Swarms of Owls

Sorry but I don't think Peter Parker would name herself petra that would be lazy writing, I think she'd go for something more distinctive, but also her writers might also cheekily wink/hijack another journalist's name from their DC rivals. Like Lois.

A lot of horror that is totally clichéd to the point of being regularly included in a totally rote form with zero gravitas in "bad horror", or flattened into a barely considered gesture at the idea of horror in the likes of childrens picture books are, if you pause and dissect them, viscerally upsetting. Their distillation into simple cultural tropes might be considered a kind of gentleness our ancestors lent to us to help their successive children reckon with that which, if presented in its raw form without conditioning, would shake us. Which is to say, it would be scary if a skeleton popped out.

If you find a tumblr post comment or tag section with all three:

1. Recounting a completely bullshit folk etymology.

2. Ascribing a normal cultural behaviour to ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, or OCD.

3. Whole-heartedly admitting to doing/believing something deeply embarrassing and racist, unprompted.

It will give you access to the secret page that lets you leave this fucking website.

Next up on my Film Filler Century: Charles le Bargy and André Calmettes' The Assassination of the Duke de Guise (France, 1908)

I'm also going to embed these were available because this early most are public domain and all over youtube:

Of the films I've watched, my first encounter with actual intertitles though they're used very sparingly to convey the plot, to its detriment. Once again this is very much a short stage play, and one that may have actually been compelling to watch with, say... Lines. But this is a silent narrative film and they hadn't really nailed down working within that format yet. This is a lot of men in tights standing in rooms explaining things we can't hear and which are only vaguely conveyed through mime, in scenes that last three times as long as they need to when they are vague and mimed.

Probably the most notable thing here is it's also my first encounter with a (surviving) original score, so in this early era it's a treat as I'd rather listen to silence than some royalty free tinkling somebody on youtube decided to put on their upload. That aside... The costumes were nice? From reading up afterwards, this was a very deliberate attempt to do "high" theatre on film, which is probably a noble attempt but they beefed the execution. Can't really blame them, nobody had written the book on it yet.

This was originally just years I hadn't seen but... We'll see.

More of this!!

Next up in Film Filler Century, Segundo de Chomón's Le Phantom Rouge (France, 1907) in which a fairly convincing skeleton all things considered (long established stage expertise coming in again, black on a remotely dark background barely picks up at all on early film stock) - who is only occasionally red because the version I watched hadn't put much time into colouring the film - attempts to demonstrate all his clever film effects but keeps being thwarted by a good(?) spirit who presumably hates cinema.

Even after a good few years of Méliès doing a lot of these effects, often one at a time, I'm sure this rocked shit in 1907. It's 10 minutes long which is practically feature length for the time.

This is very much formatted like a stage magic show but stands out in combining that so directly and deliberately with cutting edge special effects to blur that line. Familiar tricks, but impossible! I hope the red spectre patented all those powerpoint transitions, he must be a very rich skeleton by now.

Next up... Honestly I haven't been deciding in advance for these super early films because they're all 15 minutes long tops and there's not a huge effort to decide a genre etc. because the genre is largely "ooh look, a film!"