movies: cruella

Let me start this review of Cruella by setting the tone for a lot of what is to follow.

Fuck. This. Movie.

Not the whole, entire movie. But very, very specifically fuck Disney for making another "villain with a tragic backstory" movie and especially fuck the screenplay writers, Dana Fox and Tony McNamara... and Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel and Steve Zissis, who all have a story credit.

Fuck all y'all for thinking that "clumsy" is a personality trait. In fact, fuck you for putting Roger in this movie AT ALL. He does not need to be in this movie. He is pointless in this movie. I know this because you had to make him a lawyer in order to shoehorn him into this dumpster fire of a movie. He's only there because you were going down a checklist of 101 Dalmatian references and needed to check them all off. No you don't. He shouldn't be in the movie, and if you absolutely insist he needs to be there, then he should have a personality beyond "clumsy".

Fuck you for the late second act reveal about Estella/Cruella's parentage. I was like... "nah, they won't be THAT stupid and obvious... that makes no sense"... and yet, 45 minutes later... there we are, stupid, obvious and stealing liberally from the beginning of Snow White.

And especially fuck you for the inclusion of so many fucking dogs in this movie and their place in Estella/Cruella's life, and especially that she ends up the owner of three Dalmatian "attack dogs". I mean, Wink the chihuahua (played by Bluebell) is a sweet cinnamon roll and must be protected. But otherwise, fuck you.

Fuck you for having Estella/Cruella continually TALK TO A FOUNTAIN. It's a FOUNTAIN. I feel like it was actually her mother's grave at some point in the script, then things changed and now it's a fountain.

Most of all though, fuck you for that scene at the very end of the movie where it's revealed that Cruella... CRUELLA DE VIL... the notorious homicidal puppy killer... if people only know two things about Cruella, they know she has black and white hair and that she MURDERS PUPPIES. That Cruella, is the one who gave Pongo and Perdita to Roger and Anita. You know, the main characters from 101 Dalmatians.

Fuck you so especially hard for that one.

Yes, for the pedants in the room, I know that at no point in the original book, the 1960's animated movie, the 1990's live action movie or it's 2000's sequel does Cruella ever actually kill a puppy. Because they are entertainment for children, and that's not going to fly. I am aware. I am also hyperbolic.

And yes, I don't much care about spoilers for this movie. Firstly, it's been out a while and secondly, the plot is bad. It's just bad. 

You cannot make a movie about a person who's defining trait is "wanted to kill a bunch of puppies" and then try and make her sympathetic. It just doesn't work. Like Maleficent before her... this movie should be filed in the dictionary under "tonal whiplash". 

If they had tried to make this movie about Cruella's slow descent into "madness", from victim to villain, maybe that could have worked. But they wanted to make her sympathetic. Which is where the plethora of writers are to blame. We have parts of the movie where she's arch and over the top and making plans and being crazy. But then next minute she's apologising or repenting or explaining herself to Jasper and Horace.

That brings us back to that "101 checklist"... it has Jasper and Horace on it. Jasper and Horace, who are, according to the wiki of the animated version, "two burglars hired by Cruella". And then turn them into Estella/Cruella's trusted friends... in fact she calls them "family" at one point. No. They don't need to be in this movie.

It's completely unsurprising to me that story writer McKenna wrote The Devil Wears Prada script... this movie steals from that movie liberally and consistently. In fact, the whole central core of the story of Estella/Cruella and the Baroness is just the 1970's variation of that story. The fact that screenwriter Fox has written a LOT of number of lackluster rom-coms also doesn't surprise me... often times "clumsy" is a personality trait in those movies too. And the fact that Marcel was a writer on Fifty Shades of Grey, Venom and Saving Mr Banks tells me that maybe she's the person you call in when your script has gone off the rails and you need to bring it back.

Looking at the writing team and their past credits, it's no wonder this movie feels... what's the term we use now instead of schizophrenic... that. That in spades. In any case, this movie doesn't have one strong voice. It has a lot of ideas, many of which don't gel with the others.

Also, while I'm laying the boot in... fuck the music in this movie. 

Because if I am actually noticing the amount of music they're playing, and it's getting on my nerves, we're into a bad place. I am notorious for not noticing the music a lot of the time, so this is just egregious.

