#around to shit on lewis for not doing a two minute clip at MOST for fucking secret santa. and staying in dts who are worse to him than they

[milflewis]

everyday i wonder how max is not embarrassed and today is no different

[opalsiren]

possible plot points for emma that don't revolve entirely around a male love interest:

she reflects on losing her friendships with the girls from the swim team beyond the cursory five minutes of screentime it gets in 1x04 'party girls.' it's bittersweet as she realises how much she's grown, having experienced something so life-altering that alienated her from almost everyone else she knows but also considers how she doesn't have to count every single calorie or go to bed at 8pm every night to be up for 6am training anymore. this could also be an emma/cleo friendship-centric ep since presumably they've been besties for years by early season one

on that, maybe emma desperately tries to find a new hobby after quitting the swim team since she has tons of free time on her hands. cleo spends hours explaining her fish tank to her, rikki takes her to a local gig, and of course lewis takes her fishing. eventually she comes to the conclusion that what she enjoys most is just spending time with her friends, that she doesn't need any new skills or talents or preoccupations beyond just doing normal teen girl shit like hanging with her mates and trying to cope with turning into a supernatural creature

i neeeed an episode where lewis and emma do shenanigans since they're both so smart and studious that whenever they hang they cancel each other out and become idiots. mayhaps they're trying to plan a surprise for cleo, or study together, or lewis is tinkering with the computers at the juicenet after wilfred left emma in charge for a few hours. maybe it's circa s2 and emma feels for him since he doesn't really have anyone to spend time with after he and cleo break up, so she shows him the dolphins at the lagoon near mako to cheer him up, or lets him experiment with her toenail clippings for a bit or something just. let these two kid prodigies get up to no good together okay

something like a flashback to emma and zane when they were tiny since they've canonically known each other since they were three (3!). maybe emma is reminiscing on how he used to actually be a nice person before falling in with nate and that crowd, maybe zane's mum is involved, maybe emma's folks went through a rough patch when she was little and zane offered to build sandcastles with her to cheer her up, maybe they used to swim competitively together and emma used to let him win because she's a sweetie and knows his family is shitty. just give me content of these two being tiny together i need it

honestly i would take an entire filler episode of just emma hanging out with ms chatham like. sitting on her boat shooting the shit or emma volunteering at the retirement village with all the other old folks convincing her to shoot her shot with another old retiree lady perhaps. i feel like emma sees herself as a very 'together' person who seldom lets her guard down, even around her friends. she is the leader, practical and level-headed when the others are anxious or stressed about the secret or their boyfriends or any number of other things. maybe ms chatham grows to be someone she can actually let herself be vulnerable around and just vent about all that her new life entails

feel free to add!!

[prof-maddox-fletcher]

Meet the Teacher: Maddox & Lyndsay

Maddy took the stairs two at time, of course her 8 AM class was on the third floor. Some onlookers seemed exhilarated by the amount of energy she seemed to be displaying at such an early hour, but Maddy couldn’t afford to be distracted. This was the first and last fucking time she decided to bike in to school, at least until the new wave of freshmen learned how to not clog up the school’s entryway.

“Hey, Professor Fletcher?” A voice called distantly, a former student she noted as she looked in the direction of the voice, shifting her weight from foot to foot in an effort not to lose her momentum.

“Yeah?” Maddy asked in return, not wanting to rebuff the young man, but still making an effort to show she clearly had somewhere to be.

“I still need that letter of recommendation-” Maddy hissed as she remembered the post-it note she had stuck on her laptop to remind herself, damn it she could be so oblivious sometimes.

“I’ll get it to you by the end of the day.” She assured with a nod and a shaky thumbs up before taking off once more. Back up the stairs, hopping and maneuvering through the other hurried throngs of latecomers.

Her messenger bag slapped against her side with each leap she took, there was a consistency it, that and the squeak of her Vans against the floor as she skidded around the corner. Exhaling a breath, Maddy continued her path down the hall towards her classroom, raking a hand through her white-blonde curls in an attempt to tame them, she was quick to push open the door to the classroom. The entry of a new person into the classroom was enough to draw almost every eye in the room, some students were preoccupied on their phones, other zombified from the early hour. God, 8 AM classes were always a mixed bag.

“You’re all here for Professor Fletcher’s class right?” Maddy asked a little out of breath, envious of the students that were sipping at some iced coffee. What she wouldn’t give for some coffee at the moment.

“Yeah,” One man said, his lips quirked in a frown, “but if this guy’s not here in another 5 minutes, we get to leave.” Maddy gave a tight lipped smile before pushing farther into the room, her name tag was clipped to her belt and likely covered by her messenger bag. Still, as far as first impressions went, she wasn’t a fan of this guy. 

Shrugging off her bag, she placed it on the desk at the front of the room, only earning a few stares as she went - it seemed no one had caught on yet. Staring at the whiteboard, Maddy grimaced upon the discovery that two of the markers resting on the metal frame of the whiteboard were dead. By some stroke of the luck the third and last available marker still had some juice left into it. Letting out a sigh, Maddy began to write the course info on the board.

“You’re all here for this class, right?” Maddy asked, turning on her heel to survey her audience. She was greeted with some raised brows and wide eyes, she guessed she might not fit everyone’s version of what a professor looked like in their heads - what with her blazer and t-shirt underneath and her bleached white-blonde curls.

Strolling with ease to the podium beside the desk, Maddy drummed her fingers against the wood as she waited for the desktop on the podium to boot up. These damn computers could be so slow sometimes, but, she needed to use it to take attendance.

“First we’ll take roll call and then we can get into the syllabus, today will be an abbreviated session.” She announced, noting out of the corner of her eye, the guy from earlier seemed to sink into his seat a little.

The computer booted up pretty quickly, thankfully not making her look any more unprofessional than her late arrival had. She had a decent sized class for such a small college. She went through the list, doing her best of sticking faces to names.

“Sophia Larson?” She called, perking her head up at the soft spoken ‘here’ that followed.

“Michael Lewis?” Maddy called, quickly recalling the face of the man who had been oh so friendly upon her entry. He gave a sheepish lift of his hand and an even quieter ‘here’.

Maddy’s gaze refocused on the list of names on the screen, smiling briefly at the name that followed.

That’s funny, she thought to herself, Lyndsay with a y, just like earlier...

“Lyndsay Marno?” Maddy called, her stomach a bit fluttery at the memory of the brunette from the bar with soft lips and pretty handwriting, glancing up at the raised hand, the flutter in her stomach turned violent as her gaze landed on-

No, no - holy shit, this is actually happening. This had to be every professors worst nightmare, that or getting untenured.

Maddox felt her breath fleet from her lungs as her gaze met those big blue eyes, oh god, her tongue felt dry and rubbery in her mouth. Shaking her head, the professor was quick to rattle of the short handful of names that remained on the list. Submitting her attendance list, Maddy strolled back around towards the front of the desk, attempting to seem casual despite the feverish thump of her heart.

“Alright, so as you’ve figured out, I’m your professor - Maddox is a pretty unusual name, so most folks call me Maddy. If you’re trying to get my attention most times, it’s probably not going to register in my brain unless you say my name. I know I worked hard on my degrees, so I should happily wear the title of professor, but it is what it is.” She said with a small shrug, earning a couple chuckles.

Leaning back against the desk, her legs crossed at the ankles she gazed out at the class, making a conscious effort not to let her eyes linger on Lyndsay despite how badly she wanted to.

“So, I’d love to hear about you guys, then we’ll get into the boring stuff.”

[spacebrick3]

The Malformation AU: Part 10

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 |

This is the final chapter, but that’s not to say there’s not more lying ahead - not when the Malformation and @writerofwriting are around…

Chapter 10 (Talya):

Anechoi collapses to the floor. For just a moment, there is silence, nobody in the hangar daring to move. With a slow hiss, the last remnants of the magic crisscrossing the room, fade out, corrupted and Designer alike - and with the failure of the magic, the spell is broken.

Talya drops to the ground next to her, abandoning the now-useless tech. “Anechoi, Anechoi, please, come on, come on…” She doesn’t - she scared, because she doesn’t know what she’s just done. No one has researched the effects of suddenly and violently removing corrupted magic from somebody, much less doing so by stabbing a Designed blade through said person. If she’s hurt…If I was the one who hurt her…

She is hurt. That much is obvious. Eris - the entity - hadn’t cared for what she was dragging Anechoi through, and so burns of both magic and frost mottle her skin. Cuts from the dust storm line her face, and she can’t know what mental trauma being taken over by Eris will leave. But she’s alive, breathing shallowly and with a pulse. At least she’s alive. 

Did I do that, though? Would she be okay if I hadn’t…? She doesn’t know. That’s the worst part. She wants to blame it on Eris, but…can she? This hadn’t happened until she’d activated her Design, not before. Cause and effect said that she was the reason Anechoi was sprawled unconscious on the ground.

With a sigh, she buries her face in her hands. She’s drained. And even now, when the whole thing is supposed to be over, it feels like things have only managed to get worse. Anechoi’s hurt, and badly, and she doesn’t know what to do. She was just trying to help, to try and protect her or stop the thing inside her head from hurting her. Congratulations! I did! Because I was the one who hurt her! Great fucking job there, she tells herself acidly.

Syrus comes over, looking worried. “Is - is she going to be alright? You - she isn’t-“

A shrug is all she can muster. “Maybe? She’s alive, but…”

“Yeah, no…” He looks around anxiously. “Hey, this might sound strange, but do you - does she have any of the explosives left? I need to borrow one.”

Anechoi is still carrying most of them - evidently, most of the explosive work at Aquamarine was contributed by Eris. She undoes the clip on one and hands it to him. “What do you need them for?”

Tossing it between his hands - she winces, because that is absolutely not the way to handle sensitive mining explosives - he takes a second to answer. “I tried to get Kellstrand to keep them away, but even she’s not that powerful. In around…oh, maybe seven minutes, every news station on Mars is gonna be here.”

