#and some of the best use of CGI I’ve seen in my life

[sail-not-drift]

If Amazon cancels The Wheel of Time I will go directly for Jeff Bezos’s bald baby head.

[caliboron]

It’s time for Caliboron’s super based review extravaganza thing that actually isn’t that big of a deal but if you’re reading this you’re part of it! This post will contain spoilers for the following movies: Migration, Inside Out 2, Despicable Me 4, A Quiet Place Day One, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Smile 2, Gladiator 2, Moana 2, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3

I’ve never done a post like this, but my family has taken up the hobby of going to the movies so that’s a thing we do now! I saw a lot of movies this year, but this post is specifically about the ones I saw in theaters. These are all my opinions, I’m biased, they may be based on personal experience of real life events that happened when I went to see them. Also these will be rank with #1 being the best. Now let’s get on with it

Disclaimer: I liked and enjoyed all of these movies, just because it’s low doesn’t mean I hated it

#9: Moana 2

Oh, Moana 2… It was good. Not great, but good. Honestly kind of a disappointing sequel. The songs were good. I liked that they gave Moana a little sister, the dynamic between them was sweet. They introduced a lot of new side characters, but it felt too rapid-fire and sudden. I don’t remember any of the new characters’ names. I wish there were more scenes focused on them so we could get to know them better. Pua joined the adventure this time along with Hei Hei, but it didn’t add much. It was nice to see Moana and Maui interact again. The “Get Lost” song was my favorite. I got excited when we saw Tamatoa in the after-credit scene. Looking forward to the inevitable Moana 3, I hope it out-does this one. 5/10

#8: Despicable Me 4

So, I’ve never seen Despicable Me 2 or 3, but I had enough knowledge of the series to understand this one. Gru’s rival from high school shows up and their family has to go into witness protection and take on new identities. Also there’s a baby now. The baby hates Gru for some reason. They tried to do something interesting with the new identities, but it felt like a side-plot that was ignored. Gru’s high school rival was like a roach-guy and he wanted to turn the baby into a roach too? Honestly the baby was kinda cute as a roach and me and my sister agreed that we wish he stayed that way. There was a minion trapped in a vending machine the whole movie. No one helped him. He presumably starved and died. Very entertaining movie but the plot felt weak. 5/10

#7: Migration

One word I’d use to sum up this movie is “cute”. It was short but sweet. A family of ducks with an anxious father who doesn’t want to leave the lake they live in so they’ve never migrated before. As the title suggests, they do convince him to migrate. Also Danny DeVito is there so that automatically makes this movie 10x better. They get lost and end up in New York and they go to like a duck resort paradise place but it’s actually a farm that gives them away to be cooked. There’s a crazy chef that’s the main antagonist and chases them around. The relationship between the two sibling ducks was very cute. Overall I liked this one a lot. 6/10

#6: Gladiator 2

I was not planning to see this one. Me and my mom bought tickets to a “mystery movie” at our theater and it turned out to be Gladiator 2, which funny enough my parents planned to see this for their 30th wedding anniversary later that week, so my mom saw it twice. I thought I’d hate this movie, thought I’d find it boring because I don’t usually watch action/serious movies like this. It took a bit for me to get into it but halfway through I was invested. I’ve never seen the original Gladiator btw haha. I ended up really liking this! The plot was engaging and suspenseful. The cgi baboons absolutely terrified me, but I liked the little monkey named Dundus. The ruler twins were annoying and their deaths were satisfying. 8/10

#5: Sonic the Hedgehog 3

I just saw this one last night! It was amazing! Me and my sister (she is a HUGE Sonic fan) binged the other 2 movies the night before so we were ready. This movie was hilarious and action-packed. Robotnik and his grandpa were probably the highlight, there were some great scenes with them. And Shadow! He was there too. A lot of quote-able moments, too. We went to the little arcade inside the theater after and played claw machines, me and my sister joked that we should “break glass in case of emergency” to get the toys lol. Knuckles was dead set on breaking that glass. I like how they continue to find ways to include Tom and Maddie and the sibling dynamic that’s developed between Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. I think they did Shadow and his backstory justice. And my god, that after credit scene with Amy and Metal.. It was awesome. My sister is obsessed with Metal Sonic so she was overjoyed. Also there are TWO after-credit scenes!! A lot of people left the theater after the first one so they missed the second. 10/10

#4: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Beetlejuice. Oh no, I just summoned him. I loved this movie. It did the original so much justice. And SURPRISE DANNY DEVITO CAMEO!!! Loved that. Lydia’s an adult now with a daughter who gets tricked by this ghost boy and now Lydia has to recruit BJ to save her. Also Lydia’s headless, deceased father is searching for his wife the whole movie. Which his wife, Delia, ends up dying to some supposedly de-venomed snakes in a mourning ritual devoted to him. They reunite and it’s very sweet. Also Beetlejuice has a wife that’s trying to kill him the whole movie so there’s a lot going on. And there’s a shrunken head guy named Bob. RIP Bob, you were a real one. This was a legendary sequel. 10/10

#3: Inside Out 2

Another legendary sequel. This movie perfectly portrayed how a panic attack feels, and told a great story of desperately trying to fit in and be accepted that I found very relatable. The new emotions were interesting and had good character designs. It was nice to see the original squad interact more. My mom and sister kept hoping to see Bing-Bong but nope, he is dead forever. 10/10

#2: Smile 2

This was my first time seeing a horror movie in theaters. Being in a pitch-black room with surround sound definitely made it an intense experience. I kept feeling like something was behind me. This movie was even better than the first Smile. The main character was interesting and the plot had me invested. Every single jumpscare got me, big time. God the smile-demon thing is terrifying. There was so much contorting (big personal fear of mine) and that scene in the apartment when all the backup dancers were slowly moving toward the main character had my heart racing. And the reveal of the actual demon is burned into my mind. I still think about it now and get creeped out. That final scene where the main character got possessed and killed herself on stage in front of all those people… the smile demon is gonna be like a world-wide epidemic now. If they make a Smile 3 it’ll be interesting to say the least. This movie fucked me up for like a week after lol I was super jumpy, and my sister’s bf was being an asshole smiling widely at me to mess with me 10/10

#1: A Quiet Place: Day One

Wow. What a movie. This has to be my favorite one I’ve seen this year, it was so good. This movie has so much heart at its core. I wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did, but it’s definitely better than the other Quiet Place movies. It was super tense, had me on the edge of my seat multiple times, and I was hoping and praying that the cat would survive, and… IT DID! The cat lived! Dude I was so happy. That last scene where Eric was swimming with the cat towards the boat I was so worried, but they made it safely! And the final scene where the main character, Sammy, just unplugged her headphones and accepted her fate was perfect. 10/10

So.. that’s it! Next year I definitely wanna type these out right after I watch the movies bc I had difficulty recalling all the events while making these reviews.

Movies I’m looking forward to next year:

Minecraft movie (of course), Dogman, and BAD GUYS 2 HELL YEAHHH

Here��s to 2025, and many more movies and memories!

[alwayshasacold]

Right I’ve given it a bit since I finished the season so I’m not coming fresh off the binge with my thoughts. I’m not like great at phrasing and they’re not fully thought over yet but like I need to get them into words so here we go.

The short version is that while I still had fun with that season it is definitely the worst by far. Not sure if it was a necessary addition but I’ve never been solid on ending with season 3 either so won’t argue that making it was by itself a mistake. Ending was alright I guess, wasn’t good but like wasn’t horrifically bad yknow, very okay. I think that reduced ep count definitely did the season in ultimately, though we will never know now if that would’ve fixed some of the worst issues it has.

The apocalypse itself was very shitty, every other season plays into a common apocalypse trope and tbh from what we’ve seen of the death of Reggie’s world there were plenty of options to go for there to keep in trend and make it the same. Massive cgi monster you have to invent new lore to have is just boring as fuck.

Character writing wasn’t great, though the potential is there for them in most cases which is definitely at least one consequence of reduced episode count. Klaus relapse makes some sense (his powers and his addiction are always closely connected) and while I’ve seen people arguing about it being pointless if season was longer I could perhaps see it go somewhere. Luther living in the academy is very in character, he’s always been the one with the most positive connections to the place and it’s no coincidence he always tries to return there when possible. Diego not finding purpose in family life checks from his whole action hero complex, though obviously it needed more time and respect. Alison not being able to get a career off the ground or be a perfect wife or parent could’ve gone somewhere but I’d just mostly played for jokes so I’m still iffy on that one. Lila not being able to adjust to family life also checks considering she’s never had anything even resembling it, and her seeking solutions independently works from her character so far. Viktor doesn’t really have anything at first, but being able to have the time with his dad is probably the best relationship stuff we got all season and it was quite nice, though could’ve done with a bit more depth. My main gripe with his storyline is the lack of interaction really with Reggie’s wife, who’s obviously the original owner of his violin, though the showrunners not doing anything with the sound guys musical talent has been a problem since season 3 so. So we’ve got at least four decent character threads that could’ve worked, and until proven otherwise I will assume the reduced episode count is to blame for given the foundations aerosols enough.

Now onto the plain bad. They clearly had no clue what to do with five. Guy goes from wanting to retire to working for the CIA which is of course not explained. Him almost abandoning his family also doesn’t work from the guy who’s entire motivation is protecting them. And the whole romance with Lila doesn’t really make sense mostly. Five has historically turned to things like that in similar situations (Delores) but obviously he wouldn’t disrespect his family in that way which is the main issue. Same goes for Lila on the same issue. With Ben they seemed to also have no clue what they were doing, especially with consideration of the clip at the end of season 3. While I appreciate getting the reasoning behind his death, the reasoning itself isn’t the best tbh. And not giving him a proper ending is just shitty tbh, though I do appreciate his last moments are trying to help his family with the last of his ability to do so.

The lack of music this season was also very disappointing. There were very few tracks used and none really stood out beyond baby shark, which was a funny bit tbf as much as I hate the song but like the fact we got four lots of baby shark and barely more other pieces of music says it all. The choreography also fell flat - we got what, one choreographed fight scene (which I did enjoy tbf, but it’s far from the best and it being the only one is genuinely shitty) and one dance scene that didn’t fit the music? Like the music and choreography of umbrella academy is one of its most iconic features and it’s honestly the most disappointing thing about the season to me that a lot of that character that it’s always had has been lost.

Also on the lacking side was the costuming but that’s only a minor complaint, just wasn’t enough variety imo but once again probably just the reduced episode count preventing more organic costume changes.

As for other things, I loved Jean and Gene, once again they needed more time like everything else this season but they were great from what we got of them. I liked Reggie and his wife, the whole plotting of her not appreciating being revived needed more time and establishing but I like the concept and roles they played this season. The idea that people are able to figure out that the timeline has been reset is neat and I like that being used as a secondary antagonist group who want an apocalypse to fix things. This season obviously carries over prior issues the series has always had: lack of seriousness about series issues (sexual assault, drug abuse, etc) though slightly improved for making a slightly better effort at addressing klaus‘s self destructive behaviour was made if nothing else, being a bit too reliant of jokiness at times etc but nothing it’s never had issues with. The gross out vomit humour this season wasn’t great and could do with a warning also. I would’ve liked them to do more with the subway and timeline stuff, especially considering both how sick it looked and how all over the marketing it was, but it was probably another casualty of reduced run time.

I believe I’ve addressed most major thoughts I’ve had so far on the finale, though I’ll come back later if I have more. Overall, I definitely don’t think it was the best ending to the series, but I prefer it ending now while at least it’s got something left than it continue and tire itself out for good. It was a very okay six episodes that were fun enough, but I expected and hoped for more from a series I have consistently loved, and unfortunately I don’t believe this series will benefit from the boost in opinion season 3 has gotten from subsequent rewatches.

[rivetgoth]

A Plea for CGI

I feel like the last bastion of defense for CGI as an art form sometimes dude. CGI fascinates me so much. As a kid it felt so wondrous and unlike anything I’d ever seen. The dancing bear in Teletubbies was the first instance of CGI I ever remember seeing and it enamored me unlike anything else. It felt like genuine magic. I felt similarly about Tiny Planets, which genuinely felt like it transported me to an alien world. Later on as a kid I stumbled onto the Madagascar tech reel Easter egg on the DVD and it was the scariest thing I’d ever seen. It scared me so bad I couldn’t be in the same room and I was scared to turn off the television. I stayed in my bedroom until my dad got home because I knew he’d turn the TV off if he walked in and saw nobody watching it and I didn't want to be out there until I knew for sure the television was off and the reel wouldn't still be playing. I couldn’t sleep for days after seeing it and I was literally scared of DVD menus for fear of accidentally stumbling onto something like that again. Blooper reels for CG films absolutely terrified me, it was like genuinely nauseatingly scary. The “You’re not perfect” Courage the Cowardly Dog bit was similar.

I don’t think I’m an anomaly for finding these examples scary, a LOT of people did (the former one is full of commenters saying it scared them as a kid, the latter is literally meant to be scary). But the thing is with CGI, despite that it never stopped having this sort of wonder to me as well. When I was a kid CGI still felt uncommon enough that any time it was employed it felt really magical. It felt like I was seeing into a world that didn’t actually exist. I think its ability even in its earliest forms to be implemented into live action media, or its ability to have strange three dimensional properties when used in fully animated films, gave it this sense that it could be used to bring things to life in a way that couldn’t be done before. Like, I recognized even as a kid that the dancing bear didn’t look REAL. But it also looked three dimensional. It looked almost dreamlike to me.

