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wsgeon · 3 years

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hey everyone! ummm this is peyton (also the mun of lee hyeon) taking a second shot at a second character — i have a lot of muse for this one, so i swear he’ll be around for a while… 🥵 this is ryu geon, yes his name rhymes with hyeon’s & no i do not care ♥️ he’s the lead guitarist/vocalist of meta and also the son of a former nobody rockstar, but i’ll get into all that below! like this post if you’d like for me to come into your ims to plot, click the read more for more info on geon, and/or click here to be taken to his pages: CAREER, DOSSIER, PINTEREST.

HISTORY.

born in autumn ‘97 to a “budding rockstar” (translation: “no yeah i swear our band’s really starting to take off, we sold twenty-three tickets to our last show!”) & a woman with commitment issues ♥️ geon’s dad always told him that his mom left because she had some dire matters that needed to be taken care of and SWORE that she cried the last time she held her dear baby boy, but all of his dad’s bandmates say that she was just some groupie and had to be persuaded into carrying her child to term… who can say for sure?

naturally, there are no pictures of this mystery woman. there was one (1) of her holding infant geon, but then he found out that that was actually a sound tech who worked for his dad’s band… and he just never corrected geon’s assumptions LOLLLL

anyway! he was always really close to his dad, considering they were a two-person family. he has a set of grandparents, an aunt and a couple cousins but they were never involved with geon’s life because his dad is the #blacksheep of the family. geon and his dad against the world, am i right?

uhhh geon was also kind of a black sheep growing up, but he didn’t really notice? he was a happy kid, very energetic and enthusiastic. a lot of adults in the area looked down on him & his dad, but he was SOOOO blind to it because his dad’s a god in his eyes and HE’S always been nice to everyone, so why would they not like him??? because his clothes smelled a little like dad’s cigarette smoke??? big deal

wasn’t troublesome (beyond talking too much), but a lot of people still expected bad things from him :/ “his father’s a dirtbag, i’ll be surprised if that boy doesn’t end up in jail by 20”, “he won’t amount to anything without a proper role model in his life”, “his dad is teaching him how to slack off”, “he won’t contribute anything to society”, etc. he kindaaa picked up on this as he got older but pretended not to because it was more rewarding to play dumb and keep being a good kid(tm) to prove them wrong

was basically a mini version of his dad. same style, similar features, birthmarks in the same places, same “live today, die tomorrow” approach in life, same affinity for singing & playing rock music. ummm he loved his dad a lot. a lot. a lot. wanted to make him proud SO BAD, started his first band when he was 15 and they sucked so bad but his dad was their biggest fan… you know how it is. a lot of people misunderstood him, but he was a very good guy and such a great parent

TW DEATH unfortunately he passed away just shy of geon’s 18th birthday and your boy still hasn’t forgiven the world for taking his dad when he was in the middle of his angsty teen phase — had he known that their time together was dwindling, he would’ve been so so so much better to him END TW

his dad’s band actually rocketed into the charts after he passed & suddenly they were getting loads of publicity, lots of “what a shame that he went under-appreciated” which pissed geon off SOOOO bad because why couldn’t they have had that energy when he was still alive? he’s still mad about it five/six years later

this is getting kinda long, so uhhh tl;dr, he ended up staying with the drummer of his dad’s band until he was old enough to live alone/READY to live alone, but he changed quite a bit. was really going through it, quit his band, stopped putting effort into school. barely graduated. went from being a social butterfly spending every weekend at a gig or with friends to spending all of his time on a pc or in front of a tv, playing console games. the internet comforted him when nobody else would/could and then he met the future members of meta <33333333 #newbeginnings

present day geon is still struggling, has to go to counseling bi-weekly but he’s coming back out of his shell! he wants to fall in love with life again, just wants to tread carefully... outgoing & will talk to absolutely anyone, but he still spends most of his time alone. hard to reach by text, so if you wanna talk to him, you better call/facetime LMAO. talks a mile a minute, especially if you get him going abt something he really likes. laughs a lot, smiles a lot, more habitual than actual signs of happiness but yk. ummm he has a really loud voice, mostly controlled nowadays but he still gets carried away sometimes. an absolute menace during long drives/flights, sorry meta.

funny but only when he’s in large groups. feeds off of other peoples’ energy, really good at reading a room and breaking the ice/making everyone comfortable, but if you meet him 1-on-1, none of his jokes land quite the same.

i envision him as being the kind of guy who carries himself in such a way that you’d assume he’s really popular/out of reach/maybe even full of himself, but he’s... not like that... at all... in fact, he’s kinda irritating when you get to know him. the personification of a flood followed by a drought and vice versa, always either too much or not enough. gets used/ghosted/dropped/dumped/whatever a lot because he’s soooo fun in the moment (if he isn’t in his feelings), but draining long-term.

really emotionally intelligent, in touch with his feelings in a way that a lot of people never thought he would be (probably thanks to counseling tbh). he’s very very rarely the type of person who will make you wonder what your place in his life is — he’s communicative, kind, honest. ummm he thinks that intimacy between friends needs to be more common, so he’s really affectionate with the people in his life. type of guy to tell you he loves you every chance he gets (calling you when he’s drunk, sounding like a clingy ex type beat) & greet you/depart with a hug. losing his dad kinda fucked him up in the way that he won’t leave/hang up until his friends say “i love you” back, gets kinda (re: very) upset if he’s denied that and/or a hug.

TRIVIA.

has been playing the guitar “longer than he’s been walking” (not really, but he swears it’s true).

uhhh he really likes nail art, but he’s kinda hesitant in what he tries? mainly sticks to black polish (or other plain colors), but sometimes he’ll get little designs added in as well. mainly does it himself because he still doesn’t feel comfortable in salons... if his work looks bad, leave him alone <3 he’s trying

inspired by people like kurt cobain, nicky wire, yungblud, billie joe armstrong & damiano david in the fact that he’s not against wearing dresses or skirts on stage. doesn’t do it ALL the time, but often enough that it doesn’t go unnoticed. some people say that he does it for attention because he doesn’t dress like that elsewhere and tbh they’re probably kinda right

interested in history (only SOME... dinosaurs, ancient civilizations, specialized areas like the history of circuses/clowns/skateboarding/punk, stuff like that yk), stand-up comedy & documentaries. could spend a whole day watching documentaries and would say he had fun, has a lot of useless knowledge that nobody gives a fuck about and is kinda dumb when it comes to things that matter

when it comes to music, he prefers playing really fast and heavy rock or punk over anything else, but he actually listens to a lot more soft indie on his own time... he’s too tense these days to be listening to anything else RIPPP

the vibe: homemade tie-dye, ripped slipknot t-shirts, frosted tips, neon crocs with alien & peace-sign charms, chipped black nail polish, calloused hands, cheesy pick-up lines used NOT to land a date but to pull a smile, driving until he’s lost, stupid socks paired with pressed suits, dramatic poetry in an iphone note, etc.

PLOT IDEAS.

people he met through online support groups about coping with grief

uhhh an on & off relationship that’s been going for who-knows-how-long. the reason for this is up for discussion, but i imagine that he hasn’t given up yet because the constant highs and lows are a good source of inspo 🤪 artists must suffer for their art!

opposite side of the coin — someone he’s interested in, but he’s NOT disloyal so it’s a pattern of persistent courting when he’s single vs intense friend-zoning when he’s not and they’re getting tired of trying to figure out what he wants from them

someone else who likes nail art & can convince him that NOBODY cares if he goes to a salon

someone (probably female but doesn’t really matter tbh) who feels like his feminism is entirely performative… maybe they attack him directly for it or maybe they just REALLY don’t like him and they’re super vague about it idk. either way, please tell him that activism is much more than recommending one female artist a year and saying “clothes have no gender 🤪” so he can be praised for the bare minimum (his heart is in the right place but his skull is empty)

someone super introverted who comes out of their shell with geon! uhhh maybe they think that he’s the one doing them a favor, but in reality spending time with them has been doing wonders for his mental health

other people who like to skate. let’s congregate at the local skatepark and scare the middle schoolers away

someone who inspires him musically, for whatever reason. lots of late nights in studios, idly strumming his guitar and writing lyrics that definitely aren’t about how their eyes look in these dim lights… umm maybe he thinks he has a crush on them but really doesn’t and ends up hurting them eventually, maybe he really DOES have a crush but will (probably) never do anything abt it or maybe it’s entirely platonic and he just admires them a ridiculous amount

someone who likes to make music as a hobby, prob won’t publish/release any of it but it’s fun to imagine. spontaneous meetings with geon in the middle of the night, recording songs together and keeping the WORST takes for the laughs. there’s probably a diss-track of them going in on each other floating around somewhere even though geon can’t rap for shit

night owls who keep him company on the phone, even if they can’t be there physically. them talking really quietly vs geon shouting at them while he plays games LMAO

gaming buddies. come over, maybe you can carry geon through his game of the week or you can both fail but have fun while you’re at it… or you can scream while he fends off that hoard of zombies behind you

i’m typing this at the last minute (literally) so i’m gonna stop here, but i will get a proper plots page put up asap with a wider variety of connections!!! but as always, please do let me know if you have any other ideas. i’m always happy to plot and write with you all 🌚

#ws:intro #frankly my characters end up a lil different from intended 90% of the time soooo take my description of his personality w a grain of salt #this intro is long and illiterate but i'll fix it at a later time

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oneweekoneband · 3 years

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charming, if a little gauche: the taylor swift story

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“the last great american dynasty” is a song that no other pop star could make or, more to the point, would want to make, and as the third track on folklore it marked the spot in my very first listen—sweaty and embarrassingly strung out sitting in the cab of a pickup at the third place where we’d tried to find wifi—at which I let myself vault over the ledge, out of my cautious remove, and into real excitement for what this album might hold.

This is a song that Taylor Swift wrote about Rebekah Harkness, the ballet-obsessed socialite who married into the Standard Oil family (”the wedding was charming, if a little gauche” Taylor sings, and I scream.) then lived, fifty years ago, in the Rhode Island beach house Swift now owns. It is—and on this matter there can be no argument—the horniest song on the album. Taylor is absolutely jazzed out of her WASPy little gourd over this woman, this house, this grand, cyclical American story she imagines herself as part of. Does Taylor actually want to fuck her house and/or the ghost of the woman who once owned it? Well, that’s not for me to say. But the idea of them very evidently gets her going, and her zeal is infectious. She’s so clearly been bursting to indulge this passion, to memorialize this house, and I’m grateful that fate or timing made it so that she didn’t do it until now, until Aaron Dessner provided her with these specific instrumentals, because the combination is divine.

Taylor Swift in the Disney+ documentary Folklore: The Long Pond Sessions confirming that her psychosexual obsession with Holiday House is longstanding.

“the last great american dynasty” relates in colorful detail the life of Mrs. Harkness, who became a widow at just thirty-nine ("the doctor had told him to settle down / it must have been her fault his heart gave out") then used the remaining years to spend her late husband’s fortune in the most lavish ways possible. Rebekah, Taylor tells us, "Filled the pool with champagne / And swam with the big names / Blew through the money on the boys and the ballet” and, again, her total, perfect thrill with this story, with the fact of living in the house this woman once misbehaved in so egregiously as to be an affront to all her stuffy Rhode Island neighbors, is evident throughout. The song is wonderful, good fun, sounds great, feels insane, and then at the quintessentially excellent bridge Taylor pulls a pivot that should be completely noxious, but is, in practice, anything but. Wryly, she inserts herself into the song at the final stretch. “Fifty years is a long time / Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness / Their men and bad habits / And then it was bought by me”. When, “She had a marvelous time ruining everything”, transforms into, “I had a marvelous time ruining everything” I almost clap. I have clapped. It’s all unbearably cute, and in every word there is sonic evidence of Taylor’s pleasure at her own cleverness, but unfortunately it’s so good that there isn’t even really any room left on the private beaches of one’s heart cavity wherein to be annoyed at having been got by a Taylor Swift bridge once again.

Honestly............Taylor is like two decades max from this.

Though Swift was born in Pennsylvania and came of age in Tennessee, the idea that she’d take instinctively to the blue blood fantasy of wealthy New England is no surprise. It’s unclear whether there’s ever been another person alive who radiates such Big Connecticut Energy while, in fact, not being from Connecticut at all. Watch Hill, Rhode Island made perfect sense to me, in fact, for Taylor, because it not only, at $17 mil cash, made her the owner of the most expensive private home in the entire (extremely small) state, but brings with the choice a kind of self-satisfied dignity. Not being one of the more popular East Coast seaside destinations for the rich and famous, like Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, or even The Hamptons, stylishly insists that you must really be trying to get away. The house is classically lovely and has a big yard with a pool and flag pole that extends high into the blue to look down over the plebeians in the sand.

Being myself a natural born daughter of the New England states, albeit of a considerably less pristine stripe than the denizens of Watch Hill, I have spent countless day trips and weekends at the Misquamicut State Beach just a few miles down the coast in Westerly, the town that Taylor’s village (”village” ...Rich people are so weird) is a part of. Not long after Taylor moved in, I was there at the beach with my mother, and my sister, and my mother’s sisters, and whatever other beer-filled bodies might have been around, a whole hoard, and we were lounging on fanned out bed sheets in front of a restaurant called Paddy’s where you can get a blue rum-based cocktail in a plastic fish bowl. I was nursing a sprained ankle that summer, and still a week or two from being fully well, but I wanted to see Taylor’s house up close, so we walked along the water’s edge until we got close enough to snap a photo for posterity, and to see that Taylor was using around the property custom no trespassing signs which read, “I Knew You Were Trouble When You Walked In”. When someone who is very rich, popular, talented, basically has everything going for them, could buy and sell you and everyone you’ve ever known, etc., makes a stupendously bad joke it is a moral imperative that you tell as many people about that as possible, and so with love in my heart, even, I share this fact now. People had their towels right up against the edge of her sea wall, like a geographic version of the nervous game, but almost as soon I arrived, it was time to limp back to the land of the mortals.

Your hero in 2014 standing in front of the saltbox house on the coast that took Rebekah Harkness’ mind off St. Louis

The pleasures on offer in “the last great american dynasty” are almost too many to name, and all of them so specifically, distinctly, freakishly, bona fide Grade A Taylor Swift, wonderful and grating not separately, one then the other, but both the whole time, and all at once. Taylor saying “gauche”; Taylor telling a story about this dead woman she has a gigantic crush on once dyeing a neighbor’s dog green; Taylor invoking the phrase “middle class divorcee”; Taylor using the word “bitch” affectionately. Even Taylor’s actual vocals, which have been, at times, the notable weak spot in her rigorously streamlined overall package, sound really, genuinely lovely here, and as spirited as ever. The song is laden with Taylor’s remarkable self-righteous belief that by purchasing a multi million dollar home in tony Watch Hill she was somehow “ruining everything”, when she was born and bred for enclaves like that long before she had any number one hits, and actually the only major problem was people thought it was poor form for her to rebuild the huge seawall around the property, even though it was her right, and she was able to do it without issue. To know that Taylor, raised wealthy, imagines herself somehow persecuted as insufficiently chic in Watch Hill for having, by way of immense pop superstardom, multiplied many times over the riches to which she was born, brings me a great and uncomplicated joy. It is a train of thought so wholly unrelatable as to seem plucked wholesale from a work of magical realism, and that happens to be exactly the feeling I want most from a Taylor Swift song. My one and only criticism of “the last great american dynasty” is that, if you’re not right on top of the skip button, it bleeds directly into the Bon Iver duet “exile”, which does kill the vibe, but, well, nobody’s perfect.

The defense rests.

#taylor swift #folklore

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joeinfurnari · 4 years

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My Dinner with Andre

My Dinner with Andre might be one of the most difficult movies for many viewers to watch. The artsy crowd would call it minimalist while the more lowbrow among us would say it’s boring! There’s just so little to it that there is a valid case for both. The story is simply a struggling young playwright, Wally agrees to meet an acquaintance, Andre, for dinner at a nice restaurant in decaying New York city and conversation ensues. The end. But like so many things in life, My Dinner with Andre gives you so much more if you really listen closely. I recently watched it again and I forgot just how great it is and how it continues to speak to us today.

It’s so stark and unapologetic about being without plot that it’s become the subject of many pop culture parodies. I know there is a Simpson’s reference to it but I most enjoyed the episode of Community that spoofs it. You may think that this comes from a place of common dislike for the movie but it’s actually the opposite. The parodies just prove how influential and beloved it is. Why? For me, the appeal is the conversation itself. It’s been celebrated for being a complete fiction that does a great job at coming across as a documentary but that’s just appreciation on a formal level. It’s not just that they had a conversation that’s important, it’s what they talk about that matters. The content of that discussion is so important, the writers and filmmaker felt it merited being the subject of a film without any distraction. To say that Louis Malle created My Dinner with Andre for the iconoclasm alone, misses the point.

The two men seated at dinner are artists/playwrights and catch up on the long period since they last encountered each other. They’re not really friends and Wally even debates cancelling the dinner before ultimately opting to go. He’s a working writer and artist making ends meet in New York City while Andre has had a long hiatus from creative life spent on travel and self examination. Wally confirms their community speculation that Andre has money that allows his adventures. Andre at first spends dominates the conversation with anecdotes about mutual acquaintances and talks about some of the retreats and workshops he’s attended recently. Andre has dropped out of the arts and has been on a personal quest to find himself after becoming disillusioned with his life.

In the time since they last spoke Andre describes a crisis in his creative life. He left the theater and traveled to Poland where he spent time with strangers in the woods creating experimental theater. He didn’t speak or understand Polish and they didn’t understand English but the time spent together was transformative. What began for him as creative exploration in the woods forced him to act as himself and in so doing he was forced to examine his life and how he acts when he plays himself:

So, you follow the same law of improvisation…which is that you do whatever your impulse, as the character, tells you to do…but in this case, you are the character. So there's no imaginary situation to hide behind…and there's no other person to hide behind. What you're doing, in fact, is you're asking those same questions…that Stanislavsky said the actor should constantly ask himself as a character:

Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I come from, and where am I going?

But instead of applying them to a role, you apply them to yourself.

Andre tells more stories of his spiritual and creative adventures. For him, his journey to this dinner has been full of magic, mystery, serendipity and travel to exotic locations including India and even a Saharan Oasis. The restaurant is quite nice but it is still remarkably banal compared to Andre’s monstrous hallucinations and descriptions of his process of personal exploration. It culminates in a description of being buried alive in Montauk, NY. From that point on, Andre becomes surprised by his own reactions to things in his life. He even begins to look at himself and the sort of person who would spend his time the way he has. People in his life who he called friends, repulse him. Figures on television appear to be objectively horrible people. He says,

And I suddenly had this feeling I was just as creepy as they were…and that my whole life had been a sham…

…

I mean, I really feel that I'm just washed up, wiped out. I feel I've just squandered my life.

Moments later he goes on to say,

Well, you know, I may be in a very emotional state right now, Wally.…but since I've come back home I've just been finding the world we're living in…more and more upsetting.

It’s as though Andre has a new perception of the world that is in stark contrast to his former self. He’s alone in this perspective until he sees a woman working in the theater who recognizes the trouble on his face. Where everyone else he encountered commented on how great he looked, this woman somehow knew by looking at him, the emotional state he was in. Because of this woman’s recent loss of her mother, she was able to see him clearly. Andre says,

She didn't know anything about what I'd been going through. But the other people, what they saw was this tan, or this shirt…or the fact that the shirt goes well with the tan.

So they said, " Gee, you look wonderful." Now, they're living in an insane dreamworld.

They're not looking.

That seems very strange to me. Right, because they just didn'ts ee anything, somehow.…except, uh, the few little things that they wanted to see.

All of this has resonated with me very personally. I similarly feel as though my perspective on the world has shifted and it has made me incompatible with things as they are and people who aren’t looking. It’s as though my prior life was a dream, honestly. When I think of how I thought about the world and other people for most of my life, I also hate that prior self. I agree with Andre that that earlier version of myself inhabited an insane dreamworld. Andre describes it using the example of his dying mother. Although she was terminally ill and appeared only minutes away from death, the specialist was beaming at all the progress she was making. For this doctor, he had so narrowed his goals/perception to her arm that any healing on that front was cause for celebration. Insane.

I mean, we're just walking around in some kind of fog. I think we're all in a trance. We're walking around like zombies. I don't…I don't think we're even aware of ourselves or our own reaction to things.

We…We're just going around all day like unconscious machines…and meanwhile there's all of this rage and worry and uneasiness…just building up and building up inside us.

