#thatsparrow posts

so much to digest. where to begin

trick question: it's that scene where kate beckinsale is hanging from the eave of a house and jumps backward face-first into a tree. just. just straight into the tree. like, braces herself to do a cool backflip and then the next shot is her face colliding with the tree. and then catching herself from the branches with her legs so seemingly this was her intent! watched it twice because I couldn't believe what I'd seen the first time

alan silvestri brought his a-game. that classical guitar motif? unexpected and enchanting

I'd forgotten until it was happening that I'd seen the bit of anna looking in the mirror at the masquerade ball before (and, honestly, after the prior hour of the movie, would not have guessed that this is where it came from.) and it's a really clever bit! unsurprisingly landed even better in context after you've seen how big the ballroom is (that whole sequence was great. why are we having a masquerade ball in budapest? who cares! put david wenham in a jingly little jester hat)

the comedy of setting the opening sequence in black-and-white and then having a title card that says "one year later"

gotta appreciate a maximalist vision, we know the vibe we're after and it's a million spikes and spiderwebs. and when it lands, it's very fun! (the aforementioned masquerade ball. the massive scale of dracula's castle towers. all the weird steampunk gadgetry. the machinery in frankenstein's lab.) but sometimes the vision is one of the brides in like a pseudo-belly dancer outfit, or kate beckinsale's nordstrom-ass boots, and the magic of this movie was never knowing what you were gonna get

surprisingly little of it takes place at sea for a movie about pirates. I know they don't stop being pirates once they're on land (and the name of the movie is "the bluff") but we only got like the one boat scene when I mostly picture pirates as being. well. on boats

I could've watched another hour, another ten hours, of ercell killing pirates (and am of course feeling very normal about flashback!bloody mary in her armor and mohawk)

I also could've watched another hour or ten of ercell baking with old-timey implements. missed opportunity that she didn't kill someone with that big grater

isaac! isaac was so sweet and brave and quietly determined, and I liked all the practicalities of his disability, as well as all the little moments between him and ercell (both the tender ones you'd expect between a mother and son, but also him being witness to some of her violence)

lizzy! what a delight (the "sister-in-law" to "sister" bit was expected but still sweet) — though, I feel like the evolution of her relationship with ercell felt a little rushed? only because we established it at the beginning as being somewhat resentful with conflicting interests and priorities, and yes, granted, a crisis like nearly being murdered by pirates and your sister-in-law being a competent presence keeping you and your nephew safe certainly changes things, but it seemed like most of lizzy's new attitude toward ercell came from reading the journal and finding the wanted poster, rather than seeing it firsthand (vs isaac watching one of the murders and ercell being covered in blood when she retrieves him from the trapdoor. she immediately comforts and reassures him, but there is that brief unavoidable moment where we see his understanding of his mother being completely upended, and reckoning with that in real time.)

no real complaints about karl urban as connor. that said, I really wanted to like lee/the quartermaster more? no shade to temuera morrison whatsoever, I think it's more a matter of him not getting much to do with the character. never felt like I had a clear read on the quartermaster's vibe—he seems like a steadier complement to connor's unpredictability, but then there was also that scene of him getting his head shaved, which felt like. i don't know. a power play someone pulls to assert their authority (maybe that's just a left-field association I have). but he also never felt like an actual wild card or threat to connor—when he does finally mutiny, there's very little uncertainty of who's going to win, and afterward, it doesn't take too much persuading for connor to get the crew back on his side.

connor and ercell's chemistry on the other hand was pretty solid. didn't necessarily expect to buy into it, but all of their scenes felt like they were loaded with real history and baggage and complication. ercell's rage certainly felt like it was coming from a lifetime of being abused and manipulated by connor, whereas connor's anger felt like it came from a genuine sense of betrayal at ercell leaving/attempting to kill him

maybe this is naive (maybe it's in plenty of movies and I was just particularly aware of it in this one?) but there were lots of moments and one-liners that felt like they were shot just for the trailer. fine enough in their own right, but stilted or choppy enough in context with the rest of the movie that it felt like suddenly being aware of the cameras in the room and the tone being "we're doing/saying this because it's cool"

now. hey. I don't know a lot about gold. but exploded is different from, like, obliterated—right? she blew up the gold, but doesn't that just mean it's in fragments? I mean, gold is gold, no? it might've taken some time, but couldn't the pirates have collected what was there?