I think the history of CGI as an art form is just so fascinating. I remember how fascinated I was reading about the CGI of the 80s and 90s, as it began to move beyond being an oddity that computer scientists could use to demonstrate tech and found some mainstream and wider spread usage. Tony De Peltrie (1985) was the first CGI human to express emotion and objectively he hasn’t aged well, he looks super creepy as does almost everything about his short film, but it fascinates me that he was so well received and touched people’s emotions in spite of that. The human ability to connect with something so alien in every way—stylistically, but even in terms of the art form being used, which was still absolutely brand new—is so interesting. The fact that the Canned Food International Council commissioned a commercial to be done fully in CGI in 1984 and it was referred to as so realistic you “couldn’t tell if it was animated or not” when nowadays it’s surpassed by PS1 video game graphics is so fascinating. The entire implication of that moment in the history of art, advertising, aesthetic. Maybe most fascinating to me is the short series Quarxs from the 90s utilizing CGI in one of the most bizarre ways I’ve ever seen to this day to bring to life cryptobiological organisms. Really insane looking stuff using really limited technology. The creator of Quarxs, Maurice Benayoun, writes theory on virtual reality, including some really interesting stuff about the human relationship to the material and virtual world that is most definitely reflected in Quarxs.

Nowadays I turn to Severed Heads as an example of one of the most fascinating recent uses of CGI to intentionally evoke the uncanniness of older CG and bring to life the music through a visual accompaniment. “Tiny Wounded Bird” (2016) is hard to watch even as an adult, it feels like in the best way it strikes so much uncanny fear that would've ruined my life as a child. It was the first time I saw someone fully, intentionally evoke those fears in art—I think it’s so fascinating the way CGI evokes the uncanny valley so easily for so many, and Tom Ellard was clearly aware of this. Tom Ellard, the artist behind Severed Heads, has worked on the cutting edge of technology to make unabashedly uncanny art in both visual and auditory forms since the 70s.

I see people suggest the uncanniness of CGI has to do with early or pre-textured CGI looking almost corpse-like, but I always felt like it was something else, it's not just CGI People Look Creepy. I think it’s just so, so, so foreign to the eyes. It exists in a three dimensional plane that should be similar to ours but isn’t quite ours. It can emulate the human body but also contort it in any way imaginable. The blooper reels I mentioned being scared of as a kid show these fully three dimensional beings with limbs elongated far past the physical possibility of a real body, eyes popping out of the head. Shadows having to be implemented manually, AI trying to figure out how physics work for thousands of particles of simulated hair. It's sterile and it's incomparable to really anything else. CGI is an entirely new artform, unique from any other that exists. It's literally creating a whole new plane of reality. I think it should lean into that more.

I think CGI as a tool is extremely oversaturated due to all sorts of issues within the entertainment industry around the desire to rush products, the lack of unionization and worker protection, corruption from the top down causing companies to rely on it heavily in the least imaginative and most predatory ways. But that’s not the fault of CGI as an art form, which is still only a couple of decades old—Again, Tony de Peltrie, first emotive CGI human, is only about 40 years old. The first television series less than that. The first movie only about 30. This is BRAND NEW technology. We are in the earliest of earliest stages of CGI experimentation. History will look back on CGI and not view 2024 as notably distant from Toy Story’s release in ‘95. I think it’s only in the past few years that we’ve seen mainstream film really try to use CGI for something genuinely brand new—Trolls in 2016 creating an entire world comprised of textures that wouldn’t exist in such a way in real life (like felt ground, cotton ball clouds, etc), Moana (also in 2016) using computer generated blacklight and neon for the Tamatoa sequence, Into the Spider-Verse in 2018 absolutely changing the game with its use of comic book stylization that looks nothing like anything that came before it, followed by Puss in Boots: The Last Wish in 2022 implementing something similar to evoke a storybook feeling and experimenting with intentional drops in frames per second (there’s a cool video about it here that covers some of this). But these new and inventive attempts at CG, all less than a decade old, would not exist without the decades leading up to it. Terminator 2 was an extremely significant breakthrough in animating liquid. Finding Nemo over a decade later was a huge technical breakthrough for animated underwater environments. 1991 to 2003, 12 years spent learning how to make a computer animate water, and Finding Nemo looks plenty dated now. The first realistic digital fire was shown off in my all time favorite animated short, Peedee Meets the Dragon, in 1989! Only 35 years ago animating fire was in and of itself a feat! Toy Story in 1995 famously used toys as protagonists because humans were still difficult to animate—Only 29 years ago HUMANS still couldn’t be consistently animated in CGI. The Incredibles would be THE FIRST ALL HUMAN CAST that Pixar would attempt, and that was in 2004, almost a DECADE later. All the weird uncanny experimental stuff are building blocks to something so much greater than we can even imagine. I really believe that.

So like, yeah, the homogeneity of CGI in the industry right now is frustrating. The industry-standard willingness to exploit digital artists for rushed, cheap, and unregulated third party work is disgusting and genuinely abhorrent. But man, I hate seeing CGI itself shit on in the same breaths that these criticisms are made. So much fundamental misunderstanding of what it is and what it can do as an art form and such a lack of genuine desire to see it continue to evolve and progress. To be blunt a decent amount of it is just straight up nostalgia, and often very rose tinted nostalgia. “Things from my childhood looked better.” Sometimes it’s genuinely being misinformed—Tons of movies that get heralded as being traditional animation or practical effects… still utilize some form of CGI. I also think there’s something to be said about the fact that I believe the current trend of using CGI for hyper realistic effects in big budget live action films is genuinely a misusage of the medium and a complete failure to actually utilize CGI in any meaningful way (looking at you, live action Disney remakes). I love practical effects and I love traditional animation, but I don’t see why they need to be at odds with CGI. The best and most visually striking movies with the greatest visuals tend to recognize that and utilize a blend of the strengths of more than one of these mediums—Though interestingly, Courage the Cowardly Dog remains one of the only examples I can think of that uses CGI as a form of mixed media INTENTIONALLY. As in, not to look hyper-realistic or to replace/accompany practical effect or traditional animation, but to squarely be intentionally meant to be read as CGI in order to evoke a specific tone, functionally using CGI as a punchline the same way one would use live action shots in a show like Spongebob. I'm sure others have done it, but it doesn't appear particularly common.

That’s my last note: I really want to see CGI utilized more with both its strengths and weaknesses taken into account. Back to “Tiny Wounded Bird,” which makes use of the way models of the human body can be reskinned and manipulated to the point of being unrecognizable, a succinct but evocative visual theme for a song about pride and suffering. But I want to talk about another older CGI short film that does something similar, Polly Gone from 1988.

Y’all, I’m literally switching from my phone to my computer to type this out because this matters a lot to me.

EVERYONE writes Polly Gone off as absurdism. That goofy "Early CGI Was Horrifying" video writes it off as "a shitpost," which half the damn commenters on the artist's upload are quoting, annoyingly. The VintageCG Youtube account cruelly calls it "The second worst computer animation ever produced." It finds its way onto r/OddlyTerrifying and similar subreddits not unoften. You guys. Polly Gone is directed by the artist Shelley Lake, who has made this statement about her work:

"The artwork that comes from the world inside is the culmination of my mind’s eye–a fantasy world where, through my imagination, anything is possible. I enthusiastically partner with intelligent machines and together we create an artificial reality. A simulated world of superheroes, erotic men and women, wireframe meshworks, anatomical investigations, cybernetic creatures, phantasmagoric depictions of impossible people, places and things. Although these artworks often resemble our photo-real existence, these creations are utterly unreal and sometimes uncanny." (X)

She KNOWS it's uncanny. She knows it's weird. And her work is, explicitly, intentionally, and, honestly, blatantly, engaging with the weirdness of this medium to deliver messages in ways surreal, fresh, bizarre, and off-putting. I don't know what exactly her intentions are behind Polly Gone, but I would very strongly make a case for it being about women's roles in society, or at least that being a perfectly viable interpretation, especially if you do a 5 second deep dive into her body of work exploring themes about female bodies, sexuality, kink, and queerness. Her synopsis on her own Youtube page for this short is: "A day in the life of a robot." Consider watching it through a feminist lens. Consider how uncanny and dehumanized this animation is of an expressionless, mechanical humanoid--in a dress, in lipstick, with breasts--that zooms around its futuristic house doing mundane chores. Consider the name being a feminized version of the word "polygone." Consider this oddly cool OddlyTerrifying comment:

They're joking, but they're not: This is a short film from the EIGHTIES, seven years before Toy Story would be the first full-length CGI film. Shelley Lake received both a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and a Master of Sciences degree in the 70s. This is artistic experimenting from someone with years of experience, this is making use of the strengths and unique facets of computer generated animation that cannot be replicated through any other means, and it is not purposeless nor does it deserve to be written off as "a shitpost." And it's not asking you to look past the CGI limitations, it is wholly embracing them.

I want to see more CGI play with this. I think it was a mistake to veer CGI in the direction of trying to disguise it as something that it is not. I think it can work as an accompaniment to other effects, sure, but I don't think its sole purpose should be photorealistic lions emoting less than their real world counterparts singing covers of Elton John songs. I wish CGI wasn't devalued and I wish people would engage with it as a unique art form of its own.

[oddygaul]

Double Feature #1: Gladiator II & All Of Us Strangers

Gladiator II

Look, I’mma be real, I went into this movie as pleb as possible. I’ve never seen Gladiator. I saw a cool trailer with landscape pans of sprawling, CGI-recreated Rome and the colosseum filled up with water and said “hell yeah”. I came here for spectacle, and spectacle alone.

So did it live up to that?

Ehhh.

Outside of the one in the trailer, we only get two or three more meaty wide shots of Rome; we spend most of our non-colosseum time in interiors or secluded courtyards. And the fights are, well, fine. The rhino gladiator was real badass, riding standing up with his saddle full of weapons and tricks, and the naumachia is indeed pretty sick, sharks and all*. That’s about all there is for spectacle, though, as the vast majority of Gladiator II is Roman political intrigue and exploration of characters, presumably from the first movie, that I didn’t give a shit about.

*Before seeing the movie, I joked with some friends that the best scene in the movie would be the one where Denzel steps into the colosseum’s underbelly and spends five full minutes explaining, in detail, the mechanisms and engineering behind filling the colosseum up with water. Not saying that should’ve happened but like… nahhh that would be sick it totally should have happened. We got a little behind the scenes action, though – I lost it at the night crew cleaning up the colosseum with their horse zambonis. 

And look, I’m sure it’s my fault, as an uninformed viewer, that I couldn’t bring myself to give a shit about the plot – but as a standalone, it’s a thematically incoherent story with leads that aren’t particularly interesting. Lucius, our MC, grows up hating the colonialist Roman empire and delivers an impressive TtDW* result before being captured by the Romans and thrust into slavery as a gladiator. From there, he rounds up a group of other slaves, whose families and friends were killed by Romans, and leads an uprising. When the time comes for his grand speech, he tells us that… the colonialist empire of Rome is Pretty Good, Actually, it just needs better leadership. What?

Seriously, the ‘antagonist’ of this movie is a former slave who recognizes that the Roman empire must fall and personally kills two tyrannical despot emperors in order to make it happen, and we’re supposed to be rooting for the divine-right-to-rule white boy who just wants to Make Rome Great Again?

*Time to Dead Wife

Anyway, here’s the original pitch for Gladiator II by Nick Cave:

We were robbed.

All of Us Strangers

Well, that was very sweet.

I watched this the same day as Gladiator II by complete coincidence, not knowing Paul Mescal was also in it, so that was a fun surprise.

I grabbed this movie after loving Andrew Scott in Sherlock and wanting to see more of him, and he was wonderful here. In particular, I loved his performance as he catches his parents up on his life and ultimately comes out to them. He strikes a really unique tone; he’s opening himself up and being vulnerable, but he’s still firm and confident about who he is. He wants to share his life with them and see what they think, but not for affirmation – so that he can understand how their parenting made him the person he is today. Scott portrays this mix of patience and bravery in a very subtle way that communicates a lot about the character without stating it outright; it’s great.

Given that the premise of the movie is ‘man talks to his dead parents again’, I wasn’t as devastated as I expected to be. The scene where he tells his parents about all the things he imagined doing with them after their death, all the things he wished they’d had time to do together as a family, though? That one got me.

[anthonypanics]

An open letter to the Robot Chicken crew about the Ice Age movies.

