pyesetz | Reading

It is Spring and as it is often the case, there is snow. The llama hates snow but I don't mind, I have no schedule, no rush to shovel snow that will just melt away in a few days. I heed not time changes, like the llama I get up with the dawn regardless. I grow fat.

I have a fresh book to read I haven't started it. I've been building a collection of translations of My Little Pony fanfiction stories in multiple languages as a reference library or resource. There are over 1,000 now and counting. There are a dozen languages to choose from but the overwhelming majority of the translations are in Chinese, Russian, Spanish and French.

The only flowers around here are indoors. My amaryllis bloomed last week and is now busy making seeds. Maybe this time I'll succeed in germinating them. My azalea is winding down after months of pink blooms. I have hope that the fertilizer spike I stuck into the soil will be what it needed as the leaves are rather brown for the most part.

I'm still building up the nerve to dump Windows 10 and replace it with Linux of some flavor or other. My USB keys weren't working on the new machine, messing up any plans of saving stuff prior to wiping the disk, but the USB SNAFU mystery cure seems to be use a new USB with (I assume) an intact installation code. I probably had deleted it off the older USB sticks as I am wont to do with any suspicious software. Maybe. The 32 GB USB keys I bought recently works. 2 for $10! Not too shabby. So the USB Linux installation route is go! When I'm ready to bite the bullet.

One thing I want is a Linux Wordpad document clone. It was looking that Ted was just the thing! But it stopped getting updated about 13 years ago and doesn't seem to be readily available. It might not even work on recent iterations of Linux. LaTeX is probably overkill but now I've learned that there's LyX. I hope it's WorpPad compliant. I had expected that freeware would get better and omnipresent over the years, especially painting software. Instead software just keeps getting more bloated, difficult to use and the stuff that worked well just vanished. All the more reason to not update and to hold on to old software.

Yesterday I tried to update ComfyUI and instead of working well it stopped working altogether. Probably because I didn't download the three checkpoints it offered. That was because the bandwidth total was about my allotment for the entire month (Bell Canada sucks) and I already have a bunch of checkpoints. Somehow copy/pasting them into what looked like the correct folders did not work. Oh well, I already have hundreds of alien horse pictures, dancing, swimming, sleeping and whatnot.

I had a few gift cards retaining a residue of value but expiring in January of this year. So, panic time, I ramped up my Search for Stuff on eBay. I'd not seen the Barbie movie, despite hearing good things, but I live in a movie desert where the only oasis skips most unadulterated versions of movies and Barbie en version originale was one such omission. I'll drive an hour to see the My Little Pony Movie, but that's about it. So, I had an unrequited desire to see Barbie. I found it on eBay, on Blu-ray, UK import, Canadian seller (or just a Canadian division), free delivery, and delivery by mail. Mail! Oh yes, le gusta.

It arrived fast, two weeks early. It wasn't terrible. It had a very funny (and disturbing) 2001 A Space Odyssey spoof, a great Barbie world, plausible Quest, and then it slid a bit with the Real World and Ken takeover, kidnapping/deprogramming interventions and the Long Walk in the Snow. Not literal snow. 'Tain't Canada. So worth it enough to also watch the "making of" extras but otherwise. It was alright. Except the CEO bunch. There must be a CEO line of dolls I've never heard of.

Last year I saw Predator: Badlands, it was everything I hoped it would be. The perky killer synth was a riot, the extreme deadly ecology was great, and everything else was just icing. I'd heard that Prey, which is another Predator movie, is also good, so I ordered a copy off eBay and watched that. It was alright, kinda. Like, the Comanche have only the _one_ dog and the dozens of French traders are hauling a ton of bear traps out into the far frontier... by canoe? IIRC, the money was in beaver pelts, not bear.

I also saw Tron: Ares last year and it was worth it. The fact that not only do I remember that I saw it but that I still remember the story confirms that it was good. Not great, but good. The whole '3D laser printing plus simulations = instant cure for disease and hunger' plot device is a tough pill to swallow, as is the use of eye searing lasers to print or disintegrate tissue at the molecular level without cooking it. I wouldn't see this movie twice.

