#have just been a novel. just post the screenplay and keep going. it could be theatre. because it's not beautiful television.

[jimmynovac]

when i lament the loss of artistry or creativity in spn's filmmaking technique, trust that i am fully aware it was Kim Manners' influence. I Know. when i say "where did the love for the craft go" it is kind of a rhetorical question because i KNOW what happened! what im really lamenting is that the show runners did not put in the care and effort to keep up that level of skill, to match what kim manners brought to spn. maybe not even to mimic or uphold his vision, but at least to find another style that also worked, also displayed a love and care for the multiple ways a story can be told.

[mantisfriendd]

FNAF MOVIE NOVEL REVIEW

I just finished reading the FNAF movie novel, and id like to give some thoughts on it

This post will contain spoilers for both the FNAF movie and it's novelization! continue at your own risk!

Overall I would say this is a pretty good adaptation of the movie, and it actually provides some additional context for some of the weaker plot points of the movie. A prime example being Aunt Jane's motivation for wanting custody over Abby. In the book there is a trust fund for Abby set up by her grand parents, Jane wants to take this money for herself and sees getting custody of Abby as the ticket to that money.

Some scenes in the book play out much differently then in the film, but generally things end in the same spots as they do in the movie.

being inside the characters heads allows us to get more characterization out of everyone, and for the most part I really like what they did here.

EDIT: The section on Doug is no longer relevant, Scott has announced that book Doug is non cannon, and new prints of the book have entirely rewritten his character, I don't have a newer print so I can't tell what's changed, maybe I'll buy one eventually to see.

The only character who I think is a direct downgrade from the film is unfortunately Doug. In the film Doug comes off as a hapless lawyer who is being held hostage by his client who is clearly in the wrong, and he still comes off like that in the book but with a clear difference. In the film we feel sorry for him, clearly he's not a bad guy, he's caught up in something he doesn't want to be in. In the book he is barely spoken about, and when he is described he is described as being spaced out and nearly catatonic. Other then not wanting to be there his only other trait in the book is being a creep. The Sparky's Diner scene is seen from Max's perspective in the book, and we get some amazing characterization from her, expressing her discomfort with the entire meeting with Jane and the plan her brother hatches. At some point in the scene she catches Doug staring at her breasts. (sidenote I think this might be the only time the word "breasts" appears in any FNAF book, just a strange inclusion for a series about murder pizza bears)

This is strange characterization for a fan favorite character in the original film, and nothing in the film would lead you to expect this kind of thing from him.

Sidenote here in the book Ness (Matpat's character) is said to be the son of the owner of Sparky's and the book describes him as an "Auburn-haired teen" which is a funny thing to call a man in his 30s.

Minor nitpick aside I think both the movie and the film are acceptable ways to experience the plot, some of the things I thought were weird could just have been my knowledge of the films events changing my perspective.

I also enjoy the reinstatement of some of the elements from earlier screenplays and earlier cuts of the film that we know about from various cast members. The father son relationship of Hank and Carl and Garrett appearing in the archway before The Yellow Rabbit appears being some examples.

The book is also way more gorey then the film was, to my surprise. I was almost shocked at the end of the book where both Vanessa and Mike are in a pool of their own blood, the FNAF books have always gone a little harder with the gore then the games have but I guess I wasn't expecting it because of how much of a blockbuster the film was. You know with all the eyes on everything FNAF movie related, but I'm happy to say the FNaF movie novelization keeps with the tradition of surprisingly bloody Scholastic published books.

I quite enjoyed my time with this book, if you haven't read it and wanna give it a go after watching the movie, I'd say it's a worthwhile read. I also read it pretty quickly, but it might have something to do with me already knowing the plot so I didn't have to let it sink in as much

[chaoticgeminate]

Kinktober 2022 - The Prequel

Pairing: Javi Gutierrez x f!Reader

Rating: Explicit (If that was not entirely clear)

Series Summary: You’re a fanfiction writer turned novelist, which was great since it was the path you wanted your writing to take you down in life. What you never thought would happen was meeting the Javier Gutierrez, who you actively write smutty fanfiction about from his film with Nic Cage, and you especially didn’t expect him to have a crush on you.

Fast forward several months of dating, with a good chunk of your relationship being distance due to his constant traveling and having to go home to Mallorca, when he surprises you with a prompt list and a vacation planned around exploring it.

You haven’t even worked up the nerve to tell him about what you write and post to Tumblr about him as a character yet.

Prequel (1.8k)

‘The deepening connection between the reader and Joaquin is a key feature for the progression of the chapter, though I admit I am concerned about this secret she seems to be keeping from him when Joaquin has already given her every truth of himself.’

Out of all the people who read and left remarks on your fan-writing it was probably the most fun to get reviews from ‘Amigo-con-Cage’ since their commentary was deeply supportive and actually led to you changing a few things to avoid the fact that they seemed to guess all of your plots before you were even half way through a fanfic. After typing out your reply and gratitude for their continued support you turned your attention back to the novel first draft in the works, your editors and publishers weren’t hounding you but the need to be ahead of schedule had you writing for longer and longer time periods, it didn’t help that the person you wanted to spend time doing nothing with wasn’t here.

It still seemed so crazy, meeting the Javier Gutierrez at a writing workshop and having the charming screenwriter choose to sit beside you, and while he could never know in a million years that you actively write smut fanfics about the movie he’d co-written (and co-starred, co-directed, co-produced) with the Nicholas Cage… well you hadn’t been able to help squeaking in surprise when he admitted to reading and loving all of your published works.

So much a fan of yours that he had the books with him and pleaded for you to sign them all.

Then he’d taken you out to lunch so you could talk about what made you start writing.

Then he’d confessed to having a “horrendously massive, distracting, crush” on you that led to you both going out on a proper date for dinner.

Javi still lived in Mallorca, flying out to spend a month or more there and then coming back to see you while working on his newest screenplay, and while you weren’t against the idea of relocating while you did your writing you also didn’t want to invite yourself to his home and seem like his money as the only thing that mattered.

Your cursor blinked steadily on the mostly filled page as you sat back in your seat, thinking about your ‘old faithful’ in the bedroom since you were trying to write an adult scene for your novel series, and as frustrating as it was the scene felt tame.

Maxie, your main editor, had suggested keeping the smut less descriptive -as opposed to your usually hardcore writing style for adult content- and while you understood her reasoning it felt foreign as you read the words back. The almost vague descriptions didn’t flow the way you wanted them to, it felt like someone else had written them and pasted them into the document, and you huffed softly as you rolled a small crystal you’d been gifted between your hands while contemplating what to do.

“Solecita?” Javi’s voice echoed from the doorway of your apartment just over the soft instrumental music playing through your headphones and you turned to see him setting down a light travel bag. He had a copy of your key, for this reason, and you felt your throat catch at the absolute smile on his face. He hurried over to you as you nearly threw your headphones in your haste to get up and go to him; clinging to him and burying your face into his fancy cotton blazer the second you reached him, and Javi tipped your face up for an insistent kiss within seconds.

Video calls and phone calls weren’t enough when he went home to Mallorca, especially when he was away for more than a month or so, and having him show up after only three weeks away was a really pleasant surprise since he’d said it could possibly be a two- or three-month trip. His tongue slipped past your lips and tangled with yours and you grinned against his mouth as your teeth knocked together in his eager attention, his own lips lifting into a smile as he tugged you back so he could sit in the armchair he’d bought for you with you choosing to hang your legs over the arms of the chair instead of trying to cram your knees around his hips.

His hands traced down your sides eagerly and you knew he wanted you; the downside to almost constant distance and work schedules was that most of the time you didn’t have enough time to go beyond foreplay and fingering or oral except for very rare occasions. So having him here like this really only made you want him more, you rolled your hips to wiggle closer and Javi groaned into your mouth before pulling back.

“Solecita, I have a question for you.”

His hands gripped your hips, keeping you in place, and you almost pouted in reply to being stopped but you knew he wouldn’t have stopped if this wasn’t something serious.

“What’s bouncing around that noodle of yours, Javi?”

The light reply softened the almost nervous expression he wore, easing him down from a self-induced anxiety spike, and his soft breath as you proceeded to play with his hair was hot against your throat as he hid his face against your skin for a moment.

“I would like to go on vacation with you, if you would be willing. No screenwriting, no manuscript writing, just the two of us taking a break.”

Your hands stilled gently on his head, wondering what brought this on, and Javi rested his forehead to yours so you both could look at one another. The hands on your hips squeezed gently again.

“Maxie said you were ahead of schedule and I had hoped- I want to have time to give you the proper attention you deserve. I want to know what makes you the most satisfied.”

To make a point he tugged your hips closer to his, the hardness of him a tease, and your soft gasp was both from the slithering heat in your veins and the knowledge that he had wanted to plan a vacation around exploring being more intimate with you. The idea was appealing, you’d have to post a notice for your fan writing community, and you found yourself nodding before it even occurred to you that he’d been vague and not given a time or duration of the trip.

“I’m more than down for a vacation with you, Javi, I think my last vacation was… almost four years ago?” You honestly couldn’t remember, between working two jobs to pay the bills and then working to write your first book while still writing fanfiction, the time had flown by. Javi frowned slightly and let his nose brush against yours, humming almost angrily.

“Something tells me throughout this time you were overworked, underpaid, and under appreciated.” He’d proven more than aware of how hard life was for people that weren’t well off time and time again, you knew he was a good boss and that anyone under his employee was paid well above a living wage, but to be with someone who truly wanted only your happiness was both refreshing and sort of terrifying in how easy things were now that he was part of your life.

“I was but that’s in the past, I’m here now.” Javi nodded and tugged your mouth back to his, this kiss much more chaste than before, and you wiggled a little to remind him just how eager you were for him but he simply reached into the front pocket of his cotton button-up and pulled out a folded piece of paper. It was a print out of an image, the image itself was new but the title wasn’t, and your brain blanked as he handed it to you.

Sometimes you forgot about your foot-in-mouth syndrome.

It was quite an obnoxious condition to have to combat.

“Is this a Kinktober list for this year?! How did you get this already, I had no clue anyone posted a prompt list this year.”

Javi’s noise of surprise lured you out of your own distraction, his brows furrowed in an amused and suspicious expression, and you realized belatedly what you’d just admitted to. At least having a Tumblr and reading fanfic if not being a writer, the very real idea of just deleting your blog forever suddenly sounded appealing. If he found out that you were a smut writer, for his film, the only possible future you could see was yeeting yourself into the sun because you’d never be able to look at him again.

“It is, and I was hoping that we could… I wanted to know if you’d be interested in experimenting with me. One month away, just us and this list in my vacation home?”

“Should I- I should talk to my OBGYN about birth control then? Otherwise you might need to buy an entire corner store out of their monthly condom supply.”

The joke was meant to hide how flustered you were at the idea of having him to yourself for a whole month, though you weren’t too sure how your body would handle having sex every day but you knew he’d be willing to give you recovery if it turned out to be too hard on you. Javi’s pupils dilated at your words though, his jaw working furiously as if you’d caught him off guard, and after a long beat of silence he nodded.

But there was something in his eyes, contemplative, that made you wonder if Javi liked the idea of flirting with chance. The hesitation to accept your idea of getting contraceptives so he could go without a condom really made you question if Javi had a breeding kink, not that you were entirely sure you were ready to be a parent but nobody ever really was ready and admittedly the idea that you’d roll the dice wasn’t unappealing either.

But ultimately that was not a thing you were willing to risk just yet.

Better safe than sorry, the kink was still something you could explore without the risk factor after all.

“I’ll call her to schedule an appointment then.”

