dalekboy | 100 days of Love and Hate

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100 days of Love and Hate - Day 54

Cuddles
I'm a touchy-feely, huggy, cuddly person. I suppose it comes from a mix of three main things, I tend to like people a *lot*, I've always been demonstrative, and after the death of my first girlfriend it was important to me that the people I liked knew. Embarrassment at telling a girlfriend, lover or my wife that I love them is less important than them knowing, because you never truly know if you're going to see someone again. It's also why I'm quick to apologise when I realise I've done the wrong thing or been snarly. You don't always get second chances.

So I like cuddles and hugs. I like the opportunity to show someone that I care about them, love the chance (with some people, not all) to breath in their scent, or have that extra-close level of contact with the folks I like. With some people it's just nice to have them so near, with others there's a slight sexual kick to it, though that's the bonus, not the reason for the hugs. I'm a happy guy and I get serious level of delight or joy from holding those I care for.

It's also nice to be on the receiving end of. I don't know if it's true for everyone, but I can feel the difference between what I consider to be the two main sorts of cuddles. The ones that are about the cuddler, and the ones that are about the cuddlee.

On some level you can tell when someone is cuddling you because they want to be close and show you how they feel, and that their enjoyment of it is from having the chance to show you the level of their affection. It goes beyond the physical sensation of being held - you feel the affection coming through.

The other folks are holding you purely for their own comfort/enjoyment. Now I have no problem with that, we all need to be held now and again, to feel loved for who we are, to have the chance to soak that up. But some people are just no good at the balance, at giving as well as taking love and comfort. I don't think it's deliberate or conscious, I just think they miss the subtlety of cuddling. They get so much comfort from it they think holding someone is enough for the other person to feel as they do. I tend to find these sorts drain me fairly quickly, though I'm still willing to hold them, because, well, I like them. And if it makes them feel loved or wanted then that's a good thing. It simply means I can't hold them as long as either of us would probably like.

But nothing beats giving someone you care for a long hug, and feeling them being just as affectionate back. That's a real moment of sharing right there. It doesn't matter if one of you is really needing the attention, there's almost always an echo or reflection of it back to the other.

Good cuddlers give, at least most of the time. I'm fortunate, many of the people who like me show it well with cuddles. Interestingly, the people who are amongst the least sexually interested in me give me some of the best hugs and cuddles. Maybe it's because their hormones aren't getting in the way of their intent to show their genuine affection for me... That said, there are a couple of people that would like to shag me rotten that give me achingly beautiful hugs, with no hint of draining.

I'm quite lucky, for the most part my hormones don't get in the way of my holding someone - I've become fairly good over the years at keeping my overactive libido in check, shunting it sideways when it's attempting to disrupt what I'm trying to achieve with someone. Clothed or naked, most of the time when I'm holding someone that may be uncomfortable if there were a more deliberate sexual subtext to the embrace, my sex drive is not fully present. Nudity is often just a nice way to extend the contact, drop the barriers further. It may be sensual, but that doesn't make it sexual.

A lot of my talking on subjects like this make me sound like some sort of sexual monk. I'm not. I love sex and want to shag thousands of willing partners, I'm a lustful, base, sexual being. It just happens that some of my wiring requires certain levels of intimacy and emotion before I'll get fully sexual. Feel free to try (gently and respectfully) to rewire me into a sexbeast. If you were successful, I wouldn't complain.

And I'd likely be willing to thank you as often and hard as possible *wicked grin*

As much as I like my cuddles to be about showing affection and love over lust, I'm not perfect, and some folks can't help but set my hormones bubbling away. But it's not because they are necessarily gorgeous, or that I fancy them at other times, though both are often true. On the rare occasions when it happens, it's usually because the person in question is giving me so much love and comfort, I actually start to relax fully and drop my guard. If the barriers are down, well it means that my desire has some free reign as well, but usually it doesn't build beyond a mild arousal.

I may be wrong, but I believe I'm fairly good at not letting that disrupt a genuine show of affection. I suppose one of the advantages of being firmly convinced that no-one would ever want to shag you is, you become quite good at removing the possibility from your mind, and better able to work with the affection you are giving/getting. It also means you stop your base urges influencing your actions when it's not appropriate.