“That’s what you’re caring about now?” she asks incredulously, almost laughing. It’s the kind of the laugh that is just on the other side of crying, the same release of emotion. “The fucking news!? Your sister could be dying and all you care about is-“

“You two are criminals. I don’t know how wanted or whatever you are,” he says, picking up bits of shattered LIMES off the floor, “but certainly Anechoi is the one seen killing Aquamarine. My guess is you don’t want her to get packed off to jail forever. I mean, maybe they’ll put you in the same prison, but I doubt it. So we need a cover story.”

It’s hard for her to care. “Sure…?”

“Exactly. Now if I just…” He strides to the ripped-open door at the edge of the hangar, looking on on the field of strewn metal that used to be her Designer sigil. “Perfect. It’s the switch on here that arms it, right?” Without waiting for an answer, he flicks it, then throws the blinking globe, along with the scraps of LIMES, out towards the surface. Hitting the ground with a dull thunk, it bounces once before detonating and leaving a charred crater in the sand, lined with bits of metal.

“What the hell was that for?”

“Rogue android, course,” he answers.

She blinks. “What?”

Something blinks on his tablet, and he hurries back over. “Shit! They’re already here. Come on, get back into Diamond and I’ll get the flyer around when I have the chance.” Together, they manage to pick Anechoi up, but Talya can’t really carry her on her own. 

“Hey!” It’s the red-haired girl, who’s picking herself up from where Eris threw her. A trickle of blood runs down her forehead, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “I - ow - I can help. I think. Ow.” She winces, stumbling over and lifting Anechoi’s other arm over her shoulder. “She’s not still evil, is she? ‘Cause then we probably shouldn’t be this close.”

“She…shouldn’t be-“

“Oh.” She sounds almost disappointed. “I’m Mira, by the way. You going back to being a criminal or whatever?”

“What? I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re not one of the register Designers like Kayode, are you, and there’s not that many. Everybody knows who they are, so if you’re not them you’ve gotta be one of the black marketeers? Which one, though - you Devre, or are you Lewis?”

There’s not much point in hiding it from her. They manage to limp into the corridor just off to the side, leaning against the wide doorframe. “Lewis.”

“Oh, I’ve heard good things. Also that you rip off your customers. Is that true?”

She manages a small smile. “Only the ones I don’t like.”

Syrus’ voice echoes throughout the hangar. “No, I didn’t get that much of a good look at it. Think it must have been some sort of rogue Designer AI, the way it was throwing magic around. What? Once we got some shots off on it, actual solid hits, we must have broken some sort of catch in it. Wandered off into the sand and exploded. You can look, but I don’t think you’ll find much, just some broken circuits and bits of metal. Wish I could help more.”

“No, course not,” he continues, in response to another question. “No, I’ve gotta thank all the people here at Diamond who helped, the dock engineers especially and the people who managed to keep everybody safe with the evacuation. Don’t thank me, really.”

“Come on,” Mira says, pulling them forwards. “We should keep going. I don’t know how much longer I can stay with you, ‘cause - ow-“ She misses the next step, barely staying upright- “that. I think I should see a doctor. You think I should see a doctor?”

Talya is barely paying attention. “What? Yeah, probably.”

The lights of Diamond are harsh, all brilliant white overhead. She doesn’t know where they’re going - probably to another of the hangars, for Syrus to get to them, but which one? They’re just angling towards the central area, because that will connect to all the points. “They’ll never be able to take the company from him now, you know,” Mira says.

“From Syrus?”

“It’s been news, you know. I read it, but nobody seems to care. The Almas-Daviau family doesn’t like him, and so they’re trying to get rid of him as the heir to the company. But now that he’s, you know, ‘saved’ Diamond, people are gonna care, so they can’t throw him out.” The door in front of them slides open, revealing the vast, circular hall that marks the innermost point of the city. “Hey. I’m - I’m gonna go to the doctor, now, cause - cause my head really hurts.”

This part of Diamond is modeled like the train stations of Earth, benches and tables scattered throughout. Mira lets Anechoi slide off her shoulders and onto the nearest bench, head lolling over the top. She turns to go, then stops. “We should…we…” She trails off, then shakes her head, grabbing a slip of paper from the nearest kiosk and scribbling something on it. “Here.” And then she’s gone, disappearing into the maze of halls that run through the city.

Of course. Talya rubs her eyes, almost unable to comprehend what she’s seeing. Of course this day would end with her getting a girl’s number. Of course. That was just the most fitting end to the whole scenario - it started with an impossible thing happening, and it was going to end with one too. “There is no way this could get stranger,” she tells Anechoi, sitting next to her.

The problem with saying things like that is that the universe has a tendency to prove them wrong. 

There’s a tap on her shoulder. She jumps to her feet, already flicking on the spare LIMES she took from Mira. A startled cry and the four people there are backing away, holding up their hands defensively. “We’re the good guys here! Don’t shoot us!” one of them shouts, and she lowers the weapon a fraction. 

“Okay, great, thanks for not shooting us,” the one in front says. She’s tall, with black hair that’s a little shorter than ‘long’, and seems to be the leader of the group. Behind her are two boys, one with hair dyed a stark white and the other even taller than her, plus the girl who’d shouted first, short with braided brown hair. “Are you okay?” she continues, glancing at Anechoi. “You look hurt, and your…friend?”

“Who are you?” Talya demands. “The city was evacuated! Nobody’s supposed to be here! So what are you doing here?”

“No - we’re here about a problem! We’re trying to help!” the same brown-haired girl says. “There’s a…entity of chaos that’s supposed to be here, gets inside people’s heads?” 

She hesitates. “You haven’t seen anything like that, have you?”

If you’re wondering who those four are, check no further than the Guardians project from which the Malformation is taken. Looks like they’re here to help, if they can...

Tag list (if you want to be added or removed, just let me know!):

@lady-redshield-writes, @no-url-ideas-tho, @ratracechronicler, @ken-kenwrites, @ravenpuffwriter, @cirianne, @lonelylibrary @maxbeewriting, @endlesshourglass, @thebloodstainedquill,  @anip-ocs, @dreamwishing, @incandescent-creativity, @fatal-blow, @danafaithwriting, @wri-tten

[sciencespies]

'Band of Brothers' Stars Reflect on the Epic Miniseries' Evolving Legacy

https://sciencespies.com/history/band-of-brothers-stars-reflect-on-the-epic-miniseries-evolving-legacy/

'Band of Brothers' Stars Reflect on the Epic Miniseries' Evolving Legacy

Actor James Madio played Easy Company T-4 Frank Perconte. Courtesy of HBO

Michael Cudlitz remembers the moment clearly. He was standing on a dike in Europe while filming episode five of “Band of Brothers,” the epic 2001 HBO miniseries about American soldiers fighting in World War II. With blaring lights and cameras rolling in the background, he fired furiously at the actors playing German soldiers.

Cudlitz fumbled as he pressed a new clip into his M1 Garand rifle, then brought the weapon back to his shoulder. Shooting blanks, he took aim at a soldier dressed in a Wehrmacht uniform and squeezed the trigger, watching the “enemy” fall to the ground.

“I call it my holy shit moment,” says the actor, who portrayed cigar-chomping staff sergeant Denver “Bull” Randleman. “There is the smell of cordite and sulfur in the air. For a second, you feel like you caused that. There is something very visceral about it. We got the tiniest taste of what these guys might have gone through.”

Michael Cudlitz as Staff Sergeant Denver “Bull” Randleman

Courtesy of HBO

“Band of Brothers” first aired 20 years ago, on September 9, 2001—two days before the 9/11 attacks shook the country. The Emmy Award–winning production offered viewers a gritty look at the lives of soldiers on the front lines of World War II’s European theater, realistically showing what the men experienced in combat and how they put their lives on the line for their beliefs.

Produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, the miniseries is based on historian Stephen Ambrose’s bestselling 1992 book of the same name. Both follow the real-life experiences of Easy Company, part of the 506th Parachute Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, from basic training through the end of the war in Europe.

James Madio, who costarred in the ten-part miniseries as T-4 Frank Perconte, says that “Band of Brothers” changed him and all those who watched it. He went from a World War II “illiterate” to an active supporter of veteran causes.

“When you look back and think of the bravery and camaraderie and the sacrifice of that generation and how unified America was because we were attacked, the story continues to gain strength as it goes,” says Madio, who has also appeared in Jersey Boys and Basketball Diaries. “To some degree, we wish we could go back to that American way.”

Two days after the series’ premiere, the United States suffered the most significant attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Peter Crean, a retired Army colonel who served in both the 101st Airborne and 82nd Airborne, remembers 9/11 well. Just after learning of the attack, the then–35-year-old soldier wrote a portent passage in his Palm Pilot: “My generation just had its Pearl Harbor. We are at war with people we don’t even know.”

“Just like the real ‘Band of Brothers,’ we were in a war we didn’t ask for,” says Crean, who lost two friends at the Pentagon on 9/11 and now serves as vice president of education and access at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. “They were civilian soldiers who defended their country after it was attacked. The book and series showed us that we had been here before and we would get through this.”

From the beginning of the project, the actors understood they were participating in something special. Hanks and Spielberg, who had filmed the equally realistic, albeit fictionalized, Saving Private Ryan three years prior, spared no expense in making the miniseries as accurate as possible. Uniforms, weapons, scenery—everything was exact to the tiniest detail. With a budget of $125 million, “Band of Brothers” was then the most expensive production of its kind.

Band of Brothers

Stephen E. Ambrose’s classic bestseller and the inspiration for the acclaimed HBO series about Easy Company, the ordinary men who became the World War II’s most extraordinary soldiers at the frontlines of the war’s most critical moments

Buy

Easy Company’s 140 paratroopers were dropped behind German lines on D-Day, June 6, 1944. They could only hope that the amphibious landings at Normandy would succeed, giving them the chance to survive what could have easily been a suicidal mission.

