WORD TO THE MOTHERFUCKING STREET, YO.
I WATCHED GENERATION KILL FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS WEEK W/ UNDERHAND_GLORY. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. i just finished watching the finale with her yesterday night so my thoughts and shit are all over the place rn but god, you guys. this perfect fucking miniseries. pretty sure i am the latest to the party and y'all have already seen it a million times over but pls indulge me while i cry over every fucking thing. and not even always in the good way.
i have so many feelings about bravo company and especially brad and ray's fucking humvee (which they fucking pimped out and painted together!!!!). brad the frosty sergeant with his fucking psychic eyes and how he commands respect from everyfuckingbody because he is the iceman and he GETS SHIT DONE. and ray with his loudmouth bullshitting every mile of the way into iraq and how he says so much by, well, saying so much, and HOW HE MANAGES TO FIX EVERYTHING OBLIQUELY WITH HIS OBNOXIOUS SHENANIGANS, and singing fucking avril lavigne all the way to baghdad. jesus, ray is my absolute favorite. there were only two times that i actually cried while watching the series and they both happened in the finale: 1) when doc bryan had his arms around the crying iraqi child and 2) when ray's stupid ptsd-riddled self breaks down in the middle of the football field. christ. WHO FIXES THE FIXER?
REPORTER AND TROMBLEY AND WALT always chilling in the back or up top and singing dumb songs off-key together. so endeared to all of them (okay maybe not totally to trombley, our psycho) that it is ridiculous. and GOD, fucking naaate. the consummate staunch war hero type with a truly distracting babyface. he has some of the fucking greatest moments in the show and it is heartbreaking watching him walk the line between deference and wanting so badly to keep his men alive. tears for years. and all the other amazing assholes in 1st recon: godfather and sixta and POOOKE MY SWEET PRINCESS and FRUITY RUDY and PAPPY and garza and qtip and christeson and lilley on his goddamn camera, augh my heart. (AND NONE FOR ENCINO MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, OR CASEY KASEM, BYE.)
THE ENDING MONTAGE WAS THE MOST PERFECT THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD??? i could not contain the overwhelming surge of my feelings. it was just so. good. and i just thought it was such a stunningly real and nuanced and thought out approach to discussing what actually happened on the ground when the american forces moved in. i don't know much about war or politics but the show just pulls you in and tries to elucidate a lot of things. it was wonderful.
on a less serious note: god, it hurts that brad/ray (wow i'm typing this at 6:48 in the morning off of no sleep and i nearly just wrote bray/rad fuck my life)-ANYWAY, IT HURTS THAT BRAD/RAY DOESN'T SEEM TO BE POPULAR IN FANDOM? THIS PAINS ME DEEPLY. they are the old marrieds that everyone aspires to be ;____; LIKE I TOTALLY GET THAT NATE IS THE CUTEST AND WONDERFUL AND HIS RELATIONSHIP W/ BRAD IS COMPELLING but how can you deny sing-offs in the funvee and i need my rto and paying 500 bucks to fix up their crummy vehicle together and the stupid expressions they shoot at each other all the time and the fact that ray is about the only person who can get brad to react with casual aggression. that he's a superior officer but still indulges ray's ridiculousness all the time. LOVING 'SHUT THE FUCK UP'S AND THE LIKE. THEY'RE SO COMFORTABLE WITH EACH OTHER AND TRUST EACH OTHER SO IMPLICITLY IT IS MIND-BOGGLING TO ME. SO. MANY. FEELINGS. (fucking emily made the connection between pest from attack the block and ray and now i cannot stop thinking about how many parallels there are between the characters and also brad/ray and pest/moses. jesus christ. fuck you emily for ruining my life yet again.)
