Just finished it up. Figured it'd be a dumb thing to put on to wind down the night, but damn it was a ton of fun!

Without saying too much - mischievious puppets come to party on Earth with a totally square lawyer. It's on Shudder for some reason, but not really any sort of horror or horror adjacent. But still, great fun!

IMPORTANT NOTE: please use a VPN whenever visiting Blorptube, or anywhere else on the internet, for that matter. Protect your privacy.

For this Friday Movie Night, first up is Round Midnight (1986), a jazz-themed drama set in 1959, centering on a depressed, alcoholic musician estranged from his family, who decides to move out of the US and go to Paris, where he can be far from Jim Crow as possible. He befriends another guy there and their friendship gives him a new lease on life. The film features many real-life jazz legends essentially playing themselves. A simple, cozy feel-good movie with cool music. This is the best-known and best-reviewed film of director Bertrand Tavernier. A lot of critical acclaim for this one, so let’s check it out.

After that is Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest (2006), an animated French fairy tale from Michel Ocelot, the guy behind Princes & Princesses (2000), which we watched a few weeks ago. This is supposed to be even better than that, so we’ll give it a whirl. This one has an Arabian Nights theme and follows a pair of youths in North Africa who both seek a legendary genie princess. They get up to all kinds of wacky adventures from there. The visual style of the film is a CGI approximation of old tapestries and embroideries; it looks kinda like a PS2 game to me, but it has received almost universal praise. Currently ranked #243 on Letterboxd’s Top 250 films of all time.

We’ll start at 8PM EST on Blorptube, right here:

https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

Be there, comrades!

Letterboxd:

• Round Midnight: https://letterboxd.com/film/round-midnight/
• Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest: https://letterboxd.com/film/azur-asmar-the-princes-quest/

Doesthedogdie.com links:

• Round Midnight: Sorry, nothing on DTDD or IMDB.
• Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest: Sorry, nothing on DTDD or IMDB for this one either.

CWs for Round Midnight:

• Alcoholism.
• Depression.
• Racism.
• Poverty.

CWs for Azur & Asmar: The Princes’ Quest:

• Orientalism.
• Babies.
• Slapstick violence.
• Stabbing.
• Cruelty to animals.
• Child endangerment..
• Alcohol.
• Smoking.

Links to movies:

• Round Midnight: https://tankie.tube/w/rU4KKcvPkCkUcTzgCTmKh9
• Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest: https://tankie.tube/w/r4TTBxDWyty4bN8sWdjoU8

We'll be streaming here: https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

Remember to use a VPN if you don't want IP info being shared with others. See you then!

I heard a fascinating story on YouTube today! In 1971, 17 year old Juliane Koepcke’s plane was ripped apart by lightning above the Peruvian jungle. She survived the fall, breaking her collar bone and rupturing the blood vessels in her eyes. Over the next 11 days, she applied survival skills her scientist-explorer parents taught her. Despite a growing parasitic infection, she found her way to rescue and (many years later) returned to the same research site her parents oversaw. She is still alive today.

pls give me anti goverment superman james gun

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Partner and I have been watching The Last of Us because we stan Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

I was telling my partner not to expect a good character story for The Last of Us Season 2 since the show has been faithfully relaying the plot of the games especially in it's scene composition.

I'm incredibly curious as to how TLOU Season 2 walks this tight rope with the source material, political climate, and especially since Bella Ramsey has been so outspoken about the genocide.

Grimly realistic stuff. Gonna be interesting how they thread this needle.

IMPORTANT NOTE: please use a VPN whenever visiting Blorptube, or anywhere else on the internet, for that matter. Protect your privacy.

For this Special Thursday Cinema Night, first up is The Long Gray Line (1955), one of the most critically-acclaimed films from one of Hollywood’s most renowned filmmakers, John Ford. It follows an Irish immigrant (1955) over his fifty-year career in the US military, as he goes through various loves, friendships, and losses, all rendered in glorious Technicolor. Think of it as a sort of 1950s Forrest Gump (1994), with a less-dumb protagonist. The only other Ford we’ve watched so far is My Darling Clementine (1946), which was pretty good, so let’s check this one out too.