And later, Andre continues to describe this state of mind:

Isn't it amazing how often a doctor…will live up to our expectation of how a doctor should look? When you see a terrorist on television, he looks just like a terrorist. I mean, we live in a world in which fathers…or single people, or artists…are all trying to live up to someone's fantasy…of how a father, or a single person,or an artist should look and behave.

They all act as if they know exactly how they ought to conduct themselves…at every single moment…and they all seem totally self-confident.

For two men involved in theater, they are approaching the idea that who we fashion ourselves to be, is selected from clearly defined character behaviors and appearance. For an actor, it must be disturbing for there to be no leap between the actor and the character. Why is it that someone who adopts the role of artist in real life, chooses to look like what we expect? As average people in our world, we’re acting our roles as they have been defined for us by someone else. This should be alarming to everyone and not just Andre and Wally.

I mean, we just put no value at all on perceiving reality. I mean, on the contrary, this incredible emphasis that we all place now.…on our so-called careers…automatically makes perceiving reality a very low priority…because if your life is organized around trying to be successful in a career…well, it just doesn't matter what you perceive or what you experience. You can really sort of shut your mind off for years ahead, in a way. You can sort of turn on the automatic pilot.

How many of us are doing this right now? I did it for many years, always overlooking the here and now for some future reward that all of it was building towards. I also think if your focus is on a career, it’s less on the experience and wisdom needed to fully embody that role. This is why this is such a great film. It may not wow you with realistic explosions but it challenges you to question your view on your life and your world. You shouldn’t be content with the way things are. If you are, you are part of a very fortunate few and you may be overlooking much of the world to do so.

people's concentration is on their goals.…in their life they just live each moment by habit.

…

And if you're just operating by habit…then you're not really living. I mean, you know, in Sanskrit, the root of the verb " to be".…is the same as " to grow" or " to make grow. "

This is something I think about a lot. I live as a cartoonist dedicated to writing and drawing and designing and promoting and tweeting and posting and editing etc. in a driving need to produce, produce, produce. Am I really living? I don’t think so. It’s okay to admit it. This wasn’t a world of my creation but if I’m alive and active in it, I can change it. This film gave me a way to understand the things that I’ve gone through over the last few years. Without art, I wouldn’t have evidence that others have been where I stand. I feel less alone and more hopeful.

Wally talks about the need for escapism and comfort from art against the harsh reality of every day life. The choice is to create art that is comforting but for all its warmth, fails to acknowledge reality and might contribute to a collective disengaging with reality and most importantly, each other.

…we're starving because we're so cut off from contact with reality…that we're not getting any real sustenance,'cause we don't see the world. We don't see ourselves. We don't see how our actions affect other people.

This is heady stuff, for sure. All of this is to get us thinking about the nature of our lives and really see the things we’ve chosen for ourselves. To truly be free is to be able to think outside the characters and roles defined for us…even the ones we think we chose but didn’t create. Only by looking at ourselves honestly and as objectively as possible can we see how far from our own humanity we have come. Andre went through a personal crisis in which he went through a dramatization of his own death and rebirth. The fresh eyes this has given him as illuminated a very dark reality. There are no fancy distractions in this film because it is a battle cry for humanity’s future. Under the guise of a polite conversation about things most average people would discount as having no bearing on reality is actually about a fundamental reality that has changed without our conscious consent. His advise:

Get out of here.

…

the 1960s.…represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished…and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now…and that from now on there'll simply be all these robots walking around…feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there'll be nobody left almost to remind them.…that there once was a species called a human being…with feelings and thoughts…and that history and memory are right now being erased…and soon nobody will really remember.…that life existed on the planet.

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echo-inthevoid · 4 years

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Season 2 q&a and overall reaction

Jonny stealing everyone's names XD

Is martin going to be ok!? I also need to know!

He said no;-;

ok ya, no one's gonna be ok.

Ya, he must do sooo much research.

Ya, except for "fatigue" lol.

Eyyy the mechanisms!!

What's the red string brigade? Ok, I guess a group of fans theorizing about stuff.

Oh ok so someone else did martins poetry. Ooh, there's more martin poetry out there! *grabby hands*

Ok ya, Alex clarifying that Jon isn't stupid he just makes poor decisions. Probably if he'd paused and thought about it (like I did lol, I had to go do some stuff in the middle of that ep and thought about it a whole bunch lol) instead of immediately going out and buying an axe and further isolating himself and panicking immediately he probably would have figured it out. This is why it's bad to panic in a crisis guys.

Eyyy! Jonny's parents voiced Gertrude and Leitner! That's so cool.

XD Jonny grumbling about having to work with his parents.

Hmm, I hadn't really thought of Gertrude being like a mother figure in the story? She just seems very cut-throat I guess from what Leitner said. Idk so far I've been very suspicious of her. Especially since that one statement where her photo burned a whole bunch of people or something. She just seems very shady...

Alex chortling over Jonny's pain. XD

Side note, Every time there's a q&a I just can't stop noticing Jonny's voice going in and out of archivist range? Like most of the time I'm just listening along and then he'll say a sentence a bit grumblier and my brains immediately like "ARCHIVIST! That's THE ARCHIVIST!!"

Martin would be the last one alive in Friday the 13th! It's official!

(Is it bad that this gives me hope)

Jon likes Nonfiction, documentaries, and probably collects something just a little bit weird. *writes down for use in potential fics*

also while im at it I remember jon saying he dislikes coffee at one point, and so many people have him liking coffee in their fics! This has been your daily reminder of that fact because ever since then it keeps bugging me lol. (But also do whatever u want.)

Alex's spluttering sounds so much like Martin.

Yes!! I want to hear jon sing!! Yes! Musical Episode When!!?

Ah yes yes yes! All the characters are so unique!!? How does he do it!!

Ya, it being in audio format sometimes makes it hard to understand what's happening in the live-action bits. (Live-action is the wrong word but u know what I mean.)

Oh ok ya, how he mentioned he got a pipe was quite clever I didn't realize that that's why he mentioned it at all.

Ooh, there's a manga where there's something similar to Michael? I'll have to look that up later...

XD Alex and Jonny arguing about apples.

Ok, so all the statements we're hearing ARE for reals. I kinda assumed but good to have it confirmed.

They used to hang out together!!? Work function curry nights!! ;-;

Ya Ya! Who made the leitners!?

"You are assuming a book needs to be written" ...ok then. (but it has to have been created somehow??? Did they just spring fully formed from the powers? why? And why take the form of books?)

Alex's mischievous laugh about whether jon has friends *trembles in fear*

Yes!! Micheal is so good! I'm so happy they love him too! Yesyes! His laugh!

Ah Yes!! Mary kaey was so creepy!

XD yes yes yes fatigue was written on zero sleep, I knew it!

Akskdjdkd I love them so much. Also, I've looked up Michaels voice actor luke booys and he does some other horrory type sketches n stuff and I kiiinda want to do a little animatic with some of those but it's Michael like annoying some poor soul lost in his halls... I think that'd be fun. I wonder if anyone's done that yet? If so someone send me the links I neeeed iiitt :3

Season 2 summary:

Uuuuu ya so this season was really good. I kinda listened to it in bursts of about ten episodes every couple weeks and then have been saving up the reactions to post later so these are usually going up about a week or so after I actually listened to the episode just FYI.

I also do have a lot of spoilers cause I can't keep myself away from fanfic and people don't always tag for spoilers and I kiiinda wana know what's coming beforehand anyway? Idk it's hard man I get very stressed about what might happen and then also listening to too much at a time is too spooky for my poor little heart so I gotta read the less spooky fanfic to fulfill the hyperfixation you see. (If anyone has fanfic with spoilers only up to season 2 that'd be great btw)

Anyway, I try not to take spoiler type stuff into account unless I'm just so sure of it I can't really not acknowledge that I know about it.

Also, can I just talk about Michael for a minute?? Cause he's such a unique character? And I guess maybe there are other characters like him but I haven't ever seen one -tho to be fair tma is only like the third horror thing I've ever really got into (the other two are the SCP Foundation in its various forms and Little Nightmares. Hence why I keep making reference to SCP it's really the only thing I know similar to this.) But he's such a cool concept!!? Like someTHING that still has a personality? He's so not human? Like I get what he says but also I don't really? Idk im pretty sure he's an avatar right? Right?? Idk if that means he was a person at some point? But all this to say that he is probably the most inhuman character I've come across so far and I'm trying to figure out what it is about him that's so "other" to me? Like... I don't really know what Micheal's deal is? he seems to want to be sort of a neutral mischief-maker but also it seems like he keeps getting invested. But also I just love the way he talks about himself. Like he's a monster that has a personality and is fully intelligent but isn't just evil but isn't neutral either and certainly isn't benevolent. Like he's so complex and just,,,, the idea of a "thing" that's got a personality?? I love it? Kind of like dryads or spirits of things? Like the idea that after a long time things gain personality just by existing? Not that that's what Michael is necessarily? but that same sort of concept applies to him I think. Like the way he IS the maze and wants to help but wants to just watch but wants to kill them all. He's just so interestinggggggg. (And another vision of what jon could become?)

also "es Mentiras" is a beautiful name 💕

So are him and not-Sasha avatars? Not-Sasha also seems completely inhuman and I was under the impression that avatars were (or used to be) human? Or are they like personifications of their power? Do all the powers have personifications of themselves. not-Sasha seems even less human than Michael? Like she seems to just really genuinely enjoy causing fear? Tho I guess we didn't really get to hear a lot of her. She just seemed kinda gleefully angry most of the time we heard from her. Was she... Human once!???

Anyway. Also, can I just talk about leitners line about jon belonging to the eye!!? Just..*chefs kiss* hnnnngg I need more jon grappling with that. I just need more everyone dealing with the fallout post all of the finallies ok? I still need more of jon angsting over his worms scars and stuff and now I also need jon freaking out about belonging to a fear god power thing.

Also Martin! Is Martin ok? He sure did a lot of yelling which he doesn't usually? Look I love him and he actually thinks before he acts (unlike SOME people *looks at jon*) and he writes poetry and it is pretty good poetry ok!! And he cares about everyone and just wants a happy ending and aaaaa😭

Petition to get some statements from Martin's pov tho? I mean that's not gonna happen cause Jon's the archivist but I want more martin pov!! Maybe we can get some of his poem tapes??? Pls?????

I feel so bad for Tim. It sounds like he's kinda fallen into despair.

Also Elias!!? Is showing his spooky side!!? He can control cameras and beat a man to death with a pipe!!? This is his "place of powerr"!!? I am afeared!!? At least jon knows he shouldn't trust him now. Oh jeez, I wonder if jon will listen back to the tape and know what happened. Thhhatsss rough. Oh dear, I hope he doesn't feel guilty cause Leitner did keep trying to hurry him and now everyone thinks it was him. Even martin thinks he did it? Wich like I kinda want to hear more of his thoughts on that? How much does he believe that jon did it? Tim certainly seems pretty certain but he's a bit biased and cynical right now so.

And they were in the maze for DAYS?

Now I need martin recovering from being stuck with Tim in Michaels maze for days being angry and worried and hungry etc... Dksjdksa knowing jon could be dying RIGHT NOW and there's nothing he can do. Please someone give me the fic links if this exists!! I've already written like 5 drabbles based entirely on spoilers/other fics (which I'll probably post (w/ links to their inspirations) once I'm caught up and can make sure I'm not just completely demolishing cannon lol.

Leitner didn't even scream or yell or anything when he was murdered. Literally the chillest dude ever. F

Overall super great, Elias is terrifying, let's dive into the next season!!! I've got 2 seasons to finish in like, less than 2 or so weeks(?) if I wana be caught up by season 5 hhhh,,,

Better get started I guess.

#tma #tma lb #tma liveblog #liveblogging #tma season 2 #season 2 #season 2 q&a #season 2 finale #the magnus archives

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esotheria-sims · 5 years

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50 OC QUESTIONS - Marcus Blackbird

Got tagged by @thepathofnevermore, whee! :D Thank you for the tag, dear, this was fun! ^-^

01. How old is your sim? My headcanon is that he’s 15 at the start of the BaCC.

02. When is your sim’s birthday? June 28.

03. What is your sim’s zodiac sign? Cancer.

04. What is your sim’s ethnicity? Neo Margitavillean/human with magic ancestry.

05. Does your sim have any nicknames? Mark, and his sister Annika calls him Marky sometimes when they play-fight and she wants to annoy him. He pretends to be awfully offended by the nickname, but it’s more a running gag than anything else; he actually doesn’t mind it at all.

06. Do they have a job? Not at the moment.

07. Where does your sim live? Wyvern’s Bay since recently, Neo Margitaville before that.

08. Who does your sim live with? His dad Gabriel and his little sister, the aforementioned Annika.

09. What environment did your sim grow up in? (strict, loving, cold etc.) He was brought up in what could be considered the ideal familial environment - a friendly, safe neighborhood, a snug and cozy home, parents who doted on him… But his mom passed away when he was only 6, which came as a huge shock to everyone in the family, Marcus most of all. He managed to bounce back from the loss eventually - his dad was a huge source of support for him and his baby sister proved to be a wonderful distraction - but it took him a good amount of time to process it all, and even though he’s fine now, he still misses her dearly and feels her absence.

10. What is your sim’s favourite food? Pizza… and Watcher, what he wouldn’t give for a slice right now. Did you know that Wyvern’s Bay doesn’t have any pizzerias??

11. What is your sim’s favourite drink? Water.

12. If they have one what is your sim’s favourite color? Blue.

13. Does your sim believe in any clichés? (love at first sight, etc.) He firmly believes that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. And before anyone asks, no, he’s not the most ambitious of sims. :P

14. What is your sim’s sexuality? Heterosexual.

15. What is your sim’s gender identity? Male.

16. Is your sim type a or type b? Uh, what the hell is type A and type B…? Next question!

17. Is your sim introverted or extroverted? Introverted.

18. What is your sim’s favourite woohoo position? The kid’s still a virgin, so who the hell knows.

19. Is your sim a pet person? If so what is their favourite animal? Yes, he loves animals! I think he’s more of a cat person than a dog person, though he likes both well enough. He’s also very partial to small birds.

20. Does your sim have a best friend? His sister Annika, and since he came to Wyvern’s Bay, Phillip Gladwyn.

21. What is/was your sim’s favourite school subject? Back when he went to “regular” school it used to be Art, Biology, and Literature, and after Dominick Irving took him and Annika in for tutoring, his favorite lessons were in Robotics and High Elvish.

22. Is/was your sim a high, mid or low achiever in school? He was an overachiever in both elementary and high school, but due to unfortunate circumstances (read: a hoodpocalypse) he was forced to cut his education short. Now that Mr.Irving has taken him under his wing, though, he continues to excel in his studies. Once a nerd, always a nerd! 😁

23. Are they planning to go or have they already been to college? If so, what would be or what was their major?

He’d really love to be able to go to college, but the way things are now, it’s highly unlikely that’ll ever happen. :/ Wyvern’s Bay doesn’t have a university of its own, and any other universities are completely out of his reach. But if he could go to uni (dreaming is free, right?) he’d probably major in Biology or Art.

24. What are your sim’s political beliefs? He doesn’t have much of an opinion on the matter.

25. What is one thing your sim wants to do before they die? Just one thing? D: Marcus is so young, there’s so much he wants to do with life! Like find the love of his life, get married, start a family… it’s a long list!

26. Does your sim have a favourite TV show (cable) and/or movie? He doesn’t have any particular movie or show he considers his favorite, but he generally enjoys comedies, superhero films, and documentaries about ancient civilizations. Or well, used to enjoy. He doesn’t get to watch much television these days…

27. Is your sim a Netflix viewer? No.

28. Does your sim like books? Yep! He’s a complete bookworm!

29. Does your sim enjoy video games, if so what is their favourite one and do they play on PC or console? He’s not a hardcore gamer by any stretch, but he used to love playing video games as a kid and younger teen. He had a PC at home that he’d play on, and one of his friends from school (who had a console) would sometimes organize game nights. When he played on his home PC, it’d usually be single-player offline games, and when he played with his friends on console, they’d go for multiplayers.

30. What is your sim’s personal style? He’d describe it as “comfy & casual”, but these days it’s closer to “wears the same old rags every day and will continue to do so until the clothes literally fall apart”. It’s not easy to be fashionable when you live off grid, in the wilderness.

31. Does your sim have a lucky charm? Not per se, no… but he used to dry press four-leaved clovers whenever he’d come across them. He called it his “lucky collection”.

32. Is your sim religious? Nah.

33. What kind of music does your sim listen to and who is their favourite artist? He doesn’t have a strict preference re: music genre, but he likes ballads, anything with an acoustic guitar in it, and also rock, when he’s in the right mood. His favorite bands are The Beatles (got the love for their music from his dad) and The Police.

34. Is your sim a festive person? If so what’s their favourite holiday? If asked he’d probably say that he is, but to him it’s not so much about the holiday itself as it is about having a chance to get together with friends and family.

35. What is your sim’s favourite type of weather? He doesn’t have a preference, he enjoys all sorts of weather: warm, sunny, rainy, snowy… As long as it isn’t anything extreme (e.g. rainstorms, overly hot, heavy snowfall), he’s happy.

36. Does your sim prefer to start fights or finish them? He’d like it best if there was no fight to begin with!

37. Does your sim have a dream job? A professor, researcher, or any similar vocation that is intellectual in nature and allows for acquisition of new knowledge. As a kid, he’d always say that he wanted to become an archaeologist when he grows up… and while this isn’t necessarily something he’d consider his “dream job”, he probably wouldn’t mind being a stay-at-home dad.

38. Does your sim have any siblings? I’ve probably mentioned her like, what, ten times by now? Annika, his younger sister. He loves that kid to bits.

39. Does your sim get along with their family? He does, yes. His dad and sister are all he has left and he cherishes them above everything else.

40. What is your sim’s favourite hobby? Fishing! He started doing it out of bare necessity after his family got stranded in Wyvern’s Bay, but he really came to enjoy it as a hobby as well.

41. What does your sim look for in a romantic partner? Kindness, respect, loyalty, and above all, a lot of love and affection. Marcus’ ideal partner is someone who isn’t afraid to shower him with love and who will, in turn, allow him to love them just as much.

42. What is a secret about your sim? He cries like rain to sad movies, which is why he avoids watching them in the company of others… he may be a certified softie, but he still has his dignity.

43. What is a wish your sim has? For his family to find a safe place to live. That’s all he asks for, really. ;_____;

44. What is a flaw your sim has? He’s very emotional and tends to let negative comments get to him a bit too easily… He also has a tendency to get overly defensive when he’s been hurt.

45. How do others generally perceive your sim? Very nice, soft-spoken, a bit shy.

46. Does your sim have a greatest achievement? Surviving the total annihilation of your hometown, surviving a shipwreck, AND surviving in a fiendish new environment is a pretty big achievement, I’d say.

47. If they have one, what is your sim’s greatest regret? Not spending more time with his mother while she was still alive. Or rather, not making the most out of the time he had with her.

48. Does your sim have a favourite emoji? Long gone are the days when he used to have a phone for texting… but back when he did, his most used emoji was a plain old smiley face.

49. Does your sim use simstagram? No electricity, no social media. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Though he was never much of a simstagram user even when he had the necessary equipment… he only had an account because all the other kids had one.

50. What is the last text your sim sent (and who did they text)? “I’m gonna b late. Sorry” - sent to a classmate he was supposed to do a school project with. Needless to say, they never got to meet up for that project…

#sims 2 #ts2 #sims #blackbird #marcus blackbird #tag meme #BACC #wyverns bay extras #mine

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unimpressedperson · 5 years

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“10 Movies to Describe Me” tag

Hey, as I ever said, I LOVE cinema and going to the movies, watching documentaries, enjoying life by studying every nuance present on the 7th art.

Along life we have contact with a bunch of movies and references that affect our personalities, view of world, and even how we act towards some situations. Cinema is a powerful way of art, possibly influencing.

Everyone has a list of movies which influenced our personal growth. This list is all about it: 10 Movies you can use to describe me.

1 - Spirited Away

Well, I think Spirited Away was my first contact with cinematography eastern culture and made me go further in searching for more. I was 5 or 6 when I watched and fell in love with it.

Nowadays I know how to respect different cultures, have a deep interest in stories and mythologies from other countries. Thank you Studios Ghibli!

Influenced personality: Love for mythology and cultures.

2 - The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

I LOVE drag queens and everything related to that subculture. I remember watching that movie as a kid, after midnight and hiding from my parents, which advised me to sleep because I had school the next morning.

