Dear Festividder 2018
Oct. 23rd, 2018 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicInfo about this year's exchange.
Dear Festividder and anyone who might like to make a treat -- complete with sales pitches and pictures:
LONGMIRE (TV)
Sales pitch: Rural Wyoming sheriff's department investigates crimes, often interacting with residents of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation. Lead roles besides the requisite white dude include Katee Sackhoff and Lou Diamond Phillips. Featuring: Heartbreak! Hope! Landscapes! Horses! Boots and hats! Six 10-episode seasons streaming on Netflix; the last season was released a year ago. Based on books by Craig Johnson.
Lots of recurring and guest roles for Native actors include my current crush Zahn McClarnon as the Cheyenne tribal police chief as well as A Martinez, Graham Greene, Julia Jones, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, David Midthunder, Eric Schweig, Raoul Trujillo, Michael and Eddie Spears, Q'orianka Kilcher, Tantoo Cardinal, Rena Owen and Apesanahkwat.
Also take your pick of fan-favorite guests and cameos such as Callum Keith Rennie, Peter Weller, Pete Stormare, Mary Wiseman (Cadet Tilly on Star Trek: Discovery), Gina Rodriguez, Anne Dudek, Richard Speight, Jr., one of the older guys from Brooklyn 99, and more.
Caveats: Male posturing, gradual increase in soap-opera plots over episodic mysteries, insert your opinion here about Lou Diamond Phillips playing a Native American.
Vid ideas:
- I 100% watched Longmire for Mathias, and if you could manage to string together a coherent vid about him, you would make me very happy. It wouldn't be easy, though, with his limited appearances and the fact that he usually looks annoyed, angry or sad because we only get to see him when he's dealing with white people and/or criminals and/or victims. So no worries if this doesn't appeal to you.
- Retell some of the story from a Cheyenne perspective. Broadly: So many people trying so hard, being beaten down (sometimes literally) from outside and within, standing up and insisting on being heard, on surviving. Or specifically: Walt and his deputies coming in and stomping all over everything; the oil and energy companies thinking they can treat people and land like garbage.
- Walt's department or otherwise: Stuff about teamwork and trying to do what's right to help people. Grappling with grief and hardship. Being there for one another. Struggling for justice.
- Can you reframe so it doesn't look like Cady made bad choices at every turn?
- Who is Jacob Nighthorse, really?
- Want to go 'shippy, or friendshippy, or frenemy-y? I'd enjoy, in no particular order, Walt/Henry, Henry/Cady, Mathias/Walt, Mathias/Henry, Mathias/Cady, Walt/Jacob...
- Pick an episode or arc to focus on. I especially liked the Gab storyline, and Henry/Hector Lives. Maybe Bob and his son.
- Anything you're already thinking of!
Things I am less into: Walt/Vic, Walt/Lizzie, Cady/Branch, Ferg/Meg, Walt vs. Branch, the Irish mob plot, the Return of Chance Gilbert plot, the pregnancy plot, Zach's anger management issues, Travis' Nice Guy-ism.
If you're a Vic fan, rock on. I would enjoy a vid about how she's kickass if that's the only thing on this list that appeals to you (there are a lot of Vic vids on YouTube), but I am not enthused about the number of plots that involved men in her personal life.
QUEEN MARGOT (1994)
Sales pitch: Gorgeous costumes! Intricate court politics! Passionate sex like only the French can do! Strife between Catholics and Protestants! A night of stunning bloodshed! Sibling-sibling and mother-son incest, if that's your thing! Isabelle Adjani, Pascal Greggory, Vincent Perez, and even baby Thomas Kretschmann! A Patrice Chereau film, based on the Alexandre Dumas novel.
Caveats: See above re: incest. Also one instance of sexual assault or attempted/implied sexual assault, depending on which version of the film you see.
Vid request: This movie has such beautiful, rich imagery that it just begs for vidding. Anything you make will make me happy, including a whirlwind portrait of the color and blood and passion and perversion and deviousness. Personal favorite parts are the massacre, the hatred-to-love story between La Mole and Coconnas, and Anjou's face. Plus, generally, all the homoerotic undercurrents.
THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI (BOOK)
Sales pitch: A woman made of clay meets a man made of fire in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. There's challah baking and desert flashbacks and sexy seduction and supernatural possession, and, just in time for Purim, evil viziers. Beautiful, comforting prose.
Vid request: I still can't talk about this book without drawing little hearts around it. One of the things I loved was its vibrant setting, its creation of an atmosphere I wanted to wrap around myself forever. I think what I'm hoping for in a vid is a sort of mood piece, where you feel like you're in this magical 1900-ish Lower East Side or Central Park, where things are—as much as I make fun of it in movies—teal and gold like the cover of the book. (The closest movie I can think of for visual inspiration of the city is Gangs of New York, but I'm sure there's lots more out there I just haven't seen. The books Forever and Winter's Tale, which held the same sort of early-NY magic, aren't going to be much help, alas.)
And maybe you will give an impression of this large-boned Eastern European woman and this elegant Arab man (I mean, I don't expect our imaginations of Chava and Ahmad to be the same, so I look forward to whomever you choose for your fan-cast, if you fan-cast them). Maybe there will be a bakery and a metalworker's forge, or a desert and a temple, or Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities, or impressions of seduction or murder or enslavement or the clash between subservience/suppression and dominance/recklessness, or maybe there are other aspects of the story you want to highlight, or nothing so complex because it all seems very intimidating. Whatever you make, it's going to be wonderful.
I just ask that you please be sensitive if you choose to cast Schaalman or Schall. No Hollywood stereotypes of giant-eyebrowed, pointy-eared, scheming Jews. Thank you. <3
BLOOD FOR DRACULA (1974) & FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1973)
(a.k.a. Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein. I'm lumping these together in the letter because they were made one right after the other by the same director, Paul Morrissey, and with much of the same cast. Feel free to vid one or cross them over!)
Sales pitch: These movies are the amazing kind of terrible. Dialogue is badly delivered to the point of hilarity. The actors' accents range from German to Italian to New York City; you just have to go with it. I don't know what Anton/Otto is doing, but I love it. There is epic vampire/mad scientist emo, angst over modern sexuality/"deviance," and speeches about the virtues and inevitability of communist revolution. Starring an unbelievably handsome young Udo Kier, who may or may not have started his career as a street hustler, as well as Joe Dallesandro, a darling of Warhol's.
Watch both movies in full on YouTube: Dracula | Frankenstein
Caveats: Super rapey. Actual cameo by Roman Polanski in Blood for Dracula; you can avoid it if you skip the tavern scene. Blood, gore, graphic sex/nudity, sibling incest. Bonus necrophilia in Flesh for Frankenstein.
"Blood for Dracula" vid request: Help, Europe is running out of good Christian virgins and the vampires are dying! Dracula hates traveling because the windows let in too much light and the kitchens can't supply his special vegetarian meals! All the ladies lie about their sexual experience and now there's blood everywhere! Maintaining the appearance of wealth is key as society's and buildings' foundations crumble! OMG, anything you vid of this movie will be great. If there's anything I don't enjoy as much, it's the overlong ladies-and-Dallesandro sex scenes. Go funny, go tragic, go political, whatever makes you happy.
"Flesh for Frankenstein" vid request: Voyeurism! Bondage! Addams Family-like children! Assumptions about sexual orientation that derail a life's work! WHY WON'T THE MONSTERS BONK, DAMMIT? (Did Frankenstein have too much sex with them before they came alive?) Also, more communism. Again, anything you'd like to do will be gold, even a plot recap if you can find a suitable song. Feel free to go as absurd/morbid as this movie is, or more. The set design and cinematography have more to offer than in Blood for Dracula, too.
Thank you todeelaundry for introducing me to these gems.
