#Good Comics: American Cults

[doomsdaywriter]

Quick Reviews:

Due to changes in my work schedule, I’ve had a lot more time to read. I used the library app Hoopla, I’ve started downloading comics to read. Toward that end, here’s a few of my favorites: American Cult: A Graphic History of Religious Cults in America from the Colonial Era to Today, edited by Robyn Chapman – a non-fiction title from 2021, this anthology comic talks about fringe religious groups…

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

The Radio Times magazine from the 29 July-04 August 2023 :)

THE SECOND COMING

How did Terry Pratchett and Neil gaiman overcome the small matter of Pratchett's death to make another series of their acclaimed divine comedy?

For all the dead authors in the world,” legendary comedy producer John Lloyd once said, “Terry Pratchett is the most alive.” And he’s right. Sir Terry is having an extremely busy 2023… for someone who died in 2015.

This week sees the release of Good Omens 2, the second series of Amazon’s fantasy comedy drama based on the cult novel Pratchett co-wrote with Neil Gaiman in the late 1980s. This will be followed in the autumn by a new spin-off book from Pratchett’s Discworld series, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, co-written by Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna and children’s author Gabrielle Kent. The same month, we’ll also get A Stroke of the Pen, a collection of “lost” short stories written by Sir Terry for local newspapers in the 70s and 80s and recently rediscovered. Clearly, while there are no more books coming from Pratchett – a hard drive containing all drafts and unpublished work was crushed by a vintage steamroller shortly after the author’s death, as per his specific wishes – people still want to visit his vivid and addictive worlds in new ways.

Good Omens 2 will be the first test of how this can work. The original book started life as a 5,000-word short story by Gaiman, titled William the Antichrist and envisioned as a bit of a mashup of Richmal Crompton’s Just William books and the 70s horror classic The Omen. What would happen, Gaiman had mused, if the spawn of Satan had been raised, not by a powerful American diplomat, but by an extremely normal couple in an idyllic English village, far from the influence of hellish forces? He’d sent the first draft to bestselling fantasy author Pratchett, a friend of many years, and then forgotten about it as he busied himself with continuing to write his massively popular comic books, including Violent Cases, Black Orchid and The Sandman, which became a Netflix series last year.

Pratchett loved the idea, offering to either buy the concept from Gaiman or co-write it. It was, as Gaiman later said, “like Michelangelo phoning and asking if you want to paint a ceiling” The pair worked on the book together from that point on, rewriting each other as they went and communicating via long phone calls and mailed floppy discs. “The actual mechanics worked like this: I would do a bit, then Neil would take it away and do a bit more and give it back to me,” Pratchett told Locus magazine in 1991. “We’d mess about with each other’s bits and pieces.”

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – to give it its full title –was published in 1990 to huge acclaim. It was one of, astonishingly, five Terry Pratchett novels to be published that year (he averaged two a year, including 41 Discworld novels and many other standalone works and collaborations).

It was also, clearly, extremely filmable, and studios came knocking — though getting it made took a while. rnvo decades on from its writing, four years after Pratchett's death from Alzheimer's disease aged 66, and after several doomed attempts to get a movie version off the ground, Good Omens finally made it to TV screens in 2019, scripted and show-run by Gaiman himself. "Terry was egging me on to make it into television. He knew he was dying, and he knew that I wouldn't start it without him," Gaiman revealed in a 2019 Radio Times interview. Amazon and the BBC co-produced with Pratchett's company Narrativia and Gaiman's Blank Corporation production studios, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant cast in the central roles of Aziraphale the angel and Crowley the demon. The show was a hit, not just with fans of its two creators, but with a whole new young audience, many of whom had no interest in Discworld or Sandman. Social media networks like Tumblr and TikTok were soon awash with cosplay, artwork and fan fiction. The original novel became, for the first time, a New York Times bestseller.

A follow up was, on one level, a no-brainer. The world Pratchett and Gaiman had created was vivid, funny and accessible, and Tennant and Sheen had found an intriguing romantic spark in their chemistry not present in the novel.

There was, however, a huge problem. There wasn't a second Good Omens book to base it on. But there was the ghost of an idea.

In 1989, after the book had been sold but before it had come out, the two authors had laid on fivin beds in a hotel room at a convention in Seattle and, jet-lagged and unable to sleep, plotted out, in some detail, what would happen in a sequel, provisionally titled 668, The II Neighbour of the Beast.

"It was a good one, too" Gaiman wrote in a 2021 blog. "We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published, Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD(TM) and there wasn't a good time."

Back in 1991, Pratchett elaborated, "We even know some of the main characters in it. But there's a huge difference between sitting there chatting away, saying, 'Hey, we could do this, we could do that,' and actually physically getting down and doing it all again." In 2019, Gaiman pillaged some of those ideas for Good Omens series one (for example, its final episode wasn't in the book at all), and had left enough threads dangling to give him an opening for a sequel. This is the well he's returned to for Good Omens 2, co-writing with comic John Finnemore - drafted in, presumably, to plug the gap left Pratchett's unparalleled comedic mind. No small task.

Projects like Good Omens 2 are an important proving ground for Pratchett's legacy: can the universes he conjured endure without their creator? And can they stay true to his spirit? Sir Terry was famously protective of his creations, and there have been remarkably few adaptations of his work considering how prolific he was. "What would be in it for me?" he asked in 2003. "Money? I've got money."

He wanted his work treated reverently and not butchered for the screen. It's why Good Omens and projects like Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch are made with trusted members of the inner circle like Neil Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett at the helm. It's also why the author's estate, run by Pratchett's former assistant and business manager Rob Wilkins, keeps a tight rein on any licensed Pratchett material — it's a multi-million dollar media empire still run like a cottage industry.

And that's heartening. Anyone who saw BBC America's panned 2021 Pratchett adaptation The Watch will know how badly these things can go when a studio is allowed to run amok with the material without oversight. These stories deserve to be told, and these worlds deserve to be explored — properly. And there are, apparently, many plans afoot for more Pratchett on the screen. You can only hope that, somewhere, he'll be proud of the results.

After all, as he wrote himself, "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."

While those ripples continue to spread, Sir Terry Pratchett remains very much alive. MARC BURROWS

DIVINE DUO

An angel and a demon walk into a pub... Michael Sheen and David Tennant on family, friendship and Morecambe & Wise

Outside it's cold winter's day and we're in a Scottish studio, somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But inside it's lunchtime in The Dirty Donkey pub in the heart of London, with both Michael Sheen and David Tennant surveying the scene appreciatively. "This is a great pub," says Sheen eagerly, while Tennant calls it "the best Soho there can be. A slightly heightened, immaculate, perfect, dreamy Soho."

Here, a painting of the absent landlord — the late Terry Pratchett, co-creator, with Neil Gaiman, of the series' source novel — looms over punters. Around the corner is AZ Fell and Co Antiquarian and Unusual Books. It's the bookshop owned by Sheen's character, the angel Aziraphale, and the place to where Tennant's demon Crowley is inevitably drawn.

It's day 74 of an 80-day shoot for a series that no one, least of all the leading actors, ever thought would happen, due to the fact that Pratchett and Gaiman hadn't ever published any sequel to their 1990 fantasy satire. Tennant explains, "What we didn't know was that Neil and Terry had had plots and plans..."

Still, lots of good things are in Good Omens 2, which expands on the millennia-spanning multiverse of the first series. These include a surprisingly naked side of John Hamm, and roles for both Tennant's father-in-law (Peter Davison) and 21-year-old son Ty. At its heart, though, remains the brilliant banter between the two leading men — as Sheen puts it, "very Eric and Ernie !" — whose chemistry on the first series led to one of the more surprising saviours of lockdown telly.

Good Omens is back — but you've worked together a lot in the meantime. Was there a connective tissue between series one of Good Omens and Staged, your lockdown sitcom?

David: Only in as much as the first series went out, then a few months later, we were all locked in our houses. And because of the work we'd done on Good Omens, it occurred that we might do something else. I mean, Neil Gaiman takes full responsibility for Staged. Which, to some extent, he's probably right to do!

Michael: We've got to know each other through doing this. Our lives have gotten more entwined in all kinds of ways — we have children who've now become friends, and our families know each other.

There have been hints of a romantic storyline between the two characters. How much of an undercurrent is that in this series.

David: Nothing's explicit.

Michael: I felt from the very beginning that part of what would be interesting to explore is that Aziraphale is a character, a being, who just loves. How does that manifest itself in a very specific relationship with another being? Inevitably, as there is with everything in this story, there's a grey area. The fact that people see potentially a "romantic relationship", I thought that was interesting and something to explore.

There was a petition to have the first series banned because of its irreverent take on Christian tropes. Series two digs even more deeply into the Bible with the story of Job. How much of a badge of honour is it that the show riles the people who like to ban things?

David: It's not an irreligious show at all. It's actually very respectful of the structure of that sort of religious belief. The idea that it promotes Satanism [is nonsense]. None of the characters from hell are to be aspired to at all! They're a dreadful bunch of non-entities. People are very keen to be offended, aren't they? They're often looking for something to glom on to without possibly really examining what they think they're complaining about.

Michael, you're known as an activist, and you're in the middle of Making BBC drama The Way, which "taps into the social and political chaos of today's world". Is it important for you to use your plaform to discuss causes you believe in?

Michael: The Way is not a political tract, it's just set in the area that I come from. But it has to matter to you, doesn't it? More and more as I get older, [I find] it can be a real slog doing this stuff. You've got to enjoy it. And if it doesn't matter to you, then it's just going to be depressing.

David, Michael has declared himself a "not-for-profit" actor. Has he tried to persuade you to give up all your money too?

David: What an extraordinary question! One is always aware that one has a certain responsibility if one is fortunate and gets to do a job that often doesn't feel like a job. You want to do your bit whenever you can. But at the same time, I'm an actor. I'm not about to give that up to go into politics or anything. But I'll do what I can from where I live.

Well, your son and your father-in-law are also starring in this series. How about that, jobs for the boys!

David: I know! It was a delight to get to be on set with them. And certainly an unexpected one for me. Neil, on two occasions, got to bowl up to me and say, "Guess who we've cast?!"

How do you feel about your US peers going on strike?

David: It's happening because there are issues that need to be addressed. Nobody's doing this lightly. These are important issues, and they've got to be sorted out for the future of our industry. There's this idea that writers and actors are all living high on the hog. For huge swathes of our industry, that's just not the case. These people have got to be protected.

Michael: We have to be really careful that things don't slide back to the way they were pre the 1950s, when the stories that we told were all coming from one point of view and the stories of certain people, or communities within our society, weren't represented. There's a sense that now that's changed for ever and it'll never go back. But you worry when people can't afford to have the opportunities that other people have. We don't want the story that we tell about ourselves to be myopic. You want it to be as inclusive as possible

Staged series 3 recently broadcast. It felt like the show's last hurrah — or is there more mileage? Sheen and Tennant go on holiday?

