#Harrison Snyder

[apcthetics]

OPEN location : 🕺🎃

˖ ✧ ★ ────────────   “ I DON’T KNOW IF I BELIEVE IN THE MOON LANDING. “ harrison considered out loud, perching on the edge of the fallen tree that they had discovered, and as such, claimed for themselves. pulling the joint from their teeth, he blew out the smoke and then offered it out towards his ( unfortunate ) companion. “ like, okay─ i’m not that stupid. i do believe that we landed on the moon. “ every time they turned their head, the trinkets decorating their costume jangled, but it didn’t seem to bother harrison in the slightest. their hands came out on either side of them as they held them up in defense. “ but i mean. . . it wouldn’t shock me if we didn’t. like you wanna tell me we went all the way up there ? and stepped on it ? “ their fingers pointed up towards the sky, and their gaze followed. he squinted. “ richard nixon orchestrated watergate, but the moon landing was totally truthful ? ppft. “ he blew a strand of hair out of his face before shaking his head, as though his stance was obvious. “ no way. “

[your-cryin-fool]

Someone please explain why I've been thinking about rewriting/restarting If I Needed Someone,,, would anyone be interested in rereading it if I reposted/rewrote some stuff?

[walaw717]

How Leaky Gut, Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison, and Okakura Kazuko Helped Me Rediscover Coffee.

Or, My Dad was a Zen Master, and I Didn’t Notice.

Zen is not some fancy, unique art of living. Our teaching is to live, always in reality, in its exact sense.

Shunryu Suzuki

It began simple enough, well, not that simple. The Traditional Chinese Physician diagnosed my partner with leaky gut syndrome. That sounds terrible, and it was for her. She loved boxed prepared foods and was not fond of vegetables. Time and malnutrition brought on by General Mills, Conagra, and a variety of corporate food chemists had caught up to her, killing the terrarium in her gut so that everything she ate penetrated past the lichen-like lining of her intestines and digestive tract so acid ate at the inner skin like a chemical spill eating the epoxy resin on a high school science class table. This acid wash triggered various autoimmune disorders and led to arthritis, diarrhea, malaise, and general misery for her and those around her. She spent a lot of time in the bathroom, travel was curtailed, and there was general unhappiness all around because the irritation in her gut often seeped out of her vocal cords.

The Physician approached me in the waiting room. At the same time, my partner lay in a private room with needles, restoring her chi into its proper channels and outlining the changes needed in our lifestyle to cure this plague of misery. The doctor told me I also needed to join the new dietary regime to be supportive.

“Well, OK,” I said with outward unfelt enthusiasm.

So we went home and cleaned cabinets, throwing packaged foods away and feeling pangs of guilt — should we throw it away or give it to a shelter? I had visions of homeless people excitedly getting free food that passed as quality and eventually needing a traditional Chinese physician to tell them why they had started crapping so much and with such urgency. I took it to the dumpster, deciding that if they dove for it, it would at least not be the typical garbage they found to eat there that already messed up their guts and energy meridians, contributing to a miserable lifestyle. Their choice would not be my responsibility. I am, after all, an American and well-practiced at ignoring or at least rationalizing my guilt at ecological and cultural destruction. The dumpster became my version of a clear-cut in Oregon. Behind twenty-five yards of pristine natural beauty and unseen from the speeding motorists on the interstates is a desolated waste that can only support the lifestyle of the rich and infamous. To paraphrase an adage from pop psychology, “What we don’t think about, we pretend we don’t bring about.”

And then there was the Mr. Coffee. It sat on the kitchen counter, a yellowing plastic oddly shaped box protectively embracing a clear glass carafe that produced without much effort or thought a dark brown nectar that started our day. It was simple: you pulled out the black plastic cup, lined it with bleached paper, measured several small scoops of coffee, replaced the black plastic cup, filled the box with water, hit the button, and left the room, knowing the watery brown liquor would be ready after the morning shower and shave. Frankly, I was addicted to the tasteless brown water that came out, full of caffeine that gave me a lift but no longer a sweet aroma, depth of flavor or anything but a buzz. The Physician said that they had to go. The little lichen and animal-like bacteria in the gut didn’t like the acid. She equated it with Agent Orange. Being of a certain age, I was more familiar with Agent Orange than I wanted or should be, and I suspect she knew that just by looking at my grey hair. She was playing dirty there, but “Well, OK.”

So Mr. Coffee went somewhere. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to become like stomach acid and create more irritation. To ease the pain, I read an article by a Buddhist who said he quit coffee for six months and felt great but eventually had a cup of the dark roast at Starbucks. He didn’t get a buzz but got jazzed for two days. That didn’t help as I read his article while drinking weak green tea with ginger, waiting for caffeine-induced enlightenment.

As a caffeine junkie and failed Roshi, I needed some relief. Each morning, I scrolled Tumblr’s pictures while drinking my tea and tried to distract myself from the lack of coffee and junk food. Before I went to Tumblr and its processed version of the good life, I had returned to Zazen, you know, meditative sitting, but I was haunted by Buddhist demons carrying Starbucks cups. That was akin to the demons I had seen as a young college student Buddhist “wannabe” reading Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki, practicing their version of sitting zazen. The forms Mara took in those sittings mostly looked like the red-headed girl I was dating. She would arise in my meditations dancing with her female roommate, both naked dakinis looking beguilingly at me, beckoning me. Needless to say, I never found a Bodhi tree as lovely as Keanu Reeves’ in Little Buddha. I usually went to the red-headed girl’s apartment, leaving my cat to fend for herself for several days. The cat was often irritated with me — the story of my life with females.

Giving up zazen for scrolling Tumblr didn’t help much. There were many beautiful images of landscapes, cityscapes, horses, wildlife, and old trucks and cars. It is a veritable Life magazine online, and being a trained art historian studying reproductions of pictures was right up my alley. There were many images of beguiling dakinis, but more provocatively undressed than those I showed freshmen when I taught art history. As an old man, experienced in the wiles of youthful Dakinis, they looked generally unbeguiling and un-tempting. Sometimes, they wore a plaid flannel shirt tied above the waist, standing next to a campfire, or sitting on the tailgate of a pickup, holding a tin cup of coffee; those got to me — I love plaid, and there was coffee. Even more painfully, there were camping pictures, not just any camping pictures but old percolators on campfires, some with steam coming out of their spouts, some with the cooked brown fluid being poured into cups. As I hit the little heart to acknowledge I liked those images, they appeared more and more frequently. I began to seriously think there were hells, Buddhists and otherwise, and real demons determined to steal my peace.

I was not always addicted to coffee. It all began next to the Seine at a little cafe on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where I first tasted café au lait. I was a typical 18-year-old 1970s kid backpacking through Europe, and Paris was a first stop. I hated wine and was not too fond of beer, though I drank large quantities with friends at college my first term, and Perrier was breaking my travel budget. One day, I learned that café au lait was mostly milk, and being a farm boy still wedded to the idea that milk was good for me, I downed a cup of café au lait, then another and another. At the end of my first sitting, the waiter counted eight saucers and asked if “Monsieur was feeling okay.” “Sure,” I replied with composure I didn’t feel. I left the café, strolled down the Qui Voltaire, crossed the river on the Pont de la Concorde, hiked through the Tuileries and toured the entire Louvre in 45 minutes flat.

I continued my travels in Europe and tried every type of coffee I could find, settling on Turkish coffee in little cups with big cubes of sugar. In a pinch, I would accept espresso, but by the time I got to Italy, espresso seemed a weak way to live.

