#Eugene Children’s Films Festival | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

brookstonalmanac · 8 months

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Holidays 10.26

Holidays

Accession Day (Jammu and Kashmir, India)

African-American Cotton Pickers Day

American Bar Association Giving Day

Angam Day (a.k.a. Day of Fulfillment; Nauru)

Day of Mourning Day (Libya)

Day of the Deployed

Doonesbury Day

Goose Day (French Republic)

Horseless Carriage Day

Howl at the Moon Day

International Red Cross Day

Intersex Awareness Day

Kojagrat Purnima (Nepal)

Mule Day

National Day of the Deployed

National Financial Crime Fighter Day

National Gospel Day (Cook Islands)

National Livestock Guardian Dog Appreciation & Awareness Day

National Mule Day

National Noah Day

National Ranboo Day

National Tennessee Day

National Transgender Children Day

National Vivace Microneedling Day

Neutrality Day (Austria)

Peniamina Gospel Day (Niue)

Planet-Wide Moon Howl

Rugby Day

St. Elsewhere Day

Topin Wagglegammon

Workaholic Stop and Smell Something Day

World Amyloidosis Day

Worldwide Howl at the Moon Night

Food & Drink Celebrations

Chicken Fried Steak Day

Exaltation of the Shellfish (Spain)

International Mavrud Day (Bulgaria)

National Mincemeat Pie Day

National Pumpkin Day

Pretzel Day

Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day

4th & Last Thursday in October

Black Thursday [Thursday of Last Full Week]

International Carignan Day [Last Thursday]

Punkie Night (Somerset, England) [Last Thursday]

Independence Days

Austria (from Allies of WW2, 1955)

Feast Days

Albinus (Christian; Saint)

Alfred the Great (Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Eastern Orthodox Church)

Amandus of Strasbourg (Christian; Saint)

Beóán (a..k.a. Bean) of Mortlach (Christian; Saint)

Casper, Big Bird’s Brother (Muppetism)

Cedd (Christian; Saint)

Celine Borzecka (Christian; Blessed)

Cuthbert of Canterbury (Christian; Saint)

Day of the Ancients (Asatru/Pagan Slavic)

Demetrius of Thessaloniki (Christian; Saint)

Diwali, Day 3 (Hindu, Jain, Sikh), a.k.a. ...

Bhai Duj (Parts of India)

Bhau Beej (Parts of India)

Chitragupth Jayanti (Parts of India)

Dawat Puja (Parts of India)

Day of Cows

Deepavali Holiday (Manipur, India)

Deepawali (Sikkim, India)

Festival of Lights, Day 3

Gai Tihar

Laxmi Puja (Sikkim, India)

Ningol Chakkouba (Parts of India)

Tihar Festival (Nepal)

Yam Pancake (Nepal)

Eadfrith of Leominster (Christian; Saint)

Eata of Hexham (Christian; Saint)

Pope Evaristus (a.k.a. Aristus; Christian; Saint)

Fulk of Pavia (Roman Catholic Church)

Lilith’s Day (Pagan)

Ludi Victoriae Sullanae begins (Old Rome; until November 1)

Makoshe’s Day (Honoring Mother Earth; Asatru/Pagan)

Montesquieu (Positivist; Saint)

Onan Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Onomatopoeias Day (Pastafarian)

Philipp Nicolai, Johann Heermann and Paul Gerhardt (Lutheran Church)

Quadragesimus (Christian; Saint)

Quodvultdeus (Christian; Saint)

Rusticus of Narbonne (Christian; Saint)

Vasily Vereshchagin (Artology)

Witta (a.k.a. Albinus) of Büraburg (Christian; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

Better Off Dead, 26th Jack Reacher book, by Lee Child (Novel; 2021)

Cello Concerto in E Minor, by Edward Eldar (Concerto; 1919)

Cloud Atlas (Film; 2012)

Cured Duck (Disney Cartoon; 1945)

Dan in Real Life (Film; 2007)

Donnie Darko (Film; 2001)

Firework, by Katy Perry (Song; 2010)

The Great Santini (Film; 1979)

Head Hunters, by Herbie Hancock (Album; 1973)

Heartbreaker, by Pat Benatar (Song; 1979)

Interstellar (Film; 2014)

Life as a House (Film; 2001)

Mourning Becomes Electra, by Eugene O'Neill (Play; 1931)

Quadrophenia, by The Who (Album; 1973)

Rock Meets Rock or Thud and Blunder (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 313; 1964)

San Andreas (Film; 2015)

St. Elsewhere (TV Series; 1982)

Supergirl (TV Series; 2015)

The Terminator (Film; 1984)

Three Orphan Kittens (Disney Cartoon; 1935)

Under Pressure, by Queen & David Bowie (Song; 1981)

A Watery Grave or Drown Among the Sheltering Palms (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 314; 1964)

You’re the Top, recorded by Cole Porter (Song; 1934)

Your Song, by Elton John (Song; 1970)

Today’s Name Days

Albin, Amand, Wigand (Austria)

Dimitar, Dimitrina, Mitko (Bulgaria)

Amando, Demetrije, Dimitrije, Dmitar, Evarist, Lucijan, Mitar, Rogacijan, Zvonimir (Croatia)

Erik (Czech Republic)

Amandus (Denmark)

Aime, Aimi, Amanda, Ami, Manda (Estonia)

Amanda, Manta, Niina, Nina, Ninni (Finland)

Dimitri (France)

Albin, Amand, Anastacia, Josephine, Wieland (Germany)

Demetris, Dimitra, Dimitrios, Dimitris, Glykon, Leptinis (Greece)

Dömötör(Hungary)

Evaristo (Italy)

Amanda, Kaiva (Latvia)

Evaristas, Liaudginas, Mingintė (Lithuania)

Amanda, Amandus (Norway)

Dymitriusz, Ewaryst, Eweryst, Łucjan, Lucyna, Ludmiła, Lutosław (Poland)

Dimitrie (Romania)

Demeter (Slovakia)

Evaristo, Felicísimo, Luciano (Spain)

Amanda, Rasmus (Sweden)

Madden, Maddock, Maddox, Mahala, Mahalia, Makenna, Mckenna (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 299 of 2024; 66 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 4 of week 43 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Gort (Ivy) [Day 24 of 28]

Chinese: Month 9 (Ten-Xu), Day 12 (Ding-Si)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 11 Heshvan 5784

Islamic: 11 Rabi II 1445

J Cal: 29 Shù; Eightday [29 of 30]

Julian: 13 October 2023

Moon: 94%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 19 Descartes (11th Month) [Montesquieu]

Runic Half Month: Wyn (Joy) [Day 15 of 15]

Season: Autumn (Day 33 of 89)

Zodiac: Scorpio (Day 3 of 29)

#Holidays

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brookston · 8 months

Text

Holidays 10.26

Holidays

Accession Day (Jammu and Kashmir, India)

African-American Cotton Pickers Day

American Bar Association Giving Day

Angam Day (a.k.a. Day of Fulfillment; Nauru)

Day of Mourning Day (Libya)

Day of the Deployed

Doonesbury Day

Goose Day (French Republic)

Horseless Carriage Day

Howl at the Moon Day

International Red Cross Day

Intersex Awareness Day

Kojagrat Purnima (Nepal)

Mule Day

National Day of the Deployed

National Financial Crime Fighter Day

National Gospel Day (Cook Islands)

National Livestock Guardian Dog Appreciation & Awareness Day

National Mule Day

National Noah Day

National Ranboo Day

National Tennessee Day

National Transgender Children Day

National Vivace Microneedling Day

Neutrality Day (Austria)

Peniamina Gospel Day (Niue)

Planet-Wide Moon Howl

Rugby Day

St. Elsewhere Day

Topin Wagglegammon

Workaholic Stop and Smell Something Day

World Amyloidosis Day

Worldwide Howl at the Moon Night

Food & Drink Celebrations

Chicken Fried Steak Day

Exaltation of the Shellfish (Spain)

International Mavrud Day (Bulgaria)

National Mincemeat Pie Day

National Pumpkin Day

Pretzel Day

Texas Chicken Fried Steak Day

4th & Last Thursday in October

Black Thursday [Thursday of Last Full Week]

International Carignan Day [Last Thursday]

Punkie Night (Somerset, England) [Last Thursday]

Independence Days

Austria (from Allies of WW2, 1955)

Feast Days

Albinus (Christian; Saint)

Alfred the Great (Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Eastern Orthodox Church)

Amandus of Strasbourg (Christian; Saint)

Beóán (a..k.a. Bean) of Mortlach (Christian; Saint)

Casper, Big Bird’s Brother (Muppetism)

Cedd (Christian; Saint)

Celine Borzecka (Christian; Blessed)

Cuthbert of Canterbury (Christian; Saint)

Day of the Ancients (Asatru/Pagan Slavic)

Demetrius of Thessaloniki (Christian; Saint)

Diwali, Day 3 (Hindu, Jain, Sikh), a.k.a. ...

Bhai Duj (Parts of India)

Bhau Beej (Parts of India)

Chitragupth Jayanti (Parts of India)

Dawat Puja (Parts of India)

Day of Cows

Deepavali Holiday (Manipur, India)

Deepawali (Sikkim, India)

Festival of Lights, Day 3

Gai Tihar

Laxmi Puja (Sikkim, India)

Ningol Chakkouba (Parts of India)

Tihar Festival (Nepal)

Yam Pancake (Nepal)

Eadfrith of Leominster (Christian; Saint)

Eata of Hexham (Christian; Saint)

Pope Evaristus (a.k.a. Aristus; Christian; Saint)

Fulk of Pavia (Roman Catholic Church)

Lilith’s Day (Pagan)

Ludi Victoriae Sullanae begins (Old Rome; until November 1)

Makoshe’s Day (Honoring Mother Earth; Asatru/Pagan)

Montesquieu (Positivist; Saint)

Onan Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Onomatopoeias Day (Pastafarian)

Philipp Nicolai, Johann Heermann and Paul Gerhardt (Lutheran Church)

Quadragesimus (Christian; Saint)

Quodvultdeus (Christian; Saint)

Rusticus of Narbonne (Christian; Saint)

Vasily Vereshchagin (Artology)

Witta (a.k.a. Albinus) of Büraburg (Christian; Saint)

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Tomobiki (友引 Japan) [Good luck all day, except at noon.]

Premieres

Better Off Dead, 26th Jack Reacher book, by Lee Child (Novel; 2021)

Cello Concerto in E Minor, by Edward Eldar (Concerto; 1919)

Cloud Atlas (Film; 2012)

Cured Duck (Disney Cartoon; 1945)

Dan in Real Life (Film; 2007)

Donnie Darko (Film; 2001)

Firework, by Katy Perry (Song; 2010)

The Great Santini (Film; 1979)

Head Hunters, by Herbie Hancock (Album; 1973)

Heartbreaker, by Pat Benatar (Song; 1979)

Interstellar (Film; 2014)

Life as a House (Film; 2001)

Mourning Becomes Electra, by Eugene O'Neill (Play; 1931)

Quadrophenia, by The Who (Album; 1973)

Rock Meets Rock or Thud and Blunder (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 313; 1964)

San Andreas (Film; 2015)

St. Elsewhere (TV Series; 1982)

Supergirl (TV Series; 2015)

The Terminator (Film; 1984)

Three Orphan Kittens (Disney Cartoon; 1935)

Under Pressure, by Queen & David Bowie (Song; 1981)

A Watery Grave or Drown Among the Sheltering Palms (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S6, Ep. 314; 1964)

You’re the Top, recorded by Cole Porter (Song; 1934)

Your Song, by Elton John (Song; 1970)

Today’s Name Days

Albin, Amand, Wigand (Austria)

Dimitar, Dimitrina, Mitko (Bulgaria)

Amando, Demetrije, Dimitrije, Dmitar, Evarist, Lucijan, Mitar, Rogacijan, Zvonimir (Croatia)

Erik (Czech Republic)

Amandus (Denmark)

Aime, Aimi, Amanda, Ami, Manda (Estonia)

Amanda, Manta, Niina, Nina, Ninni (Finland)

Dimitri (France)

Albin, Amand, Anastacia, Josephine, Wieland (Germany)

Demetris, Dimitra, Dimitrios, Dimitris, Glykon, Leptinis (Greece)

Dömötör(Hungary)

Evaristo (Italy)

Amanda, Kaiva (Latvia)

Evaristas, Liaudginas, Mingintė (Lithuania)

Amanda, Amandus (Norway)

Dymitriusz, Ewaryst, Eweryst, Łucjan, Lucyna, Ludmiła, Lutosław (Poland)

Dimitrie (Romania)

Demeter (Slovakia)

Evaristo, Felicísimo, Luciano (Spain)

Amanda, Rasmus (Sweden)

Madden, Maddock, Maddox, Mahala, Mahalia, Makenna, Mckenna (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 299 of 2024; 66 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 4 of week 43 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Gort (Ivy) [Day 24 of 28]

Chinese: Month 9 (Ten-Xu), Day 12 (Ding-Si)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 11 Heshvan 5784

Islamic: 11 Rabi II 1445

J Cal: 29 Shù; Eightday [29 of 30]

Julian: 13 October 2023

Moon: 94%: Waxing Gibbous

Positivist: 19 Descartes (11th Month) [Montesquieu]

Runic Half Month: Wyn (Joy) [Day 15 of 15]

Season: Autumn (Day 33 of 89)

Zodiac: Scorpio (Day 3 of 29)

#calendar #Holidays

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uomo-accattivante · 2 years

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Their first joint production received an Academy Award nomination. Now Oscar Isaac and Elvira Lind are ramping up Mad Gene Media under a first-look deal with Endeavor Content, hoping to build on the success of “The Letter Room” with a wide array of future projects. The married couple, who are raising two children together, are building this banner while Isaac stars in high-profile offerings such as “Moon Knight” and “Scenes From a Marriage.”

“We’re not always on 24/7; I’d say 23/7,” Isaac says.

“We never sleep,” Lind adds.

The couple launched Mad Gene Media in 2019, and recently hired Gena Konstantinakos as head of development and production, after working with her on their Oscar-nominated short film.

Konstantinakos was formerly VP of originals for First Look Media’s Topic and executive produced “The Letter Room,” which starred Isaac as a warm-hearted prison officer and was written and directed by Lind. Isaac also served as executive producer on the short.

“One of the things I’ve noticed about the two of you is the deep, mutual respect that you bring to every conversation with one another on each project. It’s a really wonderful aspect of the dynamic,” Konstantinakos says.

Isaac and Lind’s collaborative relationship extends from their home to their production banner, named after their two children, Mads and Eugene.

“There’s no one I trust more for an artistic mind than Elvira,” Isaac says. “So whatever I’m going to do, I want her to read. Whatever I make, I want to see her notes. Anything she can contribute is incredibly helpful. It’s been a very natural progression. Now it has an official stamp on it.”

The Mad Gene team has plans to develop documentaries, feature films, TV series, graphic novels, plays and podcasts. Within that slate will be Lind’s directorial feature debut and other vehicles in which Isaac will star and produce.

Prior to “The Letter Room,” which was the couple’s first formal collaboration, Lind focused on documentaries such as “Songs for Alexis” in 2014 and “Bobbi Jene,” which picked up awards at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017. While Konstantinakos was working at VICE, she executive produced Lind’s doc series “Twiz and Tuck,” marking the first time the pair would work together.

“We talked about having that haven, where you can nurture things to life,” Lind says. “From the get-go, we were really inspired by each other. Whatever we were doing, we found ways to collaborate. It was always a dream for both of us to have a production company.”

For Isaac, Mad Gene represents a new, exciting chapter in his career.

“I think it’s a pivot into a different space, where we have a bit more control and architecture, more agency over who we work with, what we work on, what kind of things we do together,” he says.

And Isaac says that he’d love to work with his “Star Wars” alum and pal Pedro Pascal “sooner rather than later.”

“We’ve seen how great it is to be a team,” Lind says. “Gena, with all her talent and wisdom, is taking it to a whole other level. That’s huge, it feels like it really has begun. We’re so excited, it’s coming together in a whole new way now.”