David: That's the Christmas special! One Foot in the Algarve! On the Buses Go to Spain!

Michael: I don't think we were thinking beyond three, were we?

So is it time for a conscious uncoupling for you two — Eric and Ernie say goodbye?

David: Oh, never say never, will we?

Michael: And it's more Hinge and Bracket.

David: Maybe that's what we do next — The Hinge and Bracket Story. CRAIG McLEAN

[sheegons]

OKAY SO WHO ASKED FOR A POST THAT DETAILS DAMIANS CONNECTIONS TO MAGIC?.. nobody? oh okay.

(be forewarned, this is long)

now after ignoring batman 666, let's see what we have.

ROBIN: SON OF BATMAN (2015)

now, in robin: son of batman #1 It's confirmed that after his death in batman incorporated, damian went to hell. Hell is usually connected with the more magical side of the dc universe, but that's not it.

The entirety of the comic delves into damians connections to more mystical things. mythical swords and magical ancient towers, weird extinct bat-dragons, magical cults that want to destroy the whole world, etc etc.

this is easily regarded as one of damians best comics and having peak damian characterisation, so obviously Damian being magically inclined can easily work well with his character.

Now, after a barrel load of compliments, let's get to the extremely negative side of things.

TEEN TITANS (2016)

Damian's cloned brother has magic and that sentence is about as much as i care for this book. Moving on.

BATMAN (2016)

Again, dog shit damian characterisation, but here we go. Damian here actually shows an ability to use a binding spell and has a wand, making some sort of deal with a random demon, but a far cry from damian apparently selling his soul in batman 666. Moving on finally out of rebirth because that was a bad time for Damian's character.

ROBIN (2021)

Now we go back to the good. Apparently from the maternal part of damians family, magic is more commonplace. ra's even having a whole spell book to his name. Robin 2021 kinda toys with the ghul family and the lazarus pits magical and devilish side which isn't new... but it's new to involve damian!

In the final parts of this story, Damian's heart specifically is used as a plot device, lord deathman even dubbing it as "the bloodstream of the demon" and ruh (ra's' mother) uses it as a power source to fuel demon summonings, which started the Lazarus rain event.

TEEN TITANS DARK (Unreleased)

Back in early 2023 (i think) dc teased a sort of "teen titans dark" with damian, black alice and monkey prince. The "dark" moniker referencing Justice league dark, a magic team made up of magic users that solve magical bullshit. It's a good book, recommended read, i just thought I'd add this to the pile.

Detective comics/Knight terrors

Now, including these two together because they're about the same topic: Dreams.

damian is confirmed to have some sort of control over dreams and sleep, defeating demons that show up in his sleep, yet never actually disappear when he wakes up. He also has an ability to stay awake after a massive worldwide phenomenon causes everyone, even the dream masters that taught damian, to sleep and experience night terrors.

Dreams are, again, connected to the magical side of the dc universe. Now I'm not going to pretend like i actually read sandman to you, i can't lie on ramadan, so let's all give me a pass here for my lack of understanding of all that.

Batman and robin (2023)

In this, damian mentions a bit of off screen monster hunting with Frankenstein and lays a trap that lights someone on fire. I used to think this was some sort of hex but this artwork is extremely unclear, but since Frankenstein is mentioned and from my knowledge dc's Frankenstein is magic let's pretend this is some sort.

As an extra note: this guy definitely died. There's no way about it, he got lit on fire with nobody helping him. He's gone. Damian just killed a man.

Extra Extra notes:

talia using magic!

now, i haven't included these examples in the "the ghuls have magic" segment because uh...

(batman: the doom that came to Gotham/dc bombshells)

yeah...

Not only are these interpretations of talia EXTREMELY orientalist but also just generally out of character and could've been done with any randomly introduced characters.

For the unknowing white american people in the crowd: arabs actually don't only dress in revealing "belly dancer" outfits and lanterns. i know, shocking, we actually wear normal clothes.

And just to add again, there's a lot of stories that include ra's having magic, but I'm not the biggest ra's head (lol) so i didn't read them all, i implore u to do your own research because I'm not doing it.

this about wraps it up. thank you to the magic damian believers may we all win someday.

[l-just-want-to-see]

Jason (from the Greek Iásōn, “healer”) Peter Todd (from the German Tod, “death”) - I hope you find your way out of that grave.

dc comics + The Oresteia, Aeschylus / Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde / Grief Lessons: Four Plays [tr. Anne Carson], Euripides + Batman v1 #385 / Batman: The Cult #3 / For Example, Mary Oliver / Batman: Legends of The Dark Knight #100 / Batman: Under the Red Hood / Eight, Sleeping at Last / Red Hood and the Outlaws: Rebirth / Batman: Urban Legends #10 + ? / On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong / Red Hood and The Outlaws #25 / Slay the Princess / pinterest + Batman #422 / Batman #424 + Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Rainer Maria Rilke + Batman #428 | A Death in the Family / @/metamorphesque, tumblr / American Teenager, Ethel Cain / Anecdote of the Pig, Tory Adkisson / interpretations of A Death in the Family + The Oresteia, Aeschylus / Nightwing: Secret Files and Origins #1 + the Haunting of Bly Manor + Red Hood and the Outlaws #23 / @/petrichara, tumblr / I Didn't Apologize to the Well, Mahmoud Darwish / Infinite Crisis: Secret Files + pinterest / Ruin and Rising, Leigh Bardugo / Red Hood and the Outlaws #26 / The Cruel Prince, Holly Black / pinterest / Red Hood: The Lost Days / Sue Zhao / Red Hood: The Lost Days part II + Red Hood: The Lost Days #4 / I See Boats Moving, Fernando Pessoa / Oedipus the King, TV Tropes / @/devilsmoon, tumblr / Red Hood: The Lost Days + Speeches for Dr Frankenstein, Margaret Atwood / Saving June, Hannah Arrington + embroidered patch / Slay the Princess / unaligned, @/hamletmaschine + Batman: Under the Red Hood / Batman: Under the Red Hood + Batman and Robin #11 + South and West: From a Notebook, Joan Didion / The Good Fight, Ada Limón / Batman: Under the Red Hood / Grief Lessons: Four Plays, Euripides [tr. Anne Carson] / Batman: Under the Red Hood / Slay the Princess / Under the Red Hood / Slay the Princess / @/sainticide, twitter / The Truth About Grief, Fortesa Latifi + Batman: Under the Red Hood / Batman: Under the Red Hood / Ten Legs, Eight Broken, mandana on tiktok / War of the Foxes, Richard Siken + Under the Red Hood + Batman #428 | A Death in the Family / The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath, Sylvia Plath / Under the Red Hood + Batman #428 | A Death in the Family / @baitmeat, tumblr + Batman: Under the Red Hood (Deluxe Edition) / Origin Story, Desireé Dallagiacomo / Vive, Vive, Traci Brimhall / The Dogs I Have Kissed, Trista Mateer + Batman: Under the Red Hood + Three Jokers / Red Hood and the Outlaws Rebirth #9 / @/sainticide, twitter + Red Hood and the Outlaws #10 / Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, Taylor Swift / ? + Robin 80th Anniversary 100 Page Super Spectacular / Ep. 4: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth -- 'Sacrifice and Bliss', Joseph Campbell / White Knight #7 + Heaven, Mieko Kawakami / Forest Fire, Mitski / Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol. 2 #9 + Batman Annual #25 + Free Will Astrology, Rob Brezsny / Letter XV, @/lucidloving / Red Hood and the Outlaws Vol 1: REDemption / briscoepark + The Civil War, Anne Sexton [compiled by @/lovejoyparadox here] / @/soapstore, tumblr + I Await the Devil’s Coming, Mary MacLane + Claire C. Holland / @/havingrevelations, tumblr / Meditations in an Emergency, Cameron Awkward-Rich + Deathstroke #34 / Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides [tr. Anne Carson] + Red Hood and the Outlaws

[legok9]

"Who's that girl" DWM 268 (1998)

So, who would have played the Doctor if she'd been a woman from the first? DWM rounds up the likely ladies …

Hermione Baddeley 1963-66 Renowned for unsympathetic roles in both Brighton Rock and the dour 'kitchen sink'-styled Room at the Top, film veteran Baddeley made an enthralling Doctor - part dragon, part slightly dotty maiden aunt. Eternal juvenile Melvyn Hayes was 'unearthly' grandson Stephen Vivian Pickles 1966-69 Although much younger, and never a lead, the versatile Pickles had been a familiar TV face for 20 years (Harpers West One, etc) before being cast as Baddeley's successor. Her sprightly, elfin Doctor had a penchant for dressing-up, like a St Trinian's tomboy who never left school

Liz Fraser 1970-74 A comic actress familiar from several Carry Ons, Fraser's initial trepidation at taking on an ostensibly serious role soon dissipated. Her bossy, big-sisterly show-off of a Doctor was best paired with dippy companion Joe Grant (later Playgirl pin-up Robin Askwith) Frances de la Tour 1974-81 Gangling, piercing-eyed Shakespearean actress de la Tour played a tweedy, louche, Bohemian Doctor part-based on Virginia Woolf. Caused a minor sensation when she married the young actor who played the second incarnation of Time Lord companion Roman — Peter Davison

Jan Francis 1982-84 Despite rumours that the next Doctor might be played by a man (former New Avenger Gareth Hunt is hotly tipped), the youngest actress yet is cast. Fresh from middlebrow thirties drama The Good Companions, Francis made for a sporty Doctor in Lottie Dod-style tennis whites Lynda Bellingham 1984-86 Known to SF fans for her role as Barbara the Butcher in an episode of Jenna's 7, Bellingham's controversial Doctor was a loud, hectoring grand-dame of the theatre. Unceremoniously 'regenerated' following the Doctor's on- (and off-) screen inquisition in the epic Trial of a Time Lady

Pauline Melville 1987-89 Virtually unknown fringe cabaret and cult comedy artiste is surprise choice for 'back to basics' Seventh Doctor. Fan fears that series will become showcase for childish high-jinks up-ended when Melville stories adopt a sombre, down-beat mood, performed with conviction and gravitas Miranda Richardson 1996 The eldest in a successful line of acting siblings, a favourite of BBC producers since high-profile lead debut in revisionist biographical drama of notorious 20th century 'villain', makes a bid for American network stardom via lavish new big-haired version of Doctor Who. Star Trek actor Alexander Siddig plays love interest Dr Brian

[lover-of-small-things]

top 5 reasons you think i should watch riverdale go:

HI BESTIE ❤️❤️❤️ this is genuinely such a hard task because i have so many reasons. but for you i will narrow it down to five AND focus mainly on season one :

1) it's a creative writer's dream. the unreliable narrator is one of the main characters and his viewpoint molds and shapes the way the story is told. the dead boy in the river at the beginning of the show is an integral character to the story but we never see him speak. every character has a history that we only learn when it's forced out of them like pulling teeth. the town itself is alive and it is obsessed with the main characters and its love is so desperate and human that it destroys them. time is warped. every character experiences the story through a different genre. everyone is self aware and no one is aware of anything.

susan sontag might call riverdale the perfect representation of camp: it takes pleasure in the simple things; it unabashedly loves what it's doing; and it wholeheartedly makes references to what inspires it. you want a revelatory break? an open conversation with the impact of comic book legacy? an ongoing dialogue about the morality of creation? a consideration of the way literature and a love for/obsession with literature contours the way you view life? look no further. riverdale's got it all.