It approaches the realms of the first Suicide Squad movie and it's use of music (too much, too often, too obvious)... but at the same time, a lot of it is... kinda bad. I say this because I've been listening to the overly extensive soundtrack while writing this. Yes, there's a lot of cool 60's and 70's songs here, but there's also some hot, hot garbage. Or possibly they just crap up the versions they're using, I'm not completely sure. 

They really needed to have cut down the list of songs by at least two thirds. 

However.

Having said all of that... and having ranted about this movie a number of times both last night and earlier today... about how bad the writing/story is, about how the character motivations and ideas are a mess, about the fact that they needed to fuck off the 101 Dalmatians checklist...

I don't... hate this movie. 

Oh, I loathe large parts of it, don't get me wrong. However, there are parts of it that are exactly in both my ballpark and directly up my alley.

First and foremost. Ms Jenny Bevan, costume designer extraordinaire, step forward.

You might recognise Ms Bevan from her previous work on Sherlock Holmes, The King's Speech and Mad Max: Fury Road... the latter she won an Oscar for... so we're in good hands here.

The costumes in this movie are exceptional. And I mean ALL of the costumes, not just Cruella's showy outfits or the Baroness's couture gowns... everything. The men's suits have that very specific 70's cut and the men, especially those who work for the Baroness, look amazing.

And I need to give both Bevan and assistant costume designer Sheara Abrahams (who was responsible for Jasper and Horaces costumes according to an interview I read) a specific shout out for the outfit the preteen Jasper (Ziggy Gardner) wears... it's on screen for maybe two minutes... and I loved everything about it.

Basically every time we went to a new scene and there were new costumes, I was living for it all.

Add to that the hair and makeup departments, who do exceptional work with every single person on screen. Those horrific but accurate 70's haircuts... so many 70's haircuts.

Likewise Fiona Crombie and Martin Foley as the production designer and art director respectively... gorgeous work.

Everything visual about this movie is stunningly gorgeous.

And then we have the Emmas. Ms Stone as Estella/Cruella and Ms Thompson as The Baroness do amazing work with what they were given. They are clearly having the best time, and when Stone really gets to let loose as the titular character it's great. But the movie doesn't let her do that nearly enough. Thompson is an evil bitch throughout and I loved every second of it.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't call out Andrew Leung as The Baroness's secretary, Jeffrey, who doesn't get much to do plot-wise (and has maybe a dozen lines, maybe of which are variations of "she wants to see you, now"), but is very often in the background of scenes, and acting his little heart out. And he's both pretty and amusing.

With all that said and done, at the end of the day, fuck you movie. You had moments, you could have been good, you were very pretty... but fuck you.

yani's rating: 2 golden chrysalises out of 5

photo saturday: seasonal boy

A thought experiment for today's DnD Character Colouring book... and one that I've had in different forms for a while now. And that thought experiment is taking on the challenge of an eladrin...

Eladrin are elves native to the Feywild, a realm of beauty, unpredictable emotion, and boundless magic. An eladrin is associated with one of the four seasons and has coloration reminiscent of that season. Some eladrin remain associated with a particular season for their entire lives, whereas other eladrin transform, adopting characteristics of a new season.

And there are a few ways to do eladrin. The easiest is to pick a season and keep them there always. The other is to switch between seasons... but then you have the added challenge of a character with four different personalities... or four versions of a personality.

To me, if you're going to go that far, give each of those personalities it's own name. I like the idea that they are simple names. And also, I've used the "title as name" idea for High Elves in the past. This one translates to The Bowmaker.

Initially I was going to change up the costume, or at least the waistcoat, but in the end I decided that having a single outfit linked the four seasons together a little more. And yes, I am obsessed with that particular set of harness pants, thank you for noticing.

Also, yes, making the eladrin from the Feywild a Fey Wanderer Ranger is the correct choice. All the implied class backstory is then covered by the race... and lends some more story options than you'd get from a non-fey character.

Will I ever play this guy? Possibly not... I think I've mentioned before that Ranger is the only class I've never really explored. I mean, I've had character who multiclass into Ranger, but never just Ranger. And if I did, he'd probably end up defaulting to the Autumn version... because it's my favourite season... and it's also my favourite of the eladrin seasons.

Autumn is the season of peace and goodwill, when summer’s harvest is shared with all.

So there's that...

Moving on.

This week was... for the most part... dull.

I did a reprise of pea and ham soup... and yes, the secret to a decent pea and ham is "add a lot of other vegetables". I do kinda wish getting the ham part was simpler.... like, that ham hock, off the bone, kinda ham... I just put a lot of bacon in and call it a day.

