Film

[Pat Twisted Wrath]

I liked the book, not my favourite of Harris's but still enjoyable 

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

The "sermon" on certainty in the middle, that's what the story is about, not internal power struggles: they're just a device. Maybe give it another go! 

[Eoin McLove]

Yeah man, I got that too. That's the thing, the story is great up until the twist which just seemed a bit too timely, and tonally moralising. Like, the story couldn't simply be about the intrigues and goings-on during a Conclave, which is an interesting process (at least in this telling), it had to become a feckin right on woke tale about trans... sorry INTERSEX! I think it cheapened the film. The book too, I'm sure. The film won't become a timeless classic, which it might otherwise have been, because it will be forever tainted by early 21st century culture war shit. I can picture Constantine Kissin and Frances Foster having a mutual strangle wank over it 

[Sworntothecans]

I spent most of the movie expecting some Irish cardinal to turn up and say "THE FECKIN' JESUITS:THEY HAVE IT ALL TIED UP"

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Personally I think it will survive the era of the anti-woke snowflakes very well, and may even become emblematic of them. Meet back here in 2036   

[Eoin McLove]

The "sermon" on certainty in the middle, that's what the story is about, not internal power struggles: they're just a device. Maybe give it another go! 

You don't think that the film is about internal power dynamics? Maybe you need to re-watch it. The battles with certainty were threaded lightly throughout, but the shifting dynamics of, if not power, then cartainly influence and upperhandedness WERE the story. Until the last five minutes when it became about (thinly veiled) trans ideology.

Edit. Maybe it is snowflakey of me to find it a disappointing and random ending, but it sucked whatever way you slice it.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

It is interesting in itself that in 2024, and all the more so in 2026, the ending might feel shoe-horned in, in our atmosphere of increasingly discourse-dominating accusations of box-ticking in tv and film. Whereas, in reality, the book was being written over 10 years ago, before sooo much of that landscape had been set in place: pre-BLM, pre-Musk takeover of X, pre-manosphere shite, pre-Olympic boxing controversy, etc. If anything, Harris was more prescient than he could have plausibly imagined when he wrote it.

[Eoin McLove]

Fair enough. Cunt of an ending all the same. Just terrible.

Look, he wrote the book in 2014 (if you're saying it was written ten years before the film came out), which you claim is prescient, but seems to me like he was just at the cutting edge of that ideological movement that bubbled up several years later. He didn't pluck the concept out of thin air. And maybe if it hadn't become such a hot topic for a few years the ending might have been more interesting and rare, if still a bit random. But there's no denying (but of course you will anyway, because you'll fight every lefty cause to the bitter death) that the film came along, promoting a particular message and ideological view point at a time when that ideological viewpoint had come to maturity (lol) within society. And that ideology poisoned the end of the film, much in the same way it poisoned political and cultural discourse for several years. Sucky.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Indeed he didn't pluck the intersex condition out of thin air. It's a long-identified biological fact 

Trans wasn't a hot topic back then at all. It was years before Glinner and Rowling got into it, for example (i.e. the poisonous people who poisoned the discourse). I think you're entirely failing to lift it out of cultural context and consider it as a plot device for throwing Catholic ideological certainty into complete disarray in the most undeniable, because biological, way possible. Like Galileo but with biology. And you're stuck in a contingent culture war lens, seemingly.

[Emphyrio]

Without getting into a thing about it, I certainly wouldn't consider Rowling poisonous. Wasn't it mostly female jacks for women, and no-one except women in women's sports. That's as sensible as sensible can be.

[leatherface]

Cobra (1986, dvd)

A cheapo find, had not seen in full before. Total 80s sleazeball cinema, almost a giallo movie but not quite.

[Sworntothecans]

Cobra (1986, dvd)

A cheapo find, had not seen in full before. Total 80s sleazeball cinema, almost a giallo movie but not quite.

There's certainly a touch of 80s giallo to it for sure.
Got the 4k remastered version a while back and it's a great looking movie. It's a shame that we'll never get to see the original more violent cut.

[Carnage]

When Stallone was turned down fornthe role in Beverly Hills Cop (because he wanted to rewrite it and turn it into an out and out action movie), Cobra was his response. It's awful of course, objectively so but good craic nonetheless.

[Sworntothecans]

When Stallone was turned down fornthe role in Beverly Hills Cop (because he wanted to rewrite it and turn it into an out and out action movie), Cobra was his response. It's awful of course, objectively so but good craic nonetheless.

A fun drinking game for Sly's 80s stuff:what scene did he fire the director and take over?

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Without getting into a thing about it, I certainly wouldn't consider Rowling poisonous. Wasn't it mostly female jacks for women, and no-one except women in women's sports. That's as sensible as sensible can be.

It's the venom in how she addresses it, more than anything. Revisit some of her comments on Imane Khelif, fittingly also not trans