#I need a docudrama on her right now | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

homesweetgoodneighbor · 2 years

Text

I feel like there are a number of old television shows and movies that Should Not Be Missed by Gen Z, and, of course, everyone's ideal lists are different.

For me, in the "mostly comedy but sometimes will smack your feels with a brick" category, I gotta tell y'all, M.A.S.H. is a TV series y'all really need to watch. It was set in Korea with a whole lot of artistic licensing (like the length of the war, etc.) when it really was a whole lot of commentary about the Vietnam war just as much as a social commentary not only about war in general but racism, sexism, capitalism, and more that were struggles in the 70s.

A whole lot of it still applies today and that hurts me...I mean, we are in the Future. We should be better than that now, right? (Please note, it's not without it's problematic moments, but some of those were used to highlight real world issues, and some were...the 70s. Good things to discuss.)

There isn't a whole lot on queer struggles, which isn't surprising given the time. But, speaking of that:

Another is more a made-for-TV movie that was originally aired on HBO in 1993 called And, the Band Played On.

It is a docudrama based on the non-fiction book "And, the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic".

Here's the thing, my loves, AIDS is still with us; although, in this country, it's no longer the death sentence it once was, but in poor countries it still remains so. In this country, though, it was used as a political weapon to try to get rid of undesirables, particularly queers. Reagan and his cronies undermined and underfunded anything that could help research or people who had AIDS. When straight people started showing up with it, bisexuals were blamed to try to use any means to make sex continue to look evil and evangelistic puritanical views to be "saintly". There was an actual argument about whether it should be "allowed" to be seen as blood transmitted because then they couldn't pin it on just sex...and then when they had no choice, they pinned it on drug addicts and pretty much declared them not worth worrying about. But, what it came down to was, if you tested positive, you were gonna die; and if the virus didn't kill you, the people around you would. (I remember when two little girls in Florida showed up with it because their dentist was using unsanitized tools. Their house was burned down when people found out. Think I'm kidding? Look it up.)

It's a hard fucking thing to watch, and I watched it when it released and bawled my ass off because it was my fucking childhood laid before me. It's as hard for me to watch as it is to watch Schindler's List. Two completely different movies based on two completely different situations, but gods, if they don't each show what lengths humans with an agenda will go to commit acts of horror.

Except...I lived through AIDS...I am still living through the ramifications of the politics that allowed it to become a plague that people literally fought to ignore.

Kind of sounds familiar...doesn't it?

----------

Edit: I just realized, I've seen And, the Band Played On only twice. And, I also realized the reason I have only seen it twice is because it is so painful I start gagging from sobs. I lived that. I remember screaming at fellow students about what will and won't transmit AIDS because my mother was smart enough to keep up and tell her children about it. I remember friends losing family members. I remember kids getting it and having to be taken out of school for their own safety because not only would fellow students but fucking parents would have murdered them. I have seen a small portion of the AIDS quilt and knew I could never view the entire thing unless I was in a fucking helicopter or the godsdamn space shuttle. I wasn't even aware at the time that I was bisexual, and now when I did realize it hit me how lucky I was to survive, and how much I still suffer from the biphobia that was enacted during that time (Bisexual always meant not concerned with the gender of their partner. Don't listen to fucking TERFS.) All these feelings don't even cover half the shit I've seen or heard during that time...and all of them funnel into my soul while watching that film. I hope to fuck that none of you have to watch a film about COVID like this...but I fear...it will be in your future...

#MASH will always be awesome #also missionaries in poor countries still fight against teaching safe sex which is partially why AIDS continues to be a problem #missionaries should be shot on sight #no I won't apologize for that

10 notes · View notes

eirabach · 4 years

Text

For @gumnut-logic 's FabFiveFeb Challenge

Prompt Two - Gordon

[Can't / No clothes]

Also inspired by Nutty's TAG ages meta, because it gave me *emotions*. I'm super sorry. Added Vance Joy because it’s Gordon.

---

Under the surface you don't know what you'll find,

Until it's your time.

---

The night that Jeff Tracy took humanity's first step on the surface of Mars, he had three little boys watching at home. Gordon, he liked to say, was born of the fall out. A child created in a whirlwind of press tours and ticker tape and eventually brought home to that quiet little homestead that would never be truly quiet or homely again.

By the time Gordon became a Tracy being a Tracy mattered. And sure money's great and influence is better, but Gordon's sixteen years old with sunlight in his hair and his eyes and his soul, and for him, for him the best part of being a Tracy is that no one ever tells you you can't.

Not that Gordon would listen if they did.

Because the other important thing to know about being a Tracy, is that Gordon isn't very good at it.

He's uninterested in physics or engineering or math. He has minimal desire to blow things up or shoot people or study space dust. He likes a party and he loves people, but he's miserable in a cummerbund and he kinda never understood capitalism.

When you're fourth, you gotta find your own way to be first. And all right Scott's a fighter pilot and John's a genius and Virgil's some sort of goddamn savant, but at least Alan can't even tie his shoelaces yet so Gordon's got one up on him. Gordon doesn't even wear shoes. Doesn't wear much of anything at all except teeny weeny trunks splattered red, white and blue.

Gordon won't be a hero, won't have a theory named after him, but what Gordon will have will be his.

Gordon's going for gold.

His muscles burn and his hair turns green and he sweats chlorine into his sheets every night, but that doesn't matter. Nothing matters but the next millisecond, the turn, the cleanness of his touch. He can't care about anything but his coach's thumb hovering over the stopwatch and the crest of his fly because it's coming. Gold. It's coming, and it's everything.

Everything.

---

Dad calls on Wednesdays at three. Alan calls at midnight just to hear him swear. He gets weekly updates on daring-do from Scott and a monthly serving of sarcasm and space babble from John.

Virgil calls because they tend to forget.

"You gonna come home, you think? Before?"

Virgil looks different, his floppy black hair cropped short, band shirts exchanged for some weird quasi military uniform. He's still watching Gordon shovel food down his throat with an expression of disgusted awe, though, so some things never change.

"Dunno." Gordon shrugs, mouth full. "Gotta keep training. Four months to go, can't lose form now."

"You should come, there's -- there's a lot changed around here," says Virgil, like that's a reason. Then, when Gordon just chews at him in reply, "Dad built you a pool."

And maybe that's a reason, after all.

Cause sure, his dad's never told him he can't, but Gordon's been gone a long time, and he's not sure he remembers the last time his dad told him he could.

---

Home's not the farm anymore, or the ranch, or the townhouse in Manhattan. Home is some island a billion miles from anywhere, where huge portraits of his older brothers stare expressionlessly down at him and his shoes squeak on the super shiny floor, humidity making his tracksuit stick to his back.

Gordon has only really spent a few weeks here, his training all taking place under the eagle eye of Uncle Sam and sponsored entirely by Old Glory, but he doesn't remember it like this.

The decor is still retro spy movie meets crazy billionaire with paranoia problems, and his bedroom is pretty much as he left it, but nothing else seems familiar at all. He'd left Tracy Two in a great cavernous hanger that would have been overkill even for one of dad's crazy projects, Kyrano had rushed him past huge shadowy behemoths that suggested, pretty damn strongly, that Jeff Tracy is in the midst of another too easily financed midlife crisis.

"Please tell me he isn't planning world domination," Gordon had only half joked as they’d emerged into the brightness of the villa proper. "He'd look awful in lycra."

Kyrano had glared at him, swirled back into the bowels of the island, and left him with Scott.

Scott is wearing lycra.

He's sitting behind their dad's desk, two high points of colour in his cheeks and his eyes bright with something Gordon can't name as he pours over datasets. All he's missing to complete the look is a fluffy white cat and a maniacal laugh.

"Hey. Hey." Nothing. Scott mutters to himself as he sweeps his fingers through warning signs. "Scotty, hey!"

Scott looks up. Blinks. Blinks again.

"Gordon?"

"The one and only."

Scott stands, still grossly tall, and moves to ruffle Gordon's hair. It's not as easy as it used to be, there's an actual lift of his hand, and Gordon can't help but feel satisfaction creep into his bones.

"You grew."

"Hear it happens."

"Got a girlfriend?"

"Got a pillow."

"Tragic."

"That's me." Gordon throws his arm across his eyes and flops backwards onto the sofa. "Sacrificing everything in pursuit of a noble goal. Hold tight, beautiful people. Only three more months and I'm yours."

He peeks out from behalf of his elbow to see Scott standing over him, arms folded, lips twisted into something a bit like a fond smile. A bit.

Something unpleasant settles in Gordon's stomach.

"What are you doing desk work for? I thought you were out there --" He gestures to the cloudless sky beyond the glass wall. "Y'know. Saving the world."

Scott opens his mouth, but then there's a chime from the desk and Alan hollering from the staircase and Grandma crushing him to her chest, and Gordon is left to wonder.

---

Scott isn't the only thing that's strange.

There's a fish tank in the corner, empty but for a little model sub from that docudrama he and John used to love to watch with Mom, but when he lays his hand on the glass it hums beneath his fingers and makes his teeth ache.

John's not here, replaced as resident super nerd by some guy they call Brains who makes John look dumb. Dad isn't there, either, but that's okay. Nor is Gordon, really.

He's lived apart from his family for the best part of two years, he shouldn't be surprised that they've changed. That's he's changed. But somehow, it doesn't feel like he has.

Alan's finally learned to tie his laces but still never bothers, Virgil's taken out his piercing, Grandma is being followed by a robot dog, but Gordon is still the same kid with the same dreams and he isn't sure what anybody else's dreams are anymore. Virgil's in a uniform and Scott's out of his and John is gone and Alan's looking at him like he knows stuff.

This is impossible, of course. Alan is an infant. This is the abiding certainty of Gordon's life and he intends to prove it this evening with three rubber spiders and a trapeze but whatever.

It's just that Gordon isn't quite sure where he fits, just like he doesn't know where to sit when holograms of the great and the good appear in his living room. Doesn't quite know what to make of the way their eyes skip over him to rest on Scott, or Virgil, and where the hell is John, anyway?

"Top secret," Alan says, all pre-teen smugness, "can't tell you."

"Dad'll be home soon," Virgil adds, ever the peacekeeper, "I'm sure he'll tell you everything."

Gordon's not so sure and Scott says nothing at all except a vehement 'no!' when Gordon dares to suggest going for a swim.

So much for the pool, then.

---

Night is falling and Gordon's already ready for bed when the roar of engines fills the air and the whole family dart for the window, faces pressed against the glass. Gordon hovers behind them, unsure of his place, until Scott grabs him bodily by the elbow and drags him downstairs to where the deck leads down to the pool.

"Come on! You got to see this!"

It's a thing to see, all right. The pool withdraws beneath the villa itself, leaving a great gaping hole in the earth into which a great silver plane descends, jets first. And Gordon remembers the TV-21 and his father's fascination with speed and grace and more speed -- it's the one thing they have in common after all -- but this, this is something else.

She disappears into the ground, and the pool sweeps over her, only the sway of the water left as evidence. Scott turns to him with an almost hysterical glee.

"Did you see that!?"

Gordon would have pointed out that he'd have to have been dead blind and comatose not to have seen it, but Scott's practically bouncing on his toes, his expression full of what Gordon recognises as real, true love.

