The movie certainly creeped me out. There was the lost in the woods at night thing, the creepy half-heard sounds thing, all the little weird stone cairns left around, and some woven stick-sculptures. But I left the theater thinking that while it was fun and a lark, it wasn’t genuinely scary.
That came later.
On that score, I feel TBWP delivered.
Good horror stays with you. The dark parts of your mind pick and choose things from the images and ideas presented, and tuck them away to germinate, and spread. Then when you’re alone, those things come creeping back out from the cracks and shadows.
I saw the Blair Witch Project in the theaters, WAAAAY back in 1999. I didn’t know what to expect, and if you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time you’ll know I love horror movies and fiction and games, and I figured something like TBWP would be right up my alley!
It was and it wasn’t.
In the theater, the movie bemused me. The camera work was offputting, but these days you could put a smartphone in the hands of a toddler and achieve the same effect. I loved the American gothic setup of the legend, evoking not only the horror of the witch trials but the possibility that, if they were real, they would want vengeance for their treatment. Colonial America was a new world still stuck in the old world mindset, and nothing brings people together like ostracizing others. Even the “characters” had their charm: stolid, level-headed Mike, with his hangdog expression and flannel; laidback and good natured Josh, channeling the ultimate Gen-X male; and shrill, pain in the ass Heather.
God. Heather.
Before I go too much further, I need to point out that Heather Donogue has already taken a metric ton of shit for her portrayal of control-freak Heather. She based her performance on a colleague she had known, who insisted on taking control of situations only to fall to pieces constantly. So she really turned in a great performance at being a massive pain in the balls.
UGH.
The movie certainly creeped me out. There was the lost in the woods at night thing, the creepy half-heard sounds thing, all the little weird stone cairns left around, and some woven stick-sculptures. But I left the theater thinking that while it was fun and a lark, it wasn’t genuinely scary.
That came later.
On that score, I feel TBWP delivered.
Good horror stays with you. The dark parts of your mind pick and choose things from the images and ideas presented, and tuck them away to germinate, and spread. Then when you’re alone, those things come creeping back out from the cracks and shadows.
The first freakout came when I was home alone. I was in my second year of college and home visiting my parents, sleeping in my old room. They were out of town for some reason or another, and as I lay in my childhood bed in the darkness, I suddenly remembered the image from the end of the movie, of Mike, standing in the corner with his face to the wall. My room was on the south side of the house, and there was about seventy feet between our house and the street, so the streetlights cast dark shadows from treelimbs and leaf clusters over the once-familiar interior of my room. My heart raced and my eyes bulged as i lay alone in the dark, sure that if i looked, I would see Mike in my room, standing in the corner with his face to the wall.
The second freakout came a few weeks later. I was in the habit of running at a nearby park in at dusk. The park was familiar, was somewhere I had been dozens of times. But that night it was almost deserted, sinking into darkness as the sun fell down the sky. There had been a storm, and pine needles and sticks were scattered all over the ground. As I was running I looked up into the trees, and a trick of the eye made it seem as if the treetops were filled with the little woven totems shown throughout the movie. DOZENS of them, just hanging in the air, revealing my impending doom. There was a shudder, a squawk, and then a feat of athleticism that I have never again been capable of. I may have run the world’s only half-minute mile.
As I was rewatching the movie a few nights ago I remembered something my French teacher of the same year said of the movie. She was talking about a recent hurricane that had come through. The news had basically warned us this hurricane would be the end of earth, but it turned out to be just a series of heavy thunderstorms, which is always a relief in our, fair but oft hurricane-ravaged state.
“It was kind of like the Blair Witch Project. A lot of hype, a lot of sticks lying around, but nothing really happened.”
Still though, I enjoyed the film and the waves of nostalgia it brought back. And it’s certainly something to study for aspiring film-makers since it made disgusting amounts of money despite being an independent movie.
Anyhoodle, after Mark is bitten, he has to deal with the fallout of his girlfriend Robin being enraged that he cheated on her. Plus, the Countess still has her sights set on him – she has to drink his blood twice more before Halloween in order to retain her youthful beauty and immortality.
The rest of the movie is fairly predictable, but the dialogue is snappy and the comedy elements are decent. Hutton is clearly having a wonderful time as the femme fatale, and Jim Carrey makes a pretty convincing 80’s goth during the last third of the film, when the vampiric effects are really showing. There’s even a dance sequence!
