Look. Look. The world has seven jillion more pressing issues than the matter of international
toponymy. But iâve been staring at maps for long enough that iâve got some strong opinions, and
thereâs a lot of confusion to be resolved.
First and foremost: one of the Congos is gonna have
to take one for the team. Thereâs no way about it. I get that âZaĂŻreâ is kind of skunked, but at the
very least, one of them should consider making âCongo-Kinshasaâ or âCongo-Brazzavilleâ official, to
spare us all the tyranny of having to repeat âDemocratic Republic of the Congoâ a thousand times
until we die.
The other main snafu of nomenclature is Dominica and
the Dominican Republic: two countries, both of which are in the Caribbean, and both of which have
the demonym âDominicanâ, except stressed on different syllables. (Dominica on the -ni-, the
republic on the -mi-.) This is not tenable.
The republic is the better known Dominica, but iâm going to say it should draw the short straw here,
because it has a ready-made alternative right in the national anthem, which honours its
valiant Quisqueyans. Not only would the name âQuisqueyaâ put them in the ĂŠlite ranks of
countries whose names start with a Q1, but itâs far more mellifluous than the other isleâs equivalent, âWaitukubuliâ.
The Central African Republic might be better off
going by the Sango âBĂŞafrikaâ, too. The name worked when it was the Central African Empire, high on
Bokassa the butcherâs tinpot monarch dreams, but in a world of sixty-second attention spans, most of
the time, itâll end up shortened to CAR and confused with a Honda Civic.
Weâre getting into pettier territory now with New
Zealand, Britainâs antipodean twin2
and runt of the Anglosphere. I donât particularly have anything against its current name, but when
the alternative is this good, thatâs hardly enough! Throw off your Dutch trappings and become
Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud â culture war be damned, it rolls off the tongue like honey
from turned wood. (And, hey, you finally get a usable adjectival form.)
Lightning round! Equatorial Guinea is neither
crossed by the equator3
nor anywhere near the other two Guineas. Fix it.
South Africa means the opposite of âNorth Africaâ is
âSouthern Africaâ and is overall terribly generic. âAzaniaââs the obvious pick, but historically
inaccurate at best, being the Greeksâ name for what is now the Tanzanian and Kenyan coast. Might i
suggest âMacrobiaâ, the opposite of Hyperborea, the semi-mythic land of the long-lived and happy at
the very tip of Africa, beyond where the Romans ever ventured?
And âUnited Arab Emiratesâ is trivially true, but
boring as sin. The worst part is thereâs no compelling alternative, with the area being an
artificial conglomerate of princedoms once called the âTrucial Statesâ because⌠er, theyâd all
signed truces with the British Empire. 10/10 naming, bang up job, good enough, letâs all go home.
Last, the bald eagle in the room: the United States
of America, hogging the name of two entire continents all for itself in typical Yankee fashion. For
all i care, they can keep it: the alternatives are straight trash. âUsonaâ? âFredoniaâ?
âUnited Statesiansâ?? Gods know nobodyâs saying that with a straight face. Plus, itâs
really funny when people from the rest of the Americas get riled up online about people using the
word âAmericanâ for the U.S.
All that said â if they were to change, theyâd do well to go back to the civil war, and start
branding themselves as âthe Unionâ, rather than âAmericaâ. All the historical swag, none of the
cringe.
P.S. âBritainâ is also ambiguous between the island and the
country, but my preferred solution there is to make Northern Ireland the republicâs problem.
Sorry, Sir Ian junior, but youâre reĂŤntering the EU, and youâre
going to like it.
Watched as a double feature for the Halloweâen season â Evil Dead 2 is as funny as ever, and
all you need to know about Army of Darkness is that itâs a film where a stop-motion skeleton
explodes, and if that doesnât sell you, itâs not for you. (I did find myself wishing iâd watched the
theatrical cut, rather than the directorâs cut â the studio-mandated happy ending has so many iconic
bits i didnât realise i was missing!) (7/10)
In honour of Megalopolis2, Tyneside Cinema were doing a season of films with
dizzying ambitions and variable results, from Southland Tales to Synecdoche. I jumped
at the chance to finally see my favourite film on the big screen â and, yep, still a certified 11/10
masterpiece.