TL;DR: I want the robot chicken crew to show Sid the Sloth from the Ice Age movies to blow a dude. Hello. I want to talk about Ice Age, both the 2002 Blue Skies Movie and the franchise that is still ongoing. Before I do so, I recognize that Sony, and by extensions HBO, Adult Swim, and all the shows and production companies that go with them, have no relation to the movie franchise originally produced by 20th Century Fox Studios and its current parent company Disney. I also recognize that for legal reasons, the propositions I am about to make may not be considered at all even if the Ice Age franchise wasn't caught up in the modern movie monopoly mess (try saying that 5 times fast!). Nevertheless, the proposition I make to the robot chicken crew, whether it includes Seth Green and Matthew Senreich themselves or any member of the production teams, must be stated as what I am about to say cannot and will not be performed by the people who create these movies, for reasons I will later elaborate. To be clear, I do not seek any credit or compensation for these proposals. I do not care if these actually get uses. I do not ask for residuals, I do not wish my name mentioned in the credits of any episodes. I do not wish to be @ed in any social media sites. At best, I expect only a well written rejection letter and at worst a widespread ban from contacting any email addresses or social media platforms under anyone from the Robot Chicken Crew to even everyone working under Sony. Beginning with some context, I consider myself a bit of an outcast. I've never been "hip with it" both as a child and now as an aging husk of a human being reaching 26 years. When it comes to memes, I'm usually falling behind, only getting into the joke long after it becomes, what I believe the kids call "cringe as hell". Normally, I'm okay with this, but two particular memes from the past couple of years caught me off guard. The first is the Ice Age baby. Dispute watching the 2002 movie around the time it came out, i could not for the life of me even remember that baby even being in the movie. For very sad reasons I won't elaborate on, I recall watching Ice Age 2: The Meltdown far more times as a child than the original CGI animated film by Blue Skies. But so what? It's a weird looking baby from a 20 year old movie that I haven't seen in a while. No big deal, right? That's certainly what I thought. But eventually, I hear a relatively popular song used in some Tic Tok videos (I don't use Tic Tok, myself. Again, outsider). It was kinda funny, but it just sounded familiar... I couldn't put my finger on it. "Did I hear it from an animated movie? Was it Brother Bear?" I thought. I tried looking up "On My Way", but it was by Phil Collins, it wasn't the song. Then I see "Send me on my way" by Rusted Root. And there it was! I tell my girlfriend about how I had some trouble finding the song, and she says something that absolutely shattered my mind. "Oh yeah! The song from Ice Age!" These words drove me down a path of madness. I was compelled to watch a movie that I haven't seen in years, not for nostalgia, not for fun, but to avoid another amnesiac gut punch in the off chance another Ice Age meme shows up on my timeline! So okay, I started binging on some mediocre movies. Why am I bothering the Robot Chicken crew about this? Simply put, there are two issues I've noticed that the Ice Age franchise suffers from that I don't think the makers of the movies are brave enough to do. The Series needs an Aggressively Gay Scene! After the first movie, there's a trend that occurs where each of the male leads, hell each of the male characters in the movie series, gets a carbon copy female counterpart. Like Adam, each of these poor souls have a rib removed from their bodies so that a horrible simulacrum can be produced for the purpose of a heterosexual romantic plot. The only way the series could be redeemed somehow is by having a romantic story between two characters of the same sex ending up together, perhaps an enemies to lovers plot since people eat that shit up. But I think we all know that won't happen under Disney, at least not as a feature length plot. That's where I think you, the Robot Chicken crew, with your raunchy and deprived humor can come in. What I'm proposing to you is what I believe can get rid of this horrid taste of heterosexuality that's been in everyone's mouths from watching this movie, and that is to have Sid the Sloth approach a random male sloth, pull down his pants and suck him off dry for 2 whole minutes without any prior context. And when he's done playing the sloth skin flute he returns to Manny the Mammoth and Diego the Tiger, saying "Just needed to get that out of my system, let's go" and with no other word, they continue their journey with 2 seconds of "Send Me On My Way" playing in the background before transitioning to the next sketch. Without the dedication to write a full romance plot line, I believe the only other way to get this heterosexual taste out of everyone's mouth is to watch Sid the Sloth wash his with sloth sausage. And I think the only people who can pull off this stunt is the people who made a sketch of Buzz Lightyear getting lobotomized so he could be used as a bong. If you've made it this far, Thank you. You could have stopped after seeing how long this was, and you could have just close the tab after seeing the phrase "sloth skin flute". But the fact that you stuck it through this far deserves more than what my gratitude can offer. I don't expect Seth Green, or Matthew Senreich, or anybody really to make this wild request a reality. But if you made it this far at least, I just want to thank you so much in indulging me. If by any chance anyone from the Robot Chicken crew sees this, I expect either my rejection letter or possibly a cease and desist from either them or more likely from Disney. Either way, I'm happy to just get this off my chest. I appreciate your time. Sincerely and possibly crying for help, Anthony

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: Hancock

For some reason, I’ve been thinking about Will Smith a lot lately. I dunno why; it’s almost like he did something pretty awesome recently, but it slips my mind as to what it could be. In times like these, it’s always good to watch a movie to refresh your memory! And what better movie than Hancock, a movie where Will Smith plays a well-meaning asshole who loves violence and fucks up his public image so badly he needs Nick from Zootopia to be his new PR man? Just a nice film that definitely doesn’t reflect anything in real life!

Joking aside, I finally decided to check Hancock out; I always felt like this was a movie that really flew under the radar, with it dropping and then just vanishing from the collective consciousness. Sure, the titular character made it onto an EW list of the top 100 characters of the past 25 years, and the whale tossing scene I’d seen mocked a few times for its blatant and shoddy CGI, but this movie kind of just…vanished. It came and it went, and you don’t really see it talked about.

And I can half see why… But I also half think this is a very underrated film.

The very best part of the film is the titular character. Hancock is a pretty atypical role for Will Smith these days; he’s cultivated an image as a sort of a charismatic, charming leading man that it can be weird to see him playing someone who’s very much an anti-hero, slob, and an asshole. Still, Smith ahs done characters like this before and since, but I think Hancock might be one of his best. EW was correct to call him a great character, because he’s just fun to watch whether he’s fucking up or genuinely being a hero. If only the story had been more consistent so that it could give Hancock the chance to truly shine instead of bogging him down with incredibly dense lore.  

So the big thing with Hancock is that it is very much a From Dusk til Dawn situation here. For those not in the know, From Dusk til Dawn is a film directed by Robert Rodriguez (the visionary genius behind such classics as Desperado, Machete, and the Spy Kids franchise. Also Sharkboy & Lavagirl) that starts out as your average crime thriller about two violent criminal brothers hijacking a family’s vacation and using them to cross the border into Mexico and escape with their riches. For the first half of the film, it plays out like you’d expect… then they go to a titty bar, Salma Hayek sticks her foot in Quentin Tarantino’s mouth (did I mention he wrote this film? You can tell), and suddenly the club is full of bloodthirsty vampires and we’re in an entirely different film. It’s very jarring, sure, and it’s kind of insane, but Rodriguez manages to make it work because he is insane, as anyone who has seen Spy Kids 3D can attest.

Hancock also has two distinct halves, with a jarring shift right in the middle… but it’s not quite as graceful. The first half of the film is basically what the film was advertised as: a goofy deconstructive parody of superheroes. Hancock is a drunken asshole, and he causes a lot of property damage whenever he gets off his ass to fight crime, so we get quite a lot of hinjinks in this stretch of the movie. We have a bad CGI whale getting tossed into the ocean, we have a child being launched into the stratosphere at the speed of sound, we have a dude getting his head shoved up another guy’s ass… and all of this comes with some realistic consequences for Hancock. We see the public hating him for injuring and inconveniencing them, we see a warrant issued for his arrest, we see him go to jail, and we see Jason Bateman constantly working to rehabilitate Hancock’s image. This is easily the better half of the film, as it’s fun, funny, and still manages to work in a few emotional moments here and there.

But then, halfway through, Charlize Theron steps out of her car in heels, and the movie shifts gears from a goofy superhero action comedy into a lore-heavy superhero drama. We get some massive infodumps, we get heavier emotions, and laughs all but vanish as things become deathly serious from here until the end. And none of this is bad, really; I’m writing my own lore-heavy fantasy story, so this sort of thing is my jam. The issue is that the shift from one half of the movie to the next is so sudden and jarring, and it just absolutely not gel together well at all. From Dusk til Dawn was able to gracefully pull off welding what felt like two different films together into something entertaining, while this feels like if halfway through Guardians of the Galaxy it suddenly became Eternals with no warning.

And the thing is, both halves are actually great on their own. The first half is some of the most enjoyable superhero action-comedy you’ll see, and the second half is some truly compelling drama. The issue is these things just collide haphazardly, and don’t come together in a way that enhances the film. Think of it like peanut butter and ranch dressing. Peanut butter is great on its own, provided you don’t have allergies, and ranch is great on its own provided you’re not lactose intolerant. They are delicious condiments that truly enhance certain meals. But if you put peanut butter and ranch together, well, you’re gonna have a bad time unless you’re a dog or have no sensation in your taste buds. An escaping criminal movie suddenly becoming survival horror works, because it’s like combining chocolate and peanut butter, two distinct things that can pair well; having a wacky action-comedy suddenly shift gears into a heavy superhero drama, well… peanut butter and ranch.

Tonal problems aside, there’s a couple of other things that are kinda dumb, mainly with how despite everyone being aware of Hancock and his power level criminals keep acting suicidally overconfident whenever he’s around. The chief example of this is the finale, where the ridiculous villain who earlier was just a goofy showcase of Hancock redeeming himself in the eyes of the public haphazardly retconned into being the fucking Hannibal Lecter of bank robbers decides to attack the titular hero with the help of two goons. There’s some plot stuff hindering Hancock at the time, but for fuck’s sake, one of these goons had his head shoved up the other’s ass already, you’d think maybe they’d do everything in their power to steer clear of Hancock.

Still, problems aside, I think this film is a pretty sorely underrated film, but it’s also one that I can see why it’s underrated. What we have here is two halves of two truly great films that come together to make a pretty good movie, but it just can never rise above that because of how uncomfortably jarring the tone shift is. If the film had just stuck to its guns one way or the other instead of trying to hopscotch between ideas for two radically different movies, I think it would have been a lot better. As it is, it’s a pretty enjoyable movie for the most part. If you want to see Will Smith slap around a bunch of pathetic assholes and you’re tired of rewatching him smacking unfunny comedians at the Oscars, this is a decent way to spend an hour and forty minutes. It’s probably not going to change your life or anything, but it’s a solid Will Smith vehicle if nothing else.

[nhkamira]

MY ANIME WATCHLIST FOR WINTER 2021☃️❄️✨

Finally got some time to do this. Winter is here and we got a marvelous season ahead! Here is my watchlist for this season + the ongoing series i’ll be watching. I already watch every episode that came out, but I’ll do a proper first impression in different posts.

Horimiya (堀さんと宮村くん) I can’t believe this one is finally getting an adaption TT. Yes I’m part of the manga readers group, and I’m really really excited! CloverWorks is in charge and so far they have shown an amazing work! just look at that poster. Genres: Slice of Life, Comedy, Romance.

Dr.Stone: Stone Wars (ドクターストーン ) If you haven’t seen season 1, go and do yourself a favor. Been waiting for this so bad, season two is finally here, and hopefully is going to be even better than season 1. As a women of science this story really gets me excited. TMS Entertainment is working again with this series so im expecting the same amazing job. Genres: Sci-Fi, Adventure, Shounen.

Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki (弱キャラ友崎くん) This one looks interesting in a weird way, i was really excited that this season got more than one romance anime, so im looking forward to this one. Project No.9 is the studio in charge, their anime has never been that iconic or memorable, hopefully this is a different situation. Genres: Drama, Romance, School

Kemono Jihen (怪物事変) Honestly i saw the poster and thought “this probably going to be a really good but underrated one”, the sypnosis catch me right away and im really curious about the mc. the studio working on this is Ajia-Do, they brought us the marvelous Kakushigoto last year so i have high expectations. Genres: Action, Mystery, Demons.

The Seven Deadly Sins: Dragon’s Judgement (七つの大罪 憤怒の審判) I love Nanatsu so bad, i hated the way they animated last season. Studio Deen normally does a great work but damn, las season was awful. I REALLY hope they do the proper work this anime deserves. This arc is so amazing to be ruined like the previous one.

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation (無職転生 ～異世界行ったら本気だす～) As one may say, there isn’t a good season without the typical Isekai story. But this one seems to be like everything good from an average Iskeai. The trailer gave me the thoughts that this probably would be the surprise of the season + the studio working on this one is Studio Bind which is apparently new since i couldn’t find any previous work. Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Magic.

Wonder Egg Priority (ワンダーエッグ・プライオリティ) Oh this one looks so beautiful. CloverWorks did such an amazing work with the design an animation. It looks like a movie. Sypnosis didn’t makes sense and was kind of confusing but I got excited and i can’t wait to see more. Genres: Psychological, Drama, Fantasy.

Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World Season 2 Part 2 (Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活) Man, I love Subaru so much, Re is amazing everyone should watch it. Its seems this part is really important for Subaru’s development, and it would probably get really fucked up as always. WhiteFox keeps working on this amazing story. I can’t wait to see everything that’s going to happen, because last season was really good but so crazy and hard. Genres: Psychological, Thriller, Drama, Fantasy.

BEASTARS 2期 This series is back and I’m dying of excitement, i really don’t know whats going to happen, and what new challenges Legoshi would have to confront but everything tells me is going to be amazing + Orange is bringing again the best CGI work on an anime ever. If you haven’t watch season 2 go and do it you won’t regret it! Genres: Slice of Life, Psychological, Drama

The Promised Neverland Season (約束のネバーランド) I’m really dying of excitement this season. FINALLY Yakusoku is back and with nothing more that worries and uncertainty for me. My kids are back and out of the farm and I’m really nervous to see whats going to happen next. Genres: Mystery, Fantasy, Psychological, Thriller.