“I shall have the staff ready the vacation home, Solecita. Though I do wish to know more about your reading history online if you knew what this was before I explained it to you.” He was teasing, of course, but also not at the same time and you felt your face warm as you prayed you could make it out of the conversation without him finding out who you were online. But you also realized that, him having this, meant he was at the very least a reader too.

If he was going to try and get the deets from you then the turnabout was fairplay.

You couldn’t help but glance at the list again.

“Wait, are we going to have to come up with a chart for whatever we want to do during each day?” Your question made Javi pause in mouthing at you neck and nod, the idea of checking your preferred explorations together like some sort of shopping list almost made you laugh, but Javi seemed to realize your focus was no longer on the way he was holding you and bucked his hips up.

“Later, Solecita.”

All Fics Taglist: @hardc0rehaylz @wordsnwhiskey @pagannightwitch @radiowallet @musings-of-a-rose @amneris21 @trickstersp8 @practicalghost @rominaszh @alwaysdjarin @alexxavicry

Just Pedro Taglist: @maievdenoir @beecastle @littlemisspascal @writeforfandoms @AynsleyWalker @lovesbiggerthanpride @mswarriorbabe80

Alt Taglist: @imtryingmybeskar @fan-of-encouragement @grogusmum @sizzlingcloudmentality @deadhumourist @prostitute-robot-from-the-future

[byneddiedingo]

Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) Cast: Joan Fontaine, Cary Grant, Cedric Hardwicke, May Whitty, Nigel Bruce, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, Leo G. Carroll. Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, Alma Reville, based on a novel by Anthony Berkeley as Francis Iles. Cinematography: Harry Stradling Sr. Music: Franz Waxman. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you," as Joseph Heller put it in Catch-22. Considering how many plots of Alfred Hitchcock's films are variations on that theme, he might well have had the phrase posted on his office wall. Suspicion is one of the purest explorations of that premise: A woman thinks her handsome rotter of a husband is out to murder her, and the evidence keeps piling up up that she's right. Of course, she isn't, but it takes an hour and 39 minutes to reach that rather anticlimactic conclusion. Suspicion was Hitchcock's fourth American film, and it shows that he was still getting used to working in a rather different studio system than the one he had in England. After the micromanaging of David O. Selznick on his first, Rebecca (1940), he had a comparatively easier time with producer Walter Wanger on Foreign Correspondent (1940) except for the difficulty of making a film about impending war in Europe while the United States was still officially neutral -- so the bad guys could never be explicitly identified as Nazis, for example. But his third film, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), his first set in the United States, was a dud, in large part because Hitchcock had yet to master American idiom: The prissy character played by Gene Raymond, for example, was supposed to have been the best fullback at the University of Alabama. I doubt that Hitchcock knew what a fullback was, let alone one from Alabama. So for Suspicion he retreated to familiar territory, England at a time when there wasn't a war going on, and some actors he had worked with before: Joan Fontaine, Nigel Bruce, and Leo G. Carroll from Rebecca, as well as May Whitty, who had starred in The Lady Vanishes (1938). The chief newcomer was Cary Grant, who would become, along with James Stewart, one of Hitchcock's most reliable leading men. But Grant's presence in the film presented its own problems: He was known as a charming actor in romantic comedy. Would an audience accept Grant as a potential murderer? One story, reportedly verified by Hitchcock himself, holds that the studio, RKO, didn't want to mar Grant's image and insisted on a change from the novel's original ending, in which Johnnie Aysgarth really is guilty. Biographers, however, have disputed that story, claiming that Hitchcock really wanted to focus on Lina's paranoia and not on Johnnie's villainy. In any case, the film's ending feels wrong, mostly because it resolves nothing: Is Johnnie's fecklessness really curable? The chief problem is that Lina herself is an unfocused character, improbably wavering between shyness and passion, between common sense and paranoia, between tough determination and a tendency to faint. Fontaine did what she could with the part, and won an Oscar for her pains, but the film really belongs to Grant. Hitchcock was the one director who could really bring out Grant's dark side. He did it more brilliantly in Notorious (1946), but in Suspicion Hitchcock effectively exploits Grant's ability to turn on a subtle, cold-eyed menace.

[a-birdhorse]

I watch a lot of content about writing, and I read a lot about writing (in spite of how I may come across on this website) and I would like to make a submission to the World Writing Advice canon if it be accepted by the tumblrfolk: A lot of what people say to new writers is not helpful to some neurodivergent people.

Do I think people are doing this on purpose? No. That's silly. People are just sharing the advice that has helped them, and it's hard to give advice to people whose thought processes are totally different from yours. But does that make this kind of bad advice any less harmful to the people who it doesn't help? It does not.

Let's take an example of something that I see a lot among the YouTube writing channel set: Outlining. Outlining is a very important step when it comes to long-form fiction writing. All serious writers should at the very least be familiar with the basic techniques of outlining if they want to make high-quality work, just so that they have those tools available to them should they want them. That's not the problem.

The problem is that I've seen people say that if you aren't making a detailed outline of each scene in a play/screenplay/novel that you won't be able to keep track of events and your work will be worse for it. When I first started out writing plays, I believed that because it's what people had told me at my university and it's what people said online. Why wouldn't I have? The problem is that I have pretty bad ADHD, and stopping my thought process to write a detailed outline that might take me days to produce kills all the momentum that I might have already had. This technique killed multiple plays before I wrote even a single scene.

Then, I had an idea for a play that was simple enough that I could just remember what the scenes where going to be about and the order they were going to go in. I started writing without making so much as a mark in my notebook, and I was finished with the first draft in two weeks. I never felt lost, I always knew what I was writing next, it just worked. Why? I had done it all wrong.

The answer was that the advice of strict outlining was not good advice for me and my chaotic brain. Am I saying that you, neurodivergent author who is reading this, should stop outlining? No, that's not what this is about. Like the playwright I am, I have hidden my actual thesis halfway through the post: Never take someone else's advice at face value.

Let's look at another example: Ray Bradbury wrote every single day of his life. This is what made him a great writer, that's what I've been told. If you read any kind of published works on writing, that's likely the most consistent advice you'll ever see. Just work on writing every day. Once again, this is not the problem. Writing often and having your work evaluated by others is an important step in the process of growing as an artist. The problem is with the natural interpretation of that advice: Write stories every day.

Why would this be a problem? If you, like me, have the habit developing capabilities of an unstable atom of Americium 241, then you will inevitably end up missing a day or thirty of working on your projects. For me, this caused a lot of guilt. I would get into a loop of thinking that I could never be a great writer let alone a good writer if I wasn't constantly working on new plays or short stories or whatever.

Then, I took a job writing blog posts for a weird little startup (let's not talk about that.) Suddenly I was writing every day for work and feeling more and more comfortable at the keyboard. This gave me the confidence to start working on the projects that I wanted to work on, even if I couldn't do it every day because I was tired from work. I learned that it didn't matter what I wrote every day, I just had to be something. This allowed me to lower my expectations to a more realistic place in a way that has allowed me to develop a fairly robust suite of places to practice my writing skills even if I can't tell a story every day. I write fanfictions. I write speeches for my D&D characters. I write little poems. I send a text to my friend. I post on this very website (shocking, I know.) That's all writing! And when I have the energy, I can work on my plays.

But that initial advice of "write every day" needed a ton of tweaking for it to be empowering to me. As it was written, it was a shackle more than anything else. And I suspect that a lot of people out there feel the same way I did, like because they can't work on their novel/play/film/old school RuneScape tutorial every single day of their life they're somehow a failure. They might have ADHD like me, or they might have Bipolar disorder, or they might experience depression. They are not empowered by this advice. Like the advice of outlining, it is holding them back.

This is not a callout post. People don't need to stop giving out writing advice. That advice helps a lot of people. I would appreciate people who make videos/posts about writing to soften their terms a little bit. Don't tell people that they'll never be a good writer if they're not writing every day. Don't tell people that only meticulously outlined work is worth making. Please give people alternatives to your primary advice. Writing is like any other form of art in that you can make beautiful things using any number of methods.

This post is already super long, but I'm going to finish it with something I learned from my time acting: the only thing that matters to the audience is what they see. If they see a King Lear crying over the death of the only daughter who truly loved him, a crystal clear mirror in his hand, then regardless of that actor's internalities that is reality to the viewer. When it comes to art, it doesn't actually matter how the image arrives at the eye, or the ear, or the fingertips. All that matters is that it does. I hope that we can all keep that in mind as we share our little tricks for helping us do that work with our friends, keeping in mind that they are nothing more than tricks.

[agrarianradfem]

hey this is the anon with the hp mug and the weird trans thing, this is my last post before I delete my tumblr

thank u thank u thank u for ur advice. cannot emphasize enough how grateful i am. i was thinking abt changing living situations just bc of how crazy i could feel myself going (i live next to the building where the lgbtq meetings happen) but this is the cheapest and best dorm for me so thank u for that

i emailed the campus hydroponics/gardening club & even tho they dont normally accept new members in the spring semester theyre short on hands for a big project so i get to help out. i also called the local homeless shelter to ask if they needed volunteers bc theyre p far from campus so if need be ill drive out there.

im not gonna do any social media at all for a while except discord to keep in touch w my friends from high school and study groups but no twitch no ig no reddit no tiktok and definitely NO FUCKING TUMBLR. on the fence abt youtube tho, i like having minecraft builds on in the background while i study but might not be worth it

i think the best thing youve given me w your answer is the realization that im spiraling way the fuck out of control & i need to calm down & focus on myself & my values. i really wanted to wear a woman= adult human female t-shirt & campaign for female single sex spaces by passing out flyers but honestly i just wanted to feel safe in myself & i felt like as long as trans ppl existed i could never feel like i had anything safe bc not even the concept of womanhood was safe from male violence. but im not ready to even begin to think about engaging w ppl politically from a place of fear. if i ever take up that fight it will have to be from a place of love for women

im like actually a person. like im a person with goals & ideas & i like fantasy/scifi novels & weird ass old cookbooks & hiking & i want to write a screenplay but ive been too scared its overly political. like wtf is it with this debate that it can make me feel like im only a valid human being when im existing on other ppl’s terms

anyway theres like a 70% chance i wont see ur answer so, so long farewell auf weidersehen adieu and THANK YOU. hope ur blog prospers but im not gonna break my vow to see it so im just gonna have to trust it will.

Yes! Happy travels!

[mashnotesofthemythopoeic]

Fic Masterpost

So, in the spirit of full disclosure - all the X-Files fiction I’ve ever written, as memory serves. And some thoughts on how this fine fandom has taught me to write. 

Starbuck (circa 1998)

I’m not kidding, this is really embarrassing, absolute beginner stuff, but we all start somewhere and it’s interesting in an evolutionary sense. I found these on  Zuffy's X-Files Homepage.

Without The Bee  -  I couldn’t bring myself to look at this one. That title says it all. 

Agents of Change: Return from Antarctica  -  Obsessions—the Scott Expedition and the X-Files—collide. Rough early days, but probably with hints of potential. A legit turkey of a title! 

Penumbra 1998 - 2009

(I’m not going to bother with Gossamer links.) Learning the ropes as I went. Oblivious to so, oh so many things. Rickety, untrained writing, but mindlessly in love with creatively inspired by the churlish charms of our two razzle-dazzle creatures of the night. 

Contact High  -  The last line was plagiarized, pure and simple, from one of Gerald Durrell’s books about his childhood in Corfu. It’s bothered me ever since, so the big thing I took from this experience: by all means steal the rhythm of something, but at least change a word or two. 