Then I returned to America, tried various diner coffees, and wondered why they served browned hot water. By then, Mr. Coffee had replaced percolators and any other form of making coffee all across America. Joe DiMaggio was happy and smiling on every new box containing a coffee maker and heading to an American home.

I tried to make Turkish coffee. Generally, I failed and finally settled on strong home-brewed Mr. Coffee with lots of heavy cream. I would occasionally daydream about camping with my parents and blue-speckled-ware coffee pots on the fire or the aroma of the coffee their electric percolator made as it rhythmically gurgled in the kitchen. It never occurred to me to get an electric percolator because they were, thanks to Mr. Coffee, passe and un-American. I also avoided percolator coffee because I associated it with the odor of my parent’s cigarettes. No matter how good the coffee smelled, I had an aversion to their cigarettes and my parents. Therapy helped me overcome my aversion to my parents but not cigarettes, and the association of stale, burned, chemical-treated tobacco and perked coffee remained.

I felt good after six months of a healthy life, eating right, losing weight, and spending less time on the toilet. I still, however, craved caffeine. I started looking at Mr. Coffee online and realized it was a version of pour-over coffee. So, I bought a plastic two-cup Merlita sit-on-the-cup pour-over device. It was an odd orange-pink affair, but It made a good single cup of coffee, and I discovered that the two-cup size worked just fine to make a single cup of coffee. I understood that a pour-over made better coffee than Mr. Coffee, even though the process was the same. The two-cup pour-over process did require me to pay attention to what I was doing.

This pour-over coffee period came while I re-read Gary Snyder and Jim Harrison, two old Buddhists who were even grouchier than me. They got me rethinking, too, about the practice of the wild and how aggravated I was with General Mills and Conagra and the whole mess of modern American consumerism I allowed myself to get sucked into. I realized I missed camping, hiking, and the smell of coffee perking on an open campfire. I truly missed robust campfire coffee with its flavor and aroma.

I bought an Italian Bialetti Moka pot to remain civilized about my need for aroma. ( I didn’t say I escaped consumerism, just I was aggravated with it.). As I entered the ritual each morning of making coffee in a Moka pot, so strong that I had to serve it in tiny espresso cups to keep the buzz low, I realized that making coffee was really about paying attention, like a Japanese tea ceremony. It took time and required focused measuring of the coffee, packing the funnel, preheating the water, a degree of zazen, listening for the gurgle of the pot and knowing when to take it off the heat so it did not get bitter. I liked the meditation of preparing it. I hated the tiny, over-caffeinated cups. ( My coffee fast had at least broken my addiction to triple-dose caffeine.)

Then we had a cold front, I mean a really cold front that made me wish I had remembered to close the windows the night before, and I had visions of camping, dakinis in plaid flannel shirts, me in plaid flannel shirts, lakes and campfires and a percolator on the fire. It was a memory of connection and loss rolled into one. I was young, and it was a time before Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki when I knew how to sit, breathe, watch, observe, be present, and smell the coffee with childlike naturalness. So, back to the consumer websites. I scanned a couple dozen percolators. Being aware that I had to make sure I was not as irritating as stomach acid in my choice, I picked a shiny stainless steel eight-cup percolator over the twelve-cup spatterware blue of my encamped youth. Two days later, it arrived and posed gloriously on my stove. Even my partner admitted to its silvery beauty.

I then read internet manuals on how to make the perfect pot of percolator coffee. They all disagreed about the amount of coffee, timing, and type of coffee. Then I remembered my dad, carefully spooning a heaping tablespoon of coffee per 6-ounce cup of water and one for the pot. I remembered how, while he measured his coffee into the basket, the pot would sit on a rock on the fire’s edge and come to a boil. He would gently lower the full basket into the boiling water, place the lid on the pot and move the pot away from the heat, allowing it not to boil vigorously but return to a slow boil so the coffee would not become bitter. And then he would wait, light a cigarette when the water would start its gentle dance in the glass cap of the lid. While he waited, he watched the perking water in the glass knob at the top of the pot without fidgeting or seeming to allow his mind to race away with him. And at the end of his cigarette, after his short version of meditation, he would lift the pot from the fire, place it on another warm but not hot rock, wait again for the basket to finish draining into the pot and remove the basket so the coffee would not become bitter, pour his mug of coffee, and sit again. Still, this sitting involvedwatching the forest and just being. The memory reminded me of Okakura Kazuko’s “Book of Tea,” his extended essay about aesthetics, tea, and Japanese life. As I remembered my Dad by the campfire, I realized Mr. Coffee’s plastic convenience erased coffee’s aesthetic from American life.

I have discovered that Coffee is not just a daily punch line at Starbucks with crazy concoctions snatched by a string of crazier motorists, nor is it the caffeine jazz you get from a neglected Mr. Coffee after a shower and a shave. Making coffee is a meditation, an act of beauty, a reminder of history and a rare act of America behaving in a more civilized way. In the Book of Tea, Kazuko comments, “The Westerner regarded Japan as barbarous while she indulged in the gentle arts of peace and began to call her civilized only when she began to commit wholesale slaughter on the Manchurian battlefields.” I realized that Mr. Coffee not only made barbarous coffee (we won’t even discuss Keurig), but Mr. Coffee was part of our uncivilized behavior toward the entire world, eliminating a small act of spirituality from our racing over-wrought lives.

I now regard the loss of Mr. Coffee not as a loss. It is a spiritual gain. Each morning now, I conduct a ritual. I rinse all my utensils, fill the pot with eight six-ounce measures of clean water, eight heaping tablespoons of freshly ground coffee and one for the pot. I bring the water to a boil, carefully insert the coffee, and place the lid on the pot. I watch until the water rises into the glass knob and then sit, and breathe for eight minutes, the amount of time I think it would have taken Dad to smoke a cigarette. I remove the pot and sit long enough to allow the water to finish draining from the basket, remove the basket and pour coffee into a mug reserved just for coffee, the one with the horses standing in a stream, drinking clear water. And then slowly sip while I sit on my porch, looking at the mountains. When it is cool enough, I wear a plaid flannel shirt and remember a time in my youth watching my father, who had never heard of Alan Watts, D. T. Suzuki, or Zen, sit his version of Zazen drinking his coffee, smoking one of his ever-present cigarettes looking out over a campfire at the lake and being at peace and away from the “chaos of the rat race,” as he defined it.

Maybe being a Roshi is realizing that life itself is Zazen if you slow down and allow it to be. Today, I lifted my cup to a man who was my Roshi that I didn’t notice. I suspect we all have such untitled Zen teachers.

[tygerbug]

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023) - A local carpenter and weed dealer who transitioned into bit-part acting in the 60s, Harrison Ford is now 80 years old, and still somehow unretired. Indiana Jones, meanwhile, is supposed to be about seventy. The equivalent would be if Indy's father, Sean Connery, was still playing James Bond in 2010. I'd say that Ford (and by extension all Boomers and above) should step aside and let someone like Chris Pine, Ryan Gosling or James Marsden make a movie like this, but we'd probably get Chris Pratt, Jared Leto, or Shia LeBoeuf instead, so I'll just have to let it slide. This time.