The unit managed to successfully link up with American soldiers advancing from the Omaha beachhead. Under the command of legendary Army officer Richard Winters, Easy Company went on to participate in the liberation of France, the attempted liberation of Holland in the botched Operation Market Garden, the defense of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of concentration camps, and the capture of the Eagle’s Nest—Hitler’s hideaway in the Bavarian Alps.

Each episode in the HBO series began with interviews featuring the real-life soldiers. (As a segregated unit, all of Easy Company’s paratroopers—and the actors who later portrayed them—were white, with Irish, Italian, Jewish or German American heritage, among other European backgrounds.) Then in their 70s and 80s, the men discussed their experiences and offered insights on how the horror of being in battle affected them. Today, most—if not all—of the original members of Easy Company are deceased.

Both Madio and Cudlitz formed close bonds with the real soldiers they played. Like the rest of the cast, they spent time with the men and their families, learning about who they were in order to develop their characters.

Damian Lewis (center, kneeling) played Easy Company’s leader, Dick Winters.

Courtesy of HBO

“I must have stared at my phone for 45 minutes before I called [Randleman] for the first time,” Cudlitz, who is also known for his roles in “The Walking Dead” and Grosse Point Blank, recalls. “I kept going over in my head how I was going to start this conversation. And the more I did that, the stupider it sounded. I wanted to get it right. I mean, that was the point behind the whole project: We wanted to get everything right.”

Madio, who was only 26 when filming began, says he knew nothing about World War II, let alone the Normandy invasion, before winning the role. He was a quick study, though, and became extremely close to Perconte—so close, in fact, that Perconte asked the actor to attend a reunion with him and other veterans in Europe after the show wrapped.

“Frank had just lost his wife, and his son couldn’t go on the tour,” Madio says. “He asked me if I would go with him. I spent two weeks with Frank and the other vets as we went around Normandy, Holland and Germany. It was amazing.”

The miniseries experience left most of the actors feeling like they were indeed a band of brothers. (The phrase refers to a passage from William Shakespeare’s Henry V: “From this day to the ending of the world, / But we in it shall be remember’d; / We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”) Before production began, the group attended a “mini bootcamp” where they trained, drilled and learned how to be World War II soldiers. Filming, combined with getting to know the men they were portraying, left the actors with an intense feeling of solidarity.

“We get together once a year at my place in Los Angeles,” Cudlitz says. “Whoever is in town shows up.”

He adds, “We’ve also bonded with the [veterans’] families. We told the stories of their fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers with respect, reverence and love.”

The men of Easy Company pose in Austria after the end of the war in 1945.

Nat1939 via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0

“Band of Brothers” was a life-changing experience for Madio. He came away with a deep admiration for the Greatest Generation and its sacrifices, and he continued to wear the dog tags he’d received during production for two years after the show ended. Today, Madio volunteers with the United Service Organizations (USO) to entertain American troops in faraway places.

“It changed me as a young man,” he says. “I was this kid from the Bronx with no education on World War II. I went to Europe for a year and got to meet these guys who fought there. It taught me respect and understanding for what they did. It shaped me into the man I am today.”

Madio and Cudlitz regularly participate in “Band of Brothers” symposiums sponsored by the National World War II Museum. Both plan to be a part of the museum’s 20th anniversary program, which is scheduled for January 8, 2022, in New Orleans. The symposium will be livestreamed for virtual audiences free of charge.

Twenty years later, “Band of Brothers” continues to resonate with audiences. The message of sacrifice for a cause greater than the individual—along with the realistic portrayal of the average American at war—reminds viewers of how the country can coalesce into a formidable force when it needs to.

“‘Band of Brothers’ is important because it shows ordinary people doing extraordinary things,” Crean says. “These were citizen soldiers. None of these men planned to be in the military. They answered the call when their country needed them.”

American History

Based on a True Story

Books

Military

Nazis

Television

US Military

Warfare

World War II

#History

[kinghoranshit]

This is Love (LT) Ch 1

Word Count: 1,402

I didn't usually swear, but I found myself repeating the words 'Shit. Fuckity fuck. Dammit.' in my head. Over and over again as the pink plus sign burned into my retinas.

I gently set the test down on the bathroom counter and looked into the mirror. My red curls were in an unruly mass at the moment and my pale skin was flushed on the cheeks, showing my freckles a bit more. I sighed as I grabbed my brush and tried to defy them. I pulled a few curls back and clipped them with a white bow. Next, I put mascara on to frame and bring out my blue-green eyes. I had to look somewhat presentable for work.

I trudged into my bedroom, which was the only other room besides the open concept living room and kitchen. It was the basic flat you'd find anywhere.

I ruffled through my oversized sweaters; some of them more like cardigans and others like pullovers. I decided on my soft grey with a few white stripes cardigan. Before putting it on, I yanked on a white cami, then I put on my favorite (lucky) dark denim skinnies; I felt like I was going to need to luck today. Lastly, I tugged on my black rider boots.

I looked into the full body length mirror, adjusting the cardigan a bit. Nothing seemed to fit my body perfectly, but not for the same reason as some other girls. I was too skinny, which didn't make sense cause I ate and ate and ate and I didn't exercise. Some girls would kill to have this body at our age, I knew that. But, it was going to change.

I sighed in contentment. This outfit and how I looked would have to do. I didn't have time to waste anymore as I noticed it was seven-thirty. I had to be at the school in fifteen minutes.

I snatched my black satchel messenger, which had an owl covered journal, black ballpoint pen, and the most recent literature I was reading in it. And my students' papers, of course. But I believed in more discussing the reading, rather than writing it. Anyone could write.

I chowed down on a chocolate chip granola bar as I walked briskly down a sidewalk of Doncaster. My tan, red, and black plaid scarf kept flapping into my face and the apricot colored, elegant, trench coat my love insisted on buying me for this chilly winter. I didn't necessarily fight against it; It suited me and he rarely bought me anything. Though, he wanted to.

I stuffed the granola bar wrapper into my satchel as I slowed down to walk calmly into the school courtyard. I readjusted the black gloves and red beanie as I entered into the building, the warm air brushing against my cheeks.

"Good morning, Ms. Lewis," one of two Norwegian teachers, Mr. Engest, greeted with his prominent Norwegian accent. He ran a hand through his newly cut, blond hair. He was the heartthrob for all the girls. I didn't blame them, but I had a heartthrob of my own, who could've had any other girl's heart.

"Morning, Mr. Engest." I smiled with a small wave and continued down the navy blue tiled and tan walled hallway. The classroom I started in was the one next to his. Here, the teachers are the ones who moved from classroom to classroom, rather than the students.

I walked into the classroom as if I was on air and waved to the familiar, young faces. "Hello, everyone! Have good weekends? Did you make good choices?"

I set my bag, gloves, and hat on the desk provided, then unraveled my scar and unbuttoned my coat, setting them on the back of the chair.

Frankie, who sat at one of the front pair tables, started to snicker.

I gave him the best motherly look I could. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," he remarked, his British accent thick, and he ruffled his black hair.

The blonde girl next to him giggled. "He stole his pap's car and took it for a spin."

I shook my head. "Frankie, next time, just ask your father for permission." I turned to the chalkboard behind me and picked up a piece of white chalk to write today's lesson.

***

I sighed for what felt like the millionth time today. I  was ready for a hot tea and crumpet. That's all I wanted for lunch right now.

I taught four classes. All in the morning and I was out by noon. Technically, I worked part time, but the school still paid me what any other teacher would get full time. I would like to think it's for my great skills and how well I got on with the students and staff, but I was sure there's another aspect involved.

I settled myself at the small, circle table in the corner of the coffee shop, it was by the real fireplace, which had yellow-orange flames flicking and sparking. I sipped on my tea as I pulled out a piece of my old fashioned stationery and my pen.

I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to start it yet. I observed the place as I thought. The walls were a matte black and the wooden floor boards were a deep, rich mahogony. The stone bricks that formed the fireplace were white. Not much was placed around the walls of the open square room; a few paintings and song lyrics in frames. It was a cute, quaint shop; it didn't need a lot.

I, finally, decided to start my letter off with 'Dearest Louis,' and went on to write to tell him about how I was doing and explained the situation. When he found out, I didn't want it to be through media, a text, during a phone call, or even a skype call. I wanted it to be plain and clear, on paper, in my hand writing.

"Why hello loyal customer." My best friend with straight, chest length, blonde hair smiled as she sat down in the chair beside me. Her green eyes danced with amusement and her smile was natural.

Though, I had been feeling sick to my stomach all morning, my smile grew toward her. "Hi, Katie, how's the shop? I presume good?"

She laughed. "Always. Classes, okay? Did that Frankie kid get into trouble again?"

"Almost. He stole his father's car for a drive, but he doesn't know."

"Of course." She rolled her eyes, laughing some more under her breath. Her eyes peered down at the letter. "What're you writing?"

"Another letter to Louis." I took a sip of my tea.

A smirk crossed her lips. "Your relationship is so cute. I love that you, two, write letters back and forth."

"You know," I prompted as I signed the letter with my name and a heart, "You and Niall could do this."

She shook her head. "Nah, he's not one for that. But he still sends me lyrics on paper in the mail."

I looked up at her. "Do you still send him stories you've handwritten?"

"Yeah." She looked down at her hands sheepishly, her cheeks going red; it wasn't a look that I saw often on her.

"You'll get published one day," I encouraged, knowing that the thought had cross her mind in the past minute.

Katie nodded. "I know, I just don't want it to be because I'm with Niall. I want it to be for my writing. For now, though, I'm living another dream of mine. Owning a coffee shop called 'La Lee Cafe'."

"I, seriously, can't believe you named it that," I remarked, tucking the letter and pen into my bag.

"After Niall asked me out, and both of us moved here to be closer to the boys, I'm having a hard time believing anything," she shot back.

I felt my heart drop deep into my chest, causing my smile to fail. I couldn't believe anything either.

