Tromeo and Juliet - Lloyd Kaufman

There's a scene early on in Tromeo & Juliet while Juliet dreams. For a few, fleeting seconds, it seems as if it could come out of a Swedish sauna porno. But this is a Troma production, and sex is never without meaning; in this case, Juliet's fear of heterosexual intercourse is the meaning. Juliet reaches to an anonymous man's penis, and pulls it out. Not content to be a regular penis, it must be about a foot--and worse, it has a mouth. This was the moment I knew I loved Tromeo & Juliet. (The moment I knew I liked it was earlier--at the reimagining of the "'Do you bite your thumb at me?' 'I bite my thumb, sir!'" scene. You know the one.)

In Another Galaxy...: "Marvel is for everyone*!"

I wrote something for Special Snowflake. It's called "Marvel is for everyone*!", and I like it. It's about how the MCU's lack of female characters is fucking up young girls. You should check it out.

The Thin Line Between Offence and Respect

This is an exchange between a native American woman and a white man in Adam Sandler's Ridiculous 6; see if you can guess which character is which. Recently, a group of native Americans-including the film's cultural advisor-walked of the set of Ridiculous 6. This does not bode well for the film. At all.

Pop Culture & Class

James McAvoy's anxiety "about a society that doesn't give opportunities to everybody from every walk of life" reminded me of a few other recent comments about art and class: Julie Walter's and Judi Dench's in particular. This was only further compounded by a thinktank's analysis of Grammy wins over the last few decades: the study concluded that music was the whitest it had been in over thirty years (while not all white people are privileged, they are more likely to be a higher class than minorities).

This week in T-POP! News:

[T-POP! News is a new semi-weekly feature I will be running from here on out. T-POP!, of course, stands for The-Person of Porlock, which is semi-similar to the name of this blog, that I run.]

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya - Isao Takahata

The whole film is in this style, as an example. I think this is just a screengrab they decided would make a good poster. They were right.

From the moment it bursts onto screen, Princess Kaguya has a fairy tale sensibility. The visuals look like they jumped straight out of a story book, and the narration only compounds this. And despite it being visible to these Western eyes, it still felt very Japanese. The art is similar to that of the classic Japanese paintings (does anyone know what that's called?), and it was based on the first written Japanese story (extant, anyway).

Selma (On Historical Inaccuracies and Race)

I haven't yet seen Selma, but I know of the fuss raised by two aides to President Johnson (also the custodians to his library?? Why is that a thing). So obviously, they have no potential bias about this. In basic form, the two aides believe that Selma portrayed President Johnson unfairly (I guess saying that the FBI bugged King, Johnson was more interested in Vietnam than civil rights and the Selma-Montgomery march was King's, not Johnson's, idea-all true, by the by-is unfair now).

Boyhood - Richard Linklater

According to Salon, Boyhood "isn’t quite like anything else in the history of cinema". I disagree. Like, a lot. There was one part of Boyhood that I felt I hadn't seen before (sure, a lot of it in Skins&nbspand teen movies, but what makes them any lesser than Boyhood?), and I'll get onto that in a while.

Dreams of Sleeping Past (Midday): On Superhero Movies

Superhero movies bore me. That's not to say they're unworthy of being Art or Culture or whatever the term is today (god knows I don't judge on that-in my pantheon of good stuff, an obscure children's fantasy rubs shoulders with Pale Fire, a dramedy-musical with Wes Anderson): I've just never watched a superhero movie without falling asleep.

We Are the Best! - Lukas Moodysson

We Are the Best! is very much like finding a new type of comfort food. It's nothing that challenges you (too much), but you instantly love it. It doesn't aim to start a revolution, but it does aim to be satisfying.

God Help the Girl - Stuart Murdoch

God Help the Girl aims to be a complex reflection on the creation of music, mental illness and eating disorders. For the most part, I felt it succeeded. It's a twee little thing, but it works well (I do seem to have a fondness for twee, so take your tolerance for it into account).