Recently I saw another gloriously 80s-tastic vampire comedy, 1985’s Once Bitten. Jim Carrey in his first leading role, Lauren Hutton in her prime, and Cleavon Little! Hurrah!
Let the goofyness ensue!
I absolutely love cheesy 80s vampire comedies, and Once Bitten totally delivers. I had been aware of it for some time but I think it was out of print or something during the years I worked in video rental and sale stores as I never could seem to find it, but it’s now available on Netflix Instant Watch.
The Countess, played by Lauren Hutton, is living the life in 80s’ LA. She sleeps in a coffin that looks like a tanning bed, lives in a sprawling mansion that’s a few pink accents shy of the Barbie Dream House, and has a stable of undead household servants she’s assembled in her 400 year life. Hutton is a dream in shiny pink spandex, and it’s clear she’s having a hoot of a time. In all honesty, the movie seems kind of like pr0n for guys into cougars – she’s not exactly a spring chicken but she’s aging VERY well, and the barest tilt of her head or lick of her lips promises that she has PLENTY of experience when it comes to doing the nasty.
Enter Jim Carrey’s character, young, virile and frustrated Mark Kendall, whose girlfriend is afraid to Go All the Way (remember that old chestnut from Fright Night?). When his girl puts him off again, he agrees to go with some randy friends of his into town to some kind of weird hook up bar where people call each other on table phones. I don’t know, it was the 80s. Anyway, his friends both get into altercations with married women with jealous husbands, a bar fight breaks out, and hilarity ensues. There may have even been ridiculous sound effects, I’m not sure (EDIT: I had to check – there were!). Amid the chaos, Mark wanders into the path of the Countess, who takes him home to her pastel MegaMansion and sort of makes a man out of him.
Now, I was fully prepared to talk about how blase the whole thing was, until I realized I’d forgotten a lot of the movie (I watched it a few months ago). I went back to refresh my memory by looking at some quotes on IMDB, and some of them totally made me chuckle. While the performances were a little weak, this movie had some SHARP writing – there is a subplot with Mark’s friends worrying about him, and their disastrous attempts to check him for a vampire bite on his groin in the gym’s shower were actually pretty funny. Subsequently, they fret about people mistaking them for gay (THAT again) and more interestingly, whether or not they might be.
The biggest comedy score for this movie was that it has – dun dun DUNN!!!! – Cleavon Little!
“Oh THAT Cleavon Little!’ I hear you saying!
Best known as Black Bart in Blazing Saddles, Cleavon Little was a very busy actor in television and stage, but only appeared in a few movies, most of which were forgotten. I saw his name in the credits for Once Bitten and was totally astounded.
He doesn’t get as much screen time as he ought, and he’s definitely a supporting character, acting as both snarky foil to the Countess and scheming henchman. While he’s playing a stereotypical ‘sassy gay butler’ trope, my GOD is he hilarious. If the film had been just a little more serious, with a little more emotional resonance, his performance and the film itself would be better remembered. Alas, there’s only so much he can do with the material, and while the movie IS pretty funny, I just wish there had been more roles in Hollywood for him to play than be relegated to a cheesy 80s vampire sex comedy.
Anyhoodle, after Mark is bitten, he has to deal with the fallout of his girlfriend Robin being enraged that he cheated on her. Plus, the Countess still has her sights set on him – she has to drink his blood twice more before Halloween in order to retain her youthful beauty and immortality.
The rest of the movie is fairly predictable, but the dialogue is snappy and the comedy elements are decent. Hutton is clearly having a wonderful time as the femme fatale, and Jim Carrey makes a pretty convincing 80’s goth during the last third of the film, when the vampiric effects are really showing. There’s even a dance sequence!
ADORABLE!
There is a great scene where the Countess follows Mark and Robin to a store in the mall, where Robin is trying to help Mark pick out an outfit, suggesting various pastels and Cosby-type sweaters and white jeans (barf), and the Countess keeps surreptitiously intervening, suggesting black leather and such.
A fine vintage!
Additionally, the movie touches on some neuroses about sex that were so rampant during the 80s, especially about changing gender roles and the AIDS epidemic.
While it does make the sexually-aggressive Countess into a bad girl, Hutton does her best to make the character charming and fun, even if she IS evil and selfish. It’s clear that while she adores Mark, but he is just another fling in her long life, as illustrated by the stable of ghosts that live in the Countess’s basement. No doubt she courted each one as fervently before drinking their blood and losing interest.