Vespers  -  Very stoned ramblings. Inspired by John Leonard’s X-Files essay in The Nation that I’d managed to extract off a microfiche in a university library. I have a soft spot for this fic, probably because Khyber picked it very analytically apart, which was like having Jonathan Galassi or someone suddenly pay attention to you. He introduced me to 'show, don't tell', a paralyzing concept if ever there was one, which I yet only fitfully grasp.

Black Hole Season  -  Still breakin’ all the rules. This one was hugely popular, and amidst all the ballyhoo, Punk Maneuverability emailed me and quietly said: ‘Please pick a POV and a tense and stick with it’—vastly important advice that I was probably too full of myself to heed. This one won a Spooky award, one of the greatest moments of my life that I had to keep completely to myself (therein lies the painful crux of fanfiction.)

Parabiosis  -  I was eating cereal and flipping through the dictionary, and there it was: parabiosis. Who knows what it means. I didn’t have a computer, and was working in the mountains, so I wrote the whole thing out on paper several times, unimaginable now. It flowed through my brain as I scrambled through the woods in the evenings. Nothing will ever be that easy again.

Honeymoon Video  -  Promising title, not much there.

Blue-Sky Conjecture  -  unfinished Scully/Kresge

The Cretan Paradox  -  Americana. JET sent me an ear of corn from a corn maze, because she’s thoughtful like that. 

Free Beer Night at the Astrodome  -  Cut years ago in despair out of Heuvelmans’; I think part of it went back in. 

Fathoms Five  -  In one of Gerald Durrell’s books about his childhood in Corfu, his brother steps in a swamp and says that his shoe is ‘full of fathoms five’, so that’s where I got that Shakespearean misquote. I resisted writing this for a long time, but it would creep into my mind as I was falling asleep. I think this is a pretty good story, but it could have used one more draft, so since then, I’ve resolved never to rush to post. Events of this year kind of date this story now. However, it’s rather pleasant to read about a careless, joint-passing, COVID-free 2020.

Fathoms Five Outtakes and gag reels - Sorry about the glitchy old site and bad font.

A random smut biscuit  -  Uncharacteristic, I know!

Octopods  - I loved this one, but it never fit in anywhere.

Maundy Thursday  

Untitled Snippet 

World’s Tiniest Zombie Fic

∩dsᴉpɐᴉsᴉnɯ -  Very flawed, because it was written and posted under a fund-raiser time crunch. I really should overhaul it. The X-Files was ending and I was so depressed when I wrote it, and that’s an unfortunate tincture to saddle a story with. 

The Inscrutable Pair  -  How The X-Files taught me to embrace ambiguity. Goreyesque nonsense à la Gashlycrumb Tinies that also troubles itself to rip off Eliot and Homer. 

(7-Year Cold-Turkey Hiatus From the X-Files)

Gave away DVDs, got some perspective, did a little growing up, tried and failed to write a screenplay, two novels, etc. Then they put The X-Files on Netflix. One lonely night, I thought: what could it hurt to watch Darkness Falls? 44 minutes later, with shaking hands, going for the hard stuff—Redux II. Lol, the hard stuff of ancient philes. 

The Mythopoeic*  2016  - 

Heuvelmans’ On the Track - The nearly suicidal heartbreak that surrounds this story—it was the first X-Files fic I got bogged down in and couldn’t finish, and it left me with a huge mental stigma—sweetens its completion. Under its shadow I tried to become a Real Writer, without success. Give things time, I learned. Just keep working hard. The initial failure of this story taught me stuff that I now wouldn’t trade for anything. 

*I came back just intending to hang out with Philes, and didn’t want to make a big deal, and had no intention of posting fic, so I gave little thought to the name. But, characteristically ostentatious name, check. Still keepin’ it real, pure and self-taught, a bit closer to what Chuck Palahniuk calls a ‘kitchen-table MFA’. Check.

But what I really want to say is this. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to try writing if I hadn’t been in this marvelous fandom, having the method and the means demonstrated all around me by wonderfully competent and encouraging writers for whom I felt such reverence that having them reach out or comment on stuff was earth-shaking. They showed the way, and I followed. Hands on my heart, friends, I owe you everything.

[soulbatesheaven]

A Change

Hey YALLL

So if you saw the post I reblogged just now youi know whats good but if you didnt-

I am a writerrr!!! I have been a writer for some time now and have written everything from fanfiction, orignal fiction books, screenplays and more! 

Right now I’m working on a novel about four siblings from alternate realities that end up in this one world together that is going through a harsh war and they have to save both the world and the wars within and amongst themselves.

This novel has a romance between a brother-sister and it’s been put on my heart by the Lord that this will be a series and that the ending will not be sad or tragic.

These are real characters, human characters that aren’t the villians and in fact the heros and in edition to the consang feelings the characters are Black and one of the siblings are Trans too - just like me!!! 

This is a passion project (just like all projects I work on are) and I need some SUPPORT!!

There aren’t many places I feel like yet that I can go and look for feedback let alone support for a book with this many different communities represented in the same book except on here! I feel that I have found friends and support here and that we just have to keep on extending and reaching out for each other and it could transform our lives!

And so if you’re good with this I am too and even if you aren’t good with it, God Bless you and i LOVE YOU!!

But if you are serious comment and like yall! DM me and we can get this party started! I am here to support each and every one of you!! <3

[in-silks-and-flesh-and-leather]

Oh Silky,

You're wiser than me I know that to be true, and I don't see myself as someone who could advise you when it comes to writing. It's one of those things that just flows out of someone, a deeply personal process.

However, I think I should share sth I heard in the TikTok sphere that at least made what was happening across a lot of platforms make sense to me. The new saying goes: "Shein sells quicker than Chanel." (No disrespect to either brand consumers ofc)

I just find it as a nice way to understand why sometimes the good things in the world remain underappreciated (have less of an audience) while other mass produced digestible content thrive. It's as simple as that. One is inheritally meant for mass consumption and it's no surprise it does well it that area. And by no means can the success of the digestible content take away from the quality and the impact of another. (Quite the opposite actually.)

I understand how frustrating it could be to see sub-par work get recognition.

I was fuming when seeing the quality of a few Reylo fics that were in publication as I skimmed through them believe me , but it only made what you were doing more grand in my eyes.

If you ever wonder if someone is excited for a project you're working on, you can automatically know that I'm at the other end of this blog literally frothing at the mouth for it...sorry for the visual but it's true.

I really have love and awe for you in my heart and want you to be happy, so know that as long as you are happy to write, we are happy to read. I guarantee that.

We have spoken about how I feel about this God forsaken platform. It's an echo-chamber the size of a match box, so I beg you to never determine your worth based on the greatness of echos here.

I don't know if you will write your own novel or screenplay or anything else one day, but you're probably one of the few fic writers that have the ability to do that in them and I'll read that too happily.

I also want to mention that yes I'm guilty of reading undercooked plots and themes and nsfw alphabets and prompts from time and time too, but all of them go in from one ear and out from another. They don't stick like your stories do. They never make me wonder and question.

Don not feel like you're losing to them bc it's simply not even a competition between you.

I tired to keep this honest, away from the amount of praise I want to give, to make you know that I mean it entirely. I hope I have been successful.

Love,

Ariadne.

My beloved ❤️❤️

I have cherished your every word ever since you were kind enough to leave your thoughts on my dad!Sackler fic.

You are so thoughtful and insightful, it blew me away 💗 And since then, I've been so grateful to have found a kindred spirit who is so tender and honest, not to mention patient and supportive 💗

That's truly been one of the few bright spots of venturing into this space.

*

That's a very interesting point to consider and it would be wonderful to be able to discuss it further, but as we know, that's impossible here.

I do want to thank you for this sincere and deeply touching gesture - I am taking it into my heart 100% and I'm on the verge of sobbing, to be perfectly honest 💕💕

When I write and consider posting, it's because I hope there is someone like you out there who will dive into the story and let themselves feel something beautiful and that part makes me feel absolutely amazing 😍

Sending you every last bit of my love 🤗🤗

[disappointingyet]

Cold Comfort Farm

Director John Schlesinger Stars Kate Beckinsale, Eileen Atkins, Rufus Sewell UK 1995 Language English 1hr 45mins Colour

Creditable adaption of Stella Gibbons’ very splendid novel

In some ways, Cold Comfort Farm is the ultimate in British Sunday evening TV*: rural, period setting,  steam trains, magic-hour shots of the countryside and – of course – a bagful of familiar actorly faces.You’re certainly not getting short-changed on that last one: Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Ian McKellen and Miriam Margolyes are all present and correct. 

None of which is normally my idea of a good time. Stella Gibbons’ 1932 novel, on the other hand, is one of my favourite books. And it has one of those stories that seems survive adaptation well – and John Schelsinger and novelist/academic Malcolm Bradbury, who wrote the screenplay, have done a good job here. The key, as ever, is not letting the costumes and the pretty countryside get in the way of the jokes. The one predictable change they have made is to remove the sci-fi elements. If you’ve never read the book but have seen the film, that sentence might surprise you. Then again, I don’t think I really noticed the near-future setting when I read the novel the first time. But although most of the book takes place in on the crumbling farm of the title, where it might as well be the mid-19th century, up in London in the mid-20th century, they’ve got videophones and assorted other bits of high tech, plus all the fashionable types are living south of river (the very thought of it!). Presumably on the grounds that all that would be a bit confusing and isn’t relevant to the core of the story, the film is set in the historical 1930s. 

Our heroine is Flora Poste (Kate Beckinsale), a young upper-middle class woman whose parents have just died, leaving her needing somewhere to live. She decides that the most colourful and therefore most potentially entertaining of the distant relatives who offer to put her up are the Starkadders, inhabitants of Cold Comfort Farm. 

Cold Comfort leaves up to all her city-girl prejudices, being apparently backward and undoubtedly dirty. The many, many inhabitants live in fear of Aunt Ada Doom (Sheila Burrell), who only leaves her room a couple of times a year for the counting and is still traumatised after seeing ‘something nasty in the woodshed’ as a child. 

An efficient and tidy young women, Flora sets about fixing the lives of Starkadders and their farmworkers. Cold Comfort Farm is a bit like a benign version of Kind Hearts And Coronets, another story about an orphan taking on their large and eccentric family with a clear and ruthless plan. Although I should swiftly add there is nothing murderous about Flora’s intent: deeply patronising and objectifying, yes, but not deadly.

The film benefits from the task-based plot: unlike, say, a romantic comedy or a mistaken identity tale, there are no tiresome contrivances needed to keep the narrative going. 

It occurs to me that maybe the reason I find Fry, Lumley and McKellen fine here is that in 1995 none of them had yet ascended to national/international treasure status: Fry was still doing TV sketch comedy, Lumley was mid-Ab Fab reinvention and McKellen was a stage star who did the occasional films and TV, as opposed to the star of two movie mega-franchises. In short, they were still being hired to work rather than to merely bestow their presence on a project, and therefore more likely to be kept in check, especially by a director who could wield his Oscar at them.   

Also a different figure in 1995 was Kate Beckinsale, very tangibly pre-Hollywood here both in looks and approach. A fair chunk of the original audience in the UK were looking at her and thinking about her dad.** She was only 21 and playing 18, and she’s so much better than any of actors I can imagine being considered for the role if this had been made a few years later – Keira Knightley, Felicity Jones etc – would have been. Beckinsale gets the mix of briskness and sly amusement just right. 

The other cast member worth mentioning is Rufus Sewell, excellent value as the farm’s reluctant bad boy Seth.

John Schlesinger is not a director whose work I’m too keen on – I like his early 1960s films A Kind Of Loving and Billy Liar, and not a lot beyond that. But he does well here. There are a couple of minor jokes from the book that are kept in quite subtly – only as visuals, with no one nudging the audience towards them. 