"Isn't she beautiful? Come on, come on, Dad's gotta debrief and then --"

"Scott!" They both snap to attention, immediately turning to where their father stands, towering over both of them from the top of the stairs. "Debrief can wait. Let me see your brother."

Scott darts off, probably to hump the shiny thing, and Dad approaches Gordon, his eyes shining, dirt on his cheek.

"What do you think of her, son?"

"I think you've safely guaranteed Scotty won't be bringing you home any surprise grandbabies."

Dad snorts, clapping Gordon on the shoulder and turning him back toward the pool. They head out across the deck together, Gordon barefoot in only his sleep shorts, Jeff in a uniform like Scott's only gently singed.

"I've missed you. How's training?"

Gordon half shrugs. "Wet. Good. Pretty tiring."

Jeff looks him up and down with a critical eye "So I imagine. It looks good on you."

Gordon stretches and grins. "No more noodle arms, right?"

Jeff blinks, and for a moment Gordon almost thinks he sees something like sadness in his eyes, but it's soon gone and his dad's turning him to face the pool again.

"Will it do? I know it's not Olympic standard but we needed some room for the house and --"

"Dad," he says, because his dad is rambling and his dad never rambles. "Dad what's going on?"

Jeff looks down into the pool. The stars flicker into being in his reflection.

"Forest fire. Family home was cut off."

"Your rescue thing. You saved them."

Jeff looks at him, Gordon watches in the water as he schools his features, tightens his jaw. "This time.

"Scott and Virgil?"

"Are involved, yes."

"And John?"

Jeff looks up then, up to the darkening sky, and points. "We built a satellite. It monitors distress calls from all over the world - and beyond."

"Makes sense. Space case."

"Play to your strengths, isn't that what they say?"

"What about Alan?"

"Alan's eleven, Gordon. Even my insanity has its limits."

"And you built me a pool?"

"And I built you a pool. Is it -- " a breath where Gordon wouldn't expect to hear one "is it all right?"

"All right?" Gordon turns to him and grins. "It's perfect."

Because okay, so it's only a short course, and it occasionally has a supersonic plane blasting through it, but it's a pool and it's for him, and that's better than Scotty's super special plane.

His dad's clapping him on the back again and smiling and that's better than any top secret technology.

It makes a strange island full of strange things feel a little bit more like home.

Jeff's off again already though, gesturing to the round building above the villa and going on about blast radius and Gordon's content to just watch for a moment, to bask in that feeling for as long as it lasts. Then the subject changes.

"We'll be in Cape Town for the opening ceremony, of course, and I've made arrangements to ensure we can all make your races. I'm sure it won't shock you to hear Alan's made t shirts and John's bringing a banner. I hope it's safe for television."

His eyes snap to his dad's.

"John's coming?"

His dad's eyebrows twitch. "You think he'd miss it? Gordon, none of us will miss this. Not for the world. And as you now know, I mean that quite literally."

Gordon nods, mutely. There's a build up of something in his chest. Lactic acid squeezing his heart. His dad takes pity.

"What about September? Are you still planning on marine biology?"

Gordon scuffs at the tile with his bare heel. This is a conversation he's been avoiding for a long time, now. The after.

"Yeah. UCLA."

"California?"

Gordon shrugs.

"You don't seem keen? Sydney have an excellent program, do you --" Gordon feels more than hears the shudder in his dad's exhale. "No, no Jeff stop it. You tell me, Gordy. What do you want to do?"

Gordon's voice is never small, but it's as close as it's ever been. "Was thinking WASP."

Both of his dad's eyebrows disappear into his hairline. "The military? You?"

It's not an unexpected reaction. Gordon scoffs. "You wound me, Dad. Maybe I have hidden depths."

"I don't doubt that for a moment," his dad says, then he looks up, right up, to where the milky way swirls and John sits. “You’re not old enough.”

“Yeah, I know, I thought, college first - couple of years of credits and I can join as an officer.”

“You’re my son, you can join as whatever you damn well please.”

“Dad--”

"Sorry, sorry.” And his Dad’s looking into space and Gordon’s looking down at the water and it’s kinda always been like this, between them. Gordon suspects his dad hates it even more than he does.”You know I'll support you, if that's what you really want."

Gordon finally follows his gaze, imagines John in the vacuum of space, alone with his books and his stars. He wonders if Dad had had this conversation with him, before sending him up there. "That sounds kinda like a don't do it, Dad, I'm not gonna lie."

"Can I be honest?" Gordon nods, because saying no seems kinda harsh, but his heart is thundering faster than after a sprint. "Gordon, when I designed International Rescue, I designed it for you boys. A legacy, I suppose. I wanted --" he shakes his head. "I'm getting to be a selfish old man."

Gordon scowls. "You're the least selfish man I've ever met. Pretty sure those people whose lives you saved today would agree."

Jeff shakes his head.

"I want you to know," he says, "that there will always be a place for you, here, with us, if you want it. But only if you want it." A twitch of Jeff’s lips. “God knows, I could never make you anyway.”

"Thanks, Dad." Then, a wicked grin pulling at the corner of his mouth, "Race you?"

A splash, a shout, laughter rings out into the night and hell it's cheesy but it's true; for a moment Gordon kinda feels like he's already won.

---

The Olympics are due to start in June.

May, and his father dies.

Gordon flies home immediately, thirty thousand feet over Cape Town without even looking down.

He can't.

He has a place in a legacy.

---

#fabfivefeb #fabfivefeb2020 #thunderbirds are go #gordon tracy #jeff tracy #oh look its angsty #theres a wild shock #idek #there might be a part 2

81 notes · View notes

introvertguide · 4 years

Text

Network (1976); AFI #64

The current movie under review is one long procession of relatable diatribes, the newsroom drama Network (1976). This was an acting driven film and the award circuit is evidence of that. The movie had 6 actors in the 4 Academy Awards acting categories and took home awards for 3 of them. The winner of the Best Supporting Actress and the nominee for Best Supporting Actor were only on film 5 minutes and 6 minutes respectively. Every single role was just dripping with dramatic tension. An especially notable performance was from Peter Finch for which he won Best Actor from the Academy, at the BAFTAs, and at the Golden Globes. Unfortunately, he did not get to enjoy the adulation since he died very early in 1977 of a heart attack before any awards came out. Another note for the movie was a top 10 ranking of cinematic screenplays of all time by the Writer’s Guild of America. Awards for Best Screenplay went to Paddy Chayefsky from the Academy and the Golden Globes are proof of the honor. There are many interesting things about this film beyond the acting and writing, but I want to go ahead and spoil the story a little before I go further so here is the warning...

SPOILER ALERT!!! THIS IS ONE OF THE ALL TIME GREATEST CINEMATIC SCRIPTS AND IT HAS TWISTS TO SPOIL! WATCH THE FILM BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER! DON’T RUIN THE EXPERIENCE FOR YOURSELF!

The film starts with the narrator whose voice comes in throughout the movie and sounds like a gameshow emcee. It is explained that Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is a news anchor who has recently become a widower and will soon be fired from his job due to poor ratings. He goes out and gets drunk with his division president Max Schumacher (William Holden) and mentions killing himself on the air, but they are both drunk and Max thinks this is a joke. The following night, Beale announces on live television that he is tired of all the “bulls**t” and will commit suicide on air in a week. The news anchor is obviously fired immediately, but Schumacher convinces the network to allow Beale to go on the air one last time and apologize for the outburst. Beale once again goes into an angry diatribe and this causes a rating spike. The head of programming for the Network is Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), and she tries to convince Max to keep Beale on the air despite his obvious mental instability. Max refuses because Howard Beale is his old friend and there is concern for Howard’s health. Diana switches approaches and begins to have an affair with the much older married man.

Christensen talks about the network being the laughing stock of all the channels and she is seeking just one hit show to get back on top. She cuts a deal with a band of terrorists called the Ecumenical Liberation Army for a new docudrama series called The Mao Tse-Tung Hour for the upcoming fall season. Max decides to end these diatribes with Howard because it is seriously affecting his health, but Christensen convinces her boss, Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), to slot the evening news show under the entertainment programming division so she can develop it. Hackett agrees, and convinces the network executives to fire Schumacher. Hackett fires Schumacher in one of many confrontational diatribes delivered throughout the film. Not to be outdone, Beale shows up to work in his pajamas and, in his own on-air diatribe, convinces the nation to shout out of their windows "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Beale is a ratings hit and he is soon hosting a new program called The Howard Beale Show, top-billed as "the mad prophet of the airwaves". Ultimately, the show becomes the most highly-rated program on television, and Beale finds new celebrity preaching his angry message in front of a live studio audience that, on cue, chants Beale's signature catchphrase. At first, Max and Diana's romance withers as the show flourishes, but in the flush of high ratings, the two ultimately find their way back together and Schumacher leaves his wife of over 25 years for Christensen. The wife is played by Beatrice Straight, and she won a Best Supporting Actress award for her miniscule 5 minutes of screen time. She really lays into Max for disrespecting her for some young infatuation and it hurts. Fantastic performance.

The movie actually gets very funny for a short period of time as Max and Diana go on a date that ends physically and the entire time she will not shut up about ratings. Even during sex, she just keeps spouting out numbers because apparently it turns her on. Also, she now has to go into contract negotiations with the Liberation Army, and watching an almost completely silent arms dealer talk about contract language while shooting in the air to stop arguments is great. It is the hardest I have laughed in a long time.

Much to the displeasure of the network, Beale discovers that Communications Corporation of America (CCA), the conglomerate that owns the network, will be bought out by an even larger Saudi Arabian conglomerate. He launches an on-screen tirade against the deal and urges viewers to pressure the White House to stop it. This panics the top network brass because the network debt load has made the merger essential for its survival. Hackett takes Beale to meet with CCA chairman Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), who explains the world beyond countries and people and how it is ruled by corporations. Christensen's fanatical devotion to her job and emotional emptiness ultimately drive away Schumacher, who warns his former lover that she will self-destruct at the pace she is running with her career. "You are television incarnate, Diana," he tells her, "indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality." Jensen seems to have successfully persuade Beale to abandon his populist message and preach a new corporation message. This new approach is not popular with audiences as they find his new sermons on the dehumanization of society depressing, yet Jensen will not allow the network to fire Beale. Seeing its two-for-the-price-of-one value—solving the Beale problem plus sparking a boost in season-opener ratings—Christensen, Hackett, and the other executives decide to hire the ELA to assassinate Beale on the air. The assassination succeeds, putting an end to The Howard Beale Show and kicking off a second season of The Mao Tse-Tung Hour. The film ends with an overhead of a bleeding Howard Beale as commercials play and the voice over narration ends "the story of Howard Beale, the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings."

Network was written as a “what if” by Paddy Chayefsky after hearing about a Floridian news anchor who shot herself on air. Her name was Christine Chubbuck and she had long term issues with depression. She was continually suffering and had attempted suicide before, but she wanted to make a statement. Follow up investigation showed that she was suffering from clinical depression, and this was exacerbated by the constant stress that came from working in a newsroom. Research into the “story behind the story” showed that the obsession with ratings and appearance and in-office politics makes for quite the pressure cooker. Chayefsky wanted to write this story and how damaging it could be to a person’s psyche. People like Beale are chewed up and spit out by the system while people like Christensen can become successful by being cut-throat obsessive with everything about the business. It is a story of all the different kinds of people who peddle BS for a living and, no matter how good their intentions, everybody touched by the business comes out smelling like crap.