THE LESSER BLESSED (2012)
Sales pitch: Larry is a sullen, withdrawn high school student in the Northwest Territories. He likes classmate Juliet. New guy in school Johnny (Kiowa Gordon) likes Juliet too! Larry also likes Johnny! And Juliet likes them both! ~dynamics occur~ Meanwhile, Larry struggles with past trauma and a schoolmate who knows his secrets, and his mom is trying to heal as well. Based on a book by Richard Van Camp, who, like his protagonist, is Dogrib/Dene First Nations.
Caveats: Heavily implied physical and sexual abuse of child by parent, fatal incident involving fire, drug and alcohol use, bullying, discussion of death of an animal.
Vid request: SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE ME A THREESOME VID FOR THIS MOVIE, THANK YOUUUU
Larry/Johnny/Juliet is my dysfunctional OT3. Make use of all those lovely 2+1, 1+2, and 3-shots of them, and mess around with the chronology however you want to make it work.
If that's not your jam, a character study would also be nice.
I realize vidding this movie is a tall order, considering Larry has Donnie Darko face the whole time, but I believe in you, vidder.
Feel free to leave out the stuff about his bio-dad. Unless you want to focus on it; that's okay too.
WILDLIKE (2014)
Sales pitch: Ella Purnell, who played young Maleficent! Bruce Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in the Star Trek: Reboot movies and was in lots of other stuff! Alaskan landscapes from Juneau to Denali! A hurt/comfort story that progresses to the unlikely connection between a teenage girl and a gruff older backpacker!
Caveats: Molestation of high school-aged girl by uncle; mention of spousal death from cancer.
Vid request: I would be so happy to have a vid of this movie that simply told the story, focusing on Mackenzie and René's developing relationship and taking advantage of the visual splendor of the Alaskan setting. Or whatever focus and structure appeals to you. FWIW, the emotional high point of the movie for me was René's protectiveness once he found out what really happened with Kenzie and her uncle, specifically when René bundled her back into the ferry cabin. I like to think he made good use of the bear spray when he made that stop in Juneau. :)
Here are some notes on music preferences, if you're at a loss. I'm also open to spoken-word and other nontraditional forms of audio, but if you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.
Thank you for making something for one of these newly or long-loved sources.
\festivids/
Dear Festividder and anyone who might like to make a treat -- complete with sales pitches and pictures:
LONGMIRE (TV)
Sales pitch: Rural Wyoming sheriff's department investigates crimes, often interacting with residents of the neighboring Cheyenne reservation. Lead roles besides the requisite white dude include Katee Sackhoff and Lou Diamond Phillips. Featuring: Heartbreak! Hope! Landscapes! Horses! Boots and hats! Six 10-episode seasons streaming on Netflix; the last season was released a year ago. Based on books by Craig Johnson.
Lots of recurring and guest roles for Native actors include my current crush Zahn McClarnon as the Cheyenne tribal police chief as well as A Martinez, Graham Greene, Julia Jones, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, David Midthunder, Eric Schweig, Raoul Trujillo, Michael and Eddie Spears, Q'orianka Kilcher, Tantoo Cardinal, Rena Owen and Apesanahkwat.
Also take your pick of fan-favorite guests and cameos such as Callum Keith Rennie, Peter Weller, Pete Stormare, Mary Wiseman (Cadet Tilly on Star Trek: Discovery), Gina Rodriguez, Anne Dudek, Richard Speight, Jr., one of the older guys from Brooklyn 99, and more.
Caveats: Male posturing, gradual increase in soap-opera plots over episodic mysteries, insert your opinion here about Lou Diamond Phillips playing a Native American.
Vid ideas:
- I 100% watched Longmire for Mathias, and if you could manage to string together a coherent vid about him, you would make me very happy. It wouldn't be easy, though, with his limited appearances and the fact that he usually looks annoyed, angry or sad because we only get to see him when he's dealing with white people and/or criminals and/or victims. So no worries if this doesn't appeal to you.
- Retell some of the story from a Cheyenne perspective. Broadly: So many people trying so hard, being beaten down (sometimes literally) from outside and within, standing up and insisting on being heard, on surviving. Or specifically: Walt and his deputies coming in and stomping all over everything; the oil and energy companies thinking they can treat people and land like garbage.