Robin, though a boring good girl, is plucky and fiesty with her denim overalls and culottes, and is at least equally likeable. Usually the virgins in these movies are dull as dishwater, but she does a great job making the material work.
Overall, Once Bitten is another fun entry to the ’80s Vampire’ movie genre. It’s available on Netflix, and is a fun Friday night with friends nostalgia-fest.
Today, I am focusing on a single, select group of heroes that have no other defining characteristic than offering more cushion for the pushin’. As before established, heroes come in all shapes and sizes in Westeros, and so do heroic deeds. Today, we’re giving some time to a group who need and deserve some recognition. Their deeds might not be writ large, but my gosh, GRRM sure writes THEM large! (yes that was a dumb joke; moving on)
This post will contain some WICKED spoilers from the books and the show! Just FYI!
There are all manner of heroes in A Song of Ice and Fire: obvious heroes like Jon Snow, who wrestles with his inner turmoil so much it’s a wonder he can even get past breakfast in the morning; Ned Stark, whose heroism was cut short (HEYOOOO!!!!) by both his rigid adherence to honor and his utter lack of self-preservation; Davos Seaworth, who can be as rigid as the fallen Lord of Winterfell but has four billion times the good sense, and SO FAR seems to be plugging right along, despite some pretty awesome fakeouts discussed below; less obvious heroes who at first seem to be terrible people and then either perform some selfless acts or see the error of their ways, like Sandor Clegane and Jaime Lannister; complex, flawed heroes like the MAGNIFICENT Tyrion Lannister, for whom no good deed goes unpunished; and simple, stalwart heroes like my personal all-time favorite, Brienne of Tarth.
But we aren’t here to talk about them today!
Today, I am focusing on a single, select group of heroes that have no other defining characteristic than offering more cushion for the pushin’. As before established, heroes come in all shapes and sizes in Westeros, and so do heroic deeds. Today, we’re giving some time to a group who need and deserve some recognition. Their deeds might not be writ large, but my gosh, GRRM sure writes THEM large! (yes that was a dumb joke; moving on)
Samwell Tarly
Utilizes the same defense strategy as a basket of kittens
Samwell Tarly on the show is pretty much the same as Sam in the books. He will literally be the first person to tell you how cowardly he is, but they gave him a bit more dignity in the show by skipping the parts where he wees himself in terror during battles with the Others. Sam is a gentle boy who loved songs, playing with his sisters, and literally, baskets of kittens. That’s one of his favorite things right there, I’m not being funny, he literally loves baskets of kittens. ADORABLE!!
Sam’s father is the terrifyingly badass Lord Randyll Tarly, who gave Sam the choice of either taking the black so Randyll’s younger, butch son could inherit his title, or having a fatal “accident.” Tarly the elder also practiced such gentle paternal techniques as beating the holy living fluff out of Sam, and chaining him up in a dungeon. So, given the choice between death and a suck life, Sam chose the suck life. Sam has absolutely no belief in himself, and despite the fact that he slays a White Walker, perhaps the FIRST White Walker in over eight thousand years to be slain by a human being, he is convinced it was an accident. The nickname that the other Night’s Watchmen give him, Sam The Slayer, is BADASS, but the name only embarrasses him. However, HE DID THAT. Maybe it was an accident, but either way, he did it. To paraphrase something Eddard Stark told Jon, a man can only be brave when he IS afraid. In that case Sam Tarly is one of the ballsiest men in the Seven Kingdoms.
Later in the books, Jon Snow sends Sam on a trip down to Oldtown to become a maester, and to watch over Aemon Targaryen, who is ancient and in danger of being burned by the red witch (long story). He travels with Gilly, and I am very pleased to say he loses his virginity during the sea voyage. It’s just too sweet! Sam’s story is awesome because while he’s not outwardly heroic, he’s also not exactly the usual type of anti-hero either: he’s shy, he blushes around women, is terrified of just about everyone, and is so useless in a battle he’s usually ignored by enemies because he poses no threat. Granted, there is a lot to dislike, but as a character he has come a long way. He challenges the reader by unflinchingly revealing all his flaws, but then redeems himself on the odd occasion he pulls off something heroic. I was CHEERING for him when he shanked that White Walker, AND when he nails Gilly for the first time – although to be fair, in the latter situation it was more her nailing him. Whatever! Good for Sam!