#oscar isaac #elvira lind #mad gene media #gena konstantinakos #the letter room #pedro pascal #songs for alexis #bobbi jene #twiz and tuck

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birb-tangleblog · 3 years

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Rise of Flynn Rider - THOUGHTS

THE PROMISED LONGER POST ON THE RISE OF FLYNN RIDER- spoiler warning!

Ok so first off, a very brief summary: the book centers on Eugene and Arnie (Lance), childhood best friends. The orphanage they've grown up in is financially struggling, under threat by a crooked tax collector, and they're both aging out of the system; the only clue Eugene has to his parents is a letter from the woman who left him there, which is signed with a ~mysterious symbol~. When a traveling circus run by the Baron (yes, that Baron) passes through town and Eugene learns of a possible lead on his past, the two boys reinvent themselves, join up, and eventually end up entangled in a scheme to steal from the King and Queen of Corona.

I won't lie, I enjoyed this one a lot- it was a fun read, very cozy to curl up with, and even with some contradictions, it felt like a novel that was derivative of the series and set in that world. There are a lot of cameos and references, enough that I think most TTS fans will find something they like to nibble on.

Like I said in my earlier post abt the prologue and first few chapters, I'm so happy that Lance got a role alongside Eugene- he's definitely a secondary character to Eugene’s main, and he does get sidelined somewhat, but it's charming to see his friendship with Eugene and his growing passion for cooking.

'I didn't expect anything, so I'm more delighted and pleasantly surprised than genuinely unhappy with the execution' is a running theme with this book for me and basically the tl;dr of this write-up.

There are soo many cameos and little treats- I get the impression Calonita didn't have the most complete knowledge of the series, but her chats with Chris and interest in the series’ writing definitely show. King Edmund, the Stabbingtons, all of the pub thugs, Weasel, Stalyan, and the Baron all make appearances, and we get cameos from Cap, Maximus, Pascal's mother, and even Cass gets a name drop. Several series-exclusive locations are also mentioned by name- Vardaros, the Spire, and the Forest of No Return.

I'm not immune to the fannish hit of 'hey! I understand that reference!' and I really enjoyed hunting for easter eggs, so even if the presence of the pub thugs in the Baron's crew, or the boys stumbling on Rapunzel's tower in one scene and making nothing of it (yea that happened) is a lil questionable, it made me smile and I can't be mad.

I would just describe this book as 'comfy'.

(That said, I'm a little unsure who all those references are for- I feel like if you hadn't seen the series, you'd lack context and some details would be meaningless, but if you had, I think you might long for more depth and exploration...)

Structure & Progression

Here's the part where I start criticizing the book aimed at middle and elementary schoolers lmao

It's a v short book, but the plot progression still feels a little scattered- it didn’t feel quite like a heist OR a mystery. The subplot that takes up a lot of focus is actually interpersonal conflict between Lance and Eugene- and they reconcile, but not after spending much of the book in a standoff due to a misunderstanding/'liar revealed' trope.

One of Eugene's motivations for joining the circus is spotting a man with a mark on his arm that matches the one from his letter working there, and believing he'll be able to learn more abt his parents from him. He doesn't disclose this to Lance right away, and when it comes out later on, he's upset that Eugene didn't tell him- he feels tricked, and like Eugene's prioritizing his biological family over their bond. I had a hard time with this, b/c I honestly think Eugene could've literally said to Lance, 'hey, joining this circus is a great opportunity to travel, make money, send some back to the orphanage, AND I found something about my parents, will you come with me?' and Lance still would've jumped on it. Later on, there's also another similar miscommunication that deepens the rift.

It feels like manufactured drama, and I would've loved a book of the two of them just being buds, bouncing off each other, and trying to unravel the mysteries of the DK symbol and the Baron's ulterior motives together. Lance's fears of being left behind by his friend absolutely could've surfaced without the misunderstandings, especially the closer they got to the truth. (And I don't think that'd have been dissimilar to the unused 'Trial' episode concept and flashback.)

The pacing itself... meanders. After the boys complete an initiation mission to get a hold of a special key for the Baron, time passes (two weeks in-story) and there's some slice of life as they learn the ropes, get inducted into a lifestyle of thieving (it’s revealed the circus is a front for a crime ring), and get to know the Baron's crew.

I liked these parts and would've kept them in a longer book! But maybe there could've been some fine-tuning here so big events (Eugene stealing for the first time, the heist, the meeting with the mysterious Man with the Mark) weren’t so one-and-done. There are several points where nothing's really happening because the characters can't quite connect with each other, or they're waiting around for an opportunity passively, and that makes for a frustrating exp for me as a reader.

There were also lot of elements I thought were getting set up to come into play later, but not a lot of follow through? The folk hero Lance Archer is mentioned several times and has wanted posters, but we never meet him in the flesh. The Man with the Mark is revealed to be a former member of the Brotherhood(!) named Vedis(!!), but he isn't seen again after Eugene speaks with him... once. (More on this later this post is getting so long omg)

The Baron’s plan is revealed to be stealing a reward offered for the lost princess when it’s on display to the public during a festival. Eugene and Lance balk b/c stealing doesn’t sit well with them, especially when it’s from what are ultimately a family trying to find their lost child- they decide to do the right thing by foiling the scheme/stealing it back and returning it to the royals. It goes a bit pear-shaped and they’re caught, but are forgiven and face no consequences after explaining, other than being ousted from the circus/crime ring and making enemies of the Baron. Eugene hasn’t given up on finding the DK, but he realizes he already has a family in Lance, and that’s the most important thing; the two resolve to travel the world and have adventures together.

I want to make another post on it, but at the least it feels like a foregone conclusion given we know ‘Flynn Rider’ goes on to become a renown thief who steals the crown of the lost princess- that’s literally the plot of the movie, and being a dashing rogue is Flynn’s defining trait- so even aside from questionable ideas about wealth, class, and morality, the novel’s ending doesn’t fit what’s firmly established about his character, and I think big fans of Eugene might have an even harder time with that then me.

(I’m very suspicious that there might’ve been some executive meddling in an attempt to soften young Eugene’s character, and send a more palatable/upstanding message to children- it feels like Disney editing the old SW films to show Han didn’t shoot first.)

It’s def one of those novels where you can take some elements you like and leave others, but overall I’d still rly rec it for series fans! I’ve been buzzing and what-iffing about it for a few days, and I got some tasty tidbits on the characters and nods to the series, which is exactly what I wanted out of it.

And maybe it’s a funky take, but honestly I want to think of this book as the beginning of an alternate timeline where Lance and Eugene got out of crime earlier, Eugene got a clue abt his heritage by chance, and it changed his course. I think embracing the retcons and contradictions to canon makes for an interesting angle, and you’ll enjoy it more if you don’t take it too seriously.

#OKAY PHEW GOD took me way too long to post this #I'd consider this a general reaction/impression and overview #and I have more written that I want to sort out into posts abt Eugene's char AND my thoughts on Vedis as a Brotherhood Stan™#if I included it here it'd have been like... another 1k words lmfao #hopefully I can post those in the next day or so!#I have no idea how to structure proper reviews man I just want to yammer #I'm honestly just having fun reacting to smth new again C:#the rise of flynn rider #text post #my post #eugene #lance

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abitterlifethroughcinema · 3 years

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THE St. Jordi BCN Film Festival ’21 FILM REVIEWS

VOL. I: What’s Good!

by Lucas Avram Cavazos

YOUR #VOSEng take on upcoming international cinema premiering in Catalonia & Spain soon

To begin with, for a fellow who has for years been used to screening or viewing hundreds of movies annually, thereby spending hella time in cinemas, a global pandemic has been a true shock to the dork’s system. It has been a testament to the mindset of ‘the show must go on’ to see so many of our local and other European film festivals pushing back against the virus and powering through what could be deemed a safety issue by many. But basta! For starters, temp checks and hand sanitiser stations plus mandatory mask wearing have made a true return to movie going a half-wonderful respite. And so many thanks to Conxita Casanovas, Marien Pinies, David Mitjans, Cines Verdi BCN, Institut Francaise, and Casa Seat plus ALL the industry, press and movie lovers for making one of my favourite film festivals back to life for the half-decade anniversary. And I’m not just saying that for shits n’ giggles.

As an educator and broadcaster, history not only steeps itself within the confines of my classes, sessions and weekly radio/livestream shows, but every single one of us are literally living and walking and thriving through history, even as I scribe. So congratulations to anyone reading this, because you are Destiny's Child’ing it all over this place like drum n’ bass! On to the festival and cinema though please…

The St. Jordi BCN Film Festival revolves around the celebrated St. George’s/Day of the Book holiday here in Catalonia and so all the movies are based upon literary and historical works and facts. Red carpet moments and celebrities also make up the soirees and this year proved even better than others, with the likes of Johnny Depp and Isabelle Huppert being hosted by Cines Verdi, Institut Francaise and Casa Fuster. Depp, dressed as his character (I believe!) from his latest premiere Minamata -reviewed below- even mentioned that he would have loved to stay longer if he could keep Casa Fuster all to himself. And the day after her premiere for Mama Weed -also reviewed below- Huppert was seen being gorgeous at another film screening and then meandering about Gracia. But let’s speak about some of the movies that piqued my interest and will hopefully do the same to yours.

Petit Pays by Eric Barbier ####

Winner of Best Film at this year’s festival awards, Petit Pays tells a quasi-true story of family struggle during the Hutu vs Tutsi massacre that befell the gorgeous countries of Burundi and Rwanda in the early-to-mid 90s. But that is just the mere slice of what the plot truly entails. Focusing on little Gaby (Djibril Vancoppenolle) and his wee sister Ana (Dayla De Medina) as they make their way through childhood/pre-teen years, the plot thickens when the genocide starts to spill over and touch their lives, hectically lived with their Belgian father (Jean-Paul Rouve) and Rwandan mother (Isabelle Kabano, winner of the Best Actress award at this year’s festival). Truth be told, they do live in the lap of African middle class pleasantries, but as the film tenses up, reality sets in for all involved, including us viewers. The harsh reality that director Barbier fuses into the novel adaptation by French-Rwandan rapper/author Gael Faye seeks to display to the audience the truth of a genocidal history and how the sins of the parents always come back to burden or visit the children.

Where to watch: debuts in local cinemas 28/05/21

Promising Young Woman by Emerald Fennell ####

Oscar-nominated and local premiere hit Promising Young Woman had a stellar reception at this year’s festival and what a tour de force it turned out to be. The film plot revolves around medical school dropout Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan), who turns 30 and passes her time working at a trendy coffee shop but completely unmotivated whilst also continuing to live with her increasingly-worried parents. Years after her best mate killed herself, Cassie drags the guilt and loss along with her…until a blast from the past shows up, gets his coffee spat in and then falls head over heels into what will turn into a revenge tale beyond one’s craziest notions. A tale of loss that touches on modern themes in a frighteningly understandable way is few and far between these days. Fennell’s work here puts her on the map for sure.

Where to watch: in local cinemas NOW

Minamata by Andrew Levitas ###-1/2

This year marks 50 years since a collective understanding by world powers finally began to comprehend the enormity that factories create against Mother Nature and living creatures. It’s New York and 1971 when we find W. Eugene Smith (Johnny Depp), Life magazine photo journalist and one awash in a realm of problems. Then, adding to that drama, we find him suddenly embroiled on a task and mission that is presented by a couple of his fans, without his awareness that he has also stumbled onto a truth beyond wills. Environmental devastation affecting the innocent in Minamata, Japan is where we eventually spend the plurality of the film, and if you can get through the end scene of it without tears or shame of what mankind has wrought, you’re a tougher kid than I.

Where to watch: in local cinemas as of 30 April

Mama Weed by Jean-Paul Salomé ####

I cannot even begin to explain how much I absolutely enjoyed screening this film by the gifted and curious director Salomé, but it is without a doubt the tour de force work of ageless French star Isabelle Huppert that summons one to watch and compels them to laugh and engage. Undoubtedly, adapting any work of art from literature is never an easy undertaking, but the bringing to life of Patience Portefeux, a judicial interpreter for France’s investigation division, turns out to be crown jewel by Huppert. Serving up comical thrills, blithe acting when under insane pressure by duel forces and fierce Arab queen fashions, this film will have you white-knuckled, perplexed and laughing, all in tandem. THIS is an early-in-the-year film that deserves some attention!

Where to watch: in local cinemas NOW

My Salinger Year by Philippe Falardeau ###-1/2

Based on the like-titled autobio novel by Joanna Smith Rakoff, the movie stars Margaret Qualley as Joanna, an aspiring writer and young upstart in an NYC lit agency, whose tasks include many things, including answering the many fan mail letters that come for the agency’s fave writer J.D. Salinger, he of the oft-loved US American coming-of-age novel Catcher in the Rye. Even this guy connected to Holden Caulfield as a youth so when Joanna one day fields a call from Salinger and then gets caught trying to find endearing manners to respond to these grand fans, an incident leads to a coming-of-age awareness experience for Joanna and we the audience are the ones who are all the better for it.

Where to watch: in local cinemas on 4/6/21

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rantshemlock · 5 years

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Midsommar

this contains spoilers for Midsommar

so like, the cult is bad, right? you realise that? like you guys know cults are bad? like i know they were nice to her but you know this is a white supremacist cult thats manipulating mentally ill people to indoctrinate them? like you guys see that right?

i think maybe the scariest experience of Midsommar was seeing how much people completely accepted and justified everything the cult did in order to project into the fantasy of getting that ultimate catharsis; of completely breaking free from your terrible abusive boyfriend and doing so in a way that empowers you. but it’s a joke to pretend that Dani is empowered at all, or that she really wanted this.

Midsommar is about Dani, who suffers a personal tragedy and then travels with her horrible boyfriend and his awful friends (not you josh) to a cult in sweden for their nine-day midsummer festival. the longer they stay, the more dangerous and frightening the rituals become.

it’s kind of impossible to condense this movie to a short description without it sounding insanely stupid; there’s not a quick paragraph that really condenses the scope of this when so much of the movie is dedicated to crafting an incredibly specific mood. the visuals of the film are incredibly detailed and trying to describe them is almost pointless; its a movie that does need to be watched if you want to understand how Aster cultivates tone and pace.

the utilisation of the incredibly limited colour; the way images are blended into pictures so subtly they are almost there only to create a subconscious understanding; the way sound is used to tell the story; the mood the permanent sunny day and clear skies sets in a world where the sun barely ever sets. it all adds something to Midsommar, makes it even more of an anxiety-inducing nightmare of the worst thing that could happen when left alone at a friend’s house.

i think one of the greatest skills in Midsommar’s toolkit is the dialogue; while i wouldn’t call it improv or naturalism, the dialogue is very natural and not-stagey, but laced with double meanings and subtext. i think this kind of incredibly believable dialogue is one of Aster’s strongest talents, and definitely one of the things i enjoy most about his movies.

i didnt really get as much out of Midsommar as i did out of my beloved Hereditary, but it’s hard to say exactly why that is outside of my own personal relationship to Hereditary. something about the scope and scale of Midsommar, the removal from the domestic, makes it a touch less personally evocative to me.

