#2) an episode to introduce a conflict for April in the future | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

greatworldwar2 · 4 years

Text

• Doris Miller

Doris "Dorie" Miller was a United States Navy cook third class. He was the first black American to be awarded the Navy Cross, the second highest decoration for valor in combat after the Medal of Honor.

Miller was born in Waco, Texas, on October 12th, 1919, to Connery and Henrietta Miller. He was named Doris, as the midwife who assisted his mother was convinced before his birth that the baby would be a girl. He was the third of four sons and helped around the house, cooked meals and did laundry, as well as working on the family farm. He was a fullback on the football team at Waco's Alexander James Moore High School. He began attending the eighth grade again on January 25th, 1937, at the age of 17 but was forced to repeat the grade the following year, so he decided to drop out of school. He filled his time squirrel hunting with a .22 rifle and completed a correspondence course in taxidermy. He applied to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, but was not accepted. At that time, he was 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) tall and weighed more than 200 pounds (91 kg). Miller worked on his father's farm until shortly before his 20th birthday. Miller's nickname "Dorie" may have originated from a typographical error. He was nominated for recognition for his actions on December 7th, 1941, and the Pittsburgh Courier released a story on March 14th, 1942, which gave his name as "Dorie Miller". Since then, some writers have suggested that it was a "nickname to shipmates and friends."

Miller enlisted in the United States Navy for six years on September 16th, 1939. He did his recruit training at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, then was promoted to mess attendant third class, one of the few ratings open at the time to black sailors. After training school, he was assigned to the ammunition ship Pyro (AE-1) and then transferred on January 2nd, 1940, to the Colorado-class battleship West Virginia (BB-48). It was on the West Virginia where he started competition boxing, becoming the ship's heavyweight champion. In July, he was on temporary duty aboard the Nevada (BB-36) at Secondary Battery Gunnery School. He returned to the West Virginia on August 3rd. He was promoted to mess attendant second class on February 16th, 1941.

Miller was a crewman aboard the West Virginia and awoke at 6 a.m. on December 7th, 1941. He served breakfast mess and was collecting laundry at 7:57 a.m. when Lieutenant Commander Shigeharu Murata from the Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi launched the first of seven torpedoes that hit West Virginia. The "Battle Stations" alarm went off; Miller headed for his battle station, an anti-aircraft battery magazine amidships, only to discover that a torpedo had destroyed it. He went then to "Times Square" on deck, a central spot aboard the ship where the fore-to-aft and port-to-starboard passageways crossed, reporting himself available for other duty and was assigned to help carry wounded sailors to places of greater safety. Lieutenant Commander Doir C. Johnson, the ship's communications officer, spotted Miller and saw his physical prowess, so he ordered him to accompany him to the conning tower on the flag bridge to assist in moving the ship's captain, Mervyn Bennion, who had a gaping wound in his abdomen where he had apparently been hit by shrapnel after the first Japanese attack. Miller and another sailor lifted the skipper but were unable to remove him from the bridge, so they carried him on a cot from his exposed position on the damaged bridge to a sheltered spot on the deck behind the conning tower where he remained during the second Japanese attack. Captain Bennion refused to leave his post, questioned his officers and men about the condition of the ship, and gave orders and instructions to crew members to defend the ship and fight. Unable to go to the deck below because of smoke and flames, he was carried up a ladder to the navigation bridge, where he died from the loss of too much blood despite aid. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Lieutenant Frederic H. White had ordered Miller to help him and Ensign Victor Delano load the unmanned number 1 and number 2 Browning .50 caliber anti-aircraft machine guns aft of the conning tower. Miller was not familiar with the weapon, but White and Delano instructed him on how to operate it. Delano expected Miller to feed ammunition to one gun, but his attention was diverted and, when he looked again, Miller was firing one of the guns. White then loaded ammunition into both guns and assigned Miller the starboard gun. Miller fired the gun until he ran out of ammunition, when he was ordered by Lieutenant Claude V. Ricketts to help carry the captain up to the navigation bridge out of the thick oily smoke generated by the many fires on and around the ship; Miller who was officially credited with downing at least two enemy planes. "I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us," he said later. Japanese aircraft eventually dropped two armor-piercing bombs through the deck of the battleship and launched five 18-inch (460 mm) aircraft torpedoes into her port side. When the attack finally lessened, Miller helped move injured sailors through oil and water to the quarterdeck, thereby "unquestionably saving the lives of a number of people who might otherwise have been lost." The ship was heavily damaged by bombs, torpedoes, and resulting explosions and fires, but the crew prevented her from capsizing by counter-flooding a number of compartments. Instead, West Virginia sank to the harbor bottom in shallow water as her surviving crew abandoned ship, including Miller; the ship was raised and restored for continued service in the war. On the West Virginia, 132 men were killed and 52 were wounded from the Japanese attack. On December 13, Miller reported to the heavy cruiser Indianapolis (CA-35).

On January 1st, 1942, the Navy released a list of commendations for actions on December 7th. Among them was a single commendation for an unnamed black man. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had asked President Franklin D. Roosevelt to award the Distinguished Service Cross to the unknown black sailor. The Navy Board of Awards received a recommendation that the sailor be considered for recognition. On March 12th, an Associated Press story named Miller as the sailor, citing the African-American newspaper Pittsburgh Courier; additional news reports credited Lawrence D. Reddick with learning the name through correspondence with the Navy Department. In the following days, Senator James M. Mead (D-NY) introduced a Senate bill to award Miller the Medal of Honor, and Representative John D. Dingell, Sr. (D-MI) introduced a matching House bill. Miller was recognized as one of the "first US heroes of World War II". He was commended in a letter signed by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox on April 1st, and the next day, CBS Radio broadcast an episode of the series They Live Forever, which dramatized Miller's actions. Black organizations began a campaign to honor Miller with additional recognition. On April 4, the Pittsburgh Courier urged readers to write to members of the congressional Naval Affairs Committee in support of awarding the Medal of Honor to Miller. On May 11th, President Roosevelt approved the Navy Cross for Miller. On May 27th, Miller was personally recognized by Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, aboard the aircraft carrier Enterprise (CV-6) at anchor in Pearl Harbor. Nimitz said of Miller's commendation, "This marks the first time in this conflict that such high tribute has been made in the Pacific Fleet to a member of his race and I'm sure that the future will see others similarly honored for brave acts."

Miller was advanced in rank to mess attendant first class on June 1st, 1942. On June 27th, the Pittsburgh Courier called for him to be allowed to return home for a war bond tour along with white war heroes. On November 23rd, Miller returned to Pearl Harbor and was ordered on a war bond tour while still attached to Indianapolis. In December, and January 1943, he gave presentations in Oakland, California, in his hometown of Waco, in Dallas, and to the first graduating class of black sailors from Great Lakes Naval Training Station. He was featured on the 1943 Navy recruiting poster "Above and beyond the call of duty", designed by David Stone Martin. He then reported to Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington on May 15th, 1943 when he was assigned to the newly constructed escort carrier Liscome Bay (CVE-56). He was advanced in rank to cook third class on June 1st. The ship had a crew of 960 men, and its primary functions were to serve as a convoy escort, to provide aircraft for close air support during amphibious landing operations, and to ferry aircraft to naval bases and fleet carriers at sea. After training in Hawaii waters, Liscome Bay left Pearl Harbor on November 10th, 1943 to join the Northern Task Force, Task Group 52. Miller's carrier took part in the Battle of Makin (invasion of Makin by units of the Army's 165th Regimental Combat Team, 27th Infantry Division) which had begun on November 20th. On November 24th, the day after Makin was captured by American soldiers and the eve of Thanksgiving that year (the cooks had broken out the frozen turkeys from Pearl Harbor), the Liscome Bay was cruising near Butaritari (Makin's Atol's main island) when it was struck just before dawn in the stern by a torpedo from the Japanese submarine I-175 (fired four torpedoes at Task Group 5312). The carrier's own torpedoes and aircraft bombs including 2,0000 pounders were detonated a few moments later, causing the ship to sink in 23 minutes. There were 272 survivors from the crew of over 900, but Miller was among the two-thirds of the crew listed as "presumed dead". His parents were informed that he was missing in action on December 7th, 1943. Liscome Bay was the only ship lost in the Gilbert Islands operation.

A memorial service was held for Miller on April 30th, 1944, at the Second Baptist Church in Waco, Texas, sponsored by the Victory Club. On May 28th, a granite marker was dedicated at Moore High School in Waco to honor him. Miller was officially declared dead by the Navy on November 25th, 1944, a year and a day after the loss of Liscome Bay. One of his brothers also had served during World War II. Miller was 24 years old at the time of his death. Miller's legacy continues in many memorials to his service. Doris Miller Memorial, a public art installation honoring Miller on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco, Texas. A bronze commemorative plaque at the Doris Miller Park housing community located near Naval Station Pearl Harbor; organized by the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and dedicated on October 12th, 1991, which would have been Miller's 72nd birthday. Even the U.S Navy honored Miller with the USS Miller (FF-1091), a destroyer escort (reclassified as a Knox-class frigate on June 30th, 1975) was commissioned on June 30th, 1973, in honor of Miller. Miller's likeness and story has also been portrayed in films, such as Miller being awarded the Navy Cross was portrayed in the 2019 film Midway. In Michael Bay's 2001 film Pearl Harbor, Miller is portrayed by actor Cuba Gooding Jr. Although he is not identified by name, Miller is portrayed by Elven Havard in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!

#second world war #world war ii #world war 2 #wwii #military history #history #biography #black history month #black history #u.s history #us navy #pearl harbor #unsung hero

119 notes · View notes

juniaships · 4 years

Text

Jora Holiday Bio **Update 2021**

The following paragraphs contains information exclusively for the original series.

Full Name: Jora Ladybird Holiday

Age: 9, 29 (Ben10000); 39 (Ken 10)

Birthday: March 31/April 1 (she was born 11:59pm on March 31)

Species: Human

Race: African American

Fandom: Ben 10 (classic&reboot), The Secret Saturdays (crossover), Generator Rex (crossover), Cartoon Network/CN City (crossover)

Voice Claim: Kimberly Brooks; Brandy Norwood is another alternate choice

Character Role: Friend and love interest to Ben Tennyson

Powers/Abilities: Rot Inducement, Mycokinesis, Poison/Toxin Immunity, Self Healing/Regeneration, Moderate Chronokinesis (Time-Acceleration)

Items: Vials, Mini Lab, Gloves

Relationships

Family: Jeremy (father), Mavis (mother), Tasha (sister), Pattibelle (first cousin) Ginger (family friend); Kenny, Kendrix & Belle (future children), Devlin (adopted son/cousin in law(?))

Friends: Ben & Gwen Tennyson, Max Tennyson, Cooper Daniels, Richard Mortis, Mama G (future mentor)

Acquaintances: Ginger T. Glass, Tamika

Love Interest: Ben is her primary love interest, as seen with their eventual future together as well as hints and blatant displays of "puppy love."

Enemies: Pretty much every villain in this show; her personal arch-nemesis is Kudzu, a lifestyle expert & entrepreneur who initially tried to gentrify Jora's neighborhood & ruin her family's business. Other villains include Master Mortis (Richard's creator), and Kudzu's bounty hunters.