Dvd's from goodwill watched in 2025:

Book of Life, Guillermo del Toro animation, carved from wood/pop-up book style, exaggerated caricatures, so interesting visually. Story-wise, OK, somewhat predictable, no big surprises, I've already forgotten some of the plot points. Worth keeping.

Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Not good. Forgettable even. I saw the remake last year and it was only marginally better, suffering from Disney's family/children theme template. I should drop it back into the Goodwill bin.

More: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (hokey, failed equality), Tangled (I liked the horse), Cowboys and Aliens (worth seeing once), Shrek Forever After: The Final Chapter (surprisingly good), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (surprisingly bad), Trolls World Tour (worth it) and Monsters VS Aliens (worth it). I have a few seasons of Teen Titans on DVD, but after half a season I'd had enough. It's going back to Goodwill pronto.

loganberrybunny

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It's been rather lost among all the other things going on recently, but the UK government has been making it progressively harder for criminal misbehaviour to be covered up by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) over the last couple of years. As things stand, we have:

The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024. This is now in full operation and Section 17 expands the protection for victims who speak about being subjected to criminal mistreatment. Now, they can talk to not only the police but lawyers, support services, close relatives (child, parent or partner) and several other categories. Any clause in an NDA which prohibits these things is automatically void.
The Employment Rights Act 2025. This is being phased into force. On 6 April, sexual harassment becomes an explicit "protected disclosure" under the existing Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, instead of having to rely on vaguer "health and safety" protections. As the new law creates a statutory right, it cannot be overridden by NDA provisions.
The Employment Rights Act 2025. Yes, again. At a later date, currently predicted to be late this year, the existing Employment Rights Act 1996 will be updated to explicitly protects "relevant harassment or discrimination" under the Equalities Act 2020, so race, disability and age are in there too. As with the Victims and Prisoners Act provision, an NDA (or other contract) which tries to prevent this will be automatically void.
The Victims and Courts Bill is currently nearing the end of its passage through Parliament, and is expected to enter into force late this year. This will expand the protections in the Victims and Prisoners Act, and will allow any victim of crime to report it to anyone. Most obviously, this will mean an NDA that prevents a victim speaking to the media about the crime will be automatically void.

There will be a few exemptions, notably those connected with the Official Secrets Act, and more generally in cases where both parties genuinely wish, for example, that the financial terms of a settlement be kept confidential. NDAs that cover other details will remain in force. For example, if someone is assaulted by a person who holds a secret recipe, they can tell Victim Support about the crime and be protected but can't disclose the recipe with the same protections.

The laws are not retroactive, so they only apply to NDAs signed from the date the appropriate laws enter into force. However, the Solicitors Regulation Authority takes a very dim view of its members threatening someone if the disclosure is about a crime. The classic "public interest" defence also applies. In short, however much you may believe your 2022 NDA prevents a disclosure, you're going to have trouble finding a solicitor to send the cease and desist letter if there's a crime involved.

I expect there'll be issues to be ironed out and irritations people haven't thought of, since there always are. But overall, this set of laws will bring a big change. As far as I can see, a very good one.

Current Mood: thoughtful

loganberrybunny

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As in Wolverhampton, not as in the animal! Anyway, I was in Wolverhampton today, and it was a lovely day too. High teens, sunny pretty much all day, just perfect. I treated myself to a lunch in the Sunbeam: a mini mixed grill followed by baked Alaska. I was very pleased with both for the price, and the pub was comfortable with a nice view of the trams trundling by. Then some wandering around the Mander Centre, which is in a reasonable state by city-centre shopping centre standards. A slight annoyance with the trains on the way home, but only a few minutes' delay. I don't go to Wolverhampton that often, but it was very pleasant all round.