Midsommar is a movie about gaslighting and abusive relationships, but there’s a pretty clear pattern in people recognising that with Dani’s horrible boyfriend and neglecting to see it in the cult. it’s very easy to get wrapped up in the cult’s apparent empathy and understanding of her trauma, but what we’re watching isn’t a genuine love and care for Dani. it’s an indoctrination tactic used to manipulate and brainwash her. all through the movie the cult imitates and pretends to share people’s pain, but they don’t truly experience Dani’s any more than they do that of the old man who survives a suicide attempt, only to be subsequently killed by the cult. they are merely reflecting what she was going through, utilising her pain to guide her to their own ends.

the intention is stated clear as day during the exact same “does he make you feel held? does he feel like home to you?” conversation Pelle and Dani have that people love to reference so much as the heartwarming moment of the movie. Pelle tells Dani that his parents also died, but he never had to be sad because the cult was there for him, and then says that he’s glad Dani came on the trip to sweden because she’s the one he wanted there the most. later, we find out that it was the mission of Pelle and others to bring outsiders to the cult.

the meaning of this is clear; Pelle recognised that Dani was vulnerable, and took it upon himself to recruit her. this is a frequent favourite tactic of cults. the idea he was doing this trip out of the kindness of his heart is absurd; the cult deals in human sacrifice. he knew that he could more easily lead Dani to her death.

pretending Dani is happy at the end of the film is a vast stretch, and pretending that any brief spell of happiness would justify what happened is even more so. right up until the very end she is either terrified or has been drugged, often without her knowledge or consent. she doesn’t know the extent to which innocent people have been murdered. she doesn’t know what the cult have planned, what their history is, what their future is. she can’t even communicate with the vast majority of the cult’s members. to pretend that she has any autonomy in this situation is to ignore how guided and controlled her actions are throughout the movie; she accepts the death of her boyfriend when she is drugged and almost catatonic from trauma, and is that really enough to say that she is happy? that she is docile and compliant?

throughout the film Dani is constantly trying to set up boundaries, to make tiny requests of people for her own wellbeing. time and time again they are ignored and overruled and her attempts to stand up for herself are flattened in the wake of other peoples desires. the cult is no different; none of her actions are borne of her own choices. no one has ever really cared what Dani wants.

i think what is most prominent is that when Dani is becoming the may queen, an image of her sister committing suicide can be seen mixed into the trees in the background. drawing a direct parallel between death and Dani’s adoption as the May Queen feels like a very transparents statement of intent.

what also should be mentioned is the white supremacist nature of the cult; of the victims, the first to die are all people of colour. white supremacist literature is seen around the camp. the cultists talk about how their children are born from specially chosen couples, in what is the most brushed over description of selected breeding and eugenics ive ever heard. every living person is white. it is not accidental or subtle. apparently the directors cut goes into much deeper detail on this idea; i couldnt say myself, i havent seen it. but its obvious in this film that this cult stands for the benefit only of themselves and the preservation of their rituals and past.

in the end the question to me is: was it all worth it? was all the suffering and pain the loss of life worth it, just for Dani to have a smile that expresses nothing but how far she has fallen into her trauma?

one of the things that weighed on me watching the movie was that it was specified that the ritual lasts nine days -- we see maybe five. the other thing is that throughout the movie we are repeatedly shown dozens of photos of past May Queens, but never does a character ever introduce themselves as a past May Queen, never does a character reference other May Queens. after their need is abated, they just seem to vanish. it makes me wonder what happens in the other four days.

#my writing #rantsfilmwatch #midsommar

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thevividgreenmoss · 5 years

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Like much folk horror, The Wicker Man first appears to be a rural exploitation story in which an urbanite stumbles across a backwater burg where society’s standardized pieties aren’t observed. But it twists into a story about how useful a naive scapegoat—the “fool,” as Howie is positioned by Summerisle—can be in keeping the pitchforks pointed down at the land and never up at the landowner. Whether Lee’s character buys into his folksy, back-to-the-land heresy is irrelevant. For all his rituals and ceremonies, he remains gentry. This is what governs his actions, and what seals Howie’s fiery fate.

In Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019), a group of curious American millennials decamp to a remote Swedish hamlet for a highly Instagrammable solstice festival (think Maypoles, peasant dresses, flower crowns, and all the other summery, Coachella-chic accoutrements). In Wicker Man fashion, their arrival is more auspicious than it initially appears, as they end up embroiled in a conspiratorial pagan plot, unfolding against the ceaseless daylight of the Scandinavian mid-summer. Even before Midsommar, the ideas and imagery of The Wicker Man have sprouted up across the landscape of contemporary horror cinema, tapping into fears about manipulation, xenophobia, urban-rural divides, crowds gone mad, post-truth epistemology, and a lurking sense that personal agency is illusory, with the actions of the individual governed by forces that are (or are presented as being) beyond our ken.

In Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange, Adam Scovell identifies isolation, landscape, skewed morality, and a happening/summoning (often in the form of ritual sacrifice) as the four links in the “folk horror chain.” In Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015), a family of seventeenth century Puritans banished from their New England village must carve out their place in a hostile, unforgiving landscape. Crops fail, family members disappear, livestock is unsettled, and adolescent girls fall prey to the hysterical throes of puberty. In Eggers’s film, it’s as if nature—that immortal “devil’s playground”—is avenging itself on the colonizers who came to tame it.

...In contrast to horror films that teach us to fear Satanists simply because they are Satanists (Rosemary’s Baby, The Mephisto Waltz, House of the Devil), The Wicker Man and its progeny force us to reckon with the deeper implications of the hooting-and-hollering heretic cabal. Folk horror may be best distinguished not by its mere depiction of Satanists, pagans, witches, buxom nudes wreathed in summer garlands, but by the manner in which they pose threats to our fundamental beliefs. Unlike most horror, in which an interloping monster is either destroyed (in order to purge a threat to an established order) or otherwise incorporated into that order, folk horror operates by implicating the viewer in the dissolution and destruction of that order.

...The first wave of folk horror crested during the waning of a vital counter-culture that had wholesale rejected long-held beliefs about social order, gender, sexuality, and imperialism. If 1968, the year Witchfinder General was released, marks the beginning of the folk horror cycle, it also marks the moment where utopian visions of social revolution were abandoning a politics of collective liberation and ceding to New Age philosophies of personal transformation. The genre’s development maps onto the what Scovell describes as “a backdrop of confident optimism disintegrating impossibly quickly into a nihilistic pessimism.” The films crack open the space between the promise of Paris 1968 and the repression of Kent State 1970, between the dream of Woodstock and the nightmare of Altamont, between The Beatles and Black Sabbath.

Folk horror’s original social context saw the energy animating the 1960s collectivist repudiation of traditional values fizzle and fade into the following decade’s interest in esotericism, astrology, and the occult. Some hippies who suspected that the existing social order could not be willed away with songs about peace and love reasoned that they could at least build their own Buckminster Fuller-style domes and settled into agricultural communes to experiment with pantheistic spiritualties.

...While The Wicker Man’s viewers are not exactly invited to cheer as Howie burns, the merry music and free love of the Summerislanders does seem more fun than the dour abstention of the film’s ostensible protagonist. Teenage daughter Tomasin’s entry into the forest at the end of The Witch is also treated with similar ambiguity. The witches’ coven is both a source of fear for the viewer and freedom for the character, who after accepting the enticing offer of a talking goat—“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”—gets to literally fly away from her overbearing, repressive family.

The overlapping intention here is not mere proselytizing, or preaching the ethical superiority of some alternative, some hippy-dippy, left-liberal, or openly Satanic worldview. Indeed, some read the end of The Wicker Man as a defense of Howie’s beliefs (a reading encouraged by the rictus grinning Summerislanders who gaze upon his burning body, joined together to sing some sinister folk shanty). But finding horror in the space between opposing belief systems, rather than in the content of belief systems themselves, allows these films to appeal both to the permaculture-curious anarchist sporting a “Cops for Crops” back patch and the Christian viewer scared of the Beltane-observing freaks who hate their un-freedom.

A 1998 reappraisal of The Wicker Man in a Scottish broadsheet identified the shifting appeal of a film that, since its release, was regarded as little more than a relatively obscure Brit-film cult classic:

Now, as demonstrated by the enthusiastic remarks of a group of New Age twenty-somethings with Celtic tattoos (that’s Celtic with a hard C, folks) and faces full of ironmongery, The Wicker Man has become keenly appreciated not only by mainstream film buffs and horror hounds but by people who find it a vindication of their own mystical beliefs. It is as though a movie of The Diary of Anne Frank were to become a hit with Nazis, who’d come along to cheer the feel-good ending when the storm troopers haul the Frank family out of the attic.

It’s a sarcastic quip that probably seemed absurd at the time, invoking a comparison so far outside the sphere of consensus that it’s easy to brush off as a harmless joke. But it seems, like so many historical absurdities, considerably less funny now, as white supremacist attacks on synagogues and racially motivated murders regularly dominate the fickle news cycle. The surge of blood-and-soil, volkish fascism in North America makes the counter-cultural embrace of folk horror antagonists seem more deeply uncomfortable, especially when groups like the Soldiers of Odin and the Wolves of Vinland incorporate runic symbols and pagan iconography that seems culled from some hard-bound Compendium of Folk Horror.

In Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism, Mattias Gardell argues that during the 1990s, Ariosophic occultism and Norse heathen religions like Asatru overtook Christian Identity as the spiritual dimension of the white supremacist movement. This might seem like a crude projection of the fears of the present onto the films of the past, demanding a revision of that old Mark Twain quote: “To a man with a Hammer film, every nail driven into the palms of a scapegoat looks like brigades of /pol/ cybernazis unleashing Pepes of pestilence to trigger the libs.” But the association between the appeals of paganism and fascism was not lost on The Wicker Man helmer Robin Hardy, who in a 1979 interview was quoted as saying: “It was no accident that Hitler brought back all those pagan feasts at the Nuremberg rallies. The ovens would be lit later.”

Such evaluations may be reasonably deemed a little suspect; like a variation of the internet-favorite Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy, in which the themes of Hardy’s film gain consequence in their evocation of the world-historic cataclysm of the Holocaust. But they gain a renewed (and again, sinisterly absurd) significance in the present moment, where symbols of paganism and white nationalism are being revived not only in conspicuous tandem, but confused confluence. In place of a more conspicuous swastika, a more obscure runic symbol—a Celtic cross, Thor’s hammer, the German Wolfsangel—will suffice. Once again, the symbols and regalia of the past (be it the imagined distant past of pre-Christian heathenry or the more recent past of the Third Reich) are being revived. We live in an age where, ludicrous as it may seem, certain viewers may well cheer the Nazis hauling Anne Frank out of her annex.

...At its core, folk horror is speculative fiction about the failures of the Age of Enlightenment. In Tentacles Longer than the Night, Eugene Thacker explains how the universal maxims of Enlightenment thinkers are conditional. Kant’s categorical imperative requires one to act “as if” the values dictating their actions are universally valid. In supernatural horror, the conditions of this logic are violated by the appearance of some entity that threatens the anthropocentric view of the world, evoking terror from the knowledge that Enlightenment rationality is bumping up against its limit.

Folk horror, by contrast, inverts rather than negates Enlightenment philosophy: the mob sacrifices the individual, peasant superstitions supplant science and reason as the true source of knowledge, a holistic and animistic conception of the universe overtakes an atomistic and mechanistic one. The genre presents a return of these things that had to be repressed in the transition towards a rational, individualistic, and ultimately capitalist social order: witchcraft, female empowerment, sexuality, and an organismic, earth-based conception of the universe.

Here the idea is not so much that logic and reason have reached some natural limit, but rather that the promises of the Enlightenment are always provisional, subject to revocation following one too many bad harvests. Again, the ideological structure may seem warped and inverted, but it possesses an internal, contingent consistency. The death of Sergeant Howie turns the standard horror trope of sexuality and impropriety leading to death on its ear. Unlike the many slain corpses stacked elsewhere in the horror genre, Howie’s sin is precisely his dopey virginity and piousness.

For all its dabbling with the supernatural, the folk horror genre is ultimately one rooted in materialism. The landscape holds considerable power over its people, but not in a mystical way. Allan Brown argues that The Wicker Man specifically can be read as a sci-fi story about technological failure—without the barren fruit trees caused by the poor performance of Lord Summerisle’s experimental botany, no sacrifice would be needed. If the Enlightenment philosophy that provides the grounds for contemporary liberalism involves a faith in humanity’s ability to transcend material conditions, to behave as if laws were universal and human ingenuity had no natural limits, then The Wicker Man brings us back down to earth, and we are reminded of the material conditions that make modern society possible.

Chained up in the wooden structure, Howie attempts to reason with the Lord:

Your crops failed because your strains failed. Fruit is not meant to be grown on these islands. It’s against nature. Don’t you see that killing me is not going to bring back your apples? . . . Don’t you understand that if your crops fail this year, next year you’re going to have to have another blood sacrifice? And next year, no one less than the king of Summerisle himself will do.

In this moment, Adam Scovell argues, the film is “laying down the law/lore of folk horror; that fear supplanted into communities comes back to haunt those who sowed its first seeds.” Burning to death, Howie calls out to his Christian god; the villagers sing and dance as they offer him up to their pagan lords. The viewer may feel that Howie is right, the apples won’t come next year, but the horror comes from the realization that Summerisle is also right: the sacrifice will be accepted.

Like the detestable vogue in white nationalist movements, which cop their iconography and philosophy from the rubbish heap of some imagined pre-Christian, Aryanist past, the renewal of folk horror (particularly in the American context) speaks to an unsettling truth, festering in contemporary political and cultural life. The return to symbology of Neo-Paganism, or the back-to-the-land return to the supposed “realness” inherent in far-off solstice festivals (an attraction of authenticity alluring the lambs of Midsommar), suggests not so much an antidote to the cult of Enlightenment rationality as its uncanny complement. Think only of Julius Caesar himself, whose grisly imagery of human bodies crammed into a flaming wicker statue was utterly self-serving: casting Gauls and Celts as paranoid pagans in order to justify their slaughter and conquest at the tips of legionnaires’ spearheads.

The horror latent in folk horror, then as now, is not an abject fear of pagans or free-loving hippies or straight-up Satanists. It’s the unsettling knowledge that the people are often all too willing to trade one form of power and subjugation for an aesthetically different manifestation of those same conditions, if only to restore faith in power itself. Even if the crops continue to fail, and the heathens of Summerisle never again taste a locally sourced organic apple, it doesn’t matter: the sacrifice succeeds. Killing Howie need not bring back the damn apples themselves, so long as it restores faith in ritual, mysticism, heathen magick, and the other counter-Enlightenment energies that Lee’s Summerisle, in all his sinisterness and sartorial preposterousness, wields in a perverse seasonal pageant, all undertaken to consolidate his own power: as gentry and patriarch, one Lord substituted for another.

#I love this #like the end of the witch is thrilling and seemingly and maybe to an extent actually liberatory but also like tomasin's escaped one horrible #situation to now be in a seemingly better one but even there she'll be under the thrall/control of black philip or w/e so she isn't truly #free or in control of her own destiny #but all the ideological collisions and the inadequacy of colonial new england puritanical insanity #or modernity & the trappings of western/christian civilization as embodied by the wicker man guy #ie general bourgeois liberal enlightenment values being seen as the highest/most ideal form of living/thinking #in providing actual meaning/freedom for the people living under it makes them prone to being overtaken by like an insane death cult which #may have some aesthetic differences + some differences in lifestyle which are genuinely more appealing/fulfilling in certain ways but #ultimately still hold everyone under the domination of an unchallenged power structure #same with the impotence of contemporary liberal multiculturalism when it comes to actaully reckoning with the historical legacy/contemporary #impact of a racist society as seen in get out #and on and on #essays #*

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plunder-heaven-and-devour-god · 6 years

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I harped on what made Notre Dame De Paris a great novel and definitely worthy of its longevity. But now I need to rip it to shreds because sometimes cultural and historical relativism can fuck itself. I need to have this discussion with the void.

I have 206 bones to pick with Hugo and his bullshit.

Don't come at me with your bullshit 1800s enlightened poet’s soul with pretenses of progressivism. Your 15th century sexism is just 19th century misogyny is period attire. The racism is ABHORRENT. Like, I'm not an idiot. Medieval cities like London and Paris were FRAUGHT with people of color, not just the Romani who are so gruesomely marginalized in real life but also in the book. There were "Moors" and many people of the Arab world who passed through Paris. They held rights, they held positions of power and they held positions of servitude equally.

Hugo's era reeks of the eugenics employed to wipe out cultures, skin colors, and ethnic physical features. From the Belgian Congo to the north American destruction of its first Nations cultures there is so much of that coloring Hugo's work. Not to go into it too much but the racism is a different flavour in the 19th century and that’s what you taste reading this book. It’s not the racism that we know today.