Appearance

- Dark Skinned African American girl

- Chubby, shorter than Ben and Gwen

- Has dark brown hair styled in twisted pigtails, pink hair scrunchies

- Black Bead Eyes//dark brown

- Wears lilac lacy gloves

- Wears three different outfits through the show:

- Season 1: Yellow t-shirt, pink shorts, beige sandals

- Seasons 2&3: Pink and Yellow striped tank top, orange skirt, and same sandals

- Season 4: Pink and white t-shirt, yellow capris with orange belt, and purple shoes

Personality

A sweet and quiet girl, Jora Holiday did not consider herself to be special. She lacked friends in school and kept to herself out of fear of getting bullied. This was because she had to deal with her mutant powers since they came into fruition as a very small child. Jora normally tries to avoid or deflate conflict, though deep down she does get a little fed up with playing peacemaker if the squabbling persists. Jora is compassionate and humble, never boastful but also bashful when it comes to compliments and praise. Of the four kids she is regarded as the nicest.

Because of her powers Jora has clean freak tendencies in her desire to look as normal as possible. She tried to avoid gross situations, although later down the line she learns it's okay to dirty her gloves - literally.

But with sweetness comes sourness, as she does have a passive-aggressive side towards slights, whether real or perceived. She didn't get along with Tasha, feeling as though the latter didn't care for her (which isn't true). Jora tends to be oversensitive and takes things too personally, ans even can be prone to tears if provoked hard enough. She also bears lingering resentment and shame over the partial ailments her element brings; these feelings fade away over time as she grows to accept her powers and adapt to her condition. One of her biggest flaws is her timidness and inability to stand up for herself and others. She also didn't get along with Ben for a while, though they get better quickly.

Jora has a love of nature, as shown with her hobby of collecting flowers and mushrooms. She despises animal abuse of any kind, and strives to be a bit more conscious of the environment. She also seems to have no phobia towards bugs, and thus is the designated "spider catcher" on the Rust Bucket.

Jora has a passion for fashion and a girly sense of style, preferring to dress in bright or pastel colors. Her love of nature and love of fashion could lead to a career based on environmentally friendly beauty products.

Ben 10000: Lavender shortsleeved dress and white apron

Adult Appearance

When she grows up Jora is considerably more capable of handling herself. She gets upset when people see and treat her as a fragile thing, seeing as though they don't trust her. She also is very in tune with nature, spending her days off on long walks in the forests, or at her homemade lab making potions.

In this timeline she was a waitress who worked after shifts as a vigilante. At the time the Hero of Heroes didn't know who this mysterious woman was, although he was struck by familiar feelings.

Ken 10: Mint Green blouse and pink maxiskirt with pink wristwatch (which is actually her transformation device)

Costume: White bodysuit with light purple accents, helmet and visor.

Powers:

Jora has the element of Decay (&Rebirth), which enables her to induce decomposition in organic material.

Techniques

- While not proficient at hand to hand she can run fast in short bursts and have stamina

- Generate spore clouds to obscure vision and block a person's airways

- Increase or decrease the rate the decay

- Increase or decrease the size of mushrooms, from giant prehistoric constructs to miniature samples to be used for medicine

- Create a slippery puddle of rot to make opponents fall

- Throw globs of inky, rotting matter to create fungus or for long range

- Autumn Leaf Tornado

- Create Penicillin (first "upgrade")

- Able to "purify" corrupted Mycellium in the episode "Camp Fear"

- Scavenger-animal Empathy

- Forensics (adult level)

- Fossil Fuel Manipulation (adult level)

- Floral Manipulation (adult level, possibly teen)

- Acid Spit (adult level)

- Hallucinations (teen level)

Weaknesses

- Her power has little to no effect on material such as metal, glass, synthetic fabrics, stones

- Has to wear her gloves at all times which can be tedious and uncomfortable

- Lacks strength and hand-to-hand proficiency

- Weak to extreme heat & cold

- Shroom Constructs can be easily destroyed if not continually reinforced

- Unable to control her powers if under extreme duress

- Requires weapons to compensate for elemental weaknesses

- Requires a source for better potency

Strengths

- Immune to Time related attacks since her powers are considered a form of chronokinesis

- Create healing potions

- Immune to mycotoxins and can decrease and even render dangerous mushrooms safe for consumption (handy for outdoor missions)

- Powers seem to increase in wet environments, the Moon

- Her kind gentle personality makes it easier for her to restrain the dangerous potential of her abilities

- Memorized enough species of fungi and has her own mini lab to safely store and carry samples

- Natural empathy towards others

- Quick learner, continually studies her powers and traits to adapt

Background

Born the second child to floral shop owners Jeremy and Mavis Holiday, Jora had a normal childhood in the comfy small town of Annville, SC. A quiet child, she spent after-school helping around the shop. They were small yet popular with the townsfolk, reputed for their knowledge of plants and colorful arrangements. However that normalcy took a detour when Jora's powers camemto fruition.

When people started to notice more and more plants dying, that in turn led to decrease in customers and soon the shop began to undergo financial trouble. One day, a beautiful woman named Kudzu came into the store offering to buy the place from Jeremy. See, Kudzu was one of the wealthiest and powerful people in town. He refused. The next day Kudzu came again with another proposition. Again Jeremy refused. This occurred all through the week, until finally a very irritated Mavis demanded Kudzu to leave their family alone. That time, Kudzu left and didn't ame back after that. The couple was relieved. Jora was nervous.

One day, just as Tasha and Jora were at the last day of school anf thr parents were off to cash in their winning lottery ticket, the floral shop caught fire! The firefighters were called and put out the blaze, but it left their shop and home in charred ruins.

Jora felt very guilty: if she never had her powers, there wouldn't have been such an awful domino effect. The fire was ruled as a freak accident, however Jeremy and Mavis believed that other forces were at work. They couldn't prove their theories as their suspect had too much power and leverage to be fought one on one. So they came up with a plan: they would spend the summer working to add money to the saved money while their kids go out of town. Mavis called upon an old friend from trade school to take the girls on vacation (somewhere safe from Kudzu).

The next couple of days after staying at a shelter, the girls were able to buy a few new outfits and essentials and told to wait for a brown and white RV. When the RV arrived, out came a older gentlemen in a bright scarlet Hawaiian shirt, with two children trailing behind him. He introduced himself as Max Tennyson, and the two kids were his grandchildren Ben and Gwen.

Trivia

Jora has a nature motif to contrast Ben's aliens and Gwen's magic.

Overall Jora is the most normal member of the team; her family has no connection to the Plumbers or magic.

Jora doesn't have signature color, the closest would be pink and yellow since those are colors she tends to wear the most of.

I made Jora so that there'd be another main girl in the cast and because the show didn't have a black female character (despite having nonwhite female characters of other ethnicities, and black male characters)

She does not have a major role in UAF; instead her storyline is seen as a spinoff (think Static Shock to the Justice League) focusing on smaller-scale plots with occasional cameos from main cast

Jora does come back in Omniverse to replace Gwen as the female lead; she is joined by Dr. Azura (Secret Saturdays OC), Myra Hopewell (GenRex), Ginger T. Glass, and her cousin Patti.

It is unknown whether her power is genetics or a random mutation.

In the Ben 10000 timeline she and Ben broke up because Ben tried to forbid her from going on active missions as a way to keep her safe. Obviously she didn't like that and left. They do reconcile at the end of the episode.

Out of my OCs for this fandom Jora is the lead character, followed by Kendrix

Jora's powers can vary based on the type of fungi she's using at the time. So her colors could range from inky-black to a gorgeous green

She is a candidate to take on the mantle of Mother Nature (currently held by Mama G)

Her hobbies are: reading comics and books primarily fantasy genre, costume design, hiking, floral pressing, DIY crafts, and insects

Due to her timid nature she has a fear of public speaking.

I don't have a claim for her in the live action films sorry!!

Jora is a foil for Kevin in that she was born with destructive powers. Unlike Kevin, she learned to rely on friends to help her stabilize her powers.

- A recurring subplot is the girls encountering and escaping from Kudzu's hired goons sent to track them down.

Jora was going to have standard plants and flowers as her power but I wanted to go for nontraditional elements instead.

The irony is that she's a softie dressed in bright colors and respects life, yet has a power related to death.

- At the end of the show she reunites with her parents and they're able to rebuild their business. She also stands up to Kudzu and exposes the woman for the rotten POS she is

Quotes:

"Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet face!"

"I like comic books. My favorite is the Fantasia Legends."

"If you're supposed to be Lucky Girl then why dress up like a black cat?"

"There's a lot of stories hidden beneath these trees. You just gotta know where to look."

"I'm not that scared little girl you used to pick on, Ben. I think you know I can take care of myself."

"Look I didn't get to choose my powers okay! But Kudzu chose to set our family's house on fire and I'm not gonna sit back and watch her hurt anyone else!"

"It's okay. I'll help you."

"It's called having good manners. You should try it sometimes."

"Leave. Them. Alone!"

"Please let this be a normal day this time!"

"You're like a mushroom. Unassuming at first, but something unique and vibrant!"

"Ben I don't know how to say this but... you're not alone. Don't ever think you're alone."

"I hope you'll be able to see that there's more to life than just money and business but until that day comes, we'll all do very well without you!"

"I may make things rot but the both of you are rotten to the core!"

Recent Pictures

Reference sheets for Omniverse

Sketches:

#oc bio #fyeahocsofcolor #ben 10 #ben 10 original series #ben 10 oc #oc: jora holiday #canon x oc #love interest #oc x canon

22 notes · View notes

turtlethon · 3 years

Text

"Turtle Tracks"

Season 1, Episode 1

First US airdate: December 14, 1987 First UK airdate: March 11, 1989 (Premiere) / April 20, 1991 (The Movie Channel) - see below

Channel 6 news reporter April O’Neil is rescued from a gang of thugs by a group of half-human, half-turtle ninjas.

PRELUDE

In November 1987 the final three episodes of The Transformers aired on US television. One month later, the first season of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hit the airwaves. Both were credited to the late David Wise (in the case of the latter, he received co-billing with Patti Howeth). "The Rebirth" had been a rushed affair - originally a five-part mini-series that was cut down further as Hasbro assumed the robots in disguise weren't going to be a draw for much longer, it had the ignominy of being animated by schlockmasters AKOM.

After four years and almost a hundred episodes, Transformers deserved a better send-off than The Rebirth. But those last three episodes almost suggest a road map for an animated future of the series that would go unseen. Like Wise's earlier episodes - "Kremzeek!" being an example - it deftly balances the action and adventure at the core of Transformers with the occasional light-hearted, comedic moments. As the series concludes, with Cybertron restored and a new golden age beginning, the unhinged Decepticon leader Galvatron has been forced into a power-sharing dynamic with the wilier Zarak.

Zarak and Galvatron's bickering and their conflict with the newly-revived Optimus Prime - as well as all the seemingly endless new Autobots introduced in The Rebirth - would be left to the imaginations of the viewers. It was the end of an era. But with the arrival of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to American television a few weeks later, a new legacy would begin, and at least in these first few episodes we can see a lot of the spirit of what Wise might have brought to futureTransformers tales would carry on.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles debuted as a five-part mini-series in December 1987, produced to support the upcoming line of Playmates action figures that would hit shelves the following year. The timing turned out to be impeccable. Not only was there a gap in the market with many of the action series from the previous few years winding down, but with kids housebound as the mini-series aired in syndication over the festive period, there was a captive audience. It also couldn't have hurt that these first five Turtle tales were animated by Toei instead of the likes of AKOM. (To put it another way: they look a lot more like the good episodes of Transformers than they do like the bad ones.)