So if you are a massive snob like me and stumble across Cold Comfort Farm, please don’t dismiss it – this is much sharper and funnier than you might expect.

*It was shown on TV in the UK, but released in cinemas in the US. **If, understandably, you are unfamiliar with British TV of the 1970s, Richard Beckinsale was a much-loved sitcom star who died in 1979 aged only 31. Of his work, I thorougly recommend the prison comedy Porridge, one of the peaks of British television.

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Would love to hear about your beefs with Lucas because I have beefs with Lucas

(Sorry it took me three thousand years to answer this, anon.)

They mainly fall under a few headings, with the third being the most serious and the thing that I am genuinely irl furious about at least biannually (and feeling unable to adequately sum up The Problem with it after yelling about it so often is a huge part of why this post has been in my drafts for such a long time):

1. His self-mythologising and the subsequent uncritical repetition of his bullshit in the fandom. Obvious lies like that he had some master plan for 10 films when it’s clear he did not have anything like a plot outline at any point. We all know the thing was written at the seat of various people’s pants, it’s blatantly self-evident that’s the case. There’s also plenty of public record about how the OT was written. Even dumber, more obvious lies, like that Anakin was ‘always the protagonist’ and the entire 6 films were his story from the beginning. This is preposterous and every time someone brings it up (usually with palpable smugness) as fanboys ‘not understanding star wars’ because they don't get that ‘the OT is not Luke's story’... Yeah, I just... I cannot.

Vader wasn’t Anakin Skywalker until ESB, it’s a retcon. It’s a brilliant retcon and it works perfectly, it elevated SW into something timeless and special it otherwise would not have been, but you can tell it wasn’t the original plan and there’s proof it wasn’t the original plan. Let’s not pretend. And Luke is the protagonist. No amount of waffling about such esoteric flights of theory as ‘ring structure’ is going to get away from the rigidly orthodox narrative and the indisputable fact that it is Luke’s hero’s journey. Vader’s redemption isn’t about his character development (he has almost none) and has no basis in any kind of convincing psychological reality for his character, but it doesn’t need to be because it’s part of Luke’s arc, because Vader is entirely a foil in Luke’s story. It’s a coming-of-age myth about confronting and growing beyond the father.

All attempts to de-centre Luke in RotJ just break the OT’s narrative logic. It’s a character-driven story and the character driving is Luke. Trying to read it as Anakin’s victory, the moral culmination of his choices rather than Luke’s and putting all the agency into Anakin’s hands just destroys the trilogy’s coherence and ignores most of its content in favour of appropriating a handful of scenes into an arc existing only in the prequels. The dilemma of RotJ is how Luke will define ethical adulthood after learning and growing through two previous films worth of challenge, education, failure, and triumph; it’s his choice to love his father and throw down his sword which answers the question the entire story has been asking. Vader’s redemption and the restoration of the galaxy are the consequences of that choice which tell us what kind of world we’re in, but the major dramatic conflict was resolved by Luke’s decision not the response to it.

And, just all over, the idea of Lucas as an infallible auteur is inaccurate and annoying to me. Obviously he’s a tremendous creative force and we wouldn’t have sw without him, but he didn’t create it alone or out of whole cloth. The OT was a very collaborative effort and that’s why it’s what it is and the prequels are what they are. Speaking of which.

2. The hubris of the prequels in general and all the damage their many terrible, protected-from-editors choices do to the symbolic fabric of the sw universe. Midicholrians, Yoda fighting with a lightsabre, Obi-wan as Anakin's surrogate father instead of his peer, incoherent and unmotivated character arcs, the laundry list of serious and meaningful continuity errors, the bad storytelling, the bad direction, the bad characterisation, the shallowness of the parallels which undermine the OT’s imagery, the very clumsy and contradictory way the A/P romance was handled, the weird attitude to romance in general, it goeth on. I don’t want to re-litigate the entire PT here and I’m not going to, but they are both bad as films and bad as prequels. The main idea of them, to add Anakin’s pov and create an actual arc for him as well as to flesh out the themes of compassion and redemption, was totally appropriate. The concept works as a narrative unit, there are lots of powerful thematic elements they introduce, they have a lot of cool building blocks, it’s only in execution and detail that they do a bunch of irreparable harm.

But the constant refrain that only ageing fanboys don’t like them and they only don’t like them because of their themes or because they humanise Anakin... can we not. The shoddy film making in the prequels is an objective fact. If you want to overlook the bad parts for the good or prioritise ideas over technique, that’s fine, but don’t sit here and tell me they’re masterworks of cinema there can be no valid reason to criticise. I was the exact right age for them when I saw them, I am fully on board with the fairy tale nature of sw, I am fully on board with humanising Anakin- the prequels just have a lot of very big problems with a) their scripts and b) their direction, especially of dialogue scenes. If Lucas had acknowledged his limitations like he did back in the day instead of believing his own press, he could have again had the help he obviously needed instead of embarrassing himself.

3. Killing and suppressing the original original trilogy. I consider the fact that the actual original films are not currently available in any form, have never been available in an archival format, and have not been presented in acceptable quality since the VHS release a very troubling case study in the problems of corporate-owned art. LF seizing prints of the films whenever they are shown, destroying the in-camera negatives to make the special editions with no plans to restore them, and doing all in the company’s considerable power to suppress the original versions is something I consider an act of cultural vandalism. The OT defined a whole generation of Hollywood. It had a global impact on popular entertainment. ANH is considered so historically significant it was one of the first films added to the US Library of Congress (Lucas refused to provide even them with a print of the theatrical release, so they made their own viewable scan from the 70s copyright submission).

The fact that the films which made that impact cannot be legally accessed by the public is offensive to me. The fact that Lucas has seen fit to dub over or composite out entire performances (deleting certain actors from the films), to dramatically alter the composition of shots chosen by the original directors, to radically change the entire stylistic tone by completely reinventing the films’ colour timing in attempt to make them match the plasticy palate of the prequels, to shoot new scenes for movies he DID NOT DIRECT, add entire sequences or re-edit existing sequences to the point of being unrecognisable etc. etc. is NOT OKAY WITH ME when he insists that his versions be the ONLY ones available.

I’m okay with the Special Editions existing, though I think they’re mostly... not good... but I’m not okay with them replacing the original films. And all people can say is ‘well, they’re his movies’.

Lucas may have clear legal ownership in the capitalistic sense, but in no way does he have clear artistic ownership. Forget the fans, I’m not one of those people who argue the fans are owed something: A film is always a collaborative exercise and almost never can it be said that the end product is the ultimate responsibility and possession of one person. Even the auteur directors aren't the sole creative vision, even a triple threat like Orson Welles still had cinematographers and production designers, etc. Hundreds of artists work on films. Neither a writer nor a director (nor one person who is both) is The Artist behind a film the way a novelist is The Artist behind a novel. And Lucas did NOT write the screenplays for or direct ESB or RotJ. So in what sense does he have a moral right to alter those films from what the people primarily involved in making them deemed the final product? In what sense would he have the right to make a years-later revision the ONLY version even if he WERE the director?

Then you get into the issue of the immeasurable cultural impact those films had in their original form and the imperative to preserve something that is defining to the history of film and the state of the zeitgeist. I don't think there is any ‘fan entitlement’ involved in saying the originals belonged to the world after being part of its consciousness for decades and it is doing violence to the artistic record to try to erase the films which actually occupied that space. It's exactly like trying to replace every copy of It's a Wonderful Life with a colourised version (well, it's worse but still), and that was something Lucas himself railed against. It’s like if Michaelangelo were miraculously resuscitated and he decided to repaint the Sistine Ceiling to add a gunfight and change his style to something contemporary.

I get genuinely very upset at the cold reality that generations of people are watching sw for the first time and it’s the fucking SE-except-worse they’re seeing. And as fewer people keep physical media and the US corporate oligarchy continues to perform censorship and rewrite history on its streaming services unchecked by any kind of public welfare concerns, you’ll see more and more ‘real Mandela effect’ type shit where the cultural record has suddenly ‘always’ been in line with whatever they want it to be just now. And US media continues to infect us all with its insidious ubiquity. I think misrepresenting and censoring the past is an objectively bad thing and we can’t learn from things we pretend never happened, but apparently not many people are worried about handing the keys to our collective experience to Disney and Amazon.

4. The ‘Jedi don’t marry’ thing and how he wanted this to continue with Luke post-RotJ, so it’s obviously not meant to be part of what was wrong with the order in the prequels. I find this... incoherent on a storytelling level. The moral of the anidala story then indeed becomes just plain ‘romantic love is bad and will make you crazy’, rather than the charitable reading of the prequels which I ascribe to, which is that the problem isn’t Anakin’s love for Padmé, it’s that he ceased to love her and began to covet her. And I can’t help but feel this attitude is maybe an expression of GL’s issues with women following his divorce. I don’t remember if there’s evidence to contradict that take, since it’s been some time since I read about this but yeah. ANH absolutely does sow seeds for possible Luke/Leia development and GL was still married while working on that film. Subsequently he was dead set against Luke ever having a relationship and decided Jedi could not marry. Coincidence?

There’s a lot of blinking red ‘issues with women’ warning signs all over Lucas’s work, but the prequels are really... egregious.

[that-random-citizen]

Writeblr Intro

Apparently I haven't done one of these yet so here we go

About me

Hey! I'm a person who writes and has too many projects unfinished. Let's be friends!

So, what can I say about me?

This is my side blog dedicated to writing. I go by L. and I'm 21 years old. I'm Portuguese and my pronouns are she/her. INTP?? Let's just get to it

You inspired me to write this intro. Yes, you. I really like reading about all of you and your stories, makes all my writing process less lonely because now I know there's a bunch of other people out there... who also struggle to write...

Let's struggle together, my friends!

I started writing stories a long time ago but only in 2019 I finished one completely. And after that, I started trying not to give up on my projects after only 3 chapters. It's been a challenge!

Although a lot of my WIPs feature romance, I have no idea why. I like a lot of stuff. So I tend to write a lot of stuff. This stuff that I'm talking about are the genres. Yes, I'm good with words. I love mystery, thriller, comedy, fantasy, I don't really remember much more but yeah, you got the idea...

I'm very character driven so I tend to focus a lot on my characters when writing. That's the reason why I excuse my excessive amount of daydreaming instead of putting my thoughts on paper. I'm just developing the idea! It needs to reach its final form... And so, I can't really move on if I don't know my characters like the back of my hand and that's why it's been 7 years on that one WIP (introduced a little down below)

I reblog a lot of memes and writing advice that I like. I also like reblogging your WIPs because they're all so good and you guys have amazing ideas and beautiful layouts. I wish I could read all your stories! I may try to up my game and add some mood boards when I introduce my characters. I don't usually write in English so I'm not sure about posting excerpts but I'll be keeping my WIPs updated in terms of how they are doing and character wise. I can also talk about random ideas and new WIPs that cross my mind. It's an infinite number of possibilities. And that's why I don't gamble.

I'm quite random and so I have a hard time focusing on one thing for to long. And that, my dudes, brings us to a very high number of unfinished WIPs that I can't keep track of. Here's the list:

WIPs

I have to many to count (27). These are the ones I'm trying to focus on right now:

The 4 Elements

It's been 7 years!

Basically I came up with this story because my brother asked me to write it and I was trying to make him more interested in reading books so I decided I was going to write something he wanted to read. Uh, that's a long and confusing sentence... if only I had editing skills!

Anyways, then it became this big conversation topic between us and I developed it a lot over that summer. And in the past years. It also has some clichés that I see a lot on TV that I'm not that fond of and so I decided to give them a little twist with this book

It's a superhero story!? And is my longest running project (I guess)

It's a series of 4 books from which I have a good grasp of what I want to write but one of the main characters is still a mystery to me so... I'm struggling!

