#100% have not watched the main films (yet) or read the books (nor do i plan do) but she's not in them anyway

[stormlit]

it’s 2022 i no longer apologise for not knowing All The Lore in big properties like lotr or star trek i just write the characters i wanna write

[victimhood]

My TOG cast and crew movie reviews

Ok so watching TOG revived the part of me that LOVES indie-ish/European Arthouse films and I blitzed through a bunch with more to come! Idk who this review serves but I just had to explode in writing or...the feelings would go nowhere.

Love and Basketball

My movie rating: 4 / 5

Favourite parts: the conflict between a tomboy sports loving protagonist and a conventional homemaking mother. To sound cliched, this is the sort of thing only a woman filmmaker can bring out in her films. There’s so much nuance and tension expressed in all the individual women in the film and where that lies in the enforced dichotomy of woman/not a woman--thereby highlighting that IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN A DICHOTOMY all of these are in the broad spectrum of womanly behaviors bc they come from women!!! The ending where a husband supports his wife in HER basketball game? LOVE THAT. Music choices are also A++ in this film.

The film also provides some insight into respectability politics--here we have an NBA player who wants his son to do something more conventionally “respectable”. I am not American nor am I Black so someone with more insight would be able to speak to this better, but even so as an audience I could feel it!

TOG cast rating: none, bc it’s the director!! This is Gina Prince-Bythewood’s breakout film but you can palpably feel that she poured her heart and perhaps some of her life experiences in this film!

Martin Eden

My movie rating: 3.5 / 5

Don’t understand the movie, slightly put off by the Nietzschean individualist philosophy. Doubly so after I read that the author of the book (Jack London) is a socialist?? (FTR so am I so like...I’ve had enough of white male indivudalism!!) Stuff like that always reminds me of (500) Days of Summer which is anti-manic pixie dream girl and yet is beloved by aspiring MPDG-philes. Here is a quote from the author himself: London wrote, "One of my motifs, in this book, was an attack on individualism (in the person of the hero). I must have bungled it, for not a single reviewer has discovered it."

Though I have not read the book, I hope the movie is a little more pronounced, in the unraveling of the eponymous protagonist. Luca gives an impressive show of his Acting Range as the protagonist moves through life and goes through a whole bunch of political beliefs in reaction to the situation around him.

I love movies that show the impoverished side of Europe though. The movie does a good job of showing the class conflict within society--at the end of the day, the Martin Eden that has risen through the social ladder is a self-despising man. The bread mopping scene is great, and truly, there is no love for Luca Martinelli like the camera’s love for Luca Martinelli. I love Luca’s bad teeth in this too. Dental health is possibly one of the most obvious, yet most unremarked markers of social class. Nice detail.

TOG cast rating: 5/5 Luca really carries this film on his broaaaaad shoulders. Thank you Luca. Thank you Pietro, for making a movie that lingers so lovingly on Luca’s face, inspiring many a writer to pen horny paeans to the Roman nose and the Byzantine eyes. I even saw one about the lop of hair over the eyes. Yes….watching Luca is a very physiological experience.

They Call Me Jeeg (Lo Chiamavano Jeeg Robot)

My movie rating: 4 / 5

Ok this movie is quite male-gazey in the conventional action movie way. Moments where the damsel is in distress are filmed in a somewhat titillating manner. That aside, the damsel in distress does get a moment of glory, though it shortly precedes her death. The hero of the film I also found not too groundbreaking. He starts out as a thief but is given superpowers, and he’s mostly a sad loser who watches too much porn in his free time, though the damsel’s belief in him helps turn him around to the greater good. The story moves at a quick pace and with twists and turns at each corner which help the enjoyability rating.

Really, the standout of this movie is the villain. Fabio (Lo Zingaro) is fantastically deranged, in a style that surpasses the Joker. The only thing I truly have to say about this movie is that the moment where Lo Zingaro barges in on the hero and the camera POV switches from third person to first person and the hero is on the verge of fainting but all he sees is Lo Zingaro saying “Ciao”.........reader, I am speaking from the afterlife. Again, truly, there is no love for Luca Marinelli like the camera’s love for Luca Marinelli. My heart stopped when I saw Fabio’s face in such a tender, loving proximity...and yet...he is deranged...he wants to kill you….TAKE ME NOW FABIO I AM YOURS *lovelorn Victorian sigh*

Perhaps I might issue a CW that there is a trans character in the film. The character doesn’t appear for too long, and I think the portrayal is mostly neutral to borderline negative for playing to stereotypes. The damsel in distress’s story carries a huge TW for sexual abuse and incest.

TOG cast rating: 5/5 just for that 1st person POV scene alone--that was life changing. I did not expect to be greeted so intimately by a completely deranged motherfucker. I want it as my phone wallpaper.

A Bigger Splash

My movie rating: 4.5 / 5

I loooooooved Bigger Splash so much?? But this is because I love Tilda Swinton and I love Ralph Fiennes. While watching this, I don’t know why, but I just kept thinking, aaaaand this guy is also Voldemort (Fiennes). I love the implausibility and yet here we are.

Matthias is so boyfriend-shaped in this movie, I wanted to snuggle up against him and have him care for me. He’s a wonderful boyfriend, and Ralph Fiennes’s character truly, is the Most Annoying Mansplainer type ever, like, you’ve probably met that type, who thinks he’s slick and loves the sound of his own voice and I 100% related when Matthias’s character just...has had enough of Ralph Fiennes’s character. But oopsie, the rest is a spoiler.

THE SOUNDTRACK IS AWESOME also it’s got St Vincent covering the Rolling Stones and St Vincent is the lesbian guitar hero of your dreams, please give St Vincent more love.

TOG cast rating: 5 / 5 Matthias is butt naked in the opening scenes of the movie, and then he appears full frontal nude later on. But mostly he just looks so snuggly like a big boyfriend hoodie.

Rabat

My movie rating: 4 / 5

Wow ok I LOVED THIS ONE A LOT. Idk what I was expecting, but it was a beautiful, beautiful ride. It’s a perfect expression of the “roadtrip story” form. It’s got the adventure, the hijinks, the conflict and the “transformative growth” that comes out of the conflict. It’s about the MENA immigrant experience in Europe, and though from a different community as someone who’s had the immigrant experience myself I loved the part where they talk about people back home thinking they’re rich for having moved abroad. Yet--in many white-dominated countries, non-white immigrants live under an incredibly bulletproof glass ceiling and moving “upward” in society is a pipe dream. I loved when the main character Nadir mentions his dad’s taxi being a reliable source of income for the past 15 years. I think it’s such a warm and human film played by very warm and human characters, and [mild spoiler] I CACKLED SO MUCH at how Nadir “resolves” the question of marriage--I can’t go into too much detail bc the movie builds up to this but I LAUGHED SO MUCH. It’s the blend of total inappropriateness delivered in the most sincere package played to perfection.

TOG cast rating: 3/5 criminally underused Marwan bc he is not the main character. Marwan is a womanizing, alcohol-loving Tunisian friend in this story who buys a...bootleg? Hugo Boss suit for 200 Euros and then rips it up to form shorts bc the weather is too hot. The story implies he has a more complex backstory re: his relationship to his father as well as having impregnated a girl and escaping paternal responsibility for that but doesn’t give us much more. At one point, one character remarks that he would do “horrible” things (implying sexual interest) to Marwan’s character and ALAS I MUST AGREE.

...AAAAAND we’ll have more to come!! I promised a friend to watch Beale Street together so it’s gonna take a while for that to happen thx covid.

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 082221

22 August, 2021

Dear Dad--

Happy what for you will be Sunday! Perhaps I should just say happy weekend. It’s Saturday morning here in the trailer and it seems like we’re going to catch some of Hurricane Henri sometime about Monday or Tuesday. I am excited by this! I’ve mentioned how our single-wide leaked like a sieve from the windows along its west wall. Well, in response to our maintenance request, they sent a dude around to come fix it. I believe caulk, or otherwise some big tube of silicone sealant in a dispensing gun (pew! pew!) was employed. We still have our original leak; water always comes in through the top of our back door. The dude put the magic caulk on that thing too, but it’s like original sin...it’s just always gonna be there. It’s the leak where the previous tenants installed plastic hooks on the door, to hang towels on, to catch the leaks.

I spent some time on the internet yesterday and got myself some medical benefits! I now have medical, dental, and vision coverages. I don’t know when they start, but I’m going to search for a dentist some more today. I tried the area’s largest family dentistry, a place with (I’m guessing) maybe 20 dentists working in it, and their website says they have no available appointments. This seems unlikely, but not impossible. I think there’s a problem with the scheduling website, or else they’re having a surge of business before school starts, or something else temporary. Either way, I’ll find a dentist. The dental pain which I’ve come to live with and treat with Ibuprofen every day may soon be a thing of the past.

I don’t suppose I can avoid mentioning that I’m still having problems with depression. I have a few online friends who’ve been super helpful while I seem to be in this downswing, and I’m hoping to get rid of it, and return to my usual sarcastic-yet-ebullient self soon. (You don’t need to suggest exercising, I can actually hear you thinking it from here. Got to admit, I kind of wish I owned a weight bench.) I believe at least some of the depression stems from having no circle of friends. I have, at best, a very tiny triangle of friends. The three components of the friend triad would be: husband, cats and coworkers, and Mr. and Mr. plant scientist guy. I was going to go with Zach to plant scientist guy’s home today to eat, but instead I’m going to stay home and eat worms and feel sorry for myself. (Zach suggested I might like some “me” time, and I’m not keen to inflict myself upon anyone just now anyway.) Also I have lots of work shirts to iron.

I’m actually looking forward to work tomorrow, just a little bit, even though it’s my Monday. My boss has suggested in advance that I do 6 of the 7 audits tomorrow, and I don’t think I’ve ever done 6 in a day before. I especially haven’t attempted to do 6 on a Sunday, since we always audit the previous day’s stuff, which means I’d be auditing a Saturday, typically a busy time. I’m confident that I can do it, however. I can do each of those 6 audits in about an hour, and that gives me a whole two extra hours for “shit happens.” I like knowing how to do all that stuff. There’s a good chance I’ll get through all 6 audits without having any questions, or any problems I can’t solve myself.

And it’s going to be September soon! That always gets me excited, since that’s when I start my two month scary movie marathon, beginning with Night of the Demon, from 1957. I’ve reached a point where, as soon as I hear that movie begin, I relax a bit, because I know summer is over. Also, a lot of my favorite movies are in that genre, including a bunch of British ones, and a bunch with extremely unconvincing monsters. But that’s when I watched The Thing From Another World (1951), and The Fog, and the original Amityville Horror, and The Changeling, with George C. Scott. Good stuff! And, of course, the two months culminate on Halloween, when I watch a couple I saved for last, and we eat all the candy we bought, because children generally know better than to come to a trailer park during the time of plague resurgence in search of things to put in their mouths, that they KNOW FOR CERTAIN was just handled by a stranger.

Actually, I think the way they do Halloween now is: everyone buys candy and drives to church, and everyone else brings their kids, and the kids just visit each car for candy, one after the other. It doesn’t sound like it provides as much walking as the traditional way of trick-or-treating, and it seems to reduce the possibility of criminal mischief to near zero. (I’m just thinking you can’t TP someone’s house when you’re gathering candy in the church parking lot.) But it preserves some of the elements of the old fashioned style. Halloween is a great holiday, mostly because I like watching the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown special. I’m one of the few people that loves every second of that TV special, even the WW1 parts where Snoopy gets shot down behind enemy lines by the Red Baron. That show has some great jazz music in it.

I received something kind of cool in the mail today, a 16 x 100 inch roll of dichroic film. What the shit is that, you ask? Well, you see it in holiday decorations a lot. It’s a colored film that changes color depending on the angle from which you’re viewing it. It’ll also do stuff like: light passing through it is blue, but light bouncing off it is bright orange. It’s just a film you can use to tint plastic and windows that make pretty colors. I have tinted two windows in our metal living tube with it! I’ll include the pictures. It sticks on with soapy water, and is supposed to peel right off when it comes time to move out and take all my disco shit with me. I’m considering putting a couple of small patches of it on my car, just because it’s so pretty. I’ll include a pic of the dichroic film. By now, as you’ve probably concluded, they use that dichroic glass in certain disco lights.

I have a few things happening, but it’s a slow period. I have already put some of the dichroic film on the bathroom window and the window in the back door, which we never open. As predicted, it is pretty as fuck! I want to cover my car windows with it, but I checked, and I’m pretty sure that would be illegal in Maine. Auto window tint has to allow at least 30% of light to pass through (no worries, and with disco colors!) and it has to be non-reflective (shit! Mine is super reflective!) Just taking a picture of some balled-up leftover bits of the dichroic film is pretty. Anything you can scrunch up into a ball and take a beautiful picture of it MUST be special.

I was afraid, for a period, that I had done something to kill my ability to read books for fun! I know I’ve been anhedonic lately, but I’m pretty sure that I haven’t smoked enough drugs to make myself illiterate. Then, as an experiment, I picked up a Jack Reacher book, and read all 450 pages in about a day. I am pleased to report that I have neither smoked myself illiterate, nor forgotten how to enjoy a good page-turner. This pleases me!

More next week! All my love to you both!

[introvertguide]

All the President’s Men (1976); AFI #77

The next review marks the halfway point through the AFI 100 and it is of the political “thriller,” All the President’s Men (1976). The source material was created by reporters involved in the uncovering of the Watergate scandal and one of these reporters contributed to the writing of the screenplay. The film was in theatres and earned Oscar nomination only 4 years after the Watergate incident occurred which made the film a Hollywood dramatization of the news. I am not aware of another film quite like this as far as release vs. incident dates that wasn’t a documentary. Even documentaries, although filmed during or immediately after events, do not often come out in theatres so soon. They definitely don’t get nominated for 8 academy awards like this film did. So what was behind this movie that made this a one-of-a-kind film that landed it on the list of the top 100 American movies? I want to go over the basic events, since that is the plot of the film, and then discuss the good and bad aspects of this quick production:

SPOILER WARNING!!! I AM GOING TO SPELL OUT ALL OF THE CONTENTS OF THE MOVIE!!! IT CAN BE BETTER SPOILED BY A HISTORY BOOK, BUT I WILL GET TO INACURACIES WHICH MIGHT RUIN THE FILM! SO SPOILER ALERT IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THE FILM FIRST!!!

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The film begins with a lot of stock news footage and then a reenactment of the break-in at the Watergate hotel in 1972. Five men who were connected to the CIA and the Committee to Re-Elect the President (nicknamed CREEP) were caught with wire tapping equipment in the Democratic Party headquarters at the hotel. More stock footage of news reports lets the audience know that there is something fishy about this break-in.

At the trial for the five burglars, a young Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), who is a reporter for the New York Post, notices that a high priced lawyer is representing the five and yet it has been stated earlier that none of the burglars had used their phone call. Woodward keeps finding this lawyer and attempts to question him about why he is there and how exactly the burglars are attached to the CIA. Through consistent pressure, Woodward is able to connect the burglars to CIA agent E. Howard Hunt and a member of the White House Counsel, Charles Colson.

Woodward attempts to take on the story but finds that another reporter keeps taking his submitted drafts and altering them in an attempt to take over the story. This reporter is Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), a much more seasoned reporter at the Post that believes he should get the story. The editor puts them both on the case noting a lack of reliable sources, but tells them to keep digging.

Here is where it gets a little weird because Woodward talks about a secret source that he cannot name that was a senior government official. He went by the codename “Deep Throat” and Woodward meets him in a parking garage in the middle of the night. The sources does not say anything specific nor does he give any names, but he famously tells Woodward to “follow the money” which means to find out who paid the burglars to break in. 

Through basically unreliable resources, Woodward and Bernstein are able to make connections between CREEP and the money that was paid to the burglars. This is weird because it seems pretty assured that Nixon would easily defeat his competition to secure re-election, so the editors at the newspaper have doubts about putting the story on the front page.

Woodward and Bernstein are able to contact the CREEP treasurer Hugh Sloan, Jr. and are able to connect a slush fund to White House Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and former Attorney General John Mitchell, the current head of CREEP. It is discovered that this wire tapping and sabotage had been happening since Nixon was trailing during the primaries. 

The editor demands thoroughness in obtaining reliable resources, so Woodward and Bernstein go around to employees of the the treasury for CREEP, and they are all young ladies that are afraid for their safety but are compelled to give up information to the reporters. I somewhat question the accuracy of the story at this stage of the film, but I will address that after the summary.

Woodward goes out and meets Deep Throat again and the source reveals that Haldeman was behind the Watergate break-in and cover-up. This cover up was not just to deny CREEP involvement, but to hide covert operations involving US intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI. He warns Woodward that the two reporters could be in danger.

The Washington Post runs the story and the White House vehemently denies the allegations and chastises the press for shabby reporting. Woodward and Bernstein go and meet the editor in the middle of the night and decide to keep running with the story...and that is basically the end of the movie.

