#adding things to my rewatch list and polar express will be one of them

[midnight-mourning]

Night Ride

❄️❄️Midnight's DCA December Day 23❄️❄️

Another fun one! decided to have a little bit of a twist with the storyline, mainly to add a bit of extra fluff and the likes, hope you all enjoy!

Prompt: Polar express au! Perhaps yn as the conductor and sun/moon as the engineers? Or perhaps eclipse and yn are both conductors. My favorite segments are them getting over the frozen lake and the roller coaster ride right after while the main characters are stuck at the front!

Word Count: 1819

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

"What do you mean we're out of marshmallows? How does a magic train to the north pole run out of marshmallows?" You say, exasperated, then shake your head. "I've got twenty kids in that car alone that are going to want marshmallows with their hot chocolate. I don't care if you have to get in contact with Mrs. C herself, you get marshmallows, got it?"

The sous chef nods, hurrying off as you sigh. This trip has been such a disaster already. One kid almost missed the train, someone was missing their ticket, and now no marshmallows! Thank goodness you only did one of these a year, you don't think your stress levels could take anything more. 

A pair of hands rest on your shoulders, massaging. "Breathe, love. They'll figure it out, we always do, right?" 

"I know, 'clip. I know." You lean into his touch with a sigh. "This year's just been a bit of a mess and it's getting to me."

Eclipse bends down to your line of sight, chuckling. "Be honest, when is it not?"

"True. That's... true."

He kisses your cheek, releasing you again after a moment. "I'll see what I can do about our marshmallow situation. Can you handle our missing ticket problem?"

"Yes. And thank you." You reach out for his hand as he turns to leave, giving it a squeeze. "I appreciate it."

He nods, lifts your hand for a kiss, then heads off to one of the other cars. You sigh, shake your head, and get back to work. After a bit of discussion with the kids, you're thankfully able to resolve the matter. Eclipse—somehow—manages to find marshmallows, thus averting utter disaster. 

You think the trouble is over, but when the train comes to a halt, you feel dread overtake you once more. Not wasting any time, you make your way to the front, bursting into the cab only to find—

"I, Helpy, what are you doing in here? Where's Sun and Moon?"

The small bot is standing on a stool, one of the boy's hats on his head. He waves to you, then points outside.

You peek out the window, and spy sun's rays around the front area of the train. Looking further you see—"Caribou?! We don't have time for this." You duck back inside, nodding to the small bear bot. "Guess it was wise they put you in charge after all."

He salutes you and you hurry out to the front of the train. 

When you get there you see the two bots bickering back and forth. You hop up onto the platform, and quickly move between the two. 

"What exactly do you two think you're doing?" 

Sun ducks his head. "Changing the light... Or at least we would be if someone wasn't being so difficult!" He turns back to Moon. 

The other bot chuckles, arms crossed. "You were doing it wrong~"

They start to argue again and you push them away from each other further. 

"Listen, I do not care if you did it right or wrong or whatever, we have bigger problems here." You nod to the massive heard of caribou. "That, needs fixed or we're going to be more than just a little late. So get to it."

You usher the two of them off the platform, grumbling as they go and start shooing them away, with little success. 

You check the time again. Still five minutes to midnight. You click the watch shut and shove it back in your pocket. 

"You never cease to amaze me with your patience, Starlight."

You glance up, seeing Eclipse peering down at you from the top of the train. "Tell me about it. This'll take hours to clear out, we don't have time for that."

He hops down to stand beside you as you turn back to where Sun and Moon try in vain to get the caribou to retreat. Going so far as trying to shove them this way or that, with no success. 

"Ah, you forget, my sweet, what train we're on." He whistles to the other two, waving them to come back. "Return to the cab, Helpy can't do all your work for you."

Shoving each other back and forth, they trudge back to cab. Not before shooting a glare to Eclipse and wink and kiss respectively to you, however. 

You turn back to the herd. "What do you think we'll be able to do?"

"They know." Eclipse's arms wrap around you. "Believe it or not but when they put their heads together they can be quite clever."

Sure enough, the train's whistle suddenly blows, startingly you and the caribou. After a few quick blows, they finally clear the tracks, and you're moving again. 

You relax into Eclipse's hold. "Right. Should have thought of that."

"You're stressed, and you certainly can't be expected to think of everything." He presses a kiss to your hair, then moves down to your neck. 

You laugh, hands coming up to grip his arms. "Clip, we're working. Save it for later."

His grips tightens, and does not stop. Figures. 

"You know, speaking of clever, if this was all a ploy to get me alone, I'm not going to be happy with you." 

He tsks against your skin. "No, never. You know our control doesn't go beyond the train."