Everything seemed so colourful and amazing, almost magical. A explosion of music and dresses, high heels, makeup, big wigs and dancing.

While growing up it influenced my choices on sports, acceptance, music, and love for drag culture.

RuPaul's Drag Race is part of my love for drag queens, but it wasn't the first reference. Btw, support your local queens and art.

Influenced personality: Dancing skills, LGBT acceptance (when it comes to myself, I have nothing to do with someone else's sexuality), love for drag culture and pop music.

3 - Blackfish

Oh ma'am, now we got to a very rough part of my personality: my HATE and INDIGNATION over zoos and aquariums.

I don't like zoos, not at all. Watching animals caged in small spaces and sad, oh boy, it makes me want to invade the whole place with a hammer and set them free.

Before watching Blackfish I didn't quite realize how bad everything was for fishes in Aquariums as well. Now, I want to start petitions against Sea World and Aquário de São Paulo.

I love animals, WAY MORE than I enjoy being around humans, so knowing how suffering is their life inside small places makes me want to cage humans and let them walk freely.

Influenced personality: Love for sea animals and thirsty for their justice.

4 - Inglorious Basterds

(This scene is one of my favourites lol)

#ILOVEHISTORYANDTARANTINO

Well, Inglorious Basterds is a very historically inaccurate movie, but I love it with all my stone cold heart. There are so many catchphrases and iconic moments.

I just love that movie. Nothing really special or meaningful.

Influenced personality: The need for kill Nazis lol

5 - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I was a very angst teenage and depressed as well, not counting anxiety on the mix. When I was 13 The Perks of Being a Wallflower aired on cinemas, and suddenly all my concerns about acting weird and not normal, compared to other girls around and whose studied with me, kind of seemed so pointless, mainly because Patrick, Charlie and Sam seemed to have so much fun, even acting quirckly and being classified as misfits.

My story has nothing to do with neither of characters, but I related a lot to them. So I think a big part of me came and flourished after watching The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Also, it taught me the importance of speaking how you feel, therapy and trusting people enough to tell them when something wrong is going on.

The book is also one of my favourites, so I’m not impartial when it comes to The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Influenced personality: Not afraid of being myself, fight for human basic right of having mental health treatment guaranted and embracing my quirk personality.

6 - Erin Brockovich

Everyone who knows me well enough, is VERY aware of how independent and self-suficient I am. I hate depending on people for completing tasks or doing stuff, so most of the time I try to learn do things all by myself. It’s something natural inside of me, partly because I don’t get lonely, so the idea of depending on someone to anything makes me cringy.

Erin Brockovich is a movie I watched when I was 12 and the way Erin acted towards everyone, giving priority to her life and kids, not caring about everyone else’s opinion, it made me root to be independent like her (except for the kids and struggle to find a job). Erin exhales big dick energy, also the ending made me aplaud the movie (even tho I was alone at home watching it).

Influenced personality: I learnt how to classify my priorities, also improved my confidence on how I act, since Erin isn’t afraid of achieving things and proving her point, even if everyone else is against and won’t believe her.

7 - Lilo & Stitch

I think every single living human alive had at least one movie, you know this one movie, which you obsessed during your childhood. It doesn’t matter the genre, you watched it nonstop and pissed off your whole house with how repetitive movie marathons seemed to get with you, since everytime you picked whatever you were about to watch, your choice was quite predictable.

The movie I obsessed during my childhood was Lilo & Stitch (also Scooby Doo, where do you think I learned how to copy someone’s fingerprint by using pore cleanser and powder?).

As I mentioned a few items ago, I was a misfit and it played a big part on my life, being excluded from parties, playdates and games during P.E was common. It bothered me, but everything changed when we adopted my first dog, a dachshund called Xuxinha. We were Lilo & Stitch, whenever people treated me badly at school, I knew that she would be waiting for me at home.

Xuxinha passed away in 16th February 2017, and I still miss her.

Influenced personality: It helped understand that people are douchebags, but as long as I have my dog/sister at home to hold and distract me, then nothing else matters. I learned the importance of surounding yourself with people who cares about your well-being, not caring specie, ethnicity, etc.

8 - Wonder

I don’t think this item requires a lot of text to describe why I felt influenced by it. Watch the movie and let’s sob together.

Influenced personality: Learned why appearance means nothing, and everyone goes through some struggle, so always be there for people who cares about you as much as you do about them. Also, always stand up against bullying, it may look like a joke now, but it can be the trigger for fatalities.

9 - Spotlight

I study Social Communication: Journalism, that’s what I’ve been wishing to do and want to be in the future. Even tho I decided what I wanted as my career YEARS before the release of Spotlight, it helped me define which kind of journalism I wanted to follow: Investigative.

It feels like I just made 4 out of 2+2, considering the fact that I love detective stories and would love to be a detective myself, but watching and acknowledging that all the investigation and accusations were based on real facts, oh Ma’am, I can’t even describe the thrill consuming my mind only by imagining what it feels like to be involved journalistically in an investigation.

Influenced personality: My PASSION for investigative journalism.

10 - The Imitation Game

Last but not least: The Imitation Game.

Well, I constantly get annoyed on how biased our society is, for real, and whenever it happens I write poems and texts and protest, and piss off a bunch of people by only talking about a situation of inequality. When I first watched The Imitation Game the whole Alan Turing being castrated and killing himself because of homophobia and a VERY, I repeat, VERY narrow-minded society, it PISSED OFF THE HELL OUT OF ME, and I used this rage during a full semester of college paper works.

I named a group after Alan Turing and our semester project was basically about people being biased and killing genius because they cannot look further from their own bellybottoms. I won a “Oscar de Jornalismo”, which is the award that happens every six month in my college, prizing the best works from the semester.

It still makes me so angry to imagine what Alan Turing could had done if he lived for at least 20 more years.

Influenced personality: Well, it made me channel my rage about a situation and helped me to understand why we should discuss homophobia, racism, wars, etc, even harder now. Watching the world following the path for making the same mistakes all over again is frightening, and only history can help us.

- x-

It has potential to be a tag, so I’ll tag some people I want to know what movies inspired them. You don’t have to make a whole long ass text about your choices, just sharing is enough :)

@ohmydearmoonchild @okayycalum @emerson-moonchild @btsqualityy @theburntwaffle

#movies #cinema #hashtag #influences #personality #art #we're what we absorb #we are art #the imitation game #alan turing #spotlight #wonder #lilo & stitch #erin brockovich #the perks of being a wallflower #inglorious basterds #blackfish #the adventures of priscilla queen of the desert #spirited away

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purpleskiesandpaperflowers · 5 years

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Introducing me(us???)?

Ok no that's a terrible freaking title. We are not the jonas brothers.

Who's we? Haha honestly I'm not even sure anymore. This is a hard one to write because I literally don"t tell anyone about my "inner world" which is why I'm keeping my blog anonymous for now .

I guess I'm just a wierd human with a messed up brain that has no reason to be messed up. I'm in the process of figuring it all out .

Long story short "we" is me and my ... I'm not sure what to call them I used to think they were just imaginary freinds , but they have become something so much more real.

I remember being 5 years old and having imaginary freinds like any other child. I cant remember much but I'm pretty sure my home life was perfect. I have an amazing mum and dad and even had two grandparents at the time. I remember happiness and my cat who really wasnt a fan of me , but I adored her regardless , even if she did end up scratching the living hell out of me on many occasions. My main issue at the time was serious separation anxiety, I couldn't handle being away from my parents , it got better towards the end of the school year I think after a lot of spending most of the year screaming until my dad would pick me up. I found it hard making freinds as I was somewhat anti social and liked playing on my own often, but I found a freind in the end. I think we got on so well cause she was different too. Turned out she had Autism, something that I'll probably talk about a lot here. Anyway as I said back then was when I first remember having imaginary freinds , and constantly daydreaming . I used to watch my dad play video games a lot so a lot of my daydreams would be based off the video games . At the time It was perfectly fine. I was just a strange kid who had an over active imagination, zoned out a lot in school , and often enjoyed my own company, but couldn't understand why my peers didnt like the antisocial wierd kid. I remember getting teased as I have a harmless autoimmune skin condition that I developed aged 3 and I felt alienated for it . The serious bullying didnt start until later in primary school though .(I think age 11 or thereabouts, was when shit really hit the fan) Anyway the imaginary freinds were originally just that . Unfortunately things changed when my one freind from school left and moved across the country. I had no freinds so that's where I began to use my imaginary freinds to replace real people. By the time I was 13 I'd almost completely isolated myself , I didnt know how to interact with real people.

I eventually thought I'd got it all under control . I found a group of people that were all a bit wierd. Originally it was cool and I fit in okay.

When I went to sixth form college, stuff started to get weirder though. I'd been struggling throughout secondary school I'd spent a lot of time kind of going back into my alternate reality . Even at freinds parties I used to pretend that I was a different person in my alternate reality doing something with my inner world family. I mentioned it once or twice to someone at CAHMS (The british child mental health services) that I was seeing as I'd struggled a lot with anxiety and self harm , but I never wanted to be fully honest about it . I was embarrassed.

Aged 12 I remember "pretending" to be a character called Casey. At the time I was spending a lot of time pretending I was Kasey and I was making a talk show with my other imaginary freinds . Eventually another character called Paulie took Casey's place .

Paulie's whole existence is kinda embarrassing. They're a typical queer cringe OC That you know a 14 year old neurodivergent weirdo would make up. I kind of originally used them as a way to explore my special interests. And to understand things about the world . In many ways Paulie was kind of a reflection of myself and you know everything was fine . Paulie is a 5ft7 young non binary person . Born male but definitely presents more feminine. Some of the other details about them came from me incorporating things I'd learned from various medical documentaries and things I'd researched on the internet. (One of my special interests always was science , particularly biology, when I was young I wanted to be either a doctor or a vet or something like that. I dont know why I find it so fascinating. It's kind of my party trick - boring people with the details of a random medical condition that they absolutely did not ask for.) I'll go into full details at some point . I find it kind of embarrassing to talk about it all.

Anyway It used to be great we used to pretend to do makeup on our youtube channel that of course did not exist .(the deeper I get into this the more I want to delete my life) it became to the point where I was doing daily "vlogs" in the inner world as Paul , again just something I day dreamed about. It was getting beyond the limits of normal daydreaming.

At some point I came across a video about "Maladaptive daydreaming " for once in my life I didnt feel quite so alone. I couldn't believe that I wasnt the only one who did this! Ever since then I've toyed with the idea of opening up about it , maybe through some sort of blog or youtube video etc. However, I wasn't ready until now. I'm still not ready to be completely open with my freinds and family (the one person who even knows 1/3 of this stuff is my mum) which is why I'll remain anonymous for now .

In the last 2 years things have gotten increasingly more strange and confusing. When I was in sixth form college (british equivalent of high school) Paulie started to be kind of phased out of my daydreams. Then Eric showed up.

Again , it was just daydreaming that had gone a bit too far at this point, however I soon realised that my personality appeared to have changed to become much more like Eric. I stopped wearing makeup so often. I began to feel dysphoric about my body , I began to wish I was Eric.

From then it's just been confusing. It's never just been Paul , Casey or Eric . At first i thought I'd just made an imaginary family. I've been saying that I have literally no idea why because my family are great. But I wonder if it was because I lost my nan and then metaphorically lost my dad.

My dads not dead , hes alive (just about I mean he smokes like a chimney so it's probably only a matter of time) Our relationship is so wierd. I try to be grateful for him purely because hes not a completely bad person. He gave me a great childhood and has never laid a finger on me. But when I was about 13 , I lost him. He became self absorbed in his own past.

Around about that time one of my dads ex freinds died. Since then dads been remembering things from his past and is convinced that this ex freind emotionally abused him and traumatised him for life.

Hes told me the stories so many times because hes so caught up in it that I should probably remember more of what he told me but honestly I think after the third time I just gave up with talking to him. Dad never cares about what you're talking about . He only cares about himself.

I'll spare you the details for now. Maybe I'll make a post about it. I suppose that's his shit not mine though . I dont deny that his ex freind wasnt exactly nice to him and cheated him out of a relationship. But I just feel like he should maybe you know go to therapy rather than sitting at home , freeloading from my mum , mumbling to himself all day about things that happened in the past.

Its very selfish of me because I know even though dads not exactly had the worst life, and he is a little bit of a narcissist who thinks that hes had the worst life possible , I know hes hurting. But I used to have a dad , now hes just not there. We used to do stuff , and I used to adore him, However hes just not my dad anymore. Theres glimmers of him there . But hes so entangled with the past , (and also a bit delusional) that I cant have a normal father daughter relationship with him anymore.

I guess maybe the combo of that , the strain its put on my parents marriage (they're still together but they argue more now) and the fact that I'm a sensitive little snowflake who really cant deal with anything unpleasant, is the reason I created my imaginary family. I don't know if I want to put it down to that though. I feel like that makes me sound like my dad , blaming my problems on what feels like insignificant past events.

Anyway. I kind of hate the fact that I have another family on the inner world. Because even though my dads a bit of an asshat , hes my dad and as a multitude of people have told me " at least you have a dad , at least your parents are still together" and I adore my mum. Like shes as close to a perfect mum as you get in this world. Of course she has off days and it's not always sunshine and rainbows , but shes amazing. She loves me , she supports me through everything and she does so much for me. No matter how many times I screw up she just sighs and helps me move on. Mind you. I havent got anyone quite like her in the inner world.

Since I've been more honest with myself (and the boys) about the fact that I am in fact daydreaming and its not real , the boys have begun to accept my mum as their own almost. Obviously they have real mums, but I know they love her to pieces.

Anyway, so this big imaginary family. Has become more than that. A lot of the dudes are still just imaginary freinds but with a few of the boys , whom I've introduced you to two out of the three, have become scarily real. Eric is the main one. The last couple of years it's progressed to the point where sometimes , I'm not sure if I am me or if I am Eric , or if Eric is me. Sometimes I feel like I'm thinking in his voice. Sometimes I look in the mirror and see him. And sometimes he looks in the mirror and sees me. I think as Paul was so feminine. It didn't show so much. We could just pretend we were me on the outside. But when Eric is in my headspace, I hate my feminine body, I've bought a binder and my wardrobe is becoming less feminine. Because I just dont feel like the same person. I'm honestly so confused I really dont know what is going on or why it's happening.

In some ways the inner world is still just me navigating the world and my way of making sense of things. But it's also kind of like , parts of my personality, as little people that live in my brain , but not quite , I cannot begin to explain it .

And then of course, just when I'm trying to figure out the Eric saga and who the hell I even am anymore, Vlad pops up.

I'll always have a soft spot for Vlad. Hes Paul's older brother and has been in the inner world for quite some time , but has been more I suppose, in my headspace as I call it in the last six months or so. Hes the only one that I've managed to do a successful drawing of thus far although I'll try and do some of the other dudes at some point. Only issue is Vlad would much rather we doodle bugs than the other boys. Vlad has been my way of exploring the whole prospect of having Autism , I'm not diagnosed yet as the waiting lists are frankly ridiculous (yay for the tories?) but I've based vlads character around the traits that I have, and he helps me not be so ashamed of being neurodivergent. He also kind of helps me deal with my Emetophobia (the fear of vomiting) and my issues I have around food - which I honestly thought weren't that bad until I got told that the issues I've been having with my stomach and swallowing for the last year , are completely down to my anxiety. And it was at that point that I realised I may have been a teensy bit more traumatised by my phobia of vomiting than I originally believed. In fact vlads backstory is based off of my whole fear of being sick and what started it off (that time the norovirus kicked my ass, big time) .

Uhh so theres a bit about us . I'm not ready to fully open up yet . I want to eventually tell you more about the inner world but baby steps hey. I plan on trying to post more but , I'm useless so I wouldn't count on it.

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2251bluewhales · 6 years

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Week 8

Earlier this week, one of my favorite topics of discussion came up and was very casually debated among ourselves during our weekly seminar: the issues associated with cetacean captivity.

We’ve all heard the Blackfish arguments, and the advocacy for retiring and/or releasing captive marine mammals back into the wild. While there certainly is discrepancy among scientists and between marine park curators, biologists, and the general public on the ethics, complications, and realities of rehabilitating captive cetaceans, let me preface everything I’m about to say with the following:

Whether or not captivity is stressful or inherently damaging to the physiological and psychological health of marine mammals is not up for debate. There is simply too much evidence that supports the claim that captivity results in maladaptive and otherwise abnormal behavior, including self mutilation, stereotypic behavior, hyperagression, and increases the chances of reproductive complications, rejection of offspring, disease exposure/contraction, harm from element exposure, and increases heightens mortality rates in most species of marine mammals commonly maintained in captivity, notably orcas, bottlenose dolphins, belugas, pilot whales, pacific white-sided dolphins, and false killer whales (DeMaster & Drevenak, 1988 ; Perrin et al., 2009 ; Jett & Ventre 2011).

In the wake of documentaries like Blackfish, what now becomes of captivity? Has it truly lost all its value? Is there anything we can benefit from or learn by attempting to maintain these complex and demanding animals in captivity, all commercial purposes aside?

The answer: maybe.

We’ve all been there, and by “there” I mean Sea World, or Vancouver Aquarium, or Georgia Aquarium, or Marineland... you get the point.

I’ll be honest with you, my first encounter with a killer whale was in a captive environment when I was very young and impressionable and obviously ignorant to the complexities of ethics surrounding captivity. As I aged, I learned about the commercial whale and dolphin trade, and the problems that come with for-profit marine parks (*cough*) as well as the facilities that affiliate with them. It becomes an incredibly muddy and sensitive grey area to tread when one, especially a biologist, goes about listing the nuances and pros/cons to maintaining marine mammals in captivity.

As I maintained earlier, my personal opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Cascadia Research Collective, so please bear this in mind as I go about offering my two cents here. Here we go...

Pros

Public attention / Exposure; Such as in my case, aquarium facilities can provide a wonderful foundation for the general public to see whales and dolphins up close and personal and, supposedly, develop an appreciation for them and foster a culture of love for the environment. Granted this is my own bias, I became acquainted with the orca and marine life at an aquarium. Later on down the line I also learned how that orca came to arrive at that aquarium (maybe some of you are familiar with Bjossa, a killer whale caught from Iceland in 1980?) and consequently shifted my interest in working with captive marine mammals to studying those in the wild. Today, I would never advocate for the deliberate capture of marine mammals for commercial purposes, ever, but when it comes to facilities that maintain rescued marine mammals, some animals cannot be successfully released to the wild given their circumstances and complicated social hierarchies. These individuals may remain in permanent captivity where they are used as ambassadors for their species and educational tools** to promote the conservation of wild animals and their natural environments. Personally, I would now prefer that people learn through documentaries and books, and maybe that’s unfair of me, but knowing what captivity does to these animals, I can’t bring myself to recommend it. **Personal opinions may vary on the ethics of doing this, and some may argue that nature should be allowed to take its course, as deaths in the wild are natural and normal and direct human intervention is unusual. It is common for captive cetaceans to experience chronic illness and be given constant veterinary attention in unsuitable artificial confines, and that begs the question of “what kind of life is that?”, but good God, is that another can of worms.

Research opportunities; In addition to developing improved husbandry techniques, which could lead to better veterinary care and general maintenance of marine mammals in captivity for the purpose of rescue and rehabilitation, there are still some research opportunities to be had in a captive environment. Some areas of study include examining the use of sonar echolocation in marine mammals, the results of which are intended to better our understanding of sound dynamics and perchance find ways to reduce the chances of entanglement in fishing nets and strikes by vessels.

Rehabilitation and Release; short-term captivity for preparation for rehabilitation and eventual release is something I wish more aquarium facilities could refine and focus on. As it is, maintaining marine mammals in captivity is logistically and financially difficult to nearly impossible, depending on the species, but some respond better to captivity than others. Consider seals and sea lions for example at the Marine Mammal Center in California and at Vancouver Aquarium in British Columbia. Cetaceans can be more difficult to rehabilitate, again, due to the complexities in their biology and behavior and susceptibility to stress (Zagzebski et al., 2006 ; Simon et al., 2009), although it has been done! Springer (A73), a killer whale from the Northern Resident Community in British Columbia was found emaciated and orphaned in Washington back in 2002. She was taken into a seaside pen and released back to her family unit after a breif period of time in human care. She now has two calves of her own and is alive and well. Several successful releases of smaller oceanic dolphins after maintenance in short-term and long-term captivity have occurred as well (Gales & Waples, 1993 ; Balcomb, 1995 ; Wells et al., 1998 ; UNIST, 2018), but follow-up has been inconsistent in many cases.