Ongoing series from last season I’ll be continuing watching:

Jujutsu Kaisen Next arc is reallyyyyyy good.

Shingeki no Kyojin My slowly death till the end, manga ending got a date now and I really don’t know how this is going to end.

Digimon Adventure 2020 nostalgic and all time favorite.

Black Clover This arc looks insane and animation looks so good in that latest episodes, please keep it like that TT

One Piece I still need to catch up but always one of the best things to watch.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, I’ve always love this series, though i still prefer the old animation, I loved this remake, everything is making more sense now (maybe because I’m older🤣) and explanations feels less confunsing + horror is amazing.

[late-to-the-party-81]

Bucky Barnes Appreciation Week - Day 7

AN: Here we are - at the end of BB Appreciation Week 2022. Thanks to all those who have read, liked and re-blogged my little imagines - I love you all.

I've got more in store for Bucky and Sam (someone sent a bit of a spicy ask, which I'm hoping to get to soon!)

Big round of applause to the ever wonderful @firefly-graphics for her superb dividers.

Check out my master list if you are feeling so inclined.

Pairing: Luke x Lando Bucky x Sam

Word Count: Approx 640

CW: Tooth-rotting fluff, Nerdiness, Fangirling

Bucky was in heaven. Like literally, Bucky thought he was in heaven.

Back in the 30’s Bucky had been an avid reader, enjoying Tolkien, Huxley and Rand, any books where the world wasn’t portrayed as it was, whether that be fantasy or a bleak dystopian future. Since coming out from under HYDRA’s control, part of his recovery had been to catch up on pop-culture and he had fully embraced the fact he was a nerd and therefore ‘Nerd Culture’- grabbed it in both fists and refused to let go. Which is why he was here, now, basking in freedom to let his nerd flag fly.

Sam shuffled beside him, tugging at the collar of his cloak.

“Are you sure I look okay, Buck. I feel a bit self-conscious.”

Bucky snorted in amusement.

“You fly through the sky in a state of the art red, white and blue suit with a massive pair of wings and chew out politicians on live TV, but this,” he gestured up and down his boyfriend’s body at the costume he was wearing, “is what makes you self-conscious? Doll, you look gorgeous. Sexiest Lando Calrissian I ever saw, and there are a few here…..and Billy Dee Williams is going to ‘freak’ when he sees you.”

“He’s here!” Sam’s voice came out in a squeak, his eyes widening in abject terror and embarrassment.

“Yeah, babe, I’ve booked for us to do a meet, greet and photo with him.”

“Gone the whole hog, huh?”

“Yup! Shame that Mark Hamill isn’t at this one, but it’s not one of the big ones. I wonder what he’d think of my outfit?”

Bucky plucked some non-existent lint off of his boiler suit and adjusted the skin colour glove over his prosthetic. Sam had told him he didn’t need to do that, until Bucky had turned to him eyebrow raised and started to lecture him that his outfit was from before when Luke loses a hand and Luke lost his right hand not his left, and he didn’t want glaring inaccuracies in his outfit. Sam knew when he was beat.

“Bucky-Bear, you make the best Luke Skywalker, I swear. I reckon with all these new shows, if they need someone to play Luke they’d be better calling you up than relying on CGI – that shit always looks far too ‘uncanny valley’ for my liking. We can take a photo later though and tweet it to him, how about that?”

Bucky leant over and rubbed his nose against Sam’s.

“You have the best ideas Sammy… oh look – there’s the life size Jabba replica, let’s go and get a picture, then there are a few merch stalls I want to check out. Also got to get my picture taken with as many Yoda’s as possible…”

Bucky practically skipped off, as excited as a child, and Sam couldn’t contain his grin as he followed along in his wake. All the ‘Leia’s’, ‘Vaders’ and even some ‘Hans’ all wanted pictures with his dashing boyfriend, who was sporting a blonde wig with his costume and looking very un-Bucky like. But that wasn’t the only un-Bucky like thing about him today.

Sam had seen Bucky happy before, but never this carefree and, well, childlike and it was fucking endearing. Bucky was indulging himself in a way that hadn’t been available to him in his younger years. Preparing for this event had definitely kept him busy and he hadn’t had a nightmare in two weeks. Obviously getting involved in a hobby wasn’t going to be an instant and permanent fix; trauma recovery didn’t work like that, but Sam was proud of his nerdy boyfriend, recovering in his own way and allowing himself just to be.

Today Bucky wasn’t the Winter Soldier, the White Wolf or even Sargent Barnes.

Today he was James Buchanan Barnes: Nerd.

The man who Sam loved.

Tag List: @christywantspizza @jobean12-blog @tinnedowl @bucky-bucky-bucky-bucky @tuiccim @beelicious-barnes @yarnforbrains @sidepartskinnyjeans @maladaptivexxdaydreaming @krissy25 @bodeckersdiamonddoll @turbolisedcomet @goldylions @buckybarnesweek2022

[lonslibrary]

things the netflix shadow and bone got right and wrong—my reaction to the show (🚨 contains spoilers, pls read at your own risk!!)

- to start on a positive note! the shadow and bone characters: i, like many others, didn’t care too much for shadow and bone with the exception of nikolai and am also half convinced a different person wrote soc judging by how little i enjoyed reading s&b compared to soc and crooked kingdom. however, i thought the show was enjoyable and got the characters spot on. alina was more likable, mal was not bland/douchey at all, and i thought ben barnes as the darkling hit every right note.

- highlights included genya and david; though they didn’t have too much screen time, genya was stunning and david was almost exactly how i imagined him when reading the books. i’ve grown attached to them, and yes, i’m pretending row chapter 20 doesn’t exist :-)

- cgi and costuming was also super impressive. loved the keftas, loved the crows’ outfits, and the stag, the fold, and all the grisha powers were really, really good.

- moving on to the crows, i will say i thought casting was some of the best i’ve ever seen throughout all ya adaptations, although i know there are some things that could have been improved, including the fact that danielle galligan, who plays nina, isn’t plus size (no hate to the actress, pls). however, all the reviews i read praised kit young and i could see very obviously why. his jesper was spot on—exactly as i had imagined in the books. i’m willing to bet kruge on the fact that he falls within everyone’s top 5 characters. loved his character in the books, and kit was perfect for him.

- amita was also a stunning inej. her knife/acrobatic skills were all there like i imagined and i thought she portrayed the character very well on screen. i was so invested in her menagerie backstory when reading so i was happy to see some of that get into the show as well.

- ok, now my thing about kaz: freddy carter’s performance was perfectly good! i had no issues with his acting, but i think the show, meaning the producers/writers, haven’t fully understood kaz. don’t get me wrong, the introductory scene with all the crows in ep 1 was fabulous. jesper shooting the coin, kaz’s cane being on screen first, inej’s silent appearance. i really enjoyed the grittiness of kaz, the way his bare hands weren’t shown once, his hair, his cane, how he sweat, etc. however, i thought they overdid it with the pekka rollins backstory, which i think could have been saved for later seasons, and i wanted non-readers to be introduced to a more brutal, calculating, brooding, and genius kaz. i know he isn’t like that all times, but i felt like he was kind of on the defensive(?) very often, raised his voice when it wasn’t needed, etc. i wanted more of his smart, scheming moments like when he double crosses the conductor. not sure how to explain it, but his character felt a bit off at times. maybe i’ve read the books too many times to the point where i’ve kinda made him in my head very specifically.

- nina and matthias: loved danielle and calahan’s performance, i know some disagree but i think the actors were also pretty spot on to how i imagined in the books. their lines most alike to the books as well so i loved hearing the quotes. i did feel that their relationship moved too quickly, though. i definitely feel like matthias would have taken up a bit more time than that to warm up and i know how it goes in the books, but on screen it felt really sped up to the point where i was like already?? i feel like with how much they put into the very little screen time they had, this could’ve been saved for flashbacks in season 2.

- the combination of the two series did worry me but it was pretty smooth! i liked where the crows went, how they kinda came together in the end, but i’m also glad that they’re separating after all. i’m so invested in seeing the soc and crooked kingdom storyline come to life exactly how it is in the books so i don’t want any more interference lol. i am worried about how the timeline is gonna work in season 2 because obviously the civil war has not ended, but i really liked how the last episode set us up for season 2. (also a random note, but the show was very dark lol i had my brightness up all the way the entire time)

- HIGHLIGHTS: milo the goat (mvp of the show), jesper tumbling the stable boy, all of jesper’s lines, really, the darkling’s office/room setting, genya and david’s one (1) singular scene together, the darkling’s kefta, the child actors portraying alina and mal, the way the stag’s bones connected alina to the darkling (super grotesque, but a good portrayal of her becoming his prisoner), the CUT omg, that one scene when jesper pretends he didn’t shoot on dime lions territory, the scene where the fjerdans attack alina in the forest, kaz avoiding the cut, kaz saving jesper from the cut, inej’s knife battle with the heartrender, kaz stepping in front of inej to face the volcra, FEDYOR AND IVAN omg, kaz’s “jes?”, queen baghra, the darkling coming out of the fold at the end with his monsters that are impossible to spell, and more i can’t remember after binging the show until 3AM.

- in conclusion, it lived up the excitement for sure, and i’m ready for season 2!! especially with the way the last episode ended. i’m very eager to see my faves, nikolai and wylan, and cannot wait to watch where the grishaverse takes us next.

do you agree or disagree with my thoughts? i want to hear everyone’s opinions!! feel free to drop comments below :))

[lexosaurus]

Tutoring Phantom Ch 1

Characters: Danny, Dash, Kwan Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Friendship Word Count: 4036 Summary: It was funny. A year ago Dash was all but praying for Fenton to shut up, but now he would do anything to hear him speak.

This is my very belated gift for @kinglazrus! It has ended up becoming a twoshot. Here’s chapter one!

Read on: [ao3] [ffn]

---

The revelation shook Amity Park to its core.

Fenton? Really? That Fenton? 

The scrawny one? 

The kid of those nut-job parents?

The one that got picked on?

I heard he’s a loner. Super quiet. 

It was always the quiet ones…

Isn’t he failing school? Maybe that’s why. Maybe it’s because he’s a ghost. Aren’t ghosts less intelligent than humans?

Teresa told me he ditches class all the time. Probably because of his Obsession.

That’s so creepy.

Fenton was...Phantom. Danny was Phantom. It was simply indisputable. Of course some conspiracy theorists were probably screaming about photoshop and CGI, but when Dash saw the transformation happen on television, there was no other way he could make sense of it.

Fenton was Phantom. 

The Guys in White had figured it out, evidently. According to their spokesperson, they had been analyzing Phantom’s ectoplasm samples left from a ghost fight when they found human DNA infused into the ectoplasm. Scans showed that it belonged to Danny Fenton.

When the GiW collected more samples from various ghost fights, all the results were the same. 

Fenton was Phantom.

So they developed a gun. And when Phantom was distracted with a ghost fight they denied planting (but they must have, there was no possible way they could have captured him otherwise), they hit him with it.

And he transformed right there in front of everyone. 

Fenton was Phantom.

And Dash had spent years ruining his life.

Dash collapsed on his couch, his glassy eyes fixated on the still image of Fenton’s horrified face. His hair was wild, his eyes even more so. In the background, he was surrounded by men in white suits, all armed to the teeth with guns. Above him, helicopters soared. 

Fenton was trapped.

There was no way out of it.

Dash had spent the better part of his life bullying the boy who would become his hero, and now he would never be able to apologize.

---

Well, maybe Dash spoke too soon.

By some miracle, Fenton was released from the government’s clutches. 

Eventually. 

Dash didn’t understand the science behind it, but apparently Fenton wasn’t dead. He was...almost dead? But not quite. He was just alive enough to have a pulse, just alive enough to have a heartbeat, just alive enough to be considered human in the eyes of the law.

Dash didn’t want to acknowledge just how relieved he was at this revelation. And if he were a good person, his relief would have come from the part where that meant his classmate was actually alive.

But he wasn’t a good person. What good person spends their downtime picking on the weak kids at school? What good person takes out their aggression on those who don’t fight back?

Dash wasn’t kind, he wasn’t nice, he wasn’t selfless. And that’s why he was relieved.

Because all of his relief came from the fact that if Fenton was alive, then Dash didn’t have to live with the guilt that he’d tormented a dead person. He didn’t have to lie awake at night wondering if he was the one to push Fenton past his breaking point, if he were responsible for Fenton’s death.

Because Fenton wasn’t dead. So what if he was almost dead? So what if he probably did die—if only for a moment—before his body was kickstarted back to life? Fenton wasn’t dead, so Dash didn’t have to think about it.

Dash could get away with it all scot free.

Just like always.

---

Fenton was allowed to come to school.

If Dash were honest, he was surprised by this. He didn’t think the PTA would have caved to the students, who had demanded that Fenton be allowed to return to school. But apparently they relented.

Under certain conditions.

Conditions which the government was more than happy to collaborate with.

It was Fenton’s first day back, and yet he didn’t look all there. He was pale, sickly, his hair too long and voice nonexistent.

But his eyes, those scared Dash the most.

His eyes were dead. 

It was as if someone had taken all the light that was Danny and replaced it with a puppet. There was nothing in there. Nothing inside of his skin. It was...dead.