Here is what shocked me to my core. I had to stop the book and put my head in my hands.

Quasimodo is black.

And I don't mean the strange colloquialism of a "black countenance or a black attitude" that Romantic writers like to use to mean a dark figure. Neither do I mean the terms old literature uses to call a white person ugly with ethnic features.

I mean fully black. Hugo's 19th century racism in 15th century clothing rears its head. They call him an ape, a contorted construction of the Orient, he describes his black back while being whipped like an animal. When Esmeralda gives Quasimodo water to drink Hugo describes the water falling slack from his surprised and big black lips. His visage and body are ugly because they are black.

Yes there are layers to this, there is the perceived xenophobia, paranoia, and racism of the 15th century but there is also Hugo's which comes after slavery, after the rise of capitalism, after the racism that started with Europe's quest to dehumanize whole ethnicities to justify a global market. You can't sympathize with what isn't human, and that is the motive behind any dismissal of race, gender, etc.

I say this because the racism of the 15th Century is different than how Hugo imagines it. And that is what adds that layer of incredulity to my reading of the text.

Quasimodo is black. Idris Elba taking the role is FINALLY ONE THAT WILL BE ACCURATE. And what's more is that we have recontextualised the story in order to make Quasimodo a sympathetic hero so I'm glad that we call all collectively destroy this image of ugly=black. We can have a narrative that puts black at the forefront of marginalization and mistreatment.

But the Romani, oh my god. They are so persecuted by the fictional parisians and the parisian who writes about them, and the audience that did not want to sympathize as human.

There is, I swear to God, one of the longest chapters about these three women who talk about how this "village whore" had a beautiful daughter and she was supposedly "stolen" by "gypsies". The mother went mad and is later found in what is essentially a public oubliette. She's a pitiable recluse, a feral disgusting husk of limbs. There is SO MUCH TO UNPACK. Apparently her baby was replaced with a disgusting "black/brown gypsy" child who almost killed the mother upon seeing it. We find out later its Quasimodo.

This recluse screams abuse at Esmeralda who passes by just as we are about to witness the famous scene of her feeding Quasimodo water upon the pillory. But yet when one of the women's children shows up this recluse and childless mother has a breakdown. We are supposed to feel bad for her. Hugo does nothing to devillify the Romani people, we are supposed to feel sympathy for this childless mother who has become feral in this public oubliette; she was driven mad by gypsies, the gypsies are evil look at what they did to this not so innocent woman.

All I could think was "you should die in that hole too." PERISH.

We are supposed to sympathize with the White Parisian Power Structure which does indeed think itself superior to the Romani. We are supposed to think this recluse woman has a point, we are supposed to look upon the Romani with revolt in them and think: EW I KNOW RIGHT. But we don’t, not today, we think: what an awful caricature.

To his credit. Hugo does a good job of showing us the fickleness of public sympathy, the parision mob screams for blood and laughs like the Roman mobs in coliseums. I get that. The woman, like many characters are multi faceted, neither good nor bad to a 19th century audience.

Not to mention the Court of Miracles and all the "dark skin personnages" who populate it are done such a crime to them.

Hugo is OBSESSED WITH WHITE BEAUTY. White swan necks, pale hands, rosy feet, white virginal bossoms. He, like every single gly fucking Westerner in yesteryear and today that prizes near a aryan level of beauty. I'll go into this more but Esmerelda is not actually Romani, she's apparently got that "attractive skin that Roman women or andelusians have" and I'm paraphrasing but apparently a slight olive sun tan was a stratification of skin color too fucking dark for Hugo. And as a woman who is often not dark enough to be indian and not white enough to white I find this SO CONDESCENDING AND SO AWFUL TO WOCs.

I can't tell you how many times he trivialises their poverty, their tricks, their mysticism when in reality they are an excommunicated people by the pope. They cannot go anywhere and are not allowed to make a living. There's a reason that Diederle's 1939 version took an anti-fascist position to this opinion and MARGINALLY cracked open some sympathy for the Romanis. He was fleeing the Germans, and according to Lindsay Ellis his film was the only film shown at Cannes that year, a festival created against Naziism. The terms, stereotypes, abuse, and ugly caricatures of the Romani (sometimes called Egyptians, lepers, Jews, blacks, Moors) have literally not changed in centuries, I wouldn't even say after the Holocaust. One can see why this film was used to such a great affect against Faciism, all the terms and abuses which are identical in many places are showcased here.

It's frustrating because some people imply that : "well that's the point, the people in the book are bigoted, unsympathetic, and awful, and that's really how it was in 15th century Paris". To the latter I say no and I've explained why it may be true on a case by case basis. But it’s really REALLY NOT historically accurate and Hugo CLASSIFIES THIS HIMSELF IN THE BOOK AS A HISTORICAL FICITON. And to the former I also say: that's not the point.

Hugo's narration is not just a third person narrator, he refers to himself, asks the reader to permit him things or moments, he clearly sports opinions of art, architecture, the abject deplorability of living in medieval squalor, the ugliness or stupidity of one or another. He is very clearly a character in the book, one that has to differentiate his stance from other characters. His voice, his narration does nothing to exonerate or make a moral statement out of his foes and heros. Which is strange because his self insert character puts on a morality play at the beginning staring the marriage of "commerce and agriculture" and "clerical with noble". Basically Capitalism and Catholicism. He even calls it not very good afterwards. Hugo is a famous playwright. He is occupied with his moral plays and questions. He has Les Miserables to show his support, and exoneration for the people of Paris.

The difference is that he is tackling marginalized people's, people of color, disabled people of color, monstrous people of color, women of color, persecuted and excommunicated people's, pedophilia (yeah I'll get to this.) And he's a white guy. He really isn’t the man who should be writing this.

He venerates the building of Notre Dame which is a beautiful chapter in the book yes. But it is made of stone it cannot feel, it cannot feel the years of mutilation it experience so says Hugo.

The LAST LINE of the 1939 version is Quasimodo looking upon the happy crowd after saving Esmeralda, she goes into the sunset. He is left bereft, alone, still ugly, still forgotten by the narrative. He clutches a gargoyle and says: “Why was I not made of stone like these.” We are at a place in our society that values the individual enough to realise that the Cathedral doesn’t have any FUCKING FEELINGS. Quasimodo does!

Moreover, if the printing press killed architecture as a register human history, it means we get a fundamental shift from

Cathedral important to------>2)Characters are important

Which incidentally, Hugo really did not care about his characters. In visual mass media killing the book, this phenomenon has accelerated and now Notre Dame is not the focus but the setting and circumstances of the story. The characters and their plights are what is more important.

And again, people would say: what were you expecting? To which I say: yeah. I wasn't expecting much more. To be honest, sometimes I even expect worse. He is a man of his time. And for a man of this time the very clear anti clerical, and anti establishment sentiment is already progressive by the standards of his epoch and that of the historical setting of the book.

But.

Yet again, we haven't had a version of the story that has ever shown the plight off the marginalized. Not properly.

We have had a black Quasimodo yet on screen because I think many content creators and audiences did not want to sympathise with a black quasimodo. And Esmerelda of color is supported, I think, because the gendered benefit of her beauty for consumption. And the added benefit of any and all racism taking on a gendered role. We never truly get to see the Romani demystified or devilified. They’re still goofy and charletons in the Disney movies in 1996.

However, the Disney movie made Quasimodo its hero, they gave us the corny yet poignant: internal beauty is what matters. The question who is the monster and who is the man is posed to the audience. We only ever get to see Frollo's abusive relationship with the Hunchback. We get to sympathize with quasimodo. AND AGAIN Lindsay Ellis does a MUCH better and succinct job than me of explaining this. (its a great video, half of the articulations here come from her forming the idea first).

In the 1939 film we see this anti fascist, anti Holocaust sentiment in the treatment of the Romani. They are still cartoonish, and treated badly. But Esmerelda is actually Romani in this one, although white washed to hell and back.

I can't say yet, because Esmerelda and Frollo haven't actually had a scene together yet in Notre Dame De Paris. But the Disney version and the 1939 version are the only two insofar that treat Frollo's obsession with Esmerelda as violence. His lust for her is abuse, it is racial and sexual violence. His absolute anti-romani mania that equals his clerical devotion is manifested in this. And stupidly enough the fucking Disney version does this on film the best in my opinion. There was room for melodrama in the book and even less in the 1939 version. But the Disney one doesn't fuck around. To quote James Janisse from Drunk Disney: "monsters are rapey". They take the subtext of his lust for this “gypsy girl” and spell out physically in a short amount of time and leave you no wiggle room.

And Frollo is one of my favourite fictional characters because it's rare for me to watch a Disney movie between my fingers in disgust and horror. I love him because of Tony Jay's tar gargling voice and the blaspheming Catholic imagery and the disgusting split we witness down his deplorable excuse of a human soul.

But I want to get the issue of Frollo out of the way. The Disney version took its Renaissance formula and made him, although more dimensional than let's say Ursula or Radcliffe, is still a maniacal, evil laugh, and Disney-fied villain. We are never to question who is the monster and who is the man.

That isn't the issue with the book, Hugo writes this as a commonplace occurrence, this repressed lust for the object of his hatred. Which is fair and fine. And for the audience he is a prominent face in a heartless medieval mob of horrid antagonist/villains.

However, I don't know if Hugo cared if you did know who the main antagonist was. He oscillates from condemning the artists who ruined the gothic soul of Notre Dame, to the White Whole Foods mom's of 15th century Paris to the people who stone Quasimodo on the pillory. Jehannes Frollo is a douche, and unlikeable, so is Phoebus, oh god so is Gringoire. Literally every mob or crowd scene we see that all of Paris is an antagonist. Hugo almost says: look at all these awful ugly disgusting people, they're all gross and awful now moving on to my sweeping 20 page description of this corner of the cloisters.

Hugo described awful people doing awful things and then pipes up and says: aren't these people horrible! He just doesn't...do that with Frollo? Mostly because Frollo has been wholly inactive until Book 7 of 21. But when he is he doesn't say: this near forty year old is getting flushed and possessive of a sixteen years olds virginity and throws gringoire on the floor out of jealousy because he hears about his peep sow.....ISNT THAT HORRIBLE. I haven’t heard Hugo do a condemnation of that yet, which wouldn’t be strange if he hadn’t done that for literally everyone else.

There are several chapters explaining how smart Frollo is, how voracious his mind is, the depthless love he has for his spoiled and ungrateful brother Jehannes. We find out he's reviled by the public because he knows alchemy, mathematics, and languages. He's considered to be a sorcerer WHICH IS IRONIC considering that he's tasked the head torturer to track down la Esmeralda for witchcraft. This is purposeful on Hugo's part. The judge who condemns Quasimodo to be whipped at the pillory is also deaf. It's a whole farce. It's meant to be. Deaf men condemn deaf men. A perceived Sorcerer condemns a perceived Sorceress. Blah blah blah I’m Victor Hugo, the building is the only sacred thing.

But to be frank, Hugo hasn't been like: if the audience permits we would like the examine the horrible defection of Frollo's predatory nature. He calls Frollo a bird of prey once but that's it.

The mob and Frollo become unbalanced and sooner rather than later Frollo becomes the major evil. Even Frollo, is a quiet evil in this book, and the 1939 version does a good job of capturing this in the God Help the Outcasts scene. Again, in the written word killing the edifice we have reshuffled the roles and priorities of the story. Frollo is the major evil. And that's fine with me.

And I'm not trying to fish out a message about how Hugo feels about Frollo or who the true evil of the book is. That is clear to the audience. It's a varying and fickle degree of personnages who do awful things. In later adaptations the preoccupations of individuals leads us to draw greater conclusions from them. I'm just hoping we get one good condemnation out of Hugo, regardless of the obvious plot and set up as the antagonist.

EDIT:

Now that I'm further into the book I can safely say Hugo makes Frollo one of the most despicable villains in all of literally fiction. It's disgusting and nauseating. And the reason Hugo never says: look at how wrong this is is because this book is very anti clerical and anti Catholic church. Its not anti-spiritual or against faith I would say. But Hugo was progressive in the sense that he was anti establishment to a degree. Frollo is this exemplification for the hatred and bigoted mania the Catholic Church was exuding at the time. Between excommunicating an entire race, inquisitions, monstrous campaigns of slaughter, there is also lots of sexual misconduct. Rampant sexual misconduct. The clergy abusing their power. The repressed sexuality associated with evil and wrongdoing takes a definitive example in Frollo. He is positively obessed with Esmerelda to the point where Hugo spells out to us in big letters: this is sexual violence.

He is the main villain, literally no one can fucking take that mantle away from him. I was going down the wrong vein of thought above. So ignore it. Because Hugo takes a while to get to the plot of his story it means that we don't have Frollo truly do anything until the seventh book of 21. And when he does...

I wanted to vomit to be honest. I couldn't listen to the audio book. I kept putting down my ebook and walking around and avoiding it. It was one of the hardest reads. Phoebus allows Frollo to be a voyeur as he coerces Esmerelda to have sex with him (she's sixteen literally all the men in this book have to die). He plants a horrid disgusting putrid kiss on her after she faints in a pool of phobus blood. He is one of the hooded figures who puts her to the leather bed and tortures a confession out of her next to Charmoulue he heard torturer. He comes down to her oubliette to just literally beg for sex, he implores her begs her, literally even if she were to hurt him. Then when she is about to be hanged he leans down in front of the whole crowd (so some people think he's hearing her last confession) and tells her again the offer to bang is still there. She only says no because of Phoebus (who is actually alive and feeling up his fiancée within seeing distance). He starts associating the bodily harm of Esmerelda with sex and it's just so disgusting.

God and when Esmerelda gets her sanctuary in one of the appartment of the belltower Quasimodo never went the appartment. He brings her birds and flowers, respects her space. But that fuckwit Frollo can see the appartment from his office, i guess you'd call it where he's been angsting for weeks as he voyeuristlically sees Esmerelda go about her day. Then he remembers that he has a key, assaults her again, and Quasimodo pretty much almost shanks him.

Now Frollo is trying to get Gringoire to lure Esmerelda out.

Anyways this is all to say this Frollo is the worse one, Hugo went there, i was so wrong. This version made me so nauseous and terrified. Hugo doesn't mince words with who he thinks is the villain. The sexual obsession is racial violence, the racism is gendered. Vice versa.

Anyways it so bad I cant wait til every man except quasi dies in this book. Though, to the other men's credit sometimes i hate grigoire and Phoebus more than Frollo. Idk it really depends on who is doing what and when.

But let's get back to Hugo.

Where do I start when it comes to Hugo and La Esmerelda. Again, it's a useless discussion to have, we know this is a misogynistic and bigoted warp of a set of female stereotypes.

But I'll start with this.

Esmerelda is sixteen years old. She's infantilised, ridiculed, condescended to, abused, and so so so much more. Not to mention Hugo seems to revile and hate women despite his prolific attendance of 19th century brothels.

Yeah and I think Frollo is supposed a thirty nine year old who looks twice that age already. Which you know is pedophilia. Which Hugo just presents for you to make your judgment, hopefully congruent. Duh.

That's not my beef with how Hugo writes Esmerelda.

It's how the narration goes out of its way to sexualise that innocence. Nothing new, mind you of 19th Century Romanticism or 15th Century historical setting. But as a modern reader it can jar you out of the experience. Gringoire literally says: “she doesn't even know what the difference between a man and a woman in her dreams". And he revels in peeping behind a curtain and sees her in her shift while UGH explaining this to Frollo who wants to know if she's still virginal. Literally locker room talk about a child and her body to an old priest from a shitty poet.

Esmeralda is not sexually mature, when she dances she does it with a child’s abandon and to put bread on the table. She doesn't understand what her sexual appeal is, and it makes the dances feel voyeuristic and nonconsensual. And it's stupid. Making her older gives her agency when this book literally robs her of agency. Making her younger gives her no agency and makes us observant in her abuses, or at least that is how I felt.

