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belovedblabber · 2 years

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I’m so glad to have found other Jod enjoyers on this site. Top John Gaius “makes you want to chew on the furniture” moments?

Okay I can FINALLY take some time to answer this now, huzzah!

I have some other John related asks I'm VERY excited to answer but I have gotten far too sleepy now so I once again have to wait on those because I have a LOT to say and I am incapable of not treating everything like I'm writing an essay and bringing in citations.

But anyway, if I gave all of my top John moments this post would be a thousand miles long so I'm just going to give some of my faves. And this is in no particular order, I'm just putting them down as they come into my head

"Is that the truth, or the truth you tell yourself?" asked Augustine. "What is the difference?" said God. This exchange makes me go INSANE. I can't even be coherent about it right now, I just love how chilling John's response is, and also Muir using God here. I love her very clever choices in terms of what she calls John and when. Calling him God (or by another one of his fancy titles) can either be used for comedy (aka "Thanks," said God) but it can also be used for an absolute wham line like this one and it's just very good. I love it. It's chilling. He's so scary

When Harrow explodes G1deon and everything is going insane and then John just says "Stop" and just freezes everybody. It's such a cool moment. He just STOPS it all, I LOVE it. Also: The Emperor of the Nine houses—the Resurrection—the First Reborn—sat at the end of the table, his plain face splattered with gore, and his eyes were the death of light. Oh my GOD is that such a good line, I am deeply not coherent here but god I love this entire moment, it's such a good reminder of how powerful John is (and then him being like "I did't really want to eat human again Harrow" sdfghj)

The entire section where he reconfigures himself after Mercy exploded him. And then his killing Mercy so casually. But what I really love about it is how stone-cold he is after it all ("I never liked cleaning house all at once") I love how this scene really shows how right Augustine was earlier in the book when he told Mercy "John is never as sentimental as you think." John is so matter-of-fact and it is SO good when we see him turn on a dime like this and start cleaning house (I also love "You acted afraid—" "Acted is operative. But this is not am FAQ.") I am not explaining myself well here but I just love the way that John, who we have seen as this very affable, mellow, often very funny character throughout, turns on a dime and is suddenly so ruthless, right after killing someone who he was begging to forgive him moments before. The absolute callous tone he has ("I didn't offer it to Mercy because Mercy really pissed me off, I'm sorry to say.") is so jarring and it's GREAT. And I've seen people point to this as proof that like, 'oh John doesn't actually love them like he says he does, John is a liar he was faking his affection.' And that is SUCH a boring read. What's much more interesting, and terrifying, is the idea that John can be fully in earnest with his affection, but then just so brutally flip a switch when he's pushed. Idk, it's just a great moment. I am explaining myself poorly here I know asdfghj

"Harrowhark, nobody has the right to know," he said fiercely. "Nobody has the right to blame you. Nobody can judge. What has happened, has happened, and there's no putting it back in the box. They wouldn't understand. They don't have to. I officially relieve you from living in fear. Nobody has to know." I love this line because it's like, John are you talking about Harrow, or yourself? And with the context of NtN this becomes even more clearly John bringing his own baggage to the table. It's so good. I have a whole post brewing in my head on this subject that I am sure I'll inflict on my poor innocent followers at some point

Uhhh, every single John interlude in NtN. I know that's cheating but literally every single one had me going off my rocker.

But even more specifically, John 1:20. That entire section may be my favorite part of the book. I actually had to stop reading for a moment after I finished it (and no joke I did whisper "damn, Tamsyn" out loud and I was, in fact, crying a bit. it was also like, 6am and I had been up all night aserfghj). But seriously I wanted to pick a single part or so from this to highlight but I can't. It's all so good. And heartbreaking. John crying at C— and N— 's wedding, and eating for the first time in ages, the building desperation at the state of the world and how helpless they all feel and that bit of humanity and joy with the wedding, immediately followed by...everything else. "John, your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than you do about meting out punishment." John and Cristabel's final conversation. The absolute heart wrenching stuff with John seeing everyone die and his blurry recollection of it because holy shit it was horrendous. Literally everything else. Also THE MOMENT HE LETS GO, the entire sequence of him trying to take the earth into himself, and then the terrifying description he gives of him eating the solar system and pursuing the departing ships. Also I just really love "All those frightened people. All those run-away rats." I think I just have a very clear uh, 'line read' of that bit in my head, and I love the way he calls them frightened and then the absolute rage in the way he calls them rats. Idk, it's really clear in my head I can't really explain myself better here. But anyway yeah, the ENTIRETY of this interlude makes me go absolutely wild to the point that I cannot be coherent about it.

John 5:4, and everything John says about forgiveness, and what he'll do next, and taking his friend's memories. Again I can't really be coherent about this entire section, but I will give my fave bit from it. "There can be no forgiveness for those who walked away," he said. "Just as there can be no forgiveness for me—even though I rip the very fingers from my hands...throw them into the jaws of the monsters who hunt me...as I run from them across the universe, end to end. Something will satisfy them eventually, but nothing satisfies me. Nothing." I put that last bit in italics because it is maybe my fave line from John. There's just something about it. It's just so tragic and chilling and terrifying and I LOVE it and I love how it is sort of this like, succinct and perfect sum of the tragedy of him. Idk it's just, chef's kiss.

Okay finally, not a direct John moment per se, but this: John loved her. She was John's cavalier. She loved John. For she so loved the world that she had given them John. For the world so loved John that she had been given. For John had so loved her that he had made her she. For John had loved the world. I have so many thoughts and feelings on this that I cannot articulate but oh my goddddd. It's so good. First of all the whole playing off of John 3:16 thing. And just...the wording, the way it all flows. I cannot be coherent about this I just go insane. That ending For John had loved the world hit me like a brick the first time I read it, and continues to do so every time I reread it. There's something so simple and final and heartbreaking about it. I think it sums of the tragedy of the character and his story in one simple line. If that makes any sense whatsoever.

ANYWAY, this is an absolute ramble of an answer I know, but the prompt here was 'makes you want to chew on furniture moments' and I feel like with that vibe in mind the level of not hinged I am here is at least thematically appropriate. Also thank youuuuu for sending me this ask, it has made me very happy

#the locked tomb #john gaius #nona the ninth #nona the ninth spoilers #harrow the ninth #ntn #htn #thank you so much for sending me this ask!

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doyelikehaggis · 2 years

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it actually pains me how traumatised enzo and damon were in the augustine, their trauma is totally overlooked and the way enzo just bounces back right after being brutally tortured for 70 years, wtf

It is completely overlooked, you're right. 70 years of nonstop torture including imprisonment, isolation, starvation, mutilation, and dehumanization. And Enzo's just... fine and dandy. Not a single bit of trauma beyond seeking revenge on Damon for leaving him plus some mild abandonment issues. I'm aware that everyone has different trauma responses, and that's perfectly fine, but I hate that. Enzo should not have been okay. He just shouldn't have. And I use "okay" a little loosely because he did go on a bit of a murder spree and a revenge kick only to then turn off his humanity and kill himself via Stefan, but considering everything, that is TAME. That's not trauma, that's an average week in the life of a TVD vampire.

I would've liked even a little bit of depth in PTSD for Enzo. A scene where he's in the Salvatores' sitting room, sees their burning fireplace, and his eyes go all dark and distant, and maybe he's having a panic attack, maybe he just really wants to rip someone's head off. The smell of smoke catches the back of his throat and suddenly he can't breathe and needs to step outside for a second. When he's stressed, he needs to get into an open space, he can't handle being in a room with four walls that feel like they're closing in on him, caging him in. The sound of gates opening makes his heart jump until he remembers he's no longer a prisoner in a cell. He probably can't stomach blood as well as he should because his body got so used to having so little of it that any more than a few sips makes him feel sick. He might get a little twinge somewhere in his body and he finds himself instinctively checking to see what he's missing, what Whitmore has taken from him while he passed out from the pain, only to realize he's still entirely intact. Sleeping on a bed feels weird and almost uncomfortable, sheets feel wrong against his skin, being warm is foreign to him and adapting to all of the things that have moved on without him over the last 70 years is overwhelming at times.

And while Damon was not there as long, 5 whole years is still a lot of time to go through everything that he did as well. I know he turned off his humanity for, like, 50-odd years, but even that in itself should maybe have affected him a bit more severely when he finally flipped it back on. You could argue that it seems like it did at least a little based on how different his personality and general character seem from when he was human compared to him in season 1/2, and then adjusting to having his humanity again onwards.

I just feel things about this particular subject because the writers of TVD just kind of glossed over some really crucial character things, especially in the area of Augustine.

#oh look a wild anonymoose #ask away earthlings!#the vampire diaries #enzo st. john #damon salvatore #denzo

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apenitentialprayer · 2 years

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As a final illustration of the sacramental character of the Harry Potter saga, consider the wands of Harry and his nemesis Voldemort as signs which point to something important about the life of God, into which believers are invited in a particular way through Christ. Harry's wand is made of wood from the holly tree, a symbol long associated with Christmas, the feast of the Incarnation. Harry's wand core is a phoenix feather, a symbol of resurrection from death. Voldemort's wand also contains a phoenix feather, but its casing is of yew, another tree with red berries. Unlike holly, yew trees are extremely long-lived and toxic. They have a folkloric association with death as a characteristic tree of churchyards (i.e. graveyards). According to some legends, yew trees "thrive on corpses" and afford wood used in making weapons such as bows. First, it is notable that Harry and Voldemort both have wands with a Phoenix feather core. Rowling emphasizes the parity expressed here by making these feathers come from the same bird, Fawkes the Phoenix, a pet of Dumbledore who dies periodically and is reborn from its own ashes. Phoenixes have long symbolized immortality, and Voldemort's desire for immortality is established early in the books as an evil proclivity. But the fact that Harry's wand possesses the same Phoenix feather core makes an important point. It is not necessarily evil to desire an escape from mortality; it is merely human. As the punishments for the man and woman after their disobedience in Genesis make clear, deathlessness was the original state of created humanity. We were meant to live with God forever in the garden of deathlessness. To desire eternal life is, in one sense, to desire no separation between ourselves and God, and that's a good thing. Tolkien called the human desire for immortality -that "Great Desire from Death" which he said so many fairy tales consider at their core- one of the oldest and deepest of human desires. And it's a desire of all humans, not just bad or evil humans. The difference is how we go about fulfilling this desire. Harry and Voldemort's different approaches to the issue, represented in their differing wand woods, illustrate brilliantly St. Augustine's distinction between two types of love: caritas and cupiditas. "I mean by charity [caritas] that affection of the mind which aims at the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of oneself and one's neighbor in subordination to God; by lust [cupiditas] I mean the affection of the mind which aims at enjoying one's self and one's neighbor, and other corporeal things, without reference to God" [On Christian Doctrine, III.10]. Harry (holly wood) loves in conformity with Christ, who also begins his story as a child of the Incarnation, the most fragile of human states, and who, like Harry, willingly laid down his own life for the sake of his friends. Harry is utterly unlike Voldemort (yew wood), who loves himself above all, using people and things only for his own self-preservation (thriving on corpses, as it were), with no reference to outward forms of love. For Voldemort, love (cupiditas) is the love of self alone, leading to the death of others, the distortion of his own soul, and the creation of Horcruxes; for Potter, love (caritas) is the love of others, leading to his own death, the cleansing of his soul, and the Cross, or in Harry's case, King's Cross station. But ironically, the Cross is not defeat for Harry, it is victory — it means life beyond the grave. There's a good reason this seven-book saga comes down to a duel by the light of dawn — it comes down to these two wands and what they symbolize: cupiditas and caritas. Of course, the spells each one uses are not arbitrary; they reinforce the message about which kind of loving must prevail. Harry uses Expelliarmus (the disarming spell), while Voldemort uses Avada Kedavra (the Killing Curse, one of Rowling's only spells not derived from Latin). Like Christ, Harry destroys death, personified in Voldemort, not by killing, but by disarming it.

