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the-bejeesus · 5 years ago

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To Those Who Say “I’m not gonna catch up on One Piece until it’s finished. Why would I watch/read 1000+ episodes/chapters when I don’t even get to know how the story ends?”

Now for the past few years, when I came across somebody who said this, my rebute would be something like “Well the series is great already. It doesn’t really matter if I don’t know how it ends, because the journey itself is enjoyable.” or “Man if that’s your excuse, who you gonna explain why you read/watch stuff like Berserk, Hunter X Hunter, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and My Hero Academia? Newsflash, they aren’t done yet.” But it came across my mind that I can now apply a completely different approach:

“If you start watching/reading at this pace right now, it will be over by the time you catch up.”

If you’re a fan of the series, you’ll know that for awhile now Oda has been saying that he plans to end the series in just 5-4 years. Now he’s made lots of claims in the past that turned out to be ridiculous. However, many One Piece researchers have compiled his claims and found out that they only get more accurate as time goes on, with the most ridiculous claims being found to be myths. And with the most recent claims of ending the series in less than 5 years, even his editors who are usually skeptical have started to trust that he can do this. After all, he has officially set there to be only one more saga (which isn’t necessarily one arc, but it’s either going to be 1-2 major arcs or an anthology of 5-6 shorter arcs). And now that we can trust this claim, we can essentially extrapolate how many chapters/episodes are left and what pace we have to binge to catch up at just the right time.

If you plan to read the manga (black and white):

The manga in black in white is a perfectly fine way to enjoy One Piece. It’s what Oda draws, it’s how he intends it to be viewed, and best of all, it will be the first version of publication to finish.

Out of the 1223 weeks since the first chapter published in July 19, 1997, 1000 chapters have published, meaning on average he publishes 42 chapters per year, or in other words, there are only 10 hiatuses per year (including holidays where WSJ does not publish). Now if I wanted to be more accurate, I’d only look at the chapters published this year, to exclude outliers like how he had no hiatuses for the first 200 chapters, or how he had a 4-week hiatus during the timeskip, but 2020 has been a bit crazy, so we’re not doing that for this or any of the others.

Going off of this, the final chapter would be chapter 1212 in December 28, 2025 (yes, the 28th would be a Sunday again.) So here’s how you’d calculate the pace in which you need to read One Piece, and really this is how we’ll calculate it for every version)

Now I know math is boring, but the reason I’m showing this to you is because the amount of weeks until One Piece ends will vary based on when you start this binge. Chances are you aren’t going to start the day you see this post, and there’s an even greater chance you won’t see this post the day it’s posted. For every example I’m going to assume you started binging on December 28, 2020. Now let’s try to use it for this example.

And there’s your answer, just read 4-5 chapters per week. By the end, One Piece should be nearly over or have very recently ended. To put that into a different perspective, you could purchase and read just two volumes per month and you’ll be at prime pace. Or you could read one chapter every day, but only on weekdays. If you want to, you can see this calculation in action in graph form.

While this is a very rudimentary graph, it’s a basic visualization of what we’re calculating here. We’re calculating what speed we need to binge to catch up at exactly the right moment. I say exact, but ultimately no one can predict how many chapters there will be exactly, nor how many hiatuses Oda will go on during it. It will be important, as you’re nearing the end, to find a spoiler-free way to keep up on how close One Piece is to ending. To know whether you ought to speed up or slow down.

If you plan to watch the anime (subtitled):

For years now people have hated on the anime “terrible animation!” “terrible pacing” but at the end of the day, it’s the more popular version. Or the more viewed version I should say. And personally, I think that once you acknowledge its problems and learn how to deal with them, it’s a perfectly fine experience. There’s enough good voice acting and enough good storytelling that you’re easily able to ignore the problems. Plus, the animation has substantially improved since Wano.

Now for this we’re going to have to change a lot of variables to get this right. We’re going to have to adjust when publication started, and recalculate when One Piece will end by looking at how slowly the anime adapts the manga, and how behind it is. The anime aired on October 20, 1999, and has aired 956 episodes since then. This means on average they air 44.9 episodes per year, meaning there is pretty much only 7 breaks the entire year. With these 956 episodes, they have adapted 955 chapters, making the pace almost exactly one chapter per episode. However this is really inaccurate, considering all the better-paced arcs earlier on in the story. Looking solely at episodes 2012 and onwards, the anime adapts at a pace of 0.65 chapters/episode.

Knowing that there are roughly 212 chapters left, and Toei adapts at 0.65 chapters per episode, we can assume that there are going to be roughly 324 episodes left. That sounds like too many, but keep in mind that there will be several, several instances where the manga will be on hiatus whereas the anime will keep on airing. Knowing there are approximately 324 episodes left, and that the anime only takes about 7 breaks a year, we can assume that it will take 7 years, or 374.49 weeks before the anime will end. So now we have the information we need to do the math again.

x = 1280/374.49

x = 3.417 episodes/week.

It may seem like a more relaxed binge, since you get a whole 2 extra years to binge, and you only have to do 3-4 episodes per week, compared to the 4-5 chapters. But keep in mind that these episodes are 24 minutes each. Still not at all bad, but you will be spending more time on it overall.

If you plan to watch One Pace:

One Pace is a fan project that edits the anime so that filler and padding is cut, other edits will be made to make the anime more manga-accurate, such as reorganizing scenes, or adding title cards where absent. Originally only used by a niche number of One Piece fans, One Pace has grown in popularity, and has tried to improve its quality to accommodate more fans, such as making their episodes Dual Audio (meaning you can switch between the dub and original Japanese audio tracks), and including Spanish subtitles.

You’d think we’d have to adjust for when One Pace began, how slowly One Pace catches up, and the works, but there’s not much to calculate. Fortunately for us, no matter how far behind One Pace is on editing the current arc, they always like to wrap things up just a few weeks within when an arc ended, if not the very same week. So really all we have to calculate is how many One Pace episodes there will be by the end of all this, so that we know how many you’ll need to watch per week.

Looking solely at what they’ve covered so far, One Pace has taken 573 episodes and condensed it down to 259 episodes. That’s a pace of 2.21 anime episodes/ paced episode. Earlier we calculated that there would be 324 episodes of the anime left, making for 1280 episodes total. This would mean that there would be around 578 One Pace episodes by the end. And One Pace would probably wrap up in, let’s say 376 weeks, because as I said, they’ll probably finish editing the final arc a week or two after the last episode airs.

x = 578/376

x = 1.53 episodes per week

Now that’s a relaxed pace. 1-2 episodes per week? That’s so slow, I’m not even sure if I’ll remember what I watched last week next time I watch some episodes. The only problem is some of the pre-timeskip still haven’t been edited. They’ll probably be done by the time they finish the final arc, but that’s not gonna work out fast enough. You’ll hit your first roadblock about 7 weeks in when you need to watch the Baratie arc and it’s not done. And don’t even get me started on how many arcs aren’t done in dub or Spanish sub yet. Hopefully you could just switch to the anime or manga when you hit these arcs, readjusting how many episodes/chapters you need to watch/read when you do. But that’s a bit of an excessive amount of math for something that’s supposed to be fun. So yeah, if you’re still convinced you shouldn’t get into One Piece until it’s ended, maybe this is the option for you.

If you plan to read the manga (Colored):

Since 2012, Shueisha has made a colorization of One Piece. It’s not a fan coloring, it’s as official as it gets. Many consider the color schemes portrayed in this version as the most canon, as the majority are pulled straight from whatever colored illustrations of Oda’s they can find. And quite frankly it makes the manga at least 10 times more beautiful. It’s especially great if you have trouble interpreting dense, small black and white panels.

This one is a doozy. You’d think all I gotta do is calculate how far behind the colored manga usually and just adjust from there, right? Wrong. Because how far behind the colored manga is, or how frequently they release volumes in full color, is one of the most inconsistent things I have ever seen. You wanna see what I’m talking about? This is how they’ve chosen to release each volume since 2012:

Volume 1-12: July 15, 2012

Volume 13-23: September 28, 2012

Volume 24-63: December 4, 2012

Volume 64-65: April 4, 2013

Volume 66-68: December 20, 2013

Volume 69-70: August 25, 2014

Volume 71-72: September 16, 2015

Volume 73-75: October 4, 2016

Volume 76: December 2, 2016

Volume 77: March 3, 2017

Volume 78: July 2, 2017

Volume 79: September 4, 2017

Volume 80: December 4, 2017

Volume 81-82: March 3, 2018

Volume 83: October 4, 2018

Volume 84-86: August 2, 2019

Volume 87-92: September 16, 2020

How I am supposed to find out how long it will take for Shueisha to colorize the final volume of One Piece is beyond me. I guess the first step would be to look at how far behind the manga each release was on average, but I’m going to ignore all the ones before 2013, because those were clearly just Shueisha catching up really fast cause they just started and didn’t want to be dozens of volumes behind forever. So of the 14 publications between 2013 and now, on average the last chapter of the last volume they colored was 97.78 weeks after that chapter had published in Weekly Shonen Jump. This means that if the final chapter of One Piece is chapter 1212 on December 28, 2025, then you can expect the final colored volume to publish November 14, 2027.

x = 1212/359

x = 3.37 chapters/week

So if you prefer the manga but don’t want to read 5 chapters every week for 5 years, this might be a better option for ya. But yea, I have no doubt my prediction is at least a little off for this one.

If you plan to watch the anime (dubbed):

Unlike the 4KidsTV and Odex dubs of One Piece, the FUNimation dub is a perfect way to enjoy One Piece. The DVDs come with enjoyable commentary and a marathon mode, great for binging.

FUNimation’s releases of the dub are inconsistent, although not nearly as erratic as the colored manga release. However, there was recently a 2-year hiatus we only just got out of. Since Episode 1′s dub in May 27, 2008, the dub has gotten as far as Episode 614. But that’s only looking at the DVD releases. If you’re willing to stream on FUNimationnow, the dub is as far as 641, and if you’re willing to digitally purchase it from an e-shop such as the Microsoft store, it goes all the way to Episode 654. With that being said, that would mean that on average, FUNimation dubs 1.004 episodes per week. Although if we go back to before the two-year hiatus so as to exclude it from the average, it’s actually 1.10 episodes per week. Not a huge difference, actually. And then if we look solely after the two-year hiatus, it’s actually 2.25 episodes per week, which is insanely faster. It’s hard to tell what the future of the dub will be. I can’t assume they’ll go this fast forever, so I’m just going to take the average of all 3 and say it’s 1.45 episodes per week. Don’t know if that’s the best mathematical approach, but the number seems about right.

So knowing that the dub is at Episode 654 and looking at our previous guesstimation that the anime will be 1280 episodes long, we can predict that it will take 431 weeks before the dub catches up and ends. That would be in 2029! Sounds quick at first until you notice it’s 4 years behind!

x = 1280/431

x = 2.96 episodes per week

Looks like it’s almost exactly 3 episodes per week. Not as much less of a workload as I expected, compared to catching up to the sub. You know, I figured those 4 extra years would make you binge a lot slower.

Final Thoughts:

There’s a lot of my math that was estimation, approximations, extrapolations. Feel free to correct me or fact check me, especially if you plan on using this. I figured this would be a fun thought excercise. There’s also a lot of smaller variables I simply didn’t want to take into account because of how long this is already. For example, reading the black and white manga. The calculation can vary slightly depending on if you read it the day it’s published (which I assume would have to be a fanscan unless you can read Japanese), reading the weekly publication legally on Viz.com, waiting for the physical volume release. The dub can also vary depending on whether you buy from Microsoft, wait for the FUNimationnow release, wait for the DVDs, or wait for the Collection sets. So feel free to take this into account.

#One Piece #OP #ワンピース #Wan Pīsu #anime #manga #FUNimation #dub #One Pace

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stvlti · 5 years ago

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2020 Creator Wrap

I was tagged by @irolltwenties to do the 2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works tag! Thank you, lovely (*˘ ε ˘*)

Rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought to the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Before I begin, let me just tag some friends:

@reaperlight @3dnygma @drowthelynes @transdankovsky @fantomn @lawliyeeeet @dressed-to-keehl @setfa @0akdown @reidsnor @clubolive @mermaides

No pressure, but it would be fun if you guys share some of your works this year ( ˘︶˘ ) let’s see those fics and edits and artworks!! Get the clicks and views y’all deserve 💕 💕

And now, onwards to my 2020 Favorite Works List!

I didn’t write nearly as much as some of you guys did. And though I did exceed my goal of putting out 1 fic per month, I don’t have 5 solid ones I’m proud of. So I’ll just list 4 fics here:

01 // Growing Pains

I’ve always been very nervous about reccing this one, because it broaches a topic that I don’t really have a right to claim? I’m not transgender myself, but I simply adore the trans Dick Grayson headcanon so much it singlehandedly brought me back to the DC fandom and restarted my fanfic-writing habit for 2020 😂😂 plus the writing quality isn’t half bad, and I still really like the idea/metaphor this little story started with and grew from.

Fave moment (besides the obvious):

"Ka-Pow!!" The boy ventriloquised. Lego Robin sailed through the air in his fingers. One stubby, outstretched leg made contact with a Lego henchman, knocking all the surrounding baddies over like bowling pins. "Sorry Mr. Bad Guys, guess it's way past your bedtime too!"

"Good job, Robin." The boy lowered his prepubescent voice and tried to affect Batman's gravelly timbre as much as possible. In his other hand, he walked Lego Batman across the floor of the crime scene. "How about we round them up and leave it for the Commish? It's getting quite late."

"Oh oh! Can I have cookies on the ride back?"

The boy swivelled Lego Batman's grinning face around. "I don't see why not."

Another night out in Lego Gotham City, another day saved by the Dynamic Duo. This called for a celebration indeed. The boy set the pair of heroes down by the Lego Batmobile and reached over to his own plate of Alfred's after-school chocolate chip cookies. He took his sweet time with the last piece, savouring each bite, sighing at the way it melted on his tongue.

02 // Transference

This is my best-performing fic in terms of the kudos to hits ratio, so I feel validated in being proud of this one :’) It’s a pretty good marker of the distances I’ve covered since getting serious about reading the comic source material end of 2019, as you can see from the much broader and varied cast of characters I focused on for this story. It also definitely cemented - to me, at least - the fact that I can write action scenes. When I went into “Second Chances” (a fem Jay fic) earlier this year, I was so nervous about writing the action sequence there, because I’ve never written a serious action scene up until that point! To me, this fic definitely showcases the growth I’ve experienced as a writer this year ^_^

Fave moment: (CONTAINS SPOILERS, PLEASE READ THE FIC FIRST IF YOU HAVEN’T!)

When the trio return, Ivy takes her place at the meeting table with a severe expression on her face. She chooses her words carefully, when she speaks. "The odds aren't pretty. We just accepted 100 refugees over the weekend, and the Green is still repairing itself after last week's attack."

Rose exchanges a glance with Jason. He gives her hand a reassuring squeeze, though he's not looking any better than she feels.

"But, each and everyone of us stayed behind to defend the Garden, because we all believed in giving a sanctuary for the civilian survivors out there.

"So bring them here. I'll take them in."

No sooner has Ivy finished the sentence, than Zatanna and Constantine have fired up their teleportation portal, and Harley's cheerful "Good luck!" is lost to the mad dash off to the rescue mission. The rest of the Shadowpact scramble after Rose as she launches herself through the portal—

—and slams into Arsenal, pushing him out of the way seconds before a meteoric explosion of green fire incinerates the very spot he'd been standing in.

03 // Paying It Forward

This one is important to me if only for the reason that it’s the first time I’ve written character dialogues that flowed. And I didn’t even need to plan them out meticulously beforehand! Do you know how rare that is for me as an ESL writer? Dialogues have been the bane of my existence since I started writing as a wee teen. Luckily, the Titans TV show has some solid character dynamics for me to fall back on. And from there I started reading NTT era Dick & Donna, and I just fell in love with their friendship. And now, I can turn to this fic as proof I still got it whenever I doubt my abilities as a writer c:

Fave moment:

Dick glanced at her, eyebrows raised. "She ran out on you?"

"No, no, we never really... I don't think it counts as running away if it never led to anything more."

"But you wanted it to be more." Dick paused, taking in Donna's silence, which would've fooled anyone else but him. "You still want it."

"I-- yeah." Donna sighed and held her hands up as if to say you caught me. "I'm... Sorry? For stealing your girl?"

Dick laughed, bemused. "She was never mine. She knew what she wanted, what she needed - and I wasn't in the right place to give her that."

"And you? You think I'm what she needs?"

"Better you than me. You're Donna Troy. Older, smarter, prettier..."

Donna gave him a deadpan stare.

"... And you know who you want to be. She likes that in a partner. I'm still figuring that one out for myself." Dick stretched his arms up and then leaned back into his seat, lacing his fingers behind his head as he stared up into the ceiling.

04 // When I'm down on my knees, you're how I pray

I’m including this one just to showcase I got the range, babey. And honestly, the fact that I was able to write this fic and actually receive positive reviews for it was a surprise to me too!! This was the first time I ever attempted to write a real darkfic with dead dove subject matters, and I managed to nail the emotional manipulation, somehow ;__; It was a real learning experience too, learnt so much about Catholicism just to write about Dick’s guilt issues in an AU setting nobody asked for 🤡

Fave moment: (dead dove warnings apply)

"Not at all, Richard," Roman said. The boy would come to him, eventually. "Now, it's getting late. If that's all, I'll have Jason fetch your room keys. Seven Hail Mary's before bed, and think about everything we've just discussed. Tomorrow we'll do a proper debriefing."

"I... Okay." For a moment, Dick sounded like he had more to say. Instead, Roman heard a muffled sniffle, one that Dick likely tried to disguise with a hand over his mouth. Silly boy.

"Thank you again, Father," Dick said, after a beat.

"All in a day's work, my child." Roman unlatched the door and stepped out of the booth. He nodded at Dick as the younger man ambled out of the booth after him. "Goodnight now, Richard."

As he set off for the living quarters, Dick called out. "Wait!"

Roman turned around, inclining his head.

"Will you stay?" The candlelight chased shadows away from Dick's face, and for one glorious moment, Roman could see the depth of the desperation shining in Dick's blue eyes.

"Guide me through my prayers. Please."

Roman smiled.

Oh did you think I was done? 😂 It did say Favourite Works and not just Favourite Fics, so I gotta include this one on the list too:

05 // 2020 Jason Todd Birthday edit

I said Robin Jason deserves better and I meant it! 👏👏 This edit took me 12 hours and 67 layers ‘cause I made a mistake on like my 8th hour into the editing process o__o but it ended up being my most popular serious graphic edit, so it was worth it. I guess!

I mean the likes to reblog ratio is still fucked but hey, I broke 1k, which is more than I can say for any of my other edits

#tag meme #writerly things #long post #writerly tag

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sheliesshattered · 5 years ago

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This Isn’t A Ghost Story extras for Chapter 7: The Museum

The penultimate chapter of This Isn’t A Ghost Story has been posted! It’s here on Tumblr and here on AO3. Lots of pictures, explanations, and a few spoilers below the cut. The extras follow the flow of the chapter, so it’s safe to follow along with this post as you read, if you like.

Chapter 7 is named for and takes place in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo. This is the same location where Clara and the Doctor first met in 1921, as detailed in the journal entries in chapter 3 and some of Clara’s recovered memories in chapter 4. The museum was originally built in 1901, and besides a few modernizing improvements over the years, it hasn’t changed much since then. Here’s a postcard depicting the museum while it was being built:

And the museum as it appears today in modern Cairo:

The interior of the museum hasn’t changed much either, and a few of the larger artifacts haven’t even been moved since they were originally put in place for the opening in 1902.

Here’s a short walk-through video of both the entrance and the interior of the museum, showing what it looked like in 2017. The new Grand Egyptian Museum was supposed to open in the spring of 2020, but has been pushed back to at least 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. For Ghost Story I decided to skip right over 2020 and assume that by May 2021, the original Cairo Museum will still be open to the public, whether or not GEM has finally opened.

Clara asks the Doctor if he remembers what she wore to that black-tie party in 1921, and I have to imagine it was something like her dress from Mummy On The Orient Express:

This amazing dress from 1925 is also a strong contender.

While the Cairo Museum doesn’t have a reproduction of the tomb of Thutmose III like I described in this chapter (and, in fact, until the new museum opens, the Cairo Museum is far too crowded with artifacts to be able to devote an entire room to Thutmose III), that specific burial chamber has been recreated at a museum in England, with stunning attention to detail:

Comparing it to the original tomb in the Valley of the Kings, you can see how accurately they’ve reproduced it:

Clara comments on the star ceiling, photographed in the original tomb here:

Which, as the Doctor notes, is a common feature in a lot of 18th dynasty and other New Kingdom architecture, and in This Isn’t A Ghost Story connects directly with Clara’s star sapphire wedding ring:

Those of you who have followed me here on Tumblr the last few months may have heard me yell about the tomb of Thutmose III before, and in particular the art depicting the Amduat aka The Twelve Hours of the Night. What Clara describes as “stylised stick figures” is in fact what the walls of the burial chamber are absolutely covered in, and I cannot overstate my love for it. I mean:

I love this art style, possibly more than anything else in all of ancient Egyptian art. I love how stylized and timeless it is, I love that it’s used to tell a complex story that is part of an even more complex funerary tradition. I love the sweeping lines and tiny bits of shading, I love the little upturned toes of their shoes and the tiniest hint of hand shapes. I love their skinny little arms and skinny little legs, oh my god. The fact that this is a real 3500 year old work of art constantly boggles my mind.

The reproduction of the tomb of Thutmose III at Bolton’s museum in England also has a short video that retells the story of the Amduat in gorgeous stylized animation, following the recently deceased pharaoh as he joins Ra on his journey through the underworld to rebirth, if you would like a more complete idea of what the wall art is depicting.

The Twelve Hours of the Night poem Clara quotes is credited to the poet William Ashbless, the less about whom is said the better. But if your curiosity compels you (and I certainly hope it does), I do highly recommend Tim Powers’ excellent novel The Anubis Gates. Tim Powers is possibly my all-time favorite author, and a huge influence on all of my writing. This Isn’t A Ghost Story is quite definitely the most Powers-esque thing I’ve ever written, and was probably influenced most specifically by The Anubis Gates, Declare, and The Stress of Her Regard. Finding a way to work in a subtle nod to both Ashbless and The Anubis Gates felt fitting and highly amusing to me.

My long-standing love for the Amduat was an early part of the development of this story, coming right on the heels of deciding to give the Doctor a background in Egyptology. I spent a fair part of mid-June digging into research on the Amduat, reading every little scrap about it that I could wring out of the internet. On June 19th -- three months ago this weekend -- all of that research quite suddenly solidified into this chapter, which at the time I figured would be chapter 6, before chapter 5 up and decided to split into two chapters.

Using the twelve hours of the night as the linchpin for the happy ending I wanted for these two really helped solidify and clarify my ideas about how the Doctor functioned as a ghost with regard to sunlight. The sunlight/darkness and day/night theme is really the backbone to the whole story, and is also echoed by the dichotomy of Clara’s wedding ring, which looks like a star in the night sky, but only when viewed in direct sunlight. All of that, from chapter 1 onward and even the story’s title, was leading to this moment, the twist at the end of this chapter.

I wrote the first draft of this chapter in basically one go, beginning to end, which is super unusual for me for any scene, much less an entire chapter. The first version was about 400 words shorter than the final version, and almost all of that growth was in the moment right after the Doctor starts feeling lightheaded. I wanted that sequence to have enough emotional weight, without tipping over into feeling like I was milking it for melodrama. While editing this chapter, Jack said that he thinks there will be a lot of wailing in the comments this week, and I’m very curious to see how that moment will go over for all of you.

Clara and the Doctor have so many exquisite moments of heartbreak in canon that I couldn’t help but borrow from them all heavily here. And as a writer who really enjoys eliciting emotion from the reader as well as communicating the emotions of the characters, I couldn’t resist the urge to make you, my lovely readers, think that I just might take this down the path of tragedy, even if only for a couple of paragraphs. I would say I’m sorry except that I’m really, really not. :D

We’re down to just one chapter to go now, an even shorter epilogue that grew out of some of the research I did for this chapter. I’ll be back next week with the behind the scenes details for that chapter, as well as a few things about the story as a whole, including the full timeline for Clara and the Doctor.