there is something about how the first fight between ercell and the two pirates felt arduous and drawn out and uncertain in a deeply real way—that this was a life or death moment, she's using every ounce of her resolve to keep pushing through the pain, lots of unconventional weapons—versus the later sequences (even the concurrent one of connor on the beach mowing people down) where the deaths were no less violent or gory, but felt more effortless, perfunctory. we've put all these pieces on the chess board and now have to systematically knock them off, and so can't afford any individual one much focus or gravity (until of course the last fight with connor) in a way that I think contributed to the latter half of the movie losing some of the tension

for not getting to see it very much, I also quite liked the dynamic between ercell and t.h. — I think the film effectively used their limited interactions (or how they would talk about each other in scenes with only one of them, like ercell's frustration but not actual anger at t.h. taking some of the gold) to get at the depth of trust and love in the relationship

I have not revisited angel since first watching it in like—2011? and I fully forgot that it was set up as more of a noir (thinking of both angel's opening narration, as well as the everything about the intro music. which does make sense, with the detective/investigative agency angle)

speaking of things I'd forgotten—the entire character of doyle! (also, as soon as he showed up and introduced his shtick, I did go—wait, isn't this just whistler v2? half-demon who's generally on the side of humanity, receives prophetic visions from the powers that be, shows up in angel's life to get him on the right path—and sure enough, there is a note in whistler's page on the buffy wiki that he was considered for angel before getting rewritten into doyle. also, I know vaguely that a lot happens in the buffy comics, but did not expect those appearances to be like 75% of whistler's wiki entry)

they've really only got three whole actors in these intro credits, huh. we've got david, charisma, and glenn and uh—all the other characters? we'll just play it by ear as we need ’em

man—I love, love how awkward angel is. it really highlights that we'd primarily ever seen him through buffy's eyes, and even past the initial romanticizing when more of his flaws/rough edges were explored, it was still through this lens of grand tragedy and romance. but removed from that context, settled in a brand new city with no established allies, angel is kind of a dork! he's not that comfortable talking to people, he doesn't fit in easily, and it's delightful how much ats leans into that (which of course makes sense when he's now our lead, but certainly you can imagine other shows taking the easier path of only portraying him as suave and competent and brooding while conflict unfolds around him) (doing the action hero thing of jumping into the open convertible only to realize it's not his car—beautiful)

"the powers that be" is kind of a goofy concept—like we took this already nebulous phrase and made it an even more nebulous entity with vague stakes in protecting humanity (and in keeping angel in the light, specifically?) and one of our methods of achieving that is sending visions to our man demon on the ground to handle a weekly monster running around LA (compare to the "senior partners", about whom we know, at this point, similarly little about, but feel much better defined by virtue of grounding them in the hierarchy of a surprisingly well-informed and effective law firm)

obsessed with angel's like—stake-ejection mechanism up the sleeves (that he never uses again in the episode)

the funny thing about only having three main characters is that everyone needs to wear a lot of hats, so without a dedicated researcher/tech whiz, we get the absolutely perfect shot of angel swiveling between like five ancient desktops at the library

baby christian kane! (looking so much babier than I remembered)

there's a practicality piece of, like—is cordelia interested in working with angel if her life in LA is already super successful? but seeing her on the back foot does also parallel nicely with btvs 401, and buffy similarly out of her element in starting college (speaking of, it's also fun that both return to an old standard of having a vampire as our main villain. which also makes sense—we've got two pretty new settings for both shows, between uc sunnydale and LA, and so we're giving both characters some element of familiarity/established expectations while so much else around them has changed)

man I fully forgot about the phone call buffy got in 401 (I maybe assumed at the time that it was some prank call by sunday's crew?) but of course it being angel makes much more sense (and it's fun to get these through lines that remind you both shows/universes are part of the same bigger world)

angel looking down on the city from a roof's edge is a real batman-ass final pose. we wear our influences on our sleeves