Hugo writes others calling her: girl, little girl, gypsy girl, "the Esmerelda", the sorceress". You're probably asking: why are you surprised. I'm not I'm just aggravated at times when faced with a time capsule from the 1800s. It’s hard listening to Frollo, every judge, mother, petty bourgeoisie, Phoebus, and Gringoire call her “little girl” without thinking she’s eight years old.

There is a scene where Phoebus calls Esmeralda into a home where he's hanging with his fiancée, her family, and bitchy friends. And BECAUSE WOMEN CAN’T BE FRIENDS the minute Esmeralda comes in, Hugo describes that each of the women turn on their bitch switch because she's prettier than they are and they all want the one man in the rooms affection because ALL WOMEN WANT IS A MAN’S ATTENTION. So they start tearing her apart. Phoebus is gross, a pig, a soldier more likely to force a women than not. He infantilizes her just as much as the narrator.

The women start verbally shaming her, they slutshame and everything else they can think of. Until she just? Feels like she's given leave to go? Esmeralda only speaks when spoken to, she only came in when she was bid to. For such a free spirit according to Hugo she’s the perfect docile and desirable woman when need be.

Her beauty and sexuality are made appealing and un-romani for consumption, for the men in the book and the reader. Because Hugo like most men of the time and many of today are obsessed with white beauty. She has no faults, she is literally described as being perfect if not for her "pout" which, again, feels SO SEXUAL for a childlike sixteen year old. The only faults she has is the ones litigated against her for things she cannot change like her gender and supposed race.

It made me want a story told from Esmeraldas point of view, written by and for WOC. I want to see Esmeralda bandaging up her feet after a day of dancing, her toes and knuckles bloodied up from trying to earn a living. After a day of dancing she would glance over at the meagre coins in her hat and sigh at how little food she will have. I want the exoneration of the Romani people and treat them with dignity. Her poverty is unattractive and not noble but imposed on her by a system that hates her for something she can't control. I'd want an older Esmeralda with more agency, more control over herself. Shes be romani, or not. You commit to one. I'd love to see a scene where she is on the run and she does feel the entire world hate her and she is allowed moments of imperfections and cry. The world is on fire, the flames of Esmeralda as the book calls it, but their the flames of an ignoble archdeacon, the pursuit of an ingoble Archer and a wretch treated as badly as her. I want to see Esmeralda rage against an effigy, a saint and swear on her knees that she would kill all four of them with her bare hands, Frollo, Quasimodo, Gringoire, Phoebus for making her the literal objectified vessels of their want. I’d want her to kick Frollo's dead body. I would want to see her in Notre Dame by herself under the rosary window while we get lighting to denote what alignment our leading men are as they watch her and pour all of their hates and wants and make her into a vessel for themselves. To make that clear to the audience is so important. I would want her to have friends, female friends. I'd want her to stab AT LEAST ONE TO THREE PEOPLE. I would want her to be shown intelligent because she's put down for being illiterate. I want to see Esmeralda so righteously mad that God would have to beg for her forgiveness. I'd want her to leave Paris after the epic affair of Notre Dame and set back on her nomadic path convinced that no man or place is good enough for her. But when all is said and done, even when she has nothing, she has always had herself and that has been enough. She has herself and her people and that is what she needs.

And don't get me wrong I STILL LIKE THIS BOOK A LOT. And even with these parts being wholly unacceptable to me as a modern person I can enjoy the book, and not even have to practice a 2018 woke awareness to it. If I didn't read books by authors who thought that darker skinned people were inferior I'd pretty much be reading almost nothing. The story is genuinely interesting and so are the characters, stunted and pushed aside by the author as they are. But I just needed to do a comparison. To lay out all the thoughts on the table with the facts and go pretty much say what Hugo does: Not much changes in all this time, and at the same time nothing is the same.

#meta #longpost #notre dame de paris #victor hugo #also i do love this book a lot i just have frustrations and feelings #and now i have to watch the 1939 version again because i love that movie its so bad and so good #also #esmeralda #needs her own platform #and her own story from her perspective #and more merchandise #so we can all make hugo fucking roll in his grave #just let me know if these longposts are annoying

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blackkudos · 6 years

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Forest Whitaker

Forest Steven Whitaker III (born July 15, 1961) is an American actor, producer, and director.

Whitaker has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird, Platoon, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and The Butler, and for his work in independent films and for his recurring role as LAPD Internal Affairs Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the Emmy Award-winning television series The Shield.

For his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, Whitaker won the Academy Award, British Academy Film Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and various critics groups awards.

Early life

Whitaker was born in Longview, Texas, the son of Laura Francis (née Smith), a special education teacher who put herself through college and earned two master's degrees while raising her children, and Forest Steven Jr., an insurance salesman. According to DNA tests, his father was of Igbo descent, while his mother had Akan ancestry. When Whitaker was four, his family moved to Carson, California. Whitaker has two younger brothers, Kenn Whitaker, an actor, and Damon, and an older sister, Deborah. Whitaker's first role as an actor was the lead in Dylan Thomas' play Under Milk Wood.

Whitaker attended California State Polytechnic University, Pomona on a football scholarship, but a back injury made him change his major to music (singing). He toured England with the Cal Poly Chamber Singers in 1980. While still at Cal Poly, he briefly changed his major to drama. He was accepted to the Music Conservatory at the University of Southern California to study opera as a tenor, and subsequently was accepted into the University's Drama Conservatory. He graduated from USC in 1982. He also earned a scholarship to the Berkeley, California branch of the Drama Studio London. Whitaker was pursuing a degree in "The Core of Conflict: Studies in Peace and Reconciliation" at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2004.

Career

Film work

Whitaker has a long history of working with well-regarded film directors and actors, as well as, for a brief period of time, working in direct-to-video films alongside novice actors such as Lil Wayne, Maggie Grace, and 50 Cent. In his first onscreen performance of note, he had a supporting role playing a high school football player in the 1982 film version of Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age teen-retrospective Fast Times at Ridgemont High. In 1986, he appeared in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money and Oliver Stone's Platoon. The following year, he co-starred in the comedy Good Morning, Vietnam. In 1988, Whitaker appeared in the film Bloodsport and had his first lead role starring as musician Charlie "Bird" Parker in Clint Eastwood's Bird. To prepare himself for the part, he sequestered himself in a loft with only a bed, couch, and saxophone, having also conducted extensive research and taken alto sax lessons. His performance, which has been called "transcendent", earned him the Best Actor award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Globe nomination.

Whitaker continued to work with a number of well-known directors throughout the 1990s. He starred in the 1990 film Downtown and was cast in the pivotal role of Jody, a captive British soldier in the 1992 film The Crying Game, for which he used an English accent. Todd McCarthy of Variety described Whitaker's performance as "big-hearted", "hugely emotional", and "simply terrific". In 1994, he was a member of the cast that won the first ever National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble for Robert Altman's film, Prêt-à-Porter. He gave a "characteristically emotional performance" in Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's 1995 film, Smoke.

Whitaker played a serene, pigeon-raising, bushido-following, mob hit man in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, a 1999 film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Many consider this to have been a "definitive role" for Whitaker. In a manner similar to his preparation for Bird, he again immersed himself in his character's world—he studied Eastern philosophy and meditated for long hours "to hone his inner spiritual hitman." Jarmusch has told interviewers that he developed the title character with Whitaker in mind; The New York Times review of the film observed that "[I]t's hard to think of another actor who could play a cold-blooded killer with such warmth and humanity."

Whitaker next appeared in what has been called one of the worst films ever made, the 2000 production of Battlefield Earth, based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard. The film was widely criticized as a notorious commercial and critical disaster. However, Whitaker's performance was lauded by the film's director, Roger Christian, who commented that, "Everybody's going to be very surprised" by Whitaker, who "found this huge voice and laugh." Battlefield Earth won seven Razzie Awards; Whitaker was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to his co-star, Barry Pepper. Whitaker later expressed his regret for participating in the film.

In 2001, Whitaker had a small, uncredited role in the Wong Kar-wai-directed The Follow, one of five short films produced by BMW that year to promote its cars. He co-starred in Joel Schumacher's 2002 thriller, Phone Booth, with Kiefer Sutherland and Colin Farrell. That year, he also co-starred with Jodie Foster in Panic Room. His performance as the film's "bad guy" was described as "a subtle chemistry of aggression and empathy."

Whitaker's 2006 portrayal of Idi Amin in the film, The Last King of Scotland earned him positive reviews by critics as well as multiple awards and honors. To portray the dictator, Whitaker gained 50 pounds, learned to play the accordion, and immersed himself in research. He read books about Amin, watched news and documentary footage featuring Amin, and spent time in Uganda meeting with Amin's friends, relatives, generals, and victims; he also learned Swahili and mastered Amin's East African accent. His performance earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the fourth African-American actor in history to do so, joining the ranks of Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx. For that same role, he was also recognized with the British Academy Film Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and accolades from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, London Film Critics’ Circle Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics, and New York Film Critics Circle among others.

In 2007, Whitaker played Dr. James Farmer Sr. in The Great Debaters, for which he received an Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor. In 2008, Whitaker appeared in three films, first as a business man known only as Happiness, who likes butterflies, in the film The Air I Breathe. He also portrayed a rogue police captain in Street Kings, and a heroic tourist in Vantage Point.

In 2013, after working in several limited releases and independent features such as Freelancers and Pawn, Whitaker has enjoyed a bit of career resurgence, having played the lead role in Lee Daniels' The Butler, which has become one of his greatest critical and commercial successes to date.

Whitaker also starred in the film Black Nativity, alongside Jennifer Hudson, Angela Bassett, and Jacob Latimore. He also co-starred with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2013's The Last Stand, playing an FBI agent chasing an escaped drug cartel leader.

Whitaker played Saw Gerrera in the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Television work

After completing several films in the early 1980s, Whitaker gained additional roles in multiple television shows. On the series, Diff'rent Strokes, he played a bully in the 1985 episode "Bully for Arnold". That same year, Whitaker also played the part of a comic book salesman in the Amazing Stories episode "Gather Ye Acorns". He appeared in the first and second parts of North and South in 1985 and 1986. Throughout the 1990s, Whitaker mainly had roles in television films which aired on HBO, including Criminal Justice, The Enemy Within, and Witness Protection.

From 2002 to 2003, Whitaker was the host and narrator of 44 new episodes of the Rod Serling classic, The Twilight Zone, which lasted one season on UPN. After working in several film roles, he returned to television in 2006 when he joined the cast of FX's police serial The Shield, as Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh, who was determined to prove that the lead character, Vic Mackey, is a dirty cop. As opposed to his previous character work, Whitaker stated that he merely had to draw on his childhood years growing up in South Central Los Angeles for the role. He received rave reviews for his performance—Variety called it a "crackling-good guest stint"—and he reprised the role in the show's 2007 season.

In the fall of 2006, Whitaker started a multi-episode story arc on ER as Curtis Ames, a man who comes into the ER with a cough, but quickly faces the long-term consequences of a paralyzing stroke; he sues, then takes out his anger on Dr. Luka Kovač, who he blames for the strokes. Whitaker received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his performance in the series. Also in 2006, Whitaker appeared in T.I.'s music video "Live in the Sky" alongside Jamie Foxx.

Whitaker was cast in the Criminal Minds spin-off, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, that was subsequently cancelled by CBS on May 17, 2011.

In December 2016, it was announced that Whitaker would reprise his role as Saw Gerrera from Rogue One for the Star Wars Rebelsanimated series.

Theatre

Whitaker made his Broadway debut in 2016 in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's play Hughie at the Booth Theatre, directed by Michael Grandage.

Producing and directing

Whitaker branched out into producing and directing in the 1990s. He co-produced and co-starred in A Rage in Harlem in 1991. He made his directorial debut with a grim film about inner-city gun violence, Strapped, for HBO in 1993. In 1995, he directed his first theatrical feature, Waiting to Exhale, which was based on the Terry McMillan novel of the same name. Roger Ebert observed that the tone of the film resembled Whitaker's own acting style: "measured, serene, confident." Whitaker also directed co-star Whitney Houston's music video of the movie's theme song, "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)".

Whitaker continued his directing career with the 1998 romantic comedy, Hope Floats, starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick, Jr. He directed Katie Holmes in the romantic comedy, First Daughter in 2004 while also serving as executive producer; he had previously co-starred with Holmes in Phone Booth in 2002. He had previously gained experience as the executive producer of several made-for-television movies, most notably the 2002 Emmy-award-winning Door to Door, starring William H. Macy. He produced these projects through his production company, Spirit Dance Entertainment, which he shut down in 2005 to concentrate on his acting career.

Whitaker and his partner Nina Yang Bongiovi produced the film Fruitvale Station, which won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, as well as Repentance (2014), Dope (2015) and the upcoming Sorry to Bother You.

JuntoBox Films

Whitaker plays an active role as co-chair of JuntoBox Films since his initial involvement as co-chair with the collaborative film studio starting in March 2012. JuntoBox was developed as a social-media platform for filmmakers and fans to share ideas to create films and then collaborate to make them. Since Whitaker joined as co-chair, five projects have been greenlit for production.

Honors

In addition to the numerous awards Whitaker won for his performance in The Last King of Scotland, he has also received several other honors. In September 2006, the 10th Annual Hollywood Film Festival presented him with its "Hollywood Actor of the Year Award," calling him "one of Hollywood's most accomplished actors." He was honored at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2007, where he received the American Riviera Award.

Previously, in 2005, the Deauville (France) Festival of American Film paid tribute to him. On April 16, 2007, Whitaker was the recipient of the 2,335th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion pictures industry at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2009 at the 82nd Commencement Ceremony. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from California State University, Dominguez Hills on May 16, 2015.

Personal life

In 1996, Whitaker married actress Keisha Nash, whom he met on the set of Blown Away. They have four children: two daughters together (Sonnet and True), and his son (Ocean) and her daughter (Autumn) from their previous relationships.

Whitaker studies yoga and has a black belt in kenpō. He also trains in the Filipino martial art of Arnis, under Dan Inosanto. Inosanto is best known for having been a student of the late Bruce Lee and has trained actors such as Denzel Washington and Brandon Lee.

Whitaker's left eye ptosis has been called "intriguing" by some critics and "gives him a lazy, contemplative look". Whitaker has explained that the condition is hereditary and that he has considered having surgery to correct it, not for cosmetic reasons but because it affects his vision.

Activism

Charity work

Whitaker, who is a vegetarian, recorded a PSA with his daughter, True, promoting vegetarianism on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). He is also a supporter and public advocate for Hope North, a boarding school and vocational training center in northern Uganda for escaped child soldiers, orphans, and other young victims of the country's civil war.

Politics

In politics, Whitaker supported and spoke on behalf of Senator Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. On April 6, 2009, he was given a chieftaincy title in Imo State, Nigeria. Whitaker, who was named a chief among the Igbo community of Nkwerre, was given the title Nwannedinamba of Nkwerre, which means A Brother in a Foreign Land.

Whitaker was inducted as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Peace and Reconciliation, in a ceremony at UNESCO headquarters on June 21, 2011. As Goodwill Ambassador, Whitaker works with UNESCO to support and develop initiatives that empower youths and keep them from entering or remaining in cycles of violence. At the induction ceremony, U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO David Killion described Whitaker as a "perfect choice as a Goodwill Ambassador... he has exemplified compassion in every area of his life, with humility and grace. He does this because it's the right thing to do."

In 2010, Whitaker received the Artist Citizen of the World Award (France).

Whitaker co-founded the International Institute for Peace (IIP) at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Launched during the international Newark Peace Education Summit, IIP's mission is to develop programs and strategic partnerships to address cutting-edge issues such as increasing citizen security through community-building; the role of women and spiritual and religious leaders in peacebuilding; the impact of climate change; and the reduction of poverty. IIP operates under the auspices of UNESCO as a Category 2 Center.

