I'll be Pod for Castmas

@christmas

Episodes each July and December!

pnc.st/s/ill-be-pod-for-castmas

a friendly seasonal podcast of frivolous stories and the joy of literature.
hosted by @folly and katherine

I'll be Pod for Castmas @christmas12/12/2023, 5:31 AM

ghost of cohosts past @folly

Pendell @pendell12/12/2023, 3:27 AM

taking a moment to appreciate this fucked up North Pole infrastructure, thank you Robert Zemeckis

imagine a city inhospitable to humans not because it caters to cars, but because it caters to trains.

The North Pole in The Polar Express is a massive industrial complex that runs far deeper than is shown on-screen. This fucked up little railway turntable at the intersection of several pitch-black underground tunnel, completely abandoned, impossibly massive structures which sheets of frozen ice wrap around, as if to imply they ever could be running water. The children have to tiptoe across a thin metal rail over an impossibly deep chasm. This scene stressed me the Fuck Out as a kid. The North Pole isn't a cozy little workshop, it's an incomprehensibly huge place not meant for you or me, it's meant for elves, trains, 24/7 Christmas music, and that's just about it.

#the polar express #pendell talks movies

Pendell @pendell12/12/2023, 3:29 AM

instead of portraying the "checking his list" thing as Santa crouched over a cute book or scroll, Zemeckis chose to portray it as This.

like holy fuck bro did not have to go this hard for something that's in the movie for all of 4 minutes.

#the polar express #pendell talks movies

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in reply to @pendell's post:

🌊@wave12/12/2023, 3:45 AM

imagine being robert zemeckis.

trick question: impossible. no one can possibly understand why he started making movies with this technology.

it looks so fuckin dated now...

Pendell @pendell12/12/2023, 3:55 AM

i think the few where he went more stylized with it like Monster House still hold up, it was when he tried to do the realistic faces and proportions that things went very bad very quickly for the human models.

🌊@wave12/12/2023, 4:17 AM

ah. i can't say i've seen any of them. just casting stones.

btw, i have not forgotten about your camera. it looks like i might actually do a mailing-big-packages trip in the near future.

Pendell @pendell12/12/2023, 4:32 AM

Oh haha no problem! I'd actually almost forgotten about it by now 🤣

in reply to @pendell's post:

The Pnictogen Wing @pnictogen-wing12/12/2023, 5:31 AM

it's a curious business though, when you think about it—Santa Claus's "North Pole" may not exactly be Heaven but it's a sort of fictional proxy, and the image that best encapsulates it seems to be a terrifying surveillance bureaucracy like something from Gilliam's Brazil ~Chara

Pendell @pendell12/12/2023, 5:39 AM

Well the usual image one would expect to depict the North Pole would be a little homely workshop but Robert Zemeckis looked at the city illustrations in the Chris van Allsburg book and decided to deeply explore the practical logistics of the North Pole. If I wanted to be to be charitable (and I do, I was obsessed with this movie as a kid), it's like some absurdist meta-gag at the expense of the movie's own themes about seeing and believing and whatnot; the main character boy wanting Solid Evidence™ to believe in any of this and just getting that in such extreme spades but none of it is apparently enough to convince him until the end.

The Pnictogen Wing @pnictogen-wing12/12/2023, 5:53 AM

I fear I don't know the story; had to look it up. sort of a...forgetting about Narnia thing there, at the end... =(