With a $294.7 million budget (Raiders of the Lost Ark cost 20 million in 1980), a large amount of CGI has been employed, along with green screen, stunt doubling, deepfaking, de-aging, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to make it seem like Harrison Ford is still a viable action hero. To be clear, he absolutely is too old for this, and it is absolutely a bad idea to make this movie. The $185 million "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was an equally bad idea back in 2008, and it has somehow been 15 years since then.

I don't know if it's elder abuse or simply audience abuse to keep making these, but in both cases, an aging Harrison Ford is more engaged and interested in this role onscreen than he is in just about any other. 1982's Blade Runner gave us Harrison Ford in his prime, sleepwalking, disinterested and sullen. Now in 2023, Ford is visibly too old to be doing this CGI superhero bullshit, in a sequel that is forty years too little and too late, but he's committed to the role enough that he just about gets it to work. After a tepic reception at Cannes, the film is getting very good reviews and buzz, so I'll be the one to break from the pack and say that it doesn't work for me. Oh, no one involved embarrasses him or herself. Under the circumstances, it's a miracle that the movie is as good as it is. It's a bad idea that just about justifies its own existence.

A small caveat here: There may have been something wrong with the sound setup at the theater where I saw this. I couldn't understand a word being said for large chunks of the runtime, starting with a chaotic sequence in Morocco. But I don't think I actually missed anything. Maybe the sound mixing is just like that, Chris Nolan style. The opening sequence, with a younger Ford de-aged via CGI, was very dark and murky visually. In Imax, I could see the pixels on the screen, especially the bright white on black titles.

But I think the key problem for me is that I guess I don't like James Mangold as the director for this sort of thing. I haven't seen his full filmography, and he's clearly well regarded. But I have seen his dreary films about an aging Wolverine. 2013's "The Wolverine" sees the Hugh Jackman X-Men character travel to Japan and murder every single person he meets with his adamantium claws. At one point the female sidekick is mulching guys into paste with a snowplow. In 2017's Logan, he's older and unhappy about the situation, as he gets into danger with a child. These were, for me, examples of taking a superhero film way too seriously, as if gunning for the Oscar with a script that doesn't stand up to thinking about it for more than a minute or so. You wouldn't see a movie about Superman murdering a few thousand Japanese guys, because it's not a fair fight. "The Wolverine" (2013) wounds Logan just enough that he can plausibly act like the underdog, but he's a more-or-less immortal killing machine with knives coming out of his wrists.

It's hard to make a good film, and these films are polished, stylish, action-packed and memorable in many ways. But they also leave a bad taste in my mouth, comparable to the work of Zack Snyder. There's a lack of humanity to them. I could have predicted that in this Indiana Jones movie, Indy would constantly be murdering people, and that people would constantly be getting into accidents that kill them in horrific implied ways, and that the bad guys would kill any notable character that the plot isn't relying on.

That is what you get here, and admittedly it gives the film a certain energy. You don't get the sense that this is the cleaned-up Disney version of Indiana Jones, where everything is censored. You feel the danger. But it also forces me to be the party pooper and point out that this film lacks the magic that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas brought to the property. Steven Spielberg is hard to replace. He is the most famous and beloved film director of our time, and he has always brought an aura of wonder to the screen that other filmmakers can't really imitate … with only occasional exceptions like the uncanny valley animated "Tintin" film.

It's unfair to expect James Mangold to fully replace Spielberg, and under the circumstances I'm not surprised they went with a director who presumably considers his work to be Very Important Cinema. Mangold manages to deliver lots of action, and make it feel like "an Indiana Jones movie," when forty years later it probably shouldn't. But it's just not the same, for a lot of reasons.

Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is an extremely tight two hours which works like clockwork. There's a lot of wit and character to it, but it's that precision filmmaking which makes many people call it "a perfect film." It doesn't slow down very often. It's always doing something interesting visually, and always moving forward. Every Indiana Jones film ever since has tried to recapture that.

We have a problem here, which is that an eighty (or seventy) year old Indiana Jones is more of a character role, who we could expect to talk about what he's learned over the years. And an Indiana Jones movie cannot slow down for something like that, even for a second. Or at least this movie can't. The script is also not funny enough to lend much character to the proceedings, so we don't get much sense of who these people are as they're speeding around on green screens at a hundred miles per hour. The end product is chaotic, often to the point of incoherence. Everyone is almost always moving at great speed, for reasons which aren't always adequately set up. To repeat, they're moving at great speed whether or not there is a good reason for them to be doing so. They are often on green screen, or visibly stunt doubled, and one of them is eighty years old.

There's also a lot of fighting on the tops of trains and from moving vehicles. Why do the bad guys take a wounded Indy along with them as they enact their entire plan? As far as I can tell, no reason is given, except that it's a movie and Indiana Jones needs to be there for it. Helena also manages to board the plane while it's in flight, and Teddy manages to get another plane going, for the reason that these are the characters who are in the film, and they need to be there for the end of it.

The script contradicts itself constantly, and feels like bits of different drafts were combined with one another randomly. Why is Indiana Jones teaching in July, preparing his students for mid-terms or finals, then also retiring in July on the same day? Why is he coincidentally teaching his disinterested class about the same subject that the film is about, when it's a touchy subject which secretly tore entire families apart in the film's backstory? Why do we keep meeting his close friends, that he's apparently spent decades with, for about two lines of dialogue before they get shot?

The result lacks character. As with the Crystal Skull film, stunt casting is used in place of giving us scenes that show who these characters are. I can believe that Antonio Banderas is a salty old scuba diver who has had many good times with Indiana Jones over the years. I can believe that because he's Antonio Banderas, but the film expects that to be enough for us, and gives him very little of interest to do. And Toby Jones' character, an academic who's not cut out for being an action hero, would be very uninteresting if it wasn't played by a character actor like Toby Jones. (Crystal Skull pulled similar shenanigans with Jim Broadbent, John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Cate Blanchett.)

John Rhys-Davies shows up briefly as the returning character of Sallah, looking every day of his 79 years of age. I expect they wanted to keep any action with Rhys-Davies to a minimum, so we find him appearing in the movie for no real reason, except that this is an Indiana Jones movie and therefore he ought to be in it. I agree with that, but bringing these characters back one last time has an eerie David Lynch quality about it.

Mads Mikkelsen plays the memorable (if very standard) villain, a semi-retired Nazi called Dr. Voller. It's ideal casting, although it raises questions to have the 57-year-old actor playing the part in both 1944 and 1969. He is noticeably de-aged in the 1944 scenes, with a few less lines and wrinkles, but Harrison Ford manages to age 35 years in the same time (ten more than he ought to). A whole lot of CGI is used to give Indiana Jones one more adventure in 1944, and it's technically impressive, if still a bit noticeable and distracting. Toward the end of the sequence, a little too much of it takes place in the dark - not to hide the quality of the CGI but because movies tend to be too dark now.

Boyd Holbrook is memorable as a trigger-happy American who gives off Neo-Nazi vibes which aren't deeply explored. Ethann Isidore plays the sidekick, a thieving street rat kid called Teddy. Shaunette Renee Wilson plays a CIA agent, I think. Olivier Richters plays the guy who is 7 foot two. You know, I'm not sure that an 80 year old Indy and a 16 year old Teddy are really a match for this guy.