Current Mood: full

loganberrybunny

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Harriet (2019)
Historical drama | Letterboxd 3.4/5 | IMDb 6.8/10 | BBFC 12

The story of Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery to become an abolitionist and activist, is far less well known in the UK than in the US, and that creates problems here. Harriet feels a little too much like a "greatest hits" TV movie for people who already know what they're going to find. Interestingly, the title role is played by a British actress, and Cynthia Erivo's performance may be the best thing about the film. The cinematography and songs were great too, though the incidental music was used too bluntly, almost telling you when to sweat or cheer.

The accents (of both black and white characters) were sometimes difficult for me as I'm not used to them, and vital details like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 were covered in about four lines – again, fine for an American who's learned about the law in high school, somewhat less easy on this side of the Atlantic. Gideon Brodess (Joe Olwyn) was too one-dimensional a villain; he lacks the terrifying humanity Ralph Fiennes somehow brought to Amon Goeth in Schindler's List. It's a pity. Harriet Tubman deserved a movie better than "quite good". ★★★

Current Mood: tired

loganberrybunny

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It looks like the temperature may reach the high teens tomorrow, and with plenty of sunshine too. If that proves to be accurate, it might be the first day of the year when I can reasonably use the word warm instead of simply mild. I did have a cup of coffee in the pub's beer garden this morning and it was okay, but I had a coat on. Tomorrow I have too many boring things to do to have time for a pub break, but I doubt I'll need a coat at all. :)

Current Mood: hopeful

loganberrybunny

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Some of my British readers may be amused at the subject line, since it's a long-running slogan used by the Lib Dems! But that's not what this post is about. I'm actually cheerful because, just for once, I actually won something on one of those "spin the wheel" prize draws Vodafone has about every 15 minutes. Nothing huge, but a £10 Argos voucher certainly won't go amiss! I've got until 29th April to spend it, too, so I can muse for a while on what I might do with it. :)

Current Mood: bouncy

loganberrybunny

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The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) film poster

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Comedy-drama | Letterboxd 4.2/5 | IMDb 8.1/10 | BBFC 15

I don't particularly care about Wes Anderson per se. I do care about his film here. It's an absolutely wonderful, spectacular, superbly made movie which is both a very human story and a clear look at the rise of fascism in Europe. Ralph Fiennes is amazing in the lead role,¹ and my initial discomfort at his repeated use of blatant US English in a very British accent turned into enjoyable discomfort as I realised that was surely the point. The film is full of brilliant dialogue, the cinematography is stunning, the cast is sensational, and the hotel itself is as much a character as any of the humans. Or indeed paintings. ★★★★★
¹ He didn't even get nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. Boo!

Current Mood: impressed

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Happy Saturday!

I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!

If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.

loganberrybunny

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Note: All my posts on this subject carry the "Sandra Peabody" tag. If you wish to avoid it, then please feel free to ignore posts with that tag.

As you'll know if you've been following my posts for a few months, I have unexpectedly found myself with a deep interest in the abusive production conditions of Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972). In 1997 with a second edition in 2000 (the one I own), David Szulkin's book Wes Craven's Last House on the Left: The Making of a Cult Classic appeared from British publisher FAB Press. It is the only place star Sandra Peabody (also known here as Sandra Cassell) has ever spoken on the record about the movie.

During the chronological chapter following how the film was made, inevitably one segment focused on the pivotal scene where Krug (the lead villain) rapes Mari (a kidnapped young woman). Szulkin asked four people involved for their thoughts. Their quotes were presented without editorial framing. I have added each person's position on set after their name, but otherwise they are verbatim. The square brackets are in the original. "Lucy" is Lucy Grantham, not in this scene but playing Phyllis, another kidnapped young woman in the story.

Wes Craven, director: "You know, the character of Mari took an enormous amount of abuse. I liked Sandra Peabody a lot; I thought she was very pretty, and very plucky... because she was a very young actress, she wasn't nearly as confident and easygoing as Lucy was, and she had become involved in something that was very, very rough. And she hung in there. When the character was raped, she was treated very roughly, and I know Sandra said to me afterwards, 'My God... I had the feeling they really hated me.'"