Peter Finch was the first of only two actors to win the Oscar for Best Actor posthumously (Heath Ledger being the other) and it was rather ironic since his character dies at the end of the movie. Sadly, or maybe not, this was Finch’s biggest success in a long time and he really identified with the character of Beale. He had a prolific career that was starting to wind down when he had a sudden spike of popularity from this film. He died of a heart attack in a Beverly Hills hotel right after an interview with Johnny Carson. I guess it is nice that he got to go out on top. RIP Mr. Finch.

When I think back on the 100 movies on the AFI list, this one stands out as having the most dramatic speeches, even more than Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf or Citizen Cane. Every single character with more than five minutes of screen time seems to have a dramatic speech (if not many) in this film. Normally, this would not be something that I liked, but I see that all of these people are getting out their emotional garbage. These characters do not seem to be yelling to hurt others, but to try and release the hurt they have in an attempt to heal. Being loud to steal attention bothers me, but being loud because you genuinely need help and have painful energy that needs release does not.

So does this film deserve to be on the AFI? Yes and it should probably be higher. It is one of the best stories put to film of all time and it was acted beautifully. It would have won many more awards but it came out the same year as Taxi Driver, All the President’s Men, and Rocky. Amongst all of those films, it still took home most of the acting awards and Best Original Screenplay. It is the story of an individual who gets fed up with all the bureaucracy and that feeling still permeates through society today. Fantastic movie. And would I recommend it? Yes. I insist upon it. I was originally worried about how mental illness is portrayed as entertainment, but I love how one of the characters advocates for his friend throughout and that trying to take advantage of a fed up man who has become delusional goes nowhere but wrong. This to me is a two hour tutorial of how a dramatic speech should be given. I have only taken a couple of film classes, but I am sad that I didn’t see this film until my early 30s and happily put forth a recommendation for this movie.

#network #peter finch #70s #film #introvert #Robert duvall #William holden #faye dunaway #posthumous #ned beatty #howard beale #mad as hell #afi films #drama #diatribe

12 notes · View notes

acommonloon · 4 years

Text

We met Daniel and Diana yesterday at a pub. Not the one pictured, though I’ll wager they’d like Pints & Union well enough. They might have even gotten around to telling us about their role in Britain’s Most Terrifying Ghost Stories. Go on then give it try. D played it just now and said, “See I told you there are ghosts!”

The long and short of it is, we met an English couple yesterday and got on well with them. They left us their e-mail, phone number, and address, requesting we contact them. When I pulled the paper from my back pocket this morning I couldn’t decipher Dan’s handwriting and asked D. She’s a bit of a super sleuth on the internet and in no time found Dan is a personage of note in England and their family was featured in the docudrama above.

Knowing what I know now, I’m not sure I want to contact them....read on if you want to see how this played out.

I was sitting by myself at BJ’s bar attached to the Oxmoor shopping mall next to the ultra hip Apple store. It’s a large restaurant with soaring ceilings rich wood finishings and a nice long bar. I only go there when we need something at that mall but they do brew their own beer and have a good guest lineup. As I sipped their Abbey Quad, really good, I looked over their menu, also really good. Especially since we’ve been dieting for the last two months. I’ve eaten at BJ’s a couple of times before and their food was surprisingly good. I mean, other than it being a chain restaurant attached to a shopping mall, there’s no good reason to not go there.

Anyway, I was bar flying while D shopped when I heard an English voice ask the bartender if they had a lager. WTF? I flashed back to English Nick who used to come into the Fireside and order Budweiser in the bottle. He said it was because he traveled so much and it was reliably consistent. I teased him it consistently sucked but to each his own.

I was intrigued by the Englishman and glad I’d not attempted to engage the fellow on my left who was dressed in full UK regalia. That’s University of Kentucky Wildcats not United Kingdom. I wasn’t much tempted though. I suspected he’d take off his blue UK cap and replace it with a red MAGA cap after the game. I shouldn’t stereotype.

Still, I refrained from accosting the Englishman. We’d two empty seats between us and I wasn’t even 100% sure he was English. Once, a man from South Africa expressed offense when I’d asked if he was English. We were soon enough bar buddies but I learned to be more careful. When the bartender asked the man how he liked the light lager, I listened carefully at his reply. Yeah, he was English. However, I couldn’t very well shout at him and moving closer could definitely been seen as “too” friendly a move. So I sat there and wondered, what brings an Englishman to Louisville in February?

Just then D popped in taking the seat on my right. As she ordered her Margarita, I whispered, “That man’s an Englishman and he’s drinking a lager.” Oh really? she responded brow raised. I knew she missed the significance of an Englishman ordering a lager in America but, never mind. Soon enough, Mrs Englishman showed up with a small shopping bag. Now she was next to D and the great divide had been crossed.

Once there was a break their conversation, I leaned in and asked if they were English. “Oh no, we’re French!” she said and we all laughed. Soon we were introduced. Diana had more shopping to do so she excused herself while we ordered lunch. Dan said they were visiting Louisville for a Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Churches held at the Omni Hotel. They were members of the Chichester Cathedral in Sussex, England and Dan hurried on to say it was one the few cathedrals visible from the sea and it had been under roof continuously for nearly 1000 years. Wow

We’d spent three years exploring England but never made it to Sussex but my awe for English history was evident. Dan was the typical charming self deprecating Englishman and we had a nice conversation about places in England we’d both visited and lived. He suggested we should not sell America short and we agreed but said England would always be special for us. He said he’d write down his contact information and we should let them know the next time we were in London. Diana returned and after lunch we bid them goodbye and wished them a safe trip back home.

When I pulled the sheet, he’d torn from a tiny notebook, out of my pocket I realized his handwriting was the shaky scrawl of a man born in 1944. I nearly wrote it off as a lost cause but D said she’d give it a try and in no time, she found that Dan was not only a well-know champion for his church but was chairman for a group know as “The City For Britain” and a director for “Vote Leave.” In other words, Daniel was a Brexiteer of the first order.

While I liken Brexiteers to those Americans who are afraid of immigrants who don’t look like them, I recognize that’s probably too simplistic. I noted in his biography, Dan has a Masters in Philosophy among other degrees from Oxford so he is a learned person and part of me would like to engage him in a conversation to try to understand his position in regards to Brexit. Then I remember as we began to get to know each other, I said I’d like to buy his next beer, and if he was having one, did he want to stick with the lager he’d first ordered. He said he’d be delighted and he’d ordered it because, “Really then you know what you’re getting don’t you?”

That statement says much about the kind of person you are.

11 notes · View notes

oosteven-universe · 4 years

Text

Infamous: Tiger King

Infamous: Tiger King Tidalwave Productions 2020 Written by Michael Frizell Illustrated by Joe Paradise Coloured by Pablo Matinena Lettered by Ben Glibert Infamous: Tiger King: During the Age of COVID-19, the world needs a distraction. Perhaps that’s why we’re collectively riveted to Netflix’s Tiger King. A murder mystery in the vein of Dateline, Tiger King introduced the world to the flamboyant Joe Exotic, a former magician, country singer, and zookeeper with a troubled past. Joe now sits in jail for planning to murder his rival, Big Cat Rescue owner and animal rights activist Carole Baskin, who he accuses of killing her husband and feeding him to her tigers. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction in this origin story of both Joe and Carole in a flipbook. If you haven’t watched the Netlfix series, why not it is the kind of train wreck we all love to see and with the passing of Anna Nicole Smith this is the next best thing maybe better because we don't have that Bobby Trendy trainwreck too. If you have seen it then you understand how much a needed distraction this was as well as just something you couldn’t look away from even if you tried. This book right here is not a retelling of the show, that would be pretty redundant. What it does do is fill in some gaps that we didn’t see in the series. The early years and formative years that bring to life some actions and small revelations that helped them become they are now. I do very much like the way that this book is being told. Michael does an amazing job with how we see the story & plot development through how we see the sequence of events unfolding as well how the reader learns information. The order in which this is told is remarkably well done and it captures the tone and feel to the docudrama beautifully. The character development is nice to see even if we already know them but the puzzle pieces we see how them get to that point and that’s over the top impressive to me. The pacing is superb and the way it takes us through the pages revealing some great moments it shows how all of this works together to create the ebb & flow for the book. The interiors here are okay. Joe has a very distinctive style and I feel like it was rushed a bit to get it out this quickly. That being said for this kind of work to happen this quickly is also a testament to his talent. In the end what we see actually fits perfectly with the idea and the characters and the lives they lead and you cannot say that Paradise doesn’t capture the essence of Exotic. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows a strong, talented eye for storytelling. I love that backgrounds are utilised as they are and how they bring depth perception, a sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the book. The work is great! There are some moments that it feels like the Sunday Funnies of old then we see some absolute stunning colour techniques utilised, gradation/blocking, that really make this pop. This is freakin dynamite people. It is a fun, entertaining and engaging read that gives us a brand new look at both Joe Exotic and That God Damn Bitch Carole Baskin! Her segment should get a review on it’s own but both sides hold equally true when it comes to the talent, charisma, nerve and uniqueness of the creators. You need this in your life just because it's one of the best things you will enjoy reading that will make you cringe, gasp and laugh your ass off!

