movies: luca

Let me just start this off by saying that Luca is an amazing movie. But at the same time, fuck you Disney for not releasing this into cinemas. Not allowing this movie to be seen full sized on a movie screen is a crime against cinema.

You can tell that parts of this movie are a love letter to, well, the Italian Riviera first and foremost, but also to Studio Ghibli movies. The skies in this movie are absolutely Ghibli skies... and the town in the movie is called Portorosso... giving a tip of the hat to my personal favourite Ghibli movie, Porco Rosso, also set on the Riviera. It also reminded me, visually, of both Call Me By Your Name and The Talented Mr Ripley, which is unsurprising since they both take place on the Italian coast.

It's also, oddly enough, a movie set in the 1950's. I mean, you wouldn't know beyond a couple of movie posters in the background, because the movie itself is timeless. Also, the music is pretty 50's (he says as he types this review while listening to the soundtrack). Italian 50's music... but very 50's.

I wasn't sure if I was going to love the movie during the first 15 minutes or so... because, well, the first 15 minutes are basically a riff on The Little Mermaid. Just with the titular Luca taking the place of Ariel. And, for all intents and purposes, the other main character, Alberto, filling in the Prince Eric role, by which I mean being the catalyst that gets Luca up on land.

Once they are on land though, it becomes it's own thing.

Let me do my usual trick and gush about the visuals in this movie. I've already said that this movie has Ghibli skies... actually, it has Ghibli grass too... which is a massive compliment. It's clear that they pulled in all of the Pixar expertise from previous movies... because everything about this movie is visually STUNNING. The town, the underwater sequences, the very Ghibli inspired dream sequence... the food.

There's less food in this movie than there was in Ratatouille, but without any doubt the food in this movie is leap and bounds more beautiful. And when there's basil on top of a dish of pasta and you know it's definitely basil because of the little creases in the leaves and you know that it's also covered in oil because it's shiny... when you can taste it just by looking at it. That's amazing looking food.

I may have also had a moment over the other main character, Giulia, because she wears a knitted hat. A cable knitted hat. Where you can see the individual stiches. I mean, I had a moment. Add to that moment that when I learned after the movie that she's basically dressed identically to Tombo in Kiki's Delivery Service (sans the hat), which is a Ghibli movie I also love.

It's not really surprising to me that the writer/director of this movie, Enrico Casarosa, also wrote and directed the La Luna short a decade ago... they share a sweetness and a visual style that I adore... and that makes me really glad they gave him a movie to make his own.

Now, let's circle around to the story.

Casarosa's sweetness shines through here, and, if the little bits I've seen about the making of the movie in the last 24 hours are any indication, it seems like the story is based around similar experiences he had with a childhood friend. I mean, clearly Enrico isn't a "sea monster" (as far as we're aware anyway), but the friendship between Luca and Alberto is what makes this movie a stand out.

It was also one of the best representations I've seen for a "disabled" character in a movie... a character with one arm, who just says that it's the way he came into the world (and that's the one and only time it's talked about), it's not a massive plot point about him not having the arm or how he deals without it and it's also not the only defining thing about his character, it's just yet another thing to add to the list along with fisherman, father, fabulous moustache owner and respected member of the community.

And while I get why they wanted to have dangers to Luca and Alberto's adventures coming from both the land and the sea, the weakest parts of the story for me are the douchebag teenager in the village (because why none of the adults have told him to shut up and sit down I don't get... I'm assuming in my head canon that he's the son of the mayor or the richest person in town or something... he's clearly borrowing clout he doesn't have himself) and Luca's parents from the ocean. Mostly because both antagonists are played very broadly for the laughs and Luca's parents are kind of stereotypes (although, at least he has one of each, this is a Disney movie after all).

While we're on the subject... I'm still not sure how I feel about Luca's colour scheme when he's in his sea monster form... something about it was a little too much for me... maybe it's the fact that his face is blue and green, his hair his kind of purple and his eyes are red and yellow. Too many colours going on. Whereas Alberto is blue and purple with green and yellow eyes. That worked better for me. But honestly, I'd rather have had them shoot for the fences and use all the pencils in the pencil box than not have that riot of colours in other places.

Now, we come to the proverbial elephant... well, possibly the proverbial sea monster in the room.

Is the movie Luca queer? Is it queerbaiting? Has Disney accidentally made a movie by a straight writer/director that resonates massively with a queer audience by talking about a fundamental human/sea monster experience of feeling like you don't belong and finding a person who expands your world more than you thought possible who then also leads you to people who love you for who you are and that found family is very often more important than the family that you're born into. And then released it during US Pride month.

