Everything, Adequately #3 - The Season Finale Is Not What It Seems

David Bowie makes everything better. New Bowie Bran Flakes; buy them while stocks last!

Try Calligraphy: All the Cool Kids are Doin' It

Difficulty - 3/5
Duration - 5/5 (As long as you like, really)

So, you're bored. Uni's over, all your friends are away home, you've caught up on Season 3 of Orange is the New Black on Netflix and so there's nothing left to watch. Why not try a hand at calligraphy? Hell, you probably already know how to read and write so half the battle's done for you.

If you can't, please get the person reading this to you to hurry up with teaching you to do it yourself.

A friend of mine introduced me to scribbling words in fancy ways back in the spring and was even kind enough to lend me his Pilot Parallel calligraphy pen and some ink to get myself started. I swear, aside from knitting I have yet to find another pastime that is more gloriously mind-cleansing than calligraphy. It is the most zen thing even; just turn your head off and write down the first thing that comes to you.

I had watched quite a bit of Black Books that day.

Now, the important thing is to get the basics down first. Start big and then work down to smaller sizes of text; you'll notice your mistakes better if the letters are larger. With that in mind, pick up a broad spring loaded pen like the aforementioned Pilot Parallel (this post is brought to you by Pilot) and practise on lined graph paper. Once you've chosen a script to work with and feel like you're getting the hang of it, you can pick up a cheap fountain pen with a couple of different widths of nib for doing smaller work.

Right. You've got some kit; now for the writing. Get yourself a book that goes through how to construct each letter in a script nice and thoroughly. I've been using The Art of Calligraphy and it's great; super concise, easy to understand, and totally not available as a PDF for free...ahem.

Start with a script that you both like the look of and is nice and simple to begin with, but be sure to double check what kind of pen is best for each text. Then, practise.

Lots of it.

Repetition is the name of the game. Start with just going through the alphabet, focussing particularly on the letter O as it usually features a lot of the major components of the script, particularly size and scale. Pangrams will also be your best friend. Then start doing the thing with random words.

I was hungry this time...and apparently thinking of ice climbing.

I even practised while revising:

My train of thought when writing words will be studied for millennia to come.

The last challenge you can go for is trying to write longer or larger scale works and new and interesting fonts.

Some Mervyn Peake in Chancery Italic.

My first super big endeavour is writing The Higwayman by Alfred Noyes for a special lady friend's birthday in Fraktur, with the fancy big capitals in the boxes and everything. I even did the good old dipping paper in cold tea trick to make it cool and old-looky.

"Oh my, would you look at all these papers haphazardly strewn over my desk in an aesthetically pleasing fashion..."

The bottom line of it all is relax, enjoy yourself and mess around. Writing is something we all do every day, and it's nice to step away from the standard of typed text and hark back to the days of pen and ink for a while. It'll shine a new light on something you've never really stopped to think about before.

Happy writing!

The Calling (Spoilers ahead)

Gosh, I've been a tad abysmal at this whole posting thing haven't it? You're probably all sick to death of reading me saying sorry and explaining why I've been unable to post, so let's just get on with it shall we?

Susan Sarandon and the guy from That 70's Show team
up to catch a serial killer, what more do you want?

I'm going to go ahead and warn y'all that spoilers are imminent within this review, but somehow I don't think you'll mind, as I highly doubt any of you are going to watch this film, and I can't really talk about it at length without going into spoiler territory, so otherwise this review would just be this:

Lisa Simpson: providing more reviews for Pop Culture Cynic than Rhona

So, straight off the bat, this was director Jason Stone's first full length film and boy does it show. It's awfully formulaic. Small town where nothing much happens is shaken when one of it's residents is murdered in a grotesque (their word, not mine) way. Enter alcoholic, worn out detective Hazel Micallef (Sarandon), poppin' pills like no tomorrow and doesn't need anyone's help. Next up is Detective Ben Wingate (70's guy Topher Grace), young and full of life and spirit and is everything Hazel isn't. It's clear to see where Stone got his influences: I feel like he probably watched Fargo and Se7en in the same night and thought to himself, "Heeeeeeeeeeeey. I gots an idea, so I do."

There really aren't many screencaps of this
film floating about, I don't think anyone has
watched it.