Do you have any questions for me heading into the final chapter? Any behind the scenes details you’d like me to cover? Let me know! ❤️

Extras for Chapter 8: The Temple

#This Isn't A Ghost Story #This Isn't A Ghost Story extras #process thoughts #my writing #Doctor Who #Doctor Who fanfic #Clara and the Doctor

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odanurr87 · 5 years ago

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My thoughts on... The King: Eternal Monarch

Lee Min-ho as Lee Gon, and Kim Go-eun as Jeong Tae-eul.

Release date: April 17 - June 12, 2020

Episodes: 16

Available on: Netflix

Plot synopsis: On one fateful night of December 1994, the king of the Kingdom of Corea was brutally murdered by his illegitimate brother, Lee Lim. The king’s son, Lee Gon, was spared a similar fate thanks to the timely intervention of a mysterious saviour, who only left behind an identity card belonging to one Lieutenant Jeong Tae-eul. 15 years later, King Lee Gon finds himself transported to the parallel world of the Republic of Korea where he meets Lieutenant Jeong Tae-eul and together they work to uncover a conspiracy across their two worlds.

Rewatch meter: Medium to High

Introduction

The King: Eternal Monarch is the latest work by writer Kim Eun-sook and, since I enjoyed two of her previous works (Descendants of the Sun and Goblin), I was quite looking forward to it. I didn't know actor Lee Min-ho at the time but I recalled Kim Go-eun from Goblin so I was relatively excited to see her in another main role. The pilot episode of the show was great, deftly introducing us to a host of characters and setting up several plot threads in a total runtime of 70 minutes, already incorporating the concepts of time travel and parallel worlds, not an easy task and a much welcome departure from most kdramas on air. Since I am a fan of sci-fi and modern fantasy however, that meant I'd put this show under the microscope so how did it fare?

Related reviews: Goblin

Characters

From left to right: Lee Jung-jin as Lee Lim, Jung Eun-chae as Goo Seo-rung, Lee Min-ho as Lee Gon, Kim Go-eun as Jeong Tae-eul, Woo Do-hwan as Jo Yeong, and Kim Kyung-nam as Kang Shin-jae.

The show enjoys, and suffers from, a host of characters on both worlds, with many actors playing dual roles because of the concept of parallel worlds. This (over)abundance of characters results in most having to play second fiddle to the two leads. In hindsight, a tighter cast would've worked better. A fair few of the characters (e.g. the detective hiding something from his wife, the pregnant lady, the mother of Lee Gon's doppelganger, god kid, and many more) did not ultimately justify their presence other than to set up (underwhelmingly resolved) mysteries to keep the audience engaged. More important characters, like Prime Minister Koo and Lee Lim, sadly never reached their full potential to my mind, being relegated to play more stereotypical antagonist roles in the end. While I can understand this decision with Lee Lim to an extent, it was a shame Prime Minister Koo’s character wasn’t more nuanced. While Lee Min-ho's characterization of Lee Gon has taken some flak I found him to act more or less in line with how a (fictional) king would, one excited at the prospect of having found the woman he's been searching for for most of his life. Kim Go-eun as Jeong Tae-eul was the one who truly delivered on the emotional end of the spectrum, as we all knew she would. Sadly, the character of Luna was more undercooked, and the show could probably have done without her.

Pacing

The all-out battle at the end of Episode 11, with Lee Gon showing off his skill with the sword, is one of the highlights of the show.

While the pacing of the show ramped up considerably towards the end it actually started rather slowly. Lee Gon discovers the Republic of Korea at the end of the first episode, yes, but it is not until the end of Episode 4 that he returns to his kingdom, with a skeptical Jeong Tae-eul in tow. Then, it is at the end of Episode 9 that Lee Gon and Lee Lim have their first encounter, with an all-out battle with Lee Lim's henchmen at the end of Episode 11, and the reveal of the identity of the savior at the end of Episode 13. I was quite satisfied with the show's pacing up until that point but a little worried about how they would tie everything up with 3 episodes left, worries that proved to be justified, as many plot threads were left unresolved or rushed to conclusion without living up to the expectations built up after several episodes. Considering the last episode of the show solves the main conflict in the first 20 minutes, I don't think this faster pacing was justified.

Execution

It is difficult not to conclude the execution of the plot wasn't nearly as tight as it could've been. The show continuously introduced new questions, new mysteries, and new characters, to keep us guessing, to keep us engaged, sometimes to the detriment of the overall storytelling quality. Who is this new character? How does s/he factor in Lee Lim's plan? Who's sending this stuff to PM Koo? What is the significance of the scars? There is no doubt these questions succeeded in keeping us engaged and I have to give it props for that. However, the execution was dragged down from indulging in superfluous characters and plot threads. Park Moon-sik's nightly escapades from his wife are a perfect example, a plot whose resolution was needlessly postponed till the final episode. Removing such plots could've open up time better served to further develop characters, like PM Koo, or explore Lee Lim's plans more thoroughly, an aspect where I feel the show dropped the ball, as these turned out to be contradictory and contrived, helping out the writer more than Lee Lim himself.

Time Travel

Sadly, the execution of time travel is a direct casualty of continuously trying to surprise the audience with new twists or for the sake of pulling at our heart strings. Up until Episode 13, its depiction of time travel lined up perfectly with the concept of a causal loop (e.g. Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban), but then Episode 14 had characters remember new past events in real-time (think of the movie Frequency, with Jim Caviezel and Dennis Quaid), and Episode 15 resurrected a character who should've been dead, among potentially more problematic issues. Time travel is a fictional concept, but even fiction is guided by certain rules and, sadly, the depiction of time travel in The King: Eternal Monarch does not hold up under further scrutiny, what deflated my engagement somewhat. Here I was, trying to understand how the writer had put together the puzzle only to realize some of the pieces didn't line up or were from different puzzles altogether. This was not entirely unexpected, as few stories have used time travel consistently in the past, but I was mildly disappointed, particularly given the writer’s excellent work and attention to detail in Goblin.

Romance

Another highlight of the show, especially if you understand exactly what is going on in this scene.

While I can believe Lee Gon could’ve developed feelings for Jeong Tae-eul after searching for her for 20+years (fans of The Expanse will recall Miller also developed feelings for Julie while searching for her), the beginning of their romance in Episode 5 felt a bit forced. It also struck me as odd when Jeong Tae-eul was the one to declare her feelings of love for Lee Gon in Episode 7 instead of the other way around. In fact, it isn't until Episode 10 that Lee Gon admits his feelings for her in one of the most emotional scenes of the show. Perhaps if the two had switched around their declarations it would’ve made more sense.

In any case, their romantic relationship was cemented from Episode 10 onwards for me, although they had cute couple moments in earlier episodes, with Episode 6 featuring the most heartfelt conversations and interactions. For my part, watching their relationship continue to unfold was one of the highlights of the show, and it certainly delivered in the following episodes. Lee Gon's unyielding quest across time and space to find Jeong Tae-eul again and again was moving, though more powerful in Episode 14 than 16 to my mind, perhaps because of the music, editing, and added emotional impact of Jeong Tae-eul knowing Lee Gon is on his way. Perhaps if Episode 16 had dedicated more than 5 minutes (count them) of its runtime to show Lee Gon constantly leaving the palace to search for and meet different versions of Jeong Tae-eul throughout the years it would've been a lot more impactful, and potentially heartbreaking. Tying it to his appearance at the end of Episode 10 would've made it perfect.

Music

youtube

I hesitate slightly to say the soundtrack for The King: Eternal Monarch is on the same level as that of Goblin (time will tell), but if it's not, it certainly isn't far behind. Songs like "Gravity," "Orbit," and "Maze," or instrumental tracks like "One Day," "My Love and...," "Into the Fantasy," and "The Fantasia of Another Dimension," are a sample of this album's best. Sadly, not all tracks featured in the show are included in the album, such as the variant of “The King” that plays at the end of Episode 15 when Lee Gon bids farewell to Lady Noh. If you're a soundtrack aficionado like I am, I'd suggest you keep this album in your Spotify library or equivalent.

Conclusions

The King: Eternal Monarch is, by no means, a perfect show. It is technically not as good as writer Kim Eun-sook's previous Goblin, which overall covered the topics previously discussed better than The King did. However, that is not to say The King: Eternal Monarch isn't an overall good show as it is, one that boldly incorporates interesting concepts like time travel and parallel worlds to its narrative with ultimately mixed results. The music is great, production values are top notch, and all of the actors’ performances were on point, though a tighter cast would’ve benefited some of their performances. While the romance between Lee Min-ho’s and Kim Go-eun’s characters may be a hard sell for some, at least initially, it ultimately worked for me.

If you haven't watched the show yet and are reading this review now, then I'm sorry that you've missed out on the experience of watching the show week to week, discussing and dissecting it with other viewers, and rewatching episodes scouring for clues, a process it easily lends itself to as opposed to other kdramas. If you're into sci-fi and modern fantasy, then I'd encourage you to give it a watch, bearing in mind the previously discussed caveats. If you're into romance kdramas, set your expectations accordingly. If you're looking for more recommendations on modern fantasy+romance and have already watched Goblin, then allow me to recommend the excellent Hotel del Luna (which I’m currently in the process of reviewing after watching it, what, four times now?). For my part, I'm looking forward to Kim Eun-sook, Lee Min-ho, and Kim Go-eun's next projects.

#the king eternal monarch #lee min ho #kim go eun #kim eun sook #woo do hwan #kdrama #review #kdramas

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obscure-sentimentalist · 5 years ago

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Because some interest was expressed...

Part 1: AO3 Tag At Large

Backstory in brief

I didn’t intend for this to get so detailed and comprehensive--honestly, it just started because I had a particular question and some free time to go digging for the answer. And I did get my answer, but in the process uncovered a wealth of other ways to expand my study. It’s been a ride (complete with a few anxieties thanks to some researcher part of my brain), but overall a fun one, and hopefully the resulting data-cronch will be intriguing.

As noted, this is the first part of a planned three-part data series. This installment will cover statistics for the contents of the Flommy AO3 tag as a whole, while the second part will zoom in a bit and break it down into smaller categories. The third will be a bonus post where the dataset will be narrowed to examine how it compares to the tag at large, which is how I began and previewed bits of my work before broadening the scope.

Below the cut, you’ll find a breakdown of the data collection and some information on the measures I examined, before we get into some stats. There are a number of charts included, as well as written overviews and additional facts. I’ll admit that it’s... a bit, even after being selective with the charts and data to highlight, but if you have questions (or are curious about any stats not included here), let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Methodology

The overarching goal of my study was to examine and catalogue the contents specifically within the “Tommy Merlyn/Felicity Smoak” relationship tag on Archive of Our Own. All works featured in these results are tagged as (or otherwise wrangled under) this relationship tag; though it’s doubtful that this is the case, any works featuring this relationship that are not tagged in this way (and thus do not appear) will not be counted.

As of data collection on August 5th, 2020, there are 441 works (inclusive of hidden works viewable and accessible only with an AO3 login) within the Flommy tag. Aside from the individual work name and author, each entry was catalogued with the following additional variables:

Publish Year

Year in which work was initially published

Update Year

Year in which work was most recently updated

Rating

Author-assigned content rating (G, T, M, E, or Not Rated)

Work Length

Categorized as Oneshot (single chapter with an expected chapter count of 1) or Multichap (expected chapter count does not equal 1)

i.e. Works that only have a single published chapter but more are anticipated (so the chapter count reads as 1/?, 1/3, etc.) are categorized as Multichap

Completion Status

Works marked as Complete in the AO3 system are counted as such; all others are counted as Ongoing

Additional Relationships

Works may have Flommy as the only romantically-tagged (/) relationship, or additional ships; works in the latter category also had the other ships logged

Since this study was more quantitative and centered on AO3 tagging, more audience-based measures such as kudos, comment, and hit counts were omitted from the dataset. Also would like to remind that this is something I started because I was bored and curious, and I am just one person handling this data, so please keep this in mind in terms of data validity and human error.

Publish Year and Update Year

Breaking the data down by year was, oddly enough, an afterthought for me, but one I’m glad I did eventually think to add. This provided a glimpse at various trends in Flommy works over the years.

The first two sets of charts will feature both Publish Year and Update Year, as there were a few interesting datapoints I found when comparing the two of them. Moving forward, though, yearly data will be shown in terms of Publish Year, unless noted otherwise.

I pulled together this first graph to see if there were any major differences in either curve as the years went by, and overall, they share a similar shape--to be expected, given that a number of works published in one year may also have been last updated in that same year. Either way, both show a gradual increase in Flommy-tagged works until 2017, before plummeting in 2018 and continuing with a coasting decrease as of August 2020.

However, there’s an interesting shift over time between the two yearly measures: while there are (understandably) more works first published than last updated within the same year from 2013-2015, this becomes about equal between 2016 and 2017, before reversing in 2018-onwards. This goes to show that, while fewer Flommy works are being published these days, there are still some older works that are getting updated even now. People are sticking with Flommy, in some way or another.

Below is another way to compare these two measures, in terms of share of works:

The chart on the left (Publish Year) shows that the majority of Flommy-tagged works were published between 2013 and 2016--about 55%. However, the Update Year chart gives us an exact 50/50 split between the first four years of the tag and the last four, proving that the tag activity is still going strong!

Some other Publish and Update Year Fun Facts:

Because I’m too used to examining change year-over-year (YOY) for other purposes, I pulled some of those stats to accompany the line chart, focusing on Publish Year

The smallest change YOY was from 2016 to 2017, experiencing a 7% increase in published works; the largest was the 176% increase in 2014 over 2013

The decline in published works that began in 2018 has indeed slowed in 2020. 2018 had a -55% decrease YOY from 2017, and 2019 followed suit at -52%; 2020 is only down -21% from 2019, and that number can only improve as the year goes on!

12% more Flommy-tagged works have already been posted in 2020 than were posted in 2013, the first year of the tag. As the two years with the fewest works, that’s at least something!

Rating

There are more than a few ways I could break this one down, but I think this one covers the gist of this particular measure:

As might be expected, T is the most common rating, accounting for almost half of all works. The remaining ratings (aside from Not Rated) are all within a very close range of each other, but those in the E-rated category do have the edge to take second place, which, I’ll admit, also isn’t much of a surprise.

Some other Rating Fun Facts:

Took a look at some YOY changes in Rating:

E is the only rating that experiences two consecutive massive increases: 300% in 2014 over 2013, and then another 500% in 2015 over 2014

Actually, 66% of all E-rated Flommy-tagged fics were published between 2014 and 2016

...For a rating into which I rarely-if-ever personally venture, it certainly has a wealth of stats.

Work Length and Completion Status

Combining these two under one header, as they’re pretty tied-together and didn’t yield too many significant results. About 71% of all Flommy-tagged works are Oneshots, which assures that completed works will hold at least the same share within the Completion Status measure before factoring in Multichaps (which brings it up to about 81% complete). I instead put these measures against the others in the hopes of finding some interesting call-outs; after making up a few charts, there was really only one that I felt had a story to tell.

Let’s take a look at the Work Length trend over the years:

While single-chapter works hold the significant majority share, their reign over multichapter works doesn’t fully begin until 2016. In 2013, the Oneshot count was less than half the Multichap count, and the following two years showed a less than 10 work-difference between the majority category and the other. And while the year is not yet complete, 2020 is currently tracking towards following a similar pattern to the early years of the tag.

Additional Relationships

This one is going to serve as our jumping-off point for Part 2, and get us into the motivating factor for my research. Here’s one chart to say it all:

...Yup, that’s less than a quarter of Flommy-tagged works that a) have Flommy as the sole romantically-tagged relationship, or b) have other romantic relationships tagged that are not Oliver/Felicity.

That’s an answer in-and-of-itself, but my research question was two-fold: how else does this break down? How many works tagged for both pairings are compilations, such as oneshot prompt collections where the pairing varies by chapter; how many are OT3s; how many fall into a different category, whether a platonic pairing is improperly tagged or one pairing is the endgame or any other reason that doesn’t fit in any of the other categories?

We’ll get this breakdown--and a zoomed-in look at the measures covered in this installment--in Part 2, coming soon.

#The Great Flommy Tag Analysis 2020 #flommy #this project has become a monster but it's fun but how on earth did this happen

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circuit-music · 5 years ago

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2020 Music Recommendations

2020 – WHAT A SHIT YEAR! There was so much craziness in those 365 days – from politics to a pandemic. Music was often times one of those things we could take comfort in or use it as a tool to express a range of emotions. I’m always surprised when compiling these list (of which I’ve been doing for 20+ years now it seems) that no matter the state of the world, there is always an overabundance of great music to be discovered. 2020 musically, delivered - including surprising returns from some bands who’ve been rather quiet in the past years like Consolidated, Cabaret Voltaire, and Portion Control.

The majority of what I listen to is electronic based music, with techno-body music being my favorite and there was STILL PLENTY of that in 2020 from labels like Aufnahme+Wiedergabe, Fleisch, Bite, X-IMG, Sonic Groove, SOIL, and more. Occasionally something a little lighter like the ethereal shoe-gaze goodness of Mint Julep (“Stray Fantasies” was an amazing record), or the post-punk of House of Harm (wonderful new discovery this year with “Viscous Pastimes”) and Sure (you all slept on “20 years” in 2020) works its way in to my listening. I still find synth pop from the likes of Riki, Korine, Tanz Waffen and Wingtips wonderfully appeasing. The wave material from the likes of Handful of Snowdrops, Linea Aspera, Zanias, Hante., Minuit Machine and Replicant was perfect for those melancholy moods. I even dipped into some aggressive near metal stuff this year from the likes of Pudeur, ESA and Youth Code – perfect for those days of anger. Oh, and I was thrilled to see a lot of exclusive, unreleased and remixed Curve material surface this year – a band who embraces several genres (walls of guitar, shoe gaze, industrial) and moods.

This isn’t a top 10, top 25 or even a top 100. Instead, it’s an A-Z recommendation list encompassing many genres as those lines are getting more and more blurred. A good tune is a good tune, regardless of genre.

HIGHLY encourage you to get out there and seek out new music; Visit the record stores, go hear a new DJ, fire up Spotify or another streaming service, check out some new music via podcast, DJ mixes, label sites, online retailers, even Facebook. One of the best sources for discovering new music is BandCamp - who in 2020 with the pandemic started BandCamp Fridays in which the site waived its normal fees to assist artist impacted. Taking place, the first Friday of every month, those will continue in 2021. There’s a plethora of discoveries to be found out there. If you do the work, you’ll be rewarded ;) Speaking of Spotify – I made a playlist this year featuring plenty of the bands on my list. There’s at least a track or more from the artist who have a presence on Spotify. Sadly a few bands on this list aren’t on the platform, but check BandCamp and you can have a listen. Here’s the link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/02kQJZE7uvJxwHJD8j8zrh?si=SHlP4mVRTuaRejh6So3Mig

As in years past I’m certain I missed a few things, ignored the hype on certain releases or just plain forgotten something. It’s a chore to compile this list, but I love to do it. There’s a ton of new pioneering music out there for sure waiting to be discovered and it’s the “what’s next” that keeps me a motivated music fan. There’s never a dull moment in speaking, writing, DJ'ing or promoting new music, so I’ll keep doing it and hopefully be a guide for you all ;). If it needs mention and I overlooked it - I may do an addendum in the next week or so. Anyways, got your notepaper and plenty of beverages ready? Don’t be a TL:DR (Too Long: Didn’t Read) fool. Read up. Enjoy the music of 2020!

Onwards with the list!!! :D

2+2=5 - “Hidden In Plain Sight “ (COUP)

Absolute Body Control - “1980/2020” 3xLP (Oraculo Records)

Agent 15 - “Voices In My Head” (Drone)

Ah Cama-Sotz - “New Skin for Old Tribals “ (Self-released)

Andi - “Corpse to Corpus” 12” (Aufnahme+Wiedergabe)

Arabian Panther - “The Way of the Pentinent” EP (SOIL)

Arnaud Rebotini – “Workout: This is a Quarantine EP6” (Self-released)

Autumns - "You Always Taught Me Better" LP (Detriti Records)

Benedek - “Mr. Goods” 12” (L.I.E.S.)

Blac Kolor - “Extinction” EP (Aufnahme+Widergabe)

Blacksmith - “Dominated” (X-IMG)

Blitzkrieg Baby - “Remixed” (Aufnahme+Wiedergabe)

Blush Response - “Void In” LP (Megastructure) - “Void Out” (Megastructure)

Body Beat Ritual - "Raw Dogs” EP (Pleasure Corp)

Body Divide - “Pleasure From Pain” (Squarewav)

Cabaret Voltaire - “Shadow of Fear” LP (Self-released)

Calvary Stone - “Hate Unit” (Soil)

Caustic - “The King of EBM” (Self-released)

Cervello Elettronico - “No Sides” EP (SquareWav)

Choke Chain - “Chain Tactics” (Self-released) - “Grave” (Self-released)

Chris Shape - “Shaped to Deform” (Unknown Pleasures Records)

Chrome Corpse - “Detecting Movement” Ltd. Edition 12" EP (Oraculo Records) - “Helmet Mounted Display” (Self-released)

Chrome Corpse / Decent News - “Split” (Self-Released)

Codex Empire - “Broken by Fear" Ltd. 12” (Horo) - “Protected by Rage” 12” (Aufnahme+Wiedergabe)

Cold Cave - “Waving Hands” (self-releaesed)

Comfort Cure - “Serpentine City” (Rec.Body.Ltd)

Consolidated - “Capitalism” (Self-released)

Crystal Geometry - “Samiam” EP (Sacred Court) - “Senestre” 2x12” (Sonic Groove)

Curve - “Blindfold EP - Bootleg EP Series 1” (Self-released) - “Curve Oddities Bootleg Series 3” (Self-released) - “Curve Oddities Bootleg Series 5” (Self-released) - “Horror Head Raw DAT Mixes Bootleg Series 4” (Self-released)

Cyan ID - “Blurred Revelation” (X-IMG)

Dive - “Where Do We Go From Here” Ltd. Ed Box set (Out Of Line)

E.L.I. - “Dying to Live” (SOIL)

E.S.A. - “Burial 10” (Negative Gain Productions) - “Eat Their Young / The Scorn” (Negative Gain Productions)

Einstruzende Neubauten – “Alles In Allem” (Potomak)

Evil Dust - “Desolation” (Crave Tapes)

Fatal Morgana - “The Destructive Remixes” 12" (Mecanica Records) - “The Final Destruction” 2LP (Mecanica Records)

Filmmaker - “Reinvent” 12” (Soil records)

Fixmer - "Invasion” 12” (Bite)

Fixmer/McCarthy - “Unreleased From the Archives" (Planet Rogue Records)

Foreign Policy - “Watching Existence” 12” (X-IMG)

Fractions - “Nite NRG” (Monnom Black)

Further Reductions - “Array” 12” (Knekelhuis)

Hakai – “No Flesh Shall Be Spared” 12” (Megastructure)

Halv Drom - “Slum Vatic” LP (Fleisch)

Handful of Snowdrops - “Asymetrical” (NanoGénésie®) - “Echoes -The Complete Cover Collection” (NanoGénésie®) - “The Four Winds” (NanoGénésie®) - “The Impossible Dream” (NanoGénésie®) - “Watch Me Bleed / Theme for Great Cities” (Self-released)

Hante. - “Fierce - Remixes & More” LP (Synth Religion)

HKKPTR - “Macht & Ohnmacht” EP (Aufnahme+Wiedergabe)

House of Harm - “Vicious Pastimes” LP (Avant!)

Human Performance Lab - “Impact Situation” 12" (Aufnahme+Wiedergabe)

Inhalt - “Simulation” 2xLP Remixes (Mechatronica)

Iron Court - “Etched Forseights” (Detriti)

Istigkeit & Angel Karel - “You A’Int No Punk, You Punk” (RND. Records)

IV Horsemen - “Compilation Vol. 1” (Self-released) - “Human Crash” LP (Fleisch)

Karger Traum - “III” LP (DKA Records)

Kenny Campbell - “Blackest Ever Buckfast” (Drone)

King Dude - “Full Virgo Moon” LP (Van)

KLACK - "Two Minute Warning” (Klackprodukt) - “Move Any Mountain” (Self-released) - “Catching Up with Klack” (Razgrom) - “Distancing” (Self-released) - “Move Any Mountain” (Self-released) - “Probably” (Klackprodukt)

Konkurs - “Terminal Stage" (Megastructure, X-IMG)

Kontravoid - “Live from the Void” (Self-released) - “Too Deep Remixes” (Fleisch)

Korine - “The Night We Raise” LP (Data Airlines)

Kris Baha - “Barely Alive” 12” (Emotional Especial) - “Starts to Fall” 12” (Power Station)

Kutkh Jackdaw - “Sweat & Thunder EP and remixes” (Dark Disco)

Lbeeze - “Induced Expressions” (Phormix Tapes)

Liebknecht - “Demos The H4AR 2020" (Self-released) - “Koln : Total Harmonic Noize remix” (Self-released)

Linea Aspera - “LP II” (Self-released)

Looky Looky - “Are You There Beach?” (Self-released)

Machino - “Ciudad Violenta” (X-IMG)

Maedon - “Escape To Berlin" (Sonic Groove)

Marc Ash - “Mirror Glaze Lavish" 12" EP (Fleisch)

Marina Aleksandra - “Animal Industrial Complex” (Randolph & Mort. mix)

Max Durante - “Fear and Desire” 12” (Aufnahme+Wiedergabe)

Mind | Matter – “Souvenirs Brises” (Intervision)

Mint Julep - “Stray Fantasies” LP (Western Vinyl)

Minuit Machine - “Don’t Run From the Fire” 12” (Synth Religion)

New Frames - “Outer Limits” 12” (Bite) - “RNF2” 12” (R Label Group) - “Stylized Fear” 12” (Haven)

Nordstaat - “Singularity Second Coming” (X-IMG)

NZ - “More Of Us” 12” ltd. (Infacted Records)

Objekt Clermont - "Zeitgeist” EP (Self-released)

Ofelia Ortodoxa - “Maleficio” (Soil)

Pablo Bozzi - “Last Moscow Mule” (Dischi Autunno) - “Walk on Wire” EP (Bite)

Phase Fatale - “Scanning Backwards” 2xLP (Osgut Ton)

Portion Control - “Head Buried” EP (Portion-Control.Net) - “Seed 1” EP (Portion-Control.Net) - “Seed 2” EP (Portion-Control.Net)

Pudeur - “Magie Noire” (Area Z)

Randolph & Mortimer - “Enjoy More” 7” (Self-released) - “Manifesto for a Modern World” 2xLP (Mecanica) - “They Know We Know They Lie” (Self-released) - “Union of the Faithful” (Self-released)

Reka X Imperial Black Unit - “Todo Avaricia” 12" EP (Fleisch)

Rendered - “Stone Cold Soul” CD (Audiophob)

Replicant - "Regression” (Self-released) - “Annihilation” (Self-released)

Rhys Fulber - “Diaspora” EP (Aufnahme+Wiedergabe) - “Resolve” (FR Recordings)

Riki - “Riki” LP (Dais Records)

Rommek - “Break The Tension” 12” (Leyla Records)

Salem Unsigned - “Blood Origin” (RND.r recorcds)

SARIN - “Moral Cleansing Remixed" (Bite)

Schwefelgelb - “Der Puls Durch Die Schläfen Instrumentals" (n-Plex) - “Der Puls Durch Die Schläfen" (n-Plex) - “Die Stimme Drängt” 12" (Cititrax)

SDH - “Against Strong Thinking" 12" (Avant!)

Size Pier - “Typhoon in Busan” (X-IMG)

Soft Crash - “Spitzkrieg” 12” EP (Bite)

Soj - “Land of Lovers and Hammers” (Infidel Bodies) - “Slow Burn” (Industrial Complexx)

Statiqbloom - “Asphyxia Remixed” (Synthicide)

Sure - “20 Years” LP (Weyrd Sun Records)

T_ERROR 404 - “Holographic Skull” (X-IMG)

Tanz Waffen - “Led Astray” (Self-Released)

Teatre - “Crime Imagery” (Self-released)

Terrorfakt - “Achtung 2020 Remixes” (SquareWav)

The Marquis - “Poison” (Self-released) - “Scab” (Self-released)

Trauma Phase - “Human Caused Disaster Response” (Detriti) - “The Origin of Social Disabilities” (Self-Released)

Unconscious - “Regnum Novum” (X-IMG) -"Slaves of System" LP (Detriti)

Unhuman - “Voices of Distress” 12” (Bite)

Various Artisits - “ASM II “ (Forkha) with: Chrome Corpse, Mind|Matter, The Undertaker’s Tapes, Evil Dust and more

Various Artist - “Meta Moto 4” (Meta Moto) with: Borsis Barksdale, Raw Ambassador, Filmmaker, Teatre and more

Various Artist - “Antikhrist Visions vol. II” LP (Industrias Mekanikas) with: Downwell, Delectro and more

Various Artist - “BOY Records – Timeless Technology 1988 – 1991" 4xLP (Mecanica) Retrospective box of the legendary Boy label releases.

Various Artist - “Crime Violente Vol.4” (Up North Records) With: Calvary Stone, Lbeeze, Meshes and more

Various Artist - “Dystopia in Action” 12” (X-IMG) with: Alpha & Necromante, Kris Baha, Human Performance Lab and more

Various Artist - “Ecdisis Vol 2” (Frigio Records) Snag this for the outstanding edit of Portion Control’s “Chew You to Bits”

Various Artist - “Murder 01” 12” (Murder) with: Codex Empire, Crystal Geometry, JK Flesh and more

Various Artist - “Northern Nightmares Vol.1” (Up North Records) with: Autumns, Cardopusher, Teatre, Hate Magnum Opus and more

Various Artist - “Northern Nightmares Vol. 2” (Up North Records) with: Notausgang, NGHTY, Violet Poison and more

Various Artist - “Sonic Groove: 25 Years 1995-2020" 2xLP (Sonic Groove) with: Orphx, Crustal geometry, Maedon, Rhys Fulber & Portion Control and more

Various Artist - “Uncanny Valleys Vol. 1” (Area Z) with: Chrome Corpse, Sarin x Imperial Black Unit, Celldod, IV Horsemen and more

Various Artist - “Uncanny Valleys Vol. 2” (Area Z) with: Ah Cama-Sotz, 3.14, MDS51 and more

Various Artist - “Valley of Tears vol 1" 12” (Soil) with: Imperial Black Unit, Fractions, Exhausted Modern and more

Various Artist - “Valley of Tears Vol. 2” 12” (Soil) with: SOj, Djedjotronic, Years of Denial and more

Various Artist - “Seven Years of Delirium" (Liber Null) with: Blush Response, NGLY, Zanias, Celldod, Phase Fatale and more

Various Artist – “Detriti Split 1” 12” split vinyl (Detriti) with: Black Sun Dreamer and Trauma Phase

Various Artist – “Detriti Split 2” 12” split vinyl (Detriti) with: Mind | Matter and Iron Court

Visceral Anatomy - “Modern Anguish” EP (Oraculo Records)

Visitor - “Technofossil” (Braid Records)

Wingtips - “Tears Of Pearls" (Self-released)

Youth Code - “Puzzle” (Self-Released)

Zanias - “Extinction” 12” (Fleisch) - “Harmaline” (Self-Released)

Zola Jesus - “Live at Roadburn” (Roadburn Records)

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chyrstis · 6 years ago

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2019 Writer’s Year in Review

Tagged by @amistrio! Thank you so much, because this was a lot of fun to tackle, and apologies to everyone for the wordy set of paragraphs ahead! And for my rambling.

Word count:

It’s been a weird year. Because nothing really took off until late June, and I’ve really been trying to make up for lost time every since.

I was able to get in a little over 100K down in total, and I’m honestly grateful for every second of it, because I wanted so badly to start writing again, but wasn’t sure what would do it. Guess this silly game’s it!

Number of smut scenes:

Uh, well...four total, I want to say? (there’s more in my wips, but we’ll leave those alone for now)

And considering the fact that I was majorly rusty writing anything to begin with, I didn’t think I’d be writing any smut at all this year, so whoops. Goes to show what I know. XD

New things I tried this year:

Hopefully this isn’t a cop out, but jumped into a new fandom for one. :D It’s been quite the trip ever since, and I’m incredibly lucky to have met the people I have so far. It would’ve been a completely different experience otherwise, and I’m glad I was able to. And I’d like to give @sharky-broshaw a special shout out here, because without her encouragement to even pick up FC5, this wouldn’t have been possible at all. (and also, she’s one of those awesome people mentioned above, as well as you, so <3)

Tried the Comic Sans font trick for my wips, switching to writing with it in the hopes it’d keep me writing consistently. It’s honestly been the thing I’ve used consistently ever since switching from Calibri to it back in October, and I think it’s safe to say it works? Or its become easy enough on the eyes to not bother me much while using it, but I’m not about switch back now.

Took part in a gift exchange for the first time after waffling for two weeks on joining up. Simply put, I was terrified of what I’d be able to make for it, and that my gift was going to fall apart or fall short, but it turned out to be a hell of a lot of fun all around.

Jotted down notes, dialogue, and scenes on my phone, first suggested by @statichvm! I would’ve lost so many stories, exchanges, and moments to my forgetfulness otherwise, so this is totally a habit I’m going to keep up with for the long haul. (and Macy, you’re also one excellent person to have met here, and I hope you don’t mind me sending you some <3 this way too)

Favorite thing I wrote this year:

I really want to say the Exchange fic / I won’t ask for much (but just this once, I’d like you)

I spent a good day or so wondering what on earth I’d want to tackle for a Sharky/John fic only for the silliest idea to hit: what would a romantic comedy be like with these two? One with 100% more blackmail and arson? The outline practically wrote itself after that, with a few more tweaks later on for some added development.

After that every day from November onward I’d jot something down for it. Then I’d write a little more, and while it was a story that came together pretty easily, it was long. Absurdly so, considering the time constraints I was working with, but I seriously don’t think this idea would’ve come to me at all or have been written without this, so I’m glad for the push (and the person that inspired it!) and that it was given the chance to exist.

I also had free reign to indulge in a lot of my favorite tropes, write two characters that I love, throw more than a few curveballs at Sharky, and have John discover a whole new set of expressions to make at Sharky in general. ...All while including lots of banter and teasing and pining.

So this was definitely something I was heavily invested in finishing, as well as being able to share it with @finefeatheredfarcryplayer. It would’ve crushed me to abandon it otherwise.

Favorite fic I read this year:

Shoot, I’ve mentioned a few here, here, and here, but here’s a few more, and all from FC5, because I’m still digging that game a bunch.

This fic by @outranks which is an old favorite of mine, because I’m absolutely weak for Sharky/Dep/John in any form or fashion. The intimacy and ease with with they all play off of each other here’s fantastic, and I love how this is is a small peek into how well they could compliment each other.

The Deputy and John meet pre-game by @seedsplease. I may have gone through nearly every fic available in her masterlist (and will likely do so again, because I love her work that much), but I really couldn’t get over the tension here, and how it really did seem like a snapshot of a moment that could’ve happened before the game started.

Why Can’t We Be Friends? by @finefeatheredfarcryplayer. I was checking in on this series back during the summer offering up an alternate means of resolving FC5′s events peacefully, and it’s been fascinating to see the story’s journey from that point onward. There’s a lot of moments that I love in this series, and I can’t wait to see where it’ll lead to at the very end.

Lyrical Alternatives by @narcis-the-monk. I fell in love with this series months back, and really could just keep on reading story after story in this AU for as long as it could go. Not the least of which is due to how the relationship between Sharky and John plays out here, and it’s equal parts heartwarming and heartbreaking as it progresses. Mostly the first, but when the second hits, oof.

Writing goals for 2020:

Actually attempt NaNoWriMo this year, or failing that at least get more down in an outline for either of the original stories I want to tackle. I’ve put this off writing anything for either for too long now, and I really should start getting some those ideas down.

Write a little (or edit) every day

Possibly keep a short record of what I tackle from month to month

Read more. I know this is a little weird here on a writing goals list, but reading really does get the old idea center going

Tagging: @twistedsinews @guileandgall @marymay-fairgrave @sneaky-apostate @jenchwuq and anyone else that might be interested!

#ramble ramble ramble #chy takes a stab at memes #maybe I should work on being a little less wordy overall #but it's all good #sorry this took forever and a day to finish too

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kunalsoriginals · 5 years ago

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Pearls of Wisdoms for Pakis

Beloved Janta of Pakistan,

I would also like to share a secret with you, which you might never apprehend from a person from any other country, especially from an Indian. We LOVE YOU, We are obsessed with you. We enjoy infatuation comparable to that of a 14-year boy who has one on a girl living in his neighborhood, like that teenager whose heart warms up with the girl's sight. Still, he tends to tease her or plays whimsical pranks on her. It is his way of showing his affection.

Accept it, my fellow former Countrymen, you guys are in deep love with us as well. I have felt it first-hand. You folks love watching our Movies and fantasy our starlets. Sing Bollywood songs while proposing to your love. Ache to enjoy Mumbai and Delhi's nightlife. Some of you would even love to reside permanently here for a better future. There is also constant discrimination in every viewpoint; it may be Cricket or politics; in all honesty, you think of our day and night.

Keeping this indefinable affection for each other aside for a while, there is a bitter revelation that you people will have to accept and even feed it in the brains of the future generations to come. I am sure that maximum people over your side of the border should by now have conceded that India will never ever surrender Kashmir in your Lap. It won't be possible in at least another century ahead.

You see, in the manner where India's GDP had expanded from 10 Thousand Crores in the 1950s to more than 10 Lacs Crores in 2019, our sentiment of Nationalism has additionally, grown in a comparable pattern. There was a phenomenal hike in this feeling after India's general elections 2014 onwards; the reason for such an increase is unknown to me. So, the moral is, with such a vast Nationalism level in the hearts of the Aam Janta here, I don't think so parting away an inch of land to anyone would be possible.

Won't it look dishonorable for us in the front of the entire world if we lose the land to you guys who are quite behind then us in all the aspects? You will have to accept that technically both our countries are 73 years old this year. Over this side of the border, we have gradually upgraded in all aspects a Nation has to grow. I could virtually challenge you in where you guys can prove to be better in any improvement zone. This is the land wherein the year 1981 Indian Actor Amitabh enacted on the evergreen song "Dekha Ek Khawab " and his Dame Rekha in the movie Silsila hence parting away with Kashmir is painful to us as it will not only hurt our Ego and furthermore offer grief to Amitji.

Forget the BJP led NDA, Even the Congress-led UPA cannot think of such a gormless deal. The primary reason is that they want to come into power next term too to provide Public service. Now you people only tell which government will be such dimwits to kick their own rear and be signed on the history textbook of 10-year-old kids as the People who gave away Kashmir.

Realize this, Pakistani Government, Your Army and also ISI can't withhold the idea of getting the region of Kashmir in your Nation's Map, even they know that your national flag will never rise in Capital of Srinagar but since it was an Inaugural Political Agenda when your Country was created in where the principal objective of this agenda was to collect vote from you guys and funds from other countries in the name of Kashmir. It is their lollypop for you fellows that their respective parties if came in power, an ideal environment will be created where; a newly wedded couple from Lahore can drive to Srinagar for their honeymoon without a stamp on their Passport and enjoy a bite of Kashmiri Apple laying in the front deck of a Shikara in Dal Sarovar. It's All Fake, acknowledge it, and move on.

So to my Indian friends,

There was a massive inspiration for me to compose this article. It was shocking that it came from the other side of the border. In the great Indian lockdown of 2020, I who was ideally workless like many of us all, I went through many videos of this Pakistani Newsreader and Political Debate Show Host Dr. Fiza Akbar Khan on YouTube. By her venomous language, the passion for thrashing India and people over here and that high pitched voice made me think of another Indian Debate Show Host. I am convinced that they are unquestionably biologically related to each other. So I should not have a problem with her blabbering rubbish towards my Country as her Bhaiya here likewise.

But I have to admit that her language did hurt me because, unlike her Bhaiya over there who trashes Pakistan in the English language, she uses Urdu, which sounds quite similar to the Hindi language to illuminate unpleasant garbage, the reason is entirely psychological for me being hurt. For example, If somebody calls you a Motherfucker, you might not be offended in the same manner if you are called Madar***d (Pardon my Language).

This Pakistani Anchor goes on and on that How Poor, Uneducated, Physically and Mentally Weak, Shelterless, we Indians live in this Country where our economy is going into the drain. We are foolish people to elect Shri Modi as PM of our Country and that too twice. There is a vast level of discrimination on minorities over here. The world's biggest Democracy is over. In the distant future, if Kashmir is not given to them its freedom, then Islamabad will be the next capital of Pakistan and India.

Can you believe this, she has mentioned all this on her show and that too in a language which can easily pierce in our heart. Let's not get also angered about this and start calling her names. She is just doing her job. She is giving favored content to people of over there what her Bhaiya is doing over there.

As pragmatic as I can get about whatever she says on her show about us, I just can't accept it, I am too egoistic as an Indian to even reply or curse on her Video on YouTube comment section. Hence, I planned to dedicate this entire blog to Dr. Fiza Khan, whom I seriously don't mean to offend as Women, her Nation, and especially not her Religion and would like to give her some advice.

Avoid Echoing about Nukes: A round of applause towards Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan for building Nuclear Weapons, a program from a stolen uranium centrifuge design and a network of grey-market suppliers. But stop jabbering in your show that Pakis can nuke India in case a War erupts between us. Even If Jinnah Sahab from Heaven above commands your Arm Force to it, they will effortlessly deny his orders and don't stress. We likewise won't squander our atomic weapon on you. These weapons are like those expensive Portraits which you can proudly hang in your Living Room, but can't take it out on a date. Stop even using the word Nuke in your show.

Comparison between the PMs: PM Imran Sahab seems to be a jolly good fellow who also appears to try to administrate better than any other PMs or Military leaders of your Country. Let me tell you bluntly that there is no comparison with his Counterpart over here; in fact, he even doesn't stand anywhere nearby India's previous Prime Minister.

Paki's Diplomatic Policies Debacle: This is a typical miscue. You and many colleagues of you have repeatedly misguided your Citizens that Pakistan can easily use the benefit of its diplomatic relationship with a few First World Country and pressurize India on Kashmir Issue. Well, Honey, This is an open challenge to your PM, along with Mr. Qureshi Sahab go to any so-called super Power for assistance or call end numbers of meeting in OIC ( Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ). Nobody will be ready to intervene in the Valley issue for one of the main reason, Why would any country create enmity with the Country will more than 100 Million Population which is a significant business open doors for their corporates.

Playing Second Fiddle: I initially watched your Debate show of earlier years. You always mentioned the US as your elder brother and will still stand next to you along with Saudi Arabia. These were the two countries which you saw as your personal ATM. Lately, these ATM machines stopped removing Cash and Kinds, which they earlier showered on your Country, so you bashed them and accused both these Super Power for adultery. These started leaning towards us. Then you went to China and become a Virtual Puppet who dances on their tunes. Now the problem arises that the entire world started forming against your elder brother and accused them as the creator of the Pandemic of 2020. So you began a rigid assembly against them as well, and now your nation is in an arrangement for another development with Malaysia and Turkey. Understand this dear Fiza ben that in distant future you will have to abuse these two countries also while your government will go and beg to some other countries, maybe North Korea.

Last but not least, which I have already mentioned why Kashmir will never be part of Pakistan earlier in the blog. Read repeatedly till the concept is glued by heart, and if possible, explain it to your people there.

Defense products will be purchased in the name of Kashmir. For Fiscal Year 20-21 Defense expenditure of Pakistan is 1,289 Billion Dollars. India's expenses on the same would be around 66 Billion Dollars. Can you believe these Figures? This Moolah could otherwise be used in Infrastructure and improving the lifestyle of citizens of the respective Country. Civilians and Soldiers' blood will be shed on the name of Kashmir. Approximately 120000 deaths have been registered since 1989, which also includes unsympathetic deaths of militants and terrorists. Television Media will go on with Live debates inviting aficionados and enthusiasts to increase their TRP on the name of Kashmir. Newspapers and magazines will publish viperous articles vocalizing each other's blame for being troublemakers on Kashmir's name. Many commercial Movies and Web Series will also be produced on Kashmir's name. Still, by endeavoring all means of Peace or War, this dream of some of yours will never be fulfilled.

#pakistan #kashmir #fizakhan #india

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askmerriauthor · 6 years ago

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Pokemon SwSh Thoughts - Post Game

So I’ve finished Pokemon Sword’s primary content. All that’s left is to finish up the PokeDex and drive myself insane trying to whip up all the variations of Alcremie. That, and delaying buying an online subscription for as long as possible before I bother with trading to get the other game’s exclusives. Here’s some thoughts on the game after the fact:

Pokemon SwSh really needed to come out in late 2020, period. I’ve enjoyed the game so far, but I’ve played it for about a week without putting in too much time/effort grinding and I’ve already done pretty much everything there is to do. I had my Starter leveled up to 100 before I even left the Wild Area for the very first time. The pacing and content depth of this game are pretty much non-existent, whereas the majority of the effort has clearly been put toward refining the competitive combat development. That’s great for those players who really like the battle system, but not so much for those of us who like story and broader gameplay elements.

Pro - Streamlined Gameplay One thing I’ve wanted in Pokemon for ages has been the ability to skip tutorials. I understand the necessity of having them, as every game that comes out is going to be some player’s first and their presence is for that player. But at least having the option to skip them for us old hats would be nice. SwSh does that! I was delighted to discover that the game allows you to bypass tutorials with a simple yes/no prompt when a new element is introduced. How to catch Pokemon, type match-ups, how to heal at Pokemon Centers, and so forth - all the stuff previous games led us through by the nose has been made optional this time around.

I’ve seen some people saying that this game holds the player’s hand too much as it leads us from one gameplay element to the next and doesn’t let us progress at our own leisure. To some degree this is true, but it’s far less egregious than in previous games, such as SuMo. There’s yet to be a good balance between giving the player free reign and giving them enough guidance to ensure we never feel lost, but this has been an inoffensive example as far as I’m concerned. The game does end up feeling rather railroaded, but I don’t necessarily consider that a fault of hand-holding. I’ll get to this matter later on.

Pro - The Style Galar is a very pretty region and the game makes good use of the Switch’s higher capacity to produce excellent backdrops for the player to explore. Many of the Pokemon have charming animations (Falinks is my favorite on this respect). The towns are all really well-designed in terms of visuals, especially compared to the bare-bones looks of older generations. I feel like there could have been more, but what we got is still great.

Pro - Implications in Lore Those of you who know me know how much I love lore and world building. Pokemon, as a franchise, is ripe with opportunity to examine its lore to the most tiny and obscure detail, so any new addition to the franchise is welcome on that front. Galar has some pretty fascinating nuggets to contribute.

I love that the League in Galar, as well as competitive Pokemon Training in general, is treated like a career sport. In specific, I love that this view and practice is exclusive to Galar - I wouldn’t like it at all if the entire franchise shifted to this angle, but it works great for a one-off region. I like that Kabu specifically relocated himself from Hoenn to join the sports league as it doesn’t exist in his home region. The Champion being a sort of major celebrity/superhero, the way Gym Leaders can recruit proteges or even inheritors of their rank from among contenders, the sort of clique all the Gym Leaders have with one another - it’s a really neat dynamic. I also like the notion that actually completing the Gym Challenge isn’t something common and most Trainers who try rarely make it even halfway through. That’s an interesting contrast to other regions where collecting Gym Badges seems almost as a given and the League itself is considered the real challenge, or where the whole endeavor is designed to be finished as a matter of course, like in Alola.

There’s also some really neat additions to the overall lore brought in from the Pokemon Masters mobile game. While its place in canon is questionable, it does specifically mention Galar in a few places. The idea that Pokemon who do not appear in the current Dex are banned from Galar by customs (perhaps identified as potentially dangerous/invasive species) is an interesting one. So is the claim that Iris - the Champion of Unova in BW2 - is a cousin of Leon and Hop. I love it when there are connections amid titles like that as it really helps build a more unified setting.

-Edit-: Darn, apparently those screenshots were fakes. Strike that positive from the list, I suppose.

Mixed Pro/Con - The Availability of Pokemon and the Wild Area I’m not talking about Dexit - I have my own thoughts on that explained elsewhere and frankly don’t think it’s going to end up as bad as everyone is fretting over in the long run. No, in this particular case I’m focused on the availability of Pokemon that are in the game itself.

To put it simply... it’s too easy. I know that filling out the PokeDex isn’t supposed to be a huge challenge, but I’ve gotten the majority of it done - evolved forms, item-reliant forms, gender/size/color variations included - with pretty much no effort whatsoever. I like the idea of the Wild Area in principle but what it ends up being in practice is lacking. It’s too easy to just hoover up Pokemon at a breakneck pace, which leads to other zones and the Wild Area itself becoming pretty much immediately obsolete. I have no need to return to them once I’ve gotten everything I need and there’s not enough general content to urge me to visit again.

The Wild Area itself is a big open sandbox that you can roam around in, which is nice compared to more linear zones in past games. Galar has its railroad routes, but they’re brief (aside from the obligatory overlong water route, which even then is still quite a lot smaller than other regions’ have been). However, it’s just that - a big open sandbox. You can wander through it very easily and even traipse into the “high level” zones without fear because you can see all the Pokemon coming and give them a wide berth to avoid them. There aren’t any obstacles or challenges within the Wild Area itself, and the game makes it supremely easy to find Pokemon even under specific weather/time conditions, which I feel is a missed opportunity. I would have rather the Wild Area been MUCH bigger and more involved, full of places to explore and puzzles to solve. Similarly, I would rather that Pokemon were more difficult to come by as well - that a greater deal of effort would have been put toward tracking and discovering certain harder-to-find Pokemon, with more in-game detective work to find your prize.

Mixed Pro/Con - The Characters The ensemble cast of new Gym Leaders are great - I enjoy the majority of them and frankly want more interactions, more encounters, just more in general. That’s sort of the problem though - I want more. The game itself criminally under-utilizes these characters, especially compared to how much more involved and explored Gym Leaders have been in recent games. There is precious little content using the Gym Leaders here in Galar as it stands and I constantly found myself wanting them to hang out longer and have the chance to learn more about them. Their League Cards are a neat little addition full of interesting tidbits about their histories, natures, and relationships with each other, but I would MUCH rather have gotten to see all that play out in the game itself rather than read it as a flavor blurb.

On the con side of this, however, is the fact that all of the characters are extremely one-dimensional. We’ve been seeing a steady increase in the depth and development of supporting characters in the games since BW onward, with SuMo arguably having the most to date. The overall characterization in SwSh is incredibly lacking by comparison as we don’t get nearly enough time to be with the cast, nor is the cast given the chance to present more than one note per. Nobody has any sort of emotional growth or development. The closest thing to a character arc in the game is Hop’s acceptance of the idea that he’s not going to be the Champion, but it doesn’t have anywhere near as much punch as it could and is over in the blink of an eye compared to how he spends THE ENTIRE GAME repeating the same “I’m gonna be the Champion/Hokage/Pirate King!” spiel every time he’s on screen.

Con - Dynamaxing and Max Raid Battles I’m not really on board with the whole “Mega-Evolution is best! No more gimmicks!” train because that’s just silly to me. Every game has its gimmick and the way Pokemon gradually picks up tricks and traits from its past versions to consolidate into newer titles is one of its strengths. That said, Dynamaxing is worthless and a pointless addition to the game, both in presentation and practice.

The visual of a Pokemon going kaiju is a neat concept and one I was initially intrigued by, but in practice it falls flat because it’s as thin as cardboard. It’s just Mega-Evolution and Z-Moves smooshed together with an additional 3 round time limit tacked on. All it functionally does is buff your Pokemon’s HP pool and add additional weather/status effects to certain attacks, but in some cases the Dynamax versions of attacks are actually weaker/less useful than their base form. In Gym Battles all the way through the final League fight with Leon, I didn’t bother with Dynamaxing because my Pokemon were strong enough to not need it. I could one-shot Dynamaxed Pokemon with ease using a non-Dynamaxed Pokemon and that really shows a flaw in the design if ever there was one. Dynamaxing doesn’t add or improve anything vital to gameplay - it’s just fluff.

Max Raid Battles as found in the Wild Area are even worse. For those of you who don’t know, these are instanced battles against a Dynamaxed/Gigantamaxed wild Pokemon where you team up with three other players/NPCs. If you win, you get a bunch of useful items and have the chance to catch the wild Pokemon as well, which is the only way you can get certain Gigantamax-capable Pokemon reliably.

The issue with these Max Raid Battles is that they’re an absolute slog. In the early stages of the game they’re all super easy to the point that I could solo them and thus gathered mountains of EXP-boosting candies, which let me overlevel my Pokemon beyond reason. Since the whole “your Pokemon is too high level and won’t listen to you” thing apparently doesn’t apply to Starters and special Event Pokemon, I was able to max-level and run rampant across all opposition with my Starter and my special “thanks for buying early” Meowth. HOWEVER. The difficulty scale of the Max Raid Battles increases with your game progress, so by the time I finished the game and went back into the Wild Area, the Max Raid Battles’ difficulty had ramped up.�� That’s an okay compromise on its face, but the manner in which the difficulty has increased is poor game design. The battles aren’t any harder, they just take longer - the wild Pokemon has more HP, tosses up a few rounds of shields to soak damage at the start and again halfway through the fight, and purges stat boosts from the player and party throughout the battle. It just makes the fights a pain in the ass to get through rather than making them more challenging or fun, and it’s gotten to the point that I don’t even bother with them anymore. They’re just not worth the trouble, not even for the sake of trying to farm EXP candies because, at this point in the game, all Pokemon in the Wild Area scale up to level 60+ and thus are perfectly serviceable as EXP farming fodder themselves.

On a lore side of things, Dynamaxing is really confusing. There’s the whole visual aspect of the Pokemon growing to giant sizes and sometimes changing their appearances, and there’s these massive arenas built to facilitate the whole thing. But the game itself goes out of its way to impress the fact that the Pokemon aren’t actually getting bigger. They just appear to grow in size and haven’t actually physically changed themselves so Dynamaxing is more like a giant hard light holographic projection than anything else? It’s just a really weird design choice to have made and I don’t understand why it was included.

Con - The Writing So, writing is very important to me. It’s literally been my job for the past decade with various game studios. I don’t consider myself any sort of literary snob as I feel there’s a place for schlock right alongside masterpieces - they all serve a specific purpose and fulfill a particular hunger the reader would like satisfied.

That said, SwSh’s writing is abysmal.

Right on the face, there’s not enough of it. The game is criminally short and light on content, which directly impacts its pacing. Remember earlier when I mentioned that things felt railroaded? That’s because there’s not enough story to rest on - it all flies by as fast as can be, forcing the player along a very narrow and brief chain of events that don’t feel consequential at all. Further, the player has no agency in events whatsoever. It’s not the player’s story - it’s Hop’s story. We’re the supporting role to his journey, shallow as that arc may be. Hop is the one who initiates the events of the game without our input as a character and then we spend the entire game following him around, or being pushed into the next event by other characters who are facilitating Hop. At no point is the player ever given the chance to express their own characterization, motivation, or even opinions. Nearly every two-choice dialogue option that appears boils down to “Yes” or “Slightly More/Less Enthusiastic Yes”, which is a huge downgrade from the genuine negative responses and NPC reactions that were present in SuMo.

In terms of overall plot, SwSh has pretty much the same level of depth and complexity as the original Red/Blue titles, and that is as scathing a criticism in this modern age as I can possibly imagine. The whole story is “run in a circle, collect badges, fight vaguely present villainous threat, fight league.” We are actively forced from one gym fight to the next with no time to breathe, no story-focused events in between, and not even any chance to appreciate the gym, its leader, or even the towns they take place in. It’s one and done - once you’ve got the badge there’s no reason to hang around and the story shuffles us along quickly as can be. I mean that literally in some cases - there are hints of a greater plot at hand with Sonia investigating the history of Galar’s legends and the potential machinations of mega-corporate mogul Chairman Rose. But each time those are broached in game play, the game pushes the player off-screen and says “Well, that’s not something you need to worry about. Go get another badge!” I mean, LITERALLY! There’s a point where The Plot begins to kick in where Pokemon begin to spontaneously Dynamax and cause havoc, which is the narrative queue for the player to become involved and for the story to reveal a new facet. But when that happens, Leon LITERALLY says “leave this to the adults, you just focus on your Gym Challenge” and runs off-screen to handle it himself. It would be a good narrative subversion if it led up to things eventually getting out of hand and the player getting roped into things, or the player having the ability to defy such warnings and interject themselves into danger. But that doesn’t happen - the game just forces us to focus on the Gym Challenge alone and keeps all the actual plot of the game off-screen away from us. This is very poor narrative design and game design alike, and it all comes to nothing because we’re forced to clean up everything in the end anyway by battling the villain and legendaries as per usual.

Though I should also point out that there’s no villain in this game.

But what about Team Yell and Chairman Rose, I hear you ask? They’re not villains, both literally and figuratively respectively. Team Yell never really does anything other than act as brief gate locking elements throughout the game until you finish the Gym you’re at, then they bounce off to the next part of the route they’re set to block. They don’t do anything bad and, as it’s later revealed, they’re actually just a bunch of Spikemuth Gym staffers who are posing as hooligans to support Marnie. They’re literally not villains and, once you beat the Spikemuth Gym, they actually become supporting characters who cheer for the player character and help out against the actual supposed villain of the game.

The actual “villain” of the game is Chairman Rose and his assistant Oleana. However, they’re only villains because the script says they are. They don’t actually do anything bad throughout the entire game nor is there any indication that they have some sort of grand master plan. The most we get is some unusual happenings like small quakes and explosions in the distance, but the game never allows us any chance to investigate - we’re just shoved off toward the next Gym each time. So when Chairman Rose is finally revealed to be the Big Bad, it comes completely out of left field and seems to happen for no reason whatsoever. Further, IT IS FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. Chairman Rose’s plan and goal is never explained in depth - all we get is the vague indication that he believes that Galar isn’t sustainable and there will be an inevitable energy crisis in about 1,000 years, and somehow his EVIL SCHEME will fix it. But, like, even Leon flat-out says “I understand your concern but you’re being hasty, this doesn’t need to be rushed, chill out for five seconds and let’s figure this out reasonably”. Instead Rose interrupts the Champion match and announces his EVIL SCHEME on global broadcast for literally no good reason. There was no dire immediacy that required him to do it right then and there, or in that manner, but the plot needed to move us along so that’s how it goes.

It really doesn’t help that, prior to all this, there’s absolutely no indication at all that Rose nor Oleana are bad guys. They’re just business folk who appear to have nothing but good intentions and support for Leon, with the other adults of the cast all happily trusting them. There is nothing to make them seem suspicious in practice and they offer no reason to doubt them at all, so them suddenly being the bad guys is just confusing. Further, how the player is first introduced to the concept of them being antagonists is easily the most ridiculous logic jump and overreaction I’ve seen since the old Adam West Batman television show. So get this: after a battle, Leon says he’ll meet Player and Hop for dinner to celebrate. Player and Hop wait for Leon, but he never shows up. Another NPC explains that Leon was called in for a last-minute meeting by Chairman Rose (who is his boss and has made such requests of Leon’s time throughout the game, as I feel is important to point out) and apologizes for having to miss the dinner plans. Simple enough sort of situation, right? The sort of thing that any reasonable person would shrug and say “Well, that sucks but okay, let’s go eat on our own then” to, right? So what happens here instead?

The Player, Hop, Marnie, and her Gym Leader brother GATHER A SMALL MOB AND STORM CHAIRMAN ROSE’S BUSINESS HQ, FIGHTING THEIR WAY THROUGH SECURITY.

I mean, escalation much? We all have smartphones - just send Leon a text, for goodness’ sake. I’m playing through these events constantly going “why the hell are we doing this and why is everyone acting like it’s some sort of dire emergency?”. And do you know what happens when we finally kick down the doors to Chairman Rose’s office? We find Chairman Rose and Leon quietly having a peaceful chat, after which Leon apologizes for having to cancel the dinner plans and we all walk out together like nothing happened. It was just this huge, needless overreaction that has no consequence and that neither Rose nor Leon even bat an eye at. We, as the players, learn absolutely nothing of importance and are back on the Gym Challenge immediately with no functional changes to the narrative.

Like... what was the point of that?! How was that the best option to try and put Chairman Rose and his underlings into the role of antagonists for us to oppose?

So what is Chairman Rose’s EVIL SCHEME anyway? Basically he wants to provide Galar with renewable clean energy which... uh... is bad? Somehow? Apparently he plans to use a Legendary Pokemon called Eternatus - apparently the source of Dynamaxing - which is literally never mentioned at any point in the game except precisely when it’s time to fight/capture it, nor does fighting/capturing it have any impact on the story or setting. You would think that the player being in control of a massive Eldritch horror that has UNLIMITED POWER at its disposal would be something of a sticking point somewhere in the story, but no. Eternatus and Rose’s plan are never mentioned until precisely the time you need to deal with them, and once that’s done they’re both never mentioned again. Done and done all in one. No gradual seeding of information, no hints and clues throughout the game, no development of lore - just wham, bam, thank you ma’am and off we go.

Y’know, call me silly but in a game that has undertones referencing climate change, extinction of animal species, and criticisms against capitalism run amok, is it really a good idea to depict the guy advocating for clean energy to be bad? That feels like a missed mark to me.

The post-game plot, should one bother to call it that, is just inane. It basically boils down to a pair of one-shot baddies who show up and say “Ha ha! We’re rich and that means we’re better than everyone! Watch as we cause trouble for vague reasons, get hoist by our own petard, and then fuck off forever! Byeeeee~!” The post-game is completely pointless and doesn’t add anything of value at all. Which, again, compare to older games like ORAS’ post-game expansion content and it’s nothing but a damn shame.

SwSh’s writing is shallow and limited at best, with one-dimensional characters, no genuine conflict or resolution, terrible pacing, and repetitive elements that boomerang around over and over and over again to the point of annoyance. Compared to what we’ve seen Pokemon achieve in earlier titles like BW, ORAS, and SuMo, it makes it all the more obvious that SwSh was not given ANYWHERE near the time and love it needed in development and is a massive downgrade in that respect.

Con - Lots of Style, No Substance To wrap all this up - I enjoyed playing SwSh as much as I did any other early Pokemon game. I think that, as a first installment on a new system, it’s fine. That’s all - it’s just fine. It’s serviceable as a means of establishing the franchise onto the Switch and completing its move off purely-mobile mediums like the Gameboy and 3DS. It’s pretty to look at and has a superficial level of engagement, but its prettiness and level of content very quickly reveal themselves to be only skin deep. Once you get past the initial gloss there’s really nothing to this game compared to the content, involvement, and writing quality displayed in past titles on lesser-powered systems. The towns are all pretty but there’s nothing to do in any of them aside from a Gym battle - there’s no additional fun to be had in each location, making them little more than set pieces. The characters have initial appeal and potential for more, but the game never explores them at all. There’s room for a bigger narrative and interesting story with the elements presented, but no opportunity to actually see them fleshed out. The Wild Area seems big and involved at first, but as soon as you’ve gone around its loop once or twice you suddenly realize how small and compartmentalized it really is, and it lacks any reason to revisit in the end game. The major game play function - Dynamaxing/Gigantamaxing - is little more than a novelty that is basically irrelevant to gameplay itself and, in an absolutely baffling decision by the folk behind the official competitive scene, is actually somehow banned from being used in competitions? Like, not even “we’ve disabled the Dynamax button in online” but rather “if the competitive Pokemon you’ve spent so much time perfectly constructing has a Gigantamax form, it will not even be allowed access at all, so you better have an identical non-Gigantamax version on hand if you want to play”. So, what exactly is the point of even having Gigantamax Pokemon then?

Everything about SwSh seems half-baked. The ideas are there but they aren’t finished. It should have been given much more development time and, having been in the position of the creative/dev team under demands from the shareholders, I completely sympathize with Game Freak’s devs in all this. SwSh is ultimately a weak product but one with a lot of good ideas that weren’t given the chance to really shine. As such, I’ve got rather high hopes for the next installment to improve on the unfortunately thin foundation SwSh has set. Game Freak’s team has given us some amazing Pokemon games in the past and, assuming they’re given sufficient time and resources to make a title to their satisfaction, I have every confidence they’ll do so again.

#pokemon #pokemon swsh #game review #wall o'text #game freak #thank you game freak #hey nintendo - quit breathing down the dev team's neck and stand up to the shareholders for them #spoilers

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior February 21, 2020 – CALL OF THE WILD, BRAHMS: THE BOY II, THE IMPRACTICAL JOKERS MOVIE, EMMA and more!

After overestimating Birds of Prey… I mean, Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey… it looks like I underestimated Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog… I mean Jim Carrey’s Dr. Robotnik… with Sonic. It truly spanked my lowball prediction in the mid-$40 millions, but I wasn’t alone there at least. Hey, it’s a fun movie and my positive review wasn’t off-base with the critical world at large, so there’s that, too. (Apparently, I liked both Downhill and Fantasy Island more than most people, including CinemaScore voters who gave the movies a “D” and “C-“ respectively… ouch!)

This is likely to be another down week as neither of the two new movies are particularly strong, which gives me a chance to focus instead on this week’s FEATURED MOVIES! And we have four of ‘em this week, no less!

That’s right. I think it’s time I go back to my previous desire to use this column to focus on smaller movies that you may have missed since very few of the bigger outlets bother to cover them, and there’s a few worth pointing out this week. I’m gonna start with the two foreign films, because hopefully, you’ve listened to Bong Joon-ho and his translator and are not as fearful of subtitles…

First up, opening on Wednesday at New York’s Film Forumis Jan Komasa’s CORPUS CHRISTI (Film Movement), Poland’s selection for the Oscar International Feature category, which was actually nominated for an Oscar in the category in which everyone already knew Parasite was always gonna win! It’s a shame, cause this is a really amazing film with Bartosz Bielenia playing Daniel, a troubled youth just out of juvenile hall who steals the trappings and identity of the youth prison’s pastor and is therefore mistaken as an actual priest when he arrives at a small community village that has suffered a tragic loss. It’s an amazing film about faith and forgiveness and redemption, and how the script came to Komasa from screenwriter Mateusz Pacewic is an equally amazing story. Seriously, if you get a chance, definitely check this powerful drama out, since it’s another fantastic film from a country that has continually been delivering the goods in terms of original storytelling.

I was just going to do three featured movies this week, but a really good German thriller is finally hitting the States, opening at the Quad in New York Friday then in L.A. on March 13 before a nationwide rollout. Michael Bully Herbig’s incredibly suspenseful German thriller BALLOON (Distrib Films USA) is about two families from the GDR (aka East Germany) who try to cross over into West Germany in 1979 using a hot air balloon, over a decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Based on the actual events, their story previously was adapted into the Disney movie Night Crossing (which oddly, isn’t on Disney+ yet-- I checked, but it’s on Amazon Prime if you wanna compare the two movies). The movie doesn’t spend nearly as much time in the balloon as something like The Aeronauts, as the family’s first attempt fails miserably, so much of the film involves them working towards a second attempt, while trying not to be caught.

Balloon is a pretty heavy film (irony?), sometimes a little overwrought with drama but it keeps you on the edge of your seat as it cuts between the families trying to figure out their escape plan and the authorities trying to put together the clues to find these defectors. There’s a particularly amusing man in charge of the investigation, played by the always-amazing Thomas Kretschmann (The Pianist), who is constantly berating his men, something that helps lighten the otherwise heavy tone that permeates the film. This is another fairly low-key foreign film that’s worth seeking out.

Another movie people should make an effort to seek out is Rashaad Ernesto Green’s PREMATURE (IFC Films), an amazing film that follows the relationship between two young people in Harlem over the course of a summer. We first meet Zora Howard’s Ayanna as she’s hanging with her friends kibitzing about boys, as they begin their last summer before Ayanna heads to college. Shortly after, she meets Josh Boone’s Isaiah, and the two hit it off. The rest of the film follows the ups and downs of their relationship including incredibly intimate moments that lead up to Ayanna getting pregnant.

I won’t go through the plot play-by-play style, because it’s interesting to discover the twist and turns in their relationship in a similar way as we do our own relationships. Needless to say Green has a pretty amazing partner and lead in Howard, who co-wrote the screenplay, which is probably why it feels so authentic and real. Sure, there are a few scenes between Howard and Boone, both fantastic actors, that feel a bit too showy dramatically but otherwise, it’s a fantastic second feature from Green who has mainly been directing TV since his earlier film Gun Hill Road. I’ll definitely be very curious to see what Green and Howard get up to next either alone or working together.

Opening in New York and L.A. this Friday but in theaters nationwide on March 6 is the latest incarnation of Jane Austen’s novel EMMA. (Focus Features), this time starring the wonderful Anya Taylor-Joy (from The VVitchand Split/Glass) as the title character, Emma Woodhouse, a 28-year-old matchmaker who prides herself on the relationships she’s put together even while unable to find her own mate. The film follows as the latter starts coming in the way of the former as she infiltrates herself into things as an “expert on love” who can’t find it herself.

Maybe it’s not surprising that I haven’t read much of Austen’s work and have missed this one altogether, never having seen any of the other iterations, but it’s a fairly wild and witty ride. Much of that is due to the amazing and wonderful cast around the young actor, the most surprising behind Mia Goth, who is in fact three years older than Taylor-Joy, but plays the younger wide-eyed Harriet who looks up to Emma and elicits her advice. Emma basically steers Harriet from the farmer she likes to Josh O’Connor’s Mr. Elton, the wealthy local vicar who is more than a little bit of a dark. This leads to a bit of a revolving door of who is interested in whom, etc especially when Emma’s nemesis Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson) returns to Hartfield.

Some of the other men in the mix are Johnny Flynn’s dashing George Knightley – the brother-in-law to Emma’s sister – and Callum Turner’s wealthy Frank Churchill, whose attentions lead to more misunderstandings. Both were great but I was more impressed with O’Connor who transforms into a completely other person when Emma spurns his affections and seems like a different person from the way first-time features director (and photographer) Autumn de Wilde shoots him. Of course, Bill Nighy is as great as always as Emma’s father, always feeling a slight draft, but even more impressive is the wonderfully hilarious Miranda Hart (from Spy) as Miss Bates, a woman who gabs at length about how wonderful Jane Fairfax is, much to Emma’s annoyance. As much as Emma. is Anya Taylor-Joy’s show, it’s the ensemble cast around her that makes the movie so infinitely enjoyable, getting better as it goes along.

This is a very good first feature from de Wilde, who has directed quite a number of music videos for Beck, and Emma. seems very different from the movies we normally get from video directors, much of that to do with Austen’s source material and the cast. Either way, how things develop over the course of the film makes it more enjoyable as it goes along. (Although I have never read the book, the film seems fairly faithful to the book’s Wikipedia page, so Austen fans should enjoy it, too.)

I guess we can now get to the wide and semi-wide releases and the rest of the movies – merging my two columns into one means you get more 5,000-word columns, you lucky ducks!

The higher-profile of the two new wide releases is probably CALL OF THE WILD (20thCentury Studios), a PG adaptation of Jack London’s classic novel starring Harrison Ford and the most adorable CG dog (i.e. not real, so back off PETA!) you’ve ever met named Buck! Sure, dog lovers might say, “Why would we want to watch a movie with a CG dog when clearly, a movie with actors in green suits turned into dogs using CG would suffice?” But no, it’s actually a very heavily CG movie directed by Chris Sanders, who directed Lilo & Sitch, the first How to Train Your Dragon and The Croods before giving a go at live action. (Sanders also provided quite a few voices in earlier animated films like Disney’s Mulan and Tarzan.)

A film that already was well into production when Disney bought Fox (now 20thCentury Studios), Call of the Wild also stars Omar Sy (returning for next year’s “Jurassic World” finale), Karen Gillan, Dan Stevens, Bradley Whitford but the real star of the movie is the dog Buck, which is performed by the immensely talented Terry Notary, who you’ll know for his work on the “Apes” movies with Andy Serkis, Kong: Skull Island and some of the characters in the last couple “Avengers” movies.

Of course, opening the weekend after Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog, which has turned out to be a bigger hit than anyone imagined, certainly won’t help The Call of the Wild.

In many ways, this reminds me of the 2002 Disney movie Snow Dogs, which opened with $17.8 million over the 4-day MLK weekend. The combination of Ford (who appears in very few movies) and the adorable dog antics might be enough for the movie to make $15 to 17 million this weekend, maybe a little more, although it only has two weeks to do business before Disney’s next Pixar movie, Onward, takes over, not giving it much time to make bank.

Mini-Review: It’s pretty evident that this exceedingly faithful take on Jack London’s book will not be for everyone. While I personally was mixed, I expect this to be one of the rare positive reviews just ‘cause. Surprisingly, it’s also the most “Disneyfied” movie that could possibly come from the newly-renamed 21stCentury Studios as it’s a movie clearly made for kids and animal lovers even if never the ‘twain shall meet, in some cases.

The story follows a large St. Bernard named Buck (portrayed by Terry Notary – but we’ll get back to that), who begins his life as the spoiled and pampered pet of a wealthy judge in California but is sold to a man who trains Buck with his club sending the dog on a wild journey across the Yukon as part of a dog sled for a pair of Canadian postal workers (played by Omar Sy and Cara Gee from “The Expanse”). Eventually, he’s paired with an alcoholic frontiersman (Harrison Ford) and he finds true love, as the two of them go off looking (and finding) gold.

Some might be surprised that director Chris Sanders (who has an extensive animation background) decided to go for straight-up CG when depicting the animals and some of the environments in Call of the Wild. In fact, it feels almost necessary to make Buck as expressive as he needs to be to carry this film, and that’s where Terry Notary (Andy Serkis’ partner-in-performance-capture from the “Apes” movies) and the CG team comes in handy. Buck is already lovable but being able to make him so expressive doesn’t hurt, and the scenes where he’s interacting with other animals are pretty amazing.

We do have to discuss the negatives, and one of them is the episodic nature of Buck’s story that means that Harrison Ford, other than the narration and a brief appearance, doesn’t play a large part in Buck’s story until about the 45-minute mark. I didn’t think much of the performances by Sy and Gee or Dan Steven and Karen Gillan as the spoiled rich people who buy Buck to drive their dog sled off to find gold. Buck’s experiences as part of the first dog sled is far more positive even though it’s rigorous and it puts him at odd with the dog pack leader. The problem is that most of the human actors don’t come close to delivering what Notary does as Buck, the exception being Ford, but it’s still one of those odd CG-live action amalgations that doesn’t always work.

If you’re fond of Jack London’s Arctic adventures (as I generally am), Call of the Wild offers as much good as it does bad, but it’s worthwhile more for the amazing vistas and terrific use of CG (and Terry Notary’s performance as Buck) than anything else.

Rating: 6.5/10

I won’t have a chance to see the horror sequel BRAHMS: THE BOY II (STXfilms), but I never got around to seeing the first movie either, although this one, starring Katie Holmes, does look kind of fun. 2020 has not been a great year for horror so far with almost a new horror every weekend and few doing particularly well – The Grudge tops the heap with just $21 million and that opened almost two months ago!

I really don’t have a lot to say about this other than the fact that the original The Boy(not to be confused with The Boy, The Boy or The Boy, which are also movies about a different “Boy”), also directed by William Brent Bell, opened in January 2016 to $10.8 million on its way to $35.8 million domestic but it also opened at a time when there were no strong horror films in theaters. Some could argue that there are still no strong horror films in theaters, especially since so many of them quickly lost theaters after bombing. Still, there have been a lot this year already and the most recent one, Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island underperformed this past weekend, so why would anyone want more?

STXfilms’ marketing has been solid even as this moved from its December release to now, but I still think it will be tough for this to make more than $10 million this weekend and probably will end up closer to $8 million or less.

Opening in limited release but also sure to be exciting to the fans of the TruTV hidden camera prank show is IMPRACTICAL JOKERS: THE MOVIE, which brings the hilarious Tenderloins comedy troop – Q, Murr, Sal and Joe -- to the big screen as they go off on a cross-country adventure to attend a party in Florida, playing their usual prank-filled games to see which three get to attend. At this writing, I have no idea how many theaters it’s opening – I’m assuming 150 to 200 maybe? – so no idea how it might do although there are already some sold out showings in my general area (NYC) where the guys are from.

Mini-Review: It feels like there need to be two reviews for this movie – one for those who already know and love the show and find the Tenderloins hysterical (this includes me) —and then one for everyone else. The former can probably skip the next paragraph.

The Tenderloins are a group of four Staten Island friends (names above) whose antics led to a successful TruTV hidden camera show where they pull pranks and challenge each other to say and do whatever they’re told. The show has run eight seasons, and it’s made the Tenderloins such big stars they regularly sell out enormous venues (like Radio City Music Hall) to perform live for their fans. Considering the success Johnny Knoxville’s “Jackass” show has had in movie theaters where it can take advantage of an R-rating, there’s little reason why the “Impractical Jokers” shouldn’t be able to do the same. (For some context, I watched this movie with a theater full of the group’s friends, crew as well as Q’s firehouse buddies, in other words, 75% of Staten Island.)

The movie, directed by Chris Henchy, long time McKay and Ferrell collaborator – the film is presented by their “Funny or Die” brand –opens with one of a number of scripted/staged scenes to frame the road trip the Tenderloins to attend a party in Miami being held by Paula Abdul. Since they only have three passes, they need to compete in their usual challenges to determine who misses out.

If you are a fan of the show, I’m not going to spoil any of the challenges or pranks they plan on each other, but they generally get better and funnier as the movie goes along, to the point that when it returns to the “story” and the scripted stuff, the movie does falter a little. Although the Tenderloins aren’t the greatest actors, they are great improvisers and you can tell when they’re coming up with lines by the seat of their pants.

The majority of the movie is basically what we see on the show without all of the commercial breaks cutting in just as things start to get outrageous, and as someone who watches more of the show than I probably should admit, I find it hard to believe no one watching the movie will at least get one good snicker out of the movie. There are a few recurring gags throughout the movie as well as a follow-up to a memorable punishment from an earlier season. (Like with the show, you’re likely to feel bad for Murr and Sal, the nicer half of the group who always get the most abuse because of it.)

If you’re already a fan of the Impractical Jokers, you’ll probably like the movie, but if not, you might not get it and there’s just no real use trying. In other words, not a great intro to the “Impractical Jokers” but a fine bit of fun for the already-converted.

Rating: 6.5/10

This week’s Top 10 should look something like this…

1. Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount) - $29 million -50% (up $1.5 million)**

2. Call of the Wild (20th Century) - $17 million N/A (up .3 million)** 3. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (Warner Bros) - $9 million -48%

4. Brahms: The Boy II (STXfilms) - $7 million N/A (down .6 million)**

5. Bad Boys for Life (Sony) - $6 million -48% (down .1 million)**

6. The Photograph (Universal) – $5.5 million -55% (down .6 million)**

7. Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island (Sony) - $5.3 million -57%

8. 1917 (Universal) - $5 million -38%

9. Parasite (NEON) - $3.6 million -35%

10. Jumanji: The Next Level (Sony) - $3.3 million -42%

-- The Impractical Jokers Movie (TruTV) - $1.8 million*

-- Las Pildoras de mi Novio (Pantelion/Lionsgate) - $1.3 million*

* These last two projections are made without much info on either movie, including theater counts for the former.

**A few minor tweaks as we go into weekends with actual theater counts, although this weekend will still mostly be about Sonic the Hedgehog. I still don’t have any theater counts for Impractical Jokers on Thursday night so I guess we’ll just have to see if the theaters playing it report to Rentrak and it gets some sort of placement, presumably outside the top 10, on Sunday.

LIMITED RELEASES

There are lots of other new limited releases this weekend beyond the ones I mentioned above.

On Wednesday night, Fathom Events is releasing Masaaki Yuasa’s new movie RIDE YOUR WAVE (GKIDS) across the nation for one night only in some places, although it will get a limited release on Friday at New York’s Village East and maybe other places, as well. If you’ve seen any of Yuasa’s other films like 2017’s The Night is Short, Walk on Girl or Lu Over the Wall or Mind Game, then you can probably expect this to be another wild ride, except this time it’s on a surfboard. It follows the story of a surfer and a firefighter who fall in love. You can learn more about how to get tickets here.

Like Portrait of a Lady on Fire last week, Una director Benedict Andrews’ SEBERG (Amazon) received a one-week release in 2019 but it’s getting a legit limited release this Friday. It stars Kristen Stewart as French New Wave icon Jean Seberg who came to the States in the late ‘60s and began a relationship with civil rights leader Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), putting her in the sights of the FBI who were hoping to use her to bust the Black Panthers. The film also stars Jack O’Connell, Margaret Qualley, Vince Vaughn, and Stephen Root, and it’s a pretty solid historical drama, although I haven’t seen it so long I’m not sure I can say much more about that.

I was never a huge fan of Bob Dylan or the Band but I found Daniel Roher’s doc ONCE WERE BROTHERS: ROBBIE ROBERTSON AND THE BAND (Magnolia) (about the latter) to be quite compelling as the story is told by various people who were there, including the film’s exec. producer Martin Scorsese who directed the band’s legendary concert film The Last Waltz. This is also produced by Ron Howard and Brian SGrazer of Imagine, so you know it’s gonna be a quality music doc, and it certainly is, although I’m not sure it will be of that much interest to people who aren’t already fans of The Band.

Opening in roughly 350 theaters this weekend is LAS PILDORAS DE MI NOVIO (Pantelion), translated as “My Boyfriend’s Meds,” a comedy about a woman (Sandra Echeverria) who falls for a mattress store owner who suffers from multiple personality disorder and when they go on vacation… he forgets to bring along his meds! Humor abounds. As usual, this won’t screen in advance for critics.

Tye Sheridan stars with Knives Out’s Ana De Armas in Michael Cristofer’s thriller The Night Clerk (Saban Films), Sheridan plays a hotel clerk with Asperger’s Syndrome who witnesses a murder in one of the rooms but ends up as the main suspect by the lead detective, played by John Leguizamo. The film also stars Helen Hunt and it will be released in select theaters (including New York’s Cinema Village), on demand and digitally this Friday. Just couldn’t into this one, having at least one good friend with Asperger’s, due to the way Sheridan played this often-debilitating disease. (Think Rain Man without the talent of Dustin Hoffman.)

Opening exclusively at theMetrographFriday with an expansion on March 3 is Portugese filmmaker Bruno de Almeida’s Cabaret Maxime (Giant Pictures), starring Michael Imperioli as Bennie Gaza, the owner and manager of the title nightclub specializing in a mix of burlesque, striptease, music and comedy. Bennie is fairly old-fashioned so when a modern day (translation: trashy and demeaning to women) strip club opens across the way, Bennie finds himself pressure to make changes to stay in line as he starts getting pressure from his mobster financer to change. I was kinda mixed on this movie, which delivers another typically great performance from Imperioli but the way it cuts between various acts and disparate scenes that do very little to move the story forward (including the far-more-interesting subplot about Bennie’s wife Stella, a performer suffering from depression, as played by the amazing Ana Padrão). I think one of the reasons I just couldn’t get into the movie is cause a friend of mine attempted a similar film based out of a nightclub and the film never got much traction. De Almeida should have paid more attention developing the storytelling than showing off his talented musical singing/dancing friends.

A second Portugese filmmaker, Pedro Costa, also releases a new film this week. Vitalina Varela (Grasshopper Film) will open at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center on Friday. The title of the film is also the name of the non-actor who returns from Costa’s Horse Moneyto play a woman from Cape Verdean who comes to Fontainhas for her estranged husband’s funeral and sets up a new life there.

Also opening at the Quad Friday is the latest from the Dardenne Brothers, Young Ahmed (Kino Lorber) about a 13-year-old (Idir ben Addi) who has come under the grips of radical jihadism in his Belgian town, putting him at odds with various factions. When he carries out an act of violence, he ends up in a juvenile detention facility. The Dardennes won the Best Director award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where their films have been honored with the Palme d’Or twice. I’ve never been much of a fan but what do I know?

Opening at the IFC Center Wednesday is Nicolas Champeaux, Gilles Porte’s documentary The State Against Mandela and the Others, which is built around recently recovered audio recordings of the 1963-4 Rivona trial in which Nelson Mandela and eight others faced death sentences for challenging Apartheid. The film mixes animation showing the trails with contemporary interviews with the survivors including Winnie Mandela, about their fight against the country’s corrupt system.

Another doc I know little about is Andrew Goldberg’s Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations, which will open at the Village East Friday but it includes the likes of Julianna Margulies, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton as anti-semitism rears its ugly head over 70 years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust.

Also opening at Cinema Village is Matt Ratner’s Standing Up, Falling Down (Shout! Studios) starring Billy Crystal and Ben Schwartz (the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog!), the latter playing a stand-up comic whose L.A. dreams have crashed and burned leaving him with little money, forcing him to return to Long Island. Once there, he pines over his ex (Eloise Mumford) and becomes friends with an eccentric dermatologist (Crystal) as they help each other deal with their respective failures.

Playing at the Roxy for a one-week run starting Friday is Sam De Jong’s Goldie (Film Movement), starring actress/model Slick Woods as the title character, a teenager in a family shelter pursuing her dreams of being a dancer while trying to keep her sisters together. This premiered at the Tribeca Film Festivallast year.

Oscilloscope (the distributor that brought you the cat doc Kedi) is doing something called “Cat Video Fest 2020,” which will take place at the Alamo in Brooklyn (although the Saturday screening is sold out there) and the Village East Cinema. This screening of pre-selected cat videos is also taking place at other cities throughout the country, and you can find out where right here.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

This Friday, the Metrograph will debut its newest series “Climate Crisis Parabels,” a series of varied future shock films, this weekend with Robert Bresson’s The Devil, Probably (1977), Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1999) (hosted by Naomi Klein Sunday afternoon, but also playing as part of the Playtime Family Matinees”) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: The Final Cu ton Sunday night. “To Hong Kong with Love” also continues with screenings of Stanley Kwan’s Rouge (1987) and the 2016 film Raise the Umbrellas. The ongoing Welcome To Metrograph: Redux also continues with HarunFarocki’sdocumentary Before Your Eyes: Vietnam (1981). This week’s Late Nites at Metrograph is another Japanese thriller, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1966 thriller The Face of Another, and the Metrograph’s Japanese love continues as Playtime: Family Matinees will also show Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke from 1999.

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Tonight’s “Weird Wednesday” is Ken Russell’s 1987 film Gothic, and this week’s “Kids Camp” offering is the 2006 animated Curious George with a special “pick your own price.” In preparation for the release of Emma. On Friday, the Alamo is doing a “Champagne Cinema” screening of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley, which unfortunately, is sold out already. (Waugh Waugh) Monday’s “Out of Tune” is the Prince film Under the Cherry Moon from 1986, which is also sold out. (Hey, Jeremy Wein, why don’t you tell me these things are going on sale so I can go!?!) Next week’s “Terror Tuesday” is the horror classic Candyman (1992), which is ALSO almost sold out and then we’re back to “Weird Wednesday” with next week’s offering, 1985’s soft-core actioneer Gwendoline.

If you’re one of those poor souls living in L.A., you can also go to see Don Coscarelli’s 2002 film Bubba Ho-Tep, starring Bruce Campbell, on Wednesday night or the 1986 Little Shop of Horrors on Thursday at the grand, new(ish) Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Downtown Los Angeles. Saturday afternoon is a matinee of Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998), starring George Clooney and J-Lo and Saturday night, you can see Cassavetes’ Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), starring Seymour Cassel and Gena Rowlands. Monday night is Juliet Bashore’s 1986 Kamikaze Hearts, which looked into the X-rated SF underground of the ‘80s. The West Coast “Terror Tuesday” is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Keanu Reeves, Gary Oldman and Winona Rider!

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Wednesday’s afternoon matinee is the classical musical The Sound of Music (1965) and then Weds and Thurs night’s double feature is Robert Redford’sThe Hot Rock (1972) and Cops and Robber (1973). Friday’s matinee is the late Tony Scott’s The Hunger (1983) and then the Tarantino-pennedTrue Romance (1993, also directed by Scott), will play Friday midnight and Saturday’s midnight movie is the 1967 film Carmen, Baby. This weekend’s Kiddee Mattine is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). Monday’s matinee is Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) and the Monday night double feature is A Man for All Seasons(1966) and The Mission (1986). Tuesday’s Grindhouse double feature is 1980’s Super Fuzz and 1977’s Death Promise, both in 35mm, of course.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Weds’ “Black Voices” movie is William Greaves’ 1968 film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, and then on Friday night in the Spielberg Theater, you can see the 1913 film Traffic in Souls with live music as well as a couple shorts. The Japanese horror film Kwaidan(1965) will play in the normal theater. On Saturday, the Egyptian is presenting “Leigh Whannell’s Thrill-A-thon” a series of four films that helped to inspire Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, which comes out next week with some great options worth seeing, including 1987’s Fatal Attraction, David Fincher’s 2014 film Gone Girl, Rob Reiner’s Stephen King adaptation Misery(1990) and the classic Aussie thriller Dead Calm(1989) starring Nicole Kidman … all for just 15 bucks!

AERO (LA):

The AERO’s “Black Voices” film for Weds. is the great Stir Crazy, starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and then on Thursday afternoon, you can see Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classicDr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb for $8 (free to Cinemateque members!) New restoration of the Russian film Come and See (also opening at the Film Forum in New York) will play on Saturday evening as part of the “Antiwar Cinema” series. Sunday’s double feature in that series is Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957) and the Russian film The Ascent (1977). Tuesday’s “Black Voices” matinee is Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991) and then Greg Proops will screen the 1996 film Ridicule as part of his Film Club podcast which precedes the film.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Jack Lemmon continues through the end of the month with Mister Roberts (1955) on Weds., Billly Wilder’s Avanti (1972) and the classic (and one of my all-time faves) Some Like it Hot (1959) on Friday. This weekend also sees movies in the continuing “Theater of Operations” series, which will include Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker (2009) on Saturday afternoon and a bunch of docs including Werner Herzog’s 1992 film Lessons of Darkness on Sunday. Weds also kicks off “Television Movies: Big Pictures on the Small Screen” – pretty self-explanatory, I think – with 1953’s The Trip to Bountiful and 1955’s Tosca on Weds. and Sunday, 1967’s Present Laughter Thursday and Tuesday and more. (Click on the link for full schedule!) Following Film Forum’s focus on black actresses (for February, Black History Month, get it?) MOMA begins a “It’s All in Me: Black Heroines” series with All By Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story and Julie Dash’s Illusions, both from 1982, on Thursday and many more running through March 5.

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES (NYC):

The Anthology still has a few more films in its “Devil Probably: A Century of Satanic Panic” including Eric Weston’s Evilspeak (1981) tonight in 35mm, but also David Van Taylor will be at tonight’s screening of his 1991 film Dream Deceivers. I’ve never seen either of these, by the way. Robert Eggers’ The VVitch and Alan Parker’s Angel Heart screen one more time on Thursday night, as well. This weekend also begins a new series, “Dream Dance: The Films of Ed Emshwiller” but since I have no idea who that is, I have nothing further to add. (Sorry!)

NITEHAWK CINEMA (NYC):

Williamsburgis showing David Lynch’s 1990 film Wild at Heart as part of its “Uncaged” series on Friday just after midnight and John Singleton’s Poetic Justice on Saturday morning as part of “California Love.” They’re also showing Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride on Saturday morning for an “All-Ages Brunch Movie.”

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Elem Klimov’s 1985 Russian drama Come and See (Janus) will have a DCP restoration premiere at the Forum and Sunday afternoon will be a screening of the 1953 Mexican film El Corazon y La Espada in 3D. This weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is the 1953 pseudo-doc Little Fugitive. Monday night is a screening of David Rich’s Madame X (1966) introduced by actor/playwright Charles Busch.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

This weekend’s Weekend Classics: Luis Buñuel is the Mexican film The Exterminating Angel (1962), while Waverly Midnights: Hindsight is 2020s will screen Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Mnemonic and Late Night Favorites: Winter 2020is taking a surprising weekend off.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Still waiting to see if Pandora and the Flying Dutchman continues through the weekend, as at this time (Monday), there is nothing repertory listed.

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

Horace Jenkins’ Cane River continues through Friday. Saturday night’s “Beyond the Canon” is a double feature of Ida Lupino’s The Hitch-Hiker(1953) and Malick’s Badlands (1973).

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

This weekend’s “See It Big! Outer Space” offerings include1974’s Space is the Placeon Friday and 1924’s Aelita, Queen of Mars and the 1980 Flash Gordonscreening on Saturday and Sunday. As usual, 2001: A Space Odysseywill screen on Saturday afternoon as part of the ongoing exhibition.

ROXY CINEMA(NYC)

Weds’ Nicolas Cage movie is Martin Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead (1999) and then Thursday is a 35mm screening of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2012)!

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):

Friday’s midnight movie is Who Killed Roger Rabbit (1988).

STREAMING AND CABLE

Let’s see what’s going on in the world of streaming this week, shall we?

Netflix is debuting Dee (Mudbound) Rees’ new movie THE LAST THING HE WANTED on the streaming service Friday, even though apparently, it opened in select cities last week, including New York’s Paris Theater, although it got such terrible reviewsout of Sundance, maybe Netflix didn’t want any more bad reviews before it begins streaming. Regardless, it stars Anne Hathaway, Willem Dafoe, Ben Affleck and Rosie Perez, and it’s based on Joan Didion’s novel about a D.C. journalist named Elena (Hathaway) who abandons her work on the 1984 campaign trail to run an errand for her father (Dafoe). I guess I’ll watch it when it’s on Netflix just like everyone else but my expectations have been suitably lowered.

The Jordan Peele-produced series “Hunters,” starring Al Pacino, which is about a group of Nazi hunters will hit Amazon Prime this Friday as well, and a new season of the popular series“Star Wars: The Clone Wars” will debut on Friday on Disney+, adding to the amazing amount of content already available on that network.

Next week, Saw and Insidious co-creator Leigh Whannell revamps The Invisible Man for Universal with Elisabeth Moss, and there’s also (supposedly) a movie call The Ride, which I know nothing about. You can guess which movie I’ll be focusing on.

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or send me a note on Twitter. I love hearing from readers!

#TheCallOfTheWIld BrahmsTheBoy Premature Emma Balloon CorpusChristi Movies Reviews Repertory Streaming TheWeekendWarrior

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nicklesthename · 6 years ago

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Here we are again, at the end of another year of our lives and nearing the beginning of one more. That means it’s time to look back and see how I did with my resolutions from last year. I’ll be honest, it’s not good. I’ll say that right now. This year seemed to kind of get away from me and it doesn’t help that in the last two months of it, I was in a depressive episode. That really put a dent in my goals. Excuses aside, here is how I did during 2019:

Run a 5k

Yeah…this didn’t happen. I started off the year pretty strongly, running on the treadmill a couple times a week. I just stopped at some point. I think I had to miss a couple times and I let that discourage me enough to just give up. I really didn’t exercise much at all in 2019. I tried to get Just Dance and do that regularly, but I just didn’t follow through. I have a fitness-related goal for 2020, but this is a much more realistic one.

Get 100 subscribers

I may not have hit this goal in 2019, but I am proud of the growth my YouTube channel saw. I started the year with 74 subscribers and ended it with 85. That may not seem like a lot, but to me, every new subscriber means so much to me. The fact that anyone watches my videos is amazing to me, so the fact that someone would subscribe to see them all is amazing. Maybe next year with be the year I finally hit that 100 subscriber mark I’ve been after for about 2 years.

Increase watch hours to 400

Just to remind those who aren’t familiar, watch hours are how many hours have been spent watching your videos total. At the end of last year, I was at 195 watch hours. And at the end of this year, I managed a grand total of 112 hours! Hooray! Yeah, so I didn’t do very good in this department. A huge part of that is that comes down to the fact that I haven’t really been making videos for the second half of the year at all. That is due to the aforementioned depressive episode.

Receive 10,000 views on my blog

My goal for 2019 was to go from 3,450 to 10,000. Instead, I regressed back to 2,866. My theory on why I set such a lofty goal is because, at the end of 2018, I got a big boom of search engine and Pinterest referrals. It seemed like things were on the up. And maybe I would have been able to reach such a goal if I actually wrote a good amount of posts in 2019. However, from basically September onward, I didn’t write any posts at all, let alone good, searchable, relevant ones. I think I could have hit that goal if I had been writing.

Complete the Popsugar 2019 Reading Challenge

This resolution might be the closest I came to succeeding all year. Instead of just giving myself a number of books to read all year, I wanted something a little more creative and challenging, so I decided to do a reading challenge. Popsugar does a reading challenge every year. It’s two pages of prompts relating to different aspects of books, from specific words in the title to the art on the cover. There were 40 regular prompts and 10 advanced prompts. I did 35 regular prompts and 0 advanced ones. So all in all, I completed 70% of the whole challenge! I think that’s not bad. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. Finding books that fit such random criteria as having a plant in the title or on the cover or set in Scandinavia AND I also thought it sounded interesting and compelling? Not so easy. It led me to reread a lot of books that I knew were short, easy reads that matched a prompt. I don’t want to have to do that again, so 2020 will not be featuring this type of challenge.

Learn sign language

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Onto 2020!

Find a form of exercise that I enjoy doing

This resolution is about as simple as I could make a fitness-related goal. I’m tired of trying to make running more interesting or fun. It’s just not that interesting or fun. Neither is doing different workouts on the ground or mindless cardio. I want to find something I actually look forward to doing and does not feel like a chore to do. There are a million and one ways to get my body moving out there, and I’ve only tried such a small percentage. Things I am going to try first include: Just Dance, Ring Fit Adventure, yoga, and some fitness classes.

Listen to music every single day

This goal might seem lofty since it requires I do something 365 times, but this one is important. Music makes me feel good. It inspires me, energizes me, and makes me want to get things done. The only reason I don’t already listen to it every day is that I know it’ll make me feel this way and my depression brain would rather lay in bed and be sad. If I listen to anything, it’s My Favourite Murder, which is an amazing podcast but hardly does anything to inspire or motivate me. So from now on, I have to listen to at least one song a day. I think I can take 2-5 minutes a day minimum to help with my mental health.

Get 100 subscribers

Yep, we’re doing this one again! I swear, one of these days I will reach 100 subscribers, it’s just taken a couple years longer than I thought it would take. No biggie. 2020 is the year, I can feel it!

Reach 5,000 views on my blog

Last year I really shot for the moon with trying to go from less than 4,000 to 10,000 in just one year. That’s a pretty lofty increase to try to complete. This year I am going to shoot lower and then I might be able to blow the goal out of the water instead of failing again. I know that all I need to create content regularly and the new views will come. For over a year I’ve been getting views on my blog every single day. Not a ton, but its the consistency that is the key. Search engines are working for me. I just need to work for me.

Read 60 new books

As I mentioned in my wrap up from 2019, I have a bad habit of just rereading books in order to reach my reading goals. I choose short, easy reads that don’t really challenge me and definitely don’t give me a new experience. So instead of doing some big list of complicated prompts or just giving myself a number to reach, I just have to read all new books. I can read sequels of books I’ve read before, but not if I’ve read that sequel before. This should be easy for me since I have such a huge to be read list, I just keep ignoring it to meet arbitrary goals.

Those are my 5 new resolutions for 2020! What resolutions do you have for the first year of the new decade? Do you bother to set resolutions anymore? Let me know!

How did I do meeting my goals last year? And what do I have planned for 2020? Here we are again, at the end of another year of our lives and nearing the beginning of one more.

#2019 #2020 #books #goal digger #goal setting #goals #happy new year #new year #new years resolutions #opinion #personal #recent #resolution

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gazzhowie · 5 years ago

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My Top 25 Movies of 2020.

It is indeed time… or at least, as is tradition, it is indeed now overdue for me to dust off the cobwebs from my Tumblr account and post my Top 25 movies of the year. This time for 2020. That funny old year, huh? Where - if some are to be stupidly believed - “no films got released because of the pandemic”.

I thought I was done with this after 12 years and concluding with my Top 25 of the decade effort and yet here I am. Back rather egotistically because 2 people told me how much they look forward to reading this. Go figure! Years 2008 through to present are available in the archive. Frequent visitors know that I’ll throw out a few special mentions to all the films that I wish I could’ve included but couldn’t make them fit yet believe they deserve a shout out regardless and then I get stuck in to what I think are the 25 best films of the year.

As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. Anyway, without further ado, here’s the ‘also-rans’ and ‘near-misses’ separated per genre that very nearly made the final list:

Setting my stall out straight away, Steve McQueen’s Small Axe was very much TV to me and won’t get ranked within my film listing. I loved two of the efforts a great deal (Education and Mangrove), liked two but found them lacking (Red, White & Blue and Alex Wheatle) and did not get what everyone else seems to from the other (Lover’s Rock).

In terms of documentaries this year, I thought Frank Marshall did a fabulous job with The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart; a comprehensive study of the personal complexities and professional excellence of an incredibly underappreciated band. I found On The Record to be a difficult but inspiring watch and its background ‘politics’ exposed the hypocrisy of Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey in a manner we’re not talking loud enough about. Hitsville: The Making of Motown was an extensive, lovely historical tribute to an era and a style of music, full of great tunes and equally great talking head anecdotes. And finally Belushi managed to find fresh angles and previously untold stories about one of the most mythologised comedy stars of all time, simply by pulling the man to the forefront ahead of his talents.

For dramas, I enjoyed Trial of the Chicago 7 a great deal and am an absolute sucker for the work of Aaron Sorkin but bad casting (Eddie Redmayne) and stunt casting (Sacha Baron Cohen) hurt this film. I’m a sucker for a disaster movie and Pål Øie made an incredibly entertaining one with the Norwegian high-melodrama, The Tunnel. Edward Norton’s long-gestating Motherless Brooklyn was a solid, old-fashioned PI yarn with some great casting to back it up. It’s the most alive Bruce Willis has been in years and it served to remind you that Alec Baldwin can be quite the terrific actor when he’s not being an utter joke of a human. I liked The Vast of Night a great deal when in the throes of watching it but liked it less in the aftermath. Cut Throat City was the underrated dramatic gem of the year in a lot of ways and showed that RZA has a great deal of skill as a legit filmmaker, when not being caught up in the ‘gimmicks’. O.G finally landed here via Sky Atlantic of all places, rather than any sort of VOD release, and it was an enthralling drama that served to remind us all how brilliant Jeffrey Wright can be when not overacting to the point of cringe or being stuck with really terrible writing (hello, TV’s Westworld!).

With the blockbuster season at the cinema all but dead from the outset, the joys of the action genre were to be found in the little b-movies tucked away on streaming platforms and VOD. Quick notable exceptions were The Outpost which was a reminder that Rod Lurie can deliver a hell of an action sequence, blighted by truly awful film-damaging casting and Extraction which was a well-directed derivative piece of hokum. Donnie Yen delivered an earnest, entertaining end to one of the surprise action franchises of the last decade with IP Man 4 that not even Scott Adkins could fuck up. Hack director Deon Taylor accidentally delivered Black and Blue; a pretty good ode to the ‘man on the run’ non-stop action thrillers of the 80s and 90s – with Naomi Harris killing it in the lead role. Netflix tucked away two of the greatest b-movie actioners of 2020 with The Decline (a ‘Doomsday Preppers’ training camp goes horribly wrong) and Earth & Blood (a sawmill owner uses his place of work as a battleground to take on the cartel). And, finally, the Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee) Taken rip-off Unstoppable arrived to streaming and turned out to be vastly superior to all of the films it was a knock-off of.

It was a great year for horror, especially if you were open to the sort of scares you were after. Sea Fever didn’t stick the landing but delivered an ace sense of foreboding and tension building for the most part. Harpoon was a sneakily nasty, surprisingly engrossing, violent little film. VFW was a lot of fun but nowhere near as good as its concept and cast suggested it was going to be. It’s also been subsequently marred by the stories coming out of its production and the revelations about Fred Williamson. I thought Come To Daddy was an absolute gift of a horror comedy that kept swerving whenever you thought you had a handle on where it was going. And Elijah Wood continues to show himself to be an American national treasure. After Midnight was an intriguing relationship drama with a horror bent and You Should Have Left, the Stir of Echoes reunion we’ve all long sought, would work as an off-kilter double-bill with it. Kevin Bacon is brilliant in it. Vampires Vs The Bronx is a totally disposable but immensely fun ode to The Lost Boys and The Monster Squad that’ll serve you well on a lazy Saturday night. Black Water: Abyss was a really good little creature feature with a ridiculous ending that infuriates. And Train To Busan: Pennisular was a pretty shit Train to Busan sequel but an immensely entertaining post-apocalyptic zombie action movie.

Onwards is worth mentioning for the fun and moving animated ride it initially presents as but, like too much Pixar nowadays, it does not hold up to repeat viewing.

Comedy-wise, I thoroughly enjoyed Bill & Ted Face The Music but thought its gag-rate was far too hit and miss for it to take a place on the top spot. Buffaloed was a kind of “M’eh” blue-collar Wolf of Wall Street with yet another fantastic ‘How the fuck isn’t she a huge star already’ turn from Zoey Deutch. Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made was a quirky out-of-leftfield oddity that me and my eldest son enjoyed a great deal. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga was not the travesty you would’ve thought it’d be, mainly because of Rachel McAdams, but if Will Ferrell had just leaned a little harder towards his more absurdist style of humour (the killer fairy shit for example?) this could have been so much more. Finally, the second Borat film had some utterly majestic moments of cringe-comedy that make it worthy of a mention but the mechanics of joke-execution and faked set-pieces were far more on show this time around.

And now, if you’re still hanging in there that is, here is my actual Top 25 films of 2020…

25. Skyfire

I don't know whether it's because I’ve been starved of my usual 'Summer Silly Season' this year but I absolutely fucking LOVED this. It's the stupidest, most ridiculous, relentlessly bonkers "Jurassic Park - but with volcanos" fare you could ask for. I have no idea what the fuck Jason Isaac is doing in this but I’m so glad he is because it just adds to the glorious WTF-ery of it all. It's 30 minutes of mechanical lay-up followed by 60 minutes of non-stop, audacious carnage. It's been a long time since me and my wife have had this much fun watching something.

24. Bad Education

Dropped exclusively to Sky Cinema here, this is a great little film that has a shocking true story at its centre. Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney are absolutely terrific. Both of them are the sort of talents who've been in bad movies but never ever given a bad performance regardless.

Here both Jackman and Janney are having a ball with the material and they elevate a very good film into something that demands to be seen.

23. Blood Quantum

This was definitely one of the first-class b-movie horrors of the year for me. It does wonders on screen with very little AND it gives a shot in the arm to the zombie subgenre. It leads you into thinking you're getting yet another zombie-breakout film before expertly wrongfooting you into growing into something else. It's a Native American NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets MAD MAX!

22. Bad Boys For Life

This was a first-rate blast, it really was. From the inexplicable reusing of the 'Simpson/Bruckheimer' production card to the reworking of Mark Mancina's original theme, it draws you straight back to that 1990s blockbuster vibe. It's not just very funny and stacked with some pretty decent action sequences but, rather bizarrely, it actually has something interesting to say about ageing and masculinity... because nowadays Joe Carnahan is killing it when it comes to introspective recalibrations on what it means to be a man. If you were to spoil this movie for someone and reveal what the "twist" is it would sound like the stupidest, hokiest shit ever. And yet inexplicably they make it work. And furthermore, Martin Lawrence goes from the tag-along in this franchise to the platinum level MVP here. The entire final third is held up higher by his insanely good line delivery ("Would you fuck a witch without a condom?") and it's most likely how he plays shit as to why that stupid, hokey plot twist works as well as it does.

Over the course of three separate decades each BAD BOYS entry has, in itself, served to be a somewhat accidentally perfect reflection of the very cinematic decade it landed in: The first is possibly one of the last to truly and wholeheartedly successfully land that perfect marriage between the 'MTV era' and the blockbusters; bringing about the boom of the "music video director as filmmaker" that the 1990s became well known for. The second was a pitch perfect reflection of the gratuitous, often empty-headed, completely excessive pop culture period we were birthing in the 2000s. And the third lands now, right in the very time period where masculinity is being put under a spotlight and men are being asked to be more self-reflective about themselves and their conduct.

With that said, the fourth will obviously therefore land sometime in 2029 and deal with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence wandering a pandemic-ravaged Miami wasteland.

21. Wolfwalkers

This is one of the most lovely, visually wondrous, sumptuous animated films you'll experience this year. Or in quite some time, actually. It’s not just a great adventure film but it’s also a really effective ‘message’ movie that manages to teach about tolerance and friendship along with the perils of fear-mongering, without ever being overly preachy.

20. An American Pickle

This was one of the surprises of the year for me; I THOUGHT I was getting a quirky Seth Rogen fish-out-of-water comedy and instead I got that... with a massive dollop of heart, humour and interesting things to say about legacy and 'cancel culture'. I liked it a lot. It's also further evidence of how intriguing a talent Seth Rogen is becoming; jumping between broad commercial fare and original off-kilter stuff like this, producing and developing fascinating projects for film and TV and working to pass the ladder back down to others too.

19. Get Duked

I say this with only a modicum of bias as I know someone who worked a little bit on this film but this was genuinely brilliant - the absolute laugh-out-loud delight we all need right now. At the time I watched this I don’t think I’d smiled in nearly a fortnight but this broke through with me. Its wrap-up is a little too silly for its own good but that aside, this thing is absolutely stuffed with some TRULY great gags! This is one of the best comedies of the year for me.

18. Host

I had been giving this the big ol' swerve because it sounded like unoriginal, overhyped pish frankly and... fuck it, if that hype isn't absolutely deserved: It's a lean, effective, scary incredibly enjoyable ride. Made all the more fascinating by the fact it was made remotely on a shoestring with the director apparently never being in the same room as his cast at any one time due to Covid restrictions.

NB: I could not find a GIF to represent Rob Savage’s Host sufficiently so here’s Jack Black doing a backyard pandemic dance instead...

17. Sweetheart

What a crackin, lean, little horror thriller it is. It gets straight underway from its fade-up and never overcooks itself or leans hard on lazy exposition, silly character actions or bad deus ex machinas. Remember when Jonathan Mostow made BREAKDOWN and it felt like such a shot in the arm for the man-against-the-odds/standard thriller? This is like that - but for survival dramas and creature features! It commits fully to its high concept, helped along by a truly excellent performance by Kiersey Clemons and some really well-delivered set-pieces (that first flare scene is very well done!). If you watched Tom Hanks in CASTAWAY and thought to yourself "This film is great but what it really needs is a monster!" then this is definitely the film for you. And if you believe the rumours, it’s allegedly a sneaky Creature From The Black Lagoon redo for Blumhouse’s expanding ‘Monster Universe’ too.

16. Soul

I really connected with this. I like Inside Out a great deal but I’ve never understood why it's spoken of as a flawless masterpiece when it's overlong, tonally all over the place and has clunky as fuck casting. In the same breath, I don't understand why the reviews for this are so disparate. I thought it was a wonderful way to spend 100+ minutes. It was visually inventive, funny and inspiring. It doesn't quite seed its VERY deep otherworld-building foundations and Graham Norton doesn't really work in his role but overall I thought it was a delight. And, unlike Onwards, it really does lend itself to repeat visits.

15. Tenet

I had real trepidation about seeing this what with the reviews being all over the place but... well... Is it complete, barely comprehensible bunkum of the highest order? Yes. Could the film have benefited from Nolan letting his brother Jonathan have a pass at the script? Hell yes! Is it most definitely not the majestic masterpiece of masterpieces it thinks it is? Yup. Yet in spite of ALL that I had an absolute blast with it, I really did. If you give it a seconds thought it crumbles completely as the utter egotistical piffle it really is. But where it excels is in looking so gorgeous, being so kinetic and massive with its action and casting with actors who sell the shit out of a hokey script that you're so consumed with the spectacle you don't smell the bullshit until its over. Washington Jr has come out of nowhere these last few years to make me a big fan of his work - and Robert Pattinson has went from being an actor I couldn't fucking abide to being someone I now really rate and who I came away from watching this thinking "Yeah, that's your goddamn perfect James Bond right there!"

14. Da 5 Bloods

It works infinitely better as a 'men on a mission' action adventure shot through the off-kilter lens of a Spike Lee "joint" then it does as a searing commentary about race, war, etc. And that's probably why Spike's choice to include real war atrocity photos and documentary footage alongside the narrative doesn't land as successfully as he probably intended it to. But as an overall film, it's a genuinely great watch. Delroy Lindo has always been one of the greatest working actor. Here he perhaps delivers his ultimate masterclass. Regardless of whether awards season moves online or not, you cannot have any SERIOUS dialogue during it that doesn't have his performance heading the conversation. Ignore the dickheads online putting this in the same bubble as TROPIC THUNDER or DIE HARD (??). This is a wink and a nod to TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and APOCALYPSE NOW, through and through. It's big, bombastic, broad and unafraid to swing out in every direction. It's not flawless but that doesn't mean it's not fuckin ~great~!

13. His House

This very much stands as both one of the most impressive debuts and modern horror movies I’ve seen in quite some time. It's an effective, lean, interesting film that buries under your skin and takes up residency there. Go into it knowing as little as you possibly can and then let it scare the shit out of you and, in its reveals, kick the shit back into you.

12. Tread

I really, REALLY liked this. It's my favourite documentary film of this year - made by that fella who did the bonkers-bad killer dog in the warehouse movie with Adrian Brody, no less! It's an absolutely fascinating true story I knew nothing about, brilliantly intermingling talking heads, archival news footage, dramatic reconstruction and audio recordings. It'll really drop your jaw - it's most definitely one of those 'needs to be seen to be believed' type deals because if you described this to someone as having happened they'd never believe you!

11. Bacarau

No plot description really does this film justice and the less you know going in the better an experience you’ll have. It’s an odd, deeply violent, unsettling, darkly funny, bizarro confection of The Most Dangerous Game meets Assault on Precinct 13 and… well… even that doesn’t really do the film any justice whatsoever. It’s a critique of dire political circumstance mixed with political satire mixed with the tropes of the Western, the siege movie and both horror and comedy. It’s very much its own thing. And that’s what makes it so wonderous.

... and it’s sort of both wondrous AND weird that when searching for Bacarau related GIFs, this was the Brazilian offering I was given! I apologise.

10. Alone

I found this came out of nowhere to be one of my favourite films of the year; a crazily efficient, brutal B-movie without an inch of fat on it that works its propulsive and well-structured screenplay hard to make you feel like you're seeing a new variant on the "stalked woman in peril" film. John Hyams - son of Peter and the man who reconfigured the UNIVERSAL SOLDIER franchise to superb effect - has made one hell of an effective movie that beautifully captures the vastness of the Pacific Northwest: this is one part DUEL, one part FIRST BLOOD, all parts odes to everything from THE GREY, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and the last third of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. It's very easy to make films like this. But it's clearly hard to make them as great as Hyams has done here, otherwise everyone would be doing it. Maybe coz what those films don't have is lead performances as strong and brilliant as Jules Willcox and Marc Menchaca give here.

9. American Murder: The Family Next Door

This is an incredibly powerful true crime documentary on a horrific tragedy, in which Jenny Popplewell tightly and clinically weaves through police interviews, news coverage and Shanann Watts' phone, laptop and social media to weave a moving and ultimately devastating portrait of her and her children's death at the hands of one of the worst forms of evil I’ve ever been exposed to. This still haunts me to this day.

8. Greyhound

I was really impressed with this. A crisp, lean, tension-drenched watch with yet another rock solid Tom Hanks performance centring it. It strips back all the tropes of these war pictures - the character backstories about post-war hopes and dreams, the cutaways to the families back home, the subplots involving the villains - and keeps a propulsive commitment to just this situation, this boat and the people on it; who only talk to one another about the job they're doing. As a result, it's completely involving and committed with action set-pieces that are clean, tense and entertaining as hell. Genuinely had a great time watching this and highly recommend it.

7. #Alive

Whilst the TRAIN TO BUSAN sequel earned rightfully shakey reviews, think of this as an unofficial prequel / 'side-sequel'. It is a tight, disciplined thrill-ride that throws up some interesting spins on old zombie set-pieces (climbing zombie vs. toy drone, for example). It may well deflate as it heads to its denouement but all before it was strong and entertaining enough for it to stand as one of his favourite horrors from this year.

6. The Invisible Man

This started good... then got very good... then got quite frankly flat-out tremendous and then entered a final third flipping anyone the 'bird' who thought that the trailers gave too much away. There is some truly tremendous, inventive and not at all 'cheap' jump scares. In fact, the whole second act is nothing else BUT terrifically effective scare after scare. All bolstered by a REALLY committed lead performance by Elizabeth Moss. Between this and UPGRADE, Leigh Whannell has not only become seriously one to watch but he's possibly just outed himself as John Carpenter's one-true heir.

5. Lynn + Lucy

I was left completely broken by this - what a truly fantastic piece of British cinema; a dark, uncompromising morality play for the modern age with a truly jaw-dropping performance by Nicola Burley. And, Jesus Christ, what an unbelievable find Roxanne Scrimshaw is?? THIS is her acting debut? Holy SHITBALLS! It's harrowing stuff that'll really make you think.

4. Parasite

This really is absolutely ~everything~ people are claiming it to be and more too! It's an exquisite piece of work, in love with the art of spinning out a story, narrative layers, sociological parables and effortlessly terrific direction. It builds and builds in an utterly enthralling manner and then... the pressure valve pops, taking you down a whole other audacious avenue that'll have you giggling at the insanity but still completely hooked.

3. Uncut Gems

It’s alright been memed and GIF’d to death but that doesn’t change the fact that it really is an astounding film - it's completely exhausting and quite honestly one of the most anxiety-inducing films I’ve seen in a long, long time. Even on multiple go-arounds, I found myself screaming at the screen, begging Adam Sandler's character to just fucking STOP for five seconds and... and... it's inescapable as to the direction down in which it heads but it goes there at such a propulsive rate, it is actually scary. An absolutely astounding film - it's like a John Cassavetes film shot with the adrenaline drawn from a Michael Bay action movie... and believe every bit of the buzz: Adam Sandler is jaw-droppingly fucking excellent in this!

2. Wolf of Snow Hollow

I thought this was a complete delight. Once again Jim Cummings has taken a film 'type' you THINK you know and infused it with his own very specific sense of humour to give us something that's very much delightfully off-kilter. What's more, as a sophomore directing effort, Cummings deserves all the plaudits for the massive advancement: There's action scenes and scary set-pieces that are really first rate and are way more accomplished than what you'd expect from someone only on their second movie and have never worked in the horror genre before. Cummings is REALLY funny in the lead role too but it's Robert Forster's final performance that'll break your heart. He was a hard miss anyway but this very much drives home what a great guy we've lost.

1. The Way Back

Gavin O'Connor has hit the trifecta with this, Miracle and Warrior on making a masterful sports drama and using it as a platform to 'say something' and draw a career best from a talented but under-appreciated actor (first Kurt Russell, then Nick Nolte and now Ben Affleck).

Affleck is astounding here. Fallible, real and pained. He's truly brilliant. There’s a realism to every movement he makes and every breath he exhales that only someone who has struggled with addiction will recognise. And around him is a deconstruction of the sporting underdog movie as we know it - it's only by the end that we truly realise that this has always been about the connections made through the game rather than the game itself.

Like with Warrior, you can go back and watch this umpteen times and find different strokes in the human and unspoken moments. If ever there was a secretly feel-good film for 2020 it is this – the movie that tells us that it doesn’t matter how hard or how far we fall, we are defined only by the moments in which we rise again.

And that’s that. See you all next year. Maybe ;)

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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2020: The Year That Changed How We Watch Movies

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Under normal circumstances, it’s easy to get lost in the grind of daily living, missing the forest for the trees. Under normal circumstances, one can be too busy to notice that history is occurring all around them. 2020 was not a normal year.

After nearly 12 months of pandemic and shutdown, social unrest and political upheaval, we are only beginning to understand the ramifications from the year that was. There hasn’t been one facet of our culture that wasn’t dramatically altered by the effects of COVID-19 and the world it wrought. And yes, that includes movies.

When the year began, moviegoers were still going to the last Star Wars movie in theaters to the tune of a billion dollars and looking forward to summer spectacle like Wonder Woman 1984. As 2020 ends, many of those same people are resigned to watch Wonder Woman on HBO Max. What occurred between marks a significant sea change for movies and the audiences who adore them. One that perhaps has changed this relationship forever. Here is a reminder of how.

When Movie Theaters Went Dark

March 17. That was the day movie theaters across the U.S., like European markets before them, began shutting their doors. Regal Cinemas, the second largest movie theater chain in the U.S., and which is owned by the world’s biggest, Cineworld, was the first to announce it would close all North American locations until further notice. Within 24 hours, AMC Theatres and most competitors joined them, with AMC having a particularly rosy outlook when it announced it would only be a 12-week “pause.”

With these events occurring nine months and a lifetime ago, it’s easy to forget how different the motion picture landscape was at the time. The New Year’s moviegoing season had only begun in earnest a few months earlier, with the surprise haul of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s Bad Boys for Life in January exceeding all expectations. It grossed $206 million in the U.S. alone.

Indeed, early months saw several blockbusters, as well as excellent smaller films, that are now ending up on end of year lists at an unusually high volume. Jason Blum’s horror factory of Blumhouse Productions released a Universal Monsters reboot that was better than likely anyone could anticipate in The Invisible Man, with Elisabeth Moss delivering a brutal performance that felt rooted in our post-#MeToo world.

Margot Robbie launched her passion project, Birds of Prey (and the rest of its title). And even with its R rating, the Harley Quinn film will ironically remain the highest grossing superhero movie of the year. And first-time director Autumn de Wilde and her star Anya Taylor-Joy found new, pastel-colored life in Jane Austen’s final novel, Emma, by pinpointing the humor and subversive brilliance of the author’s desire to “take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” It’s the best period adaptation of that tale to date. Meanwhile in the indie world, Kelly Reichardt delivered another critical darling with the A24 released First Cow.

Those are a few of the early critical successes at the cinemas in 2020—and they remain so, as they were also among the only line-up of movies to be in theaters before the full extent of the pandemic was realized. But even before the stampede to video on demand, there had been a steady drip of movies being delayed as the full danger of the coronavirus pandemic became apparent. First Eon Productions moved the next James Bond picture, No Time to Die, from its nearby April release date to November. Then Universal Pictures followed, delaying F9 a full year.

The drip, drip, drip of delays soon became a flood, with the real tipping point being Paramount Pictures delaying A Quiet Place Part II, indefinitely at first. This was one week from its premiere. In fact, the studio had already done press for the movie, with the film being the last I saw in theaters, as well as the last film I did in-person interviews for (and the first where it was made clear no one would shake hands and there was a bottle of Purell available on every surface). The film was supposed to open on March 18. Instead most movie theaters were closed en masse during that weekend.

VOD Experimentation… and Revolution?

The films already in theaters in mid-March, such as Pixar’s Onward or Warner Brothers’ The Way Back, became the earliest to break the theatrical window and immediately go to VOD. Universal Pictures cracked that glass first with The Invisible Man, Emma., and The Hunt, but that was nothing compared to what they announced next: Trolls World Tour would have an alleged day-and-date release in theaters and on Premium Video on Demand (PVOD). But as theaters were essentially closed, this meant Trolls was the first movie to dismiss its obligations to theatrical exhibitors.

It was not received well within the exhibition industry then, and was treated worse still after NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell boasted about the success of pushing the Trolls sequel essentially straight to VOD—where studios keep about 80 percent of grosses, as opposed to somewhere between 40 to 60 percent from a theatrical release. Shell told The Wall Street Journal, “As soon as theaters reopen, we expect to release movies in both formats.”

The news was treated as a threat by AMC Theatres head Adam Aron, who said the largest theater chain in North America was effectively banning Universal Pictures releases in light of Shell’s comments, plus the still sour feelings about Universal putting Trolls 2 on PVOD without consultation with exhibition partners. This was the first public conflict between movie theater owners in dire need of new theatrical content as the pandemic wore on, and the theaters who were wary to provide it. It would not be the last.

Universal and AMC eventually patched things up, agreeing to create a historic model where Universal would keep new releases in AMC Theatres for 17 days (so about three weekend cycles), and then decide afterward whether it made better sense to leave new releases in theaters or to move them straight to PVOD, where AMC would earn an undisclosed portion of the revenue. Where this left AMC Theatres’ competitors is still an open question, but the compromise would look quaint with what was to come.

For while the Universal-AMC drama unfurled, more and more films, both studio efforts and independent releases, were jumping to PVOD or alternative forms of streaming. Universal tested the waters again with the Pete Davidson-led The King of Staten Island while Warner Bros. also gave PVOD a try with a major release via Scoob!

Movies

Hamilton: The Real History of the Burr-Hamilton Duel

By David Crow

Movies

What Hamilton Doesn’t Say About His Real History with Slavery

By David Crow

Perhaps most presciently though was Disney releasing Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton movie straight to Disney+ for the Fourth of July. Technically an edited together version of several 2016 performances of the original Hamilton cast on Broadway, the “movie” was intended to be a special theatrical event released in theaters by Disney in October 2021. And the Mouse House paid a staggering $75 million for the distribution rights to the film.

With its early streaming release, Disney was now effectively using Hamilton as a loss leader for its fledgling streaming service in need of new content. It was a massive success for the Mouse, and Hamilton became one of the most talked about cultural cinematic events of the year, even if it was technically a piece of theater released to streaming. According to Variety and ScreenEngine/ASI, Hamilton was the most watched movie streaming event of the year.

As a harbinger of things to come, Disney continued to build its streaming service’s reputation, and the loyalty of its hastily growing subscriber base by releasing one of the most anticipated theatrical projects for next year.

As such, Disney (plus Miranda’s genius) dominated the cultural landscape in July with a reawakened interest in the legacy of a musical written in the Obama era about the Founding Fathers, but cast with diverse, multicultural talent. Premiering last summer when statues of Founding Fathers (among more deserving historic figures) were being torn down, Hamilton put Disney in the center of the “discourse” occurring in the zeitgeist. The company wouldn’t soon leave.

Tenet and Mulan: A Tale of Two Release Models

As a shutdown spring dragged into a grim summer, and U.S. Congressional leadership balked at the urgent need for a second round of stimulus in a desperate economy, questions began to arise about just how long movie theaters would be closed. In April alone, S&P downgraded AMC Theatres’ credit rating and suggested the theater chain was unlikely to survive if its doors remained shuttered past June.

While AMC and others did, in fact, struggle on, survival was not easy. As infection rates slowly descended in the summer, and more folks began dining inside and outside of restaurants, many in the exhibition industry took it as a sign moviegoers could also return to theaters with proper safety precautions. And at least one major filmmaker and studio agreed with them: Christopher Nolan at WB. The singular filmmaker behind The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception had a new sci-fi action movie epic slated for July 17, 2020, and while all of its competitors abandoned the summer, Tenet would not.

Viewing cinemas as “a vital part of our social life,” Nolan wagered audiences would return in smaller but steady numbers if studios would just give movie theaters content to release again. And after reluctantly agreeing with WB to delay Tenet several times, first a few weeks in July and then more weeks in August, he convinced WB to experiment with bringing movie theaters back: Tenet would open in European and Asian markets on Aug. 26, and then open in “select” U.S. cities on Sept. 3, ahead of the U.S. Labor Day weekend.

It was a monumental gamble intended to give refuge to movie theater owners, and the rest of the industry looked on. Even several other films kept adjusting their release dates around Tenet’s moves, from the B-thriller Unhinged with Russell Crowe, to Disney dumping The New Mutants into theaters a week before Tenet’s U.S. debut. Those movies floundered, but Tenet would be different, right?

Well one competitor who moved in unison with Tenet didn’t think so… Disney’s own controversial blockbuster, Mulan, was scheduled to open in theaters one week after Tenet in July—having moved off its original March 2020 release date due to the pandemic—and then was taken off the release calendar again following Tenet’s delay to August. Then Disney offered an alternative: they would release Mulan as a PVOD on Disney+ one day after Tenet’s U.S. opening.

That’s right, Disney was asking people already paying to subscribe to Disney+ to pay an added premium of $30 to access Mulan—about $10 more than all the other PVOD experiments by competitors earlier in the summer and spring. They also were offering a dueling vision for how to handle the pandemic on the same holiday weekend as Tenet.

It turned out to be a disappointing holiday, indeed. After the weekend was over, WB curtly announced the movie grossed $20 million during its opening weekend. However, that number turned out to include up to $10 million worth of preview screenings throughout the country from the previous weekend, as well as its earlier release in Canada.

Movies

Tenet Ending Explained

By Chris Farnell

Movies

The Many Obstacles of Mulan

By Gene Ching

It was a meager debut for a movie that would go on to do okay business in Europe and Asia, but gross only an anemic $57.8 million in the U.S. Its failure was due in part to the United States’ biggest markets, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and more, remaining closed for its entire run. It also was a result of theaters’ health precautions only allowing most auditoriums to run at a third capacity or less.

More importantly, it was a result of audiences still by and large balking at going back to movie theaters in the midst of a pandemic. Shocking, eh? Even before Tenet’s second weekend, the rest of Hollywood was flinching, delaying its fall schedule into 2021. Black Widow moved again, as did Candyman, and No Time to Die… and WB delayed Wonder Woman 1984 for the second time, from October to Christmas Day.

Meanwhile as a benefit of relying on their own streaming service, Disney has not disclosed its grosses from Mulan’s “Premier Access” experiment. The movie seemed to have a muted reception, perhaps because of the film’s exclusionary price tag for many consumers, and perhaps because of the many problems dogging that production. But Disney was clearly happy enough with the result, as they’ve announced they’re trying Premier Access again next year with the rare thing: an original movie titled Raya and the Last Dragon.

The Awards Season Push

As 2020 concludes, it’s left what once was the height of awards season in a strange, muted place. As early as June, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began facing the new reality by delaying next year’s ceremony from February to April 25, 2021. Additionally, instead of needing to open in 2020, films released as late as Feb. 28, 2021 are eligible for consideration in all categories.

Perhaps more significantly though, the Academy’s Board of Governors ruled films initially intended for theatrical release but released on VOD, streaming, or other means, including drive-ins, will now be eligible for consideration. Tellingly, this rule is intended to only pertain to 2020 (and early 2021), but it’ll be interesting to see if the Academy can put that genie back in its bottle. Firstly, because with a few notable exceptions, like Searchlight Pictures and Chloé Zhao’s beautiful Nomadland, many of the “big” studio awards contenders, like Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story, have abandoned 2020. As a consequence, what’s left of 2020’s movie calendar was dominated, both in the public and critics’ imagination, by streaming services.

Indeed, Netflix has developed a murderer’s row of awards friendly contenders, including Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7, David Fincher’s Mank, Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, the latter of which features the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, which unto itself has generated awards chatter.

Movies

Mank and Amanda Seyfried’s Quest to Save Marion Davies from Citizen Kane

By David Crow

Movies

Toronto International Film Festival 2020 Movie Round-Up

By David Crow

Amazon, meanwhile, is releasing Regina King’s stirring directorial debut, One Night in Miami, and previously dropped the underrated little character study, Uncle Frank. And even Amazon’s Borat 2 is an award contender for the supporting performance of Maria Bakalova. To put that into perspective for a moment, a sequel to one of the raunchiest comedies of the 2000s had its premiere on streaming… and is now an Oscar contender.

The times they are a-changin’.

The Next Wave of Movies

But even as the future of 2021’s film slate—much of it composed of movies originally intended for 2020—remains ambiguous, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel as the industry resumes production on films big and small.

Not surprisingly, it was a major studio tentpole, the type that underwrites the rest of a studio’s fiscal year, which was the first to go back to work. Universal Pictures led the way again with Jurassic World: Dominion, the third film in the Jurassic World trilogy, and sixth Jurassic Park movie. Universal is bringing back major cast members from the recent movies and the original, and as director Colin Trevorrow started filming again, the company released detailed safety guidelines for how to keep the cast and crew safe. They’ve since opened the production up to the gaze of the New York Times. “We are the guinea pigs,” star Bryce Dallas Howard told the paper of record.

They would not be the last. Ridley Scott resumed production on his medieval epic The Last Duel, with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Adam Driver; Guillermo del Toro finally got to finish his Nightmare Alley with Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett; and Robert Eggers traded in lighthouses for Vikings with The Northman. But it hasn’t been perfect.

Infamously, WB’s The Batman had to shut down production again (for the second time after a spring pause) when star Robert Pattinson tested positive for COVID-19. And Anthony Mackie got candid about filming during a pandemic with Entertainment Tonight.

Talking about the safety measures on the resumed production of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Mackie said, “Everybody’s very afraid of each other. The food is bad because they have to pack it up somewhere else and bring it to us in Ziploc bags. Yeah, it’s awful. You’re literally living in quarantine.”

Movies

Jurassic World 3 Story Being Adapted to Reflect Post-2020 Landscape

By Kirsten Howard

Movies

The Batman: Robert Pattinson Returns to Set in New Images

By Kirsten Howard

But it’s keeping folks employed and the industry rearing up for a post-pandemic life. It’s maybe for that reason Tom Cruise made headlines when audio leaked of him chastising crew members on the currently filming Mission: Impossible 7.

“I’m on the phone with every fucking studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies.” The show must go on, even if it hardly sounds like an opening night gala….

Did HBO Max Change the Game or Forfeit It?

When Warner Bros. announced in November that Wonder Woman 1984 was going to premiere day-and-date in theaters and on HBO Max, everyone in the industry took a deep breath. Obviously, this wasn’t a unique development. Disney tested these waters with Hamilton and Mulan, and this month’s Soul on Disney+. The more the merrier, right?

… And yet, it was the first time a studio placed its biggest tentpole of the year on streaming. Universal might’ve been the first to break the theatrical window, but that studio likewise made sure to move F9 a full year to hopefully keep its theatrical window safe. Still, director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot accepted the Wonder Woman arrangement (as well as a rumored $10 million each, a consolation prize for losing gains from profit participation backend deals), and exhibitors were notified about WarnerMedia’s decision.

They were not on the next one. WarnerMedia’s bold choice to release WB’s entire film slate of 17 movies on HBO Max went off in the industry like an atom bomb. More troubling still, no one who worked on those movies, from talent to producing partners, were notified about a decision that could have unforeseen and extensive economic ramifications.

Nolan, the filmmaker who convinced WB to release Tenet in theaters, was shockingly blunt and uncharitable to the studio that was loyal to him for nearly 20 years. He called HBO Max “the worst streaming service,” which is flatly untrue to any cinephile who’s ever used it. However, the auteur made a better point about the hidden economic problems in the move.

In a more recent interview with NPR, Nolan better articulated, “The economics of it are unsound unless you’re purely looking at movements in share price, number of eyeballs on the new streaming service. Theatrical is really only one part of what we’re talking about here. You’re talking about home video window, your secondary, tertiary windows. These are things very important to the economics of the business and the people who work in the business.”

This is in line with what director Judd Apatow said separately to Variety, highlighting how the decision hurts people below the line, and just not stars and filmmakers with profit participation deals.

“It creates a financial nightmare, because most people are paid residuals – they’re paid back-end points,” Apatow said. “What they get out of it for years and years of hard work is usually based on the success of their films. And so now what does it mean to have a movie go straight to streaming? How do they decide what to pay you? Do you even have a contract that allows you to negotiate, or is it really just up to them at this point? It raises thousands of questions, which I’m sure are very complicated.”

It’s also why Denis Villeneuve, director of one of WB’s most anticipated new movies, Dune, penned a passionate essay in Variety, saying AT&T “hijacked” WB, and has no love for cinema or audiences. He outright states AT&T CEO John Stankey has led the horse (Dune) to “the slaughterhouse.”

Is that sound and fury against the inevitable changing realities of the industry, or justified anger at a panicked reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic—and more acutely HBO Max’s poor streaming launch?

Movies

What Alejandro Jodorowsky Thinks of the New Dune Trailer

By Mike Cecchini and 1 other

Movies

How Patty Jenkins Steered the Wonder Woman 1984 Ship

By Delia Harrington and 1 other

It’s hard to say at the moment, but it’s clear that WB’s fire sale approach of all or nothing to subsidize HBO Max’s poor performance is burning bridges in the industry, with Wonder Woman director Jenkins moving to Disney for the next Star Wars movie, Rogue Squadron, while entertaining the idea in the press of starting a United Artists-like studio with other filmmakers who still believe in the theatrical experience. And most persuasively, Disney, the Big Five studio best positioned to go all-in on streaming, is leaving its biggest 2021 blockbuster, Black Widow, slated for theaters even as it moves smaller efforts to Disney+.

The future isn’t written, and while the theatrical window apparently has been shattered, it may not be beyond some state of repair, even if it never quite resembles what it once was. These will also be lingering questions that will hang over cinema as 2020’s cold grip is finally shaken off.

Will 2021 be that different, for motion pictures and the world at large, from the chaotic upheaval of 2020? Only time will tell, but it’s worth remembering that if 2020 changed the future of moviemaking, at least 2021 promises a chance to embrace that future by turning the page on all the anxiety and uncertainty that defined this year’s biggest changes to the cinema.

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yeonchi · 5 years ago

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2020: Red Pill Year

At the end of every year, I write up a post to sum up what I did this year and share my (controversial) opinions of the year’s current affairs. My original plan was for this to be part of my end-of-year review post, but since it started getting long, I decided to split it into two posts. In this post, I’m going to be talking about current affairs; my wrap-up of the year will come in another post to be released on New Year’s Eve.

I’ve experienced a lot through my ten years on social media, but the events of the last four years (since graduating high school) have changed me a lot and led me to take the red pill on a few things. I suspect that being sheltered and isolated from society for at least 20 years contributed to some of my feelings and opinions.

From this point on, I’m going to be giving my opinions on current affairs, and I’ve been really looking forward to writing this given the year that we’ve had. Everything that’s happened feels like a perfect storm that if you were to go back in time and warn people of what would happen in 2020, you would be labelled a conspiracy theorist. Because I have a lot of things to talk about, I’ve split them up into sections under headings.

Let me warn you now, some of the things I’ll be saying will be controversial and there may be a few censored slurs in this. I’ve also peppered a few jokes here and there, so if you don’t get them, that’s on you. You are free to stop reading here, but if you decide to keep reading and you want to discuss anything about what I’ve said, I’ll only accept comments from people who have the ability to debate calmly without resorting to insults or are open-minded about their views. I have no time for idiots or brainlets.

My justification for using the n-word

I feel like I should address this before I go on. In January 2017, I shared an infamous Chris Rock sketch from 1996 where he decries African-American people whose actions spoil other peoples’ impressions of their community by acting in a criminal or stereotypical manner. As an Asian of Chinese ethnicity with family from Hong Kong, I have to admit that I’ve used the n-word (both soft-a and hard-r versions) to decry the actions of mainland Chinese people whose actions taint my view of them, or the stupidity of politicians in Hong Kong. I even started another page just so people on my news feed didn’t have to read some of the toxic shit I had to say.

Later that year, some gaijin bitch I was having a feud with found that page and reported every post where I said the n-word (that page barely had any fans, btw), which led me to be postblocked three times. He only agreed to stop when I called him out for being an asshole and told him to kill himself (like iDubbbz did Keemstar).

From that point on, I resolved to be less hateful online and one thing that I did was to stop using the n-word. However, the news that followed in the years after that made me realise that in insight, I was somehow correct in my justification and that the other guy was, whether intentional or not, being pro-China. The current climate of the internet, where censorship is rampant and people have a tendency to overreact to things that aren’t as much a problem as they think, has discouraged me from talking about current affairs like I used to and led me to doing so in these yearly posts instead.

“BUT YoU Can't USe THE N-Word, tHAT's oUr woRD” Shut the fuck up. Either everyone can say that word or nobody should be allowed to say that word (in any of its forms). This includes black people. iDubbbz’s Content Cop on Tana Mongeau made me realise this concept of gatekeeping over words because some people “own” the word or want to “take it back” is bullshit and dare I say, racist. The n-word has been used in songs and non-black people are known to listen to them, so how would you stop them from singing the word when it comes up?

In Chinese, the n-word translates to “black ghost”, but I prefer to define it as “black-hearted ghost” in order to cover “black-hearted” people of any race.

The homophobic f-slur (not to be mistaken for the f-word) is also a word of contention, particularly because of its initial usage on 4chan as an insult, which began to spread to the rest of the internet from about 2014 onwards. In my opinion, there’s not as much uproar over the f-slur compared to the n-word, particularly nowadays when there are more pressing things to be worried about.

If you keep reading on, you’ll get to see how angry I feel about certain things, particularly in some topics where I make reference to the n-word.

Coronavirus

Naming and pandemic management

In January, we were still dealing with fires that were burning various regions of Eastern Australia. I was on a cruise ship (not Princess Cruises) coming back to Sydney from New Zealand when I heard that biosecurity officials were starting to screen flights coming from Wuhan. Near the end of 2019, I had heard inklings of SARS-like pneumonia cases coming from Wuhan on Facebook pages about Hong Kong. Before we knew it, the coronavirus had become a worldwide pandemic.

The term “COVID-19″ was coined in February to describe the pneumonia caused by the virus, which was coined “SARS-CoV-2”. To be honest, I’m not fond of the terms “COVID” or “COVID-19” because even though it does make sense when you think about it (Coronavirus disease 2019), I honestly believe that this was an act of political correctness by the WHO and China to protect people’s “feelings” by obscuring the fact that the first cases of the coronavirus were found in Wuhan, putting the blame on other countries for creating the virus and brushing off the effect that this virus has had on the people of Wuhan, China and the world. Therefore, I believe that the virus started in Wuhan until there is proof beyond all reasonable doubt that the virus came from somewhere else. Pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong and Taiwan still refer to it as the “Wuhan pneumonia” (武漢肺炎) because of these reasons whereas officials and pro-establishment supporters refer to it by its politically correct name (新型肺炎/新冠肺炎). I’ve referred to it as the “Wuhan coronavirus” once at the start of the year, but I just refer to it as “coronavirus” now. Frankly, it would have been better if we all just called it SARS 2.0. Given “SARS-CoV-2″, it makes sense. Hell, I’d even call it the “n-word f-slur virus” after iDubbbz’s favourite compound slur, but I digress. For the record, I’m not too keen on Trump naming it the “China virus” over “Wuhan virus” or any other name.

This wasn’t the main thing that pissed me off about the WHO, however. Taiwan had managed to manage the epidemic quite well early on, which only resulted in 7 people dying (since May 2020) whereas the virus is still rampant in the US and Europe at the time of writing. In an interview with Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward on 28 March, he awkwardly denied to respond to comments regarding Taiwan’s management of the epidemic and whether the WHO would consider giving them membership. Later, on 8 April, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom claimed that he was subjected to racial abuse coming from Taiwan.

If I could use the n-word to describe China, its government and the people who support them, then the WHO are a bunch of n-word-lovers, which is really ironic given that a literal n-word like Tedros is running the fucking WHO. I’m sick of Taiwan being portrayed as the underdog by China and n-word-lover countries breaking ties with Taiwan in favour of China. And frankly, a fucking crybaby like Tedros deserves all the racial abuse he gets for that allegation about Taiwan.

I don’t deny that the WHO has done good for the world over the years, but when it came to the coronavirus, it’s like they’ve been deliberately trying to appease China. China’s initial management of the coronavirus has been less than ideal, which is why I still point the blame at them for allowing the pandemic to get to where it is now (apparently they did similar things back during SARS, but I digress). I suspect that there have been more cases and deaths in China than what has been reported, but since many countries have had more cases and deaths than China at this point, I truly believe that we shouldn’t be pointing fingers until the pandemic has been suppressed.

Racism

Moving onto coronavirus racism now and dear god, I wish Asians living in Western countries would just shut the fuck up about coronavirus racism and check their privilege. As an Asian living in a Western country (ironic, I know), it honestly bugs me how much I see Asians crying and playing the victim card (particularly on NextAsian, whose audience is the Asian-American community) when I haven’t experienced as much racial abuse from other people in my life (probably because I haven’t been going outside as much during lockdown, let alone before). Look, yes, I’m not denying that racism still exists, but people need to understand that changing attitudes in society have led to cases of racism falling over the years and there are Asians living in Asian countries who are probably more oppressed than your house being graffitied or a Karen at the supermarket calling you “coronavirus”. If you call out someone for doing or saying something racist, like making squinty eyes in a photo or being white and selling Asian food at their restaurant (particularly if the comment or action is not directed at you), then you’re just taking someone else’s problem and making it yours. People need to learn to mind their own fucking business.

I remember arriving at the train station on my way to uni one time and hearing a man ranting about “fucking Japs” as he walked past. The comment wasn’t directed at me (I’m not Japanese btw), he didn’t make eye contact with me and I don’t recall him coming back or saying anything else either, so I just let it go. In short, it’s not just Westerners or the media who needs to change their attitudes of racial perception. Much as I hate to say it, Asians living in the West need to change their attitudes as to how they deal with racism. Here’s a tip - just say “ok cracker” and move on.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree that Chinese people shouldn’t be blamed for starting or spreading the coronavirus. But were Middle Eastern people blamed for starting or spreading MERS back in 2012? No, they weren’t (or at least I haven’t heard anything about it because racists were still worried about Muslims being terrorists). This comes back to my complaint about political correctness in naming the virus and my point that we shouldn’t be pointing fingers until we have the pandemic under control.

Lockdowns

Taking a look at lockdowns now and as I said, the lockdown has given me a good excuse to do a lot of things as a NEET that I would have doubts doing otherwise. I’ve been trying to find a job for years with no luck and right now, I’m on the cusp of getting one, which is why I’m aiming to finish my personal project by the end of next year. Weekly hotpots and takeaways became staples for my family during the lockdown and because of that, I hope to get back to the gym soon, as the one I go to is right in the city and I still have a lot of unused visits on a pass I bought at the start of the year (if I had known things were going to end up like this, I probably would have forgone gym for the year).

As a university student, I can say that I dodged a bullet, because there was a risk that Grade 6 and Year 12 students would not be able to attend their graduation ceremonies. I had planned on doing two additional subjects this year in addition to the one I still had left, but the lockdown quashed those plans and I decided to end it there. To be honest, it could have been worse. Someone on CUHK Secrets who was born in 1997 was talking about how they were unable to attend their graduation ceremonies because of various factors; they couldn’t attend their kindergarten graduation in 2003 because of SARS, they couldn’t attend their primary school graduation in 2009 because of swine flu, they couldn’t attend their secondary school graduation in 2015 due to bad timing, they couldn’t attend their undergrad ceremony in 2019 because of the protests, and they couldn’t attend their masters ceremony this year because of the coronavirus.

There have been a lot of people who were affected by the lockdowns, whether it be losing their jobs, businesses or loved ones before they got a chance to see them among others. The lockdowns have particularly made an impact in Melbourne, where the second wave has led to compulsory face masks, a nightly curfew and a “ring of steel” with regional Victoria. My sympathies go out to everyone affected and I want to say that if there was an easier way for us to get through lockdown, maybe by allowing people to see loved ones out of our travel zones, then we would probably have taken it. People advocating against lockdowns and people advocating for or defending lockdowns are two ends of the spectrum; if we tried to find a middle ground, then we would probably have gaps through which more cases could come in. I don’t doubt that the lockdown has helped get the numbers down and allowed us to get back to normal quicker, but I wish that there would have been a way for people to see their dying loved ones in person. Are lockdowns a conspiracy to get us to stay at home? I disagree. I’m pretty sure that even evil overlords would want us to get back to buying and consuming things as soon as possible, though maybe I’m being a bit too optimistic.

Hong Kong

The situation in general

Taking a look at the situation in Hong Kong over the past year and everything that’s happened just proved my opinions right. Protests aside, the way that they have managed the coronavirus has been subpar to the point that they are now dealing with a fourth wave when Melbourne has just managed to overcome the second wave. The situation is more precarious in Hong Kong not only because of population density (there are lots of residential high-rise flats there), but also because they’ve been through SARS, bird flu and swine flu before. The main reason why we’re in this situation is because not only did the government not close the border to mainland China, but the exceptions they imposed were too lenient that they were allowing people to come (back) into Hong Kong without having to observe 14 days quarantine. And on top of that, they’re offering $5000 HKD subsidies to positive cases in an effort to encourage the lower class to get tested, like that isn’t going to lead to people purposefully trying to contract the virus just to get their hands on that money, given the mentality of these people. At least other countries have guidelines and strict criteria with their subsidies.

It’s interesting that this perfect storm and the protests that started it all were a result of a cuck patrolling a thot, the thot’s mother going to a pro-Beijing party to seek justice and the government exploiting this whole situation to push the extradition law, then exploiting the chaos caused by the protests to push the national security law before throwing the thot’s mother away like a used condom. Nice to know that incels and MGTOWs have the power to change society, but not in the way they would probably want it.

Jokes aside, there have been so many things that have happened over the last 18 months that it would be impossible for me to state them all, like boomers wearing white clothes lynching young people wearing black clothes (KKK vibes, anyone), riot police entering a train station and attacking everyone inside and the police siding with boomers, gangsters and the government against young people. More recently, there’s the 12 young people who were arrested at sea as part of a government conspiracy to get them arrested in Chinese waters, the saga over the pro-democracy politicians resigning en masse and all the police shit that’s still going on.

I don’t blame anyone who has decided to leave Hong Kong because of all this, and I don’t blame anyone who has decided to stay, maybe because they don’t have the ability nor the resources to move or maybe because they want to be there when we get to the end of the tunnel, or rather, the bottom of the pot as they would say. My family moved to Australia in the 80′s because my grandparents were concerned about what would happen to Hong Kong after the handover; if they were still alive today, they and probably many others would have been proven right.

I know a lot of people say that it’s bad to attack your opponents, but these events have made me so angry that I have to say this (besides, I’ve held these views since 2014 and don’t tell me you wouldn’t attack a Trump or Biden supporter this way because let’s face it, you probably have). If you don’t want to talk about the Hong Kong protests, that’s fine, but if you decide to stand against the protesters (or stand with the Hong Kong government, the Chinese government and/or the police), then you are an n-word if you are Asian or an n-word lover if you are not and I have no sympathy for black-hearted ghosts like you.

Some people have said that these protests were more successful than Occupy Central and I have to agree. While we did make an impact on the international stage, not very many of us were united in our goals or willing to keep the movement going, so Occupy Central basically ended in failure. This time around, governments around the world have started taking measures against China, resulting in their crybaby spokespeople condemning foreign interference every time the US or some other country announces sanctions or other shit towards China. It’s really funny that this is all they can do without being the first country to trigger the start of World War Three; if the sanctioned individuals don’t have interests or assets in foreign countries, then why are these n-words so concerned about this?

A philosophy that the protesters have adopted is the doctrine of laam chau (攬炒), also known as “phoenixism” or “if we burn, you burn with us”, a line from The Hunger Games. Both the Hong Kong and Chinese governments have criticised this doctrine because they believe that they will only end up destroying Hong Kong themselves, but has it ever occurred to anyone that, given everything that’s happened over the past 18 months, including the arrests and whatnot, it is actually them who are laam chau-ing us (and the world as well)?

Families have also been split over this entire issue as well. It’s honestly bullshit how some people, particularly boomers, put their patriotism and support for the police over the rest of their family, particularly those who support the protesters. It’s no better than disowning your child just because they came out as LGBT. Frankly, if I was that petty with parents who supported the government and the police, I’d just dump them in a home and never visit them. It’s the most humane thing I’d probably do, but I wouldn’t do it because a) my parents aren’t that stupid and b) I care enough about my parents to not be petty over this bullshit.

It’s honestly weird and fascinating how boomers can parrot the government’s (or any other pro-government organisation’s) position on anything and be smug about it. The only reason why boomers can be so “passionate” about being patriotic is because they’re usually coaxed with free money and free food. At any other time, they don’t need to do anything because the government are on their side so they can do all the heavy work for them. Their lack of education and addiction to TVB news also contributes to this.

Speaking of TVB, the mainstream media in Hong Kong is no longer our friend. The only media outlets we can still trust are those who are pro-democracy or those who are still trying very hard to remain neutral, such as Apple Daily or RTHK. Now TV and Cable TV were touted as alternative news sources, but they’ve been taken over by executives who used to work for TVB or aTV (remember when it was still a thing?). When the protests started in 2019, there was a movement to boycott all businesses advertising on TVB or having TVB on their televisions because of their bias toward the government and the police. The organisers of the Facebook page behind it were arrested in April, but another page sprang up soon after. Some artists and employees working for TVB were shelved, had their contracts cancelled or decided to resign because their views did not toe the party line. Good on them for resigning, I’d say, because there are many better places they could be useful at. God, it’s so weird how a cultural institution that defined our childhoods has now become an enemy.

Hong Kong protests vs. Black Lives Matter

When the Black Lives Matter movement came back to prominence in May following the death of George Floyd, I feared that this was an attempt to derail the Hong Kong protests by providing the world with a “convenient” distraction. I mean, people love black dicks more than Asian dicks, amirite? However, I was surprised when BLM protesters were willing to learn off HK protesters, because it shows that they must have been doing something right, I guess.

In spite of this, I have to say that BLM haven’t gotten enough ideas off of Hongkongers. BLM supporters encourage the boycotting of stores and businesses that are against BLM and the support of those that support BLM, but do you have any centralised platforms to collect that information? That’s right, I’m talking about the yellow economic circle of Hong Kong, where we boycott (read: “renovate”) stores and businesses that are pro-police or pro-government and support (read: “punish”) stores and businesses that support the protesters or embrace similar pro-democracy ideologies.

Funnily enough, pro-establishment politicians, supporters and media mock and laugh at us for our economic circle, but I don’t see them trying to copy us even though we’ve compiled a list of stores and businesses that are on their side so we can boycott them. Consumers have the right to procure goods and services from any business they choose, regardless of political stance; to condemn consumers for choosing businesses based on their political stances is not only biased, but anti-consumer. If BLM can put out an app that serves the purposes of the BLM economic circle and, at the same time, piss off Republican politicians and supporters (not just Trump supporters), I can finally say they’ve done something right.

One thing that really pissed me off was that n-words and n-word-lovers were actually saying that the Hong Kong protests should not be compared with the BLM protests. Through a quote tweet, I’m going to debunk their claims of the two being “polar opposites”, skipping over things (mostly related to BLM) that are already obvious.

The first thing I should point out is that they state “Minneapolis riots” when they’re obviously trying to support BLM. Doesn’t BLM disavow violence and rioting?

Racism: How are the Hong Kong protests “racist”? If this is about “racism” towards Mainland Chinese people, then your argument is invalid because they are the same race and that’s not what the word means. If this is about minorities living in Hong Kong, then that’s beside the point of the protests. If anything, Hongkongers have connected with minorities more than ever before.

Trump: Face it, the only reason why the Hong Kong protests are “pro-Trump” is because he’s been vocal in his opposition to China and “orange man bad”. Activists are seeking bipartisan support because they don’t want to see Hong Kong become a bargaining chip between two candidates and importantly, bills and acts regarding Hong Kong have received bipartisan support in Congress.

White-Americanism: Where the fuck do they get this from, honestly? Is this another “all white people are racist” argument?

Colonialism: This argument cannot be used for BLM because it’s centred in America, a country which the US government obviously owns. As for Hong Kong, I’m gonna have to play devil’s advocate on this one. It’s extremely wishful thinking to think that the UK or US will send their forces in to Hong Kong because China can easily send out their troops, who have bases in Hong Kong. Therefore, it’s also extremely wishful thinking to think that they will take control of Hong Kong in any capacity. Some people support this international intervention in the hope of eventual independence, but it’s wishful thinking as well with China as they are now.

Capitalism: Honestly, they’ve got it backwards here. Many companies in the US (and the world) have spoken up or taken steps in support of Black Lives Matter while many companies in Hong Kong tend to support the government and China. It’s not really a case of pro or anti-capitalism, but rather who has capitalism on their side.

Funding: Personally, if the Hong Kong protests were funded by the CIA (or NED), then there would have been something on WikiLeaks and the mainstream media (despite people’s disdain for them) would have covered it by now and not just the Chinese media. Therefore, I’m sceptical of this because it’s not common knowledge proven beyond all reasonable doubt. As for BLM, the same thing can be said of them apparently being funded by Chinese interests.

Spontaneous vs. Intricate: Doesn’t an uprising or protest need planning? Wouldn’t the “spontaneous risings” of BLM also be “intricately organised” as well? Weren’t the “intricately organised riots” in Hong Kong also “spontaneous”? This is going into conspiracy territory, which makes them no better than the conspiracy theorists they disavow.

Weaponless vs. Deadly Weapons: Like bricks, umbrellas and other things can compare to tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. Yes, there were molotov cocktails and shit, but the point here is to not excuse one protest and criticise the other when there have been documented cases of violence by both police and protesters in both protests. To that point, I believe that no revolution can happen without violence on both sides.

In short, the people who made this are n-words and anyone who unironically believes this are n-words who get their news from n-word sources. The claims made are very superficial and no attempt was made at backing up their claims, even outside of Twitter. Also, I find it ironic that these people are showing their support for one marginalised group while perpetuating hate for another when the whole point of Black Lives Matter and other similar movements is about fighting against hate and injustice (though I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by these people, especially given that there have been cases of anti-black racism in China). Yes, the Hong Kong protests and the Black Lives Matter protests are different, but there are common factors in both of them and supporters of both groups should stand together against hate and injustice. To stand with one but not the other is nothing short of hypocrisy, and I say this not just for those who support BLM but not HK, but also for those who support HK but not BLM. Even if you only believe in the underlying causes, namely being against racism and police brutality (and also violence), that’s all that really matters.

All lives don’t matter until black lives matter and all lives don’t matter until (young) Hongkonger lives matter.

In regards to ACAB

At the start of the year, in my review for the Doctor Who episode Orphan 55, I said that climate change protesters should check their privilege in regards to police brutality. This was because Hongkongers have suffered more compared to those vegans and if their countries were in the same situation as Hong Kong or China, they wouldn’t be able to protest in the first place. After hearing of the police brutality at BLM protests and weighing everything up, I’ve become an ACAB person now.

I’ve held this attitude in regards to the police in Hong Kong since 2014, but I’ve been iffy to say the same for police in places like the US or Australia. An old friend of mine from primary school looks like the type of person who would support ACAB, but she is actually against it. I never understood why until she posted some toxic tweets on her Instagram story showing some ACABers celebrating the death of someone’s father, who was a member of the police force, and explained that she didn’t support ACAB because she didn’t support the toxicity surrounding the people who support it.

Over time, I’ve come to realise that ACAB symbolises a deeper problem that can’t be solved by only dealing with the shallower problems. As the saying goes, “a few bad apples spoil the barrel” - good cops will eventually become bad cops as they are silenced into submission to cover up the actions of other bad cops. In Hong Kong, there is another saying - “好仔唔當差”/“Good men don’t become cops”. Look, I don’t deny that there are good cops and bad cops and that it is the system that is corrupt. That can be said for other countries, but for Hong Kong, I believe that the notion of good cops still existing there is well and truly dead. That notion is so dead that some Hongkongers mock the police and their families with phrases like “while the cop’s on overtime, the wife has a threesome”.

Anyone who mocks ACAB by saying things like “well, what if you really need the police someday” is missing the point. Yes, we need the police force and there are good cops out there, but what ACABers are looking for is a change in the system so that there is more scrutiny over police being held accountable for their actions. If it means calling for an independent investigation/inquiry into or the disbanding of the (current) police force, then so be it. How can we trust the police to enforce the law if they can’t uphold the laws that they are beholden to?

Last year, I read a tweet from a Mainland Chinese person living in Australia who is supportive of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. He says that any person who supports the police is an idiot because if their enforcement of the law is lawful, then they don’t need your support, but if their enforcement of the law is unlawful, then you might be the next person to be beaten up by them.

Speaking of climate change protests, Greta Thunberg finally said something useful that isn’t about climate change- wait, you say she was nominated to say it? Oh well, it was a nice try.

Oh, and by the way, Leticia Lee (李偲嫣), a pigfucker who has been supporting the Hong Kong police since before Occupy Central, has died of what is suspected to be the coronavirus. All cops are bastards and so are the people who support them.

The US elections

I never thought I’d be saying this, but I honestly hoped that Donald Trump would be reelected for four more years. I honestly hoped that the left wouldn’t learn from 2016 and not attack people who disagree with them, but yet they still managed to get Joe Biden elected while still attacking those who disagree with them. You could say that BLM was what turned the scales, but I think that Trump’s management of the coronavirus was what did it. I guess you can manipulate elections by manipulating people’s feelings, only this time around, Trump wasn’t good enough in that aspect.

On a side note, has anyone ever considered that some people can’t accept other people’s opinions if they aren’t willing to compromise and look at things from their point of view? These people wonder why others can’t accept their opinions and viewpoints and then get surprised when they say “fuck it” and double down on their own opinions and viewpoints while completely rejecting the opinions and viewpoints other people want them to even consider.

When Trump was elected in 2016, I only saw it as an ironic meme in that there would be a rise in unemployment figures as Trump personally went to every workplace and told everyone “You’re fired” given how he used to host The Apprentice. A lot of celebrities and people around me on social media started becoming anti-Trump like it was a meme. I’ve never been a fan of Trump myself, but SJW bullshit aside, seeing the measures he (and the Republicans) took against China in response to the situation in Hong Kong gradually warmed me to him. He was the one who led the US to take the first step when no other country was brave enough to. It’s the reason why some Hongkongers and Taiwanese people feel the same way.

I’ve heard some people say that Trump isn’t really going to help Hong Kong and that he is doing all this just to benefit himself. Firstly, it’s not just Trump, but also other Republicans (and maybe even Democrats) who are pushing for action within the US government, and secondly, what makes you think Biden will do anything for Hong Kong after Obama never did anything following Occupy Central? I thought that a second Trump term would be the best thing for Hong Kong, but now that things have ended up this way, I hope that the Biden administration will be just as hard on China compared to now (given what I said about bipartisan support). If Biden decides to reverse the sanctions on China, well, don’t say the right didn’t warn you about “China Joe”.

Do I believe that the election was rigged? Maybe and maybe not. The left was crying about Russian interference back in 2016 and yet here we are. Frankly, I can accept the result of the election because I have a bad feeling that, according to some on the right, Joe Biden will be deposed in favour of Kamala Harris, who has been elected vice-president. On one hand, I don’t believe it will happen because it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but on the other hand, I don’t think Biden will serve out the whole of his first term or his second term if he gets reelected.

As I’ve said for two elections in a row on the Waifu Network: Well may we say “God save the world”, because nothing will save the United States of America!

China (and why I’ve used the n-word in relation to them)

With China seemingly being victimised daily by “attacks” and “interference” from other countries, it’s hard not to think of them as absolute crybabies. It’s essentially how I feel about Asians living in Western countries and crying about racism (see above). It’s not the first time these Ken/Karen-like attitudes have been put on show and they certainly won’t be the last. But how did mainland Chinese people become such Kens and Karens (if you want a better term other than “n-words”) after a glorious history of ancient knowledge and understanding? People have discussed this over the years and this post is an attempt at distilling what I’ve read and what I think. Information has been sourced from this Reddit ELI5 post, this blog by Jeraldine Phneah and this article from The Diplomat. Hopefully you’ll understand all of this after you read it.

From 1839, there was a long history of violence and instability in China that took a particularly dark turn when the CCP took power in 1949. Movements like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution not only killed a lot of people in an attempt to modernise China with Western influences (if it weren’t for that, Chinese people would probably still be wearing changshans and qipaos like in historical dramas instead of using computers and smartphones), but drove a lot of people into fear and poverty as food was rationed, salary was standardised and people were encouraged to dob in other people for being intellectuals, disagreeing with the government or hiding their wealth from the government. This resulted in society becoming “every man for himself” as people were forced to do anything they could to survive. The hukou system back then meant that people couldn’t move from place to place, so many poor people ended up working in factories and living in crowded dormitories where modesty is neither a privilege nor a right. On top of that, not many people back then were able to get a good education like we do today, so lower-class people were encouraged to mimic what upper-class people did. Given the living conditions of Chinese society back then, one can only imagine the kind of corruption happening amongst the upper class that would be mimicked by the lower class.

During the Deng Xiaoping era of the late-70′s and 80′s, China saw large growths in economy, production, infrastructure and technology. While the quality of life did begin improving, a lot of the mentalities of the Mao Zedong era remained. Regulations couldn’t keep up with industry and the environment became polluted as a result. Factories began cutting corners and as a result, subpar quality, if not fake, products began appearing on the market. Poor people became rich very quickly and the “every man for himself” mentality became inherited into materialism. People began buying impulsively and buying more daily essentials than they needed even though there was no crisis and life had improved since the Cultural Revolution. If you people thought toilet paper shortages were the first of its kind, then you don’t know about formula shortages. If you thought the rise of daigou services in the past five years were the first of its kind, then you don’t know about parallel trading and the 2008 Chinese formula scandal.

Now we get to the main point of the topic. With the economic boom in China, more and more people began travelling to other places where people lived better lives in the past than they did in China. However, due to the lack of education and/or exposure to foreign cultures for many people, they were never taught the etiquette of being wealthy or being in another country. While some tourists try to understand the history and culture of other countries, mainland Chinese tourists tend to just buy expensive shit because they’ve apparently got a lot of money to waste. On top of that, there are tourists who tend to gravitate towards their own culture, for example they might eat at Chinese restaurants instead of trying out other places that aren’t Chinese. It’s why their market is so lucrative to many businesses and companies because these n-words will spend money on anything (or if they can get it for free, like buffet food on cruise ships, they’ll gorge on it).

In Chinese culture, loudness and positivity (熱鬧) is a good thing to them because it means that everyone is happy and whatever they are doing is fun. It’s why you tend to hear them being loud; it’s because they’re happy. But what they don’t understand is that not everyone likes this noise pollution and so, they end up thinking that Chinese tourists are annoying. As for modesty (i.e. going to the toilet on the street), refer back to the crowded dormitories bit from earlier; in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if families have three or more generations living in the one house nowadays.

From this, you can see where Hongkongers’ sentiments on mainland Chinese people come from. In the past, people were fleeing to Hong Kong to escape communist rule; following the 1997 handover, 150 people are migrating to Hong Kong every day while people are fleeing to other countries for a better life. With more and more mainlanders moving to Hong Kong, “mainlandisation” measures such as the use of Mandarin instead of Cantonese in schools and national education is causing mainlander immigration to become cultural enrichment (at least in my opinion). This is part of the reason why Hongkongers tend not to identify as Chinese and why all these protests have occurred over the years.

I’m gonna have to call this post here because it is getting long(er than usual) and I need to write my end-of-year review post. There are two things that I also became redpilled on, namely Doctor Who and censorship, particularly on the internet, which I’ll cover in the post to be released on New Year’s Eve.

I’ve tried my best to cover everything I could in this, but I make no guarantee that I’ve covered everything I wanted to cover because there is just too much. I hope people can understand why I feel a certain way about certain things and be civil in their discourse.

I look forward to cranking it on the moon when the struggle in Hong Kong is over.

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