There is some footage of the two typing vigorously and then stock footage of the news reports and teletype printing out what happened in the news. It is not much of an ending, but this is likely because the story had not finished when the movie went into production. 

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So I have some major issues with this film and these problems have revealed themselves over multiple viewings. The first time that I saw this was in class as a senior in high school. I was in Mr. Sly’s Government and Economics class and we watched the movie over two class periods with many breaks for explanation and a lot of forwarding through the filler. At the time, the teacher was very excited at the topic (he hated Richard Nixon) and the movie was fascinating because he only showed and subsequently explained the good parts. Also, his enthusiasm for the topic was contagious. He was a very good teacher. 

The next viewing was a full 15 years later when going through the AFI list for the first time. I could not figure out what I liked so much about it and had to rewatch multiple parts because I kept falling asleep. There were no thrills and there was so much filler, I remember thinking that this should have been a 20 minute film and it would have been almost completely newsreel stock footage. 

This final time I can see what the problem is with the film...and I like it even less. The film is over 2 hours long and more than half of it is stock footage from the news, walking around quickly (there is some running in the newsroom for no reason), extended conversations due to fear of “somebody finding out” (the threat is never established as real so it is just annoying), a lot of parking lots (it shows the same car driving from the same parking spot out into the street on 3 separate occasions), intense research and typing, and establishing shots of buildings. It has as much filler as a B movie and costs about the same, but because it was so close to the event with big name actors, it was treated as something special. In fact, it is talked about like a documentary in many reviews that I read with words like “important” and “powerful” scattered about, but I don’t see it. 

Robert Redford bought the book rights because he knew it was an interesting topic that people would want to know about. He was correct, but it wasn’t enough fact to make a full movie, so he let one of the reporters, Carl Bernstein, punch up the screenplay with his stories of how he enchanted female story leads into giving out information. Those conversations are completely unnecessary.  At some point, the writers realized that there was no clear and present danger so they had the secret source bring up safety and Woodward becoming paranoid...but absolutely nothing happened. 

This movie needed to be a 30 minute documentary with some re-enactments or it needed to wait until more details became available to replace the filler. I respect that it was different from anything prior or since, but it doesn’t make the movie good or even interesting. It kind of broke me when the two main characters were going over a list of people that they needed to visit as possible leads and all they did was read names over a shot of the city. You might as well read out the phone book for 2 minutes as it was just as boring. 

The poster calls this the most devastating story of this century and I agree... devastatingly boring. No other film on the AFI list has less story than this film. Some of the other films have annoyed me more, but I could see why some people liked it or at least why it was interesting. This is not interesting and it is presented like a documentary when it is not. Variety magazine said this film was “ingenious” and overcame the difficult lack of drama that a story about reporters running down a story might otherwise have. Disagree vehemently. 

Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 stars, so critics I have the utmost respect for seem to have enjoyed it. I was not alive when the film came out and agree more with Dave Kehr who called the film “pedestrian” and “a study in missed opportunities.” For my money, National Geographic TV did a one hour special that was just the facts and it was so much more interesting. Here is a link to that and I would suggest skipping the Hollywood version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWkS-sOia-Y

So does this film deserve to be on the AFI 100? Well...I guess maybe? It was something different and likely the most accurate and up to date Hollywood film like none before or since. It used real names and was written by the actual people involved. It just wasn’t that interesting to me. Would I recommend it? If you are suffering from insomnia. Otherwise, no. If you want to see an accurate retelling of the story in one third the time, click the link above. Let the Robert Redford film be an experiment that made for very uninteresting results.

[bellamygateoldblog]

the 100 ofc!

— this gets a little rant-y and may or may not be coherent- currently pulling an all-nighter and it’s literally 5am- that’s it. That’s my excuse.

all time favourite character

IDK man IDK…I wanna say Jasper, maybe Raven

a character I didn’t used to like but do now

I’ll stick Octavia in this one. I actually did like her at first, then i didn’t then i did then i didn’t then i

a character i used to like but now don’t

[ insert every single character here ] Clarke and Bellamy. Clarke lost me very early season 3 and Bellamy is dead to me as of season 6. I’m throwing Miller in here- when he was that delinquent that wears the beanie I could go for that, but now i’m just straight up annoyed by his presence and want him to go away forever. My reluctant liking of Abby turned sour pretty fast, too. Arming a group of children and sending them out into a warzone to find your daughter, then abandoning them once she’s back is really SOMETHING. And hitting Raven while she’s acting Chancellor…i should beat your ass, Abby

a character i’m indifferent about

Wells: poor treatment of MoC and very valid anger aside, truely I don’t see the facination and borderline obsession fandom has with the character himself- he barely existed. Are you all in love with the idea of him, rather? Or the guy from the book? He was literally in this thing for three episodes, we never actually knew him, nor was he even given the chance to develop or have any sort of story. I see so so much hate about Echo and her lack of development and yet in the same breath y’all are talking about missing Wells and oh what a wonderful character he was. Spare me. He was a character full to the brim with potential and unfortunately that’s all he’ll ever be.

Anya and Lexa, too. I don’t really have opinions formed on either of them, nor do I really care to

a character who deserved better

I mean with that minor Wells rant aside and half a step into my hypocrisy boots…Wells did. Lol. I think he absolutely deserved better than to be killed off in order to push a white woman’s story forwards. I think he deserved better than to have been all about Clarke, his entire character about serving her character, even in death. This show has a history of criminally underusing/sideling/killing their most compelling characters, i think Wells would’ve been such a fun addition to the main band, i wonder how his personality would’ve expanded, what could his arcs have looked like? i think about how his dynamics would form and fair, what might he think of Clarke now?

Jasper deserved better than to have become a nihilist’s wet dream. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, i really do. The creators, some of the fans even, chat about how it’s a gritty reality, sometimes it’s just Like That, and in some ways that’s absolutely right, but in a show of such loss to have this bleak ending for a character like this is just…a bit of an overkill? What’s wrong with hopeful endings? I mean we literally already had a similar scenario occur with Luna a mere episode(s) before. A woman who strives for nothing more than peace loses her faith in humanity and so fights for death. Why they felt the need to kick a dead horse by doing the same thing with Jasper is beyond me.

Listen many character have demonstrated suicidal tendancies at some point or another: Clarke, Murphy, Bellamy, Octavia, Harper and so on, but Jasper is the only one that gets the actual suicide? The character who’s canon mental illness has been more on the explicit and expressed side, the first victim of the ground, the very character who we’ve watched struggle his way through four seasons with an inconsistent or otherwise absent support system, his story ended with suicide. It’s devastating and, frankly, disrespectful. As if he was too far gone to find his way back into the light.

We saw clearly Monty’s reactions to Jasper’s death, but we didn’t see him grieve- he was busy rushing to survive the end of the world. This show loves sidestepping the consiquences of big events they write- there’s always a new threat to face which means everyone gets to move on abnormally quickly. Nobody asked about Jasper in Becca’s lab, we never actually saw anyone except for Clarke find out about this, nobody in the bunker either, not Octavia, and no mentions of Jasper in season five besides Monty begging him to be wrong about humanity. This show isn’t great with handling their deceased either. They want to focus on a fresh plot and not be stuck dragging around that dead weight. Finn isn’t mentioned in relation to Raven despite his importance to her story and of the fact this specific death shook the whole show. Wells’ has been removed from memory despite Clarke being the protagonist who we should know most intimately. I feel most detached from her, honestly. We’ve had a fair amount of Lincoln, though, and a consistantly aggressive reaffirmal of Lexa’s existence. But Jasper just isn’t here. He isn’t talked about. Jasper suffered, and Monty was right there in front of him trying to hand him that peaceful life he always dreamed of, ready to lift him (literally) out of that pain, and he died. Harper got to change her mind last minute, so did Raven, but not Jasper, no, his body went up in flames with the rest of it. The way they filmed the scene was gut-wrenching because of the hopelessness and coldness of it all. And i think he deserved to be spacekru, to heal somewhat up there, and oh what fun would he have been in season five. What would he be like now? What would he think of what became of everyone else? Of Clarke and of Octavia? Again, such wasted potential.

Jasper was one of The 100 on a show named after them, his death brought that to 4, and i can’t emphasise to you enough how big a mistake it was to craft a show around a certain group of people and then abandon that idea entirely. Your show is named something that it isn’t even about!!

Lexa deserved a more respectful death.

Bellamy deserved better than to be murdered brutally by the writers during season 6.

a ship i’ve never been able to get into

Bellarke. Braven. Murven. Clexa. Wicken/Ravick(?). Octabriel. Kabby

a ship i’ve never been able to get over

Becho. Memori. Jasper and Octavia were very sweet

a cute, low-key ship

Linctavia. It was always more of a background ‘ship’ for me. And Marper!

an unpopular ship but i still enjoyed it

Becho and Murphamy

a ship that was totally wrong and never should’ve happened

Flarke

my favourite storyline/moment

favourite storyline(s): delinquents finding a way to live on the ground and mount weather!

Favourite moment: i don’t think i have one TBH

my first thoughts on the show

It was exactly what i was looking for; a post-apoc teen drama, a little corny, a little gritty. I enjoyed season 1, and then 2, but with the constantly rising stakes to absolutely obscene levels eventually, my interest dwindled. By season 4 there was an almost desolate feeling and all the potential this had was dead and buried. They could’ve gone so many ways, done so much more, but for reasons unknown they chose possibly the weirdest and least interesting route available. I really thought they’d exhausted all their story by the end of 4 and i was, of course, absolutely correct since s5 was…more of the same…a literal recycled storyline that had been done not once but twice before it. In season 1 and then again in season 2. Since joining tumblr and fandom and seeing things from a various new angles, reading of social implications and meta on how sections of the writing are flawed, i’ve crafted a more informed and complex opinion than i had as a casual viewer and now see most aspects of the show in a completely different light.

my thoughts now

I’m over it. I think it could be safe to say i hate what it became. Most of my opinions of it now are negative, or at the very least have a critical component to them. I haven’t genuienly enjoyed it since season four and it hasn’t been actually decent since season two. It has a lot of deeper issues engrained into it’s writing, and there was a before when you could criticise those choices and obvious flaws and still be able to enjoy the show as it’s own entity because it existed as one at that time. But now it feels like an empty shell void of all life. With how broken and goofy the writing has become i just can’t take it seriously anymore. Characterisation and consistency have been thrown out in favour of serving the plot many many times before, but season 6 brought this to a whole new low. Dialogue was clumsy and there was a LOT of information dumping, it focused much too heavily on new characters nobody cared about, things were swinging from one extreme to another in terms of character arcs (see: Octavia’s full redemption and transformation basically overnight, and Bellamy switching from set to commit genocide in Clarke’s honour and ‘[we let these people die because] it’s not my fault their delusional’ to ‘let’s do better for Monty i am suddenly King of morality’) and in relationships (see: Bellamy instantly forgiving Clarke and then abandoning everyone and everything to save her, meanwhile he’s demonising Octavia like he’s getting paid for it). The characters just aren’t people anymore, they’re wheels that move the plot forward (in any way that’s required regardless of whether or not it’s actually in line with canon), and let’s not even talk about the science that pushes the envelope too far and Clarke’s insane plot armour. I’ve beaten this rant to death at this point so I won’t get any more into it. But just know: what was once a genuine fondness of this show has turned poisonous since.

[korean-feminist-blog]

Watch Out, Feminism Is Coming!

In 2015, a woman was killed by a stranger at downtown of the capital, Seoul. The criminal hid in the public restroom and waited until any woman came in. After 5 men went out, a woman came into the restroom and he stabbed her to death. It came out that the murderer was a schizophrenic and committed the crime because he thought all women have ignored him in the police investigation. It brought a huge controversy to the society: “Was the crime rooted at misogyny or the mental illness he had?”

Obviously, it was a hate crime considering he set his target as ANY WOMAN and actually did not attack the 5 men who came into the place prior to the victim. Chun-Seok Seo, a psychiatrist, said “we need to stop the execrable dispute. The criminal’s wrong thinking against women was the reflection of the misogynic atmosphere in our society.” Even though the murderer admitted he was a misogynist, most Korean men didn’t recognize the presence of misogyny and didn’t sympathize with the fear of women either. They kept explaining why the crime was NOT a hate crime, treated the outraged women as bloody feminists, and cautioned their girlfriends to stay away from those men haters. 

We, Korean women, felt fear and anger from the bottom of our hearts. It was NOT just a death of a person whom we didn’t know. The victim could be us, one of our friends, our sisters or moms. At last, the crime, the preposterous argument, and the absence of empathy from the majority of the society became the trigger for us to encounter feminism. The more we got to know our rights under the hoof, the more we got woeful, choked, and enraged.

<Mourning for her>

Facing the awful reality, we started making a change. Firstly, about 235,000 people petitioned to the government and over 1,000 women participated in a protest for the legalization of abortion. South Korea has reported the lowest rate of usage of condoms, and the highest rate of abortion among OECD states. Many experts point out that the lack of sex education in school has caused ignorance of birth control. In a society where sex is taboo, sex education for students does not cover the details of birth control and sexually transmitted infection. I did not learn them in my teenage at neither schools nor home. Also, the education is full of sexism and tends to be implemented like an annual event, not like a regular course. 

Besides, between the mid of the 1980s and 2000s in Korea, it was common to have an abortion when the fetus was female at the ultrasound examination. The table below shows the number of newborn male babies per 100 newborn female babies. In the red box, we can see the sex ratio rocketed when the baby was the third, fourth, or fifth kid. It represents the households kept giving birth until they got a son. When the fetus was female, it was socially acceptable to have an abortion or name the female baby as a swearing word or a word wishing to have a male one next time. Experts estimate over 30,000 female fetuses per year dead for the last 20 years. 

<The sex ratio at birth bewteen 1981 and 1996 in South Korea>

In my country, a woman who got an abortion can be punished with a one-year sentence or $1,800 of fine. Being defined as a crime, an abortion is likely to be operated at an unreliable place and patients cannot be protected by the medical law. Some teenagers who cannot afford the illegal surgery choose to roll down the stairs or hit their bellies. Even if they choose to give birth, they cannot get enough financial support from the government and the whole society will despise them. In contrast, men are totally out of the punishment and responsibility for birth control, bias from the society, and financial support for newborn babies and single moms. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women urged South Korea to decriminalize abortion and remove punitive measures for women. Yet the government has not put out a solution in response to the petition and some organizations fiercely staged protests against the legalization.

It’s time to ask back the society. Why did you tolerate when people had killed numerous fetuses just because those were female for the last 20 years? Aren’t you putting the blame for the high rate of abortion to women since the country has reported the world’s lowest fertility rate in recent years? Face it. The real reason for the low fertility rate is NOT because women don’t give birth; the birth rate has rather increased since 2011. It is because the society had looked on the femicide with folded arms, as a result, lost hundreds of thousands of women that can give birth. 

<The protest against illegal shooting/filming of women’s bodies>

The other main resistance is the protest against spy pornography. Around 55,000 Korean women gathered on the street to condemn the creepy society. Shooting and filming women with hidden cameras have been as prevalent as the president admitted the crime was “part of daily life”. The number of cameras —looks like eyeglasses, car keys, water bottles, and neckties— that were found by the police was more than 6,500 in 2017. Criminals for the crime get at most 5-years of the sentence or even get probation depending on the degree of the crime they committed. One ridiculous thing is that those women in the protest had to wear sunglasses, masks, and caps to hide their faces because Korean men do shoot them, upload the pictures on social media, and sneer their appearances, even at the protest which was to criticize exactly that point. Last week, it was disclosed on air that the CEO of an app for booking accommodations had been involved in the website that shares spycam porns. Besides, one heavy uploader of the spycam porns was interviewed that he had earned $268,000 to $357,000 per year as the profits for 3,000 terabytes of the illegal porns and was imposed a fine of $45. Now, Korean women are preparing for the next protest on August 4th in order to urge the government to increase the penalties.

Still, the majority of the society think that feminists are men haters who are “too argumentative and ugly to be loved by men.” A lot of men keep explaining what the real feminism is to us. It seems that they think feminism is something men can allow women to do. WRONG. More and more women are gradually realizing how unfair the way they have been treated is. The more the society oppress us, the stronger we resist. We won’t stop our fight until we win.

This is the end of my writing. Thanks for reading.

For more information of Korean feminism: a blog run by a British man who has lived in South Korea for 18 years.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home and Drive-In Edition July 24, 2020: THE RENTAL, MOST WANTED, YES GOD YES, AMULET, RETALIATION and more

Are we all having fun yet? Does the fun ever truly begin when you’re in the middle of a pandemic, and no one can seem to figure out how to get out of it? While I love New York’s Governor Cuomo and the amazing job he did getting us through the worst of it, he just doesn’t seem to know how to get movie theaters reopened, nor does he seem to care. I mean, they’ve had four months now to figure this out and New York City is already in Phase 4 (which was supposed to be the last phase of the reopening).  It’s a real shame, because this has been a ridiculously hot summer and with none of the “cooling centers” from past summers being possible, it is brutal out there. Fortunately, there are a few decent movies this week to watch at home and some in the drive-ins that are popping up all over the country.