Katie noticed my change in mood and her eyebrows furrowed. "Is everything okay?"

I looked down at the table, my bag, and finally, back at her, and I shook my head.

"I'm gonna close the shop up early today. We'll grab a pizza, go back to the apartment, and have a writing night, and if you want, you can tell me what's going on. Sound good?"

I made a small laugh. "Sounds good."

Next: Ch 2

[Masterlist]

[adambstingus]

7 Dumb Back To The Future Products You Won’t Believe Existed

A good 80 percent of Cracked’s content is devoted to peeling back the kaleidoscopic layers of WTF-ness contained within Back To The Future, but this article isn’t about that. Nope, this is about an even more ridiculous topic: the many confounding ways people tried to squeeze big bucks out of the Back To The Future flicks.

This ordinary tale of a time-travelling eccentric and his pet teenager has spawned such baffling shit as …

#7. The Back To The Future Cartoon Was A Fucking Crazy Parade

As we’ve mentioned before on the site, Doc Brown’s character-concluding decision to father children with a historically dead woman and blast through time in a screeching lightning train was reckless at best. And so it’s only natural that the 1991 Back To The Future TV show would follow the horrific mishaps of this family, sandwiched with live-action science demonstrations by Christopher Lloyd and an oddly mute Bill Nye.

They’re like the Penn and Teller of mad science.

But despite its audience of the young and curious, an average episode of Back To The Future: The Animated Series played out like Rick And Morty episodes Adult Swim rejected for being too bleak. Don’t believe us? The pilot for the series starts with Doc’s younger son Verne stealing the time machine and traveling to the Civil War … followed by Doc finding a photo revealing that little Verne died for the Confederate Army.

“But hey, it says here that the Alabama chapter of the KKK is named in his honor.”

Doc eventually prevents this by creating a truce between Verne’s Confederate pals and the Union, and the gang happily flies home like they didn’t just irrevocably alter the outcome of a Civil War battle. That’s basically the story of the series, as Doc, Marty, and Doc’s kids manhandle historical moments while Doc’s wife Clara waits back home with sandwiches.

In the third goddamn episode, Doc brings his kids to the very moment the dinosaurs are wiped out by a meteor, saving the group by hastily stopping the comet and changing the future into a lizard-ruled wasteland. (One of said lizards looks like Biff, implying that a Tannen once fucked a dinosaur.)

This means that Doc is forced to go back and kill the dinosaurs himself, re-altering his actions so that the meteor gets back on a collision course with Earth … but not before one of his kids befriends a scared pterodactyl. So how does Doc handle this unfortunate attachment? Obviously, the rest of the series would involve the group goofing around with their adopted dino friend. I mean, otherwise, he’d have to …

… tear his son from the sobbing grasp of a doomed animal …

… stuff him into the time machine and fly away …

This also serves as the official series finale for The Flintstones.

… and watch as the comet tears through the atmosphere and vaporizes the boy’s dinosaur pal. That’s seriously what happens in the special “watch all the dinosaurs die” episode of this nightmare series. Happy Saturday morning, assholes!

#6. A Japanese Video Game Made BTTF 2 Into Crazy-Ass Anime

Anyone who played the early Back To The Future Nintendo games knows that whoever made them clearly didn’t bother to see the movies. Either that, or Back To The Future Part III cut a scene in which Marty ingests a crazy amount of peyote and starts seeing mutant cow men everywhere.

Presumably named “Beef Tannen.”

The Japan-only Back To The Future Part II Super Famicom game, on the other hand, tried to follow the plot of movie … and somehow ended up being even weirder. You control Marty, who spends the entire time on his hoverboard — because, realistically speaking, if you owned a hoverboard, why the fuck would you ever not be flying around on it?

The game starts on a grimly prescient note, with trigger-happy 2015 cops shooting at Marty for no apparent reason.

When we reach the alternate 1985, Marty goes around fighting disoriented crackheads, mistaking their agonized gasps for taunting chicken noises. Marty then discovers his murdered father’s tombstone, and he … seems pretty copacetic with this development, all things considered.

Doc, on the other hand, turns into an angry pink Gollum.

If you’ve ever wanted to see these iconic moments reimagined as demented Sailor Moon episodes, you’re in luck. When Marty discovers the 1950s girlie mag instead of the sports almanac, the mere sight of boobs gives him a stroke.

Which is weird, because this is after meeting his mother’s gargantuan dystopian breasts. Marty’s perma-smirk in that scene is somehow even creepier than when he was standing at his dead dad’s grave.

Also, why are they in the Technodrome?

By the time Biff seemingly vampire-bites the almanac away from Marty and gets covered in a sea of 16-bit horseshit, you’ll probably never see Back To The Future the same way ever again.

“I won’t close my mouth. I deserve this.”

And speaking of which …

#5. A Hot Wheels Biff Car … Complete With Manure

There aren’t a ton of Back To The Future toys, but the ones that do exist are mostly DeLorean-based. There’s a DeLorean Lego set, a remote-control DeLorean, and even a Power-Wheels-esque DeLorean for ’80s kids whose parents wanted them to explore their confused Oedipal feelings outside the house.

Sadly, this kid was easily taken out by Libyan terrorists.

So it’s only natural that the DeLorean be adopted by stalwart toy car company Hot Wheels. Recently, the company decided to expand their Back To The Future line to include not only Doc’s DeLorean …

Oh, sorry. Doc’s “Time Machine of Indeterminate Brand.”

And Marty’s sweet 4×4 …

“Complete with two coats of wax and Fat Biff’s tears!”

And even Biff Tannen’s Ford Super Deluxe Converti– oh, shit.

You can get a non-poopy version for an extra $300.

Yes, they produced a beautiful classic automobile overflowing with rancid manure, as seen in that scene and that other scene and that variation of the scene. It looks like an amusing Internet Photoshop job, but it’s a real toy which you could go buy right now … or, you know, make at home yourself with a toy car and some laxatives.

Couldn’t Hot Wheels have mass-produced Doc’s hover-train? Or one of those kickass police cars from 2015? Nope. Instead, we get the shit-encrusted rapemobile. Think of all the ways kids could play with this. “Oh no, Biff’s car got covered in manure … again …” Assuming your kid even knows what Back To The Future is, how are they supposed to integrate Biff’s car with their other Hot Wheels products?

“Yes! The race is delayed due to track turds!”

#4. ZZ Top Turns All The Characters Into Ogling Creeps

Along with “The Power of Love,” Huey Lewis and the News wrote “Back In Time,” the surprisingly engaged recounting of the events of Back To The Future from Marty’s perspective. Sadly, we were less lucky with ZZ Top’s “Doubleback,” a jabbering spray of temporally-themed rhymes in no way related to the third film.

The one band you’d think you could trust to hitch their beer-drinking, hell-raising wagon to Wake-Up Juice, but noooooo.

Now, “Doubleback” is a fucking abomination, an artistic charley horse clearly farted out 12 minutes from the studio call time. But then there’s the music video, which superimposes the band into random clips from the movie in such a disjointed, cookie cutter way that it comes alive like a serial killer’s scrapbook.

GOOF: ZZ Top were only teenagers in 1885, so they shouldn’t have beards yet.

It’s everyone’s third-favorite time travel movie, perpetually interrupted with the looming presence of three guys who look like the personification of bathroom assault. By the end, they’re literally sticking their faces over the action so that we don’t forget to be bummed out by their existence.

We’re all for them supplanting Marty’s mom in this scene to make it less creepy, though.

But the weird stuff begins when this monochromatic onslaught changes the movie’s finale to include a pimped-out ride randomly rolling into Marty’s standoff with Mad Dog Tannen …

… and releasing three jean-short bombshells of various ’90s fabric patterns and foxy accessories, to which the movie’s characters react with stock disbelief appropriated from the original scene.

OK, we have to admit that these guys clean up nicely when they shave.

That’s right — Doc reacting to Marty’s fakeout death is the same expression as his boner face. Or maybe he’s wondering how a Cadillac Sedanette went back in time without a bunch of nonsense sticking out of its hood. Either way: boner.

#3. Pizza Hut’s Back To The Future Ads Are Rather Sad In Retrospect

Having the ability to engorge on a puck of meat and cheese has been every child’s dream since Marty’s mom hydrated a Pizza Hut pizza in Back To The Future II.

The most fantastic concept here is a 2015 pizza without a gimmicky crust.

So delicious. At least, if you ignore the fact that eating a waterlogged dough slice sounds like a fucking nightmare, and that the Pizza Hut of this future solely makes the equivalent of microwave meals. In fairness, the brand’s own advertising campaign had a slightly different take on their role in the future:

Their kinder, gentler take on Robocop was probably their lamest (and most inaccurate) prediction of all.

According to one 1989 commercial, the Pizza Huts of 2015 are built like techno mosques. It makes sense in the context of the ad, which begins with two unknown ruffians taking the DeLorean out for a spin, presumably after swiping the keys from Doc Brown’s ransacked corpse.

To save you 15 minutes on IMDb: It’s Mikey from Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.

The ne’er-do-wells zoom to 2015, where, to the sad grumbles of their stomachs, they find the streets barren of any pizza eateries, as Domino’s has long been converted into a hardware chain. Luckily, there’s still one place in business, and it’s the all-hail Pizza Hut temple.

The Noid was executed after a show trial in ’94.

It’s unclear why a restaurant that makes cookie-sized products needs multiple neon spires, but it probably has to do with the announcer’s assertion that, even in the future, Pizza Hut is the “only one place to get a great pizza.” The fact that Pizza Hut was envisioning an all-exclusive Demolition Man scenario with their brand is made that much more heartbreaking by the company’s actual 2015 situation:

Also depressing: the current state of journalism, since no one realized this graphic should be a pie chart.

Turns out that all the movie projector pizza boxes and eye-tracking tablet menus in the world can’t get us to that Utopian Italian palace where dressing like it’s the ’80s is still hip and (according to another tie-in ad) absolutely everyone wears futuristic solar shades.