Steven Spielberg did not technically direct this, but come on now, we all know this is as
spiritually Spielberg as it gets. Some fun stuff, especially the motley crew of paranormal
investigators, but itâs weighed down by the jarring tonal mish-mash and a glued-on fourth act where
they seem to have suddenly realised they forgot a â0â in their special effects budget. (5½/10)
I knew absolutely nowt about this going in, so when Robin Williams showed up, it took some time for
me to mentally adjust to the combination of his zaniness, Jeff Bridgesâ shock-jock sleaze, and the
trademark layer of Gilliam grime coating it all. All of it comes together beautifully in a
surprisingly good-hearted fantasy tale of big-city redemption. (8/10)
I had bought the tickets and everything for Clint Eastwoodâs final film â but it was the day after
the U.S. election, and fifteen minutes in, i thought, cripes, do i really want to be
sitting through a drama about the dysfunction of the American legal system right now? (N/A/10)
Thereâs nothing i love more than a big, ambitious, messy film, and this hits all three. You can see
the joins between the Kubrickian rigour and Spielbergian spectacle, but i donât care. Viva the mess.
Haley Joel Osment is incredible in this. You can totally see why Kubrick thought no child actor
could ever pull off the script.
All the tech has this glorious early-noughties Orionâs Arm-style shimmer and sheen to it, and
let me tell you, i live for that shit. (9/10)
This is some kind of primordial film, one that youâd find washed up at the bottom of the Marianas
Trench, and six months later, radiocarbon dating would show it to be older than civilisation itself.
(Very glad i had subtitles â those old-timey wickie accents donât mess about.)
Also, Robert Pattinson is really, really hot in this. No man has ever been this Fucked Up.
(10/10)
I didnât know Hollywood still had it in it to pull out all the stops for a big, colourful
show-stopping musical like this. Ariana Grande stole the show, but the goat stole my heart. (9/10)
Whoever invented the Qwerty keyboard was right. Z,
X, and C totally are best friends and
belong together. They all give off the same vibes.
Hearing rumours that the Americans have invented a holiday that is like Christmas, but exclusively
the part where you get into arguments with your extended family. Fascinating.
I just realised that âsweatpantsâ are just what Americans call jogging bottoms.
Machine-learning-generated Minecraft is a
constantly-shifting immaterial nightmare where any action is but a suggestion and object
permanence is anathema. In other words: close enough, welcome back,
LSD: Dream Emulator.
Itâs that time of year again, isnât it? When the days shrink and night begins to rule. A time for
staying wrapped up inside with a cup of hot chocolate for some. But for us, dear readers â we know
better by now, donât we? The time approaches for merriment, mĂŚnadism, and of course⌠misrule.
Io Saturnalia, friends.
This is our fourth annual Satyrsâ Forest Lords of Misrule, where in the spirit of the season, i put you â yes, you â in charge of the site. If you
write or put together anything, absolutely, positively anything, and email it to
misrule@satyrs.eu, come Saturnalia (thatâs December the seventeenth through the
twenty-third, for those who arenât up to date on their Roman calendar) iâll put it on the site,
etched in stone for all to see. Temporary defacements of pages are also quite welcome.
I kindly ask the same things of you as years past: no political polemics, and nothing that would get
me in legal trouble. Other than that, anything goes. A video essay on the occult implications of
Gremlins 2. A rant about how birch trees used to be better back in the old days before Big
Nature made them cringe. Whatever you, my lords of misrule, want.
Submissions are open from now until the fifteenth of December, 2024. Have fun, be merry, and donât
be afraid to get weird with it!
Alex Garlandâs Annihilation is nominally a horror film.1
Team of scientists goes into an evil forest, gets picked off one by one with cool body horror
effects, blonde final girl makes it out and is irreversibly traumatised, movie ends, many such
cases.2
But iâve never seen it that way.
Might i just be a contrarian? Certainly, the biosphere our characters enter is cruel, but i think
itâs a useful exercise to consider the situation from its perspective. The government is on their
Gods-know-how-manyth expedition into the Shimmer at this point, and up until now, itâs all been
military men. Cripes, if i were a sentient self-regulating ecosystem and all these feds started
probing around my internals because they want to kill me, iâd develop an immune response too.
The world beyond the Shimmer is beautiful beyond description. It is a place where the sky glistens
in iridescent3
waves, where every sort of plant grows from every sort of bush and beast, and where death is just
one step in a beautiful cycle of life and rebirth.4
It blurs the line between not just the species but kingdoms of life â flora, fauna, and funga all
mingling and merging together equally under one roof. Barring the terrifying humanâbear hybrids,
thatâs a world iâd like to live in.