Like, what is her motivation? I can't really find her voice, she's the "leader" and the only one who carries a braincell in the entire series and yet... What is her conflict in the story? I guess we have to wait another 7 years to find out...

Found family trope because that's my reason to live

A lot of chaotic energy

Four idiots who can control the elements

A lot of backstory

Some bad guys

It's a fantasy book. Or a sci-fi? I'm not sure

I'm going to write the second draft of the first book by this summer... hopefully

Reverse Fairytale

I don't know what to say about this one

I like taking clichés and reversing them somehow so I guess this is it

There's a princess trapped in a tower, a bunch of knights, a bunch of witches and a kingdom to overthrow

Very soft, very sapphic

There are only women loving women and an ace boy who has a pet dragon

Fantasy. There are a lot of fairy tale books involved

It's also romance and... why do I do this to myself?

Even the subplot is a romance - it's about a mermaid and a pirate and a curse but that's a spoiler so let's move on

Helena's Trial

This one I just want to get the outline done

I really liked this idea but I forgot to write it down and now I'm going through it to get it back

Another thing about me: I have terrible memory

It's about this angel and this devil who realize that they were guarding the same person - Helena

And in this universe, there can only be one guardian for each human depending on the fate that is given to someone as they are born

If you're destined to do good things you get a guardian angel

If the big boss says you're going to be evil, you get a devil to guard you and you have to be evil, no chance of changing back your destiny

Another corrupt system that it's getting overthrown

Helena has both an angel and a devil guarding her so they have to realize her destiny fast because she's destined to die in 24 hours, on her wedding day

The angel and the devil knew each other before they died and so it's a little awkward

It's a little enemies to lovers in that area

There are also cupids and a big Goddess who wants revenge

Fantasy

There's a screenplay...

So I'm trying something here but I'm still not sure.

I have about 100,000 words of backstory and that isn't even over yet and I'm trying to write a TV series screenplay.

I literally don't know why

It's a comedy so I had a really great time getting to make my characters be complete idiots but I have no idea how to write this and it's been a ride...

That's about it. I'm having new character ideas but I don't want to get myself wrapped around them yet. But my next big thing is going to be a horror novel (with chaotic energy and some idiocy, the only things that are a constant in my works) so if you have any tips, let me know. I tend to write in every genre. I thrive for it actually. I think it's a good experience to figure out what I truly enjoy and the things I wouldn't want to touch with a 10-foot pole

Anyways, feel free to interact, I'll be making an effort to be more active about my WIPs and post more about them here. Maybe it's the little push I need to focus on them and actually finishing one for a change. You can drop a message anytime, let's be friends and writing buddies!

[aion-rsa]

Best Corrupt Cop Movies to Watch After Training Day

https://ift.tt/3chCEB5

Training Day is one of the archetypal crime dramas of its time. It features a classic standoff between a young, fresh-off-the-street rookie police officer named Jake Hoyt (Ethan Hawke) and his veteran partner Alonzo Harris (Denzel Washington). The older cop is ostensibly evaluating his young partner, but in actuality he’s breaking Jake hm down and trying to corrupt him–just as Alonzo himself, one of the great screen monsters of the past 20 years, is corrupt beyond all redemption. Here is a supposed officer of the law who acts more like a crime boss, ruling over his neighborhood with an iron fist.

The tension that burns at the center of the movie–will Jake be turned and will Alonzo get his comeuppance?–forms the bedrock of a classic dramatic scenario. The power inherent from being in law enforcement can be both a force for good and a weapon of evil. The ability to wield that power over the lives of so many others can lead anyone or any institution to a moral crossroads. And whether a single cop or an entire police force can stand up for what’s right or descend into a cesspool of rot and amorality has been the basis of some of our greatest movies.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but if you’ve recently had a chance to revisit Training Day on Netflix, then here are five more superb movies in which a lone cop goes head to head with that insidious corruption. All the movies feature drugs, guns, money, and sometimes sex; but in the end, the most powerful and dangerous narcotic of all turns out to be power.

Serpico (1973)

Legendary director Sidney Lumet’s classic 1970s police drama was one of several films that established Al Pacino as among the greatest actors of his generation, and kicked off a loose trilogy of movies from Lumet himself that focused on police corruption in New York City–others being the less iconic but equally brilliant Prince of the City (1981) and Q&A (1990).

Serpico is also the only film on this list based on a real person: Frank Serpico, a plainclothes detective who uncovered widespread corruption and eventually blew the whistle on it during his 11 years of service. In keeping with the true-life inspiration for the story, Lumet shot the film in a documentary-like style and chose some of the grittiest locations in New York City in which to work. Pacino himself met with Serpico several times, immersing himself in the character and his life.

The result was one of the first major American movies to tackle real life police corruption head-on, and what’s frightening is that there is no single villain for Serpico to go up against: it’s the entire NYPD itself, which came under extensive investigation thanks to the real Serpico’s actions.

Internal Affairs (1990)

Richard Gere stars in this Mike Figgis-directed film as Dennis Peck, a corrupt Los Angeles police officer and womanizer who comes under investigation by Raymond Avilla (Andy Garcia), an Internal Affairs officer intent on taking down Peck even as the department around him portrays him as a role model. But the wily Peck has other plans, including turning Avilla and his wife (Nancy Travis) against each other.

Set in pretty much the opposite of Serpico’s rough NYC environs, Internal Affairs, as its punning title indicates, is less about widespread systemic corruption and more about ideas of masculinity. Gere’s charm and sex appeal is put to wicked use as Peck fucks or threatens to fuck the wife of every man he crosses paths with, using that as a weapon to undermine them as men and leverage his power over them. Using his family as cover for his nefarious deeds–he has three ex-wives and eight kids to support–puts a dark twist on the idea of the male as the head of the household.

Garcia’s Avilla is flawed as well, racked with jealousy and anger management issues, which gives what could have been just a sleazy potboiler an extra level of complexity. And no amount of ravishing L.A. locations will wipe away the slime at the heart of this low-key thriller.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

The late Curtis Hanson’s masterful adaptation (with co-writer Brian Helgeland) of James Ellroy’s novel remains one of the best films of the 1990s, mixing fictionalized versions of real-life figures with indelible characters in a complex, suspenseful, and epic tale of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity.

The two cops at the center of the story are LAPD Sgt. Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) and officer Bud White (Russell Crowe); the former is upstanding yet aggressively ambitious while the latter is a blunt weapon used–unknowingly at first–by precinct captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) to advance Smith’s own ends. Also in the mix are a high-end prostitute (Kim Basinger), a jaded detective (Kevin Spacey), and a tabloid magazine editor (Danny DeVito), all of whom are caught in the LAPD’s web of corruption.

L.A. Confidential builds its story brilliantly to an explosive third-act confrontation between White and Exley that gives way to an even more thrilling motel shoot-out at the film’s climax. Relatively unknown at the time, Crowe and Pearce are outstanding while Basinger shines in a career-peak performance. L.A. Confidential takes the “cop vs. cop” scenario and drenches it in neo-noir style and Tinseltown sleaze, creating an unforgettable portrait of power gone mad.

Cop Land (1997)

An early drama from writer/director James Mangold–now known for films like Logan and Ford v. Ferrari—Cop Land stars Sylvester Stallone as Freddy Heflin, the sheriff of a small New Jersey town that is a bedroom community for a number of New York City cops. Although Freddy, who is partially deaf and perceived as somewhat slow-witted, reveres the cops and aspired at one time to be an NYPD officer himself, he becomes gradually aware of the rampant corruption among them. Eventually he must act.

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The Real Goodfellas: Gangsters That Inspired the Martin Scorsese Film

By Tony Sokol

Stallone put on 40 pounds for the role of Heflin and his performance cast him in a new light as a serious actor after years of mindless action vehicles or Rocky sequels. Mangold’s screenplay may be too overly complicated for its own good, but the lonely small-town cop making a stand against the men he once looked up to is a poignant, haunting image. The film is also bolstered by great work from an all-star cast that includes Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert Patrick, and Annabella Sciorra.

The Departed (2006)

Based on the 2002 Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, The Departed is an operatic, grand crime thriller as only the great Martin Scorsese can do it. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Billy Costigan Jr., a Massachusetts State Police recruit forced to go undercover and infiltrate the gang of crime boss Frank Costello (an over-the-top Jack Nicholson). Meanwhile another State Police officer, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), is actually a mole for Costello inside the force, and the machinations of both Costello and the police eventually pull the two undercover agents–one good but troubled, one corrupt–into each other’s orbit.

Loosely inspired by real-life figures like corrupt FBI agent John Connolly and Boston crime kingpin Whitey Bulger, The Departed has more twists than a winding mountain road and all the double-crosses and betrayals can be tricky to navigate, even for fans of the Hong Kong movie it dramatically remakes, Infernal Affairs.

But Scorsese’s expertise with this kind of material leaps off the screen and his cast is impeccable (including a career-best performance from Mark Wahlberg and a scene-stealing turn by Alec Baldwin). While it can be a little on-the-nose at times–we’re looking at you, Mr. Rat on the apartment terrace–The Departed nevertheless conveys its cynical view of human nature with style, wit and manic energy. As it turns out, we’re all basically fucked up and vulnerable to being fucked with.

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[hannibal-obsessed]

Why Not Spend Your Lock-Down with Dr. Hannibal Lecter?

By Shannon L. Christie

You are cordially invited to spend your lock-down, dining in the company of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Menu

Reception

Dr. Hannibal Lecter is one of thee most iconic fictional literary villains, created in the 20th Century; Hollywood films has cemented his iconic status and his transformation into the 21st Century, via network television, has been carefully crafted under the watchful eye of executive producer, Martha De Laurentiis.

Hannibal Lecter sprang from the mind of novelist Thomas Harris; Lecter has been in our lives for almost 40 years; introduced with the publication of Red Dragon in October 1981; he has never left our consciousness for too long.

So where does one start?

Do you read the 4 novels, watch the 5 movies or the TV Series?

Do I start at the beginning with Harris's novel, Red Dragon?

There are several ways to feast upon Hannibal Lecter: read Harris' novels first: watch the movies and then dine on the TV Series; read the novels, watch the corresponding movies and then the TV Series; watch the TV Series and then go back, watch the movies and read the novels. Whatever way you decide, you will not be disappointed at the end of your feast!

The following menu outline would be my suggestion for how to feast upon the sumptuous offerings of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Amuse-bouche

In this course we are served small bit-sized morsels of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Red Dragon: Thomas Harris, 1981

Will Graham, a former FBI Special Agent with an instinct for profiling, is sucked back into consulting for the FBI on their latest serial murder case; involving the Tooth Fairy. Will's been living a quiet life in Florida with his wife and son, when his former boss, Jack Crawford visits, enticing Graham back into the game. In order to get that old scent back; Graham needs to get into the mindset of a killer, so he visits Dr. Hannibal Lecter at The Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where Lecter is serving 9 consecutive life terms for murder. Graham was the FBI Agent who finally caught Hannibal and it almost cost him his life and sanity.

Interesting Fact: Harris attended portions of Ted Bundy's trial for the Chi Omega Murders in Florida. The Prosecutors in the Bundy trial used bite marks left on one of his victims as evidence. Dolarhyde left bite marks on Mrs. Leeds, which allowed forensics to create dental impressions, creating a sample of Dolarhyde's teeth.

Manhunter: Directed by Michael Mann, 1986

Manhunter was written and directed by Michael Mann; starring William Petersen (Will Graham), Dennis Farina (Jack Crawford), Tom Noonan (Francis Dollarhyde, film spelling/Red Dragon/Tooth Fairy), Joan Allen (Reba McClane) Brian Cox (Hannibal Lecktor, film spelling).