I gotta say that I’m particularly bummed that my favorite local theater, the Metrograph, won’t be opening any time soon, but starting Friday, they’ll be starting “Metrograph Live Screenings,” which will consist of the type of amazing programming the theater has gained a reputation for since opening four years ago. They are offering new “digital memberships” at $5 a month or $50 annually (about half the price of a normal membership) so that you can watch any of the movies being offered at home. The program begins on Friday with Claire Denis’ 2004 film, L’Intrus, which Metrograph Pictures picked up for release. That’s followed on Monday with St. Claire Bourne’s doc, Paul Robeson: Here I Stand.  You can see the full list of screening times and dates (many with filmmaker introductions) on the Official Site, and this will be a good time for those who can’t get downtown to the coolest area in New York City to check out the Metrograph programming until they reopen. (Apparently, they’re working on a drive-in to open sometime in August. Wish I had a car.)

If nothing else, it’s safe to say that IFC is killing it this summer. The indie distributor stepped right up to the pandemic and said, “Hey, we’ll play in those drive-in theaters that have mostly been ignored and didn’t play our films for decades!” It has led to at least two big hits in the past few months.

This week, IFC releases the horror/thriller THE RENTAL (IFC Films), the directorial debut by Dave Franco.  In it, brothers Charlie (Dan Stevens) and Josh (Jeremy Allen White) decide to take a weekend away with their significant others, Charlie’s wife Michelle (Allison Brie) and Josh’s girlfriend Mina (Sheila Vand), who also happens to be Charlie’s creative work partner. They have found a remote house to rent, but they’re immediately suspicious of the caretaker (Toby Huss), who they think may be spying on them. He’s also racist towards Mina’s Arab lineage.

The premise seems fairly simple and actually quite high concept, and there have been quite a few thrillers that played with the premise of a creepy landlord/caretaker, including last year’s The Intruder, directed by Deon Taylor, and a lesser known thriller called The Resident, starring Hillary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Part of what makes The Rental different is that Franco co-wrote it with Joe Swanberg, so you know it’s going to be more of a character-based thriller than some kind of gorefest. Sure enough, this deals with the competitive nature between the brothers and the jealousy that arises when you have such a close working relationship with your brother’s girlfriend. It’s what happens between these two couples over the course of this vacation that makes you even more interested in their behavior after things start happening to them, but there’s a pretty major twist that happens just when you think you know where things may be going.

That’s all I really should say about the plot to avoid spoilers. Although the third act veers into the darker horror tropes we may have seen before, that’s also when it starts to get quite insane. Franco clearly shows he has the eye for the type of suspense and timing necessary for an effective thriller, and his cast, including wife Alison Brie, really deliver on all aspects of his script to deliver shocking moments that will keep you invested.

In some ways, The Rental might be the most obviously accessible movie of the weekend, and since it will be playing in drive-ins (and maybe a few still-open theaters?), it probably is worth seeing that way i.e. with others, although it will also be available via digital download, of course.

Another “Featured Flick” this week -- and I’m guessing this is one you won’t be reading about anywhere else --  is Daniel Roby’s MOST WANTED (Saban FIlms), a real-life crime-thriller starring Josh Hartnett as Globe and Mail journalist, Victor Malarek, who discovered that a French-Canadian junkie named Daniel Léger (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) had been sentenced to 100 years in a Thailand prison for drug trafficking in 1989.  As Daniel attempts to survive the violent conditions of the Thai jail, Victor tries to uncover the crooked practices by the Canadian federal police to get Daniel imprisoned for their own means.

This is one of two Saban Films releases that really surprised me, maybe because I’ve gotten so used to them releasing so much action and genre schlock meant mainly for VOD, usually starring fairly big-name action stars from the past, usually not doing their best work. Most Wanted is a far more serious crime-drama that tells an absolutely amazing story from North America’s famed war on drugs from the ‘80s. First, we meet Antoine-Olivier Pilon’s Daniel, a lowlife junkie who is trying to find a place to live and a job, something he finds when he gets into business with Jim Gaffigan’s Glenn Picker, a complete low-life in every sense of the word. It’s funny, because when Gaffigan’s character is introduced, you’re immediately reminded of the famous “Sister Christian” in PT Anderson’s Boogie Nights, and as we watch Picker completely humiliate and then betray Daniel, you realize that we might be seeing one of Gaffigan’s best performances to date.

What keeps Most Wanted interesting is that it tells the story on a number of concurrent storylines, ignoring the fact that one of the threads might be taking place years before the other. Through this method, we see how Daniel begins working with Glenn, while also seeing Victor’s investigation, as well as the sting operation being perpetrated by the Canadian feds, as represented by the always great Stephen McHattie. (McHattie’s appearance is also a telltale sign that this is indeed a Canadian production, as is the role played by author and filmmaker Don McKellar.)  I’ve always feltHarnett was a really underrated actor especially as he got into his 30s and started doing more mature roles, and while his reporter character may not always be the central focus of the story, his attempt to get his editor to respect his work is something far too familiar to far too many writers. One also can’t sleep on the fantastic performance by Antoine-Olivier Pilon, who really holds the film together by starting out as a scumbag almost as bad as Picker but through his troubles to survive in Thai jail, we start to become really invested in his story. (The only character who doesn’t get nearly as fulfilling a story arc is Amanda Crew as Victor’s wife Anna who gives birth just as he gets involved in this major story.)

I wasn’t at all familiar with Daniel Roby’s previous work but the way he broke this story down in a way that keeps it interesting, regardless of which story you’re following, makes Most Wanted as good or better than similar films by far more experienced and respected filmmakers. (For some reason, it made me think of both The Departed and Black Mass, both movies about Whitey Bulger, although Daniel’s story is obviously very different.)

Okay, let’s get into a trio of religious-tinged offerings…

Natalia Dyer from Stranger Things stars in YES, GOD, YES (Vertical Entertainment), the semi-autobiographical directorial debut by Obvious Child co-writer Karen Maine (expanded from an earlier short), which will open via virtual cinemas this Friday as well as at a few drive-ins, and then it will be available via VOD and digital download on Tuesday, July 28. The coming-of-age comedy debuted at last year’s SXSW Film Festival and won a Special Jury Prize for its ensemble cast. Dyer plays sixteen-year-old Alice, a good Midwestern Catholic teenager, who has a sexual awakening after a racy AOL chat. Wracked by guilt, Alice attends a religious retreat camp where the cute football player (Wolfgang Novogratz) catches her eye, but she constantly feels pressure to quell her masturbatory urges.

I’m not sure I really knew what to expect from Ms. Maine’s feature film debut as a director. I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy this movie as much as I did, nor did I think I would relate to Dyer’s character as much as I did --  I’ve never been a teen girl, nor have I ever been Catholic, and by the early ‘00s, I was probably closer to the age that Maine is now versus being a teenager discovering her sexuality. In fact, I probably was expecting something closer to the Mandy Moore comedy Saved!, which was definitely more about religion than one character’s sexual journey.

Either way, I went into Yes, God, Yes already realizing what a huge fan I am of coming-of-age stories, and while there were certainly that seemed familiar to other films, such as Alice’s inadvertent AIM with an online pervert early in the film. Even so, Maine did enough with the character of Alice to keep it feeling original with the humor being subdued while definitely more on the R-rated side of things. On top of that, Dyer was quite brilliant in the role, just a real break-through in a similar way as Kaitlyn Dever in Book Smart last year. (Granted, I’m so behind on Stranger Things, I don’t think I’ve even gotten to Dyer’s season.) The only other familiar face is Timothy Simons from Veep as the super-judgmental (and kinda pervy) priest who Alice has to turn to when confessing her sins. (A big part of the story involves a rumor started about Alice and a sex act she committed on a fellow student that keeps coming up.)

Yes, God, Yes proves to be quite a striking dramedy that I hope more people will check out. I worry that because this may have been covered out of last year’s SXSW, it might not get the new and updated attention it deserves. Certainly, I was pleasantly surprised with what Maine and Dyer did with a genre that still has a lot to tell us about growing up and discovering oneself. (You can find out where you can rent the movie digitally over on the Official Site.)

Another horror movie that premiered at this year’s Sundance is AMULET (Magnet), the directorial debut by British actor Romola Garai, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars Romanian actor Alec Secareanu as Tomaz, a former soldier who is offered a place to stay in a dilapidated house in London with a young woman named Magda (Carla Juri from Blade Runner 2049) and her ill and dying mother. As Tomaz starts to fall for Magda, he discovers there are sinister forces afoot in the house with Magda’s mother upstairs being at their core.

I was kind of interested in this one, not just because it being Garai’s first feature as a filmmaker but also just because Sundance has such a strong pedigree for midnight movies, probably culminating in the premiere of Ari Aster’s Hereditary there a few years back. It feels like ever since then, there are many movies trying to follow in that movie’s footsteps, and while this was a very different movie from the recent Relic, it had its own set of issues.

The main issue with Amulet is that it deliberately sets itself up with a confusing narrative where we see Tomaz in the present day and in the past concurrently, so it’s very likely you won’t know what you’re watching for a good 20 minutes or so. Once Tomaz gets to the house, escorted there by a nun played by Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), the movie settles down into a grueling pace as the main two characters get to know each other and Tomaz explores the incongruities of the decaying house.

Honestly, I’m already pretty burnt out on the religious horror movies between The Lodge and the still-unreleased Saint Maud, and the first inclination we get of any of the true horror to come is when Tomaz discovers some sort of mutated bat-like creature in the toilet, and things get even more disturbing from there. Although I won’t go into too many details about what happens, the movie suffers from some of the same issues as Relic where it’s often too dark to tell exactly what is happening. As it goes along, things just get weirder and weirder right up until a “what the fuck” moment that could have come from the mind of David Lynch.

I don’t want to completely disregard Garai’s fine work as a filmmaker since she’s made a mostly compelling and original horror movie – I have a feeling some might love this -- but the grueling pace and confusing narrative turns don’t really do justice to what might have been a chilling offering otherwise.

Going by the title and the fact it’s being released by Saban Films, I presumed that Ludwig and Paul Shammasian’s RETALIATION (Saban Films/Lionsgate) was gonna be a violent and gritty crime revenge thriller, but nothing could be further from the truth. Adapted by Geoff Thompson from his 2008 short film “Romans 12:20,” it stars Orlando Bloom as Malcolm, a troubled ex-con doing demolition work while fighting against his demons when he spots someone in the pub from his past that caused a severe childhood trauma.

This is another movie that I really didn’t know what to expect, even as it began and we followed Bloom’s character over the course of a day, clearly a very troubled man who has been dealing with many personal demons. Make no mistake that this is a tough movie, and it’s not necessarily a violent genre movie, as much as it deals with some heavy HEAVY emotions in a very raw way.

Honestly, I could see Geoff Thompson’s screenplay easily being performed on stage, but the way the Shammasian Brothers have allowed Malcolm’s story to slowly build as we learn more and more about his past makes the film so compelling, but they also let their actors really shine with some of the stunning monologues with which they’re blessed. While this is clearly a fantastic and possibly career-best performance by Bloom, there are also good performances by Janet Montgomery, as the woman who loves Malcolm but just can’t handle his mood changes. Also good is Charlie Creed-Miles, as the young priest who tries to help Malcolm.

I can easily see this film not being for everybody, because some of the things the film deals with, including pedophile priests and the effects their actions have on the poor, young souls who put their faith in them, they’re just not things people necessarily may want to deal with. Make no mistake that Retaliation is an intense character drama that has a few pacing issues but ultimately hits the viewer right in the gut.

A movie I had been looking forward to quite some time is the Marie Currie biopic, RADIOACTIVE (Amazon Prime), directed by Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) and starring the wondrous Rosamund Pike as the famed scientist who helped discover radiation. Based on Lauren Redniss’ book, this is the type of Working Title biopic that would normally premiere in the Fall at the Toronto Film Festival, and sure enough, this one did. The fact it wasn’t released last year makes one think maybe this didn’t fare as well as potential awards fodder as the filmmakers hoped. It’s also the type of movie that works too hard to cater to the feminist resurgence from recent years, which ultimately ends up being its undoing.

The problem with telling Marie Currie’s story is that there’s so much to tell and Redniss’ book as adapted by Jack Thorne just tries to fit too much into every moment as years pass in mere minutes. There’s so much of Marie’s life that just isn’t very interesting, but trying to include all of it just takes away from the scenes that do anything significant. Maybe it’s no surprise that Thorne also wrote The Aeronauts, Amazon’s 2019 ballooning biopic that failed to soar despite having Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones as its leads.

I’m a similarly huge Rosamund Pike fan, so I was looking forward to her shining in this role, but she does very little to make Marie Currie someone you might want to follow, as she’s so headstrong and stubborn. This is the most apparent when she meets Pierre Currie, as played by Sam Riley, and maybe you don’t blame her for being cynical, having had much of her work either discredited or stolen by men in the past. Shockingly, Pike’s performance seems all over the place, sometimes quite moving but other times being overly emotive. Almost 90 minutes into the movie, Anya Taylor-Joy turns up as Curie’s grown daughter, and it’s one of the film’s biggest infraction, wasting such great talent in such a nothing role.

While Radioactive could have been a decent vehicle for Ms. Satrapi to flex her muscles as a filmmaker, the movie spends so much time having Currie fighting against the male-dominated science field that it loses sight of why she was such an important figure in the first place. Radioactive just comes across as a generally bland and unimaginative by-the-books biopic.

Also on Digital and On Demand this Friday is Chris Foggin’s FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS (Samuel Goldwyn Films), another quaint British comedy based on a true story, much like the recent Military Wives. Rather than being about a group of singing women, this one is about a group of singing men! What a twist!

Daniel Mays plays Danny, a music biz exec from London who travels to the seaside town of Port Isaac, Cornwall with some of his record company coworkers. Once there, they discover a local group of singing local fisherman, known as “Fisherman’s Friends,” who Danny wants to sign to a label. He also wants to get closer to Tuppence Middleton’s single mother Alwyn, who, no surprise, is also the only pleasant-looking younger woman in the town.

Fisherman’s Friends isn’t bad, but if you’ve seen a lot of British movies from the last few decades, then you’ve already seen this movie, particularly the “fish out of water” humor of a guy from the big city trying to relate to the down-to-earth ways of folk in a fishing village. It’s the type of really forced humor that is perfectly pleasant but not particularly groundbreaking in this day and age with so many filmmakers trying to do cutting-edge work.

Instead, this goes for a very typical and cutesie formula where everything works out with very little real conflict even when it throws in a needless subplot about the local pub falling on hard times and selling to a rich man who has little regard for the ways o the town.  On top of that, and even if this wasn’t based on a true story, it’s very hard to believe anyone in the music industry or who buys records would be that interested in this group to make them worth signing a million-pound record deal. (Apparently, this really happened!)

I think it’s adorable that filmmakers are trying to turn character actor Daniel Mays (who you’ve seen in everything!) into a romantic lead, especially when you have James Purefoy right there! Instead, 56-year-old Purefoy is instead cast as Middleton’s father, while she’s put into a situation where she’s the love interest for a man that’s 23 years her elder. This kind of thing rarely bothers me as it does many younger female critics, but their romance is just ridiculous and unnecessary if not for the formula. As much as I enjoyed seeing Dave Johns from I, Daniel Blake as one of the singing fishermen, there really isn’t much for him to do in this.

If you like sea shanties and you are a woman over 60 (or have a mother that age) then Fisherman’s Friends is a cute butnever particularly hilarious British comedy that tries to be The Full Monty. But it never really tries to be anything more or less than the formula created by that movie 23 years ago, so it’s quickly forgotten after its saccharine finale.

Unfortunately, I just wasn’t able to get THE ROOM (Shudder/RLJE Films), the live action directing debut from Christin Volckman (Renaissance), but it’s now available on VOD, Digital HD, DVD AND Blu-Ray! It stars Olga Kurylenko and Kevin Janssens as a couple who leave the city to move into a an old house where they discover a secret hidden room that has the power to materialize anything they want, but this is a horror film, so what might seem like a fairy tale is likely to get dark. (I actually think I saw the trailer for this on Shudder, so I’ll probably check it out, and if it’s worth doing so, I’ll mention it in next week’s column.)

Yet another horror movie hitting On Demand this Friday is Pamela Moriarty’s A DEADLY LEGEND (Gravitas Ventures) that stars Corbin Bensen as a real estate developer who buys an old summer camp to build new homes unaware of the dark history of supernatural worship and human sacrifice. I’m gonna take the fifth on this one, which also stars Judd Hirsch and Lori Petty.

Available via Virtual Cinema through New York’s Film Forum and L.A.’s Laemmle is Gero von Boehm’s documentary, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful (Kino Lorber), about the photographer who had a nearly five-decade career before dying in a car crash in 2006.