2) it's absolutely devastating. a boy drowns in the river and no one knows what happened to him, and no one ever really knew him except his sister, and no one is free enough from the thumb of authority to ask questions except for a bunch of kids. a little boy is groomed by his music teacher and he learns that his body is useless beyond its ability to take a hit and look pretty doing it. all he ever wanted to do was be a good son and a good friend and play guitar. a little girl is lied to and manipulated and alone and she thinks she's going crazy trying to play the part of the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect girl next door.

a little girl moves to a strange town where everyone hates her father, and she's lost and unmoored and trying to reinvent herself, and she's desperately trying to be good even as everyone around her chooses their history over her love. a little girl loses her twin brother and is lost, hated, and manipulated by her abusive parents while she desperately tries to figure out what in the world is happening around her, and she's so lonely. so lonely. a little boy, homeless and abused and hungry and cold, grapples for control while his life burns down around him, and turns to writing as a form of escape and a way to make sense of his world.

riverdale knows it's a lot sometimes. it knows it can be ridiculous. but underneath the glitz and glamor, you're left with a small fistful of breathtakingly real characters who you can't help but empathize with. who you can't help but love. who you can't help but to want to understand.

3) it's so fun! as heartwrenching as riverdale can be, one of its best parts is that it's simply so much fun to watch. there are musical episodes. there's a mafia movie plotline. and a gangster movie plotline. and a sci fi alien movie plotline. there are cults and evil dnd games and flashbacks to the 80s. the kids do ridiculous, grown-up things like meddling in murder investigations and uncovering hidden town truths, but they also go to prom and run the school newspaper and try out for the cheerleading squad and tackle stage fright and fight with their parents. they go to drive-ins! and perform in a talent show! and meet their friends' weird ass families!

there are episodes told like horror stories. episodes framed like comic books. episodes where stories and imaginations come to life. silly episodes, filler episodes, straight-up fun episodes. in this era of tight, eight-ep seasons that are meant to be a movie chopped up haphazardly so it can fit run times, who is doing it like riverdale?

4) it plays with the american gothic. this small town is corrupt to the core. it was built on violence and bloodshed and hatred. everyone thinks it's perfect. they're not all wrong; there are still legacies of love here despite the rot that runs through everything. the outsiders are the enemy. the outsiders are not the enemy, but it's easier to pretend they are so we don't have to confront ourselves. the nuclear family is not terrifying because it can be infiltrated by evil, it is terrifying because there is something inherently evil about it. when you anger the town, it traps you with an impenetrable fog. you can't trust your friends. you can't trust your parents. you can't trust the police. everyone knows everyone. you're trapped. you love it here. you should move. you can never really leave. this town loves you. it wants to eat you alive.

5) it's very silly. i'm weird i'm a weirdo. the epic highs and lows of high school football. word of my serving nick his comeuppance has made its way to the demimonde of mobsters and molls my father used to associate with. it's not queerbaiting, it's saving the world. i'm training with the fbi and i'm coming for you, you psycho bitch. again, WHO is doing it like riverdale? my beloved riverdale my best friend riverdale. every single silly line from this show makes me so overwhelmed with fondness for it and you should join me so you can experience the absolute love i have for her too.

[theoutcastrogue]

Favorite movie from 01?

[Give me a year and I'll give you my favourite films / recommendations]

Perhaps "favourite" isn't the best word, perhaps the best word is "biggest obsession", but I have to go with Mulholland Drive. David Lynch is a very special case, you're either into him or you ain't, and arguments either way are of little use. I just want to note 2 things, about Lynch in general and Mulholland in particular:

Contrary to all appearances, it actually makes sense. It may be a weird sense, a dream sense (literally a dream, for like half of this movie), but it's not random.

It doesn't need to make sense to you to be enjoyable. It's perfectly cool to treat it like a trip, and just get lost in the highway sauce. You can revisit it later, and think about it and look up what others have made of it, but it's optional.

Now, these 4 are my favourite 2001 films:

Spirited Away needs no introduction, it's widely thought as the best Ghibli film, and I love it to bits.

I'm a complete sucker for Moulin Rouge! and for truth! beauty! freedom! love!, and will accept no criticism at this time.

El espinazo del diablo (The Devil's Backbone) is early Guillermo del Toro, and a sort of prelude to Pan's Labyrinth: it's horror, it's set during the Spanish Civil War, and it takes a stance, along with its own supernatural elements.

And I simply adore Hedwig and the Angry Inch (second musical lol). Does that need an introduction, on 2024 tumblr?

Also of interest:

Monster's Ball is the best from the rest, an incredible drama with Halle Berry's best performance. Very disturbing from start to finish. "Billy Bob Thornton plays a prison guard who begins a relationship with a woman (Halle Berry), unaware that she is the widow of a man (Sean Combs) he assisted in executing."

Ocean's Eleven is the fully on-brand film, it pretty much defined what modern American heist films should be like. No small feat!

Das Experiment: so the Stanford experiment inspired some notoriously bad takes, not least by Zimbardo himself. It also inspired this amazing film. Please don't bother with the pointless American remake. (I owe tumblr a serious post about the Stanford experiment btw, but this is not the place.)

The Brotherhood of the Wolf is surely the wackiest AND darkest action / horror / period / swashbukcling / wuxia / monster film out there. We're in 18th century France, there's the legendary beast of Gévaudan, and cults, and spies, and all of the above.

Il mestiere delle armi (The Profession of Arms) is a shoutout to @wearemercs, it's a realistic war film with landsknechts and condottieri in 16th century Italy, we don't see that every day.

@feyariel I remember that Metropolis was wonderful and I loved it, but not much else about it. Sorry, it's been a while and I have shit for memory!

Monsters, Inc.: not best Pixar, but good Pixar

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: can't leave this one out!

The Man Who Wasn't There: excellent neo-noir by the Cohens

Gosford Park: a whodunit set at an English country house, and the polar opposite of Downton Abbey (which goes at great lengths to convince us that masters deserve their servants' loyalty), ironically written by the same person

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amélie): here begin the films that were adored back then, especially by the artsy/festival crowd, but I haven't seen them since and I've no idea how they've aged

Ghost World: based on the comic book by Daniel Clowes

Waking Life: Linklater, philosophy, rotoscope, Ethan Hawke's there, oh my!

Y tu mamá también: Alfonso Cuarón, road trips, sex, young Diego Luna, young Gael García Bernal, oh my!

Ichi the Killer: by Takashi Miike, based on Hideo Yamamoto's manga. do not watch this if you're not completely sure you wanna watch this lol

[thedreadvampy]

btw on the tangent of end of history ass bullshit I put my finger recently on why adapting Good Omens as a modern-day story bugs me

bc I Have Known. bc I was a comedy-fantasy afficianado in the 90s/early 2000s. that GO is one of many examples of a very specific genre of British comedy-scifi-fantasy popular in the 90s I would term "millennial apocalypse farce".

you know, they're a mix of biblical eschatology, Fortean Times conspiracy theory, cult tropes, and Y2K Rise of the Machines stuff, smashed together into an Adamsian comedy where a group of hapless protagonists bumble around while the world falls apart in comically overblown ways. imo, though a lot of authors bring their own spin to it, they're all heavily stylistically influenced specifically by Dirk Gently, which isn't Millennial Apocalypse Farce but I think did inspire a lot of it. Robert Rankin is on the edge of it, Good Omens is the most lasting example, but I read like 20 of these and most authors only wrote one afaict.

but the thing I was saying the other day is I honestly cannot think of a genre of popular English-language fiction that's more rooted in a specific time and culture. I tried for a while and really couldn't.

It just doesn't translate well away from the turn of the millennium, purely because the millennium was such a fevered touchpoint for Apocalypse Stuff. two things there I think.

Obviously, Y2K looming. Millennium Approaches. The turn of every century has often been accompanied by an uptick in interest in apocalypses and end times, but this was the BIGGIE. It's only happened on this calendar once before. People in the 1900s were talking about how close they were to a new millennium. The approaching millennium dominated the whole 20th century, and especially with how apocalyptic a lot of the 20th century felt in terms of war and technology, apocalyptic fervour really kicked up in the 90s. And there was a smorgasbord of apocalypses to choose from; divine, nuclear, digital, cosmic, alien, all stuff which on the millennial scale had really only just shown up in the last century or so. I was 7 in 2000 so pinch of salt but I remember all of us sort of holding our breath leading up to Jan 1 2000, not just bc of Y2K but bc it felt like something momentous HAD to happen.

The end of history. The cold war had subsided, and so had the economic depression of the 70s and 80s UK. There just was not a Singular Apocalypse hanging over a group of people who'd spent their whole lives in the shadow of a Singular Nuclear Apocalypse. I think stuff really rushed in to fill that gap, and Millennial Apocalypse Farce is a response to that sudden glut of possible apocalypses all clamouring for attention.

I think as well American end-of-days right-wing evangelism was really loud in the 80s-90s and that plays a part, cause the generally lefty and consciously self-effacing British comedy author milieu found that off-putting in a very mockable way

but the point is that glut of apocalypses was a real flash in the pan, the same way the End of History was. it was a like 10-15 year timespan where the world was definitely ending but nobody could say why or how, and it began around the fall of the Berlin Wall and ended on September 11, 2001.