"Uh huh,"—you say, then notice that the winds picked up significantly—"Hey, don't you think we're going a little fast?"

Eclipse pauses his assault on your neck, looking up and out to the path in front of you. "It would appear so. Too fast for what's up ahead."

"Yeah, that's what I thought." You remove yourself from his hold, going over to the side of the train to yell back. "Boys! Slow it down. Glacier Gulch is up ahead, remember?"

Nothing but the wind as a response. 

You curse under your breath as you continue to pick up speed, going back to the front railing. "Not good. This is not good."

"The train and everyone inside will be perfectly fine, love. It's you that I'm worried about." Eclipse comes up behind you again, hands encircling your own as they cling to the railing, holding you securely against it. "I think we're in for a ride."

You see the hill prior to the gulch rapidly approaching, your stomach already dropping in fear.

You press your back into his chest, hands shifting to be able to grip his in some regard. "I'm worried about you two, you big dummy. Sorry in advance for the screaming I'm about to do."

"No need for apologies. I don't think you're going to be the only one."

You make it to the top of the hill, and only have a second before you plummet to the bottom. You both scream, clinging to each other and the railing for dear life as you ride up and down, and up and down through the mountainous terrain. Your heart lurches into your throat several times over, and if you weren't facing every the track head on you think this might be fun. 

Forcing yourself to glance up after a moment, your eyes widen as you see there's ice over the tracks up ahead. 

The train bursts out onto the ice, tilting this way and that as you twist around and hug Clip as tight as you can, burying your head against his chest. He returns the gesture ten-fold. 

After seconds that feel like hours, the train comes to a halt. Before you can even think to react, Eclipse has let you go, on the move as he storms back to the engine's cab. From here you can hear him chastising his siblings for the situation, and you sigh for the umpteenth time that night. 

You climb the steps and head back as well, coming to stand by the other conductor on the top of the train. 

"Do you have any idea the danger you put them in—" You put a hand on his arm and he stops immediately, voice softening. "Oh, hello, love."

You smile and don't miss the scoffs and muttering you hear from below. You squat down and address the two yourself. "I'm sure you two were trying your best back here. Thank you for getting it under control again."

Eclipse huffs as Sun's rays spin and Moon tugs his hat down to avoid your gaze. A cracking sound to your left however interrupts you. 

Across the lake, rapidly getting closer are massive cracks in the ice, with waves of water following right behind. You step into action. 

"Compliments later. Get us the hell out of here right now!"

The two below spring into action, getting the train moving again as you wobbly get to your feet. Eclipse reaches out to balance you, helping you turn around to face the other side of the lake. 

"Tracks ahead! Follow my signal." You look up to Eclipse, shifting so that he's behind you. "Keep me balanced and an eye on that back there for me."

"Always, sweet."

Zeroed in on the tracks across from you, you call out commands to Sun and Moon. 

"Left! Right! Left! Give it more steam!"

You hear the cracking noise growing louder and louder but keep your attention forward. 

"Right! Left! Left! Come on! More power!"

You feel the train drop behind you and assume the worst, just a little further—

The wheels hiss and screech as they make contact with the tracks again, lurching forward suddenly as you climb the hill. Before you can fall, Eclipse catches you, holding you close as you regain balance, and your sanity. 

You all but melt into his arms, stress leaving your body and leaving nothing left but a puddle of a person. 

"I think... I need a nap..." You collapse into his arms, drained. 

Several minutes later, after regaining your composure, you're sentenced to the stool in the corner of the engine's cab. There's hot chocolate—with marshmallows—in your hands and a blanket around your shoulders as you decompress. 

You think if they didn't have to drive the train, the engineers would be taking turns holding you, so instead they stick to walking by to for a kiss every now and then. Something you're sure is going to upset a certain conductor. But, it was arguably his fault you'd needed this break in the first place, so he'd just have to suffer until after your trip was done and over. 

You take a sip of your drink and lean your head against the cool glass of the window, staring out into the night sky with its lovely hues. A sign you were nearing the North Pole by the minute.

It was a good thing you only did this one night a year, but that didn't mean you didn't enjoy it any less. Not when you had moments like these to remember it by.

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

Thank you for the super fun request @rosescarletful!! Enjoyed rewatching the clips of the movie for context, forgot how much fun it is lol, hope you enjoyed the moments with the boys, thought i'd be cheeky and include all three ^-^

Masterpost link

Tag list (if you would like added, see this post for more info):

@scarletcowboy @beemyhuneybee @fishm0ther @deviouscrackers @elsajoyagent8

@luckyyyduckyyy @zenkaiankoku @jogimote @local-shrub @amarynthian-chronicles

@robinette-green @everlightreader @sinister-sincerely @starredeclipse @dangerva

@juukai @crystalmagpie447 @mothgutz236 @lizyxml @divinit3a

[letterboxd]

Making Waves.