Wikipedia

#Forest Whitaker #07-15

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brookstonalmanac · 9 months

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Holidays 9.18

Holidays

Aging Awareness Day

Big Brothers Big Sisters Day (Canada)

Celebrate Your Name Day

Celebration of Talent (French Republic)

Chiropractic Founder’s Day

Clemente Day

Day of National Music (Azerbaijan)

Dieciocho (Chile)

Eleven Days of Global Unity, Day 8: Human Rights

European Heritage Days (EU)

Feast Day of the Walloon Region (Belgium)

Festival of Inner Worlds

Fiesta Patrias (Chile)

First Love Day

Global Company Culture Day

Hug a Greeting Card Writer Day

International Equal Pay Day (UN)

International Pitt Hopkins Awareness Day

International Read an eBook Day

Island Language Day (Okinawa, Japan)

Jeannie in a Bottle Day

Jitiya Parwa (Only Women Employees; Nepal)

Jonny Quest Day

Long Playing Record Day

Mickey Mantle Day (New York)

Mid-Autumn Festival Holiday (Taiwan)

National Cannabis Day (Germany)

National Ceiling Fan Day

National Colton Day

National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day

National Museum Day [also 5.18]

National Play-Dough Day

National Report Kickback Fraud Day

National Respect! Day

Navy Day (Croatia)

New York Times Day

PCOS Awareness Day

Scouring of the White Horse (Wantage, Berkshire, UK)

Shimakutuba Day (Okinawa)

Top Ten List Day

U.S. Air Force Day

World Bamboo Day

World Medical Ethics Day

World Water Monitoring Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Brett Day

National Cheeseburger Day

National Chocolate Day

Rice Krispies Treats Day

3rd Monday in September

Bettagsmontag (Switzerland) [Monday after 3rd Sunday]

Human Rights Day (Antarctica) [3rd Monday]

National Cupcake Week begins (UK) [3rd Monday]

National Woman Road Warrior Day [3rd Monday]

Respect For the Aged Day (Japan) [3rd Monday]

Independence Days

Buddie Union (Declared; 2015) [unrecognized]

Chile (a.k.a. Dieciocho, 1st Gov't Junta, 1818)

Free Republic of Silbervia (Declared; 2020) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Amoeba Assimilation Day (Pastafarian)

Anton Mauve (Artology)

Arcadius, Bishop of Novgorod (Christian; Saint)

Ariadne of Phrygia (Christian; Martyr)

Bidzin, Elizbar, and Shalva, Princes of Georgia (Christian; Martyrs)

Castor of Alexandria (Christian; Martyr)

Constantius (Theban Legion)

Edward Bouverie Pusey (Episcopal Church)

Eugene’s, Bishop of Gortyna (Christian; Saint)

Eustorgius I (Christian; Saint)

Ferreol (Christian; Saint)

Feast of Ceres (Roman Goddess of Agriculture & Grain Crops)

Festival of Labour (French Republic)

Hilarion of Optima (Christian; Saint)

John Harvey Kellogg Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Joseph of Cupertino (Christian; Saint)

Juan Macias (Christian; Saint)

Leonardo da Crunchy (Muppetism)

Mark di Suvero (Artology)

Methodius of Olympus (Christian; Saint)

Plataia (Ancient Greece)

Richardis (Christian; Saint)

Sophia and Irene of Egypt (Christian; Martyrs)

Third Nostril of Christ Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Thomas of Villanova (Christian; Saint)

Tzom Gedaliah (Fast of Gedalia; Judaism)

Vanaheim Day (Pagan)

Vondel (Positivist; Saint)

Zay Day (Sus God Zay) [Wear red or purple hoodies]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Fortunate Day (Pagan) [38 of 53]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Tycho Brahe Unlucky Day (Scandinavia) [31 of 37]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [24 of 30]

Unlucky 18th (Philippines) [3 of 3]

Premieres

Abacab, by Genesis (Album; 1981)

The Addams Family (TV Series; 1964)

Birthday, recorded by The Beatles (Song; 1967)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Film; 1958)

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Animated Film; 2009)

Continental Divide (Film; 1981)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Film; 1951)

Dog Daze (WB MM Cartoon; 1937)

Enough Said (Film; 2013)

Fatal Attraction (Film; 1987)

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (Film; 1981)

Funny Girl (Film; 1968)

Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss (Albums; 1978)

Goldfinger premiered in UK (1964) [James Bond #3]

Goo Goo Goliath (WB MM Cartoon; 1954)

Heartache Tonight, by The Eagles (Song; 1979)

In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak (Children’s Book; 1970)

Jennifer’s Body (Film; 2009)

Jonny Quest (Animated TV Series; 1964)

Making Money, by Terry Pratchet (Novel; 2007) [Discworld #36]

Maple Leaf Rag, by Scott Joplin (Song; 1899)

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (Film; 2015)

More Than a Feeling,, by Boston (Song; 1976)

The Road to Ruin or Mine Over Matter (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S2, Ep. 55; 1960)

Rush Hour (Film; 1998)

The Scorch Trials, by James Dashner (Novel; 2010) [Maze Runner #2]

Serve It Forth (Art of Eating), by M.F.K. Fisher (Food Essays; 1937)

Severed Relations or How to Get a Head (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 161; 1962)

Sicario (Film; 2015)

Singles (Film; 1992)

Smiley Smile, by The Beach Boys (Album; 1967)

Strange Little Girl, by Tori Amos (Album; 2001)

A Streetcar Named Desire (Film; 1951)

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (TV Series; 2006)

Superman: Doomsday (WB Animated Film; 2007)

That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles or Me and My Chateau (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 162; 1962)

Tired and Feathered (WB LT Cartoon; 1965)

Two Flying Ghosts or High Spirits (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S2, Ep. 56; 1960)

Wagon Train (TV Series; 1957)

War Pigs, by Black Sabbath (Song; 1970)

Where’s Wally, by Martin Hanford (Puzzle Book; 1987)

WKRP in Cincinnati (TV Series; 1978)

Today’s Name Days

Herlinda, Josef, Lambert, Rica (Austria)

Alfonz, Irena, Jonatan, Josip, Sonja (Croatia)

Kryštof, Oskar (Czech Republic)

Titus (Denmark)

Tiido, Tiidrik, Tiidu, Tiit (Estonia)

Tytti, Tyyne, Tyyni (Finland)

Nadège, Véra (France)

Alfons, Herlinde, Lambert, Rica (Germany)

Ariadne, Ariadni, Evmenis, Kastor, Romylos (Greece)

Diána (Hungary)

Eumenio, Giuseppe, Maria, Sofia (Italy)

Alinta, Elita, Gizela, Liesma (Latvia)

Galmantė, Mingailas, Stefa, Stefanija (Lithuania)

Henriette, Henry (Norway)

Dobrowit, Irena, Irma, Józef, Ryszarda, Stefania, Tytus, Zachariasz (Poland)

Eumenie (Romania)

Elizaveta, Raisa (Russia)

Eugénia (Slovakia)

José, Sofía, Sonia (Spain)

Orvar (Sweden)

Irene (Ukraine)

Clint, Clinton, Corbin, Corwin, Corwyn, Korbin, Korvin (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 261 of 2024; 104 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 38 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Muin (Vine) [Day 14 of 28]

Chinese: Month 8 (Xin-You), Day 4 (Ji-Mao)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 3 Tishri 5784

Islamic: 3 Rabi I 1445

J Cal: 21 Aki; Sevenday [21 of 30]

Julian: 5 September 2023

Moon: 12%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 9 Shakespeare (10th Month) [Vondel]

Runic Half Month: Ken (Illumination) [Day 7 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 89 of 94)

Zodiac: Virgo (Day 28 of 32)

#Holidays

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brookston · 9 months

Text

Holidays 9.18

Holidays

Aging Awareness Day

Big Brothers Big Sisters Day (Canada)

Celebrate Your Name Day

Celebration of Talent (French Republic)

Chiropractic Founder’s Day

Clemente Day

Day of National Music (Azerbaijan)

Dieciocho (Chile)

Eleven Days of Global Unity, Day 8: Human Rights

European Heritage Days (EU)

Feast Day of the Walloon Region (Belgium)

Festival of Inner Worlds

Fiesta Patrias (Chile)

First Love Day

Global Company Culture Day

Hug a Greeting Card Writer Day

International Equal Pay Day (UN)

International Pitt Hopkins Awareness Day

International Read an eBook Day

Island Language Day (Okinawa, Japan)

Jeannie in a Bottle Day

Jitiya Parwa (Only Women Employees; Nepal)

Jonny Quest Day

Long Playing Record Day

Mickey Mantle Day (New York)

Mid-Autumn Festival Holiday (Taiwan)

National Cannabis Day (Germany)

National Ceiling Fan Day

National Colton Day

National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day

National Museum Day [also 5.18]

National Play-Dough Day

National Report Kickback Fraud Day

National Respect! Day

Navy Day (Croatia)

New York Times Day

PCOS Awareness Day

Scouring of the White Horse (Wantage, Berkshire, UK)

Shimakutuba Day (Okinawa)

Top Ten List Day

U.S. Air Force Day

World Bamboo Day

World Medical Ethics Day

World Water Monitoring Day

Food & Drink Celebrations

National Brett Day

National Cheeseburger Day

National Chocolate Day

Rice Krispies Treats Day

3rd Monday in September

Bettagsmontag (Switzerland) [Monday after 3rd Sunday]

Human Rights Day (Antarctica) [3rd Monday]

National Cupcake Week begins (UK) [3rd Monday]

National Woman Road Warrior Day [3rd Monday]

Respect For the Aged Day (Japan) [3rd Monday]

Independence Days

Buddie Union (Declared; 2015) [unrecognized]

Chile (a.k.a. Dieciocho, 1st Gov't Junta, 1818)

Free Republic of Silbervia (Declared; 2020) [unrecognized]

Feast Days

Amoeba Assimilation Day (Pastafarian)

Anton Mauve (Artology)

Arcadius, Bishop of Novgorod (Christian; Saint)

Ariadne of Phrygia (Christian; Martyr)

Bidzin, Elizbar, and Shalva, Princes of Georgia (Christian; Martyrs)

Castor of Alexandria (Christian; Martyr)

Constantius (Theban Legion)

Edward Bouverie Pusey (Episcopal Church)

Eugene’s, Bishop of Gortyna (Christian; Saint)

Eustorgius I (Christian; Saint)

Ferreol (Christian; Saint)

Feast of Ceres (Roman Goddess of Agriculture & Grain Crops)

Festival of Labour (French Republic)

Hilarion of Optima (Christian; Saint)

John Harvey Kellogg Day (Church of the SubGenius; Saint)

Joseph of Cupertino (Christian; Saint)

Juan Macias (Christian; Saint)

Leonardo da Crunchy (Muppetism)

Mark di Suvero (Artology)

Methodius of Olympus (Christian; Saint)

Plataia (Ancient Greece)

Richardis (Christian; Saint)

Sophia and Irene of Egypt (Christian; Martyrs)

Third Nostril of Christ Day (Church of the SubGenius)

Thomas of Villanova (Christian; Saint)

Tzom Gedaliah (Fast of Gedalia; Judaism)

Vanaheim Day (Pagan)

Vondel (Positivist; Saint)

Zay Day (Sus God Zay) [Wear red or purple hoodies]

Lucky & Unlucky Days

Fortunate Day (Pagan) [38 of 53]

Taian (大安 Japan) [Lucky all day.]

Tycho Brahe Unlucky Day (Scandinavia) [31 of 37]

Unglückstage (Unlucky Day; Pennsylvania Dutch) [24 of 30]

Unlucky 18th (Philippines) [3 of 3]

Premieres

Abacab, by Genesis (Album; 1981)

The Addams Family (TV Series; 1964)

Birthday, recorded by The Beatles (Song; 1967)

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Film; 1958)

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Animated Film; 2009)

Continental Divide (Film; 1981)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Film; 1951)

Dog Daze (WB MM Cartoon; 1937)

Enough Said (Film; 2013)

Fatal Attraction (Film; 1987)

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (Film; 1981)

Funny Girl (Film; 1968)

Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss (Albums; 1978)

Goldfinger premiered in UK (1964) [James Bond #3]

Goo Goo Goliath (WB MM Cartoon; 1954)

Heartache Tonight, by The Eagles (Song; 1979)

In the Night Kitchen, by Maurice Sendak (Children’s Book; 1970)

Jennifer’s Body (Film; 2009)

Jonny Quest (Animated TV Series; 1964)

Making Money, by Terry Pratchet (Novel; 2007) [Discworld #36]

Maple Leaf Rag, by Scott Joplin (Song; 1899)

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (Film; 2015)

More Than a Feeling,, by Boston (Song; 1976)

The Road to Ruin or Mine Over Matter (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S2, Ep. 55; 1960)

Rush Hour (Film; 1998)

The Scorch Trials, by James Dashner (Novel; 2010) [Maze Runner #2]

Serve It Forth (Art of Eating), by M.F.K. Fisher (Food Essays; 1937)

Severed Relations or How to Get a Head (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 161; 1962)

Sicario (Film; 2015)

Singles (Film; 1992)

Smiley Smile, by The Beach Boys (Album; 1967)

Strange Little Girl, by Tori Amos (Album; 2001)

A Streetcar Named Desire (Film; 1951)

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (TV Series; 2006)

Superman: Doomsday (WB Animated Film; 2007)

That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles or Me and My Chateau (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S4, Ep. 162; 1962)

Tired and Feathered (WB LT Cartoon; 1965)

Two Flying Ghosts or High Spirits (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoon, S2, Ep. 56; 1960)

Wagon Train (TV Series; 1957)

War Pigs, by Black Sabbath (Song; 1970)

Where’s Wally, by Martin Hanford (Puzzle Book; 1987)

WKRP in Cincinnati (TV Series; 1978)

Today’s Name Days

Herlinda, Josef, Lambert, Rica (Austria)

Alfonz, Irena, Jonatan, Josip, Sonja (Croatia)

Kryštof, Oskar (Czech Republic)

Titus (Denmark)

Tiido, Tiidrik, Tiidu, Tiit (Estonia)

Tytti, Tyyne, Tyyni (Finland)

Nadège, Véra (France)

Alfons, Herlinde, Lambert, Rica (Germany)

Ariadne, Ariadni, Evmenis, Kastor, Romylos (Greece)

Diána (Hungary)

Eumenio, Giuseppe, Maria, Sofia (Italy)

Alinta, Elita, Gizela, Liesma (Latvia)

Galmantė, Mingailas, Stefa, Stefanija (Lithuania)

Henriette, Henry (Norway)

Dobrowit, Irena, Irma, Józef, Ryszarda, Stefania, Tytus, Zachariasz (Poland)

Eumenie (Romania)

Elizaveta, Raisa (Russia)

Eugénia (Slovakia)

José, Sofía, Sonia (Spain)

Orvar (Sweden)

Irene (Ukraine)

Clint, Clinton, Corbin, Corwin, Corwyn, Korbin, Korvin (USA)

Today is Also…

Day of Year: Day 261 of 2024; 104 days remaining in the year

ISO: Day 1 of week 38 of 2023

Celtic Tree Calendar: Muin (Vine) [Day 14 of 28]

Chinese: Month 8 (Xin-You), Day 4 (Ji-Mao)

Chinese Year of the: Rabbit 4721 (until February 10, 2024)

Hebrew: 3 Tishri 5784

Islamic: 3 Rabi I 1445

J Cal: 21 Aki; Sevenday [21 of 30]

Julian: 5 September 2023

Moon: 12%: Waxing Crescent

Positivist: 9 Shakespeare (10th Month) [Vondel]

Runic Half Month: Ken (Illumination) [Day 7 of 15]

Season: Summer (Day 89 of 94)

Zodiac: Virgo (Day 28 of 32)

#calendar #Holidays

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yourjagmohanjaggu-blog · 6 years

Photo

Paul Robeson was a famous African-American athlete, singer, actor, and advocate for the civil rights of people around the world. He rose to prominence in a time when segregation was legal in the United States, and Black people were being lynched by racist mobs, especially in the South.