Captive breeding; No, I don’t mean for the commercial trade. I mean captive breeding for the purpose of wild repopulation. Now, let me be the first to say that I don’t think this is the best concept to experiment with, especially with endangered cetaceans where it would be most logical for this type of intervention to take place. Take the recent last-ditch efforts to save the Vaquita porpoise. Acute stress as a result of capture was believed to be the cause of death of one of the last remaining critically-endangered Vaquita porpoises when it was captured for the purpose of captive breeding (Pennisi, 2017). The resulting offspring as well as its parents would have later been released back into the wild in hopes of boosting their numbers. Because of stress associated with the capture of marine mammals, this is a practice that has barely been attempted, and maybe is best left a concept, although its a nice thought and often a better conservation effort when it comes to terrestrial or more adaptable animals.

Cons

Chronic/Sustained Stress; as a result of capture and confinement to small spaces, as well as unnatural social groupings, cetaceans may experience heightened stress levels over the long-term from having certain instincts and natural behaviors repressed. As we know, stress can have a severe negative impact on the bodies of organisms, and cetaceans are no different. This can increase their susceptibility to disease and increase the likelihood of experiencing reproductive complications such as miscarriages, stillbirths, and calf rejection. (Perrin et al., 2009; Rose et al., 2009; Jett & Ventre, 2011)

Maladaptive/abnormal behavior and repression of natural behavior; cetaceans often exhibit abnormal behavior in captivity, including stereotypic behavior like floating motionlessly, resting for unnaturally long periods, circle-swimming, chewing on foreign objects, hyperaggression towards their handlers and tankmates, self mutilation. This can also result in skewed observational data when observing marine mammal behavior in captivity, as often times there is little natural behavior exhibited by cetaceans in captive environments. Additionally, because of the difficulties associated with replicating natural social structures and habitats in captivity, this disallows these animals to engage in natural behaviors such as deep-diving, (specialized) foraging behavior, dispersal, long-term social associations, etc. which can further exacerbate stress. (Perrin et al., 2009; Rose et al., 2009; Jett & Ventre, 2011)

Increased mortality; many cetaceans on average live drastically shorter lifespans in captivity than their wild counterparts, despite being kept in relatively sterile environments free of contaminants, predators, and other threats present in their natural environments. This is particularly noticeable in pilot whales, orcas, bottlenose dolphins, and belugas. (DeMaster and Drevenak, 1988; Jett & Ventre, 2011; NOAA’s National Marine Mammal Inventory, 2016)

Expensive/logistically difficult to maintain marine mammals; Marine mammals require spacious habitats with powerful filtration systems to be properly maintained, however, even with these factors accounted for, it become difficult to satisfy the dietary, environmental, and social needs of cetaceans in particular in an artificial environment (Perrin et al. 2009). Some animals are incredibly specialized hunters, gregarious and sociable, or originate from marine habitats that can be difficult to replicate on the large scale (deep, pelagic environments, or dynamic coastal environments, for example). Some aquariums have attempted to incorporate kelp forests and natural substrates in aquaria, while maintaining multiple species of live, schooling fish (for example) to stimulate hunting behavior, but this is not a common practice across the board.

Stimulates commercial industry; the display of captive cetaceans can be the inspiration for developing countries and regions outside of North America to begin their own captive whale and dolphin trade for commercial purposes. Dolphinariums are popular tourist attractions that annually generate millions of dollars in revenue, and these marine parks and aquariums, as well as the fisheries that supply wild-caught animals, can help stimulate local economies. This is both a good thing and a bad thing, as developing countries can greatly benefit from job production and economy stimulation, but this can also put unnecessary pressures on wild stocks of marine mammals and may lead to the collapse of some populations of whales and dolphins such as in the case of the Southern Resident orcas of Puget Sound in the 60′s and 70′s when marine parks were rising in popularity across North America.

Sends the wrong message (Questionable ethics/“respect” for nature); Again, this is personal bias, but I think it illustrates the issues that surround public exposure to marine mammal captivity. When I first was introduced to whales and dolphins in an aquarium setting, I was not inspired to work with them in the wild, but rather wanted to train captive orcas and be in the water with them. When we view marine mammals in captivity (or at least, prior to Blackfish), we see a positive image of keeping these animals in captivity. It also masks the complications and dangers that are associated with their captive maintenance through the use of marketing and PR tactics to hold these aquarium facilities and marine parks in a positive light while ignoring some of the hard and blatant realities of this practice. My love for other marine animals like many of the great whales and oceanic sharks did not stem from seeing them in an aquarium, but rather from reading about them in field guides and watching them in their natural habitats through documentaries. Additionally, with today’s technological advances in the virtual reality and animatronics, as well as the use of films, preserved specimens and museum-quality replicas and models, one can create an educational and entertaining exhibition without the unethical and dangerous use of live animals in aquaria. Attitudes continue to change in the wake of public enlightenment regarding the captivity industry, and I can only hope we rightly shift our attentions from the animals in captivity to the ones in the wild where it really matters in the grand scheme of things. I’m not saying forget about the captives, in facts many still need our help when it comes to holding these facilities accountable for their husbandry practices and contributions to research and conservation. But we are at the risk of losing the world’s oceans, and we need to address that now.

What do you guys think about captivity? For research and conservation? For commercial purposes?

#captivity #marine mammals #cetaceans #whale #dolphin #sea world #aquarium #marine park #blackfish #anti captivity #pro captivity #marine biology #biology #science #conservation

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gazzhowie · 3 years

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My Top 25 Movies of 2020.

It is indeed time… or at least, as is tradition, it is indeed now overdue for me to dust off the cobwebs from my Tumblr account and post my Top 25 movies of the year. This time for 2020. That funny old year, huh? Where - if some are to be stupidly believed - “no films got released because of the pandemic”.

I thought I was done with this after 12 years and concluding with my Top 25 of the decade effort and yet here I am. Back rather egotistically because 2 people told me how much they look forward to reading this. Go figure! Years 2008 through to present are available in the archive. Frequent visitors know that I’ll throw out a few special mentions to all the films that I wish I could’ve included but couldn’t make them fit yet believe they deserve a shout out regardless and then I get stuck in to what I think are the 25 best films of the year.

As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. Anyway, without further ado, here’s the ‘also-rans’ and ‘near-misses’ separated per genre that very nearly made the final list:

Setting my stall out straight away, Steve McQueen’s Small Axe was very much TV to me and won’t get ranked within my film listing. I loved two of the efforts a great deal (Education and Mangrove), liked two but found them lacking (Red, White & Blue and Alex Wheatle) and did not get what everyone else seems to from the other (Lover’s Rock).

In terms of documentaries this year, I thought Frank Marshall did a fabulous job with The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart; a comprehensive study of the personal complexities and professional excellence of an incredibly underappreciated band. I found On The Record to be a difficult but inspiring watch and its background ‘politics’ exposed the hypocrisy of Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey in a manner we’re not talking loud enough about. Hitsville: The Making of Motown was an extensive, lovely historical tribute to an era and a style of music, full of great tunes and equally great talking head anecdotes. And finally Belushi managed to find fresh angles and previously untold stories about one of the most mythologised comedy stars of all time, simply by pulling the man to the forefront ahead of his talents.

For dramas, I enjoyed Trial of the Chicago 7 a great deal and am an absolute sucker for the work of Aaron Sorkin but bad casting (Eddie Redmayne) and stunt casting (Sacha Baron Cohen) hurt this film. I’m a sucker for a disaster movie and Pål Øie made an incredibly entertaining one with the Norwegian high-melodrama, The Tunnel. Edward Norton’s long-gestating Motherless Brooklyn was a solid, old-fashioned PI yarn with some great casting to back it up. It’s the most alive Bruce Willis has been in years and it served to remind you that Alec Baldwin can be quite the terrific actor when he’s not being an utter joke of a human. I liked The Vast of Night a great deal when in the throes of watching it but liked it less in the aftermath. Cut Throat City was the underrated dramatic gem of the year in a lot of ways and showed that RZA has a great deal of skill as a legit filmmaker, when not being caught up in the ‘gimmicks’. O.G finally landed here via Sky Atlantic of all places, rather than any sort of VOD release, and it was an enthralling drama that served to remind us all how brilliant Jeffrey Wright can be when not overacting to the point of cringe or being stuck with really terrible writing (hello, TV’s Westworld!).

With the blockbuster season at the cinema all but dead from the outset, the joys of the action genre were to be found in the little b-movies tucked away on streaming platforms and VOD. Quick notable exceptions were The Outpost which was a reminder that Rod Lurie can deliver a hell of an action sequence, blighted by truly awful film-damaging casting and Extraction which was a well-directed derivative piece of hokum. Donnie Yen delivered an earnest, entertaining end to one of the surprise action franchises of the last decade with IP Man 4 that not even Scott Adkins could fuck up. Hack director Deon Taylor accidentally delivered Black and Blue; a pretty good ode to the ‘man on the run’ non-stop action thrillers of the 80s and 90s – with Naomi Harris killing it in the lead role. Netflix tucked away two of the greatest b-movie actioners of 2020 with The Decline (a ‘Doomsday Preppers’ training camp goes horribly wrong) and Earth & Blood (a sawmill owner uses his place of work as a battleground to take on the cartel). And, finally, the Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee) Taken rip-off Unstoppable arrived to streaming and turned out to be vastly superior to all of the films it was a knock-off of.

It was a great year for horror, especially if you were open to the sort of scares you were after. Sea Fever didn’t stick the landing but delivered an ace sense of foreboding and tension building for the most part. Harpoon was a sneakily nasty, surprisingly engrossing, violent little film. VFW was a lot of fun but nowhere near as good as its concept and cast suggested it was going to be. It’s also been subsequently marred by the stories coming out of its production and the revelations about Fred Williamson. I thought Come To Daddy was an absolute gift of a horror comedy that kept swerving whenever you thought you had a handle on where it was going. And Elijah Wood continues to show himself to be an American national treasure. After Midnight was an intriguing relationship drama with a horror bent and You Should Have Left, the Stir of Echoes reunion we’ve all long sought, would work as an off-kilter double-bill with it. Kevin Bacon is brilliant in it. Vampires Vs The Bronx is a totally disposable but immensely fun ode to The Lost Boys and The Monster Squad that’ll serve you well on a lazy Saturday night. Black Water: Abyss was a really good little creature feature with a ridiculous ending that infuriates. And Train To Busan: Pennisular was a pretty shit Train to Busan sequel but an immensely entertaining post-apocalyptic zombie action movie.

Onwards is worth mentioning for the fun and moving animated ride it initially presents as but, like too much Pixar nowadays, it does not hold up to repeat viewing.

Comedy-wise, I thoroughly enjoyed Bill & Ted Face The Music but thought its gag-rate was far too hit and miss for it to take a place on the top spot. Buffaloed was a kind of “M’eh” blue-collar Wolf of Wall Street with yet another fantastic ‘How the fuck isn’t she a huge star already’ turn from Zoey Deutch. Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made was a quirky out-of-leftfield oddity that me and my eldest son enjoyed a great deal. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga was not the travesty you would’ve thought it’d be, mainly because of Rachel McAdams, but if Will Ferrell had just leaned a little harder towards his more absurdist style of humour (the killer fairy shit for example?) this could have been so much more. Finally, the second Borat film had some utterly majestic moments of cringe-comedy that make it worthy of a mention but the mechanics of joke-execution and faked set-pieces were far more on show this time around.

And now, if you’re still hanging in there that is, here is my actual Top 25 films of 2020…

25. Skyfire

I don't know whether it's because I’ve been starved of my usual 'Summer Silly Season' this year but I absolutely fucking LOVED this. It's the stupidest, most ridiculous, relentlessly bonkers "Jurassic Park - but with volcanos" fare you could ask for. I have no idea what the fuck Jason Isaac is doing in this but I’m so glad he is because it just adds to the glorious WTF-ery of it all. It's 30 minutes of mechanical lay-up followed by 60 minutes of non-stop, audacious carnage. It's been a long time since me and my wife have had this much fun watching something.

24. Bad Education

Dropped exclusively to Sky Cinema here, this is a great little film that has a shocking true story at its centre. Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney are absolutely terrific. Both of them are the sort of talents who've been in bad movies but never ever given a bad performance regardless.

Here both Jackman and Janney are having a ball with the material and they elevate a very good film into something that demands to be seen.

23. Blood Quantum

This was definitely one of the first-class b-movie horrors of the year for me. It does wonders on screen with very little AND it gives a shot in the arm to the zombie subgenre. It leads you into thinking you're getting yet another zombie-breakout film before expertly wrongfooting you into growing into something else. It's a Native American NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets MAD MAX!

22. Bad Boys For Life

This was a first-rate blast, it really was. From the inexplicable reusing of the 'Simpson/Bruckheimer' production card to the reworking of Mark Mancina's original theme, it draws you straight back to that 1990s blockbuster vibe. It's not just very funny and stacked with some pretty decent action sequences but, rather bizarrely, it actually has something interesting to say about ageing and masculinity... because nowadays Joe Carnahan is killing it when it comes to introspective recalibrations on what it means to be a man. If you were to spoil this movie for someone and reveal what the "twist" is it would sound like the stupidest, hokiest shit ever. And yet inexplicably they make it work. And furthermore, Martin Lawrence goes from the tag-along in this franchise to the platinum level MVP here. The entire final third is held up higher by his insanely good line delivery ("Would you fuck a witch without a condom?") and it's most likely how he plays shit as to why that stupid, hokey plot twist works as well as it does.

Over the course of three separate decades each BAD BOYS entry has, in itself, served to be a somewhat accidentally perfect reflection of the very cinematic decade it landed in: The first is possibly one of the last to truly and wholeheartedly successfully land that perfect marriage between the 'MTV era' and the blockbusters; bringing about the boom of the "music video director as filmmaker" that the 1990s became well known for. The second was a pitch perfect reflection of the gratuitous, often empty-headed, completely excessive pop culture period we were birthing in the 2000s. And the third lands now, right in the very time period where masculinity is being put under a spotlight and men are being asked to be more self-reflective about themselves and their conduct.

With that said, the fourth will obviously therefore land sometime in 2029 and deal with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence wandering a pandemic-ravaged Miami wasteland.

21. Wolfwalkers

This is one of the most lovely, visually wondrous, sumptuous animated films you'll experience this year. Or in quite some time, actually. It’s not just a great adventure film but it’s also a really effective ‘message’ movie that manages to teach about tolerance and friendship along with the perils of fear-mongering, without ever being overly preachy.

20. An American Pickle

This was one of the surprises of the year for me; I THOUGHT I was getting a quirky Seth Rogen fish-out-of-water comedy and instead I got that... with a massive dollop of heart, humour and interesting things to say about legacy and 'cancel culture'. I liked it a lot. It's also further evidence of how intriguing a talent Seth Rogen is becoming; jumping between broad commercial fare and original off-kilter stuff like this, producing and developing fascinating projects for film and TV and working to pass the ladder back down to others too.

19. Get Duked

I say this with only a modicum of bias as I know someone who worked a little bit on this film but this was genuinely brilliant - the absolute laugh-out-loud delight we all need right now. At the time I watched this I don’t think I’d smiled in nearly a fortnight but this broke through with me. Its wrap-up is a little too silly for its own good but that aside, this thing is absolutely stuffed with some TRULY great gags! This is one of the best comedies of the year for me.

18. Host

I had been giving this the big ol' swerve because it sounded like unoriginal, overhyped pish frankly and... fuck it, if that hype isn't absolutely deserved: It's a lean, effective, scary incredibly enjoyable ride. Made all the more fascinating by the fact it was made remotely on a shoestring with the director apparently never being in the same room as his cast at any one time due to Covid restrictions.

NB: I could not find a GIF to represent Rob Savage’s Host sufficiently so here’s Jack Black doing a backyard pandemic dance instead...

17. Sweetheart

What a crackin, lean, little horror thriller it is. It gets straight underway from its fade-up and never overcooks itself or leans hard on lazy exposition, silly character actions or bad deus ex machinas. Remember when Jonathan Mostow made BREAKDOWN and it felt like such a shot in the arm for the man-against-the-odds/standard thriller? This is like that - but for survival dramas and creature features! It commits fully to its high concept, helped along by a truly excellent performance by Kiersey Clemons and some really well-delivered set-pieces (that first flare scene is very well done!). If you watched Tom Hanks in CASTAWAY and thought to yourself "This film is great but what it really needs is a monster!" then this is definitely the film for you. And if you believe the rumours, it’s allegedly a sneaky Creature From The Black Lagoon redo for Blumhouse’s expanding ‘Monster Universe’ too.

16. Soul

I really connected with this. I like Inside Out a great deal but I’ve never understood why it's spoken of as a flawless masterpiece when it's overlong, tonally all over the place and has clunky as fuck casting. In the same breath, I don't understand why the reviews for this are so disparate. I thought it was a wonderful way to spend 100+ minutes. It was visually inventive, funny and inspiring. It doesn't quite seed its VERY deep otherworld-building foundations and Graham Norton doesn't really work in his role but overall I thought it was a delight. And, unlike Onwards, it really does lend itself to repeat visits.

15. Tenet

I had real trepidation about seeing this what with the reviews being all over the place but... well... Is it complete, barely comprehensible bunkum of the highest order? Yes. Could the film have benefited from Nolan letting his brother Jonathan have a pass at the script? Hell yes! Is it most definitely not the majestic masterpiece of masterpieces it thinks it is? Yup. Yet in spite of ALL that I had an absolute blast with it, I really did. If you give it a seconds thought it crumbles completely as the utter egotistical piffle it really is. But where it excels is in looking so gorgeous, being so kinetic and massive with its action and casting with actors who sell the shit out of a hokey script that you're so consumed with the spectacle you don't smell the bullshit until its over. Washington Jr has come out of nowhere these last few years to make me a big fan of his work - and Robert Pattinson has went from being an actor I couldn't fucking abide to being someone I now really rate and who I came away from watching this thinking "Yeah, that's your goddamn perfect James Bond right there!"

14. Da 5 Bloods

It works infinitely better as a 'men on a mission' action adventure shot through the off-kilter lens of a Spike Lee "joint" then it does as a searing commentary about race, war, etc. And that's probably why Spike's choice to include real war atrocity photos and documentary footage alongside the narrative doesn't land as successfully as he probably intended it to. But as an overall film, it's a genuinely great watch. Delroy Lindo has always been one of the greatest working actor. Here he perhaps delivers his ultimate masterclass. Regardless of whether awards season moves online or not, you cannot have any SERIOUS dialogue during it that doesn't have his performance heading the conversation. Ignore the dickheads online putting this in the same bubble as TROPIC THUNDER or DIE HARD (??). This is a wink and a nod to TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE and APOCALYPSE NOW, through and through. It's big, bombastic, broad and unafraid to swing out in every direction. It's not flawless but that doesn't mean it's not fuckin ~great~!

13. His House

This very much stands as both one of the most impressive debuts and modern horror movies I’ve seen in quite some time. It's an effective, lean, interesting film that buries under your skin and takes up residency there. Go into it knowing as little as you possibly can and then let it scare the shit out of you and, in its reveals, kick the shit back into you.

12. Tread

I really, REALLY liked this. It's my favourite documentary film of this year - made by that fella who did the bonkers-bad killer dog in the warehouse movie with Adrian Brody, no less! It's an absolutely fascinating true story I knew nothing about, brilliantly intermingling talking heads, archival news footage, dramatic reconstruction and audio recordings. It'll really drop your jaw - it's most definitely one of those 'needs to be seen to be believed' type deals because if you described this to someone as having happened they'd never believe you!

11. Bacarau

No plot description really does this film justice and the less you know going in the better an experience you’ll have. It’s an odd, deeply violent, unsettling, darkly funny, bizarro confection of The Most Dangerous Game meets Assault on Precinct 13 and… well… even that doesn’t really do the film any justice whatsoever. It’s a critique of dire political circumstance mixed with political satire mixed with the tropes of the Western, the siege movie and both horror and comedy. It’s very much its own thing. And that’s what makes it so wonderous.

... and it’s sort of both wondrous AND weird that when searching for Bacarau related GIFs, this was the Brazilian offering I was given! I apologise.