As the first wave of action figures flew off the shelves, it quickly became apparent that TMNT was going to be a big deal, and over the next two years Turtlemania really began to take hold. Eventually Bandai brought the toy line to the United Kingdom, and after an incredibly brief dalliance with the near-unknown cable channel Premiere, the toy firm was able to secure a deal with the BBC to broadcast the TV series. But the Beeb would demand that Bandai make a litany of edits and alterations to the show - at their own expense - in order to "soften" the green team. Now redubbed Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, it debuted on mainstream UK television on January 3, 1990. However, the first season was omitted completely, seemingly considered too dark and too violent to even be considered for broadcast as part of TMHT.

The first five episodes, then - "Turtle Tracks" through to "Shreddered & Splintered" - have a certain mystique to me as kid who grew up in Hero Turtles territory. These tales went unseen in animated form for us for a while. Other media like Fleetway's fortnightly comics (which reprinted the Archie adaptation of this storyline) and the Topps trading cards went some way towards helping to fill in the gap.

In spring 1990, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles began airing daily on British Satellite Broadcasting's Galaxy channel, and seasons 2/3 looped continuously for some time as the BBC continued to crawl through the run at a glacial pace. Finally, after BSB's merger with rival satellite service Sky, the first five episodes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - the forbidden season! - aired as one feature-length adventure on The Movie Channel on April 20, 1991. Down the road, and completely unannounced, the individual episodes also appeared at least once on Sky One alongside the regular Hero Turtles rotation.

April O’Neil (voiced by Renae Jacobs) reports for Channel 6 on a series of unusual crimes that have taken place in New York recently. Three different scientific equipment companies saw their premises robbed, with assorted high-tech equipment being stolen. An unnamed expert explains to April that these crimes “can only be the work of ninjas, the ancient band of Japanese warriors”, on the basis that a piece of rope they left behind sports a “made in Japan” label.

Accompanied by a crew consisting of a cameraman, sound guy and her co-worker Vernon Fenwick in their van, April films an on-location piece awaiting the next action by the crooks. The rest of the team besides April is soon scared off by the arrival of a group of punks, including club-wielding Rocksteady (Cam Clarke) and mohawk-sporting Bebop (Barry Gordon). The gang announce that they’re delivering a message from “the big boss man”, and that April should stick to reporting on fashion shows. Seeing that the hoodlums are intent to leave her with a physical reminder of their message, April makes a run for it, escaping into a nearby sewer tunnel.

Figuring that she “must really be onto something hot if they’re trying to kill [her]”, April panics and manages to run face-first into a brick wall. The gang now have her cornered and are about to dispense punishment as per the orders of their boss, but a shadowy quartet of strangers intervenes, using martial arts moves and weaponry to easily defeat them.

April offers her gratitude to the strangers but is horrified when they emerge from the shadows to reveal themselves as a group of masked, bipedal turtles. The sight of this is enough to cause her to faint, an event that is watched from a remote location by a caped figure in a metal mask.

Later, April wakes up in a sewer hideout, where a giant rat in a kimono offers her a cup of tea. She faints for a second time, before being prodded by one of the turtles into waking up. After watching the group begin chowing down on pizza, April begins asking questions about who her rescuers are and what their deal is.

The mutant rat (voiced by Peter Renaday) outlines their backstory by way of flashback, recounting how Hamato Yoshi was a shidoshi – teacher of the warrior ways of enlightenment for a group of ninjas called the Foot Clan. His leadership was threatened by the younger student Oroku Saki, who would go on to plant a knife on Yoshi when an older teacher visited their school. In the first truly great bit of comedy in the series, the wise old Sensei is questioned as to how Yoshi should be punished, simply responding “throw the bum out!”

A disgraced and penniless Yoshi would wind up in the United States, living in the sewers of New York City, where he would befriend the rats. A second group of animals would join him as companions after a young boy tripped and drop a group of four pet turtles down a drain. As Oroku Saki reinvented the Foot Clan as a criminal organisation, Yoshi continued to live a peaceful and solitary existence, until the fateful day that he found his four turtles covered in a mysterious glowing ooze.

Act two opens with the flashback resuming, as Yoshi is seen wiping the mutagen off the turtles, a substance that would cause “whoever touched it to take on the form of the animal they had most recently been in contact with”. In a matter of seconds, the turtles grow rapidly, taking on a humanoid form due to their contact with Hamato Yoshi; conversely Yoshi goes from being a regular man to a rat, due to his most recent exposure being to the rodents.

[NOTE: One of the most baffling things about this version of the TMNT origin story is that we can clearly see the animals Yoshi was in contact with immediately prior to his mutation weren’t rats, but the Turtles themselves – if anything he should have also become a turtle, or at best some kind of turtle/rat/human hybrid. If you were exceedingly charitable you could argue that he was standing in the mutagen for a few seconds prior to handling the Turtles, and that perhaps the reaction which was turning him into a rat had already started, but that feels like a real big stretch.]

The Turtles would go on to dub the newly-mutated Hamato Yoshi “Splinter”, ostensibly for his ability to break wood using his martial arts skills. He would train them in the art of ninjitsu so that they could defend themselves from the inevitably hostile residents of the city, and would name each of them after his favourite Rennaissance-era artists. Inventive genius Donatello (Barry Gordon) wields the bo staff; acerbic Raphael (Rob Paulsen) carries a pair of sai blades; studious team leader Leonardo (Cam Clarke) wields a pair of katana swords. Finally, Michaelangelo (Townsend Coleman), “master of the whirling nunchuckus” is the most gregarious and fun-loving member of the team, whose compulsive love of pizza exceeds even that of his team-mates.

With the flashback over, April quizzes the team as to who was responsible for dousing them in mutagen to begin with. Leonardo responds that while they don’t know, they intend to one day find out, and force that person to return Splinter to his human form. April reaches the conclusion that the Turtles must have been responsible for the robberies and tries to flee their home, leading to the first of what will be hundreds of animation mix-ups throughout the course of the series, as Donatello blocks her path but speaks with Raphael’s voice, pointing out that she owes them a debt of gratitude for saving her life. The Turtles are insistent on not becoming the subject of TV news, with Raphael declaring that “[they] spent half their lives crawling around the bottom of a glass bowl, and [they] ain’t goin’ back!” Donatello adds that until they can reach an agreement, April will have to remain in their sewer lair home.

At Channel 6, cantankerous station boss Burne Thompson (Pat Fraley) bemoans April’s absence, pointing out that in the time she’s been AWOL another scientific company has suffered a robbery. Vernon does his best to downplay April’s accomplishments and value to the organisation, setting up a rivalry between the two crew members that will become a staple of the series.

Back in the Lair, the Turtles ponder what to do about April. Leonardo suggests they track down the ninja thieves on her behalf, and that she could assist them in finding a way of returning Splinter to his human form in return. Raphael is sceptical about the idea that April could be of much help to them, but Leo points out that she can get into places they can’t, and so the team agree to give it a try.

Rocksteady is accompanied by the other punks as he provides a report on their defeat to their boss, who he addresses as “Mister Shredder”. The masked man (voiced by James Avery) demands to know if the shadowy group who defeated them resembled Turtles, and is frustrated after not getting a definitive answer.

The Turtles and April return to the location where they battled the gang, figuring they might find a clue regarding the activities of the crooks. They hit upon a matchbook left on the ground that has a logo printed on it for “Ninja Pizzeria”. Heading up to the surface, our heroes are immediately confronted by a gun-toting old lady. Seeking a way to prevent her new friends from drawing attention, April heads into an all-night clothing store, emerging with fedoras and trenchcoats. Donning their new disguises, the Turtles wander through the city streets, questioning the eccentricities of humans as April struggles to remember which member of the team is which.

Our heroes eventually wind up in the town’s Ninja District, where there’s a definite pattern to the businesses that have set up shop, including “Ninja Dry Cleaning”, “Ninja Video Rental” and “Ninja Dentist”. They pay a visit to “Ninja Pizza”, where the employees all dress like extras from a martial arts movie. Their arrival on the premises is monitored by Shredder, who grouses about the earlier failure of his men, opining that he shouldn’t “have sent a punk to do a ninja’s job”.

As the Turtles enjoy their pizzas, April wanders off to explore the nearby Manhattan Security Services. She watches as a receptionist summons a group of “security guards” - in reality, robotic Foot Soldiers – for deployment to their latest client, another business that will be raided by the group. April rushes to a nearby phone booth, requesting that a news crew join her on the scene, but is cut off after being captured by a group of the robot minions.

After finishing their meal, the Turtles hit the streets, finding April’s wallet, press pass and a wad of her chewing gum on the ground. Donatello points out that her purse can be seen dangling from the roof of a nearby building, and so the team head off to investigate. April is soon found tied up on the roof, but this turns out to be a trap, as waves of Foot Soldiers emerge. The Turtles are cautious in battling April’s captors until it dawns on them that they’re battling a group of robots. Now unrestrained, the green teens lose their disguises and begin destroying the waves of enemies. Continuing to monitor all of this is Shredder, who notes that the four heroes are trained in “the Foot technique”, which could only have been taught to them by Hamato Yoshi.

The Turtles unite in a display of strength, pushing back against a wall that has a group of Foot Soldiers on the other side. Seeing their numbers dwindling, the remaining robots flee to the roof of a neighbouring building. Our heroes free April and tie a sword to one of Leo’s katanas to create a makeshift zip-line, allowing them to pursue their enemies.

Shredder is finally able to get a good look at the Turtles through his cameras as they wander around his premises; the Turtles also briefly see the masked villain on the monitors dotted around the offices. Now convinced that the mutants confirm Hamato Yoshi is still around, Shredder issues an order over the building’s PA system, instructing his Foot Soldiers to return to the Technodrome. The Turtles pursue the robots down the winding stairs of the building, but as a deterrent the warriors flood the complex with water. After reuniting with April, the team are forced to make a mad rush back up to the roof, clinging to the zip line as the entire building becomes submerged in water, then collapses.

The Turtles and April return to the Lair, where they examine the remains of one of the uniforms worn by the Foot Soldier robots. Splinter declares that this is an outfit worn by the Foot Clan, which can mean only one thing – his old foe Oroku Saki must be behind the criminal operation. Leonardo vows to find and defeat Saki, before adding that the Turtles “don’t know the meaning of the word defeat”; Mikey chips in to declare “[they] never bothered to look it up in the dictionary!” April laments that the Turtles never seem to take anything seriously, before turning around to find the team absorbed in the one thing they never take lightly – eating pizza.

“Turtle Tracks” is a solid opener for the series, taking the basic elements of the original Mirage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics and reworking them for consumption as a syndicated cartoon show. While it’s not a perfect debut – for all the time spent explaining the backstories of Splinter and the Turtles, some of the lore raises as many questions as it answers – it's remarkable how much it manages to pack into the space of twenty-two minutes, successfully establishing the characters of all four Turtles, April, Splinter, Shredder and to some extent members of the supporting cast. Along the way it also establishes new concepts that would go on to become accepted elements for future incarnations of TMNT moving forward, such as the differently coloured headbands for each of the Turtles to aid in viewer recognition.