Plus, it seems willing to learn. In the ending âfightâ
(cue the noise), allegorical for the obvious as the
visuals may be, the alien throws not a single punch. Itâs learning by doing, mimicking every move
Lena makes, enough to turn into a rudimentary facsimile of her â and even after its destruction, the
ending glimmer in her and her husbandâs eyes makes clear a part of the Shimmerâs essence is here to
say. I say thatâs for the better.
P.S. Hereâs some stuff iâve been listening to recently (sorted from
âbleep bloopâ to âstrum strumâ):
I have gotten slightly addicted to Sonic Robo Blast 2, an open-source Sonic fan game thatâs been in development for twenty-six years and has
dozens of mods to show for it. I play, like, one new video game a year, and it looks like this is
2024âs. Pray for me.
Bowling Green, a park
in New York where, during the revolution, a statue of George III was taken down and decorative
crowns on the fences were sawn off â the marks of which are still visible today!
I have to assume this has been here since at least last Christmas.
I think this used to be(?) a centre for birds of prey. Not sure why it was done up like an old
west town, if thatâs the caseâŚ
I started hearing old-timey fairground music in the distance and it took me far,
far too long to realise that it was coming from the old-timey fairground Beamish has.
For fifteen minutes i was the most confused i had ever been in my whole life.
I reviewed this one in full back in August, so go check that out
if you want more detail. A stylish sequel (sevenquel?) that makes the world of Alien more
believable than ever and introduces some great new talent. (7/10)
Seeing Christopher Lloyd in this was like seeing Jeff Goldblum in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Like, hey, youâre not meant to be famous yet!
Itâs one of those films thatâs been talked about so much that i have very little new to add, but i
will say that i wasnât expecting this to be as funny as it was.1(7/10)
Ugh. Once the plot gets moving two thirds of the way through itâs pretty good, but that
first hour is ĂŚsthetically revolting in the most perplexing way. The Spanish countryside has never
looked so grimy and clammy. I hate all of these people. (3½/10)
I didnât know Steven Spielberg had the capacity to be so⌠cryptic? I love how the film builds up the
mystery of whatâs going on, with an ending that leaves you wondering in both senses of the word.
Contactâs better, yeah, but Contact wouldnât exist without Close Encounters as
a base to work off. (9/10)
Douglas Trumbull, 2001âs special-effects man, gets into directing with this sickeningly
seventies environmentalist sci-fi fable. Thereâs a lot to like here, but i canât help the feeling
that this would have worked a lot better if youâd cut it up into five twenty-minute
TV episodes and had Tom Baker show up midway through. (5/10)
Went to the cinema for this, for⌠some reason? Tim Burton is back, baby, having finally freed
himself from Disneyâs offputting computer-generated tendrils, and while
Beetlejuice²: Beetlejuice Harder is ultimately inessential, itâs a fun legasequel thatâs
better than anyone was reasonably expecting, keeping up the same manic energy as the original.
Michael Keaton, Catherine OâHara, and Winona Ryder havenât missed a step since 1988. Willem Dafoe is
great too, though like most of the new cast, his character doesnât have much to do in the story,
which struggles to commit to any of its three plot threads.
Also, the lead girl falls in love with a socially awkward zoomer who listens to Sigur RĂłs, which
means thereâs still a chance for me. So thatâs⌠thatâs good. Thatâs reassuring. (6/10)
Come on. Itâs Casablanca. What do you want me to say? Every five minutes thereâs a line that
made me point at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio. âWeâll always have Paris.â(10/10)
Unnerving to see Dev Patel before his ongoing âsexiest man aliveâ era, but you can never go wrong
with Danny Boyle, whose kinetic, saturated style elevates a simple feel-good rags-to-riches story.
(6/10)
I cannot fucking believe i roped my mum into coming to the cinema with me.2
Greatest decision of my life. Her fucking face!
The Substance is the goopiest [sic] movie iâve ever seen, and thatâs ignoring all the
body horror. Demi Moore digs through wet rubbish to pick up a sticky
USB drive and splatters eggs everywhere. Dennis Quaid eats a bowl of
shrimp that makes the worldâs most viscerally disgusting noise. Margaret Qualleyâs teeth fall out.3
My one complaint is i wish it had gone further. Everyone on the internet thinks it went too far. No.