Millennial Apocalypse Farce novels did keep coming out after 2001 but like everything else, the culture has changed really radically, and also, like, we were past the millennium. Those infinite possibilities of apocalypses hadn't paid off. Not saying that the public interest in apocalypse went away - 2012, obviously. The LHC. But the full on fervour for any and all crank apocalypses kind of petered off a bit bc the turn of the millennium was so much a flashpoint for it. and anyway we had really concrete apocalypses again - terrorism, totalitarian governments, plague, and of course the main 21st century apocalypse, Oh Shit We Really Fucked This Climate Change Thing Up.

and I really love the Millennial Apocalypse Farce genre. I really love stumbling on books in that genre. because it's such a time capsule for an incredibly specific period in recent cultural history.

but it does not translate into a 2020s setting. It's so 90s. it's so rooted in a really specific landscape of cultural anxieties and abstractions. it just doesn't make sense to me to translate it to the modern day, it's like setting Angels in America in 2023. it's just the wrong type of apocalypse. apocalypses are culturally generated and they change fast based on how a culture sees itself and the world. you can't pick up a 1990 apocalypse and put it unchanged in 2023, it's Wrong. if you're going to do that you have to be in conversation with it, you can't just update it.

like ok example of thoughtfully recontextualising an anachronistic apocalypse for a modern setting. War of the Worlds 2005. Why is it War of the Worlds? Because it wants to say some things about the relationship between post 9/11 America and colonial England, and how the specific common anxiety of invasion affects them as people in a nation of invaders. Idk if it's a good film cause I didn't like it when I watched it but that was a long time ago. But the intent makes sense.

what does putting a Millennial Apocalypse Farce in the 2020s actually. say? about the commonalities between now and then? I mean. Based on the TV show of Good Omens, to me, not a lot. It's pretty beat for beat in that sense, and we're not really far enough away from 1990 for it to have the obvious impacts that saying "now is very like then" does with, say, War of the Worlds, because the world of HG Wells was distant enough for a 2005 audience to go 'oh, Victorian colonialism, that's Not Like Us.' whereas like. I remember the 90s. It's not recent but it's in continuity with now. saying "then it's like now" is a) kind of Incorrect imo, the cultural anxieties are Very Different, and b) not...striking?

idk like. The genre is dated. The nature of that specific apocalypse idea is incredibly dated. And that's good actually. It's fine for art to be a time capsule of a specific cultural moment and to not make sense divorced from that moment. That's good! That's a good use of art!

[ariel-seagull-wings]

@themousefromfantasyland @piterelizabethdevries @thealmightyemprex @the-blue-fairie @professorlehnsherr-almashy @stickypersonaearthquake

Do you know the conflict between Autheur Theory vs Art as Collaboration?

Basically, Autheur Theory began between French critics and filmmakers, as a way of analyzing the film industry: originally films were clearly a collaboration, and it was common to have more than one director on the same project until the final edit of the film was reached (Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz being famous examples).

But the Autheur Theory presented and popularized the idea that, to have the same prestige as, for example, a classic novel, it is necessary to have a figure defined as "the Author of the film", and the chosen figure was the director.

And this vision became dominant from the 60s onwards, when a wave of directors grew up who exercised strong control over films, and whose names became the brand that attracted people to watch. Before, you went to watch a film expecting to be entertained by the fiction, and to see the actors and characters who were the Stars. You would go by Judy Garland, Gary Cooper, Vivien Leigh, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, etc. From the 60s onwards, you will see films by director Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Copolla, etc.

And there was the simplified idea that "the director is a visionary genius who is a champion against the oppression of producers and studios who care only about money." But decades passed, and after some box office failures of films made using the Autheur model (Heaven's Gate directed Michael Cimino being the most famous), the cult of Autheur began to be questioned, as it denied the fact the role of all the team collaborating to make a film, often this personality cult of the director encourages abuse practices in the name of the "vision of genius", the fact that just because the director has a style and trademarks common to his films, it does not This means that it is automatically good, just that it repeats themes and subjects, the study of the history of cinema showing that Autheur itself is also a brand to be sold, and that it is not the "great champion against the studios", but in fact, he becomes prominent because when he makes a film that is successful and the studios see that it makes a profit, the studio will support him to do what he wants in the hope of always replicating that success, and the prestige of his name is it works as marketing in the same way that the face of the Actor who is a Star works.

I bring up this discussion because I think a similar conflict applies to the American comics industry: American society is obsessed with the idea of ​​the Great Man, the Visionary Genius. Originally, artists drew the character, and then he became part of the publishing house (Detective Comics, Fox, Timely, etc.).

Those who originally created them continued drawing for a while, then went to work on other titles, and then another artist would take care of drawing the Phantom, Mandrake, Flash Gordon, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Society of Justice of America, the Blue Beetle, Namor the Sub-Mariner, Captain America. Another artist could expand the universe and increase the lore and create a new villain, but he did not compete to erase what the previous artist had built and only establish what their idea was as "the true version".

It was the old collaboration model in which the name of the artist didn't matter, what mattered was telling a good story about those characters. Not everything was rosy, obviously: with the publisher being the owner of the character, the artists were often screwed and left in the cold. poverty. Siegel and Shuster suffered from poverty after creating Superman, and it was the fact that other cartoonists came together to demand decent pay that helped them in their old age.

But narratively, there was a focus on cohesion and collaboration.

But in the 60s, as in the film industry, things changed: the idea of ​​control and authorship grew.

And now you had Marvel (former Timely) selling the image of Stan Lee as the creator of his entire Universe, Steve Ditko defending the view that the Artist should be considered the author of the work, names like Alan Moore, Frank Miller and John Byrne becoming stars, and it all comes back to the idea that the Author should have all the control.

And when a name and work become popular and make money, remember what companies do: they let you do whatever you want:

You are the Autheur.

And readers bought into that idea: His redesign and rewrite of Daredevil and graphic novels The Dark Knight Returns and Year One made people for decades venerate Frank Miller to the point of denying everything that came before as the "version wrong" of the characters and that Miller "fixed" them, no one heard of Swamp Thing and Miracle Man until Alan Moore's name was on the cover, no one remembers that one day Sandman was a masked guy with a sleeping gas gun before being portrayed as the embodiment of the concept of Dreams in the graphic novels of a certain accused of sexual abuse Neil Gaiman.

Now, imagine you are an artist or writer who becomes known as a star in the comic book industry, whose name becomes prestigious and helps sell the magazine, and then you are given the job of drawing an existing character.

Everyone worships you, your word is considered law, you are a genius who can do no wrong, and then you think:

"Why do I have to follow rules, because I have to think about what has already been established as a characteristic of that character, when I can use it to represent what is MY artistic VISION of what a hero SHOULD be?"

And as a result. ..comic crossover events where a bunch of characters die horribly or turn evil for no reason, weddings you've followed developing for decades erased from continuity, characters committing horrible acts without any idea on how to examine the consequences.

We, as the public, created the cult of the genius, the comics industry responded to this by thinking it was a viable economic model in which to profit, and art suffered in the process.

Recognizing the importance of collaboration is the solution to dealing with this problem.

And there are other comic industries outside the US where collaboration, rather than competition between "visions of genius", is encouraged:

In France, more people came to draw Asterix and Obelix after the passing of Gossiny and Uderzo, building the stories based on the work they established.

In Brazil, Maurício de Souza's publishing house produces both Classica Mônica and Friends and Monica's Teen Manga series magazines with several artists and scriptwriters working together as graphics novels in which individual artists reinterpret characters, but without wanting to impose their interpretation as the only correct one.

And the Japanese manga industry has the model of one or two artists working on a story with a beginning, middle and end, which allows other artists, often fans, to develop sequels or spin offs that expand or complement the previous title, without ever trying to erase what was done before.

[everythingispirates]

We have to face the fact that Elizabeth hated piracy and left it for good. She wanted a peaceful life and that is exactly what she got.

We have to face the fact that Bruce Lorne Campbell (born June 22, 1958) is an American actor and moviemaker. He is known best for his role as Ash Williams in Sam Raimi's Evil Dead horror series, beginning with the short movie Within the Woods (1978). He has also featured in many low-budget cult movies such as Crimewave (1985), Maniac Cop (1988), Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat (1989), and Bubba Ho-Tep (2002).

Bruce Lorne Campbell[1] was born in Royal Oak, Michigan, on June 22, 1958,[2] the son of advertising executive and college professor Charles Newton Campbell and homemaker Joanne Louise (née Pickens).[3] He is of English and Scottish ancestry,[1] and has an older brother named Don and an older half-brother named Michael.[4] His father was also an actor and director for local theater.[3] Campbell began acting and making short Super 8 movies with friends as a teenager. After meeting future moviemaker Sam Raimi while the two attended Wylie E. Groves High School, they became good friends and collaborators. Campbell attended Western Michigan University and continued to pursue an acting career.[5]

Campbell and Raimi collaborated with a 30-minute Super 8 version of the first Evil Dead movie, titled Within the Woods (1978), which was initially used to attract investors.[6] He and Raimi got together with family and friends to begin working on The Evil Dead (1981). While featuring as the protagonist, Campbell also participation with the production of the movie, receiving a co-executive producer credit. Raimi wrote, directed, and edited the movie, while Rob Tapert produced. After an endorsement by horror author Stephen King, the movie slowly began to receive attention and offers for distribution.[7] Four years after its original release, it became the most popular movie in the UK. It was then distributed in the United States, resulting in the sequels Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992).[8]

Campbell was also drawn in the Marvel Zombie comics as his character, Ash Williams. He is featured in five comics, all in the series Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness. In them, he fights alongside the Marvel heroes against the heroes and people who have become zombies (deadites) while in search of the Necronomicon (Book of the Names of the Dead).[9] Campbell also played as Coach Boomer in the movie “Sky High”.

He has appeared in several of Raimi's movies other than the Evil Dead series, notably having cameo appearances in the director's Spider-Man film series.[10] Campbell also joined the cast of Raimi's movie Darkman[11] and The Quick and the Dead, though having no actual screen time in the latter movie's theatrical version.[12] In March 2022, Campbell was announced to have a cameo in Raimi's Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.[13]

Campbell often performs quirky roles, such as Elvis Presley for the movie Bubba Ho-Tep.[14] Along with Bubba Ho-Tep, he played a supporting role in Maniac Cop and Maniac Cop 2, and spoofed his career in the self-directed My Name is Bruce.[15]

Other mainstream movies for Campbell include supporting or featured roles in the Coen Brothers movie The Hudsucker Proxy, the Michael Crichton adaptation Congo, the movie version of McHale's Navy, Escape From L.A. (the sequel to John Carpenter's Escape From New York), the Jim Carrey drama The Majestic and the 2005 Disney movie Sky High.[16]

Campbell had a major voice role for the 2009 animated adaptation of the children's book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and a supporting voice role for Pixar's Cars 2.[17]

Campbell produced the 2013 remake of The Evil Dead, along with Raimi and Rob Tapert, appearing in the movie's post-credits scene in a cameo role with the expectation he would reprise that role in Army of Darkness 2.[18] The next year, the comedy metal band Psychostick released a song titled "Bruce Campbell" on their album IV: Revenge of the Vengeance that pays a comedic tribute to his past roles.

