I learned that I love Lola Albright and her science-appropriate couture.
Honestly, and I think I say this on behalf of everyone, it's been one helluva week and this has been, hands-down the best release.
Very grateful and seriously happy.
Thanks @Taweret@octodon.social for the flik and @cheribaker for the bingo and everyone for the community.
In conclusion, I give #TheMonolithMonsters 4/5 looming gigantic evil crystals. It is notable in that it both displays the scientific method while at the same time using wacky-town banana-pants science logic. It is notable that the tiny western town is excited about geology. I appreciate that the plot was resolved via Explosive Altruism. The movie would be improved if it had more godzillas, and/or more lesbians.
you know this is all fiction because not one cop is taking money under the table to fuck some poor shmuck up; and they get to the scene of an emergency in less than 5 minutes
#Monsterdon #TheMonolithMonsters "Mom, WHY are you watching this?!" -- #CeCeCat ππ€£πΉ
@Crazypedia "Do you think it'll ever rain again, like it did a few days ago?"
"Nope, never. Everything is solved"
The original working title for the movie was "Somewhat Lethal Rocks Versus Saline Solution" but marketing spiced it up a bit for wide release as "Monolith Monsters."
So, what did we learn today? Never take nature for granite. #monsterdon
Please, please, let the town be destroyed by their stupid plan.
#monsterdon "You can't blow up that dam, that's privately owned!"
"That's a six million dollar irrigation installation!"
_extremely Ellen Ripley voice_ "They can _bill me_!"
(And what have we learned about the overlap of public liability with private ownership of infrastructure projects, kids? That's right, public/private partnerships may not deserve to be dismissed out of hand but broadly fail to deliver on their promised potential due to misaligned incentives and timescales!)
For the last half hour of the movie, the actors pretty much just stood in a parking lot doing facial-reaction expressions that they could splice in between miniature segments
#monsterdon These medical professionals are awfully swift to declare that Ginny is out of danger after addressing a previously unseen affliction with a previously unused treatment and observing a single positive swing in her vitals
Everyone just keep on handling the killer rocks.
#monsterdon
@Taweret@octodon.social lol, it feels like COVID in how they've declared victory a little bit too soon
#monsterdon AND THAT'S A WRECK! The alien-silicate monoliths definitely did not fuck off into the sea because that is salt water that for some reason halts their growth. The town lives on in fear of the next rainstorm, we never address the concept of the preservation of mass, and presumably the terrifyingly dangerous rocks are dealt with safely and swiftly by putting them someplace on earth where there is no water!
Thank you @Taweret@octodon.social for organizing! Thank you @cheribaker for the bingo card!
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It's funny, people are just reading their lines in a compact time frame as possible - no time for acting
AHA! so they diverted & dammed the water from most likely native & african american reservations and land grants and now the black rock & roll curse is coming to bite them in the ass.
y'all fuck around with the orishas & cemΓs, you find out
that guy's hair takes a whole pot of pommade, doesn't it?
Yeah so this rock has killed a bunch of people, let's just sit around handling it for a while longer.
Everybody please stop touching the rocks, ffs....
#monsterdon OK, so we have established this rocks are gremlins in that they must never be allowed to get wet
Next we shall discover what happens when someone feeds their pet rock after midnight
#Monsterdon where the hell is Dam security? Must be the orchestra scared them off.
Boom - and there's your classic abrupt #monsterdon ending.
it was like they were directing water canons at those black rock & rollers
the end
Looks like these monoliths just hit rock bottom. #monsterdon
*explosives installation montage*
The Monoliths advancing on the town is pretty cool for the time, well done
Wondering if this movie inspired Alien at all, and something is going to burst out of the child....
the black stony phallus of DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
"Men Kneeling And Examining Rocks"
The Catalogue
Next on #themonolithmonsters human science advances as we go to the house that was destroyed by evil rocks and look at the rocks, confirming that have different colors. Also, they have the magic power to turn things that aren't rocks into rocks... they are like evil rock vampires... or maybe zombies.... or maybe borg... they assimilate you so that you are also rock. Anyway, when they do this, people die because rocks are too stiff to be a people.
You're right, she is special. She's a stone kid. #monsterdon
#TheMonolithMonsters so the boringest scooby doo gang gets in their Megacar and visits the Little Girl's homestead, to find that the house has been Destroyed by Rocks, in particular, evil black rocks. The Little Girl is there, but she's frozen but not quite dead yet. They take her home and look at her in the microscope, confirming that she's turning into a rock and we need to rush her to the nearest hospital's medusa ward.