There was no DnD this week.

Thursday night was called off due to a) two folks being unavailable... and b) nobody making a fucking decision, so I called the thing off, because no other asshole was making the call.

And Friday was called off due to Mr and Mrs having a pre-existing social engagement. So instead Fluffy came over and we watched a movie... the Cruella movie. More on that later. Because I have thoughts and opinions about that particular movie.

Today wasn't much of anything either.

We did the supermarket thing. Unpacked. Faffed about a bit. Ma went home. I think there was something that I said last week I wanted to do at some stage. But whatever it was, clearly it wasn't super important, because fucked if I can remember what the hell it was.

Clearly, very important.

Current mood:

photo saturday: extra

The word of the day is... extra. Let me use it in a sentence... "these DnD Character Colouring Book characters are very extra".

Partly these are me, trying to teach myself how to apply makeup, albeit not to myself, also digitally, and using the preset options in Hero Forge. They're also what happens when I start just fooling around with options and then like what I've done and end up making the rest of the character to match.

I wasn't even sure they were wizards until I sat down to make the images this afternoon. Normally I lean much more in the direction of sorcerers, because, honestly, they're just better. Charisma casters > Intelligence casters... fight me. And if I was actually going to play one or other of them, I'd probably rebrand them a little... but for right now... wizards.

Lady Larimar is also what happens when at a certain point you think about designing someone your one confirmed lesbian character would crush hard on... while Marli (or to translate his name, Golden Pride) is the answer to the question "what happens if you combine a dwarf and a drag queen?".

Also the fact that I love playing with skin colour... except I just realised that Marli should be a hill dwarf, not a mountain dwarf, but fuck it... I love the alternate versions of dwarves (gold and shield, standing in for hill and mountain respectively) and the two variations of high elves, sun elves and moon elves (of which Larimar is the latter, obvs).

Anyway.

Roof/leak update... Grubby returned, this time with a different apprentice... Nerd Mullet. Yes, nerd glasses and a mullet... sort yourself out boy... look at your choices.

Anyway... that's somewhat burying the lede... Grubby couldn't work out where the leak was coming from yet again, which was why he needed to saw a hole in my ceiling.

Yes, you heard that right. A big-ass hole (relatively speaking)... not that big in the grand scheme of the universe. But still a hole.

On the up side, he located the issue about 30 seconds later, thanks to all that lovely daylight visible through the gap. So, they covered the hole with a temporary fix courtesy of some plastic board and masking tape, swept up all the mess they made and they reported back to the Powers that Be.

So now we wait.

I was somewhat reminded of the water drama from my previous apartment though... just because I had to move furniture and there wasn't much point in putting it back right now, since I'd just have to shift it all again. Of course if it takes them forever to return, I might rethink my stance, but it just makes life easier right now... at least for wall related hijinks.

Of course, if it takes them as long as it did for them to fix the previous drama (September 2014 - March 2015), I will not be a happy bunny. But that time they had to replace the whole roof if memory serves... this shouldn't be that extreme.

Moving on.

I made soup... I just say soup because it was one of those recipes I made up out of my head, but honestly, it was something of a version of the DnD Halfling Everything soup... but made in the spirit of the recipe rather than the actual recipe. In so much as the in world lore talks about the soup being made by whatever you have on hand. Which I did... so basically chicken, vegetable and tomato soup... quite good, even if I do say so myself. Which I do.

Thursday's DnD saw the return of Fluffy as Guest DM... and an adventure that can only be described using the word of the day... "extra". Fun, chaotic, potentially a little scattered... and depending on how things eventually shake out, possibly a tiny bit predictable. Although I hope that it works against the assumptions of players and goes in a completely different direction.

But definitely an interesting change of pace.

Friday's DnD was... well... it went in an unexpected direction. It didn't start out the way I really expected it to... partially because of my character and it certainly ended up somewhere unexpected, again, because of my character. Which isn't that surprising given there are only three of us.

But we're collecting more NPCs... we're now three gnomes travelling with a talking polar bear, a mummified ancient elf and an awakened berry bush. Or, as things currently stand, two gnomes and a disembodied spirit shaped like a leaf.

And it'll be a couple of weeks before we get back to it due to life and whatnot. So there's that.

Today we actually left the house after shopping... which is a bonus.