- Emily Strand ("Harry Potter and the Sacramental Principle")

#Harry Potter #immortality #desire #eternity #folklore #death #symbolism #J.K. Rowling #J.R.R. Tolkien #love #agape #lust #Jesus Christ #sacrifice #Saint Augustine #phoenix

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stewblog · 2 years

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Avatar: The Way of Water

Avatar: The Way of Water has a lot going on, but there is one thing abundantly clear throughout its (interminable) 3 hour and 15 minute runtime: Director James Cameron has a boundless love for the world he has created and all of its native inhabitants. When the credits finally rolled, I was left wishing he had simply made a couple of faux documentaries about Pandora narrated by Sigourney Weaver.

Cameron takes particular pride and care when depicting Pandora’s flora and fauna. His passion for marine biology shines particularly bright in this long-awaited sequel as the majority of it takes place in, under and around water. A Pandoran whale ends up becoming one of the most endearing characters in the film. He also has a palpable love for the new family unit(s) that are introduced here. This sequel may have taken more than a decade to finally arrive, but James Cameron wanted this to be about something and not just contain wall-to-wall spectacle.

Personally, I would have preferred the spectacle compared to what we got.

For as much obvious affection as Cameron has for this world and these characters, very little of that translates into an engaging story or characters that register. This would have been forgivable and perhaps even understandable in a 90 minute, or even two hour, movie. But when you have no real story to speak of and not a single character, new or returning, feels fleshed out in a meaningful way with a runtime that outlasts The Godfather by about 20 minutes, something is horribly amiss.

Following a bit of a recap, The Way of Water picks up in earnest roughly 15 years or so after the events of the original film, which saw humans pushed out of Pandora en masse and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), now fully integrated into his avatar body. Jake is now a father to three children with Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), as well as adoptive father to two wayward kids as well. There’s Spider (Jack Champion), the wayward human son of Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), and Kiri (Sigourney Weaver), the immaculately conceived daughter of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), who died while inhabiting her avatar in the previous film. All of whom are forced into exile when the regrouping human colonists are determined to kill Jake and dissolve the insurgency he leads.

These kids are the driving force of the whole thing, both mechanically and thematically, for good and ill. What story exists on the page is theirs. Sorry, Jake Sully fans, he’s only going to show up sporadically to get mad at his sons for disobeying him and little else. Neytiri has even less to do. The rest of the time we’re largely stuck with these kids attempting to settle into their new lives among a new tribe of Na’vi who have adapted and taken to the sea of Pandora the way Neytiri’s tribe flourished in its forest. This, naturally, leads to all sorts of fish-out-of-water hijinx, both literally and figuratively. The boys, Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) just want to fit in. Kiri begins to more fully realize the spiritual and physical connection she has with the planet itself. The youngest, Tuk (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss), is also accounted for.

Dull and unengaging as most of their escapades are, though, it’s during this middle stretch that Cameron shows where his heart remains. As in real life, his passion is for the sea and its inhabitants. If James Cameron could grow gills and never rise to the surface again, he would likely have already done so. You’ll not find a more vividly rendered and realized environment in a movie than the seas of Pandora. It is a space that is at once familiar and yet wholly, rivetingly alien. He presents us a dreamy vista of a submerged paradise and intentionally lingers there for extended stretches. It’s entirely digital, and yet it feels as tangible and real as anything else on a movie screen this year. There are other talented special effects houses out there, but the work that WETA Digital has put forth for this movie is something an echelon above anything else I’ve seen in recent memory.

But sumptuous underwater escapades only retain their engagement for so long here. There reached a point where I stopped being able to tell which blue alien cat boy which. Kiri’s connection to the planet can only be so meaningful without some engagement deeper than “she just feels it.” There was certainly space to play here. At its core you could say this movie was, at least on paper, intended to be an examination of fatherhood and the ways that expectations of fatherly behavior are often at complete odds with how children, and sons especially, are failed by living up to those expectations. Fathers need to be more than just a stern voice and a “protector” (the latter of which Jake Sully fails fairly spectacularly at being).

This could have been especially interesting given what’s at stake for Quaritch. Despite becoming Neytiri’s new arrow quiver at the end of the first movie, he’s now back but in Na’vi form. Ostensibly implanted with his former self’s full batch of memories and even personality, New Quaritch must now wrestle with inhabiting the build and visage of the very thing he once tried to annihilate, all while reckoning with the (now grown) son he may or may not have even known he had. A tale of two fathers, both at odds with their brood, their life and their purpose.

All of it is largely ignored. We don’t even get a perfunctory moment where Quaritch finds himself even slightly contemplating the nature of his existence and why he must remain on the path his former self set in motion despite the fact that he’s only technically that person still.

At least the final hour of The Way of Water is an absolute banger and an explosive reminder that almost no one else does large-scale, big budget action like James Cameron. It’s cleanly executed, thrilling from moment to moment and brimming with the kind of kinetic spectacle that you’d expect from the man.

And in full honesty, it’s hard to be fully mad at a mega-budget movie that is such an unsubtle diatribe against destructive environmental practices, annoying dudebros who love to play the part of military tough guys and historical atrocities enacted by colonizers. No other director would likely dare to be so brazen in their messaging with so much money at stake. But when central themes are left unexplored and characters remain frustratingly underdeveloped, all the audacity in the world can’t keep your movie from bellyflopping onto the immaculately rendered ocean surface.

#avatar #james cameron

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grigori77 · 4 years

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2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30. BODY CAM – in the face of the ongoing pandemic, viral outbreak cinema has become worryingly prescient of late, but as COVID led to civil unrest in some quarters there were a couple of 2020 films that REALLY seemed to put their finger on the pulse of another particularly shitty zeitgeist. Admittedly this first one highlights a problem that’s been around for a while now, but it came along at just the right time to gain particularly strong resonance, filtering its message into the most reliable form of allegorical social commentary – horror. The vengeful ghost trope has become pretty familiar since the Millennium, but by marrying it with the corrupt cop thriller veteran horror screenwriter Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) has given it a nice fresh spin, and the end result is a real winner. Mary J. Blige plays troubled LAPD cop Renee Lomito-Smith, back on the beat after an extended hiatus following a particularly harrowing incident, just as fellow officers from her own precinct begin to die violent deaths under mysterious circumstances, and the only clues are weird, haunting camera footage that only Renee and her new partner, rookie Danny Holledge (Paper Towns and Death Note’s Nat Wolff), manage to see before it inexplicable wipes itself. Something supernatural is stalking the City of Angels at night, and it’s got a serious grudge against local cops as the increasingly disturbing investigation slowly brings an act of horrific police brutality to light, until Renee no longer knows who in her department she can trust. This is one of the most insidious scare-fests I enjoyed this past year, sophomore director Malik Vitthal (Imperial Dreams) weaving an effective atmosphere of pregnant dread and wire-taut suspense while delivering some impressively hair-raising shocks (the stunning minimart sequence is the film’s undeniable highlight), while the ghostly threat is cleverly thought-out and skilfully brought to “life”. Blige delivers another top-drawer performance, giving Renee a winning combination of wounded fragility and steely resolve that makes for a particularly compelling hero, while Wolff invests Danny with skittish uncertainty and vulnerability in one of his strongest performances to date, and Dexter star David Zayas brings interesting moral complexity to the role of their put-upon superior, Sergeant Kesper. In these times of heightened social awareness, when the police’s star has become particularly tarnished as unnecessary force, racial profiling and cover-ups have become major hot-button topics, the power and relevance of this particular slice of horror cinema cannot be denied.

29. BLOOD QUANTUM – 2020 certainly was a great year for horror (even if most of the high profile stuff did get shunted into 2021), and this compellingly fresh take on the zombie outbreak genre was a strong standout with a killer hook. Canadian writer-director Jeff Barnaby (Rhymes for Young Ghouls) has always clung close to his Native American roots, and he brings strong social relevance to the intriguing early 80s Canadian setting as a really nasty zombie virus wreaks havoc in the Red Crow Indian Reservation and its neighbouring town. It soon becomes clear, however, that members of the local tribe are immune to the infection, a revelation with far-reaching consequences as the outbreak rages unchecked and society begins to crumble. Barnaby pulls off some impressive world-building and creates a compellingly grungy post-apocalyptic vibe as the story progresses, while the zombies themselves are a visceral, scuzzy bunch, and there’s plenty of cracking set-pieces and suitably full-blooded kills to keep the gore-hounds happy, while the horror has real intelligence behind it, the script posing interesting questions and delivering some uncomfortable answers. The characters, meanwhile, are a well-drawn, complex bunch, no black-and-white saviours among them, any one of them capable of some pretty inhuman horrors when the chips are down, and the cast, an interesting mix of seasoned talent and unknowns, all excel in their roles – Michael Greyeyes (Fear the Walking Dead) and Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant) are the closest things the film has to real heroes, the former a fallible everyman as Traylor, the small-town sheriff who’s just trying to do right by his family, the latter unsure of himself as his son, put-upon teenage father-to-be Joseph; Olivia Scriven, meanwhile is tough but vulnerable as his pregnant white girlfriend Charlie, Stonehorse Lone Goeman is a grizzled badass as tough-as-nails tribal elder Gisigu, and Kiowa Gordon (probably best known for playing a werewolf in the Twilight movies) really goes to the dark side as Joseph’s delinquent half-brother Lysol, while there’s another memorably subtle turn from Dead Man’s Gary Farmer as unpredictable loner Moon. This was definitely one of the year’s darkest films – largely playing the horror straight, it tightens the screws as the situation grows steadily worse, and almost makes a virtue of wallowing in its hopeless tone – but there’s a fatalistic charm to all the bleakness, even in the downbeat yet tentatively hopeful climax, while it’s hard to deny the ruthless efficiency of the violence on display. This definitely isn’t a horror movie for everyone, but those with a strong stomach and relatively hard heart will find much to enjoy here. Jeff Barnaby is definitely gonna be one to watch in the future …

28. THE MIDNIGHT SKY – Netflix’ big release for the festive season is a surprisingly understated and leisurely affair, a science fiction drama of big ideas which nonetheless doesn’t feel the need to shout about it. The latest feature in the decidedly eclectic directorial career of actor George Clooney, this adaptation of Good Morning, Midnight, the debut novel of up-and-coming author Lily Brooks-Dalton, favours characterisation and emotion over big thrills and flashy sequences, but it’s certainly not lacking in spectacle, delivering a pleasingly ergonomically-designed view of the near future of space exploration that shares some DNA with The Martian but makes things far more sleek and user-friendly in the process. Aether, a NASA mission to explore K-23, a newly-discovered, potentially habitable moon of Jupiter, is on its return journey, but is experiencing baffling total communications blackouts from Earth. This is because a catastrophic global event has rendered life on the planet’s surface all but impossible, killing most of the population and driving the few survivors underground. K-23’s discoverer, professor Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), is now alone at a small research post in the extreme cold of the Arctic, one of the only zones left that have not yet been fully effected by the cataclysm, refusing to leave his post after having discovered he’s dying from a serious illness, but before he goes he’s determined to contact the crew of Aether so he can warn them of the conditions down on Earth. Despite the ticking clock of the plot, Clooney has reigned the pace right in, allowing the story to unspool slowly as we’re introduced to the players who calmly unpack their troubles and work over the various individual crises with calm professionalism – that said, there are a few notable moments of sudden, fretful urgency, and these are executed with a palpable sense of chaotic tension that create interesting and exciting punctuation to the film’s usually stately momentum, reminding us that things could go suddenly, catastrophically wrong for these people at any moment. Clooney delivers a gloriously understated performance that perfectly grounds the film, while there are equally strong, frequently DAMN POWERFUL turns from a uniformly excellent cast, notably Felicity Jones and David Oyelowo as pregnant astronaut Dr. “Sully” Sullivan and her partner, mission Commander Adewole, and a surprisingly subtle, nuanced performance from newcomer Caoilinn Springall as Iris, a young girl mistakenly left behind at the outpost during the hasty evacuation, with whom Lofthouse develops a deeply affecting bond. The film has been criticised for its slowness, but I think in this age of BIGGER, LOUDER, MORE this is a refreshingly low-key escape from all the noise, and there’s a beautiful trade-off in the script’s palpable intelligence, strong character work and world-building (then again, the adaptation was by Mark L. Smith, who co-wrote The Revenant), while this is a visually stunning film, Clooney and cinematographer Martin Ruhe (Control, The Keeping Room) weaving an evocative visual tapestry that rewards the soul as much as the eye. Unapologetically smart, engrossingly played and overflowing with raw, emotional power, this is science fiction cinema at its most cerebral, and another top mark for a somewhat overlooked filmmaking talent which deserves to be considered alongside career highs such as Good Night & Good Luck and The Ides of March.