Born on April 9, 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, Paul Robeson was the youngest of five children. His father was a runaway slave who went on to graduate from Lincoln University, and his mother came from an abolitionist Quaker family. Robeson's family knew both hardship and the determination to rise above it. His own life was no less challenging.

In 1915, Paul Robeson won a four-year academic scholarship to Rutgers University. Despite violence and racism from teammates, he won 15 varsity letters in sports (baseball, basketball, track) and was twice named to the All-American Football Team. He received the Phi Beta Kappa key in his junior year, belonged to the Cap & Skull Honor Society, and graduated as Valedictorian. However, it wasn't until 1995, 19 years after his death, that Paul Robeson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

At Columbia Law School (1919-1923), Robeson met and married Eslanda Cordoza Goode, who was to become the first Black woman to head a pathology laboratory. He took a job with a law firm, but left when a white secretary refused to take dictation from him. He left the practice of law to use his artistic talents in theater and music to promote African and African-American history and culture.

In London, Robeson earned international acclaim for his lead role in Othello, for which he won the Donaldson Award for Best Acting Performance (1944), and performed in Eugene O'Neill's Emperor Jones and All God's Chillun Got Wings. He is known for changing the lines of the Showboat song "Old Man River" from the meek "...I'm tired of livin' and 'feared of dyin'....," to a declaration of resistance, "... I must keep fightin' until I'm dying....". His 11 films included Body and Soul (1924), Jericho (1937), and Proud Valley (1939). Robeson's travels taught him that racism was not as virulent in Europe as in the U.S. At home, it was difficult to find restaurants that would serve him, theaters in New York would only seat Blacks in the upper balconies, and his performances were often surrounded with threats or outright harassment. In London, on the other hand, Robeson's opening night performance of Emperor Jones brought the audience to its feet with cheers for twelve encores.

Paul Robeson used his deep baritone voice to promote Black spirituals, to share the cultures of other countries, and to benefit the labor and social movements of his time. He sang for peace and justice in 25 languages throughout the U.S., Europe, the Soviet Union, and Africa. Robeson became known as a citizen of the world, equally comfortable with the people of Moscow, Nairobi, and Harlem. Among his friends were future African leader Jomo Kenyatta, India's Nehru, historian Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, anarchist Emma Goldman, and writers James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. In 1933, Robeson donated the proceeds of All God's Chillun to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler's Germany. At a 1937 rally for the anti-fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War, he declared, "The artist must elect to fight for Freedom or for Slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative." In New York in 1939, he premiered in Earl Robinson's Ballad for Americans, a cantata celebrating the multi-ethnic, multi-racial face of America. It was greeted with the largest audience response since Orson Welles' famous "War of the Worlds."

During the 1940s, Robeson continued to perform and to speak out against racism, in support of labor, and for peace. He was a champion of working people and organized labor. He spoke and performed at strike rallies, conferences, and labor festivals worldwide. As a passionate believer in international cooperation, Robeson protested the growing Cold War and worked tirelessly for friendship and respect between the U.S. and the USSR. In 1945, he headed an organization that challenged President Truman to support an anti-lynching law. In the late 1940s, when dissent was scarcely tolerated in the U.S., Robeson openly questioned why African Americans should fight in the army of a government that tolerated racism. Because of his outspokenness, he was accused by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) of being a Communist. Robeson saw this as an attack on the democratic rights of everyone who worked for international friendship and for equality. The accusation nearly ended his career. Eighty of his concerts were canceled, and in 1949 two interracial outdoor concerts in Peekskill, N.Y. were attacked by racist mobs while state police stood by. Robeson responded, "I'm going to sing wherever the people want me to sing...and I won't be frightened by crosses burning in Peekskill or anywhere else."

In 1950, the U.S. revoked Robeson's passport, leading to an eight-year battle to resecure it and to travel again. During those years, Robeson studied Chinese, met with Albert Einstein to discuss the prospects for world peace, published his autobiography, Here I Stand, and sang at Carnegie Hall. Two major labor-related events took place during this time. In 1952 and 1953, he held two concerts at Peace Arch Park on the U.S.-Canadian border, singing to 30-40,000 people in both countries. In 1957, he made a transatlantic radiophone broadcast from New York to coal miners in Wales. In 1960, Robeson made his last concert tour to New Zealand and Australia. In ill health, Paul Robeson retired from public life in 1963. He died on January 23, 1976, at age 77, in Philadelphia.

#Paul Robeson

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uomo-accattivante · 7 years

Photo

On 21 August 2017, the Great American Eclipse caused a diagonal swathe of darkness to fall across the United States from Charleston, South Carolina on the East Coast to Lincoln City, Oregon on the West. In Manhattan, which was several hundred miles outside the path of totality, a gentle gloom fell over the city. Yet still office workers emptied out onto the pavements, wearing special paper glasses if they had been organised; holding up their phones and blinking nervously if they hadn’t. Despite promises that it was to be lit up for the occasion, there was no discernible twinkle from the Empire State Building; on Fifth Avenue, the darkened glass façade of Trump Tower grew a little dimmer. In Central Park Zoo, where children and tourists brandished pinhole cameras made from cereal boxes, Betty, a grizzly bear, seized the opportunity to take an unscrutinised dip.

Across the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Oscar Isaac, a 38-year-old Guatemalan-American actor and one of the profession’s most talented, dynamic and versatile recent prospects, was, like Betty, feeling too much in the sun. It was his day off from playing Hamlet in an acclaimed production at the Public Theater in Manhattan and he was at home on vocal rest. He kept a vague eye on the sky from the balcony of the one-bedroom apartment he shares — until their imminent move to a leafier part of Brooklyn — with his wife, the Danish documentary film-maker Elvira Lind, their Boston Terrier French Bulldog-cross Moby (also called a “Frenchton”, though not by him), and more recently, and to Moby’s initial consternation, their four-month-old son, Eugene.

Plus, he’s seen this kind of thing before. “I was in Guatemala in 1992 when there was a full solar eclipse,” he says the next day, sitting at a table in the restaurant of a fashionably austere hotel near his Williamsburg apartment, dressed in dark T-shirt and jeans and looking — amazingly, given his current theatrical and parental commitments — decidedly fresh. “The animals went crazy; across the whole city you could hear the dogs howling.” Isaac happened to be in Central America, he’ll mention later, because Hurricane Andrew had ripped the roof off the family home in Miami, Florida, while he and his mother, uncle, siblings and cousins huddled inside under couches and cushions. So yes, within the spectrum of Oscar Isaac’s experiences, the Great American Eclipse is no biggie.

Yet there is another upcoming celestial event that will have a reasonably significant impact on Isaac’s life. On 15 December, Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be released in cinemas, which, if you bought a ticket to Star Wars: The Force Awakens — and helped it gross more than $2bn worldwide — you’ll know is a pretty big deal. You’ll also know that Isaac plays Poe Dameron, a hunky, wise-cracking X-wing fighter pilot for the Resistance who became one of the most popular characters of writer-director JJ Abram’s reboot of the franchise thanks to Isaac’s charismatic performance and deadpan delivery (see his “Who talks first?” exchange with Vader-lite baddie Kylo Ren: one of the film’s only comedic beats).

And if you did see Star Wars: The Force Awakens you’ll know that, due to some major father-son conflict, there’s now an opening for a loveable, rogueish, leather-jacket-wearing hero… “Heeeeeh!” says Isaac, Fonzie-style, when I say as much. “Well, there could be, but I think what [The Last Jedi director] Rian [Johnson] did was make it less about filling a slot and more about what the story needs. The fact is now that the Resistance has been whittled to just a handful of people, they’re running for their lives, and Leia is grooming me — him — to be a leader of the Resistance, as opposed to a dashing, rogue hero.”

While he says he has “not that much more, but a little more to do” in this film, he can at least be assured he survives it; he starts filming Episode IX early next year.

If Poe seems like one of the new Star Wars firmament now — alongside John Boyega’s Finn, Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Poe’s spherical robot sidekick BB-8 — it’s only because Isaac willed it. Abrams had originally planned to kill Poe off, but when he met Isaac to discuss him taking the part, Isaac expressed some reservations. “I said that I wasn’t sure because I had already done that role in other movies where you kind of set it up for the main people and then you die spectacularly,” he remembers. “What’s funny is that [producer] Kathleen Kennedy was in the room and she was like, ‘Yeah, you did that for us in Bourne!’” (Sure enough, in 2012’s Bourne Legacy, Jeremy Renner’s character, Aaron Cross, steps out of an Alaskan log cabin while Isaac’s character, Outcome Agent 3, stays inside; a few seconds later the cabin is obliterated by a missile fired from a passing drone.)

This ability to back himself — judiciously and, one can imagine after meeting him, with no small amount of steely charm — seems to have served Isaac well so far. It’s what also saw him through the casting process for his breakthrough role in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2014 film Inside Llewyn Davis, about a struggling folk singer in Sixties New York, partly based on the memoir of nearly-was musician Dave Van Ronk. Isaac, an accomplished musician himself, got wind that the Coens were casting and pestered his agent and manager to send over a tape, eventually landing himself an audition.

“I knew it was based on Dave Van Ronk and I looked nothing like him,” says Isaac. “He was a 6ft 5in, 300lb Swede and I was coming in there like… ‘Oh man.’” But then he noticed that the casting execs had with them a picture of the singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne. “Suddenly, I got some confidence because he’s small and dark so I said to the casting director, ‘Oh cool, is that a reference?’ And they were like, 'No, he just came in here and he killed it.’” Isaac throws his head back and laughs. “They literally said, 'He killed it.’ It was so good!”

In the end it was Isaac who killed it in Inside Llewyn Davis, with a performance that was funny, sad, cantankerous and moving. The film was nominated for two Oscars and three Golden Globes, one of them for Isaac in the category of: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — comedy or musical” (he lost to Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street). No cigar that time, but in 2016 he won a Golden Globe for his turn as a doomed mayor in David Simon’s HBO drama, Show Me a Hero. This year, and with peculiar hillbilly affectation, Vanity Fair proclaimed Isaac “the best dang actor of his generation”. It is not much of a stretch to imagine that, some day very soon, Isaac may become the first Oscar since Hammerstein to win the award whose name he shares. Certainly, the stars seem ready to align.

Of course, life stories do not run as neatly as all that and Isaac’s could have gone quite differently. He was born Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada in Guatemala City, to which his father, Óscar, now a pulmonologist, had moved from Washington DC in order to attend medical school (having escaped to the States from Cuba just before the revolution) and where he met Isaac’s mother, Eugenia. Five months after Isaac was born, the family — also including an older sister, Nicole, and later joined by a younger brother, Michael — moved to America in order for Óscar Senior to complete his residencies: first to Baltimore, then New Orleans, eventually settling in Miami when Isaac was six.

Miami didn’t sit entirely right with him. “The Latin culture is so strong which was really nice,” he says, “but you had to drive everywhere, and it’s also strangely quite conservative. Money is valued, and nice cars and clothes, and what you look like, and that can get sort of tedious.” Still it was there, aged 11, that he took to the stage for the first time. The Christian middle school he attended put on performances in which the kids would mime to songs telling loosely biblical stories, including one in which Jesus and the Devil take part in a boxing match in heaven (note the word “loosely”). For that one, Isaac played the Devil. In another, he played Jesus calling Lazarus from the grave. “So yeah,” he laughs, “I’ve got the full range!’

He enjoyed the mixture of the attention and the “extreme nature of putting yourself out there in front of a bunch of people”, plus it gave him some release from stresses at home: his parents were separating and his mother became ill. His school failed to see these as sufficiently mitigating factors for Isaac’s subsequent wayward behaviour and, following an incident with a fire extinguisher, he was expelled. “It wasn’t that bad. They wanted me out of there. I was very happy to go.”

Following his parents’ divorce, he moved with his mother to Palm Beach, Florida, where he enrolled at a public high school. “It was glorious, I loved it,” says Isaac. “I loved it so much. I could walk to the beach every day, and go to this wild school where I became friends with so many different kinds of people. I met these guys who lived in the trailer parks in Boynton Beach and started a band, and my mom and my little brother would come and spy on me to see if I was doing drugs or anything, and I never was.”

Never?

“No, because I didn’t drink till I was, like, 24. Even though I stopped being religious, I liked the individuality of being the guy who didn’t do that stuff. Maybe it was the observer part of me… I liked being a little bit detached, and I wasn’t interested in doing something that was going to make me lose control.”

When he was 14, Isaac and his band-mates played at a talent show. They chose to perform 'Rape Me’ by Nirvana. “I remember singing to the parents, 'Rape meeee!’” Isaac laughs so hard he gives a little snort. “Yeah,” he says, composing himself again, “we didn’t win.” But something stuck and Isaac ended up being in a series of ska-punk outfits, first Paperface, then The Worms and later The Blinking Underdogs who, legend has it, would go on to support Green Day. “Supported… Ha! It was a festival…” says Isaac. “But hey, we played the same day, at the same festival, within a few hours of each other.” (On YouTube you can find a clip from 2001 of The Blinking Underdogs performing in a battle of the bands contest at somewhere called Spanky’s. Isaac is wearing a 'New York City’ T-shirt and brandishing a wine-coloured Flying V electric guitar.)

Still, Isaac’s path was uncertain. At one point he thought about joining the Marines. “The sax player in my band had grown up in a military family so we were like, 'Hey, let’s work out and get all ripped and be badasses!’” he says. “I was like, 'Yeah, I’ll do combat photography!’ My dad was really against it. He said, 'Clinton’s just going to make up a war for you guys to go to,’ so I had to have the recruiters come all the way down to Miami where my dad was living and they convinced him to let me join. I did the exam, I took the oath, but then we had gotten the money together to record an album with The Worms. I decided I’d join the Reserves instead. I said I wanted to do combat photography. They said, 'We don’t do that in the Reserves, but we can give you anti-tank?’ Ha! I was like, 'it’s a liiiiiittle different to what I was thinking…’”

Even when he started doing a few professional theatre gigs in Miami he was still toying with the idea of a music career, until one day, while in New York playing a young Fidel Castro in an off-Broadway production of Rogelio Martinez’s play, When it’s Cocktail Time in Cuba, he happened to pass by renowned performing arts school Juilliard. On a whim, he asked for an audition. He was told the deadline had passed. He insisted. They gave him a form. He filled it in and brought it back the next day. They post-dated it. He got in. And the rest is history. Only it wasn’t.

“In the second year they would do cuts,” Isaac says. “If you don’t do better they kick you out. All the acting teachers wanted me on probation, because they didn’t think I was trying hard enough.” Not for the first or last time, he held his ground. “It was just to spur me to do better I think, but I definitely argued.”

He stayed for the full course at Juilliard, though it was a challenge, not only because he’d relaxed his own non-drinking rule but also because he was maintaining a long-distance relationship with a girlfriend back in Florida. “For me, the twenties were the more difficult part of life. Four years is just… masochistic. We were a particularly close group but still, it’s really intense.” (Among his fellow students at the time were the actress Jessica Chastain, with whom he starred in the 2014 mob drama A Most Violent Year, and Sam Gold, his director in Hamlet.) He says he broadly kept it together: “I was never a mess, I just had a lot of confusion.” He got himself an agent in the graduation scrum, and soon started picking up work: a Law & Order here, a Shakespeare in the Park there; even, in 2006, a biblical story to rival his early efforts, playing Joseph in The Nativity Story (the first film to hold its premiere at the Vatican, no less).

By the time he enrolled at Juilliard he had already dropped “Hernández” and started going by Oscar Isaac, his two first given names. And for good reason. “When I was in Miami, there were a couple of other Oscar Hernándezes I would see at auditions. All [casting directors] would see me for was 'the gangster’ or whatever, so I was like, 'Well, let me see if this helps.’ I remember there was a casting director down there because [Men in Black director] Barry Sonnenfeld was doing a movie; she said, 'Let’s bring in this Oscar Isaac,’ and he was like, 'No no no! I just want Cubans!’ I saw Barry Sonnenfeld a couple of years ago and I told him that story — 'I don’t want a Jew, I want a Cuban!’”