This also appears to be screenplay writer Scott Abramovitch's first full length feature film screenplay, which is equally as glaringly obvious. The screenplay really isn't particularly strong at all; the dialogue, though generally passable, is very clunky in parts, and the plot itself is something I have a lot of issue with. The killer is revealed to the audience fairly early on in the film, and it's explained to us that he's killing for religious reasons - he wants to use the people he's killing as sacrifices to bring back his death brother. The catch is that he needs the people he kills to be willing sacrifices. Key word being willing. As soon as it's revealed to us that the victims are willing (all of them suffering from some terminal illness or another), my interest in the detectives catching him kind of died a little. Like, I don't really care that much any more, these people wanted to die, they don't really need saving. This film is no longer a thriller.

Oh hey Marge- wait. nope.

Next is that there are a lot of these weird throw-away lines to do with Hazel's past - we can gleam that she lost her child somehow, she was married at some point, she was in the hospital (possibly for an overdose) and she's injured her back somehow. None of these get developed upon in the slightest, and sure it's great to let the audience piece things together themselves, some of these definitely could have done with some development for Hazel as a character. We don't know why she is the way she is and it makes it hard to identify or sympathize with her. It's possible that she miscarried her child, this put a strain on her relationship so her husband divorced her which led to her attempted overdose and this alcoholic, pill popping cycle. But that's me filling in a lot of them blanks, and there's other stuff in the film that contradicts this story. She also had this weird relationship with this guy who was literally in two scenes, Andy. They appeared to have possibly had a relationship in the past, but he's married now, and Hazel and his wife have some kind of rivalry? I don't know. So yeah, could've done with a bit more fleshing out.

Lastly is the fairly unsatisfying ending. Hazel is abducted by Simon (the murder) and it's made clear that he's going to use her as his final victim (he needed 12). He creates this concoction for her to drink which would kill her and Hazel (depressed having lost her child) is almost convinced to drink it. But then she literally just says no. She doesn't want to die. Which throws the killer's plan way off, since the whole point is that the victims need to be willing sacrifices. So he just kills himself. Like it's so unsatisfying. Hazel doesn't fight him off and escape, the other detectives don't do anything. He kills himself. The house catches fire so that creates our sense of threat and adventure I guess. When Ben visits Hazel in the hospital at the end of the film, the stock dialogue of:

"You did it."

"No, we did it."

I was just sitting there like, no. Y'all didn't do shit. You didn't catch him or arrest him or kill him. 

"Heard you were talkin shit." No, no Susan, I'm sorry- AAAAHHHHH.

Finally, this is the kicker, remember how I was saying that these killings were motivated by a religious belief that would result in bringing Simon's brother back from the dead? No? Well I just explained it again so there you go. Simon had been keeping his brothers body wrapped in towels soaked in formaldehyde in a camper van, this is discovered about halfway through the movie. At the end, after Simon has killed himself and all 12 willing victims have been sacrificed, detectives that we haven't met before go out to the camper van and investigate it and dun dun dun - the fucking body has moved, implying that it worked. Gah. No.

"Go on anon, send Rhona hate!"

Okay, I know I've been shitting on this movie a lot. But, I didn't entirely hate it. The film looked pretty nice visually and the performances were actually reasonably strong. It just goes to show however that good actors can't save a film that suffers from poor direction and writing. 

Till next week time follks!

Everything, Adequately #2 - A Nice Warm Cuppa

You're getting another comic because I'm super stressed and this is helping me relax. Once resits are done we'll have ourselves some proper posts. Also, yes, that is my Troy and Abed in the Morning mug.

"I am wearing my pyjaaaamas!"

(This comic is in no way autobiographical. Any resemblance of characters to reptiles living or dead is purely coincidental.)

Everything, Adequately #1 - Greetings

I have been doing much more drawing recently that I have writing, so you're getting another comic! Hooray! This will hopefully continue to be a regular thing, let me know what you think of it all; I want it to be fun to read as well as draw, so tell me if it's crap.

Newts are notorious card sharks.

I Drew A Thing - The Platypus and the Newt

Hey everybodilypeeps! Things have not been going great over in the real world (I'll likely whinge at you rather soon), so here's a little story that I wrote and drew

all by my selfsome. I've been hoping to get a webcomic of some sort going for a while now, so consider this an attempt at starting it. Enjoy!

