links/2024w11

And we're back to the weekly list: Squarespace changed up their iPad editor and made it impossible to add links, so it's simpler to do it this way and put it together once a week on the Mac.

• As if the beauty of her work as a whole wasn’t amazing enough, her attention to the smallest detail never ceases to amaze :: Star Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter on Fashioning Afrofuturism | artnet

• The black and white photos of Macdonald's work are incredible; like PDR, I can only imagine how amazing the color was in reality :: The Art of Sutherland Macdonald, Victorian England’s “Michelangelo of Tattooing” (ca. 1905) | The Public Domain Review

• 🤯🤯 :: Immersive Bamboo Installations by Asim Waqif Whirl and Heave in Monumental Motion | Colossal

• The Armored-Knight "Robot" Designed by Leonardo da Vinci (circa 1495) | Open Culture

• Better late than never, I suppose :: Keurig Just Killed The Coffee-Pod With Their New Biodegradable Compressed Coffee Pucks | Yanko Design

• At last, an AI with impeccable gaming taste :: Google DeepMind’s Latest AI Agent Learned to Play 'Goat Simulator 3' | WIRED

• Someone has to have the adaptation option on this story, right? :: The Ghost-Busting 'Girl Detective' Who Awed Houdini | Atlas Obscura

• Very cool :: Teen Titans Live-Action Movie in the Works at DC Studios | The Hollywood Reporter

• And, finally, re-linking / linking within to the teaser for MOUSE, an upcoming game from Fumi Games that takes the CUPHEAD / Tex Avery aesthetic and turns it into an FPS.

BLUE BEETLE (Ángel Manuel Soto, 2023)

(Directed by Ángel Manuel Soto from a script by Gareth Duner-Alcocer; starring Xolo Maridueña, Belissa Escobedo, Bruna Marquezine, Adriana Barraza, Damián Alcázar, Raoul Trujillo, George Lopez, and Susan Sarandon. Released 15 August 2023; watched 2023w47 via Max )

If you'd've told me ten years ago that the best film in the DCEU would be BLUE BEETLE, I wouldn't have believed you. Yet here we are - and it is, by far, the best: a perfect balance of heart, humor, and thrill. A shame it was lost to the box office undertow of the end of the DCEU and its (much-needed) rebirth into the Gunn/Safran DCU, but hopefully BEETLE finds the audience it deserves in streaming (ironic, given its origins) and physical release. Relief, too, that Xolo Maridueña will continue as Jaime in the new canon; here's hoping for his return sooner rather than later. Wonderful film.

unsolicited dcu casting advice

With Giancarlo Esposito's admission that he has spoken with James Gunn about appearing in a DCU project (a movie, so my hopes may be shattered but hey)- and in full knowledge that popular reckoning is that it's for Luthor (and he'd be an undeniably great Luthor - he's perfect as his voice in HARLEY QUINN) - what I really hope is that it’s for Sinestro in the LANTERNS series. Perfect pairing: combo of all of his great villainous roles – and the opportunity for a major turn of loyalties, from hero to villain to hero again to villain to…

DCU / Elseworlds

As I seem unable to get this out of my head, I'm recording it here: while I dig everything I've heard coming out of the James Gunn DCU– and maybe it's my decades-long love of the wild stories (RED RAIN, GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT, RED SON, METROPOLIS, NOSFERATU) that came out under that banner – the "Elseworlds" branding for out-of-continuity projects like THE BATMAN and JOKER sequels, etc, feels… off. To me, at least, the current "Black Label" nomenclature used for things like BATMAN: DAMNED, WONDER WOMAN:HISTORIA, or SUPERMAN: THE LAST DAYS OF LEX LUTHOR (very good) seems more apposite. But IDK, maybe there's a rights issue with Johnny Walker or something.