After that is Ballerina (2023), a Korean action-thriller about an ex-bodyguard skilled in both close-combat and gun duels, who decides to avenge the murder of her best friend. This involves shooting and killing a whole bunch of shitty men as she mows her way through the local crime syndicates. Chicks are gonna rock. Director Lee Chung-hyun is otherwise known for the thriller The Call (2020), which we have not yet watched.

We’ll start at 8PM EST on Blorptube, right here:

https://blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

Be there, comrades!

Letterboxd:

• The Long Gray Line: https://letterboxd.com/film/the-long-gray-line/
• Ballerina: https://letterboxd.com/film/ballerina-2023/

Doesthedogdie.com links:

• The Long Gray Line: Sorry, nothing on DTDD or IMDB.
• Ballerina: https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/1066389

CWs for The Long Gray Line:

• Smoking.
• Alcohol.
• Gun violence.
• Fistfighting.

CWs for Ballerina:

• Gaslighting.
• Child abuse.
• Drug use.
• Someone is drugged.
• Sexual assault: a r*pe motivates the main plot of the film, but the act itself is shown only as grainy footage and only for a few seconds..
• Someone is physically restrained.
• Discussion of sexual assault.
• Someone is burned alive.
• Unconsciousness.
• Broken bones.
• Tooth damage.
• Torture.
• Stabbing.
• Blood and gore.
• Human trafficking.
• Kidnapping.
• Natural bodies of water.
• Self-harm.
• Suicide attempt.
• Suicide.
• Underwater scenes.
• Jump scares.
• Shaky cam.
• Screaming.
• Someone is watched without their knowledge.
• Fat jokes.
• Objectification of female characters.
• Sex.
• BDSM.
• Gun violence.

Links to movies:

• The Long Gray Line: https://tankie.tube/w/n6o3XsvLMd6YQkz8qJMEND
• Ballerina: https://tankie.tube/w/qhD4hSNPPDvajcEh23bYPL

I was late to the party and the party is amazing.

would 1337x.to be good? I have a VPN to protect myself and know how to seed properly. I don't plan on doing this a lot. I just had trouble finding a particular old film in high quality and decided to pay it forward and post it myself.

Anthology shows are something that I have always looked forward to after randomly discovering Black Mirror way back when the third season hadn't even arrived. To be clear, I loved the concept of a show that was centered around a theme rather than a story or characters. Black Mirror's theme of technology and we using it in fucked up ways was a very realized theme which was fascinating to me, I was excited for every new episode to see what they would explore next. To be honest, that is still the best anthology series I have seen yet but we're not here to talk about tech because later on I did end up watching a few other anthology series and in this post I just wanna talk about those and maybe get to know a few more from you guys

First one was The Twilight Zone, not the old one but the 2019 reboot by Jordan Peele. I wasn't a fan of it and only watched the first episode but it did have something that I hadn't seen before: somebody coming on screen to explain a bit about the show's story or make a comment on it before it started. As it turned out that's very common but back then I just forgot about this show for some reason.

Then somehow I started watching Tales from the Crypt (70's one) and Cabinet of Curiosities together and man it was a lot of fun comparing the two. Both are clearly very different: Tales from the Crypt is adapting stories from comic books so it has more of that one-off shocking gorey spectacle of an edgy teenage comic book and I was very pleased that it delivered so much of that even though the later half of the first season was mostly boring to me especially that episode where they stay at the old castle and just have sex and then the guy gets killed lmao

Cabinet of Curiosities on the other hand atleast says that these stories have much more purpose to them. The themes are more mature, there's a lot of drama and it frequently dips into the the themes of grief, redemption, madness but it was also very boring. The episodes are so much more longer than they need to be and often times not much happens in them and when something does happen it's often fragmented and very poorly paced that I can't feel attached to any of it. The most realized episodes in the series are "The Autopsy" and "The Viewing" as they bring a sense of real suspense and mystery to it along with a lot of gore. I really liked the visuals and the production element of the show as well, many of the gore and the monsters all look really good.