27. PALM SPRINGS – the summer’s comedy highlight kind of snuck in under the radar, becoming something of an on-demand secret weapon with all the cinemas closed, and it definitely deserves its swiftly growing cult status. You certainly can’t believe it’s the feature debut of director Max Barbakow, who shows the kind of sharp-witted, steady-handed control of his craft that’s usually the province of far more experienced talents … then again, much of the credit must surely go to seasoned TV comedy writer Andy Siara (Lodge 49), for whom this has been a real labour of love he’s been tending since his film student days. Certainly all that care, nurture and attention to detail is up there on the screen, the exceptional script singing its irresistible siren song from the start and providing fertile ground for its promising new director to spread his own creative wings. The premise may be instantly familiar – playing like a latter-day Saturday Night Live take on Groundhog Day (Siara admits it was a major influence), it follows the misadventures of Sarah (How I Met Your Mother’s Cristin Miliota), the black sheep maid of honour at her sweet little sister Tala’s (Riverdale’s Camila Mendes) wedding to seemingly perfect hunk Abe (the Arrowverse’s Superman, Tyler Hoechlin), as she finds herself repeating the same high-stress day over and over again after becoming trapped in a mysterious cosmic time-loop along with slacker misanthrope Nyles (Brooklyn Nine Nine megastar Andy Samberg), who’s been stuck in this same situation for MUCH longer – but in Barbakow and Siara’s hands it feels fresh and intriguing, and goes in some surprising new directions before the well-worn central premise can outstay its welcome. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the cast are all excellent – Miliota is certainly the pounding emotional heart of the film, effortlessly lovable as she flounders against her lot, then learns to accept the unique possibilities it presents, before finally resolving to find a way out, while Samberg has rarely been THIS GOOD, truly endearing in his sardonic apathy as it becomes clear he’s been here for CENTURIES, and they make an enjoyably fiery couple with snipey chemistry to burn; meanwhile there’s top-notch support from Mendes and Hoechlin, The OC’s Peter Gallagher as Sarah and Tala’s straight-laced father, the ever-reliable Dale Dickey, a thoroughly adorable turn from Jena Freidman and, most notably, a full-blooded scene-stealing performance from the mighty J.K. Simmonds as Roy, Nyles’ nemesis, who he inadvertently trapped in the loop before Sarah and is, understandably, none too happy about it. This really is an absolute laugh-riot, today’s more post-modern sense of humour allowing the central pair (and their occasional enemy) to indulge in far more extreme consequence-free craziness than Bill Murray ever got away with back in the day, but like all the best comedies there’s also a strong emotional foundation under the humour, leading us to really care about these people and what happens to them, while the story throws moments of true heartfelt power at us, particularly in the deeply cathartic climax. Ultimately this was one of the year’s biggest surprises, a solid gold gem that I can’t recommend enough.

26. THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME – Body Cam’s fellow heavyweight Zeitgeist fondler is a deeply satirical chunk of speculative dystopian sci-fi clearly intended as a cinematic indictment of Trump’s broken America, but it became far more potent and prescient in these … ahem … troubled times. Adapted by screenwriter Karl Gadjusek (Oblivion, Stranger Things, The King’s Man) from the graphic novel by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini for underrated schlock-action cinema director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, Colombiana, the last two Taken films), this Netflix original feature seemed like a fun way to kill a cinema-deprived Saturday night in the middle of the First Lockdown, but ultimately proved to have a lot more substance than expected. It’s powered by an intriguing premise – in a nearly lawless 2024, the US government is one week away from implementing a nationwide synaptic blocker signal called the API (American Peace Initiative) which will prevent the public from being able to commit any kind of crime – and focuses on a strikingly colourful bunch of outlaw antiheroes with an audacious agenda – prodigious Detroit bank robber Bricke (Édgar Ramiréz) is enlisted by Kevin Cash (Funny Games and Hannibal’s Michael Carmen Pitt), a wayward scion of local crime family the Dumois, and his hacker fiancée Shelby Dupree (Material Girl’s Anna Brewster) to pull off what’s destined to be the last great crime in American history, a daring raid on the first night of the signal to steal over a billion dollars from the Motor City’s “money factory” and then escape across the border into Canada. From this deceptively simple premise a sprawling action epic was born, carried along by a razor sharp, twisty script and Megaton’s typically hyperbolic, showy auteur directing style and significant skill at crafting thrillingly explosive set-pieces, while the cast consistently deliver quality performances. Ever since Domino, Ramiréz has long been one of those actors I really love to watch, a gruff, quietly intense alpha male whose subtle understatement hides deep reserves of emotional intensity, while Dupree takes a character who could have been a thinly-drawn femme fetale and invests her with strong personal drive and steely resolve, and there’s strong support from Neil Blomkampf regulars Sharlto Copley and Brandon Auret as, respectively, emasculated beat cop Sawyer and brutal Mob enforcer Lonnie French, as well as a nearly unrecognisable Patrick Bergin as local kingpin (and Kevin’s father) Rossi Dumois; the film is roundly stolen, however, by Pitt, a phenomenal actor I’ve always thought we just don’t see enough of, here portraying a spectacularly sleazy, unpredictable force of nature who clearly has his own dark agenda, but whom we ultimately can’t help rooting for even as he stabs us in the back. This is a cracking film, a dark and dangerous thriller of rare style and compulsive verve that I happily consider to be Megaton’s best film to date BY FAR – needless to say it was a major hit for Netflix when it dropped, clearly resonating with its audience given what’s STILL going on in the real world, and while it may have been roundly panned in reviews I think, like some of the platform’s other glossier Original hits (Bright springs to mind), it’s destined for a major critical reappraisal and inevitable cult status before too long …

25. BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC – one of the year’s biggest surprise hits for me was also one I was really nervous about – the original Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its just-as-good sequel Bogus Journey have been personal favourites for years, pretty much part of my geeky developmental DNA during my youth, two gleefully dorky indulgences that have, against the odds, aged like fine wine for me over the years. I love Bill and Ted SO MUCH, so like many of the fans I’ve always wanted a third film, but I knew full well how easy it would have been for it to turn out to be a turd (second sequels can be tricky things, and we’ve seen SO MANY fail over the years). God bless Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves for never giving up on the possibilities, then, and for the original screenwriters, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, for writing something that does true justice and pays proper respect to what came before while fully realising how much times have changed in the TWENTY-NINE YEARS that have passed since Wyld Stallyns last graced our screens. Certainly times have moved on for our irrepressible pair – in spite of their convictions, driven by news from the distant future that their music would unite the world and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, Bill and Ted have spectacularly failed to achieve what was expected of them, and they’ve grown despondent even though they’re still happily married to the Princesses and now the fathers of two wonderful girls, Billie and Thea (Atypical’s Brigette Lundy-Paine and Ready Or Not’s Samara weaving). Then an emissary from the future arrives to inform them that if they don’t write the song that unites the world TODAY, the whole of reality will cease to exist. No pressure, then … it may have been almost three decades, but our boys are BACK in a riotous comedy adventure that delivers on all the promises the franchise ever made before. Winter and particularly Reeves may have both gone onto other things since, but they step back into their roles with such ease it’s like Bill and Ted have never been away, perfectly realising not only their characters today but also various future incarnations as they resolve to go forward in time to take the song from themselves AFTER they’ve already written it (a most triumphant and fool-proof plan, surely); Lundy-Paine and Weaving, meanwhile, are both absolutely FANTASTIC throughout, creating a pair of wonderfully oddball, eccentric and thoroughly adorable characters who would be PERFECT to carry the franchise forward in the future, while it’s an absolute joy to see William Sadler return as Bogus Journey’s fantastically neurotic incarnation of Death himself, and there are quality supporting turns from Flight of the Conchords’ Kristen Schaal, Anthony Carrigan, Holland Taylor and of course Hal Landon Jr., once again returning as Ted’s grouchy cop father Captain Logan. The plot is thoroughly bonkers and of course makes no logical sense, but then they’re never meant to in these movies – the whole point is just to have fun and GO WITH IT, and it’s unbelievably easy when the comedy hit rate is THIS HIGH – turns out third time really is the charm for Matheson and Solomon, who genuinely managed a hat trick with the whole trilogy, while there was no better choice of director to usher this into existence than Dean Parisot, the man who brought us Galaxy Quest. This is the perfect climax to a trilogy we’ve been waiting YEARS to see finally completed, but it’s also shown a perfect way to forge ahead in new and interesting ways with the next generation – altogether, then, this is another most excellent adventure …

24. TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG – Justin Kurzel has been on my directors-to-watch list for a while now, each of his offerings impressing me more than the last (his home-grown Aussie debut, Snowtown, was a low key wallow in Outback nastiness, while his follow up, Macbeth, quickly became one of my favourite Shakespeare flicks, and I seem to be one of the frustrated few who actually genuinely loved his adaptation of Assassin’s Creed, considering it to be one the very best video game movies out there), and his latest is no exception – returning to his native Australia, he’s brought his trademark punky grit and fever-dream edginess to bear in his quest to bring his country’s most famous outlaw to the big screen in a biopic truly worthy of his name. Two actors bring infamous 19th Century bushranger Ned Kelly to life here, and they’re both exceptional – the first half of the film sees newcomer Orlando Schwerdt explode onto the screen as the child Ned, all righteous indignation and fiery stubbornness as he rails against the positions his family’s poverty continually put him in, then George MacKay (Sunshine On Leith, Captain Fantastic) delivers the best performance of his career in the second half, a barely restrained beast as Ned grown, his mercurial turn bringing the man’s inherent unpredictability to the fore. The Babadook’s Essie Davis, meanwhile, frequently steals the film from both of them as Ellen, the fearsome matriarch of the Kelly clan, and Nicholas Hoult is similarly impressive as Constable Fitzpatrick, Ned’s slimily duplicitous friend/nemesis, while there are quality supporting turns from Charlie Hunnam and Russell Crowe as two of the most important men of Ned’s formative years. In Kurzel’s hands, this account of Australia’s greatest true-life crime saga becomes one of the ultimate marmite movies – its glacial pace, grubby intensity and frequent brutality will turn some viewers off, but fans of more “alternative” cinema will find much to enjoy here. There’s a blasted beauty to its imagery (this is BY FAR the bleakest the Outback’s ever looked on film), while the screenplay from relative unknown Shaun Grant (adapting Peter Carey’s bestselling novel) is STRONG, delivering rich character development and sublime dialogue, and Kurzel delivers some brilliantly offbeat and inventive action beats in the latter half that are well worth the wait. Evocative, intense and undeniable, this has just the kind of irreverent punk aesthetic that I’m sure the real life Ned Kelly would have approved of …