10. Alone

I found this came out of nowhere to be one of my favourite films of the year; a crazily efficient, brutal B-movie without an inch of fat on it that works its propulsive and well-structured screenplay hard to make you feel like you're seeing a new variant on the "stalked woman in peril" film. John Hyams - son of Peter and the man who reconfigured the UNIVERSAL SOLDIER franchise to superb effect - has made one hell of an effective movie that beautifully captures the vastness of the Pacific Northwest: this is one part DUEL, one part FIRST BLOOD, all parts odes to everything from THE GREY, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and the last third of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. It's very easy to make films like this. But it's clearly hard to make them as great as Hyams has done here, otherwise everyone would be doing it. Maybe coz what those films don't have is lead performances as strong and brilliant as Jules Willcox and Marc Menchaca give here.

9. American Murder: The Family Next Door

This is an incredibly powerful true crime documentary on a horrific tragedy, in which Jenny Popplewell tightly and clinically weaves through police interviews, news coverage and Shanann Watts' phone, laptop and social media to weave a moving and ultimately devastating portrait of her and her children's death at the hands of one of the worst forms of evil I’ve ever been exposed to. This still haunts me to this day.

8. Greyhound

I was really impressed with this. A crisp, lean, tension-drenched watch with yet another rock solid Tom Hanks performance centring it. It strips back all the tropes of these war pictures - the character backstories about post-war hopes and dreams, the cutaways to the families back home, the subplots involving the villains - and keeps a propulsive commitment to just this situation, this boat and the people on it; who only talk to one another about the job they're doing. As a result, it's completely involving and committed with action set-pieces that are clean, tense and entertaining as hell. Genuinely had a great time watching this and highly recommend it.

7. #Alive

Whilst the TRAIN TO BUSAN sequel earned rightfully shakey reviews, think of this as an unofficial prequel / 'side-sequel'. It is a tight, disciplined thrill-ride that throws up some interesting spins on old zombie set-pieces (climbing zombie vs. toy drone, for example). It may well deflate as it heads to its denouement but all before it was strong and entertaining enough for it to stand as one of his favourite horrors from this year.

6. The Invisible Man

This started good... then got very good... then got quite frankly flat-out tremendous and then entered a final third flipping anyone the 'bird' who thought that the trailers gave too much away. There is some truly tremendous, inventive and not at all 'cheap' jump scares. In fact, the whole second act is nothing else BUT terrifically effective scare after scare. All bolstered by a REALLY committed lead performance by Elizabeth Moss. Between this and UPGRADE, Leigh Whannell has not only become seriously one to watch but he's possibly just outed himself as John Carpenter's one-true heir.

5. Lynn + Lucy

I was left completely broken by this - what a truly fantastic piece of British cinema; a dark, uncompromising morality play for the modern age with a truly jaw-dropping performance by Nicola Burley. And, Jesus Christ, what an unbelievable find Roxanne Scrimshaw is?? THIS is her acting debut? Holy SHITBALLS! It's harrowing stuff that'll really make you think.

4. Parasite

This really is absolutely ~everything~ people are claiming it to be and more too! It's an exquisite piece of work, in love with the art of spinning out a story, narrative layers, sociological parables and effortlessly terrific direction. It builds and builds in an utterly enthralling manner and then... the pressure valve pops, taking you down a whole other audacious avenue that'll have you giggling at the insanity but still completely hooked.

3. Uncut Gems

It’s alright been memed and GIF’d to death but that doesn’t change the fact that it really is an astounding film - it's completely exhausting and quite honestly one of the most anxiety-inducing films I’ve seen in a long, long time. Even on multiple go-arounds, I found myself screaming at the screen, begging Adam Sandler's character to just fucking STOP for five seconds and... and... it's inescapable as to the direction down in which it heads but it goes there at such a propulsive rate, it is actually scary. An absolutely astounding film - it's like a John Cassavetes film shot with the adrenaline drawn from a Michael Bay action movie... and believe every bit of the buzz: Adam Sandler is jaw-droppingly fucking excellent in this!

2. Wolf of Snow Hollow

I thought this was a complete delight. Once again Jim Cummings has taken a film 'type' you THINK you know and infused it with his own very specific sense of humour to give us something that's very much delightfully off-kilter. What's more, as a sophomore directing effort, Cummings deserves all the plaudits for the massive advancement: There's action scenes and scary set-pieces that are really first rate and are way more accomplished than what you'd expect from someone only on their second movie and have never worked in the horror genre before. Cummings is REALLY funny in the lead role too but it's Robert Forster's final performance that'll break your heart. He was a hard miss anyway but this very much drives home what a great guy we've lost.

1. The Way Back

Gavin O'Connor has hit the trifecta with this, Miracle and Warrior on making a masterful sports drama and using it as a platform to 'say something' and draw a career best from a talented but under-appreciated actor (first Kurt Russell, then Nick Nolte and now Ben Affleck).

Affleck is astounding here. Fallible, real and pained. He's truly brilliant. There’s a realism to every movement he makes and every breath he exhales that only someone who has struggled with addiction will recognise. And around him is a deconstruction of the sporting underdog movie as we know it - it's only by the end that we truly realise that this has always been about the connections made through the game rather than the game itself.

Like with Warrior, you can go back and watch this umpteen times and find different strokes in the human and unspoken moments. If ever there was a secretly feel-good film for 2020 it is this – the movie that tells us that it doesn’t matter how hard or how far we fall, we are defined only by the moments in which we rise again.

And that’s that. See you all next year. Maybe ;)

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sirtravisjacksonoftexas · 4 years

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Should the story of the woman caught in adultery be removed from the Bible? Um, NO, and here is why:

The story of the woman caught in adultery is one of the most powerful historical events to be found in the Gospels. It speaks to the heart of God’s love and mercy, a love that we are to share in our hearts, a love we are to share with the world. It is also a foreshadowing of the gift of grace and salvation to come, a gift won by the physical death and resurrection of Christ, a gift that can bring about our own spiritual resurrection. Who cannot feel compassion as this woman is dragged before the public, an invisible scarlet letter emblazoned on her chest as the religious leaders speak out loud about her sin? Who cannot feel her broken spirit as they mention the Old Testament laws about how those guilty of adultery were to be stoned? And who cannot feel her shock and relief when Jesus states ““Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7). Who cannot imagine her exhilaration when Jesus said that he did not condemn her? What a beautiful story of Christ! It is almost impossible to imagine the Gospel of John without it.

And yet, there are many Christians who want it removed from the Gospel of John! I repeat: there are many Christians who want it removed from John’s Gospel! Now why, pray tell, do they want it taken out of the Bible? The following note in the ESV bible offers a clue:

“The earliest manuscripts do not include John 7:53-8:11.” That’s right. The Oldest copies of the Gospel of John that we have do NOT have the story of the woman caught in adultery, which is also called the Pericope Adulterae. Indeed, the earliest copy we have of the Gospel of John that has the story dates from the 5th century AD (though this doesn’t mean that there weren’t earlier copies of John with the passage in it. Not all manuscripts from the ancient world have survived to the modern era. Thus, some may very well have had it. Indeed, there is evidence for this; the Pericope Adulterae made its way into Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Translation in 383 AD, in the 4rth century AD (the year he finished translating the gospels. The Old Testament was translated into Latin from Hebrew by 405). This seems to have been a story that was circulated for a time and then later added to John. Indeed, it is believed by many to have been part of the early Christian oral tradition, just as the rest of the Gospels were before they were put into print. Though many scholars accept that it tells a historical event, its placement in scripture has been a point of debate. Indeed, there was some debate in the ancient world about it as well (more on that later).

So…the Apostle John didn’t write it, its not in the earliest manuscripts of John (i.e. that we have), and therefore, according to many Christian scholars, it should not be considered scripture. Seems like a pretty strong case, doesn’t it? It would be, if it wasn’t for the fact that its based on both the special pleading fallacy (aka double standard) and a refusal to accept the early church father’s testimony about it.

Let’s deal with the latter issue first.

Didymus the Blind, a Christian theologian who lived in the 4rth century, wrote that the story was found in “certain gospels”. It was presented as a historical event in the third century Christian document the Didascalia Apostolorum. Jerome, who translated the bible into Latin (the “Latin Vulgate”) put the story in his translation, even though he acknowledged that it wasn’t found in some versions of John. However, he stated that it was found in many Greek and Latin manuscripts of his day. Augustine was a big supporter of the passage. Indeed, he mentions something quite sinister about Christian leaders who opposed the story in his lifetime: “…certain persons of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fearing I suppose, lest their wives should be given impunity in sinning, removed from their manuscripts the Lord’s act of forgiveness toward the adulteress, as if He who had said, 'sin no more' had granted permission to sin.”

Augustine, De Adulterinis Conjugiis, 2:6–7. Thus, people were removing it from the scriptures.

Is it any wonder, then, that none of the early copies (before the 5th century AD) of John that survived to the modern era don’t have it? Some must have, in order for Jerome to have put it into his translation (remember, he also said there were many Greek copies in his time that contained it).

Now, some have discarded Augustine’s testimony, saying that he also defended the Old Testament Apocrypha (1rst and 2nd Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, etc.), which are found in the Catholic Bible but not in the protestant bible (save for some King James Bibles). This is a genetic fallacy, a logical fallacy where someone disregards an argument based on its origin instead of on the merit of the argument itself. Yes, Augustine did have some bad theological views, but so did Martin Luther, who started the Protestant Reformation (Luther wrote an anti-Semitic theological book titled “On the Jews and Their Lies”. I guess we should all be Catholic now…). Plus, the fact of the matter is that Augustine actually didn’t consider the apocrypha on par with scripture.

“So what?” the enemies of the Pericope Adulterae will say, “Its still not in the early manuscripts of John! John didn’t write it, therefore it’s not scripture!” Really? Really want to go down that road? Well, then you might as well cut out sections from the Pentateuch as well…

For many ages, Moses was considered the sole author of the Pentateuch aka Torah. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy were thought to have been entirely pinned by Moses. Then skepticism reared its ugly head, and many scholars rejected the idea of Mosaic authorship, pointing out passages that proved problematic to it (more on them later), as well as repetitions that differed in details and different names of God being used in certain parts of the books (including some areas where Yahweh was used in stories that take place before Moses. The name of Yahweh wasn't revealed to humans until God spoke it to Moses, according to Exodus 6:2-3). This led to the Documentary Hypothesis, the idea that the Torah was written in stages over many centuries, with no parts written by Moses. Eventually, these documents were put together as the Torah.

Interesting idea, but even it has recently come under scrutiny, primarily due to the fact that ancient near eastern literature was known for odd repetitions that at times differed on details (see Paul’s conversion tales in Acts 9, 22 and 26). Individual storytellers and writers in the ancient near east did this, and Moses would have been expected to do the same. Other aspects of the Documentary hypothesis, including the use of different names for God in some passages, likewise fails under closer scrutiny (The passage in Exodus 6:2-3 can be translated to mean that “Yahweh”, as a name for God, was known of long before Moses was born).

Personally, I’ve never accepted the documentary hypothesis, in part due to the fact that there are multiple verses that indicate that Moses wrote a significant amount of the Torah (Ex 17:14, 24:4-8, 34:27, Num 33:2, Dt 31:9, 19, 22, 24). Combined with the fact that most of the material from Exodus to Deuteronomy deals with Moses’ life, as well as the answers to objections about repetitions, differing details and the use of different names of God noted above, one can conclude that a good case can be made for Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch or Torah.

But did he write the entire Torah? Um…Nope.

Genesis 12:6 is our first clue:

“Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.” At that time…the Canaanites were in the land. Now, if Moses wrote this, then there is a BIG problem.

You see…the Canaanites were STILL in the land while Moses was alive! The Israelites hadn’t even invaded the land yet (Dt 26:1)! That didn’t happen until after Moses died, when Joshua led the invasion (se Joshua chapters 1-3). Indeed, if you read the book of Joshua closely, chapters 13-18 show that, despite the hyperbolic statement of Joshua 11:23…the land had not been fully conquered. After Joshua died, there were still Canaanites in the land (as shown in Judges chapters 1-2). Indeed, they were still in the land during the time of Ezra, when the Israelites returned to Israel during the time of the Persian Empire (Ezra 9:1)! This happened during the reign of Cyrus the Great of Persia, who conquered Babylon in 539 BC and then gave the Jews permission to go back home.

Cyrus died in 530 BC.

Moses lived about 1400 BC.

Next, let’s look at the Edomite Kings list in Genesis 36:31-39:

“ These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the Israelites. Bela the son of Beor reigned in Edom, the name of his city being Dinhabah. Bela died, and Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah reigned in his place. Jobab died, and Husham of the land of the Temanites reigned in his place. Husham died, and Hadad the son of Bedad, who defeated Midian in the country of Moab, reigned in his place, the name of his city being Avith. Hadad died, and Samlah of Masrekah reigned in his place. Samlah died, and Shaul of Rehoboth on the Euphrates reigned in his place. Shaul died, and Baal-hanan the son of Achbor reigned in his place. Baal-hanan the son of Achbor died, and Hadar reigned in his place, the name of his city being Pau; his wife's name was Mehetabel, the daughter of Matred, daughter of Mezahab.”

Now, did you catch that first verse? Let’s look at it again:

“These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the Israelites.” (emphasis mine) Moses didn’t write that. How do I know?

Because King Saul, the 1rst King of Israel, didn’t live until centuries after Moses! Heck, his reign marked the end of the Judges period!

Now, to be fair, Abimelech, son of the Israelite Judge Gideon, was made king of Shechem, and ruled Israel for 3 years (Judges 8:30-9:22). However, his kingship wasn’t instituted by God (thus God didn’t recognize it, see Dt 17:14-17). He was an evil king, and during a battle a woman threw a millstone onto his head. Not wanting to die due to a woman, he had his armor bearer run him through with a sword. This was all due to the wrath of God (Judges 9:1-57). Oh, he also lived long after Moses and Joshua.

Now, some may say that there may have been a king who reigned during Moses time, someone who wasn’t mentioned in the Bible. Well if that’s the case (no evidence for it whatsoever), then how do people who believe that explain Deuteronomy 17:14-17:

“When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," be sure to appoint over you a king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.”

Thus, many of the Edomite kings in the Genesis 36 kings list lived long after Moses. Ergo, Moses didn’t write Genesis 36:31.

It’s also safe to say that he didn’t write Deuteronomy 34, which records his death. No one writes their own obituary.

Some try to say that Moses was writing about his upcoming death as a prophecy, but if he did…why did he describe it in the past tense? Indeed, the passage seems even less like a prophecy in verse 10: “And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face,” Indeed, in Dt 33:1, right before he gives his final blessing on Israel, it states: “This is the blessing that Moses the man of God pronounced on the Israelites before his death.”

Similar arguments have been made for Genesis 12:6 and 36:31. Some have tried to make the case that both are actually prophecies penned by Moses, the former referring to the eventual removal of the Canaanites, the latter to future Edomite kings and the future Israelite monarchy. However, just like the passages about Moses’ death, they are described in the past tense. There is a reason for that; Genesis is a history, not a prophetic book. True, it does record some prophecies (Genesis 3:15, 15:4-5, 13-16, etc), but Genesis 12:6, 36:31 and Deuteronomy 33:1 and 34:1-12 (Deuteronomy is also a history) are written in the past tense, meaning...that they already happened when these passages were written down. They are no different from the rest of the historical passages in the Torah. They are structured as history, not prophecy. To say otherwise is to commit eisegesis, instead of considering the historical facts of the Bible. Let’s face it: Moses didn’t write these particular passages. Indeed, there are no doubt other parts of the Torah that he also didn’t write. Though Moses wrote the Torah, people added to it over time. Indeed, some of these additions were put in centuries after Moses’s died.

Just like the story of the woman caught in adultery was put into the Gospel of John a few centuries after it was written…

This begs the question; why are the same people who want to cut out John 7:53-8:11 not raising a ruckus about these passages in the Torah that Moses didn’t write? Why the double standard??

I could understand a little if they believed in the Documentary Hypothesis, but the Documentary Hypothesis doesn’t jive with the Biblical evidence for Mosaic authorship seen above. Whether one thinks that Moses wrote a little bit of the Torah, or most of it, there is no denying that some of the Torah was written much later. And yet, the scholars who dismiss John 7:53-8:11…don’t dismiss Genesis 12:6, 36:31, or Deuteronomy 34. I once had a short twitter debate with a Biblical scholar (whose name I won’t mention) over the Pericope Adulterae . When I brought the passages up in the Torah that Moses obviously didn’t write, then asked why he didn’t want them gone because they weren’t written by Moses, yet still wanted John 7:53-8:11 gone, because it wasn’t written by the Apostle John, he said “That’s not how textual criticism works.”

What a way to sugarcoat a Special Pleading Fallacy. Now, some will cry foul, saying that there was controversy over the passage even during the ancient world. Well...guess what? Come on, guess what?

There was also controversy over Jude, James, Hebrews, the Book of Revelation, 2 Peter and 2 and 3rdd John! Indeed, in the third century, these (and several other NT works) were at times excluded from scripture! Though there was already recognition of some NT books being canon in the 1rst century (2 Peter 3:16) it wasn’t until 367 AD that the New Testament canon acquired its current form. Folks, Textual criticism is an interesting field of study. To see what was originally in a historical document and then dismissing what’s not can be comparable to a surgeon removing a tumor from a body. But we also have to remember that God is the ultimate author of the Bible, inspiring John, Moses and countless others to write these sacred treasures. The story of the woman caught in adultery is no different. To remove it from the Bible would be like a surgeon removing a healthy organ from a body. Like Jude and the book of Revelation, this passage passed the test of the ancient church and later the reformation (when the Old Testament Apocrypha was removed). It speaks to the character of Christ, whose life perfectly reflected the truth that God is love (1 John 4:8,16).