The nuclear fallout has melted all of our eyes by now.

#2. Doc Brown Teamed Up With Doogie Howser For Earth Day

Back in 1990, people were really committed to saving the environment … as long as the extent of that commitment was appearing in some kind of extravagant TV special instead of cutting back on fossil fuels. Regardless, this newly-discovered sense of eco-awareness led to one of the craziest moments in pop culture: The Earth Day Special.

The special starred a slew of wacky creatures, like the Muppets and Danny DeVito and E.T., who looks to have been living in a filthy alley since the events of his film.

He’ll touch you with his “magic finger” for $5 and some Reese’s Pieces.

Since this was the year that Back To The Future Part III came out, Doc Brown naturally joined the cross-promotional fray. Who better to promote environmental activism than a guy who hoards large quantities of plutonium in a garage in a residential neighborhood?

The loose plot of the special is about the personification of Mother Earth dying. Doc Brown shows up in his DeLorean and offers his assistance to the doctor in charge of healing Mrs. Earth — who, because this was 1990, is Doogie Fucking Howser.

“Not even Edward James Olmos’ mustache could revive her.” “We’re doomed.”

Doc whips out his suitcase TV and shows them footage of how screwed over the Earth is, which is kind of a dick move, considering how she’s right over there. It doesn’t help that the clips are seemingly stock footage pretentiously edited together by first-year film students.

“What are those ladies doing with that cup …?” “Whoops, wrong year.”

As always, Doc ends up finding the solution: science! Not any specific science but, like, the act of reading and shit. Look, it was 6 a.m. and someone wanted to finish that goddamn children’s TV show script already.

#1. The Back To The Future Novelization Gets Dark

Movie novelizations are generally terrible, but the one for Back To The Future takes it to a whole new level. It’s the Back To The Future of bad literary cash-ins.

“What do you mean it’s not about a kid with a camera who farts fireworks?” — the author, probably

The book opens with a vivid description of a dead family getting bent out of shape by the detonation of a nuclear bomb, which turns out to be a scene from a film Marty is watching. This never comes up again in the book — because the author is too busy thinking up even crazier, tangentially BTTF-related shit. For instance, we get a scene featuring the Libyan terrorists casually hanging out in a shitty motel, which answers the question you always had: Yes, one of them is a psychotic former fashion model.

You can only be told to look “sexy like tiger” so many times before something inside snaps.

And she doesn’t mind offing Doc Brown because he … “looks Jewish.”

Doc goes commando in his jumpsuits in this version.

Even when it’s a scene we recognize from the movie, the author’s prose manages to make everything seem a tiny bit seedier:

Not that “Let’s hire your attempted rapist as our live-in manservant” is any less creepy.

The novel also features the most disturbing context for the phrase “giggled naughtily” in all of fiction:

A parent’s naughty giggling is typically reason #1 Protective Services gives when taking away their child.

The whole book is so bizarre and creepy that it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that it was imported from the shitty alternate 1985. And we’re only scratching the surface here. A whole other book could be written just pointing out all the fucked up moments, page by page. Did we say “could”? We meant “someone on the Internet did exactly that.”

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/7-dumb-back-to-the-future-products-you-wont-believe-existed/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/181924707857

[allofbeercom]

7 Dumb Back To The Future Products You Won’t Believe Existed

A good 80 percent of Cracked’s content is devoted to peeling back the kaleidoscopic layers of WTF-ness contained within Back To The Future, but this article isn’t about that. Nope, this is about an even more ridiculous topic: the many confounding ways people tried to squeeze big bucks out of the Back To The Future flicks.

This ordinary tale of a time-travelling eccentric and his pet teenager has spawned such baffling shit as …

#7. The Back To The Future Cartoon Was A Fucking Crazy Parade

As we’ve mentioned before on the site, Doc Brown’s character-concluding decision to father children with a historically dead woman and blast through time in a screeching lightning train was reckless at best. And so it’s only natural that the 1991 Back To The Future TV show would follow the horrific mishaps of this family, sandwiched with live-action science demonstrations by Christopher Lloyd and an oddly mute Bill Nye.

They’re like the Penn and Teller of mad science.

But despite its audience of the young and curious, an average episode of Back To The Future: The Animated Series played out like Rick And Morty episodes Adult Swim rejected for being too bleak. Don’t believe us? The pilot for the series starts with Doc’s younger son Verne stealing the time machine and traveling to the Civil War … followed by Doc finding a photo revealing that little Verne died for the Confederate Army.

“But hey, it says here that the Alabama chapter of the KKK is named in his honor.”

Doc eventually prevents this by creating a truce between Verne’s Confederate pals and the Union, and the gang happily flies home like they didn’t just irrevocably alter the outcome of a Civil War battle. That’s basically the story of the series, as Doc, Marty, and Doc’s kids manhandle historical moments while Doc’s wife Clara waits back home with sandwiches.

In the third goddamn episode, Doc brings his kids to the very moment the dinosaurs are wiped out by a meteor, saving the group by hastily stopping the comet and changing the future into a lizard-ruled wasteland. (One of said lizards looks like Biff, implying that a Tannen once fucked a dinosaur.)

This means that Doc is forced to go back and kill the dinosaurs himself, re-altering his actions so that the meteor gets back on a collision course with Earth … but not before one of his kids befriends a scared pterodactyl. So how does Doc handle this unfortunate attachment? Obviously, the rest of the series would involve the group goofing around with their adopted dino friend. I mean, otherwise, he’d have to …

… tear his son from the sobbing grasp of a doomed animal …

… stuff him into the time machine and fly away …

This also serves as the official series finale for The Flintstones.

… and watch as the comet tears through the atmosphere and vaporizes the boy’s dinosaur pal. That’s seriously what happens in the special “watch all the dinosaurs die” episode of this nightmare series. Happy Saturday morning, assholes!

#6. A Japanese Video Game Made BTTF 2 Into Crazy-Ass Anime

Anyone who played the early Back To The Future Nintendo games knows that whoever made them clearly didn’t bother to see the movies. Either that, or Back To The Future Part III cut a scene in which Marty ingests a crazy amount of peyote and starts seeing mutant cow men everywhere.

Presumably named “Beef Tannen.”

The Japan-only Back To The Future Part II Super Famicom game, on the other hand, tried to follow the plot of movie … and somehow ended up being even weirder. You control Marty, who spends the entire time on his hoverboard — because, realistically speaking, if you owned a hoverboard, why the fuck would you ever not be flying around on it?

The game starts on a grimly prescient note, with trigger-happy 2015 cops shooting at Marty for no apparent reason.

When we reach the alternate 1985, Marty goes around fighting disoriented crackheads, mistaking their agonized gasps for taunting chicken noises. Marty then discovers his murdered father’s tombstone, and he … seems pretty copacetic with this development, all things considered.

Doc, on the other hand, turns into an angry pink Gollum.

If you’ve ever wanted to see these iconic moments reimagined as demented Sailor Moon episodes, you’re in luck. When Marty discovers the 1950s girlie mag instead of the sports almanac, the mere sight of boobs gives him a stroke.

Which is weird, because this is after meeting his mother’s gargantuan dystopian breasts. Marty’s perma-smirk in that scene is somehow even creepier than when he was standing at his dead dad’s grave.

Also, why are they in the Technodrome?

By the time Biff seemingly vampire-bites the almanac away from Marty and gets covered in a sea of 16-bit horseshit, you’ll probably never see Back To The Future the same way ever again.

“I won’t close my mouth. I deserve this.”

And speaking of which …

#5. A Hot Wheels Biff Car … Complete With Manure

There aren’t a ton of Back To The Future toys, but the ones that do exist are mostly DeLorean-based. There’s a DeLorean Lego set, a remote-control DeLorean, and even a Power-Wheels-esque DeLorean for ’80s kids whose parents wanted them to explore their confused Oedipal feelings outside the house.

Sadly, this kid was easily taken out by Libyan terrorists.

So it’s only natural that the DeLorean be adopted by stalwart toy car company Hot Wheels. Recently, the company decided to expand their Back To The Future line to include not only Doc’s DeLorean …

Oh, sorry. Doc’s “Time Machine of Indeterminate Brand.”

And Marty’s sweet 4×4 …

“Complete with two coats of wax and Fat Biff’s tears!”

And even Biff Tannen’s Ford Super Deluxe Converti– oh, shit.

You can get a non-poopy version for an extra $300.

Yes, they produced a beautiful classic automobile overflowing with rancid manure, as seen in that scene and that other scene and that variation of the scene. It looks like an amusing Internet Photoshop job, but it’s a real toy which you could go buy right now … or, you know, make at home yourself with a toy car and some laxatives.

Couldn’t Hot Wheels have mass-produced Doc’s hover-train? Or one of those kickass police cars from 2015? Nope. Instead, we get the shit-encrusted rapemobile. Think of all the ways kids could play with this. “Oh no, Biff’s car got covered in manure … again …” Assuming your kid even knows what Back To The Future is, how are they supposed to integrate Biff’s car with their other Hot Wheels products?

“Yes! The race is delayed due to track turds!”

#4. ZZ Top Turns All The Characters Into Ogling Creeps

Along with “The Power of Love,” Huey Lewis and the News wrote “Back In Time,” the surprisingly engaged recounting of the events of Back To The Future from Marty’s perspective. Sadly, we were less lucky with ZZ Top’s “Doubleback,” a jabbering spray of temporally-themed rhymes in no way related to the third film.

The one band you’d think you could trust to hitch their beer-drinking, hell-raising wagon to Wake-Up Juice, but noooooo.

Now, “Doubleback” is a fucking abomination, an artistic charley horse clearly farted out 12 minutes from the studio call time. But then there’s the music video, which superimposes the band into random clips from the movie in such a disjointed, cookie cutter way that it comes alive like a serial killer’s scrapbook.