“I live in Florida, my cat’s in the movie. It is incredibly personal.” Waves writer and director Trey Edward Shults opens up about his filmmaking process, reveals the movies that made him fall in love with cinema, and gushes about fellow A24 alum Robert Eggers.

Trey Edward Shults doesn’t want to spoil Waves. We don’t want to spoil Waves either. To even begin to describe its unconventional structure would be a spoiler. We’ve said too much already. Just know it’s a sweeping melodrama that solidifies Shults as one of the defining American voices of the decade.

The coming-of-age family drama centers on brother Tyler (Shults regular and breakout star Kelvin Harrison Jr., pictured above) and sister Emily (Taylor Russell), their relationships and struggles with each other, their parents (Sterling K. Brown and Renée Elise Goldsberry), and first loves (Alexa Demie and Lucas Hedges). This is Shults’ third collaboration with A24 after his DIY debut Krisha (set in the same family house as Waves, and similarly playful with its aspect ratio), and the polarizing horror It Came At Night.

While its structure hasn’t worked for everyone, Waves has captured the enthusiasm of many Letterboxd members in a profound way. “This is the coming-of-age movie to end coming-of-age,” writes ActionTomasello. “The less you know of it, the better it is going into this one.” It’s been added to the popular ‘You’re not the same person once the film has finished’ list, and the film’s soundtrack, collected into this Spotify playlist by Letterboxd member Ella, is one of the most-mentioned contributing factors to its success. Writes Nick: “A soundtrack that’s meant for a specific group of people that I’m a part of. It feels too perfect how someone made a film filled with songs from Kanye, Frank Ocean, Radiohead and many others. It feels like one long, sad, fucked-up music video.”

But no Letterboxd review currently beats Jack’s heartfelt letter to Shults: “Your film has moved me to better myself, to love, and to meet my emotions head on. Thank you.” (He also put it in his top five of all time.)

We caught up with Shults to learn how Waves was conceived and executed, and investigate which films have hit him the hardest.

Taylor Russel as Emily in ‘Waves’.

You often draw your films from your personal experiences and you’ve described Waves as autobiographical. Can you go into some detail about which life experiences fed into this film? Trey Edward Shults: Where to start? In broad strokes, I was a wrestler and tore my shoulder in the same way as Tyler. The relationships between Tyler and Alexis and also Emily and Luke are inspired by my girlfriend and [me] in the good moments, bad moments, and everything in between. Their parents are inspired by my parents. I live in Florida, my cat’s in the movie. It is incredibly personal, but I had a huge collaboration with Kelvin, and then as more actors came on it got more collaborative, so it really started from this personal place and grew out of that.

How do you reconcile your relationship to your own suffering with the fact it’s become your livelihood and commodity? It’s very strange. When we recreated events in Missouri I think that was the furthest I’ve ever gone. That shoot was an all-consuming dread and I broke down, it was very hard. I would question: “Is this healthy? Is this right?”, but I came out the other side happy I did it. It was cathartic. My mom and my step-dad are therapists and I would be a total mess without them, though I’m not in therapy right now. Working through these movies is a bit of therapy.

I’m trying to make personal things that I hope connect with other people, especially this movie. Going through life and getting to the other side of it and having perspective informed me a lot. Whether it’s just tonally or pacing-wise, I wanted the film to spiritually feel that way.

The film’s photography is remarkable, especially the first act, when you have your fullest frame. Can you take us inside how you executed some of those spinning 360-degree shots? For the car shots we took out the middle console of the truck and put a slider that went from the backseat to the front. Basically, the dolly grip and I were crammed down hiding behind the car seats and the grip pushed the camera from the back to the front. Drew [Daniels, the director of photography] was in the car behind us with a remote, so he’s operating the spinning and I have a monitor in the back. That way I could talk to the kids in the car and I also had a walkie so I could talk to Drew.

A lot of the dynamic camera stuff was a case-by-case scenario, sometimes it was just running behind our steadicam operator or just hiding and letting them go and play. We wanted the camera to be purely motivated by where our main character’s emotional state of mind was, so it’s all coming from them, but then we also wanted to figure out the technical shit and make it feel to the actors that the camera disappeared and we’re not even there. So it was an interesting balance getting there. It’s a second skin for us and we know exactly what we’re after visually, but let’s disappear and let the kids play and we’ll adapt to them.