A high bar has been set with this first outing, one that most of the remaining episodes of this first season will clear, though beyond that it’ll be rare to see anything quite this mature and well-crafted in this incarnation of TMNT again. There’s a darker undercurrent to the first season of Turtles than in everything that will follow it, with the city feeling borderline dystopian; at least one source - the Topps trading cards which would adapt this story - suggests that it’s supposed to be set in a very near future a la Robocop, though if that idea was ever canonical it would turn out to be swiftly abandoned, with subsequent outings for the Turtles definitively being set in the year in which they were initially broadcast. It’s tempting to wonder if the show could have continued down a more nuanced path, maintaining its edge while only being occasionally silly. These first five episodes at least remain as something resembling that vision, with the story continuing in the next adventure, “Enter the Shredder”.

#teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt #tmnt 1987 #1987 #turtle tracks #turtlethon #ninja turtles #throw the bum out

6 notes · View notes

claudia1829things · 4 years

Text

Favorite Episodes of "WHY WOMEN KILL" Season One (2019)

Below is a list of my favorite episodes from Season One of the CBS All Access series, "WHY WOMEN KILL". Created by Mark Cherry, the series starred Lucy Liu, Ginnifer Goodwin and Kirby Howell-Baptiste:

1. (1.09) "I Was Just Wondering What Makes Dames Like You So Deadly" - A surprising confrontation reveals a secret that shocks 1963 housewife Beth Ann Stanton to her core. In 1984, socialite Naomi Harte reacts with rage upon discovering her teenage son Tommy's affair with fellow socialite Simone Grove. After being angrily rejected by her screenwriter husband Eli Cohen in 2019, attorney Taylor Harding uncovers the dark truth about former lover Jade's past.

2. (1.06) "Practically Lethal in Every Way" - Beth Ann and her aerospace engineer husband Rob Stanton throw a housewarming party. Secrets come to light when Simone and her art dealer husband Karl Grove have dinner with the conservative future in-laws of Simone's daughter Amy. Taylor begins to question her living arrangement with Eli and Jade.

3. (1.10) "Kill Me as if It Were the Last Time" - Beth Ann devises a plan for revenge against Rob for his infidelity and lies. As Karl's health worsens, Simone's commitment to their relationship is tested. With Jade allegedly out of the picture, Taylor and Eli are hopeful the past is far behind them.

4. (1.01) "Murder Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry" - Beth Ann learns of Rob's affair with local waitress April Warner. Simone is blindsided by her her discovery that Karl is a closet homosexual. Taylor's open marriage with Eli expands when she introduces Jade into the household.

5. (1.05) "There's No Crying in Murder" - Beth Ann's budding friendship with April leaves her feeling conflicted. Simone and Tommy get stuck in a precarious situation during one of their meetings. With Taylor out of town, Eli and Jade's relationship enters new territory when she helps him with his script.

15 notes · View notes

travllingbunny · 6 years

Text

The 100 rewatch: 1x01 Pilot

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

Rating: I'd give the Pilot 4/10, maybe 4.5/10 if I'm generous.

Episode opens on Clarke's voiceover. The first mention of how Ark came to be. There were "12 nations" with stations in the beginning, 97 years earlier, and the current Ark is "one station forged from the many". Which begs some questions: how did they manage to make everyone on the Ark speak English (and in American accents), why are they so culturally uniform? Did they try to do it by force? And why did big powers like China and Russia go along with it? But world-building has never been this show's strength. The opening scene shows Clarke drawing, and focuses on her father's watch. Some facts I had forgotten - the cells on the Ark were called "Skybox". Clarke says she is turning 18 in a month. This means she turned 18 sometime in late season 1 and was about 18 and a half year old in season 4. In season 5, she should be about 24 and a half year old. Abby is the first other major character to appear. Abby to Clarke "Your instincts will tell you to take care of everyone else first, like your father", stressing that this is the similarity between Clarke and Jake. "I can't lose you, too, I love you so much" First appearance of Jaha - on the video played to the Delinquents on the dropship. The kids comment: "your dad's a dick, Wells". Yes, he is. "If we knew for sure the Earth was survivable, we would send others. You are being sent down because your crimes have made you expendable". Oh god, he's awful. He became a more enjoyable character in season 4, just because of his interactions with other characters, but he's always been an a-hole. Jaha tells the kids to go to Mount Weather, explains what it is and that it has supplies for about 300 people to survive for 2 years. I had completely forgotten that there were so many Mount Weather references. This was clearly a storyline that was planned from the beginning. The first casualties on the show - 2 Delinquents who imitated Finn's stupid behavior on the dropship, but, unlike him, were killed when the ship crash-landed. When they land, it turns out they landed on a wrong mountain, instead of Mount Weather, due to a technical error. Who knew that this was the luckiest thing that ever happened to them? Clarke and Wells later insist that the kids should go to MW ASAP and find supplies. Every time someone in the episode talks about Mount Weather and says things like "We have to find Mount Weather to survive", it's so ironic now. No, you need to run as far from Mount Weather as possible. Run, run, fast, and don't turn back. At the end of the episode, they try to cross the river, and Jasper even finds a Mount Weather sign. In retrospect, they are so lucky they did not go through with it, after Jasper got speared, but who was to know? Kane looks so young compared to his season 5 self. And it's funny to see early Kane, who was kind of a bad guy. He's so pessimistic and insisting on ruthless solutions as necessary, a total opposite of where his views end up later. But the one consistent trait is that he's always been so stubborn about sticking to whatever course of action he thinks is best, and even naive about it. At this point, he's all about sticking to the rules. And here's Shumway, who seems to want the culling to happen even more than Kane does. I never understood what the supposed difference in policy was between Diana and Jaha. Diana was claiming to be fighting for the rights of the underprivileged? But Shumway is working for her, and wants the culling to happen, Jaha and Kane are intending for the culling to happen... What's the difference? They're all the same. Shumway is also the one to tell Kane about Bellamy's shooting of Jaha - and Kane says they have a traitor. Shumway close-up, he says nothing. Foreshadowing. Scene between Kane and Abby near the end of the episode. Kane says he's the only one willing to do what needs to be done so they survive. Abby: "That's the difference between us, Kane. I choose to make sure we deserve to stay alive." Ironic how they'll end up switching positions during the Dark Year. But then Abby starts hating herself over what she has become. The thing I liked best about the Pilot the first time was that it was really good at explaining the premise and getting a lot of info across, without clunky exposition. Oh god, about half of the Pilot was sooo cheesy. Most of the scenes with kids on Earth are so teen-soapy. That's why I initially preferred the stuff on the Ark (but then a few episodes later, I felt the exact opposite). Especially 90% of Octavia's lines in the Pilot are so cringey,I remember I only found it to be 'just OK' at the time I first watched it, good enough to keep watching, but I only got hooked around 1x05 when it started losing most of its CWness. But now, after having seen the rest of the show, the tone is so weird - so teen-soapy. I guess the first time, I expected the show to be like that, because of the channel it's on - a teen-soap take on post-apocalyptic SciFi. The pop songs and the scenes with kids enjoying the Earth were so corny but I guess they were meant to be, to make the contrast bigger when something bad suddenly happens, like Jasper getting speared at the end of the episode. Or that mutant deer, that was a good scene. Funny that we never get to see any of the scary nature stuff again. What happened to the man-eating water snake? The show pretty much forgets all of that later, because we get human antagonists on Earth. I also probably blanked out a lot of the cheesy teen-soapy stuff the first time, because I wasn't interested, since I didn't even remember some of it. All the potential pairings and flirtations that went nowhere now seem so random and funny. They were clearly just throwing anything to the wall to see what sticks. Who remembers that Octavia used to have a thing for Finn in the Pilot and said "Finn is mine" to Clarke, and he briefly flirted with her? Then there was Jasper's crush on Octavia, but that one actually did last a bit longer in season 1. The show really seemed to be trying to make Finn the main heartthrob. Of course, Finn's main interest was flirting with Clarke non-stop and following her around all the time. The fact he started hitting on her immediately in the dropship really makes him look bad now (whether or not that was initially intended - since they probably still hadn't planned for Raven's character to exist.)

And look, here's Kelly Hu as Kane's girlfriend/Abby's best friend, who was clearly supposed to be one of the mains, and then completely disappeared without explanation after the Pilot. Kelly Hu was even in the main credits for the Pilot, right after Bob Morley, who was credited 6th - after Eliza and Paige and Thomas McDonnel and Eli Goree and after Marie. Which pretty much fits their screentime in the Plot. I doubt they were expecting Bellamy to become the male lead, Finn and Wells were clearly treated as the male leads. Speaking of Bellamy - AARGH, that terrible slicked-back hair! My eyes, my eyes!!! I remember now why I had such mixed feelings about him in the Pilot, unlike others who said they hated him. I mean, he was clearly meant to be seen as an antagonist at this point, but most of the things he says about the privileged and the elite on the Ark is true. I still think that the Ark leaders were the first villains introduced on the show. They sucked. Even if we weren't supposed to see them as villains, and even if some of them later changed and developed (Kane). I wasn't sure how much of what Bellamy said was just him using that rhetoric to manipulate the kids. but the first time he says "let the privileged do something for a change", he said it before he learned about the wristbands. So, some of that anger was sincere. (And it was certainly justified.) A bit later we see Bellamy listening carefully and formulating a plan as Clarke is explaining to the kids that the wristbands are transmitting their life signs to the Ark.

I don't know where the later idea of Bellamy as a completely hotheaded guy who can't act in a strategic or manipulative comes from. One of the first things we saw him do in the show was manipulate a bunch of younger people into something that would help him not get caught and executed by the Ark leaders, so he could stay and protect his sister. That's what he's doing for the fist few episodes. The first kids he convinces to take the wristbands off and make others do the same are Murphy and John Mbege. It's funny that Mbege's role was at this point almost as big as Murphy's. We still haven't seen Harper or Miller.

So many scenes of conflict between Bellamy and Wells in this episode. It seems like they probably meant for that dynamic to be an important one going forward, with the two of them as foils. "See you on the other side". Oh, god. Those lines will never be the same. It's actually Finn who said it first when he was about to cross the river by rope, but then Jasper went first to impress Octavia, and said that line for the first time. And here comes the spear. "We are not alone". Well, duh. But Clarke had to say that line for a very Lost-like ending to the Pilot. Geez, I can see how this bunch of clueless, silly kids with no weapons, fooling around, looked like such a dangerous invading force to the Grounders who saw them. Yes, the season 5 comparison between them and the heavily armed mass murderers from Eligius who immediately tried to kill the first people they ran across, was soooo apt... *sigh*.

#the 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 1x01 #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #octavia blake #abby griffin #marcus kane #jasper jordan #wells jaha

10 notes · View notes

aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Warrior Season 2: What to Expect From the Return of the Martial Arts Drama

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

When Warrior premiered in April of last year, Cinemax knew they had a hit right away. Helmed by Fast & Furious director Justin Lin and Banshee co-creator Jonathan Tropper, Warrior was renewed for a second season after just three episodes.

“Warrior comes from the pitch Bruce Lee brought to Warner Brothers,” Tropper says, the writer of the show. “It was an eight page treatment Bruce Lee had written that Shannon [Lee] held onto, and that was where the initial ideas for this show come from.”

The show exists largely through the efforts of Shannon Lee (Bruce Lee’s daughter and the executive producer of the show) to bring one of her father’s many visions to fruition. It’s a true testament that Warrior carries on Bruce Lee’s legacy nearly 50 years since he’s passed.