What did they do to him?

The teachers didn’t try to make him engage with their lessons. They only looked at Danny with pity in their eyes when they would walk by. And Danny wouldn’t acknowledge them because he was just empty. 

Dash wanted to approach him. Talk to him. He had a whole speech prepared, and he knew Kwan did too. But the speech had all but died on his lips when he saw Fenton that morning. He knew—he knew—that nothing was going to get through to him.

Fenton was Phantom, but Fenton wasn’t even there.

And in his place was nothing but bones wrapped in skin held together by metal contraptions on his wrists, ankles, and neck.

Dash shivered. The one on his neck was blinking. It was a warning, Dash realized. A warning that Danny was dangerous. He was inhuman. He was Phantom. 

The students avoided him. Even the ones who had advocated for his safe return. Dash didn’t blame them, either. No one could have predicted that this would be coming back to their class.

Even so, Manson and Foley stuck by him. Dash watched them guide him to each class, carrying his books and trying their best to include him in the conversation. Sometimes he would even lock eyes with them, sometimes his lips would twitch upward and his eyes would brighten as if he were following along with Manson and Foley’s antics. 

Those moments were rare though. Fleeting.

Because in the end, the modicum of emotion would always vaporize from Fenton’s face and they’d be left with the blank, faraway glazed expression that he always seemed to wear now. The duo would be left talking between themselves, and Dash was left looking at them from the sidelines waiting for Fenton to open his mouth and just respond.

Gone were the days of the snarky comments and muttered undertones. Gone were Fenton’s stupid comments that Dash spent years beating him up over. 

It was funny. A year ago Dash was all but praying for Fenton to shut up, but now he would do anything to hear him speak.

No one knew what happened to Fenton during his stay with the government. No one knew what they did to him. Because, as far as Dash knew, Fenton hadn’t said a word since he returned home. Dash wasn’t sure if it was because Danny couldn’t respond, or if he just wouldn’t. 

He didn’t know which one was worse.

---

It had been one month since Fenton returned to school. Anyone with a pair of eyes could see that he wasn’t doing well.

He drifted from class to class like he was in a dream, often not even bothering to put his notebook on his desk as he sat in each class staring at the wall with the same dead expression.

Fenton didn’t take his tests or quizzes with the class anymore. He was in the same math class as Dash and only lasted one exam before Mr. Falluca started proctoring his exams separately. Rumor had it they were trying to get him extra help, but the PTA didn’t want him integrated with Casper High’s most vulnerable students.

Dash thought that was a load of crap, personally. Dash had a few teammates who got extra help from the school’s learning center and they could handle themselves just fine.

Regardless, at this rate, Fenton was going to fail out of school.

Which was why it was of no surprise to Dash when he and Kwan were called down to Mr. Lancer’s office one day with a request to tutor Fenton.

“I know this is a lot of responsibility, and I know you haven’t always seen ways with Mr. Fenton in the past,” Mr. Lancer said, his fingers steepled in front of his chin. “But I can’t ask just anyone to do this. You two are leaders in your class, and you have some high marks to boot. Mr. Lee, you have consistently scored in the top ten percent of the class in your English and history courses, and Mr. Baxter, this past year you’ve done remarkably well in your math course.”

Dash had been regarded as many different things. Athletic, social, hotheaded, cocky, brave—but never smart. He was always known as the high school jock stereotype, he never did well in school.

But Mr. Lancer always knew he was more than just a stereotype, and when he called Dash and his parents after school one day with the recommendation that Dash get tested for ADD, suddenly everything clicked. 

It was amazing how a small pill each morning could turn Dash from a C student to a rising A student in the matter of a few months.

“And because I know how much I’m asking of you two, I have spoken to your teachers and they are willing to give you extra credit on your final exams as compensation.”

Dash cleared his throat. “Mr, Lancer,” he started, his voice scratchy. “With all due respect, why have us tutor him? Why not have the teachers do it?”

“I have been working with Mr. Fenton, and I’ll continue to through the school year. But he needs that peer to peer connection, he needs the support of those around him. I’m sure you’ve noticed the shift in your class, the growing uneasiness of those around you?”

Dash nodded. He would have had to have been blind to not see how everyone seemed to skirt around Fenton in the hallways, how nobody except Manson and Foley said so much as a “hello” to him.

“I understand,” said Dash. 

“The...ghost inhibitor thing isn’t helping, either,” Kwan added. “I’ve never seen that kind of technology used on any ghost. And you have to admit, Danny’s been acting really strange lately. Like he’s not even here. Mr. Lancer, if you don’t mind me asking, is it...are they…?”

The unsaid question hung in the air, and Mr. Lancer’s eyes darkened. “There’s only so much I’m allowed to say on this matter. But I would say your suspicions about the devices are likely to be true. Although, it’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly how much they’re affecting Mr. Fenton. He’s been through a lot.”

Dash felt lightheaded. So the rumors about the devices were true. At least, somewhat true.

If there was one thing both Fenton and Phantom were, it was resilient. Sure, the Guys in White could knock him down, but to change him this much? To give him so much baggage he couldn’t even speak?

It screamed foul play.

“That’s terrible,” Kwan said. “It’s sick knowing that they’d do that to him.”

“Indeed. Which is why I’m asking you both to step up as leaders of your class and help your fellow peer through this difficult time. If we can help Mr. Fenton become more integrated with his classmates, we may have a case to allow him to remove the inhibitors and get him real help.”

Dash could feel Kwan’s eyes on him, and he knew why. Dash and Fenton had history, and that made this complicated. There was so much unfinished business between the two. 

Was Dash ready to take this step? Was he really ready to be the selfless, altruistic hero like Phantom instead of the bully he had always been?

“Again, I know the school is asking so much of you both, and I am willing to personally help if need be. If, for whatever reason, you feel as though you can’t do it, there will be no judgement from me or any of your other teachers. This is entirely up to you.”

If Dash said no, Kwan would follow. If Dash wasn’t ready, Kwan wouldn’t force him into that position. It was exactly why Dash and Kwan were such good friends: Dash got his way, and he always knew Kwan would have his back.

But that wasn’t healthy. And it didn’t lead to good outcomes in the long term.

Now was the time for Dash to take that step. 

He needed to be the leader instead of the coward he always was.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

---

If Fenton was confused as to why his two former childhood bullies were now his after school homework buddies all of the sudden, he didn’t say it.

In fact, he didn’t say anything at all.

But Dash knew this would happen going into it. He knew it would be difficult to tell if Fenton’s head was in the clouds or if he was truly in the present. And he knew Fenton would just go along with whatever they threw at him anyway.

Because he was Fenton. He could never let Dash have the last metaphorical word, even if he was being suppressed by the physical manifestation of the United States government on his wrist, ankles, and neck.

He was annoying like that.

“See, this is what goes into the equation. F of x has its own definition, and g of x has its own definition. So in this problem we’re just replacing f of x and g of x with what’s written here. You see?” Dash asked, circling the functions and drawing arrows with his multicolored pens.

Fenton just stared down at his paper.

“Here, we can do it together,” Dash said. He took Fenton’s paper and wrote out the equation, going through the problem step by step with his neatest handwriting. Following Kwan’s lead from earlier, he talked through every minute detail about the equation, pausing in between lines to allow the information to sink in, and to give Fenton the opportunity to interrupt if he was lost.

Even though it was obvious that Fenton wasn’t going to interrupt.

And he didn’t. He sat there, staring dully at the paper like he was watching cement dry. And at the end, once Dash put his pencil down, Fenton just ran his finger across the problem, his brow furrowed like he couldn’t figure out how Dash’s writing had ended up on his paper.

And maybe he truly couldn’t figure it out. Maybe he didn’t understand what was happening. Maybe he had no idea that Dash was tutoring him.

Dash wasn’t a mind reader. He didn’t know what was going on in Fenton’s head.

“That makes sense, Dash!” Kwan supplied from across them, his voice bright and cheery. 

Even though they were technically just tutoring Fenton, framing the group as a small, informal study group seemed more appropriate in Dash’s eyes. 

“I think I understand this a little better now. What do you think, Danny?”

Fenton blinked slowly, his head raising to face Kwan.

“Do you think you get the first problem?” Dash asked.

Fenton’s gaze flickered over to Dash, and the confused expression on his face deepened. He cocked his head slightly, as if he was just seeing Dash for the first time.

A beat of silence stretched around the table, and Dash held his breath, waiting for something to happen. But after a moment too long, Fenton just turned his attention back to the paper, staring at it motionless.

Dash couldn’t help but send a quick ‘help’ glance over at Kwan. He had never tutored anyone in his life, much less a teen who was seemingly incapable of responding. 

Maybe...maybe this was a mistake. Maybe he was wrong to think he could do this.

But fortunately, before he could get too deep in his own insecurities, Kwan came to the rescue. “Dash, can we do one more together before trying a problem on our own? Number two looks a little different than number one, and I don’t really understand how to set up the equation!”

Dash sent a mental thank you Kwan’s way before plucking a purple pen off the table. “Sure!” He turned to Danny’s paper. “Okay, this is f of x. Looking at the equation, we know that it goes here. And this—” He swapped to a green pen “—is g of x. Where do you think this one goes?”

He sat patiently, as if he were waiting for Fenton to respond.

But Dash knew that he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He was wasting his time with this pause, even if he was only doing it to be polite.

Truth be told, he didn’t even think Fenton was listening to him. Fenton probably was incapable of that. Hell, he probably didn’t even remember where he was or how he got here.

But, just as Dash was about to go ahead and answer his own question for Fenton, the small teen shifted beside him. Dash’s eyes snapped onto Fenton, watching as the boy lifted his arm off his lap and pointed to the paper.

Dash’s eyes trailed down to the worksheet, down to Fenton’s hand, and froze. 

Fenton was pointing to the correct part of the equation.

He had been listening to Dash. He, somehow, was able to understand Dash.

Dash looked over to Kwan, who too was resembling a fish with his open mouth stare at the duo. His eyes met Dash’s, and a smile overtook his expression. He shot Dash a thumbs up, a clear encouragement to continue on.

“Yeah,” Dash breathed, turning his attention back to Fenton. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Fenton’s hand dropped back to his lap.

“Good, now let’s solve this together.”

---

As the days turned to weeks, slowly tutoring Fenton got a little easier. Though it was still impossible for Dash and Kwan to know just how much Fenton was absorbing with their sessions, they were starting to be able to decipher small behavioral quirks in Fenton’s body language to help guide them through the haze.

An eyebrow twitch here, a tiny jerk of his pupils there. His movements were small, but telling. And when he was truly spaced out, when their questions would yield not even the faintest twitch from him, a gentle tap on his arm seemed to pull him back to reality.

Tutoring Fenton could be difficult—some days it felt like nothing they said was committing to his fleeting memory—but it wasn’t impossible. Because under that dense fog clouding his mind was still the annoying, snarky teen they had grown up with.

And some days, they could still see glimpses of that snarky teen in him.

“Yeah so the coach is having us an extra gym routine tomorrow,” Dash said, closing his notebook and leaning back in his chair. “So I’ll probably be a half hour late picking you up. Sound good?”

Fenton didn’t respond.

Not that Dash was expecting him to.

“I hear we’re gonna have a wall-sit contest,” Kwan said. “Dale crushed us all last time, but I’ll have my revenge this time around!”

Fenton’s eyes flickered up to Dash. He tapped his thigh, the corner of his lips twitching up.

“What?”

Fenton paused, seemingly mulling something over, before loosely pointing to Dash’s legs with a subtle smirk.

Dash sat up, realization dawning on him. “Are you…are you calling my legs weak?”

Judging by the ghost of an impish grin on Fenton’s features, Dash was right.

“Really? You too?”

Fenton grinned and tapped his legs again.

“Oh, like you’re one to talk!” Dash crossed his arms. “I could kick your scrawny ass to next year if I wanted to!”

Fenton raised his brows ever so slightly.

“What, you think just because you’re Phantom that means you’re stronger than me?” Dash jammed his thumb to his chest. “Don’t forget who your gym buddy was Freshman year! Once those inhibitors come off, it’s you and me at the gym! I’d like to see you try to keep up with me, Fenton!”

Dash heard a snort from the other side of the table. His head whipped around to see Kwan with his hands cupping his mouth.

“What are you laughing at?”

With that, Kwan bursted out laughing and leaned back in his chair. “Dude!” He exclaimed, seemingly catching a breath. “You really think you can bench more than Phantom? Oh my god—I can’t breathe—that’s the funniest fucking thing!”

“Hey, have my back here!” Dash snapped. He glanced over to Danny, whose face had broken out into a full grin. “Yeah, laugh it up why don’t you!”

Danny just tapped his legs as a response.

Kwan roared in laughter and all but fell off of his chair.

“Oh, shut up!”

---

“We want in,” a voice said from above him.

Dash stuffed his notebook into his backpack, not even bothering to glance up at the speaker. “What are you talking about?”

“We know you’ve been doing homework with Danny after school, and we want to join.”

Dash sighed and threw his bag over his shoulder. He stood, facing Manson in all her glory. Though her outfit didn’t scream quite as goth as it had when they were Freshmen, she still had the same self-righteous stance that had always irritated Dash.

“Okay?” Dash responded. “And who is ‘we’?”