23. MUST MERCY – more true-life cinema, this time presenting an altogether classier account of two idealists’ struggle to overturn horrific racial injustices in Alabama. Writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, The Glass Castle) brings heart, passion and honest nobility to the story of fresh-faced young lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) and his personal crusade to free Walter “Johnny D” McMillan (Jamie Foxx), an African-American man wrongfully sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman. His only ally is altruistic young paralegal Eva Ansley (Cretton’s regular screen muse Brie Larson), while the opposition arrayed against them is MAMMOTH – not only do they face the cruelly racist might of the Alabama legal system circa 1989, but a corrupt local police force determined to circumvent his efforts at every turn and a thoroughly disinterested prosecutor, Tommy Chapman (Rafe Spall), who’s far too concerned with his own personal political ambitions to be any help. The cast are uniformly excellent, Jordan and Foxx particularly impressing with career best performances that sear themselves deep into the memory, while there’s a truly harrowing supporting turn from Rob Morgan as Johnny D’s fellow Death Row inmate Herbert, whose own execution date is fast approaching. This is courtroom drama at its most gripping, Cretton keeping the inherent tension cranked up tight while tugging hard on our heartstrings for maximum effect, and the result is a timely, racially-charged throat-lumper of considerable power and emotional heft that guarantees there won’t be a single dry eye in the house by the time the credits roll. Further proof, then, that Destin Daniel Cretton is one of those rare talents of his generation – next up is his tour of duty in the MCU with Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings, and while this seems like a strange leftfield turn given his previous track record, I nevertheless have the utmost confidence in him after seeing this …

22. UNDERWATER – at first glance, this probably seems like a strange choice for the year’s Top 30 – a much-maligned, commercially underperforming glorified B-movie creature-feature headlined by the former star of the Twilight franchise, there’s no way that could POSSIBLY be any good, surely? Well hold your horses, folks, because not only is this very much worth your time and a comprehensive suspension of your low expectations, but I can’t even consider this a guilty pleasure – as far as I’m concerned this is a GENUINELY GREAT FILM, without reservation. The man behind the camera is William Eubank, a director whose career I’ve been following with great interest since his feature debut Love (a decidedly odd but strangely beautiful little space movie) and its more high profile but still unapologetically INDIE follow-up The Signal, and this is the one where he finally delivers wholeheartedly on all that wonderful sci-fi potential. The plot is deceptively simple – an industrial conglomerate has established an instillation drilling right down to the very bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest point in our Earth’s oceans, only for an unknown disaster to leave six survivors from the operation’s permanent crew stranded miles below the surface with very few escape options left – but Eubank and writers Brian Duffield (Spontaneous, Love & Monsters, Jane Got a Gun, Insurgent) and Adam Cozad (The Legend of Tarzan) wring all the possible suspense and fraught, claustrophobic terror out of the premise to deliver a piano wire-tense horror thriller that grips from its sudden start to a wonderfully cathartic climax. The small but potent cast are all on top form, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick (Netflix’ Iron Fist) and John Gallagher Jr. (Hush, 10 Cloverfield Lane) particularly impressing, and even the decidedly hit-and-miss T.J. Miller delivers a surprisingly likeable turn here, but it’s that Twilight alumnus who REALLY sticks in your memory here – Kristen Stewart’s been doing a pretty good job lately distancing herself from the role that, unfortunately, both made her name and turned her into an object of (very unfair) derision for many years, but in my opinion THIS is the performance that REALLY separates her from Bella effing-Swan. Mechanical engineer Norah Price is tough, ingenious and fiercely determined, but with the right amount of vulnerability that we really root for her, and Stewart acts her little heart out in a turn sure to win over her strongest detractors. The creature effects are impressive too, the ultimate threat proving some of the nastiest, most repulsively icky creations I’ve seen committed to film, and the inspired design work and strong visual effects easily belie the film’s B-movie leanings. Those made uneasy by deep, dark open water or tight, enclosed spaces should take heed that this can be a tough watch, but anyone who likes being scared should find plenty to enjoy here. Altogether a MUCH better film than its mediocre Rotten Tomatoes rating makes it out to be …

21. PENINSULA – back in 2016, Korean director Yeon Sang-ho and writer Park Joo-suk took the tired old zombie outbreak trope and created something surprisingly fresh with their darkly satirical action horror Train to Busan. The film was, deservedly, a massive international smash hit and a major shot in the arm for the sub-genre on the big screen, so a sequel was inevitable, but when the time came for them to follow it up they did the smart thing and went in a very different direction. Jettisoning much of the humour to create something much darker and more intense, they also ramped the action quotient right up to eleven, creating a nightmarish post-apocalyptic version of Korea which has been quarantined from the rest of the world for the last four years, where the few uninfected survivors eke out a dangerous day-to-day existence amidst the burgeoning undead hordes, and the value of human life has plummeted dramatically. Into this hell-on-earth must venture a small band of Korean refugees, sent by a Hong Kong crime boss to retrieve a multi-million dollar payday in stolen loot that got left behind in the evacuation, led by former ROK Marine Corps Captain Jung-seok (Secret Reunion’s Gang Don-won), a man with a tragic past he has to make up for. Needless to say, nothing goes according to plan … Train to Busan was an unexpected masterpiece of the genre, but I was even more bowled over by this, particularly since I got to see this on the big screen on Halloween night itself, just before the UK cinemas closed down again for the Second Lockdown. This certainly is a film that NEEDS to be seen first on the big screen – the fully-realised hellscape of undead-overrun Seoul is spectacularly immersive, the perfect cinematic playground for the film’s most impressive set-pieces, two astounding, protracted high-speed chases with searchlight-and-flair-lit all-terrain vehicles racing through the dark streets pursued by tidal waves of feral zombies. Sure, the plot is predictable and the tone gets a little overblown and maudlin at times, while some of the characters are drawn in decidedly broad strokes, but the breathless pace rarely lets up throughout, and there are moments of genuine fiendish genius on offer here, particularly in a truly disturbing centrepiece sequence in which desperate human captives are set against slavering undead in a makeshift amphitheatre for sport, as well as a particularly ingenious use for radio-controlled cars. And the cast are brilliant, with Don-won providing a suitably robust but also pleasingly fallible, wounded hero, while Hope’s Lee Re and newcomer Lee Ye-won are irrepressibly feisty and thoroughly adorable as the young girls who rescue him from certain death among the ruins. Altogether, this is horror cinema writ large, played more for thrills than scares but knuckle-whitening and brutally effective nonetheless, and in a year where outbreak horror became all too real for us anyway it was nice to be able to enjoy something a little more escapist anyway – given the strength of its competition in 2020, this top-notch sequel to a true genre gem did very well indeed to place this high. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t say no to thirds …

#body cam #body cam movie #blood quantum #the midnight sky #Palm Springs #palm springs movie #the last days of american crime #bill and ted face the music #true history of the kelly gang #just mercy #underwater #underwater movie #underwater 2020 #peninsula #train to busan presents: peninsula #2020 in movies

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lovemesomerafael · 5 years

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El Amor Todo Lo Puede Chapter 48: With This Ring...

Chapters 1-45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47

“What would you say is the biggest challenge in your relationship?”

“He tries to tell me what to do.” Laura answered, adding more quietly, “That gets a little sporty sometimes.”

The priest looked over at Rafael. The amusement in Rafael’s eyes made Laura nervous, but all he said was, “I think I would agree with that.”

Laura breathed again.

Rafael had a number of issues with the Catholic Church, and had advocated for a quick, easy wedding, but he knew his fiancée well enough to know that wasn’t going to happen. Of all the things he had ever done to show his love for her, Laura thought that his being here in this room was the most telling. Rafael simply chalked it up to one more thing he would never have imagined he’d do, and then had done without hesitation when Laura asked him to. At least they hadn’t been required to take pre-marriage classes.

Father Frederick would never understand how Laura had talked him into waiving that important step, which he usually required for all couples he married. He wasn’t worried. They weren’t kids, and nothing he’d learned had pointed to any serious issues. He had known Laura Parker since she’d joined Saint Augustine Parish several years before, and he was a good judge of people. He had also spent a number of hours one-on-one with Rafael Barba, and now had a good understanding of Rafael’s basic character. He hoped that Laura would be able to influence Rafael to come back to the Church, because between the two of them, Father Frederick thought Rafael might actually have the deeper, more unshakable faith. What Rafael thought was his anger toward the Church, Father Frederick believed was actually anger at his father and his ex-wife, both practicing Catholics whom Father Frederick would like to have a shot at in a dark alley with a baseball bat. He made a mental note to confess that desire at his next opportunity.

The pre-marriage counseling session didn’t take long. These two were more than compatible, and there were only a few red flags that required particular discussion. To be sure, Father Frederick was relieved to hear that they recognized they were both very strong-willed. They had also discussed the deep wounds both Rafael and Laura carried from the traumatic experiences of their pasts, and the ways those wounds caused problems for their relationship today. Still and all, Father Frederick had no reservations about marrying them.

After that, it was just a matter of choosing a date, which was quickly done. Although they were already living together, a fact they hadn’t tried to hide from Father Frederick, they were both eager to have the blessing and sanction of the Church. Father Frederick was just as eager to get them properly married and out of a state of sin.

***********

Choosing a dress had been easy. Laura knew exactly how she wanted to look when she married Rafael. It had also been easy to agree that they wanted to be married in the beautiful little chapel at St. Augustine’s, rather than the main church, with a small number of family and very close friends in attendance. Lucia informed them that, intimate wedding or not, one doesn’t marry a Hispanic man with a huge, Catholic family without a correspondingly huge party afterward. They had cheerfully accepted her help in arranging one.

No, wedding preparations hadn’t been the problem. The problem, the hardest step for Laura in preparing to marry Rafael, had been telling Peter Stone. Her mother had flatly refused to be the one to do it. Carol had scolded Laura for even suggesting such a cowardly and unfeeling thing. In truth, Laura had been pretty sure she would, but she’d tried anyway.

Peter had started dating a woman a few months after returning to Chicago, and the relationship sounded like it was progressing nicely. Still, Laura was the one getting married, and even she felt a certain sadness at the knowledge that her romance with Peter, the other great love of her life, was truly and finally over for good. She thought maybe Peter might feel a little sad, too, and she didn’t like the idea of hurting him.

“So… um… I called to tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I’m… getting married. To Rafael. In May.”

There had been only the smallest hesitation before Peter had congratulated her and, as expected, reminded her that he had predicted that.

“I’ve been telling you for years you should listen to me, but I’ve given up expecting you to.”

“Be nice to me. I talked Mom out of the flowered couch.”

“I am being nice to you. I’m happy for you. Rafael’s a lucky bastard, and I hope he knows it. And how did you talk your Mom out of making me take that couch, anyway?”

Peter only felt a little guilty about changing the subject. As long as he’d been expecting this news, it still hit him like a sledgehammer.

“I told her… You know what? Don’t ask me that. You don’t want to know.”

“Now you have to tell me.”

“Really-“

“Sunshine. Spill.”

“OK, but you asked for it. I told her that we lost our virginity on it. Together. And it would be too emotionally difficult for you to have it in your apartment.”

“You’re not lying about that last part. But I wish I thought you were kidding.”

“You know I’m not.”

“Sunny, you are - something.”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“I don’t know.”

“So, anyway, it’s a tiny wedding. Just close family and friends, which is you on both counts, but… I don’t know if you’d want to come. Don’t feel like you have to.”

“That’s kind of a tough one, Sunshine. You know how I feel. I honestly don’t think I can go to your wedding.”

“I didn’t think so. I’m not going to yours. But… you know. I had to ask.”

“I know. And listen. I’m really happy for you. I wish you everything good in the world.”

“Thanks, Peter. That’s what I want for you, too.”

Peter had thought a long time ago that he had cried for the last time over Laura Parker. But he’d been wrong.