It is getting into spoiler territory to say that Karen Allen appears as Marion, although that won't surprise anyone either. It is definitely getting into spoiler territory to say what became of their relationship after the Crystal Skull film, and these are some of the only moments in the film where Harrison Ford really gets to act and lay out his character's backstory. I wish we'd gotten more of this. I've seen complaints about this storyline, saying it robs the character of a lot of his charm, and is too similar to plotlines in the Star Wars sequels, and the Blade Runner sequel. I can see that, but when sequels come this late, they really have to be about regret, and this storyline works better than anything else in the film. Although I couldn't help but think that this elderly couple began - in Raiders - with Marion punching her former Professor, who had clearly had an inappropriate relationship with her when she was a minor. The 30s were a different time, and so were the 80s. Marion's role is also very small here. It is crucial that she be present, but the film is not interested in exploring her character any more deeply than that.

We don't get Ke Huy Quan's Short Round, as his career only picked up this past year with a memorable role in Everything Everywhere All at Once. It's easy to imagine the character showing up in either Crystal Skull or this film as one of the leads, rather than these new characters, but that wasn't something they considered writing for the slightly embarrassing kid sidekick from "Temple of Doom." And speaking of embarrassing …

The "Crystal Skull" character of Mutt, played by Shia LeBoeuf, was covered in the press at the time as a character who could replace Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones films, played by an up and coming young actor whose career was given a huge boost by the Spielberg seal of approval here, leading to the equally annoying character of Sam Witwicky in the Michael Bay Transformers films (the first in 2007). And yes, in the actual film, Shia LeBoeuf is deeply uncool and mostly just a nuisance.

Pretty much every male nerd of a certain age wanted, and still wants, to be "cool" like Indiana Jones. Any internet reviewer, of the Angry Video Game Nerd variety, will put on a complete Indiana Jones cosplay for their review of this film, as they did with Crystal Skull, and they'll think they're being slick with it. The leather jacket, the shirt, the hat, the whip. All clothing items that they already, apparently, had. Nobody wanted to be Shia LeBoeuf's Mutt Williams. He's got a 50s greaser look which doesn't suit him, making him look less like Marlon Brando than like Michael Cera's Wally Brando, from Twin Peaks. Indeed Cera might have been better in the role. Shia is a very reactive actor, and could theoretically have pulled off a Michael J. Fox type role which required that. But planting the idea that he could replace Indiana Jones nearly ruined his career here, because he very clearly doesn't have the necessary swagger. The movie itself even confirms this. In the end, Mutt picks up Indy's trademark hat, and Indy grabs it right back from him. This can be seen as a metaphor for how this series has gone, and also for how the Boomer generation, and older folks who came of age in the 60s and 70s, have refused to retire and let the younger generation take over for them.

Okay, so maybe Shia LeBoeuf was never going to replace Indiana Jones, a character originally offered to the hairy-chested Tom Selleck. But perhaps another actor could have. Harrison Ford seems iconic and irreplaceable now, but in the 70s he was a weed dealer and carpenter who did bit parts on the side. While it's fun to see Indiana Jones come back one last time, it's also a metaphor for Hollywood leaning back on successes from over four decades ago, and refusing to create anything truly new. Shia was set up to fail, because he looks and acts young in a movie that sees his youth as embarrassing. It didn't actually give us a "new Indiana Jones type," and Dial of Destiny doesn't either.

Shia LeBoeuf eventually left the Transformers franchise. We're told that he was killed off between films. And then there were the allegations, as his behavior, according to the newspapers, became ever stranger and more erratic. "FKA twigs Sues Shia LaBeouf, Citing ‘Relentless’ Abusive Relationship. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by the musician, accuses the actor of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress."

Shia LeBoeuf does not appear in this film.

(ROT13 because of spoilers) Guvf vf npghnyyl n znwbe cybg cbvag. Zhgg Jvyyvnzf, yvxr Cbbpuvr ba Gur Fvzcfbaf, qvrq ba gur jnl onpx gb uvf ubzr cynarg, be engure va Ivrganz. Vg vf Vaqvnan Wbarf' terngrfg erterg gung ur qvqa'g fgbc Zhgg sebz rayvfgvat, naq vg qrfgeblrq uvf zneevntr. Ur gryyf hf gung Znevba jnf ybfg va ure tevrs, ohg vg vf irel pyrne yngre ba gung Vaql jnf gur bar jub tbg ybfg. Ubjrire, gur cybg bs gur svyz nyfb tvirf Vaql gur pyrneyl-fgngrq bccbeghavgl, ivn gvzr geniry cbjref, gb vagresrer va gvzr naq fnir Zhgg sebz qlvat. Gur svyz arire fybjf qbja ybat rabhtu gb tvir Vaql gvzr gb npghnyyl qb guvf, ohg jr pbhyq nyfb pbapyhqr gung Vaql ernyvmrf gung ur unf gur cbjre gb oevat Zhgg onpx sebz gur qrnq, naq pubbfrf abg gb qb fb. Haqrefgnaqnoyr, unir n avpr qnl.

V ernyyl gubhtug jr'q trg gjb Vaqvnan Wbarfrf gubhtu. V gubhtug gung'f jul gurl jrer frggvat hc gur gvzr geniry ryrzrag naq gur qr-ntrq Vaql ng gur ortvaavat. V gubhtug gung jr jrer tbvat gb ybbc nebhaq naq trg zber jvgu obgu Vaqvrf. V jnf abg rkpvgrq nobhg jung jr npghnyyl tbg.

I have not yet mentioned the rest of the plot, which involves the Greek mathematician Archimedes and is stupid. At one point there is a dull scuba-diving sequence where Indy is attacked by equally dull CGI eels. At another point we get the welcome return of the red line on a map which marks which country Indiana Jones is going to next.

There's also the matter of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who wrote and starred in Fleabag on the stage in 2013, and on television in 2016 and 2019. Her character is equal parts charismatic and off-putting, attractive and reprehensible. (Phoebe also appeared in "Broadchurch," contributed to "James Bond 007: No Time to Die" and created Crashing and Killing Eve.) Despite a strong outing in Fleabag, it took Lucasfilm some time to do anything interesting with her. Her voice role as feminist android L3-37 in "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (2018) is baffling. It may have made more sense before rewrites and reshoots replaced directors Lord & Miller with Ron Howard. But it also runs afoul of a recurring problem in Star Wars, which is that droids seem to be fully developed, intelligent, sentient beings, who are never treated as if they're deserving of human rights. Star Wars never deals with this in any meaningful way, and it's an exposed electrical wire that they often get tripped up on, especially in animated television shows like The Clone Wars.

Anyway, I think this movie, the Dial of Destiny, has a problem with women. There are a lot of characters in this movie that aren't deeply explored or explained, but none of them quite like Helena Shaw, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Unless I missed something during all the dialogue I couldn't understand, this doesn't feel like an actual consistent character. It feels like several very different characters from several very different drafts of several very different movies, all stapled together more or less randomly.

The performance is fine - Phoebe Waller-Bridge is charismatic and delivers every line with a wink and a twinkle. Her character is also just deeply insane, and her motivations never make sense. She is also, I think, playing an entirely different character by the end of the film, who is a more traditional hero, and expecting us to believe that she's been playing that character the entire time. As with her character in Solo, this should probably be funny, but isn't, because it's not written to be funny or make very much sense. Helena is, depending on the scene, the puppetmaster in charge of the entire adventure, or coming along reluctantly and making it up as she goes. She is also, depending on the scene, only in it for the money, or very deeply invested in this academic mystery and adventure. She is ready to sell off the Dial of Destiny to pay off gambling debts, because it's either the most meaningful thing in the world to her, or not meaningful at all. Sometimes she's a straightforward hero, or sidekick to the hero. She is also just deeply insane and often untrustworthy, going goblin mode in a way that may have been funny or interesting in a different draft of this script.