#Comic Books #Comics Reviews #Tidalwave Productions #Tiger King

2 notes · View notes

hurleyonfashion14 · 4 years

Text

'The True Cost' documentary tallies global effect of low-cost clothing

Go to any type of mall, as well as low-cost clothes are plentiful-- $4.99 T-shirts, $7.90 slim pants, $8.90 shoes. As we load our wardrobes, who pays the price? That question is answered in the wide-ranging brand-new film "The True Cost." In the wake of the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, which eliminated more than 1,100 garment factory workers, Los Angeles-based filmmaker Andrew Morgan laid out to make a docudrama concerning the human as well as environmental cost of buying at H&M, Forever 21, Topshop, Zara and various other shops connected with the $3-trillion fast-fashion sector, in which stores obtain trendy brand-new product every day. The film, which opens up May 29 in movie theaters, on video as needed and also iTunes, was fired in 13 nations, from the shanty towns of Dhaka, Bangladesh, to the cotton fields near Lubbock, Texas. It consists of interviews with fashion designers, factory employees and also owners, cotton farmers, labor activists, academic professionals on usage, sustainability as well as even more, to shine a light on the "perfectly engineered nightmare" that feeds shoppers' pressing hungers for affordable trendy. , I looked down as well as realized I had never ever assumed concerning where garments come from," claims Morgan, 28, who lives in Sherman Oaks. "When you grow up looking only at a store window as well as just assuming regarding your side of the equation, it leads to a very unsafe set of results." He started researching into the reasons of the fast-fashion issue. One of the very first individuals he called was Livia Firth, creative supervisor of London-based sustainability brand name consultancy Eco-Age as well as founder of the Green Carpet Challenge (which encourages sustainable dressing on high-profile red rugs to concentrate on the issue), that agreed to be an exec producer, as did British reporter Lucy Siegle, who has discussed the ecological effect of the fashion business. The movie comes on fast as well as angry with astonishing statistics concerning the rise in intake: 80 billion pieces of clothing are purchased worldwide every year, which is 400% more than a decade back. 3 out of 4 of the most awful garment factory disasters in background happened in 2012 and 2013. And as the casualty boosted, so did the earnings. The year after the Rana Plaza catastrophe was the fast-fashion industry's most lucrative yet, and the globe's top 4 fast-fashion brand names-- Zara, H&M, Fast Retailing (which has Uniqlo) and Gap-- had sales in 2014 of greater than $72 billion, compared to $48 billion in 2013. " Major fast-fashion companies have ended up being financial investment vehicles," Morgan says. "These businesses have actually been on a trajectory for greater than 5 years of 15% development annually, which is extraordinary. H&M is opening up a brand-new store each day this year." The movie does not put blame on any one seller (Morgan got to out to a number of however had not been able to get any kind of to comment), yet all the major labels are name inspected in video footage of path shows, advertising and Black Friday sales, as well as YouTube shopping haul video clips. Fueling the craze are less expensive rates, enabled due to the fact that apparel manufacturing has been contracted out to nations such as Bangladesh, China and also Cambodia, where incomes are reduced, functioning problems much less controlled and also manufacturing facility disasters accepted as the expense of doing organisation. The film places a human face on exactly how the globe's 40 million garment employees are feeling the capture as creating countries, hopeless for economic possibility the organisation provides, stop working to apply wage as well as labor regulations, while huge fashion brands keep their hands clean. Morgan nos in on Shima Akhter, 23, that relocated from her regional town to the city of Dhaka, Bangladesh, at age 12 to operate in the factories. Not able to manage childcare, she is forced to leave her daughter behind to be increased by relatives. After the Rana Plaza calamity, Akhter was relocated to start a union as well as submit a checklist of demands to her employer, which led to a fierce altercation in which she and other workers were held behind secured doors in the factory and also defeated. " I believe these garments are produced by our blood," she claims, cleaning away tears, in among the film's most touching moments. " One of things I hope gets communicated in the movie is that these females, at terrific danger to their own wellness as well as family members, are starting to stand up and truly defend and also insurance claim standard dignity as people," Morgan claims. "I hope we can support them in their battle." As a consumer, do not believe you are doing your component to offset raised usage by giving away excess clothing to charity. Morgan dispels that myth, showing that while the average American discards 82 extra pounds of textile waste a year, only regarding 10% of what's donated gets offered in thrift shops. The remainder is dumped right into land fills (" the dirty darkness of the fast-fashion industry") or right into Third World countries like Haiti, where the castoffs might understandably end up being put on by the actual individuals who made them. " I almost wanted to bewilder the viewer with just exactly how enormous the problem is," Morgan says. Mission accomplished. As a counterpoint to the fast-fashion offenders are several services that register for one more way of making apparel, consisting of British fair-trade fashion brand name People Tree and also California-based Patagonia, which motivates its clients to acquire much less. Despite the major ecological and also human effects of fast style, which are laid out in great information, the film recommends we could be on the brink of a turning factor. To use a company term, now we're ready to scale," Morgan claims. "You do not have to like fashion any less. Commemorate the appeal and also creativity of garments and spend in points you actually enjoy as well as will wear and take treatment of a long time.

#update #dress #clothes

1 note · View note

littlethingwithfeathers · 5 years

Text

HBO’s Chernobyl - A Content Guide

Hey everyone!

So... the docudrama “Chernobyl” on HBO is probably one of the best things to ever grace a television, and everyone should totally go watch it right this now.

However, it is not an easy watch, even if you’re stout of constitution like me. While the show does not over-dramatize or sensationalize the horrors that happened during and after the Chernobyl disaster, it also does not shy away from showing them when appropriate. So I thought I’d put together a watch-guide just to make people aware of the more graphic scenes and topics in the show. I don’t have time-stamps. This is just more painting with a broad brush. And if you’ve got questions, feel free to ask me.

I do my best to leave plot elements out of my summary, so as to avoid “spoilers” (if you can really have such a thing in something like this), but there are some plot points that could be potential problems for people so... spoiler warning?

Also, the full scripts are available online here if that’s helpful as well. They’re actually worth a read after you’ve seen the show... lots of interesting commentary in the blocking.

The guide is below the cut. Enjoy!

Episode 1 - "1:24:45"

This episode concerns the first eight hours after the reactor explodes. Point of view bounces back and forth between what's happening inside the reactor and what's happening in the nearby town of Pripyat.

Ep. 1 gets a blanket warning for pandemonium and confusion in the wake of the explosion (which happens almost immediately at the start of the episode), gore/blood/wounds consistent with very acute radiation sickness, including burns, frequent vomiting of blood, and vibrant "radiation tans" which appear similar to severe sunburns. There is very little screaming or crying save in a couple of specific cases I will detail below. Mostly, dying of radiation sickness looks like someone with a serious case of the stomach flu who also has a horrible sunburn.

There are no jumpscares, but the whole episode has a palpable escalating tension about it almost in the style of a horror movie. "No no no don't go in there! The core is open and you're going to die!" That's the general internal monologue while watching. The viewer knows, but characters do not really understand what's happened for the entirety of the episode. Most of the tension revolves around the plant management insisting that everything is fine and making people go to the reactor site to check on things and them becoming horribly ill. It's not until close to the end of the episode that someone goes and looks in daylight and sees what's happening (and even still the management doesn't believe it until the next episode).

Spot warnings:

The first scene is a suicide. A man hangs himself in the very beginning. We only see his feet dangling. It's very fast. We don't see a struggle.

The explosion is also very early in the episode (about 7 minutes in) and is not a jumpscare or particularly rattling. It's viewed from a far off window and is silent initially until the shockwave arrives. There isn't a huge tension build up. It's something very distant.

(personal note) This is one of my favorite things about the show… they don't go the traditional narrative route. Show starts and they do two things in the first ten minutes. Kill the main character, and blow up the reactor. All of it without any sort of ceremony or tension-building.

Any scenes in the wrecked reactor, turbine, and water pump halls get a blanket warning for radiation related gore and suffering. There is no screaming or yelling due to injury. It feels very claustrophobic and dread-inducing because of the way it's shot. It's almost as if there is a monster in these halls, but that monster is the rapidly leaking radiation.

Same goes for any scenes involving the firemen outside the reactor. They are standing next to an open reactor core spraying it with aerosolized water. They are going to get very sick, and many of them do on site. Vomiting, lethargy, and obvious radiation tans are the main symptoms shown.

One fireman picks up a hunk of graphite which is highly radioactive. Later, he is screaming on the ground in pain when they try to pull his glove off, revealing a very severe and graphically depicted radiation burn on the entirety of the palm of his hand.

A group of people from the town watch the fire burn from a railroad bridge. As they watch, ash falls from the sky. This is actual, honest to goodness fallout. Nothing happens while they are watching, but the cinematography and the score make sure you know that they are all going to get very sick.

Three men from the plant are sent to lower the control rods by hand, which has them going into the open reactor core (again, they don't know it's blown apart). Two go in and are instantly radiation tanned. The third, who pried the door open, is also partially radiation tanned, but because he had wedged himself against the radiation-leeching metal of the doorframe, he is severely and acutely burned where he'd braced himself. The burns are under his white clothes, but he begins bleeding profusely before collapsing in the hallway.

We find this man later, clothes soaked in blood. He is nearly incapacitated and obviously dying, but there's no screaming or wailing. He actually asks another plant worker for a cigarette and smokes it quietly.

Two men go down to open water pumps and are made incredibly ill by radiation poisoning. Again, there is no screaming. They just get weaker and weaker.

The control room manager, Dyatlov, vomits in a conference room near the end of the episode.

A man is sent to the roof of the reactor building at gunpoint to survey the damage. When he turns back from the edge of the reactor pit, his face has a severe radiation tan.

***

Episode 2 - "Please Remain Calm"

This episode happens over the next 60 hours or so after the accident and concerns the discovery of just how bad the accident is. Up until this point, no one really understood or accepted that the core had cracked open. This is the slow dawning of the apocalypse. There is less gore in this episode. It's more building tension as everyone comes to understand how awful things are and how much worse they are going to get. Blanket warning for general struggle and pandemonium in the hospital scenes, and milder images of radiation sickness (they're all still very sick and traumatized, but there's less actual blood).

Spot warnings:

In the burn ward of the hospital, the firemen are all there and very very ill. A doctor recognizes that it's radiation poisoning and begins pulling their clothes off. The clothes are thrown in the basement. As she's leaving, the doctor looks down at her hand, which had been holding a bundle of clothes and she has a mild radiation burn.

There is a tense scene when the fireman's wife arrives at the hospital. She runs into some of the people from the railway bridge who are very sick. One man begs her to take his baby and run away from Pripyat. There is a lot of pitched yelling and begging.

There is an argument between Legasov and Shcherbina in the helicopter about whether or not they're going to fly over the core. It gets quite tense with vivid threats on both sides.

The plan with the helicopters to drop sand and boron on the reactor goes about as well as one might imagine at least until they get the distance worked out.

When the decision is made to evacuate the city, people are forced to leave their pets behind.

Towards the end of the episode, it is discovered that there are pools of water under the reactor that need to be drained. This must be done by hand and it is made clear that whoever it is will likely die of radiation poisoning. Three men volunteer to go down under the burning reactor in diver suits, and wade through chest deep irradiated water to open the valves and drain the tanks. Again, this goes about as well as one would expect. It's probably the most tense moment in the whole episode. They get lost when their flashlights fail. The dosimeters are going bananas, and to top it all off… it ends on a cliffhanger with them lost in the dark. So… you might want to keep going. Not that the next episode is much better.

***

Episode 3 - "Open Wide O Earth"

This episode sprawls out over the next couple of weeks post-explosion. It largely concerns itself with the immediate cost of human lives. It gets a huge blanket warning for radiation-related gore, most often in the Moscow Hospital. Radiation poisoning this acute is a horrible and incredibly visceral way to die, and while it's not sensationalized or overwrought… they don't shy away from showing how it truly is. Legasov actually lists the symptoms and progression early on in the episode before we watch it happen. Which goes in this order.

-Initial symptoms were seen last episode: "nuclear tan" surface burns on the skin, vomiting, lethargy, loss of consciousness. This continues for a day or two.

-Patients seem to rally as they enter a latency period and the immediate effects seem to subside. Recovery seems possible. The firefighters are shown playing cards at one point. Burns are visible on their skin but it looks like a really bad but healing sunburn. This lasts a day or two in these cases.

-Then the true breakdown begins as the cellular damage starts to catch up to the lack of new cell growth. Basically, you decompose from the inside out, starting with bone marrow, then organs, then the vascular system. This is incredibly painful as pain drugs cannot be administered due to failing tissue integrity. Visible symptoms are open, seeping sores, necrosis, eye discoloration, etc.

They show this on a few patients unflinchingly. Close ups. Full body shots. It's gross and difficult to look at. They are basically melting. Honestly… I stopped wondering why zombies are a thing after I watched this. :(

Spot warnings:

Episode opens back on the divers again, lost in the dark with the dosimeters going ballistic. It's pitched and panicked, but they formulate a plan to handle the situation and succeed in their mission.

Important scream warning: There is a scene that begins with water dripping in the sink. This is followed by a man screaming. The nurses are trying to get the fireman's clothes off and he is shrieking in pain. It's a quick scene but hard to watch. If you're bothered by agonized screaming, cover your ears from the time you see the water dripping until Gorbachev's face appears if you want to avoid. This is probably the worst instance of pain-screams.