If there's no chance they want to sleep with me, but we're both happy holding each other, why potentially spoil it with a kiss or grope?

Of course, this may also be why I've failed to get laid by women I loved deeply, but the fact that I'm fucked in the head is a matter of public record by now :)

Dead Man's Chest
Am I the only person who thought Dead Man's Chest was a highly disappointing, and fairly soulless, film? To the point where the only reason I'll see the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean is to give the writers a chance at redemption?

DMC relies on people's love of the first, and of the leads, over storytelling.

The first one had a story and was internally consistent. It was a film about undead pirates, had all manner bizarre moments and conceits, but never once was my suspension of disbelief challenged. The story, and its construction, were solid enough to do the job well. In fact to anyone who wants to write films, I'd recommend the writer's commentary on Pirates, it's brilliant.

Maybe DMC suffers because it's the middle film, maybe it'll be one of those films that I'll rewatch in a few years and say, "Wow, why did I hate that?" But unlike the first film, I've seen it once on the big screen, I haven't rented it, and unless I really like the third, I won't be buying it. I also have no intention of rewatching it before I see the third, I just can't be bothered, I'd get more enjoyment out of four episodes of the George Reeves Superman series than I would spending two hours watching DMC again. If I enjoy the At World's End enough, I may pick up the second to be completist, once I see it around for $10.

What's criminal is that characters I loved in the first film, I didn't care about in the second. Captain Jack was just as amusing to me, but I no longer cared about him. He, like the others and the film itself, was by-the-numbers. That can be fun if the numbers have interesting calligraphy, these didn't. It felt like a reasonable piece of fan-fiction, something readable, but not something I'd recommend.

I expect more from a feature film. Sorry.

I think the second biggest crime of DMC was that it broke my suspension of disbelief, and once shattered I found that I couldn't get back into the film. The point at which this happened was the start of the water wheel sequence. When they ended up on the roof on the mill, that exists on an otherwise deserted island for no apparent reason, it was rickety, rotting, and sagging. It looked like it would give way the moment they were on it. It didn't. Fine. Then they jump onto the water wheel.

*snap*

A piece of wood as thick as my chest just breaks off. The rest of the wheel remains intact, even as it rolls around over all sorts of rocky surfaces, suffering way more stress than it would have copped with the weight of the guys on it, or that it was built for. In an action sequence suffering from a bad case of Wachowski-excessius, the scene goes from amusing to overlong fairly quickly. The thing is, from this point on, I couldn't get back into the film, which is unusual for me.

I have excellent suspension of disbelief, I'm a Doctor Who fan, for cryin' out loud!

The reason this single inconsistency did so much damage to my watching is simple - the film had only barely engaged me. Oh it's fun and silly, but it has neither the heart nor cleverness of the first. It's not an awful film, but it's mundane enough that I have no excitement or desire to see the third. I will, but it'll take some pushing. I may even wait for DVD, since I don't have access to a cinema screening $5 films anymore.

I also feel that they've tacked the start of the third film onto the end of the second, to the detriment of both. The second film should have ended with the characters deciding they were going to save Jack, but with no idea how. Yes it's downbeat, but given that this film already relies on the third to save its arse in terms of storytelling, at least work to make it interesting.

The sequence at the end goes on too long, to give us the finale we know is coming, the appearance of Barbosa. There's no surprise to it, his name is on the fucking poster! You could have made it a surprise, had a flashbacks to the days on the Black Pearl with Jack and Barbosa, let the audience think that was the appearance. Make the flashbacks a part of the film that actually inform the story. It would have given Rush more to do, for a start.

And how about this for the end? Jack is lost, everyone despairs, the film is over. Someone says they should save Jack but no-one knows how or believes he can be saved. They return and have a wake for Jack at a pub. Someone proposes a toast to Jack's memory, the door slams open and there is a figure silhouetted in the doorway. Everyone thinks it's Jack. The figure steps forward into the light and it's Barbosa.

"Do I take all this to mean you've no interest in savin' your dear Captain Jack then?"

Thanks to Dead Man's Chest I have no desire to see At World's End... How sad is that?

