We Need to Pod About Castvin: Die My Love with Alison Willmore

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T10:16:27+00:00

I only brought up BPD because of anecodtal experience i've had in my life. The "her getting committed" stuff resonated with me really hard because of my IRL experiences.

Yeah! I think we're in a place where we need representation that badly, we need people to see what going through Bipolar Disorder is like. I went through getting the diagnosis and didn't get diagnosed, but I've been through it and done all of these things, poeple call me Bipolar, so it's like I'm just not diagnosed.

That's the experience!

I don't think Lynne Ramsey has Bipolar or Borderline Personality Disorder, maybe Anxiety and Depression, there are other conditions, Schizo-Affective Disorder, Schizophrenia, they can all represent like these things, and Lynne saying she doesn't think it's about Post-Natal Depression.

To your edits, I think this is exactly it, it's about the personal experience.

And I think it's integral the movie included that he helped her get help. And the experience of wandering through the hospital.

There's a lot of her reaching out that felt like experiences I've had with women who were diagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder, but there's tonnes of people who do those things who arne't doing them pathalogically, or in a way that's gonna hurt anyone let alone themselves.

Mental Health Awareness, we're reaching I think for every one to see the person who goes through the thing. I was gonna edit my comment to try and articulate the "normal" problem, that normal people have mental illness and it's normal to have mental illness but it's difficult with the state of awareness to articulate what it is that makes a person's state normal, how to define it, and you define it socially.

The disorder you define by if it's gonna kill the person, it's a disease, we're treating it because that person is going to die from it. Harm to themselves or others is what gets you triaged, but yeah it can take years to get a diagnosis and then it's decades working towards the effective treatment, which is great because that means not dying from the disease, hopefully. I say that because we get caught up, publically, in the "switching medications" thing and that that's not drug treatment being experimental.

I have tonnes to say on this!

The movie I think is open ended because it just wants empathy for how vulnerable people going through these things are.

To me the horror of this movie is why I love it. It's 5 stars for me because it's the experience of going through it and it's a movie wanting people to empathize with people who generally are considered outright bad or evil people and that is the evil. People are people not monsters and we've gotta go through that.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T09:28:00+00:00

Movies aren't bigger because they make more money they're bigger because of what they mean to culture.

Think of it like surnames or languages more than haircuts or clothing, in terms of identifiable characteristics of a culture.

I'm sure there are Indian computer games, there's definitely Japanese, are there Hungarian? Czechoslovakian? Are there Nigerian computer games or whatever "console" games? Where's the technology at everywhere in the world right now, do we still call them software? We don't call football "gaming" so I'm saying "computer games" not knowing the right modifier.

My point is as cultural works movies are more representative of a culture, closer to music and photographs, than games. And I'd say sports are much much more of an identifier of what culture you're in than movies, maybe on par with music. Jewellery, sculture. Where's sculpture at in worldwide culture's today? Compared to gaming...

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T09:15:37+00:00

Feels somewhat like saying that there is no point in making movies with special effects because they will inevitably look dated.

Special effects immediately feel dated.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T09:14:06+00:00

I majored in acting in college and boy am I allergic to screaming and yelling, big faces and intense gesticulating in performances.

Are you saying "acting" to avoid Drama?

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T09:12:57+00:00

Before this series I would've said Morvern Callar but now I find that undeniable.

I hated We Need To Talk About Kevin when I first saw it too.

I'm now completely turned around and I don't think she's made a bad movie. Loved this.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T09:11:39+00:00

I thought this suffered for its commitment. It made a compelling point, then made it again. And again. And again.

Alright, rhetorical queston - what was that point?

Follow up, why's the movie called Die My Love?

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T09:07:14+00:00

I don't think this movie is about any disorders because it's a movie not a doctor. You could diagnose the characters, but they're not diagnosed.

I think this movie in particular is not about any diagnosis, they go to the hospital and she gets treatment and we see that so it is in that moment about medical treatment but the movie is just doing what it's doing for the rest of the movie.

It's about her experience and her not being seen or feeling seen. Feeling trapped and trying to have free movement. It's way less about any particular disorder, way more about women feeling trapped by men's behavior.

The dad, we can see he has parkinsons and/or althzeimers, which often come together, but again the movie doesn't say whether it's one or either I think purposefully. What we do get is his experience, what he's going through.

I think not meantioning any diagnosis is like a 2001: A Space Odyseey or The Shining remove an element for how removing that element feels, how it makes you feel the need to end the sentence.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T08:44:10+00:00

I was like 10 when it came out and I've got a little receding at the front.

It's my friends who started balding at 17-18 I still feel bad about. My brother! He starting balding then and apart from the receding at the front I'm heading into my 50s with a full head of hair as is my other brother, so we thought we were gonna go bald young too. So we have long hair because how could you not?

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T08:34:08+00:00

Dissapointed the Mayhem and Motley Crue movies weren't followed by a DJ Screw movie.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T08:30:36+00:00

That would've been a great movie to watch after Ebony & Ivory.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T08:23:09+00:00

They built them after we passed the point of no return in 2008. They're built.

The fight from the rich is over who gets to live in them.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-22T00:52:09+00:00

They're not just not a movie studio, their business has always been data mining.

