Remember how awesome Kenneth Branagh used to be?

He was.
I mean, nowadays, I think the best thing he's actually managed was (essentially) playing himself in the Harry Potter films. Thor wasn't that bad, either.

But... he used to kick ass at directing, and even managed to act well from time to time.

***

Dead Again is a very, very strange mystery film about reincarnation. Aside from his own performance as a private detective, we're also treated to:
- Emma Thompson as an amnesiac whose only memories... are of a past life
- Derek Jacobi as a hypnotist/antiques dealer
- Robin Williams as a foul-mouthed former psychiatrist
- Andy Garcia in... one of the most stomach-turning performances I've ever seen

It's basically one of the best things I've ever seen in my whole life.



Here, he offers up some of what he does best: Shakespeare. Blah, blah, blah, Henry V, blah blah blee. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, thank you.

I'll admit that there are some blatantly corny moments in this one, but it's still fantastically awesome. I mean, aside from Keanu Reeves being EEEEEEEVIL (or maybe Keanu Reeves being evil just helps it. I can't decide! I don't know, though. I think if a person is named 'John the Bastard', they're... kind of predisposed to being... a bit mean-spirited.)
Brian Blessed is loud (even as an inconsequential side character), Robert Sean Leonard's eyebrows are enormous (His character's only purpose? Eyebrows and stupidity.), Michael Keaton is fucking crazy as Dogberry (this man should only do comedy, ever), Emma Thompson is Beatrice, one of the most fantastic snarky ladies on the planet, and Denzel Washington is wonderfully smarmy as Don Jon.
My Mom and I have probably watched this 40,000 (or maybe 12) times and it never gets old. Ever.



Oh, Branagh.
What, what, WHAT WERE YOU DOING?
Look at your life. Look at your choices.
I like Helena Bonham-Carter and all, but...
Well, let's just say I think know where your career started hitting the skids.

Even if Robert deNiro was fuckin' awesome as The Creature.
(I'm not hyperlinking you to Robert deNiro, though. If you don't know who that is, there's no help for you.)



Maybe he knew his talent was tanking. Maybe he just recklessly burned it all out by powering through with this thing. Time may only tell.
1996's Hamlet is just... overwhelming. It's so on-point in every regard that it's difficult to try and write about coherently.

The weird visual mish-mash of criss-crossing anachronisms melds together into perfection. The costuming, the sets, and the color composition of the whole thing are all stunning.
Every shot is perfectly framed.
This owes a lot to the way it was filmed. Most films (before the advent of digital filming, of course) were done on 35 mm film (the same width as camera film). This particular film (all four hours of it) was done on 65 mm film.
That doesn't make the picture itself bigger; it makes it possible to capture wider, more inclusive shots. (It also makes for higher image resolution.)

I can't find fault with anyone's performance. It's a very, very long movie in its entirety (as the complete, full text of the play was filmed, which is quite unusual for adaptations of Shakespeare), and in view of that, the emotional nuance needed for the scope of the thing is incredibly well-realized. (In stage adaptations, that tends to get lost in view of the fact that it's more important for actors to exaggerate a bit in order for their voices and gestures to be seen and heard properly by the audience.)

Not only that, but in the style of his better movies, it's utterly jam-packed with blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos.

So... nearly everything he's done since Hamlet has, indeed, SUCKED... but I'd say that's one hell of a ($18,000,000) magnum opus all in all.

Brian Blessed is the loudest man known to humankind.

And he's also one of my heroes.

Go watch Black Adder. Seasons 2 and 3 are admittedly superior, but they do not feature His Royal Loudness at any point.

I don't know what this has to do with anything, aside form the fact that if you don't know who Brian Blessed is, I think you've had a sad life and that you should educate yourself promptly.

Fucking Massive Music Post, Part One

A quick note on the entry that's under the cut here:
I had wanted to arrange this so that each artist/category I was going to detail would have their own cut (like on LiveJournal), but I'm just not good enough at newer/different coding to get it to work here. Thus, for right now, everything is just as sectioned as I can get it behind one cut.
The lack of ease of navigation, therefore, frustrates me enough that I'm apologizing.
I imagine that nobody who's gonna read this is gonna give too much of a damn, I just figured I'd mention.

So now, on to what I came here to do tonight: ramble endlessly about music.

Quick Thoughts On Cultural Oddities, and also, The People In My Life.

(1) Joey Comeau, the writer (of the text) for A Softer World, also writes short stories. I am both enamored with and jealous of his skill when it comes to "writing stories about cocks", as I have previously described my own attempts.

(2) Turtle recommended that I watch RoboGeisha, and if nothing else, the hilarious dub work is worth it.