It is likely, considering her repeated lines that she's "in it for the money," that they intended Helena to be similar to Harrison Ford as Han Solo. But I think this movie has a problem with women, and failed to write her as a complete person with motivations that make sense. There is one scene in Greece where, to test how a location echoes, Helena starts shout-singing Beethoven's Fifth. Phoebe plays this a little bit wacky, so this feels like the setup for some comedic banter, probably with Indy being annoyed by this. But he just goes along with it and does the same. Helena Shaw is an eccentric performance in search of a better script which would actually explain what she's doing, or make it funnier.

The character clearly has a sense of humor, and is carrying a lot of trauma, and has a lot going on in her backstory, and none of it matters. This could have been a journey where her character changes over the course of the adventure, and maybe they think that's what they accomplished here. It feels more, to me, like this is four different characters held together by one performance.

The character we get as a result is acceptable, and at least she doesn't have the weight of having to possibly replace Indiana Jones, which made Mutt Williams so worrying. But it's also a character delivered with a wink to the audience, and another wink to Indiana Jones himself, as if this is all one grand joke that we're all in on. At no point was I in on this joke, so that didn't work for me. Throughout the film she does things that could easily cause the death of the very elderly Indiana Jones, as well as herself, and it just never matters because this script was rewritten a thousand times and has inconsistent internal logic.

Early scenes in the film set Indy up as a man out of time in a changing world, an interesting character note which is largely forgotten once he puts that hat back on, something he only does because it's an Indiana Jones movie and that's what Indiana Jones wears. For all of the film's chaotic, frenetic action, it's at its best when it's about an old man complaining about his life. There's a brief scene where Indy complains to Helena about the state of his body, and this angle really is curiously underexplored in The Dial of Destiny. At 80 years old, Harrison Ford is not a young action hero. This has become, whether Lucasfilm likes it or not, a character actor part. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is also performing Helena as more of a character-actor part. So I think this could have been a better movie than it is if they stopped pretending that this is an Indiana Jones movie and let it go completely off the rails and become a disaster. Like when a Sam Raimi or David Lynch film loses interest in what it's supposed to be doing, and pursues something more nonsensical for awhile. I think that would be better than what we got. I don't think the Dial of Destiny is bad, but I question all of the cultural decisions that led it to be made in the first place.

Does Indiana Jones, even at eighty, deserve one last hurrah? Sure, but we all deserve one last hurrah and we don't usually get them. If you wanted to make this movie, the time to do so was in the 1980s, or 90s if Ford was interested then.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out in 1989. (Remember "It belongs in a museum!" "So do you!") It was intended as the last hurrah for an aging Indiana Jones, and we've now gotten three of those, which is more than the two movies that preceded it, both of which purport to be Indiana Jones' first adventure. If you take into account the Young Indiana Jones TV series, all of Indiana Jones' live action adventures are either his first ever adventure, or his last ever adventure. Sometimes they're both - Last Crusade has a Young Indiana Jones segment (the weakest part of the film), Dial of Destiny has a Relatively Young Indiana Jones segment, and The Young Indiana Jones has Indy as a one-eyed old man. Or at least it did; George Lucas has cut those scenes from re-releases. At least we get one episode in season 5 where a bearded 1993 Harrison Ford plays the saxophone.

That wasn't what we wanted either; we wanted Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in 1993. The Indiana Jones film series was based on older adventure movies whose influence is, I think, nowhere to be found in the new film. Those films were probably familiar to audiences in 1981 but unfamiliar to even the filmmakers in 2023. Enough time has passed that many other series trying to recapture the Indiana Jones formula have come and gone. We've had The Mummy series. We've had multiple Lara Croft Tomb Raiders. We've had multiple Scrooge McDucks. Everyone is trying to capture that sense of old-fashioned adventure with a little comedy, and they're usually better at the comedy than Dial of Destiny is.

Full disclosure: I don't think Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull is as bad as its reputation, or at least I didn't when I saw it in theaters in 2008. I've not bothered with it since. As I recall, I was invited to see it in Los Angeles, with a friend from high school and his friend group. We couldn't all get tickets together, so I was separated. I was in either another row, or in another theater entirely. After the show, they greeted me with sarcastic feigned enthusiasm, saying "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull rocks!" and high-fiving me. I hadn't especially liked the film either, but soon realized that I'd made a complete fool of myself, in their eyes, by having any opinion about it more complicated than "wow, that was complete garbage."

Folks, Harrison Ford was 66 years old at the time. It was two decades late to be as good as "The Last Crusade." Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had both gone to some weird places in their careers, and George's contribution was always going to include some peculiar story beats and very obvious CGI. It was about aliens.

The writers included David Koepp, who as far as I could tell is a terrible writer who was often paid a lot of money to write films that turned out very good in spite of him. David Koepp was also a writer of The Dial of Destiny. It's hard to tell, from a finished film, whether the actual screenplay was well written or not. People in Hollywood know this - that a bad movie can come from a good script, and that sometimes they know enough to judge a writer for that script rather than that film. David Koepp is credited for writing films that I like, so I might wonder why I was so convinced he's not a good writer. But those movies were mostly based on strong IP which did a lot of the work for him. It felt like Panic Room and War of the Worlds (2005) succeeded in spite of their screenplays. And what about the Johnny Depp thriller Secret Window (2004)? Show me what he can do without Steven Spielberg to clean up his messes.

Anyway, my expectations were not that high for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. I wasn't expecting something as good as Raiders or Last Crusade. I was expecting an elderly Harrison Ford, with a pretty bad script, and pretty obvious CGI, that would be trying to look like a vintage adventure visually but be easily dated to 2008 throughout. Dated before it was even released. I expected some distracting casting, of recognizable famous faces. I expected that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas would both be so successful now, and so deeply into their own individual eccentricities, that they wouldn't have been able to agree on what this movie should actually be, and that it would show.

I think it was a bad idea to have made that movie. I expected, more or less, what we got. And Steven Spielberg happens to be a great director who gave us, under these unusual circumstances, some of that Spielberg magic.

That magic is not present in The Dial of Destiny. As a movie, The Dial of Destiny is reasonably well made. It's action-packed. There is some obvious CGI, but it's trying to do things which are very difficult and expensive to do, like de-aging Harrison Ford or a cartoonish parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Dial of Destiny is an okay movie. A lot of people are saying it's better than The Crystal Skull. I don't think The Crystal Skull is as bad as people are saying, and I don't think Dial of Destiny is as good as people are saying. I don't think either are fully successful in what they're trying to do. Indiana Jones really was too old for this, and Hollywood could have let some writer come up with a new idea instead.

I think it was a bad idea to have made both of these movies. I'm not sorry I watched them, because I'm old enough to be nostalgic for the property, but I also think they're trying to recapture something which they would have struggled to recapture forty years ago. I think, under the circumstances, both movies are pretty good and have some pretty good stuff in them.

I am also begging, begging, begging Hollywood to stop making movies like this.

These sequels that come twenty, thirty, forty years late. We watch them because they're familiar, but we don't need Indiana Jones, we need the next thing that could be as big as Indiana Jones. There won't be a sequel to the Dial of Destiny forty years from now, with a 120 year old Harrison Ford. Or maybe there will, because Hollywood wants to keep repeating itself. And we'll all be dead or dying from climate change by then, so what does it even matter?