We did the supermarket thing. I'm attempting a pea and ham soup this week... they can go either way, and, honestly, it's a lot of peas. But I'm following advice from past me and cramming it with a lot of other vegetables.

After the unpackery, we headed out to Big W, because Luca is out on DVD and Ma hasn't seen it yet. So we grabbed that, wandered around the store and then called it a day.

Current mood:

photo saturday: my boys

In the last two Friday DnD campaigns I've played characters with silver/white hair who either start out the game as a mother or became one by the campaign wrap up. And both times they've been boy children.

And because I'm me, I designed the child version of those characters, but then my mind gets to thinking and I end up designing a grown up version also. Because it's not like I don't have enough half-formed characters in the hopper, I clearly need to add more.

So here we have Quill's son Bo and Nightingale's half-angel boy Andir. And yes, Bo is called Kipper in the current timeframe, but gnomes take on as many names as people will give them and use them as they see fit. So the grown up version uses the nickname his mother always called him and his father's surname.

I will say that had DM Fluffy not decided to tie my backup character (quite artfully, it must be said) to Kipper/Bo, I might not have thought of turning him into a whole character. But, really, where do future adventurers come if not from the children of current adventurers?

Also, I blame Hero Forge, because they dropped a whole lot of tattoo and war paint decals last Thursday... and I really wanted to play with some visible tattoo ideas. I decided later that each of the tattoos (and there are 15 in total, only five of which are visible) denote someone he has lost. Whether that's friends, fellow rangers, lovers, family or what, I don't know. But I like that idea. Alternatively they might just be important events, some of which happen to be people he's lost. Either way.

Plus the idea of him having this particular ranger subclass caught my attention... the final version isn't out yet, it doesn't drop until later this year, him having a similarly sized wingless dragon friend as very appealing. And there's a lot of very interesting art out there of those kind of beasties.

Not that, you know, I'm likely to ever actually PLAY this character... but I wouldn't mind dipping into that subclass at some point, so we'll just call it research.

I know when I originally made Andir, I had ideas about what his class was going to be... and maybe he was supposed to be a paladin... there's some sense in that honestly... but I also like that he followed at least a little in his "father's" footsteps. But for a different god. Plus I love some of the naming conventions that have been devised for some of the different churches... and Paramour for goddess of love is just perfection.

Oh, and sidebar, I know that Aasimar (half-angels basically) are supposed to look human... but his mother was a drow and his father was possible a goliath who got turned into an angel or possible the divine essence of the natural world focussed into taking the form of a baby. Nobody knows and Nightingale ain't telling. 

I just wish there were better options for having a character who is a stick/eskrima/baston fighter other than just reflavouring low damage clubs.

Also, yes, I am aware they're wearing the same pants... they're good pants... lots of straps, much detail. It's also fascinating to me that they're in the exact same pose, but something about the height difference of about 3'5" and 5'10" that renders parts of the pants very differently.

Anyway.

You know how I said the plumbers/tradies, Grubby and Thighs, came to visit last week and looked at the roof and the leak thereof and I said that they had "fixed the issue in theory".

They made it worse. Or, to be fair to them, they may not have made it worse, but they didn't make it any better. And when we got a morning full of rain on Wednesday I looked up from what I was doing to watch two drips run the full length of the wall. So I reported it immediately, the plumber people contacted me on Thursday and they're coming out next Wednesday.

So there's that. Cue additional stress right there.

I made CHOW-DAH this week... sorry, but The Simpsons episode, The Boy Who Knew Too Much (Season 5, Episode 20 from May 1994) has ruined that word for everybody who grew up with that show. But it wasn't bad chow... chow... chowder... there, I did it. I think that I've made thicker versions in the past, but this was quite tasty overall.

Thursday's DnD session was good... appropriately weird and stressful, but good. And I may have used the phrase "that horse is up to something"...

Friday's DnD session was almost sans bread... because I generally get it sorted out for the second proving at about 4:30... and suddenly it was 5:15 and I realised I hadn't done shit all about it.

The session itself was good... although we're all very dumb... because a thing that DM Fluffy has been, with hindsight, hinting at came to pass and we didn't expect it. Or at least, I didn't. And now I have two spell slots left and the party in general has reduced health and we have to fight (or maybe not... who can tell... my character definitely wants answers from this foe) what I thought was going to be a much later game enemy.

Today was short and sweet.