Manhunter is now considered a cult classic; at the time of it's original release it fared poorly at the box office and met with mixed reviews. It's cult status may be partially due to the continuing saga of Hannibal Lecter and William Petersen's success in CSI. The film touches on many of the important elements of the novel and also misses on quite a few. What is Dolarhyde's motive? The movie is dated with a definite 80's Michael Mann vibe; in spite of that it is definitely worth a watch for Noonan's performance.

Interesting Fact: Film Producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the movie rights to the novel Red Dragon in 1983.

Red Dragon: Directed by Brett Ratner, 2002

This is where I'll skip ahead and talk about Manhunter's remake, Red Dragon. You can either choose to watch Red Dragon here or move it to after Hannibal to watch in order of release – entirely up to you.

Dino De Laurentiis passed on the movie rights to The Silence of the Lamb, due to the poor showing of Manhunter at the box office. So when The Silence of the Lambs was critically acclaimed by the critics; a huge box office success; winning the top 5 categories at the 1992 Oscars; Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay – Dino wanted another serving of Hannibal Lecter.

When Harris released his third Lecter novel, simply titled Hannibal, Dino De Laurentiis picked up the rights and saw this as an opportunity to remake Manhunter, this time using the book title, Red Dragon, especially considering the success of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. In fact, Red Dragon was released in theatres a year after Hannibal.

Lecter's role was beefed up with a few added scenes; Lecter enjoying the symphony with the exception of the violinist; experiencing one of Lecter's sinfully delicious dinner parties of the music council with the violinist as the main course; seeing the tete-a-tete played out between Lecter and Graham (Edward Norton) that nearly cost them both their lives.

Dolarhyde's (Ralph Fiennes) abusive childhood is explored, the motivation for his heinous crimes against families. We see more of the relationship between Dolarhyde and Reba (Emily Watson) and Dolarhyde's struggle to keep the monster at bay. Ted Tally wrote the screenplay (he wrote The Silence of the Lambs screenplay and passed on the Hannibal screenplay); he has a great sense of what is essential to the narration of a well conceived movie, without loosing too much of the original story told by Thomas Harris.

I am partial to Red Dragon over Manhunter for that reason; I love Ralph Feinnes portrayal of Dolarhyde; he's creepy without being overtly creepy like Noonan is in Manhunter. Anthony Hopkins plays Hannibal Lecter beautifully as he always does. There are a few flaws in this version though, namely Edward Norton's portrayal of Will Graham. I love Norton – I just think he was wrong for the part and the bleached blonde hair drove me mad. I also have issue with Harvey Keitel as Jack Crawford, I just didn't get an FBI Special Agent in charge of the Behavioral Science Unit vibe from him. Keitel is the guy you bring in to rough up your suspect. On the plus side, the crime scenes are more graphic than in Manhunter, which I feel is essential to understanding the severity of the need to capture this fiend, because now he has a taste for it and he will not stop!

Interesting Fact: Dino De Laurentiis had to make a deal with MGM, so the shot of The Baltimore State Hospital building used in The Silence of the Lambs, could be used in Red Dragon, as the building had been demolished.

Dinner

Appetizer

In this course we are treated to petite, rich tasty morsels of Hannibal Lecter,

both of the hot and cold variety.

The Silence of the Lambs: Thomas Harris, 1988

The follow up novel to Red Dragon, Harris' third novel, Lecter was not a character Harris intended to use; he just showed up one day as Harris wrote. The Silence of the Lambs was the story of a young female FBI agent in training; female agents were a relatively new concept at Quantico. J. Edgar Hoover had died in 1972 and the FBI slowly started to drag itself into the modern age and out of the Mafia/Prohibition dark ages that it was founded on. Harris' story of Clarice Starling was an exploration of an agent in training along with a manhunt, headed by Jack Crawford, for a serial killer, only known as “Buffalo Bill”; who abducted girls, held them hostage for a few days; shot them in the heads, dumped their bodies in rivers; having partially skinned them post mortem. The FBI is stumped, they have no motive, no pattern and no connections between the victims. What should they do? Crawford sends Clarice Starling, an agent in training to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

The Silence of the Lambs: Directed by Jonathan Demme, 1991

As I previously mentioned, Dino de Laurentiis passed on acquiring the movie rights for The Silence of the Lambs; the rights ended up in the hands of Demme and Orion Films, without a fee paid to De Laurentiis. The screenplay was written by Ted Tally, who managed to highlight all the important aspects of the novel, creating a balanced story. The movie starred Jodie Foster (Clarice Starling), Glenn Scott (Jack Crawford), Anthony Heald (Dr, Frederick Chilton), Ted Levine (Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill) and Anthony Hopkins (Hannibal Lecter),

Interesting Fact: Anthony Hopkins on screen performance of Hannibal Lecter, consisting of only sixteen minutes earned him an Oscar for Best Actor in 1992.

Entree

This course is a hearty and meaty dish of Hannibal Lecter, served with delicate red sauce.

Hannibal: Thomas Harris, 1999

Would Harris write another Lecter novel? As we eagerly waited to see – making us wait 10 long years, Harris' reward was Hannibal; a story centred around Dr. Hannibal Lecter. I think many people weren't prepared for the monster to be uncaged. It was bloodier and gorier than the previous two films and quite sadistic. Manhunter and The Silence of the Lambs were considered psychological thrillers with a dollop of horror. Hannibal was a full on horror novel with a dollop of psychological thriller. Dr. Hannibal Lecter was free of his cage, just in-time for the new millennium and some readers were not happy.

When the novel, Hannibal, was released, many critics and readers were appalled by the goriness of it (we are talking about a man who kills people and eats them). I guess once the layers of the onion were peeled away; culture, music, art, culinary skills, courteousness – they were horrified by the monster at the centre – that was the point. Serial killers show society a veneer of acceptable personality traits; they keep the monster hidden away, until he breaks through and comes out to play. In that sense, the novel Hannibal, is spot on. He's your neighbour, your friend, your husband, your father, your brother and sometimes your son (The majority of serial killers are male, sorry guys). He wears a symbolic mask in public, to prevent you from guessing how sick and perverted he truly is.

Harris' novel, Hannibal, was the perfect GOTCHA moment! Harris had led us into a false sense of security; either intentionally or unintentionally, with Lecter's intro in Red Dragon; sure he tells Francis Dolarhyde to kill Graham's family – In The Silence of the Lamb; Lecter is so helpful trying to advance Clarice Starling's career; sure he kills several people while escaping from custody; we'll just chalk that up to acceptable carnage.

We start to rationalize that Lecter can't be all bad; he must have some redeeming qualities: he's a man of sophisticated tastes; he's knowledgeable; an incredible chef; a great musician and artist. We don't even mind knowing that he dined on Dr. Chilton, upon his escape; possibly thinking Chilton had it coming.

Harris let us peek briefly behind the curtain in Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs and perhaps Harris was dismayed to learn that upon the popularity of Hopkins portrayal of Hannibal Lecter; he'd become a pop culture icon and somewhat of a hero. Hannibal shattered that illusion.

We find Clarice Starling, 10 years later, working as an FBI Special Agent, in a stagnate career. She can't advance; being blocked by Paul Krendler.

Hannibal has been living in Florence as the curator of the Palazzo Capponi as Dr. Norman Fell (the real Dr. Fell disappeared under mysterious circumstances). Florence, Italy, the ideal spot for Lecter, a true Renaissance man. We discover there has been a string of murders by the fiend, know as Il Mostro.

Meanwhile, Mason Verger, Lecter's 4th victim, is on the hunt for Dr. Lecter, who left Mason disfigured, although technically by Mason's own hand. Verger has offered a $3,000,000 reward for information leading to the capture of Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Interesting Fact: Thomas Harris attended the trial of The Monster of Florence, Pietro Pacciani, in 1994, incorporating some of the aspects of the crimes into his Hannibal novel and hinting that Hannibal himself was Il Mostro (The Monster of Florence).

Hannibal: Directed by Ridley Scott, 2001

If some readers were unhappy with the novel, there were those unhappy about the production of a movie in the same vain. Ted Tally didn't want to write the screenplay, Foster didn't want to reprise her role as Starling and Demme wasn't interested in directing. The consensus was it was too graphic and gory and they wanted no part of it; a complete turnaround; they initially were chomping at the bit to be involved in the follow-up to The Silence of the Lambs.

Interesting Fact: Dino De Laurentiis was under the impression that given a good story even he could play Clarice Starling.

The extra dinner course you never needed; you were already full.

Hannibal Rising: Thomas Harris, 2006

From all accounts that I've read, Harris was gently coerced into writing Hannibal Rising. Dino De Laurentiis wanted an origin story to turn into a film and he'd do it with or without Harris. Harris eventually caved and produced the fourth Lecter novel, Hannibal Rising.

Harris uses the hardships of WWII as the starting backdrop for the development of young Lecter's transformation into “Hannibal the Cannibal”. This is perhaps a story that never needed to be told. We were given glimpses in the novel Hannibal that never made it into the movie and perhaps that was a mistake; not seeing the humanity in Hannibal before events unfolded to create a monster and he is a monster, however refined his tastes are. It would have made a good contrast to the harshness of Lecter's grotesque and sadistic actions in Hannibal; that's where a good screenplay, might have made a difference. Francis Dolarhyde, Jame Gumb and Hannibal Lecter weren't born evil, they were shaped and moulded by their harsh experiences as young, innocent, impressionable children. Monsters aren't born, they are made – the moral of the stories. The difference being Hannibal always took responsibility for his actions, never placing the blame at someone else’s feet.

Hannibal Rising: Directed by Peter Webber, 2007

This time Harris would be involved, writing the screenplay for the Hannibal Rising movie. While I enjoyed Gaspard Ulliel as a young Hannibal, I felt that the story was unnecessary.

And just when you thought that was all and Hannibal Lecter's story had been narrated from beginning to end; Lecter was resurrected in 2013 for Bryan Fuller's TV Series, titled Hannibal, for three seasons on NBC.

Dessert

A delicate balance of psychiatry, culinary skills, food porn, relationships, sex, beauty, horror

and murder tableaus, like the layers of a sinful Double Chocolate Torte.

Hannibal TV Series: Developed by Bryan Fuller, 2013-2015

I know what you're going to say; there's no way I'm watching a Hannibal TV show without Hopkins on NBC! Whether your a Cox fan or a Hopkins fan; they both played the part in their own style and both performances are top notch. Hopkins had a little more to sink his teeth into with The Silence of the Lambs; as the screen time was slightly longer than in Manhunter.

I was stubborn too! I didn't watch Hannibal during the originally airing for season one or two. I remember catching a glimpse of an episode as I was on my way out to photograph a band; I was a live music photographer for around three years, so many of my Friday nights were spent in Toronto. It was the episode with the horse and the coffin-birth, which ultimately left an impression. So in January 2015 I binge watched season one and two (26 episodes) in only two days; I couldn't stop watching!

There's been a string of missing girls attributed to one person, known as “The Minnesota Shrike” and the FBI are struggling for leads. Upon the eighth girls disappearance, Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) walks into Will Graham's (Hugh Dancy) classroom to request his help. Graham has the unique ability to empathize with narcissits and sociopaths and as he states, it has less to do with a personality disorder and more to do with an active imagination. Dr. Bloom expresses her concerns to Jack Crawford about using Will Graham for his special gifts and recommends keeping an eye on him; suggesting a colleague of hers, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Bryan Fuller's adaption uses Red Dragon as the main source material, with additional material from Hannibal and Hannibal Rising; expanding characters stories and switching some genders to give it a less male dominated cast. Characters like Margot Verger, who were left out of the Hannibal movie are slotted back in to give the Mason Verger story more substance. Cordell, Verger's valet and cook, is far cheekier in the TV series. Dr. Alan Bloom is transformed into Dr. Alana Bloom and Freddy Lounds, once played by the amazing Philip Seymour Hoffman becomes Freddie Lounds played by Lara Jean Chorostecki, who plays her less sleazy and yet still despicable.