From Colombia to various Virtual Cinemas is Catalina Arroyave’s debut, Days of the Whale (Outsider Pictures) set in the city of Medellin, where it follows two young graffiti artists, Cristina and Simon, who tag places around where they live but coming from very different backgrounds, but they eventually bond while part of a revolutionary art collective.

Danny Pudi from Community and Emily C. Chang from The Vampire Diaries star in Sam Friedlander’s comedy Babysplitters (Gravitas Ventures) as one of two couples who have mixed emotions about having kids, so they decided to share one baby between them. Okay, then.

Netflix will also debut the rom-com sequel, The Kissing Booth 2, once again starring Joey King as Ellie, who is trying to juggle her long-distance romance with Jacob Erlodi’s Noah and her close friendship with Joel Courtney’s Lee.  I haven’t seen the first movie. Probably won’t watch this one.

Next week, more movies in a variety of theatrical and non-theatrical release!

If you’ve read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com, or tweet me on Twitter. I love hearing from my “readers,” whomever they may be.’

[pjmendez]

Serve Or Be Served (2017)

1.

On the tube one morning going to work at St. JOHN, the world-renowned English restaurant, I was wearing my long beige vintage mac, black tracksuit bottoms and plain white hi-tops, my black duffel bag was on my lap, and I had one leg crossed over the other as I read James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain. My hair was trimmed close, my stubble fine. The seats either side of me remained empty.

A tall man of around 40 got on at Victoria, saw the seat next to me and oriented himself towards it. Then he saw me, without making eye contact, and pulled back from his toes to stand next to the opposing door. I kept an intermittent eye on him until I got off at King’s Cross, when I looked back to find he’d sat down in the seat I’d vacated. As I turned round to continue my journey, I was left with the image of his face looking up at, presumably, the line chart in the carriage, to check how to continue his. There was something fresh and purposeful about how he’d rounded his shoulders and stretched out his neck, his mouth slightly open, his eyes wide, his checked work shirt open at the neck, his blond fronds of hair neatly unkempt, clean and casual, considered yet relaxed. He’d forgotten me, and was over our moment of discomfort. He was starting his day, his life. He doesn’t remember this moment. I do.

All that intelligence and breeding, and the world is still what it is because certain people are still chasing the same old dream. By and by they’ve allowed their subjects greater freedoms, but never the ultimate: the right to live one’s life outside their system of authority. Every action for the past half century has been in the service of protecting a nepotistic hierarchy of earthly gods. To what end? What have they planned that the rest of us don’t know about? Every civilisation in the past has died: Babylon, Egypt, Rome to name but a few. I’m not a historian, nor a mathematician, but anyone can see patterns over time. The current guard is outgoing; it’s just a case of when and how. Of course there’ll be a horrible mess, both to live through and reflect upon, if anyone survives.

I once excitedly watched a documentary on Channel 4 called “The Trouble with Black Men”, back in the days when I believed blackness was a curse and when I was looking for confirmation of the differences I perceived between myself and “regular” black men. I remember one interview in particular that the film’s writer and presenter gave in the classroom of a majority black school in south London. The boys were eleven or twelve; all seemed intelligent, curious, conscious, gregarious, unselfconscious and articulate. Where are those boys at fifteen? Eighteen? Twenty one? Thirty? Not living lives befitting their natural capabilities, because I can’t see them.

I googled “The Trouble with White Men” to see if I could use it as a title. Not one search term match, I was unsurprised to find.

2.

I’ve experienced many false starts attempting to leave the hospitality industry. Eventually I realised that people would always complain about me because of who I am, and that I wouldn't be able to change myself to accommodate ignorance. People complained about me because I wouldn't let them patronise me. I was never wantonly rude to any of my customers, but some tried my patience, and it was only then that things started to unravel. I allowed every one of my customers to recognise that I was intelligent and capable, that I was older than I appeared, and knew everything about the menu, including the wine. I allowed them to see me as a friendly, helpful, resourceful person first, before they saw me as black, or English, or anything else. I didn't feel it necessary to give each one of them justification for my eloquence and experience; perhaps some of them were simply trying to make conversation, but it hurt me to have to answer questions such as "you speak very good English. Where did you learn to speak English like that?” “Where did you go to school?” “Where did you get your voice from?" I gave up when I realised I no longer had the energy to keep convincing people – I have nothing left to prove as a waiter – and that my energy should be redirected towards proving myself as a writer. Eighteen years is more than long enough as an apprenticeship; I'm educated in my own idiosyncratic, unstructured, esoteric way, and I increasingly began to feel that it was time to start at least trying to produce something, some kind of fruit.

Even when my service was good, when I gave my guests every reason to believe that I was a person of quality and someone to be respected, they could still give me reason to feel aggrieved. I remember serving an older lady, who reminded me very much of a posher Jo Brand, with her husband and grown-up children. She wanted advice on a nice, fruity, medium- to full-bodied wine, and I knew exactly what she would want to drink, so I suggested a bottle, and she left it to me, and she loved it; indeed, they ordered a second and third bottle. I advised her on food, and her daughter was pregnant, so I advised her on what not to eat on the menu. They took all my advice and had a lovely meal.

"I need you at home."

Initially I took it as a compliment, then as a joke, but soon came to realise who was speaking to me and who she was speaking to: an upper-middle-class English white woman, whose predecessors, it would have taken little imagination to conceive, probably employed staff, and in these throwback times, being served by a capable black waiter, she imagined me for herself as a domestic. She didn't ask me who I was outside of work; she didn't ask me if I was an actor or dancer, as people often do. She imagined me only as her home help, a servant who would make her life easier for her. She did everything but offer me a job.

I was reminded of the scene in The Colour Purple, when Sofia, played by Oprah Winfrey, is accosted in the market square by a white woman who takes an unwanted interest in her clean, polite children (proof of her competence) and offers her a job as a maid – a job “offer” in those days and circumstances would've been tantamount to entrapment – to which Sophia responds:

“Hell no!”

Upon repetition, she is slapped by an outraged white man who overhears; the camera focuses on her vengeful eye; unable to resist retaliation, she gathers her heavy fist and punches him to the ground. Ensuring her children don’t see what happens to her, she is set upon by an angry mob, beaten to disfiguration, and forced to work for the woman after all, the while losing her freedom and her beloved children.

I am in no way comparing my relatively lucky situation to that of Sofia and countless millions of other African-Americans and European colonial subjects whose lives were defined by forced domesticity, slavery and worse, but in those moments, and while this Jo Brand-lookalike was still in the restaurant finishing her dinner, I was made to feel as if at any moment I could be led out of the restaurant, put into a car and taken to her home, especially as, at the time, I was in rehearsals to play Shakespeare’s Othello, a high-born African soldier who had been sold into slavery in his youth, and I lacked the technical ability to separate art from life cleanly enough.

Those who believe we are living in a post-racial society are often white liberals who agree amongst themselves that racism doesn’t exist, and who lack first-hand experience of everyday racism; none of their black friends, should they have any, are going to complain to them about racism. I personally try not to talk to white people about racism because it’s impossible to approximate its complexity in a normal-length conversation. They think that because they see themselves as not being racist, and because they only associate themselves with people who see themselves as not being racist, that that is proof, in their world, that racism no longer exists.

I remember serving a table of twelve Americans who were an hour late for their booking, and had all kinds of weird requests. They wanted several portions of the famous bone marrow and parsley salad to share between them but then à la carte mains and desserts, and had brought their own wine. Because they were so late and had so many requests – aperitifs, etc –  I was a little bit salty with them at first, and could see they were starting to protest at me, so then I started entertaining them in my best American accent and all of a sudden the mood changed and we started to get on rather well. They were from California, and this was about a fortnight before the Trump-Clinton US election. They were confident that Hillary would win. “All down my Facebook wall is blue,” one of them said, the same one who asked me where I was originally from – “where are you from?” “No, where are you from, I mean, originally” – and when she eventually got me down to Jamaica, she said she thought I looked “more East African”. We agreed that misogyny would be to blame if Hillary did not win. They drank their wine and let me taste some, ate every scrap of their food, and were in and out just like that, leaving me a £100 cash tip on top of the service charge.

In the age of social media, people are able to seek comfort in the false knowledge that the world is as they see it on Facebook and Twitter. They believe that certain things are going to happen because everyone in their world says that that is what’s going to happen. The great flaw of social media is that it ghettoises people; we only live in the world that we and our friends create, and we distance ourselves from people who have different opinions and ways of living. We console ourselves in the hope that “our” world will win, and fail to acknowledge enough the dangers thereby possessed by those of a different inclination. Those liberals who feel like racism doesn’t exist: do they know any black people? And if they do, which black people do they know? Black people have, of course, for a long time been party to the highest levels of society, albeit thinly outside the entertainment and sports industries, fields black people have long excelled in. But what about in other levels of society? It’s all very well to have a buddying relationship with the black security guard at Fortum & Mason’s, the black waiter at St. JOHN, the black nurse at Chelsea and Westminster – people who seem to be doing just fine for themselves because they work in expensive neighbourhoods – and not have to talk about institutionalised racism. It’s all very well to be friends with a black attorney or medical doctor. But they and everyone in between will all experience racism.

Microaggressions unfurl themselves at the most unexpected and disorienting times. I was in Brixton looking for somewhere to have lunch, was on my own and hadn’t brought anything to read, so I went to Book Mongers and picked up several paperbacks (not that I’d planned to read all of them over lunch). I could see on the Ritzy Cinema’s main display board that I Am Not Your Negro was playing again. Instead of going into the cinema I decided I'd look for the listings board outside. I barely even noticed the two men on business sitting in front of it; they were just people. As I approached, apologising already that I just wanted to see the listings board, the look of panic on their faces was clear. They grabbed their things and beat a hasty retreat. They apparently thought I was about to try to rob them. I felt like vermin. The swift gentrification of Brixton is well-documented; young professionals priced out of Clapham will come to Brixton, and there are certain places for them, places the likes of me aren't readily allowed unless I immediately look like the sort of “cool” black person who dresses daily in mainline Comme des Garçons and potters about town, apparently unemployed, with a huge grin on my face, wheeling my cage behind me so that the tourists can take pictures.

James Baldwin once wrote: "I learned in New Jersey that to be a Negro meant, precisely, that one was never looked at but was simply at the mercy of the reflexes the colour of one's skin caused in other people." As a black male body, I’m constantly having to dodge the reflexes of white people in whose sightlines I appear, taking care not to walk too close behind someone at night, even if we’re walking at the same velocity and in the same direction, for example. Perhaps soon we will all wear spectacles logged into our social media accounts that will show in colour what we want to see, our friends, and what we find of interest; everything else will be black and white.

For five years I’ve lived in the area of Brixton that borders onto Clapham, a great location that means I have easy access to both the Northern and Victoria lines, the year-round beauty of the approach to Clapham Common and the huge variety of food on offer in Brixton. I have at least five good Jamaican takeaways and restaurants within a ten-minute walk, a fantastic cinema, good vintage and charity shops, the aforementioned well-stocked bookshop, fine flat whites, two tube stations, an Overground station and buses that hit every nook and cranny in London. I once knew someone who’d lived in Clapham for twenty years, but who freely admitted to me that he didn’t know any black people. Whenever we would go out to eat it would be in Clapham, or Soho. Whenever I suggested Brixton something in his eyes disappeared. Perhaps he didn’t believe that Brixton has genuinely good eateries up its sleeve, but I rather think it’s because he feels that Brixton is too black for him; anywhere there are black people is too black for him. He is a wonderful man in many ways but how can I associate myself with someone who racialises me, in a different but no less offensive way than did the Jo Brand-alike in the restaurant? How can I associate myself with someone who didn’t want to see Moonlight, Hidden Figures or Fences with me because, having seen 12 Years a Slave, he couldn’t bear to see another “depressing” art film about black lives? How can I associate myself with someone who has absolutely no interest in the cultures I belong to, and worse, no willingness to come with me on the journey of discovering why I have issues with those cultures, and how they can be resolved? How can I trust people who say we live in a post-racial society when their only concession to anti-racism is to not call me a nigger?

We still live in a racist world. Black people are still stereotyped. We still live in segregated society. It’s just that in London, at least, we are very polite about it.

3.

I worked a lot of hours. I came down with a cold. I worked a lot of hours with the cold. It was gruelling. The next day I should’ve rested but went out for a long lunch at a French brasserie off Clapham Common with my friend and shared three carafes of Malbec to drown down the gritty oysters and disgusting, smelly, suspiciously-pink chitterling sausage with chips and béarnaise sauce I fatally chose from the menu. I thought they’d be crispy deep-fried shards of whatever innards I’m quite used to eating, given my employment at St. JOHN, but it was a grisly, oddly pungent mess, almost as if I’d slit open a cow’s stomach, ripped out its intestine and ate it right there in the field.

I went to work, and worked more hours with the cold. Celebrities. That week I’d met and served a customer, a customer, a customer and a customer, not to mention a customer and a customer, who, having that very day published the headline ‘CRUSH THE SABOTEURS!’, asked me for some white bread without even looking at the basket. I went home, smoked a really strong joint and wondered whether I might die of exhaustion and food-poisoning, collapsing right in the middle of the restaurant floor, by the till.

That pretty black boy, who looked good enough to eat.

I remember catching a customer staring at me once, hungrily, during a wine tasting, back when I’d only been there a couple of weeks and was still smiling. I wondered whether, instead of reporting my death, they wouldn’t just send me in a white van to an abattoir to be cleaned out like a suckling pig then brought back, every hair on my body torched and scraped off leaving my eyes looking a little awake, teeth and tongue intact, my entire skin surface oiled up and my torso stuffed with bread, onions and sage, sewn up and tucked in the oven with foil protecting my extremes. Maybe I wouldn’t fit, so they’d have to chop my legs off at the knee and sew them at the ends; perhaps they’d braise my lower legs in chicken stock and white wine, garlic and whole shallots. Four hours is all my slender body would need.

A customer would wait in the middle of the feasting table, his cutlery stood on ends in his fists, Fernet Branca having prepared him, the start of a bottle of 2012 Côte Rotie in his wine glass. A customer would be there, along with a customer, a customer and a customer, not to mention a customer and his hypersexual girlfriend, whom I was never able to look in the eye in life. A crazed-looking customer, her bleach-job in need of a retouch, would carve me with no make-up, wearing a red wine-stained apron, starting with my head, which would sit on a plate in front of the host for selfies, each meaty haunch, cut from the waist through the natural line into my groin, enough to feed ten with side bowls of stuffing, potatoes and greens, my kidneys a lucky find. Then the abdomen; she plucks out my ribs and separates chunks of steaming flesh with her tongs; he’s a tough one; maybe I wasn’t in the oven long enough; I’m burnt to sight but it was hard to judge how long to leave it with my colour skin. We’ll know for next time.

My heart, trimmed, turns up as a Monday lunch special, grilled with a balsamic glaze and served with green beans and a pickled walnut dressing; my balls, another starter, poached in milk and deep-fried. My liver comes as a main, devilled and pan-roasted in butter with a sherry vinegar deglaze. Delicious, says some American lawyer dining alone, having licked his plate clean and drained his glass of 2015 St. JOHN Bourgogne Rouge dry. I’m not that hungry, explains a customer, having pushed his plate to the side after a mouthful or two. Can we order six madeleines, ask a Japanese couple, midway through the liver.

© Paul Mendez 2018

[jawblade-a-blog]

REALLY  LONG  CHARACTER  SURVEY.   RULES.  repost ,   don’t  reblog  !    tag  10  ! good  luck  !   TAGGED.  by myself   TAGGING.  all y’all lovely people GIMME YOUR IN DEPTH CHARACTER HEADCANONS

BASICS.

FULL  NAME :   Takashi Shirogane ( 白銀隆 ) NICKNAME :   Shiro AGE :  25 BIRTHDAY :   October 21st ETHNIC  GROUP :  Japanese NATIONALITY :   Japanese-American LANGUAGE / S : English, Japanese, bits of Altean and Galran SEXUAL  ORIENTATION :  asexual ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION :  aromantic RELATIONSHIP  STATUS :   single HOME  TOWN / AREA :  Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Honshu, Japan CURRENT  HOME :   Castle of Lions PROFESSION :  Black Paladin, leader of Team Voltron

PHYSICAL.