The gritty action-packed drama is set during the brutal late 19th century Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown and showcases a largely Asian cast. Loosely based on historical events, Warrior explores the tumultuous Wild West period leading up to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the only law that the United States ever implemented to block immigration of a specific racial profile.

“My father had the main character Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji) coming over from China, getting indoctrinated into the Tongs as a hatchet man, while he was really looking for his sister. It had Bill (Kieran Bew), the police officer, as a character. It had the Tong wars as a backdrop to the show and it had the Chinese Exclusion Act and the political immigration issues of the time as a backdrop to the show.”

With trending immigration issues under the present political regime, Warrior is uncannily topical.

“This has always been an immigrant story,” says Tropper, who started writing the show under the Obama administration and didn’t foresee how relevant it would become in 2020. “For me, it’s not that we were aiming at this topic. It’s just that this topic is never not there. It just happens that people are much more conscious of it right now because of this administration. But America is a country built by immigrants that has never developed a comfortable relationship with immigrants. So it’s a generational problem and it’s a cyclical problem, and it’s one that we have not solved. I feel like thematically, this show would be relevant no matter when it was coming out. Now it just happens to speak really loudly to what’s going on.”

Enter the Dragon – Rising Star Andrew Koji

Politics aside, Warrior has one of today’s hottest actors in the lead role, Andrew Koji. Beyond Warrior, Koji plays the pivotal role of Storm Shadow in the upcoming Snake Eyes: G.I.Joe Origins alongside Henry Goulding (Crazy Rich Asians), Ursula Corbero (Money Heist), Iko Uwais (The Raid), and Samara Weaving (Bill & Ted Face the Music). The film was slated for release this October but was pushed back to 2021 as another COVID-19 casualty.

“If it’s best for the film, for the audience, for people,” says Koji, “I don’t think many people want to go to the cinema right now.”

While the postponement of his first major film was disappointing, it was overshadowed by the announcement that Koji has been cast in Bullet Train starring Brad Pitt and directed by David Leitch.

“I saw the article the other day,” recounts Koji with glee. “I was like, “What’s my face doing next to Brad Pitt’s? Nah. Nah. What’s going on?”

Koji’s character Ah Sahm is the role that Bruce Lee intended for himself. However, Ah Sahm is his own man, only echoing Lee with Easter Egg nods to classic film fight scenes, but the nods are kept low key.

“When he beats up the first two guys at the brothel in the pilot, that is literally the choreography from Way of the Dragon,” Trooper explains. “And then he sits down on the chest of the guy, we’re just totally paying homage there. And then, having done that, we do almost nothing else the rest of the season except the occasional tweak of the nose or the gesture with the hand.”

Brucesploitation is a genre of its own, another surreal testament to Bruce Lee’s legacy. If Koji had just done an impersonation of Bruce, Ah Sahm would have degenerated into yet another Bruce Lee clone. Despite the temptation, and having the blessing of Bruce Lee Entertainment, Warrior would not have succeeded like it has if it were just derivative.

“Of all people, Shannon Lee was really insistent that we don’t go overboard with the Bruce Lee stuff,” continues Tropper. “She really tempered it. We were welcomed to use it, but she really wanted the show stand on its own. She had a sort of ‘less is more’ approach. And I think that turned out to be the wise way to go.”

Despite Koji’s rising star, he’s quick to deflect the credit for the success of Warrior to his cast mates.

“When I see Warrior Season 2 and I see these great actors; Kieran, Tom [Weston-Jones], Hoon [Lee], Joe [Taslim], et cetera, I’m more honored that I’m amongst this cast. When I see their performances I’m like, ‘Whoa, these guys are good, because they’re nothing like this in real life.’ It’s more that it’s an honor to be able to work alongside these people who are just so good at what they’re doing.”

Fist of Fury – Warrior Season 2 Comes Out Fighting

When Ah Sahm was last seen in Season 1, he had lost a brutal duel to Li Yong (Taslim). He falls from grace at Hop Wei Tong to become a coolie. ‘Coolie’ is a Chinese word. ‘Ku’ means ‘bitter’ and ‘li’ means ‘work’ and the coolie world is a hopeless grimy place to be. It sets the stage for Season 2 to blow up.

“The fun of any Season 2, and certainly in this show, is in Season 1 you have to do all the heavy lifting of building the world,” Tropper says. “Season 2, the world’s already built, and now you get to really go deeper into all the characters because you don’t have to spend as much time placing them.”

Season 1 established the three distinct worlds of Warrior: the upper crust world of San Francisco politics, the working class world of the cops, and the lower class, the Irish ghetto and Chinatown.

“These three forces have been put into this pressure cooker where something is going to either give or explode,” continues Tropper, “So in Season 2, it was time to let that pressure cooker explode.”

Lee feels that her father would be pleased with how Warrior has turned out so far. She finds it crazy how relevant the show is today and is excited to see how the next episodes play out.

“Fans can expect, for Season 2, to really up the stakes and up the conflict,” she says. “We’re really going to see things reach a bit of a fever pitch in Chinatown… So it’s very complicated and the weaving of the story is really brilliant and the stakes are really high. And you’ll see what happens.”

Warrior Season 2 introduces several new characters and story arcs. The costumes of Ah Toy (Olivia Cheng) get more lavish and opulent. The fights escalate, getting bigger and bloodier as the season progresses and even includes a face-off between Ah Sahm and Dolph, played by UFC Champion Michael Bisping.

“I don’t think many people would be able to say they kicked a UFC champion in the face and lived,” jokes Koji. Warrior Season 2 would be a sure win if it weren’t for Cinemax’s programming cuts and the fact that it’s 2020, the year of the pandemic.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic brings an unexpected challenge for a show about Chinatown. Racist attacks against Chinese have been on the rise, so much so that the House or Representatives just passed a resolution condemning “all forms of anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19.” Will this affect the reception of Warrior?

“Gosh, I don’t know,” says Lee. “I certainly hope not. But given the ability of people to be reasonable in this moment that we find ourselves in, I wish I could say, ‘Oh, that would be silly,’ but I feel like the anti-China, anti-Asian sentiment in the country around the coronavirus is silly. There’s a lot that’s gone on that is kind of blowing my mind left and right, so I wish I could say for certain that it wouldn’t. But what I hope happens is that people tune in to the show… because it’s entertaining and they fall in love with it; and maybe it shifts their perspective in some way.”

For Tropper, the relevance of Warrior reflects the pervasiveness of racism.

“I think that just proves the point that whether it is overt or covert, it’s never gone,” he says. “There’s the version of xenophobia towards the Asians. There’s a version of racism towards the Black population. Our country has these fault lines that are always there whether they’re shaking or not. Obviously there are tremendous echoes from our show of what was going on when they started referring to coronavirus as the ‘Chinese flu.’ But if you speak to any Chinese American, I don’t think they’ll tell you it’s ever really been gone. It just goes through periods of quiet and periods of noise. So I think we just happened to be coming out at a kind of noisier time, which is deeply unfortunate. Believe me I’d much rather we were just a fun martial art show that was a lot less relevant today.”

The Road to Warrior Season 3

Unfortunately last January, Cinemax announced that it would no longer be commissioning original shows in preparation for the launch of HBO Max. “Right now, Season 3 is a little uncertain,” says Lee. Warrior Season 2 is an attempt to level the show up to prove it deserves another round.

“We’re in these uncertain times,” says Lee, “but I’m hoping that when the show, once Season 2 completes on Cinemax, they are going to release it to the HBO platforms and I do hope that the show will just catch a much bigger audience and that there will be demands for a third season.”

Why invest in a second season when the future is uncertain? There’s always a chance that the fans may save it. Shows like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, The Expanse, Money Heist, and Cobra Kai found new life and more fans on other networks.

“I’ve got a gut feeling that this show, or at least the legacy of this show, will last a lot longer than most shows,” adds Koji. “I think what it means – the energy, the feeling, the story and the characters – there’s so many elements that just were magic. The writing’s sharper, the action is crisper and embraces its style more. I think the actors are all on point. Season 2 was one of the highlights of my career so far, shooting, and I think it was for a lot of people. We all felt that magic, so we hope that it comes across on-screen, which I believe it will. I think they’re going to see something special on all fronts.”

Koji holds out a lot of hope that Warrior Season 3 will happen.

“Well, obviously, with the current climate it’s a lot less certain. All we know is if the fans make enough noise and help us by making that noise it is in so many of our intentions to wrap this show up as I think it should. Not only for the show, the story, for the fans, but for that legend Bruce Lee. I think it deserves a conclusive ending.”

Regardless of what the future may hold for Warrior, Season 2 is worth the watch.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Warrior begins its ten-episode second season on Oct. 2, exclusively on CINEMAX.

The post Warrior Season 2: What to Expect From the Return of the Martial Arts Drama appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2S3Ioog

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

0 notes

jira-chii · 5 years

Text

Thoughts on the Shoumetsu Toshi anime after it aired

This post is probably overdue because the anime finished...a while ago.

*Warning for long post and spoilers for the Shoumetsu Toshi anime*

Also, I didn’t rewatch the anime for this; I read the scripts.

So, before the Shoumetsu Toshi anime aired in April, I had written some initial speculations, mainly outlining three key challenges of adaptation the anime would have to face. Now that I've finished the anime, I would like to revisit that post and elaborate on how they handled those challenges.

Tldr on my og post: the anime had to find a way to not include too many of the (very loveable) characters from the game, had to be able to tell a complex story in a clear way within a 12 episode limit, and they had to do it in an interesting way without too much exposition. I definitely feel like the anime staff had these goals in mind, as there is evidence in the anime that they put in a lot of effort to solve them. But they may have fallen just short of that goal.

Before I continue further though, I would like to say that I maintain my belief that making an anime adaptation from a source material as complex as Shoumetsu Toshi is incredibly difficult, and I admire the anime production team for tackling the challenge head on (putting in actual effort to make the anime a standalone-product, as opposed to shoehorning in an exact copy of the game’s storyline as so many other adaptations do for some quick marketing).

That said, the final product did not quite match my expectations (my bad for having my hopes up that high in the first place), and while I would love to chalk most of it up to episode constraints, time restrictions, budget limitations, and other factors outside the production team’s control, the truth is my issue is probably at a much more fundamental level.

Let's go through the order identified in my original post.

Too many characters

After watching the anime I am sure the producers were acutely aware of this challenge, and knew they had to be selective in who to choose to include in the production: characters who could not only propel the plot forward, but had interesting stories of their own to tell.

Fan favourites like Tsubasa and Yoshiaki were an obvious choice, and including a mix of both frightening tamashii like Suzumebachi, and less violent ones such as SPR5, I can understand. The only real tamashii choice I can’t justify is Rou. Apart from looking slightly menacing, he does nothing, says nothing (maybe just one word. He gets a mention in the credits), and even worse he appears in episode one.

My primary issue with Rou is that his character's design has too much...character. He’s a friggin’ monk. Flying around in a highway tunnel. It’s bound to raise questions. Which are never answered. If you introduce a character that flashy you've got to give him a backstory (he has one btw, but it's too complex to fit into this already packed anime).

One could argue Rou's only purpose was to act as a weapon for the enemy, but I would think sticking with Suzumebachi would have been better? They serve the same role, and I feel having Takuya and Yuki resolve the conflict with Suzumebachi over the span of two episodes instead of just the one would make him seem like more of a threat and upped the tension.