They are fools. That blood-sprayed audience should have started melting into The Thing, and we all
know that deep inside our hearts. (9½/10)
Long live the new flesh! A film starring a Betamaxussy and a man who exists exclusively
through semi-sentient VHS tapes. So many ideas, so little time (the
Cronenberg special). Watching this is like trying to remember a nightmare you just woke up from.
Iâm filing this in the same folder as Rear Window, a film with a surprising amount to say
about an internet that it couldnât have reasonably foreseen. What are we if not, like Brian
OâBlivion4, ghosts of all our past transmissions? Is the online avatar not the new flesh?
Existenz tackles the internet more head-on, but suffers from the fact that David Cronenberg
doesnât know what a video game is. Videodrome is unburdened by the future facts, and so can
say whatever it wants. (10/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs final fart is why Hollywood canât have nice things, an incomprehensible
schmaltzy mess about how Adam Driver is a Very Special Boy who is always right. I donât know where
the money went â everything looks like Spy Kids. What an embarrassing way to go out.
(2/10)
Francis Ford Coppola shoots for the moon and misses with Megalopolis, his long-gestating
passion project that shows why studio interference isnât always the worst thing. Sometimes you need
someone in the room to say ânoâ. Every creative decision made here is baffling: Adam Driverâs
character can stop time, and this never comes up. Our main character can
stop time, and this does not play a role in the filmâs story! His political rival
leaks a video of him having sex with an underage pop star, and within about five minutes, it turns
out it was fake and she was 23 anyway, so that plotlineâs resolved and never comes back up. Every
conflict is like this. I donât know whatâs going on. (4/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs Megalopolis: A Fable defies your puny human notions of âgoodâ or âbadâ
in an ambitious sci-fi drama thatâs like if Hillary Clinton wrote a Neil Breen film.5
You can neatly split the cast into âknew what kind of movie they were inâ and âdidnâtâ. Shia LeBeouf
knew â he chews the scenery with every line as if the sets were made of cotton candy. Aubrey Plaza
knew, because thereâs no way not to know what kind of movie youâre in when your character
is called âWow Platinumâ and makes Mr LeBeouf give her head. Adam Driver probably knew? He can get
pretty hammy, but heâs kind of trying to keep a straight face. Nathalie Emmanuel didnât know â sheâs
the female lead, but her performance is so wooden i was genuinely shocked to find out she wasnât a
nepotism hire. Giancarlo Esposito is insulated enough from the properly weird stuff that i donât
think he knew. (6/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs Francis Ford Coppolaâs Megalopolis: A Fable is so sincere i canât help
but love it. Itâs a man who built his fame on films about the criminal underworld and the hell of
war going: âI refuse to let this be my legacyâ. Megalopolis is about a man with a vision for
a better future and the power to make it happen. (His vision for a better future mostly involves
those moving walkways they have at airports. I never said it was perfect.) And, yeah, itâs a little
undercooked. Yeah, itâs as subtle as a brick.6
But itâs the film the man wanted to make, and itâs a film that proudly stands against the cynical
doom and gloom that has infested popular culture since the nineties. I canât help but respect that.
(8/10)
âWhaddaya think of this boner i got?â âJon Voight, 2024 (10/10)
The death of the magazine, and quality writing with it, is one of the sadder trends of the internet age. They can pry
Empire and Private Eye from my cold, dead hands.
A video popped up in my Youtube recommendations recently that gave me pause. I didnât recognise the
name of the channel, or the man on the thumbnail, sat unbothered atop a log in a distinct yellow
hunting jacket. Beside that image were two short words: âIâm Deadâ.
Itâs an omnipresent trope of fiction, and itâs a strange feeling seeing it cross into the real
world.
âAs iâm recording this today, it is 20 December, 2023, and iâm recording this and giving Brad
instructions to publish it upon my death. So if youâre watching me: iâm dead.â
I never met the uploader, Paul Harrell. I never watched anything he made. Iâd never even heard his
name. But watching his last message a tear crossed my cheek nevertheless, an experience, judging by
the videoâs comments, that isnât uncommon among people who happened to stumble upon it.