Perhaps it’s a sad indictment of the entertainment industry that a Latino actor can’t expect a fair run at parts without erasing some of the ethnic signifiers in his own name, but on a personal basis at least, Isaac’s diverse role roster speaks to the canniness of his decision. He has played an English king in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood(2010), a Russian security guard in Madonna’s Edward-and-Mrs-Simpson drama W.E. (2011), an Armenian medical student in Terry George’s The Promise (2017) and — yes, Barry — a small, dark American Jew channelling a large blond Swede.

But then, of course, there are roles he’s played where ethnicity was all but irrelevant and talent was everything. Carey Mulligan’s ex-con husband Standard in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive in 2011 (another contender for his “spectacular deaths” series); mysterious technocrat Nathan Bateman in the beautifully poised sci-fi Ex Machina (2014) written and directed by Alex Garland (with whom he has also shot Annihilation — dashing between different sound stages at Pinewood while shooting The Last Jedi — which is due out next year). Or this month’s Suburbicon, a neat black comedy directed by George Clooney from an ancient Coen brothers script, in which Isaac cameos as a claims investigator looking into some dodgy paperwork filed by Julianne Moore and Matt Damon, and lights up every one of his brief scenes.

Isaac is a very modern kind of actor: one who shows range and versatility without being bland; who is handsome with his dark, intense eyes, heavy brows and thick curls, but not so freakishly handsome that it is distracting; who shows a casual disregard for the significance of celebrity and keeps his family, including his father, who remarried and had another son and daughter, close. It’s a testament to his skill that when he takes on a character, be it English royal or Greenwich Village pauper, it feels like — with the possible exception of Ray LaMontagne — it could never have been anyone else.

Today, though, he’s a Danish prince. To say that Isaac’s turn in Hamlet has caused a frenzy in New York would be something of an understatement. Certainly, it’s a sell-out. The Sunday before we meet, Al Pacino had been in. So scarce are tickets that Isaac’s own publicist says she’s unlikely to be able to get me one, and as soon as our interview is over I hightail it to the Public Theater to queue up to be put on the waiting list for returns for tonight’s performance. (I am seventh in line, and in my shameless desperation I tell the woman in front of me that I’ve flown over from London just to interview Isaac in the hope that she might let me jump the queue. She ponders it for a nanosecond, before another woman behind me starts talking about how her day job involves painting pictures of chimpanzees, and I lose the crowd.)

Clearly, Hamlet is occupying a great deal of Isaac’s available brain space right now, and not just the fact that he’s had to memorise approximately 1,500 lines. “Even tonight it’s different, what the play means to me,” he says. “It’s almost like a religious text, because it has the ambiguity of the Bible where you can look at one line and it can mean so many different things depending on how you meditate on it. Even when I have a night where I feel not particularly connected emotionally, it can still teach me. I’ll say a line and I’ll say, 'Ah, that’s good advice, Shakespeare, thank you.’”

Hamlet resonates with Isaac for reasons that he would never have foreseen or have wished for. While playing a young man mourning the untimely death of his father, Isaac was himself a young man mourning the untimely death of his mother, who died in February after an illness. Doing the play became a way to process his loss.

“It’s almost like this is the only framework where you can give expression to such intense emotions. Otherwise anywhere else is pretty inappropriate, unless you’re just in a room screaming to yourself,” he says. “This play is a beautiful morality tale about how to get through grief; to experience it every night for the last four months has definitely been cathartic but also educational; it has given structure to something that felt so overwhelming.”

In March, a month after Eugenia died, Isaac and Lind married, and then in April Eugene, named in remembrance of his late grandmother, was born. I ask Isaac about the shift in perspective that happens when you become a parent; whether he felt his own focus switch from being a son to being a father.

“It happened in a very dramatic way,” he says. “In a matter of three months my mother passed and my son was born, so that transition was very alive, to the point where I was telling my mom, 'I think you’re going to see him on the way out, tell him to listen to me as much as he can…’” He gives another laugh, but flat this time. “It was really tough because for me she was the only true example of unconditional love. It’s painful to know that that won’t exist for me anymore, other than me giving it to him. So now this isn’t happening” — he raises his arms towards the ceiling, gesturing a flow coming down towards him — “but now it goes this way” — he brings his arms down, making the same gesture, but flowing from him to the floor.

Does performing Hamlet, however pertinent its themes, ever feel like a way of refracting his own experiences, rather than feeling them in their rawest form?

“Yeah it is,” he says, “I’m sure when it’s over I don’t know how those things will live.” He pauses. “I’m a little bit… I don’t know if 'concerned’ is the right word, but as there’s only two weeks left of doing it, I’m curious to see what’s on the other end, when there’s no place to put it all.”

It’s a thoughtful, honest answer; one that doesn’t shy away from the emotional complexities of what he’s experiencing and is still to face, but admits to his own ignorance of what comes next. Because, although Isaac is clearly dedicated to his current lot, he has also suffered enough slings and arrows to know where self-determination has its limits.

What he does know is happening on the other end of Hamlet is “disconnection”, also known as a holiday, and he plans to travel with Lind to Maine where her documentary, Bobbi Jene, is screening at a film festival. Then he will fly to Buenos Aires for a couple of months filming Operation Finale, a drama about the 1960 Israeli capture of Adolf Eichmann which Isaac is producing and in which he also stars as Mossad agent Peter Malkin, with Eichmann played by Sir Ben Kingsley. At some point after that he will get sucked into the vortex of promotion for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, of which today’s interview is an early glimmer.

But before that, he will unlock the immaculate black bicycle that he had chained up outside the hotel and disappear back into Brooklyn. Later, he will take the subway to Manhattan an hour-and-a-half or so before curtain. To get himself ready, and if the mood takes him, he will listen to Venezuelan musician Arca’s self-titled album or Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie and Lowell, light a candle, and look at a picture of his mother that he keeps in his dressing room.

Then, just before seven o'clock, he will make his way to the stage where, for the next four hours, he will make the packed house believe he is thinking Hamlet’s thoughts for the very first time, and strut around in his underpants feigning madness, and — for reasons that make a lot more sense if you’re there which, thanks to a last-minute phone-call from the office of someone whose name I never did catch, I was — stab a lasagna. And then at the end of Act V, when Hamlet lies dead, and as lightning staggers across the night sky outside the theatre, finally bringing the promised drama to the Manhattan skyline, the audience, as one, will rise.

Fashion by Allan Kennedy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is out on 15 December. The December issue of Esquire is out now.

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#oscar isaac #esquire uk #star wars #the last jedi #interview #david slijper #article

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tornrose24 · 6 years

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CU Tangled AU ideas, part 2

A continuation of the discusion of the CU Tangled AU (a friendship based AU with Harold as Rapunzel and George as Flynn/Eugene) with @princeasimdiya12 (so if it sounds like I’m talking to someone in particular, that is who I’m talking to). I made a new post so we wouldn’t have to keep reblogging the first one, which is super long at this point. I’d check the last/recent version of that post to understand what is going on/what we are talking about.

Also, I ended up doing some drawings for this AU, but I won’t be scanning or inking/coloring just yet.

The removal of the rainbows from the symbol would be an interesting choice.

The parents would have still been together after the abduction, but separated some time after Heidi was born. The queen loves Heidi, but she’s very paranoid of losing another child so Heidi either stayed behind palace walls or had to have an escort at all times when outside. Poor girl doesn’t have a lot of playmates or friends because of this.

Though I had this cute idea that CU eventually wanted to meet the queen at some point but ended up meeting Heidi instead. By this point she’s heard of him and admires everything she’s heard about regarding him, so she would never get him sent to prison or send him to Krupp who seems to REALLY hate CU more more than everything he does that gets on his nerves (like helping out the citizens and being so popular with the children of the kingdom). The two get along really well to the point it’s like Heidi got the dad she always wanted. She then asks CU if he could help find her brother so that her mom could be happy again, and CU promises he will–though after she has to clarify that Harold is probably NOT an infant after so many years passed by when CU assumes he’s supposed to be looking for a baby.

Also, Heidi probably jokingly told her mom that she wouldn’t mind having someone like CU as her stepdad. And Krupp overhears this or eventually finds out and has an EPIC reaction of horror and embarrassment. (And no, he doesn’t want to try to marry the queen for power–that would be a stupid cliche in my opinion.)

Anyway, CU tries to keep an eye out for Harold, but he always seems to completely miss the tower. However, Harold did catch a glimpse of CU on a stroke of luck through the window and heard him yell out his catch phrase. It happened so fast that Harold couldn’t do anything about it or even see his face, but he was excited about it and showed Edith a drawing of what he could make out. It gave them both hope that perhaps they could finally escape and be free once more. Perhaps one day they’ll see that strange man in just a cape and undergarments and he’d set them free.

I’m also adding the above because I want the boys to be connected before they finally meet in the present day. Especially since CU is a living representation of their friendship. Also when Harold finally meets CU, he’s at first shocked and thinks it’s one of the funniest/best things he’s ever seen, but then he realizes that he’s heard that ‘TRA-LA-LAA!’ before and gets excited that he finally met the strange man in so little clothing who can fly.

But it would be ironic because Krupp chasing George into a hiding spot that’s actually a secret passageway to the tower would partly be due to George trying multiple times to snap his fingers to bring CU out and Krupp frantically stops each one (especially if he does the ‘cover your ears and try to talk loudly’ route). So CU being around is what leads to George finding Harold/CU starting to fulfill his promise to Heidi.

I bet Edith knows what a dolphin looks like and the animal becomes Harold’s favorite creature to summon. Anyway, The Grimm’s fairytales weren’t a thing just yet in the timeframe of Tangled (which I think was supposed to be 1780 if the research was correct), so I think Edith would be familiar with the Charles Perrault stories as well as both versions of Beauty and the Beast (I think it would be insanely ironic if that was a story she liked. The idea of someone who seems like a beast but would be a prince deep down somewhere inside–even in a figurative sense–is very sweet and perfectly reflects the romance she has in the film/will soon have in this AU. I don’t know if she would like a fairytale like Cinderella after living out a similar story and being screwed over instead of gaining her freedom). So she recounts the fairytales to Harold and they amuse themselves by coming up with their own versions over time.

Also it turns out George and Harold love the same kind of stories–the ones with heroes to go as far as to break the rules to do the right thing. Stories like Robin Hood, yes, but also ones where the hero is silly and delusional, like Don Quixote (someone on tumblr ACTUALLY proposed a Don Quixote CU AU, but I don’t know where it went). The memories of his parents telling stories to him, as well as being able to tell his own stories to them, are among George’s most cherished memories.

I imagine that when George comes into the tower, he’s knocked out because they have no clue what is going on, but after the excitement, they hide him away. And there would be that moment like in the film where Ribble makes it point blank she’s NEVER going to let them leave the tower which is soul crushing for Harold but angers Edith–it’s one thing for the woman to put her down with so many insults as a way to keep her inside, but it’s another to insult the boy and deny him any freedom.

Cue the bargaining scene. And I love the set up and your idea of how things could be resolved so that the crown can be returned.

Considering how in the film Gothel snuck in and out o the castle like magic, the magical folk would have been among the first who were suspected, but she’s not too lost in her grief to ask for help. Lisa and Billy’s families were probably among the first to leave, but they were told about Krupp as a warning so it all clicks for them when they find out who is chasing George down. And yeah, I could see Krupp being gleeful at the idea of capturing two young spellcasters and making it a big deal while scaring them half to death. He also thinks they aren’t a threat because he doesn’t think children are as powerful as adults–boy was he proven wrong!

It takes him awhile to figure out what happened to him but unlike his book/film counterpart, he finds out and is it NOT a good moment for him. It’s to the point that capturing George becomes his personal goal (with goal number two being trying to find a way to undo the spell while keeping it a secret).

I guess recounting the story would have to be like a Gilligan cut, just to make things easier.

Krupp would recognize Edith as the person who was with the boys and while she pities him, she also would remind him that she should be the one whose angry because she was separated from the boys–one of whom she is very close with and swore to keep an eye out for. But I can see Krupp trying to keep his anger down and, after Edith shows some kindness towards him, he slowly starts to relax and drop his guard around her. Though he’s still trying to cover himself up when they go find the boys and when Edith tells him that CU was very sweet and not only acted like a gentleman towards her, but also saved her in the chaos of the destruction of the dam/quarry, it annoys him (not realizing he’s actually being jealous of his counterpart).

And when Krupp does find the boys, they pull the repeating switching personalities scenario to mess with him and also because it’s so funny.

Yeah, George would need to be in disguise–he’d probably wear a mask or something. He’d show Harold around town and even though Harold had his first time playing/hanging out with kids at the Snugly Duckling, it’s the first time he’s played together with someone his own age who shares similar likes and dislikes. And because Harold has so much fun, it makes everything new to George again and he can quit worrying about getting caught, never finding his family, or mean adults–he can be like a kid again. They would still do the boat and go out when there are all the lanterns, but it’s a moment of being friends–NO ROMANCE! None whatsoever! It’s a moment where they finally reach the best friend status without realizing it. (When George sacrifices his life to save Harold and Harold is willing to trade his freedom to save George, that is when they know for sure how strong that friendship is).

Ooooooh, rainbow lanterns. I love it. :)

Also, when I said that Krupp begins to let his guard down around Edith, she also promises to not let him switch on accident during the festival after the boys did the back-and-forth on him–especially because transforming without realizing it is a source of paranoia that keeps him from being comfortable around people and keeps him from enjoying himself. When it DOES happen, she is able to keep her promise and turns him back in a way that won’t make him miserable–like leading CU to a place with water before he can start throwing things off, getting her hand wet, and then placing it on his head like checking a fever. And when Krupp awakens, she smiles and says something like ‘See? I told you I’d keep my promise.’ So not only does this increase his ability to trust Edith and deepens his appreciation towards her, but it’s one of the moments that leads to him beginning to develop stronger feelings towards her (though he’d struggle with that, because he also thinks that there’s no way she’d like him back due to his reputation, the ‘curse,’ and that she seemed to favor CU more than him).

Yeah that stuff about him and George and figuring out Harold’s identity sounds about accurate.

That’s a clever choice for the roles of the Stabbington Brothers and makes sense. Though I bet that at one point Ribble catches a glimpse of Edith with Krupp and not only is mad at the woman’s betrayal, but she can’t stand Edith being happy, looking so beautiful in that moment, or with a man which is a clear sign she’ll lose her servant and be forced to do a lot of the chores if that happens. And that gives her more ways to attack Edith later on when she and Harold are forced to go back.

I did have this one, super dark idea that ties into the original fairy tale–when Harold realizes why he was placed in the tower in the first place and Edith tries to help him out once again, Ribble decides that Edith is disposable–she can always find another servant–and decides to invoke a slow death upon Edith by having her trapped under these super thorny hedges/bushes near the tower. There’s a couple of feet thick of thorns in the least dense areas outside the spot Edith is stuck in, but there are so many thorns that it would be super painful to try to break the bushes all apart. In fact, the thorns can also gradually sap away the strength or magic of anyone who gets scratched or pierced by them, just to twist the knife further. Meanwhile, there’s enough room for Edith to be able to sit up or lay down, but it’s still a nightmare of a place to be stuck in if you happen to hate small spaces. The idea is that Edith will die of starvation or die in her attempt to escape since she’s not that powerful or strong enough to begin with, and that ‘her bones will mingle with the thorns’ since no one will be able to find her. (Also, NO ONE GOES BLIND like in the story because of this. I don’t want to make this AU THAT gruesome).

Of course Edith WILL be found, but let’s save that discussion for another time.

Well, I don’t know how soon I can respond back with more ideas. Until then, Merry Christmas.

#cu tangled au #captain underpants #george beard #harold hutchins #edith the lunch lady #mr. krupp #principal krupp #heidi hutchins #lisa beard #billy hutchins #ms. ribble #a bunch of others #egg casserole #kruppxedith

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