(3) It's about time I told you a little bit more about the people I have written / will write about.


***

I currently live in Rochester, NY. I'm not from there, though.
I live with two other people - Ivan, The Boyfriend, and Turtle, The Roommate. Turtle's cat Archie and her rabbit Jackie also live with us.

Ivan is about seven months older than me, from the Rochester area, and a wonderful person. That's not to say that our relationship is perfect. We're human just like everyone else, and there are things we have to work at on a regular basis to keep it going, but there's nobody else I'd rather come home to every day. (Unless I could have him as part of a live-in harem of super-hot people. Ivan, if you're reading this, can we turn the attic into a harem of super-hot people?) He's very good at drawing, he's very understanding, he's not dumb, and he has good personal hygiene. He covers all my baseline requirements for long-terms relationships, and he finds me the best youtube videos. (Example is seen here.) (Actually-well-sung versions of that song can be found here and here, with due respect to Bea Arthur.)
He is the Pumpkin to my Honey-Bunny, the Morticia to my Gomez, and one hell of a guy all around.

Turtle is about eight months younger than me, and she's a fantastic person, and even though she's only our room mate, I miss her. (If by just our roommate, I mean JUST THE BEST ROOMMATE, then that's 100% accurate.) She is my partner in the law firm of Ziggy and Turtle-Derby, Attorneys At Funk. (We are not actually lawyers. We're just funky.) She's the best baker ever, she's a pretty good cook, and she can enjoy a good shot of tequila just as much as I can. She also has impeccable taste in music.
She got me my job (the one before this one), and then we actually met and became friends.
People who don't know us mistake us for siblings (or at least relatives) from how stupid we act around each other.
Archie, her cat, is ADORABLE, but fatally stupid. (She may also be the Antichrist, but that's another story for another time.)
Jackie is Turtle's rabbit. She doesn't venture out of her cage much. That's about all we have to say about her.

Tami is my best friend in the whole world, even though I don't see him often anymore. (He lives in Buffalo, where I'm from.) (Yes, Tami is a he, and is not a drag queen or a transsexual. Yes, it's pronounced Tammy.) I miss him terribly, and we have the weirdest inside jokes ever. During the year I lived in Michigan, we would talk on the phone and watch Conan O'Brien every night. I used to stay at his house practically every weekend when I moved back to Buffalo. If I ever get married, he will be my best man. Yes, I'm a lady, and he will be my best man. There are certain songs that I like because they remind me of driving around in the car with him.
Aside from Ivan, he is probably my absolute favorite male person.

Mom and Stepdad should be fairly self-explanatory names. They currently like in Michigan, where Stepdad is from. She's an esthetician, he's going to school to be a teacher. He's an only child, she's the third of four children.
They have one daughter together, my sister Bug, who is one month less than seventeen years younger than I am. She is probably the most adorable child on the planet.
I miss the three of them awfully, but I ended up hating living in Michigan more than I miss them.

Dad and Stepmom live in Syracuse. We don't have the best relationship. I'll get into it if I feel the need, but I won't bore you with it here.
They have two children together - A.L., female, nearly 11 years younger than me, and A.W., male, nearly sixteen years younger than me. (I could be doing the math wrong there. I don't know how old my brother is exactly, because I'm a bad person.)

The Baron and Lady Baron are two of (our?) best friends - they live about four blocks away from us in Rochester. (They are my friends, they are Ivan's friends, they are Turtle's friends.) He is in IT work, she is a stay-at-home girlfriend (who should not be judged poorly for that choice). They are both completely fucking awesome people.

Turtle-Boyfriend is.... Turtle's boyfriend. He's part of a theater company in Pennsyltucky who also does carpentry work. He's one of those disturbingly thin people who isn't actually anorexic. He likes Zelda games and certain forms of LARPing. (Turtle and The Baron are also members of his LARPing group.) He has fantastic hair. This is all that I know about him.

Tío Aparato is my father's youngest brother. He lives in Washington and struggled for a number of years with the fallout from a back injury, but that seems to have been improving recently. He has always been one of my favorite people. 
Mačka is my uncle's... gentleman friend? I don't know. 'Boyfriend' sounds juvenile, 'life-partner' sounds robotic. I've never really asked them what label they put on it, as such. He's a cool guy, even though he's really quiet. He's also insanely smart. His quietness can be intimidating, unless you know that he's just usually like that.


Ma Cousine is my father's younger brother's oldest child. (There's three brothers there. Dad, Père Du Ma Cousine, and Tío Aparato.) She's got pretty much a full ride to AU, because she applied herself in every way that I managed to slack off in highschool. She's one of the coolest people I know.




These are all of the people that I might post about in the foreseeable future.