Sources:

“Nelson’s Dictionary of Christianity” by George Thomas Kurian (Editor), 128-29 “Encountering the Old Testament” by Bill T. Arnold and Bryan E. Beyer, 168-169 “The Apologetics Study Bible (Holman CSB), 1587 “Archeological Study Bible (NIV)”, 15 “Oxford Guide to the Bible” by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (Editors), 102-104

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vulgate

https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/main-articles/woman-caught-in-adultery

https://confessionalbibliology.com/2016/03/29/response-to-james-white-on-augustine-and-the-pericope-adulterae/

https://purelypresbyterian.com/2016/12/01/defense-of-the-pericope-adulterae/

https://www.ancient.eu/Cyrus_the_Great/

https://www.ancient.eu/Moses/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/martin-luther-quot-the-jews-and-their-lies-quot

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/on-luther-and-lies

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Special-Pleading

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/special-pleading

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Genetic-Fallacy

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic

http://textualcriticism.scienceontheweb.net/FATHERS/Augustine2.html

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citizenaycock · 4 years

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The Master (2012) | Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

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Intro and Technical Details

I try to figure out why I gravitate to certain films. Most of the time, it’s after someone asks me what my favorites are. I tell them, and then 90% of the time they don’t understand why I like those particular films. I’ve asked myself if it’s just some kind of wanna-be elitist, cinephile phoniness or something...but that’s not it. The reason I love films like The Master is due to their elusiveness. The Master shows you an approximate direction, but doesn’t overtly tell you what the answer is. In my eyes, this places it in a special category of cinema which is mysterious and often transcendent. It has something profound to say about us as humans and morphs with each viewing. It is alive because it doesn’t spoon-feed you an agenda or proposed concrete “truth” or “moral lesson”. My goal in this post is to take what I know and implement my personal thoughts and film knowledge to try to gain a better understanding of what this film is. This is my third post analyzing a film of my choosing. The first was about two women (Persona), the second was about a man and a woman (Cold War) and The Master is about two men. When people ask me what my favorite movie is, I tell them The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson. This is also PTA’s favorite film of his own. I remember the first time I watched it was at the NoHo Laemlle Theater a couple of blocks from where I live, right off of Magnolia, which happens to be the title of the first Paul Thomas Anderson film I ever watched. But while watching The Master that day in the theater, I remember feeling lost and dumb. I knew A LOT was happening but I didn’t know what. It left me behind. As a short filmmaker, when I first started (around the time The Master came out) I would just have stuff in my films (images, sounds, lines, etc) that were superfluous and didn’t have any legitimate reason for existing. My intentions were good...I was trying to create an atmosphere, even though a lot of the attempted atmosphere didn’t connect to the story or the idea being examined. I think it’s because a lot of the movies I was watching during that time I didn’t understand. I didn’t know why the director was making the detailed choices he or she was making. I still don’t always know the reason, but I do have a better idea. I must’ve thought these choices were just there spontaneously or by accident...for style-sake maybe! I was just going along the ride without consciously considering the nuanced decisions the director or actors were making. And oddly enough, this particular film is about a cult called “The Cause” and every cult’s main philosophy-based objective (in some odd form or fashion) seems to be to awaken your consciousness to yourself and/or to reality. If one is a film lover, and is so inclined to dig into this film, I believe one must watch consciously to understand it and not just go on the ride. And at first glance, one might make the mistake of thinking there is no rhyme or reason for certain moments, but Anderson is a filmmaker that does a vast amount of research and is very aware of what he’s packing in there. A literary example (which is much more elusive) is Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce. Many believe Joyce was just goofing around with words, but if you read Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key or do some independent research on each phrase and term (if you have 10 years), one will realize there is meaning within the puns and riddles and melding-words. Finnegan’s Wake is a circular book and I believe The Master is a circular film. Finnegan begins again and I believe Freddie begins again. Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars and I love the first two sentences of his review: “Paul Thomas Anderson’s "The Master" is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air. It has rich material and isn't clear what it thinks about it.” Of course, I disagree mostly. I agree that the material is rich, but I think it’s clear what it thinks about itself more than Ebert thinks...and I’ll elaborate on this opinion throughout this detailed post. The next sentence in the review (after the quote above) is about how the Dodd character is based on L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, but how in the film there is no clear vision of what the cult is or what it becomes. I believe we see quite a bit of what it is and we see that it has expanded to England by the end of the film. The film never lays out the exact tenets of the cult in list form, but Dodd himself is making it up as he goes along and this is expressed multiple times in the film. I also believe enough is revealed to get a fairly good idea of the cult’s philosophy and the methods being used for “curing”. Also, in my opinion, I don’t think understanding “The Cause” is entirely relevant to what the film is trying to say. The film is mainly about the symbiotic relationship of the two main characters, Freddie and Lancaster. I rewatched There Will be Blood last night (Anderson’s film before The Master) and the thought came to me that you have to watch the expressions of the characters closely during these films and follow what’s happening inside of them. This seems so obvious to point out, and could definitely apply to any film-watching experience, but the acting in Anderson’s films is so strong and subtle one will be lost unless you watch the silent moments and what the faces show you. I'm really trying to pick the right words to express this...but you have to consciously tell yourself while watching (in your thoughts) what’s happening with these complex characters if you want to understand the transitions. I don’t think the camera movements are as important in The Master nor the lighting, but it’s the characters’ internal life expressed in their faces manifesting from their psychological states, needs and wants. Of course, Freddie’s gait is a big part of his character and various body language from the all the characters are important, but their faces tell you most of the story. Also, I believe some knowledge of Spiritualism is needed to bring to the table, but I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to understand what the film is trying to say. But anyway, perhaps I’m over-explaining too soon. I was trying to figure out how movies like this get away from people (including me) and cause so much confusion. The last time I saw the film was about 6 months ago at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood where the premiere was in 2012. The screening I saw may have been the same 70mm print from the premiere, but I could be wrong. I just tend to think there’s not too many 70mm copies out there. The Master was the first fiction film in 16 years to be shot in 65mm and then 5mm is added for the audio track. I didn’t know for a long time the reason why such a big film stock made a difference, but apparently it’s because more information can fit on each frame, therefore it’s crisper and more details can be seen...which makes it epic and ambitious and a filmmaker is really swinging for the fences if they use this big stock! Anyway, there was quite a large crowd at the Egyptian and I remember laughing at a few spots where no one else was and kinda had to pull myself back. I also remember noticing a lot of things I hadn’t noticed before and I’m sure this will be the case when I rewatch it again for this post. Before getting into the film, I'd also like to mention I will probably come off as a bit of a fan boy in this excerpt. It is because I believe Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best filmmakers in the world of the past 25 years and has much to teach in a field that I’m passionate about. Also, I believe The Master is a master-piece and there are new interpretations of depth and reference that I am still uncovering (or think I’m uncovering).

Freddie Quell, Navy Man at Sea

The opening shot is of aqua blue water behind the back of a ship, which is also the dominant color in the palette of the film and the color I think of when I think about the film. Johnny Greenwood’s score crashes in and then we see the first shot of Freddie Quell in a bunker with a military helmet on. I can’t remember where I read it but Paul Thomas Anderson told Joaquin Phoenix to mimic the monkey in the hot spring from the documentary Baraka for this shot, which also coincidentally was filmed in 65mm. I’m sure it's partly a nod to the film’s use of the same stock size, but I also think it's covertly setting us up for Freddie’s animal-like nature...or pointing to the animal-like nature of war and how this particular primate, Freddie, is expected to change his entire behavior, which is attempted by Lancaster Dodd throughout the film. Simplistically put, Freddie indulges in his animal nature. Dodd denies it. A dichotomy that will also act as a magnet between the two throughout the film and something that I will point out several times. Also, we wonder if war broke Freddie or was Freddie already broken? Or is he actually “broken” at all??

We immediately see that Freddie drinks heavily and how he is markedly different from the other soldiers in the group. He takes things too far and is much cruder than the others. He drunkenly simulates sex with the nude sand woman the guys have made and then masterbates into the ocean. He then lays down and closes his eyes next to the sand sculpture bosom, almost oedipal-like, sweetly spooning its side. This exact same image will pop up again and I believe it holds a large significance in the key to understanding the film.

It is next revealed Freddie can make booze out of pretty much anything as he drains what looks to be the ship’s missile fuel into a cup. This also seems to be Freddie’s way of making friends with the other troops, as it is simultaneously announced that World War II is over. The camera scans the room and shows all the interesting yet shell-shocked faces of the troops as it’s explained to them by their superior they are now able to enter the world. They are told they can now open up their own businesses with the skills they’ve acquired. This doesn’t come off so much as anti-war, but obviously points out that a lot of these men are damaged psychologically, and the military either comes off as naive or willfully ignorant regarding the mental state of the guys entering the world post-service. This is magnified by a comical scene of Freddie sitting in a room with a hardened military psychologist who shows him rorschach blots as Freddie interprets every single one as extremely sexual. Phoenix is amazing in these closeups and the camera is able to hold on him for long periods of time. This was after his fake retirement from acting and I think he was hungry for this film. His face is gnarled with lines. He has this mumble that’s slightly distracting but makes you lean in as he moves in and out of the camera’s shallow depth of focus. This film has so many closeups and doesn’t include the long steadi-cam and dolly shots like in Boogie Nights or There Will be Blood. The comical scene is followed by a sad scene showing us that Freddie has some real psychological pain. He talks little and very uncomfortably to another military psychologist about his family and an old sweetheart. Freddie mumbles, “you can’t help me” and later sarcastically says, “thanks for the help”. Later on we wonder if Dodd gives him real help opposed to these psychologists.

Freddie Enters the World

Freddie has a job as a photographer in a department store. The portraits look lovely. The song underneath during this scene is perfect (”Get thee Behind Me, Satan” by Ella Fitzgerald).

Freddie flirts with a woman that models clothes for customers. He later then mixes some of his potion in a photo-chemical room like an Alchemist. They both drink from the flask and then kiss. She shows him her breasts. Freddie asks her to go out that night, which cuts to Freddie passed out drunk at the restaurant table and the woman annoyed.

The next day Freddie is hung over at work and gets into a fight with a large male photo client. Freddie comically runs from the man and throws various items at him while dodging and weaving behind columns. The camera covers the commotion in wide shot in the department store so well! Then Freddie does something peculiar and funny by grabbing the hand of the model (his date from the night before) like he’s leaving the job and she’s coming with him. She looks at him baffled as they hurry out. Music comes in perfectly here (once again) with a jagged discontinuity of woodwinds which takes us to Freddie now working in a lettuce field in Salinas, California. The shift to this new, vastly different environment is dreamlike. Freddie continues to make booze and gives some to an older man that Freddie says looks like his father. The man gets ungodly drunk and Freddie is run out of the work group after being accused of poisoning the man, which leads to one of my favorite shots of the film. It is a long tracking shot of Freddie running through a foggy field away from the workers chasing him. I liked it so much I tried to slightly copy it while shooting a silly annual family short film in a cotton field in Texas, also running away from farmers. And worth mentioning (assuming my short film is worth mentioning), I remember reading somewhere that Paul Thomas Anderson read about the life of John Steinbeck (from Salinas, CA) and incorporated some of the stories in The Master.

The Master (2012) Paul Thomas Anderson (Panavision 65mm)

The Jackel (2016) Cory Aycock (Canon 7D Crop Sensor)

Freddie Meets “The Cause”

Next, it cuts directly to Freddie walking on a dock, looking cold and dejected. In the distance is a boat docked with a lively party and warm lighting. Music plays and we get our first glimpse of Lancaster Dodd. He dances charismatically with his wife in the middle of an admiring group as Freddie, the misfit loner, decides to sneak onto the boat. The boat is then shown setting out to sea, which looks to be departing from San Francisco under the Bay Bridge.

The next morning, Freddie is hungover and has a humorous conversation with Lancaster, the leader of “The Cause”. Such a great opening scene with these two and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is so great in this role. I think it’s his best performance...but I’m biased. As mentioned, the conversation is humorous, but not funny-haha. Again, I will try to explain as best I can what I feel when watching some of these scenes... They talk in such a way, not necessarily about funny stuff, but they are such characters and there’s such chemistry it puts a smile on your face. You see the inner-game they are both playing and it’s delightful to watch. They are opposites, which creates this lively synthesis and makes you laugh sometimes, but also gives you such a large mindscape to enter during these rich, concentrated dialogue sessions. In this first conversation, Lancaster and Freddie both mention that the other seems familiar, which comes back later. Their association is sweet yet ridiculous at times. A likable naivety exists, but also a sense of intrigue and darkness lies underneath. Dodd tells Freddie, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher...but above all I am a man...A hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.” And shortly after calls Freddie a scoundrel, but asks him to make more of his secret booze. A young Rami Malek, Clark, pops up next in the film and is marrying Lancaster’s daughter, Elizabeth. The first interaction we see between Hoffman and Malek feels like a Tom Cruise-like stareoff. Malek stares until Hoffman ducks his head in slight awkwardness. This trivial detail always catches my attention and I’m not sure why. Lancaster gives a speech after the ceremony in triangular blocking. This is my favorite speech of Dodd’s in the film. He is at his most charismatic and funny here, in my opinion, and touches on some of the philosophies of “The Cause” in symbolic terms. He talks about lassoing a dragon and then teaching it stay, then roll over and play dead. I’m almost positive this serves as a metaphor for taming the ego and/or reactionary mind, then learning how to navigate life playfully following this “enlightenment”. Freddie shifts in his drunkeness from confusion to laughter while continuing to compulsively drink all the alcohol in sight counter to the simultaneous speech.

Although, Lancaster loves Freddie’s booze and, again, secretly asks for some after the speech. Freddie’s process of procuring this solution is somewhat like a mad alchemist and shown multiple times in the film. To me, this could metaphorically point to some type of alchemy forming between the two opposite characters considering the psychological and metaphysical tone of the film. It is also revealed the next morning by Amy Adams’ character, Peggy (Dodd’s wife), that Freddie inspires something in Dodd and he has been writing much more since Freddie showed up. Peggy has asked Freddie to sit with her at breakfast, possibly to see what it is about him that could possibly spark this insight in her husband. Despite this, I don’t think Peggy sees anything special in Freddie and doesn’t understand their relationship for the remainder of the film. Actually no one, besides maybe Elizabeth, sees anything worthy in Freddie at all other than Dodd. I believe this is because Freddie fills a unique gap within Dodd. I will expand on this more later, but to me it’s obvious Freddie is filling the gap of the id. Freddie is a scoundrel, an open drunk, a philanderer and a wanderer. These are things Dodd isn’t. He forbids himself of being this and Freddie is counter to this persona of Dodd’s, who is a leader, married and always ON. He is relied upon by his followers, always maintaining his status as prophet for the cult...perhaps the superego. Soon it is revealed there are “processing” sessions occurring on the ship, recording “past lives”. Everything is being put on tape of what people are saying during these sessions. Freddie humorously navigates the ship during all of this. At one point he sits at a table and puts on some headphones and it’s Lancaster’s voice deliberately stating, “We are not animals.” “We are not a part of the animal kingdom.” Simultaneously, Freddie looks across the table at a young woman and passes her a dirty sexual note. She goes back to work as Freddie watches her. The sun behind him shines through the window and perfectly peaks behind Freddie’s head. This is what I meant at the beginning of the post...the film is showing you something regarding the ideas it is trying to express. In this moment it’s not necessarily just in the face of the character, but in what Dodd says in the headphones in direct opposition to Freddie’s sexual note and then the sun winking at us from behind. For some reason, it makes me cringe to analyze some of these moments... demystifying and deflating the “magic” of these details.

The distinction of “animal” pops up periodically a few more times in the film on the account of Dodd. Again, Freddie (the animal) and Lancaster (the divine) forming a fully whole being. Now, at the 36 minute mark, the best scene between two actors sitting across from each other at a table I’ve ever seen. It reminds me a bit of the scene in Persona where the two women sit across the table from one another when they meld. They also repeat the dialogue here like in Persona and Dodd dresses down Freddie similar to Alma’s dressing down of Elisabet. The face lighting in this scene is also similar, half-lighting the characters but in a dark Charlie Rose-like room directly counter to the white background in Persona. The scene begins by Freddie being processed after a drink with Lancaster. Lancaster asks him probing questions about his life and records it. The scene is funny, dark, raw and nuanced. I can’t say enough about this scene, there is so much here. Phoenix moves and looks around. Hoffman stays still, centered, not breaking eye contact. The first time around, Freddie doesn’t take it seriously and farts in the middle of them talking. Lancaster playfully calls him a “silly animal” and ends the processing session soon after by turning off the recorder. Freddie seems disappointed and wants to do it again. Lancaster sets up the rules this time and tells him he is not allowed to blink during the questioning. Freddie agrees. In somewhat Mesiner-like fashion they continue the exercise in a long closeup on Freddie. Phoenix is amazing here and at one points slaps his face multiple times after he blinks. They start over. Tears roll down his face. Apparently Freddie is severely troubled by his family past and recalls a sexual relationship he had with his Aunt. Then he reveals he was in love with a girl in his hometown named Dorris. It beautifully cuts from the black, heavy room to a bright sunny day and the white house where Dorris lives with colorful flowers in front. This is a beautiful contrasting cut by Anderson transporting us. Also, worth pointing out, is the contrast of how silly the scene started with farts and laughter, then taking us to this this deep, heavy pain within Freddie.

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This is a unifying scene for Freddie and Lancaster. And despite what we think about the legitimacy of the cult, some type of deep psychological progress with Freddie is being made here...a progress that was not even close to being accomplished with the military psychologists. Or is this “progress”? Feels like it. As Freddie comes back from the flashback, it cuts to the aqua blue water again, similar to the opening shot of the film, perhaps personifying Freddie’s current mental state. The color of Freddie’s shirt also matches the color of the water.

Again, there is a charming naivety within Lancaster regarding “The Cause” during his far-fetched final questioning lightening the mood before the two have a drink and smoke a Kool together.

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Funny outtakes at the end of the scene.

Obviously, Dodd is modeled after L. Ron Hubbard, but I don’t think it's a nasty rebuke or hit piece, nor is it an exact replica. I read Anderson and Tom Cruise remained friends after Anderson showed it to him. If one thinks it’s mainly a film about Scientology then they are absolutely wrong. It’s evident Anderson loves these characters in spite of all their flaws and complications. Dodd remains a believer of his own philosophy throughout the film, which I think keeps him likable. You also believe throughout he wants to help Freddie, even though some of that motivation may be ego-based or material for his writing. He is misguided at times but cannot be broadly painted good or bad and does not come off as maliciously pumping out nonsense solely for monetary gain. You believe he believes.

Sea-Legs to Landlocked

The ship now arrives at New York City and the group attends a fancy party at a home. You get the feeling this new spiritual movement is in vogue. Freddie goes straight for the booze and also begins stealing random stuff around the house. Lancaster schmoozes, then is shown performing a processing exercise for a woman laying on the couch for the party crowd. This last time watching, I got the feeling Dodd was curious what she would say and that every session he conducts he secretly sees as an experiment, collecting more data for himself rather than having a fully realized philosophy or completed methodology.

I’ve read Dianetics, so I do believe I have more insight into what’s going on in some of these scenes than a regular viewer. Although, I also believe the information is already there in the scenes if one pays close enough attention. And I’ll say it again, “The Cause” is not a carbon copy of Scientology. But, to generalize, the quest of both seems to be the same...to reach a state of “perfect” (or “clear”) by cutting through past traumatic memories and lifetimes (when the “analytic mind” was unconscious) in order to tame the current reactive mind. After processing, the woman on the couch talks about her past life and Dodd answers some of her questions. Then, a naysayer from the party verbally challenges the legitimacy of Dodd’s claims. "The Cause” is no longer confined to the vacuum chamber that is their boat. Dodd raises his voice in anger and Peggy looks visibly rattled as well. Lancaster eventually loses his cool after the naysayer continues to not back down and calls him a “Pigfuck”, which makes me laugh every time. This is the first time we see Dodd lose his composure in the film. Freddie is observing off to the side and throws a tomato at the guy, probably something Dodd wishes he could do. The party guest is obviously convinced there is no way to have a logical discussion regarding “The Cause” with Dodd and he’s right.

A quick aside and personal story...the actor playing the Party Guest Naysayer is named Christopher Evan Welch. I briefly worked backstage at the Mark Taper Forum in Downtown Los Angeles and Christopher was one of the actors in a play when I was working there. During one of the shows, while waiting for his time to go back on stage, he sat with me for a while and asked me questions about what I wanted to do in the business and where I was from, etc. I was still pretty green. I remembered him being very nice and authentic. This must have been around the time he worked on The Master because it was in early 2012. The next year I found out that he died suddenly of Cancer. Hoffman died not too long after. Very sad. The full scene is below with Welch and Hoffman:

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Dodd and Peggy are upset now in their room after this fiasco. Dodd writes furiously as Peggy speaks, putting words to their anger, completely flabbergasted by this mild rebuke. The whole group is bent out of shape, shaken by this challenge. Freddie, next door, elects to take Rami Malek’s character (Clark) to the naysayer’s room to rough him up and they do (or Freddie does).

The next day Dodd pretends to scold Freddie, but it’s obvious he’s glad he did it. Again, Freddie being the id that is unrestrained and not held down by social convention in direct opposition to Dodd’s persona. This is where something similar comes in comparable to Scientology, because Scientologists are known to go after naysayers, sometimes aggressively. The group nows arrives at a large house in Philadelphia belonging to Laura Dern’s character, Helen. Everyone gets out of the car like a big happy family visiting relatives and you really feel the warmth of their community here. Different courses and talks are being held at the home. Dodd’s daughter, Elizabeth, makes a move on Freddie during one of the talks and Freddie resists. She is a redhead just like his past sweetheart Dorris. In the previous scene, Freddie was ready to go find the naysayer and Clark seemed apprehensive until Elizabeth gave him a look to go. She seems to like Freddie’s aggression. Plus, perhaps, her father’s closeness with Freddie has something to do with this attraction. There are moments when Freddie’s face, with all it’s interesting lines, drifts to another place and the sound completely fades as Anderson holds the shot on Phoenix in closeup. Anderson does tons of planning and research, but you get the feeling on the day during filming he’s constantly looking to catch moments of spontaneity and it seems this choice to hold on Phoenix during this particular moment is a good example.

Freddie continues to get completely wasted alone amongst the others, shown during a party as Lancaster sings and holds court. The scene afterwards always makes me laugh really hard (no pun intended) when Peggy jerks Lancaster off in the sink while making him agree not to drink anymore of Freddie’s booze. She continues to jerk and tells Lancaster if he’s going to cheat on her to not let her or anyone else she knows find out. Lancaster eventually comes and doubles over as he lets out a few violent pleasurable yelps. This is the closest to the animal side we see of Dodd, and this spirited release may point to the pressure build-up. Peggy then walks into the dark room where Freddie is passed out and tells him there will be no more boozing. He reluctantly agrees upon waking. Yet the next scene (the next day) shows Freddie continuing to drink heavily on the sneak. The Philadelphia Police show up at the house suddenly to arrest Dodd for running a medical school without a license. Dodd gives himself up relatively calmly and in contrast Freddie fights wildly with several police who violently wrestle him to the ground and handcuff him. Then there is a wonderful scene following, setting up the two protagonists’ contrast in temperament even more when Freddie is hauled in and put in the cell next to Dodd. Dodd is cooly standing still and calmly leaning on his bunk. Freddie is abruptly being dragged in by four officers, and immediately starts DESTROYING his cell as Dodd just observes. Dodd possibly feels this rage inside but has elected to consciously watch his rage rather than react as Freddie is. Then the two get in a hilarious, childish yelling match after Dodd tries to explain to Freddie why he is how he is. He tells Freddie the cause of his affliction is due to an implant from millions of years ago and that he is asleep (lining up with Scientology). Freddie isn’t having it and says he’s just making it all up as he goes along, echoing what Dodd’s son said to Freddie on the porch right before the police showed. Dodd yells back that no one likes Freddie except for him. Both of the characters have told each other a truth. Dodd then says he’s done with him and begins peeing in his cell toilet. Yet Freddie has no pot to piss in because he’s destroyed his cell, including his toilet. In fact, he may have also destroyed his relationship with Dodd, which would likely mean he will not have a pot to piss in for quite some time.