Varys the Spider
I treasure every eyeroll, ESPECIALLY the ones at Littlefinger’s expense.
To be fair, Varys is described as “stout.” POV characters think of him as soft and effeminate, with his silks and powders. To further be fair, silk bathrobes are unforgiving on EVERYONE without a wardrobe wrangler, so it’s to Conleth Hill’s credit that he brings the character to life and makes him as riveting as he does.
POV characters think of Varys as duplicitous, untrustworthy, and scheming. The audience knows different: he really does try to help save people from themselves, but can’t compromise himself or his network of spies. He counsels Ned Stark on how to save himself, and to Stark’s credit he takes the advice, but Joffrey the Shitbag ruined that plan by just being his shitbag self and everyone knows how that turned out. Varys also tries to advise Tyrion from continuing his relationship with Shae, but when he sees that Tyrion is dead-set on seeing the whore he arranges for them to meet in secret. He does betray people, which is pretty far from heroic, but he only betrays people after they have already betrayed themselves.
Varys is nothing if not practical: as a Targaryen loyalist, he is trying to both hold the realm together and tear it apart just enough for Danaerys to arrive and reestablish the Targaryen dynasty. Varys helped spirit the Targareyn children away, and later, you find out that he also was instrumental in helping save (HUGE SPOILER HERE IT COMES!!!! ) Rhaegar Targaryen’s son, Aegon.
Though he’s not an actual fat guy per se, he does take epic amounts of shit about being a eunuch and generally disliked. However, he can change his appearance by using costumes and makeup (although by all accounts he makes a repulsive woman). It wouldn’t surprise me if, at the end of the series, Varys revealed himself to be seven feet tall and cut like a granite cliff face with hair down to his waist. If that happens, I’d like to take credit for being the first person to imagine the possibility, and I’m refusing to Google and see if someone else has come up with the same thing.
Strong Belwas
Strong Belwas, wearing the same amount of armor that women are usually shown in.
Strong Belwas has not yet appeared in the show. He shows up either at the end of A Clash of Kings or the beginning of A Storm of Swords, and is basically there to act as a distracter for the real meat and potatoes of the story, reintroducing Barristan Selmy (Note: maybe I’ll do an ‘Old People of ASOIAF’ next; Selmy would be king of that list). A former pit fighter, Belwas is a huge fat eunuch who seems like an oaf at first; he shows up, and basically acts as occasional comic relief, doing nothing but eating and sort of doofing around in the background. He has a sword, and a tiny iron vest he wears as armor. He is covered with scars, claiming that each cut represents a foe he has slain, as he allows them to make a single cut before he finishes them so everyone can know how many men he’s fought. Everyone sort of glances at each other and smiles, thinking he’s full of it.
THEN.
During their march, Danaerys’s army comes up on a walled city. The city close up their walls and send out a single champion on horseback. The meaning is both clear and veiled: Dany can send out her own champion to fight the lancer, but there is no guarantee that the people will open their gates if her champion wins; the veiled meaning is that if she loses, she will look weak and foolish AND be out a champion. She looks over her little court of champions and decides to send out the one who hasn’t done a whole hell of a lot yet and wouldn’t be a big loss to Team Targaryen, Strong Belwas.
Belwas requests they make him a dish of liver and onions, which are his favorite ‘after battle’ food,’ draws his sword and absurdly tiny shield, lumbers out onto the battleground, and goes to work. However, when battle is joined, he moves like a fat tiger.
In thinking about Strong Belwas’s fighting technique, I am reminded of Bruce Lee’s adage of ‘Be like water.’ If Lee was a fan of ASOIAF he might have amended that adage to “Or jello. If you can’t be water, be jello.” Jello traps an enemy’s blade, conforms to whatever shape it’s dropped in, and springs back into shape once it’s freed. So too does Strong Belwas. He’s fast, he’s agile, and he lets the lancer get in a single cut before he finishes the guy like the last french fry. Then, rather than take a victory lap, Belwas drops his pants and takes a victory dump in the direction of the city’s no longer cheering crowds. Then he returns to Dany’s camp and requests the aforementioned liver and onions. After all, he did make some room.
Strong Belwas again proves himself when he inadvertently eats a poisoned dessert intended for Dany, surviving the poison because of his huge bulk. I have no idea what the future holds for the character, but I do love him so.