I do feel like it deserves a second season because I think the first season of any anthology series is about discovering itself, especially since most shows these days don't even have full ten episodes a season. I also recently watched Tales from the Crypt's season 2's first episode Dead Right with Demi Moore in it and that was just the whole show doing everything perfectly right. It was so good that I want CoC to come into it's element properly but sadly that doesn't seem to be happening.

If you haven't seen the show, I highly recommend giving it a try or atleast watching some of these episodes: "The Autopsy", "The Outside", "The Viewing and "The Murmuring" (not a fan but letterboxd really likes it) The show also has a really good cast, some surprising people made it there that wouldn't have thought I would see again haha

Finally, is Star Trek (TOS) an anthology series? I have seen like nine episodes and it's been good so far

blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

Note that you apparently need a Hexbear account to use Blorptube now.

In any case, this is our penultimate watch party for this show. For our final watch party next week I'm probably gonna start half an hour early, since we'll be watching one more episode than usual. Then the week after that, or two weeks from now, we'll finally start the 1982 sequel series Once Upon a Time... Space — the only non-edutainment show in Barillé's Once Upon a Time... canon, and also one of only two shows in the canon to be included in anime databases due to being a Japanese co-production (the other being 1987's Once Upon a Time... Life)

In any case...

Episode titles: "Elizabethan England" — "The Golden Age of the Low Countries" — "The Great Reign of Louis XIV" — "Peter the Great and His Times" — "The Age of Reason"

Content warnings: Death incl. murder — sexual assault — nudity — animal gore — disease — racist caricatures — religion presented as fact — Eurocentrism

NOTE: Do not treat a nearly 50 year old cartoon as a definitive source on world history! This show was inaccurate even when it was made! We are watching this show to be critical of our nostalgia, understanding it as a product of a particular historical and material context, and understanding that it reproduces harmful narratives about history.

The Series is now over. we can now officially declare we avoided it! Not one Jedi, not one sith, not one appearance of Vader of the emperor, not one lightsaber, not one physical manifestation of "The Force". They actually did Star wars with zero bullshit.

These couple of weeks, Hexbear has been full of Andor posts. Considering these last 3 episodes were probably the best television I've ever seen in my life, I figure there are gonna be a lot of people who want to share their thoughts on the finale.

I'll be honest, until episode 10, I thought Season 2 wasn't for me. it's wasn't bad but I just felt it didn't have the punch of Season 1. that season gave us novel tropes like a gold heist, a prison break, a riot, etc. season 2 was a more character focused set up for rogue one.

but the last 3 episodes, they changed everything. every minute was amazing.

Andor is often called perfect for someone who doesn't think they like star wars. If it was just a standalone sci-fi spy thriller, it would be still be the best thing on television, but what's truly the crowning accomplishment is that if you do know a lot about star wars, it somehow becomes ever better. This show redeems other media in this franchise. it redeems rogue one, it even strengthens Episode 4.

How much the destruction of the death star cost. In episode 4, the audience is shown "It was a longshot, but somehow a backwater orphan pilot managed to score the killing shot and destroy the battle station."

in Rogue One, they're shown "Okay, it was an even longer shot than that, because before they got to that point, they had to do a big adventure culiminating in getting the plans off Scarif with just seconds to spare"

And I always thought that was sort of weak, because it's a work of fiction. fiction naturally collects around the execution of extremely lucky acts. how ever unlikely their success was is ultimately arbitrary, they can always be written to succeed in spite of the odds.

But it's not about their luck, it's about their sophistication. it's that the rebels were doing all of these things collectively and competently, that they had become what they needed to be at their finest hour, and all the contributions, all the sacrifices of every single character all lead to this being possible.

Or I'm just high an none of this makes sense.