trainwrecks-waiting
professional lurker, i promise i won’t be weird18+ content warning if you’re gonna dig thru my account
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Latest Posts by trainwrecks-waiting
Indie sleaze revival
Early 2000s Desktop Wallpapers!
East of Eden is a tale that is remarkably Stoic.
So far, I think this book is a masterwork. Just thinking about it makes me weep. It's a contemporary Stoicism story with a sprinkle of everything else tossed in for good measure: Nihilism, Absurdism, Existentialism, and so on. John Steinbeck has just become one of my favourite authors. At one point in the book, one of the characters fondly flips through Meditations. Some quotes: “You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”
“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”
“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hunger and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?” “The Hebrew word, the word timshel - 'Thou mayest' - that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open... Why does that make a man great... He can choose his course and fight it through and win... I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.”
Film Analyses/Reviews
The Sacraments of Genre: Coppola, DePalma, Scorsese
Operatic Style and Structure in Coppola's "Godfather Trilogy" (Pt. I) (Pt. II)
The Tragedy of Michael Corleone in "The Godfather: Part III"
Animated Nature: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Empathy in Miyazaki Hayao's Ecophilosophy
The Precarious Politics of Precious: A Close Reading of a Cinematic Text (X)
As I Lay Dying: Violence and Subjectivity in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (X)
Shifting Gears and Paradigms at the Movies: Masculinity, Automobility, and the Rhetorical Dimensions of "Mad Max: Fury Road"
Review: Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola
Two Thousand Light Years from Home: Scorsese's Big CASINO (X)
TIME PIECES: WONG KAR-WAI AND THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY (X)
Matter out of Place: Carnival, Containment, and Cultural Recovery in Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" (X)
Disney's Moana, the Colonial Screenplay, and Indigenous Labor Extraction in Hollywood Fantasy Films
Viewing Sinophone Cinema Through a French Theoretical Lens: Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood For Love" and 2046 and Deleuze's "Cinema" (X)
The Parallelism of the Fantastic and the Real: Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth/El Laberinto del fauno and Neomagical Realism (X)
"Back to the Future": Oedipus as Time Traveller ("Retour vers le futur": Oedipe, voyageur du temps)
Beyond the Male Romance: Repetition as Failure and Success in Apocalypse Now
Beautiful Friendship: Masculinity and Nationalism in "Casablanca"
GIRL POWER: BACK TO THE FUTURE OF FEMINIST SCIENCE FICTION WITH INTO THE FOREST AND ARRIVAL
"Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli." How Machiavelli's The Prince Exemplifies the Gangster in The Godfather and A Bronx Tale
Film as Literature: TWO SCREENPLAYS (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas)
Where Did the Goodfellas Learn How to Cook? Gender, Labor, and the Italian American Experience
Goodfellas Review (1991)
Where is the Bawdy? Falstaffian Politics in Gus Van Sant's "My Own Private Idaho" (X)
The Filmmaker as DJ: Martin Scorsese’s Compiled Score for Casino (1995)
EAST Meets WEST: "Casablanca vs. The Seven Samurai"
The Power of Adaptation in "Apocalypse Now"
Animalizing "Jurassic Park's" Dinosaurs: Blockbuster Schemata and Cross-Cultural Cognition in the Threat Scene
Review: American Psycho
The Feminine Hero of The Silence of the Lambs (X)
"Fight Club'"s Queer Representations (X)
