Stargate (1994)

Oh hey! It's another vaguely Egyptian themed movie! I'm noticing a trend!

How I love this silly, stupid movie. Another Roland Emmerich, whose films I adored when I could stomach disaster porn films. The pacing is excellent, the stakes high, the technology nonsensical (how are they possibly going to "dial" the Stargate on the other side??). I love it.

Ben pointed out the imperialism and white people nonsense and that definitely sours the movie a little. Just the old lady saying "I found [the necklace] at my father's dig" when in truth she straight up stole it from the person of color who was sorting artifacts and probably got fired/prosecuted when it turned up missing. Just... ick.

This score is a banger. David Arnold does fabulous work. His scores for Independence Day and Casino Royale are incredibly underrated. They're not John Williams recognizable but they so perfectly fit the movie and the story that's being told. Sweeping, dramatic, perfect. He understands the assignment.

Stargate was my first James Spader movie and started a many years long crush on him. Which is funny in hindsight because I think mostly James Spader gets hired to play characters who fuck and Daniel Jackson most specifically does not fuck. (Am I using that phrase right? I hear the young ones using it. And it's catchy.) Another movie crush examined, another total goober. I wonder what that's about...

This viewing has served, in the past week, as a nice gateway ( :D ) to Ben sharing his love of Stargate SG-1. And sharing favorite pop culture in a relationship is The Best.

Watercolor & gouache.

9x12"

Takeaways:

-Okay so this is immensely silly but I'm so happy with it. In the middle of the movie, Ben was razzing the use of the same moon three times but just rotated/resized and I thought "DO THE THREE WOLVES & MOON SHIRT BUT WITH ANUBIS AND THREE MOONS" and then thought, "oh I hope I come up with something better than that" AND I DIDN'T! So here it is!

-I think one of the reasons I'm so happy with it is because it's silly and I embraced that. I know I'm not alone in this, but I can get really bogged down in delivering Serious, Important Art even though it's the silly, referential stuff that delights me most. In my own work and in that of others! When I do silly pieces, I feel guilty and there's a lot of negative self talk that demeans the work. But it's closer to who I am than any of the serious stuff. So... let's enjoy doing it!

-Between getting my final renderings for Heathers together and finishing my grad school application (hello, potentially, to faculty who are checking out this blog! welcome!), I thought I was going to be totally creatively depleted but honestly? I had great energy for this. I've been doing lots with watercolor this week which I thought meant I'd do this digitally but I went with paint and was really pleased! Hooray!

-The longer I worked on this the more I realized I absolutely pooched ( :D ) the proportions on Anubis. Sigh. Still happy with it.

And because I'm happy with it, I'm going to leave it at that! Next week, CLUE! Infinitely quotable, and responsible for introducing me to so many of my favorite comedians, I cannot wait. Especially because I haven't watched it in well over a year and this is one of my favorite background noise/unwinding movies.

I hope you have a killer week, exploring new-to-you worlds, learning about yourself, and embracing who you really are.