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Nope, you're not the only one. I hated DMC with the kind of spitting rage I reserve for Matrix sequels. It's a soulless, money-grabbing grave robber, awful enough in every facet that I seriously don't care whether I see the 3rd installment or not.

Given that I left the cinema after "Black Pearl", went straight down the escalator to the DVD store and pre-ordered a copy of the DVD six months before it was available for pre-order (that was a fun half hour of ordering sales assistants about :) ), it was a truly rotten-souled effort on the part of the filmmakers to cause me to hate the sequel so much. But I dooby-dooby-do.

(rolls up sleeves)

The Matrix Reloaded is by a country mile my favourite of the Matrix films. Clever, inventive and bold enough to ignore popular expectation and replace an action movie cliche-filled climax with a conversation in a room. And I seem to be the one guy who wasn't bored by the action scenes, particularly the Morpheus-kicks-all-asses freeway chase.

And I also loved Pirates 2, although I agree they suffer greatly from not having a complete story in one movie (a problem that also plagued The Two Towers) and they rely way too much on force of personality over an arresting and intriguing storyline.

And the Barbossa reveal was my most excited movie-going moment of the year, because none of the posters *I* saw had Rush's name on them and I honestly didn't realise he was going to be in the second film until he started walking down the stairs.

*joins you in loving the action scenes in Reloaded* The Burly Brawl was particularly fabulous.

I didn't see Barbossa coming, either.

But hey, Return of the Jedi's my favourite Star Wars ep, so what do I know :)

I have a lot of affection for Jedi myself, and I certainly had a ton of love for the film when I first saw it. It's rollicking fun, it just has a bunch of fairly big flaws to me:

1. It's practically a two-act rather than a three-act film, and that hurts it on a structural level.
2. While I don't despise the Ewoks like most SW fans seem to, they aren't necessarily who you want around for the final chapter of a six-movie epic.
3. The good guys win without having to lose anything, which is just bad mythic writing on George's part. There's no sacrifice involved. The one I've heard was apparently considered at the time was Lando and the Falcon not making it out of the Death Star, which would have been perfect.

3. Don Bies confirmed that one when he was in Melbourne one time. George decided against it because everyone loved the Falcon.

2. Yep, the ewoks themselves don't bother me, it's their use that is the issue. A lot of ewok screen time is to devoted to them being comic characters, which automatically makes it harder to take them as a serious threat against the Empire.

1. I got nothing to add... just didn't want to waste the 1.

III. It was the wrong choice not to destroy the Falcon, and adds more weight to the "did George originally plan nine films not six" argument - was he expecting he'd need the Falcon for Episode VII?

II. It's also the final insult to the abilities of the Empire that an entire legion of the Emperor's best troops can have their asses handed to them by the Muppets.

I. Yeah, I've got nothing either. I do remember seeing a TV doco once where Dean Devlin was raving about how clever Return of the Jedi was for being all climax and no story. Kind of explains the plot structure for the Stargate movie.

c) I'm amused that it was the Falcon than Lando that they realised everyone would care about.

It's been interesting re-watching it today in the light of that - I'd forgotten how bluntly they foreshadowed the Falcon's destruction when Han loaned it to Lando mid film. That never made much sense before.

...none of the posters *I* saw had Rush's name on them...

You lucky bastard! I would have been much happier not knowing.

Reloaded is an interesting one for me. Hated it at the cinema and found the set pieces all to be about twice as long as necessary. When I finally rewatched it, I decided to do so while playing through the game of Enter the Matrix, so I watched it in bits over a couple of days of game playing, swapping back and forth between them.

With the extra story supplied by the game, I actually found the film to be significantly more enjoyable. In fact, I now find it to be a better story than the third film. But it shouldn't have taken a computer game to give me that.

I'm not the only one who like Reloaded?

Nope :)

Matrix 1 and 2 are ok.

3 was a *huge* letdown.

And how.

Too predictable. I like a little mystery to my movies.

Perhaps it was all the hype and spoilers/trailers/promos that gave it away for me.