***********

Carisi and Rollins had volunteered to be sort of unofficial ushers. Unofficial because the wedding was really too small to need ushers, but they’d wanted to do something, and Sonny said that he had experience with some odd behavior at weddings in his family. They just wanted to be sure the day was perfect for their friends. The whole squad was overjoyed that Rafael and Laura were getting married. As much as they liked Laura, they had known and cared about Rafael longer, and were especially thrilled to see him happy. It was obvious that he had found a woman who loved him beyond reason, would protect him with her life, and not only tolerated his crankiness but adored him for it. For a while, they’d hoped that being in love (and getting laid regularly) might also make Barba a bit easier to deal with, but that hadn’t happened. Still, they were happy for him.

Neither Laura nor Rafael ever knew how fortunate it was that Carisi and Rollins were on the door that day.

Rafael’s childhood friend Alex Muñoz and his wife, Yelena, arrived with a guest. She was a Hispanic woman who looked as though she had been very pretty at one time but, as Amanda later put it confidentially to Sonny, “That girl’s got some miles on her.” They knew that, at some point in the distant past, Rafael had dated Alex’s wife Yelena, but since Rafael had invited her along with her husband – how could he not – they were willing to be pleasant. But the idea of bringing an uninvited guest to a wedding as intimate as this one rubbed Amanda the wrong way, and the woman herself bothered Sonny. Carisi, who liked everybody until they gave him a reason not to, immediately distrusted her.

And then as Amanda and Sonny were quietly engaging them with questions about how they knew the couple – in other words, interrogation dressed up as social chat – Yelena called the woman “Ana.” Amanda’s suspicions went into the red.

“Oh, Ana, what a lovely name.”

Sonny knew immediately that things were about to get interesting. He’d been partnered with Rollins a long time. He knew when she was about to go Amanda.

As Amanda had intended, the woman explained that “Ana” was short for “Anatalia.”

Anatalia. Rafael’s ex-wife. The one who treated him so horribly that poor Laura basically had to use a crowbar to finally get his pants off, Amanda thought. Oh, hell no. That is not happening.

The sweet, southern smile on Amanda’s face didn’t change. True to her heritage, she appeared perfectly polite and charming as she let Anatalia know – without saying one specific word – that both she and Sonny knew the kind of woman she was. Afterward, neither Yelena nor Anatalia could ever figure out what, exactly, Amanda had said that was so insulting. But they both distinctly got the message.

They got Sonny’s message, as well. Both barrels of it – Italy and Staten Island. He was far more pointed and far less polite than Amanda had been when he told them that Anatalia would not be attending Rafael and Laura’s wedding. For good measure, he shared his opinions on the kind of woman who would even attempt such a thing, and the kind of people who would help her do it.

Anatalia and Yelena sputtered and began to affect discreet outrage, not wanting to make a scene. Amanda, however, was unwilling to give one second to such bullshit on such a happy day. She simply shut it down with a quiet, surgical nuclear strike. “Honey, I think it might be best if you listened to Sonny, but I’d be happy to just have a quiet word with Lucia and ask her what she thinks.”

The reaction on both women’s faces was spectacularly entertaining to both Amanda and Sonny, although neither showed it at the time. Amanda had correctly guessed that Lucia Barba was not a woman to be crossed, and that both Yelena and Anatalia had good reason to know that. That moment gave birth to a favorite, very private joke between Amanda and Sonny. They referred to making an especially effective threat during an interrogation “Asking Lucia.”

It was crystal clear that Anatalia was not getting past Rollins and Carisi. Alex had privately wondered what she and Yelena had been thinking in the first place, but he’d never really liked Ana and wasn’t much surprised when she suggested something as tasteless as crashing Rafi’s wedding. Consummate politician that he was, Alex suggested that the ladies have lunch somewhere while he attended the wedding by himself. He later explained to Rafael and Laura that Yelena was “indisposed” and couldn’t attend. Neither of them gave it a second thought.

**************

The wedding itself was perfect. The mothers cried, Rollins and Carisi cried, and even Olivia and Fin had tears in their eyes. Ed Parker only cried once, just as he finished walking her down the aisle and set Laura’s hand in Rafael’s.

Laura wouldn’t remember much about the ceremony. She was glad there were pictures and a video, because all she was aware of was Rafael. Every detail of his adorably handsome face was precious to her. He always dressed well, and he always looked good to her, but she thought that, standing next to her in his morning suit, beaming with joy, he looked the best she’d ever seen him. She remembered the night in the safe house when she had first realized she loved him, and marveled at the meager fragility of that feeling compared to the feeling she had for him now. She had been completely unprepared to fall in love with a man so much smarter and stronger than she was, so irascible and combative on the outside and yet so privately tender and romantic. But she remembered during the ceremony to offer profound thanks to God that she had. And that he loved her just as fiercely as she loved him.

It was the same for Rafael. His entire focus was on Laura, this brash, irreverent woman who wore thousand-year-old cutoffs and T-shirts whose logos were faded to memories, who had saved his life on multiple occasions despite his reprehensible treatment of her, and who fearlessly waved her love for him like a banner before the whole world. He thought she was beautiful in her simple, elegant white gown and the gauzy veil that sparkled just a little in the morning sunlight. He wanted a picture of her, looking just like that, on his desk to look at every day for the rest of his life. He had done his best to prevent falling in love with her, and to keep her at a distance, but as he stood before the priest and vowed to spend his life caring for her, he thanked God for ignoring what he’d thought he wanted.

***********

The sun streamed in, causing Rafael to throw an arm over his eyes and Laura to bury her head under a pillow. It had been late when they’d finally stumbled into their hotel room, laughing and kissing, and they weren’t quite ready for it to be shining in on the bed, waking them from an exhausted sleep.

They were clear headed, neither having drank any alcohol at the party the night before. Rafael was aware that he could drink if he chose; Laura was clear that she was responsible for her own sobriety. He just preferred not to drink when he was with her. Everyone else at the party had freely indulged, however. Lucia and Carol, who had become fast friends and a fearsome duo, had chosen to hold the party in a restaurant owned by – no surprise – relatives of Lucia’s. The space had rough wooden pillars down the sides of a very large room, supporting rafters of the same wood from which hung cascades of multicolored flowers. The layout made for a huge public space with a raised platform for musicians and acres of floor for dancing, surrounded by rustic, well-used tables covered with brightly-colored linens and dishes. It also created darker, more secluded spaces on the edges beyond the pillars where smaller tables lined the walls. There were thousands of twinkle lights on the rafters and surrounding the pillars, and several votive candles on every table.

The musicians who had been hired for the occasion were from the neighborhood, and welcomed anyone who wanted to join them. The guest who joined them to sing the most songs turned out to be Father Frederick, who sang beautifully and was easily talked into singing. Everybody forgave him for the hilarious result when he tried to sing in Spanish.

The food was so good, and so plentiful, that everyone commented later they’d eaten far more than they’d planned. And everyone had such a good time that most of them also drank more than they’d planned, which made for an easy mixing of the various groups of guests.

Rafael smiled remembering his cousins Ramón and Selena teaching the cha-cha to Olivia and Tucker, who were too tipsy to be any good but had a great time. Fin and his lady, on the other hand, turned out to have some serious moves despite drinking as much as everyone else. Laura’s older brother Steve showed an unexpected interest in learning to cha-cha, which seemed odd until Steve and Selena disappeared about halfway through the party.

Things hadn’t worked out with the Sergeant from Computer Crimes, but Rollins seemed to be taking that in stride. She spent most of the party at a secluded table in a dim corner of the room with an investigator from the D.A.’s office. Carisi and Dean had bonded with Laura’s younger brother Dan and – all three a bit the worse for drink - had learned quite a few colorful Spanish phrases and found themselves very well-liked by Rafael’s many relatives. Carol and Ed Parker tried to ignore their drunken son, but Lucia thought it was hilarious and kept pointing out their shenanigans throughout the night. The only time Lucia faltered was when, after downing shots of something, the three had shouted a particularly graphic phrase they’d just learned. When Carol had asked what they’d said, Lucia blushed and lied.

At one point, one of Rafael’s more inebriated uncles had gone to one knee and proposed to Carmen, who had gracefully negotiated a dance for the moment, in exchange for some time to think about agreeing to marriage.

Rafael and Laura had changed into more casual, comfortable clothes after the wedding, and had spent an exhausting evening trying to make sure they spoke to everyone. It was a difficult task because everyone wanted to feed them, or dance with them, or give them marital advice. It was made more difficult by the fact that they really didn’t feel like being separated. It happened again and again; they kept being swept apart by the many well-wishers, and afterwards Rafael would have to go looking for Laura.

His wife. The idea popped his eyes open and he looked over at her in the bed. She was wearing the bow tie from his morning suit, which he had tied for her once they were finally alone at the hotel, simply because she wanted to wear it. It was still tied perfectly, though hanging crookedly around her neck. He peeked under the covers to confirm that, in fact, it was all she had on. He didn’t know why those silly ideas she got were so adorable to him, but he supposed he’d better get used to it.

She felt him move the covers and peeked out from under the pillow.

“Am I married to you?” She asked sleepily.

“You are.”

“Legally? Like, consummated and stuff?”

“Fully and inescapably.”

“Sweet.” She rolled over and pulled the pillow back over her head. It was a little hard to get back to sleep because her jaw actually ached from smiling so much the day before.

Rafael ordered breakfast from room service and cuddled up to Laura to doze until it arrived.

**********

After a short honeymoon in the Poconos, Laura and Rafael eventually returned to work and began life in their new normal. It was no different than it had been before they were married, other than having moved into their new apartment. But somehow it felt different, in part because every single time Laura caught a glimpse of Rafael’s wedding ring, she felt a new sensation of bliss, on top of the little frisson of excitement she’d always felt when she saw him.

#law & order svu #law & order: special victims unit #rafael barba #raul esparza #chicago pd #chicago justice #chicago fire #chicago med

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jungdrizzydraco · 5 years

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An O.C. for Your Asses!!!

I wanna see if the characters are legit before I move forward with this short story im working on (I'm a character first kinda guy, so I work inside-out) leave any form of constructive critique you wish, they are still works in progress, thanks!!

Augustine Harriet Andersson

Age:22

Sign: Gemini (sun) Cancer (moon) Virgo (rising)

Height: 5'8

Eye Color: Formerly dark-brown, bleached to a pastel-hazel because of some dark magic fuckery

Hair Color/Cut: dark-brown,q shifting variations of a fade, whose design changes somewhat based on his thoughts and emotions (yes, this is an enchanted fade)

Build: lean, lightly muscled from years lifting cauldrons in his grandfather's potion shop

Notable Features: Dimples; left-dimple is deeper than right, multiple piercings on each ear, artificial left eye (looks organic but to magical eyes, it looks otherwise)

"Have you ever been like...fundamentally angry? I feel that way...like at my core, there's this rage that seethes and coils at the pit of my stomach, everyday, like a python that can't quite squeeze his prey all the way to death. Everytime I think I've grown up, forgiven something or someone or myself, there's this anger that tightens right back up all over again...like it's reminding me of something. Somedays...I feel like that feeling will petrify everything I've ever loved about myself, and I'll just be another slave to outrage and ego and pain...just like everyone else...haha, then I'll really be a normie." -August Andersson, on his depression and internal anger issues.

Augustine Andersson is a witch-boy. But you could probably already tell that from looking at him: the way his eyes are almost constantly fixed towards some unseeable infinity, the way air molecules hum with fresh, manic energy around him, how he seems to absorb sunlight and the way his brown skin would filter the glow as a result of his connection to the natural...it was all very off putting to others around him for most of his young adult life. And as we all know, no one likes a freak, so such years had a hand in building his current trust issues, feelings of great anger and inadequacy, and all the tics and tricks he uses to keep such feelings at bay. He's not at a total loss; at his core he is a humanitarian, deeply compassionate and available to those who have managed to capture his heart, as well as wild and humorous. However, he keeps a tight lid on his darkest feelings and insecurities, out of fear that they may be too much for those around him (also, he might accidentally call forth a vile arch-daemon on accident, but that's neither here nor there.) After finally having had enough of his mundane time amongst the humans, he vanishes from his college campus one day and takes to the open road, hoping that like the many young, angsty teens in the movies he loves, he will find himself in his own solitude. But the best way to deal with oneself is when confronting someone else, and after a close-call with a reckless (and very cute) motorcycle rider on an interstate, August will be forced to deal with every single part of himself, the good, the bad, and the strange...