Campbell worked as an executive producer for the 2023 movie Evil Dead Rise.[19]

Other than cinema, Campbell has appeared in a number of television series. He featured in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. a boisterous science fiction comedy western created by Jeffrey Boam and Carlton Cuse that played for one season.[20] He played a lawyer turned bounty hunter who was trying to hunt down John Bly, the man who killed his father. He featured in the television series Jack of All Trades, set on a fictional island occupied by the French in 1801. Campbell was also credited as co-executive producer, among others. The show was directed by Eric Gruendemann, and was produced by various people, including Sam Raimi.[21] The show was broadcast for two seasons, from 2000 to 2001. He had a recurring role as "Bill Church Jr." based upon the character of Morgan Edge from the Superman comics on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.[22]

From 1996 to 1997, Campbell was a recurring guest actor of the television series Ellen as Ed Billik, who becomes Ellen's boss when she sells her bookstore in season four.[23]

He is also known for his supporting role as the recurring character Autolycus ("King of Thieves") on both Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, which reunited him with producer Rob Tapert.[24] Campbell played Hercules/Xena series producer Tapert in two episodes of Hercules set in the present.[25] He directed a number of episodes of Hercules and Xena, including the Hercules series finale.[26]

Campbell also obtained the main role of race car driver Hank Cooper for the Disney made-for-television remake of The Love Bug.[27]

Campbell had a critically acclaimed dramatic guest role as a grief-stricken detective seeking revenge for his father's murder in a two-part episode of the fourth season of Homicide: Life on the Street. Campbell later played the part of a bigamous demon in The X-Files episode "Terms of Endearment".[28] He also featured as Agent Jackman in the episode "Witch Way Now?" of the WB series Charmed, as well as playing a state police officer in an episode of the short-lived series American Gothic titled "Meet The Beetles".

Campbell co-featured in the television series Burn Notice, which was broadcast from 2007 to 2013 by USA Network. He portrayed Sam Axe, a beer-chugging, former Navy SEAL now working as an unlicensed private investigator and occasional mercenary with his old friend Michael Westen, the show's main character. When working undercover, his character frequently used the alias Chuck Finley, which Bruce later revealed was the name of one of his father's old co-workers.[29] Campbell was the star of a 2011 Burn Notice made-for-television prequel focusing on Sam's Navy SEAL career, titled Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe.[30]

In 2014, Campbell played Santa Claus for an episode of The Librarians. Campbell played Ronald Reagan in season 2 of the FX original series Fargo. More recently Campbell reprised his role as Ashley "Ash" Williams in Ash vs Evil Dead,[31] a series based upon the Evil Dead series that began his career. Ash vs Evil Dead began airing on Starz on October 31, 2015, and was renewed by the cable channel for second[32] and third seasons,[33] before being cancelled.[34]

In January 2019, Travel Channel announced a new version of the Ripley's Believe It or Not! reality series, with Campbell serving as host and executive producer. The 10-episode season debuted on June 9, 2019.[35]

Campbell is featured as a voice actor for several video games. He provides the voice of Ash in the four games based on the Evil Dead movies series: Evil Dead: Hail to the King, Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick, Evil Dead: Regeneration and Evil Dead: The Game.[36] He also provided voice talent in other titles such as Pitfall 3D: Beyond the Jungle, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man,[37] and Dead by Daylight.[38]

He provided the voice of main character Jake Logan for the PC game, Tachyon: The Fringe, the voice of main character Jake Burton for the PlayStation game Broken Helix and the voice of Magnanimous for Megas XLR. Campbell voiced the pulp adventurer Lobster Johnson in Hellboy: The Science of Evil and has done voice-over work for the Codemaster's game Hei$t, a game which was announced on January 28, 2010 to have been "terminated". He also provided the voice of The Mayor for the 2009 movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the voice of Rod "Torque" Redline in Cars 2, the voice of Himcules in the 2003 Nickelodeon TV series My Life as a Teenage Robot, and the voice of Fugax in the 2006 movie The Ant Bully.[37]

Despite the inclusion of his character "Ash Williams" in Telltale Games' Poker Night 2, Danny Webber voices the character in the game, instead of Bruce Campbell.[39]

He has a voice in the online MOBA game, Tome: Immortal Arena in 2014.[40] Campbell also provided voice-over and motion capture for Sgt. Lennox in the Exo Zombies mode of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.[41]

In addition to acting and occasionally directing, Campbell has become a writer, starting with an autobiography, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, published in June 2001.[42] The autobiography was a successful New York Times Best Seller.[43] It describes Campbell's career to date as an actor in low-budget movies and television, providing his insight into "Blue-Collar Hollywood".[42] The paperback version of the book adds details about the reactions of fans during book signings: "Whenever I do mainstream stuff, I think they're pseudo-interested, but they're still interested in seeing weirdo, offbeat stuff, and that's what I'm attracted to".[42]

Campbell's next book Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way was published on May 26, 2005. The book's plot involves him (depicted in a comical way) as the main character struggling to make it into the world of A-list movies.[44] He later recorded an audio play adaptation of Make Love with fellow Michigan actors, including longtime collaborator Ted Raimi. This radio drama was released by the independent label Rykodisc and spans 6 discs with a 6-hour running time.

In addition to his books, Campbell also wrote a column for X-Ray Magazine in 2001, an issue of the popular comic series The Hire, and comic book adaptations of his Man with the Screaming Brain. Most recently he wrote the introduction to Josh Becker's The Complete Guide to Low-Budget Feature Filmmaking.

In late 2016, Campbell announced that he would be releasing a third book, Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor, which will detail his life from where If Chins Could Kill ended. Hail to the Chin was released in August 2017, and accompanied by a book tour across the United States and Europe.[45]

Campbell maintained a weblog on his official website, where he posted mainly about politics and the movie industry, though it has since been deleted.[46]

Since 2014, the Bruce Campbell Horror Film Festival, narrated and organized by Campbell, was held in the Muvico Theater in Rosemont, Illinois. The first festival was originally from August 21 to 25, 2014, presented by Wizard World, as part of the Chicago Comicon.[47] The second festival was from August 20 to 23, 2015, with guests Tom Holland and Eli Roth.[48] The third festival took place over four days in August 2016.[49] Guests of the event were Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Doug Benson.[50]

Campbell married Christine Deveau in 1983, and they had two children before divorcing in 1989. He met costume designer Ida Gearon while working on Mindwarp, and they were married in 1992.[51] They reside in Jacksonville, Oregon.[51]

Campbell is also ordained and has performed marriage ceremonies.[52]

[balloons-in-bold]

To Bring Forth Sweetness: A Prophet Slain

Part two of three in my series on growing up in a cult.

For further context you can read my the artist statement for part one here https://www.tumblr.com/balloons-in-bold/756747631527624704/a-struggle-in-secret-the-wedding-riddle-part-one?source=share

Growing up in a cult can be really damaging. I struggled through many confusing and lonely times, but there was also a lot of good. Everything joyous and nurturing about my childhood was a result of my parent’s mindful parenting. The choices they made can be traced back to their experience in the cult, and their desire to give us better than they were given. Harsh parenting, high control structures, and the inability to rely on family during their upbringing manifested conversely in an environment for us of love and support, a healthy celebration of novel experiences and guilty pleasures, and a rock solid family unit that could weather any storm.

And storms we did weather. After leaving my birthplace of Brazil, we moved to Taiwan, a locale that felt far more like home to my parents who had spent so many years in Asia before I was born. My mom grew up in Macau and met my dad during his time in Japan. Two years after making the move to Taiwan, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake rocked the island, displacing us and tens of thousands of others from their homes. While staying in refugee camps, my parents, displaying a rugged resilience cultivated by the cult’s outsider status, immediately got to work lifting people’s spirits with songs, clown shows, and distributing balloons. 

Twisting balloons was a widely taught skill in the cult, both as a way of making money, and as a form of community outreach. Balloons, music, and selling literature were the primary modes of support for many large commune homes due to the cult’s restrictive policies heavily discouraging the working of regular “systemite” jobs. Despite Asia being home in their hearts, my parents had to move us to America, to seek medical care for various health problems they were struggling with. Ever since the early days of the cult, David Berg prophesied a coming doom and destruction for America, which he styled as the whore of Babylon from Revelations 17. He preached against the relentless wars waged in foreign nations, and against the complacency of the American Evangelical churches in ignoring Jesus’s more radical teachings of asceticism and acceptance, styling himself as an iconoclast and table flipper in the image of Jesus rebuking the Pharisee establishment. I still carry these sentiments with me today. I was fed anti-America messaging throughout publications and music which worked with the isolating, not-of-this-world lifestyle to create an identity of elite separation from the country in which we lived. This, despite the often comically rabid christian-nationalist, pro Imperialist content found in the a-Beka homeschool curriculum we used. Cognitive dissonance and lack of certainty in what I was being taught would be an ever growing thorn in my worldview throughout my time in the cult. More important than the inconveniently present patriotism, was the lack of education about evolution in our curriculum. More than any other outside teaching, evolution was maligned as the most evil and dehumanizing work of Satan that we had to be indoctrinated against. As a supplement to the homeschooling material, we were given the Kent Hovind creationist seminars, which I, an enthusiastic student of science, practically memorized by heart. Many things could have ended up catalyzing my doubts in college, but learning about evolution from an unbiased perspective had me realizing I couldn’t rely on the trust I had in the worldview that had been forced on me, and the only way forward was to reevaluate everything from the ground up. I wrote in the previous part in this series on the isolation and loneliness I experienced as a result of being homeschooled. The limited opportunities for socialization was made up for with an encouragement of extracurricular learning. Since an early age I was taught how to teach myself, utilizing the library system, internet forums, and pirated software. I became skilled in Photoshop, 3D modeling, music, and eventually balloons.

Balloon twisting was a skill taught to me at the age of 16 by my parents. Many ex-cult members have negative feelings about balloons due to its association with the cult, but I value the connection as the convenient illustration of the unique circumstances throughout my family history that led to me being the person I am today. A history tracing back to my great grandfather, David Berg, who got his start preaching to wayward hippies at Huntington Beach in the late 60s. As well intentioned as the group may have started out, the radical views on sex that “Grandpa” developed, when combined with the all encompassing authoritarian nature of the cult he created, led to some truly stomach churning abuses. I was shielded by abuse in part due to the careful parenting of my parents, and due to the doctrinal overhauls that took place in previous generations after much international backlash and public scrutiny. A story of institutionalized abuse, coverup, reform, and gaslighting that I uncovered piece by piece as I was given more freedom to read the cult’s antiquated teachings. David Berg kept his likeness hidden for much of the cult’s existence in order to evade consequences for the abuses he perpetrated and made commonplace. Only after his passing did the cult release a photo book so his many thousands of followers could finally know the leader they’d been so dedicated to. When in hiding, his appearance was substituted with a friendly and wise old anthropomorphic lion character. This is the lion I would render in balloon form, to burn the man in effigy, mixing both crucifixion and heretic-at-the-stake imagery, a fitting end to such a self-styled rebel prophet. Out of his disemboweled corpse flows honey, like honey from the lion’s carcass that Samson would construct his riddle around. The honey meets with a hexagonal honeycomb pattern composed entirely of classic balloon dogs. The iconographic symbol of balloon art, connecting my family’s past in the cult with the medium I sculpt with today. The large 6 x 7 foot painting that makes up the background is a more abstract form of the sculpture’s themes of beauty and goodness derived from chaos and despair. The various textures are created using many different techniques and acrylic mediums. Palette knives, piping bags, and custom hexagon silicone molds were used with modeling paste, acrylic gels, and crackle paste to evoke the gore and viscera of a decaying corpse alongside the life and structure of a buzzing beehive.