Short version. No to the first, no to the second, FUCK YES THEY DID to the third.

But... and this is a very big but. While it's perfectly reasonably to read this as a queer movie and absolutely ship the two Nonnas (you'll know what I mean if you've seen it), it isn't a love story... even accidentally. It's about two boys who don't fit in because they're different no matter where they go learning to show the world exactly who they are and finding that the world loves them because they're good people and doesn't care about the ways that they're different.

And at the same time, that doesn't have to be read as a queer story. Stories about boys who care for each other, aren't afraid to show affection with each other, both physically and emotionally, and support each other are important in their own right, irrespective of anybody's current or future sexual orientation. And I want those movies to exist in the world without everybody pointing at every single one of them and screaming "GAY" like they're an extra in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie.

Because movies like this are important for little boys to watch. Little queer boys and little straight boys both. Because finding the weirdos who are your kind of weirdo and love you for it is an important thing to have in your life. For everyone.

It should be unsurprising to anyone who's ever read one of my Pixar movie reviews... I absolutely cried at the end of this movie. Even though I knew how the movie was going to end, I still cried. Because while I knew the destination, I didn't know exactly how they were going to get us there.

And I'll be honest, Luca is kind of all about the journey. A sweet, sweet Summer journey I'm very enthusiastic to take again.

yani's rating: 4 goatfish out of 5

photo saturday: going three-d

So... the best way to describe this is as a "group project". This is the mini for Quill, my druid in Friday's DnD games. Designed by me using Hero Forge, 3D printed for me by one of the Thursday DnD boys, and given a first go at a paint job, and then refined and finished off by Mrs from the Friday group.

And then photographed by me... at a scale you'd never, ever be able to see the mini itself, because it's tiny... 30mm tall more or less.

There is a second mini, which I tried to photograph, but it just didn't work because it's darkly painted and covered in glitter... it looks amazing in person though, and exactly what I wanted.

I'm honestly in awe of anyone who can paint miniatures... it takes a degree of skill, talent and eyesight I simply don't have.

Anyway.

I made possibly the best tomato soup I've made thus far, and unsurprisingly, it's a halfling recipe from the DnD cookbook. I also made the prettiest looking (and tastiest) toasted cheese sandwich ever. So, I will absolutely be going back to the recipe at some point.

And having cheese toasties all week wasn't the worst thing in the world either... even if that first one was the best by far.

Thursday was an odd DnD session... if only because it was an episode of When Worlds Collide. Since we're doing a rotating DM thing, Fluffy (Friday's DM) offered to come and meet the reprobates I play with. Which was fun... having a new energy in the room... and also seeing him interacting with the rest of the group was interesting.

And it was also a much more chill session all around, which basically just depends on the mood of the room on any given day. Not just that room specifically, but just DnD tables as a whole in my experience.

Then before Friday's game, Fluffy had asked whether I wanted to watch Luca with him. And I did. So we did. More on that later.

Friday night's game was very much a case of "And Then". We were basically going from A to B, exploring a little along the way. Which is stuff you gotta do at the beginning of a campaign and something I enjoy in and of itself. Lots of mysteries for us to come back and solve later.

Today we did some actual stuff.

I'm attempting the chilli from the DnD cookbook, although, honestly, fuck the background fluff for that particular recipe, but I still wanna try it.

So I got the ingredients for that... increased my spice rack by about a third... which just goes to show you how anaemic my spice rack is currently.

After the supermarket and coming back here for the YubTubs, we headed off to Mitcham Shopping Centre to poke around Cheap as Chips and also visit the Portuguese custard tart shop that Mrs told us about yesterday. So damn good.

But we just picked up a few bits of things otherwise... I finally got another silicon whisk and actually found another storage box for my dice... basically the duplicate of the one I have now. Definitely not sure how I'm going to put it to use, but I couldn't leave it on the shelf, especially as it was the last one there.

And that was it really.

Current mood:

photo saturday: excited flame

So we have Character Inception for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... a fictional character made up by a fictional character.

My current bard character, Harland Honeypot's tiefling muse, Nancy Drew adult's only stand-in, archaeologist and rogue, Euphoria Phlox. And I'm more amused because while I knew that Phlox was the name of a type of purple, and the name of a type of flower, it also comes from the Greek word for flame. Which works as a tiefling.