Illyrio Mopatis
Played by Roger Allern in the show
Illyrio Mopatis in the book has probably the cruelest description of all the fat guys on this list. He’s described as ‘lord of suet,’ ‘lord of cheese’, ‘vast’ and other unkind terms, by various POV characters. In the show he just looks like they added some padding to the actor.
Illyrio is a magister in Pentos, basically a super rich businessman. We meet him in the beginning of the series when he helps Viserys (remember him? he was AWFUL) arrange Danerys’s marriage to Khal Drogo. The fancy mansion that the Targeryens are staying in belong to him. He also gives Danaerys her dragon eggs.
Like Varys, much and more is said of Mopatis, and most of it is not too kind. Besides POV characters describing him as fat, he is also mistrusted and considered to be conniving and self-serving. Strong words, considering he sheltered the Targaryens and is helping Varys with his plans to restore them to the throne. It could just be that he’s a businessman with unusually long foresight – after all, whichever Targaryen takes the throne would remember the man who helped them, and that would be a good position to be in. Some make the facetious claim that if he had known the dragon eggs would hatch, he would have sat on them himself rather than give them to Danaerys.
However, as the reader I think he’s a bit more of an altruist, similar to Varys. Both of them grew up penniless on the streets of Pentos, and when he was young Mopatis was a sellsword who was incredibly lithe and fierce with a blade. Perhaps they both remember those days and are seeking to stabilize the realm for the benefit of smallfolk. After all, the smallfolk are the ones who pay the highest price when it comes to wars.
Mopatis sends Strong Belwas and Arstan Whitebeard to Dany as bodyguards. When Tyrion escapes King’s Landing, Mopatis helps him across the Narrow Sea and also sends him to Dany, chatting with Tyrion along the way. Tyrion mistrusts his motives, but I don’t know, I really think he’s just out to help the little people. He also states that Viserys had intended to sneak into Dany’s room the night before her wedding to Khal Drogo and steal her maidenhead, but he put a stop to that by posting guards outside her room.
Wyman Manderly
Any resemblance to Santa is purely coincidental… or IS it?
Wyman Manderly appears at Winterfell early in A Game of Thrones, but I don’t believe he’s in the show, or if he is they didn’t introduce him. He shows up as one of the Stark bannermen to discuss things with Bran, who is acting as lord when everyone else is away. He is, without a doubt, my FAVORITE secret fat guy hero of the entire series.
Uncharitably but probably truthfully described as ‘Lord Too Fat To Sit a Horse,’ Manderly is the lord of White Harbor. Two of his sons are involved in the War of the Five Kings: one is taken captive by the enemy, and the other travels with Catelyn Stark, ultimately being murdered during the Red Wedding. One of his sons is visible in the show during the Wedding, a round-cheeked guy with a waxed mustache and a silver merman on his black shirt.
SPOILERS AHOY!
By the time Davos Seaworth makes his way to White Harbor in the fifth book to ask Manderly to support Stannis, Manderly has become paranoid and mistrustful. He has Freys in his charge as wards and allies, and so he immediately puts Davos to death. Later, another POV character reports that they have seen the Onion Knight’s head dipped in tar, his mouth stuffed with onions and put on a spike above the gates of White Harbor. Since Davos is another of my favorite characters, I was M A D that day. My boyfriend occasionally comes to check on me when I reading ASOIAF, usually when I start yelling. Sometimes my yelling is angry (GODDAMN IT CATELYN STOP DOING THINGS), sometimes my yelling is in disbelief (WTF THEY JUST CUT OFF JAIME’S HAND I CAN’T EVEN) and sometimes it’s in excitement (SAM FOUND BRAN AND RICKON! YEAAAHHHHHH!!). He just wants to know what kind of yelling it is. That day it was the ‘THIS BOOK KEEPS KILLING THE GOOD PEOPLE THIS IS ALL BULLSHIT’ kind of yelling. I am very passionate when I read.
BUT!
It was all a ruse!
Davos has been chilling in the dungeon, and since he knows how to write now he can probably write the ‘Let’s Go!’ book of Westerosi dungeons since the man spends more time in them than anywhere else.
Wyman Manderly is NOT a turncloak – he is aware that his court is crawling with Frey spies, and he is FIERCELY loyal to Team Stark. He had to make it seem like he was putting Davos to death, even going so far as to kill some poor bastard who resembled the Onion Knight and putting his head on top of the gate. He has also found one of Theon’s underlings and gotten the true story of the Stark boys out of him: that Bran and Rickon are alive, and heading to the Wall. He charges Davos with the most awesome, dangerous, and heartfelt quest in the book, after Brienne of Tarth’s: finding Manderly’s young lost lords, Bran and Rickon, and bringing them home to White Harbor, safe. He knows for certain that Rickon is on the Isle of Skagos, so that is where Davos heads.