Since our name is ‘Letterboxd’, I feel obligated to ask you an aspect-ratio question. Can you share with us how you built this intuition to change at will—did you have films you saw that you feel did this well? That’s a good question, because this one really felt like it was building off what I did with Krisha and pushing it further. I do remember The Grand Budapest Hotel came out right before I started Krisha and it had the three aspect ratios to separate [its] time periods, which was really cool to me. I think I got really excited about using aspect ratio to echo the character’s state of mind. That was the goal with that, especially for Tyler’s trajectory.

The soundtrack is getting some acclaim. Do you have any songs you wanted to fit in but couldn’t find the room, or couldn’t clear the rights for? I realized there were so many songs I wanted in it, but the movie told you what works. If you tried to force it on, it didn’t work. It started with the writing and it worked its way organically. The final soundtrack is pretty close to what was in the script though I think a few changed along the way. We got incredibly lucky that we got everything we wanted. I don’t know how we did it. It was a long process and our last song didn’t even clear until after Telluride and Toronto.

Trey Edward Shults and Sterling K. Brown on the set of ‘Waves’. / Photo: Monica Lek

There are shades of Chungking Express, Magnolia and Moonlight in the film’s DNA. What were some other films you watched or recommended to your cast and crew as preparation? Funny thing is we didn’t do a lot of movie-watching for preparation. Drew and I lived in the same house so we’d always have a movie on. We were watching The Story of Film a lot—the giant anthology series and study of the history of cinema, incredible. What we watched would totally range, it could be things like Ordinary People and Raging Bull, to The Tree of Life and I Am Cuba, to Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love. We would take inspiration from anything, even a film like Yi Yi. It’s a completely different cinematic approach.

Yi Yi might just be the best film about family, so it’s a good start (Lulu Wang also mentioned it in our recent chat with her about The Farewell). That’s the thing exactly: even though Waves is made in such a different way, I think spiritually they’re sprawling tales of family. That’s one of my favorite movies. For the cast, we didn’t actually talk about movies that much. It was more about Florida, music and the character dynamics and all that good stuff.

Which movie scene makes you cry the hardest? One that just popped in my head is Dancer in the Dark. When Björk escapes in her head doing these musical numbers and it leads to the end, to the most devastating thing possible, it broke me. That movie’s rough, man. That’s not one I could watch and have good cries or something. I can’t rewatch it because it’s utterly traumatizing. I was probably crying for hours after it, I felt dead.

Which film makes you laugh the hardest? The most recent film that made me laugh the hardest is What We Do in the Shadows. I saw it for the first time on an airplane sitting next to a stranger and I think they thought something was wrong with me. Then I got home to Florida and showed it to my girlfriend, and her brother came home and we watched it again. It never got old.

Who was the most relatable coming-of-age film character for you? It’s hard because when I was a teen I was obsessed with sports and then it was music. I’m trying to think who I related to the most. Man, I don’t know. Nothing is coming to mind. Shocking.

What film do you wish you made? I’ll go with There Will Be Blood. It’s the first film that popped in my head.

What mind-fuck movies changed you for life and why? There were three that I saw pretty close together at a young age: Boogie Nights, A Clockwork Orange and Raging Bull. I had a digital cable box in my room, so I would sneak and watch a lot of things that my parents didn’t know I was watching. They just rocked my world. Until that point it was all Aliens and Terminator and every big action movie, so then when I saw those films it was like “this is what movies can be! What the hell is this?”.

I remember with Raging Bull I didn’t actually enjoy it. I was like, “This isn’t Rocky but I can’t stop watching.” It’s like a trainwreck and I’m fascinated but I don’t know if I like it, then I was obsessed with it and it’s one of my favorite movies now. Boogie Nights and A Clockwork Orange felt like a bigger vision was at work. It wasn’t just something made out in the ether, it was a specific singular vision and I cannot stop looking at it.

Sterling K. Brown in ‘Waves’.

What’s the most overlooked movie from A24? Shoot, I wish I could look at the catalogue right now. I’m just gonna go with The Spectacular Now because I just watched it again on the airplane and I thought it was really beautiful. It’s a good one, man.

Lastly, it’s time for best-of-decade lists. What’s the greatest film of the 2010s? When we interviewed Robert Eggers, Waves was his first choice. Shut up, come on! Oh my god, Rob’s the best. I will say that The Lighthouse is my favorite film of the year, without a doubt. I’m obsessed with it. I could gush about him for hours. He’s not just one of the greatest young filmmakers, he’s one of the great filmmakers working now. Honestly though, for my decade number one I gotta go with The Tree of Life. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time so I would put that at number one, and then The Lighthouse is close to it.

‘Waves’ is distributed by A24 and is playing in select US cinemas now. Photos courtesy A24.