The only buzz I got from DMC was the fact that a couple of days later, Sal and I saw Geoffrey Rush in the intermission crowd at a Lano & Woodley gig. (We had better seats that Captain Barbosa.) Come to think of it, the buzz was from the L&W gig more than DMC...

You're definitely not the only one, concerning DMC. I agree with

throughsoftair that there is a disturbing similarity to the Matrix sequels in what we've seen so far. I only dearly hope that this similarity goes no further. I will see the third PoTC for the same reason I saw the third Matrix even after seeing its second - I feel I owe it to the producers purely as thanks for the first movie.

Nah, you thanked the producers for the first film when you paid your cash to see it at the cinema.

I think Pirates 3 will have to be significantly awful to be worse than Matrix Revolutions. But, isn't the third film nearly always disappointing? Return of the Jedi, Return of the King, Superman III, Batman Forever...

I think we two grossly disagree in our taste for films. Matrix revolutions IMO was just as bad as its predecessor, and the entire series could benefit from having both films struck from the record. As for Star Wars, I think the original series was only "OK" anyway, so RotJ didn't disappoint, and I never saw RotK as I hated the first two movies so much (I saw the second as a friend begged me to and offered me discounted tickets to do so).

I may have thanked the producers when I paid to see the films, but that doesn't mean I still didn't owe them to see the sequels. You pay to see any movie you see at the cinemas (in theory) - that doesn't mean some aren't better than others, and you may then feel a certain amount of respect and trust for the producers, and thus feel you owe it to them to see a third in a series after a mediocre second, when for instance if you had seen the second one purely on its own merit you may have no wish to see the third. I thought this concept was quite simple really.

If you think film #2 in a franchise is wretchedly awful, why waste money on film #3? Like the saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

The Matrix Reloaded impressed me a great deal. Revolutions did not, mainly because they derailed their own plot with an hour-long giant robot fight I didn't care about and sidelined their own protagonists. Not fun.

I hated what they did to Morpheus in the third film. Some people have compared him to becoming Chewbacca, I think he ended up more as Nien Numb.

I've said the Chewbacca line several times myself, but Nien Numb is a better comparison.

"If you think film #2 in a franchise is wretchedly awful, why waste money on film #3?"

Because of the first one.

Just received the Back to the Future trilogy as a belated birthday gift, so that may be the exception that proves the rule.

(i.e. BTTF 3 from what I recall was still pretty good. I prefer the BTTF trilogy to the Star Wars Septology or whatever the f it is.)

(there I said it.)

Star Wars is surely only a septology if you include the Holiday Special, and what self-respecting Star Wars fan wouldn't?

BTTF3 is pretty cool, it is true.

what self-respecting Star Wars fan wouldn't?

Gasp! I've outed myself!

(no, it's all right, I still haven't seen Clone Wars, or Eps 1 and 2, or the special edition of Eps 4,5 & 6 and I don't have any of it on video or dvd or comic or flipbook - though I may still have the original novel and "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" somewhere...)

Oh shit, the Warren Star Wars Super Spectacular magazine! Must locate and e-bay...

I have Splinter of the Minds Eye (though it used to be my dad's). I picked up the storybook version (A4 with lots of pictures!) of Return of the Jedi at a garage sale recently. And I have the Scholastic novelisation of Phantom Menace. It's a great read, much more enjoyable than the movie.

Cuddles rock.

Hurray for cuddles.

I saw DMC at a Swancon screening, and the fanbase made the movie worthwhile. Watching it a second time, it was a noticeably poorer movie.

On the rant side, to paste from http://prk.livejournal.com/19603.html, I wrote:

1) You are the bride at a wedding. It's pouring down with rain as tends to happen in the tropics. Do you a) move the wedding indoors where everyone can be comfortable? Or b) kneel at the alter outside, in the rain, in order to establish a bleak and depressed mood for your wedding day?

2) Ravens aren't nocturnal. They shouldn't be flying about over the Perl or the prison island from hell in the night.

3) You are in charge of a barren prison island from hell, with no trees whatsoever. Do you a) import wood in order to put all your deceased prisoners in coffins before throwing them into the ocean? or b) throw the bodies into the ocean directly, thus allowing you to use wood for more important thing, such as fires?