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!!
Remember how I said that Manderly had a couple of Freys in his charge? And he was fiercely loyal to the Starks? And how EVERYONE in Westeros knows about the Red Wedding?
Manderly gets some sweet, sweet vengeance. Oh yeah.
He bakes them into a pie and serves them to Roose Bolton, Walder Frey, and some other Freys.
BAM!!!
WYMAN THE PIEMAN, baby!
I had some friends who declared that they didn’t want to watch the show anymore after the Red Wedding. I honestly can’t blame them; I knew what was coming because I read the book, but even reading the book I nearly stood up and threw it across the room. Since it was my Kindle, I had to exercise restraint though. After I sat down and my blood pressure slowed down, I HAD to keep reading! SO MUCH GOOD STUFF happens in the second half of book 3 and beyond. I am hoping that seeing Joffrey buy it (GOD that day can’t come fast enough – even though i know it’s coming I CANNOT WAIT) will draw people back.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this little reemergence of my ramblings. I really do want to try and keep it up again. I have ideas for entries all the time and just can’t seem to work blogging into my schedule. I do enjoy it so!
Do YOU have a favorite character on GoT? Who is it? Why?
..with TR, it was different. I learned lessons a LOT faster in Tomb Raider, because Lara’s gruesome death scenes bothered me so much. Add to that the Solarii’s smugness after they kill her, which you can hear, and I was NOT going to make the same mistake again. That’s not to say that I blew through the game with minimal deaths– half the time I was my own worst enemy and would wander off the edge of cliffs, jump over railings to my doom, or blow myself up by walking into a room full of flammable gas with a lit torch. But! I did beat it, and I did manage to get lots of headshots on bad guys, as well as some pretty badass kills. So I was very pleased with myself overall. I just hope to God there isn’t some kind of record that will tell me how many times I died– I’m pretty sure such a number would be expressed in scientific notation, and I’d be depressed.
The PC game cover
I never owned any of the games, and I remember struggling to play one of the Tomb Raider games on the PS1. I wanted to play it, but I found the controls difficult (I hadn’t been gaming for a while and never made the time to sit down and finish the game). It was a series I was always meaning to get around to. I found the movies entertaining, but beyond that my familiarity with the series was limited to my few fumbly sessions playing it, and hearing about it from its LEGIONS of fans. The trailers and buzz, and the fact that it was written by Rhianna Pratchett all got me intensely excited.
So I budgeted some time and money, and on Tuesday the 5th I sat down in front of my 360 with my boyfriend, some snacks, and I went on an adventure.
It was AWESOME.
It’s everything the reviews are saying: gritty, exciting, challenging, fun, and very like Uncharted (haven’t played that, but I’m curious to now).
Overall, the game certainly had room for improvement: there is NO humor whatsoever, although considering the grim situation it’s understandable; there were fewer puzzles than I expected; there was a LOT more combat than I thought there would be. Even with those complaints, and really those were the only ones, the game is pretty awesome. I may have rushed through a lot of it just in my breathless excitement to get to the next level, and i fully intend to start a new game so I can go through at a more leisurely pace. I also suspect that now that the game is out and garnering such glowing praise and a lot of buzz, the sequel will be a little less… tense? Dutiful?
Lara getting the bow early in the game, which I used as much as possible
While I loved the game, I am hoping the next installment has the jaded, world-weary, somewhat arch and confident Lara that I’ve heard so much about. Since Rhianna Pratchett wrote it, and also wrote ANOTHER of my favorite games, the hilarious,and wonderfully warped Overlord series, I am pretty sure this will come to pass.
**POSSIBLE SPOILER**
I was also hoping for more of a supernatural feel to the game; while the storyline incorporates a lot of supernatural elements, you are mostly fighting the Solarii, a cult established by shipwreck survivors and lead by Mathias. Any women who wash up on the island are sacrificed or killed outright, I guess. You fight so many Solarii I started thinking that the game’s subtitle could have easily been ‘Escape from Bro Island.’ However, you do encounter some supernatural stuff much later on in the game.