Interesting Fact: Bryan Fuller incorporated some of the forward written by Harris in Red Dragon about his experience writing the novel.

Whipped Fresh Creme & a Cherry On-top!

Hannibal Fan Fiction

Season 3 of Hannibal ends on a cliff hanger and unfortunately NBC cancelled the show without a resolution. Not to worry, there is a buffet of Hannibal Fan Fiction out there for you to sink your teeth into. Hannibal fan fiction spans the spectrum of General Audience to NC-17 to pornographic; there is something to suit everyone's taste. If you don't find anything pleasing; you can always write your own fan fiction!

Interesting Fact: Some of the cast members have read Hannibal fan fiction.

Hannibal Fan Art

The amazing thing about the Hannibal fandom, whether you're old school or new school; there is incredible artwork to explore created by incredibly talented artists.

Interesting Fact: Bryan Fuller and the De Laurentiis Company are not dicks about copyright infringement, when it comes to fan art and fan fiction.

Hannibal Conventions

Red Dragon Con by Starfury: An all Hannibal Con in London, England.

Fannibal Fest: An all Hannibal Con with location tours in Toronto, Canada.

Sofa-Con by Fannibal Fest: Due to the lock-down situation around the world because of Covid-19 all conventions were cancelled in 2020. Fannibal Fest set of some Zoom meetings with guests that starred or worked on Hannibal.

There are several Hannibal fandom groups all over different parts of the world; who meat-up to dine and discuss their favourite topic, Hannibal. I am part of a GTA Fannibal group that centres around Toronto, Canada and we’ve met several times.

So, as we finish our dining experience with Dr. Hannibal Lecter; we'll eagerly anticipate another invitation to Lecter's dinner table, as a guest or if you're unspeakably rude, perhaps you'll be the main course; either way I'll meet or eat you there!

Shannon L. Christie

aka Hannibal_Obsessed

[interestarticles]

Best Movies Of The Year 1980 - Top 20 Films Of 1980

What Are The Best Movies Of The Year 1980?

From New York to Los Angeles this is a question that will get a different answer from every person you ask. There were some great films in the 1980s, and 1980 started the decade off with a bang as a year full of innovation in every way throughout all of society, and it was the start of some exciting new techniques, technologies, and ideas in the film industry in particular with many movies from the year 1980 introducing revolutionary and pioneering cinematic visions. Many people think that some of the best 80s movies of the decade came out in 1980. In this article post, we will go through our top picks for the 20 best movies of 1980, you might be surprised to find out which movies made it on the list! 1) Kramer vs. Kramer In 1980, "Kramer vs. Kramer" was released and became a huge success at the box office. The movie starred Meryl Streep as Joanna Kramer, Dustin Hoffman as Ted Kramer, Jane Alexander as Marylin Jaffe-Jenson, and Justin Henry as Billy Kramer. This film won five Academy Awards in 1981 including Best Picture of 1979 or 1980. It also received nominations for best director (Robert Benton), best actor (Dustin Hoffman), and best-adapted screenplay based on another work (Erica Mann). It is now considered one of the most significant Hollywood films ever made about divorce because it provides nuance to both sides of an argument. 2) The Shining This iconic horror classic film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall was released in 1980. It is based on Stephen King's 1977 novel of the same name. The film has been ranked a number of times as one of the best horror movies ever made and is now considered to be one of Kubrick's best films. It was nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Actor in Leading Role--Jack Nicholson) and won none at the time. The Shining also received nominations for Best Director - Stanley Kubrick), Best Adapted Screenplay--Steven Spielberg/Stanley Kubrick). Its reputation grew over time, eventually earning an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. 3) Being There Hal Ashby himself had been nominated for an Academy Award in 1971 with directing The Last Detail. It is a film that could be classified as both comedy and drama, but the emphasis on this 1980 release lies more on its comedic aspects. While it was not one of the most acclaimed films when it came out, many now consider Being There to be a classic film about society's relationship with television at the time. It offers commentary on economic inequality and how people are often reduced to simple archetypes who can easily fit into neat narratives for consumption purposes. 4) Time Bandits Time Bandits, a 1980 British fantasy film about adventure, was co-written by Terry Gilliam. It stars Sean Connery and John Cleese as well as Shelley Duvall and Ralph Richardson. Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm. Peter Vaughan and David Warner are also featured. It is a whimsical kids' movie with the fantasy adventure of time travel that has been ranked as one of the best movies ever made by many critics. Gilliam has referred to time bandits as first in his "Trilogy of Imagination", which includes Brazil (1985), and then The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (88). They all revolve around the "craziness and incoherence of our society, and the desire for escape through every means. These films all focus on the struggles and attempts to escape through imagination. Brazil is seen through the eyes of a young man, Time Bandits through a child's eyes, and Munchausen through an old man's eyes. Time Bandits, in particular, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. 5) Pennies from Heaven Quite a departure from his previous work, this film is much more lighthearted and comedic than the serious dramas of The Miracle Worker or Bonnie and Clyde. The plot revolves around Arthur Parker (Steve Martin), whose life becomes increasingly chaotic as he tries to juggle two jobs, an impending child custody battle for his daughter, and a demanding girlfriend who wants him to give up one job so that they can have some time together. 6) Airplane! This Leslie Nielsen instant comedy classic was one of the highest-grossing movies of 1980. The movie is about an airplane crew that must find a way to land their plane after food poisoning breaks out on board and the pilots become incapacitated, with only two inexperienced passengers who happen to be a doctor (Robert Hays) and a flight attendant (Julie Hagerty) qualified to land the plane. Airplane! was one of the most successful films at theaters in 1980 It had more than $83 million worth of ticket sales by year's end - it became one of Leslie Nielsen's most popular roles ever The film also helped launch Robert Hays' career as a leading man, though he later found greater success playing comedic supporting characters before retiring from acting. 7) The Empire Strikes Back One of the most famous of the 1980s movies, The Empire Strikes Back is remembered for its numerous plot twists and turns as well as introducing fan-favorite Yoda The film features Mark Hamill reprising his role as Luke Skywalker in this second installment of George Lucas' Star Wars series and it was the first star wars to be released on VHS. Featuring a mixture of live-action footage with high-quality animation from Japanese company Toho, it became one of the best critically acclaimed movies ever. In 1997, it won an American Film Institute award for being among the top 100 films since 1941. 8) Raging Bull 1980 was a strong year for movies, and Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull is one of the most acclaimed action films to be released that year. It stars Robert De Niro in an Academy Award-winning performance as new york boxer Jake La Motta, who has a turbulent affair with Kim Basinger's Vickie. The film depicts how new york boxing served as both his escape from domestic abuse but also led him on a self-destruction path. In addition to being nominated for ten Oscars (including best picture), it won two including best actor for Robert de Niro and best director awards respectively. Released by United Artists, the movie has ranked among the top 100 American Films ever made according to AFI rankings. This release is considered one of the best films of the 80s by many critics. 9) Kagemusha One of the most interesting and well-made movies that 1980 has to offer, Kagemusha tells the story of a warlord who is critically injured and after being buried alive. The movie was directed by Akira Kurosawa and stars Tatsuya Nakadai in one of his best performances ever as both warrior leader Katsuyori Shibata and an imposter named Shingen Yashida. Released in Japan on April 20th, 1980, it became the second-highest-grossing film at the Japanese box office just behind The Return of Godzilla (1984). Kagemusha made its international debut at Cannes Film Festival's Directors Fortnight where it won two major awards: Special Jury Prize for Best Direction and Grand Prix du Festival International du Film - Art. 10) The Gods Must Be Crazy Part comedy, part drama, The Gods Must Be Crazy is a timeless classic. Released in 1980, the film follows Xi (N!xau), an out-of-touch bushman who lives happily with his family until he encounters Coca Cola for the first time and it changes their world forever. The premise of this movie makes us laugh because we can relate to how much more comfortable life was before modern society became so intricate that things like Coke began infiltrating every aspect of our lives. We're drawn into Xi's story as he goes from living peacefully with his tribe to being thrust into a completely different reality when they start hunting down any remaining cases of coca-cola at stores all over town! It also touches on some deeper themes such as the cultural modern world where his customs and rituals mean nothing. Xi's journey is our own as we watch the culture clash of modern society, with all its good intentions and never-ending thirst for new things to consume, come into contact with a simpler time that has long since passed by. The humorous film release was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film but lost out to Italy’s Cinema Paradiso (1988). 11) Caddyshack Released in 1980 this classic comedy film by Harold Ramis is widely considered one of the funniest movies ever made by fans and critics alike. It features an amazing comedic all-star ensemble cast, including Chevy Chase as a rich playboy who turns caddie in order to get girls; Ted Knight as Judge Smails, who wants to keep his country club memberships exclusive and prestigious; Rodney Dangerfield as Ty Webb, a millionaire golfer-cum-caddy who has been banned from all other golf courses for being too good. Also featuring Bill Murray as Carl Spackler, the groundskeeper at Bushwood Country Club whose only goal seems to be killing off gophers with any weapon he can devise (including explosives); Michael O'Keefe as Danny Noonan, a young man hired by Judge Smails's daughter (Castle) to caddy for him; and Brian Doyle-Murray as Lou Loomis, the club's ultra-snobby head professional. 12) The Blues Brothers Another instant classic 1980 movie, The Blues Brothers are best known for its 1980 car chases. Starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as Joliet Jake & Elwood Blues respectively, the two brothers who perform a blues show before being arrested by police. They break out of jail with their friends to save an orphanage from foreclosure through satanic cult leader sheik Abdul Khadaffi's "Elvis-Is-King" rally in Chicago Illinois on Mothers Day 1980 at noon. The film has been praised by audiences and critics alike for its music, screenplay, and performances but criticized for its lack of character development (most likely due to budget constraints). This was even acknowledged during production when director John Landis told cast members not to act too much because "no one is going to see this movie." The 1980 car chases are iconic and highly regarded by film critics. One of the most memorable moments in 1980 was when Elwood Blues while driving his 1980 Chevy Malibu, spots a cat on the front fender as he's being chased by police officers from Illinois State Troopers who try to arrest him for not wearing seat belts (the law at that time). The chase ends with Jake & Elwood crashing into an old man sitting atop a 1980 Chevy Monte Carlo. After striking them, the cops then swerve quickly around their fallen comrade before continuing after our heroes. 13) 9 To 5 9 to 5 (listed in the opening credits as Nine to Five) is a 1980 American comedy film directed by Colin Higgins, who wrote the screenplay with Patricia Resnick. It stars Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton as three working women who live out their fantasies of getting even with and overthrowing the company's autocratic, "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" boss, played by Dabney Coleman. The film grossed over $103.9 million and is the 20th-highest-grossing comedy film. As a star vehicle for Parton—already established as a successful singer, musician, and songwriter—it launched her permanently into mainstream popular culture. A television series of the same name based on the film ran for five seasons, and a musical version of the film (also titled 9 to 5), with new songs written by Parton, opened on Broadway on April 30, 2009. 9 to 5 is number 74 on the American Film Institute's "100 Funniest Movies" and has an 83% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. 14) Smokey And The Bandit 2 Smokey and the Bandit 2 Is a 1980 American action comedy film directed by Hal Needham, starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jerry Reed, Jackie Gleason, And Dom DeLuise. This film is a sequel to 1977's film Smokey and the Bandit. The original release of the film was in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Bo "Bandit", Darville (Burt Reynolds), and Cledus "Snowman," Snow (Jerry Reed) transport an elephant to the GOP National Convention. Sheriff Buford T. Justice, Jackie Gleason (Jackie Gleason), is once more in hot pursuit. 15) Superman 2 Superman II, a 1980 superhero movie directed by Richard Lester, is written by Mario Puzo, David, and Leslie Newman and is based on a story by Puzo about the DC Comics character Superman. It features Gene Hackman and Terence Stamp, Terence Stamp, Ned Beatty, and Sarah Douglas. The film was first released in Australia and Europe on December 4, 1980. It was also released in other countries during 1981. Megasound is a high-impact surround sound system that's similar to Sensurround and was used for select premiere Superman II engagements. The Salkinds decided in 1977 that they would simultaneously film Superman and its sequel. Principal photography began in March 1977 and ended in October 1978. There were tensions between Richard Donner, the original director, and the producers. It was decided to stop filming the sequel (of which 75 percent was already completed) and instead finish the first film. After the December 1978 release of Superman, Donner was fired from his post as director and was replaced by Lester. Many cast members and crew members declined to return following Donner's firing. Lester was officially acknowledged as the director. Principal photography resumed in September 1979 and ended in March 1980. Film critics gave the film positive reviews, praising the performances of Reeve, Stamp, and Hackman as well as the visual effects and humor. The film grossed $190million against a $54 million production budget. 16) Friday The 13th Friday the 13th, 1980 American slasher movie, is directed and produced by Sean S. Cunningham. Written by Victor Miller, it stars Betsy Palmer and Adrienne King. The plot centers on a group of teenager camp counselors, who are each murdered by an unknown killer as they attempt to reopen an abandoned summer camp. Cunningham, inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) success, put out an advertisement in Variety to sell the film. Miller was still writing the screenplay. Filming began in New York City after casting the film. It was shot in New Jersey during summer 1979 on an estimated budget of $550,000. The finished film was the subject of a bidding war. Paramount Pictures won domestic distribution rights while Warner Bros. Pictures took European rights. Friday the 13th, which was released on May 9, 1980, was a huge box office hit, earning $59.8 million globally. The film received mixed reviews, some praised its cinematography, score, and performances while others criticized it for depicting graphic violence. It was the first independent film of its type to be distributed in the U.S. by major studios. The film's box office success led it to many sequels, a crossover film with A Nightmare on Elm Street, and a reboot of the series in 2009. 17) Flash Gordon Flash Gordon is a 1980 space opera film directed and produced by Mike Hodges. It was based on Alex Raymond's King Features comic strip. The film stars Sam J. Jones and Melody Anderson as well as Max von Sydow, Max von Sydow, Max von Sydow, and Topol. Topol is supported by Timothy Dalton and Mariangela Melato. Peter Wyngarde plays the role of Peter Wyngarde. The film features Flash Gordon (Jones), a star quarterback, and his friends Dale Arden and Hans Zarkov (Topol), as they unify the warring factions on the planet Mongo to resist the oppression by Ming the Merciless (von Sydow), a man who wants to destroy Earth. Producer Dino De Laurentiis had been involved in two comic book adaptations: Danger: Diabolik and Barbarella (both 1968). He had also previously worked on Danger. De Laurentiis declined a George Lucas directorial offer, a Star Wars version directed by Federico Fellini was also rejected. De Laurentiis hired Nicolas Roeg as director and Enter the Dragon writer Michael Allin as the lead developer on the film. They were replaced in 1977 by Lorenzo Semple Jr. and Hodges, who had written De Laurentiis’ remake of King Kong, this was due to Roeg's dissatisfaction. Flash Gordon was mostly shot in England, with several soundstages at Elstree Studios and Shepperton Studios. It uses a camp style that is similar to the 1960s TV series Batman, which Semple created. Jones quit the film before principal photography was overdue to a dispute between De Laurentiis and Jones. Much of Jones's dialogue was dubbed by Peter Marinker. The documentary Life After Flash examines the main subjects of Jones' departure and his career after it was released. It is known for its Queen-inspired musical score, which features orchestral sections by Howard Blake. Flash Gordon was a box-office success in Italy and the United Kingdom, but it did poorly in other markets. The film received generally positive reviews upon its initial release and has since developed a large cult following. There have been many attempts at sequels or reboots, but none of them have ever made it to production. 18) Cheech & Chong's Next Movie Cheech and Chong's Next Movie, a 1980 comedy film by Tommy Chong, is the second feature-length Cheech & Chong project, after Up in Smoke. It was released by Universal Pictures. Cheech and Chong go on a mission: siphon gasoline to their neighbor's car. They then continue their day. Cheech works at a movie theater, while Chong looks for something to smoke (a roach). Then Chong revs up his indoor motorcycle and plays loud rock music that disrupts the neighborhood. Cheech is fired and the couple goes to Donna, Cheech's girlfriend, and welfare officer. Cheech seduces Donna over her objections and gets her in trouble with her boss. 19) Coal Miner's Daughter Coal Miner's Daughter, a 1980 American musical biographical film, was directed by Michael Apted and based on a screenplay by Tom Rickman. The film follows Loretta Lynn's rise to stardom as a country singer, starting in her teen years with a poor family. The film is based on Lynn's 1976 biography by George Vecsey. Read the full article