I love slop, I love garbage. Pour it into my mouth.

[fuffette]

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami Invisibility: A Manifesto by Audrey Szasz Bunny by Mona Awad Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties: Stories by Carmen Maria Machado The Encyclopedia of the Dead by Danilo Kiš One Hundred Shadows by Jungeun Hwang Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto Whale by Myeong-Kwan Cheon The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura The Minuscule Mansion of Myra Malone by Audrey Burges The Probable Future by Alice Hoffman Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald The Overstory by Richard Powers Poison by Kathryn Harrison Bitter Orange by Fuller, Claire We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Fowler, Karen Joy The Edible Woman by Atwood, Margaret A School for Fools by Sokolov, Sasha Ferdydurke by Gombrowicz, Witold The Iliac Crest by Rivera Garza, Cristina Paris Peasant by Aragon, Louis The Making of a Marchioness by Burnett, Frances Hodgson Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Semple, Maria Hell by Barbusse, Henri The Honk and Holler Opening Soon by Letts, Billie Find Me by Berg, Laura van den * Big Swiss by Beagin, Jen Mariana by Dickens, Monica The Lime Works by Bernhard, Thomas Dead Souls by Gogol, Nikolai Gargoyles by Bernhard, Thomas The Pachinko Parlour by Dusapin, Elisa Shua Lolly Willowes by Warner, Sylvia Townsend Rebecca by du Maurier, Daphne The Hearing Trumpet by Carrington, Leonora Jane Eyre by Brontë, Charlotte The Savage Detectives by Bolaño, Roberto Solitude: A Novel of Catalonia by Català, Víctor Almond by Sohn Won-Pyung My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Moshfegh, Ottessa Heaven by Kawakami, Mieko Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo Convenience Store Woman by Murata, Sayaka Iza's Ballad by Szabó, Magda The Door by Szabó, Magda Phantom Limb by Berry, Lucinda The Night Journal by Crook, Elizabeth Faces in the Water by Frame, Janet Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Abgaryan, Narine The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Bronsky, Alina Eileen by Moshfegh, Ottessa I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Moore, Lorrie The Stationery Shop by Kamali, Marjan Breasts and Eggs by Kawakami, Mieko Milkman by Burns, Anna The Maid by Prose, Nita The Guest by Cline, Emma Hang the Moon by Walls, Jeannette The Secret of Ventriloquism by Padgett, Jon The Salt Line by Jones, Holly Goddard Perdido Street Station by Miéville, China The Accursed by Oates, Joyce Carol Occupy Me by Sullivan, Tricia Poison Study by Snyder, Maria V. The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Fox, Hester Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Fawcett, Heather Skylark by Kosztolányi, Dezső Blue of Noon by Bataille, Georges Ruth Hall and Other Writings by Fern, Fanny The Vegetarian by Han Kang Nadja by Breton, André Exquisite Corpse by Brite, Poppy Z. Ice by Kavan, Anna Kallocain by Boye, Karin Palimpsest by Valente, Catherynne M. Elena Knows by Piñeiro, Claudia Landor's Tower: Or Imaginary Conversations by Sinclair, Iain The Birthday Party by Mauvignier, Laurent The Magnolia Palace by Davis, Fiona Memories of the Future by Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund Under a Glass Bell by Nin, Anaïs Sugar by McFadden, Bernice L. Vintage Cisneros by Cisneros, Sandra Raising Hope by Willard, Katie Chodleros de Laclos Les Liasions Dangereuses by Various Daddy-Long-Legs by Webster, Jean Local Anaesthetic by Grass, Günter Don't Stop the Carnival by Wouk, Herman Confessions of Felix Krull by Mann, Thomas The House of Mirth by Wharton, Edith Radiant Terminus by Volodine, Antoine Shanghai Girls by See, Lisa The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, Mikhail (Translator: Mirra Ginsburg) Owlish by Tse, Dorothy

undue influence by anita brookner slip of a fish by amy arnold beside myself by ann morgan blue ticket by sophie mackintosh nostalgia by mircea cartarescu I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Crane, Marisa

[indoraptorgirlwind]

Wesen Moodboards

Lausenschlange (German: Louse Snake)

Though they have fangs, they fight more like boa constrictors, strangling their prey with the very strong grip of their arms. They consider Mauzhertz their natural prey and will casually kill and eat them. Lausenschlange are known to be naturally aggressive, but they are perfectly capable of living with humans and having normal lives. There are wieder Lausenschlange.

Notables: Mason Snyder, Quinn, Kirk, Harrison Berman

[overwhlcmed]

☁️ ⠀  ⠀ ⠀  ─────── 𝚃𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙸𝚃𝚈 𝙺𝙰𝙽𝙴 : snapshots.

pictured : levi himaya . ( @cherryflcvoured ) / izzie liao, harrison snyder . ( @foxtcils )

[dzjadzja]

75 books in 2023. Not bad. I fell into a Julia Quinn hole in Nov/Dec, apparently (I didn't realize how many of her books I read during the Holiday season). I discovered a few new authors I really like. And I've realized that, given the option, I will almost always pick a female author (Ilona Andrews being the stand out exception, since I like the way the duo write together, and one of them is a dude). Burn for Me - Ilona Andrews Chasing Shadows - Maria V Snyder Navigating the Stars - Maria V Snyder The Apothecary Diaries V1 - Natsu Hyuuga The Darkest Pleasure - Gena Showalter The Darkest Kiss - Gena Showalter The Darkest Night - Gena Showalter Fledgling - Octavia E Butler Master of None - Sonya Bateman Iron Widow - Xiran Jay Zhao Echo North - Joanna Ruth Meyer The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea - Maggie Tokuda-Hall The Siren, the Song, and the Spy - Maggie Tokuda-Hall The Kings Beast, V1&2 - Rei Toma Brighter Than the Sun - Julia Quinn Secret Diaries of Miss Miranga Cheever - Julia Quinn To Catch an Heiress - Julia Quinn Dancing at Midnight - Julia Quinn Minx - Julia Quinn Ten Things I Love About You - Julia Quinn The Secrets of Sir Richard Kentworthy - Julia Quinn The Girl With the Make Believe Husband - Julia Quinn The Sum of All Kisses - Julia Quinn First Comes Scandal - Julia Quinn Mr Cavendish, I Presume - Julia Quinn The Lady Most Likely - Julia Quinn Lady Whistledown Strikes Back - Julia Quinn A Night Like This - Julia Quinn Just Like Heaven - Julia Quinn The Other Miss Bridgerton - Julia Quinn Everything and the Moon - Julia Quinn Romancing Mister Bridgerton - Julia Quinn It's in His Kiss - Julia Quinn To Sir Phillip, With Love - Julia Quinn When He Was Wicked - Julia Quinn An Offer from a Gentleman - Julia Quinn The Bridgertons, Happily Ever After - Julia Quinn On the Way to the Wedding - Julia Quinn Queen of Myth and Monsters - Scarlett St Clair King of Battle and Blood - Scarlett St Clair The Innocent Sleep - Seanan McGuire The Fenmere Job - Marshall Ryan Maresca Lady Henterman's Wardrobe - Marshall Ryan Maresca The Enforcer Enigma - GL Carriger The Omega Objection - GL Carriger The Sumage Solution - GL Carriger Demons and DNA - Meghan Ciana Doidge The Amplifier Protocol - Meghan Ciana Doidge Of Noble Family - Mary Robinette Kowal Without a Summer - Mary Robinette Kowal Valour and Vanity - Mary Robinette Kowal Shades of Milk and Honey - Mary Robinette Kowal Demons of Good and Evil - Kim Harrison Empire of Ivory - Naomi Novik Backpacking Through Bedlam - Seanan McGuire Blame it on the Early - Jane Ashford Earl on the Run - Jane Ashford The Duke Who Loved Me - Jane Ashford Magic Claims - Ilona Andrews Magic Tides - Ilona Andrews Victory of Eagles - Naomi Novik Black Powder War - Naomi Novik Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik The Atlas Paradox - Olivie Blake The Atlas Six - Olivie Blake A Darker Shade of Magic - VE Schwab Lost in the Moment and Found - Seanan McGuire The Marrow Thieves - Cherie Dimaline Time's Convert - Deborah Harkness VenCo - Cherie Dimaline The Outsiders - SE Hinton The Book of Life - Deborah Harkness Shadow of Night - Deborah Harkness Soul Taken - Patricia Briggs Nona the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir.