- Walt's department or otherwise: Stuff about teamwork and trying to do what's right to help people. Grappling with grief and hardship. Being there for one another. Struggling for justice.
- Can you reframe so it doesn't look like Cady made bad choices at every turn?
- Who is Jacob Nighthorse, really?
- Want to go 'shippy, or friendshippy, or frenemy-y? I'd enjoy, in no particular order, Walt/Henry, Henry/Cady, Mathias/Walt, Mathias/Henry, Mathias/Cady, Walt/Jacob...
- Pick an episode or arc to focus on. I especially liked the Gab storyline, and Henry/Hector Lives. Maybe Bob and his son.
- Anything you're already thinking of!
Things I am less into: Walt/Vic, Walt/Lizzie, Cady/Branch, Ferg/Meg, Walt vs. Branch, the Irish mob plot, the Return of Chance Gilbert plot, the pregnancy plot, Zach's anger management issues, Travis' Nice Guy-ism.
If you're a Vic fan, rock on. I would enjoy a vid about how she's kickass if that's the only thing on this list that appeals to you (there are a lot of Vic vids on YouTube), but I am not enthused about the number of plots that involved men in her personal life.
QUEEN MARGOT (1994)
Sales pitch: Gorgeous costumes! Intricate court politics! Passionate sex like only the French can do! Strife between Catholics and Protestants! A night of stunning bloodshed! Sibling-sibling and mother-son incest, if that's your thing! Isabelle Adjani, Pascal Greggory, Vincent Perez, and even baby Thomas Kretschmann! A Patrice Chereau film, based on the Alexandre Dumas novel.
Caveats: See above re: incest. Also one instance of sexual assault or attempted/implied sexual assault, depending on which version of the film you see.
Vid request: This movie has such beautiful, rich imagery that it just begs for vidding. Anything you make will make me happy, including a whirlwind portrait of the color and blood and passion and perversion and deviousness. Personal favorite parts are the massacre, the hatred-to-love story between La Mole and Coconnas, and Anjou's face. Plus, generally, all the homoerotic undercurrents.
THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI (BOOK)
Sales pitch: A woman made of clay meets a man made of fire in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. There's challah baking and desert flashbacks and sexy seduction and supernatural possession, and, just in time for Purim, evil viziers. Beautiful, comforting prose.
Vid request: I still can't talk about this book without drawing little hearts around it. One of the things I loved was its vibrant setting, its creation of an atmosphere I wanted to wrap around myself forever. I think what I'm hoping for in a vid is a sort of mood piece, where you feel like you're in this magical 1900-ish Lower East Side or Central Park, where things are—as much as I make fun of it in movies—teal and gold like the cover of the book. (The closest movie I can think of for visual inspiration of the city is Gangs of New York, but I'm sure there's lots more out there I just haven't seen. The books Forever and Winter's Tale, which held the same sort of early-NY magic, aren't going to be much help, alas.)
And maybe you will give an impression of this large-boned Eastern European woman and this elegant Arab man (I mean, I don't expect our imaginations of Chava and Ahmad to be the same, so I look forward to whomever you choose for your fan-cast, if you fan-cast them). Maybe there will be a bakery and a metalworker's forge, or a desert and a temple, or Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities, or impressions of seduction or murder or enslavement or the clash between subservience/suppression and dominance/recklessness, or maybe there are other aspects of the story you want to highlight, or nothing so complex because it all seems very intimidating. Whatever you make, it's going to be wonderful.
I just ask that you please be sensitive if you choose to cast Schaalman or Schall. No Hollywood stereotypes of giant-eyebrowed, pointy-eared, scheming Jews. Thank you. <3
BLOOD FOR DRACULA (1974) & FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1973)
(a.k.a. Andy Warhol's Dracula and Andy Warhol's Frankenstein. I'm lumping these together in the letter because they were made one right after the other by the same director, Paul Morrissey, and with much of the same cast. Feel free to vid one or cross them over!)