WHY DON'T MORE PEOPLE SHIP THIS? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
i also watched private romeo. like, i watched private romeo, and then i watched gk with emily. this was a week for war-related narratives, apparently. here, have a download link, courtesy of yours truly. (this is a not-so-subtle nudge to pls watch this movie.)
i don’t know how matt doyle did it but he totally sold me on smitten juliet, ugh. HIS FACE. SETH NURMICH’S FACE. THEIR PHYSICALITY. I CAN’T DEAL WITH IT!!! a lot of people have been saying that r+j is by far their least favorite shakespeare. FULL DISCLOSURE: I NEVER READ THE PLAY because i missed it for school when i moved to shanghai. it's a long story. obviously the play is so immersed in pop culture that i know virtually everything anyway, including noted passages and shit, but you know. if you're hesitant to watch b/c you don't like r+j, don't! because people who hate it have told me that they enjoyed this adaptation! plus gay dudes making out! watch it, y'all.
anyway, as you may be able to tell, i really enjoyed it. i thought the performances (esp. by the main six: r+j, benvolio, mercutio, friar laurence, and omar) were stunning and seth and matt had amazing chemistry. i reaaaally liked the line delivery (especially omar's, because he made it sound so natural and not stilted at all). i didn't think retaining the original language detracted but rather added to the dreamlike ambience of the entire film. romeo and juliet were fucking stunning throughout, and oh my GOD, mercutio. so so so so so good. i was seriously blown away. the entire movie is really built on those performances and the foundation is rock solid. and the end scene with mercutio and tybalt is really sweet and lovely and i may or may not have clutched at my chest ;__; BOOOYS.
the entire story was so well done in the sense that even though reading the initial situation on the page/a synopsis of the movie sounds so weird, they totally sold it on screen. almost nothing seems absurd to me and it’s really a testament to how they shot the film and how the actors played the characters so well ;__; MY TIED-FOR-FAVORITE SCENES were definitely the wherefore art thou romeo scene (oh god, romeo’s faaaaces and juliet’s little grins shut the fuck up) and the consummation scene. the double-take kiss right before he hops out the window, you guys. F E E L S.
GREATNESS ASIDE, there were obviously hiccups in the adaptation. i’m still confused by mercutio’s dual role as juliet’s father and benvolio as his mother and what the fuck ‘paris’ is. re: the language, it was def an interesting stylistic choice to keep the archaic victorian-era prose of the play in the dialogue of the movie. i read this after watching the film and from the second blurb my vague interpretation is that since the boys were reading r+j in class, they used the only language they knew how to relate to each other as the situations in fiction and in real life overlapped. but there’s also this sort of allegorical quality between the original text and the events of the movie, and the analogy is not perfect at all. things definitely start breaking down near the end when we realize that the stakes are so much lower than the ones in the source material (like, no one dies, so that changes things a lot, even though yay! happy ending!), and that kind of lessens any emotional impact or catharsis that the original is supposed to have.
to make sense of which parts were analogous to the original i did a bit of digging/formed a bunch of conclusions on my own and apparently the director wrote the script when the turmoil over don’t ask don’t tell was at its peak, and obviously made the conscious decision to make his adaptation a love story about two boys. in one of the interviews (the last one here) with seth and sean (benvolio) they say that the eight actors and the director, etc. had a lot of long talks about who/what ‘paris’ was in this new context. IT’S FRUSTRATING BECAUSE THEY DON’T OUTRIGHT SAY WHAT IT WAS IN THE INTERVIEW AND IT’S CERTAINLY UNCLEAR IN THE FILM SO I’M LIKE UGH. TELL ME. because it obviously wasn’t another dude-like, they included it for a reason so WHAT WAS THAT REASON. and as for the don’t ask don’t tell context, and the fact that it’s set in a military academy, i chose to interpret the end where the authorities/higher ups walk into the auditorium to see r+j kissing as sort of a step out of the closet, a death of hiding their love in the dark out of necessity, rather than a physical death. (maybe also death of romeo’s aspirations to go to west point since he wouldn’t be allowed if he was openly gay???) this is definitely me projecting and it’s a stretch. (i’m a mess.) i feel like that’s one of the only ways in which the analogy fits, though, so idkkk.
re: capulets and montagues. the entire rest of the academy is out for training somewhere and these 8 guys didn’t qualify so they had to stay behind-so maybe the montague vs. capulet stuff was analogous to two different battalions/squadrons/cliques in the academy and the groups hadn’t interacted in such close quarters (or possibly even at all) until they were forced to go to class together and live in proximity with each other with no one else around? like i said before tho, it just doesn't feel like the stakes are high enough to warrant a lot of things.