HAIR: deep black and cut short, the sides and back of his head shaved into an undercut. one long patch is left at the front, a forelock that hangs down over his forehead, reaching down just shy of his eyes. while this forelock used to be the same black as the rest of his hair, it’s now white, the colour lost under the severe stress he faced in Galra captivity. EYES :   a dark grey in colour, sometimes looking from a distance to be a deep brown or black. long eyelashes. FACE :  strong, sharp jawline, high cheekbones, long and straight nose, thick eyebrows. LIPS :   average, perhaps leaning on the thin side – often quite dry or cracked. COMPLEXION :  pale, but in a sickly, unnaturally caused kind of way, caused by complete lack of sunlight and possibly other events from his time in captivity. eyes often have dark circles beneath them. BLEMISHES :   none SCARS :  most notably, the lateral scar running across his nose, gained in a gladiator battle. the rest of his body is littered with scars, of all different varieties. large, jagged gashes, thin but deep lines, claw marks, sword slices, burns – just about anything you can think of. the placings are all very random, all clearly gained from battle, some overlapping. none of it is a pretty nor attractive sight, one of the many reasons he always has so much of his body covered. as well, there is a great deal of scarring on the bicep of his right arm, where skin meets the metal of his prosthetic. TATTOOS :  none HEIGHT :   6′2″ WEIGHT :   182 lbs. BUILD :   muscular and fit. chest and arms particularly toned, though his legs aren’t lacking in muscle mass. FEATURES :   Galran cybernetic prosthetic arm. ALLERGIES :   none, as far as he’s aware. USUAL  HAIR  STYLE :  kind of just how he wakes up. the only hair he really has that can be styled is his forelock, which is generally left alone. USUAL  FACE  LOOK :   clean-shaven. USUAL  CLOTHING :   not a lot of clothing variety in the middle of space. outside of his armour and his usual outfit though, he’d stick to long sleeves. lots of sweaters or shirts with long sleeves. his style always used to be very casual and comfortable.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S :   loss of those he cares for. isolation. captivity. the possibility that he might not be a good person, that he’s every bit a monster that the Galra are with everything he’s done and is capable of doing. loss of control. panic attacks. flashbacks. ASPIRATION / S :   defeat Zarkon and free those who have been under his control or enslaved by him. keep the other paladins as innocent as he can/they should be at their ages. keep the other paladins alive and get them all home safely. find and save matt and commander holt. work with keith to develop and show him his capabilities. POSITIVE  TRAITS :   loyal | supportive | patient | reliable | practical | observant | compassionate NEGATIVE  TRAITS :   represses feelings | paranoid | pessimistic | solemn | on occasion can let emotion direct him to reckless action | self-sacrificing MBTI :   DEFENDER ( ISFJ-A ) ZODIAC :   libra TEMPEREMENT :   melancholic SOUL  TYPE / S :    leader, helper, caregiver ANIMALS :   sable VICE  HABIT / S :    jaw clenching, finger tapping, biting the inside of his lip/cheek FAITH :  none GHOSTS ? :   doesn’t believe AFTERLIFE ? :   doesn’t believe REINCARNATION ? :   doesn’t believe ALIENS ? :   i mean. he wishes they weren’t real sometimes. POLITICAL  ALIGNMENT :  vol…tron?? whatever being against zarkon is. EDUCATION  LEVEL :    high. graduated the Galaxy Garrison at the top of his class.

FAMILY.

FATHER :    doesn’t really remember or know much about him MOTHER :    deceased. SIBLINGS :   Keith Kogane, adopted brother EXTENDED  FAMILY :   n/a. NAME  MEANING / S :    隆 ( takashi ), meaning “noble, prosperous”;  白銀 ( shirogane ), meaning “silver” HISTORICAL  CONNECTION ? :   n/a.

FAVORITES.

BOOK :  a brief history of time by stephen hawking MOVIE :   n/a – he needs to pick a new one because all his old favourites are sci-fi and those are a lot less fun after you’ve lived it. 5  SONGS :  n/a ( forgive me, i’ve not settled on his favourite music yet ) DEITY :   n/a HOLIDAY :   new years MONTH :   september SEASON :   autumn PLACE :    his home – the one where he grew up and lived with his mom after moving from japan when he was very young. the home where he watched Keith grow up. WEATHER :   cool, but not cold. sunny, but with clouds in the sky and the chance of rain. SOUND :   wind blowing past leaves in the trees SCENT / S :    rain, freshly dried laundry, mom’s tonkatsu TASTE / S :    subtle flavours, most things fruity FEEL / S :   anything that isn’t metal. soft, anything that screams ‘comfort’ ANIMAL / S :    wolves NUMBER :  11 – his favourite time is 11:11 COLORS :   he’s been rethinking these, since a lot of his favourites now remind him of not so pleasant things these days.

EXTRA.

TALENTS :  leadership, knowing the right thing to say in most circumstances, combat – particularly hand to hand, picking up on and memorizing patterns, improvising, observation – particularly of people and their behaviours, ticks, etc. BAD  AT :  handling his own emotions, seeing his own value TURN  ONS :   n/a TURN  OFFS :   n/a HOBBIES :    exercising, sparring, reading, distracting himself from his thoughts and anxieties, avoiding sleep, spending time with those he cares about, cuddling TROPES :   Broken Ace, Awesome by Analysis, Team Dad, I Am a Monster, 100% Adoration Rating, Not So Above it All QUOTES :     “ If you get too worried about what could go wrong, you might miss a chance to do something great. ” “ Patience yields focus. ”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 :   if  you  could  write  your  character  your  way  in  their  own  movie ,   what  would  it  be  called ,  what  style  would  it  be  filmed  in ,  and  what  would  it  be  about ?           A1 :   uhhh i mean, since he’s a very main character, i get quite a bit of what i want from canon ngl. buuuut i’d love some full backstory of his life prior to kerberos, plus everything that happened while the galra had him prisoner. Q2 :   what  would  their  soundtrack / score  sound  like ?           A2 :   oh god, idk. music with deep, heavy lyrics, but ultimately with optimistic messages? Q3 :   why  did  you  start  writing  this  character ?           A3 :    okay so i’m a big red vs. blue fan, and i was seeing all kinds of people talking on tumblr about how shiro is so much like wash, who happens to be my favourite character and my biggest, oldest muse. finally caved and watch voltron, and… shiro ticks like, all of my boxes for a favourite character + character i can relate to on some levels. he’s complex, he’s broken, he struggles a lot internally but holds it together and helps others, he’s team dad, he’s self-sacrificing… i could go on, i really could. Q4 :   what  first  attracted  you  to  this  character ?           A4 :   oh. uhm. see the answer above. i heard he was v much like wash except more chill and much less jaded, and also who could escape hearing him referred to as ‘space dad’. i’m weak for space/team dads. Q5 :   describe  the  biggest  thing  you  dislike  about  your  muse.           A5 :   holy shit nothing. i love him and his strengths and his flaws. Q6 :   what  do  you  have  in  common  with  your  muse ?           A6 :   mm… we both believe more in others than ourselves, both v supportive of those we care about… there may be more??? but those stick out to me the most. Q7 :   how  does  your  muse  feel  about  you ?           A7 :   “Please stop playing on my fears” basically Q8 :   what  characters  does  your  muse  have  interesting  interactions  with ?         A8 :    everyone??? i love getting to explore the older brother/dad dynamic he has with the rest of the paladins, and how it differs between the four. also love the dynamic between enemies, particularly those who put him on edge, or worse. Q9 :   what  gives  you  inspiration  to  write  your  muse ?         A9 :    honestly i tend to wake up with inspiration bc he’s become my strongest muse, right up there with wash, buuuuut rewatching canon, having intense discussions about canon or AUs, and doing character analysis all give me an extra boost of inspiration, for sure. Q10 :   how  long  did  this  take  you  to  complete ?           A10 :    like half the fucking day, holy shit. granted, my focus is shit and it’s not the only thing i’ve been doing. multitasking.

[cbspams]

The Boyz - No Air (A Song of Ice and Fire)

These are gonna be super fucking long, just fair warning.

Hello again and welcome to another round of Delphine nitpicking a performance into the oblivion!

Honorable mention to my roommate who desperately despises kpop with all their heart but watched this performance (and the other TBZ performance) with me to help me get some insight on how attuned to GOT the performance was since I've never watched the show or read the books. For reference, they have read the books, watched the tv show and in their free time they listen to extensive opinion pieces and analytical essays on GOT. So I'd personally put their knowledge pretty high, but once again this is like a second hand account so sorry if I get things wrong.

ALRIGHT LETS GET IT!!

First, I wanna talk a bit about the pre-performance clips. I really liked the underwater photography studio idea as a way to feel and show desperation. I personally would need to do something else as I'm not afraid of water but I think that the literal concept of not having air is interesting and a good direction. I'm also really proud of Sunwoo for working so hard despite his fear, and I'm really touched by Younghoon specifically going back into the tank to help. Side note but pufferfish New hehehehe.

I genuinely wish they had used more of the film and photography from the session for the actual performance. I feel like a short pre-performance film would've really elevated the storyline, especially since they're trying to reference GOT which is (as according to the books and the show UP TO where the books ended, yknow, pre-season 8) really, really plot and lore based. Not to dive too deep into the theme yet but I feel as though a lot of TBZ's performances in Kingdom (which are really just this one and then O Sole Mio (Red Wedding) in round 2) aren't really expressing the full extent of their themes.

What I mean by this is that anyone who has read A Song of Ice and Fire (ASIF, pls dont @ me if this is the wrong acronym bc idk??) probably knows that TBZ performance wasn't really based in any events of the book or any themes of it. No Air is a desperate love song and there's plenty of desperation in ASIF but it really feels like TBZ did a mix of inspired by ice and fire (the literal elements) and set in ASIF (physical location markers). According to my roommate, the set pieces are recognizably places in ASIF but the performance didn't really track the themes present in the novel. I'll get to the Red Wedding later as well, but in both performances although TBZ were clearly trying to track some level of GOT's, it feels underdeveloped and therefore to me feels clunky, which is a bit disappointing because TBZ are masters of concepts and executing new ideas. Not sure if this makes sense but I guess if I had to summarize, it would be that they're taking inspiration from the name and title of things rather than the actual source material so it doesn't feel as effect in some ways. STILL, if I consider it operating on the level of just ice and fire rather than by GOT, they did a beautiful job!

Consider this: No Air is originally a bit more of an upbeat rhythm and melody but the way they toned it to be almost kind of in minor key to fit the desperation theme? Whoever's doing arrangement is putting out stuff that's really amazing. On top of that, the drum beats in the baseline add to that same feeling and then to have the turn around where the melody gets softer before the chorus, is a beautiful touch of contrast that really draws together the tender side of a desperate love. And the first chorus feels almost defeated, longing and yearning. I feel like the flow of the music really fit a tragic romance storyline, which I just love about TBZ.

Even with their less than stellar (imo) execution of theme, they're still putting out completely new and incredible ideas. Starting even with the 100 sec performances in which they did the hands thing and now with the POV camera direction, TBZ are taking full advantage of the stage and it's set up, which I cheer at every time I see it. Even the other groups are were picking up their ideas! See Stealer (The Scene) by SF9 in which Zuho "fights" the camera.

ALSO a quick note on the beginning camera work!! They show the frozen zombies (an allusion to the white walkers I assume) and they're completely stiff but then the camera moves towards Juyeon and the woman's arms take off one of his wrist cuffs before turning and you see that the zombies have moved!! And then there's a quick shot that as she's turned around to take off the other cuff, the zombies start to move again. That's a really smart way of setting up the kind of stakes in the moment, that if she doesn't get Juyeon free quickly then she'll be attacked and overtaken and Juyeon will stay trapped. The blocking in this moment is immaculate as far as story telling goes!! I love when the camera contributes to the theme and storyline, very much a show don't tell kind of thing. Love that for them.

The stretch screen is also a really interesting idea! I'm not sure how it correlates to ASIF or their theme necessarily, I think it's more of a performance aspect but literally Juyeon What The Fuck. He's genuinely so talented and it stems from his dedication and hard work. They kind of mention in the pre-performance clips that he's really harsh on himself and cries after performances when they don't do well, but legit I thought he did so, so well here. His expressions were really forlorn at first and once again, those dance moves!! Bro!!

On the topic of expressions, because one of their main themes is desperation, I watched really closely to how they were expressing that with their faces and bodies. I'm judging body language differently, since kpop dances tend to really favor the more hip hop, sharp isolation style and I can't view it like, oh they should've done contemporary dance.

Kevin's opening line gave me goosebumps. The kind of build up in the strings to his cool but forceful voice, mmph. I think Haknyeon's anger is also a really nice touch because desperation may be based in sadness but it's real expression usually comes out in anger. In that last do or die moment, are you cowering and hiding in an attempt to survive or do you fight back? The human body has a natural instinct to thrash around and reach for anything you can when you drown, and it feels like a fight because it is one. So although TBZ is aiming for a sad and tragic love story, because their main theme is what it is, I like that they included different sides from fury to despair. Sunwoo's little head toss back was really good too, both technically and thematically.

Honestly I don't know who choreo'd this but I really liked it. They definitely choreo'd it with the camera in mind, which I mean, everyone did but their was really smooth and easy to flow with. People were walking off camera nonchalantly, as opposed to sprinting off. It's something that ATEEZ had trouble with in the 100 sec performance (in the pre-performance clip) so you can see TBZ experience in performing the live take on the Kingdom stage (which I've mentioned before is a really unconventional type of stage). Plus because the arrangement slows in different places, they have little moments of tragic love as well (like pre-chorus when the camera unblindfolds Hyunjae or post-chorus when Haknyeon, Kevin, Sangyeon, and Jacob hold the lover's hands tenderly), which just emphasizes their desperation! I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot but tbh that just goes to show how in tuned TBZ are with their emotional theme. Another thing is the zombies, which continues the theme from before that they're fighting somehow to stay with their lover or that their time is in danger. Sunwoo dangling over the hoard, like okay. Okay! I see you! Oof, props to you choreographer, props to you.

YOUNGHOON!!! What an actor man, he's got such a diverse range of facial expressions. He really pulls off the kind of empty, forlorn look, ugh. Please get this man a role in a drama, 11/10 would watch. Honestly Juyeon too, please guys I'm too wear for those intense, piercing looks.

That last moment is interesting. It's almost like they're flinging their lover away from the fire, rejecting them so they'll be safe? The explosion in the back honestly doesn't make a lot of sense except as some kind of climactic moment but I don't think they needed it. It doesn't really fit the story they were telling, nor does it set up for their next performance so like. Why lol.

I'm new TBZ and I've been kind of eating up content from them, but especially because I got to know them through RTK, I had really high expectations for them now. I think they're still doing wonderfully, especially between the new creative freedoms Kingdom offers. But I also think they're suffering what I've previously described as the kind of burden to come up with something that fits in the set.

A quick recap: Because RTK had less budget and was smaller, the props and sets were a lot more simple and specific. Each group had to create stories using limited props which forced them to be more technically advanced with their formations, dance moves, arrangements etc. Because Kingdom has more budget and can now create elaborate sets and costumes etc, I think the groups are somehow less diverse and creative here than in RTK. Their technical skill still shines through but it feels like a lot of it gets covered with the sets and stuff.

So like in RTK, TBZ made ample usage of their own bodies to tell stories whereas now it feels like they're not doing that and it makes me sad in some ways because I think that's the appeal of a competition show. That you're allowed to make more story telling with your own body, instead of following pure performance choreography like in normal performances. Something that comes to mind for example is like The Eve from EXO. The song is supposedly about standing up to corruption but the dance is uh. Sexy and honestly not very aligned with the song. So like that's kind of a choreography and performance for the sake of performance. But on RTK, groups were able to have more themed storytelling and TBZ were a master of it, from thieves in Danger to revolutionaries in Reveal. So I'm just a little sad to see that kind of vanish with the budgeting that comes with Kingdom.

Despite all that, I still think TBZ have put on a great performance and it's still really interesting and fun to watch. I hope that their future performances allow them a little more creativity and storytelling with their bodies and techniques, with the set pieces helping enhance that rather than hinder it.

[datako-blog1]

An Honest Review of Black Panther from a Non-Black Person (#08)

Yep, here is your honest review from a film major who watched this movie very critically on the first go. Now I haven’t read the original Black Panther, nor have I watched Ragnarok (why do people keep comparing it???). I went in expecting it to be as good as any other super hero Marvel film. Here are the results:

Yes, I am still very annoyed at seeing Black Panther posts online from black people who love it just because it has black people.

It is as good as any other super hero Marvel film.

It did not surprise me. It did not impress me.

I enjoyed it, but I also enjoy most Marvel films. It didn’t make me say “I want to watch this again” any time soon.

The best thing about this film is it’s historical achievement. I have to go here because I am a filmmaker and I will credit as so. Black people have the right to be excited about a top Hollywood film that was made by 100% black people. That is impressive. It is NOT impressive that it was made by 100% black people, because let’s not view people by color here!! Anyone can do anything and no skin color or ethnicity will define that! It is impressive that they proved to Hollywood that they don’t need to hire a 50+ yr old white male to produce something amazing or a top-paid actor/actress to appeal to the market. Now going off that, here’s my biggest point:

Casuals will say Black Panther is an amazing film. I think the real credit goes to the amazing director.