#TheMonolithMonsters we get an autopsy debriefing where a doctor explains to the Probable Lead, the Newspaper Geologist and the Schoolteacher Lady that the geology guy was like welded together with magic and that's why he died. I think they decide the rock was evil, showing that the characters can figure out the story as well as the audience. They decide to investigate the homestead to make sure that the wet rock the little girl brought home doesn't do evil wet rock things.
#TheMonolithMonsters 6 minutes in, we see our second human in the movie, an older dude in a white suit and a mustache, with a bow tie. The first dude shows the white suit guy the cool rock he found, which the audience assumes came from space. We learn that both of these characters are Science Masters and also Geologists, and that Western California used to be an ocean, because this movie was made when Americans believed in science.
OMG people are already memeing the rock film
@diazona @kcarr2015 maybe they were hoping for a sequel?
"Monolith Monster's II: Electric Boogaloo"
@CactuarJoe but because Dan is a white guy, they let him off for it. #monsterdon
And the governor... was reasonable also. Huh
"wait til we see the whites of their eyes" is one of the most mildly racist things they've said in this movie to, yes, confirm this is all about them black rock & rollers
Sister Rosetta Tharpe would be side-eye them so hard.
Their plan better be rock-solid. Get it? Rock-solid? #monsterdon
"If it's dull and statistical, I've written about it."
He just described my former job working at an insurance company π€£π€£π€£
The "hey you can see them from here" scene has a real Simpsons episode vibe to it.
#Monsterdon #TheMonolithMonsters We have an impromptu war room where we figure out where we need to stop the evil rocks at. Because no one in this town has a map, we look at a painting of the town instead and point angrily.
#Monsterdon We do more science to battle the rocks. We are having no luck and then we discover our mistake - we thought that the Salt part of the Salty Drug was unnecessary, and the Drug part was what defeated the rocks! But no, because the rocks are fed by water, logic predicts that their natural enemy is salt, and so we need the salty part to kill the rocks. #TheMonolithMonsters
#monsterdon "I think we've got seven or eight hours, then Santangelo won't be much of a town."
You'll need a new municipal anthem, of course
"WE BUILT THIS CITY
WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK"
those black rock and rollers reproduce like maniacs with just a squirt of water
"I'm writing you up a ticket for growing crystals too fast"
#Monsterdon #TheMonolithMonsters A sad and panicked farmer drives up, reporting that his livestock and his dog have turned to stone, and his kids are sad. Me too kids, me too. His wife screams as she finds herself turning to stone.
Fortunately, we have to cure for turning to stone now, it is a salty drug, so the audience is assured that the screaming wife will be fine.
#Monsterdon #TheMonolithMonsters Since everyone will die if it keeps raining, our heroes make a phone call to the weather nerd, who, between eating raisins, tells them it will stop raining, but start raining in two days, meaning they have 2 days to stop the rocks from destroying the world. We call upon another temporary character, the Telephone Operator Lady, to warn all the police and tell everyone they need to evacuate the town.
#monsterdon Oh for pete's sake can you please turn off the bunsen burner before racing out into the rain
My #Monsterdon hot take for #TheMonolithMonsters is that it speaks to an era with a higher level of faith in science than most modern movies, because the characters are actually going the process of investigating a weird scenario and hypothesizing why things might happen. The logic of the scenario is insane, but they're approaching it in a very investigative way.
In most modern SF movies, the scientists act more like oracles than detectives.
Is that a pot of coffee on the bunsen burner?
Love how this is all happening before silicon chips become everywhere, whole other angle for invasion now!
I am learning so much about Silicon tonight
I love how everybody just touches the rocks and stands around the house destroyed by the rocks and nobody is thinking "gee, could it get me?"
It's like COVID
#monsterdon "The gas tank is in one piece, smashed but intact" THIS SENTENCE CHANGED DIRECTION THREE TIMES
Flanders is not a christofascist spreading toxic positivity, just a military-industrial-complex scientist spreading toxic positivity
there's always a university with an military-related institute near the extraction settler colonial suburb, that can help them with the alien invasion infestation problems π§
MICROSCOPE!
Benβs going to be expensive to ship. #monsterdon
Because #TheMonolithMonsters hasn't introduced any girls yet, we get a new scene where a Teacher Lady is taking some kids on a class field trip via her classy and yet somehow comical 1950s Megacar. One of the girls finds some lizards and a cool rock, which she takes back to her homestead, but it's one of the Evil Black Rocks from before. Ignorant of its terrible power, she gets it wet, which is a thing you should probably never do with Evil Rocks!
that little girl is a chismosa. she's gonna get monolithed.