“Tucker and I. You know, Danny’s best friends? Have been since elementary school? The two people who have actually been there for him this whole time? Ring a bell?”

Dash rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m leaving. Study with him on your own time.”

He turned to walk away, but she grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “Wait. Sorry, just—” She paused, dropping her arm back to her side, and Dash watched as a myriad of emotions flickered through her expression. Her gaze dropped to the floor, and cracks of insecurity seeped through her features. “Sorry. Let me start over.”

He straightened back up. “I’m listening.”

She took a deep breath. When she started, her voice was quiet but steady. “I get why Lancer asked you and Kwan to work with him. I do, I get it. But Tucker and I are his best friends. And you know how he is right now. Those devices are...they’re messing with his head. I know they are.” Her gaze flickered up at Dash, and she looked scared. “It hurts seeing him like this, you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Dash said. “But I don’t see what this has to do with our study sessions.”

“He just seems happier now since he started. He seems better.”

Dash blinked. Whatever he was expecting her to say, that definitely wasn’t it.

Manson hugged herself, her shoulders hunching. She looked...small. Fragile. As if the slightest breeze would topple her over. 

This wasn’t like her.

“Whatever you guys have been doing, it’s working. He’s getting better. I don’t know, he just seems more present now. And...it hurts that I haven’t been there during this. You know, it’s been months since I’ve heard his voice. Not since before he got captured, since before those evil devices were forced on him. I know they’re preparing for a court case to get them removed, and I know there’s a chance he’ll get better again, but I just…”

“You miss him,” Dash said, surprising himself. 

“Yeah. I do.”

Dash sighed. “I don’t know how I can help with this.”

“Just give us a chance? Please. Just let us tag along, even if it’s only for a few days a week. We won’t interfere with the tutoring, we just want to be there.”

He stared at her silently, studying her face under her bangs. 

The past year had been hard on her, that much was obvious. And Dash, as unobservant and bullheaded as he was, could see the dark circles under her eyes, her blotchy skin, her chapped lips.

The way she stood there before him, a person who she would never have been caught dead being friendly with, defeated and all but begging for help.

Dash wasn’t selfless. He wasn’t altruistic.

He was just a dumb jock.

But in that moment, as he scrutinized the way her hands fidgeted and her lower lip wobbled, he couldn’t help but feel her sadness, her regret.

It was painful to watch.

“Okay.” He turned away. “We meet at Kwan’s at four. I’ll see you both there.”

---

chapter two> 

[nerdypipsqueak]

Lawrence After Arabia (SPOILER ALERT)

Today thanks to the generosity and hospitality of @aivelin @steblynkaagain and @willdudedoo​ I watched the new “Lawrence After Arabia” movie and boy oh boy do I have thoughts, vibes and general WTFery (in no particular order) for you. Buckle up, lords, ladies and supreme rulers of the universe!

1. The soundtrack is... questionable. But we knew that already because it got released, complete with music video, so much earlier.

2. The CGI was... not good. We also knew that because we saw a snippet of it in the music video. But I was not expecting to see the entire screen turn green (like solid green) halfway through the movie. I really understand that the movie was crowdfunded but dammit, if I were a benefactor and saw this I would be severely disappointed. Why I personally refused to donate to this movie is a separate matter; please feel free to DM me if you want details.

3. The acting wasn’t the best. It sometimes felt a bit like a school play.

4. The movie tried too hard to be educational, especially in the beginning when the church custodian tells the little boy about Lawrence, during the public inquiry, during the scene when the secret agents read Lawrence’s file out loud and in the end after the funeral.

5. The movie was actually filmed on location in Clouds Hill, on the grounds and inside the cottage itself. The National Trust (the organisation currently looking after the property) initially denied Mark Griffin (the producer) permission to film on location. He then took to the media (both traditional and social) and ranted about how the National Trust denied his biopic but allowed a “Jane Austen and zombies” movie to be filmed on one of their locations until the Trust gave in.

6. There was a shitload of really random details from Lawrence’s life. Some felt like they were shoehorned in to make the film more educational.

7. I was astounded by the sheer amount of very “in your face” references to “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), from “nothing is written” to numerous visual references (goggles hanging on the bush, shadow in robes) to literally naming a character William Potter to literally using the quote “the trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts”.

8. So many conspiracy theories! From the black car theory to Feisal possibly being poisoned. In fact the entire film is built around the premise that Lawrence was taken out by two secret service agents in a black car.

9. I really wanted to like Tom Barber Duffy as Lawrence but his performance was just... IDK, bland? There wasn’t much feeling there. 

10. My notes here literally say: “did he just kiss Florence Hardy on the cheek?!” and that’s exactly what happened. We will revisit the Florence Hardy situation later.

11. I want the keffiyeh and the leather motorcycle gauntlets.

12. There’s a flashback to Ned’s childhood where he is seen receiving punishment from his mother. Sarah Lawrence displays a tactic I’ve seen among numerous Christian fundamentalists: she tells Ned she loves him and gives him a hug, then quickly pushes him away and proceeds to administer punishment, complete with the “I do this because I love you” messages.

13. Tom Barber Duffy’s visible piercings sparked joy in me. Thank you @aivelin​ for the screenshot.

14. I was quite excited to see Laurent C. Lucas as Feisal simply because of the resemblance but, damn, he was disappointing and his attempt at a Hejazi accent wasn’t great.

15. Lawrence gets called a “bloody sadomasochistic little bastard” by the head of the secret service. So many opportunities for an intelligent short joke were missed in this movie.

16. “Feisal gives him status of son”. I thought that was Hussein? Am I confusing them? Can someone please help?

17. “If someone isn’t going to annihilate this little shit then I will”. Again, so many short joke opportunities...

18. SO MUCH talk about Ned and Oswald Mosley. I felt that at one point it was suggested that Ned may have sympathised with Mosley but I may be mistaken.

19. I have a weird feeling that Mark Griffin (the producer) was inspired by Matthew Eden’s infamous “The Murder of Lawrence of Arabia”.

20. Cally the dog is a very good boy and so far my favorite character. Cally’s performance was the best and is the only thing about this movie that deserves an award.

21. OMFG NED JUST FULL ON HUGGED FLORENCE HARDY

22. Is Mark trying to make Ned straight?!

23. What the fuck is going on with Ned and Florence Hardy and why does it look like Mark is shipping them?! During the 2 hour feature Ned kisses Florence on the cheek, Florence cups Ned’s face in her hands and kisses his cheek while he turns his head like he’s trying to get a kiss on the lips and then stops himself, Ned and Florence hug, Ned helps Florence down a fence/wall type thing and they have one of those moments where they stand a little too close, still holding onto each other and looking into each other’s eyes, then they hold hands while they walk to the village.

24. Ned pulls a gun on a journalist and almost shoots him. I’m sure this is a reference to that one time Lawrence punched a journalist for asking invasive questions.

25. Is Laurent C. Lucas in brownface make up?!

26. Why TF is Ned bathing in a basin if he has a whole-ass bathtub on the property?! Filming restrictions probably.

27. The secret service agents called Ned “a queer”. No context was provided as to why they would say that.

28. It would appear that the two secret service agents “were roommates” and “there was only one bed”. That is the actual setup of their room and they are filmed sitting on the one bed.

29. At this point my notes say that the soundtrack composer may have been inspired by the BBC News theme tune.

30. The accident is just a major WTF moment.

31. The blood pouring down Ned’s face is just... a lot.

32. Why was there a beep like when someone flatlines on a medical show?!

33. OMFG THAT DICK JUST WENT IN THERE AND INJECTED NED WITH SOMETHING

34. I liked Ned racing the train and the plane on his motorcycle. It was a fun touch.

35. Y’ALL LEAVE POOR MR BROUGH OUT OF YOUR SCHEMES, YOU SECRET SERVICE DIPSHITS

36. The dipshit blackmailed Mr Brough with a picture and I really want to know what was in that picture. Did I miss something?

37. Mark is really going to ride the whole black car thing to the death.

38. The inappropriately happy and upbeat version of “Jesu, Lover of My Soul” was used as the background for Ned’s funeral procession. It was supposed to be a march.

39. Mark Griffin has inserted himself into the movie as a secret agent and a voice-over guy.

40. Deraa was mentioned exactly twice, once as “an allegation” and referred to only as torture. No further context was provided.

41. Dahoum is referenced numerous times but without any context. I feel that Mark struggled to choose between the LGBT theory and his own heteronormative projections on Lawrence and decided to roll with both.

So there you have it. Two hours of my life that I will never get back.

[rebeccalouisaferguson]

"I always just rode the waves,” Rebecca Ferguson says with a shrug. The comment hangs in the air, as if the Anglo-Swedish 37-year-old is only now processing that a combination of currents and tides has led her not just to an acting career but to the brink of big-screen stardom.

“I’ve never been ambitious,” she says. “I’ve always thought that that was a bad thing.” She’s seen others in the industry consumed by constant striving and asked herself why she hasn’t hungered for fame since childhood, slept in cars outside castings, barged into directors’ offices or thrown herself in the path of a producer. “But should I not be burning for this? Out meeting people and networking for the next job?” says Ferguson, who has chosen the sort of quiet, private life outside the big city that so many actors claim to crave. “My life just took another turn. But I’ve always thought: Am I where I should be?”

At the moment, on this late July day, Ferguson is slumped in the backseat of a Mercedes-Benz sedan, crawling through rush-hour traffic on the M4 out of London. She is capping off a hectic week during a particularly busy period. Most immediately, she’s coming from a table read for Wool, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Hugh Howey’s bestselling postapocalyptic trilogy. Ferguson is both the star and, for the first time, an executive producer. “I’m sitting in all the different rooms, listening and learning like the students,” she says. She’s filming Mission: Impossible 7, her third tour of duty in the long-running series that first brought her widespread recognition. She’s also promoting the film Reminiscence, the sci-fi noir written and directed by Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy in which Ferguson stars opposite Hugh Jackman. And now she is starting a press push and festival prep for her role as Lady Jessica ahead of the much-delayed release of Dune (in theaters October 22), director Denis Villeneuve’s reimagining of Frank Herbert’s novel. “After this film, I think everyone will see what I see in her,” the filmmaker says. “She has a beautiful, regal, aristocratic presence, elegance. But that was not the main thing: The most important thing for me was that depth.”

After tracing a long, meandering path, Ferguson has landed in a rare and rarified position: ascendant in her late 30s (still an anomaly for women in the film industry) and sought after by some of the biggest names in the business. “When you meet Rebecca, you just see it. She’s very open, candid, collaborative, hardworking, funny—and not pretentious,” says Tom Cruise, who handpicked Ferguson to star opposite him in the Mission: Impossiblefilms, which are known for their demanding shoots. “She just rose to the occasion every single time.”

In February 2020, when the pandemic began, Ferguson left Venice, where she’d been shooting Mission: Impossible 7, and hunkered down with her husband, their 3-year-old daughter and Ferguson’s 14-year-old son from a previous relationship at their farm in Sweden. After four months, Ferguson returned to the M:I set and basically hasn’t stopped working since.

Dune has sat idle for far longer. By the time the movie premieres, more than two years will have passed since it wrapped. Ferguson recently asked to screen the film again: “I miss it,” she says. She ended up bringing along her Mission: Impossible co-star Simon Pegg. After the credits rolled, Pegg broke into a smile and wrapped her in a congratulatory bear hug. “That’s all I needed,” she says.

Despite being a sci-fi epic based on a novel from 1965, Dune feels “very timely,” Ferguson says, pointing to its handling of environmental issues, religious zealotry, colonialism and Indigenous rights. The plot of the film, which cost an estimated $165 million, centers on occupying powers battling for the right to exploit a people and their planet, named Arrakis, for melange (or spice)—the most valuable commodity in Herbert’s fictional universe, a substance that provides transcendental thought, extends life and enables instantaneous interstellar travel. “Spice,” Ferguson says, “is equally about the poppy and oil fields.”

Ferguson’s Lady Jessica is a member of the Bene Gesserit, a powerful secretive sisterhood with superhuman mental abilities. She defies her order by giving birth to a son, Paul (played by Timothée Chalamet), who may be a messianic figure. “She basically just f—s up the entire universe by having a son out of love,” says Ferguson. In her hands, Jessica is equal parts caring parent, protector and pedagogue. Among the skills she wields and teaches Paul is “the Voice”—a modulated tone that allows the speaker to control others.

The movie was shot in Norway, Hungary, Jordan and Abu Dhabi, whose desert landscape stood in for Arrakis. Filming there was particularly arduous, as temperatures exceeded 120 degrees Fahrenheit, limiting the shoot window to only an hour and a half each day at 5 a.m. and again at dusk. “We were running across the sand in our steel suits being chased by nonexistent but humongous worms,” Ferguson recalls, referring to the sand-beasts later rendered in CGI. “To be honest, it was one of the best moments ever. It was the most beautiful location I’ve ever seen.”

Back in London, Ferguson is approaching home. She leaves the following day for a small town on the coast of England, where she plans to spend her first vacation in two years and to do some surfing. “Let’s hope it’s good weather,” she says. “If not, I’ll surf in the rain.” Not that she’s the sort to paddle out into storm swells. “I think I’ve managed to stand on a board once in my entire life,” she says. “But it was quite a high. Complete surrender to the waves and total control all at once.”