During a quick arraignment scene with Dodd, the Judge orders him to repay the $11,000 he took and gives him this look that has so much character and makes me smile every time. He cuts his eyes up in this humorously scolding way as he simultaneously hits the gavel. With these great films and directors and actors, you learn that even the smallest scene is packed with so much richness and detail and not wasted!

Dodd is now at the dinner table with his family. Freddie is still in jail. The family open up to Dodd voicing their concerns regarding Freddie. They want him gone. Dodd says they must try and help Freddie get well, perhaps Dodd trying to find a way to keep him around. Now a wide shot outside of the Philadelphia house. Dodd is sitting up on the porch with several others and there is a little girl on a tricycle in the foreground below the steps. Freddie sheepishly approaches the house after being let out of jail like the prodigal son. Dodd cooly embraces him. The little girl runs up the steps into the house. The two men then start wrestling like little boys in the yard, the two halves reconciled, laughing hysterically.

Freddie Quell, Patient of The Cause

Freddie is now being “treated” and/or administered tests in front of about 30 people in the house to “cure” him. Dodd tells him to go from one end of the room to the other, to feel the wood wall and describe it, then walk over to the glass window, feel it and describe it too. He continues this over and over.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a filmmaker that walks in front of you and you have to catch up. He does this by overloading your mind with scenes that just start and don’t have a lead-up. You have to wait, then you find out. The strength of the music, cinematography and acting lays so much subtext in front of you, it can keep you from following what’s actually happening...which, oddly, I feel is part of what great cinema is. It’s a great distraction...a created atmosphere so thick that one can be swept away by it if they don’t watch out. For example, the first time I watched this film I thought I had an idea what was happening, then I realized I was wrong, but I had already overthought in the wrong direction so far I became completely lost and just sat there asking myself even more wrong questions in my head about what was going on until the credits rolled. I did the same thing in the same theater with Inherent Vice a few years later. In the next scene there is another exercise where Freddie sits across from Clark and is not to react to anything he says, including personal insults. He cannot react in any way (laugh or talk, etc) or Dodd will start over the exercise. This reminds me of the Synanon Cult and their ”Attack Therapy”. The cult used to be located in Santa Monica where the hotel Casa Del Mar is now and I’m sure Anderson had heard of them growing up in LA. Clark immediately says “Dorris” and Freddie breaks right away, looking to Dodd knowing Dodd told Clark to say this. Dodd replies, “Fail” and they have to start over. In my opinion (and I think I’m right) Dodd wants Freddie to get to a point of non-reactivity, possibly closer to a state of “clear”. All the individual’s insecurities are placed in the forefront consciousness (also why they record everything) and then the individual has to face these thoughts head-on until the past is dealt with and the former traumatic memories no longer abscond the self, opening the individual to infinity. The individual must face the shadow in other words, becoming whole by “mastering it”...taming the reactive mind or “dragon” as mentioned in Dodd’s speech at the wedding. Once the dragon is tamed then one can teach it to “roll over and play dead”. Am I being indoctrinated too??

Next, Peggy reads Freddie sexually explicit passages from a book in a Demme-like closeup and Freddie is not supposed to react or say anything. Dodd excludes Freddie from eating lunch with the group and makes him stay inside the house continuing the exercises where he continually has to walk back and forth and feel the wood wall and window over and over again. Freddie is at a point now where he names the wall and window random things like “moss”, “rocks” and “barbed wire” as he touches them. My guess is this is an exercise to break down his sense of language....or just break down his mind, because it’s obvious to Dodd he needs to be broken down. I also think Dodd is using this as an experiment for his methods to see what “works”. He watches from outside as Freddie, alone, continues to walk back and forth. The camera pushes in on Dodd and his expression is one of curiosity as well as remorse, yet still barks out orders, “Back again!”.

Shortly after, he explains to Freddie that it is a slow, hard process and Freddie looks mentally exhausted. But, eventually, Freddie starts making progress and is becoming stronger. Is it really working? Rami Malek (Clark) is so monotone and annoying here, it really shows Freddie has to be strong to take his insults during the exercises. Peggy even shows compassion for Freddie at one point, one of his biggest naysayers throughout the film. To shift to something technical for a second, I love how the flicker of the film looks in these closeups on Joaquin Phoenix! You can really notice it in the 4K Version. I also remember being very aware it was shot on film while watching the 70mm version at the Egyptian. I know it’s very cool to like film, but I really do authentically enjoy the look of it.

Freddie now does the wall/window exercise with manic energy. There is one moment when Joaquin Phoenix is jumping up and down and almost hits his head on the chandelier’s metal point...and it looks as though Hoffman gets out of character for a sec to block Phoenix’s head that narrowly misses it. Freddie is back feeling the wall like he has hundreds of times, then goes over to the glass again, feels it and deeply says he can touch the neighbor’s plants...the stars...anything he wants... This is not a big moment magnified by a music cue or closeup, but Dodd says enthusiastically “End of application!” Freddie has succeeded in completing the exercise. Perhaps Freddie has now transcended and touched infinity in Dodd’s opinion, realizing he can touch anything he wants (mental freedom), seeing the infinitude in something simple and ordinary like a glass window. Perhaps he has gone through the iterations of the exercises enough to become “clear” (the word “clear” is never used in the film). Dark, foreboding music now comes in during a shared hug between Lancaster and Freddie. In my opinion, the music foretells the bleakness of certainty Freddie is 100% cured.

In the next scene, Peggy announces that Dodd’s new book will be presented in Phoenix, Arizona. After watching a few times, you realize that the work done with Freddie was most likely the catalyst for Dodd finishing the book after administering all the exercises. The film obviously doesn’t come out and say this directly, but we know Freddie has inspired Dodd’s writing, his son earlier revealed that Dodd is just making it up as he goes along and this announcement about a new book comes directly after Freddie “successfully” completes the tests. Also, is it a coincidence the city picked for the new book event is the last name of the actor playing Freddie, as well as the symbolic mythological bird that rises from the ashes after a rebirth?

Dodd and Freddie now are at a remote, desert location I assume is outside of Phoenix. They dig up Dodd’s unpublished work that had been buried. Lancaster carries a gun and looks around to make sure no one’s watching or, maybe, if a magic event might manifest. The score by Johnny Greenwood here is amazing. Again, with the two characters in this scene there is a wonderful naivety regardless of the ridiculousness of digging up this essential manuscript for “The Cause”. They are like two kid soldiers out in the great beyond full of wonder and purpose. And the shirt Dodd is wearing in this scene is hilarious.

“The Split Saber” is printed on the press. Freddie takes pictures of Dodd, which are funny and sweet. I’ve included a pair of photos below that look to be influenced by photos taken of L. Ron Hubbard.

Everyone is gathered at the book event in Phoenix now. Dodd sits in a side room and is visibly nervous. There is a church vibe to the event. The Master (Dodd) comes out on stage to cheers from the crowd. Freddie sits in the middle listening intensely with a yearnful look on his face, perhaps hoping Dodd has a huge secret to reveal. Unfortunately, Dodd just basically says some of the same stuff he’s said before and Freddie looks let down. Anderson’s closeups on Phoenix in shallow depth of field continue to be revealing and look magnificent! Freddie paces afterwards behind the stage, looking lost, angry and confused. As you look at him, his pants, shirt and shoes are way too big. Maybe because he had to borrow some decent clothes from Dodd. Phoenix walks with Freddie’s unusual gait like a wounded clown. A friend of The Cause from New York, Bill, who we’ve seen before, reveals to Freddie he thinks the book stinks. Freddie asks Bill to go outside with him and just completely snaps and slaps Bill hard multiple times. There is something comical about this. It’s as if Freddie’s been holding this monster at bay and then just releases it all on poor ole Bill. Freddie has a history of lashing out at naysayers of The Cause but I don’t believe this is the main reason for the attack. I think Freddie now knows he is not “cured” or “clear” like previously thought. I think the lack of answers he felt he was going to get from Dodd’s speech and book pushed him to this, knowing deep down Dodd doesn’t have all the answers like he expected. In the following scene, Laura Dern’s character sweetly approaches Dodd sitting alone on stage after the event. She confronts him about something he has changed in the book regarding the processing and seems very confused. Dodd has a comically loud, insecure outburst displaying his lack of patience and also his unacceptance of criticism. Obviously, Freddie and Lancaster both simultaneously react harshly when The Cause is questioned despite the contrasting prior exercises practicing non-reactivity.

Freddie Runs

Now Freddie, Lancaster, Clark and Elizabeth drive a car and a motorcycle out to a deserted lake bed. On a personal note, I shot my latest short film’s biggest scene in a lake bed very similar...so similar I had to look it up online to see if it was the same one. It was not. Anyway, I remember in Roger Ebert’s review he seemed to be perplexed by this scene and what it represented. I just think Dodd decided it would be a good idea to get away and blow off some steam with a motorcycle after the stressful book event. I personally really like this scene. It’s funny, it’s visually interesting and there is a danger to it. Dodd explains the game is to pick a point and then drive the motorcycle to that point. Dodd does this first. Now it’s Freddie’s turn. Freddie takes off and speeds away. Dodd does this funny thing in closeup where he puts his hand up to block the sun, watching Freddie ride, then goes to say something, stops himself, then eventually ends up yelling, “Freddie!!” It’s something so small but Hoffman makes it so interesting and humorous and it’s hard to explain why. In my Short Film, I start my scene at this similar location with my hand up looking in the distance, as a nod to this scene with Hoffman (3rd photo).

Freddie is long gone with the bike. Dodd’s best friend has left him. “No Other Love” by Joe Stafford comes in perfectly here. It’s such a melancholy end to the scene and I just feel the song compliments it so eloquently. It’s my favorite song of the film because of this and is in the trailer. Freddie goes to the house of the girl he loved before going to the war. He finds out Dorris is married now with kids and lives in Alabama. He finds this out by talking to Dorris’ mother. Freddie missed his shot. The scene is slightly comical due to the dichotomy between the sweet, mannerly mother and Freddie’s pressing roughness and gnarled face. It’s something I always notice and enjoy watching. We are transported now to Freddie asleep alone (most likely drunk) in a movie theater. You can hear Casper the Friendly Ghost in the background and see the flicker of the big screen on the sleeping Freddie and the empty seats around him. There has to be a reason for the choice of Casper the Ghost, but I have no interesting theory why. A theater concierge brings a phone to Freddie after waking him up. It’s Dodd. Either this is a supernatural moment in the film in which Dodd just happens to know where Freddie is (because they’re “tied”) or Freddie is being followed Scientology-style. Freddie nor us know how Dodd knew he was there. This made me think of an interview (somewhere) with PTA saying sometimes details in a film don’t have to make sense or have a definite answer. Dodd asks Freddie to come to England where he currently has a school. He says he misses Freddie and says he can cure him. My guess is he’s had someone find and follow Freddie...unless the Casper the Ghost reference somehow hints at the supernatural spiritual “tie” Dodd mentions between him and Freddie and Dodd just “knew” he was there...but my theory connecting this may be too far of a stretch.

On a Slow Boat to China...

Freddie is once again traveling on a boat, which has become a motif... Freddie adrift. We see the recognizable deep aqua water paired perfectly with Greenwood’s score. The music, once again, adds so much here, producing a sense of longing and beauty.

Freddie arrives at the school looking haggard and gaunt. Jesse Plemons’ character (Dodd’s son) greets him with a wry smile of familiarity which soon turns to concern after examining Freddie’s appearance. They walk down the burgeoning school hallway to Dodd.

Freddie enters with wild eyes to Dodd’s grand office. Peggy sits off to the side and Dodd at his desk. Freddie hands Dodd some Kool cigarettes and they hug. Peggy immediately asks Freddie if he’s drunk, says he looks sick and says he’s not interested in getting better. She storms out. The two men share a smile after she leaves, but Dodd’s hands are tied. It’s worth mentioning Amy Adams (as Peggy) was also nominated for an Oscar for her role and plays a sort of antagonist to Freddie. Dodd’s book was not well received by close peers and perhaps this was due to Freddie’s influence and she saw this, maybe encouraging Dodd to cut ties because of Freddie’s negative influence and lack of dedication to The Cause. You can see here Dodd loves Freddie very much. This is scene is so good! There is a lot of heart and power here in these closeups. Dodd loves Freddie’s freedom. Freddie depends on Dodd for structure and meaning and a place to stay. Dodd then says my favorite lines of the film, “For if you figure a way to live without serving a master...any master...then let the rest of us know, will you?” With the risk of over-explaining, I’ll dive in with my thoughts... Dodd seems to think everyone has a Master...an obligation, a social role and something transcending mammalian daily life to quench existential and spiritual need. But does Freddie have a Master? I think Dodd thinks if anyone might know how to live without one then it would be Freddie. Would this make Freddie “The Master” and not Dodd? Who is the prophet? Dodd calls him “a man navigating the seas, going wherever he pleases, paying no rent” and you realize Freddie’s steadfast gaze reveals a mastery of something...especially according to Dodd. The culmination here of bringing to consciousness the pair of opposites in character form proves to be the thesis of the film. This is not a film with a traditional story (perhaps that Ebert hoped to understand clearly) but a special situation between two men and how they fit together like puzzle pieces...two sides of the same coin...to the point where one might think it’s possible they did in fact know each another in a past life. Dodd mentions this upon meeting Freddie for the first time and Freddie agrees there is a mutual recognition. Two inverses folding into one another creating something whole, for better or worse. Dodd goes on to explain that he finally figured out where they met in a previous lifetime and says if they meet again in the next life they will be sworn enemies. Again, there is a lovely naivete here...and said with such earnestness. And as mentioned before, it is easy to like Dodd because you believe that he believes what he says, even though we, the audience, are speculative. Again, this is not a film about trying to figure out the legitimacy of a cult but about two men trying to navigate the world the best they can. Dodd goes into great detail about their past life association. In appearance, Dodd is so regal, reserved and groomed...so certain! Freddie is mangled, gaunt and lost. Dodd now begins to sing, which is funny and heart-breaking at the same time. It’s as if this is the best way he knows to express how he feels in the moment. I remember the first time I watched this film in the Laemlle Theatre and there were a few laughs here. I also remember watching this part when I was staying with my Dad and Stepmom one Christmas on HBO. I just flipped through the channels and saw this scene and stopped to watch. My Dad had never seen the film but watched this part with me and also chuckled a bit...not in a “that’s ridiculous” way, but in a concentrated way due to the intensity of Hoffman’s performance here. As the scene carries on, I again begin to wonder if these two really did meet in a previous life. Or maybe it’s just so powerful because they both BELIEVE this past life was real, believing in a pre-destined reason for their association in this lifetime.

Freddie has now left Dodd. He is out of the office walking alone in a row of trees leaving the school. He goes to a bar, meets an English woman and they go to a room and have sex. Both are fully naked in a very human way lit in natural light. Two hominids in an animalistic act following the parting of Dodd who rejects the animal side for the fully divine. He playfully tells the woman he has to ask her some questions and she can’t blink. The processing scene is obviously still with Freddie and obviously PTA is aware of the power that scene held to call it back. She plays along for a little bit but laughs quickly and breaks. Now waltz music plays, circling back to Freddie on the beach where he was at at the beginning of the film, laying next to the sand woman in oedipal longing. Did he dream all of this?? I have watched the film around 10 times and have never thought about this as much as I have this time around. Of course, it’s ambiguous, but it could very well be true. And he did mention to Dodd in the England office he had a dream, but never got a chance to explain what the dream was. Dodd then went on to talk about their past life association. Anyway...the interpretation that I had come to previously was that Freddie has gone on this journey, but has ended right back where he started, meaning no amount of processing or methods to change his behavior can change his determinism. He is what he is. In fear of repeating this too much (which is never overtly stated in the film) humans cannot escape the fact that they are also of the animal kingdom. I believe the first shot of Freddie in the film mimicing the monkey introduces this idea. And Anderson doesn’t seem to care if the audience gets this first, coded, specific detail, but I believe there are enough clues throughout the film to make the animal comparisons to come to the same interpretation, as I’ve pointed out above multiple times to really bring my point home. Also, Freddie cannot escape how he may have suffered in the war, nor the trauma of his childhood, nor the loss of his sweetheart, Dorris, as he lays next to the breasts of the manufactured woman made of earth as the tide rolls in and out. This is still with him in his memories, shaping his present, whether he deals with it or not. And, more broadly speaking, perhaps all of this striving us humans engage in for self-mastery, and the constant modifications to ourselves to reach some pinnacle of “perfection”, we have built in our own minds is futile. We just go in this big circle, this journey and we end up right where we started. Are we “better”? Are we different? Are we “cured”? Maybe. Maybe not.

To conclude, I’d like to mention that I’ve discovered pre-determination has loomed large in all three films I’ve written about on this page. I’m not sure if it’s me or the films, but it has been the big picture idea I’ve come to on all three. It also makes me think how cinema itself is made possible, by showing and shaping a world, often overtaking the individual characters’ will. I believe this tells us something vital about our reality...cinema expressing transcendent ideas that can swallow up egoic identification, which is why films like this stick with you, pointing to something larger at play within the individual rather than solely the idea we have of ourselves.

#the master #paul thomas anderson #phillip seymour hoffman #joaquin phoenix #70mm #film analysis #film essay #favorite film #cinema #citizen aycock

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dinosthoughtsandreviews · 7 years

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28 Days Later review

28 Days Later is a British horror movie set in a post-apocalyptic London, directed by Danny Boyle (“Trainspotting”) and written by Alex Garland. The movie stars Cillian Murphy (“Batman Begins”, “Dark Knight Rises”), Naomie Harris (“Pirates of the Caribbean”), Brendan Gleeson (“In Bruges”, “Braveheart”, “Troy”), and last but not least, Christopher Eccleston (“Doctor Who”). The plot of the movie surrounds four survivors who, after a virus outbreak, found themselves fighting for survival and coping with life that changed drastically from the one they knew before.

The movie starts out with animal rights activists breaking into a genetic research facility that contains animals (monkeys, to be exact) that are caged up and experimented on. The activists find one monkey in particular, strapped to a bed and forced to watch tapes featuring violence and war on numerous TV screens. With disgust on their faces, they are even more determined to do what they came there to do. As they try to release the monkey, they are caught by a scientist, who tries to stop them and explain that the animals are contagious, carrying a deadly virus, a “rage”, and should not be released. The activists do not heed his warnings and let out the animals immediately, which proved to be a mistake, as the monkey quickly started to scream violently and attack the humans, ultimately killing them. The movie cuts to black, with “28 days later” shown in the corner. This both ends the movie’s prologue and tells us that 28 days have passed since the incident, which was a nice touch.

Immediately after, we are presented with a man (Cillian Murphy) waking up in a seemingly abandoned hospital, as they are no staff around, no patients, no one. He lurks around the hospital, wondering what is going on. This sets an eerie mood very easily, as we are not used to places such as hospitals, in cities such as London, to be empty. But that scene pales in comparison to what comes next; as the man exits the hospital, he finds the whole city empty, not a soul in sight. He wanders Piccadilly Square and Westminister Bridge, both places that were once crowded with people, now eerie and sinister sights. He quickly gets a hold of what has happened, as people held memorials and posting “missing” pictures of their friends and families, and various news articles regarding the outbreak. As the night settles, the first “infected” were shown; people with bloodshot eyes, covered in blood and looking for blood. He is saved by two other survivors: Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley) who ask him of his name (Jim) and explain what happened. Selena tells Jim of the days that followed after the initial outbreak; riots, people attacking people, government trying to evacuate the city, the virus spreading to France and America, etc. “Look, if someone gets infected, you’ve got between ten and twenty seconds to kill them”, she says, which sets this movie apart from other horror/zombie movies. It has us on edge since we’re counting down from the moment a person is infected, and it banishes the possibility of a person hiding the infection, which always happens in zombie movies. It also sets a dreary and tense atmosphere, since we’ll know that death will come quick with no time to react. Without spoiling the story further, Jim and Selena find a family of two; a father and a daughter and decide to go for an army unit which broadcasted a message, calling all people to come there and help build the civilization again. Did they make it and what happened next, you will have to see for yourself.