Working on a project over both the long and short term, with paintings that take months, and balloon sculptures that take days, puts in perspective the complexity of understanding someone’s story. To truly understand someone, you need to take in both their immediate lived and felt experiences, and the sometimes long and complicated history and context within which those events take place. Creating this balloon sculpture for display while also setting up the rest of my exhibition posed more of a challenge than if I were to have worked solely in private. But it  all came together and I’m glad so many people got a chance to see it in person. There will be one final balloon sculpture/painting part in the series but I’ll be taking my time with it and setting up an event sometime in the future for its exhibition. Maybe as part of a group show; we’ll see. 

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Treat Your S(h)elf: Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield (1998)

At Thermopylae, a rocky mountain pass in northern Greece, the feared and admired Spartan soldiers stood three hundred strong. Theirs was a suicide mission, to hold the pass against the invading millions of the mighty Persian army.

Day after bloody day they withstood the terrible onslaught, buying time for the Greeks to rally their forces. Born into a cult of spiritual courage, physical endurance, and unmatched battle skill, the Spartans would be remembered for the greatest military stand in history–one that would not end until the rocks were awash with blood, leaving only one gravely injured Spartan squire to tell the tale….

- Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire (1998)

This is one of my favourite books on war I’ve ever read. I took my dog-eared copy with me last year when I went with ex-military veterans friends to climb Olympus and hike around Greece. One of the places we stopped was Thermopylae - where you can still bathe in the hot springs as the ancient Spartans and Athenians did before their monumental battle with the Persians. The very recent death of the last king of Greece, King Constantine II of the Hellenes, made me think of my trip to Greece last year and of one of the books I read on that trip. I thought I might share some of my rambling thoughts I had written down at the time, and also since then, about the retelling of one historical turning point in our western civilisation that has now entered into myth.

In 1998 was the year Frank Miller’s iconic comic graphic novel 300 about the the Battle of Thermopylae – where a tiny Greek force led by 300 Spartans held out for three days against an immense Persian invasion in 480BC - was published to great critical acclaim. Zack Snyder highly stylised slick film version of Miller’s 300 defied audience and studio expectations when it stormed the box office with Spartan-like ferocity back in 2007. Its mix of ancient history, comic-book iconography and sound-bite dialogue immediately found its way into the verbal and visual lexicon of contemporary pop culture; but things could have been very different. In 1998 Miller’s publication overshadowed the publication of Steven Pressfield’s more conventional historical novel, Gates of Fire, took its name from the eponymous battlefield, Thermopylae (referred to in 300 as ‘the hot gates’).

Pressfield, an ex-Marine soldier, had worked as a screenwriter creating disposable action-movie scripts for the likes of Steven Seagal and Dolph Lundgren in the late 1980s and early 1990s before writing his first novel, The Legend of Bagger Vance, which was adapted into the Will Smith film of the same name. It too won critical acclaim and was a huge best seller. George Clooney’s film production company bought the rights and David Self (screenwriter of 13 Days and Road to Perdition) was brought in to adapt it. Bruce Willis was dying to be in it and iconic director Michael Mann signed on the direct it. Instead the film went into development hell before Snyder’s film stole a march on Mann’s version to come out first in 2007.

As a Classicist and ex-veteran I found Both Miller’s comic graphic novel and Snyder’s film a severe guilty pleasure. But I have to say I found reading Steven Pressfield’s brilliant novel deeply satisfying on many more levels.

The book I remember well as an American special forces chap I knew out in Afghanistan gave it to me to read because I was complaining I was fast running out of things to read between missions. I loved it.

Like a good officer I passed the book along to others in my corps - rank and file - and within a month or two it had been passed around a fair bit. It led to endless arguments about the Greeks and the Western way of war in and out of the cockpit with my brother/sister aviators and crew as well other officers and the men.

For the soldiers on the ground the book felt more visceral. As a fellow brother British infantry officer said the depictions of phalanx warfare raised his blood pressure at how well he and his men could relate. I never felt more Spartan than I did I sitting on my arse baking in the sun of Afghan red dust mornings. We all related to this story one way or another - the sand, sweat, blood, feelings of combat, and thoughts of mortality.

Most book reviewers loved the book. “Does for (Thermopylae) what Charles Frazier did for the Civil War in Cold Mountain’, enthused author Pat Conroy. The New York Times praised the book’s ‘feel of authenticity from beginning to end.’ Author Nelson DeMille  admired the ‘mastery, authority and psychological insight.’ Sarah Broadhurst, in The Bookseller, particularly wanted to recommend the book to women: “ Although it has a male feel to it, it will appeal to both sexes, as my two readers and I can testify. In fact, it is a great example of the rebirth of the historical novel, which I am sure is on its way.” Where people quibbled, it was usually about the violence of some of the descriptions, or on small errors of fact. The Times called it ‘a story of blood, biffing and bonking, thigh deep in blood, terror-piss and entrails’ but acknowledged that ‘their heroism still makes the hairs at the back of the neck bristle’. The Times Literary Supplement sniped at Pressfield for confusing two different Greek cities called Argos, and for what it called ‘phallocentric discourse’, but also called the book ‘a monument to the important twentieth-century art of pace.’

The novel stands out in the way it makes everything come alive from the soldiers' training, the scenes of actual battle, and most particularly the scenes after or between battles. The discussions of fear, and of how officers and soldiers should behave are particularly poignant and also felt very real to those of us who have experienced war first hand. What I found pleasantly surprising was how well written it was with its very strong portrayals of women as secondary characters. With nearly all military books women are often relegated to the background but here I found some of the strongest depictions of women in this genre. The women don't fight in the battles, yet are courageous and compassionate, intelligent and influential.

Many readers will be familiar with the broad strokes of the story of the battle. But it’s worth recapping here for those that don’t. In 480 BC, King Xerxes lead a Persian army of between one and two million into Greece. The Spartan King Leonidas lead 300 Knights and some 700 Thespaian allies to the narrow pass at Thermopylae, in order to hold the Persians back as long as possible. They proceeded to hold the pass for 7 days. These 300 Spartans died to a man defending the pass against a force of over a million and the epitaph provided to them by the poet Simonides, "Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie", is perhaps the most famous in history. Their example rallied and inspired all of Greece and eventually the Persians were defeated in the naval battle at Salamis and on land at Plataea.

The story is told from the point of view of its narrator Xeones of Astakos, a helot, a slave of the Spartans, and has his own conflicted feelings about Spartan society. He is taken, wounded, before Xerxes, and asked to explain “who were these foemen, who had taken with them to the house of the dead ten or, as some reports said, as many as twenty for every one of their own fallen?” In Xeones’ own words, therefore, we get the story of his life; from when his own city is destroyed, to when he comes to Sparta as a slave, to the time when he finally comes to stand beside the Spartiate in the fateful battle. As the sole survivor among the Spartans, Xerxes wishes Xeones to tell his story to the Persian court historian Gobartes. Xeones starts with the tale of how he came to Sparta. As a youth, his village of Astakos is destroyed and his family slaughtered, but he and the cousin he loves, Diomache, escape. As they wander the countryside, Diomache is raped by soldiers and Xeones is crucified after stealing a chicken, although Diomache saves him from death. Thrown into despair, because his hands are so damaged that he can never wield a sword, Xeones heads off by himself to die. But he experiences a visitation from the Archer god Apollo Far Striker and realizes he can still wield a bow. When Diomache, who is also distraught after being violated by the soldiers, takes off, Xeones heads to Sparta where he hopes to join the army.

The middle section of the book, which is at a much slower pace, deals with his life in Sparta and the training techniques used by the Spartans to create what was one of the most formidable fighting forces the world has ever seen. Eventually he becomes the squire of one of the 300 knights who are chosen for Thermopylae.

The final section, on the battle itself, depicts wholesale slaughter accompanied by acts of ineffable courage. It also relates two of the great lines of all time. When Xerxes offers to spare the Spartans lives if they will surrender their arms, Leonidas is reputed to have snarled, "come and get them." And upon being told that the Persians have so many bowmen that the cloud of arrows would blot out the sun, one of the Spartans says, "good, then we'll have our battle in the shade."

Pressfield being an ex-Marine grunt himself gives a very convincing grunt’s-eye-view of the battle and of Spartan society to create a fantastically blood pumping engaging tale. Pressfield sets himself the task of explaining Spartan culture to us in all its glory, humour, brutality and philosophy. To do so, he draws on his personal experience as a US infantryman, as well being strongly versed in Classics. The result is a fascinating tale, on one level a war story written with great pace and excitement, on another a ruminative tale of man’s capacity for honour, heroism, and self-sacrifice.

As a Classicist (since confirmed by Pressfield in many interviews) he makes excellent use of the ancient historical sources (such as they are). The most useful sources seem to be Herodotus first, his pages about the battle.  Plutarch’s Lives of various Spartans — Lycurgus, Agesilaus, Lysander, etc - can be discerned strongly as the section of his Moralia called Sayings of the Spartans and Sayings of the Spartan Women.  Xenophon of course was the best contemporaneous eyewitness to real Spartan society. Constitution of the Lacedaemonians, the Cyropaedia and even the Anabasis greatly help Pressfield pepper history with authentic detail.  Diodorus’ version of the battle added the thought of the night raid (which The 300 Spartans also had) and Pressfield takes that from him.  Pressfield has said that he didn’t consult recent archaeology, other than going to Sparta myself and checking out the ruins of Artemis, Orthia and so forth.

But still huge gaps remained. This is where Pressfield the ex-Marine and the well educated novelist come together. There was much detail that he needed to consciously to make up and make it sound plausible and even true. For instance, the concept of phobologia, the Science of Fear. That’s completely invented, yet Pressfield, as a Marine veteran, absolutely felt certain the Spartans, like every other warrior race, must have had something like that, a religious-philosophical doctrine of warfare understanding the principles of their culture, probably a sort of cult-like initiatory situation.  