IDK, GUYS. loved parts, disliked/was confused by other parts, but in the end, boys kissing is always a win in my book. this review emily linked me to puts it really well. and fuck my life if i don't ship seth/matt all the way to high heaven now-apparently they auditioned for the war horse broadway production together whilst filming private romeo? jesus christ. please read this article and then come back and tell me you do not fucking ship it. I DARE YOU.
now someone write me rpf.
i have so many feelings about bravo company and especially brad and ray's fucking humvee (which they fucking pimped out and painted together!!!!). brad the frosty sergeant with his fucking psychic eyes and how he commands respect from everyfuckingbody because he is the iceman and he GETS SHIT DONE. and ray with his loudmouth bullshitting every mile of the way into iraq and how he says so much by, well, saying so much, and HOW HE MANAGES TO FIX EVERYTHING OBLIQUELY WITH HIS OBNOXIOUS SHENANIGANS, and singing fucking avril lavigne all the way to baghdad. jesus, ray is my absolute favorite. there were only two times that i actually cried while watching the series and they both happened in the finale: 1) when doc bryan had his arms around the crying iraqi child and 2) when ray's stupid ptsd-riddled self breaks down in the middle of the football field. christ. WHO FIXES THE FIXER?
REPORTER AND TROMBLEY AND WALT always chilling in the back or up top and singing dumb songs off-key together. so endeared to all of them (okay maybe not totally to trombley, our psycho) that it is ridiculous. and GOD, fucking naaate. the consummate staunch war hero type with a truly distracting babyface. he has some of the fucking greatest moments in the show and it is heartbreaking watching him walk the line between deference and wanting so badly to keep his men alive. tears for years. and all the other amazing assholes in 1st recon: godfather and sixta and POOOKE MY SWEET PRINCESS and FRUITY RUDY and PAPPY and garza and qtip and christeson and lilley on his goddamn camera, augh my heart. (AND NONE FOR ENCINO MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, OR CASEY KASEM, BYE.)
THE ENDING MONTAGE WAS THE MOST PERFECT THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD??? i could not contain the overwhelming surge of my feelings. it was just so. good. and i just thought it was such a stunningly real and nuanced and thought out approach to discussing what actually happened on the ground when the american forces moved in. i don't know much about war or politics but the show just pulls you in and tries to elucidate a lot of things. it was wonderful.
on a less serious note: god, it hurts that brad/ray (wow i'm typing this at 6:48 in the morning off of no sleep and i nearly just wrote bray/rad fuck my life)-ANYWAY, IT HURTS THAT BRAD/RAY DOESN'T SEEM TO BE POPULAR IN FANDOM? THIS PAINS ME DEEPLY. they are the old marrieds that everyone aspires to be ;____; LIKE I TOTALLY GET THAT NATE IS THE CUTEST AND WONDERFUL AND HIS RELATIONSHIP W/ BRAD IS COMPELLING but how can you deny sing-offs in the funvee and i need my rto and paying 500 bucks to fix up their crummy vehicle together and the stupid expressions they shoot at each other all the time and the fact that ray is about the only person who can get brad to react with casual aggression. that he's a superior officer but still indulges ray's ridiculousness all the time. LOVING 'SHUT THE FUCK UP'S AND THE LIKE. THEY'RE SO COMFORTABLE WITH EACH OTHER AND TRUST EACH OTHER SO IMPLICITLY IT IS MIND-BOGGLING TO ME. SO. MANY. FEELINGS. (fucking emily made the connection between pest from attack the block and ray and now i cannot stop thinking about how many parallels there are between the characters and also brad/ray and pest/moses. jesus christ. fuck you emily for ruining my life yet again.)
WHY DON'T MORE PEOPLE SHIP THIS? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
i also watched private romeo. like, i watched private romeo, and then i watched gk with emily. this was a week for war-related narratives, apparently. here, have a download link, courtesy of yours truly. (this is a not-so-subtle nudge to pls watch this movie.)
i don’t know how matt doyle did it but he totally sold me on smitten juliet, ugh. HIS FACE. SETH NURMICH’S FACE. THEIR PHYSICALITY. I CAN’T DEAL WITH IT!!! a lot of people have been saying that r+j is by far their least favorite shakespeare. FULL DISCLOSURE: I NEVER READ THE PLAY because i missed it for school when i moved to shanghai. it's a long story. obviously the play is so immersed in pop culture that i know virtually everything anyway, including noted passages and shit, but you know. if you're hesitant to watch b/c you don't like r+j, don't! because people who hate it have told me that they enjoyed this adaptation! plus gay dudes making out! watch it, y'all.