**END SPOILER**
I enjoyed the game mostly because of Lara herself: homegirl gets MESSED. UP. in this game! I know that sounds weird, but as a woman myself, I identified with her character from the start, and seeing or hearing her hurt made me that much more cautious in my fighting style. It became personal, in other words, in a very different way than if the protagonist was male. Have I yelled and talked shit during the God of War series? LORD YES. After I died and respawned, I’d go after some of those mythological monsters like their asses were made out of candy.
The environment is gloriously rendered and meticulously detailed; half the deaths I had in the game were because I was staring in fascinating at something in the background and fell off a ledge or something!
But with TR, it was different. I learned lessons a LOT faster in Tomb Raider, because Lara’s gruesome death scenes bothered me so much. Add to that the Solarii’s smugness after they kill her, which you can hear, and I was NOT going to make the same mistake again. That’s not to say that I blew through the game with minimal deaths– half the time I was my own worst enemy and would wander off the edge of cliffs, jump over railings to my doom, or blow myself up by walking into a room full of flammable gas with a lit torch. But! I did beat it, and I did manage to get lots of headshots on bad guys, as well as some pretty badass kills. So I was very pleased with myself overall. I just hope to God there isn’t some kind of record that will tell me how many times I died– I’m pretty sure such a number would be expressed in scientific notation, and I’d be depressed.
What also drew me into the game was Lara’s attitude– at several points in the game when you’re doing something that looks impossible, she mutters self-encouragements. She’s justifiably frightened in a very frightening situation, but she’s just as frightened of letting her friends down, or letting them come to some of the harms that she’s already encountered. I found these little moments of vulnerability very emotionally engaging–people can only be brave when they’re frightened, after all.
Another interesting thing about the game was how much more emotionally involved my boyfriend was while spectating. He hated the death scenes and hearing the Solarii talking shit at Lara. He would flinch or gasp when something happened to her, much more so than he did when he watched me play Silent Hill: Downpour last year.
(Sidenote: The Solarii never say anything sexually threatening, just stuff about ‘kill the girl’ and ‘get the outsider’ and whatnot; I wondered about the reality of an island full of violent men who never see women at all NOT threatening to do terrible things to her ladyparts; I then reasoned that they are religious zealots; plus, I figured the writers’ reasoning was ‘if she was male, they wouldn’t be threatening to rape her, so we will not have that in there;’ plus plus, that would have made the game much darker, and would have been a massive turnoff, and made it damn near unplayable for me).
The Tomb Raider reboot is a great refresh to an old, established brand, and I definitely look forward to playing more from the series. If you can pick it up, you should!
In the life of a film fan, there are only two times you watch a Marilyn Monroe film: There’s the first time you see her, in all her glory, and realize what the big deal is all about, and there’s the time you realize you’ve watched all the movies she ever made; that there are no more. Barring someone having some old home movies they release, or maybe some stills or cut footage from the finished films that were forgotten in someone’s attic for sixty years, there will be no more. I think this applies to any other actors and actresses who died young, but the first time I became aware of this phenomenon was with Marilyn.
You know who she is.
Growing up, you knew her face, even if you had never seen any of her movies. You saw her everywhere, on all kinds of products and in all kinds of places. You heard her name in movies, cartoons, songs, read it in books, magazines, and on billboards or perfume bottles. She has been written about, studied, photographed, filmed, re-imagined, marveled at, and explored literally more than the bottom of Earth’s oceans. And due to her untimely and mysterious death, she went from being simply famous to a legend.
Maybe, like me, you reached a point where you wanted to know just who the hell Marilyn Monroe was, and what the big fuss was about. WHY was Madonna trying so hard to be this person in the 80s? And why was everyone so skeptical about her achieving it? At the time, the similarities to me were more numerous than the differences: they were both blonde, white, and famous, both were beautiful, and both were paid vast sums of money for doing things that sometimes involved taking their clothes off. I readily admit that at 10, many nuances about life were lost on me.
When I was about 19, I worked in a retail video store called Suncoast. If you wanted to buy a movie that wasn’t on the top 10 rack at Target or the grocery store, that’s where you went. We had thousands of movies, including foreign films, imported anime (which was where you had to get it before places like Cartoon Network showed it), informational stuff, old tv shows, and softcore pr0n.
