The New Mutants

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So, wait… that is the Marvel movie that Fox re-shot and buried for a year? Say what now?

The New Mutants is far from great; the casting is flawed in places, they tried to stir a couple incongruous romances into the mix, two-fifths of the cast are superheroically superfluous, and it’s probably impossible to really know what’s happening if you’re not watching it with a moldering old man who bought the first 75 issues of the comic off a spinner rack in the ‘80s.

But come the fuck on… I’d watch TNM five times in a row before I’d watch a single one of Fox’s X-Men movies again. Among the studio’s two decades of X-output, I’d actually put this one at #3, behind Logan and the first Deadpool.

The flaws are real, no question. The casting of Dani and ‘Berto is weak and weird, respectively; maybe there’s a production backstory I haven’t read, but how the hell did Roberto Da Costa go from a short, arrogant Portuguese-speaking Black kid in 1982 to a bored 6′ tall Brazilian virgin-hunk in the 21st century? 

And the problems with those characters don’t stop with the actors; Dani’s original ability-set was perfect for a coming-of-age story —because she can unexpectedly find anyone’s greatest fear or shame and literally show it to the world, she essentially had the power to make other teenagers hate her— but taking her straight to Full-On Demon-Bear drained her of much of her poignance. Meanwhile, Roberto had his powers swapped out for the absent Magma’s, probably because someone realized a slightly cringey Fiery Latino was a less-bad look than a whitewashed character turning black and punching people.

Fortunately, Anya Taylor-Joy is a delightful, show-stealing Illyana Rasputin —assuming this version of the character is still a Rasputin, who knows?— who could easily carry a Magik movie of her own, and the handling of The Lockheed Situation is simply adorable. (Had this movie been marketed competently, Lockheed sock-puppets would have sold big.) And to his credit, Charlie Heaton is a competent Sam Guthrie; his biggest problems come from the script’s complete disinterest in the character and what he can do.

Maisie Williams as Rahne… should work. Prior to seeing the movie, I viewed her casting as a bit of a coup; after, my feelings are mixed. Maisie doesn’t bring much depth or vulnerability to what should be an incredibly shy, insecure, self-loathing werewolf, and what little Arya-magic she does provide is undercut when the movie decides that the sexually repressed and violently shamed Catholic girl is going to instantly transition to an unrepentant queer who makes out in graveyards. It’s frustrating, because taking Rahne down that road is a solid idea, but taking her there in the first 30 minutes is a waste of a character that is otherwise sidelined by the giant power-gap between her and the rest of the heroes and villains.

Having shot its load on the Demon-Bear in the first movie, I’m not sure if The New Mutants had legs as a franchise… if it were to continue as a superhero-horror hybrid, the only place left to go would be Illyana’s Limbo, and that would be a lot for the average Marvel Moviegoer to swallow in one bite. But as it is —as the last artifact of twenty years of mediocre world-building at Fox— it’s a solid piece of work that shouldn’t embarrass anyone involved.

This was my first camera, part of Kodak’s ill-fated attempt to clone Polaroid’s self-developing film. They were sued for a fortune and lost… ended up having to send everyone rebates when they took the cameras off the market.

The funny thing was how lame the competition really was. Polaroid’s One-Step camera had a built-in flash and a fun little buzzy motor that ejected your photo… Kodak, meanwhile, decided to replace the motor with an old-timey handle. (Thus the plastic-retro look of the thing.) You literally cranked the handle until the photo emerged, and in place of a built-in flash, I was still stuck using flash-cubes.

It’s hard to imagine a time when the photos you took weren’t limited by opportunity, or even the amount of film on hand, but by how many single-use flashbulbs you could carry.

formerlykandg:

bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls:

After a thousand iterations of “small waist, pretty face, with a big bank”, I find myself wishing TikTok had been a A Thing back when it was “my neck, my back, my pussy and my crack”.

Relevant cover time!

I love this.

And while I’m here, I want a dance remix of Liz Phair’s “Flower” for the TikTok girls to feast upon. Someone should take the stripped-down Girly-Sound version and crank up the BPM, at least.

I’d never heard of this before stumbling across a trailer, embedded in a block of ‘80s TV commercials on YouTube.

It’s probably a shitty movie, but the marketing sure made it look titillating, in that exploitative, ‘70s/’80s way. And it features two future members of ‘80s royalty: Ally Sheedy and Eric Stoltz.

I’ll have more to say about this later, but I finally got around to watching The Other Side of the Wind on Netflix last night, and… holy shit! I am astonished.

Against all odds, a washed-up old man managed to shoot not only a dizzying, supremely confident, narratively dense rumination on the state of filmmaking in the ‘70s, but also an unbelievably gorgeous quasi-parody of avant-garde, counter-culture movies in the form of a film-within-the-film.

It’s difficult to imagine, but somehow, Orson fucking Welles made one of 2018′s sexiest movies in 1973.

I have the same computer —an Amiga 1000— in my garage.

It was a huge coup, when Commodore scored Deborah Harry and Andy Warhol to host the launch party in ‘85. Andy at least pretended to be excited by the technology —painting with 32 simultaneous colors, from a pallete of 4,096! Digitized video! Sound sampling!— but I doubt he ever touched a mouse again after that night.

Debbie went on to be an icon, Andy went on to be dead, and the Amiga sprouted a Video Toaster and did all the CG for Babylon 5 before Commodore went under and we all went Intel Inside.

Ah, the Wonder Years…