Born Rebecca Louisa Ferguson Sundström to an English mother and Swedish father, Ferguson grew up bilingual in Stockholm. She immersed herself in dance from a young age, enjoying ballet, jazz, street funk and tango. Despite being shy and prone to blushing and breaking out when forced to speak publicly, Ferguson found she was at ease in front of the camera. She dabbled in modeling and then, at 15, attended a TV casting call at her mother’s urging. Ferguson ended up getting the lead role in Nya Tider (New Times), a soap opera that became wildly popular, splashing Ferguson’s face into Swedish homes five times a week.

When her role ended about two years later, Ferguson was adrift. She had no formal acting training to fall back on, no clear sense of how to steer a career and no major connections to the industry. She had a short run on another soap and appeared in a slasher flick and a couple of independent shorts, then…nothing. “I was famous in Sweden, but I didn’t really have an income anymore,” she says. “So I went and I worked in whatever job I could get.” That meant stints at a daycare center and as a nanny, in a jewelry shop and a shoe store, as well as teaching tango, cleaning hotel rooms and waitressing at a Korean restaurant. She eventually landed in a small coastal town named Simrishamn, where she lived with her then-partner and their toddler son, content to be a where-are-they-now celebrity.

When fame again came calling, Ferguson ran away. She was at the flea market when she recognized the acclaimed Swedish director Richard Hobert, and he saw her. As he shouted her name, Ferguson grabbed her son, who lost his shoes and sausage, and fled. “I panicked,” she says. “I don’t know why.” When Hobert eventually caught up to her, Ferguson tried to act nonchalant as he proceeded to tell her he’d admired her work and pitched her on the lead role in his next movie: “I’ve written this role, and I think I have written it for you. Do you want to read the script?”

Her work in Hobert’s A One-Way Trip to Antibes earned her a Rising Star nomination at the Stockholm International Film Festival. She quickly got an agent in Scandinavia, then one in Britain. On her first trip to take meetings in London, she read for the lead in The White Queen, the BBC adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s historical novels about the women behind the Wars of the Roses. Ferguson got the part, and her portrayal of Elizabeth Woodville, queen consort of England, earned her a Golden Globe nomination and the admiration of at least one Hollywood heavyweight.

Ferguson was in the Moroccan desert filming the Lifetime biblical miniseries The Red Tentwhen the assistant director whisked her off her camel. “We’re going to have to pause shooting,” he said as he asked her to dismount. “Tom Cruise wants to meet you for Mission: Impossible. We’re going to fly you off today.”

Cruise had seen Ferguson’s work in The White Queen and her audition tape and couldn’t believe she wasn’t already a major star. “What? Where has this woman been?” Cruise recalls exclaiming to his new Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie. “She’s incredibly skilled,” Cruise says, “very charismatic, very expressive. As you can tell, the camera loves her.” Ferguson landed a multi-picture deal to star opposite Cruise in the multibillion-dollar franchise. He and McQuarrie built out the role of Ilsa Faust for Ferguson, creating the anti-Bond girl, an equal to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. “We could just see the impact she could have,” he says. “She’s a dancer. She has great control of her body, of her movements. She has the same ability to move through emotions effortlessly.”

Ferguson threw herself into the films and quickly found a shorthand with the cast and crew. “There was a dynamic that worked very well with all of us,” she says. “One of the things I absolutely love is doing all the stunts.” That physicality has given her a reputation as an action-minded actor. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve done 20 other films where I don’t kick ass,” Ferguson says. “Mission comes with such an enormous following. That was what made my career.”

Ferguson’s M: I movies bracket a number of films in which she played opposite marquee names: Florence Foster Jenkins, with Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant; The Girl on the Train, with Emily Blunt; The Greatest Showman, with Hugh Jackman and Michelle Williams; Life, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds; Men in Black: International, with Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson; The Snowman, with Michael Fassbender; Doctor Sleep, with Ewan McGregor. And now Dune, opposite Oscar Isaac, Javier Bardem, Zendaya and Chalamet, whom she calls “one of the best actors, if not the best actor of his generation—of this time.” She was similarly impressed by Zendaya, who plays the native Fremen warrior Chani. “She’s quite raw and naughty and fun,” says Ferguson. “She has an enormous f— off attitude.”

When Ferguson first spoke to Villeneuve about appearing in the movie, “he started telling me about this woman who was a protector, and a mother, and a lover, and a concubine,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘I’m sorry. You want me to play a queen and a bodyguard? And you want me to kick ass and walk regally?’ I was like, ‘Denis, why would I want to do that? That’s the last thing I want to do.’ ”

After the call, Ferguson says, “I went downstairs to my hubby and said, Oh, my God, he’s amazing, but I’m not going to get the job. I just criticized the character.” Ferguson worried she was being cast as a stereotypical “strong female character,” where “it’s constantly, ‘She looks good, and she can kick.’ That is not what I want to portray.”

Ferguson hasn’t always been able to work with collaborators who’ve given her the space to question or opine. “I’ve been bashed down. I’ve been bullied,” she says, though she opts not to say by whom. That was never a concern with Villeneuve, who welcomed her critique. He and his co-writers had already decided from the start to make women the focus of their screenplay adaptation, and he promptly offered her the part.

“I want Lady Jessica to be at the center, the forefront. For me, she’s the architect of the story,” Villeneuve says. “I needed someone who will convey the mystery and the dark side of the film in a very elegant and profound way. Rebecca was everything I was hoping for. She’s so precise. She brought a beautiful, controlled vulnerability—it becomes very visceral on-screen.”

Ferguson vaguely recalls trying to watch the 1984 version of Dune, directed by David Lynch, in her youth, but she fell asleep. And she had never opened Herbert’s novel until being offered the part in the new adaptation. As she dug into the book, she says, she learned that her character was subservient and far more like a concubine, forced to eat alone in her bedroom, not spoken to and not allowed to speak. Ferguson ended up relying primarily on Villeneuve for her research and prep—his notes and comments, his references and the pages in the book he suggested she focus on. “I would feel ignorant not to have read Frank’s book at all,” Ferguson says, though she admits there are parts of the sprawling novel (which Villeneuve is splitting into two films) she’s only skimmed. “I have to finish it.” That will not happen on her upcoming vacation, however. “Absolutely not,” she says “I am surfing.”

By the way, if you saw, I am snaking on the ground, snaking around my room to get good Wi-Fi—it’s not some dance or yoga thing,” Ferguson says. “You have to do that in this old house.” It’s a week and a half after our first meeting, and Ferguson is at her new home, a more than 500-year-old property southwest of London that has, over the years, been home to numerous English Royals. It’s more spartan than stately now. “Empty except for a rock star,” she says, turning her phone’s camera to reveal a framed duotone poster of Mick Jagger that’s leaning against the wall. “We haven’t even started renovating.

Ferguson has returned from her holiday fortified and with renewed confidence, thanks in part to her success on the surfboard. “I went up nearly every time,” she says cheerfully, “but the waves weren’t very high.” She shrugs. “I was proud. I was up. I rode them, not the other way around.”

After years of going with the flow, Ferguson is eager to replicate that sense of control in her career. She values her role as an executive producer on Wool, she says, “because I am, for the first time, a part of it from the beginning.” She relishes weighing in on every aspect, from casting (the show recently added Tim Robbins) to cinematography to her character—which has not always been easy for her. “Why do I feel it’s difficult to speak up? I still battle with these things,” she says. Alluding to those times she was pushed around in the past, Ferguson says, “I was angry, but it was more me getting off at ‘How can I let that happen? Why am I letting myself react this way?’ And I take it with me to the next thing where I go, ‘OK, how do I stop that from happening?’ ”

She is learning that she can ride on top of waves without giving up her agency or maybe just let them break against her. “I want to feel I can go home and think, That was a hard day or that pissed me off—and that’s OK,” Ferguson says, with a nod and tight smile. “Because I still stood there as Rebecca. I didn’t shift.”

[watch-grok-brainrot]

hii i was wondering if you have any other cdrama recs that's similar in tone to cql that's not shl? it doesn't have to be adapted from danmei either. i've tried ashes of love but the generous use of cgi kinda threw me off. i tried handsome siblings too, and i found that i LOVE wuxia as a genre but the pace feels a little all over the place so i didn't finish it either. any kind of help would be much appreciated!

I don’t watch as much cdrama as I would like… I think @baoshan-sanren @wuxian-vs-wangji @wuyus, @minmoyu, and @drwcn all watch more than I do i think.... i’m just not good at focusing on ANYTHING tbh. ooof.

This post got long. TL;DR: i’d probably say try out Ever Night, Legend of Fei, and Love and Redemption in that order. 

I recommend Nirvana in Fire a TON but it’s not the same -- much heavier but the pacing is AMAZING. 

Joy of Life and Sleuth of Ming Dynasty are both very good so far but i’m not done with them. They’re not really wuxia. Joy of Life is like a isekai.  and Sleuth is semi-wuxia but period specific and case solving. Lots of food.

 You might enjoy movies such as Painted Skin and Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity.

 Also check out some danmei based donghuas. you might have fun. For a much more rambley list... see after the cut

AND! i almost forgot!!!! check out mydramalist. a lot of shows are listed there and maybe you can see what you like. i’ll probably watch anything as long as it’s well done... or pretty enough... hahaha. 

That said, since Nov 2019 I have watched/half heartedly paid attention to while playing phone games:

Love and redemption – this one was ok. It was almost really good and then kinda fell flat for me. I don’t think I’d watch it again but I did like the setting and a lot of the premise.

And the winner is love – this one is fun! But the first 12 eps are slow and I have a hard time caring. The rest get a bit better. I didn’t hate it. I did like how they randomly killed off characters so that was good. Flirty Luo Yunxi with a fan was definitely a perk. If you like him, I recommend.

Ever Night (I) – OH! This one is a ton of fun. I think its intricacy level and setting styles and storytelling pacing isn’t too far off from CQL’s. but it’s only S1. WORTH IT, imo… but S2 is so different I couldn’t make it past ep 1

Nirvana in Fire – AMAZING. BEST FREAKING CHINESE DRAMA I’VE EVER SEEN. PERIOD. HANDS DOWN. MIND BLOWING. But it IS INTENSE and not really like cql. It’s fun but much much much heavier. I technically first watched this in 2016 but I rewatched it this year so it’s on the list.

Love o2o – not bad. Boring. Not much plot. The main ship are cute enough, I guess. Something to watch in the bkgd.

King’s Avatar – I seriously only watched this to see Yang Yang on my non-gif-making screen whenever I was waiting for things to happen in photoshop. It’s ok. Cute. Feels like a sports anime. Is an esports show.

Legend of Fei – this might be your best bet on something close to CQL. The plot, imo, is a bit contrived… and it really kinda feels like a shonen manga if I’m gonna be honest… maybe a shonen manga crossed with a season of super sentai.

Dating in the Kitchen – cute, straight, modern romance. The girl is only a TINY bit annoying. She’s a chef and spunky. It was fun.

Eternal Love – not terrible. Better than ashes of love. I don’t really like yang mi that much…

Ashes of Love – do not recommend. Unless you adore Luo Yunxi. I also don’t love Yang Zi… so that doesn’t help. I haven’t seen her in a role where I didn’t want to smack her yet. (but my sample size is 2… so there’s that)

Lost Tomb Season 1 this was fun? again, something to only half pay attention to. cliche. tang yan is hot in it. and yang yang too... but not really enough of yang yang for me... ope. 

(and of course, CQL and SHL)

I’m assuming if you’re asking about cql, you’ve looked at tgcf, mdzs, and svsss animations. Have you looked up the Qian Qiu donghua? I think it’s call “shan he tong bei”… but I could be wrong. @hunxi-after-hours blogs about it a lot. Worth checking out. I loved the novel. Currently I’m watching can ci pin on bilibili.

I’m in the middle of:

Guardian – I like it even if it’s sometimes a bit cringy

Sleuth of Ming Dynasty – this one is FUN. I should pay more attention

Advance Bravely – I watch this after I drink booze and then only if I am streaming it as a group watch on discord. It’s danmei and a hot mess of a show. Do not watch without emotional support. Do not watch as a serious show.

Joy of Life – this one is serious but good so far. I’m scared to get too far because no word on S2 and I was burned with Ever Night. It’s really good so far though… I’m only only ep 7ish.

Ode to Joy – the cast is so good: Liu Tao, Wang Kai, Wang Ziwen, Jin Dong… but I just can’t get into it.

Older shows I watched that i can remember:

My Sunshine: modern romance. Sad and melancholy in tone. Not like cql at all. But!! Luo Yunxi is in it briefly. And he is styled so poorly it’s just sad. And kinda funny. Tang Yan and Wallace Chung are great in it. I enjoyed it a lot. (granted, this was 2014/2015 and I might’ve been some various levels of depressed at the end of grad school… )

Princess Pearl: wuxia-ish. Zhao wei skyrocketed to fame with this show. It was fun. Qing dynasty to prepare you eyes for the queues… but it’s a lot of fun. If you’re a tea snob (like my dad was and now I am), you’ll be pissed about a character claiming dragonwell tea is from taihu… but that’s really just my own neurosis. I liked the spunky MC and her bff. Very nostalgic for me

Tiger Mom: Hilarious modern family/slice of life drama about raising kids in china. i loved it... but i love the two leads? one of which is zhao wei of princess pearl fame. 