Seriously, has anyone credited the director yet (asides from the fact he’s young and black)??? So for all you normies out there who are saying “it’s amazing because it’s different” and not because it’s 99% black people, it’s because the visionary is different. There’s 2 ways to earn my approval, and that’s either with a great original story  or with auteur. Usually that comes hand in hand. This dude, Ryan Coogler, got his big break from directing Fruitvale Station. I also saw that movie with skepticism because...well... the black-people hype. I enjoyed it, because it was directed with a balance of indie and Hollywood. He carried this tradition in Black Panther, so without really seeing any of his other films, maybe I’ll assume that this is his auteur. What exactly do I mean by that? Hollywood, and honestly most of Marvel, have a very dry-cut formula in terms of shot type, composition, and editing. Coolger branches off from it. It’s not obvious, but clearly the normies aren’t seeing it.

He takes advantage of a lot of sound bridging (which ya’ll know is like porn to me), he takes advantage of sound cues to seamlessly edit pacing and transitions. An example is the scene where he is crowned King. I was pretty meh about the BGM the first quarter of the film. The rest was pretty nice. I don’t even like Kendrick Lamar but dang that chase scene + soundtrack was pretty dope.

He switches up angles a lot. Traditional films will do a main shot-reverse. Nope, this guy wanted to switch it between aerial angles and low angles, and a shit ton of reaction shots which is sooo *makes clicking sound with tongue* nice.

Overall, when I watch Coogler’s films, I am not immersed in it. I am very into his art style and the story of the film, but I’m 95% of the time aware I’m watching a film because I’m so focused on what he visually created. I’m not checking my watch, I wouldn’t get up to pee, which is good, but it doesn’t get my full attention. Maintaining your audience’s attention is arguably the most important thing when it comes to these kinds of movies. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a side effect when it comes to his style, and I appreciate it for being different.

And I have to say this..I’m not sure if this is on purpose but maybe he loves including that 1 shot-reverse-shot that breaks 180. There’s always one!! And I caught it! It’s there. No error escapes my gaze!! (it’s the scene where he’s talking to a girl overlooking the horizon during sunset)

Now for plot, because apparently one of my coworkers emphasized that he felt like the bad guy did nothing wrong. I expected some nice you-choose-your-hero kind of plot. NOPE. He was a plain bad guy. He wasn’t evil for the sake of being evil but he didn’t present anything new. He didn’t convince me of his ways. It was a very very typical plot. Now, if you really want to bite your nails over who’s a real bad guy, go watch drifterindenial’s Hybrid. As a side note, I feel like I understand my coworker less and less now.. his way of thinking has been just...assertively stupid.

Generally speaking the plot was basic. There were also some plot holes, which didn’t bother me much, but they were there. I did have questions. Many questions. But sometimes you just tell yourself you’re fine but you’re not fine...

Female roles (from the perspective of a non-black and non-feminist person). It’s strong, and I can’t hide that fact. How prominent females actually are in the original story, I have no idea, but the main character is practically assisted/supported by 80% female characters. Did gender matter? Nah. But it was a good choice. I loved every single female character for their unique personality and strengths and not for the sake of them being there. I also have a fetish for strong female warriors, so that’s probably why. Oh yea, they weren’t even sexualized at the slightest. Good for the director. I will say this...are the Black Panther’s people like 100% female or what??? Does he not have male soldiers or guards but all the other tribes do?? What the fuck..

Conclusion time! Should you watch it? Of course, but I wouldn’t stress over waiting hours in line, pre-booking tickets, or feeling the need to see it opening weekend. Hell, I was dragged into this. Even when I sat down, I was not excited. It didn’t live up to the hype as social media has been blasting. Again, another Marvel film being a Marvel film except it was created in the hands of someone new, and thus it was a bit different.

[s0022228a2film-blog]

R. Creative Investigation - Collated Quotes

Style

“they sent me this script and i really liked it, it was very strong. i had never really done something that was more of a horror film, and its funny, because those are the kind of movies that i like probably more than any genre. The script had images in it that i liked - the windmill, the tree of the dead - although i’m not a big horse fan. And its a fascinating story, a story that a lot of people know but that nobody’s really read.”

“succeeded in fitting together in such a way that shifts Alice towards a character that is suddenly more ‘Burtonian’ having an overtly melancholy relationship with her own childhood.” 

“in the end, however, Sleepy Hollow is a Tim Burton film…. something unmistakably the directors own”   

“Burton’s curious ability to rethink anything…. as an experiment in expressionist autobiography is yet again in evidence” 

“when i reread the story, so many elements came together: the Gothic setting, the air of mystery, and the sense that the town itself has a kind of sleepiness to it” 

“its always a great challenge to walk that line between reality and fantasy” 

“ Experiencing his brand of cinema is a lot like walking into an abandoned amusement park, or a haunted carnival, or a nightmarish circus—it’s entertaining—and even endearing at times, but it’s also extremely dark and deeply disturbing”

“ defines exactly what “Burtonesque” is, from the concept of the “heroic loner” to his surrealistic humor”

“ In terms of cinematic style, Burton’s films are—interesting. They’re dark, demented, and nightmarish, but they also have a strange innocence and element of childlike wonder, too. He creates a dichotomy between the gothic and idyllic—the dark and the light—but since it’s Burton, the darks and lights are warped by the funhouse mirror of his creativity” 

“every film is designed to within an inch of its life, with the mise en scene and visual motifs providing so much of what should be considered typical Burton” 

“most of his productions are not filmed on location but on studio sets, often at  great expense, which allows Burton complete control to realise these stunning visual ideas”

“Burton rarely employs tension or suspense”

“it normally does not take more than a few seconds of screen time to realise that you are watching a Burton movie. this is because he employs a number of recurring themes and motifs that create a cohesive and personal vision. in some senses you are not watching a Tim Burton film, but entering his world”

“the key to Burton’s approach with his film projects lies in the way he takes an established genre and twists it” 

“this goes a long way to explain the rare filmic charm of Burton’s work” (explaining how others have been influenced by his style)

“they are the embodiment of a nostalgic youth - the wonder of discovery - like opening up a musty book on a windy night and being unsure as to what’s inside” (talking of Burton’s films in the contest of genre)

“it is the overall aesthetic cohesion that makes his work stand out. conceptually he is far removed from the mainstream, and yet is successful enough to ensure that his name on a film is eminently marketable”

“the project must be right and the studios willing to cough up the cash - but its a price worth paying for what is undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s most fascinating directors”

“Burton’s Sleepy Hollow straddles the border between dark parody and pastiche. The film provides adept commentary on authorship in fairy tales and folktales”

“No contemporary director-producer has as deliciously macabre a signature as Tim Burton”

“ In the garden of Miss Peregrine’s home, there is a topiary of a dinosaur, a reference to one of Tim Burton’s earlier films, Edward Scissorhands (1990), in which the main character, Edward, cuts the shape of a dinosaur into a shrub”

“ Every person in Wonderland/Underland has a proper name. These names were invented for this movie, as in the books and most other movie versions, they are referred to only by descriptive titles…  The size-changing potions are likewise named for the first time”  

“ He has a say in everything present in each scene, from the actors to the symbols ever present in his films that help tell the narrative and reach audiences on a sub-conscious level”

Themes

“the majority of burtons previous films have been fuelled by his strong sense of identification with his lead characters, and his identification in Sleepy Hollow is just as personal, if less obvious.” 

“for burton, sleepy hollows setting is as important as his identification with Ichabod Crane.”

“Burton’s inner world oscillates between a dark almost autistic mode, and carnivalesque display; it is populated by mutations and disguises” 

“she thus represents Burton’s first major female character, stubborn and determined”

 “it is a key to Burton’s universe that only the truly terrified and alone… can face up to the monsters and earn the reward the romantic fulfillment”

“ The Melancholy Death Of An Oyster Boy & Other Stories conveys the pain of an adolescent outsider” 

“like Tim Burton’s movies, the work manages to be both childlike and sophisticated, blending the innocent with the macabre”

“one of the original images in my mind was a character who lies in his head versus a character with no head. i always though it was symbolically wonderful” 

“ In terms of the narrative, Burton’s films, at least from this time, tend to feature a protagonist that Brubaker calls the “heroic loner”, which is quite a departure from the traditional underdog hero that was (and still is) popular in films in that Burton’s heroes aren’t lowly nerds that desire companionship or acceptance from others in their community. His heroes are lowly nerds/goths/super crime fighters that are 100% happy with their lonely existence secluded from others”

“the origins of a character, particularly concerning their parents (or lack of them), form a significant contribution to their psyche”

“the bastard sons of Frankenstein”“the grotesque” “stripes and swirls” “weird sciences and domestic appliances” “television” “snow” “dogs” “Godzilla” “Tim Burton” all of these are key features in multiple Burton’s films, they are almost always present somewhere in the film, all representing something.

“the links between horror, folk tale and fantasy genres have always been strong”

“He has produced a body of work that that focuses on the outcasts of society. his villains are rarely resolutely evil - they’re normally misunderstood. the traditional narrative techniques exist in his films, but secondary to image and feeling”

“Often Burton portrays the normal people, the powerful people, and the conventionally beautiful people as possessing deep character flaws, and the entrenched systems of discourse in which they participate as pervasively corrupt”

“ His films are characteristically quirky; they explore concepts that could never exist in the real world. Since his films are so typically ‘fantasy’, audiences come to expect quirky, unusual stories when a film is associated with him. However, even though they feature things that do not really exist, the films are centred around themes that are very human and relatable”

“ His films also explore social issues such as peer pressure and conformity”

Influences 

“Although Burton has acted as his own producer since Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollows production duties were handled by Scott Rudin and Adam Schroeder.”

“Alice is neither frivolous nor carefree: she believes in her dreams. I liked Mia Wasikowska’s seriousness and maturity”

“Ricci seems a natural inhabitant of Burton’s world, her broad, child-woman face blank in adoration of her deeply embarrassed swain, credibly witchlike, chaste but not asexual, clearly willing to step into madness if that’s what it takes to join the man she loves” 

“i wanted to make a film that was respectful to the source material but also tapped into some of the visual influences of the classic hammer horror films of the 1950′s 1960′s”

“expressionism if fundamental to the Burton ethos and many of the classics of early German cinema seen to have had an effect on his work, perhaps because of saturation of images that came from these influential films” 

. “what makes a Burton film so magical is the influence of past absurdities and eccentricities”

“he doesn’t intentionally waste studio money, but follows his instincts as to what he would like to see” 

“Burton has said, he tended to sleep between twelve and fourteen hours a day, a fair amount of his time on the job. To trick his employers, he often dozed upright with a pen in one hand (Salisbury 1995, 10). During this sluggish period, Burton produced some short films such as Vincent (1982), Hansel and Gretel (1982), and Frankenweenie (1984)”  

“Burton primarily discusses his familiarity with contemporary versions of the tale, giving a vague impression that he may never have read Irving’s story that closely for inspiration” (talking of sleepy hollow)

“Burton has spoken on one or two occasions about his influences, including fairy tales:

Because I never read, my fairy tales were probably those monster movies. To me they’re fairly similar. I mean, fairy tales are extremely violent and extremely symbolic and disturbing

I think I’ve always liked the idea of fairy tales or folktales, because they’re symbolic of something else. There’s a foundation to them, but there’s more besides, they’re open to interpretation… . So I think I didn’t like fairy tales specifically. I liked the idea of them more” 

“His philosophy of life and film is partly shaped by the possibilities he has long seen in the realm of dark cinematic fantasy”

“In particular, he has commented repeatedly on the importance of his early hero, actor Vincent Price, and the cinematic adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe”

“ Tim Burton aimed to use as few digital effects as possible; “It was nice to shoot on location, to be connected to a place, and geography, while having people actually floating, as opposed to doing it all digitally”

“ Ransom Riggs’ novel was partly inspired by otherworldly vintage photographs, one of them being a cover-shot of a levitating girl. The author collected these at flea markets, included them in the book, and later showed them all to Tim Burton, before filming began”

“In the books, Olive is one of the youngest girls, and has the ability to float. The inhumanly strong Bronwyn, is around the same age as Jake and Emma, and Emma has the ability to control fire. In the film, the ages of Olive and Bronwyn, and the abilities of Olive and Emma, are switched, with Emma also gaining the ability to control air” 

“ Before Tim Burton was involved with the project, Anne Hathaway was offered the titular role of Alice, but she turned it down because it was too similar to other roles she had previously played. However, she was keen to work with Burton, so was pleased to be cast as the White Queen. She shot all her scenes in two weeks”

“ Tim Burton and Johnny Depp worked hard to give the Mad Hatter more depth and presence than in past portrayals. In fact, the pair swapped sketches and themes for the character prior to creating this new version” 

“ He was very introspective, looking at things in a symbolic and very poetic way. While he was not an avid reader, he did identify with the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl for its imagery and symbolism” 

[krisrampersad]

My Discoverie Columbus Lost and Found from New World To Old LettersToLizzie Sneak Preview

Dear Lizzie,

I discovered Columbus when I was about four years old and then I lost him again to rediscover him one fine sunset, his parts cut up and scattered across my world and yours, the way he cut up our continent and our peoples that became Your Majesty’s Empire.

Early explorations

I still remember the expression on his face. Pa looks baffled. So far, he is able to answer all my questions that end-of-July morning - the kind of morning that begins with sunshine warming the weathered unvarnished wooden gallery, bathing it in soft light and lending a calm cosy to the holiday feel. But every farmer’s daughter knows – if she took the time from the more pressing global inquisitionings – a day like this could brew thunder and torrential rains by mid-afternoon.

I must have agitated him, this early morn. He asks me to bring him a cigarette – his brand, named after an avenue in the city - and a box of matches.

I hand him a Three-Plumes match from its yellow box, a product of Trinidad Match Limited since 1887, it reads. I could read. Before that it was just a yellow box with red markings, and the dark red scratch sides. Reading material was scarce in rural Trinidad so I had taken to reading anything I could find and that usually was the packaging of any item. I would later learn that 1887 was the year Parisiens began to lay the foundation for the Eiffel Tower; and that Britain passed the Act to unite Trinidad with Tobago as it celebrated the golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria, just like your recent jubilee celebrations, and ours, Liz.

Pa scratches the match against the side of the box like my sister would, some years later, do a scratch lottery. It flares over the edge of the cigarette and flickers out, leaving a light stream of smoke behind it. He put it to his lips, leans back, closes his eyes and draws hard on the tobacco that has soothed many a shamanistic and other agitated spirits for millennia. It has also attracted as gold many-a-pilferer, marauder and cutthroat pirate to our parts from yours, as you well know, Dear Liz.

It is rare discovery for me as a child - Pa at home at this time of a morning. He is usually long gone by the time we are up, usually awake from 2 am. We would know from his deep coughing, caused by a head cold he caught working as a forester in his younger days which would hasten his end of days. By peek of dawn he would have already left for the vegetable garden or to the market to sell its produce that was our main source of income.

Now, facing the onslaught of curiosity, he is perhaps wishing he had kept this routine and head out early as I bounce around him in the early morning trying to get answers for these enormously challenging thoughts of universal import that collide like meteors in my child’s mind.

“So how did Columbus discover Trinidad?” The question pops into my head and pops out of my mouth as questions tend to do from near-four year olds. I am conjuring up a pale man in fancy pants, frilly shirt and embroidered waistcoat with funny wavy white hair dripping down to his shoulders as I had seen in my sisters’ history book. Reading material was often limited to their text books and I would take sneak peaks, thumbing through them to see the pictures. They open-up the windows of my imagination.

In my child’s mind, Columbus is now unfurling - from over our island and pulling onto his ship - an enormous sheet bellowing out with the wind. I had watched many times as Ma or one of my sisters made our beds, shaking out a freshly washed bed sheet. It would bellow out, before settling on the bed. The process of covering and uncovering and surely discovering too, was a normal household routine. 

Though he never complained nor showed annoyance, it is the kind of question that probably made Pa, the object of my incessant questioning, wish I was in that place where all precocious youngsters are sent so someone else would answer their impossible questions about how the world works - school. I am not yet enrolled in any of the illustrious British-styled public schools – the legacy of your Governor Lord Harris and subsequent governments, Lizzie - which were sure to offer the answers to these impertinent thoughts of an infant. The closest ones are just about a mile in any direction to one of which I was destined to walk to and from, sometimes barefooted, over the next seven years – tall punishment for a few questions – talk about how curiosity kills the cat, as schools kill curiosity!

Ma calls out to me. She ladles out boiling cocoa from a big iron pot resting on the mud fireside with a metal kalchul which she bought from Mawah in Princes Town. She would go to the town just to chat with Mawah’s mother, leaving me to wander around looking at all the curiosities in this shop that seems to have everything, including the traditional wooden kulcha, and flat wooden dablas used to turn roti on the chulha, dhal ghotnis of all sizes – wooden swizzle stick with zig-zag edges on its round base and the biggest enamel basins and iron pots one could imagine.