My boss was a man whose encyclopedic knowledge of film was nothing short of staggering. Did you see something once where a guy had a dangerous operation while his wife looked on and she was crying and wearing a red hat? That guy with the mustache was in it? I just made that shit up and Bill would have recommended a movie to me. A movie with that exact scene in it. SERIOUSLY. He was that good. “Oh Bill, I saw this German made-for-tv movie that only played twice on one channel in Berlitz and it may have starred a man with two legs. It was about the history of the xylophone, but not really, it was all just a metaphor. There was a scene with a basket of figs. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
And he would.
He only looked up things to get serial numbers when he ordered them for people. He often described himself as ‘The Jewish Geppetto’ (referring to Pinocchio’s creator) and was a retired phlebotomist. He and his boyfriend had been together longer than I had been alive, and they had a sulphur-crested cockatoo they referred to as ‘the chicken.’ I would like to look him up sometime to see how he’s doing, but I digress.
When I told him I loved movies, but had never seen one with Marilyn Monroe, he told me I needed to do that. That it was important.
So I did. I didn’t watch one right away, it took me a little while to finally sit still and do it (I think of my late teens and early twenties as my fidgety years), but I did.
Man.
A candid shot
In the life of a film fan, there are only two times you watch a Marilyn Monroe film: There’s the first time you see her, in all her glory, and realize what the big deal is all about, and there’s the time you realize you’ve watched all the movies she ever made; that there are no more. Barring someone having some old home movies they release, or maybe some stills or cut footage from the finished films that were forgotten in someone’s attic for sixty years, there will be no more. I think this applies to any other actors and actresses who died young, but the first time I became aware of this phenomenon was with Marilyn.
The first Monroe film I ever saw was Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I was hooked.
Blondes is the story of diamond-hungry Lorelei Lee and down-to-earth Dorothy Shaw, the latter played with a charming brassiness by Jane Russell. The two are showgirls, and Lorelei is engaged to Gus Esmond, the son of a millionaire. She intends to marry him, but Gus’s father is opposed to the match, viewing Lorelei as a ‘blonde mantrap.’
Lorelei and Dorothy embark on a trip to Paris so that Lorelei and Gus can be married, but Gus’s father calls him at the last minute and prevents him from going with them. The girls go by themselves, with Gus promising to find Lorelei, and giving her a letter of credit to spend as she likes. Unbeknownst to them, following the two is Sam Malone, a private investigator hired by Gus’s father to dig up dirt on Lorelei.
There are numerous hijinks and some glorious musical numbers, as well as some really hilarious jokes. The writing for Dorothy especially is great, as is Russell’s performance as a sultry, sharp-witted brunette to Monroe’s wide-eyed ingenue balances the movie well.
What I especially like about this film is how my appreciation of it has grown over the years. In the beginning, I was mostly enjoying the songs and the banter and the clothes. Now, I look at Lorelei’s somewhat pragmatic approach to life by marrying rich with a new perspective. I’ve struggled to make ends meet, and I know what it is to be panicked that you have six dollars to your name, barely any food in the house, and another thirteen days to go until payday. I had a lot of fears and nightmares in that situation; for example, what if my cat got sick? Or worse, what if my parents became ill or were in an accident and I flat out didn’t have the gas money to drive the 85 minutes to see them? My friends would have helped me out, and I am fortunate for that, but I can’t help but feel that it would be failing as an adult to find myself in a situation like that, and not be able to do anything about it, especially when the amount of money in question is so little. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to have an ill spouse or child and find myself in the same circumstance.
“If a girl spends all her time worrying about the money she doesn’t have, when does she have time for love?” is her logic, and it’s not entirely as warped or materialistic as it sounds; most relationships and marriages break up in times of financial crises, showing that the strain of financial straits isn’t to be dismissed. It’s one thing to never have any money because of your own bills and spending habits; it’s quite another when you’re broke because of someone else. So, while it might not seem to be the most altruistic rationale, it’s definitely realistic. It’s better to have money and not need it than need it and not have it, as the saying goes.
Granted, I’m not talking about supporting a Kardashian lifestyle, here. Just covering the bare necessities with a bit left over for savings and the occasional trip or present or meal out is my idea of having made it, financially.
Anywhoo, I digress.
Lorelei and Dorothy in the dining room
Watch a Monroe movie, any one, maybe not even this one. Although it is WORTH it to see this one, just for Lorelei and Dorothy strutting through the middle of the ship’s dining room, Lorelei in orange, and Dorothy in shimmering dark green. Especially the ones in color… Marilyn’s ruby lips and sapphire eyes are a special effect unto themselves!