On the other end of the spectrum I have complaints about characters they didn't include, namely Lisa. How could you have Kouta without Lisa, that is just such a foreign concept to me? This could be due to the availability of the seiyuu themselves but, honestly, I would have rather they removed Kouta altogether. Don’t get me wrong. I love Kouta to bits, but for the purposes of the anime, it feels like he doesn't do anything at all.

In fact, if you think about it, Kikyou, Yumiko, Eiji, Kouta, and Geek to an extent, basically all serve the exact same purpose. Which means having all of them at once is a waste of space. I know they made an effort to make it seem like Eiji and Kikyou are from a different organisation to Yumiko and Kouta. But really, what's the point? So what if Yumiko and Kouta used to work for the enemy? The impact of that to the main thrust of the story is minor; there are probably less convoluted ways to get to the same result. We could have had just Yumiko and Eiji and I’m pretty sure the story could be the same. Introducing just two of these characters instead of like, five, in episode one alone no less, also relieves the cognitive load on the audience (we can only take in so much information in those 20 minutes).

The actual problem though, is not so much there being too many characters, but that they were not used to their maximum potential.

For instance, if we broke down the explanatory purpose of just the tamashii that appeared in the anime, we would get something like this:

SPR5 explains that tamashii can materialise alternate possibilities;

Tsubasa shows AFs can be used to enhance the powers of the orphans who awakened powers as a result of human experimentation;

Orphans reinforce what we learned from SPR5, including that the way to escape the alternate dimension is to fulfil their wish;

Rou and Suzumebachi do nothing but seem threatening...;

Akira protects Yuki and gets guilt tripped by Souma...

One way of judging whether a character was “used” well, is to look at the narrative purpose they serve, and its correlation with the ending. You can probably see that, by themselves, with the exception of maybe SPR5 and orphans, these don't contribute much to understanding the ending of the anime. But that’s not to say they are useless filler. Some serve a functional purpose (for example, Yuki needs Akira to fight). Others contribute to the overall "core message" in their own way. Which seems to be: even though life is tough you have to move on. You can't change the past because then you would be denying the futures of those living in the present (More on this message later. Also, this exact theme appears in Souma's arc in Shoumetsu Toshi 0, but it’s done better).

However, even if a character’s or concept’s narrative purpose is not “useless”, that is not to say they couldn’t be made more “useful”. For example, AFs are basically never mentioned again after Souma dies. I only realised looking back retrospectively, but what was the real point of all that? Did we really need AFs in this story at all? Was there a way we could get to the same conclusion without the AFs? Alternatively, could we alter the ending to make the AFs more relevant?

Part of this involves altering the structure and flow of the story. Another part of this would be giving more strategic time for the important characters to make clear their narrative purpose. It is not easy to do that with a cast as big as Shoumetsu Toshi’s, but as a rule of thumb, the more important a character, the more screen time they should get.

I’ll use SPR5 as an example. In my original post, I was concerned they would get too much screen time, and in a sense they did. But it wasn't useful extra screen time, and this is a problem because the plot point that the anime uses SPR5 to explain is incredibly complex for just one episode. For that same reason, it seems reasonable to give them that extra screen time; but it could have been utilised better. For example, we could use their early cameos to make it clear they were victims of Lost. Before we formally meet Geek, why not show him mourning over SPR5 like everyone else did for the victims on the third anniversary of Lost, then show him binging their old videos. While you’re at it, why not throw in a comment lamenting that the idols will never have another live performance again?

The advantage of this is that it is a much more clear and direct method of conveying information (compared to just the ambiguous montage we had at the very start of the anime). Additionally, having the audience know this stuff in advance, means it is more likely they will make an instant connection when they formally see Yua’s tamashii. Which means less time needs to be spent clarifying things we should already know (that SPR5 should be dead), and more time can be used productively on progressing the story (or apportioning more screen time to other important characters later in the show, like poor Ryouko).

Of course, this relies heavily on these pieces of knowledge being displayed in a clear enough way, or leaving a large enough impact, that we are able to link them in our minds almost instantaneously, even after several episodes.

Complex storyline

This was definitely where I thought the anime failed the hardest but was admittedly also the most difficult to pull off.

First of all, the pacing was awful. The anime went for a 4-4-4 split for their twelve episodes, involving four episodes to set up the main plot, followed by four episodes focusing on stories of tamashii, and then a final four episodes resolving the main conflict. The problem with this is that major events are not given the time they need to make an impact. Like I mentioned, just introducing Ryouko earlier and keeping her around for more than one episode is a simple solution that would do wonders to fix the pacing. Therefore, I would suggest a better ratio for the split would have been 2-6-4.

It was clear that the anime was focusing on a linear story, and tried to link plot points to tamashii where possible (some with more success than others). It is very much plot-driven (as opposed to character-driven), and I honestly don’t have a problem with that. Except that using character-focussed side stories as a vessel to connect to a larger plot is undeniably one of the game’s greatest strengths, and it really shows. The anime’s best episodes were arguably the middle four, which focused on tamashii’s side stories. After the orphanage arc wrapped up, the anime honestly just went downhill from there.

But even then, some very deliberate decisions regarding the overall feel of the show seriously limited the potential of even those four episodes.

For instance, did anyone else feel something was missing with the Kaitodan? And I don't just mean the omission of some very important members, but the overall feel of the team. They were lacking charisma, and, while this is mainly due to not having enough time to develop, it is also a result of purposefully making them behave in a way that fit the story.

Essentially, the anime tried fitting all their characters into a very similar narrative pattern. Everyone needed a tragic character arc, whether it was losing someone dear to them, or losing their dreams and futures. The aim was to depict a truly horrible reality, to contrast against the ideal in an alternate reality, a parallel world.

But the result of this was losing a lot of the core characteristics that made these characters beloved in the first place. Characters aren't given the full scope to showcase their personalities. Rui definitely felt a lot less playful, Sumire seemed to use a gun more than her signature chainsaw, and I fear this was also part of the reason Yayoi, Kouji and Saori got cut out. Their natural state was just too...positive, for the atmosphere the anime was going for. And I think this is a missed opportunity.

What I am saying is essentially, this anime needed a better balance of positive and negative. While watching the show, there were times where I really thought it would have been better if the anime didn’t try so hard to be dark and dramatic and gloomy. One could argue that the core message of the anime relied on Yuki feeling miserable almost the whole time, but that doesn't mean you have to subject your audience to never-ending despair as well. Especially when another core message is that this world is worth living in.

The key scenes in particular that I think could be leveraged are the "parallel world" scenes within Lost. These moments are so important as a reference point to understand the implication of Yuki's final decision. We need to know there is an alternative, and see how good life "could" have been. Yet these pivotal scenes are only given a brief couple of minutes. And that's such a waste, because I really think Lost was the most interesting setting in the whole anime. That's, like, literally where the tamashii are supposed to be. It's also where most of the surreal Observer symbolism happens, which is what 90% of the game's fans were looking forward to. And yet we're only in it for (not even) two episodes! What's the point of calling this anime Shoumetsu Toshi if they're not even in said Shoumetsu Toshi for half the time??

Anyway, my point is, Yuki makes a very big decision at the end of her journey, with huge implications. But, up until then, there was very little to actually guide her (and us) in that direction. Why, after everything she has been through, would she choose to reject resetting the world? We could probably come up with some answers if we tried (meeting Takuya being one of them), but these answers are never made obvious enough. And while this could have been done on purpose to put the “correctness” of Yuki’s final decision into question, it also risks jeopardising the message of the entire anime. Because there’s not enough evidence to convince us that her decision was the right one, and too much evidence making us believe it was the wrong one. And there’s no pay-off to either.

As a result, despite the very strong core message, I could not help but feel that not much was resolved in the end. It was quite unsatisfying in that there wasn't enough closure for our main characters, but at the same time the ending felt surprisingly closed and final - there's no real hint that they want to make a sequel? Which is disappointing.

The biggest disappointment though was that there was no plot twist. There were so many interesting concepts they could have explored more. The source material by itself gives a heap of options around parallel worlds alone. What if inside Lost we actually dropped Takuya and Yuki into one of those ideal alternate parallel worlds? And had them live it out more fully? And gave Yuki more time to explore it, and give her some concrete reason to believe that keeping her world as it is, despite its flaws, is actually the best decision?

You might accuse me of trying to fit more into an already packed anime but I am strongly of the opinion that a story's conceptual potential should be explored to its fullest wherever possible, even if it means not wrapping up everything perfectly by the end of twelve episodes. I would argue the anime could have, and should have, spaced out its events more to end on a cliffhanger, with a potential for a sequel (regardless of whether or not a sequel would even be feasible). Because saying this is the end, is just sad.

Exposition

This was the one thing the Shoumetsu Toshi anime probably spent the most effort addressing. The anime attempts to follow, for the most part, a show, don't tell approach. This is especially evident in the first few episodes, which are full of action. And well done on them for trying that. Key word being trying, because I don't think they actually successfully pulled off the show, don't tell. Because there is still a heap of exposition (sometimes they try to dress it up by having a news crew exposit instead of Eiji, or Yumiko. But don't be fooled). And even worse, a heap of missing exposition, which becomes apparent when you realise they needed an entire episode of just flashback to explain some key concepts (episode 9), because they couldn't do it in the eight whole episodes prior. Even worse, we were still left with so many questions about what happened in episode 11.

I guess what they needed was more strategic exposition, which should have been tied into the way the story was told and its pacing (see what I mentioned about the narrative purpose of the tamashii earlier). Sadly, the character who needed to utilise strategic exposition the most, but epically failed to do so, was Yuki herself.

Yuki’s poor character development was one of the things I definitely did not expect. She's the main character! But her personality is so...flat. Or rather, it doesn't make much sense.

Yuki’s perspective is the one we primarily view the anime from. She is shown to us at the very start of the show. Yuki is meant to be relatable to us. In the first half at least, we actually know more about her than Takuya does. We get to see flashbacks of her past that she doesn’t reveal to anyone else. We experience the same confusion she does when Takuya busts her out. We are meant to feel as betrayed as she does when Takuya calls her a “package”. If the anime continued on this trajectory, we are actually supposed to fully understand why Yuki makes the decision she does at the end. Except they completely broke our suspension of disbelief when Yuki basically develops complete trust in Takuya by the end of episode 2, and is even confident enough to enable someone else to move forward in episode 3. Something happened to Yuki that we weren’t a part of. And now she is no longer relatable because for some reason we weren’t on that journey with her.

Even worse, Yuki’s biggest character development happens off-screen, when Takuya is off at the orphanage doing an entire investigation without her. Isn’t it kind of sad, that Yuki gets more character development out of talking about Takuya to Yumiko, rather than actually interacting with him. This is also part of the reason the events of episode 11 are just baffling. Because the fact of the matter is, for the entire first half of the anime (possibly even the first three-quarters), Yuki and Takuya just don't seem to trust each other enough to make their relationship believable.

When even your main characters lose credibility, it becomes difficult to feel invested in the rest of the show. This feeling is exacerbated in Shoumetsu Toshi because the anime relied so much on drama. How many times did we see/hear the gunshot cliche? Gunshots serve as an effective way to transition between scenes, while creating a cliffhanger effect. The problem with this, though, is doing it too much, especially within a short span of time, results in high-tension scenes losing impact. Even worse, when you’re not even invested in the characters enough to care whether or not they die, the whole scene just feels cheap and ridiculous.