What makes it stranger is that, while, yes, a recording of a man speaking from the grave, âIâm Deadâ
is also a Youtube video, with all the trappings of the format. Mr Harrell makes note two minutes in
that other creators have made claims of him with which he strongly disagrees, and bemoans (tongue
planted in cheek) that he wonât be around to respond anymore. In a twist on the formula, he thanks
the viewers for all the likes, comments, and subscriptions over the years â no point in beseeching
for more, after all. I donât point these quirks out to denigrate the man; by all accounts he seems
to have been an upstanding chap with a passion for weaponry. But⌠I donât know. Itâs hard to put
into words the cocktail of emotions that arises when someone jumps from talking about his diagnosis
of pancreatic cancer to going âthanks for the likesâ, all in the typical jolly cadence of online
video.
Time comes for us all. Two of my most valiantly followed blogs are run by authors of
fifty-nine and
seventy-three; barring a rapid scientific
breakthrough, i am near certain to outlive them. Videomakers trend younger; still, in just the past
year, a cancer diagnosis and
a stroke have passed my subscription feed.
I donât get torn up when a musician i love passes, but in this postmodern age, the internet begets a
one-sided connection that feels a damned lot more like friendship than a vinyl record ever could.
One by one, the first generation of internet creatives is dying â and, unless we remember them,
their spirit will too.
Oh fuck i idly put on Kid A and accidentally let it get all the way to âMotion Picture
Soundtrackâ.
đď¸đď¸đď¸ REEEED WIIIINE đď¸đď¸đď¸ AND SLEEEEEPIIIING PILLS đď¸đď¸đď¸đď¸ HELP ME GET BACK T
First and foremost: one of the Congos is gonna have
to take one for the team. Thereâs no way about it. I get that âZaĂŻreâ is kind of skunked, but at the
very least, one of them should consider making âCongo-Kinshasaâ or âCongo-Brazzavilleâ official, to
spare us all the tyranny of having to repeat âDemocratic Republic of the Congoâ a thousand times
until we die.
The other main snafu of nomenclature is Dominica and
the Dominican Republic: two countries, both of which are in the Caribbean, and both of which have
the demonym âDominicanâ, except stressed on different syllables. (Dominica on the -ni-, the
republic on the -mi-.) This is not tenable.
The Central African Republic might be better off
going by the Sango âBĂŞafrikaâ, too. The name worked when it was the Central African Empire, high on
Bokassa the butcherâs tinpot monarch dreams, but in a world of sixty-second attention spans, most of
the time, itâll end up shortened to CAR and confused with a Honda Civic.
Weâre getting into pettier territory now with New
Zealand, Britainâs antipodean twin2
and runt of the Anglosphere. I donât particularly have anything against its current name, but when
the alternative is this good, thatâs hardly enough! Throw off your Dutch trappings and become
Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud â culture war be damned, it rolls off the tongue like honey
from turned wood. (And, hey, you finally get a usable adjectival form.)
Equatorial Guinea is neither
crossed by the equator3
nor anywhere near the other two Guineas. Fix it.
South Africa means the opposite of âNorth Africaâ is
âSouthern Africaâ and is overall terribly generic. âAzaniaââs the obvious pick, but historically
inaccurate at best, being the Greeksâ name for what is now the Tanzanian and Kenyan coast. Might i
suggest âMacrobiaâ, the opposite of Hyperborea, the semi-mythic land of the long-lived and happy at
the very tip of Africa, beyond where the Romans ever ventured?
And âUnited Arab Emiratesâ is trivially true, but
boring as sin. The worst part is thereâs no compelling alternative, with the area being an
artificial conglomerate of princedoms once called the âTrucial Statesâ because⌠er, theyâd all
signed truces with the British Empire. 10/10 naming, bang up job, good enough, letâs all go home.
Last, the bald eagle in the room: the United States
of America, hogging the name of two entire continents all for itself in typical Yankee fashion. For
all i care, they can keep it: the alternatives are straight trash. âUsonaâ? âFredoniaâ?
âUnited Statesiansâ?? Gods know nobodyâs saying that with a straight face. Plus, itâs
really funny when people from the rest of the Americas get riled up online about people using the
word âAmericanâ for the U.S.
P.S. âBritainâ is also ambiguous between the island and the
country, but my preferred solution there is to make Northern Ireland the republicâs problem.
Sorry, Sir Ian junior, but youâre reĂŤntering the EU, and youâre
going to like it.