Sandra Cassell, Mari: "No comment."

David Hess, Krug: "That was a difficult scene, because my style of acting is to go over the edge during rehearsal... to push it as far as I can possibly push it, just to see how far I can go. And then I set my parameters. Once I draw that box, once I have those boundaries, then I'm free to do whatever I want within my character. I think I frightened her a few times... I actually got pretty physical with her. She may have been a little bit intimidated, because she couldn't back off when the camera was running."

Yvonne Hannemann, assistant director: "That one scene was really quite upsetting. I know Sandra had to be consoled; it really got very rough. And I think they [the actors] all got very emotional. Of course, David Hess was just so frightening, that a lot of the acting was sort of method acting."

Current Mood: sad and angry

loganberrybunny

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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) film poster

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Sci-fi | Letterboxd 4.3/5 | IMDb 8.3/10 | BBFC U

Without doubt an epic feast for the senses. The visual effects are staggering given the total lack of CGI in the era, with most holding up superbly almost 60 years later. The film is very slow, with long stretches without dialogue book-ending the section most people remember. HAL 9000 might even be the best actual character in this movie. Drops half a star for a combination of the slightly unsatisfying Star Gate section which, through no fault of its own, now looks like a 1980s computer game, and the immensely annoying folks of the "If you don't rate this six stars at least you're Not A Real Film Fan" tendency. But it's still a sensational watch even with those issues, which tells you how remarkable it actually is. 2001 would have blown my mind on a big screen in 1968, I'm sure. ★★★★½

Current Mood: calm

loganberrybunny

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At least, if you're in the UK. The really interesting low-budget horror from 1962, Carnival of Souls, which you may remember I really liked when I watched it a month ago, is being shown on Rewind TV (Freeview 81) on Tuesday. Note that this channel does not have a catch-up service, so you'll need to record it via your own hardware or use Freeview Play if you want to watch it at a different time.

Current Mood: okay

loganberrybunny

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In Kidderminster Morrisons this morning to get a few things, and there was a chugger standing right in the rather narrow exit passageway. My heart always sinks when this happens, since they tend to ask things like "Would you like to help children with cancer?" and, seriously, what are you supposed to say to that? These days they usually aren't licensed to accept informal donations, so they're trying to get you to sign up to a direct debit – and I will not do that with something I've had sprung on me, no matter how good the cause.

So, I have to harden my heart for a moment and simply walk past without breaking stride. I often feel bad about it, but in all honesty the whole setup feels coercive. In a supermarket particularly so, as many customers will be struggling financially already. I do sometimes try to square the circle by, if I've got time, heading for a charity shop run by a similar charity and buying something from there. But it still puts me off going back to that supermarket for a while.

Current Mood: uncomfortable

loganberrybunny

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The Appointment (1981)
Horror | Letterboxd 3.5/5 | IMDb 6.2/10 | BBFC 15

A rare and atmospheric British horror here, one that turned up on Talking Pictures TV not so long ago. The cold open shows us a schoolgirl being taken by some invisible force while she walks home from school. Then the action moves to an upper-middle-class family, headed by Ian (an excellent Edward Woodward), a company director who has hired a Ford Granada while his normal car is being serviced. He is also having to miss his 14-year-old daughter Joanne's (Samantha Weysom) concert, something she deeply resents. Wife Diana (Jane Merrow) completes the household.

This is definitely a slow burn: it's maybe 20 minutes before it becomes more than a domestic drama with a slightly disconcerting father-daughter relationship. Then there's a strange night-time scene upstairs involving lots of glances from either side of closed doors, and after that the tension ratchets up, with a quiet supernatural undertone. Sound design is a major feature of The Appointment, with classical music, heartbeat-reminiscent sounds and weird noises that feel like they should have come from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The other key aspect is that of nightmares. Ian is plagued by a recurring dream involving Rottweilers and a car crash. Despite that, there's little gore here, though one brief scene is suggestively nasty. These faster beats alternate with long, lingering scenes that serve to build the sense of unease. As a side bonus, you get an excellent peek into the world of 1981 England, from school corridors to an achingly nostalgic motorway service station. Lindsey C. Vickers never directed another feature film, but The Appointment is surely worth making an... no, even I have more self-respect than that! ★★★★

Note: For UK and Irish viewers, this film is on Talking Pictures Encore until Wednesday. It may be available via the BFI Player in some other countries.

