Category: Films

Posted on

Utena?

Today I saw the “Revolutionary Girl Utena” movie for the first time, having never seen the show. I told my friends that I expected this *kind* of disorientation and confusion, but not this *degree* of it.

Fortunately, having seen some anime, I went into the movie not expecting to understand it.

I’m not, like, an instant super-fan? But apparently the show was based on the book Demian, by Herman Hesse, which is interesting. (It’s been 27 years since I read that and it changed my life. Maybe I should reread it.)

We watched a couple episodes of the show afterwards. I remain bemused.

It did occur to me, in among all this, that anime may have influenced the American queer aesthetic idea of “being nonbinary means you owe the world skinny androgyny.” (Because I couldn’t tell the gender of half those characters, and that’s REALLY INTERESTING.)

I also wondered how much Tamsyn Muir was influenced by the aesthetics of the movie/show in her Gideon the Ninth books, because the cavalier aesthetic is STRONG there. Plus the sword, the chest wound, everything. It’s SO. WEIRD.

This isn’t how it happens

Posted on

A song mashup no one needs

Alternate lines of “do not stand at my grave and weep” with lines from “This is Halloween,” preferably the cover by Marilyn Manson.

I am the thousand winds that blow

I am the diamond glints on snow

I am the who when you call “who’s there?”

I am the wind blowing through your hair

Posted on

Something goofy: Finding a movie I haven’t seen

I recently saw a tweet with the meme “Share the movies that shaped your coming of age,” and had trouble identifying the movies pictured.

(I, famously, have not seen a large number of pop culture iconic movies. My friends make fun of it a lot, to the point that we have a running Excel spreadsheet of movies I still need to see.)

In order to pinpoint one of the movies I saw, here are my Google searches. Enjoy my cringe!
“natalie portman pink coat”
“natalie portman pink coat in the rain”
“natalie portman pink coat in the rain movie”
“natalie portman and the guy who played frito”
“who played frito in idiocracy”
“who is the guy in grey’s anatomy”
“who is the guy in scrubs”
“natalie portman zach braff movie” — yay I found it!