CCTV’s version of Romance of Three Kingdoms (1994), Journey to the West (1986), and Dream of Red Mansion (1987) are all amazing and cultural touchstones… but no… I’m rambling. I should recommend this but that might be 90% of my nostalgia and cultural feels speaking. Nothing like cql… I should also recommend a good version of Outlaws of the Marsh… but I don’t remember having any really grab me as a kid. Ope.

Wuxia shows based on Jin Yong novels (there are multiple versions of these, usually and 100% were wuxia staples for 80s/90s kids and even my parents’ generation)

Legend of the Condor Heroes: classic. Iconic. Watch this to get a lot of Chinese references

Return of the Condor Heroes: shifu/disciple taboo trope, I liked it ok. Not my favorite. I did like a lot of the wuxia world building

Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre: good main character whump, main character takes a while to show up though… I didn’t like how it felt like a harem anime for a bit… and the ML doesn’t show up for a while…

Proud Smiling Wanderer: this one I loved. Also good MC whump. Uh… ok. I like whump… *facepalm* and I don’t remember that much more of it but I did read it twice almost two decades ago and liked it… even if I didn’t like the eunuch related weird stuff and that definitely didn’t age well… it was a good story…

And i never did get into Deer and Cauldron. I read 3/5 to 4/5 of the novel, got really annoyed with the lack of morality of the MC and quit. it was fun but i had no desire to watch the show if couldn’t even stomach the novel. 

[dying-suffering-french-stalkers]

Finally watching Goodbye Partner!  I’m watching the dub, but I have the subs on so I can read the date/location popups and signs, so I’m getting a bit of dialogue comparison.  I’ll probably go back and watch a few scenes with the original audio as well (Kiyoshi Kobayashi my beloved).

Here begins the liveblog, but all in one post and under a cut so it’s not as insufferable:

Starting strong with a heist escape sequence as per usual!  As far as openings go, it’s hard to go wrong with that.

Oh, hello, literal actual Chopin courtesy of a timeskip/flashback.

What are these RWBY-ass CGI piano hands??  Y’all warned me and you were not kidding.  Traditional rotoscoping would never hurt me in this way.

CUSTODY_OF_CHILD.JPG

Lupin playing in those see-through inflatable “hamster” balls skdfjskjdflsl

Intricate Rituals.  Jiglup gunplay confirmed

Epcar’s delivery here was so much more aggressive than Kobayashi’s.

“Area 61, Colorado” just say Cheyenne Mountain

EDWARD ZNOWDEN

Fujiko really is terrible with kids

Listen, I love a good Dutch angle, but I’m starting to feel like I should set up a CinemaSins counter at this point.  I’m glad to have some shot variety but there are other compositions, you know.

Motorcycle Jigen returns!!

Loving this little Morricone shoutout, which I unfortunately cannot seem to find on YouTube.

[strangled Goemon voice] “MISTAKE.”

God. GOD. Tony Oliver’s delivery in the betrayal scene is so good.  Lupin is clearly not buying it at all and is quite willing to play along with whatever the hell this is - until Jigen shoots him right in the heart.  That’s going to hurt a lot more than literally when he wakes up, though 1) given that the movie’s barely begun, I’m guessing he’s still not completely buying it (rightfully so) and is gonna look into this and 2) unfortunately this franchise isn’t known for actually digging into all the delicious angst and implications it likes to sling around.  Cowards.

Also, I like that Lupin seems to be wearing a navy shirt and pink tie like he had in early Part 2 instead of the blue shirt/yellow tie he has in the other Red Jacket movies.  Not sure why that’s what they went with but I’m down.

Okay, I went back and watched the betrayal scene in Japanese and OOF, it hits DIFFERENT to hear Kiyoshi Kobayashi deliver those lines.  He’s so utterly casual about it and it’s all the more angsty since he’s, y’know, a million years old, so here his Jigen sounds much more tired/resigned compared to Epcar’s brasher gunman.

The way that the shots focus on not only Jigen, but also Fujiko when the boss asks about the betrayal...nice.  Fujiko doesn’t know for sure if Jigen killed Lupin, but I imagine such a possibility would shake her at least a little - not just because she cares for that silly monkey man, but because that partnership has been a surprising constant in her life.  If even that could finally crumble, her natural cynicism is about to get a whole lot deeper.  Morbidly, she wants to know if Jigen had the balls to do it.  It’d be a hell of a lot more kindred spirit between them than she ever expected if so.  It’s a shame this plot wasn’t used in a Koike movie; it would’ve been great to see the deliberate parallel/foil from TWCFM continue.

“Why don’t we talk about your future?” the boss says as Jigen’s whole demeanor screams What future?  Even though Lupin isn’t dead and Jigen has his reasons for why he did this, Jigen hardly expects forgiveness after all this.  Lupin may be alive but Jigen has just killed the best thing he ever had and he can never get that back (except he can, because movie and long-running franchise, but y’know, Watsonian vs. Doylist).

The Dark Crystal (1982)

HATSUNE MIKU???  ACTUAL HATSUNE MIKU????? (just her voice but aksdjfkajsdkfjaklsjdfljasjdflajsdf)

Ohhhh, the Lupin & Clarisse / Jigen & the kid’s mom (still haven’t heard her name lmao) parallel was just uncalled for, my heart

Let Jigen wear burgundy more often

...Mr. Epcar, I love and respect you, but is it too much to ask that you vary your inflection a little more?  Where’s the PATHOS?

Slightly cried instantly, “The Wendy lady lives.”  Then Peter knelt beside her and found his button.  You remember she had put it on a chain that she wore round her neck.  “See,” he said, “the arrow struck against this. It is the kiss I gave her.  It has saved her life.”

BLACK JACKET

Burgundy suit + round glasses Goemon!!!

There’s no way Pops is getting his job back after this one

Goemon: [turns his usual hot girl swordsmanship up to 11]

Lupin: Well mark me down as scared AND horny! dot jpeg

Again with the CGI hand crimes.

Wow he straight-up said Jigen was cheating on him

Ah, see, that “waste of oxygen”/“huge mistake” bit of dialogue is the kind of inflection I like to hear.

WarGames (1983)

It took me entirely too long to realize the president was supposed to look like H.illary.

Goemon: [slices open a door for Fujiko]

Fujiko: “Oh, you.” <3

This is all very action-heavy and surprisingly decent for a Lupin film so far, but uh. why is Jigen once again a side character in his own movie?

Ayyyy, nice reference to Zantetsuken’s composition from Part 1.  Still insane that they melted down three awesome swords to make a different sword though.

Goemon snarks back to robots confirmed.  Not that Lupin would ever be stupid enough to buy an Al3xa/etc. but can you IMAGINE

JAZZ PIANIST FUJIKO!  Fujiko having actual interests and hobbies!!!

Comrade Emilka

TRIPLE PARALLEL WITH JIGEN & ALISA NOW

They just?? left Jigen in the middle of the desert after the absolute minimum discussion of All That????  That’s...on-brand actually but give me the angst this plot device deserved >:(

Michelle Ruff I would die for you

This variation on the main theme is my favorite.  I’ve probably listened to it about a thousand times at this point but I finally got to hear it in context.

Welp, that was one of the better Lupin movies I’ve seen, but I do wish they’d done more with the whole Jigen betrayal thing that ended up being more of a subplot.  Thank goodness for fics that do the work.

Edit: “There are about four different plots going on at once in this movie, and they forgot to focus on the one that’s in the actual title.” - @theimpossiblescheme

[bumbleboarhd]

Where The Wild Things Are (2009) - Crumby review #1

Hello! Thank you for reading this review! In these reviews I will try to encapsulate what I loved or hated in a piece of media. At the end, instead of giving it a score I’ll compare it to a food or a specific taste and experience. Enjoy!

The first time I saw this film was my freshman year of college. I was severely depressed and spent most of my days grinding through movies I’d always wanted to watch but never got the chance to. I can’t remember what specifically inspired me to watch this one in particular. I was interested in the film when I was a kid but never got the chance to see it. It could’ve been some podcast or video essay but either way this movie captivated me back then. There was no doubt in my mind that I was watching something truly special. I couldn’t quite verbalize it at the time but the movie resonanted with some forgotten part of me. 

Well, it’s been 5 years and lucky for me but unlucky for you. I now have the capacity to verbalize why this movie slaps! This film is an enigma. When most directors are given the chance to adapt a childens book they usually choose to either expand on the initial work while staying recognizable or do the same plot but pad it out with humor or OCs voiced by whoever is popular at the time. WTWA is definitely the former rather than the latter. Spike Jonze (who I was shocked to learn was asked to make a children’s film) examines the themes of the original book and shows them to us not as they actually were but as we remembered them. It captures the duality of childhood especially for those of us that grew up emotionally unsatiated. The parents are overworked and tired, the siblings are bored and apathetic, and we the child want all the attention but are also repulsed by the world around us. Max wants his mother’s attention but can’t understand that she’s barely making ends meet and is exhausted. He throws temper tantrums and demands to be looked at with authority but cannot handle any repercussions. This is all expected because Max is a literal child. The film isn’t trying to punish max nor does it seem interested in criticizing him. Max does face consequences but it doesn’t feel like watching veggie tales or my little pony where there’s an unseen moral inquisitor making sure everyone suffers. In this film it feels natural and like the characters are truly making organic decisions. Max is confronted by monsters who mimick his ego and through this confrontation he realizes what he needs to change in his own life. The best part of all of this is it’s done through subtle storytelling. A lot of Max’s feelings and actions are only explained through visuals, there’s no exact moment when a character just says the point of why everything is happening. Nor, is there a moment where Max just says “This is the lesson I learned”. It truly feels like the film is trying to present and define elements of the human experience that are intangible. It’s more about the emotions and thoughts that are evoked than it is about bringing the viewer to one unified answer. There is no perfect phrase for when you know you’ve gone too far but can’t apologize or when you go from an emotional high to a sadness that leaves you nonverbal and sobbing. the cinematography helps to support this goal of portraying rampant whimsy married with brutal emotional unruliness. We get tons of wide shots filled with negative space and the film is not afraid to let the camera linger for just the right amount of time. The opening of the film is a perfect punch in the face to introduce us to Max. It was honestly one of the best looking movies I’ve seen in a while. The cgi faces of the monsters took a bit to get used to but props on them for using actual constumes for the most part. 

 I found the characters to be off putting at first with their super laidback manner of speech but soon I warmed up to them. The film even got several verbal chuckles out of me which is a good sign! Not that I’m a hard nut to crack lol. Max’s acting was absolutely superb. I’m too lazy to look up if this kid was nominated for anything but this has got to be one of the most realistic portrayals of a troubled child in film and there are A LOT of troubled children in film. The ost was phenomenal except for a few licensed songs that just felt too generic for me. “Hideaway” is a hood classic ofc but some of the other songs were just too on the nose. Any time I heard an indie musician scream as Max was getting angry I cringed. Lastly, while I would suggest anyone reading this to watch the film, I can’t really reccommend it for children. I don’t agree that it’s inappropriate but I don’t think they’d really get it. This film is more like Boyhood, Eighth Grade, or The Florida Project, where the point is moreso to look at childhood in retrospection than to explain these feelings to children. Those are my thoughts at least, I’m not a parent yet haha! 

I’d consider this movie a subtle and masterfully crafted parfait you have on a lonely stroll through the city. The beginning of your day was full of dissappointments and all your plans fell through. The museum is closed and your friends forgot any plans you may have made. You think about just heading home and calling the day a bust, but on your way to the car you see a cute, humble, diner having a sale on desserts. You decide to treat yourself and partake. Plus, it’s been a while since you ate out and payday was yesterday so it won’t hurt too bad. The line moves too fast and you get anxious when the cashier asks for your order. So you pick a random parfait. Great, another dissappointment. You go to an outside table and sit. At first, you feel angry at yourself. This was the one mistake you could’ve controlled but you failed like you always do. You grab a spponful of your food expecting something that’s ok but not as good as it could’ve been. You’re wrong, the parfait is not too sweet but not underwhelming either. It’s just enough to kep you chasing for more. Your cheeks feel flush and for the first time all day your body is able to relax. You keep digging into your cup taking bite after bite riding this high of creamy sweetness. In this pursuit, you feel happy but before you know it there’s no parfait left. Usually you’d get mad at yourself for eating too fast but then it hits your stomach. You feel like a boulder. There’s no way you can get up now, so you stay and watch the cityscape. You see a nervous couple on a date. You can tell it must be a first one becuase they keep chattering away stealing the silence with nervous yet authentic banter. They seem truly happy. You see a child walking with their father. the kid trips and scrapes their knee. As they look up towards their dad it seems like a meltdown is imminent. Tears are sloshing down and their face is turning to a violent shade of red, resembling that of a scared and dejected yet powerful stop sign but the dad is able to make enough silly faces and noises to bring the kid back to a state of happiness. watching this reminds you of when you were a kid. You feel the cold autmn breeze pass through you and dance through the trees, bringing that nostalgic autumn scent with it. You realize it’s been a while since you’ve had a moment like this to yourself. A moment to just be. It feels nice, today was nice. 

Thank you for reading this! It took a lot of motivation lol. Look forward to more and have a Happy Valentines Day!