Current Mood: awake

loganberrybunny

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Watch on YouTube

Time for some music! As it's International Women's Day, it was always going to be a female group, so here's a song I particularly like. The Nolan Sisters are better known as The Nolans, but that name change didn't arrive until 1980, the year after this song reached no. 3 in the British charts. The Anglo-Irish group had a thirty-year career, with a couple of short-lived revivals that didn't eventually end until 2022. The group also did an excellent cover of "Bright Eyes", which doesn't do them any harm in my book!

Current Mood: awake

loganberrybunny

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A comment in an otherwise unrelated post a little while back made me think about how the American domination of English-language social media is distorting the way people see or even talk about the history of British race relations. I'm not really up to a complex, detailed, dense post on this – and I'm no expert anyway – but I'll try to get something down. I happened to read this point of contrast today and it really hit me:

* Black Americans are overwhelmingly likely (80-90%) to be there because their ancestors were trafficked there as slaves.
* Black Britons are overwhelmingly likely to be here because their ancestors came here as free people.

It's certainly true that many British people, of all races, find the American way of looking at race to be very monolithic. It largely works for the US, because of that statistic. It really doesn't work for the UK, because we simply don't have one background that fits the large majority of our Black citizens. (And because of the importance of class in British discrimination, but that's a post in itself...)

The reason this matters is that the aforementioned US dominance of online discourse provides pressure that people "should" talk about the issue in a way that fits with American sensibilities. But doing that in fact risks erasure of the distinct history of Black people in Britain.

Not just Black people, either. Whiteness in itself wasn't necessarily a shield against enslavement in Europe, something I tend to find many Americans find very hard to process. In fact, possibly as many a million Europeans – including from Cornwall – were taken by Ottoman "Barbary" slavers operating out of North Africa between the 16th and 18th century. Yes, the very same era when Europeans were taking people as slaves from Africa – on a more industrialised scale, absolutely. It doesn't fit into a nice, tidy, American social media-shaped box, does it? But it happened.

If someone's family tree has gaps in it because their ancestors disappeared in those Barbary raids, then they must be able to talk about that without needing to add a "disclaimer" about a completely different atrocity. It is also a form of erasure to make out that anyone who brings up the Barbary trade is basically a white nationalist under the skin. Some indeed are, but many are simply talking about their own family heritage. Context matters. Once again, the standard US framework just doesn't work here, and it's harmful when people (often, it has to be said, white American liberals) try to force it to.

One final point, and this returns to Black British history. For Black History Month – which is in October here – in 2024, a poll was taken which among other things revealed that about twice as many British people (of all races) knew about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott as knew about the Bristol bus boycott which happened in their own country and helped bring about modern equalities legislation. I only knew about it myself because I have family roots in Bristol. But again, it bothers me that we've made a US event our "standard" example when the background to that boycott – beyond the shared central factor of institutionalised racism – was really quite different.

Current Mood: thoughtful

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Pyesetz/Песец

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August 2025

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Песец

Pyesetz: The Life of a Geek

Reading

Snow Springs Eternal

The restriction of NDAs

Wolves

Film post: Harriet (2019)

Cautiously optimistic forecast

Winning here

Film post: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Performing some traffic maintenance today

This was treated as "background colour" less than 30 years ago

Film post: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Heads-up for anyone interested in Carnival of Souls

Chugging

Film post: The Appointment (1981)

Music time! The Nolan Sisters – "I'm in the Mood for Dancing" (1979)

Square peg, meet round hole

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August 2025

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