GOOF: ZZ Top were only teenagers in 1885, so they shouldn’t have beards yet.

It’s everyone’s third-favorite time travel movie, perpetually interrupted with the looming presence of three guys who look like the personification of bathroom assault. By the end, they’re literally sticking their faces over the action so that we don’t forget to be bummed out by their existence.

We’re all for them supplanting Marty’s mom in this scene to make it less creepy, though.

But the weird stuff begins when this monochromatic onslaught changes the movie’s finale to include a pimped-out ride randomly rolling into Marty’s standoff with Mad Dog Tannen …

… and releasing three jean-short bombshells of various ’90s fabric patterns and foxy accessories, to which the movie’s characters react with stock disbelief appropriated from the original scene.

OK, we have to admit that these guys clean up nicely when they shave.

That’s right — Doc reacting to Marty’s fakeout death is the same expression as his boner face. Or maybe he’s wondering how a Cadillac Sedanette went back in time without a bunch of nonsense sticking out of its hood. Either way: boner.

#3. Pizza Hut’s Back To The Future Ads Are Rather Sad In Retrospect

Having the ability to engorge on a puck of meat and cheese has been every child’s dream since Marty’s mom hydrated a Pizza Hut pizza in Back To The Future II.

The most fantastic concept here is a 2015 pizza without a gimmicky crust.

So delicious. At least, if you ignore the fact that eating a waterlogged dough slice sounds like a fucking nightmare, and that the Pizza Hut of this future solely makes the equivalent of microwave meals. In fairness, the brand’s own advertising campaign had a slightly different take on their role in the future:

Their kinder, gentler take on Robocop was probably their lamest (and most inaccurate) prediction of all.

According to one 1989 commercial, the Pizza Huts of 2015 are built like techno mosques. It makes sense in the context of the ad, which begins with two unknown ruffians taking the DeLorean out for a spin, presumably after swiping the keys from Doc Brown’s ransacked corpse.

To save you 15 minutes on IMDb: It’s Mikey from Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.

The ne’er-do-wells zoom to 2015, where, to the sad grumbles of their stomachs, they find the streets barren of any pizza eateries, as Domino’s has long been converted into a hardware chain. Luckily, there’s still one place in business, and it’s the all-hail Pizza Hut temple.

The Noid was executed after a show trial in ’94.

It’s unclear why a restaurant that makes cookie-sized products needs multiple neon spires, but it probably has to do with the announcer’s assertion that, even in the future, Pizza Hut is the “only one place to get a great pizza.” The fact that Pizza Hut was envisioning an all-exclusive Demolition Man scenario with their brand is made that much more heartbreaking by the company’s actual 2015 situation:

Also depressing: the current state of journalism, since no one realized this graphic should be a pie chart.

Turns out that all the movie projector pizza boxes and eye-tracking tablet menus in the world can’t get us to that Utopian Italian palace where dressing like it’s the ’80s is still hip and (according to another tie-in ad) absolutely everyone wears futuristic solar shades.

The nuclear fallout has melted all of our eyes by now.

#2. Doc Brown Teamed Up With Doogie Howser For Earth Day

Back in 1990, people were really committed to saving the environment … as long as the extent of that commitment was appearing in some kind of extravagant TV special instead of cutting back on fossil fuels. Regardless, this newly-discovered sense of eco-awareness led to one of the craziest moments in pop culture: The Earth Day Special.

The special starred a slew of wacky creatures, like the Muppets and Danny DeVito and E.T., who looks to have been living in a filthy alley since the events of his film.

He’ll touch you with his “magic finger” for $5 and some Reese’s Pieces.

Since this was the year that Back To The Future Part III came out, Doc Brown naturally joined the cross-promotional fray. Who better to promote environmental activism than a guy who hoards large quantities of plutonium in a garage in a residential neighborhood?

The loose plot of the special is about the personification of Mother Earth dying. Doc Brown shows up in his DeLorean and offers his assistance to the doctor in charge of healing Mrs. Earth — who, because this was 1990, is Doogie Fucking Howser.

“Not even Edward James Olmos’ mustache could revive her.” “We’re doomed.”

Doc whips out his suitcase TV and shows them footage of how screwed over the Earth is, which is kind of a dick move, considering how she’s right over there. It doesn’t help that the clips are seemingly stock footage pretentiously edited together by first-year film students.

“What are those ladies doing with that cup …?” “Whoops, wrong year.”

As always, Doc ends up finding the solution: science! Not any specific science but, like, the act of reading and shit. Look, it was 6 a.m. and someone wanted to finish that goddamn children’s TV show script already.

#1. The Back To The Future Novelization Gets Dark

Movie novelizations are generally terrible, but the one for Back To The Future takes it to a whole new level. It’s the Back To The Future of bad literary cash-ins.

“What do you mean it’s not about a kid with a camera who farts fireworks?” — the author, probably

The book opens with a vivid description of a dead family getting bent out of shape by the detonation of a nuclear bomb, which turns out to be a scene from a film Marty is watching. This never comes up again in the book — because the author is too busy thinking up even crazier, tangentially BTTF-related shit. For instance, we get a scene featuring the Libyan terrorists casually hanging out in a shitty motel, which answers the question you always had: Yes, one of them is a psychotic former fashion model.

You can only be told to look “sexy like tiger” so many times before something inside snaps.

And she doesn’t mind offing Doc Brown because he … “looks Jewish.”

Doc goes commando in his jumpsuits in this version.

Even when it’s a scene we recognize from the movie, the author’s prose manages to make everything seem a tiny bit seedier:

Not that “Let’s hire your attempted rapist as our live-in manservant” is any less creepy.

The novel also features the most disturbing context for the phrase “giggled naughtily” in all of fiction:

A parent’s naughty giggling is typically reason #1 Protective Services gives when taking away their child.

The whole book is so bizarre and creepy that it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that it was imported from the shitty alternate 1985. And we’re only scratching the surface here. A whole other book could be written just pointing out all the fucked up moments, page by page. Did we say “could”? We meant “someone on the Internet did exactly that.”

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/7-dumb-back-to-the-future-products-you-wont-believe-existed/

[chrismaverickdotcom]

Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions List – 2018 (Why can't my favorite movie win?)

Who wants to do an Oscar pool? I love the Oscars. Everyone knows that. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, then you haven’t been paying attention… how the hell are you even reading this? To me the Oscars are almost as exciting as the Super Bowl (come on, last year’s last minute buzzer beater by Moonlight was amazing).. I watch them every year and I make Stephanie watch with me so we can fill out ballots and baton the winners. In 2015 and 2016, I posted my “Big Fucking Oscars Prediciton List” for the awards so that people could try to beat me. For some reason I seem to have forgotten to have done a predictions list online last year; I was probably too busy working on a conference paper or something. I’m busy working on papers right now, but you know what… fuck it.

I love the Oscars!

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So I’ve written at various points about what it means to be an Oscar movie and why something like Wonder Woman, as much as I loved it, doesn’t deserve to be there. It just isn’t “good” enough in an objective sense… at least not in the any of the ways that the Oscars are meant to measure. The Oscars often take criticism for being “out of touch with the fans”and just being “the Hollywood industry just taking a chance to blow itself.” And well, YES! It is! It is totally Hollywood taking the chance to blow itself. That’s why I use the silly sex metaphor in my predictions. It is what it is, and that’s ok. The Oscars are the movie industry looking at the their peers and celebrating their technical and artistic merit. They’re about the artistic statement that the Academy wants to present. The Oscars aren’t about what people like. They’re not about connecting with the fans. That’s the People’s Choice awards and the Billboards. Wonder Woman was hugely inspiring to a great many people who needed that inspiration and will carry it with them for the rest of their lives. Black Panther is doing much the same this year. But you don’t get an Oscar for that. You get a different award. It’s called a billion dollars. And when you compare that billion dollars to a little golden statue that something like Moonlight takes home, well… it’s not that bad a trade.

Movies are a funny art form. Pop culture entertainment is in general, but especially movies. Pop culture fandom often develops such a sense of ownership over the media that it consumes that it feels entitled to demand that others see it the same way as they do. No one ever writes think pieces complaining that Pulitzer Prize should have considered Twilight or The Hunger Games or even Harry Potter series. And when’s the last time you read a hot take on someone being snubbed by the Dentistry Awards?  To argue that the popular choice film should get the award because the Academy is out of touch for wanting to celebrate their values rather than the public’s is much the same thing.

That said, I don’t always think the Academy gets it right. Sometimes I disagree with their choices, even within their own metric. Lots of critics do. Famously Shakespeare in Love beating out Saving Private Ryan back in 1999 and the Artist arguably should have lost to literally ANY of the other nominees back in 2012. So this year I figured maybe I’d offer two sets of picks when applicable: The pick I think will win and the pick I want to win when I disagree. It will be interesting to see if any of my wishes for will actually pull an upset.

Steph and I will be watching the show Sunday night and probably drinking a bunch (yay, I don’t have to work on Monday!!!!) so if anyone is up for Oscarsing and Chilling as the kids say (well, the cool kids say… ok… well they should say… whatever… fuck you!) let me know. And one way or the other, I’d love to see your Oscar Picks as well. Post them here, it’ll be fun to see if anyone can beat me. You can get a ballot here: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/printable-2018-oscar-ballot. For extra super awesome points, feel free to comment with your guesses before you read mine. That makes it more fun to compare.