After the scene with the miners and the minister, there's another long scene at the hospital. No screaming, but it's the fireman. His condition is clearly deteriorating. Long shots of skin lesions and bandages.

After the "no fans" conversation with the miners we return to the hospital. This time the patient is one of the men from the control room. The one that went down to work on the pumps. He is in severe condition. Eyes are discolored. Skin is swollen and red and shiny. He can barely speak. Again, this is a long scene with lingering shots on his face and body. After he gives his age to the person interviewing him, he gets a nosebleed, which the person cleans up.

After that scene, they transfer the worsening fireman to a critical care ward. His skin is in awful condition. Worse than the patient from the control room. This also has lots of long shots of his symptoms. His face is turning black and necrotic. His skin is pocked with necrosis and looks like it could slide off his bones. For me this was one of the most difficult things to watch, and I actually had to look away. And I pride myself on having a pretty strong stomach.

There's a short scene with Legasov and Shcherbina in their trailer-office, and then… NAKED PEOPLE!!! Naked miners to be precise. Lots of them. Full frontal and everything. It's actually a pretty funny scene… blessedly.

After the scene with the naked miners we go back to the control room operator in the hospital. Then to the other operator's room. We never see the other operator. Just the interviewer's face. Then we go back to the fireman's room briefly.

The episode ends with a funeral, shot to great but incredibly sensitive effect. The firemen are buried in metal coffins, welded shut and covered in concrete.

***

Episode 4 - "The Happiness of All Mankind"

This episode chronicles the efforts of the "Liquidators" who were sent to the surrounds of the plant to raze the forests, turn the turf, and kill all the animals.

So… blanket statement for lots and LOTS of animal death. We're talking critters wild and domestic alike killed by the truckload and buried in concrete to prevent the spread of radiation. Most of it is offscreen, but the spot warnings will have specific warnings of particularly sad/graphic instances. There are also some scenes of mild radiation sickness symptoms, but they are barely blips on the radar if you've watched his far. Just some vomiting and people looking generally unwell.

There's also a warning for pregnancy and child death, though labor, delivery, and death all happen off screen.

Spot warnings:

First scene is of an old woman milking a cow. There is a soldier trying to evacuate this old woman. She refuses. Then he shoots his gun, and for a moment you're unsure where the bullet landed. Then her cow falls over dead.

The episode is mostly conversations until you see the soldiers and Pavel roll into a neighborhood in a green truck and start pulling out guns. Bacho will give Pavel some instructions (don't let the animals suffer and so forth) and then he whistles for the animals. They come running and they start shooting them. We don't really see anything, but we hear it. Gunfire and some yelping/whimpering. Mostly we're just watching Pavel's reactions.

When Pavel gets sent to go door to door, he comes across a cream and gray colored dog. This is the worst scene regarding animal cruelty. You will definitely want to look away when Pavel says "Go… go go go away." He shoots the dog, wounds it but doesn't kill it. We see the dog lying in a pool of blood. Pavel is overcome with guilt and approaches. Bacho appears and shoots it to put it out of its misery. It's over when you hear Bacho say "You're dragging that to the truck."

There are brief glimpses of the animal corpses on the truck when the soldiers are having lunch but they're in the distance and out of focus.

If shouting and smashing things in anger is an issue, be warned that when the German robot gets fried on the roof, Shcherbina flips his shit. He calls Moscow and screams at them, ultimately smashing the phone to pieces.

After the discussion of what to do about the roofs after the German robot fails, we go back to Pavel working. He and the soldiers are shooting animals. Again, you don't see the animals. Just hear the shots and the whimpering. But it's short lived. No wails of suffering or anything.

After Bacho tells Pavel to go door-to-door, he goes up to a house and finds a mom-dog with puppies inside. Bacho follows him and when he sees what he found, sends Pavel outside and kills them himself. Again, you just hear the shots and see Pavel's face.

After this, the three soldiers bury the animals. There's a brief image of them being dumped from the truck, and another of them being covered in concrete.

One of the most pitched and harrowing scenes comes after the General gives a speech about how to clear the graphite off the roof to a new set of recruits. They are in crude lead shielding and rubber suits, they run out onto the roof and use shovels to clear graphite. They are stumbling and struggling, dosimeters going ballistic the entire time. It's incredibly tense. When they are called in, one of the men stumbles and gets caught on a piece of graphite. His boot tears. The scene lasts about 90 seconds.

In the scene that immediately follows, we see the fireman's widow. She picks up a girl's mitten to hand it to her, and she goes into labor.

The final scene of the episode is the labor ward in a hospital. We see the fireman's widow alone behind a partition.

***

Episode 5 - "Vichnaya Pamyat"

This episode is largely concerned with the trial of the plant management which is intercut with flashbacks to the day of the explosion.

There is a good deal of tension as they are showing step by step what went wrong, cutting between the trial testimony and the flashback to the reactor control room. There is a fair amount of arguing and yelling, mostly on Dyatlov's part both at the trial and in the control room. The flashbacks do not go beyond the explosion so there's no scenes of radiation related trauma.

Spot warnings:

Shcherbina begins having coughing fits during the trial. He later shows Legasov a bloody handkerchief.

There is a very tense scene with the head of the KGB after the trial is concluded.

Other than that, nothing to speak of.

***

Hope this is helpful! Happy watching, and again, if you have any specific questions, feel free to send me a message or an ask!

#chernobyl #hbo chernobyl #chernobyl hbo #chernobyl watch guide #content guide #watch guide

30 notes · View notes

tervacious · 5 years

Text

Since Everything is a Feminist Dissertation Imma blog about Shane Dawson’s palette for a minute

Nine times out of ten when you make a statement and end it with BUT, you have outted yourself as a hypocritical ass who should have the ovarios to say what follows the BUT without the opening statement. Maybe this will be true for me too.

In agreement with most radfems I totally think the cosmetics industry is a clusterfuck of male entitlement and wealth being siphoned away from girls and women to men and male CEOs, etc etc, and I also think the sheer amount of product and time involved in placing thirty-five different products on one’s face to achieve a “natural” look is insidious and a perfect exemplar of what misogyny functions like on a daily basis, BUT

I’m a survivor of an extreme fundie xtian cult that controlled female behavior by emphasizing conformity, femininity, modesty, and lack of adornment/personality. I did not like this even as a small child because I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel. Which means I was a totally normal little girl who didn’t like being controlled and who fought back at every opportunity.

Which might explain why I’m a goth. I’m also an artist, and I’m on this planet, as are you, for a very tiny amount of time, and if I want to spend a fraction of that time adorning myself and wearing lots of black eyeliner, by the goddess I’ll fucking do it. And there’s nothing radical or feminist about that, any more than there’s anything inherently radical or feminist about not doing it.

I have a single small dresser drawer filled with makeup, and I’ve been eyeballing it recently because I should really pitch out and replace about 80% of it for age related reasons alone.

And thus we come to the Conspiracy palette by Shane Dawson x Jeffree Star, and also the mini palette, Lorde help me

Jesus christ, look at that.

I only buy one eyeshadow palette at a time and use it until it is gone or falls apart into dust. The current state of the beauty industry is such that they are pressuring women and girls into buying palette after palette, some of them enormous, some small, but a grown-ass woman owning stacks of these things is not unusual anymore. And new ones are coming out constantly-- to the point where there’s a whole part of beauty YouTube devoted to “the anti-haul”, in which people announce which makeup thing they will NOT be buying. This is a sorry state of affairs, there’s no way around it.

I don’t collect makeup because that’s silly. It’s a huge waste of money. I watch otherwise sensible women hoarding vast numbers of eyeshadow palettes, and they use only one or two colors and that’s... just sad? Apply that to the vast quantities of makeup products, to your lipsticks and glosses, to your pencils and correctors and corrector palettes and concealers and blushes and highlighters and contours and powders and foundations and primers and mattifiers and setting sprays and mascaras and a bunch of others things I forget, add a pile of false eyelashes and I don’t know, eyebrow merkins or some shit, and that’s what a well-appointed makeup afficionado is supposed to have in her arsenal. And all those things can’t be just one-- you have to have multiples, for reasons. But I honestly think the eyeshadow obsession is the worst, which is strange coming from me, because I adore eyeshadow.

And yet in spite of this I have a black stand-alone eyeshadow pan, and one large palette that is cheap, made in China, not great but with a lot of weird colors in it, so I use that one when I bother, and a few pots of glitter. My plan is to use it up or wait until it’s too old to use safely, and then pitch it/repurpose the case for something (it is literally the size of a laptop with a huge mirror in it so I can think of something), and get a new palette. I only buy one at a time, and use it until it’s gone. You know, like a rational person.

At first I’d decided when the time comes I’d get the Jawbreaker palette and mini, by Jeffree Star, because I loved the colors, but now I’ve changed my mind, because Shane Dawson’s not only has a case that matches my aesthetic, it also has awesome colors and, most importantly, BLACK. I use black eyeshadow alone or to set my eyeliner, so I’m devoted. And while all of these palettes have too many neutrals for my taste you can always use those for some kinda detail, and the Conspiracy Palette is my jam. It’s really gorgeous. Not gonna lie.

The documentary he made about the making of this palette is interesting on multiple levels-- there’s the process itself, which I didn’t know shit about until now. There was the portrayal of his relationship with Jeffree, which was interesting and often pretty funny, and touching. And from my chronic can’t stop writing feminist dissertations POV, the way women are the target of this business and yet completely sidelined was a real eyeopener. Let me just mention this one part:

In the final episode when the palette is assembled, each pan glued into the box and then the box boxed up, there’s a song with a woman singing about how she’ll never be Prom Queen. Shane is walking through the assembly line, emotional, because this is his project coming to fruition. Jeffree is with him, and Shane starts crying, and Jeffree comforts him. The song is clearly meant to be something Shane feels.

But the scene is of dozens of women, none of whom will be prom queen, none of whom are about to make millions of dollars on cosmetics, in white coats and hair protectors and goggles, busily assembling a beautiful object, which one suspects only a few of them will be able to afford for themselves though I can’t swear to that, it’s possible they are paid well, the place is unusual, Jeffree makes all his product in the United States, and I’m not inclined to jump to conclusions. But they are anonymously and busily working, putting together this thing, meant for women, and no woman really had any functional input into this project at all. This was, as everyone was joking, Shane and Jeffree’s baby. A baby. You know, the thing a man can never have.

I appreciate film making that reveals truth, even if it wasn’t intentional.

So other than that there’s not much to say. You can watch the epic thing yourself on YouTube, it was entertaining (and good for me because I need to opt out of some of the heavier shit I’m always buried in, yet one more reason I fucking QUIT MY JOB and am now FREE,) but if you want a look into the way the business works on the indy end of the spectrum, not the old timey Cosmetics Corporations but the new one that Jeffree Star basically spearheaded and upturned large chunks of the old business model, I think this documentary is a good one for understanding exactly how marginalized women remain in a business that ostensibly is directed at us.