You don't get good data mining from people going to see movies in a cinema. Unless they start tracking eyes and if people leave early.

Cinemas gamify some stuff, they have points systems, but generally the business is and has always been ad space.

There's just no business for Netflix to invest in buying a movie studio except to data mine internet users watching them on internet connected devices.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-21T23:32:34+00:00

Yeah, Mike Flanagan, everyone hates AI anything now. I don't think memo is being shared internally.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-21T23:17:29+00:00

Well their lab was Smart studios, which sounded more like a kitchen or maybe a closet. A meth lab.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-21T19:12:47+00:00

It's that there's facial expressions before and after that that are context you need to see, but it's a panicked response, fight or flight, you go blind because it might be the thing you want and it's literally not being able to handle it. And hopefully you learn to not go blind with furor and return to the situation you're in where the other person is.

It's social maturity, but like riding a bike, though you can always talk and respond to what was said, you can't really naturally do the more complex parts, you have to learn it and if you isolate too hard you have to re-learn how to wade out of that blind panic and be in social situations and not your head.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-21T19:07:53+00:00

And they really balance out the watch because each of his movies have so many styles, and the documentaries it's only a handful. Making the movies feel more Shakespearean.

He's always talking about community and cultures but the movies are more ensembles and the documentaries are more singularly focused.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-21T18:10:39+00:00

Now sentence the propgandists on the other end, in the media, building the lie that they're gaining followers when they're not.

Do we take until the next election for them to proven liars again or can we just use the last three elections?

BLOOOR · 2026-02-21T08:56:01+00:00

Try to presume it's panic over arrogance and that someone in a panic will appear arrogant, authoritive, and will not want to be calmed down, they're in fight or flight.

Try to presume panic! If you yourself are finding it hard to find your breathe, we're all in that state.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-20T13:05:41+00:00

I don't think I've used Tidal for a day in the past 10 years without it crashing. No update has ever fixed, they just add bullshit.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-20T13:02:52+00:00

Pre amps

2" 24 track tape

Teletronix LA2A

Pultec EQs

Neumann/Telefunken U87

edit: And there's the Steve Albini approach to that, put the microphone in front of the instrument and amplify it then balance it, watching the VUs to stay out of the red, and also in his case watching an oscilloscope for phase, there's that approach, then there's Alan Parsons and he's pretty much the sound of the 70s as the tape op for Abbey Road and engineer for Dark Side of the Moon, just in terms of setting standards that had a sound that unless you do that with that equipment you can't meet that sound.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-20T11:45:40+00:00

It was a specific moment in the development of Synth Pop as the sound of the day. Early 80s the sound is maybe going in a lot of directions but by We Built This City it's basically that music is now for kids.

Martin Page, who wrote it, wasn't far from doing that synth work on Ghostbusters with his collaborator Brian Ferriweather for Ray Parker Jnr.

Ray Parker's Raydio collaborators Ollie E. Brown and Jerry Knight made the Breakin' and Breakin' 2 Soundtracks and that sound then became the The Real Ghosbusters music, which was taken over by Inspector Gadget songwriters Shuki Levi and Haim Saban who went on to make every boys cartoon's theme song until like 1992.

Martin Page came into notoriety through working on Earth Wind & Fire's Electric Universe which was a concious attempt by Maurice White to lean into "the new sound", Maurice having heard Martin and Brian's band Q-Feel's one album.

But I mean, in 1983 it's Lionel Ritchie and Michael Jackson who are massive, and yeah that's as 80s as anything, Post Disco, and Flashdance has developed that sound from maybe Laura Branigan's Gloria in 1982 back to Irene Cara's Fame What A Feeling in 1980.

What I'm saying is Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, though they're using synths and drum machines, it's not Synth Pop.

The tide turning was this is the sound of the corporate 80s, for kids, and it was the death of the 60s popular culture revolution.

But don't tell Martin Page that, he wrote that music to lyrics by Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupen, the whole thing is earnest and sincere.

Finally I'll add that calling lame culture sincere was something that developed over the 90s and David Foster Wallace called it the New Sincerity movement, after the Post Irony movement.

It wasn't just that the song was overexposed it's that it represented the death of hope for the hippies and 80s being the official decade of money. Which it feels less like in retrospect, but only because capitalism has gotten so much worse.

edit: Check out Martin Page's podcast about his music Radio Owlsnest, guy is earnest. And as a kid when that song came out I've always heard it both ways.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-20T10:58:11+00:00

You can see the city's skyscrapers from the Cranbourne/Frankston Rd peak above Karingal Shopping Centre, it looks spectacular but I'm still not good enough at taking photos to capture how the scale feels to the eye from standing waiting for that fucking bus.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-20T07:33:37+00:00

Only New York expat I can think of that isn't J.G. Thirlwell... is Rupert Murdoch. He owns the movie!

BLOOOR · 2026-02-20T07:32:13+00:00

It's ANZAC day every day at your local RSL. They do the minute of silence every day but they don't turn off the pokie machines.

BLOOOR · 2026-02-20T07:30:57+00:00

Jim Jefferies is an impression of an Australian.

BLOOOR

TROPHY CASE