Dear Zachary: Nought to Blubbering Heap in 90 Minutes

"I don't like documentaries." It's a phrase that, as a film fan, you will likely have heard from countless people. It comes from the same place as "I don't like subtitles/black and white films/fun," where either laziness or simply an unwillingness to put a little extra effort into an experience to get something back leads to a broadly dismissive statement. You can, however, see the logic in the argument: if you wanted to have to read along with your entertainment, you would have picked up a book; and black and white movies are, like, old... And documentaries feel a bit like homework; you're given lots of facts and arguments and are expected to think and have opinions. Ugh!

"Move me from the fire, I'm burning."

It pains me every time I hear these kinds of things; not just because it means people are missing out on some great stuff. The blanket lack of acceptance of subtitles by the general populace has led to any and all foreign film being consigned to a single award in the Oscars rather than being allowed to run for the main prize. I have friends who don't like Psycho or pretty much anything before the 1950s because it's "not got any colour in it"; actual quote. But I think the complete dismissal of documentaries as a genre has to be the most agonising to hear.

There are few types of film more varied and more capable of actually affecting a person than a documentary (although fair's fair, they're also some of the most untruthful, manipulative bullshit possible), and yet so many will point blank refuse to give them a chance because they think it's boring, or don't like sad stories, or are uncomfortable facing nasty truths. When you don't want to experience things that have changed lives and altered the course of human society (for better or worse) because it seems like too much effort, you are in dire need of an encouraging kick up the backside.

The crux of that whole introduction? You people stop whinging and watch some documentaries; they're amazing pieces of art and culture and you're doing yourself a disservice by not giving them a chance. As you might have already guessed, today's film is a documentary; a very good one at that. May I introduce you to Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About his Father?

It's just behind that ocean of tears there.

Now this isn't, to be perfectly honest, a very original documentary. It does the typical "we started out planning to make one thing but we actually made it about something else in the end" bit, it's blunt, it's emotionally manipulative, it's very opinionated, it tells rather than shows... But you still need to watch it. Why? Because it is one of the most sincerely emotional pieces of film I've ever seen, and I think the main reason for that is down to how personal the subject matter was to the director, Kurt Kuenne.

On the right.

The man on the left, Andrew Bagby, is the initial subject of the documentary. In 2001, Bagby was murdered by his ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner. That, right there, is the happiest part of the whole sorry story, and the reason Kuenne began filming. He decided to commemorate Bagby's life as best he could by interviewing family members and the such, and that's where we come in as the film opens. From there, Kuenne goes on a blistering emotional crusade that's about as agonising to watch as being forced to ride a flaming motorbike. Naked. While being tattooed. By rattlesnakes...made of dirty needles... That analogy ran away from me a tad.

Point being it only goes downhill from there, with each turn of the tale (un)lucky enough to have been caught at the time it happened by Kuenne (or so we're led to believe; we have to stay sceptical when dealing with documentary chronology). This means we get to see Bagby's family and friends go through some pretty harrowing stuff with the candour that most "this is what happened" after-the-fact documentaries often lose, all at the hands of this monster:

That baby's got fucking motives, man...

That's the aforementioned Shirley Turner, and boy do we hate her. I mentioned before that Dear Zachary is a rather opinionated documentary. Much of that opinion is that this woman is evil, and Kuenne expends a great deal of effort portraying the disgust and fury he and Bagby's family feel towards her. Imagine if someone did something so unthinkably cruel to you and the people you love that you're simply overwhelmed with debilitating anger and frustration at the situation. Now imagine you were able to capture that sensation and put it on film; that's the level of powerful emotion Kuenne manages to invoke in Dear Zachary.

It's untidy, messy even at points, but so bursting with absolutely visceral passion that you can't help getting swept up in the family's ordeal. I can't remember who said it (help me if you can) but someone once said that you should leave a documentary angry, hungry for change, and Dear Zachary delivers on that ravenous desire for righteous justice in spadefuls.

If you say you don't like documentaries or don't see the point in them, I implore you to put this on. If you feel anything by the end, then you can understand what these films are for.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

Screaming at a Slasher Movie Victim to Fucking Notice the Monster!!! -

Like a train wreck in slow motion you can see exactly what's coming but, much to your dismay and frustration, there's absolutely nothing you can do to to stop it.