The reason I think women like watching men like Jeffree and Shane and whoever else do these things is because it aids and abets the lie that wearing makeup is all a choice women make. The men are choosing, because men have zero pressure on them to do these things. Women are taught to have affinity with men and to ignore their lack of affinity with us. These bits of entertainment are a great brainwashing reinforcing device, to get us along for the ride, to hop in the car we never ever get to drive. And none of it is intentional, which is the best part. As smart as Shane is, the joy of being male is you just take things, casually, as your birthright. You’re totally entitled to make a nine-hour epic following your friends and family, unapologetically, put it on the internet, and get accolades, including the one I’m writing right now. You’re entitled to dictate the facts as if they contain a great truth. You can be totally unaware of the impact your decisions have for the greater bad. You can think you’re helping your sister-in-law through her crisis created by the very culture you are responsible for while mocking the women she blames for making her feel bad. This set of films is a monolithic treat for a radical woman to confront. And I hope, since there’s truth hidden in plain sight throughout, that a lot of other women and girls will see it too. Will notice the few females scattered throughout the film, consulted in the most cursory way, knowing they have to perform or they’re replaceable. I’m an Old, and used to seeing the real world, which has looked like this all my life. I don’t know what a fifteen year-old will see.

Tati Westbrook also released a new eyeshadow palette last week I think, and since people think if she puts out a forty-five minute video she’s talking too much, she naturally did not film a massive docudrama showcasing her Eyeshadow Palette Journey or whatever I could imagine her saying. Thus she was very much overshadowed by something that won’t appear for sale until tomorrow. I have no doubt she’ll do well, but will she make twenty million dollars? Will she do as well as she could have if she were a man?

Should anyone, off of what is essentially bullshit? Pretty, gorgeous bullshit? Of course not. That’s the actual feminist conclusion, it doesn’t matter if a male or a female is profitting off of, essentially, the insecurities and desires for cool new things and to be hip and liked and looked up to, which all of us have to some extent in some arena. I’m not immune to it either, ain’t lying again. It’s always an unseemly pleasure to have someone half my age ask me what I’m wearing and where I got it. Capitalism has conditioned all of us to associate material things with social acceptance and admiration, and if you are a materialist person like I am, that association comes very easily.

Anyway, that’s it, that’s the bit. I have no doubt this thing will sell out in approximately two hours, which will happen without me because my old eyeshadow palette still works.

5 notes · View notes

guylty · 5 years

Text

How quickly time flies. If Besotted hadn’t reminded me in the comments, I would’ve completely forgotten that I had a last episode of The Impressionists to catch up with. Forgetting the Re-Watch is symptomatic. I may have enjoyed the show, and the wide smiles that Armitage was allowed to brighten the screen with were certainly welcome, but somehow this mini-series was never – and never will be – my favourite of Richard’s works.

It’s not *all* because of the wig and look of Claude Monet. *That* is easily balanced out by the wide smiles! My lukewarm feelings about this mini-series has more to do with my general lack of enthusiasm for impressionism. I fully appreciate the importance of this arts movement for the development of painting and art in general, and I understand the impressionists’ value. In many case I actually do find their paintings particularly evocative, beautiful and touching. I guess, my problem with them is that they have become too popular – which usually makes me turn away from something. That’s unfair – but unfortunately true. But I totally concede that – particularly Monet’s – Impressionist paintings are incredibly beautiful.

Quick Summary

We pick up again in episode 3 of TI with the group celebrating Edouard Manet’s formal recognition as an artist after he has been awarded the Légion d’Honneur. However, Manet is suffering from syphilis and his health deteriorates. He dies in 1883. Monet, OTOH, is living with Alice Hochedé after his wife’s death. The two of them become a couple, marry and eventually settle in Giverny. Monet develops his serial painting technique, always following the changing light.

A large part of this episode is taken up with the life and travails of Paul Cézanne who is seen as a revolutionary new painter by the impressionists. Despite an affluent background, he lives in poverty with his working class wife and illegitimate son. First shunned by the art world, Cézanne’s genius is eventually recognised and he joins the Impressionists as the most celebrated painters in the world. They overcame all the obstacles and changed painting – and art – forever. So much for the summary of episode 3.

Beards and Hair

I was quite amused in this episode about the changing hairstyles of Claude Monet. Starting out with short hair and a pipe, the next scene in a café he had long hair again. Continuity was a bit lax there, I thought 😂. But at least we could see that RA really knew how to smoke. Yep, as an ex-smoker (almost 6 months to the day) I notice such things. – Eventually the episode settled into short hair for Claude. And I couldn’t help but feel reminded of my personal hero Leon Trotzky…

Tenuous. I know. But fun. Right down to the left eyebrow.

However, let’s stay quickly with the look – ok, I am a not a fan of facial shrubbery at all, and particularly not these kind of standalone shrubs on upper lip and chin. If there has to be facial hair, give me a full blown meadow that covers all (beard) or stay with the manicured lawn aka stubble. Looking at the overgrown goatee on Richard’s chin, however, I am wondering whether it is actually his own. Not only because he has always been so proud of his fast growth and thus the conclusion lies near. No, but also because of the tell-tale triangle underneath his lower lip. Mr Armitage has, indeed, a rather pretty beard-growth pattern (see evidence on right).

Elder statesman or ill-fitting wig?

I was quite taken with the elder statesman look he was given in the latter part of the episode, once Monet had settled down with Alice and concentrated on creating Giverny as his inspirational garden. (I don’t really think that Richard has an old man’s face, yet, though, so I finally was reconciled with Julian Glover playing Monet senior in the framework plot.) In fact, I found myself fascinated by the grey temples and the short hair, and I kept screen-shooting.

#gallery-0-7 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-7 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-7 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

I also enjoyed that his eye crinkles came into play…

Things I Loved

As always, Richard – even considerably younger and less experienced than today – was a pleasure to watch. I loved the scenes where he glowed with enthusiasm, happiness and lust for life, smiling widely with glowing teeth. But I especially liked the scenes where you could hear him laugh. It really doesn’t happen very often at all that you can hear Richard Armitage laugh in one of his roles. He is the go-to man for scowling (Guy of Gisborne, John Thornton), growling (Francis Dolarhyde, Thorin Oakenshield) and frowning (John Porter, Daniel Miller). And yet his laugh is an absolute joy. In German we call his kind of laugh “gurgling” – but that doesn’t quite hit it in English. What I like about it is not what it looks like (although I believe that *every* laugh looks beautiful), but what it sounds like. Reminder:

youtube

That’s what he laughed like in his younger years. (I think his laugh now has become slightly deeper, more baritone, whereas it sounded more tenor way back in the early 2000s.) And it is infectious. Bookmark and keep near for any rainy day. It definitely works.

Ok, moving on. The old fogey in me also quite enjoyed the mature-lovestory-section of this episode. We were discussing it somewhere in the comments, I believe, and the series didn’t really get into it, but there are suspicions that Monet and Alice Hoschedé started their relationship even before she split with her husband and moved in with the Monets. Her youngest child may even have been by Monet. In that sense, it was lovely that the series spent a little time with Monet’s and Alice’s relationship. I wasn’t quite convinced by Richard’s choice to play Monet as out of breath as if he had just raced a marathon when he catches Alice in the garden and proposes. But this completely balanced everything out:

Why yes, Mr Thornton, I am coming home with you.

Not to mention this:

Gorgeous crinkles, like arrows pointing at happy eyes.

Ok, bonus for the romantics among you:

Yeah, man, this was such a clean show, it almost seemed as if it was made for school TV. You know what I mean? Your history/art/literature teacher wheeling in the big TV and the VCR, and then you’d sit through an hour of veritable and highly educational but mindnumbingly clean-and-boring docudrama? Well, to be suitable for teenagers, no tit may be shown, no mention of sex may be made and no tongue may be used. 😂

And Where It Went Wrong For Me

And maybe that is what ultimately irked me about this show, or what prevented me from saying ” I love Love LOVE The Impressionists!!” It’s not that I need sex in every TV show to keep me engaged. And I am a big fan of contextualising history and presenting it in a way that the viewers can relate to. In that sense it was great that this mini-series made an attempt at showing the personal sacrifices all those pioneering painters had to make in order to succeed with their art. From losing Bazille in the war, via Manet’s syphilis, Degas’ eye illness and declining fortunes, to the overwhelming poverty of Monet and Cézanne, TÍ is not simply a list of artistic milestones in the painters’ lives, but a look at how they progress as painters as well as men. And herein may also be the problem for me – I never fully committed to the show, and maybe so because of the lack of women in the narrative. Don’t get me wrong – of course I “saw” Camille and Alice, and Mme Manet, Mme Cézanne and various models. But that’s exactly it, “various models”. Sure, you don’t have to explain to me that the 19th century was still a time dominated by men. But that doesn’t mean that in their private lives, men were uninfluenced (and untouched) by women. Or that women artists did not exist or not contribute to the development of art. Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzalez were part of the impressionist set – they don’t even turn up in passing in this series. The wives and women remain in their traditional role as nurturer, house-keeper and mothers.

Women. Reduced to nurturers and parasol-bearers?

(Left-field thought: Maybe it is also because this show was made in 2006 that women aren’t represented more prominently?) And all that may also be due to the limited amount of time available (3 hours) for a group of painters. In fairness, it would’ve been impossible to depict the lives and times of the impressionists in detail, and hence also a number of *male* protagonists of the movement (Pissarro? Gauguin? Sisley? Matisse?) had to be left out in order to contain the show. However, for me the whole show remained somewhat one-dimensional.

The Disclaimer

For fans of Richard Armitage, however, TI is definitely a worth-while show to watch. The smiles, the laugh, and the mannerisms that are just delightful to recognise. From Richard’s insistent innovative use of his teeth, to delicate hand movements and holding his head at *that* characteristic angle, there are certain “trademarks” in his acting repertoire that superfans such as us have no trouble identifying.

#gallery-0-8 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-8 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-8 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-8 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

And Richard convincingly acts emotions and draws the audience into the emotional world of the sensitive artist.

Lastly I want to commend the mini series for producing beautiful images. I loved the wide shots especially because they illustrated so clearly what the impressionists were after.

These shots play with the impressionists’ emphasis of depicting the *moment*, pinpointing the changeability of art, and the transience of life. The impressionists’ penchant for working plein air is ideally illustrated here. And the series is obviously also conscious of depicting movement rather than static subjects, and the different qualities of light – during the day, the seasons, inside and outside, in rain, sun or locomotive steam – as these are impressionist characteristics that are often also attributed to film (and photography). In that sense the series puts the theory into practice.

Last note: Just as I was watching episode 3 of TI, the news came through that a Monet painting has set a new record price for works by the artist. From the “haystack” series of paintings, the picture was sold for $110m in New York. An indication of how *right* the impressionists were.

I finish with a quote by Berthe Morisot, of all people.

It is important to express oneself… provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.

The impressionist painters did that beautifully, and showed us that it can be done and *should* be done. No one better to portray “real” feelings than Richard. And I am always happy to see how he expresses them.

Re-Watching The Impressionists [part 3] – Finale How quickly time flies. If Besotted hadn't reminded me in the comments, I would've completely forgotten that I had a last episode of

#Claude Monet #Re-Watch #Richard Armitage

24 notes · View notes

cinaed · 6 years

Text

Red vs Blue: S16:E12 - Docudrama

I’m a First member, but I’m going to be posting my reactions a week after to avoid spoiling anyone. So here are my thoughts upon a second watch!

The animation is so gorgeous this season!