And now my picks… Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions 2018:

Best Picture:

The biggest award of the night is probably the most obvious place where I’ll disagree, and it’s the place where the common viewer probably has the most problem with the Oscars. It’s where people think Wonder Woman got snubbed. But when you look at the other films there… films, which granted only 5-10% of the Wonder Woman audience saw, and you objectively judge them it doesn’t fit. If anything, the snub here for me was The Big Sick, which really probably should have snuck in here. It is worth noting that the Oscars allow up to ten nominations for Best Picture (instead of the five for most categories). This year they only chose nine, and so there was an open spot which has actually been pretty debated. In some respect, I guess everyone can just assume their favorite film should have been inserted there and was snubbed for political reasons. Or maybe it’s like saving a seat for Elijah? I dunno. Anyway Conventional wisdom is that this is a two dog race between The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I personally actually liked the latter film more, but for Best Picture, I think the visual artistry of former film is going outweigh the storytelling mastery of the latter. Especially since Three Billboards isn’t really “enjoyable” so much as it is “good.” The social issues being so unresolved and so present in Three Billboards is going to leave some voters uncomfortable for this category. Of course, if it were up to me, I’d go with Lady Bird. I do think it was the best film of the year in terms of storytelling and theatrical craft, plus it fit the social message of the time period and it was hella enjoyable. Lady Bird was like the first time you have sex. It was true love or what felt like it. Maybe you don’t totally know what you’re doing yet, but it was sweet innocent and beautiful. You’ll never forget it. But that just won’t compare to the mastery of what is Shape of Water, this year. After all, who doesn’t love the beautiful touching story of a woman fucking a fish. Everyone wants to see that, right? You know you do!

Mav’s wishful thinking: Lady Bird

Mav’s prediction: The Shape of Water

Best Directing:

Much of what I said under Best Picture applies here as well. This is the place where a lot of people thought Patty Jenkins should have been nominated for directing Wonder Woman (she shouldn’t have been). And it’s a place where I personally would love to see Greta Gerwig win for Lady Bird. She won’t. A lot of people are probably also probably pulling for Jordan Peele to get the Oscar for Get Out. He won’t. Hopefully Gerwig and Peele will have future opportunities. But as far as how this year is going to shake down, this is all about Guillermo del Toro. And this is for the same reasons that I think his film is going to take Best Picture. This is a movie that honestly isn’t all that innovative from a storytelling point of view. It was a cute little fairytale, that I’ve seen before (specifically it’s Splash… but if you want to take out specific plot details, it’s just a lot of star-crossed lovers romances), but what made it special was the exceptional craft of presentation and that was all del Toro. Who else could make such a beautiful visual statement out of woman fucking a fish? Exactly!

Mav’s wishful thinking: Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird

Mav’s prediction: Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water

Best Actor in a Leading Role:

I try to see most of the movies that I think have Oscar potential. Partly because I want to make informed guesses here. Partly because I’m like the pop culture weenie guy so understanding the current zeitgeist is sort of my job. And partly because I just really like movies. I’m going to admit that I never got around to seeing Darkest Hour. I wanted to, it was just never the right time. So I’m kind of judging it based on trailers and clips. But I think I have the basic plot down. The story goes like this: Let’s dress up Gary Oldman in a fat suit and win him an Oscar. And something about Churchill too, maybe, but really what can we do to get Oldman and Oscar? That’s the story, and I think it’s going to work. The only thing could possibly fuck it up is that we know Daniel Day-Lewis is giving up acting after his latest movie (Phantom Thread), presumedly to continue to pursue his lifelong dream of being a cobbler (no, really!). And it’s possible that the Academy just wants a chance to blow Day-Lewis last time… you know how it is… sometimes the love of your life is leaving you… you know there’s nothing you can do to make them stay, but if this is going to the last night together, then you’re going to make it memorable and you’re going to fuck the shit out of them! Really work it this time. Suck harder than ever. No orifice is off limts. Maybe call in a friend as well. The Academy wants Daniel to know what he’s giving up. They want him to remember their name. But let it go, Academy. He’s already moved on. I mean, it’s not that he doesn’t care about you. He does. And if you beg hard enough… then sure… he’ll finish on your face one last time. But honestly, he’s doing that for you, not for himself. The magic is gone for Daniel. It’s over. If you love him let him go. But Gary… look at Gary over there in his fat suit. He’s doing that for YOU! Gary loves you. He just wants a little recognition. He just wants to know you love him. You don’t need to do too much. Maybe just a little hand stuff. He deserves it. Don’t make him beg. He will. And you know what that’s like. Besides, Oldman is totally ok with you having a side piece.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Gary Oldman for The Darkest Hour

Best Actor in a Supporting Role:

And speaking of being a side piece. Sam Rockwell wants this bad and will do ANYTHING for you and I mean ANYTHING. All the stuff you’re willing to do for DDL plus stuff you’ve never even heard of and wouldn’t know to google. Filthy stuff. Sam’s going reach down your — Ok, I just want to break away from the sexual metaphor gimmick for a second. Same Rockwell, fucking owned his role in Three Billboards. No one else matters here. Not even a little bit. And yeah, there’s a little bit of controversy about “should we be celebrating someone in this day cultural moment for playing such a racist?” And the answer is yes. Rockwell embodied that character perfectly. That was the definition of acting and he did it in a way that made a character that was completely over the top seem very real and tangible. So much so that he caused the controversy. That’s craft and there’s just no question that he deserves this. Ok back to the sexual metaphor gimmick already in progress. — and you’ll both be walking funny for weeks afterwards.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actress in a Leading Role:

So there’s this problem in Hollywood. They favor the young, particularly among women. And really… I get it. Because given the chance I totally would totally fuck both Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan. And if you don’t want to… well, something is wrong with you. But they’re both in their 20s. They’re skinny, white, blonde and pretty. Frankly, even if they weren’t talented (and they both are) Hollywood find something for them to do. Sally Hawkins is 41 and brunette, so she had to do a little something extra and fuck a fish on camera to get noticed (and again, I don’t want downplay the cinematic achievement there… it was beautiful… like, I mean, I’m questioning stuff about myself). But you know who’s willing to really work for it? A sixty year old France McDormand, who like her co-star Sam Rockwell (see above) was good enough that my whole stupid Hollywood orgy metaphor just kind of falls apart. She was just that good. It doesn’t matter who else was nominated. What? There are five spots and we only nominate four women? I don’t know, someone throw Meryl Streep in there for whatever she’s done most recently… because it doesn’t fucking matter. This is McDormund’s year.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Frances McDormand for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:

So this is a weird one. Here’s the one place that I feel like there was a serious snub this year. Holly Hunter really deserved a nomination here for The Big Sick. It didn’t happen. Probably just because the movie came out too long ago and no one really expected much to come of it. I’d argue it’s probably the biggest omission in this year’s nominations. She was amazing in it. The only things that come close are Allison Williams not getting nominated for lead actress in her role in Get Out (and she’s young, white and pretty… even without being blonde she’ll get another shot… especially given how talented she is) and Patrick Stewart not getting a nomination for supporting actor in Logan (but that’s a comic book movie… so probably a lot of Academy voters didn’t take it seriously even though he was very good). However, in each of these cases, including Hunter, it wouldn’t have mattered. Rockwell is taking the category that Stewart would have been nominated for. McDrormund is taking the category that Williams would been in. And supporting actress is coming down to one of two people. Laurie Metcalf for Lady Bird and Allison Janney for I, Tonya. This one is kind of a steal. Janney is going to take it. And Janney totally deserves an Oscar. But even at 58, she’s going to get another shot. This is a body of work award. She’s paid her dues and she was good in this and she’s going to take it. I personally think Metcalf was better. And she’s 62 and doesn’t do as many movies (she’s a TV actress) so this is probably her last shot. But it’s not going to happen. This is Janney’s year. Everyone else should just be happy to be there. But this is the one place where I would have replaced a nominee. I like Octavia Spencer a lot and she has an Oscar win and another nomination for a reason. Shape of Water was not her best work. Hunter was better. So since they’re all going to lose to Janney anyway, I would have liked to have seen Hunter get a nod here.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Laurie Metcalf for Lady Bird 

Mav’s prediction: Allison Janney for I, Tonya

Best Animated Feature:

Animated Feature is probably the one category in all the Oscars where being the super popular movie is actually the best way to guarantee a win. Sometimes this is deserved. Sometimes it’s not. This time it is. The answer here is Coco. Arguably, Coco deserves that 10th spot in the Best Picture race. There shouldn’t even be a contest here really. To continue the Hollywood orgy metaphor that I’ve been doing one last time (it doesn’t really matter for the awards after this) and be quite inappropriate for a film that is aimed very much at children, Coco is like deep sensual lovemaking while everyone else is still waiting for their first kiss. I mean, really… we’re comparing this to fucking Boss Baby. Are you fucking kidding me?

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Coco

Best Animated Short Film:

And now we’re getting down to the films and awards that most people don’t understand even a little bit. That’s why the orgy metaphor is hard to continue If you’ve got an Oscar pool going, this is where you win it. Animated short films are actually really hard to judge. Partly because it’s sort of like Best Picture in that there are a lot of different ways to win it. Sometimes it’s technical achievement. But it’s just as often to be awarded on grounds of making a really touching story or a beautiful piece of artwork. And sometimes you just give it to whatever random thing Disney or Pixar tossed out there just to win the award (this year, that thing is Lou). This was tricky this year, because I actually would kind of like to see Revolting Rhymes win in any given year. But not this one. Usually, this isn’t the kind of award that anyone that you’ve ever heard of matters at all. Best Animated Short Film is not about star fucking. But not this year. This year, I think it goes to Kobe Bryant’s Dear Basketball. Oh yeah, did you know Kobe Bryant was a film maker now? Well he is. And his short is a gorgeous and touching love letter to… well, himself… but it’s really good.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Dear Basketball

Best Cinematography:

If there is a fucking god, then this belongs to Blade Runner 2049. I loved that movie, and while I acknowledge it isn’t for everyone (and predicted that no one would see it when I reviewed it), if Blade Runner is about nothing else, it is about the beauty of the film medium. This category basically exists for Blade Runner 2049. I would argue that ninety years of fucking Oscars were all leading up to this moment when Blade Runner 2049 wins an Oscar for cinematography. But there is no god… so there’s a good chance that Dunkirk takes this instead. But I’m going against my gut… this is the one place where I’m going to put my wishes in instead and make my official prediction what I want it to be instead of what I expect the Academy to do. It’s the one award I’ll be least surprised to lose.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Blade Runner 2049