Basically, there were milestones we needed to see to make Yuki’s development seem natural and credible. Specifically, her development involved her gradually trusting in Takuya, and growing more confident in herself. These require at least one of two things happening: Takuya does something to make him worth trusting, or something happens to make Yuki come to the decision that she wants to go to Lost. I think the anime tried to go for the former in episode 1 (by having Takuya persist on taking Yuki to Lost despite his injuries), and the latter in episode 2 (symbolically through Yuki jumping onto the scooter with Takuya). But I'm not sure this is the best way to depict such a relationship convincingly to the audience.

Wouldn't it make more sense to do it the other way? To have the two cooperating because they each have different motives to go to Lost (Yuki to find her father, Takuya to fulfil his contract), and then have Takuya do something outside his contract to finally get Yuki to trust him?

Yuki probably did have a glimmer of hope when Takuya rescued her, but those hopes were dashed when he called her a literal package. I don't see why she should continue to trust him. Is it because he decided to look for her, and convince her to go to Lost? But that's not a particularly satisfying reason. Because the implication right now is, regardless of whether or not Yuki trusts Takuya, he is going to take her to Lost, even by force. Because of his dedication to his contract.

Likewise, Yuki doesn't even get to the point of telling Takuya what traumatised her, even though she was ready to tell Ryouko everything after she brings up her father. Ryouko makes Yuki realise she really does want to find her father and is the first person she opens up to about the experimentation she was subjected to. This could have been a great opportunity to let Yuki decide for herself that she wants to go to Lost, regardless of whether or not she trusts Takuya.

My point is basically: have Ryouko be Yuki's emotional crutch, while Yuki decides whether or not Takuya is trustworthy. Keep Ryouko around for a while longer to get us emotionally invested, and lull Yuki (and us) into a false sense of security. Eventually, it should get to the point where, if Ryouko died and Takuya comforted Yuki, we would know it was not just out of sympathy. Capitalise on Ryouko’s death. Show how bad Takuya is at comforting, but also that he's willing to try. Then, contrast this to what he does after Souma's death. He goes through all the rubble (basically Souma's corpse) to find the choker. Because he understood how important that was to Yuki. The two didn't need to say a word to each other to understand how the other was feeling. Takuya didn't even need to see Yuki. Just silently hands over Souma's choker, as he keeps his eyes on the road ahead, never looking back.

If one could naturally see the progression in their relationship until this moment, almost everything that follows in the anime starts to make a lot more sense: especially the seaside scene and the Lost scene.

The frustrating thing is, I could see signs of this in the anime, but they weren’t explicit enough. It is absolutely crucial to just nail that transition in their relationship: from cooperation, to dependence, to actual trust. It needs to happen in that order, and it needs to be incredibly obvious. Going for subtlety for something as important as this, is definitely not a good idea.

Anyway, this post has become very long and messy so I’ll stop now, but I am definitely not going to stop talking about this topic. I think the key to theoretically fixing this anime is a stronger integration of plot and character. I've already given a bit of an idea into how this could be done, but it's probably a little hard to visualise from just what I’ve written here. In the future I do plan to go the whole way and actually write up a pseudo episode-by-episode potential outline of an alternate way to do the anime. So look forward to that.

In the meantime, you can see the prequel to this post here.

Or my thoughts on just episodes 5 and 6 (the Kaitodan-Tsubasa-Yoshiaki arc) here (including another way I would have done it)

#shoumetsu toshi #anime #afterlost #analysis #long post

0 notes

theconservativebrief · 6 years

Link

New York Comic Con feels like it gets bigger every year.

Its growth makes sense: Comic and geek culture have become mainstream culture. Doctor Strange and the Guardians of the Galaxy are no longer esoteric comic book superheroes. If you ask somebody what they think of Doctor Who, they’re likely to respond by asking you to specify which iteration of the show you’re talking about. And the number of people who are familiar with Taika Waititi’s work has exploded since he directed Thor: Ragnarok.

The drawback to this golden age of entertainment is that it makes compiling any given “best of” list extremely difficult. For some, the task might compare to such challenges as choosing between money and love, deciding on a hypothetical desert island meal, or definitively naming Marvel’s best Chris.

With that said, of all the TV and movie offerings I had the chance to preview at this year’s New York Comic Con, I’ve highlighted my top five below, in no specific order.

[embedded content]

The sly, infuriating, and ultimately most heartbreaking thing about writer Rick Remender and artist Wesley Craig’s 2014 comic book Deadly Class was how it made you fall in love with its 1980s antiheroes — a group of damaged teenagers whose crime lord parents enroll them in a prep school for future assassins and murderers — before showing their monstrous sides and their seemingly inevitable downfalls.

The comic is now being adapted into a TV series (Remender is credited as one of the executive producers, along with the Russo brothers, among others) that will debut on SYFY in January, and those who attended its NYCC panel got to screen the first full episode.

Lana Condor (best known for playing Lara Jean in Netflix’s breakout hit To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before) and Benedict Wong (who starred as Wong in Avengers: Infinity War) are the most recognizable names in the cast, and both actors are playing characters who are the polar opposites of their famed roles. But Deadly Class belongs to sentient chestnut Benjamin Wadsworth as the show’s protagonist, deeply troubled Marcus Lopez. The show centers itself on Marcus’s experience and his own vulnerabilities, and Wadsworth holds that spotlight effortlessly.

“Gritty,” “grim,” and “murdery” aren’t unique traits for a show to have in the ever-growing field of comic book and superhero television (see: Gotham; every single Marvel superhero show on Netflix; Arrow; and even some elements of Riverdale). But Deadly Class boasts a few elements — like Henry Rollins playing a professor who teaches an “Introduction to Poison” course or its Harry Potter-esque setting — that heighten and brighten its world.

It’s also fitting, and almost too cutting, that amid America’s current introspection into how our institutions are run and the culture they breed, one of the most exciting TV shows coming down the pike focuses on the next generation of supervillains.

Deadly Class premieres January 16, 2019, on SYFY.

Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement’s beloved 2014 vampire roommate mockumentary gets ported over to television via FX in spring 2019, and attendees of the show’s NYCC panel were treated to a screening of the pilot episode.

Like the original movie, the show depicts how mundane aspects of real life — from drugstore crepe paper to roommate quarrels and city living — become exponentially funnier in the hands of centuries-old vampires who have decided to break with the old world and move to … Staten Island.

Fans of the film will remember that Clement and Waititi (who hadn’t yet found mainstream fame for directing Thor: Ragnarok) starred in, co-directed, and co-wrote it. They’re back for the show as executive producers, along with Paul Simms, but are handing over the starring roles to three new vamps played by Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou, and Matt Berry. Harvey Guillen, meanwhile, plays their faithful and scene-stealing human servant.

There’s something wildly hilarious, but also sad — or at least sad-adjacent — about this cadre of vamps finding the meaning of life and adjusting to its bleak modernity, and I can’t wait to see more.

What We Do in The Shadows doesn’t yet have an exact premiere date but is slated to debut on FX in the spring.

A still from Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. Netflix

One of the common themes of the new TV shows featured at NYCC concerned fictional schools and academies — and more specifically, how broken they can be or what they signify. Deadly Class is about a prep school for death dealers, and one of the main conflicts of Netflix’s upcoming The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is centered on the dark magic school that Sabrina is supposed to attend.

The Umbrella Academy fits that theme but explores something different entirely: the idea of a chosen family. The series is adapted from the Eisner Award-winning 2007 comic book of the same name, by Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Bá.

The story centers on a “family” of adopted superhuman kids with quirky abilities brought together to save the world by a figure named Sir Reginald Hargreeves. The group is dubbed “The Umbrella Academy,” but they eventually break up after years together and carry the trauma of being superheroes.

In this Netflix adaptation, which is anchored by Ellen Page and Mary J. Blige (who promised the audience at the show’s NYCC panel that she’s pure evil in this series), the Academy — who are now young adults — is brought back together after the death of their mentor Hargreeves. They find out that dealing with each other, and mending their relationships, is just as difficult and important as saving the world.

Attendees of the show’s NYCC panel got to see stylish footage from the series, which featured the beginning of the group’s formation and slivers of the numbers (the members of the Academy have numbers, such as No. 7, as code names) showing off their superpowers.

The Umbrella Academy premieres February 19, 2019, on Netflix.

[embedded content]

One of the most intriguing things about X-Men: Dark Phoenix isn’t necessarily good. The movie’s release date has been continually pushed back — it was originally scheduled to release in theaters in November 2018, then was pushed to February 2019, and then pushed again to June 2019.

This much jumping around and uncertainty isn’t usually a good thing for movies. So it’s possible that Fox wanted to calm some of fans’ reservations by scheduling an NYCC event.

Audience members at Dark Phoenix’s offsite panel got to see the first 13 minutes of the movie, which features the team going to space to save a NASA mission gone awry. Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner) seemingly becomes a casualty, but not so fast — cosmic rays bombard her, and for some unexplained reason, she survives.

As any X-Men fan could tell you, said unexplained reason is that Jean is imbued with the Phoenix Force, a cosmic entity with immense power.

The footage sets the foundation of the fourth movie in the rebooted franchise (it is preceded by 2011’s X-Men: First Class, 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, and 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse) by lighting the fuse that will end with the team going up against its most powerful adversary — and someone who happens to be one of their own.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix hits theaters on June 7, 2019.

David Harbour is essentially the prom king of New York Comic Con. Harbour is currently most widely known as Sheriff Jim Hopper on the Netflix TV series Stranger Things. But he’s also building on that geek cred by playing the titular role in Lionsgate’s forthcoming Hellboy reboot.

And during the movie’s Comic Con panel, Harbour even said he would officiate a wedding in character as Hellboy if this tweet gets 666,000 retweets. At this point, any celebrity who wants to win over a Comic Con crowd should be paying Harbour for a clinic — the man knows his audience and how to play to it.

But Hopper’s biggest crowd-pleasing moment during the panel came when he and original Hellboy comic creator Mike Mignola showed a brief trailer for the upcoming movie.

We’re introduced to a more rambunctious, ruder, and crasser Hellboy than the one originated by Ron Perlman in the first film. The footage from the new movie suggests it will skew darker and more along the lines of a horror movie (Mignola said so) with a go-for-broke energy (think: a giant sword engulfed in flames) than the world that director Guillermo del Toro created in 2004.

This isn’t to say that del Toro did a bad job — far from it. But Harbour, Mignola, and director Neil Marshall are aiming for something completely different with the character and the story, rather than trying to trace the steps of the work of a master like del Toro. And by the looks of it so far, they’ve done just that.

Hellboy hits theaters on April 12, 2019.