Look, I have no strong feelings about the CarWash ship, but man that scene was awkward, especially when you realize Carolina and Wash are watching it. Though "I want to be in you like an AI" is a pretty good line. But still, damn it, Jax. Also show, way to taunt me with a Grimmons sex scene and not deliver. I'm just going to go with the Grimmons reunion being where Jax reshoots it and finally gets a close up on the kiss.

Kai is so mad about not getting in on these sex scenes though.

Simmons' sheer joy over Grif's new sword brings me life. And how they both instantly start to discuss sword puns.

DONUT! I missed you so much. We'll see if he's still working for the Trickster god, I suspect he is.

Grif's refusal to call Atlus and the others gods is so good. Meanwhile Tucker is almost cheerful about gods.

"We leave you alone for five minutes and you piss off GOD?" Iconic line right there.

Listen, I am a sucker for documentary stuff-- The Office, the Leverage ep that's a parody of The Office-- and so this little bit with everyone's titles DELIGHTS me. Also noted that her company is called Blood by Blood Gulch Musical Festival, in case it needs to come up in fic!

Dexter Grif: Pizza Lover. Okay, I laughed at this the first go round but uh, doesn't pizza no longer exist? Or were those kids just fucking with him? I'd love it if they were fucking with him and pizza existed the entire time.

Grif has no problem with lying to Sarge's face. Same.

Kai/Huggins OTP. But also I love Huggins and Grif's friendship. Please give us jealous Simmons. First Locus, now Huggins.

"Last time I was called agent, I got dental." "You're protected by a god! That's full coverage!" is also a great line.

Wash definitely sounds the most like himself than he has for most of the season, though the memory problems are still a thing.

Haha, I missed that bit about JFK the first time.

Okay, I guess pizza still doesn't exist? Now I'm just imagining the documentary crew being like "WTF is pizza?" "I don't know, man, but do you want to ask Mister Jax?" "Uh, fine, Dexter Grif: Pizza Lover it is."

Everyone needs to be nicer to Donut! It says something with a potentially evil god is nicer to him than people he's spent the last decade with. I am still pretty sure he's still working for Chronos or Kronos or however it's spelled, because wouldn't he have mentioned O'Malley working for the bad guy by now?

Caboose and Chinese fingertraps. Amazing.

Of course Jax has been using the time travel gun. Ugh.

Also the time travel looks like a penis was a good visual gag, ngl.

Simmons being supportive of Grif and then confused about it. I can't wait to see him watch Grif actually be polite to the alien gods. That'll truly blow his mind.

And then Wash hits us all in the feels.

You'd think during the interviews Carolina could've taken the Reds and Blues aside and mentioned what was up with Wash. This is not the way to handle things, especially when they're about to talk to powerful aliens.

Get wrecked, Jax. I guess we'll find out if he's dead or not in the next ep, but personally I don't care either way, heh. I disliked him this season.

Sarge is so sad about Kali being married. Same, buddy.

Tucker, did you never learn about Greek mythology? It's all sister-wives and brother-husbands there.

If Genkins/Jenkins is a trickster god, I wonder if his remark about "The pink one is going to steal the hammer" has any significance for the next ep.

Simmons, Wizard of Science. ....Listen, I love him.

Someone needs to write me a fic of Kai partying and sleeping with the gods, please and thank you. Kali/Kai/Huggins threesome??

Grif spent all this time trying to avoid a long story, and now he's going to be stuck listening to the supposed story of the universe. Sorry, Grif.

#Red vs Blue #Red vs Blue spoilers #rvb season 16

10 notes · View notes

sciencespies · 3 years

Text

Atomic Bomb Scientists Wanted To Make A Cautionary Movie About Nuclear Weaponry. An Interview With Greg Mitchell About How Hollywood Destroyed Those Hopes

https://sciencespies.com/news/atomic-bomb-scientists-wanted-to-make-a-cautionary-movie-about-nuclear-weaponry-an-interview-with-greg-mitchell-about-how-hollywood-destroyed-those-hopes/

Atomic Bomb Scientists Wanted To Make A Cautionary Movie About Nuclear Weaponry. An Interview With Greg Mitchell About How Hollywood Destroyed Those Hopes

Greg Mitchell’s “The Beginning or the End.” Published in July 2020 by The New Press

Photo credit: The New Press

Better late than never, right? In July of 2020 The New Press published Greg Mitchell’s The Beginning or the End, which was about a 1947 Hollywood docudrama that portrayed the development of the world’s first atomic bomb. A little more than a year later, this week provides a stellar opportunity to talk with Mitchell about his book. That’s because August 6 is the anniversary of the day when the United States detonated the world’s first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, a Japanese city with a population of about 300,000 people. Three days later on August 9, 1945, an even more powerful bomb was detonated over the city of Nagasaki, which had a population of about 200,000. As acknowledged by the United States government, the number of civilian deaths in Hiroshima (immediate event + radiation sickness) was about 100,000. About 70,000 died in Nagasaki. Appalled nuclear scientists reached out to Hollywood for help informing Americans about the needless deaths their atomic bombs had caused. The movie that Hollywood produced merely fanned patriotic flames and elevated nuclear madness.

Welcome to Los Alamos

The Manhattan Project was the name of the effort sited in Los Alamos, New Mexico, through which atomic bomb technology was developed. Well before the bombs were dropped, seventy scientists from the Project had become aghast at creation. They signed a petition asking asked President Truman not to drop atomic bombs on Japan. Ultimately, of course, Truman disregarded their plea.

In 1945, shorty after the end of the war, some of those same scientists reached out to Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s Louis B. Mayer in hopes that we would make a movie that depicted the horrors that their weaponry had produced and that warned the world about the dangers of a nuclear arms race. They offered to serve as advisors to the movie.

Mayer thrilled at the idea. He imagined a potential blockbuster. The scientists were overjoyed.

Then they weren’t.

Circa 1935: Russian-born American film mogul Louis Burt Mayer (1885 – 1957), head of production at … [+] MGM. (Photo by General Photographic Agency/Getty Images)

Getty Images

Atomic Bombs Are So Conveniently Top Secret, Aren’t They?

Because the scientists who would advise the movie had top-secret information, Mayer gave Truman and General Leslie R. Groves (who led the Manhattan Project for the Army) script approval rights. Unfortunately, Groves’ and Truman’s vanity took over. They didn’t just edit sensitive information out of the script. They used the opportunity of concern about national security to put the script through meat grinders designed to make them sound good and look handsome. Meanwhile, MGM scriptwriters added romances and subplots. What eventually emerged was a hackneyed, over-hyped docudrama that glorified the president and the military and that created astonishing myths about why the use of the bombs had been the right choice for the United States of America and the world.

Author Greg Mitchell is a journalist who knows military history and United States politics well. He is the author of The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill; Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady (a New York Times Notable Book); The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and The Birth of Media Politics (winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize). He also co-authored with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America. Mitchell is the former editor of Nuclear Times magazine and the writer/director of the 2021 documentary, Atomic Coverup.

For Forbes.com, I talked to Mitchell about his nonfiction examination of the scientists’ motivations in reaching out to Hollywood and about Hollywood’s distortion of their intentions and message. Mitchell’s book is called The Beginning or The End — and that, by the way, is also the title of the MGM movie that so sorely disappointed the scientists involved. I have edited the conversation for length and clarity

The Conversation with Greg Mitchell

Rebecca Coffey: Your book tells the story of scientists who were sickened at the deaths caused by their work at the Manhattan Project. They wanted Hollywood to help them create a movie that would be a cautionary tale. What they got instead from Hollywood was a movie designed to help Americans feel good about the appalling Hiroshima and Nagasaki news. The movie didn’t raise moral questions about scientific matters. It celebrated nuclear weaponry and its “heroes.” Am I right about that?

Journalist and author Greg Mitchell

Photo credit: Barbara Bedway

Greg Mitchell: I think that’s a fair assessment. The country had mixed feelings about how the bomb had been used. The scientists had mixed feelings about what they’d created. Truman and Groves had script approval. A movie filled with distortions and outright lies was the result.

RC: I’m surprised at how good a job the movie did in creating lasting distortions. I mentioned to a well-educated, well-read, peace-loving friend the other day that I would be interviewing you and I also said that you had spent a significant portion of your professional life examining moral questions about the use of the bomb. He said, well, what is there to talk about really? Using the bomb was necessary. If we hadn’t done it the Soviets were about to do it. I responded that, no, Russia had spies at the Manhattan Project. That’s because they had no bomb. Japan and Germany didn’t have a bomb, either. Apparently, the wool that the government and this movie pulled over the eyes of even educated, peace-loving Americans has held up over the years. It still controls the narrative.

GM: That’s why I wrote this book. It’s what has motivated me for 38 years now. Last year was the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was an opportunity for reassessment. That didn’t happen, perhaps because of COVID-19 headlines and the election. There was a best-selling book by Chris Wallace [and Mitch Weiss] defending the use of the bomb, but it included all sorts of errors. And there was Wallace’s Fox special about the bomb. But there was no impartial assessment 75 years after the fact. I’ve always wanted to promote an honest debate about what happened. I want all of the facts out there. I want Americans to have conversations and examine moral issues.

American actress Donna Reed (1921 – 1986), circa 1945. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty … [+] Images)

Getty Images

RC: If I remember correctly, one of the Manhattan Project scientists who had misgivings about the future of nuclear weaponry reached out to a former high school student. She was the actress Donna Reed. She brought her agent husband into the conversation and he sold Louis B. Mayer and MGM on the scientists’ idea about a movie that would warn audiences about the dangers and moral complexities of atomic bombs. Mayer was excited enough to call the movie the “most important story” he’d ever get the chance to tell. But the movie that MGM ended up making was not at all a cautionary tale. Do you know whether Mayer had a personal sense of loss about how the project turned out?

GM: I couldn’t find any testimony about that. I think he kind of bowed out. So many MGM movies needed his attention. This one didn’t seem to be a high priority, after all.

RC: The movie is a docudrama, though it’s hard for me to understand how any audience member accepted the supposedly nonfiction aspect of it given how predictable and corny the dialog is. Even so, they did. As a documentary-plus-drama, it was a “cross-genre” movie. And in some ways, your book is a cross-genre narrative because it’s about such serious matters but it incorporates lots of dark comedy. The photo on the book jacket’s speaks to gallows humor even more than it does to the book’s important historical information. Do you have any response to that?

The Beginning or the End (1947) Directed by Norman Taurog. MGM promotional photo. Shown: Tom Drake … [+] and his wife.

MGM/Photofrest

GM: I think there is a lot of unintentional comedy in it. There was the absurdity of trying to make a romantic, Hollywood blockbuster about the creation of a horrible, potentially world-destroying weapon. MGM went through all the usual promo processes, and they were oddly out of place. You know, “Here’s a beautiful actress getting her ID checked!” “Here are cool signs that say ‘Top Secret!’” Everything MGM said about the movie was inadvertently tone deaf. A nearly final version of the script had the Japanese receiving instructions on how to build an atomic bomb from Germans who arrived, as Germans apparently often do, by submarine. Having received the instructions, the Japanese took them to their secret atomic bomb factory … which was supposedly in Hiroshima! There was no factory in Hiroshima. No Germans were crawling out of submarines and bearing instructions for Japanese scientists. The script, the casting, the promotion, and the filmmaking process all were absurd.

Scientists and army personnel discuss nuclear science in MGM promotional shot.