Sales pitch: These movies are the amazing kind of terrible. Dialogue is badly delivered to the point of hilarity. The actors' accents range from German to Italian to New York City; you just have to go with it. I don't know what Anton/Otto is doing, but I love it. There is epic vampire/mad scientist emo, angst over modern sexuality/"deviance," and speeches about the virtues and inevitability of communist revolution. Starring an unbelievably handsome young Udo Kier, who may or may not have started his career as a street hustler, as well as Joe Dallesandro, a darling of Warhol's.
Watch both movies in full on YouTube: Dracula | Frankenstein
Caveats: Super rapey. Actual cameo by Roman Polanski in Blood for Dracula; you can avoid it if you skip the tavern scene. Blood, gore, graphic sex/nudity, sibling incest. Bonus necrophilia in Flesh for Frankenstein.
"Blood for Dracula" vid request: Help, Europe is running out of good Christian virgins and the vampires are dying! Dracula hates traveling because the windows let in too much light and the kitchens can't supply his special vegetarian meals! All the ladies lie about their sexual experience and now there's blood everywhere! Maintaining the appearance of wealth is key as society's and buildings' foundations crumble! OMG, anything you vid of this movie will be great. If there's anything I don't enjoy as much, it's the overlong ladies-and-Dallesandro sex scenes. Go funny, go tragic, go political, whatever makes you happy.
"Flesh for Frankenstein" vid request: Voyeurism! Bondage! Addams Family-like children! Assumptions about sexual orientation that derail a life's work! WHY WON'T THE MONSTERS BONK, DAMMIT? (Did Frankenstein have too much sex with them before they came alive?) Also, more communism. Again, anything you'd like to do will be gold, even a plot recap if you can find a suitable song. Feel free to go as absurd/morbid as this movie is, or more. The set design and cinematography have more to offer than in Blood for Dracula, too.
Thank you to
deelaundry for introducing me to these gems.THE LESSER BLESSED (2012)
Sales pitch: Larry is a sullen, withdrawn high school student in the Northwest Territories. He likes classmate Juliet. New guy in school Johnny (Kiowa Gordon) likes Juliet too! Larry also likes Johnny! And Juliet likes them both! ~dynamics occur~ Meanwhile, Larry struggles with past trauma and a schoolmate who knows his secrets, and his mom is trying to heal as well. Based on a book by Richard Van Camp, who, like his protagonist, is Dogrib/Dene First Nations.
Caveats: Heavily implied physical and sexual abuse of child by parent, fatal incident involving fire, drug and alcohol use, bullying, discussion of death of an animal.
Vid request: SOMEONE PLEASE MAKE ME A THREESOME VID FOR THIS MOVIE, THANK YOUUUU
Larry/Johnny/Juliet is my dysfunctional OT3. Make use of all those lovely 2+1, 1+2, and 3-shots of them, and mess around with the chronology however you want to make it work.
If that's not your jam, a character study would also be nice.
I realize vidding this movie is a tall order, considering Larry has Donnie Darko face the whole time, but I believe in you, vidder.
Feel free to leave out the stuff about his bio-dad. Unless you want to focus on it; that's okay too.
WILDLIKE (2014)
Sales pitch: Ella Purnell, who played young Maleficent! Bruce Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in the Star Trek: Reboot movies and was in lots of other stuff! Alaskan landscapes from Juneau to Denali! A hurt/comfort story that progresses to the unlikely connection between a teenage girl and a gruff older backpacker!
Caveats: Molestation of high school-aged girl by uncle; mention of spousal death from cancer.
Vid request: I would be so happy to have a vid of this movie that simply told the story, focusing on Mackenzie and René's developing relationship and taking advantage of the visual splendor of the Alaskan setting. Or whatever focus and structure appeals to you. FWIW, the emotional high point of the movie for me was René's protectiveness once he found out what really happened with Kenzie and her uncle, specifically when René bundled her back into the ferry cabin. I like to think he made good use of the bear spray when he made that stop in Juneau. :)
Here are some notes on music preferences, if you're at a loss. I'm also open to spoken-word and other nontraditional forms of audio, but if you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.
Thank you for making something for one of these newly or long-loved sources.
\festivids/