Pressfield in one interview admitted that the speech that Alexandros recites holding his shield —  “This is my shield, I bear it before me into battle, etc.” — was a fictional invention based upon his own experience in the US Marine Corps, where Marines recite, “This is my rifle. There are many other like it, but this one is mine, etc.” Another huge fictional detail that he made central to the story was the prominence of the squire in hoplite battle.  Again he based this on pure instinct and common sense.  He thought the relationship must be much like that of a professional golfer to his caddie.  Pressfield firms believes that the bonds formed between man and batman in the course of bloody warfare must have been intimate on a level second only to husband and wife, and maybe more intimate.  The ancient sources make nothing of this, because they just passed it over as obvious, but I fully agree with Pressman. It’s an inspired insight. The fact that squires and armour bearers voluntarily stayed to die at Thermopylae says volumes.  (Also a squire was the perfect fly-on-the-wall narrator, like Midshipman Byam in Mutiny on the Bounty.)  Further I could not imagine that squires would stand idly by, watching their men fight.  They must have served as auxiliaries, not only dashing in and out of the field evacuating the wounded, but getting in their blows as light infantrymen whenever they could.  I suspect that, as prominent as Pressfield made their roles in Gates, if we could beam ourselves back and witness actual ancient battle, the part of the squire/auxiliary was even bigger than one might imagine.

The book then is not merely about the immortal stand at Thermopylae but delves into the Spartan lifestyle, how they achieved such military cohesion, how they viewed themselves and the world, what made them willing to march off to a suicide mission — it’s one thing to find oneself in such a situation, it’s quite another to jockey to be chosen for it, to know days ahead of time that this is it, you’re heading to your death and to do it unflinchingly. It’s about what binds men together in a group — what makes them willing to die for others. I think Dienekes’ thoughtful analysis of fear and how the opposite of fear isn’t bravery but love, tells it all. Love of a messmate, a family, a city.

Indeed as Pressfield shows the spartans would carry their shields on the left side of their body which allowed them to cover the blind spot of the warrior fighting next to them. Commanders would arrange it so that family members and friends were placed next to each other within the formation. The belief was that warriors would be less likely to abandon their comrades if they were fighting next to someone they deeply cared about. Love conquers fear.

Now the story isn’t perfect, there are some pacing issues when the plot seems to go extra slow, and there are time jumps that can feel a bit awkward. Some periods of our main protagonist’s life, that would be interesting, are just skipped.

In my opinion, the book balances fiction and facts quite nicely, not making the Spartans some over the top super heroes, like the movie “300” did.

The thing that I liked the most is the whole theme of the book: honour, the duty to your city and people, and the strength of the mind. The Spartans didn’t see war as a fun way of killing people, it was an inevitable fact of life. They didn’t kill fear, they learned to embrace it, keep it locked until the very last moment.

Now it’s a bit harder to judge characters in a book like this because some of them are based on real people and some of them are fictional. But what I will say is that these people feel real, grounded to the situation they are in.

I was very taken by the portrayal of Leonidas, the Spartan king who commanded at Thermopylae. One of the most stirring speeches in the book is addressed to Xerxes, the King of Persia, and contrasts Xerxes with Leonidas: "I will tell His Majesty what a king is. A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his back and the pains he endures for their sake….”

I also appreciated the inclusion of the women of Sparta — no shirkers themselves. They would be the first ones out shaming the men into doing their duty for their city (and that’s what it was all about for these people — the survival of the city first) if that was what was needed. I have to say I shed a tear when Leonidas confessed his criteria for selection of the 300. So much is said about Spartan men but the women kicked ass in a time and place where women were almost never seen and certainly never heard from. The first female Olympic champion was a Spartan princess called Kynisca, in 392 BC. She was also the first woman to become a champion horse trainer when her horses and chariot competed and won in the Ancient Olympic Games. Twice.

Arete is in some ways the most powerful character in the book. She is very well written.  She just popped forth, full-grown from the brow of Zeus.  I liked her a lot.  Whether or not Sparta was a “good” place for women I can’t say.  Certainly it would be fascinating as hell to beam back there and see, for real, how they lived and what they were like.  It seems likely Pressfield drew inspiration of Arete from Plutarch’s Sayings of the Spartan Women. These, if you’ve ever read them, are unbelievably hard-core.  For example, here’s one: A messenger returns from a battle to inform a Spartan mother (Plutarch gives her name but I’ve forgotten it) that all five of her sons have just perished honourably fighting the enemy.  She asks this only: “Were we victorious?” The courier replies yes.  “Then I am happy,” says the mother and turns for home. Here’s another: A messenger returns from another battle to tell another mother that one of her sons has been killed, facing the enemy.  “He is my son,” she says.  Her other son, the messenger continues, is still alive but ran from the enemy. “He is not my son,” she replies. Pressfield doesn’t see Arete quite that hard-core but certainly someone tough as nails who imbibed the Spartan mythos even more than the men and lived it.  Pressfield admits in one of his interviews that this was all instinct, he could be wrong, but itt just was what felt right to him.

Before I had gone through Sandhurst after university I didn’t really condone crude language or lewd humour but it’s one of the ways that my stint in the army and especially out on a battlefield deployment changed me a little. I confess that I loved the sometimes crude humour - they’re soldiers in a time of war and you do or say whatever will get you through. Battle (especially foxhole) humour has a dark gallows feel and it’s entirely acceptable and authentic - just ask any veteran of any war. The battle descriptions are graphic - very graphic but not much worse than what’s in the Iliad. And we are talking about a battle in which thousands died by sword, spear, arrow and other various messy methods.

I also enjoyed how the book has a pleasing prose aesthetic that imitates the style of Homer. For the non-Classicist it may take a little bit of getting used to and slow down their reading but it sounds melodious to the ear.

Overall Pressman gives us a pulsating story in which the characters are not either super evil villains that cartoonishly want to “take over the world” or superheroes that can’t make mistakes. The author doesn’t take a side in this story, war is war, and people are people. They make mistakes, get angry or jealous, they do bad things in the name of good and vice versa. The book is not about good and evil, it’s about how different people and cultures understand the order, stability, good and even our minds and dreams. The enemies here aren’t some sort of Oriental magic freaks from far away lands, they are just men made in flesh and blood. Sure wanting to control more land or have more people serving them, but that’s everyone I know in the history of rise and fall of civilisations.

Was the Spartan defence of the Hot Gates worth it?  

Clearly, yes. Cultures, if not civilisations, are nearly always rubbing up against each other and even clashing where they can’t bridge differences. I think Pressfield has it right when he said, “What the defence meant to me was this: its significance was metaphorical rather than literal.  We are all in a battle that will end with our deaths and, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, we know it.  The question is how do we deal with it.  They answered by being true to their calling, to their brothers and sisters, and to their ideals.  Early in the book there’s a passage where the Persian historian is narrating; he’s speaking of King Xerxes and his interest in the fallen Spartans.  Xerxes says of them: “He knew they feared death, as all men.  By what philosophy did their minds embrace it?”

In two of my favourite passages, Pressfield has his protagonist explain why sacrifice is so beautiful to the Greeks (or to anyone who has honour), "In one way only have the gods permitted mortals to surpass them. Man may give that which the gods cannot, all he possesses, his life”. This is a very profoundly moving insight.

Pressfield goes further and tries to answer a much deeper question as to why men fight and perhaps this is where it’s the ex-Marine and not the novelist in Pressfield who is talking, "Forget country. Forget king. Forget wife and children and freedom. Forget every concept, however noble, that you imagine you fight for here today. Act for this alone: for the man who stands at your shoulder."

Amen to that.

At the end of the book, I would have probably stranded there fighting side by side with them against the Persians. Because at that point, they were my friends, comrades, and heroes. It was when I put the book down that I realised that I already had the humble privilege of serving with my fellow brother and sister officers and soldiers of whom all were comrades, many were friends, and a few were unspoken heroes.

Does the battle of Thermopylae provide any lessons to us?

That is harder to discern because it depends on what values we already hold dear. Sparta was a small, compact, basically tribal society where every citizen (forgetting about the helots for the time being) was vitally needed and where warfare was hand-to-hand and absolutely communal, with your own brothers, uncles, father and friends fighting beside you, so if you acted the coward, there was no hiding it.  The modern world of anonymity, mass culture, commercialism, shamelessness, indulgence of sensual desires, worship of money couldn’t be farther.  The Spartan society is like a culture from the moon.

On an individual and interior basis, I think, can we take lessons that might help us.  Self-discipline, loyalty, grit, hard work, perseverance, honour, humility, respect, and compassion.  

On a societal level Spartans were not selfish and didn’t worship the cult of individualism as we do today. It was all about the group. In our age when civil strife, economic hardship, and effects of a unrelenting pandemic erode our trust in our political and civil institutions and set neighbour against neighbour because of the political or religious beliefs they might hold, the only thing we have left to fall back on is just our individual selves. It’s every man for himself. The Spartans would balk at such selfish individualism. The strength (and ultimately the effectiveness) of the Spartan phalanx was encapsulated in the “next man up” approach. If a warrior was injured or killed on the outer edge of the formation, the next man behind them would step up and take their place. The integrity of the group’s formation was protected at all costs, because without the strength of the phalanx to protect them, each man on had little chance of surviving the battle on his own. In a real sense, they had each other’s backs. They had the cohesion of a collective spirit. They were in it for each other together.

It’s not a bad thing in this day and age to be a little bit “spartan,” don’t you think?

[grandhotelabyss]

How would you rank Alan Moore’s major works?

Watchmen comes first, because it contains everything he can do done to perfection. Its crystalline structure holds all his contradictions in a sustaining tension, his heart and his head perfectly aligned in one of the most beguiling fictional heterocosms I have ever had the pleasure of entering. I've read it more times than I've read anything, to be honest, and I'm not tired of it yet.

From Hell is also an extraordinary literary achievement, not at all diminished if placed next to comparable or roughly contemporaneous works by Pynchon or McCarthy—I've compared Sir William Gull to Judge Holden—and heartfelt in its own way, if also at an extreme of horror hard to match elsewhere in serious fiction.

There's a lot of dross in the Swamp Thing run, but I love its first and final third, everything before and after the relatively bad "American Gothic," because it's almost all heart, an outpouring of lyricism like nothing else before in comics, the imitation of which would launch Gaiman and Morrison down their own paths.

The Lovecraft material probably has to come next—The Courtyard, Neonomicon, and Providence—his most truly substantial comics work of this century and a profound and ambivalent meditation on how the pop and cult fiction of the last century created our present reality. It's about as horrifying as From Hell, however, with its entire chapter of interspecies rape to balance From Hell's entire chapter of misogynist murder.