Courtesy Greg Mitchell

RC: In general, Hollywood movies have clear heroes and villains. Your book doesn’t, but let’s just talk about its cast of characters. In the whole mess that was the creation and use of the bomb, is there a character who disgusted you most? Is there somebody whom you consider to be the true villain of the atomic bomb story?

GM: I suppose I’d have to say General Groves. He had his finger in everything. He got the bomb built. He covered up radiation accidents at the Manhattan Project. He helped pick Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets. He moved up the schedule so the bomb would get used earlier. After the cities were bombed, he covered up the effects of the radiation on the civilian population and later he pushed for building more and bigger weapons. He capped it off by getting a massive amount of money from MGM to advise on the movie. By the way, no one else got paid, even though the scientists were promised money. Then, when questioned, Groves denied taking the money. He ruined the movie that had the potential to bring some truth to millions of Americans. Because he had his finger in everything, he would have to be the villain

(Original Caption) 9/11/1945-Alamogordo, NM: Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves (r), and Dr. J. R. … [+] Oppenheimer.

Bettmann Archive

RC: What about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist at the Manhattan Project? I’ve read several books that portray him as an unreliable, weird, and perhaps overly self-involved figure. He had to give his approval to the movie for MGM to use his name, and his name was so well-known that MGM really had to use it. Why did he give his approval to the script?

GM: One of the subplots of the book is the continual engagement between MGM and the scientists including Oppenheimer, Albert Einstein, and Leo Szilard. [Before the Manhattan Project, Szilard had conceived the nuclear chain reaction upon which atomic bomb technology relied. He’d also patented a nuclear fission reactor design and he’d convinced Einstein to join the Manhattan Project. In 1945 Szilard drafted the petition to Truman asking him not to use the bomb against Japan.] Some of the scientists were very famous and were hesitant about cooperating. Whenever they dragged their feet, MGM got nervous and came up with pseudonyms for them. Even Oppenheimer had a provisional pseudonym. It was “Whittier” — funny because it was WASP-y and he was anything but. I’m not sure why ultimately he gave permission and let the MGM screenwriters use his real name. He was being surveilled by the FBI, but there’s no evidence that he cooperated just to get J. Edgar Hoover off his back. He had gotten some changes made in the script. Maybe that was enough for him. Maybe he knew that he couldn’t stop the movie altogether or solve all of its problems. Maybe he liked the idea of being a character on the big screen. Even Einstein and Szilard approved the script eventually.

RC: Why do you think Einstein and Szilard approved it?

Albert Einstein (1879-1955), American theoretical physicist and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize for … [+] Physics.

Bettmann Archive

GM: MGM brought Szilard out to the lot for a week or two. That might have been flattering and fun. And Szilard didn’t have a lot to protect. The movie just showed him in the lab early on doing some of the groundbreaking work on nuclear science. He got some changes made to the script. The movie may not have deeply upset him because it doesn’t portray or distort his attempt to stop the use of the bomb.

Einstein, on the other hand, was a little different. In the book, there’s an exchange of letters between Mayer and Einstein. Mayer tried to twist Einstein’s arm. Einstein held firm. Then, a couple of months later, Szilard seems to have told Einstein, “Look, I got some changes made. I think you should sign. No big deal.” Einstein may have thrown up his hands and signed. It seems that, in the end, when scientists believed they were being treated fairly on screen they signed. Maybe they’d just been worn down.

Corbis via Getty Images

RC: Did the scientists get anything for all of their trouble?

GM: MGM didn’t pay the scientists even though they’d promised to. With their dithering, though, the scientists did succeed in delaying production. By the time the movie was released, the bomb had disappeared from the headlines.

RC: Poetic justice?

GM: Well, if you’re bothered at the idea that the movie that was supposed to be a cautionary tale ended up having a pro-atomic-bomb message, at least you can take some comfort. The scientists succeeded in ruining the audience for the movie. They delayed so long that America had lost interest. Mayer’s “most important story” was a box office flop.

RC: What are your favorite darkly comic moments about the development of the movie?

(Original Caption) 1949: Official portrait of Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd president of the … [+] United States.

Bettmann Archive

GM: I like Donna Reed’s involvement because it’s so unexpected and strange. Another favorite of mine is the fact that Truman got the actor playing him fired for not having a sufficiently “military bearing.” The actor then wrote a letter to Truman that appeared to be respectful but, between the lines, was deeply sarcastic. He suggested that Truman should play himself. He said something like, “No doubt you would love to be the person who takes credit for this historic use of the bomb.” Truman wrote a polite letter back, evidently not having caught onto the actor’s mockery.

By and large, I found reams of jaw-dropping stuff in the Motion Picture Academy Library. For example, Groves, who was overweight and not happy about it, ordered MGM to remove from the script a second reference to him liking chocolate. He and Truman allowed incredibly large falsehoods about science to stay in the script but disallowed details that they didn’t make them look good.

RC: Because for thirty-eight years you have researched this part of history, let me see if I can get you to opine about certain matters. In Einstein’s interview with the New York Times Magazine, he said that he believed we didn’t have to use the bomb. Do you agree with him about that?

GM: When I started writing about this in the 1980s and went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a month, I didn’t have an opinion. I just wanted to delve deeper into the story. Over the many years in which I’ve read more, I’ve become convinced that it was not necessary to use the bomb in that time period to produce a surrender in very short order. That’s what General Eisenhower and others believed. They could see there were other ways to end the war.

RC: Do you think President Franklin D. Roosevelt would have approved of using the bomb on Japanese cities?

GM: I’ve thought about it but I don’t have a firm opinion. The evidence is not crystal clear. I’m satisfied that I’ve raised some conversation about it. Could he have been bullied the way Truman was by Groves? Maybe not. But, like Truman, he wanted to end the war as soon as possible. He’d ordered the creation of the bomb.

RC: What about impersonating scientists on film? Do you think that getting B-grade actors to fiddle with flashing gadgets while pretending to be world-class scientists does a disservice to science — especially on matters as grave as this?

GM: The scientists who were impersonated in the MGM movie were disturbed by the screenings. Szilard ran out and kind of cowered in a waiting car. It wasn’t just that the movie celebrated the bomb. It was the hokey way scientists were portrayed.

The producers tried to placate the scientists. They pointed out that one major character functioned as a representation of the qualms of some of scientists. It was the character of Tom Drake. He appeared in much of the movie. He was a sympathetic-looking guy. He gave voice to their concerns about civilian casualties and the future of nuclear weaponry. But, of course, in the movie he was a tragic figure and he died, and in the very last scene his ghost came down and talked to his wife and said that the bomb is a great thing. It’s our salvation. God gave it to us.

This gets back to my motivation for writing the book. So many Americans remain ignorant about the history of nuclear weaponry in our country and the ongoing possibility of its use. Unlike many of our allies, we have a “First Use” policy! We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons first. Many Americans don’t know about the First Use policy. That fact is enough to keep me talking about the dangers of the nuclear arms race and inspiring me to write books like The Beginning or the End.

RC: Thank you so much for talking.

Greg Mitchell’s The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood — And America — Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is gripping, surprisingly well-researched and fun storytelling about a devastating topic. Mitchell’s Twitter handle is @gregmitch. His news and politics newsletter is Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

#News

#08-2021 Science News #2021 Science News #acts of science #Earth Environment #earth science #Environment and Nature #Nature Science #News Science Spies #Our Nature #planetary science #Science #Science Channel #science documentary #Science News #Science Spies #Science Spies News #Space Physics & Nature #Space Science #News

0 notes

mirrorballwhoistrying · 3 years

Text

2 Weeks of Being 22 (04.07.21)

I really needed this. Or maybe I thought, to sit in a coffee shop with my laptop collecting and minding my thoughts. I’m just not sure the decision to come this popular coffee shop with a poor service is the right choice.

It’s ages to feel this way. It feels like so much has happened in the past 5 weeks that I can’t really fathom it. I submitted my thesis a week ago but I still don’t feel the true peace of mind. Maybe I’m just so good at keeping myself anxious.

5 weeks ago, it felt like the world had turned against me. When I decided to “start” doing my thesis, all my sources rejected me. Even the expert didn’t respond me on time. It was my fault for leaving things for so long. I was so hopeless, but with the help of friends and seniors and also my supervisor, we got the idea of docudrama and was approved my school.

It still wasn’t that easy as it required a whole new level of preparation like interviewing and writing script to the level of a short film. The production was a after my birthday and it was hell. Lucky enough I had b Ketya and her friend to help me find props and find an apartment.

The production wasn’t smooth at first but it got better at the afternoon. It ended. then a new level of headache came. I had only like a week to do my paper and editing. Of course, I had an editor from the company, Roath, and assistance from Pisey. I felt bad to drag them to do the work with me on the weekends. The worst part was feeling like I wasn’t in control. Confrontation or simply expressed what I wanted still drained the fuck out of me. I felt bad to revise so many things with Roath. Was I a bad guy to drag everything back and forth like that? I really need to learn the idea of stop being a perfectionist and see what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes.

I now have like a week or two or something until the day of defending my thesis. When will this shit end?

I didn’t feel anything on my birthday. But at least I wasn’t that lonely as last year with a few friends in a foreign country. Of course, I couldn’t throw big parties with many groups of friends, but at least I got gifts from them. I feel so grateful.

The worst part was I failed YSEALI again. This time it was the worst. The deadline was on my birthday and a day before production. I did it half-assedly. I submitted a minute late. I didn’t even receive a confirmation email. Great, this time I’m not even considered. Self-sabotage succeed again. What do I expect? I reap what I sow. I didn’t focus on it and that’s the price I pay.

The last few days I felt so overwhelmed that I decided to deactivate my social media again last night. It feels like I’m in the state of... languishing again. I’m not particular sad but it’s just the absence of positivity or joy. I came across a lot of people around my age succeeding that it triggered a strong insecurity of me.

I’m in the state of turning point again. It’s all up to my decision. Now that I’m back to work so what? 2-3 senior colleagues are resigning soon. I feel like the last 6 months of 2021, what am I supposed to do? What path should I choose after graduating? I let the environment controlled me for so long now I don’t know what to do when I can make a choice.

My dream to do digital film making still lingers. I’m just not sure whether to start it when? Should I focus that idea in my internal company? What would I get at the end? If I choose startup, will it make enough income to sustain? What if I failed? What if others are better than me?

I don’t know I guess I should focus on what’s in front of me instead of try to grab on everything right now. I’d give myself deadline until the end of this year and see where it goes. I’d start doing side work again like Phnom Penh Used Books and hopefully the box.

What if the end of the year came, and I achieve nothing? fuck... dear me, please give myself a break.

How about my love life? I’m talking as if it exists in the first place. I’ve been in a clean state (or is it?) for this whole time. I just wish I’m not obsessed or infatuated with anyone again. Or let’s put it in a more positive notes. I tried with them and it failed. At least I have nothing to regret. I hope the last 6 months I’d focus on myself instead of spending time imagining my whole life with someone lmaoo. There are a couple guys chasing me and I’ve been ghosting him for a while. I’m still a toxic bitch omgg. I can’t believe I haven’t had sex for 7-8 months. That’s what I imagine 50% of the time and scared to to do.

It’s been fun talking to myself. At least I feel better every time I jot down my thoughts. I still don’t what the fuck to do with my life and I’m still figuring out. See you again byee.

0 notes