Best Costume Design:

Remember how I said that The Darkest Hour only exists to give Gary Oldman an award for best actor? Well, Phantom Thread only exists in order to win the award for Costume Design. No joking… it’s literally a movie about designing costumes. That’s it. I actually haven’t watched it yet (I should) but I mean, this is the most Oscar pandering concept ever. And by all accounts, they did a great job.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Phantom Thread

Best Documentary Feature:

This one is always hard. Generally I never get to see any of these until after the Oscars (if ever) and that’s true this year. A lot of the industry buzz is that this is going to go to either Icarus or Faces Places. But, I’m going with Last Men in Aleppo. The Documentary category is one where traditionally the Academy likes to show just how socially conscious they are. This is not not just culturally and socially relevant in this exact historic moment as a film, but it is notable because it is not only the first film ever nominated out of Syria, and the subject matter of the film itself, but because if it were to win, no one will be there to accept the award because Trump’s travel ban is keeping the filmmakers out of our country. And yeah, maybe you didn’t know that… but the people who vote for documentaries probably do.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Last Men in Aleppo

Best Documentary Short Subject:

Same issue with Documentary Short Subject. Here socially conscious and relevant matters. The two short subject categories (this and animated) are the only ones where all of the voters are required to see all of the films (since it doesn’t take long) and with documentary, this is a place where making a statement matters. I’m going with Heroin(e) purely because people are going to want to address opioid crisis.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Heroin(e)

Best Film Editing:

Remember what I said about there not being a god? If there were a god, then Baby Driver might have a shot here. Baby Driver is a movie that is all about craft. The magic of that movie is the way in which sound and visuals are expertly crafted together. The challenge was not only editing it together in a brilliant way that made for an engaging visual experience, but the technical expertise to make it work with the music and sound mixing. The film is a master class in craft. It is a singular achievement in film editing that absolutely deserves this almost as much as Blade Runner 2049 deserves the cinematography award. But I said I was only going to play that card and go against my gut once and I am sticking to it. So I think Baby Driver gets beat here just because it’s too genre and high concept and voters might never have given it a chance. So this award is going to go to the second best edited film this year, Dunkirk.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Baby Driver

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Foreign Language Film:

Like I said, these categories are really hard. I’m going to go with A Fantastic Woman, because it’s the one I am most interested in seeing (I haven’t seen any of the nominees this year). There are a couple others that sound interesting (The Insult is getting some good buzz) but I feel like this one. And much like the documentary categories being a socially relevant can really help in this category. Not as much, but some. And this is a story focusing very heavily on transgender rights. This is something that can also tank it because… well, the Academy is a lot of very very old white men. So it might just be “icky.” But, I expect Foreign Language Film is one of the categories where a lot of the people who would be squicked out by it just don’t bother to vote, so I’m going with it.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: A Fantastic Woman

Best Live Action Short Film:

This is another one of my hard sections because I haven’t seen them. So on this one I’m judging purely on industry buzz and social relevance. I’m going with Dekalb Elementary. Honestly, a big part of this is because it will create a moment for the filmmaker to stand up and give an inspiring speech about gun control and how we have to do something to end the crisis of school shootings. And everyone will applaud and feel great… well, until he gets played off for giving a speech longer than ten seconds, because we have to make sure we have enough time left for the big names to give speeches at the end of the show. We care about school shootings… but only so much.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: DeKalb Elementary

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

This is usually a hard one. It’s not this time. Remember how I said that Darkest Hour was a movie about getting Gary Oldman his Oscar? Well, in order to that they had to transform him. And that took a massive technical achievement in makeup and hairstyling.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Darkest Hour

Best Original Score:

Original Score is a weird category this year. For obvious reasons, the industry sort of privileges the “Original” part of Original Score. And, so in a lot of ways it sort of makes sense to exclude Baby Driver from the category because the music is from preexisting sources. BUT, in the same way that Phantom Thread is a movie about costuming. Baby Driver is a movie about scoring a movie. That’s the whole gimmick of the film. And to exclude it is sort of the same thing as arguing a DJ isn’t a musician and well… that’s an argument. But in this specific case, I feel like Baby Driver at least needed to be on the conversation. Certainly more than Star Wars: The Last Jedi which I think is just sort of there because legally, Star Wars has to be nominated in this category. But Baby Driver is not there. And so I am forced to pick something else, and while I personally liked the Dunkirk score a lot, I think for what the Academy is going for, we go to Shape of Water again here. If nothing else, because it has momentum.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Dunkirk 

Mav’s prediction: Shape of Water

Best Original Song:

The music categories are hard at the Oscars. You have to sort of forget that you’re at movie awards and then apply the logic that you would use for making a Grammy pick. But then you have to remember that you’re picking an award for a movie and you are at the Oscars and it’s just a whole big thing. And also, it’s music so it kinda needs to sound nice. Anyway, for some reason, 21st century Hollywood loves a musical and The Greatest Showman was one.

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman

Best Production Design:

Like I said, there is no god, but there is momentum.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Blade Runner 2049 

Mav’s prediction: Shape of Water

Best Sound Mixing:

As I say every year, no one in the world really understands the difference between Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Not even the people who do it for a living. I think I understand… and if I do, then this is the one place where Baby Driver has a very real shot at winning an Oscar. And it deserves it. But again, remember, there is no god… and you’re not required to watch all of the movies to vote in this category. I can totally see old Oscar voters looking at the cover for their Baby Driver screener DVD and saying “oh fuck no” and moving on without knowing how much that movie needs this. It is a celebration of the art of film sound. But no… they’ll probably just pick Dunkirk.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Baby Driver 

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Sound Editing:

Baby Driver was more about the sound mixing than the sound editing… you know… unless I got those backwards… because again, no one really remembers which is which. If I’m right, then Blade Runner 2049 had better sound editing. But it doesn’t matter, because the same deal as with Sound Mixing and the Academy will just pick Dunkirk and move on with their lives.

Mav’s wishful thinking: Blade Runner 2049 

Mav’s prediction: Dunkirk

Best Visual Effects:

Do you know why this category exists? This category exists to give trophies to Star Wars. Any year that there is no Star War is just a year that we’re standing around and waiting for a Star War to happen. And I am including the fifty years that the ward existed before the first Star War. And now that we have a Star War every year, you should be able to sort of pencil in the Star War to win this award. Only it hasn’t happened. See, the last time we brought back the Star Wars we were busy giving this award to Matrixes and Lords of Rings. And this time, now that we have a yearly Star War, we keep saying “oh, well, there will be another chance for the Star Wars, so let’s recognize an Ex Machina or a Jungle Book because we’ll totally get to the recognizing the Star War next year.” Well, this is not that year. Because this is the year of Blade Runner 2049. And frankly, there’s probably not going to be another one. In 1982, the original Blade Runner got bumped for this award by E.T. which for all intents and purposes (in this category at least) might as well have been a Star War. Well, this franchise didn’t wait thirty-five years for that to happen again. So you know… lets see how Solo: A Star Wars Story does next year (BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!!)

Mav’s wishful thinking and prediction: Blade Runner 2049

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Sometimes it’s an honor to be nominated. Two of my own personal favorite films are in this category this year. Logan and The Disaster Artist. A movie about the X-man Wolverine and a movie about arguably one of the worst movies of all time. Neither of these things have any business being anywhere near the Academy Awards… and yet, in these two specific cases… they totally do belong. They’re just not going to win. In the past we’ve had a lot of Oscar controversy about things being too white. Too male. Too heteronormative. The Academy is trying to fix that… Moonlight last year was a big part of that. But they’re not going to burn the Best Picture spot on diversity every year. And a good place to do that is the screenwriting awards. So this is going to be the Academy saying “you want diversity? Fine, we’re so woke we’re going to give an award to a gay film that you’ve never even fucking heard of. That’s right, we’re going with Call Me By Your Name. You don’t know it! Not so woke after all, are you! Fuck you!”

Mav’s wishful thinking: Logan (though to be fair, this is partly me being a comic book weenie and I haven’t seen the film that is going to win yet either… though I want to) 

Mav’s prediction: Call Me By Your Name

Best Original Screenplay:

And they can consider demonstrating their wokeness with the other screenwriting award. And this is kind of a problem. Because as I said on my very first pick, Lady Bird was probably the best pure film of the year. And it really deserves and Oscar. But it’s not going to get one. It’s going to get shut out, and that sucks. Because it wasn’t the best written film. The Big Sick was actually better, and this is the only places it’s even nominated. And I really would have liked to see that get more recognition. And really, again, if there was a god, it would probably be a shoe-in here. But there is no god… and in the mind of the Academy voter, diversifying means tossing a vote towards a woman, a gay, or a black. But then when the voter looks at Kumail Nanjiani they say “what the fuck is that dude?!?!?  Pakistani? Uhhh…. no…  no no no… that’s just not going to happen here.” Wokeness only goes so far. But on a good note, it goes far enough that I think you can pencil in Jordan Peele to get recognized for Get Out. Oddly enough, of the three things I’ve mentioned here, Get Out is probably the LEAST well written. But it’s the one that I feel like can really get traction and win here. Of course, this is a tough category… and I wouldn’t be shocked if Three Billboards gets another nod here (and that would be reasonable) or Shape of Water because of its momentum (and this would NOT be reasonable. It’s not as well WRITTEN as the others). But I think this is one where the more diverse pick really can pull it out. Not just because he’s black, but because it’s such a different film than anything else that Academy has ever seen. And yet they liked it enough to nominate it anyway.

Mav’s wishful thinking: The Big Sick 

Mav’s prediction: Get Out

So those are my picks… What are yours? And if you’re interested in watching with me an Steph, let me know (we may even say yes 😀).

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Mav’s Big Fucking Oscar Predictions List – 2018 (Why can’t my favorite movie win?) was originally published on ChrisMaverick dotcom