#TheMonolithMonsters We see our first human, as a guy in a notable hat drives his wood bodied surf wagon into the desert and tries to refuel it, only for it to have a leak that I guess waters some meteors. The surf wagon is labelled "Department of the Interior", which is a US government department that I does does natural resources things, like casting Druid spells.
He then drives off past a model of the Parthenon and into a 1950s Western Town, which I guess is in California.
#monsterdon This quaint little village scene looks awfully familiar. I'm sure Lorelai Gilmore is about to walk by and get a grumpy telling-off from Luke for drinking way too much coffee.
These are definitely alien rocks. They vape! #Monsterdon
I can only assume this is a documentary about the downfall and last days of free DNS hosting site ML dot org (a.k.a. Monolith) in the 1990s. #Monsterdon #TheMonolithMonsters
IN THE FUTURE YEAR OF 2024 WE WELCOME THE METEOR
#Monsterdon that was a lot of basaltic Viagra! Now the town will lack stiffness and vigor!
It's not exactly a gem, but I do appreciate a classic nonsense science flick. It would have been hard to take it seriously, but thank goodness the commentary section rocks, as usual. I think we have all gotten a little stoned tonight.
Thanks @Taweret for hosting and everyone for posting! Looking forward to next week!
anyway in conclusion
...and it turns out he was joking about what the Governor said and Dave is in a lot of trouble for that and the deaths of all the towns' children
I guess the EPA cleaned up all the magic meteor rocks before it rained again.
So yeah, I really want a remake of this movie that focuses on the little moments of property law and political niceties they had. There's a natural disaster, but you can't fix it until the governor gets there. You can't investigate it without funding from the Dep't of the Interior. The local newspaper has to get its licks in, even the kids who deliver for him have their price to be paid. The real threat isn't the rocks. The real threat is the ungreased wheels of capitalism. #Monsterdon
I guess they functionally made a sea to fuck off into the monsters? Anyway, that movie had some good moments. Good night!
"Dave, is everything alright?"
"Well, except for the crystals from space killing everyone in the valley, and the explosives I've just installed in the dam, sure, everything is peachy."
so they gotta turn SoCal into another mormonland to stop the black rock & roll monsters.
this is not gonna end well.
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a dam. #monsterdon
One might consider evacuating the town before blowing up a nearby dam, but what do I know
Our plan to defeat them is blow up a dam and flood the rocks with salt water, killing them. Someone objects that the dam is both privately owned and expensive, but the Probable Lead invents communism and is like "Fuck that! The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few! Or the One!" and then they go to put up explosives around the damn.
@paco I would have thought people would get the Wheel right away, it's not Mastodon #monsterdon
@athena_rising There's no room for pedantry when saving humanity, my friend. They're doing science!
#Monsterdon I want a crossover between Papergirls and #TheMonolithMonsters where the titular Papergirls have to actually deliver these evacuation papers in the 1950s, in between the time travel shenanigans. I predict that this crossover would be very popular with between 1 and 6 people, one of which is me.
that slightly long kiss was considered 'Sex' in Wisconsin
In case you were wondering, there are no non-white people in town.
Whenever I watch old black and white movies, I'm always always impressed at how amazingly well-dressed everybody used to be. It's a dead art in life.
so the "silicone" is sucked from the white people, they turn ashy blackβ¦ just sayin π§
#Monsterdon #TheMonolithMonsters good news as the little girl is feeling better and can move again, even if she's trapped in the iron lung thing that I called a reverse MRI machine because I don't know how 1950s medical technology works. We cured her by making a Salty Drug using the the power of science.
We suggest using the same therapy used on the little girl to defeat the giant evil space rock. The doctor repeats the chemical formula for the Salty Drug over the phone.
Car 42 - they've got the answer to life, the universe and everything geological.
"Mommy, my laptop has lost internet!"
If it's scary enough to scare the sassy telephone operator, you know it's serious!
when they didn't have satellites to view the weather
This man is basically making it up, isn't he?
#Monsterdon #TheMonolithMonsters Okay so if this was a Japanese movie then those crystal meteor spires would hatch into giant kaiju that godzilla (or a color coded team of superheroes with alien technology) would have to fight to save the earth. The kaiju would be played by dudes in strangely angular clothes that look like rocks, and the production quality would be extremely cheap but everyone would appreciate it nonetheless because of the creativity that went into it.
JFC, how long did it take them to work out it was WATER
They're heating coffee over an open gas jet.
C'mon white men, it's the WATER that's making the rock grow
This is why you need diversity in Science
#monsterdon OMINOUS ZOOM IN ON THE ROCK THAT IS SITTING THERE BEING A ROCK
#TheMonolithMonsters bruh its a rock. kind of a stretch to say that it's been gathering the secrets of the universe for billions of years. #Monsterdon