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stray thoughts
May. 1st, 2026 06:54 pmit can be tough for me to decide what non-dane films to watch since there's so many that all sound equally good (or so bad they must be good), so the "leaving soon" feature on the criterion channel has proven very handy. shame that shudder streaming doesn't have anything like it.
since a big batch of werner herzog movies were departing at the end of april i decided to finally educate myself and watch the handful that seemed most intriguing: signs of life (1968), aguirre (1972), and fitzcarraldo (1982). signs of life was interesting - picked it for admittedly shallow reasons but ended up appreciating what he was going for overall. finished reading le guin's the lathe of heaven for the first time before watching aguirre, which made for some interesting parallels. between aguirre and fitzcarraldo i watched magellan (2025) and that just blew them out of the water. (i was struck by fitzcarraldo and i understand now why herzog's the cult figure he is, but. you want an ambitious take on deconstructing the "great man" trope? watch magellan.)
there's a half-baked post about colonialism, language, and the spectacle of bodies in magellan vs aguirre/fitzcarraldo that i've been rolling around in my head, but first i really need to finish my review post for heatwave. that's been getting shuffled between front and back burners for months now lol. and not for lack of interest! having to choose the screencaps was Hard for me, ok, but i finally got it down to ~25. this is reminding me that i still want to order these photographs held at the ontario archives, but since they won't do a preview scan of the negatives i have to just. request all 30+ negatives. and with their fee schedule it'd run me over one thousand dollars. painful..... i've been saving up since last year and it's of the whole photoshoot that my icon is from so i know it would be an absolute win for my personal archive but still, with everything going on it feels hard to justify.
in less painful developments, tomorrow night i'm going to baby's first kink-oriented event (bootblacking, pole dancing, that kind of thing) and i'm looking forward to it since it's at a venue that requires masking for everyone all the time because covid's not over(!) but it's gonna be a bit of a drive so we'll see how much energy&time i have for working on the review this weekend. at the very least i hope to be able to get it out before three weeks for dreamwidth ends.
since a big batch of werner herzog movies were departing at the end of april i decided to finally educate myself and watch the handful that seemed most intriguing: signs of life (1968), aguirre (1972), and fitzcarraldo (1982). signs of life was interesting - picked it for admittedly shallow reasons but ended up appreciating what he was going for overall. finished reading le guin's the lathe of heaven for the first time before watching aguirre, which made for some interesting parallels. between aguirre and fitzcarraldo i watched magellan (2025) and that just blew them out of the water. (i was struck by fitzcarraldo and i understand now why herzog's the cult figure he is, but. you want an ambitious take on deconstructing the "great man" trope? watch magellan.)
there's a half-baked post about colonialism, language, and the spectacle of bodies in magellan vs aguirre/fitzcarraldo that i've been rolling around in my head, but first i really need to finish my review post for heatwave. that's been getting shuffled between front and back burners for months now lol. and not for lack of interest! having to choose the screencaps was Hard for me, ok, but i finally got it down to ~25. this is reminding me that i still want to order these photographs held at the ontario archives, but since they won't do a preview scan of the negatives i have to just. request all 30+ negatives. and with their fee schedule it'd run me over one thousand dollars. painful..... i've been saving up since last year and it's of the whole photoshoot that my icon is from so i know it would be an absolute win for my personal archive but still, with everything going on it feels hard to justify.
in less painful developments, tomorrow night i'm going to baby's first kink-oriented event (bootblacking, pole dancing, that kind of thing) and i'm looking forward to it since it's at a venue that requires masking for everyone all the time because covid's not over(!) but it's gonna be a bit of a drive so we'll see how much energy&time i have for working on the review this weekend. at the very least i hope to be able to get it out before three weeks for dreamwidth ends.
