Valentine Steele

Like, I do tolerate Orthodox Jews and Muslims making women wear head/face coverings. Go nuts. Rightfully protected by law.

But I would go fucking insane if I had to make myself pretend that it wasn't super off-putting (to me) in a weird medieval way.

I genuinely think it all went wrong when "tolerance" became a dirty word.

Sorry, sometimes you *will* have to tolerate others instead of loving them. A lot of people are dicks/weirdos in ways that aren't harmful, but are still very draining and annoying.

I would count this as more of a Halloween™ movie than horror, per se, but the Tim Burton Sleepy Hollow is excellent.

Buckets of atmosphere and a fun cast of character actors being goofy.

It's so weird seeing this obviously British movie with American accents dubbed in randomly.

Makes it feel like it takes place in the same city Charlie and the Chocolate Factory does. lol

The Adam McKay vs Blake Edwards schools of comedy acclaim.

Be lauded because you put effort into making good comedies, or be reviled because you make bad comedies that spend most of their time wanting to be lauded.

Like, Adam McKay made movies that were more intelligent and visually interesting than most 2000s studio bro flicks.

But as soon as he moved into drama/'thinking' comedy, that very same approach suddenly meant his movies looked and felt blander and dumber.

Even though his style never changed.

A lot of comedy people complain about how comedy is underappreciated, which I agree with.

But the problem is that with said underappreciation comes lower standards/expectations.

Most of those complainers wouldn't have nearly as much acclaim if comedy was genuinely appreciated.

IMO- Ghostbusters is one of the best from that run of comedies because the extra production hassle from the effects forced them to actually shape the comedic bits into a tight narrative.

Each sequel got that wrong by either focusing on unfunny improv shit or making the story super serious.

It's all social media.

Everybody has to perform for a potential audience of haters 24/7.

It's like if a charity dedicated its time/resources on forming a committee to redefine hunger-induced spasms as a worthy form of cultural dance instead of just giving out food.

The insane thing about Stalin worship from tankies is that he essentially killed the USSR by reshaping it into a structure that had "Stalin stays around forever" as its one and only load-bearing point.

There used to be a woman in the UK called Mary Whitehouse, who ran many stupid censorship campaigns.

Infamously, she got Doctor Who dragged off air because that week's cliffhanger ended with a fight scene and "children would spend a week thinking Dr Who had been killed".

We now live in her world.

However, I do suspect that this was also driven by Gerwig/Netflix wanting to nip comparisons to the 2000s movies in the bud.

And you even get to have a Blitzed out London for the 'first' instalment so it doesn't feel like too much of a shock.

True, but IIRC WW2 is only mentioned once in the entire series and then basically every other book is basically just set in the 1950s.

Hell, within the space of about a year 'in-universe' you go from the Blitz in TLWW to a satire of 50s progressive schooling in Silver Chair.

That's also why I'm not that shocked/put out about the new Gerwig adaptation moving the setting of the TMN to the 50s.

It's very much a book about that time/vibe, with some Victorian set dressing hastily thrown on.

Same here.

I reckon a lot of its awards success is basically down to tv people giving it props for being a typical meat and potatoes 9-5 piece of tv work.

And not an bloated movie that you need to shoot in Eastern Europe/New Zealand because its the only way to make the budget work.

Streaming (and streaming-induced) tv bloat really obscured this, but even early episodes of Game of Thrones were basically shot like a quality BBC period drama with the fantasy elements intruding only occasionally.

IMO - most of its success is due to being a return to actual 'prestige tv' first principles.

That is, a fairly common type of TV show with one high-concept element and a larger-than-normal budget.

Compensated for by a relatively easy-to-shoot production. Mostly indoors, contemporary, etc.

Every time that Hot Ones Matt Damon video goes viral (where he talks about the death of the home video market), people always miss his very obvious subtext.

viz. "If you people don't start paying 10-20 bucks for regular mid-budget movies again, you aren't gonna get any more of them".

#1 is especially true. Streaming has ended up fragmenting and losing to piracy because, as it turns out, undercutting/debt financing *does* have a floor.

95% of the reason why film/TV sucks now is that it's either gotta be the most popular thing ever, or has to cost 40% of its 90s/2000s equivalent.

The British have produced a huge supply of incredibly valuable contributions to the world, and every single one of them is miraculous for simply having escaped the crab bucket that is the UK mindset.

The problem with the British is a lack of taste/sense, not pure raw skill.

The British Left and the American Left are both fascinatingly different examples of going crazy because you think you've won the discourse.

You also, on balance, probably got fewer self-selecting psychos than you do now.

Or at least, their impact was pretty heavily diluted.

I think abolishing the draft was good, but it did at least prevent
"being a vet" from being turned into a lifestyle brand.

The insane thing is that she's literally from Rotherham. Like, it's not just a moral principle deal, it's literally just her wanting answers about a thing that happened in her own constituency.

And yeah, you better believe she's still persona non grata in certain circles, nearly a decade on.

One of the most pro-Gaza MPs in the country literally had to step down from Corbyn's Labour shadow cabinet, because she said that grooming gangs were a problem.

And still, no lessons were/will be learned from this.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Anglo LibLeft has undergone an even more extreme sowing/reaping experience with overrarching anti-free speech actions.

It represents the existence of stories that are not "guy who looks exactly like me wakes up in anime world with huge penis" and "girl find out that she is secretly a princess and becomes the romantic focus of 10 differently hot werewolves"

Something like 30 Rock played this a lot smarter, where the character relationships did soften over time, but never lost that fundamental underlying tension which drives comedy.