A few more things about him...

1. His father is Afro-swedish, hence his last name.

2. Loves to travel and is nomadic by nature.

3. He gets a special kind of warmth out of being moderately petty at all times.

4. He loves open spaces and bodies of water, as well as hikes through mountains (ok so he only went once in Vegas, so sue him, he really liked it!)

5. Surprisingly low maintenance, really just likes being around people that are happy, and the feeling easily rubs off on him.

6. Both positive and negative emotions easily rub off on him.

7. Can get caught up in moments of warm content, given his unstable interior life, and can get lost in wasting/spending time.

8. Gets restless easily.

9. Budding film buff, faves include Kill Bill vol. 1&2, Her, Moonrise Kingdom, Gone Girl, Blue is the Warmest Color, Moonlight, & Mean Girls.

10. August's father is very engaged with politics and civil rights, so in honor of that, he decided that his son's middle name would belong to one of the greatest figures of the civil rights movement: Harriet Tubman.

11. Favorite new movie is The Favourite.

12. Due to a lack of acceptance of his full self and the full spectrum of his sexuality, he is judgemental of others and holds them to the same near-impossible standards he holds for himself.

13. Things he expects from others: To read his mind and conjure what he wants without saying, to have his needs and boundaries respected without actually stating so, for others to fit in whatever box he thinks they should be in, for everyone's intellect to be slightly lower than his own, but high enough not to annoy him with silly questions, ect.

14. Listens to Lorde, J. Cole, Rex Orange County, Frank Ocean, Lana Del Rey, Tyler the Creator, Young Thug and assorted film soundtracks.

15. Enjoys playing into his double-sided nature when it suits him, and has a secret glee in melding into different roles depending on who's around him.

16. Is attracted to more eccentric personalities in platonic and romantic relationships

17. Smokes weed to escape boredom. (and his problems)

18. Smokes weed because he likes the feeling.

19. Is secretly a little ratchet, but he'll kill you if you say so, it'll fuck up his reputation as the quasi-sociopathic erudite.

Magic House-Thoth

Augustine is a member of the Sacred House of Life, witches whose magic is passed down from the Egyptian Gods themselves. August himself is a descendant of an African slave-witch, once known as Ashe. She was taken to Egypt as a typical piece of cargo from zealot raiders, and was sentenced to a life of building the pyramids. Or so she would have thought: Thoth, the God of Magic and Knowledge, took pity upon her and beguiled her to follow an invisible force into the desert one night. He then revealed himself to her in his ibis-headed brilliance and bestowed upon her a set of choices: he could free her now and set her loose across the desert with all the things she would need for survival, or he could give her secrets and wisdoms unknown to man at the time, but she would have to frequently return to him for lessons. Ashe always prized knowledge and growth over any material thing, or even something such as freedom (I prefer to disagree myself). And secrets from a God must count for that much more, right? She indulged in option two. Thoth grinned and whispered to her the mysteries of life, the secrets of the stars, and the riddles of worlds lost and intangible, he spoke magick into her very soul. She would then use her newfound knowledge to fool her captors, freed any slave that would believe in her, and with her wits about them, guided them across the desert to build a library-like sanctuary, in honor of Thoth. The former slaves then learned from the god's teachings, passed through Ashe, and became witches and educators in their own right, and Ashe came to lead this new coven of magi. This is how the House of Thoth became to be.

Magick: As a member of house of Thoth, August has the ability to manipulate various aspects of the moon, writing, hieroglyphics, knowledge and sciences, and the progression of time. His particular specialty is the creation of Moon Dust, a substance used as a medium for most of his spells. By gathering various quantities of mineral, be it: crystal, rocks, pearls, aluminum, or even silvers and golds, he can channel his magic into them and break down and rearrange their atomic components into a corrosive, abrasive substance that also tends to stick to objects due to an electric charge. This dust is also dangerous to breathe in. He tends to carry around a pouch or two on his person, as trying to create some on the fly is nearly impossible given how much time and intricacy is needed to create the substance. (I mean, working with just a pile of plain old rocks would take a couple of hours to convert, let alone harder or more distilled substances.) Spells that he has mastered so far include...

Spell of Refraction: A spell in which the moondust bonds to whomever or whatever August desires (sans the harmful effects, it's enchanted in this state) and whatever is enveloped in dust turns invisible via light refraction.

Spell of Revelations: He can spread his moondust over an area and have the pieces cling to imprints of negative emotion or dark magick. A spell used for forensic work.

Spell of Retribution: An offensive spell that uses moondust to its fullest offensive powers and creates small funnels of dust to ravage the opponent. The largest funnel made could surround a fully grown man.

Golemancy: Can create golems out of the moon dust he has formed, usually no larger than a human toddler. They tend to take form roughly resembling lego-men (he was a big fan of the Lego Expanded Universe as a child), but one can easily be fooled by their size: each golem has the strength of three men, and can combine to further power themselves up.

There are a few spells that don't require the moon dust...

-The Veil: A surface-level illusion layered directly over the skin. This allows the caster to look like whatever he wants to look like and sound however he wants, but can be broken if struck with bad intentions (like a slap from an offended woman on the street)

-Somnus: A very old, yet practical spell. Also one that does not require moondust, this handy spell induces sleep. Those affected by this spell will not remember being forced to sleep, but they will have active and vivid dreams for distraction. Also necessary for Dream Diving.

-Dream Diving: A skill Augustine has yet to master, this allows the caster to astral project into one's consciousness for complete access to the afflicted parties mind, if the brain is distracted by dreams. August has gotten stuck in several public nude dreams, and it takes long hours to remove oneself from another's mind.

-Illusion Casting

-Temporary Madness Inducement

-Script Magick: By writing down a word or phrase on any surface that can be sufficiently marked on, whatever has been written manifests somehow, just so long as it is within his power. He can't create miracles with it though.

Top 10 Roadtrip Songs

Sobriety- Sza

No Role Moldelz-J. Cole

Sacrifices -Dreamville, assorted artists

Grown Up Fairy Tails- Chance the Rapper, Taylor Bennett

My Boy-Billie Eilish

U.N.I.T.Y.- Frank Ocean

West Coast: Lana Del Rey

Cruise Ship-Young Thug

400 Lux-Lorde

Let Em Know- Bryson Tiller

#writblur #oc #my writing #my ocs #iwrite

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liv-andletdie · 7 years

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4, 13, 49, 53, 60 For all them Cub Kids

Thanks for the questions (I know you said in a different message to ignore 49 and 53 but they’re really fun questions so I’m doing them oops)

Alexei

4) Does anyone have a crush on your character? Is your character aware of this?A lot of people get crushes on Alexei, especially when he reaches his 20th year. He’s an alright looking kid but he’s just got one of those faces that doesn’t get “handsome” till he matures. And then there’s definitely some giggles from a few of the ladies at court when he enters a room, but he’s not really aware of them. Zelda will sometimes joke that he’s got lots of admirers, he just brushes her off mostly.

13) What would your character die for? His family. Without a doubt. He doesn’t have to think twice about it, if his family is in danger he’ll want to be on the front line risking everything to make sure they are safe. (He’s particularly protective over Julius and Nutty) 49) How does your character stand politically? He’s not really political until he starts to work in the army and he starts talking to his fellow soldiers. He then realizes that there’s a lot that not’s perfect in Hyrule (and honestly what country is perfect?) but he starts campaigning for better pay for some of the soldiers, more leave time for those who’s families don’t live in Castle Town, Maternal and Paternal leave for soldiers who are starting a family, that kind of stuff. 53) What clubs would your character join? If he went to my school growing up he’d have been that one kid who was great at sports and who all the teachers liked, so any club he’d join would reflect that. We didn’t have a fencing club at my school but that’s something that he would find interesting I feel.

60) If you could title your character’s life, what would you title it? You know I’m not great with titles (”Paint me like one of your Zora girls” is the best example of that) But I’m guessing… if it were a novel or a play it might be.. Idk “The wolf and the sword” relating to his relationship with his father and his talent with the blade.

Rest of the cubs under the cut

Augustine

4) Does anyone have a crush on your character? Is your character aware of this? It’s actually another OC Pierre, Shad and Ashei’s son, grew up really close with Tina and Alexei (he’s the closest in age to both of them, only being a year younger than Alexei and an year older than Augustine) He’s not sure but at some point, probably around the time he reached 17, he started seeing Augustine as more than a friend and then everything got quite awkward because didn’t want to proclaim his feelings for her and end up getting rejected and ruining their friendship. So for the longest time he just sat and had a crush on her in silence. Did Augustine know? No. He hid his feelings that well, and she’s that blind to people being attracted to her, that she just thought he was coming down with a chest cold or something.

13) What would your character die for? She’s the same as Alexei. She would die for her family. Except while Alexei is protective of Julius and Nutty, She is very protective of him. Her big brother. 49) How does your character stand politically? She’s trained to take the throne so she’s been taught to be impartial and to work only with the facts presented to her (obviously a lot of facts never reach royal ears, despite how long they are, and no action is taken) She’s like her mother in the way that everything she does is for Hyrule. Zelda takes the stand that she was placed on the throne to protect her people, and if they are unhappy then it’s her fault and if they want her gone they are within their rights to do so. It’s a privilege not a right. And she’s passed that philosophy onto Augustine.53) What clubs would your character join? ALL OF THE DANCE CLUBS! Mostly things like Ballet and Ballroom dance (waltz in particular) but she wouldn’t be averse to joining the tap club. Heck she might even join Zumba if she was in my school.

60) If you could title your character’s life, what would you title it? Now this one was actually easy! “Silver slippers, silver tongue” as it represents her political powers and her love of dance

Marta

4) Does anyone have a crush on your character? Is your character aware of this? Marta is actually the most “beautiful” of the cubs (not that she believes it) so when she reaches marrying age they find that she gets a lot of suitors asking for her hand despite maybe only having met her at a few parties. She’s aware of people’s “affections” towards her but only because they don’t tend to hide them. She’s not a big fan of big romantic gestures from men, and for the longest time she fully believes that she just doesn’t like romantic gestures… until one of the ladies gives her a rose and she just about dies on the spot.

13) What would your character die for? Family again but aside from that her animals. She counts them as part of the family (she’s the only cub that Epona will let touch her for an extended period of time, putting her in a very unique club that only has Link and Ilia as members) When she raises her first colt at 10 with her father she realized that this was “where the Goddesses have put me, this is my job” 49) How does your character stand politically? Augustine looks after the people of Hyrule, Marta looks after the animals. She’s a huge advocate for animal rights and is very VERY outspoken about it. She works hard to make sure that all animals are looked after and are cared for properly. But don’t get the wrong idea, she’s not like PETA, she doesn’t spread dumb rumors like “Sheep die from being sheared” “People milk cows till they bleed” “They tear babies away from their mothers to sell them” You’ve got to remember that her father was a Goatherd for the first half of his life, she’s seen how ranches work first hand and the care that the animals are given. She just wants to do more to help.53) What clubs would your character join? Is there such thing as a gardening club? Well if there was she would be the president of that club! They have a little herb garden in Ordon and it’s always her favourite place to be when they visit family down there.

60) If you could title your character’s life, what would you title it? Marta in the middle I’m kidding. This one is tricky one hm… “Roses and Violets” as Roses are her favourite flowers and I’ll let you research Violets.