I've said before that I love when a name accidentally becomes more relevant. Like when Peregrin's name turned out to be a combination "in the original halfling" of Pery, meaning "flower, love, loyal, romance" and Gren, meaning "baker, cook, feast, green, plenty"... at least according to books from previous editions of DnD. And, honestly, combining most translations of both words together makes sense for the character he ended up being.

Anyway...

I included a little mini "minor illusion" version of this model in the Harland model, but I kinda wanted to show off the full version. Plus, I'm otherwise running out of images of any kind.

I think probably in the reality of his books, Harland would probably write her with a much more low cut or otherwise slightly revealing top... but with a (purple) leather jacket to go over the top. My original concept was doing her with purple skin... but honestly, that just looked weird when I was putting the model together. Plus I feel like he would be able to find a lot more "sexy" adjectives for skin in human tones as opposed to purple tones. Plus that way all the accessories including her neckerchief, belt buckle and crossbow bolt fletching can all be purple.

Moving on...

This week's soup was not from the DnD cookbook and it was... acceptable. It was beef and vegetable with tomato... and not anywhere near as good as the version I made the other week. But, like I said, acceptable.

Thursday's DnD was... frustrating. For very specific and personal reasons that I'm not going to bother going into... suffice to say... just occasionally, and for a limited period of time... I kinda hate my friends. Urgh. It's fine, I know it's a series of factors, and I'll live. But just sometimes...

Anyway...

Friday was much better. We met our "sidekick"... an overly timid polar bear that I accidentally named Pepper because a) everybody else's potential names were slightly ridiculous and b) I rolled on a table of imaginary plant names and came up with Royal Pepper as a plant name... so, we just shortened it to the second part.

And I met more of my character's druid circle pals.... and they were alive this time... although, I will say, thus far I've met two, found one dead, discovered that a second one died a couple of months ago and one might have gone crazy and be the problem. So, out of a group of ten druids, she's at 20% dead and 20% met.

Plus we met Lassie. Well, not actually... but basically a dog ran up to us when we entered one of the towns and made Lassie whining at us until we followed it home to discover that, in fact, one of it's owners had gotten himself lost down a non-literal well, and we need to go and see if we can find him.

So, thus far, we're a party of three gnomes, a polar bear and a husky. We have not, as yet, walked into a bar. But it's only a matter of time.

Also, it was Mr's pre-birthday Friday, so I made olive bread (which I don't normally make because Mrs doesn't like olives) and Fluffy also gave everyone a present of a blind bag semi-prescious stone d6... and while they were both blind bags and we picked them in a totally random order as well, but of the four dice, they all worked really well for who ended up with them... for example, I'm playing a druid and I got one with a tree. So everybody was really happy, which is always good.

Today wasn't much of anything really.

We did supermarketing. I'm planning on making halfling tomato soup this week from the DnD cookbook. So we'll see how I feel about that by the end of the week.

Then, we came back here and did the unpackery and feel down a YubTubs hole... because, honestly, it's too cold to go out for no specific reason. And we didn't have a reason. So we didn't.

Thus endeth this week.

Current mood:

photo saturday: family ties

And so it begins...

I'll circle back around to this, but Friday DnD started our new campaign this week. And for the first time in a proper campaign, I'm going in with a character with an actual family. Not a found family or a nebulous case of "parents and siblings". A husband and a son.

So, this week's DnD Character Colouring Book is Quillamina Silverthread (in her "at home" gown"), her husband Wrenn Bafflestone and their boy, Kipper.

I hadn't thought until just now that I decided to put Quill in blue, a primary colour, but the boys are both in secondary colours, orange and green respectively. Not sure if that was an unconscious choice because primary vs secondary characters... or I was just trying not to have them all in the same/similar colours.

Anyway...

Dwarven potato and leek soup this week. From the Heroes Feast DnD Cookbook once again. And while I've made many, many, many pots of potato and (something) soup in the recent past, this may be one of the thickest soups I've made in a while. And pretty good overall. Definitely something I'll revisit in some way, shape or form.

Tuesday I watched all seven hours of the final episode of the second Critical Role campaign. It's the very definition of being sad that it's over and happy that it happened. And very much proof of how amazing DnD can be when you have a great DM and the players really lean into their characters.

And I absolutely cried.

Thursday's DnD was great. Good character moments... and I discovered things about my character that are definitely a problem, but that gives me something to work through. And not something I've explored before. So that's fun.

But, as I said, we started a new campaign in the Friday DnD game.