Tiny Life: Technology and Masculinity in the Films of David Fincher (X)
Complex Design in "The Empire Strikes Back" (X)
SAVAGE PLACES REVISITED: CONRAD'S "HEART OF DARKNESS" AND COPPOLA'S "APOCALYPSE NOW"
PORTRAITS OF THE POSTMODERN PERSON IN TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, AND THE KING OF COMEDY
(Taxi Driver) (Raging Bull)
Homosexuality in "Dog Day Afternoon" (1975): Televisual Surfaces and a "Natural" Man (X)
Where Did All the Heroes Go? (Dog Day Afternoon)
Italian-Americans in Film: From Immigrants to Icons
God's Lonely Man: "Taxi Driver" in Script and Screen
A Slice of Delirium: Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" Revisited
Kafka on the Screen: Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" (X)
Stalking 'The Deer Hunter'
Gender, Genre, and Myth in "Thelma and Louise" (X)
Restaging the War: "The Deer Hunter" and the Primal Scene of Violence
"The Godfather, I and II": Patterns of Corruption (X)
Making the Milk into a Milkshake: Adapting Upton Sinclair's "Oil!" into P. T. Anderson's "There Will Be Blood"
Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron's Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization
THE SWOLLEN BOY: Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS and Diggler Days
Love in Time: Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, and Richard Linklater's "Before" Films
Other
Al Pacino (X)
Lies and Loneliness: An Interview with Tony Leung Chiu Wai
Wong Kar-Wai (Interview)
Imagism and Martin Scorsese: Images Suspended and Extended
Docufictions: An Interview with Martin Scorsese on Documentary Film
Orson Welles: The Human Side of Genius
Eavesdropping On Female Voices: A WHO'S WHO OF CONTEMPORARY WOMEN FILMMAKERS (1987)
Disappearance of Elaine May
THE NON-DIEGETIC FALLACY: FILM, MUSIC, AND NARRATIVE SPACE
Hollywood Movie Dialogue and the "Real Realism" of John Cassavetes
THE WORK OF JOHN CASSAVETES: SCRIPT, PERFORMANCE STYLE, AND IMPROVISATION
The Adventure of Insecurity: The Films of John Cassavetes
Prospero's Muccs: The Meaning of Martin Scorsese's Italian American Dialect
Between Colorblind and Colorconscious: Contemporary Hollywood Films and Struggles Over Racial Representation
The Militarization of Marvel's Avengers
BEFORE AND AFTER "JAWS": CHANGING REPRESENTATIONS OF SHARK ATTACKS
Sound Doctrine: An Interview with Walter Murch
Made Men (Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Scorsese Interview)
Beautiful Resistance: The Early Films of Wong Kar-wai
Who Knew It Could Get Worse? When Nixon Haunted the New Hollywood
TV
Sticking Together, Falling Apart: "The Sopranos" and the American Moral Order
"Mad Men"'s Color Schemes: A Changing Palette of Working Women
ETHICAL UPLIFT, "NOT FOR NUTHIN" (Review: The Sopranos)
Writing
Story: Substance, Structure, Style by Robert Mckee
Dialogue - Robert McKee
THE WRITER’S JOURNEY Mythic Structure for Writers
The Art of Dramatic Writing
Anatomy of Story
Into the Woods
—-
(X) = corresponding tumblr post
Muppets Tonight (1996-1998)
tfw the tarot cards predict the worst possible outcome so i have to pretend i dont believe in that shit and that i actually touch grass or else i will faint
i <3 when buster keaton plays real lovers
“Buster doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve does not mean that he doesn’t have one. Acting both through and around his deadpan, he knew how to let the audience figure out what he was trying to hide.
In The Haunted House, when a woman comes into the bank where he works and exerts her wiles to seduce him into opening the time-lock safe early for her, his face remains as set as granite, but every time he shakes his head in refusal we know exactly how much his resolve has weakened. Here the stone face hilariously counterpoints a spine of jell-o.”
- Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy by Imogen Sara Smith
Buster Keaton filming the famous falling house stunt for Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1927)
“Wanna chase you ‘round the table, wanna touch your head”
Music: This Is Love by PJ Harvey
Buster at the premiere of ‘Hell’s Angels’ (1930)
Just a clip of his beautiful voice in preparation to submit it to the next round of the hotvintagepoll
I can remember if I’ve posted this edit on here before, but here it is again anyway. For the purposes of propaganda for Buster’s entry in @hotvintagepoll
Buster Smiles and Laughs in the Roscoe Arbuckle films
Music: When You’re Smiling by The Benny Goodman Trio
pen15 is honestly like really fucking funny but also really fucking hard to watch sometimes because of how they capture what it was like to be a little girl in the early 2000s, like....even the fucking weirdness of how maya masturbates lmfao, but also just the very deep kind of sadness that comes with having grown up a girl and watching it back as an adult woman
Watching Pen15 and seeing them as little girls, even though they’re played by these grown women, had me bawling my eyes out. Watching the popular girls be racist to Maya and then her mimicking them and not knowing what it meant until her brother said something. Then when Anna realized she was part of the problem and she should’ve spoke up and she apologized. The show is so wholesome, and sad.
Anna going through her parents divorce and how it’s affecting her life, the relationship with her father once he’s moved out. Her feeling like she has to step up and take care of him, while also being told not to, and being met with no appreciation. It’s just so much like what 13 was for me with my parents splitting that it breaks my heart for her.
This show makes you cry and laugh, and sometimes Maya’s outbursts are almost hard to watch, but they’re just little girls.
God, the Yuki episode of Pen15 is so good. It's like a brilliant short movie completely seperate from the show. Most of the time when a TV show does an episode concentrating on a side character it feels a bit like a filler, but this is the exact opposite. From the opening shot of Yuki at the merch stand, to the disability sign & her playacting the leg injury to the juxataposition of the breakfast and the dinner, it's all done with so much care. The Japanese dialogue was so Japanese, so "different" from the rest of the American dialogue that it really made it feel like watching a Japanese art house movie and drove the point home about how torn she felt - even if there hadnt been the heartfelt ending. Wow, what an exploration of culture clashes and aging and family in 30 minutes. In a "cringe humor" TV show.
remember that one widely circulated internet post that was like, one day your parents picked you up and put you down and never picked you up again? that’s how i feel about the last time you woke up your mom in the middle of the night because you had a nightmare and she laid in bed with you until you fell back to sleep.
the finale of pen15 was so hard to watch but i did cry after all of that trauma when shuji showed up for maya and anna and carried all their earthly belongings as he skateboarded them home.
ok something about pen15 that they did really fantastically and I've never seen done before is how it showed young girl's first sexual experiences, even first kisses, as like.... upsetting. Like Anna has her first kiss and comes back to the room with her friends and starts tearing up and I found that soooo true to my own experience.
But especially the way Maya's first sexual experience is framed almost as a horror movie, and its something she just does.... and then feels shit about it.
And its the idea, and the reality, that young girls are just kind of carried along into sexual situations by boys (and men 🤢) who take advantage of their indecisiveness or unsureness, and the pressure that is on young girls and the idea that young girls don't even enjoy their sexual experiences is so fucked up!!! But it's true!! And it was brutal to watch this reflection back as an adult woman
PEN15 is such a brilliant show and the way that they were able to accurately depict a friendship between two preadolescent girls is so bizarre but also kind of sad because growing up i didn’t have that close of a relationship with any of the girls in my grade and i barely remember middle or high school and now I’m an adult wondering why i can’t foster a tight relationship with other women like did i do something wrong growing up? Time is scary, one day you’re sharing snacks during recess and then the next you’re finding out they got married through a week old Facebook post and you always thought that you’d be there for moments like that because you promised each other you would be when you were younger.
maya erskine doing an episode on her show about her mother and do a love letter for that side of her mom that is woman and not just her mother and doing it in a beautiful way and talking about the struggle of being foreigner in a country that is not yours and how women let everything behind for motherhood….pen15 is literally one the best tv shows in the last years that its obvious made with lots of love and humanity to portrait womanhood
Pen15 season 1: lol remember AIM???
Pen15 season 3: your childhood will end when an older boy asks you to come to his room. you will follow him and you will always, always remember the darkness of the hallway. there are some things a best friend cannot save you from, even when she is saving you. also remember tamagotchi?