Julius

4) Does anyone have a crush on your character? Is your character aware of this? It takes a while for him to really grow into his features, he looks more like Zelda so people tend to say he’s very “beautiful” and that’s attractive to some and not as important to others. He is quite unconcerned if people find him attractive or not, sometimes he receives the odd “love letter” from a member of court but he never really ruminates on them for long. He’s got more important things to worry over in his eyes.

13) What would your character die for? Marta. Out of everyone in the family he’s closest to her. Don’t get me wrong he loves his family with all his heart, but she’s the one he would die for. She raised his horse, she takes him out shooting, she reads to him when he’s having weak days, she teaches him how to sew. They also the closest in age, being just over a year apart. 49) How does your character stand politically? He’s very much like Augustine in the idea that his main concern should be Hyrule as a whole, however he is very passionate about healthcare and what could be done to improve it. He’s talked to Alexei a lot about creating a program that entitles the soldiers and their families to free healthcare, and he’s even broached the topic with Augustine. He feels that he’s lucky to get the support he has from Royal doctors and medics, but he wishes that the people would be able to get the same level of care as he does. 53) What clubs would your character join? Archery and riding. It’s his favourite things to do because a lot of the time they don’t require anyone else. He needs help getting into his saddle some days but once he’s up there he’s free. And that freedom and independence is something that he really cherishes

60) If you could title your character’s life, what would you title it? “One step at a time” It’s his personal mantra to himself everyday, to keep going to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Natalya (Nutty)

4) Does anyone have a crush on your character? Is your character aware of this? She’s quite similar to Julius in that she feels like there’s more important things in her life than finding romance. She’s had a few people develop “crushes” on her in the way that you develop a crush on a celebrity.

13) What would your character die for? Her parents. As the youngest she’s not under the same kind of pressure as Augustine or Alexei so she tends to notice a little more. She see’s the kind of work that Zelda and Link do and how they struggle with the difficult decisions that they have to make. It’s not easy running a country, it’s not easy running an Army, and it’s not easy trying to do both of those things with 5 children. You can’t solve every problem and Natalya see’s how that weighs on her mothers heart. She’d do anything for her and Link. 49) How does your character stand politically? She’s the most apolitical of the bunch. Obviously if there is an issue she can see she’ll want to do something to help, but it’s not on the forefront of her mind. Her biggest concern is trying to make sure her older siblings and her parents don’t die of stress! 53) What clubs would your character join? Music clubs. Music is her main passion in life, having started learning different instruments from a very young age. She prides herself on being able to write and play songs and it’s one of the ways she bonds with Augustine. To her it’s more than just making pretty sounds, it’s a way to help the ones she loves relax and feel happy. She wrote a lullaby for Link and will play it to him sometimes when he’s had a very, very, long day.

60) If you could title your character’s life, what would you title it? “The Little Songbird” for a lot of obvious reasons but the main one being that it’s one of Link’s nicknames for her.

#tp zelink #TP Zelink cubs #i love these babies so much

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penniesforthestorm · 7 years

Text

On ‘Twin Peaks’, Part 1

A Policeman’s Dream

NOTICE: I have tried to avoid concrete spoilers, but honestly, if you haven’t watched the full series, all of this will sound like gibberish anyway, so read on at your own risk.

My very first favorite movie was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. There was a period of time when I watched it almost every day. My favorite scene, the moment I geared myself up for every time, was of Snow White in her glass coffin, being mourned by the dwarves and other denizens of the woods. I didn’t cry because she was dead (I knew how the story ended), but because the dwarves were sad, weeping for their beloved companion.

Fast-forward twenty years later, during my first year on my own in New York City, when I decided to watch David Lynch's Twin Peaks for the first time. I had developed an impression of what it was—Kyle McLachlan playing a more grown-up version of his character in Blue Velvet (which I saw during my senior year of high school), once again investigating the corruption and decay behind the white-picket-fence façade of an American small town. Something about pie and coffee and owls and a dead teenage girl.

I was not expecting the visceral grief of the pilot episode. The way Pete Martell (Jack Nance)'s voice warbles on the words "wrapped in pla-a-astic"—indignant that Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), not just princess, but prom queen, should wind up in so cheap and unworthy a coffin. The tears of Deputy Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz), the Galahad of the Twin Peaks police force, as he examines the body no kiss could revive. Sweet Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle) and James Hurley (James Marshall) sharing a look of horror as they realize their friend has slipped out of their grasp one final time. Laura Palmer's murder touched everyone in this modest mountain town, so reminiscent of my own home of Missoula, Montana—which, of course, ends up playing a role in the series (and was the birthplace of David Lynch himself).

Over the course of the series, I realized something else: David Lynch and Mark Frost are two of the very few filmmakers who have ever captured the nature of dreams. It's one thing to throw forty-five or sixty or ninety minutes of nonsense at an audience and call it 'dream logic'—it's an entirely different thing to actually transmit the experience of dreaming itself. Special Agent Dale Cooper (McLachlan) has a dream in the third episode, in which a black-gowned Laura Palmer whispers the name of her killer into his ear. A little man in a red suit, his voice recorded backwards and dubbed forwards, says, "Let's rock!" There are red curtains, and a floor with a black-and-white zigzag. That, I thought to myself, that looks like one of my dreams. A series of images and phrases which may or may not retain any meaning upon waking, but which feel incredibly significant while you're experiencing them.

Or take that wonderful scene at the Double-R Diner, when the cerebral Major Garland Briggs (Don Davis), sits down with his wayward, petulant son Bobby (Dana Ashbrook), and describes one of his dreams. In so doing, he helps Bobby understand that despite their disagreements, despite all of Bobby's ill-advised rebellion, his father still loves him. It's a beautiful testament of faith—a little rest from all the terror and confusion surrounding the characters. (An excerpt of Major Briggs' monologue shows up in Terrence Malick's 2016 film Knight of Cups, which is itself a flawed, but frequently arresting meditation on fathers and sons. I almost squealed in the theater.)

The best trick, though, is the way Lynch and Frost made the real world seem like a nightmare. Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine) crawling out of the fog in her white slip, unable to give voice to what she's been through, languishing under heavy sedation at the hospital. Poor Maddy Ferguson (Sheryl Lee again, but with dark hair and a mousy affect), betrayed by the same figure that killed her cousin Laura. Even jovial Big Ed Hurley (Everett McGill), trapped by guilt into a suffocating marriage, and our Special Agent Dale Cooper, haunted by the woman he couldn't save. In the world of Twin Peaks, all lines are blurred—dream and reality, future and past, even (ultimately) life and death.

So much for the original series. I finished it just after Christmas of 2014. Time moved forward. I followed the rumors of the show's return, that terrible period when it seemed like Lynch wanted no part in this expansion of his creation, and the wild mishmash of speculation on the fates of various characters. (Whither John Justice Wheeler? …Just kidding; no one cared about him.)

In the spring of 2016, I experienced a shattering tragedy of my own: the loss of a friend, a wonderfully talented and tenderhearted young man. He, too, was the focal point for a small, vibrant community of people. He, too, had secrets. In the fall of that year, I started watching Twin Peaks again, in preparation for the new series. Suddenly, the reaction of Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) to her daughter's death—her madness and devastation—didn't seem so extreme. Time moved differently in the aftermath. One foggy evening in December, I briefly felt as though I had left time completely. (The next morning, under the shroud of a brutal hangover, I experienced every second with thudding clarity.)

I sped through the series, exchanging observations with my brother—how I'd hated creamed corn as a child, the sweetness of the friendship between Shelley Johnson (Mädchen Amick) and Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton), how, this time around, I felt a certain tenderness toward Bobby Briggs. I skipped a large portion of Season 2—the plotlines of Ben Horne: Civil War Enthusiast and Invitation to Love: The James Hurley Edition in particular. I nursed deep disappointment over the fact that Michael Ontkean would not be returning as Sheriff Harry S. Truman. There's a moment, fairly late in the first series, when Truman hears Agent Cooper coming down the hall, and his face just lights up: here comes my friend. I was sure his steadfast decency would be missed.

The day before the premiere of Twin Peaks: The Return, I finally watched the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which is, chronologically, a prequel to the original series, but would make absolutely zero sense in isolation. (No, I am not going to make the obvious joke here. You can do that on your own.) It functions as something of a dark mirror to the TV show. Instead of the chipper, kindly Dale Cooper, we get Agent Chet Desmond (Chris Isaak)—vaguely louche and sardonic, investigating the death of the transient Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley), in the badlands of Oregon. The Deer Meadow law enforcement is steeped in corruption and obtusely unhelpful. Harry Dean Stanton shows up as Carl Rodd, owner of the trailer park where Teresa Banks lived, spectacularly put-upon and haunted by… something. At the FBI headquarters in Philadelphia, David Bowie makes an outrageous, ethereal cameo, as a long-lost agent gabbling about convenience stores and someone named Judy (or, rather emphatically not about Judy).

And Laura. Laura Palmer, in her last week on Earth, already nearly crushed by her own secrets. Laura, of the coloratura scream and fathomless blue eyes, desperately trying to protect her darling Donna (portrayed here by Moira Kelly) from the degradation of the infamous Bang Bang Bar (a.k.a. the Roadhouse). Laura, paralyzed with horror when she finally understands the true identity of her tormentor. Laura, seeking one last respite in the arms of the faithful James, before disappearing into the woods where her martyrdom awaits. In a world where another season of the show would likely never happen, Fire Walk With Me provides an ending. Notice I didn't say 'the' ending.

Please join me for Part 2, coming tomorrow!

#tv #Long Reads #tv review #twin peaks

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thefilmjournal · 6 years

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Never Goin’ Back (2018)

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Having loved A24′s other recent coming of age movie Eighth Grade, I was looking forward to seeing what this film had to offer to both the genre and A24's library.

Upon watching this in theaters, I found it overall endearing. I found myself becoming attached to the main characters, Angela and Jessie. I had to admire their attempts at balancing ‘adult’ responsibilities all while giving into their youth.

By the end, I found myself comparing it to A24′s The Florida Project for a couple of reasons, and I will touch on that more later on. Never Goin’ Back had a lot of heart and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Days later, I am still thinking about it and imagining Angela and Jessie’s lives after their runtime onscreen.

Never Goin’ Back is rated R for crude sexual content and language throughout, drug use and brief nudity- all involving teens.

There will be spoilers beyond this point. Thank you for reading!

(Image source: Rooftop Films)

Quirkiness

I think one thing this film did, to an extent, was tell me to relax--like Angela’s character was always trying to do for Jessie. The best example of that being when Angela and Jessie, and their two roommates--Jessie’s brother Dustin and his friend Brandon (played by SNL’s Kyle Mooney)--call the cops after their home is broken into. The conversation with the police arrives at a point where an officer asks Dustin if he’s homosexual. In response, I asked, out loud, in the theater by myself, “Why the fuck does that matter?” Of course, the cop that asked ended up being gay himself and I had to laugh at myself for getting immediately worked up.

The comedic moments that stand out in my memory most involve Dustin and his friends—from moments as tiny as him getting robbed with a thunder sound inserted in the background to Ryan and Tony having a dance off turned worm-off.

I enjoyed Jessie's fixation on pancakes. Poor Jessie and Angela fought to stay sober in order to beg for their jobs as waitresses back and, of course, the two end up accidentally munching on more than enough weed cookies beforehand so that they are barely functioning by the time they arrive at the diner. Knowing their boss, who had been so patient up to that point, couldn’t possibly take them back in their current state, I had to just let go and enjoy Jessie’s intense craving which was magnificently emphasized by Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You.” Angela and Jessie discussing the intensity of their high, not realizing they are in the presence of their boss, was great.