[spiritgamer26]

[Critique] Vanish

Vanish (non je ne ferais pas la blague)

Les amateurs des collaborations fructueuses entre Donny Cates et Ryan Stegman sur des titres tels que 'Venom' et 'King in Black' peuvent se réjouir. Leur dernière entreprise, 'Vanish', s'apprête à faire son entrée en français grâce à Urban Comics. 'Vanish', intégré parmi les récentes publications d'Image Comics, illustre une renaissance d'artistes renommés qui décident de quitter les grands éditeurs pour explorer de nouvelles voies créatives. À l'instar de Baker, Millar, Vaughan et Snyder, Cates et Stegman se lancent dans cette nouvelle aventure narrative. La série replonge les lecteurs dans l'âge d'or des bandes dessinées des années 90, évoquant une nostalgie qui rappelle des créations emblématiques telles que 'WildC.A.T.S', 'Cyber Force', 'Spawn', 'Savage Dragon' et 'Youngblood'. Ensemble, ces artistes forgent 'Vanish', un récit sombre et intense centré autour d'Oliver Harrison, un personnage déchu qui se noie dans la monotonie de la vie de banlieue, pour être brusquement plongé dans un monde de surréalisme et de danger avec l'arrivée de l'énigmatique équipe Prestige. L'art de Ryan Stegman brille de mille feux dans 'Vanish', témoignant de son impressionnante carrière sur des titres tels que 'Venom' et 'Spider-Man'. Le voir ainsi libérer sa créativité aux côtés de ces vétérans chevronnés de Marvel au sein d'Image Comics donne naissance à une série méticuleusement conçue qui promet de captiver les lecteurs. L'édition américaine du recueil, publiée par KLC Presse sous l'étiquette de Stegman et Cates, s'apprête à conquérir le public français d'Urban Comics. L'attente pour cette version traduite est palpable, offrant aux lecteurs une occasion unique de s'immerger dans cette narration saisissante et ces visuels époustouflants. Veken Marion, artiste issu de chez Zenescope et ayant fait ses preuves chez DC Comics, se joint à Stegman dans cette aventure artistique, ajoutant une nouvelle dimension visuelle à la série.

Donny Cates

Donny Cates est un scénariste de bandes dessinées américain, connu pour son travail dans l'industrie du comic book. Il est né le 24 avril 1984 à Garland, au Texas. Cates s'est fait remarquer pour ses contributions à des séries populaires de Marvel Comics, telles que "Venom", "Thor" et "Guardians of the Galaxy". Il est également reconnu pour ses collaborations avec d'autres éditeurs de bandes dessinées, notamment Image Comics, où il a travaillé sur des titres tels que "God Country" et "Redneck". Donny Cates a gagné en popularité grâce à son style narratif dynamique et à sa capacité à créer des histoires engageantes qui captivent les lecteurs de bandes dessinées.

Ryan Stegman

Ryan Stegman est un dessinateur de bandes dessinées américain. Il est connu pour son travail sur de nombreuses séries populaires de super-héros, notamment pour Marvel Comics. Stegman est né le 17 septembre 1980. Il a travaillé sur des titres emblématiques tels que "Amazing Spider-Man" et "Venom". Sa carrière dans l'industrie des bandes dessinées a été marquée par son talent artistique et son style dynamique, ce qui lui a valu une reconnaissance et une base de fans importantes. Ryan Stegman a également collaboré avec d'autres éditeurs et a contribué à des projets indépendants, démontrant ainsi sa polyvalence en tant qu'artiste de bandes dessinées. Son travail est apprécié pour ses compositions captivantes et son sens du mouvement, qui apportent une dimension visuelle dynamique aux histoires qu'il illustre. Read the full article

[walaw717]

I’ve had truly mixed feelings about writing this little meditation, but then it is not costumed as a dispensation. We apparently drown in discursive texts and lists of principles and, on occasion, turn in despair from recondite Buddhist studies to the poetry of Han Shan and Gary Snyder and many in between. As the Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz has said, “There are no truths, only stories.” Perhaps that is why we are drawn back to The Blue Cliff Record and the Book of Serenity. After all, we live within a story and our own story is true. This is only to say what I have to offer is a tad simpleminded compared to what has been offered to me.

Jim Harrison

[thereasonsimbroke]

Suicide Squad ISEKAI: Worlds Collide

In Ep. 572, Millennial Mike and I discuss the discovery of the unique One Ring MTG card, the Anime Expo announcement of Suicide Squad: ISEKAI, Henry Cavill’s final season of The Witcher, and more! Full Topics:

The unique One Ring Magic: The Gathering card, graded as a 9, could become the most expensive Magic card ever, attracting offers of over $2M and potentially impacting the value of Collector Booster packs.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, starring Harrison Ford and directed by James Mangold, earned $60 million in North America, received mixed reviews, and is projected to earn $140 million worldwide.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts' poor box office performance raises concerns for the franchise's future, with delayed releases and a possible Transformers crossover as a last attempt to revive both franchises.

Henry Cavill returns as Geralt of Rivia for his final appearance in The Witcher on Netflix, with the third season divided into two parts and remaining popular on Netflix's daily TV rankings.

Netflix's live-action series adaptation of One Piece will feature the original Japanese anime voice cast to maintain the essence of the beloved franchise.

Naruto's original anime is making a comeback with four new episodes celebrating its 20th Anniversary.

Warner Bros. Japan and WIT Studio announced the production of "Suicide Squad ISEKAI," an anime series based on DC characters, combining the worlds of ISEKAI and the Suicide Squad.

Warner Bros. Pictures plans a potential Dune trilogy, with the third film potentially based on the Dune: Messiah book.

A fire broke out at Warner Bros. Studios lot, swiftly contained with no injuries reported.

The Flash, under James Gunn's watch, is underperforming at the box office, projected to reach only $300 million, making it a financial disappointment for Warner Bros. Discovery.

