Real Conversation I Had Last Night:

Thoroughbreds

You cannot hesitate. The only thing worse than being incompetent, or being unkind, or being evil, is being indecisive. The most mi...

The most misanthropic black comedy this side of a David Fincher joint.

Portrait of general Winfield Scott, c. 1860′s. Probably one of the last photographs taken of him shortly before his death in 1866.

Source: Library of Congress.

Boy doesn’t give a damn, girl finds inspiration in correctly defining “tomorrow”, and all of us who love the movie put our hands in on ears going “la-la-la I can’t hear you” about the racism.

Spoil the ending of your favorite movie with no context.

He spins a top that may or may not have fallen over before reuniting with his children.

Last year I did a few write-ups and drawings about some lady fighters from history who fought openly as their gender (there are plenty of disguised-as-a-man soldiers and plenty of trans soldiers, but those are outside the scope of this series).  This is by no means an exhaustive list; there were plenty of great figures that my schedule didn’t permit me to tackle (at least not yet).  But as Women’s History Month gets started tomorrow, I thought y’all might enjoy reading about some of history’s toughest broads.

I think the poll of Davout vs. Hornblower was botted. It jumped from Davout having roughly 50% to 27% of the votes very quickly. And it has roughly 350 votes, which is odd when the others from around the same time only has around 100.

Like cmon, if you’re going to bot it, at least make it not look this obvious.

Ok, here's the thing: It did actually coincide with a number of reblogs. I think it just hit the British Navy fandom with one of those reblogs. It has 65 notes; everything else posted at the same time is in the single digits on notes.

The same thing happened back with the Tom Pullings vs Sidney Smith poll on the last day it was up. Something similar pulled Nelson to victory in his last day. Nelson's poll ended with upwards of 400 votes.

There's a strong contingent of people out there who really like the British navy in this period, fictional or real.

Independence Day Marathon Part 1: Maleficent

To honor my country's existence, I decided to spend the entire day in the theater.  I mapped out to spend a solid ten hours staring at just about everything Hollywood could throw at me, and came out mostly unscathed. I feel like it was a good way to celebrate Independence Day.

I started with Maleficent, a fairly shallow but enjoyable-enough Disney fantasy galvanized by Angelina Jolie's amazing performance. She's always had an otherworldly look about her, but nothing has taken advantage of it like this, and few roles have let her dig so far into such a fascinating character. Writer Linda Woolverton does a great job expanding on the character, giving Jolie a rich character arc to traverse, and building a lovely twist around the nature of True Love's Kiss. And with that to work with, Jolie ignites the screen every moment she's on it, and it's absolutely worth seeing just for her.

If she wasn't in it, though... it would be about like Snow White and the Huntsman - watchable and pretty, but there's not much else to it. No one can chew the scenery like Sharlto Copley, but his villain is pretty flat. His backstory has him go from a guy who gives up the only thing he has to be with his love, then show up years later totally evil. The narration suggests he was corrupted by the greed of mankind, which sounds fine, but burying it in the narration makes it abstract, and we never see any evidence of Man's Greed elsewhere in the film. Elle Fanning is perfectly likable as Aurora, but all she's asked to do is smile pleasantly.

And the three fairies are simply obnoxious. That's one of my favorite elements of the original Sleeping Beauty - the heroes are three bickering old ladies instead of the straight-arrow prince. But here, all they do is bicker endlessly, without ever accomplishing anything. I never thought I'd see Imelda Staunton or Juno Temple give performances I didn't enjoy, but I couldn't stand them here. (I'm not as familiar with Lesley Manville, but she was perfectly wonderful in An Adventure in Time And Space, so I'm disappointed there as well.) I really do blame the script here - making them incompetent and not giving them any non-bickering scenes really doesn't give the actors any room. And the hideous visual effects for the fairies are no help - they look like rubber masks of the actors pasted over awful CGI. (The effects are otherwise fine if overabundant - they're pretty to look at, but it feels like we're watching pretty special effects rather than a real, living world.)

I'm not really convinced the Mega-Happy Ending was earned, either. Maleficent's story is so laced with tragedy and Aurora is so underdeveloped that neither of their endings really worked for me.

But Jolie makes it all worthwhile, and Woolverton's take on the story is interesting enough to carry it through its weak spots.

I love how after “The Dancing Men” Holmes is constantly telling people to sit down whenever he interviews them.  Watson one time was like ‘hey that woman looks awful, ask her to sit down, Holmes’ and Holmes was like ‘Ah yes!  People like to sit down!  I will hold this as a primary fact of life for the rest of my existence.’

Okay, not quite. I was spot-on with what Guardians would make, but I really thought Turtles would drop faster. Also, that Expendables wouldn't completely bomb. Which is too bad; I was hoping they'd stick around long enough to make a genuinely satisfying entry. You know, with a story and some nice character work and a classic action sequence and maybe even, I don't know, living up to the title and giving its stars some good death scenes.

Box Office Prediction (August 15-17)

I know it’s a long shot, but I’m calling Guardians of the Galaxy to retake the number one spot this weekend, though it won’t be until the weekend actuals are released on Monday that we’ll know.

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OKAY, WE ARE AT THE END OF JULY AND I’M STILL OBSESSING OVER MAD MAX : FUCKING FURY ROAD, HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE ? Tell me please i’m not the only one

Okay, it’s like this:

RT gives their percentage based on a simple yes or no -- good or not. But the “average rating” is based on averaging critics’ ratings of the film, which are a little more nuanced than “good” vs. “rotten”. Generally speaking, if a critic is rating on a 4-star scale, 3 is considered good, 2 is considered bad, and 2 1/2 is meh. 2 1/2 usually but not always ends up as a negative review on there. So a theoretical film that got 2 1/2 stars across the board verses one that got 1 star across the board are going to get the same RT score of 0%. But the 2 1/2 star one will have an average rating of 6.3/10 (2.5*2.5 rounded up) and the 1 star film will get an average rating of 2.5/10.

So, The Room got some “positive” reviews which give it 2 1/2 stars or 3 as an accidental camp classic ala Plan 9 From Outer Space, but anyone who reviewed it seriously gave it 1 star or 0 stars or something in that area.

Whereas Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice apparently has some undeniably strong elements (Affleck’s performance, many of the visuals, some of the action beats, some interesting themes buried in the rubble), so its negative reviews are almost all 2 or 2 1/2 star reviews. It’s too good to go to a bottom-of-the-barrel rating. So the same number of critics gave it a good review, but its average score is a lot higher than The Room, because its positive qualities drive up the ratings.

Congrats to Tommy Wiseau, who Warner Bros. has hired to direct Justice League.