4) You are a giant Kraken able to track a man by the black spot impressed into his hand. Do you a) ignore everything else and just go after individual items of clothing he happened to lose overboard? Or b) go directly after the target?

Those things were purely to establish moods and/or set scenes. Unnecessary and in my mind making it difficult to suspend disbelief.

Then there was the beyond the believable, verging on silly, action scenes. Take the group who escaped by rolling the bone cage down the hill for a significant time. How was it that noone at all in that cage suffered a single broken bone?

What about the waterwheel? How could it possibly remain upright for that long over that kind of terrain?

For some reason I didn't have that much trouble with the ShishkeJack scene. Yeah, he ended up with a whole lot of fruit on the bamboo shoot, but a whole lot also missed and hit him or the rocks around him. Besides, after that, it was all treated pretty consistently.

I find it somewhat interesting that I have no trouble suspending my disbelief to allow for the Flying Dutchman and its crew, the giant Kraken and other 'fantastic' occurances, but I just can't accept some of the blatant violations of standard laws of nature / physics. At least not unless a damned good explanation is given for it.

Then there's the whole "To Be Continued" ending.

*mutter*

1. Style.
2. Were they undead ravens? Or maybe special movie ravens. Maybe all the pirate activity made it hard for them to sleep.
3. Maybe we didn't see the side of the island with the forest on it.
4. Clearly the Kraken is *thorough* - no point eating the guy if there's bits of his stuff lying around everywhere.

On 4: I didn't get the impression that the Kraken had any special tracking abilities. Davy Jones and crew did the tracking, then they summoned the Kraken, which ate anything that happened to be in the area regardless.

After thoroughly enjoying The first PotC (even going to see it again at the Moonlight in Melbourne with a group of people all dressed up as Pirates), I am still yet to see DMC. I have heard that it is both good and bad, so I will reserve judgement until I get round to seeing it.

Cuddles are sooooo good. When I'm away overseas, its not the familiar faces that I miss so much, its the cuddles. I need my hug fix every day. I'm addicted to them :)

Haven't seen Matrix 2 or 3 yet. Or LOTR 3...

Nothing like a good hug. My Dad's great at them, and sometimes a longer than normal hug can say so much more than words.

DMC - It's fairly safe to say that you're not alone!! :-)

I loved Black Pearl so much I saw it several times on the big screen(I also had access at the time to cut price movie tickets)and I couldn't wait for the DVD so I bought the American version just because it was released first...

Another "I was disappointed with 'Dead Man's Chest' too" here. (And another "What do you mean, Barbossa was on the poster?")
Speaking of the writers' commentary, I note that on the first film Elliot & Rosso were brought in after two other writers had already had a crack at it, when there was already a general outline and a set of characters for them to work with; on the second film, they were the first and only writers, meaning they had to create the whole thing from scratch. I don't say that this is significant, but I wonder if it might be.

I've wondered about the writers as well. I also wonder how much was the studio insisting on set-pieces. Given all the good advice and idea that were presented in that first commentary, it's like they've forgotten all they knew about writing between films.

Or maybe it's just the problem of only having half the story... I would have preferred two self-contained sequels rather than something that's continued in the next part. It's a literary conceit that seldom works as well as it should in cinema.

My memory is that Rush was mentioned on the poster, but both you and Grant have me wondering now. It may have been a standee, or perhaps our local cinema dragged out one of the old standees, giving the game away. I don't look for spoilers online, and seldom keep up with movie news in general, so it must have been something pretty big and obvious for me to find out.

What I do know is that when I sat down in the cinema, really looking forward to the film, I was wondering how they were going to get Rush back into it. The first time we saw the boots in an early scene, I knew who it was.

Or maybe it's just the problem of only having half the story...

There's that, too. (There's at least one bit in the film that a lot of people think could/should have been trimmed, that the writers have gone on record saying that it was necessary to set up something in the next film. Which is fair, but only up to a point: it may be necessary to the story as a whole, but it still damages this film as a film in itself. And I reckon they could have found a less obtrusive way of setting it up if they'd tried.)

http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/34/MPW-17209

I couldn't see Rush's name on there.

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100 days of Love and Hate - Day 54

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