The introduction of Session Zeros for this game, which means that we've all had an experience in the world before we came together as a group, have added an interesting dynamic. And it seems as though Fluffy, in his role as DM has seemed to have decided to bolt my backstory to the main narrative at this point. Which is not great for some of the characters connected to my backstory right now.

It definitely gives my character a reason to join up with the group though, which I appreciate. Because, on the surface, I hadn't found one on my own throughout that session.

It's also interesting because this is the first time in... well, a while anyway... where I feel like my choices about a character's personality has come more from the accent I'm choosing to use. The only other time I feel like this happened was with my elven wizard with the hideous French accent... and he just wouldn't shut up. But this is very different experience. And she's turning into a much calmer and thoughtful character because I'm using a softly spoken "Southern US" accent.

Which is kind of fascinating.

I am very interested to see where this particular group of characters goes throughout this story though. And how Quill's goal of going back to her routine and her life pans out in the end.

Today was good.

We did the supermarket thing... I decided to put the DnD cookbook to one side for this week and just make up my own soup this time. Then maybe dip back in next week for either the Halfling Tomato Soup or the Gnomish Lamb Stew... since the characters I'm playing on the regular at the moment are a halfling and a gnome. So there's that.

I had also promised Ma I'd make her sausage rolls for her birthday (because neither of us thought of it in time last week), so we got the supplies for that also.

We also took a side trip to Kmart to investigate sparkly silver nail polish for DnD purposes. Yes, actually.

And then we came back here, put a movie on and I made sausage rolls. Now with fresh thyme and some lemon zest, just, because why the fuck not.

Then, as they say, that was that. I sent Ma on home with half of the leftover sausage rolls and called it a day.

Current mood:

photo saturday: arrows and ice

And so we reach the last of the Disney Princess Adventurers in DnD Character Colouring Book.

Merida is basically already a DnD character to be honest... but I decided to make her an Arcane Archer, imbuing her arrows with magic... as well as giving her the Sharpshooter feat... because, well, Merida. And she's already an Outlander, finding food to feed her and her mother in the wilderness and finding her way in the world.

If I hadn't already gone with a Ranger for Snow White, I would have made Merida a Beast Master with a bear companion, because that makes sense too.

And as much as I would have liked Elsa to have been one of the characters for last week when Fluffy forced me to watch Frozen 2... she's here now... day late and a dollar short.

I absolutely took liberties with her costume... because, well... the cold never bothered her anyway. And given that she runs across a frozen ocean barefoot in the second movie, clearly that's a thing.

So that's why she has the the Elemental Adept (cold damage) feat... which doesn't give her resistance to cold unfortunately, but does mean she does a little more damage with cold/ice spells and doesn't care if the thing she's attacking is resistant to cold.

She's a hermit for obvious reasons, and Wizard just made the most sense... as did the fact that wizards have access to the most cold damage spells in the game, and those spells are mostly the School of Evocation.

So that's the end of that little diversion.

I did do a deep dive into the DnD Heroes' Feast cookbook this week... with Halfling Everything Soup (basically chicken and vegetable, but very tasty), Dwarven Flat Bread (decent, but not sure I completely got the hang of it),Halfling Oatmeal Sweet Nibbles (cookies)... which were amazing still warm from the oven... and were descended on as through by wild animals by the Thursday DnD crew.

Rolling back a second...

Thursday should have been excellent... I made cookies, we were finishing the second half of the first adventure in the series we're doing... and all of that was fine. What wasn't fine was when I powered on through a yellow light and had a little bit of a bumper bump with the guy in front of me who stopped sooner than I expected.

Thankfully all that really happened was his towbar pierced my bumper in a way that's hardly worth bothering about. So at least that was a bonus. But not a great way to start my Thursday night excursion.

Friday was Chiro Day... and technically also Haircut Day... in so much as I reshaved my head for this month.

And then we had our Session Zero for the new campaign... which mostly consisted of eating bread stuffed with cheese, chatting about what our expectations are for the new campaign... and then I retired to Mrs' study to read graphic novels while the others did their intro to the adventure. And then we played the first board game from the folks at Critical Role, Uk'otoa, which is a super fun game.

Today was the usual.

I'm attempting another recipe from the DnD cookbook this week... which is basically potato and leek soup, which I can make anyway, but I'm interested to try a different take on the genre.

But we did the supermarket thing... came back here, did the usual and then took a little trip to Haighs. Because, why not.

Current mood: