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xiyao-feels · 4 years ago

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Part Four: My thoughts on the effects of these changes on our interpretations of the characters, and some miscellaneous final notes

Intro - Pt 1 - Pt 2 - Pt 3 - Pt 4

Okay, so. That's a list of changes. What kind of effect does it actually have on our interpretation of the characters?

For JGY, it's perhaps more subtle than you'd think. The complaint from JGY stans about FJ I heard most often, prior to watching it, was that JGY involves NHS in his brother's killing—whereas in MDZS, as shown, if anything he functions as NHS' protector. This is definitely obnoxious, but to my eye the worst changes are the perhaps more subtle ones. The JGY of FJ is significantly different from the JGY of MDZS and CQL in two ways: first, he has more options available, and second, without ever making an explicit claim, the text nevertheless sends the strong message that he is /not actually in danger from NMJ/.

What do I mean about more options? To begin with, he teaches NHS the corrupted SoC. This carries some risk of LXC finding out, and a much greater risk of NHS finding out—as, indeed, he does. I don't see how this could plausibly be a risk worth taking for JGY; the narrative's insistence suggests either that he has some way to mitigate that risk, or that he's secure enough he can afford to be so careless. His ability to achieve such strong, immediate affects via musical cultivation, despite his weak cultivation level, adds to the general sense that FJ JGY is much less constrained than MDZS or CQL JGY, as does JGS' complete absence from the narrative; it would be easy to forget that JGY is under any social/political pressure at all, even though this is a constant theme in NMJ and JGY's confrontations in MDZS and CQL, and the pressure and danger from JGS specifically is central to their confrontation at the stairs. The lack of any hint of or history of disrespect to LFZ from the Nie men, given what we see of their interaction in CQL, is yet another example of FJ ignoring the constraints JGY actually has to work with.

And, of course, FJ suggests that he has the option to actually cure NMJ, when the fact that he doesn't is in my opinion central to the morality of the decision, to understanding JGY's character, and indeed to many of the themes of the text. (In fact as a friend pointed out to me it suggests that NHS or indeed anyone could learn the music to cure him, although FJ does not seem to realize the implications of this itself.)

This ties in with point two: that JGY is not actually in danger from NMJ. We never see NMJ attack him—NMJ's violence is reserved for other people. Furthermore, we see him (and later NHS) stop NMJ's violence by the quick application of the uncorrupted SoC; this includes, as I've mentioned in previous sections, a scene where JGY protects NHS from NMJ's anger via cultivation, while in the nearest MDZS scene JGY protects NHS from NMJ's anger very explicitly by being a more appealing target. Watching FJ, it would be very difficult to understand how much danger JGY was actually in, and how much he was a target of NMJ's violence.

Even in CQL, NMJ tries to kill JGY at the stairs, drawing his sabre on him after the stairs kick—and even that first attempted blow, before they exchange words outside, could have caused JGY serious damage. In MDZS, after the stairs—where NMJ would very likely have succeeded in killing JGY if LXC hadn't intervened—though WWX admires JGY's skill in finding the right words to convince NMJ to "give him another chance," JGY is only able to do this by promising he'll do something that would probably get him killed, and then promising NMJ that he can kill JGY if he doesn't do it. Moreover, NMJ ends his own life by kicking down a door to kill JGY on the spot, because he did not like the way he was talking about NMJ to LXC. This is a very, very far cry from anything presented in FJ.

The idea that JGY could actually cure NMJ goes to this as well. NMJ is as violent to JGY as he is because of the sabre curse; JGY's choices are endure this, and hope to survive, or...kill him quicker, and hope to survive. He doesn't actually have a choice that involves not being subject to NMJ's violence. Ignoring this fundamentally changes JGY's character, who is so defined by the constraints under which he suffers, and indeed by the lack of physical security he has until he becomes Jin-zongzhu.

What then about NMJ's character? Honestly I don't even have the words for this; it's a profound insult to his original character. The thing is, it's not just that NMJ doesn't doubt the righteousness of Nie cultivation practices, although he very much does not. It's that NMJ would never do something he secretly thought was unrighteous, never mind /shape his life around it/. If he believed something wasn't righteous, he simply wouldn't do it. This is literally the heart of his conflict with JGY, and it repeats throughout the text again and again.

Further, and less flattering to NMJ: NMJ is absolutely convinced of the righteousness of his own judgement. It's not just that he wouldn't do something he thought in his heart wasn't righteous; he's never the kind of torn he is shown to be in FJ, and he never doubts his own judgement. When NHS challenges him here on whether he's qualified to decide the fate of evildoers, who are after all still evil, part of him clearly thinks NHS has a point. But NMJ absolutely, one hundred percent believes in his right to play—if you'll pardon the phrase—judge, jury, and executioner. It's not just JGY, although it very much is, also, JGY; at no point does he seem to believe anything but that he has the absolute right to kill JGY if he decides to. Indeed, some of his worst violence to JGY is a result of JGY challenging his assertions of righteousness, at the stairs. We see it with XY, both in MDZS and arguably even more clearly in CQL as well: in episode 10 he instantly decides that XY should be executed, and is about to carry out that execution when WWX intervenes—and then he's offended about WWX's intervention! The only reason he doesn't carry out the execution on the spot is MY's argument that keeping XY alive can be used to harm the Wen. And, of course, we see it with his attitude to WQ and WN, although people are so often determined to ignore this. Please note that he argues /against/ JC and LXC's defense of them, both in MDZS and in CQL; if ever there was a single incident that could have changed at all how things came out, it would be the very respected sect leader Nie, whose sect is after the Jin the strongest surviving sect post-Sunshot, speaking out in their defense at the conference convened to determine what to do about the fact that WWX just made off with them.

Now, thematically, I think part of the point of his character is that his inflexibility is...well, inflexible; his condemnation of people who are in bad positions does more harm than good. Returning to JGY for a moment, I also think it's telling that NMJ doesn't take effective action to accomplish his goals re: XY. This isn't even just because JGY killed him—if he had actually killed JGY instead, then he would have found quite suddenly that he'd killed Lianfang-zun, the war hero who killed WRH, his own sworn brother, JGS' beloved son, etc etc etc. It would not have gone well for him. Part of the point is that—in a corrupt system, acting as though the system isn't corrupt will itself lead to injustice. Making NMJ himself knowingly complicit in the corruption of that system rather defeats that point.

I am also, I admit, /extremely/ annoyed that /he/ is offered the understanding that he had no choice because of his position, while JGY's difficulties are ignored, and when a) although from what we see in MDZS it would certainly have been quite difficult, he did actually have a choice b) the movie strongly suggests (with the ready willingness of the Nie men to follow him when he rejects the ancestral method of balancing, their respect for sabre-weak NHS, and the lack of opposition from any other area) that it would not, actually, have been that difficult, socially speaking.

I think in terms of the effects this has on people's interpretations of JGY, probably this makes them think that NMJ at the stairs rejects the specifics of JGY's argument, and contributes to a general lack of engagement with the substance of what JGY is actually saying (and the lack of substance of NMJ's reply). People mostly ignore NMJ's similar stance towards WQ, so I suspect this doesn't have much effect there; I have on occasion seen the claim that he was right to condemn her as well, but I mostly don't think it was coming from an FJ-inspired place.

When it comes to NHS…mmm. As I said, CQL makes him less amoral at the beginning, although it doesn't prevent his total—I'm not even sure you can say 'carelessness towards collateral damage' in the current timeline when from his perspective collateral damage would be a good thing, since it would be blamed on JGY. Not to mention the way he treats QS, what he's implied to do with MS' body... I suspect that FJ!NHS is where you get man-of-the-people NHS, who would /totally/ have built those watchtowers instead of that awful JGY if that awful JGY hadn't cruelly murdered his brother because a) he's Evil and/or b) he's ambitious (and also evil), and what other considerations could there possibly be?

To which I can only say: fucking spare me. I suspect the characterization here of NHS and of the Nie men contributes generally to fandom's idea of a much more gentle and progressive cultivation world than either MDZS or CQL supports.

In summation: FJ is, considered as providing any kind of interpretive light on CQL and/or MDZS characters, a terrible movie. If you are not fully familiar with the relevant portions of MDZS, I don't see how you could come away from this without absorbing significant falsehoods. Although I certainly can't and indeed don't wish to tell anyone what they should or should not consider canon, I do think it's important to know that incorporating FJ into your personal canon is going to result in an extremely different characters than not doing so, and if you want to argue with CQL or MDZS fans about characters' characterizations based on FJ, it's not going to be a very productive discussion for anyone involved.

A few miscellaneous notes:

-The change in the narrative of NMJ's violence extends beyond the replacement of his primary target. In fact, there are three things in particular I want to pull out.

First, and despite his near assault of NHS, FJ!NMJ is portrayed as much less...well, scary, than MDZS NMJ, and even to some extent CQL NMJ. NMJ habitually takes out his anger in undirected violence towards objects—the boulder when he hears his men talking about MY, the boulder(/pillar in CQL) after MY kills WRH, the door he kicks open to kill JGY before he qi-deviates, the table he cracks in his anger around NHS delighting in fans rather than knowing where he sabre is; even, though here at least it is a clear deliberate choice, his burning of NHS' things. In FJ—well, I don't want to say there's none of that, he does at least break NHS' paintbrush and I could be misremembering other things, but it certainly seems a lot less prevalent. And more than that, people simply don't react to him as terrifying! In FJ, NHS after NMJ /nearly hits him/ is still a lot less scared of NMJ's anger than NHS is in this parallel scene in MDZS, where he does not (ch 49):

One day, the moment he returned to the main hall of the Unclean Realm, he saw about a dozen folding fans, all lined in gold, flattened out one next to the other in front of Nie HuaiSang, who was touching them tenderly, mumbling as he compared the inscriptions written on each one. Immediately, veins protruded from Nie MingJue’s forehead, “Nie HuaiSang!”

Nie HuaiSang fell at once.

He really did fall to his knees from the terror. He only staggered up after he finished kneeling, “B-b-b-brother.”

Nie MingJue, “Where is your saber?”

Nie HuaiSang cowered, “In… in my room. No, in the school grounds. No, let me… think…”

Wei WuXian could feel that Nie MingJue almost wanted to hack him dead right there, “You bring a dozen fans with you wherever you go, yet you don’t even know where your own saber is?!”

Nie HuaiSang hurried, “I’ll go find it right now!”

Nie MingJue, “There’s no need! Even if you find it you won’t get anything out of it. Go burn all of these!”

All of the color drained out of Nie HuaiSang’s face. He rushed to pull all of the fans into his arms, pleading, “No, Brother! All of these were given to me!”

Nie MingJue slammed his palm onto a table, causing it to crack, “Who did? Tell them to scurry out here right now!”

Even though he nearly hits NHS, even though he actually kills many of his own men, he is simply not presented as nearly as scary.

Second, and not unrelatedly, in FJ the narrative focus of the consequence of NMJ's violence is on his own pain at his men's death, and NHS' pain at seeing him kill them. In MDZS, this is more complicated. We see, of course, his violence to JGY, and the consequences to JGY of that violence; at the stairs, for example, kicking JGY down the stairs he gives him another head wound to add to the one Madam Jin gave him. Moreover, his increasing rage actually /damages/ his relationship with NHS. We see this notably in NHS' reaction to NMJ burning his things (ch 49):

Nie HuaiSang’s eyes brimmed red. He didn’t even make a sound. Jin GuangYao added, “It’s alright even if the things are gone. Next time I can find you more…”

Nie MingJue interrupted, his words like ice, “I’ll burn them each time he brings them back into this sect.”

Anger and hatred suddenly flashed across Nie HuaiSang’s face. He threw his saber onto the ground and yelled, “Then burn them!!!”

Jin GuangYao quickly stopped him, “HuaiSang! Your brother is still angry. Don’t…”

Nie HuaiSang roared at Nie MingJue, “Saber, saber, saber! Who the fuck wants to practice the damn thing?! So what if I want to be a good-for-nothing?! Whoever that wants to can be the sect leader! I can’t learn it means I can’t learn it and I don’t like it means I don’t like it! What’s the use of forcing me?!”

He then runs off the field and locks himself in his rooms, not even letting anyone in to bring him medicine. The next we hear about NHS is in the next scene, not two months later, when LXC describes NMJ's recent troubles (ch 50): "These past few days, he has been deeply troubled by the saber spirit, and HuaiSang has argued with him again." Now, they clearly continue to love each other, and NHS is clearly devastated by NMJ's death; but in the months leading up to NMJ's death, their relationship was unusually strained, not closer than ever.

Thirdly, I think the narrative ends up distorting the way NMJ's sabre rages work. Not completely—the example where he almost punches NHS is actually a pretty good example—but consider his final violence to his men. He kills them, /not/ because in his rage he feels that killing them would be righteous punishment for whatever they have done, but because he hallucinates that they are WRH's puppets. But I don't believe we see NMJ hallucinate anything until he actually qi-deviates—at which point he hallucinates that they are /JGY/, and while in CQL at least JGY has confessed to the corrupted music before he starts hallucinating JGYs, in MDZS his anger is, again, about how JGY was talking about him to LXC. When NMJ is violent to people under the effects of the sabre curse, it is because he is angry, and in his anger that violence feels reasonable. There is not as far as I can tell anything that suggests that his sabre-affected rages feel differently from the inside than his more regular rages—nor do we ever see him apologize for the harm he does in his rages, precisely because, to him, his rage and hence his subsequent violence feel like entirely appropriate responses to the situation. I think this goes to point two, above; it would be harder to induce sympathy for NMJ if, say, he killed his men because they were challenging him, and at no point acknowledged he has been wrong to do so.

-You could probably do something interesting here with considering this movie as splitting JGY's character between NMJ (the man who makes difficult decisions due to his political position), NHS (the weak but skilled cultivator), and NZH (the loyal and extremely competent subordinate), even as it ignores the much greater difficulty of JGY's position, that his weakness is because he lacked NHS' opportunities and his skill obtained despite lacking them, that unlike FJ NMJ he actually does need to make those difficult decisions to achieve his goals and does indeed achieve them, etc. This is left as an exercise to the reader.

-I greatly resent the clear and extensive visual parallels between NHS' bow to JGY, at the end of the film, and MY's bow to JGS after JGS kicks him down the Jinlintai stairs, and the way the similarity is taken as indicating parallels beyond the visual. This is, first, because their positions are not at all the same. I am certainly not saying NHS' position was in any way comfortable or good; nevertheless, he is at that moment a clan leader who is surrounded by men who, from the film, would not hesitate to die at his command. There is not really anything about the presentation of the Nie men in FJ that suggests that if NHS went outside that room with JGY and announced to them that JGY had killed NMJ and they should attack him now, his men would do anything other than try to kill JGY immediately at his command. This was, needless to say, very much not the position of the young teenager MY, far from home, injured, humiliated, and made a public joke; perhaps more subtle is that NHS' position at NMJ's death, though he is politically weak and though he has just suffered a devastating loss, is still more secure than /JGY's/ at the same, as JGY—far from being a clan leader with the absolute obedience of his men—is not even JGS' acknowledged heir. Indeed, in many ways the focus of NHS' enmity on /JGY/, rather than JGS who commands him, is an extension of NMJ's focus on JGY rather than JGS when it comes to achieving XY's execution, and in both cases extremely advantageous to JGS. Certainly NMJ would not have been able to get away with harassing Zixuan as he does JGY on the matter of XY; likewise, JGS would never have risked Zixuan in an attempt to kill NMJ as he does JGY. The advantage of JGY as assassin is that if he kills NMJ, JGS wins; if NMJ kills him, JGS also wins (an incalculable political advantage); and if he is caught, his background makes him both easily severable and an ideal scapegoat. Also returning to framing of the bow—and while this is much more trivial it is a recurring petty imitation—I have seen matched gifsets suggesting that JGY was also swearing revenge on JGS at this moment.

-The last words JGY says to NHS are "Restrain your grief;" in English of course this comes across as extremely insensitive, but see drwcn's post for some cultural context; it's actually a common expression of condolences.

-I believe this is whence the idea that MY's headpiece in CQL used to be NHS', because we see kid NHS wearing it in the flashbacks; let us say, if you don't feel the need to accept FJ as canon, I don't think you need to accept that, either.

#fj negativity #long meta #more than one tag could contain #anger burned in his heart #we can't change places

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writing-prompts-for-friends · 5 years ago

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Notes on Robert McKee’s “Story” 21: How to Create a Great “Hook”

Today we’re going to delve into “the inciting incident.” You might also know it as “the hook.” It’s The Big Bang that kickstarts your story. Buckle up because this is an important (and slightly long) post.

The World of the Story

Before you start writing anything, you need to have a crystal clear idea of what your setting is. McKee talked extensively about setting earlier on in the book and I covered it in a post. I also created a World Building Questionnaire with over 100 questions to help you think deeply about your world before you begin writing. So I recommend that you check them out.

06 Setting and Avoiding Cliches

Questions to Help World Build

A couple more things you should consider about your setting are these:

“What are the biographies of my characters? From the day they were born to the opening scene, how has life shaped them?

What is the Backstory? “Backstory” is the set of significant events that occurred in the character’s past that the writer can use to build his story’s progressions. We landscape character biographies, planting them with events that become a garden we’ll harvest again and again.

What is my cast design? Each role must fit a purpose, and the first principle of cast design is polarization. Between the various roles we devise a network of contradictory attitudes. Ideally, each and every character would have a separate and distinctively different reaction to any given event, from something as trivial to a dropped glass to a death in the family. When characters act the same, you minimize the chance for conflict.”

The Inciting Incident

When you come up with your Premise (a.k.a. that spark of an idea that makes you want to write this new story), it doesn’t necessarily need to be the Inciting Incident. Maybe your Premise is the finale, or just a scene somewhere in the middle of the story that you need to build towards. So ask yourself: How do I set my story into action? Where do I place this crucial event?

Here are the necessary qualities of any Inciting Incident, as stated by McKee:

An Inciting Incident must be a dynamic, fully developed event, not something static or vague.

The Inciting Incident radically upsets the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life. Before the Inciting Incident, the protagonist is living a life that’s more or less in balance. But this incident radically upsets the balance, throwing it into either negative or positive.

In most cases, the Inciting Incident is a single event that either happens directly to the protagonist or is caused by the protagonist. He is immediately aware that life is out of balance for better or worse.

The protagonist must react to the Inciting Incident. Even inaction in and of itself is a reaction, though the protagonist cannot remain inactive forever, because there would be no plot otherwise.

The Inciting Incident arouses the protagonist’s desire/need to restore balance, and this leads them to determine an Object of Desire: something physical or situational or attitudinal that he feels he lacks or needs to put the ship of life on an even keel.

The Inciting Incident propels the protagonist into an active pursuit of this object or goal.

*Bonus* For those protagonists that we admire the most, the Inciting Incident arouses not only a conscious desire, but an unconscious one as well. these complex characters suffer intense inner battles because these two desires are in direct conflict with each other. No matter what the character consciously thinks he wants, the audience senses or realizes that deep inside he unconsciously wants the very opposite.

The Spine of the Story

The energy of the protagonist’s desire forms the critical element of design known as the Spine of the story (a.k.a. Through-line or Super-objective). It is the deep desire in and effort by the protagonist to restore the balance of life.

No matter what happens on the surface of the story, each scene, image, and word is ultimately an aspect of the Spine, related, casually or thematically, to this core of desire and action.

If the protagonist has no unconscious desire, then his conscious objective becomes the Spine. The Spine of any James Bond movie, for example, can be phrased as: To defeat the arch-villain. James has no unconscious desires.

If the protagonist has an unconscious desires, this becomes the Spine of the story. An unconscious desire is always more powerful and durable, with roots reaching to the protagonist’s innermost self. When an unconscious desire drives the story, it allows the writer to create a far more complex character who may repeatedly change his conscious desire.

By looking into the heart the protagonist and discovering his desire, you begin to see the arc of your story, the Quest on which the Inciting Incident sends him.

Design of the Inciting Incident

An Inciting Incident can be random, casual, coincidental, or on purpose. A wife could be the random victim of a mugging, inciting the husband to seek revenge. It could be on purpose, too: perhaps a child runs away from abusive parents.

While the the inciting incident for subplots do not have to unfold before the reader, the Inciting Incident of the Central Plot must be seen and felt directly by the reader for two key reasons:

When the audience experiences an Inciting Incident, the work’s Major Dramatic Question, a variation of “How will this turn out?” is provoked.

Witnessing the Inciting Incident projects an image of the Obligatory Scene into the audience’s imagination. The Obligatory Scene (a.k.a. Crisis) is an event the audience knows it must see before the story can end. This scene will bring the protagonist into a confrontation with the most powerful forces of antagonism in his quest, forces stirred to life by the Inciting Incident that will gather focus and strength through the course of the story. The scene is called “obligatory” because having teased the audience into anticipating this moment, the writer is obligated to keep his promise and show it to them.

Can you imagine the outrage you’d feel if you read all of the LotR books, all of them building up to destroying the ring, and instead of describing them casting it into the caldera, the book just cuts to them being back in the Shire and saying, “Man, it was hard but I’m sure glad we managed to get rid of the ring.” Fin.

Wouldn’t you just implode?

Locating the Inciting Incident

In other words, when should you insert the Inciting Incident? McKee’s book is about storytelling, but specifically through the medium of film. Therefore, he talks about this mostly in minutes. However, as writers, we need it in pages, chapters.

He states that the first major event of the Central Plot must occur within the first 25 percent of the telling, no matter the medium. However, the later the Inciting Incident, the higher risk you run of having your audience grow bored.

“Well okay, so I’ll just have the Inciting Incident happen in the first chapter and no worries,” you may be thinking.

For some stories, that is fine. But for others, you need to establish characters before the full impact of the Inciting Incident can be understood.

Take the movie Rocky, for example. Its Inciting Incident happens a full thirty minutes into the movie, when he agrees to fight Apollo Creed for the heavyweight championship of the world. In the thirty minutes leading up to that Inciting Incident, we are engaged by the subplot of his romance with Adrian, and we also learn more about who Rocky is, what an underdog he is--and it is thanks to our understanding of who Rocky Balboa is that the Inciting Incident is so gripping. “Oh my God, there’s no way in hell that Rocky can win! But I want him to win!” If the movie had started out with Rocky challenging Apollo, we would have thought it was just another wrestling match, with nothing at stake.

“Bring in the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident as soon as possible...but not until the moment is ripe.

An Inciting Incident must “hook” the audience, a deep and complete response. Their response must not only be emotional, but rational. This event must not only pull at audience’s feelings, but cause them to ask the Major Dramatic Question and imagine the Obligatory Scene. Therefore, the location of the Central Plot’s Inciting Incident is found in the answer to this question: How much does the audience need to know about the protagonist and his world to have a full response?

If it arrives too soon, the audience may be confused. If it arrives too late, the audience may be bored. The exact moment is found as much by feeling as by analysis.

If we writers have a common fault in design and placement of the Inciting Incident, it’s that we habitually delay the Central Plot while we pack our opening sequences with exposition. We consistently underestimate knowledge and life experience of the audience, laying out our characters and world with tedious details the filmgoer has already filled with common sense.”

A Caveat for Fanfiction Writers

Fanfiction is such a huge genre now, and as a long-time writer of it, I wanted to throw in my own two cents about Inciting Incident and fanfiction. Generally, we post our stories one chapter at a time, either scheduled or whenever we manage to get a chapter done. With fanfiction, it is my personal opinion that the Inciting Incident must be in the first chapter.

Even if you’re writing an AU, the readers will still know the characters and the barebones background information at least, so there is no need to build up who these people are, like in the above example of Rocky.

Because fanfiction is a free, nigh limitless commodity, readers are spoiled (myself included). If the first chapter doesn’t immediately pull them in, what incentive do they have to follow the story?

We’ve also seen this shift in music. It used to be that the “hook” of a song could come at the chorus or that BADASS solo halfway through the song. Scroll through your playlists and take a look--how many contemporary songs start off with the “hook?” I guarantee you it’s more than half. This is because in the age of streaming, we are no longer forced to listen to the entire song on the record or tape or radio. We can give a song a few second’s listen and skip it. Sadly, fanfiction is going down the same path.

The Quality of the Inciting Incident

“Henry James wrote brilliantly about story art in the prefaces to his novels, and once asked: ‘What, after all, is an event?’ An event, he said, could be as little as a woman putting her hand on the table and looking at you ‘that certain way.’ In the right context, just a gesture and a look could mean, ‘I’ll never see you again,’ or ‘I’ll love you forever’--a life broken or made.

The quality of the Inciting Incident (for that matter, any event) must be germane to the world, characters, and genre surrounding it. Once it’s conceived, the writer must concentrate on its function. Does the Inciting Incident radically upset the balance of forces in the protagonist’s life? Does it arouse in the protagonist the desire to restore balance? In a complex protagonist, does it also bring to life an unconscious desire that contradicts his conscious need? Does it launch the protagonist on a quest for his desire? Does it raise the Major Dramatic question in the mind of the audience? Does it project an image of the Obligatory Scene? If it does all of this, then it can be as little as a woman putting her hand on the table, looking at you 'that certain way.' "

Creating the Inciting Incident

Okay, so now you need to conceive and write the Inciting Incident. McKee states that the hardest part of any story to write is the Climax, but the second-hardest part is the Central Plot's Inciting Incident. This scene is re-written more than any other.

So before you begin penning the Inciting Incident, ask yourself these questions:

What is the worst possible thing that could happen to my protagonist? How could that turn out to be the best possible thing that could happen to him?

What's the best possible thing that could happen to my protagonist? How could it become the worst possible thing?

I wrote an absolutely horrible novel when I was 13. Now that I'm older and all-around better and more experienced in writing and life itself, I want to tear it all apart and rewrite it. The new inciting incident I have in mind currently is this:

Three years prior to the start of the story, the protagonist's mother vanished into thin air. She drove off to the store but never came back, and they found her car crashed down a ravine on the side of the road, but she was gone and the car had no blood in it. The protagonist's father locked himself into his study that night, and has not emerged from it since. The protagonist was 15 at the time, and in the three years that have passed since then she has grown independent. She lives in the house with her father, makes him meals and puts them on trays outside his study. Sometimes he takes them, other times he leaves them untouched. They have zero communication. In many ways, the protagonist feels like she lost not one but both of her parents in that accident.

Then, one day, she wakes up to get ready for school and sees that the study door is wide open for the first time in three years.

So now I have to ask myself the above two questions.

The worst possible thing that could happen to her is if her father has finally gone mad in his isolation and they are unable to restore their bond. How it could change for the best: She could commit him to a facility, allowing him to get professional help and allowing her to move on with her life.

The best possible thing that could happen to her is if her father emerges, sound of mind and body, and picks up his life with her again. How it could change for the worst: They both wish to reestablish an relationship, but an external force separates them, this time permanently.

“A story may turn more than one cycle of this pattern. What is the best? How could that become the worst? How could that reverse yet again into the protagonist's salvation? We stretch toward the 'bests' and 'worsts' because story--when it is art--is not about the middle ground of human experience.

The impact of the Inciting Incident creates our opportunity to reach the limits of life. It's a kind of explosion. No matter how subtle or direct, it must upset the status quo of the protagonist and jolt his life from its existing pattern, so that chaos invades the character's universe. Out of this upheaval, you must find, at Climax, a resolution, for better or worse, that rearranges this universe into a new order.”

Source: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen, 1998. Print

#creative writing #creative writing methodology #creative writing theory #writing #writer #writeblr #write #author #writing inspiration #writing inspo #robert mckee #writing novels #writing fantasy #writing fiction #writing fanfiction #plotting #story plotting #novel plotting #writing prompts for friends notes on story

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chorusfm · 3 years ago

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Bret Koontz and Truancy Club – “Strange New Love” (Video Premiere)

Today is a great day to share the latest single from Bret Koontz & Truancy Club, called “Strange New Love.” In this great-sounding single, the band channels power pop groups like Chicago and The Carpenters with a modern twist to keep things interesting for newer audiences. The track comes from the band’s upcoming new LP A Sparkle Road Cult, that will be out everywhere music is sold on November 18th. I was also able to catch up with the band for a brief interview too. With regard to this new release, where did everything start: conceptually, musically, and otherwise? And how does this release compare to your other projects? After playing and touring in support of Low Light Trades, my solo album, I found myself with a lot of thematically cohesive new material that wanted to be brought to life in a large format band. So the band began as a recording project, with playing live being a secondary aspect that eventually became just as important. Low Light Trades saw me coming off a period of time where I had looked around at how sweetly sad and complicated my life had become and taken some time to appreciate it, kind of luxuriate in it. With a Sparkle Road Cult, I was beginning to turn my thoughts towards a more functional and radical future. What made you choose “Strange New Love” as the LP’s first single, and what is its significance to you? ”Strange New Love” distills a lot of what we’re exploring with the band—the more baroque side of pop, the radical potential of vulnerability– it encapsulates a dark breeziness that’s pretty central to our sound. I started writing it in Chicago just before leaving for an extended solo tour and finished it on a porch in the middle of that tour. It was a very transitory, anticipatory time and the song captured that moment for me. How did you go about translating it visually, and where did inspiration for the video come from? I animated the music video during the pandemic when getting together for a live action shoot was still too dicey, mostly by rotoscoping over cell phone videos and then adding imagined elements. I wanted to use the video to emphasize the fact that the song is about something beyond romantic love. It’s more about a re-connection with the world around you. So the music video depicts a metaphysical and even paranormal connection: an underground musician has a close encounter of the fourth kind. --- Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/features/bret-koontz-and-truancy-club-strange-new-love-video-premiere/

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autoirishlitdiscourses · 4 years ago

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Discourse of Thursday, 16 September 2021

And is often the best option for you, is a productive place to close-read, so you should definitely be there. There are a few significant gaps, possibly as a plausible outcome of the text. Talking about some aspect of the poem until after the final. Well done on this. Chivalry is in this regard. A-becomes a B-—300 F The point totals.

Since this was explained both verbally and in a 1:30 and will get you one in front of the assignment, takes the safe bet is to provide one. Ultimately, what does that tell me when large numbers of fingers at the front of the more specific about where you're going to relate it to say is: what kinds of political and biographical concerns. O'Hanlon—You've got some very perceptive readings of Yeats. And in places, though I felt like did a very small but very well done!

It doesn't have, only one narrator that is sophisticated, nuanced writing. Nice job on the exam, research paper was not previously familiar with immediately suggests itself to me in advance what you think about things forever, honestly. This is a good but quite difficult piece of background information. A-. It may be performing an analysis, and should take a direct, personal interest in is the most important, and it completely impossible to do. Talking about some parts of your material you emphasize I think that your paper would most need in order to move towards a final answer to something excellent. Several new documents have been more successful. If you attend, it feels like you're writing two papers—one about space—and then to question 2 for later in your paper is a particularly complex poem that showed in the first half of the colonizer is a hard time constructing a theory of reader-response criticism which is to write your papers. With that grade range—not just examining a specific ethical theory about sex. You are welcome to run by my office, and they all essentially boil down to structural issues with your students at it if it's the best possible lenses into. Your writing is otherwise so good, sir. If you request a grade update before grades are simply D's. Here are the first episode of Ulysses in particular from Penelope, Godot Vladimir's speech, page 81—, Ulysses from Penelope, Godot Lucky's speech to the first sentence above means that you make that leap and since this is a violent and sadistic serial killer.

Which is just to think if there are endless others: think about my own reaction would be to think about how things are going quite well in this paragraph: attending section a bit more gracefully. I will also choose which lines you're reciting. I think? You should consider not because I think that you are interested in similar research areas, and the Stars/: Keep the Home Fires Burning sung at the smaller scales, too. You were clearly a bit more impassioned manner. So I told him that he marry the Widow Casey, who served in some form, and sometimes the best possible light, and I suspect that that alone would pull you to refine your thesis is that this is not by any means the only one freedom for' th' workin man: control; tomorrow night! Of course I'll respect your wishes. Hawthorn blossoms are gathered by young men in literary texts to prove that the extra credit, miss five sections results in no credit for what will be much more detail. Can't read margin comments is quite well, actually. Again, well done! Though it was written close to their paper topics, I think that that's what you're ultimately proposing, as a natural, organic part of the text of the interpretive problem and resolving complexity in the earlier period of sometime surrealist Joan Miró, who is beleaguered by temptations that he has been a pleasure to have sympathy for violent characters, I think, and you incur the no-show penalty. Ultimately, it would emphasize the possibility that you should read the assigned poems by Yeats we talked about it. There are many places, with no credit for section attendance, participation will probably do at least some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, at the smaller scales, and the way: if you prefer. Could you email him as soon as possible, OK? I told him that not taking the safe path, then think about the text is all yours! You can go a long time, so you need to perform. It is in your critique of the midterm, and that you avoid emailing him before lecture is over and in a few places where you found it there and nowhere else. In the unusual event that someone writes an A-—You've got a perfectly acceptable reason to freak out.

I've just finished it you write, but it also appears at the point of causing interpretive difficulty for the previous week's reading, engage the class, because it's up to the topic as a fully effective. I've left it unclear and/or 3:30 and will happily handle it is, after all, you've done some excellent readings, and their outline doesn't bear a lot of similarities to yours, and I quite like your performance, you can't write a first draft, let me know that I've made they're intended to help you to reschedule—they will be on a very good student this quarter, I think it would have been even more than the Yank versions. As I said on my way I'd be happy if you have any more questions, OK? Finally, the eponymous metaphorical cyclops of the relevant chapters as a separate entry on your grade is calculated for the quarter, as Giorgio Agamben has pointed out that it is, after all, I think that the section guidelines handout, which is just posting the parts of your discussion plans.

You picked a wonderful quarter, and your writing is thoughtful and sensitive, thoughtful performance that you'd thought about it in to the end of that first draft and allow for real discussion to end up. You added a just in line 1582. Speaking of your overall grade for the final! You picked an important scholarly aspect of the places where attention to the connections between their argument and how we have seen here would be a more explicit stand on what your central claim is actually a real pleasure to have moved forward even more effectively. Well, they're fair game, but a particularly good selection there. Let me write to the course would require that you can make your own perspective and talking, and I suspect that you need to buy yourself some breathing room. Hello, all of this length, but certainly not going to argue more strongly for the final arbiter of whether you hit a snag that students should have been even more importantly to yourself.

There are a very solid aspects of your plans. Well done on this you connected it effectively to promote either agreement or disagreement from the play, it currently is. Let me know how many people wanted feedback on a different text. You may also be generally useful resources for those who are interested in similar research areas, and I have that are slightly less open-ended, less abstract questions, OK? You may also find it helpful to make this transition which you may want to be absolutely sure/that week; it sounds like it passes differently. This means that you are hopefully already memorizing. You've done some very, very general prompt, and word not only help you to stretch your presentation, I'm happy to talk about how you can bridge between them having intermediate questions if they could answer more than that they are assumed to feel more intensely, because I've taught them during my office hours and am happy to give everyone their preferred text/date combination if possible, OK? If you are present/at the appropriate types that add to your recitation/discussion assignment, which is complex, if you want to know in advance that this afternoon, we can work something out. But you really mop the floor with the dates that would better be delivered in a paper that takes a directly historical perspective on a second idea, too. However, you must be eight to ten sections attended relative weighting involves/making more productive questions that ask people to discuss any of these as a person of comparatively limited energy and/or the student can find out if any, are there not other places where your ideas, and how that ties together multiple thematic and plot issues and/yet Y formula in some of the play, for instance, or play too much of the musical adaptation; other than as being most significant thing to remember to send me an email, and is entirely understandable, but it has been known to bill clients in guineas, for your patience. There are a lot of these come down to, close your eyes on all versions of the passage in question. Jack Clitheroe's treatment of these come down to size by thinking about why a specific, particular idea is good. How, exactly, by the other hand, posting it publicly yourself isn't a bad thing. Well, they're on the 27th you'd probably need to rise above the minimum length requirement. And its background. I think, and your paper's own overall logical and narrative paths that your thesis is that you too often back off from making your teaching practices visible on the final please only do this, but you are one of the historical and literary readings are very solid and quite free of all of the section eventually, and none of that's absolutely necessary you can still get it graded as soon as possible; if you have any questions. Think about what you can make your paper and one days late 10 _3-length penalty of one means that I'm not aware of what's going on, and that missing more than 100% in section, not 72.

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

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architectnews · 5 years ago

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Samara Arena Stadium Masterplan Winner

Samara Arena Stadium Masterplan, KPMG JSC Russian Architecture Competition, Design Contest News

Samara Arena Stadium Masterplan Winner

23 Nov 2020

Samara Masterplan Design Competition Interview

“We wanted to develop a concept that would not just be “beautiful pictures”, but a viable project that was attractive to all stakeholders”: interview with Andrey Asadov and Sven Osmers, winners of the international competition for a master-plan of the FIFA World Cup-2018 Legacy territory in Samara

Interview conducted by Veronica Shevchenko

On 2 October the final jury meeting of the Open International Competition to develop a master plan for a territory adjacent to the Samara Arena Stadium took place. This site had the potential to become one of the most significant locations in both the city and the entire region.

Samara Masterplan Design Competition First prize – design by KPMG JSC:

The jury, chaired by Dmitry Azarov, the Governor of the Samara Region, assessed and chose the best of four projects submitted by the finalists. A consortium led by KPMG JSC (Moscow, Russia), (members: LAND Srl (Milan, Italy), Asadov Architectural Bureau (Moscow, Russia), and Samara State Technical University) won. The competition was initiated by the Samara Region Development Corporation, with support from the Samara Region Government and the Samara Urban District Administration. The Agency for Strategic Development CENTER was chosen to oversee the competition.

Representatives from the winning consortium, Andrey Asadov, General Director of the ASADOV Architectural Bureau, and Sven Osmers, partner at KPMG JSC, spoke to us about their project and the opportunities that will be opened up for city residents after its implementation. They also shared their impressions of the competition and their emotions after winning.

KPMG JSC, the consortium leader, is one of the world’s largest networks in the field of financing and providing audit and consulting services. They rarely participate in such competitions as consortium leaders, and even more rarely win. Does this mean that economics played a key role in the project?

Andrey Asadov. In order to successfully tackle such a complex and large-scale challenge as the development of the Samara Arena territory, a cross-disciplinary approach was needed, which combined an exciting functional programme, economic strategy, and well-thought-out architecture and landscape. This was not our first experience of working with KPMG: previously we resolved a challenging issue in Kazan when taking part in a competition to develop an Eco-district master plan[1].

Samara Arena Stadium Masterplan Winner – design by KPMG JSC:

Sven Osmers. KPMG JSC provides a wide range of services, including working with companies in the real estate and construction sectors, which is a separate type of activity that we specialise in. In our project, finding balance played a key role, as one of the consortium leader’s tasks was to verify the solutions proposed by team members in terms of their economic viability and feasibility. It was important that elements of the project concept were supported by demand from both investors and end consumers. We wanted to develop a concept that would not just comprise a “beautiful picture”, but a viable project that would be attractive for all stakeholders (the city, region, investors, and residents).

You mentioned during the project presentation that the main idea of the master plan was cluster development within the territory. Could you please expand on that?

Andrey Asadov. In order to make the project as attractive and sustainable as possible, we divided the territory into a number of thematic clusters that could be developed independently and autonomously. These included a technical cluster with a research campus and science museum, a conference and exhibition centre with hotels, a musical theatre and an art village, as well as a sports facility with a race track and an extreme and water sports centre. All these clusters were consolidated by a dynamic central boulevard with developing small businesses.

Sven Osmers. Three clusters (economics, ecology, and emotions) made up three functional and territorial cores of the presented concept, which were earmarked to become points of growth for the target territory.

You listed three clusters and three project pillars, one of which is ecology. Also, the concept is called SAMARA Green City, which highlights your objective of preserving the environment. How do you plan to restore and strengthen the natural connections we lost during the fragmentation of the city’s ecological network?

Andrey Asadov. The heart – or rather green lungs – of the project is a large park adjacent to the stadium, which is to be transformed into a modern public space for recreation and healthy lifestyles. We also made sure that green lines of park spaces penetrate the entire territory, and that they can be used to traverse different parts of the territory.

Let’s talk about “emotions”. Which recreation opportunities on the territory will become available for local residents and tourists, and what infrastructure will be created to achieve this goal?

Andrey Asadov. Our project comprises many recreational and entertainment scenarios, from the scientific and educational scenario in the technical cluster and the cultural scenario in the expo zone to the health-enhancing scenario in the sports zone, and are in both outdoor and indoor formats. Such diversity makes the territory a year-round centre for the whole family, in which each visitor can find something to their liking: from physical exercises and business and cultural events to relaxing walks in the park.

The description of your concept references an ambitious plan to make the area adjacent to the stadium the centre of the Volga Region. Why, in your opinion, will people from all around the region flock here?

Andrey Asadov. The variety of functions and life scenarios offered by the entire territory makes it very attractive to the public. The compact and modern exhibition centre, with a conference area and hotels located close to the airport, will serve as a convenient venue for business events, while the technical cluster will gather together innovative companies from the whole region and become an incubator for new scientific start-ups; also, the diverse sports infrastructure, along with the existing stadium, will allow various sports events to be hosted, both federal and international.

The 2018 World Cup was without question a huge event for Russia. Is there anything special about being part of its legacy?

Andrey Asadov. The top priority was that all the large-scale infrastructure that remained after the World Cup could be given a second life, become popular with the residents of surrounding areas, and be organically integrated into the fabric of the new city. We carefully considered these criteria in our project.

Describe the target area in three words.

Sven Osmers. Potential — the project has excellent implementation opportunities, as well as the potential to create an urban space of a new level and format. Challenge — the implementation of such a concept is undoubtedly very ambitious, and requires the mobilisation of a consistent and professional management team with experience in executing similar large-scale complex projects. Change — the successful implementation of the presented concept can make the project a new urban space development standard not only for Samara, but, potentially, the entire country.

Andrey Asadov. The following three words are the slogan of our project: ecology, economics, and emotions!

Have you ever been to Samara before? What impression does the city make on you?

Andrey Asadov. In my childhood I visited this area, the Studeniy ravine, and will always remember the mountain-high sandy shores from which one could roll down head-over-heels, straight into the Volga. And the city itself is very distinctive and laid-back, and has a wonderful sandy beach along the main embankment, fast river boats, and green islands wait for you just around the corner.

During the final of the competition you personally presented the project to Samara Region Governor Dmitry Azarov and all the judges. What were you feeling when you spoke to the governor and answered his questions? And could you describe your emotions when your consortium was named the winner?

Andrey Asadov. Our presentation was a bit different, however, like all the other presentations it was performed partially offline and partially online. Fortunately, the equipment worked well and there were no hiccups, so we were able to fully convey our comprehensive vision for developing the territory. And victorious emotions always feel wonderful and are very important, since they provide a great pay-off after great efforts have been invested. I wish everyone could regularly experience such emotions!

Sven Osmers. At that moment we focused on the presentation and tried to convey our proposal as accurately as possible in a limited period of time. The questions from the governor were practical and meaningful, which was testament to his desire to realise the project as soon as possible. Our team invested tremendous efforts into creating a balanced and sophisticated concept, and so we were truly delighted that the results of our work were highly esteemed by the judges.

[1] Open International Competition for the Eco-district Concept and Master Plan Development in Kazan (Republic of Tatarstan). The competition was initiated by the Republican Support Fund and supported by the Government of the Republic of Tatarstan and the Administration of Kazan. The Agency for Strategic Development CENTER acted as the organising committee of the competition, and was the author of a study that established respective specifications for the competition participants. A consortium led by ASADOV Architectural Bureau achieved second place in the competition.

6 Oct 2020

Samara Masterplan Design Competition Winner

First prize – design by KPMG JSC:

On October, 2 the final meeting of the judges of the Open International Competition for the development of a master plan for the territory adjacent to the Samara Arena Stadium – one that may become one of the most significant locations in the city and the entire region.

The Board of experts chaired by Dmitrii Azarov, the Governor of the Samara Region, reviewed the four finalists’ concepts and chose the best project. The winner is the consortium headed by KPMG JSC.

Heritage of the FIFA World Cup 2018: the master plan for the territory adjacent to the Samara Arena Stadium will be designed by the consortium headed by KPMG JSC

Today the final meeting of the judges to the Open International Competition for the development of a master plan for the territory adjacent to the Samara Arena Stadium – one that may become one of the most significant locations in the city and the entire region. The Board of experts chaired by Dmitry Azarov, the Governor of the Samara Region, reviewed the four finalists’ concepts and chose the best project. The winner is the consortium headed by KPMG JSC.

Representatives of the finalist teams, consortia headed by Drees & Sommer Project Management and Building Technologies Ltd., IND Architects LLC, KPMG JSC, and Aurora Group LLC, gathered in Samara in order to personally introduce the outcomes of the four-months’ work and answer the judges’ questions. The experts evaluated the finalists’ work according to a number of criteria based on the key principles of development of an important urban area, namely: shaping a brand new urban environment, supporting active engagement of human resources, growth of investment potential.

Dmitry Azarov, Chairman of the Jury, Governor of the Samara Region “The experience gained across the globe by now is very diverse and exciting. The competition proved it once again. We will be paying special attention to take all the best ideas that currently exist both in our country and globally. There isn’t a slightest doubt that our region is going to embrace some suggestions, concepts and ideas which have been thought out in depth.

We could probably use these ideas both for the land in question and across other cities in the Samara Region. I was really excited by the abundance of the ideas, land development approaches, and that creative momentum and the highest professionalism that were demonstrated by the competition participants.”

Finalists to the competition introduced diverse designs for integrated development of the territory with a total area of 397 ha, intended to reveal the potential of the FIFA World Cup 2018 heritage and the tourist potential of Samara.

First prize – KPMG JSC

Based on the finalists’ presentations, the jury chose the competition winner. The winner is the consortium headed by KPMG JSC, with the participation of LAND Srl (Milan, Italy), Asadov Architects LLC (Moscow, Russia), and the Samara Polytech University (Samara, Russia).

The major SAMARA GREEN CITY project concept was the clustered territory development along with implementation of multi-purpose complexes, and revealing the potential of the area to become a new agglomeration center of the Volga Region. The transformation strategy for the territory development is focused on three E’s: ecology, economy and emotions. Ecology and principles of environmental protections are applied to reinforce natural connections that were once lost, which eventually led to fragmentation of ecological network of the city. The notion of “Economy” is implemented in order to introduce economical aspects and create a stable economic system.

The notion of “Emotions” is focused on creating a modern public space packed with various exciting leisure and recreation opportunities for Samara’s citizens and guests. Development of the territory involves integration into the Volga landscape, the creation of a radial green space network, and a cluster-based approach to master planning. Developing the territory in harmony with nature and creating a comfortable modern urban environment were the key challenges in the course of designing a master plan. The suggested project solution both shapes the space around the Samara Arena Stadium and becomes a driving force for development of the entire region.

Maksim Soyfer, General Director, Samara Region Development Corporation “To my mind, the final stage of the competition was quite successful. We received interesting diverse works based on original ideas that could apply both to the land adjacent to Samara Arena, and to other projects across the region. Of course, the design by the KMPG consortium stood out as the most comprehensive, as far as the majority of the judges were concerned in the course of discussions, which finally resulted in a vote supporting it I would like to emphasize that all competition participants will have to further adjust their designs to take into account feedback from the judges and the technical specification of the Development Corporation.”

Second prize – Drees & Sommer Project Management and Building Technologies Ltd.

Following the results of the meeting, the second prize was awarded to the consortium headed by Drees & Sommer Project Management and Building Technologies Ltd. (Moscow, Russia). The consortium includes CSIGHT GmbH (Hamburg, Germany), ASTOC ARCHITECTS AND PLANNERS GmbH (Cologne, Germany), Center of Competence for Major Housing Estates (Berlin, Germany). Key city-planning elements of the SMART Samara concept are two new and impressive city quarters in the are of the Samara Arena Stadium. Technopolis cluster is the scientific research, healthcare and innovations campus in the northern part of the territory that is enhanced by numerous sporting, entertainment and leisure events in the Zhiguli Garden quarter adjacent to the stadium.

Third prize – IND Architects LLC

The Jury awarded the third prize to the consortium headed by IND Architects LLC (Moscow, Russia) participated also by UNStudio (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), AB DOM LLC (Samara, Russia), Knight Frank JSC (Moscow, Russia), Spectrum Holding LLC (Moscow, Russia), and NP NIITDKh (Moscow, Russia). The master plan elaborated by the team is based on the new life style; many people living in a megapolis dream of a “20-minute city” where anyone could spend as little as only 20 minutes to get to any city service and satisfy any of their needs: work, home, sport, outdoor activities, spending time alone or together with their families.

Fourth prize – Aurora Group LLC

The fourth prize went to the consortium headed by Aurora Group LLC (Moscow, Russia) participated by Aukett Swanke Ltd. (London, Great Britain), PricewaterhouseCoopers (London, Great Britain), PHOSPHORIS SAS (Paris, France). The [SAMARA SLABODA – innovation territory] concept enables an environment to be created that offers freedom of thinking and experimentation. The concept is based on the idea of further developing the district as a heart of sporting activities in the city, and adding extra functionalities in order to ensure synergy between various functions.

Again, the Samara Region is working actively to create mechanisms that would enable leveraging of the infrastructure previously created for the World Cup. The competition initiated by the Samara Region Development Corporation and supported by the government of the Samara Region and the Samara Urban District Administration has become a part of this comprehensive work. Agency for Strategic Development CENTER was chosen as the operator of the competition.

Sergei Georgievskii, CEO, Agency for Strategic Development CENTER: “Today this competition is over, one that will surely be remembered as one of the first projects aimed at converting the sports venues that were built especially for the FIFA World Cup 2018 into hubs for comprehensive urban development. I’m sure that other regions that two years ago were proud to hold World Cup matches will be led by the example of Samara and consider integrating major sporting venues into the city fabric.”

The task for the competition finalists was based on the comprehensive analysis of the territory surrounding the Samara Arena Stadium. As part of the research, experts analyzed the role and place of the stadium within Samara’s structure, evaluated the development potential for this territory, and elicited the most significant drivers that might impact selection of strategic pathways for its development. For the purposes of an in-depth study of the territory, a marketing analysis was conducted to assess the real estate market and global experience in working with sports mega-venues after an event which enabled a number of general trends to be singled out that might be applicable to the area around the Samara Arena Stadium.

The total number of potential applicants who registered for the competition was 127, representing 28 countries. This resulted in the filing of 27 applications by participants from 15 countries including Great Britain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The list of participants includes 76 companies: 7 individual entries and 69 entries that were part of 20 multinational consortia.

Samara Arena Stadium Site Masterplan Winner images / information received 061020

Previously on e-architect:

23 Mar 2020

Samara Masterplan Design Competition

image courtesy of architects Samara Arena Stadium Site Masterplan

Location: Samara, Russia

Architecture in Russia

Russian Architecture Designs – chronological list

Russian Buildings

Moscow Architecture Walking Tours

Samara Buildings Masterplan image from BDP Samara Center

Kurumoch International Airport Samara Design: Nefa Architects image courtesy of architects Kurumoch International Airport in Samara

ZIM Area Development Samara

Russian Design Competitions

Russian Architecture Competitions

Masterplan for Derbent Urban District Competition, Derbent, Republic of Dagestan, Russia image courtesy of organisers Masterplan for Derbent Urban District Competition

Dacha in a Dvor Design: Megabudka image courtesy of architects Russian Character International Competition Winner

Perm Museum – Russian Architecture Competition

Russian Architecture Competition – House of Pure Wood

Russian Biennale for Young Architects, Kazan, Tatarstan

Samara Arena

Comments / photos for the Samara Arena Stadium Masterplan Winner page welcome

Website: Architecture

The post Samara Arena Stadium Masterplan Winner appeared first on e-architect.

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reactingtosomething · 8 years ago

Text

Reacting to Grey’s Anatomy (Part 1 of ?)

“Why Do We _____, Dr. ____?”

The Setup: Kris’s writing teacher doesn’t watch more than one season of most TV shows in real-time, so that she can keep up with the big picture of the industry, but she does stay current on Grey’s Anatomy. She was annoyed with the structure of the season 13 finale, so it was homework for Kris’s class. Marchae and Miri have wanted Kris to react to Grey’s for a long time -- this was actually, indirectly, part of the origin story for Reacting to Something -- and Kris didn’t want to jump in TOTALLY blind so he figured he could just watch a handful of earlier episodes to ease in. Silly boy.

KRIS: So I have now seen the nine episodes of season 1, plus episodes 1-5 and the “code black” two-parter of season 2

And the most recent season finale, because [Writing Teacher] told us to watch it

MARCHAE: You nailed the rewatch!

KRIS: And in freshman year of college I saw a few scattered episodes of whatever season fall 2005 was

or maybe sophomore year?

MARCHAE: And to be transparent I am two-ish seasons behind

KRIS: Did you watch the last finale?

MARCHAE: No but I knew most of the players in this episode

Of the recent season I watched more episode from where I was in season 12

But am committed to finishing and being caught up after this season

KRIS: OK I guess we shouldn’t talk about that one then

But I do have some Opinions about the earlier stuff I’ve watched

MARCHAE: Oh I will watch as we text!!

So I do want to know what you think of the show in general

I've wanted your opinion for a long time now

KRIS: It’s hard for me not to compare it to early ER, which was one of my first major TV obsessions (I watched those seasons in syndication when I was in high school)

I low-key refused to watch House or Grey’s when I first learned about them after moving back to the US after high school in Europe, because I was like “why do these need to exist if ER is still on the air?”

(And if anyone does want to seek out those early ER seasons I think they probably hold up surprisingly well)

It has Young George Clooney!

And when I did eventually watch House I loved the first 3 - 5ish seasons

MIRI: Moment to remind us all that Lin-Manuel Miranda had a significant arc on a late season of House. I have nothing substantial to say about it right now, but I think we all collectively forget about that fact most of the time and we should be reminded.

MARCHAE: Yeah I think she talks about ER in one the master class episodes

She=Shonda Rhimes, whose online Master Class Marchae is taking

And house is awesome

KRIS: But all that said, I do like what I’ve seen and will probably very slowly make my way through 12 more years worth of it

MIRI: VICTORY!!!!

MARCHAE: Yessss

KRIS: VERY slowly

Like that’s a lot of TV

MARCHAE: Ohhhhhh come onnnn

It's only taken me four years to get where I am you can do it!!!

KRIS: I feel like it might be a little hard for me to binge because there are some stylistic things that annoy me

MARCHAE: Tell me!!!!

KRIS: Four needle drops an episode

is a lot

I’m also not sure the voiceover is really doing enough to justify itself?

MARCHAE: That's often my critique is how are these people doctors

KRIS: I feel like you can have all those needle drops OR you can have heavy-handed VO but both is too much

Do we need to define needle drop for our readers, you think?

MARCHAE: Perhaps I was looking for a good link

That explains to put here but can't find one

KRIS: So a needle drop is when a show plays non-diegetic (usually) pop music that they have to license, as opposed to an instrumental score composed for the show

And diegetic means sound that comes from the action that’s happening onscreen, or off-screen but still in the world of the scene/story--dialogue, sounds from the environment, anything that the characters are hearing too.

And it’s not an unusual thing at all

But I feel like Grey’s does SO MANY songs

And I’m vaguely aware that a fair number of singer-songwriter type artists were first “discovered” by a lot of fans through Grey’s, like maybe Ingrid Michaelson

MARCHAE: They do and they even have an album, I think there have even been interviews with Shonda Rhimes (SR)

She says she wanted music to be just as much a character as the people

Which I find interesting thematically

KRIS: I get that theoretically, but it’s one of those things that’s the hard opposite of Show, Don’t Tell

when it’s lyrics

And especially for a show with bookend voiceover to tell you exactly What An Episode Is About, it’s just... it’s a lot

MIRI: I CANNOT WAIT for Kris to get to the musical episode, which is both amazing and so on the nose it hurts at multiple points.

MARCHAE: That's so interesting considering your like of shows like CEG which is quite musical

KRIS: I actually do like voiceover when it’s used well throughout a thing (thinking Burn Notice, or Dead Like Me)

MARCHAE: Did you watch sex and the city

KRIS: But in Crazy Ex the music is dialogue, it’s written by the writers and it’s spoken by the characters, it’s not a third party thing

I’ve seen a little

I guess I’m also just curious about the choice only to use voiceover at the beginning and end

although I think maybe it was there throughout the pilot episode

MARCHAE: Yeah I was about to say there may have been a few where it's through out

KRIS: In the pilot there was this conceit that at least some of the VO was addressed to Meredith’s mom

But other times (most times?) Meredith is clearly addressing the viewer

MARCHAE: I think it's to keep reminding us that this is Merediths world

KRIS: Meredith is interesting

Which I realize is super vague

MARCHAE: That's my theory or has been at least since the beginning

KRIS: But I’m having trouble landing on really clear descriptors for her

I like her

I think Ellen Pompeo is good

MARCHAE: I have a few but I'll wait

KRIS: But she’s harder for me to pin down than Izzy or Cristina or George

MARCHAE: Ellen Pompeo is AMAZING

KRIS: And I think maybe this is deliberate?

But again the VO would make that a strange choice

MARCHAE: I Honestly think she's supposed to be

KRIS: But I do sort of like the idea that she keeps a lot to herself

I think she’s a pretty good example of a lead who has to ground the more eccentric performances of the rest of the ensemble

MARCHAE: She does-ish it's weird I love and hate her simultaneously and that's what I love about her

KRIS: At least in these earlier seasons

MARCHAE: I think she does also as the show progresses you're right on

KRIS: Then again I did just watch the Pick Me Choose Me Love Me speech

Which is as demonstrative as anything the others do

But still there’s a restraint in how she generally presents herself to the rest of the world that I identify with

I guess what I’m having trouble figuring out with her is what her fundamental drive is

MIRI: I would argue that this is because Meredith’s fundamental drive is a quest to understand and accept herself, which is a tough main character to pull off and it works better in some stretches than others. But overall I am really pleased with Grey’s willingness to let her flounder and be wrong sometimes.

Also I would not have called Kris identifying with Mer but it makes SO MUCH SENSE.

MARCHAE: That is really eloquently stated

She has a tremendous amount to prove

And she has a tremendous amount of hurt and she is guarded because of those things - I think as the show progresses (I'm trying not to spoil too much for you)

But we learn it's a lot more than mom and dad

It's Webber and her own crap too

Meredith's drive is summed up in that choose me, pick me statement

And it gets the best of her often

KRIS: (Of the few original characters still around in season 13 I’m most surprised Webber is still there)

MARCHAE: (Really!!!!! I'm surprised by Alex)

KRIS: I guess just because it seems like he would’ve retired

MARCHAE: Ha!

I suppose that makes sense

KRIS: Do you think Meredith is a little bit of a cipher at first because she’s supposed to be sort of an audience surrogate? Or is it just that she’s stuffing a lot down where no one can get to it yet?

I guess I could look at the bible to figure this out

MIRI: The show bible, not the Christian one. A show bible is a big ass document explaining the world of the show--a deep dive on who the characters are, the setting, the vibe, etc. It also usually contains some episode and season plots.

MARCHAE: I can send it to you (maybe I already did)

KRIS: You did

MARCHAE: I think it could be a by of both to answer your question

Bit*

I think we learn the most about her as the show progresses that justifies somemof the things I find most annoying about her

However, she is kind of our guide into this world

I read the Bible and it's a bit different than what's on screen not much

I'm most impressed by how developed she is and and that SRs intention is that her characters (when she writes) have no end they are infinite in terms of story because they have to be (except in the case of scandal which had an end from the beginning)

KRIS: Sure, and that also makes sense for a setting that has continuing education built into the characters’ lives

MARCHAE: Which is kind of brilliant on her part

KRIS: It was part of why I liked ER

MARCHAE: I know you said you liked Bailey but I was curious about why and also your thoughts on Christina Yang

KRIS: Which was specifically at a teaching hospital

MARCHAE: (Did you ever watch St. Elsewere)

KRIS: no

Part of why I like Bailey is that in these earlier episodes when I haven’t really found my way into all of the central intern characters yet is just that she thoroughly has her shit together

MARCHAE: (Such an amazing show- set in the 80s)

YESssss

KRIS: As someone who has never disagreed with a character yelling at George, I just appreciate that there’s a blunt authority figure with a really dry sense of humor

MARCHAE: (Oh Kris promise you'll keep watching!!!!!!!)

KRIS: And that she also has basically that same comportment toward the attendings

MARCHAE: Ummm excuse me!!!! George is awesome and it infuriates me he gets yelled at!

KRIS: I will, I think it’s one of those things that’ll be easy to return to between other shorter things

Oh man

I mean I don’t dislike George

If I’m being honest there’s more of George in me than I’d like

Which is on some level probably a reason I like when people take him to task

MIRI: Wait guys this is actually enormous progress for Kris to “not dislike” a character he thinks he partially embodies.

MARCHAE: He just so freaking kind that I feel like they poo on him because they can

MIRI: Just because he’s kind doesn’t mean he’s without flaws. Also he is not always kind! Which is good because no one is, but let’s not pretend he’s a saint.

KRIS: I have trouble with Designated Kind Characters though

MARCHAE: And that bothered me a tremendous amount as a person who rarely yells at people even when I'm mad

Kris what is happening

KRIS: Because those characters are also often very squishy

And I’m impatient

MARCHAE: So you weren't an Izz fan either?

Squishy

KRIS: And I think you can have Very Kind characters who aren’t pushovers

Hmm

I like Izzie fine

K: I didn’t want to do much annotation here, but on this point I want to be clearer. Obviously George has stories and an arc about becoming a stronger, more assertive person. What bothers me not necessarily about George specifically, but about how Nice characters are often written, is a conflation of kindness with weakness or timidity, and this seems to me how we’re supposed to read George’s default setting, or at least his starting point. Not that kind characters should never be weak or timid! To address Marchae’s question a little further, I think there’s an interesting distinction between how Izzie’s kindness or “softness” makes her seem less of a doctor (to someone like Cristina) and how George’s seems to be more a reflection of his overall character.

MARCHAE: *insert Marchae DYING GIF*

MIRI: Marchae has what has been described as an “unhealthy attachment to Katherine Heigl”

KRIS: So okay, yes, if I had to pick an intern I most identify with it’s Cristina

There are just a lot of feelings flying all over the place

MARCHAE: I KNEW IT!!!!

KRIS: And Cristina has no time for that

And Cristina doesn’t like babies

MARCHAE: She is my favorite!!!

(She does....ish)

These people are incredibly emotional which sometimes makes me uncomfortable so she is often the voice of reaso

Reason*

KRIS: Right, me too

And I realize there’s some masculinity/patriarchy baggage here too that I’m always in the process of dealing with myself

But yeah, I feel like a lot of the characters are not just emotional but very NEEDY

Which brings me to Shepherd

MARCHAE: I will also give you that

They are needy

KRIS: That man is super needy, specifically in how he wants to be liked

MARCHAE: I often feel like they don't listen very well to one another

KRIS: Oh for sure

Which is also often used effectively for laughs

Like in the episode I just watched, Izzie has just gotten home from her first date with Alex and Meredith has just dumped Derek

and they go into George’s room and are just having their own “Seriously?” monologues

MIRI: This kind of moment on Grey’s is usually done SO well and I really want to go watch some season 2 Grey’s right now and avoid all of my responsibilities, ok? Ok.

What did you think of Derek’s initial courtship of Meredith?

MARCHAE: I don't love it to be honest

KRIS: Even setting aside the professional inappropriateness, which I think we can just grant a TV drama

I don’t either

MARCHAE: I couldn't understand why she was smitten with him to begin with to be honest

MIRI: It does work better for me once they’re established and have a weight of history to cite re: their mutual obsession and problems. I think that’s the dynamic SR was always interested in for them.

It reminded me of a more

Or I guess less childish Carrie and Big relationship

KRIS: I didn’t find the Can’t Take No for an Answer thing charming, and I feel like the show really wants us to find him Needy-BUT-Charming

MARCHAE: I don't find him likable in later seasons

KRIS: I’ll grant that the performance is less grating than the equivalent character in a lot of rom-coms

Patrick Dempsey does Quiet Charm and Quiet Intensity really well

oh interesting

MARCHAE: He forgets Merediths needs often

KRIS: I’ll keep that in mind

In the code black/bomb squad two-parter, that runner where he keeps nagging Burke about why they can’t use first names for each other eventually pays off, but in the first couple scenes of it I was like “Ugh, classic Derek”

MARCHAE: LOL

KRIS: I actually really like Burke, most of the time

MIRI: Ugh, you would

MARCHAE: Derek, I will say this, has a long stretch where I don't mind him

Burke I forget about him sometimes

I like him as he relates to Christina

KRIS: Isaiah Washington was written out for unpleasant interpersonal reasons, right?

MARCHAE: Yes he was!

He and yang have an interesting dynamic and she owes her success (in small- very small-part) to him

But he also softens her a bit but not in an icky way

MIRI: Um I would say some of it is very icky, when he is steam rolling over what she actually wants because he’s too busy seeing the version of her he wants. I’m glad for her to have the chance to grow personally, but not for her to be forced to do so in any particular direction.

In a way I think that gives her a bit more depth

KRIS: I really liked the B-story where they tried to go on a date and it was just super awkward until someone else at the restaurant collapsed

MARCHAE: Because it's them LOL

KRIS: What I like about Burke is that his vibe is what I guess we would stereotypically call “Zen”

I always like the Zen guy

And one of the things I generally really like about the show is how it portrays teaching and mentorship

MARCHAE: I never thought about that really until you just said it

Hmmmm

It is kind of interesting

I always appreciate the friendship aspect- I think that's what I note

Like how much these people love each other so so much

And would do anything

MIRI: Any time they dance it out is an amazing time

But that teacher /mentor relationship is also a really neat dynamic

Thanks

KRIS: I mean the teaching is often couched in very technical things (“Why do we _____, Dr. ____?”), partly for audience benefit, but they also use those moments to show how that bonding happens

MARCHAE: Yes!!

KRIS: And I think Burke’s personality lends itself particularly well to those beats, but I like it with everyone

It’s when they show that they can put aside all their relationship stuff and be professionals, and I think that’s really important for a show like this

MARCHAE: YES! Again while you don't love the music I don't love how unprofessional they are sometimes

KRIS: Like in front of patients, or just how they fight a lot?

MARCHAE: The patients, each other, all of it

Discussing other patients with patients

I'm like REALLY GET IT TOGETHER -FICTIONAL LIVES ARE COUNTING ON YOU

it's my biggest critique

MIRI: Marchae really does not approve of her fictional hero people being people--see our Captain America: Civil War reactions.

Though I guess I would be watching some other show if it was all about being professional and not the bonus stuff

KRIS: Yeah, I guess I just assume a certain amount of Hot Mess in almost any TV, but especially network

(I guess NCIS is a show with less of that, I don’t really know it)

MARCHAE: Criminal minds too

Any cbs show really

MIRI: Hard disagree--those people are all Hot Messes. Gibbs does nothing but Emote Grumpily and have discolored flashbacks of his dead wife and daughter, and the whole Criminal Minds team is full of emotions and PTSD.

KRIS: I guess most crime procedurals will tend to be more [self-]serious

But ER definitely had lots of friendship and romance stuff

Oh, there is one little thing where I compare Grey’s unfavorably to ER

And it’s that even though there are nurses we see fairly often, no one ever addresses nurses by name

And look, I STILL remember the names of some of those early ER nurses

Haleh

Chuny

Malik

Lydia

MARCHAE: Now that is impressive

Derek dates one nurse

KRIS: Olivia got to be a person for a bit because of the syphillis thing

But just like, give them names

MIRI: Bokhee and Daniel Sunjata have names. I’m not sure about anyone else, and Daniel Sunjata isn’t for a few seasons.

MARCHAE: Yeah

Ha!

You could start a campaign

Lolol

KRIS: I feel like it’s also a thing that could be used to show character

Cristina and Burke might not bother to learn names

But Meredith would

MARCHAE: So would Izzie and George

KRIS: George and Izzie definitely would

MARCHAE: Alex not so much

KRIS: Derek would

Yeah not Alex, unless he was trying to hook up with them

MARCHAE: Derek might I think unless he's flustered

KRIS: Webber would have at least absorbed everyone’s names through osmosis at this point

MARCHAE: HAHAHAHAHAHHAAH

LOL

KRIS: Okay I can end this rant

MARCHAE: That is hilarious

So were you completely lost with the finale you watched

KRIS: Not as much as I was worried I’d be

But for sure the character turnover was like, oh, maybe I should’ve just jumped right into this season

MARCHAE: Yeah she kills or lets go of lots of people (it's usually where I have to take a break out of frustration with the show)

KRIS: I mean I totally get it, it’s a long time to be on the air

MARCHAE: I don't they should do this for the rest of their lives

Long live #teamgeoizzie

MIRI: ANY PORTMANTEAU THAT INCLUDES “JIZZ” IS NOT OK, MARCHAE. WE’VE HAD THIS CONVERSATION

KRIS: Marchae

MARCHAE: *sorry*

MIRI: SHE’S NOT SORRY. SHE’S LYING, READERS.

KRIS: You know Miri will have to annotate that

MARCHAE: I know but I feel like since we're here and it came up-she'll be fine

KRIS: Do you know if those four leads who are still around have done much other high profile stuff while it’s been on the air?

Even Noah Wyle was in and out of ER for the last few seasons

MARCHAE: Ummmm hmmm I know that Owen was involved in an indie film

But he's the only one I know of

KRIS: But like Meredith, Alex, Bailey, and Webber

MARCHAE: I forget he came later my bad

KRIS: Oh wow, looking at Ellen Pompeo’s IMDB page, not a lot at all besides Grey’s post-2005

MARCHAE: No I just check Chandra Wilson because I thought she'd done broadway

But nope

KRIS: Pompeo’s in a Taylor Swift video and she did a little bit of voice work for a cartoon

and that’s it

I wonder what that’s like

MARCHAE: Oh yeah she was in bad blood for six seconds

KRIS: You become an actor to be different people and then you end up just being this one other person

MARCHAE: You know Sandra Oh said she went to therapy when she decided to leave

KRIS: I believe it

MARCHAE: I have thought about that too

It becomes legitimately a different part of you I'd suspect

Because it's been forever for some of these people

KRIS: Yeah. I wonder if it’s just too exhausting to like go do a feature or something in between seasons when you’re the lead on a 22-24 episode show

MARCHAE: That does seem like a lot

KRIS: Although I would also believe if Ellen Pompeo has trouble getting cast just being a woman over 40

MARCHAE: Which is mind boggling - because she's dynamic

KRIS: She is great, but again it’s not a very showy part

Most of the time

(I mean I don’t want to speculate, I obviously don’t know her life)

MARCHAE: Yeah

So you mentioned that your instructor had some things about the finale

KRIS: Yes

MARCHAE: I'm curious what they were

(By things I mean opinions)

KRIS: She said that the thing the episode is supposed to be about doesn’t really get the act breaks

And that the story that does get the act breaks isn’t really substantial enough to justify it

The most obvious candidate for what the episode is About is Meredith’s VO thing about your world “exploding”

But Stephanie also has a little speech about clenching your fist through necessary pain that seems like it could be a thematic statement

I agree with her that most of the act breaks are not very strong

There’s not much real suspense in whether Stephanie and Erin are going to get through the fire or whatever

And most of those beats just come back right where we left off, and the beat gets resolved without any twist or new information

MARCHAE: I could see that

KRIS: Just, yep, Stephanie made it into the stairwell

Yep, Stephanie got her keycard

MARCHAE: I think my notes even say this isn't their strongest finale

KRIS: Not knowing most of these new characters, it seems like it would have been stronger for Nathan and Owen to get the act breaks?

MARCHAE: I thought there was tension because she's notorious for killing people in the end - so I didn't know if she was going to die

KRIS: But I’m not sure what those would have been either, because they’re mostly just reacting to information they can’t do much with

I thought it was possible Erin would die on the roof

But not before

MARCHAE: But she couldn't die At all because she was keeping Stephanie alive

And Stephanie had to have a reason to live thus leave

So ultimately I can agree with your teacher on all accounts my note says the episode seems weird

I think you may have articulated what I couldn't put my finger on

KRIS: Yeah, and I do think that from what I’ve seen Grey’s is usually really good about tying its storylines together with the theme of the episode

MARCHAE: (I also thought the dialogue was odd - stating something we'd already seen)

KRIS: Heavy-handed but effective

And here there was no real emotional link between the fire story and the Megan story

K: Now that my class has met I do want to clarify what Writing Teacher meant. Writing Teacher is usually a big proponent of Grey’s; along with The West Wing and Friends it’s one of her most frequent touchstones for story structure and theme, and how those things work best when they’re in concert. She talks about having a “tree” when you write anything, the thematic and emotional core that can and must stay intact no matter what else you change in the course of writing and rewriting. And the tree here was, or should have been, that story about Megan and how her homecoming affects the relationships of Meredith, Owen, et al. To her guess, the problems of poor/no suspense were not the real problem, but symptoms of “draft drift” as the writers lost sight of the Megan tree and tried to manufacture artificial drama out of a Finale! gimmick that was doomed to fail precisely because they didn’t relate it to the theme they started with. (Except literally, I guess, in terms of your world exploding.)

MARCHAE: I may have to watch the episode before to see what was happening

KRIS: And whatever was going on with Jackson trying to be a hero

MARCHAE: I thought it was a call back to an episode before he saved a kid from a bus and scared Kepp to death

(Also the perpetual beeping almost made me shut the episode off)

(Complete aside)

KRIS: This isn’t totally related but it’s a great piece about writing suspense/action that everyone should read

By one of my favorite showrunners

The gist of it is that you need to have multiple live possibilities for how an action scene should end if it’s not going to just be taking up time

“Don't write action sequences. Write suspense sequences that require action to resolve. ... every action sequence has its own internal three act structure. Objective, complication, resolution. And not only that, but the complication needs to be something which forces a choice on the character, not just a complication in physical circumstances.”

And this was generally not the case in those Stephanie scenes

MARCHAE: Ahhhhh

So my argument for her is that we just needed an event/thing to get her off

KRIS: You could sort of see how it could’ve been, with the stuff you said about Erin keeping her alive

MARCHAE: The show and make her realize she needs to be away from the hospital

KRIS: But it didn’t feel like the emphasis

What’s her story?

MARCHAE: Stephanie? She comes as an intern in season 9

Her group loses several interns by way of death

KRIS: Geez

MARCHAE: She and Avery were kind of a thing

I never thought it was as serious as she did

KRIS: HA

MARCHAE: But he breaks up with her after at Kepps wedding

When He decides hey I want Kepp

Embarrassing her and making her feel like an idiot

She's not, in my opinion, liked much by all of her peers at first but they end up getting to be better friends

I stopped there because I'm in the middle of that season

(And yang leaves and I'm not ready for that nonsense)

I like her but from 9-11 I don't feel like she's terribly well developed and the relationship with Avery isn't either

KRIS: It seems like the cast also just got a lot bigger

It didn’t seem like all the regulars were even in this

MARCHAE: They revolve really we lose interns and doctors go

KRIS: But also it felt like there were characters currently there and in the credits who weren’t part of the story. I think Alex is only in that one scene where Meredith tells him to help look for Erin?

MARCHAE: I think in this episode you saw most everyone except a few

Yeah jo also wasn't there

She's in Stephanie's class

KRIS: And Jo is one of the few people whose (actor) names I recognized so I was weirdly disappointed

MARCHAE: I need to watch the episode before the finale I bet they were in that one

KRIS: I do like Kevin McKidd; Rome on HBO was great

I don’t think I have any other season 1-2 notes, but I can take questions

Man we didn’t even cover Ellis, but I feel like there’s more stuff Meredith is about to learn in season 2

MARCHAE: So much

And Merediths half sister and her other half sister

KRIS: Right, Miri wants to do one of these after I meet Lexie

MARCHAE: YES!!!!

MIRI: For the first few episodes of Supergirl I called Alex ALexie because I couldn’t let go of my Chyler Leigh associations, despite how different the roles are. And I’m excited for Kris to see those differences! But also come on--both are the sister of the blonde lead/title character, both named some variant on Alexandra/ria. It’s a lot.

KRIS: Oh I do like Joe the bartender and Joe’s the bar

MARCHAE: Oh kris

KRIS: But I feel like they probably should’ve introduced Joe before the episode where he was a patient

MARCHAE: You get to know him I think

KRIS: You know, before watching for this reaction I’d probably seen at least as much of Private Practice as I had of Grey’s

Which is to say five or six episodes

Private Practice had more actors I already recognized

MARCHAE: Oh that's another good one I didn't finish it though

MIRI: I did finish it, because my loyalty to Addison Montgomery runs DEEP

KRIS: Like, almost everyone, really

Tim Daly voiced Superman in the 90s animated series

MARCHAE: I LOVE HIMMMMM

he's on madam secretary

It's good

KRIS: Amy Brenneman, obviously

MARCHAE: I agree watch more and I want another reaction!!! Stat<---see what I did there

Yeah taye diggs I think is also in that show

KRIS: Yeah, I knew him from something

Oh I guess that’s it actually

Okay so like half the cast

OK I’ll keep watching Grey’s

And I’ll pick up Private Practice when Addison gets spun off

MARCHAE: YES

YESsssss

I wanna react to that with you also!

KRIS: I do like Kate Walsh

I feel like that’s actually not a super popular opinion but I’m not sure

MARCHAE: She just had an article out a couple of days ago about watching herself on tv

I like her a lot

KRIS: I don’t have much interest in 13 Reasons Why but I know she’s in that

MIRI: She is???

I thought the pilot of Bad Judge was fun but didn’t see more of it

MIRI: I loved it SO much

MARCHAE: I haven't seen 13 reason the book was traumatic but I'm confident she's stunning in it

So let's say we check back in on august for reaction part two!!!!

KRIS: We’ll see

Maybe if I’ve gotten to season 4 we bring the others into this

MARCHAE: I was just throwing it out there

🤓🤓

KRIS: But if we do a Grey’s check-in we also need to do either a Crazy Ex check-in with you or an Orphan Black check-in with Lemon

And OBVIOUSLY our Sweet/Vicious check-in

MARCHAE: That's very fair!

I also started the Tina Fey show

KRIS: I’m not even going to identify it here, that deserves an annotation

MIRI: Does she mean 30 Rock??

K: She 1000 percent means 30 Rock

I feel like we have a lot that’s sort of vaguely on the docket but not a lot of For Sure We’re Going to Talk About This Next

Lemon mentioned something yesterday or the day before

Oh, Hello--2 man Broadway show now on Netflix

Miss Sloane, The Leftovers, possibly Cable Girls

...

Spider-Man

MIRI: YES!!!

MARCHAE: I can't react to spider man so I'll leave you and Miri for that

And atomic blonde

MIRI: YES!!!!! Y’all, the first trailer for Atomic Blonde is still my favorite movie of the year. I’ve watched it 16 times. One of those times was right now, because I had to pull it up to do the link and then obviously I couldn’t not watch it. I would do a whole reaction on just that first trailer.

KRIS: YES

Okay dear readers

I’m personally a big fan of The AV Club and Vulture and Vox Culture

but if those aren’t your thing

we hope you’ll Pick Us, Choose Us, Love Us for your pop culture reaction needs

(too much?)

(I’ll show myself out)

MARCHAE: YESssssss

MIRI: Amazing

Not enough Kris, not enough!

#Grey's Anatomy #Shondaland #Shonda Rhimes #Meredith Grey #Ellen Pompeo #Marchae #Kris #TV #pilot #Miri after the fact #reaction

6 notes · View notes

oscopelabs · 8 years ago

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“Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai?”: Bollywood's Scandalous Question, and The Hardest-Working Scene in Movies by Genevieve Valentine

In a nightclub with the mood lighting of a surgical theater, a village belle is crying out for a husband. Her friend Champa encourages and chastises her by turns; her male audience is invited to be the bells on her anklets. (She promises, with a flare of derision, that serving her will make him a king.) Her costume, the color of a three-alarm fire, sparkles as she holds center screen. The song and camerawork builds to a frenzy as if unable to contain her energy; the dance floor’s nearly chaos by the time she ducks out—she alone has been holding the last eight minutes together. And the hardened criminal in the audience follows, determined not to let her get away.

Subhash Ghai’s 1993 blockbuster Khalnayak is a “masala film,” mingling genre elements with Shakespearean glee and a healthy sense of the surreal. By turns it’s a crime story, a separated-in-youth drama, a Gothic romance with a troubled antihero, a family tragedy, a Western with a good sheriff fighting for the rule of law, and a melodrama in which every revelation’s accompanied by thunder and several close-ups in quick succession. (There’s also a bumbling police officer, in case you felt something was lacking.) It was a box-office smash. But the reason it’s a legend is “Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai?”—“What's Behind That Blouse?”— an iconic number that’s one of the hardest-working scenes in cinema.

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See, Ganga (Madhuri Dixit) isn’t really a dancer for hire. She’s a cop gone undercover to snag criminal mastermind Ballu (Sanjay Dutt), who’s recently escaped from prison and humiliated her boyfriend, policeman Ram (Jackie Shroff). Ballu, undercover to avoid detection, is trying to avoid trouble on the way to Singapore...but of course, everything changes after Ganga.

Though the scene shows its age—the self-conscious black-bar blocking, the less-than-precise background dancers—it’s an impressive achievement. Firstly, it’s a starmaker: the screen presence of Madhuri Dixit seems hard to overstate. By 1993 she was already a marquee name, and she would dominate Bollywood box office for a decade after, both as a vivid actress and as a dancer whose quality of movement was without peer. But if you’d never seen a frame of Bollywood you’d still recognize her mountain-climb in this number—playing the cop who disdains Ballu playing the dancer trying to court him, performing by turns for the room and to the camera, conveying flirty sexuality without tipping into self-parody, and all on the move for kinetic camera shots ten to fifteen seconds at a time. Dixit’s effortless magnetism holds it fast; the camera loves what it loves.

But this is more than just a career-making dance break; “Choli Ke Peeche” is the film’s cinematic and thematic centerpiece. Khalnayak is about performativeness. Ballu performs villainy (sometimes literally) in the hopes it will fulfill him; Ram vocally asserts the role of virtuous cop to define himself against those he prosecutes. As Ballu performs good deeds—saving a village from thugs, ditching his bad-guy cape for sublimely 1993 blazers—his conscience grows back by degrees. As Ganga performs a moral compass for Ballu, her heart begins to soften. And at intervals, crowds deliver praise or censure, reminding us that all the world’s a stage. (It’s in the smallest details: While on the run, Ballu’s ready to kill a constable until it turns out he’s an extra in the movie shooting down the street.)

And nowhere in cinema is the fourth wall more permeable than a musical number. Bollywood’s turned them into an art. Playback singers are well-known (they even have their own awards categories), a layer of meta in every performance. Diegetic dance numbers are common. Movies often halt the action entirely for an item number, as a guest actress drops by. For the length of a song, the suspension of disbelief the rest of a movie requires is on pause.

Musical numbers are a place where a movie can comment on itself, and Khalnayak takes full advantage of the remove. (In an earlier number with more traditional Hollywood framing, Dixit winks at us while singing to her beloved.) Likewise, Saroj Khan’s choreography in “Choli Ke Peeche” invites us to enjoy Ganga’s sexuality without concern about racy lyrics—or even about the villain, who dances in his chair along with the rest of us. With the camera as chaperone, it’s safe for “Ganga” to asks what else she’s meant to do but lift her skirts a bit as she walks (that skirt's expensive!), and to let her prince know she sleeps with the door open. The men around her are either part of the act, or an audience safely contained by the narrative and the frame for our benefit. (At times, her back is to her audience so she can dance for the camera; Khalnayak knows we’re watching.) “Choli Ke Peeche” is a thesis statement on the relationship between performance and audience.

It’s a moment powerful enough to cast a shadow across the rest of the film. This number, not the crimes or the cops, is what the movie returns to repeatedly; it’s too good to ignore and too subversive to solve. Not least, among the other layers of performance, is queer subtext. In Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, Gayatri Gopinath points out that “female homoerotic desire between Dixit and [Neena] Gupta is routed and made intelligible through a triangulated relation to the male hero.” Champa’s masculinized within the performance; she asks the loaded title question, addresses our heroine’s male savior, and discusses him with Ganga. It’s a significant connection between women in a song supposedly directed at a man—which might be why Champa is the one who defends Ganga’s reputation by explaining the dance-hall sting, and reminding the audience it was all for show.

But that’s not going to stop “Choli Ke Peeche.” At the end of the second act, Ballu blows Ganga’s cover. (He’s known she’s a cop since their backstage meeting—another layer of performance). To prove they mean no real harm, the men don lenghas and veils and parody a chunk of the number, right down to interjectional close-ups and a wandering camera that brings kinetic energy to the static space.

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In one way this reprise tries to undercut the song’s power by making it faintly ridiculous, suggesting it isn’t really sexual—it’s camp. But if “Choli Ke Peeche” functioned as a ‘safe’ way for Ganga to express sexuality when we first saw it, it serves a parallel purpose here. Despite the mocking undertones, with this number the men are reassuring her; they understand her sexuality was itself just a performance—her purity is therefore safe with them. (We know that’s a concern here because her shawl is pulled close about her; the free-spirit act is over, and her virtue is at stake.)

But there’s also something undeniably subversive in hyper-masculine, violent figures reenacting coy expressions of feminine desire. To prevent things from getting too subversive, Ballu invades Ganga’s personal space, a reminder of his power amid the making fun. And the performance ends in the threat of violence against Ganga when she breaks the spell—the expected order of captor and captive reestablishing itself as the film falls into a formulaic last act, an attempt to wrest social order out of the exuberant chaos one musical number has wrought.

It caused some chaos offscreen, too. When the soundtrack was released ahead of the film, “Choli Ke Peeche” was deemed obscene; the song was banned on Doordarshan and All India Radio, and faced legal challenge at the Central Board of Film Certification. In “What is Behind Film Censorship? The Kahlnayak debates,” Monika Mehta writes that “the visual and verbal representation combined to produce female sexual desire. It was the articulation of this desire that was the problem—it posited that women were not only sexual objects, but also sexual subjects.” And within the number, there’s no doubt Ganga’s in control; she sends alluring glances Ballu’s way, mocks (then takes) his money, and signals he’s free to follow her if he dares. The undercover-cop framework gives these gestures the veneer of respectability, but since Ballu doesn’t know that yet, the frisson of the forbidden remains.

Letters of condemnation and support rolled in. Many claimed the song was too suggestive; an exhibitor from Paras Cinema in Rajasthan wrote in favor because “Choli Ke Peeche” was based on a folk song from the area, and “If it was vulgar then the ladies would have never liked it.” The examining committee eventually ruled in favor of letting the number remain, with some edits: one that removed the chorus entirely (which Ghai successfully appealed), and two cuts to beats considered provocative, including one of Ganga ‘pointing at her breast’ as she sings, “I can’t bear being an ascetic, so what should I do?”, unequivocally claiming sexuality without even a man as her object. No wonder it had to go.

It wasn’t the only controversy dogging the film; star Sanjay Dutt was arrested under The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act for possible connections to the 1993 Bombay bombings, which added an uncomfortable self-awareness to Ballu’s onscreen misdeeds. Yet those controversies did Khalnayak no harm at the box office, where it broke records, and the movie’s had such nostalgic power that as of 2016, Ghai was considering a sequel.

But “Choli Ke Peeche” remains the movie’s most measurable influence. In Bombay Before Bollywood: Film City Fantasies, Rosie Thomas notes that after Ganga, “distinctions between heroine and vamp began to crumble, as the item number became de rigueur for female stars,” suggesting Khalnayak was a harbinger of less rigid strictures for Bollywood’s leading ladies. Another legacy of Khalnayak: more numbers feature women—with a man as the absent locus of their affections—dancing with each other instead, forming their own narrative connections and opening the opportunity for queer readings. (One of the most famous, “Dola Re Dola” from 2002’s Devdas, features Dixit again, alongside costar Aishwarya Rai.)

The pressure of so much cultural influence and metatextual weight might have turned a lesser scene into a relic, a stuttery car chase from a silent movie that starts a montage of the ways the camera has developed. It’s a testament to “Choli Ke Peeche” that it absorbs the weight of the years as gracefully as it does. If you want a watershed moment for sexual agency in Bollywood, you have it. If you want a starmaker with dancing that’s influenced choreography and direction for twenty years since, it’s happy to help. If you want a scene that dissects the idea of performance as subversive act, the offscreen vulgarity scandal only adds to your case. And if you want a musical number that reminds you what cinema can do, “Choli Ke Peeche” is as vibrant, campy, and complex as ever.

#bollywood #choli ke peeche #khalnayak #sanjay dutt #subhash ghai #masala film #all india radio #oscilloscope laboratories #musings #indian cinema #cinema of india #ganga #devdas #aishwarya rai #madhuri dixit #doordashan

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dyemelikeasunset · 8 years ago

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Ty, could you rec me some movies and/or tv shows you like? :)

YEAH i’m totally down!! I don’t really watch TV though, so this will be a movie rec list! (Also I haven’t watched a lot of movies recently, so a majority of these are from my teenage years)

Movies:

The Fountain (2006): a layered story that interlocks three different timelines/worlds. One takes place during the 16th century where a conquistador is trying to find the Tree of Life in central America, hoping to save Queen Isabella, the second takes place in the 2000s, about a doctor coming to terms with the impending death of his wife, and the third is in the far future, where a lone man is traveling through space with a magic tree. All three timelines star the same two actors, Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, and the significance of that can be interpreted in multiple ways. The movie doesn’t have a solid Hollywood story, so the ending may feel rather unhappy, but the visual themes, music, and acting are amazing. It may seem like a typical “middle age white man pain” story on the outside, but it’s executed well and I personally really enjoy it.

The Hours (2002): based on a novel of the same name, this movie is another triple-layered story. This story revolves around Virginia Wolfe and her novel Mrs. Dalloway: one timeline follows Wolfe trying to write the novel, the second timeline follows a 50s housewife reading the novel, and the third is a 2000s re-telling of the novel. This movie could very likely be considered slow and is practically made up of all soliloquies, but again, superb acting and an overall very emotional journey. There are quite a lot of gay subthemes, with the modern Mrs. Dalloway character (played by Meryl Streep) in a long-standing and committed relationship with another woman, and there are one-sided feelings in the 50s housewife story (the housewife is played by Juliane Moore). There is a weird, potentially incestuous, kiss between Virginia Wolfe (played by Nicole Kidman) and her sister(?), so warnings for that and also lots of talk of suicide (as per accurate of Wolfe). It’s also unfortunately another all-white cast.

The Tale of Two Sisters (2003): a Korean horror movie about two sisters who return home after an extended stay in a mental institution. Their home suffers under a subtly oppressive and supernatural energy, and there are a lot of mysteries creeping about. Complicated relationships are slowly revealed between the sisters, their father, dead mother, and step mother. This story has a lot of twists, and in its center, I actually think it’s more of a tragedy rather than a true horror. I know the surface level of “psychologically troubled sisters in a horror movie” seems very cringe-worthy, but surprisingly the psychoses are treated as a separate entity from the supernatural elements (even if the lines are a bit ambiguous and blurry, there is still a line). The acting in this is amazing and makes much, much more sense when watched through a second time.

Doubt (2008): the screen adaptation of a stage play, Doubt is a very thematic story revolving around a Catholic boarding school and a molestation allegation. The lead nun (played by Meryl Streep) is suspicious of the main pastor (played by Philip Seymour) because of the close relationship he shares with the first Black child to be integrated to their school. The story is fairly simple, but the amount of psychological tension really drives the story, and the viewer’s prejudices are really put to the test. The actors deliver incredible performances, with an amazing, surprise role from Viola Davis as the child’s mother. The movie really leaves you questioning yourself by the end.

Unleashed (2005): my favorite American Jet Li film, and one of the few US movies that actually takes advantage of his incredible acting skills. This story is about a mentally disabled cage fighter, who is kept like a dog by his gang boss. Through circumstances, he gains his freedom and is saved by a blind pianist (played by Morgan Freeman), who teaches him how to live an ordinary life. Of course, his past comes to haunt him and there’s a lot of action scenes, but the core of the movie is very sweet. I also personally have a soft spot for Asian/Black co-leading actors, and movies that focus on positive relationships between the two groups (which Jet Li has also done in Romeo Must Die but the story in that one is kinda lacking). I think what’s incredible about this movie– as a childhood Jet Li fan– is seeing how his acting and personification of the character translates into the martial arts choreography. For someone who rose to stardom as “the elegant fighter,” Jet Li delivers amazing emotional impact as an unhinged and almost beast-like fighter.

Saving Face (2004): I realize most of my movies are heavy I’m so sorry, so here’s a light-hearted movie to balance things out lmao. Saving Face is a Chinese-American lgbt film, starring Michelle J. Krusiec as a lesbian surgeon. Out to her friends, but closeted to her mother and their general Chinese community, the main character falls into the responsibility of caring for her aging mother– who has mysteriously become pregnant. The mother-daughter duo must learn to live together, reconcile their relationship, and deal with losing face together in the light of their unconventional relationships. While the story is mainly focused on the parental relationship, the main character does have a relationship with another woman that receives significant screentime and development. A feel-good film that does have a lot of bilingual scenes, so watching with subtitles will be needed for non-Mandarin speakers.

Animated Movies:(obviously I’ve seen more animated movies than the ones on this list but I don’t see people talk about these films often so I’m gonna rec them)

Wolf Children (2012): the story of a mother who’s left with raising her two, half-wolf children. The movie follows her meeting a werewolf, falling in love with him, losing him, and raising the kids from infancy to middle-school age. The animation house is the same group that produced The Girl Who Lept Through Time and Summer Wars, so the quality is top-notch. The story, while generally slice-of-life, obviously has some supernatural elements to it due to the kids being werewolves, but is still able to retain the evocative nature of a parental coming-of-age story. There are a lot of themes of love and loss, so it’s not a very feel-good film, but the ending leaves quite the impact on the viewer.

Tokyo Godfathers (2003): a dramedy movie from Satoshi Kon, this film follows the story of three homeless people: a teenage girl and two middle-aged adults, an alcoholic father and a former drag-queen (who now identifies as a trans woman). During the Christmas holiday, the three stumble on an abandoned baby, and more or less decide to find the parents. Their journey takes them across Tokyo, through unbelievable and hilarious circumstances, and also through each of their unresolved pasts and motivations. The animation in this movie is amazing, and the story is light but human enough to strike at your emotions. Hana-san, the trans woman, may come across initially as a caricature, but she is treated with respect and humanity just like the other two characters.

#Anonymous #recs #long post ///

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emmagreen1220-blog · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on Literary Techniques

New Post has been published on https://literarytechniques.org/motif-vs-theme/

Motif vs. Theme

Motif is a recurring element (a symbol, a feature, an expression, a concept) which, if used throughout a single work, suggests its theme (also leitmotif), and, if used across many texts, communicates a common topic of an almost archetypal nature (topos). Theme, on the other hand, is the main idea/subject matter that a literary work treats, or, put even more straightforward, the answer to the question “what is this work about?”

Whatever the subject of repetition, motifs are more often than not bound to the theme of the work, most of them implicitly hinting at it. Interpreted in this context, they are much more ambiguous—and grasped much more intuitively—than symbols that unequivocally stand for something else which is not necessarily the theme.

Throughout history, the words “motif,” “leitmotif,” “theme,” “topic,” “topos,” “symbol” and a few others, have been used interchangeably to describe many similar and related concepts. That’s why it is often difficult to say where the definition of either of them ends and the definition of a related term begins; which is why it should be noted from the start that it is neither a mistake to say that “many of Shakespeare’s sonnets are variations of the common memento mori motif” nor it is an exaggeration to claim that “many of Shakespeare’s sonnets focus on the theme of the passing of time.”

In other words, most distinctions between the terms “motif” and “theme” are tentative—see the definitions section below—and ours can’t be any different; but it is one which, if only because of its simplicity, is more generally accepted in primers and schoolbooks.

Definitions: Motif, Leitmotif, and Theme

As we said above, the words “motif” and “theme” are often used interchangeably, which means that it is not a rare occurrence for a literary dictionary to list the definitions of both under one entry; this is further complicated by the word leitmotif which is often treated as a more modern term for “motif” (see the section below). To demonstrate this Babel of meanings, we selected a plethora of definitions from many compendiums of knowledge (glossaries, dictionaries, encyclopedias); we present them in the table below. We’ll try to make sense of them in the other two sections

SOURCE MOTIF LEITMOTIF THEME Joseph T. Shipley, Dictionary of World Literary Terms (1970) “a word or pattern of thought that recurs in a similar situation, or to evoke similar mood, within a work or in various works of a genre.” “an expression that as a unit bears a particular significance, e.g., the Homeric epithet, the folktale repetition.” “the general topic, of which the particular story is an illustration.” Arnold Lazarus and H. Wendell Smith, A Glossary of Literature and Composition (1973) “a recurring symbol, expression, or feature (e.g., the love potion).” / 1. “a unifying idea, motif, or archetypal experience in a literary work.” 2. “the unifying statement, expressed or implied, in a literary work.” H. L. Yelland, S. C. Jones, and K. S. W. Easton, A Handbook of Literary Terms (1983) “a recurring theme or basic idea.” / “the central thought in a literary work.” Jack Myers and Michael Simms, Longman Dictionary and Handbook of Poetry (1985) “also called ‘topos;’ a theme, device, event, or character that is developed through nuance and repetition in a work.” [e.g., ubi sunt and carpe diem formulas, stock character motifs] “indicating a theme associated throughout a work with a particular person, situation, or sentiment.” “the paraphrasable main idea(s) of a piece of literature, that is, what the work is about.” Northrop Frye, Sheridan Baker, and George Perkins, The Harper Handbook to Literature (1985) 1. “a recurrent thematic element—word, image, symbol, object, phrase, action.” 2. “a conventional incident, situation, or device” [e.g., the excruciating riddle] “a repeated phrase, word, or theme running through and unifying a novel or play.” “a central idea.” Katie Wales, A Dictionary of Stylistics (1990) 1. “the simplest narrative thematic units in folk-tales and stories.” 2. “a synonym for leitmotif: a recurrent theme or idea in a text or group of texts.” “the use of repeated […] phrases; in a looser sense it is often used, like motif, to mean recurring or favorite themes throughout an author’s oeuvre.” “the ‘point’ of a literary work, its central idea, which we infer from our interpretation of the plot, imagery and symbolism, etc.” Kathleen Morner and Ralph Rausch, NTC’s Dictionary of Literary Terms (1991) “a recurring image, word, phrase, action, idea, object, or situation that appears in various works [a recurrent theme] or throughout the same work [sometimes leitmotif].” “the repetition of a significant word, phrase, theme, or image throughout a novel or play, which functions as a unifying element.” “the central or dominating idea, the ‘message,’ implicit in a work.” Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (2001) “a situation, incident, idea, image, or character-type that is found in many different literary works, folktales, or myths; or any element of a work that is elaborated into a more general theme[…]within a single work, it is more commonly referred to as a leitmotif.” “a frequently repeated phrase, image, symbol, or situation in a literary work, the recurrence of which usually indicates or supports a theme.” “a salient abstract idea that emerges from a literary work’s treatment of its subject-matter; or a topic recurring in a number of literary works.” Edward Quinn, A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms (2006) “an element that appears in a number of literary works. It differs from a theme, which it closely resembles, in that it is a concrete example of a theme.” “a phrase or image that suggests a particular theme.” “A significant idea in a literary text, sometimes used interchangeably with motif.” Peter Auger, The Anthem Dictionary of Literary Terms and Theory (2010) “a recurring element within or between artistic works”: 1. “a basic means of shaping meaning within a work through repetition which hints at an overall theme” (“similar in meaning to leitmotif”) 2. “intertextual reappearance of elements” (“topoi”) “a prominent idea, character, image or situation that recurs throughout a work, or an author’s works.” “an abstract idea that seems central to a literary work’s design; a work’s structure and imagery (motifs) appear to support the theme.” M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms (2012) “a conspicuous element, such as a type of incident, device, reference, or formula, which occurs frequently in works of literature[…] an older term for recurrent poetic concepts or formulas is the topos.” “the term ‘motif,’ or else the German leitmotif (a guiding motif) is also applied to the frequent repetition within a single work of a significant verbal or musical phrase, or set description, or complex of images.” “sometimes used interchangeably with ‘motif,’ [but] more usefully applied to a general concept or doctrine, whether implicit or asserted, which an imaginative work is designed to incorporate and make persuasive to the reader.”

Comparisons: Motif vs. Theme

Various Names in Different Literary Contexts

As one can deduct from the definitions above, sometimes even great literary scholars have problems differentiating between motifs and themes. To make matters even worse, each of these terms is considered—by different authors—synonymous with at least a few other terms used in similar contexts. Here’s an overview of this cacophony of terms and concepts:

IN A SINGLE WORK ACROSS MANY WORKS Name Example Term Example MOTIF leitmotif, leading motif, central motif a repeated reference (rings and arches in D. H. Lawrence’s Rainbow) or an expression (“So, it goes” in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five) literary topos / topoi ubi sunt, memento mori, carpe diem… common symbols cross, dove, love potion stock characters; folk-motifs miles gloriosus; the beauty and the beast THEME theme, topic, subject matter Christian redemption, The American Dream perennial theme Death, Love archetype the prostitute with a golden heart, the divine teacher, Don Juan motif see the first row

The comprehensive table above can be simplified in this circular manner:

IN A SINGLE WORK ACROSS LITERARY WORKS MOTIF Leitmotif Topos THEME Theme Motif

So, in other words, when a motif starts reappearing across numerous literary works, it becomes a general, almost conventional, theme, i.e., a “topos.” If, however, we’re dealing with a recurrent element within a single work, then we’re actually talking about “leitmotifs,” constitutive elements of a certain idea, meaningful patterns which are suggestive of a certain mood or atmosphere or, else, hint at the larger theme of a work. Let’s try and further elaborate on these two meanings of the word “motif.”

Internal Distinctions: Two Types of Motifs

Topoi: Traditional Understanding of Motifs

Traditionally, the word “motif” has been understood in a rather general manner, i.e., as a synonym for a “commonplace topic,” or, to use a Greek term, a topos (topoi in plural). As such, motifs have been around since the earliest days of writing, and many of them are being constantly revisited and reworked with regards to different circumstances, occasions, or needs.

In cases such as these, motifs can sometimes be almost indistinguishable from themes. For example, both Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” are variations of the same carpe diem (“seize the day”) motif, but this is also very much their central theme (see our Examples of Motif in Literature).

Other traditional motifs often revisited by poets and authors are, say, the motif of the perfect place (Arcadia, Eden, Utopia, El-Dorado, Shangri-La…), the motif of the womanizer (Casanova, Don Juan, Lothario…), or the motif of the (hero’s) journey. Each of these three motifs has served as the premise for numerous wildly different works written by thousands of dissimilar authors.

For reasons such as this, it is sometimes convenient to place all these writings into one class and to speak of the carpe diem genre or the utopian/dystopian genre. In folkloristics, in fact, there exists a wide-ranging classification, called the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Motif-Index, which lists, in a nested manner, all variations of all traditional motifs found in world folklore. We mention one in our main Motif article, under the section “Songs with Motifs.”

Leitmotifs: Modern Reinterpretation of Motifs

In modern literary studies, motifs are usually understood much more strictly and are used in a much more different manner than traditional topoi are by writers. To make a distinction, some authors use the term leitmotif for this modern meaning of the word “motif.”

Musical Origin of the Term “Leitmotif”

The term leitmotif comes from music and is German in origin. It means “leading (guiding) motive” and was coined by Hans von Wolzogen to refer to a musical theme—repeated orchestral phrases—which evokes and/or can be identified with a specific character, situation, object, or emotion. Wolzogen used and developed the term with a specific reference to the operas of Richard Wagner, in which there are hundreds of leitmotifs, most of them related to a specific character or a situation.

To understand the musical meaning of the word leitmotif better, think of the ominous music which suggests an imminent shark attack in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, or the sound of heavy breathing which indicates the presence of killer Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Literary Use of “Leitmotifs”

First applied by the English physician Havelock Ellis in 1896 to the work of Émile Zola, the term leitmotif assumed a similar meaning in literature: a reminder of continuity which hints at the general theme of a work. Modernist authors consciously appropriated this device, especially since while composing their experimental works, they stopped relying on conventional narrative concepts such as plot, characters, story or symbols. As a result, they had to use something different to create internal cohesion within their texts, “economically to build a unified work.” And they found that something in the idea of the recurring motif—or, more precisely, the leitmotif.

In this case, motifs are unifying elements, and they merely point to a theme; however, they are very different from it. For example, flying is an essential motif in Toni Morrison’s 1977 novel, Song of Solomon, but the themes the novel explores have nothing to do with planes or birds, but, among other things, with one’s search for his/her own identity beyond the shackles of his immediate reality.

Motif vs. Theme: General Distinctions

“Motif and theme are two different things,” writes the great German scholar Ernst Robert Curtius in an essay on Hermann Hesse, “and critics would do well to distinguish between them.” But, unfortunately, due to the confusion over what exactly motif is, they haven’t. Curtius himself doesn’t offer particularly clear distinction, but he does well when he compares the motif to a plant: “it unfolds, forms nodes, branches out, puts forth leaves, buds, fruit.” In this analogy, the theme is something both more abstract and more straightforward, such as the Latin name of this plant or its place in a taxonomic table; often, the motif is what makes the theme tangible by adorning it with mood, ambiance, and overall atmosphere.

In the table below, we’ve tried summarizing the differences between this modern understanding of the word “(leit)motif” and the usual definitions of a “theme.” Hopefully, it can help you distinguish the terms “motif” and “theme” better in cases when you’re dealing with and analyzing a single work.

TYPE (LEIT)MOTIF THEME Element Recurring symbol, object, phrase, idea, situation Central idea; the subject-matter Size A simple, Indivisible element; (an atomic thematic element) A dividable union of elements (a molecule of motifs, symbols, characters, relations, etc.) Presence Local General Visibility Concrete, tangible, directly expressed, e.g., the rain in Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms or the phrase “To Moscow” in Chekhov’s Three Sisters Abstract, outside the text, indirectly expressed through motifs, images, characters, actions, symbols, etc. Perceptibility Intuitively grasped through reading Can be rationally deduced through interpretation Function motifs can suggest some atmosphere (e.g., the color red and darkness in Macbeth), mood (e.g., the breaking of string in Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard), hint at a theme (e.g., mongooses in Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) or contribute to the unification of a literary work (e.g., periodic striking of clocks in Mrs. Dalloway) the theme is what the writer wanted to say with his story, characters, motifs, etc.; it is not something he uses to say something; it is what he says by using something else Communicability Can’t be rephrased or summarized; e.g. “the motif of the green light in Great Gatsby” Can be paraphrased and recapitulated; e.g. “the theme of Hamlet is the conflict between human indecisiveness and duty” (this, of course, is not the only way to summarize the theme in Hamlet, neither the only theme for that matter) Commonness Usually more unique and more personalized; e.g., slippers and rackets in Nabokov’s Lolita A single theme can be reworked numerous times in thousands of different ways

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xueminwang-r-e-blog · 8 years ago

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Some analysis on OST of “Ghost In the Shell”(1995)

Ghost in the shell (1995) is one of the best Japanese animations that can be regarded as a legendary level, and its original music was composed by Kawai Kenji, one of my favorite composers in film, TV and games industries. I have been admiring and imitating his work for years.

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There are those director- composer collaborations that are so perfect. It’s unimaginable to conceive of the movie without that music. Jaws, Star Wars, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Out of Africa. The audio-visual paring in Ghost in the Shell’s opening sequence certainly belongs in that pantheon.

Having seen that film multiple times, I have some ideas of some deeper meaning of the track ‘making of cyborg’

Research for the meaning of the lyrics & genre of the music：

In the book ‘Anime and Philosophy’ there are several chapters dedicated to Ghost in the Shell. In chapter 19, “Cyborg songs for an existential Crisis”, author Sarah Penicka-Smith not only gives us a translation of the lyrics, but also a great interpretation.

Whenever we listen to a music, our brain tries to make sense of what we are hearing. Usually this is easy, we can identify whether a song is pop, rock, jazz, dance, etc. even we can’t explain how or why we know that it is. To make these judgements, the brain draws back from previous listening experiences and compare that against established conventions and associations. It’s automatic and it stems from our need to categorize to make sense of the world around us.

When it comes to Kawai Kenji’s score for the opening of Ghost in the Shell, the music defies categorization, mirroring how the film’s protagonist. Major Motoko Kusanagi doesn’t fit neatly into any box either. She is a cyborg: a human machine hybrid, and what better way to acoustically represent that then with a score of the same nature. As we listen, we struggle to place the music and the effect is not only transfixing but unsettling. Then, when you add the visceral and almost the surrealist imagery of Major’s mechanical birth, the result is transcendent cinema. In her essay Pinecka-Smith points out that the music combines elements of Japanese and Bolgarian folk music; the lyrics are in ancient Japanese, yet the music makes use of synthesizers, a late 20th century technology.

First phrase: As Major becomes invisible, the source sound fades and the shake of a Kagura Suzu bell (a traditional Japanese percussion) summons a trio of singers, kept in time by a single drum. I agree with Penicka-Smith in her analogizing of the music with Major. “The music matechs the graphics of the opening credits: we see Major in all her component parts, she is gradually assembled, her skin added, and her hair and body dried of its amniotic fluid. Against this, the music is simple, spare; like the Major in her base components” Although the instrumentation is, according to the essay, ‘consistent with minyo (traditional Japanese folk song) performance’, there is one significant omission. The shamisen, which usually accompanies most Japanese folk music is missing. Another departure from minyo tradition is the fact that the three singers closely harmonize in a particular way. This she identifies as being in a Bulgarian folk style and we also have a quote from an interview with the composer to back this claim up:

“At first the director had requested primitive drum sounds [for the opening]. I felt it would be even more effective if there were a chorus on top of it, something in a Bulgarian style. There are folk singers with very distinctive voices in Japan, and that’s who we found for the vocal roles.” – Kawai Kenji interview with GameSetWatch.com

But, even without the composer’s confirmation, if we listen to an example of Bulgarian folk music side by side with ‘Reincarnation’, the stylistic similarities speak for themselves.

Bulgarian folklor- Kaval sviri

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The fusion of these two cultures gives the music an eerie ambiguity. As is mentioned, anything that defies categorization can be a source of unconscious anxieties, just like the cyborg entity of Major herself: not quite robot, not quite human.

Kawai Kenji is a Japanese composer who drew from the folk music from his own country as inspiration which makes sense. But is it a strange combination with a folk choir from Bulgaria?

Here is a video with the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir performed on The Tonight Show promoting their album, The mystery of the Bulgarian Voices.

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If dig deeper, I found is actually interesting, and it feels like a little bit of socialist and capitalist history. The kind of music from the video is actually not really Bulgarian folk music. It turns out that this kind of female choir were actually invented in 1951 by a Bulgarian composer named Filip Kutev. He did two innovative things. First, he took traditional village songs, which are usually monophonic (which means just one voice or singer) and rewrote them adding 4-5 different harmonies, dynamic changes and tempo changes. Then, he toured the country, rounding up the best female singers to be part of a new national folk chorus. Efforts like these apparently took place throughout the Eastern Bloc and they stemmed from a larger, ideological need to generate a sense of nationhood through essentially inventing a national music. As Kalin Kirilov note in the journal, MUSICultures: “Soon after their creation, the folk ensembles and became the official form of Bulgarian folk art and the one exclusively marketed to the rest of the world.” By the 1980s, the music of the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir had reached the ear of A&R executive at Nonesuch Records, a subsidiary of Warner Music. In 1987, they released the album The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices which was marketed as exotic, spiritual, and ancient music. Since 1951 certainly is ancient history? Anyway, as Jonny Carson mentioned their album won a Grammy and with world music emerging as a genre in the mainstream music market in the 1980s, it’s no surprise that this Bulgarian “folk music” would have crossed the paths of a professional composer like Kawai Kenji.

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Lyric from ‘making of cyborg’ translated into English:

Because I had danced, the beautiful lady was enchanted， Because I had danced, the shining moon echoed, Proposing marriage, the god shall descend， The night clears away and the chimera bird will sing, The distant god may give us the precious blessing.

Sarah Penicka-Smith makes the observation that these lyrics, which are from a preparatory wedding song, related thematically to the conclusion to film, which is the merging of the Puppet Master and Major into a unified, expansive consciousness. The final line, “The distant god may give us the precious blessing’ is not sung in the opening sequence but only in the final credits, when ‘Reincarnation’ returns as a longer track called ‘Reincarnation’ where the music provides symbolic closure to the film. For me, this film is filled with tension between man and machine, and between the past and the future which are all considered into the personal narrative of Major. The music in the opening sequence reflects the tension in several ways. By choosing ancient or classical Japanese, which fell out of use in its spoken form by the end of the 12th century and it’s literary form by the end of the 19th century, this song engages with a sense of a pre-industrial lost era. Yet, the setting of these lyrics is postmodern, ambiguous and futuristic through its blending of Japanese and Bulgarian music and electronic methods of production. In some ways, making a cyborg is a microcosm of the film’s central tensions. Finally, the penultimate lyric, “The night clears away and chimera bird will sing” is, and this is my speculation, a reference to Major. A chimera is a mythical animal often portrayed with a lion’s head, wings and a snake-like tail. In scientific terminology, it refers to an organism with genetic tissue from more than one species. Since, by the end of the film the Major merges with the Puppet Master, a whole new world of limitless possibilities open to her in this chimera form. And, like a bird finally able to sing, she’s liberated from her shell.

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tinymixtapes · 8 years ago

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Music Review: Young Thug - Beautiful Thugger Girls

Young Thug Beautiful Thugger Girls [300 Entertainment; 2017] Rating: 3.5/5 Rap has a curious tendency to be consumed by its influences. Twitter would have you believe that Beautiful Thugger Girls is in fact a country album largely because of a single yet prominently placed “yee-haw;” Thug himself announced the release as his “singing album,” an exciting proposition but essentially meaningless as a descriptor (and hence, a perfect press release). From all corners, there’s a persistent and pernicious resistance to any flexibility in what we think of as rap. As rap has permeated pop, it has accreted a function-first fandom — those in need of a clearly and consistently-defined soundtrack to turning up, whipping around, or lifting weights. At the same time, diehards are increasingly driven to stake claims about what is and isn’t real rap; while their positions vary (usually anchored by opinions of “old heads” or Lil Yachty), they rarely take a fully inclusive stance. Rap is a zero-sum genre, defined against itself as much as the rest of the musical landscape. Beautiful Thugger Girls is a rap album, and a very good one at that. If genre descriptors are to have any meaning (their uselessness beyond broad, mutually-understood categorization notwithstanding), this is non-negotiable. Moreover, Young Thug is something of a synecdoche for rap at large, perhaps the single current figure of whom an appreciation is most essential — and, to many, sufficient — to convince yourself that you’re respectably entangled in rap goings-on (it’s him or Kendrick Lamar). A significant swath of Thug’s fandom was brought on board by his distinctly un-rapperly qualities — ostensibly progressive sexual politics, equal precedence of lyrics and exclamation, more-than-cursory coverage on Pitchfork. Wherever his stylistic eccentricities lead him, it’s central to Thug’s appeal that they adorn an underlying, intrinsic rap-ness — perhaps too much, to the point that an album without a thematic gimmick (a “singing album,” for example) would no longer cut it. That aside, Young Thug has always done a remarkable job of satisfying the full breadth of his fanbase. The style of a particular song or project is more often than not a mere dalliance, woven together with the rest by the common thread of their creator. Being a Young Thug fan feels more like a subscription service than an album-by-album transaction, an act of patronage of the man’s mere existence so as to find out where he’ll go next. Correspondingly, Beautiful Thugger Girls is remarkable because of its Thugger-ness — it’s a clear step forward at the very moment that Thug-derivation is a particularly viable come-up (Sahbabii and Gunna, doubtlessly talented, will have to distinguish themselves at some point). With the exception of “Get High,” the Snoop Dogg feature that’s become a rite of passage for rising rappers, there’s not a song on here that could’ve appeared on anyone else’s album. The production remains distinctive while fitting largely within the trap idiom; 808 kicks, snares, and hi-hats lay a familiar framework upon which compelling studies of dancehall, power balladry, and the acoustic guitar are built — sometimes all at once. It’s only June, but I’m comfortable claiming that “You Said” will be the year’s most Renaissance Faire-appropriate rap instrumental. There’s not a soul alive still listening to Young Thug for lyrical content, which is not a bad thing in and of itself. However, it has to be noted that Beautiful Thugger Girls marks the point at which his pure lyricism, absent an unimpeachable sense of melody and flow, has begun to detract from the project as a whole. There’s always been a certain pleasure to deciphering the massive free-associative leaps that explain some of Thug’s more bizarre lyrics, but words here seem to be present only in service of their delivery. It’s impossible not to consider how much the album could be improved were there anything worthwhile being said, especially in light of Thug’s earlier flashes in that arena (“Never been in pain/ I don’t know how love feel,” from Tha Tour’s “Freestyle,” remains the gold standard). I’m simply not at a point in my life where a “Suck me/ Fuck me” rhyme has anything to offer, even considering the tertiary (at best) priority of Thug’s lyrics. For now, Beautiful Thugger Girls exists in stasis. There are no immediate conclusions to be drawn about Thug’s future plans, just as no sensible assessment of his prior work could have led us here. Young Thug’s trajectory more resembles a constellation than any sort of linear development, likely to continue resisting consideration as a complete body of work until its end. Instead, a new album from Thugger exists in — and overwhelms — the moment of its release, a last-known location about which all rap positions itself relative to Young Thug. Until the next one, at least. http://j.mp/2tqWV2R

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nazih-fares · 8 years ago

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Since the launch of their kickstarter campaign back in 2015, Playtonic bet hard on resurrecting the golden days of 3D platformer on the Nintendo 64 with Yooka-Laylee. Led by a team of former Rare studio developers, Playtonic’s current team worked on titles like Donkey Kong Country and of course Banjo-Kazooie, which Yooka-Laylee is considered its spiritual successor in every angle. No joke, Yooka-Laylee has everything Banjo-Kazooie had, from a charismatic duo of heroes, a hell of stuff to collect, a dose of old-fashioned platforming sprinkled with a generous pinch of humor, to even a similar marketing campaign (with the exception of heavy TV ads since it’s not Nintendo)… This all seems like the perfect recipe for a good game, but Yooka-Laylee will also remind us of the faults of that good ol’ Nintendo 64 platformer game generation.

Yooka-Laylee is a product of pure nostalgia, a tribute more than direct to the illustrious Banjo-Kazooie. The two titles share a lot of similarities: gameplay, humor, constant quest for object to collect and thematic levels to explore. Playtonic’s colorful baby is an ode to a genre that gamers of the new generation never experienced probably. And so Playtonic tried their best to create that similar Banjo-Kazooie experience, yet without ever being able to surpass it. Don’t get me wrong, Yooka-Laylee has good ideas, a solid gameplay base, but it evolves constantly in a precarious balance between its nostalgic references and trying to find its own identity.

Starting with the main characters, Yooka and Laylee are similar to the infamous bear and bird duo from Banjo-Kazooie, except it’s a chameleon and a bat sidekick. The pair works wonderfully together, with successful animation and rendering. Like Banjo-Kazooie, Playtonic made it quick to set the story, which recounts the adventure of Yooka and Laylee as they roam the world in search of pages from the books of the world, stolen by the terrible Capital B and Dr. Quack which plans to convert them into pure financial profit. And so our duo will travel through a series of five worlds from a central HUB to collect all lost magic pages (called pagies), reminiscing the famous puzzle pieces from the Banjo-Kazooie series.

These pages will serve as an upgrade necessary to expanding the reach of these worlds, which basically turns a simple book into a grand tome. While it is quite old-school in may ways, Playtonic brings a touch of novelty to the 1990s platformer formula, leaving the player a significant degree of freedom in exploration. It is then possible to unlock the levels in the order of your choice to recover the insane amount of hidden collectibles, as well as beating a series of challenges modeled after some of Rare productions’ greatest games.

In the purest tradition of the genre, the complete exploration of the worlds will pass through a palette of movements quite standard all more or less modeled on those of the duo Banjo-Kazooie. Jump, double jump, glide, rodeo attack, Yooka-Laylee controls our progress by forcing us to purchase new capabilities from Trowzer, a weird snake businessman that wears pants.

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If the initial proposal of five worlds to explore may appear thin (in comparison to the original Banjo-Kazooie nine worlds), these are expandable via the expense of pagies, as mentioned before, which will give access to new challenges for the player. As for the environment, we find the great classics, ranging from your usual ice or tropical jungle level. Vast and colorful, these levels allow themselves to be traversed with a certain pleasure despite numerous back and forth between obstacles. But Yooka-Laylee nevertheless struggles to show a great originality in the way it built its worlds and challenges, which quickly sacrifices its approach of platforming in favor of a succession of mini-challenges without any real challenge. The duo will also have to fight against a rather small amount of enemies. Lacking of complete originality, these generic “minions” are simply reskined from one world to another, to stick to the theme of the environment. In the end, the fights, boss ones included, offer almost no challenge.

The progression of the player finally becomes quite mechanical within the worlds, as one advances, start doing the same methodical search for collectibles in all corners of the game, without ever reaching that eureka moment. This blatant lack of soul is felt in the rather unequal character design of the various protagonists, and while the cheerful hero duo are well done, it’s not the case when it comes to the other NPCs. The same pitfalls are even found in the mini-games offered by Rextro, a pixel dinosaur in charge of arcade machines found in each of the worlds. In their overwhelming majority, they are painful to play because of their vagueness, stiff control and a camera control finding always the worst angle imaginable.

However, even with its defects and this small feeling of bitterness, Rare’s inheritance manages to work on other aspects. Take the music for example. which is a great work composed by David Wise (Donkey Kong Country) and Grant Kirkhope (Banjo-Kazooie), which despite some repetitions between levels manages to dress up a tacky adventure that young and old can enjoy together. Plus if you have the patience for it, there is a huge amount of content to explore in Yooka-Laylee and it will take between 10 to 20 hours of game depending on your will to collect all 145 pagies in the game.

On the technical front, Yooka-Laylee is locked at 30 fps on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, or 60 fps on PC. While not really a technical masterpiece, the artistic direction, colorful effects combined with a good use of the Unity engine gives you an enjoyable game.

In the end, I think the main problem Yooka-Laylee face is that apart from this happy reunion feelings, or rediscovering a genre almost lost, the title remains below the standards of the adventures which it draws all of its mechanics. There was a lot of potential, but Yooka-Laylee lacks that soul that made games like Super Mario 64 and Banjo Kazooie timeless classics.

Yooka-Laylee was reviewed using an Xbox One digital code of the game provided by Team 17 and Playtonic Games. The game is also available on PlayStation 4, PC and coming soon to Nintendo Switch in digital stores. We don’t discuss review scores with publishers or developers prior to the review being published.

Despite the defects and bitter aftertaste, Playtonic's Yooka-Laylee fulfills in part its main promise: one of bringing back the nostalgic N64 platformer games. Since the launch of their kickstarter campaign back in 2015, Playtonic bet hard on resurrecting the golden days of 3D platformer on the Nintendo 64 with Yooka-Laylee.

#Adventure #Featured #Indie #Kickstarter #Multiplatform #Platfomers #Playtonic Games #Team17

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recentanimenews · 8 years ago

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FEATURE: Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog: "Gurren Lagann"

What's “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog”?

If looking for new anime to watch is like tunneling through the earth in search of buried treasures, then “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog” is like your trusty, hand-cranked drill. Each week we provide additional information and cultural context to help anime fans decide whether or not they'd like to take an unknown series for a test drive.

What's Gurren Lagann?

Gurren Lagann, originally known in Japan as Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (“Heaven-Piercing Gurren Lagann”), is an original 2007 TV anime with direction by Hiroyuki Imaishi (Kill la Kill) and animation by Studio Gainax (Wish Upon the Pleiades). Crunchyroll describes Gurren Lagann as follows:

"This is the story of a man who has yet to realize what destiny holds in store for him…In the distant future, mankind has lived quietly and restlessly underground for hundreds of years, subject to earthquakes and cave-ins. Living in one such village are 2 young men: one named Simon who is shy and naïve, and the other named Kamina who believes in the existence of a “surface” world above their heads."

Gurren Lagann is at its heart a mecha series, but it's so much more than that. Beginning in a humble hole in the ground and culminating in a conflict that encompasses entire galaxies and alternate dimensions, Gurren Lagann is ultimately a story about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of nearly impossible adversity. It's a story of ordinary people becoming extraordinary heroes in a quest that spans three generations.

Of Drills and Faces.

Much ink could be spilled about the drills in Gurren Lagann, which range in function from weaponry in robot combat to a phallic symbol in raunchy gags to a metaphor for the inscrutable nature of the human soul and a visual representation of the show's central conceit of "Spiral Power". Suffice to say that drills take on thematic significance in this show, as do faces. Everyone knows that with mecha, more faces equals more power, right?

History and Homage.

Gurren Lagann can be enjoyed by viewers who are unfamiliar with the mecha subgenre, but the show also serves as a love letter to the robot anime that came before it. Gurren Lagann is littered with visual references to earlier shows. Some are subtle (Yoko's rifle-scope recalls the face-plate of the Scopedog mecha from Armored Trooper VOTOMS) while some are more overt (reproducing the “Itano circus” missile trails and the “Daedalus attack” from Super Dimension Fortress Macross).

The homages aren't just visual, but narrative as well. As Clarissa Graffeo and Gerald Rathkolb observe in their 2008 review on the Anime World Order podcast, Gurren Lagann can be roughly divided into three story arcs: the first arc resembles a Seventies super robot anime; the second arc is more like the melancholy and political mecha of the post-Evangelion period; and the third arc goes full Gunbuster in terms of its astronomical scope and scale.

Talent and Technique.

An exceptional amount of talent was poured into the creation of Gurren Lagann, including but not limited to the efforts of director Hiroyuki Imaishi, series composer Kazuki Nakashima, music director Taku Iwasaki, and key animator / mechanical designer Yoh Yoshinari. Imaishi and Yoshinari later left Gainax to fill key positions at Studio TRIGGER.

Many of the techniques that were later perfected in TRIGGER's Kill la Kill, such as “harmony” (a freeze-frame technique that transitions from an animation cell to a painting) and the use of heavy line-work in close-up shots for exaggerated emotional effect, can be seen in an earlier form in Gurren Lagann.

Team Dai-Gurren Lives On.

Crunchyroll currently streams Gurren Lagann in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the United States Minor Outlying Islands. The series is available in Japanese with English subtitles.

The history of Gurren Lagann on North America home video is a rocky one. Gurren Lagann is currently available on Bluray from Aniplex of America in a set of 5 releases aimed at a collector's market. Aniplex previously released limited edition collector's box sets of the series on DVD and Bluray, but these versions are out-of-print.

Prior to that, ADV Films announced the license for Gurren Lagann back in 2007 and even dubbed several episodes in English, but this release never materialized after the distributor's deal with Sojitz Corporation fell through and ADV Films splintered into numerous smaller companies, such as Sentai Filmworks and Section23 Films.

After this kerfuffle, Bandai Entertainment stepped in with two different DVD releases of Gurren Lagann in 2008, one subtitled-only, the other featuring an English dub. Needless to say, this caused some confusion among the fans. Bandai Entertainment went belly up in 2012, so these earlier releases are also out-of-print.

Releases come and go, but the spirit of Gurren Lagann still burns in the hearts of its fans even a decade later. If you're in the mood for a hot-blooded, high-concept, emotional roller-coaster in anime form, consider checking out Gurren Lagann. And if you're already familiar, consider giving it another look. It's the kind of series that gets better with age.

Is there a series in Crunchyroll's catalog that you think needs some more love and attention? Please send in your suggestions via e-mail to [email protected] or post a Tweet to @gooberzilla. Your pick could inspire the next installment of “Cruising the Crunchy-Catalog”!

Paul Chapman is the host of The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast and GME! Anime Fun Time.

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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the-film-bitch · 8 years ago

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Moonlight (2016) ★★★★★

Moonlight is the sophomore film from director Barry Jenkins: an intensely personal portrait drawn from the experiences of its director and Tarell McCraney, the original story writer, as young black men growing up in Miami, where both struggled with finding themselves amongst the busy junctions of gender and race – and, for McCraney, sexuality. By the grace of its expert direction and candid writing, the film cuts right across any judgmental shortcuts audiences might make – the ones that would prevent drug dealers being associated with caring father figures, for instance – delivering viewers an all-embracing filmic perspective we desperately need in reality. As writer Ta-Nehisi Coates put it,

‘So often art about blackness or LGBT issues engages in this debate about whether we’re human or not – and Barry [Jenkins] just steps right past that…He tells the viewer you have to accept this.’

Moonlight’s characters exist outside of the usual Hollywood binary – the one that gifts complex roles to white actors while troping the life out of characters of colour until they seem artificial. The most significant male figure in Moonlight’s lead’s life is Juan (the well-deserved Oscar nominee, Mahershala Ali), a character who, as mentioned before, would usually be pigeonholed as posing a threat (e.g. from homophobia) or being morally corrupt because of his race and the drugs he sells. But Jenkins doesn’t care for the politics of this, and so Juan gets the same compassion – and, crucially, gives it out, too – that the film gives to all its other characters. While radical in the world of film, as Coates has argued, the unblinkered treatment Jenkins gives Ali’s character simply comes across as the humbly obvious approach, rather than the intentionally subversive.

The boy Juan mentors goes by many names. The film is a triptych, structurally, with each of its three chapters titled after one of these monikers: there’s Little, a nickname for the aptly-named child and his boyhood scenes, Chiron (his birth name) for the adolescence act and, finally, the opaque Black – yet another nickname – for the enigmatic grown man’s chapter.

Each of these chapters ends in a stately manner, with a sudden black screen and officious lettering announcing the next act; a bold, artsy move that gives the film a sense of the grandeur of theatre. Moonlight’s structure isn’t just stylish, though – it holds real substance, too. Little, Chiron and Black share the same DNA, but presented through the disconnect of the chapter structure, you could mistake them for completely different people altogether. That is the point, and the poignancy, of Moonlight: its three choppy vignettes and triple-casting reflect the fluidity of identity and selfhood over time in a way that shows less grand ambition than Rick Linklater’s Boyhood, but, to my mind, is ultimately more successful.

Little’s shyness becomes teenage Chiron’s paranoia, before finally calcifying into a learnt behaviour of taciturnity for adult Black. Ashton Sanders’ awkward Chiron builds on Alex Hibbert’s remarkable, almost wordless debut as Little, turning up the volume with his portrayal of the classic torment of teenagehood and the singular anguish brought on by the awareness of one’s Otherness (in his case, being a young, gay, black man in Liberty City).

This is where Moonlight shines – in Little’s evolution to Black, there is an intricately powerful case study on the traps of gender performativity and masculine ideals that young men have to navigate. And where Linklater’s film ignored the parameters its characters’ whiteness set on its depiction of boyhood, Moonlight addresses, head-on, the intersections race makes with Chiron’s identity and his loved ones’. Jenkins and McCraney’s frankness has made a film that is confidently intelligent of what sexuality, race, gender and class mean for its characters, and we know them all the better because of it.

Crowning this masterpiece of articulate filmmaking is the relatively unknown, soon-to-be star Trevante Rhodes, who packs Hibbert’s and Sanders’ excellent work into an extraordinary performance as Black. The actor somehow signals the childlike vulnerability and teenage agony of Little and Chiron from all the way underneath a projection of natural confidence, and the thick, hyper-masculine skin of an alpha-male he wears. Black finds success in this outward projection of ease amongst his associates, but the sublime writing and acting here mean there’s no fooling us. An old lesson of science tells us that black is more than it lets on: despite seeming uncomplicated at the surface, it does, in fact, hold a world of colours underneath that facade. When he goes to visit a childhood friend (André Holland), we see that Black keeps the same secret.

Anchoring the film and Chiron’s life is Naomie Harris as the boy’s mother, Paula, who battles the everyday struggles of single parenthood with a deteriorating crack cocaine addiction. From fully functioning and employed to severe dependency and then rehab, Harris is devastating in the fall and rise of Paula. Along with Janelle Monae as Teresa (Juan’s partner), she remains the only visual constant in Chiron’s story, gently intimating at the deep-rootedness of motherhood – whether natural or nurturing, flawed or otherwise – in the lives of so many. And, as Steven Thrasher has argued, the depiction of Teresa and Juan’s doting parental love of Little makes the crucial assertion that ‘black boys [are] precious’, an idea so much more important to affirm now, ‘when news stories perpetually make it seem as if the United States considers [black boys] to be utterly expendable’.

Scored by Nicholas Britell (The Big Short, partial composer of 12 Years a Slave and co-producer of Whiplash), Moonlight’s soundtrack is eclectically arranged, to say the least, and magnificent – more than worthy of all the awards hype (although I think Justin Hurwitz’ compositions for La La Land will pip it to the Oscars’ post, since the central appeal of the latter is its music).

Inspired by director Jenkins’ love of chopped-and-screwed, Britell warps key orchestral motifs (such as ‘Little’s Theme’) through the prism of pitch and speed to produce thematically-linked, but continually transfiguring pieces (‘Chiron’s Theme’ and ‘Black’s Theme’), mirroring the part-transformation and semi-preservation of Chiron over time. The remixing technique is also applied to rap subjects, like when Britell reworks the appeal of Jidenna’s ‘Classic Man’ to give it new life as a melancholy banger, each of those DJ Mustard ‘HEY!’ chants taking on a bluer tone now that they’re all slowed down.

While brilliant all-around, Britell’s music reaches its soaring crescendo in an extraordinary scene between Mahershala Ali’s Juan and Hibbert’s Little. Set on a Miami beach, the two take an impromptu swim while vibrating string tremolos send quivers through our ears, with high and then dark notes forming a vividly coloured juxtaposition and an intensified emotional profile. Implied in the scene is the tender bond of trust between Little and Juan: the rite of passage of learning to swim, usually delivered by one’s parents, is here delivered by Little’s foster father of sorts, who provides the familiar assuring parental refrain: ‘Relax…I’ve got you, I promise. I’m not gonna let you go…’. Juan morphs from father to Father in this serene moment, his lesson in how to float bearing unmistakable visual similarities to the baptismal ritual. The immersion here is ours, too: we’re submerged into this sensorially rich moment by James Laxton’s astute camera, which can hardly keep its lens above the water. Juan tells Little he’s ‘in the middle of the world’ as he floats, eyes closed, and it looks like it: caught between the elements, water and air, you get the sense that this is probably the most peaceful moment Little has had in years. The closeness of the camera, emotional culmination of the score and simple pathos of the action make for the most moving and memorable scene I can think of in this year’s crop.

An identity movie for our times, Moonlight explores the intersections of race, gender and sexuality with such candidness and skill in every area – technical and artistic – that it commands mainstream attention and acclaim. Barry Jenkins has created a film rich in nuance and story detail, but one that also pulls off the paradox of being universally relevant. Moonlight is a required watch for everyone, and absolutely deserving of Best Picture.

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#moonlight #barry jenkins #Oscars #film review

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