I wanted to point something out, and I suppose it fits best here: I wanted to acknowledge that, being from Texas, I was glad someone was truthful about Galveston (unlike in The Shallows, I’ve heard). It’s not the prettiest beach. I reveled in its brown waters and its shells that mostly came tiny and broken when I was younger. Now, I'm hard-pressed to stick a toe in. Thanks for the honesty, Augustine Frizzell!

(Image source: IndieWire)

Affection

What stood out to me in Never Goin’ Back’s characters was not necessarily who they are individually--although Angela is infectiously positive and adorable--but the relationships between characters. The closeness between Angela and Jessie, and between Dustin and his friends, even, at times, had me reading the characters as sexually fluid, which was refreshing.

Typically, we imagine men in the drug business--at least based on their usual portrayal in film and television--as being, or wanting to seem, hyper-masculine. Dustin and his friends are goofy. Dustin, in particular, is not my favorite character, though I give him credit for coming off non-judgmental and comfortable in his sexuality. Earlier, in the conversation between the household and the officers on homosexuality, Dustin did not become angry or bothered over being questioned about his sexuality. He doesn’t do any gay bashing either in order to defend himself, which up to this point in time with film, we see a lot of. I can recall another scene, recently, in Call Me by Your Name between Elio and his father, which surprised me and delighted me because of that expectation that Elio’s parents wouldn’t accept his sexuality (because we have heard, more often that not at this point, that parents don’t). This is all to say I enjoyed watching Dustin, Ryan, and Tony interact with each other--spending the day being ridiculous together, like when they all lovingly slept together on the couch.

Angela and Jessie have a beautiful love for each other that seems so effortless and comfortable--Maia Mitchell and Camila Morrone’s on-screen chemistry is tender and believable. The shot with the girls locking pinkies from their separate cells was a beautiful moment.

(Image source: IMDb)

Never Goin’ Back and The Florida Project

After finishing The Florida Project for the first time, I was left thrown off by the ending, which left me questioning my opinion on the movie as a whole. In it, we see the main character Moonee run off with her friend to Disney World before Moonee is taken by Child Protective Services. But did she actually get that far? I think, for one thing, we can figure no one is able to simply run inside the theme park. We can also arrive at the conclusion, especially with the change in the style of the picture, that it was perhaps Moonee’s imagination.

Never Goin’ Back ends with Angela and Jessie taking all the money from the safe of a sandwich shop. They run home, determined to leave for California with the cash they’ve stolen. Before the movie ends, we are given a clip of the two of them on a beach, happy. However, earlier in the movie, we were shown a similar image before the two girls were awakened by a bus driver, learning that they had been passed out for hours. So, it begs the question: Was the beach a dream sequence? It’s a sad thought. As much as the girls mean to do well, things happen that are of out of their control, even when they aren’t the ones making unreasonable choices.

While I want these characters to have their happy ending and freedom from the stresses they’ve adopted at an early age, I can’t help but feel that the ending at the beach was fake. It seems too easy for them to get away with the robbery and end up in California using that money. There were likely cameras and the owner could press charges, regardless of any blackmailing. As someone who thrives on happy endings, I want that for them. From an analytical standpoint, it makes the movie stronger and more interesting to wonder about the outcome, and not in a pissed off way like in some cases in film.

Aside from that ending, both Never Goin’ Back and The Florida Project give us an intimate look into the lives of women struggling to make ends meet. Since I made the comparison between the two, I’ve liked to joke (theorize?) to myself that it’s as if Angela is Moonee as a teenager, off on her own. And here she is, perpetually using her imagination to cope.

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pluresmundos-blog · 5 years

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Philosophy of space and time

Philosophy of space and time is the branch of philosophy concerned with the issues surrounding the ontology, epistemology, and character of space and time. While such ideas have been central to philosophy from its inception, the philosophy of space and time was both an inspiration for and a central aspect of early analytic philosophy. The subject focuses on a number of basic issues, including whether time and space exist independently of the mind, whether they exist independently of one another, what accounts for time's apparently unidirectional flow, whether times other than the present moment exist, and questions about the nature of identity (particularly the nature of identity over time). The earliest recorded Western philosophy of time was expounded by the ancient Egyptian thinker Ptahhotep (c. 2650–2600 BC) who said: Follow your desire as long as you live, and do not perform more than is ordered, do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit... — 11th maxim of Ptahhotep [1] The Vedas, the earliest texts on Indian philosophy and Hindu philosophy, dating back to the late 2nd millennium BC, describe ancient Hindu cosmology, in which the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction, and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320,000 years.[2] Ancient Greek philosophers, including Parmenides and Heraclitus, wrote essays on the nature of time.[3] Incas regarded space and time as a single concept, named pacha (Quechua: pacha, Aymara: pacha).[4][5][6] Plato, in the Timaeus, identified time with the period of motion of the heavenly bodies, and space as that in which things come to be. Aristotle, in Book IV of his Physics, defined time as the number of changes with respect to before and after, and the place of an object as the innermost motionless boundary of that which surrounds it. In Book 11 of St. Augustine's Confessions, he ruminates on the nature of time, asking, "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not." He goes on to comment on the difficulty of thinking about time, pointing out the inaccuracy of common speech: "For but few things are there of which we speak properly; of most things we speak improperly, still the things intended are understood."[7] But Augustine presented the first philosophical argument for the reality of Creation (against Aristotle) in the context of his discussion of time, saying that knowledge of time depends on the knowledge of the movement of things, and therefore time cannot be where there are no creatures to measure its passing (Confessions Book XI ¶30; City of God Book XI ch.6). In contrast to ancient Greek philosophers who believed that the universe had an infinite past with no beginning, medieval philosophers and theologians developed the concept of the universe having a finite past with a beginning, now known as Temporal finitism. The Christian philosopher John Philoponus presented early arguments, adopted by later Christian philosophers and theologians of the form "argument from the impossibility of the existence of an actual infinite", which states:[8] "An actual infinite cannot exist." "An infinite temporal regress of events is an actual infinite." "∴ An infinite temporal regress of events cannot exist." In the early 11th century, the Muslim physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhacen or Alhazen) discussed space perception and its epistemological implications in his Book of Optics (1021). He also rejected Aristotle's definition of topos (Physics IV) by way of geometric demonstrations and defined place as a mathematical spatial extension.[9] His experimental proof of the intro-mission model of vision led to changes in the understanding of the visual perception of space, contrary to the previous emission theory of vision supported by Euclid and Ptolemy. In "tying the visual perception of space to prior bodily experience, Alhacen unequivocally rejected the intuitiveness of spatial perception and, therefore, the autonomy of vision. Without tangible notions of distance and size for correlation, sight can tell us next to nothing about such things."[10] A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists, by contrast, deny or doubt the existence of objects independent of the mind. Some anti-realists, whose ontological position is that objects outside the mind do exist, nevertheless doubt the independent existence of time and space. In 1781, Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason, one of the most influential works in the history of the philosophy of space and time. He describes time as an a priori notion that, together with other a priori notions such as space, allows us to comprehend sense experience. Kant denies that neither space or time are substance, entities in themselves, or learned by experience; he holds, rather, that both are elements of a systematic framework we use to structure our experience. Spatial measurements are used to quantify how far apart objects are, and temporal measurements are used to quantitatively compare the interval between (or duration of) events. Although space and time are held to be transcendentally ideal in this sense, they are also empirically real—that is, not mere illusions. Some idealist writers, such as J. M. E. McTaggart in The Unreality of Time, have argued that time is an illusion (see also The flow of time, below). The writers discussed here are for the most part realists in this regard; for instance, Gottfried Leibniz held that his monads existed, at least independently of the mind of the observer. The problem of the direction of time arises directly from two contradictory facts. Firstly, the fundamental physical laws are time-reversal invariant; if a cinematographic film were taken of any process describable by means of the aforementioned laws and then played backwards, it would still portray a physically possible process. Secondly, our experience of time, at the macroscopic level, is not time-reversal invariant.[11] Glasses can fall and break, but shards of glass cannot reassemble and fly up onto tables. We have memories of the past, and none of the future. We feel we can't change the past but can influence the future. Causation solution Edit One solution to this problem takes a metaphysical view, in which the direction of time follows from an asymmetry of causation. We know more about the past because the elements of the past are causes for the effect that is our perception. We feel we can't affect the past and can affect the future because we can't affect the past and can affect the future. There are two main objections to this view. First is the problem of distinguishing the cause from the effect in a non-arbitrary way. The use of causation in constructing a temporal ordering could easily become circular. The second problem with this view is its explanatory power. While the causation account, if successful, may account for some time-asymmetric phenomena like perception and action, it does not account for many others. However, asymmetry of causation can be observed in a non-arbitrary way which is not metaphysical in the case of a human hand dropping a cup of water which smashes into fragments on a hard floor, spilling the liquid. In this order, the causes of the resultant pattern of cup fragments and water spill is easily attributable in terms of the trajectory of the cup, irregularities in its structure, angle of its impact on the floor, etc. However, applying the same event in reverse, it is difficult to explain why the various pieces of the cup should fly up into the human hand and reassemble precisely into the shape of a cup, or why the water should position itself entirely within the cup. The causes of the resultant structure and shape of the cup and the encapsulation of the water by the hand within the cup are not easily attributable, as neither hand nor floor can achieve such formations of the cup or water. This asymmetry is perceivable on account of two features: i) the relationship between the agent capacities of the human hand (i.e., what it is and is not capable of and what it is for) and non-animal agency (i.e., what floors are and are not capable of and what they are for) and ii) that the pieces of cup came to possess exactly the nature and number of those of a cup before assembling. In short, such asymmetry is attributable to the relationship between i) temporal direction and ii) the implications of form and functional capacity. The application of these ideas of form and functional capacity only dictates temporal direction in relation to complex scenarios involving specific, non-metaphysical agency which is not merely dependent on human perception of time. However, this last observation in itself is not sufficient to invalidate the implications of the example for the progressive nature of time in general. Thermodynamics solution Edit The second major family of solutions to this problem, and by far the one that has generated the most literature, finds the existence of the direction of time as relating to the nature of thermodynamics. The answer from classical thermodynamics states that while our basic physical theory is, in fact, time-reversal symmetric, thermodynamics is not. In particular, the second law of thermodynamics states that the net entropy of a closed system never decreases, and this explains why we often see glass breaking, but not coming back together. But in statistical mechanics things become more complicated. On one hand, statistical mechanics is far superior to classical thermodynamics, in that thermodynamic behavior, such as glass breaking, can be explained by the fundamental laws of physics paired with a statistical postulate. But statistical mechanics, unlike classical thermodynamics, is time-reversal symmetric. The second law of thermodynamics, as it arises in statistical mechanics, merely states that it is overwhelmingly likely that net entropy will increase, but it is not an absolute law. Current thermodynamic solutions to the problem of the direction of time aim to find some further fact, or feature of the laws of nature to account for this discrepancy. Laws solution Edit A third type of solution to the problem of the direction of time, although much less represented, argues that the laws are not time-reversal symmetric. For example, certain processes in quantum mechanics, relating to the weak nuclear force, are not time-reversible, keeping in mind that when dealing with quantum mechanics time-reversibility comprises a more complex definition. But this type of solution is insufficient because 1) the time-asymmetric phenomena in quantum mechanics are too few to account for the uniformity of macroscopic time-asymmetry and 2) it relies on the assumption that quantum mechanics is the final or correct description of physical processes.[citation needed] One recent proponent of the laws solution is Tim Maudlin who argues that the fundamental laws of physics are laws of temporal evolution (see Maudlin [2007]). However, elsewhere Maudlin argues: "[the] passage of time is an intrinsic asymmetry in the temporal structure of the world... It is the asymmetry that grounds the distinction between sequences that runs from past to future and sequences which run from future to past" [ibid, 2010 edition, p. 108]. Thus it is arguably difficult to assess whether Maudlin is suggesting that the direction of time is a consequence of the laws or is itself primitive.

#Space #time #spacetime #philosophy

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