When it comes to technicalities, the British cinema and cinematography shines once again. There is no use of special effects, even on the infected, other than the fake blood treatment. The camera shots tend to be up close and personal at times, giving us a more personal and immersive experience, but they also tend to change to documentary-like camera angles. The most recognizable scenes, where Jim wanders the empty London, are also the best. Director Danny Boyle did wonders with capturing the essence of a ghost town, which must have been a mighty feat, clearing all those massive spaces of people, in London. The make-up crew also deserves praise, as their work on the infected give us realistic-looking disease that makes us wonder if it could happen. Speaking about the infected, the actors who actually played them did a remarkable job; the sounds they were making, the twitchy hand gestures and body convulsions, it all added to the experience.

Although I liked the movie and it deserves praise, I have a few gripes with it; the third act of the movie, and the movie’s ending. While this goes into spoiler territory, it is something that needs to be dealt with. The whole third acts seemed out of place and rushed to me, as if a full action shootout was needed to portray just how dangerous the infected can be. I think a more tense and psychological approach would have been much better, with slow, stealthy moments, where the survivors try to outwit the infected. And this where the main problem with the ending comes into play. I have a love-hate relationship with the ending; I hate it because it is a “happy” ending, where key characters are still alive and looking for help. Throughout the movie we see how dangerous the infected are, and how sooner or later everyone turns into these berserk, mindless creatures, signifying the end of the world as we know it, and it is a shame the same did not happen to the survivors as well. But I also like it since there is a trace of hope at the end, that not everything is lost, and that is what people need in those situations to stay alive: a reason to stay alive.

All in all, 28 Days Later is a fantastic horror movie, an instant classic, if you will. An amazing setting with various things done differently that set it apart from other movies, a couple of amazing scenes that will always be recognizable, and an ending that not everyone will like. Horror movies will always be the ones which get criticized the most, as the horror genre is a difficult crowd-pleaser. Many people will love this movie, most of them will point out some flaws, and some will hate it, but I give it a solid 7.5/10. It is an amazing movie which falls a little too short of greatness, but it is certainly a must-watch, and I highly recommend it.

Sources:

28 Days Later. Dir. Danny Boyle. Writ. Alex Garland. Perf. Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Christopher Eccleston, et al. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2002.

#28 days later #cillian murphy #christopher eccleston

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bellabooks · 7 years

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“Wonder Woman” and the wonders of writing women

Wonder Woman, the latest in the DC Comics film franchise, will be released in theaters on June 2, 2017. It’s noteworthy because the Wonder Woman character is the only female superhero featured in this line-up, soon to be followed by Aquaman and The Flash in 2018. These films, including Shazam, will continue the all-male tradition of superhero films. Bella authors, who regularly write about women, definitely have something to say about this iconic character. Renée J. Lukas, a Bella author and film fanatic, shares her perspective on this momentous step by Warner Bros., and why it’s so important to increase female visibility in film. Why Did it Take So Long for Wonder Woman to be Brought to the Big Screen? Warner Bros. response: they found it difficult because they knew they had to “get it right.” You’re darn right they did. They had to make her soft enough to appeal to the traditional members of the audience, but badass enough to appeal to women like me who are still likely to rake them over the coals for her skimpy outfit. Heck, even if the movie is absolutely perfect, some critics, including myself, are still not likely to be happy about it. So is it any wonder a studio would fear Wonder Woman? But eventually, the public outcry about Wonder Woman’s omission from the Marvel superhero line-up became too deafening. And now, a gazillion years later, action has finally been taken. What is the Problem with Wonder Woman? First, let’s be clear. It isn’t Wonder Woman’s fault. Her character has the same problem that the first LGBT character or black character or Hispanic character or Asian character, etc. has. When you’re the lone example of your group, (in this case—in a particular genre), standing on the horizon, everyone is going to assume you represent ALL of your group, which is never the case. And that’s a lot of pressure, even for a fictitious character. We Haven’t Come a Long Enough Way, Baby The more pervasive problem: According to the acclaimed documentary MissRepresentation, only 16% of women are protagonists, or main characters, in U.S. movies. Women make up 51% of the U.S. population, yet are virtually non-existent in leading roles in big studio films. Yes, there are exceptions, but this is still the rule. And the numbers are worse when talking about the superhero genre. So in that context, the pressure is really on Wonder Woman’s shoulders, as a shining beacon of female superhero-ness. The solution? Fill the screens with more women, so they can be treated as diverse characters the way male characters are. What a revolutionary idea! Among male characters on the big screen, you have your heroes, your bad apples, your much older men who happen to still be alive after age forty, and you have your heroic but flawed guys. Guess what? I’ll let you in on a big secret. Come a little closer. . . women are like that, too! Who knew? Hollywood’s Female Problem In the superhero/action genre, male writers seem to have a block when it comes to writing women. In other words, they can’t do it. The problem is they see a man at the center of the universe, and any woman who enters the plot is usually just a manifestation of male fantasy—the love interest. But a love interest isn’t a real person who yells back at the TV news, who steps in something sticky on a sidewalk. . .things mere mortals do. A love interest is on a pedestal, so her lines are very limited and reveal little about her as a person. The love interest’s dialogue is populated with things that assist the male character, lines like “Can I help? You seem tense.” Why does this matter? Statistically speaking, whenever you go to the movies, 9 times out of 10 you’re seeing a film directed by a man. Since film is the most powerful medium in shaping cultural attitudes, this translates to a male-dominated viewpoint that profoundly impacts our collective consciousness. Let that sink in a moment. Even in classics like Casablanca, they shot Ingrid Bergman with a high angle so the audience was literally looking down on her, while looking up at Humphrey Bogart with a low angle. Imagine that. It’s so disturbing it’s worthy of a separate blog. Bella Books and the Deep, Deep Secrets of Writing Women At Bella Books, we writers are used to writing women as people—flawed, magnificent, not-so-magnificent. . . and our readers find our characters to be colorful, often relatable and even frustrating at times. It’s ironic, though. Even as lesbians who do find women to be our “love interests,” we tend to treat women to a fully multi-dimensional existence in our stories. In my comedy, The Comfortable Shoe Diaries, there’s a woman plagued by anxiety disorders. In Hurricane Days, there are double-crossing women whose intentions (they both think) are equally honorable. But these women aren’t all good or all bad. Like life, there’s plenty of gray area. It baffles me to see how Hollywood continues to stuff female characters in boxes. All you have to do is live a little, and you’ll meet so many wild, weird, wonderful women. Why is it so puzzling to write about them? How a Trope Becomes a Trope So we’re left with female film tropes and very little deviation from them. Why does this happen? A trope becomes a trope when a writer copies what he sees in other works without drawing from his own experience. It’s lazy writing, to say the least. Either that, or the only women most male writers in Hollywood have ever met have been prostitutes, strippers or the always supportive housewives who are content to live their lives through the actions of their husbands—the ones who wait at the door with a fresh avocado and a neck rub. Personally, I’ve never met any of these women. Back to superheroes. As someone who likes character-driven stories, I’ll admit I’m not a big Avengers/Marvel franchises fan. I don’t enjoy watching stories where the women are placed as props for the men, which is so often the case. But it didn’t always seem this way. In the mid-‘70s Superman franchise, Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane had way more personality than the cardboard “love interest” we see so much of today. In fact, her character was infused with plenty of the drive you see in women trying to make a name for themselves in the big city. She was humorous and lovable, not just a silky voiced woman who slid on stockings at just the right camera angle. Unfortunately, women in many of today’s superhero films are on set merely as decorations with extra cleavage. Or, “Oh look, she can kick bad guys while wearing a skin tight suit!” The flip side: When a female superhero is included, meaning she has more than three lines, the idea is that she must be as tough and badass as possible in order to be considered equal to the male characters. Now I’ll admit Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow can tie me up any day. But this thinking leaves you with heroes that must continuously be bigger and badassier than ever until there’s hardly a shred of humanity left in the character—or until they’re all more like stereotypical action guys. Is that true equality? It’s nothing but punching and kicking and more action than an energy drink commercial. It’s exhausting. Now I understand that fans of superhero action flicks aren’t going for depth of character. Your expectations for dialogue are more like “Hand me that rope!” with a focus on the death-defying situations that will be faced. I get that. I also get that we’ve had some films that dared to put a woman front and center in the action genre—a risky move indeed. (Not risky, but the studios seem to think it is.) Speaking of Scarlett Johansson, she’s enjoyed some success as the lead in the traditionally male sci-fi genre with incredible films like Lucy and Under the Skin. Oh, and who can forget Sigourney Weaver carrying the Alien franchise. . . But for some reason, the superhero genre has eluded female characters for quite some time. I did believe they’d use every last male character in their line-up (Ant Man? Squid Guy? Sewage Rat. . .), anyone else, before attempting a female superhero. Now that it’s happening, we have to hope it won’t be a one-shot wonder. Sometimes Being a Lesbian Complicates Things As a lesbian, I always feel conflicting emotions when I think of iconic women in movies. On the one hand, in my mind, no one but Lynda Carter will ever be fit to throw that golden lasso. And yes, she’s older now AND still sexy. If Jack Nicholson can play roles until he’s a hundred, Lynda Carter can still be Wonder Woman. Next, it would be great if Wonder Woman is hot, but not in a male titillation kind of way. Now hear me out. . . Since nearly everything in Hollywood is written, packaged and produced for the male gaze, I cringe at the thought of Wonder Woman being yet another prop for male fantasy. Of course this begs the question—what are the differences, even subtle, between lesbian and straight male fantasies? I’d argue there are differences in the way sexy women are depicted, but sometimes there’s probably overlap. For me, it boils down to the under-representation of women in front of and behind the camera, as mentioned earlier. So despite my overall wariness about superhero/action movies, I’ll be going to see Wonder Woman in theaters when it comes out, hopefully to break box office records, to send a message to studios that female characters CAN and SHOULD open a tentpole film, and that women in Hollywood should be paid what their male counterparts are paid. As of now, it’s a political act. And it will continue to be a political act until female characters are as diverse as males, and until it’s not such a big deal to have a female superhero headlining a film. Renée J. Lukas holds a B.A. in Motion Picture History, Theory & Criticism from Wright State University. She is the author of four books published by Bella Books, the latest one, In Her Eyes, due out this July. http://dlvr.it/PJSxX8

#Books #Movies #Renee Lukas

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mariespeaksg-dsgrace · 5 years

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Spring cleaning..Seek God in all things!!!

The Bible study Wednesday!!!!

I would like to thank everyone for the emails and messages. Those who took the time to message me, thank you. Thank who took the time and we prayed together, thank you. And to those we are are taking the time to further their relationship with God, thank you. You/ We all are doing more and more each day for God's kingdom. Please continue your journey. Please continue your faith. Troubles come and troubles go, but God is forever. Our God is a righteous and just God. God will right every wrong set against you. Have faith. Have strength in Yeshua Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is with us all always. ALWAYS..... To God be all the glory!!!

Praise God on high !!!!!!!!

Book of Matthew 4:23-25

a. Yeshua Jesus Christ teaches in synagogues a1. diseases, illnesses, demoniacs, and sickness cured for many a2. Yeshua frame spreads b. Great crowds followed Yeshua Jesus Christ from Galilee and other areas

(a2) Yeshua Jesus Christ's, frame spending must have been on the next level of awesomeness. Think about it.... No way there was a mass social media post. No way there was viral film of the great miracles being preformed. I would imagine the word speed through groups of people being amazed to witness the miracles. I would imagine the word spread like wild fire. Maybe those who were telling what they had witness even did reenactments. As we all might have been taught to understand, people taking time out of their daily lives to go and witness all the wonderful works they had heard of must have been difficult. Taking in to account the travel and preparation that would have had to be involved just to make a journey to Yeshua's locations, but to also possibly leave behind daily living requirements of those times. The fishing, the hunting, the Shepards, the tending to children, the businesses...... People found what was being completed by Yeshua so glorious, they risk possible hardships later upon their return to go and witness for themselves miracles. Now a days people complain about have to drive 30 minutes to work or to a friends house to help them move. But, during times where travel was by foot, animals, and or water; people still made a vast effort to witness, receive, and proclaim the glories of Jesus. That is nothing short of amazing. Some of us can't even get a text back, yet people had more heart in ancient times. More faith even.... More love for a possibility..... WOW.... I am in awe of how someone in ancient times must have felt.....

Then after witnessing the miracles preformed by Yeshua, I am sure crowds cheered....maybe even some fainted at the wonder of it all. We know many returned to their home locations Shouting and calling for other to take the leap of faith to go visit Yeshua. How else would the word of Yeshua works spread. There was no gossip column to be read. There was no street sign that said, "Want a miracle , go see Jesus. Show begins at 8am. selling tickets. First come first serve." What a time to be alive it must have been!

(a) Yeshua went all over Galilee teaching and preaching the gospel of God's Kingdom. Yeshua spread "The Good News". Now let's be honest for a second....how many of us gravitate to good news? How often to we turn to salacious text, videos, or ideas? How often do we instead of researching God, The Holy Spirit, and Yeshua; do we put in more research/ study of when is the time for the game, where is the game playing, what dress will make my booty pop...... Come on now be honest..... Persons today will put in more efforts in the ways of glamour and porn, then seeking gout a Godly church, Godly music, Godly movies, Godly Christian recreations...... Tell me I'm wrong....

It's ok, some of us are at different levels in our life. Some of us just need to remove unhealthy habits and replace those habit with more forward movement towards our relationship with Christ. Maybe finding a Biblical documentary might help. Maybe taking 30 mins to research a local church to attend weekly, instead of looking at fight scene from whoever shared a post; will maybe do us more good. Maybe instead a practicing the latest technique of a smokey eye, we start our day with just thanking God for waking us up that morning. We all have to start somewhere. I'm not saying not to rest and relax.....but if the manner of which one chooses to rest and or relax is not helping further our relationship with God....maybe that would need to be changed also.

(a1) I think most of us can picture healing and restoration, but let's try and thinking about removing demonic possessions. Now this is a deep topic. A topic I'm sure many will just toss to the way side, but stay with me. Now I am learning about Spiritual Warfare myself; I'm by no means an expert(or even close). What I will say is what I have learned thus far. There are many types of demons. Demons come is all forms and attacks people in many different ways. If demons didn't exist and could not possessed people; Yeshua would have had no need to cast demons out of people. Now..... "there is nothing new under the sun". How the evil ones attacked God's people in ancient times is how he attacks people now. Before one dismisses this reality as a crazy folklores or some kind of looooloooo talk; let me ask you this........ Have certain odd things been happening to you since you have renewed/ gain further ground in your walk with Yeshua? Do electronics act up suddenly while you are reading your Bible or just after praying? Have pictures fallen of your wall suddenly? Has your door blown open? Have you heard door bell ring, yet know one is there? Have you heard strange sounds while sitting quietly? Or maybe the most common......how are your dreams? Are your dreams extremely sexual? Do your dreams seem so very real at times? Do you wake suddenly with unexplained bruises, scratches, or aches not related to anything in waking life? Do you even dream at all? or remember your dreams? Now I'm not saying this to worry anyone. Remember God's love is fearless and fear free, but....these things are just something to think about and ask yourself. Now since I'm not an expert and am still learning myself all I can do at this point to share some persons who after prayer with God to whom I was lead.

https://youtu.be/MQu0udfdma8 Praying Medic https://youtu.be/UjvVaOUqfMk Rosalind Solomon https://youtu.be/p5wbmiaib6o Josh Coen

Now these are my favorites person to learn from. I hope the links help. Side note...it helps to have a note pad when watching them...they share so much information..it's amazing.

Moving on, (b) The Old Testament states "And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan." WoW!!!!! I keep being lead to wonder, how many person in our times would follow Yeshua? Many can't even rip themselves away for a football game or recover fast enough from a night of partying to make it to church on Sunday. Many rather stay home in comfort then go help someone in need. Not to mention the many who are too comfortable with a victim mentality to even seek help or use wise counsel; how many of them would even make the journey to go receive healing. Maybe this is why God will make us uncomfortable for a time..so we will finally turn to him? Maybe this is why God will try and send us messages not to hangout with certain people or go certain places, so we will seek more Christian forms of comforts? I am just wanting to point out...if ones life is in heartache and troubles.....well, shoe fits. It's almost spring cleaning time....time to rid oneself of unGodly relationships, lifestyle choices, happenings, etc....and yes, this can mean those closes to us. One may be lonely for a period of time, but seek God my friends..seek God in all things.

Let us pray and seek God:

Lord, today I pray those that are being targeted by demonic or evil ones be shielded by the blood of Christ. God I pray for those those are being attack, not be fearful. Not be scared. Not be frightened from your love and protection. I pray Lord, those who are receiving challenges also receive growth, wisdom, and discernment. I pray WE rejoice in your glory God once again. I pray your people wake each and every morning with a song of your love in their heart. I pray this song carries them through their day. In there comings and going God. I pray the light of you that shines from your people blind the enemies and repels any evil person, things, or evil ones from being able to even getting close to them. God I pray, those who are in need of healing receive not only healing, but nourishment of you Lord. I pray everything and or person removed from us be replace with Godly person and things. With you Lord there is no void. There is no lacking. There is no hunger or thirst. We are complete in your love God. I pray each and everyone who reads this receive a shield of protection in their waking and sleeping life. Let no evil come to their side as they rest, pray, and or seek you God. I pray this in the great name of Yeshua Jesus Christ. Seal with the blood of Christ. Amen.

Prayer from Feb 8, 2019

God, Today We pray for those who are lost. We pray for those who are lonely. God, we pray for those who are struggling with addiction of any kind. Set them free from their chains. Lord, I pray for those who are harming others; to be granted a fruitful and loving heart; longer able to cause anyone else anymore pain. I pray God reaches down and releases them for any Demons, that maybe taking over their body, spirit, and or mind. I pray for those who repent, be saved and granted grace. Even for those who have to receive judgement from you Lord, we pray that they receive their judgement with a humble and courages heart. Rejoicing in the fact that although they have done wrong, they can now make those wrongs right..... by being truthful, honest, reborn, and pay restitutions to those they have hurt/harmed/murdered/injured. We also pray for those that have been made to suffer at the evil hands of others; receive peace, healing, grace, and abundance in all aspect of their new life. We pray that those now made anew from your healing, become testimonies of your Love and Blessings; furthering your kingdom here on earth. You are the Almighty I AM. God, you said you hear those who cry out to you. You hear and we believe you have heard our cries. We thank you Lord, that healing and blessings for those that are in need; are already on the way. Thank you Lord. We pray this in the great saving , redeeming, loving name of your son Yeshua Jesus Christ. Amen God is on the move my friends...have peace.

RECAP: I will be using my Second Edition Fully revised and expanded book: The Jewish Annotated New Testament. I purchased this book from Barnes and Noble a while back. I have provided the link below incase anyone is interested. No, Im not paid or sponsor by this book, editors, or writers, or Barnes and Noble, just sharing information. (Plus, as a side note I personally don't like it when information of where to look up reference with held when I am watching others on channels etc, so I try and provide the sources of which I am gathering information.) https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-jewish-annotated-new-testament-marc-z-brettler/1125563566 This is just me doing my part to share THE GOOD NEWS, from a study Bible new Christian study person view of the world, experiences, and study bible sorts. So I completely understand any others interpretations, but this is my blog so obviously that interpretations I write with my views and applications to my life, from my life. I pray this helps others. I pray I can help further God's kingdom here on Earth. I pray God be with us in our study and guide us to wisdom, knowledge, and discernment; for our souls shake. In Yeshua Jesus loving name. Amen. I will be going through this study bible book by book, verse by verse. While comments are welcomed, any negative and evil comments will not be tolerated(towards myself or others) by me. I don't aim to divide, but bring us together as sisters and brothers in Christ. I can accept different points of view, but evil words will never be tolerated or welcomed. It is ok to disagree, but not to attack. It is ok to have a different view or interpretations, but not to curse(spiritual definition). And as always if others have information to add, or thoughts to be considered, please post in comments sections. Thank you friends and Christian family.

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