[world-of-ryan]

When COVID-19 shut down production last March, it especially hit hard for NBC’s New Amsterdam. The show not only films at several real-life hospitals, including Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn and Metropolitan Hospital in Harlem, but it also had a pandemic storyline planned. Of course, not the coronavirus specifically.

“There was so much fear and anxiety at that time around the pandemic, we didn’t want to air an episode where people were getting sick left and right and further scare people,” says series star Ryan Eggold, who plays medical director Dr. Max Goodwin, in this exclusive interview.

But New Amsterdam will touch on the COVID-19 pandemic in its Season 3 premiere. It will feature a very powerful montage showing the doctors and nurses at work trying to save lives, working until they are exhausted, showing people getting vaccinated, and then moving into post-pandemic stories.

“Working on a hospital show, post-pandemic, our first responsibility is to tell the stories of the nurses and doctors who have worked so tirelessly to try to keep people safe and healthy,” Eggold continues. “Peter Horton directed that episode. And I think his and [executive producer] David [Schulner]’s intention was to honor the healthcare workers and what they’ve been through and start in that place of, this has been Ground Zero of fighting the pandemic, and it has taken its toll on everybody.”

From there, the story continues with Dr. Vijay Kapour’s (Anupam Kher) life hanging in the balance due to COVID, Dr. Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) unable to touch people as a result of lingering anxieties, Dr. Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) facing his eating disorder/body issues and Dr. Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery) unable to give up her patients to their special-care physicians.

“It’s kind of like that wartime mentality with soldiers coming back and having trouble adjusting to civilian life,” Eggold says. “These doctors were so overwhelmed with patients, not enough beds and trying to keep up. What are the ramifications on their personal life and their psyche? And how do they get back to the new normal?”

Also, viewers will get a long-awaited moment between Max and Helen. Expect some resolution regarding their feelings for each other, despite the fact that Helen has moved on with new head trauma surgeon Dr. Cassian Shin (Daniel Dae Kim).

“I will say that I think Max and Helen have a unique relationship that they are forced to confront this season and figure out what it means for better or for worse, and finally name what has been unspoken for a while,” Eggold adds.

For more scoop on season 3 of New Amsterdam, read more of the interview with Eggold.

How did the New Amsterdam pandemic episode compare to what actually happened?

I haven’t seen that episode because it didn’t air, which is usually how I see them, so I would be curious to know myself. It’s pretty wild. It’s happened to the writers a few times where they’ve written something and then it happens later. But nobody could have predicted COVID was going to happen.

I saw the first two episodes and it feels like a sadder show this year. Will that continue?

No. There’s a lot of humor. I was saying to David, “Is Max getting too broad?” There has been a lot of humor on the show lately, which is nice. I think it’s important to find humor and joy amid a pandemic because we have to remind ourselves what we’re fighting for. The intention is not to make it super heavy and sad, but certainly in the beginning to discuss it; it is a heavy, overwhelming, larger-than-life situation that we’ve all been through.

Max also seems to have lost his “How can I help?” attitude–which is what inspired him to take the job and kept him going when he lost his wife. Will he get that back?

Yeah. I think it’s evolved from how can I help, or how can I fix the system and make it better, to how do we begin again? And how do we build from the ground up because we weren’t prepared for this and it changed a lot of things. I think his perspective has widened in a good way and he will see things differently this season.

What will be the new challenges for Max this season?

One thing is he’s a single dad who is trying to get his hospital through this pandemic. And he has left his daughter Luna with [late wife] Georgia’s parents in an effort to protect her and keep her safe as he is going to the hospital every day. But I think there’s a lot of guilt like, “Am I doing the right thing? Am I being a bad father by not being there? Am I neglecting her?” So, that’s something that he wrestles with.

Then the question of romance. Is there a partner for him to find and is he ready to start a relationship with someone after losing his wife? In the back of his mind, I think it’s something he wants, not only for himself but for his daughter.

(Photo by: Virginia Sherwood/NBC)

There’s a moment where Max realizes that some of his great, crazy ideas aren’t always the right way to do things. Is he growing?

Absolutely. He’s a character who’s full of ambition to change things and to make things better. And he’s very headstrong and optimistic. He’s certainly overly idealistic about how to make those changes happen. The show is about finding out the reality of how that change happens. You have these lofty ideas of, “I want to make everything better, I want to do X, Y and Z,” and you can’t do that overnight, so what does it look like on a daily basis? How does change occur on a systemic level, which is certainly bigger than the individual?

To your point about admitting fault, I think he’s learning that he can’t do this on his own and he can’t change the world overnight and that you need other people. You can’t be a one-man band, so I think he’s going through a lot of change and evolving a lot.

What was it like filming in the hospital in March 2020?

Our last day of filming we were at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, and it was weird. People were starting to get nervous, “Should we be filming in a hospital?” We didn’t know a lot about it. Is this real? Is this really growing the way people say it’s going to grow? And very quickly, the world changed overnight.

It’s the right decision not to film in the hospital right now, not for our show, but to get out of the way of the hospitals and to let them function to the best of their capacity when there are so many serious things that need to be addressed. And, then for the show, to keep everybody safe, of course. But I hope we can get back to that once this pandemic is behind us because there’s always this wonderful authenticity to be found when we can shoot in those places because you are near the reality of healthcare so it helps you reflect that story.

Did it take New Amsterdam longer to come back because you had to change your filming locations?

We had to build a lot of sets. We had to build a lot of the hospital locations that we use, and we had to add more sets and locations we could film in. Then everybody was just making sure it was safe and making sure we had the practices and protocols in place to do our job, be safe and not put anybody at risk. To everyone’s credit, it feels really safe. We’re tested every day and we have a lot of protocols in place that keep the set running efficiently and safely. It’s a good place to be.

How did you handle the pandemic?

I look back and that was so much time that we had. I feel like I should have written a novel, climbed a mountain, or something. But, no, I slowly went crazy and did all the usual, like slept. I did do a fair amount of writing. I wrote a screenplay, trying to put my brain to work a little bit. I was in denial like, “This will only last a month of weird whatever.” Then a month goes by and you’re like, “I guess it’s still going.” Seven months go by and it was crazy. It was nice to slow down and catch up with family and unplug for a minute. I wish it had been under better circumstances and people’s lives weren’t at risk, but, yeah, there were some positives.