Original Source -> 5 highlights from New York Comic Con, from Hellboy to Deadly Class

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

0 notes

friesislife-blog · 7 years

Text

Selena gomez porn video

A Brief Historical past Of White Actors Playing Native Individuals I've in all probability worked with close to 25 homosexual-for-pay porn stars previously 4 months. Right, Actor Bryan Cranston speaks onstage at the Crackle NewFronts at Cedar Lake Studios, April 30, 2014 in New York. Roshan acquired his third Filmfare Award for Best Actor in 2006 for his role in the motion flick Dhoom 2, and his fourth award for Jodhaa Akbar. Commissioned an officer on the outbreak of World Conflict Two, the actor served on Lord Louis Mountbatten's workers in England where he observed the British make cross-channel raids on German positions designed to confuse and deceive the enemy. Transgender actor and activist Alexis Arquette died over the weekend at age forty seven. Arquette paved the best way for transgender actors in Hollywood, and her work as an activist is being remembered by the leisure and LGBT communities. Smith-Watson runs the program selena gomez porn video along with her husband, Invoice Watson, and actor Jim Tasse, who each work within the theater department at the College of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I do know some will not be actors however well-known athletes and singers are shut sufficient to appearing most of the time. As with almost all modern animated movies, Puss in Boots is being sold on a laundry record of massive-identify Hollywood actors. Her mom died from drug and alcohol abuse, and folks have whispered for years about her following in her mother's footsteps. Jude Regulation is a controversial well-known British actor, director and film producer who started his performing career with the Nationwide Youth Music Theater and starred his debut acting in tv in 1989. Kingsley's first film was Worry Is the Key, launched in 1972; since then, he has starred in numerous movies together with the 1982 movie Gandhi, which resulted in him winning the Academy Award for Best Actor - not too shabby for a self-taught actor. Her mother died from drug and alcohol abuse , and folks have whispered for years about her following in her mother's footsteps. After eight earlier nominations in the eighties and nineties, Khan obtained his first Filmfare Award for Finest Actor for performing in the major grosser Raja Hindustani in 1996 and later got his second Greatest Actor award for the Academy Award-nominated film - Lagaan. After 80 episodes over the span of seven seasons, Ellis walked away with a handful of sought after awards: Two Satellite tv for pc Awards, an Ewwy for best supporting dramatic actor, and a NewNowNext Award for actor getting ready to fame. She starred in films that offered an hour and a half of optimism at the top of the Despair. I might say salman khan is essentially the most good-looking and the hottest star in bollywood and he keeps himself in the listing of best actors by the virtue of his hardwork and co-operative nature. Identical to the 'prince' and 'princess' of entertainment world, they're now turning into the king and queen of hearts as they marry each other on January 19, 2017. Being a star or being famous does not require that you simply had been born with it. In actual fact that is virtually impossible until you were born with an ideal face…leading to crowds of individuals dashing to you on a regular basis asking you to have their image taken with you. Biagiotti died in hospital within the Italian capital where she had been in intensive care after a heart attack this week. Some states, like California or New York, had been the birthplace for a complete pack of actors. Canadian actor whose profession really began within the 1930s when he joined Montreal's Negro Theater Guild. If you wish to be a famous actor/author, or no matter, you need to have a famous father or mother. The actor and Pulitzer Prize-profitable playwright died at his Kentucky house on Thursday (20 July). With this piece, acquire perception into what each actor dropped at the character and discover how they formed the world's most timeless secret agent. He's a dedicated bodybuilder and is known for taking off his shirt in movies and stage exhibits. Just NEVER surrender and in the future you may be looking again to the time you the place really desirous to be well-known and be like my dream got here true! However, in quality and substance, the perfect actor in Bollywood, who I highly respect for his appearing abilities is by far Aamir Khan. The outdated Hollywood star introduced a stage of neurotic energy to his greatest roles that few Technique actors may match. I do not even realise you know mexican actors and acctress too!I additionally by no means know that Mr Roarke from Fantasy Island is a Mexican,Thanks for sharing! The training concerned actors function enjoying six reasonable scenarios with cops. The Scottish actor was supplied $6m for every of the three Lord of the Rings films, plus a 15% stake within the franchise's field office takings, but reportedly opted out. These days, most producers do their greatest to hire actors which might be from American Indian descent, or no less than to a point.

0 notes

travllingbunny · 6 years

Text

The 100 rewatch: 1x06 His Sister’s Keeper

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

Rating: 8/10

Flashbacks to characters' past on the Ark are always one of my favorite things. i wish we'd get more of them. So far, IIRC, there's just been 3 episodes with flashbacks - 1x03, this one, and Join or Die in season 3. They really did a good job making both Bob and Marie look younger in the flashbacks. I do think that telling a 6 year old child it's his responsibility to take care of his sister is messed up, but on the other hand, what choice did Aurora Blake have? I can't judge her for it, since she was in a terrible situation, and it's the Ark system that's to blame for it all. And I've seen people hate on Aurora way too much. Some even go as far as to bring up that terrible "poor people should not have kids" argument, which is awful (classism, eugenics..). . (Another mini-rant upcoming) Speaking of weird things I've seen said in the fandom, I was really puzzled to learn that a lot of people did not realize Bellamy and Octavia have different fathers, and act like that's a big surprise, or that I've even seen people say that "the show never gave indication that they were half-siblings"?? WTF? The show never gave any indication that they were anything but half-siblings. For starters, I don't know why those two being full siblings would be anyone's default assumption, or why some people apparently think that women can't conceiving children with more than one man in their lifetime and that half-siblings are such a weird, rare and unheard of thing? But once you've seen this episode, the probability that they have the same father becomes microscopic. They're 6 years apart, there is no father in sight when Octavia is born, no one ever mentions a father, and Aurora is not in a regular relationship with anyone at the time Octavia is born. If Octavia's father died or was floated, it would have happened very recently, and they would have certainly mentioned it. In fact, I think that they would have definitely mentioned it if either of them knew they had a father who had been floated. I'm not sure what the deal was with Bellamy's father, whether Aurora had a serious relationship with him, whether he was around when Bellamy was very little and what happened to him (but even if he was in the picture at any point, he clearly couldn't have been around much, because Bellamy never mentions him), but in case of Octavia's father, he's clearly not in the picture and it's almost certain Octavia doesn't even know who he is. The two biggest revelations of the flashbacks were: that Octavia was discovered when Bellamy tried to let her have a life, for the first time, by taking her to see the Moon through the window and taking her to the dance to have fun and meet people; and that Shumway was the one who made Bellamy shoot Jaha in exchange for a place on the dropship. Not the greatest mystery The 100 has done - it was always going to be one of the few notable characters on the Ark, it was getting obvious it was not Kane, Diana hasn't even been introduced at this point, and the show never made the whole Jaha - Diana conflict remotely interesting or meaningful. Just how awful would have the lives of the Blake siblings been if they had spent their lives on the Ark? Octavia would have probably never met anyone other than her mother and her brother, never had a chance to have any kind of life except hiding. And Bellamy would have probably never had a real romantic relationship or a close friend (I always assumed he never had any of those on the Ark, because he kept people at a distance), never giving himself a chance to have a family of his own other than his sister, because of having to keep such a huge secret from everyone. Re: the Earth/present part of 1x06, it takes place fully on Earth (which was such a relief for me at the time, because at this point, I was sick of the Ark and hated pretty much every major character there other than Abby) and it's mostly about Bellamy taking a group of Delinquents (including Finn, who was asked to come as a tracker, and a bunch of kids who volunteered) to find Octavia, who was caught saved by Lincoln at the end of 1x05. One of the kids who volunteers is Jasper, the others include Bellamy's FwB Roma, John Mbege, some kid named Diggs, and Monroe (her first appearance). Three of those are redshits that end up killed by the Grounders. The rest almost meet the same fate, if Octavia hadn't asked Lincoln to help save her brother, so he used the signal horn to send a fake warning about the acid fog. which of course had the Grounders running away. I've seen a theory that Bellamy stopped sleeping around (minus that thing with Raven later in S1) because he felt guilty over Roma's death, because, as he says, she only joined the rescue party because of him. It may also be the turning point where he notably starts caring more about all of the Delinquents and not just his sister. As for the scenes with Lincoln and Octavia... eh. Lincoln will get much better writing and become one of my favorite characters in season 2, but in season 1, they were writing him really poorly. He was clearly meant to be mysterious and give the wrong first impression as a scary dangerous dude, which is why he doesn't talk until the very end of 1x07. But that doesn't actually make sense - there's no reason whatsoever, if he's already helping Octavia and doing things not sanctioned by the other Grounders, that he couldn't just talk to her and explain the situation, rather than chaining her up in the cave after healing her. The B subplot is again the love triangle. Or to be fair, the development of the relationship between Clarke and Raven, which is not just about the love triangle. Clarke reveals the info about the shelter to Raven (which Finn is not happy about) and they go together to search for things Raven could use to fix the radio with and contact the Ark. They have a conversation about their mothers, too. Clarke is still very angry at her mother because she blames her for her father's death, but won't talk about it, while Raven thinks Abby is awesome and wishes she had a mother like that, comparing her to her own alcoholic, neglectful mothers. We also learn more about Finn's role in her life - they knew each other as children, and he was the neighborhood boy who was giving her things and helping her survive. Which is consistent with Finn's character - he's always focusing on the girl he's in love with, doing everything for her and doing everything to make sure she feels that she needs him.

Then Raven figures out that Clarke and Finn had hooked up, because she found the origami deer and she's smart, and confronts Clarke about it I don't like the way Raven is catty to Clarke here, as opposed to the fact that she later doesn't confront Finn about it (until much later, when she realizes he's in love with Clarke). I always hate it when women blame only the "other woman", but not their own boyfriend/husband who's the one who cheated. But, again, I love the fact that Clarke absolutely doesn't do the "catty and fighting for a guy" thing. Instead, she points out that she didn't know about Raven.,but also tries to smooth things between Raven and Finn by pointing out that they thought Raven and everyone on the Ark would soon be dead and they would never see them again. This is, however, way, way too generous to Finn, because he was flirting with Clarke already on the dropship and pursued her constantly from day one. But I'm not sure that Clarke is even fully aware of it. She may be thinking that he really wasn't planning on hooking up with her till that moment at the end of 1x04, when he lost hope in contacting the Ark. She has very little romantic experience, after all, and seemed too distracted by everything else happening around them, the fight for survival, trying to save Jasper, Wells' death, the drama with Charlotte etc. to even notice how much Finn was hitting on her. The same way that, in season 2, she was far too distracted by planning the war and worrying about Bellamy and the Delinquents at Mount Weather and didn't seem to notice Lexa giving her heart eyes, until Lexa surprised her by kissing her. She's really not the most attuned to these things. Raven\s remark that "he could have waited for more than 10 days" (yes, exactly) gives us the first explicit clue about the exact timeline. The painful Octavia/Bellamy confrontation at the end of the episode is one of the best dramatic moments on S1. It gets resolved at the end of S1, but now I can't help thinking that it's just the first of the many times throughout all 5 seasons where Octavia blames Bellamy for pretty much everything ever. I remember that Bellamy takes back what he said here in the S1 finale - telling Octavia his life didn't end when she was born, it began - but does Octavia take back any of what she said to him, blaming him for their mother's death and her imprisonment and all? I don't remember that, but I'll pay attention in 1x13.

Timeline and body count at the end of 1x06:

The first 6 episodes took place over 10 days. The first 3 episodes must have been something like a day, then there was a week between episodes 3 and 4, and 4--6 were about a day or two.

Body count:

at least 320 dead people on the Ark, 10 dead Delinquents on the ground: 2 killed in the crash landing (and due to their own stupidity), 3 (Trina, Pascal, Atom) killed by the acid fog (that is, the Mountain Men) - though technically Clarke mercy killed Atom, 2 killed by the Delinquents themselves (Wells - murdered by Charlotte, Charlotte - suicide, mostly sue to pressure from Murphy),, 3 killed by the Grounders (Doggs, Mbege, Roma). "The 100" are The 90 now. As of the start of season 6, they'll be The 4.

#The 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 1x06 #His Sister's Keeper #bellamy blake #octavia blake #clarke griffin #raven reyes #lincoln kom trikru #aurora blake

10 notes · View notes