The utensils for its preparation might have evolved, but not centuries and several languages and cultural adaptations could alter cocoa, the pre-Ice Age plant, more than 21,000 years old, and its primordial connections as food of the gods across world cultures. Even European botanists could find no better substitute than to translate its value - Theobroma (Theo/god; broma/food) and the echo of its ancient MesoAmerican/Caribbean, pre Olmec, preMayan roots: kakaw with slight variations in inflections: Theobroma cacao. Today, its most common global identification as chocolate still echoes its ancient primordial resonance. Once Columbus helped Europe discover it, there was no turning back. Cocoa now covers some 17 million acres of global soil, with nearly 4 million tonnes produced every year. It has become the foundation of Swiss identity, and a catalyst for the centre of social interaction in kingdoms far and wide. A global strategy for the conservation and use of cacao genetic resources as the foundation for a sustainable cocoa economy now guides an International Cocoa Organisation, an international network of cocoa producers and International Cocoa Genome Sequencing Consortium who meet annually to upgrade strategy, redefine directions for the future of chocolate, its by-products and co-industries.

Though no longer a formal currency as it was used in mesoAmericans - about 100 beans could then get one a finely handwoven shawl - with increasing scientific evidence that it reduces high blood pressure and can positively impact cancer and cholesterol rates, I’m sure, Liz, that you concur with women the world over who testify that this remains one of god’s essential provisions of heaven on earth.

To the steaming cup of fresh cocoa, its oil already forming a film around the edges of the cup, Ma adds a touch of bliss. She tilts the condensed milk can into a bluey-green enamel cup, stirs it and hands it to me.

‘Careful, it hot!’ she warns, nodding in Pa’s direction. Ma is not one for much words.

I walk back to the gallery tentatively. The oil, temporarily disturbed, returns to curl around the edges of the cup. The aromatic steam of cinnamon, clove, bayleaf, nutmeg and cocoa drift out and up. You would agree, Dear Lizzie, in that moment, it is not difficult to understand why Europe turned half the world upside down, raided east and west, and went to war for the likes of this.

I hand the cup to Pa and run back into the kitchen. Ma hands me a smaller version of the same bluey-green enamel cup, with own serving of ‘cocoa tea’, though that in itself may violate indigeneous practice that reserved enjoyment of cocoa for ritual use only by men who fought nations for the privilege - the second of four Anglo-Dutch wars was fought over cocoa, in England’s favour, in the 1660s and on which the wealth of the likes of the Dutch East India Company was founded then trading its primary wealth in cocoa beans. As was most other pleasures of primitive planet-of-the-apes type cave-men, cocoa, too, was considered toxic for women and children.

Not so in our wooden dwelling. Ma had spent most of the night grinding the chulha-parched cocoa, adding cinnamon and bayleaf and grated nutmeg, Taking handfuls of the ground cocoa, moist with its own oils, between her palms, she had lovingly moulded them into oval shaped balls. They are already hardening this morning and by tomorrow, before boiling, we would have to grate it on the grater Pa made from pounding holes closely together with a nail onto a piece of galvanise, bending it into a semicircle, and nailing its edges against a short, flat piece of wood.

The still lingering aromas of last night’s cocoa production hang on the wooden floors and walls of the entire house and spill out to envelope the village in the way the porridge from The Magic Porridge Pot had crept out of the house in that Enid Blyton book I would later read.

Pa didn’t seem to think I am violating any gender taboos, either, when I reappear with my own cup of steaming cocoa, which seems to me, on hindsight, a very patriotically appropriate way to commemorate one of the last Discovery holiday days Trinidad and Tobago would know. Indigeneous to Trinidad, the Trinitario is one of the world’s three main varieties of cocoa – a unique offspring of our geo-botanical connections with the South American mainland as a more resilient, higher yielding and natural hybrid of the two others – Forastero and Criolla. For Your Majesty’s information, our cocoa might be old world Americas, but had produced another New World hybrid - the cocoa panyols, an ethnic group of intergenetic mixes between native peoples and other migrant streams who joined them here – Your Majesty’s people, Europeans, Africans, Indians and others.

On this July 31 morn both Pa and I are unaware that it would be some years yet before Apple computer technologies would name its application programme interface (API), cocoa.

The steam from his cup of hybrid cocoa is beginning to subside. Pa takes a sip, inhaling deeply its aroma. I have never seen him this relaxed.

 “Why he not up yet? Wake him?” I ask Pa, nodding in the direction of my brother’s room, hoping for chance at an excursion to visit some other part of Trinidad on this holiday. As my brothers and sisters grew older, our wooden house was expanded over the years: a room added here, a corner boarded in there, and this was a new room my brothers and his friends added at the end of the gallery.

Pa’s answer triggers the steam of questions from my condensed milk-sweetened, cocoa-lubricated tongue.

As he had every Sunday afternoon, my brother had routinely polished the silver angel with its transparent plastic pink-tipped wings perched on the bonnet of his baby blue Cortina taxi the day earlier, before he also lathered the entire car, and himself, to be covered in white soap suds. Sometimes he would cover his whole face and head in suds and try to scare us. He succeeded once when he sneaked up on me. I screamed so loudly, that I stumbled over a root of the enormous chenette tree in our yard in trying to run away from him as he looked like a jab jab from a Carnival band.

Native to our part of the world, the chenette tree, like cocoa, also predates Columbus by thousands of years, and its fruit is known in various pronunciations as genip across South Central America and the Caribbean. The more melodramatic injections into its nomenclature occurred when European botanists wrapped their tongue around its sticky pulp. Discovered for Europe in Jamaica and named by Patrick Brown as he had 103 other genera in the mid-1700s, Brown, an Irish botanist who worked as a doctor across the West Indies also produced A Civil and Natural History of Jamaica until our oh-so-inhospitable-to-Europeans clime sent him a-packing as it has a few others, like the man who invented television whom we will discover later. Brown gave chenette its botanical name, Melioccus bijugatus which was subsequently described and placed in its soapy genus group by Dutch-born Austrian, Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin who has an orchid named after him; had Mozart teach music to his children and named a couple of his pieces after them, and in honour of whose work in the Caribbean, Austria in 2011 issued a special commemorative silver coin issue.

The Spanish dubbed it limoncillo/mamoncillo in some of their territories. Contented to translate rather than rename, the English called it Spanish lime another characteristic misnomer as it is, Liz, most unlike a lime or lemon, as an apple is from an orange. I believe this is the origin of the application of the Trini word ‘lime/liming’ as a pasttime of ‘doing nothing’ or hanging out with friends. The towering chenette tree in our yard was a village icon. A piece of wood nailed to its trunk formed a bench and under its soothing cool became the district’s social hub – for liming, all fours card games and even serious meetings; informal craft groups; Hindi, Bhajan singing and other classes, and village events planning – all right in our front yard. That might be also the original meaning of the word community leadership, until it was endowed with other connotations decades later.  

I did not know any of that technical stuff, then, nor that chenette was a fairly substantive source of calcium, carotene and phosphorous, when as children we sucked the pulp or roasted the seeds, and so indelibly stained our clothes much to Ma’s displeasure. We noticed too, that its stickiness restricted our tongues, but that it also had a constipation effect, also to Ma’s displeasure. She would have to spend sleepless nights as we complained of stomach pains from having gorged too much, though she made sure she had adequate supplies of seina leaves to administer when necessary to relieve constipation. I hear on the grapevine, Liz, that roasted chenette seeds are now gaining currency as a treatment for diarrhoea.

Loved and hated, the tree contributed substantially to our chores as we had to daily sweep up masses of its constantly shedding leaves. Our water copper, used to boil sugar at one time in the once thriving sugar industries, but now serving as our fresh water reservoir, had to be protected from its droppings as it sat directly under the tree. My younger brother and I would splash around in its massive bowl on weekends before emptying it, scrubbing off any moss that had accumulated around its edges and then refilled it with fresh water and covered it with galvanise.

“Why he not up yet,” I ask again, growing impatient as the beautiful day seem to be slipping away.

 I am curious as to why my brother is not stirring in the room in the gallery. He is usually up and out while it was still dark, in the predawn, to take villagers in his Cortina to their workplaces in ‘town’, Princes Town - named, Lizzie, as you know, for your grandpa George V and grand uncle Edward after they visited as princely lads. It was known as Kairi to the native peoples who find Columbuscrawling up our coast, as indeed was the entire island, when Columbus was doing his discovering, until Spanish Catholic missionaries gathered them around a church and school and renamed it Mission. At the time of your grandsire’s visit, Lizzie, it was then little more than a few scattered shacks with the church and school set up by Spanish Catholics. A later school and church, set up by missionaries from your then North American colony – Canada - will conjure up the old name, Iere, but shortly after their visit, it was proclaimed Princes Town, a name it still holds.  

It must please Your Majesty to know that the two poui trees the Princes planted in the yard of the Church of England in the town also still stand, 134 years later. So far they are winning the battle to resist the giant tropical termites whose Queen, leading her colony of nymphs and soldiers, are constantly waging war, threatening to make a meal of the princely pouis.

Princes Town itself has grown into its name, and out of it too – maybe ready for city status even, if the powers that be would take note - as it is now aggressively edging off what used to be the lush tropical rain forests described by your writer-traveller, Charles Kingsley who, At Last, made it here for A Christmas in the West Indies in the latter half of the 1800s. It must have been his writings that brought your grandsires here; and certainly too, geological reports of the 1850s eruption of the mud volcano at what the Spanish had labelled Devil’s Woodyard that had also attracted Kingsley. The indigeneous people’s had long worshipped at it for its connections with the mysterious underworld that provided the trees, fruits and roots that nourished them. The boggy soil and forested district did not deter Kingsley continuing the journey to Devil’s Woodyard, but your grandsires were waylaid by the pomp of planting of the pouis, as you may know since it is part of the Royal lore.

Princes Town now continues to encroach on the once-canefields that provided the raw materials for the sugar, molasses and rum factories that augmented British waistlines and coffers. You may want to know, Lizzie, that this town, named for your grandsires, has done the empire proud, with reputedly the highest numbers of drinkers in the country – one of your Empire’s enduring legacies in these parts from the practice of paying estate workers near rumshops - but that’s for another letter, to come.

But it was not rum in my Pa’s cup this July morn. I’ve never known him to be excessive with the bottle, but he didn’t abstain either. He is drawing patience from the aromatic, freshly brewed cocoa in the enamel cups Ma bought from the lady in the store crammed with enamel and other household paraphernalia in Princes Town. Ma and the lady would stand for hours chatting away in Bhojpuri while I wander around the overstocked shop.

Though they never spoke the Trinidad-adapted Indian language, nor Hindi, to us, both Pa and Ma could read and write Hindi. They could both read and write only a smattering of English and by that were defined as illiterate. So this conversation on this morning about our Discovery with my Pa is in your mother tongue, Liz; which Pa and Ma had adopted for us, though it was not their mother tongue, in which, if I may humbly point out, Your Majesty, versed as you are in one of some of the European languages, might yourself be considered illiterate.

The oil from the cocoa hangs on to the top of Pa’s lips, forming an artificial moustache on his hairless face and head. It made him look funny and a laugh is trying to force its way through the many serious questions on my lips. I held it back - the laugh; it is the questions I can’t stem from pouring out.

I have never known Pa to have hair on his face, nor head either. The baldness makes him look stern at times. Villagers call him The Sheriff and sometimes I knew why. His grey eyes would blaze right through you when his lips tremble and his voice raise in anger. In those times I know not to ask the questions about how the world works that popped into my head and onto my tongue as somethings more perplexing must be troubling him. Like how he would feed his family because someone had crept into the garden that night and stole all the crops he had nurtured over the last months which he hoped to sell so we could have what household things we need. I’d bite my lip to keep the thoughts in, then.

Not now. This mild morning, sipping his home-made cocoa, he is as mellow as the Eastern spices in it. 

“He not going to work because it is a holiday today,” he is answering my question about my brother’s late-sleeping, while I try to suppress my giggle over the milk-moustache over his upper lip. An unusual quiet hang over the village, serene, without the routine morning bustle of people getting ready of school, for work. Few others are stirring, taking advantage of this ‘holiday’. My mind is on high drive.

“What holiday?” I ask, perked.

“Discovery Day.” He even seems a bit happy, then, to be home to sagely field the curiosity of his youngest daughter; you will understand anew, Liz, as you have a couple lil great grand royal ones around that age now added to your household.  

“What is Discovery Day?”  The questions keep popping out of my head, spilling onto my tongue and out of my mouth, even before I know they are there.

“It is the day Christopher Columbus discovered Trinidad.” Pa had never gone to one of the British-type schools but he always knows all the answers, it seems. And though he could not read any of the storybooks, which are my presents on birthday and Christmas, he could talk about any topic under the sun, I thought, and he could recite the whole Ramayan in its strange Sanskrit or Hindi text and explain the strange parables in the lines as villagers often called on him to do. And he could study any Whe Whe chart with their strange Chinamen faces and letters and tell what number would play at the man they called ‘the banker’ who functions from a secret place because Whe Whe is illegal and police is always searching for the law-breakers like him.

Pa was no longer with us in the mid-90s when the post-Independent Trinidad and Government introduced a legal machine-driven version of the game which licence operator through a selective process. The traditional version, still illegal, has remained popular; the official version has the audacity to often complained that it takes about fifty million $TT (five million Great Britain Pounds) away from the State every year! Maybe if he was still around with the million-dollar jackpots we could win a million or two; or I could have won him a million or two. Here’s how.

Pa liked to bet on my dreams. He said I had ‘straight dreams’ and would even send me to sleep in mid-afternoon so I could tell him what I dream for the evening betting session, as the Whe Whe banker ‘opened the bank’ morning and evening. As he didn’t scoff at whatever my overactive imagination churned up in my dreams, he made me confident of dreaming. I guess he neverthought I would make a career of this dreaming thing. He would ask me for a number to bet on and would always place a bet on my choice saying I gave him straight wins. That made me warm inside, like freshly boiled cocoa tea sweetened with condensed milk. When I helped him win a bet he would give me a five-cent coin; or if it was a big win, a shilling, which I popped into the wooden piggy bank that did not look much like a pig. He had made it for me with the small slit at the top to throw in the coin and a wedge at the bottom that twisted out to let the coins drop out. With those savings, I could buy myself whatever I wanted for Christmas or anytime, no questions asked. As I began to read, ‘anything’ was almost invariably story books, of course, like The Magic Porridge Pot. Even before starting school, I was already an avid listener to my sisters reading to me, and to unending epic romances Pa would roll out night after night, mostly from some secret store in his imagination that none of us can remember, though it was a childhood experience that none of us can forget.

I guess he thinks that his last answer, ‘Discovery Day’, would quell my questionings. He lights another Broadway. I know it as his favourite brand because he would send my brother or sisters, and me when he thought I was old enough to walk the road alone, to Ganesh, the village shopkeeper, to buy. On days when market sales were good he would buy a whole carton. We would know to ask for DuMaurier, instead, only when Braodway was out of stock because the sales van only came into the village once a week.

Though smoking tobacco seems now to be more identified with the Frenchman, Jean Nicot de Villemain, (hence nicotine) who took it to the French court in the mid 1500’s after Columbus introduced it to Europe following his discovering it on his first voyage in the region the natives called Haiti, but which Columbus called Hispaniola, my father was participating in a 7000-year old kingly shamanistic tradition of the Caribbean and the Americas -  a tradition now practiced by nearly two billion people across the globe, despite an intensive and powerful anti-smoking lobby. One can sniff new tensions in the air as recent research and development suggests smoking as a potential cure for high blood pressure, asthma and tuberculosis. A new odourless, tasteless white protein extract from its leaves promises to be every masterchef’s dream ingredient as a salt-free, fat- and cholesterol-free low-calorie substitute for mayonnaise and whipped cream and can take on the flavour and texture of several foods and beverages.

Oblivious to all of that, engrossed in inhaling, Pa is unaware that smoking tobacco was considered - by the people who first inhabited our soil before Columbus and his bunch decimated them - a divine gift. They believed its exhaled smoke carried one's thoughts and prayers to heaven. Pa looks the part, shamanistic, dreaming and relaxed as if communing with some higher authority as he ease back on the wooden bench he had made with his saw, chisel and smoothing plane. I had gathered up the chippings that fell of the plane and put them in the fowl coub, as we called it, behind the house. My fowl pet had just had chicks – eight little yellow delights that I would feed on scraps of left over roti and rice while talking to them about the unfolding mysteries of the universe. I had a pet goat too, that I untied and took to graze on roadside grasses on evenings. There was much to do, but first I had to finish with this inquisition.

I absorb his answer: ‘Today, Discovery Day, was the day Christopher Columbus discovered Trinidad.’ Something did not fit there. My chick’s mind isn’t sure what it is. I know Christopher Columbus from the picture with the three triangle ships in my sister’s school book. Once, when I am visiting some relatives, one of their children had a Ladybird book about Columbus. He is in fancy pants and long shoulder long white ‘hair’ which I would later learn was a wig that fancy Europeans and massa-like Trini people in courts and the Parliament like to wear. In the picture book, Columbus’ shirt is bellowing in the wind. He looks soft and effeminate as European men in their garb of that era. His three ships of varying sizes are on the sea behind him. Black haired, wide-eyed, brown people are peering at him from the bushes. Maybe it is they who discovered him; not he discovered them. That’s how thought pop into my head and out of my mouth.