FOLLOW/SUPPORT MILLENNIAL MIKE: @millennialmike (Mike's Vero) @TheExilesNet (Mike's Twitter) The Ronin Council (YouTube) As always, we appreciate your constructive Feedback, Suggestions, and Questions. You can also leave us an audio question on SpeakPipe. Thank you for the continued love and support! Enjoy the show. Daniel Podcast Awards 2019 || Games & Hobbies (Winner) Podcast Awards 2017 - 2018, 2020 - 2022 || Games & Hobbies (Nominated) Official Site FOLLOW US: - Twitter | @ReasonsImBroke and @TRIBPod - Instagram - Threads - Pinterest - Tumblr - Discord Lounge - YouTube Channel SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts / iHeartRadio / TuneIn / Overcast SUPPORT THE POD: Getting $1's worth of entertainment and information each month? Support us on Patreon or visit our TeePublic storefront! SPREAD THE WORD: If you're enjoying the show, please head over to iTunes and leave us a rating and a review! Each one helps new Brokettes discover the podcast. Contribute to the Hero Initiative to offer assistance to comic creators facing difficulties. Show your support for the AFSP's efforts by donating to the Autumn Snyder Tribute Fund. CREDITS: Opening/Closing Jingles - Alex Scott Show Logo By - Opanaldiova

The latest episode of The Reasons I'm Broke Podcast!

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

Alternate Events 3: Doppelganger Troubles and Other Threats

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/XnFBAiL

by cer1992

Not long after learning of the recent resurrection of two heroines and the news of an impending Crisis, the heroes are once again thrown into action when trouble strikes in the form of evil doppelgangers and other enemies from alternate Earths. Takes place three weeks after the events of "Alternate Events 2: One Year Later".

Words: 108565, Chapters: 17/17, Language: English

Series: Part 3 of DC Multiverse Crossovers

Fandoms: Smallville, The Flash (TV 2014), Arrow (TV 2012), Supergirl (TV 2015), DC Extended Universe, DC Animated Universe (Timmverse), Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), The Flash (TV 1990), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Superman (Christopher Reeve Movies), Supergirl (1984)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: Gen

Characters: Clark Kent, Barry Allen, Kon-El | Conner Kent, Oliver Queen, Kara Danvers, Courtney Whitmore, Laurel Lance, Earth-2 Laurel Lance, Sara Lance, Lois Lane, Chloe Sullivan, Kara Zor-El, Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow, Roy Harper, Thea Queen, Mar Novu | The Monitor, Clark Luthor, Doomsday (Superman), Earth-X Oliver Queen, Earth-X Kara Danvers, Earth-X Clark Kent, Eobard Thawne, Diana (Wonder Woman), Earth-90 Barry Allen, John Diggle (DCU), Wally West, Bruce Wayne, Shayera Hol, Billy Batson, Lex Luthor, Bart Allen, Tess Mercer, Lena Luthor, Alex Danvers, J'onn J'onzz, Arthur Curry (DCU), Victor Stone, Dinah Lance, John Stewart (DCU), Slade Wilson, Nyssa al Ghul, Justice League (DCU), Earth-2 Harrison "Harry" Wells, Winn Schott Jr., Earth-96 Clark Kent

Relationships: Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Barry Allen/Kara Danvers, Kon-El | Conner Kent/Courtney Whitmore, Oliver Queen/Chloe Sullivan, Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen

Additional Tags: Crossover, Multiple Crossovers, Dimension Travel, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Post-Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021), Post-Justice League (2017), Smallville (Post-Series Finale), Smallville/Arrowverse crossover, Laurel Lance Lives, Crisis On Earth-X Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe), Episode: s01e09 Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part Two

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/XnFBAiL

[ledenews]

OVAC Sees Five Qualify for First OHSAA Girls Wrestling State Championship

Sunday was a historic moment for the Ohio High School Athletic Association and a number of its female athletes across the Buckeye State. In four locations, Olentangy Orange, Mentor, Marysville and Harrison, the OHSAA put on the inaugural state regional wrestling tournaments at those sites. Next up is the inaugural state girls wrestling championship, set to run alongside the boys from Friday through Sunday at the Schottenstein Center in Columbus. Local participation is still growing, but four OVAC teams sent competitors to their respective regional tournaments and three of them are seeing at least one wrestler advance through to compete at the Schott. The top four finishers from each regional championship advance to the state, with the No. 5 finisher at each serving as the first alternate. Warren and Shenandoah were sent to the Orange regional tournament, while Steubenville Big Red and East Liverpool competed at Mentor. And each site saw an OVAC competitor's hand raised in victory as the conference can count three regional champions among its ranks. Orange Regional The Host Pioneers featured a full roster of wrestlers and took advantage, winning four weight classes and amassing 221 points by Sunday's end. Warren's Hayley Snyder is going for her fourth state championship and first official OHSAA crown. The OVAC's Warren Warriors came in second with 106 points, but with far fewer wrestlers (3). And three of those wrestlers, Hayley Snyder (110), Nevaeh Rockhold (130), and Kylee Tait (155) are advancing to Columbus The Warriors had four placers, as Maria Nutter came in sixth in the 170 class. Snyder will be looking to four-pete as champion. While this is the first official OHSAA girls' state wrestling championships, the Ohio High School Wrestling Coaches Association held state championship tournaments each of the last three seasons. Snyder won her first two at 101 pounds, before moving up to win 110 as a junior. Her first two titles she defeated Elyria's Riley Banyas, a fellow senior who won the 100 class at the Mentor regional. This time, Snyder, who earlier this season celebrated her 100th victory, won by forfeit against Shenandoah's Brooke Snyder in the finals of the 110 class. Both Snyder and Farmer, a junior, are off to Columbus. Snyder isn't the only Warriors wrestler with state experience. She previously finished fifth in 2021 and second last year, losing a 7-4 decision to Lyndsee Young of Madison Comprehensive. Rockhold is the final Warriors' wrestler advancing after beating Madelyn Thornton via pinfall at 2:00 in the third-four place match. Makyah Newlun pinned her way to and through the 155 finale at Mentor. Mentor Regional Big Red entered the tournament with a decent number of wrestlers and totaled 32 points overall. But none of the Steubenville girls reached the Top 6. Not that the trip wasn't without some successes. Newlun is currently ranked No. 2 in Ohio at 155. Jahmiah Bey (100), Taylor Zimmerman (120), Ana Gross (136) and Kami Anthony (190) all won their opening matches, with Bey earning a 9-2 decision while Zimmerman, Gross, and Anthony won via pinfall. East Liverpool finished two spots behind Big Red in the team standings with 30 points, but those 30 all came via one determined junior wrestler. Makyah Newlun advanced her way through the 155 bracket in dominating fashion, putting an emphatic stamp on her afternoon with a pin of Chippewa's Isabella Adams in 2:39 of her final match. That pin, her fourth of the afternoon, gave Newlun the 155 regional championship and a spot in Columbus. Currently the No. 2-ranked wrestler at 155 in all of Ohio, Newlun advanced to the finals with pins in 15 seconds, 13 seconds, and 2:40. She'll look to improve upon last year's fifth-place finish at the OHSWCA's state championships. Newlun lost a 1-0 decision in her opening match at the championships last year before wrestling back to finish in fifth place. She'll be looking to get off to a better start this time around. Read the full article

[slayer-izaya]

⚠️ UPDATE ⚠️ Just want to give everyone! A HUGE thanks for being wonderful to me, when I was not! Thanks for the support of my Twitch community, GatewayChurch family, Celebrate Recovery family, Walmart family, also my best friends, Caitlin Humphrey, Titus Snyder, Hector Torres, Adam Greiner, Trevor Hoffman, Amanda Puderbaugh, Harrison Campbell, my mom and dad, especially my trucker brother Steven McCoig!!! Without everyone supporting me or each other, who would not be where we all are today!!! God bless you all and thanks for supporting me through my dark times and pulling me through! Amen! https://www.instagram.com/p/CnYLoEKO_lg/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=