anyway, as you may be able to tell, i really enjoyed it. i thought the performances (esp. by the main six: r+j, benvolio, mercutio, friar laurence, and omar) were stunning and seth and matt had amazing chemistry. i reaaaally liked the line delivery (especially omar's, because he made it sound so natural and not stilted at all). i didn't think retaining the original language detracted but rather added to the dreamlike ambience of the entire film. romeo and juliet were fucking stunning throughout, and oh my GOD, mercutio. so so so so so good. i was seriously blown away. the entire movie is really built on those performances and the foundation is rock solid. and the end scene with mercutio and tybalt is really sweet and lovely and i may or may not have clutched at my chest ;__; BOOOYS.
the entire story was so well done in the sense that even though reading the initial situation on the page/a synopsis of the movie sounds so weird, they totally sold it on screen. almost nothing seems absurd to me and it’s really a testament to how they shot the film and how the actors played the characters so well ;__; MY TIED-FOR-FAVORITE SCENES were definitely the wherefore art thou romeo scene (oh god, romeo’s faaaaces and juliet’s little grins shut the fuck up) and the consummation scene. the double-take kiss right before he hops out the window, you guys. F E E L S.
GREATNESS ASIDE, there were obviously hiccups in the adaptation. i’m still confused by mercutio’s dual role as juliet’s father and benvolio as his mother and what the fuck ‘paris’ is. re: the language, it was def an interesting stylistic choice to keep the archaic victorian-era prose of the play in the dialogue of the movie. i read this after watching the film and from the second blurb my vague interpretation is that since the boys were reading r+j in class, they used the only language they knew how to relate to each other as the situations in fiction and in real life overlapped. but there’s also this sort of allegorical quality between the original text and the events of the movie, and the analogy is not perfect at all. things definitely start breaking down near the end when we realize that the stakes are so much lower than the ones in the source material (like, no one dies, so that changes things a lot, even though yay! happy ending!), and that kind of lessens any emotional impact or catharsis that the original is supposed to have.
to make sense of which parts were analogous to the original i did a bit of digging/formed a bunch of conclusions on my own and apparently the director wrote the script when the turmoil over don’t ask don’t tell was at its peak, and obviously made the conscious decision to make his adaptation a love story about two boys. in one of the interviews (the last one here) with seth and sean (benvolio) they say that the eight actors and the director, etc. had a lot of long talks about who/what ‘paris’ was in this new context. IT’S FRUSTRATING BECAUSE THEY DON’T OUTRIGHT SAY WHAT IT WAS IN THE INTERVIEW AND IT’S CERTAINLY UNCLEAR IN THE FILM SO I’M LIKE UGH. TELL ME. because it obviously wasn’t another dude-like, they included it for a reason so WHAT WAS THAT REASON. and as for the don’t ask don’t tell context, and the fact that it’s set in a military academy, i chose to interpret the end where the authorities/higher ups walk into the auditorium to see r+j kissing as sort of a step out of the closet, a death of hiding their love in the dark out of necessity, rather than a physical death. (maybe also death of romeo’s aspirations to go to west point since he wouldn’t be allowed if he was openly gay???) this is definitely me projecting and it’s a stretch. (i’m a mess.) i feel like that’s one of the only ways in which the analogy fits, though, so idkkk.
re: capulets and montagues. the entire rest of the academy is out for training somewhere and these 8 guys didn’t qualify so they had to stay behind-so maybe the montague vs. capulet stuff was analogous to two different battalions/squadrons/cliques in the academy and the groups hadn’t interacted in such close quarters (or possibly even at all) until they were forced to go to class together and live in proximity with each other with no one else around? like i said before tho, it just doesn't feel like the stakes are high enough to warrant a lot of things.
IDK, GUYS. loved parts, disliked/was confused by other parts, but in the end, boys kissing is always a win in my book. this review emily linked me to puts it really well. and fuck my life if i don't ship seth/matt all the way to high heaven now-apparently they auditioned for the war horse broadway production together whilst filming private romeo? jesus christ. please read this article and then come back and tell me you do not fucking ship it. I DARE YOU.
now someone write me rpf.