Tied for fifth, almost of necessity, are the didactic series Promethea and the prose novel Voice of the Fire. To understand post-1980s Moore, you must understand magic, and these two works, uneven as they might be, suggest what magic means to Moore. Promethea, anyway, for all its faults, is often a pleasant post-Vertigo throwback to the proto-Vertigo qualities of Swamp Thing, while Voice of the Fire—a book a few years ahead in English literature of the technique David Mitchell would be celebrated for in Ghostwritten and especially Cloud Atlas, though both Moore and Mitchell borrow from a book I've never read, Riddley Walker—has passages of such scorching intensity you could put them next to any contemporaneous novelist.

So that's my top five (or top six). Miracleman is too disunified, so clumsy at inception and so polished in conclusion, though Book Three is remarkable. Neither V for Vendetta nor Lost Girls can sustain critical scrutiny on any but a formalist level; Moore at his most politically didactic proves himself politically naive. The first two chapters of Big Numbers are stunning, and I mourn what might have been. Tom Strong, with its bittersweet and poisoned nostalgia, is poignant, underrated, while Top 10 is unreadably dense and overrated. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is good for its first two volumes—volume 2, as an intense refraction of post-9/11 politics, is especially brutal and powerful—and then it becomes a folly and a self-indulgence, which I did not bother to keep up with. I love the performance pieces, especially the first one, The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels. Among the rest of the prose, I didn't finish Jerusalem and didn't love the 250 pages I did read—he seemed to have understood the difference between a comic-book script and a novel better when he wrote Voice of the Fire 20 years before—and I found the novel-length "Thunderman" centerpiece of Illuminations close to reprehensible. Since I've rendered such a negative verdict on that most recent work, let me conclude by recommending what's probably the gem among the earliest work, the tender and clever Delany-esque feminist space opera, The Ballad of Halo Jones, with its memorable tagline, "Where did she go? Out. What did she do? Everything." Moore almost never went out—almost never left his hometown, except for ventures in the astral plane—and yet he has written everything, in every genre, in every style, and for that he has, despite any local judgments I might make against this or that work, my entire admiration.

[krittec]

The Umbrella Academy season 2 & 3 would have been worlds better if they didn’t continually dumb down their characters in favour of jokes or completely derailing on going character development for the same sake.

Luther was canonically smart in season one, as was Diego who wanted to become a cop and possibly a detective since that’s what he did in season two. The both of them had theories on what Fives portal could have been… yet both of them were turned into Himbos in season 2, in Luthers case to make him more likeable I assume (Which could have been done SO MUCH BETTER than just making him stupid. He knew he messed up and apologised but it still could’ve gone better) And then Diego, a man who wanted to solve crimes, couldn’t figure out Stanley very obviously wasn’t his son.

My second point is geared toward Klaus & his entire cult plotline. First of all, cult plotlines especially done in a ‘humours’ way is so disrespectful and off putting that I genuinely hated Klaus for that season. Making Kool-Aid jokes as if that wasn’t a real event that killed over 900 people including children. I find this super common in American Media for some reason and it sickens me every time. Second of all, his plot-line just goes nowhere. He had something strong in season one but then it all evaporated because the show didn’t know where to take it so they put the LOWEST of lows in for comedic effect.

Also the whole sexual assault part is horrendous in itself. I am aware that it happens in the comics and that Allison repeatedly did things like that in the comics but they’d already changed so much and taken out so much, some of my favourite things, and including that is quite shocking and not in a good way.

Gerard’s lack of involvement after season one shines brightly and it’s sad. Glad that MCR is back and he is living his best life though.

I actually fear for season four and I’m almost relieved it’s the last season since it’s taken a steady decline (besides the music. S2 was great for that but even s3 took a dive) and to watch it go further would be depressing. Only reason I’m not loving it is because the same director is writing for a netflix Horizon project, which is very political and not subtle with the themes. I will be mortified if it gets ruined by their poor attempt at comedy.

[film-classics]

Louise Brooks - The Flapper Icon

Mary Louise Brooks (born in Cherryvale, Kansas on November 14, 1906) was an American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as "The Flapper Icon," in part due to her trend-setting bob hairstyle and modern fashion sense. Those that do not recognize her name almost certainly know her look.

Born in a typical a typical Midwestern community, Brooks joined the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts in Los Angeles at the age of 15. She soon found work a as a chorus girl in George White's Scandals and as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City.

Her Follies stint attracted the attention of Walter Wanger, a producer at Paramount Pictures. He had her sign a contract with the studio in 1925. During this time, Brooks gained a cult following in Europe for her role in the Howard Hawks' film A Girl in Every Port (1928).

Dissatisfied with her mediocre roles in Hollywood films, Brooks went to Germany in 1929 and starred in some of the silent era's films, including Pandora's Box (1929).

When Brooks returned to Hollywood in 1931, she was cast in some mainstream films such as God's Gift to Women (1931). However, her career prospects as a film actress significantly declined by 1940. Brooks briefly returned to Wichita, where she was raised, and then moved to New York City, where she worked numerous jobs.

Following the rediscovery of her films by cinephiles in the 1950s, Brooks began writing articles about her film career and had had special relationships with film historians James Card, John Kobal, and Kevin Brownlow.

After suffering from degenerative osteoarthritis and emphysema for many years, Brooks died of a heart attack in her apartment in Rochester, New York at 78.

Legacy:

Served as the inspiration for the long-running Dixie Dugan (1929-1966) newspaper strip by John H. Striebel, the comic books of Valentina (1965-1996) of Guido Crepax, and Ivy Pepper in Tracy Butler's Lackadaisy (2006-2020) comic series

Is the basis of the movie Show Girl (1928) and its subsequent musical Show Girl (1929), and the graphic novel entitled Louise Brooks: Detective (2015)

Opened a dance studio in Beverly Hills and Wichita, Kansas in the 1940s

Authored a booklet titled The Fundamentals of Good Ballroom Dancing in 1940

Became a noted film writer in the late 1950s for various journals like Film Culture and Sight and Sound

Inspired many cinematic and literary characters such as Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972) and Lulu in Something Wild (1986)

Published a collection of autobiographical essays, Lulu in Hollywood, in 1982, which was ranked number 44 in the Hollywood Reporter's "100 best film books of all time" in 2023 and number 28 in the Los Angeles Times' "50 best Hollywood books of all time" in 2024

Presented with the George Eastman Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Film in the 1982 Festival of Film Artists

Ranked number 44 by Empire magazine's 100 sexiest stars in film history in 1995

Is the subject of the Emmy-nominated documentary Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu, which was commissioned by Turner Classic Movies in 1998

Is a central character in the PBS film The Chaperone (2018), which depicts her initial arrival in New York

[georgiapeach30513]

I'm going to counterpoint that American Psycho anon with Matt Damon's character in the Drive Away Dolls movie. I wouldn't say his role in this film (no spoilers but it is readable on the film's wiki) is particularly level with his current career. I mean he was just in Oppenheimer...lol. Can we also mention him appearing in the Dunkin commercial with Ben for the Super Bowl? But, he's Matt Damon. He can do what he wants.

Here's the thing: Actors will do the things they do because they want to or it's an opportunity or they were convinced for whatever reason. Or they just needed something on their resume. Or it could be a million other reasons.

We don't know for sure Chris is playing the Priest guy. It can be inferred because in the PR of the movie, he's listed as playing a cult leader and cult leaders are usually akin to religious leaders, and Priest Dean makes sense. However, these are simply context clues, like Jen has mentioned previously. You don't know what his entire role will be. I don't think having raunchy sex onscreen, if his character does do this, means it's downgrading his career. I think if anything it's meant to be comical, but maybe people should watch Drive Away Dolls and see what type of vibe Ethan and Tricia were going for. I think it'll be in the same realm in Honey Don't. But it could also be completely different. Who knows what's going on in that brain of Coen.

And I'm going to be dead honest...I recently tried to watch the Pam and Tommy show and I was extremely turned off by it and everyone involved. TBF, I think Seth Rogen and co are way too old to be doing something like a show about a sex tape....and the fact that they needed to put Tommy talking to his penis. To me....that was unnecessary and not something I would do if I was trying to be taken seriously. It somewhat worked for the Awards circuit, and the show and the cast got recognized. But if you asked me if on paper, a show focusing on a sextape that gets stolen of two famous people would garner Awards...I would have rolled my eyes. But you really never know. Until the finished product.

And...last controversial take. Everything Everywhere All at once. I am a huge Michelle Yeoh fan. But I did not enjoy this film. There was a butt plugs fight scene...(For anyone who hasn't seen it, well...yeah) Again, it worked out for the Academy and for viewers, but I couldn't take it seriously. But I don't hold it against the actors because this is something unexpected and out of pocket. For Michelle, I wouldn't have expected her at this point in her career to be doing a film like this but glad she did. Because it got her the Oscar. And the mainstream recognition she's deserved, in my opinion, for a very long time.

Again - I am not saying that Honey Don't is going to be some Oscar darling because I'm going to go ahead and say it's not. Lol. But it is coming from the brainchild of an auteur Oscar nominated/winning director whose made some very out of pocket and unique films in his career. I'd more like to ask Margaret Qualley what made her decide to sign onto a sequel before the first one even came out.

Whatever happens, I think this will be at the very least, an interesting role for Chris.

You do bring up a great point with Matt Damon. I feel throughout most of his career Matt has been a very respected actor, and he’s still done some raunchy comedies. Dogma, anyone?

And we don’t know, and may never know why Chris chose this role. At the end of the day, he’s going to do what is best for him and his career. And we can continue to watch, or don’t. And that’s okay. Once upon a time I was a HUGE Elijah Wood fan. I still adore him, but I don’t check out every single project he does.

Okay, so as far as the talking penis in Pam and Tommy, that was literally taken from Tommy’s memoir. And unfortunately sometimes the shock value is what people do. And Seth Rogan is one that loves a good shocking moment. And those moments can cause buzz. Buzz is what makes people want to watch something. I work with a lot of people, from a lot of different walks of life. And one of my clients, has no idea who Sebastian is, but heard enough about P&T and decided to watch it. She now is a Sebastian fan.

I have yet to see Everything Everywhere All at Once, but @nancydrewwouldnever told me I need to check it out more than once 😂 I’m currently finishing up the Fall of the House of Usher, yes, I know I’m late. And look at what it earned Michelle! So good on her!

We don’t know what Honey, Don’t will entail. We aren’t even 100% sure if Priest Dean is Chris, I think it’s a great guess. But he will be doing a panel this Saturday, and I’m going out on a limb and predicting that he will mention his upcoming projects. He has a lot of work he can talk about this time.

And what we can say for certain, is with Honey, Don’t, Chris is stepping out of his comfort zone. He’s taking a risk. And this is what I and several other people have asked for ALL last year. So I am excited to see what his future holds.