“So how Christopher Columbus discover Trinidad?”

My question brings Pa back from where he had gone with the warm cocoa inside him and the cigarette already nearly half done. 

He looks at me. “You would know all about that when you start school.” It did not cross my mind that he did not have an answer and that the question was baffling many others more than my own child’s mind.

Pa calls out to Ma. “You ready?” That is his cue for her to accompany him to the garden – having for the morning, already finished washing the clothes of all of us, prepared breakfast and made lunch too, cleaned the house and washed the dishes.

My rare morning discovering our Discovery with my Pa at home is over. I scramble up to accompany them to the garden, not waiting to be asked; secretly hoping that might get some more answers.

The giant bedsheet bellowing out from over the island and collapsing on Columbus’ ship settle in my mind’s eye, before which also swirls experiences of cocoa, chenette, and tobacco, all of which predated Columbus’ discoverings, and the eastern spices and we who came thereafter.  

When the sun rose that July 31, it was only the dawn to a near lifelong quest for my holy grail – knowledge of it all, and uncovering the puzzles of the discovery of Trinidad that was before Columbus discovered then. It has taken me to many parts and through many sunsets.

Even though Discovery Day has been wiped off the calendar, he still haunts the landscape, and is stamped on national emblems inspiring the false knowledge that marked his own Discoverie, and mine.

 One fine sunset, then another, then another, I gathered and pieced together the skeletal knowledge in the bones he had scattered all over the Caribbean from Puerto Rico through Cuba, Santo Domingo, across Jamaica and your colonial archipelago to Trinidad, from Mexico to Argentina, and the Americas and across in Europe through Barcelona and Seville and Italy, Portugal, and Spain, as discovered, too, Columbus’ own bones. Scattered in pieces and fragments in which he cut up our land and our history and our Discovery in the blood soaked soil still violently echoing in the bones of ghosts in their sleep-walking dreaming state they tell one story. But for me gathering the pieces, like our collective story, they spoke to me of the yet undiscovered El Dorado, at treasure trove of buried knowledge echoing down the ages even now, through little known corridors and crannies, the knowledge bridge from Columbus to us that can soothe and calm like cocoa balm when cocoa is no longer god, nor king, but you still a Queen, Your Majesty, Dear Lizzie.  

****

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[theroadworriers-blog]

Una vez mas en Mexico (One more time in Mexico

The temperature is somewhere between 75 and 80 degrees F. I am sitting at a table on a covered terrace facing the pool. Behind me, I can hear the waves of the Gulf of Mexico gently licking at the sand on the beach. The day began with some promise but now clouds are invading the sky and I doubt we will see much sun. Stil, I KNOW we won't see any f**king snow and that's a good thing.

We are presently in a little village near the nortwestern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula called Chelem. It is located on a long sandy spit just 11 kms from Progreso; a fairly well known sun destination.

We are ensconced in a large-ish studio apartment on the ground level of a beachfront villa. The villa features two one-bedroom apartments at the foot of the property beside the gate with the owner's residence situated at the beach end. The property is owned by a Canadian gentleman named Bob who happens to hail from Ottawa. The villa is nice looking and has promise but is in sore need of refurbishing. It happens to be up for sale and, after a little more than 36 hours in Chelem, I can say with certainty that we would not buy this, or any other property in Chelem,under almost any circumstances.

We flew out of Ottawa on Saturday February 18th. The weather was perfect. After a terrible aeroport breakfast of hard-poached eggs on a sliver of toast we arrived at our gate to see our plane at the gate a posted announcement that the flight was delayed by about 75 minutes 'at the request of Air Traffic Control'. The alarm bells begin to go off. You see, we were flying into Cancun and the Cancun aeroport is notoriously busy on Saturdays. It turns out that the volume on this particular Saturday was so great that Mexican authorities had requested (demanded??) that flights be delayed to spread out the traffic. Okay so no big deal. 

Our Westjet flight was one of those without any form of in-flight entertainment (unless, of course, you find listening to screaming children and watching frazzled parents entertaining). Instead, you have to download the Westjet app which allows you to access music, films, etc. Now I have, in fact, downloaded this app but, being dinosaurs from the Ikea age, this last thing we wanted to do was huddle over a 10-inch screen to watch a film we can barely hear. We had lots of reading material and we survived. For some inexplicable reason, the flight attendants handed us the wrong immigration forms to fill out before arrival. The ones they gave us were for Mexican nationals, were entirely in Spanish and did not include the mandatory visa portion. So we had to fill out new forms in the (barely) controlled chaos of the terminal. Then the fun really began.

Our plan was to rent a car and immediately set out for a town called Rio Lagartos, situated roughly halfway between Cancun and Chelem, which is the home of Mexico's world famous and justly popular pink flamingoes. Had everythng been on schedule we would have landed at 3:10 and been on the road heading out of Cancun by about 5:00. Unfortunately, we arrive close to 90 minutes behind schedule and, because of all of the staggered arrivals, the terminal was full of people being told to step out of line to fill out the proper visa forms. The volume of people and vehicles outside the terminal made it difficult for the shuttles to the rental agencies to easily get through. Once at the car rental (which shall remain nameless but has the initials 'Thrifty') we had to wait 15-20 minutes to get to an agent and he took 20 more minutes to process our request which, let us not forget, had been booked in advance. Sigh! We love Mexico but loving Mexico means accepting that things are often done at Mexican time. Once processed, we waited close to an hour - AN HOUR - for them to bring us our vehicle. A new standard, even for Mexico. By now the sun had set which meant we would be driving close to three hours in darkness. And it has been years since I have driven a vehicle with so few 'extras'. No power locks, power windows, cruise control, power seats, nothing. Even the trunk is opened with a key. I guess that's what rentals of $2.00/day will get you. But here things began to change. 

Most rental agencies advertise themselves on their vehicles. Thrifty is more subtle than most as the only visible sign is a 'Thrifty' frame around the licence plate. The problem is that those agency identifiers also identify the occupants as visitors or, in other words, prey. Our car, luckily, had no such identifier. I think Thrifty was too embarrassed to proclaim that this was one of their cars. Still, that lack may spare us some irritation in the coming weeks.

The first half of our drive to Rio Lagartos was on the well-maintained four-lane toll highway to Valladolid. From there we had to take a two-lane road north for more than 100 kms to Lagartos. Roughly half way up this road is a large town called Timizin. They have fire and the wheel in Timizin but it seems that the notion of 'a straight line' has quite reached there yet.. To travel from the south end to the north involves several twists and turns and, inevitably we missed a turn and wound up going the wrong way down a one-way street. And two municipal cops pulled us over. Neither spoke a word of english or french but we muddled through with my spanish and, after only a minute or two, the policemen offered to lead us out of town. It took a while and there was at least one time when Diane and I both thought that they were leading us to the jail (or worse) but eventually we reached the northen town limits on the right road (with a sign indicating Rio Lagartos). As we made our way uninterrupted through town, with one of the policemen flashing his red and blue lights and no one daring to cut in or pass, Diane said that it felt like we were the President driving slowly through town. I guess they REALLY wanted us out of town. At the end we thanked our new friends who replied that they were happy to be of service and we went our separate ways.

We finally arrived at Rio Lagartos at around 9:30 local time (10:30 our time) having eaten nothing but a few chips since noon. Our fear was that the hotel would be closed for the night. That fear was unfounded. As we pulled up a young woman received us, checked us in while I apologized for our late arrival, showed us to our room, bade us good night, and then proceeded to lock up the hotel. The kitchen at the local restaurant was closed but they served us a very good guacamole with two satisfying adult beverages and we called it a day.

There are two claims to fame for this area of Mexico. One is the habitat for the pink flamingoes and the other is the salt lagoons; also pink. To see the pink flamingoes involves a three-hour boat ride. We were tired and we had forgotten to set our clocks back one hour so, thinking it was already a little late, we decided to pass on the boat tour. We did, however take a short detour to see the pink salt lagoons. The water was bright pink. So CHECK on the salt lagoons.

From there we had to retrace our route to Timizin where we failed to encounter our new police friends (nor did we go the wrong way down one-way streets for that matter). We went west a ways then turned north to a little place called Dzilam el Bravo where begins a coastal road that takes us right to Progreso. I looked at a map and was assured that Dzilam el Bravo is not, in fact, at the end of the world but I swear you can see it from there. Anyway, as we drove west along the coast there is a lot of marsh and, eventually, a large lagoon. We stumbled onto a few more salt lagoons and then, suddenly, there were around 40 or so pink flamingoes. From the Department of useless trivia; flamingoes are born grey but they feed in briny water (which tends to be pinkish) and the creatures on which they feed contain a particular mix of chemicals that causes them, and eventually the plummage of the flamingoes, to become pink. So we saw the flamingoes feeding. CHECK!

All along the road to Progreso there are visible signs of construction as more and more wealthy people, many of them expat Canadians and Americans, build villas or condos. Paradise lost? When we arrived in Progreso one of the first things I did was start down the wrong way on a one-way. Luckily I noticed immediately and corrected my error. I suspect the locals knew then that we were turistas even without the Thrifty logos.

Progreso is a fishing village that is being converted into a tourist centre, in part due to the proximity of Merida some 40 kms away inland. The sea here is shallow so they have built a giant pier that extends some 6.5 kms into the gulf. The main reason for this was to draw cruise ships which now make Progreso a regular stop. There are apparently a number of decent restaurants in Progreso which we will try to sample over the next couple of days. When we arrived Sunday there was at least one cruise ship in town (so to speak) and thousands of people were strolling the beachfront malecon. At first glance the beaches were not as impressive as the ones on the Riviera Maya south of Cancun or even as attractive as those near Puerto Vallarta. Traffic was incredibly slow. Between Progreso and Chelem is village called Yucalpeten. It features a large sheltered marina and' I believe, a small shipyard. Apart from the marina (if you like marinas) the town does not appear to have any redeeming qualities except, maybe, low prices. I suspect Progreso and Chelem have become too pricey for the locals and many of them now live in Yucalpeten.

Our instructions were a little vague and, being without a working phone for the moment, it took a little while to navigate our way to our lodgings. The owner has two small black dogs. One, mostly scotch terrier, is aloof and barks a lot. The other looks like a pug-bulldog mix and is very sociable. His name is Yogi. Diane is allergic to dogs which seems to serve as a magnet for Yogi, who whined at our door for Diane this morning. I know this because he all but ignored me as I stepped outside.

Yesterday was a lazy day of checking out the beach in front of the villa (it is badly eroded and probably not a lot of fun to swim in) basking by the pool and catching up on our reading and sleep, in no particular order. Today we will brave the masses (there is another ship in town) and explore Progreso a bit. Tomorrow will probably be more of the same. Thursday we head to Merida to celebrate Carnaval and explore some more. Guy

[deliriousscenarios]

Aww. I hope you are feeling better now, but not gonna lie I was really happy that I got to lift your mood a bit. Last time I forgot to "sign" but it was me, Adorable Baepsae. I have been doing good, but I'm gonna go cry in a corner because classes are almost starting again. Btw, are you sure your favorite band is BTS? I was pretty sure it was GOT7. 😂 Anyways, you said you like old books, can you tell me some you have read? Bc I really love books, but I'm kind of running out of them?😂 -AB

Hey my sweet baby!! Gosh! Always bringing light into my life, even when I don't know it's you! ^^ thank you so, my sweet A.B!! It sucks you've gotta go back, but I'm sure the rest of the year will fly by and then it'll be summer and you can relax away the stress of your stellar first year ^^ honestly, I'm super proud of you, and I don't doubt for even a second you're gonna ace the second half of the academic year too! Good luck, my babeh, I'll be cheering you on the whole way! 😁😁😁 🎉🎉🎉Lmfao! My love for both groups is so hard to explain, but I promise musically it's BTS. Every comeback they remind me exactly why I rate them so highly (speaking of.... FEBRUARY IS COMING!!!!!! 😱😱😱). Don't get me wrong, Got7 are a close blooming second, and Def Soul almost ties for first. Forgive me, Army, I am not loyal! 😅😅😅 but yeah, for now, it's BTS ^^I do like old books, my sweet, but I probably should have specified, I like the way the old pages smell the most. I find it super soothing, lmfao. I'll recommend a mixture of old and new, if that's okay ^^ also, I think this is gonna be a long list, so I'll put this in a read more ^^ that, and I'm super extra and can't do anything without rambling so forgive me in advance!

(Things in bold = Highly recommend)

A few Golden Oldies/Classics - A Picture of Dorian Grey (Oscar Wilde) - Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)- Animal Farm (George Orwell)- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (Lewis Carroll)- Goodnight Mister Tom (Michelle Magorian)(Technically this book came out in the 80's but it's still amazing, and I consider it a classic)- Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)- Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)(Can I just say now, this novel is heartbreaking, but bloody beautiful. I had to read it for GCSE English and I fell in love immediately)- A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess)(This is from the 60's but it's another classic. Though prior warning, the storyline is a lot messed up, but it's a really interesting read. It's honestly so good! Way better than the film, and the film wasn't even terrible. It's a pretty easy read too, I literally read it in a day. It's only like 170 something pages ^^)- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)(Another one from the 60's but a classic if ever I saw one. This book is the whole reason I got into reading Sci Fi)- Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)- Jaws (Peter Benchley)(This is from the 70's and not quite a classic just yet, despite how famous the film is, but it's actually really good and worth reading at least once ^^)- Wicked (Gregory Maguire)(Now, this book came out in '95, so technically is neither old nor a classic but as far as I'm concerned it's the best classic there's ever gonna be!! I can't even begin to put into words how much I love this book. It's actually really different to the musical (which I also adore with all my heart) and I have to sort of separate them in my head when I watch/read them but it is one my all time favourites. I read the book before watching it, so the book will always have a special place in my heart. I recommend this to absolutely everyone. IT IS AMAZING!!)

I've realised that nearly all the books I've "highly recommended" are actually lacking in the romance department, so incase that's what you were most interested in, my babeh, in this section, I'll only recommend romance ^^

- Dinner With A Vampire (Abigail Gibbs)(Forewarning: Kaspar starts out as a complete and total dick, but I can't help loving him anyway! I have issues apparently)(contains mild smut sort of but isn't supposed to be the main focus, I've just got a one track mind, lmfao)- Experiment in Terror Series (Karina Halle)(Unless you don't like supernatural reads, then I wouldn't touch these with a ten foot barge pole. It can get quite scary ^^)(These also contain smut but in the later books)- Can You Keep A Secret? (Sophie Kinsella)- The Sky is Everywhere (Jandy Nelson)(This book is freaking amazing, but mainly focuses on grief, the actions that can cause us to make and how it effects our lives moving on from it. This book is beautiful but will probably make you bawl your eyes out)- The Duff (Kody Keplinger)- Saving Wishes (G.J. Walker-Smith)(Honestly, I recommend the whole Wishes series. Especially the second book, Second Hearts. It's my favourite out of all of them)- Anna and the French Kiss (Stephanie Perkins)- Fatal Secrets (Richie Tankersley Cusick)(This is a Point Horror which are no longer being punished but, I still really recommend this and loads of others from the Point Horror Publishers, those books are the true definition of my childhood. They're the whole reason I learnt to read ^^)- Soul Love (Lynda Waterhouse)- This Man Trilogy (Jodi Ellen Malpas)(Pretty much published smut, with a pretty awesome plot. If I hadn't read these books, I probably never would've written smut. This was the one that got me hooked on it ^^)- The Fallen Star Series (Jessica Sorensen)(There's an alternative version to this series that the same author has written and they contain smut, but I read this version first and liked it more, so I haven't read past the first book of the others. They might be good though ^^)- Sweet Addiction (Bk1) & Sweet Possession (Bk2) (J. Daniels) (More published smut with a sort of plotline that maybe doesn't seem to go anywhere. From what I can remember I did think the smut was good tho)- Royals Saga (Geneva Lee) (More smut. I've only read the first two, but I thought they were pretty good ^^)- AfterMath (Denise Grover Swank)(Contains mild smut)

A Very Special Mention:- When God Was A Rabbit (Sarah Winman)(This book is not a romance novel, and the subject matter can get really freaking heavy at times, but this book got to me in a way no other book ever has. I'm not saying this is the most amazing book in the world, or anything like that, but personally, it means so much to me. Before I read this, I was so undecided about my future and always second guessing myself, but as soon as I finished it, I knew 100% I wanna be a writer. I don't even know what it was about it, it just hit me and it hit me hard. For that reason alone, this book will always be my all time favourite)

So, yeah... Just a few to get you started, my sweet A.B, lmfao. I jk, obviously I don't expect you to read all of them, but hopefully you'll find one or two in there you might wanna read ^^ ♡