We did the supermarket, I forgot to pick up my mask, thankfully they have disposable ones at the entrance. We came back, unpacked, faffed about a bit and then Ma went home super early because... honestly, going out and doing non essential things just isn't any fun right now.

Current mood:

photo saturday: cushion the wild

This week was... within the specific context of my life the last few weeks... full on.

So, we're dipping back into regular photos this week, mostly because otherwise I got nothing to take the edge off all the words.

I made the somewhat unappealing sounding Chicken and Cabbage Soup this week (well, depending on your opinion of cabbage I guess). Basically it was just chicken and vegetable, but I added cabbage, because I just felt like it... and it was really nice. Very tasty.

Monday was my third and final jaunt down to the airport at the proverbial crack of dawn... and I was even further forward in the line than last week. So I was one of the first four cars served and back home by about 7:30am. And I got my results back just before 9:30pm the same night. Woo. Negative across the board, three for three, so I could finally leave my house and do things.

The most important immediate one to me was actually being able to go down to our apartment's recycling bins and get rid of three weeks of recycling. Nothing like having clear countertops to reduce that mental clutter.

Also, being able to let out the proverbial breath I'd been unconsciously holding since two Wednesdays prior.

Wednesday night was this week's Thursday DnD session... because reasons. And yes, if it seems to anyone else like we should just move the Thursday session back to Wednesday, I totally agree with you... but, you know... I'm not in charge of those decisions.

But anyway... we did like half a session of roleplay, as we are want to do at the start of an adventure in the current timeline. And it was the first time we'd all been together for three weeks, so we were perhaps a little rambunctious... and I won't lie, I forgot how to bard a bit and didn't use a number of my abilities. In fact it was only halfway through the game that I remembered I'd taken the Bountiful Luck feat to assist the party.

Fortunately we hadn't been rolling a lot of natural ones before that point.

Thursday was Chiro Day... because it was supposed to be last Friday, but that didn't happen, obviously. And getting out of the house and going into town was... weird. Doubly so in a mask and then going to the chiro where everyone was wearing a mask... not that people weren't doing that in the city... although there were a couple of folk whose noses are clearly just painted on and not functional organs, because their masks weren't pulled up over their noses.

Anyway...

Friday I was visited by Grubby and Thighs, the plumbers/roofers/tradies who came to look at my periodically leaky roof/ceiling. And as usual they sent me acceptably pretty tradies, one of whom I would definitely have wanted to wash first (which has a charm all it's own honestly), the other who seemed to be built in the himbo vein... cute, beefy and a little bit dumb. But they were nice and they were eye candy delivered right to my house and they did things on the roof and have fixed the issue in theory.

Or at least enough that I'm going to stress about it less until I have a reason to stress. Because otherwise, that way madness lies.

Also thankfully they showed up during the hour or so when it was nice and sunny and not while it was raining, so things got done and it wasn't a case of "sorry, we don't do the rain". Also, at about the mid point in the "we'll be there between X and Y timeframe" and not five minutes before the end of it, because that's always a pain.

Then we were back to Friday DnD after two weeks away. And it was also mostly a roleplay session. Which was lovely. Because we got to meet my graph paper husband, my graph paper son and my graph paper dog and cat. And hang around in my graph paper farmhouse and eat a delicious graph paper meal.

And then DM Fluffy had to give me a horrific vision from the big bad evil goddess of cold disinterest... while in the real world I was cuddling/dealing with the world's neediest cat.

So there's that.

It was a very "me" centric episode... but a) it makes perfect sense because we were with my character's family and b) there's only three of us playing, and it seems like a lot of my arc is right up front at present. Or that Fluffy has bolted a number of the story hooks onto my backstory... which is fine. The others will get their turn soon enough.

Short story long... it was a good session.

Today was the first time I've been shopping in three weeks. But also in a mask. So, both the good and the bad there.

Mostly it was picking up things I didn't totally need previously but was missing during the last few weeks. Or that I didn't think about until I was in the supermarket itself.

Afterwards we came back here, I unpacked, and Ma got out her laptop and asked several questions that I've answered at least six times already, but you know, if they stick this time we'll be okay. And we did a bit of catch up, watched a bit of YubTubs and then I sent Ma off with a lot of leftover frozen soup.

So, yes... not really all that much... but considering I've spent two weeks only looking at the inner walls of my apartment or driving to get tests done.

Current mood: