#how can they release this officially and still make our boy go through a redemption arc…. redeem WHAT he was TORTURED

[shortnotsweet]

Bakudeku: A Non-Comprehensive Dissection of the Exploitation of Working Bodies, the Murder of Annoying Children, and a Rivals-to-Lovers Complex

I. Bakudeku in Canon, And Why Anti’s Need to Calm the Fuck Down

II. Power is Power: the Brain-Melting Process of Normalization and Toxic Masculinity

III. How to Kill Middle Schoolers, and Why We Should

IV. Parallels in Abuse, EnemiesRivals-to-Lovers, and the Necessity of Redemption ft. ATLA’s Zuko

V. Give it to Me Straight. It’s Homophobic.

VI. Love in Perspective, from the East v. West

VII. Stuck in the Sludge, the Past, and Season One

Disclaimer

It needs to be said that there is definitely a place for disagreement, discourse, debate, and analysis: that is a sign of an active fandom that’s heavily invested, and not inherently a bad thing at all. Considering the amount of source material we do have (from the manga, to the anime, to the movies, to the light novels, to the official art), there are going to be warring interpretations, and that’s inevitable.

I started watching and reading MHA pretty recently, and just got into the fandom. I was weary for a reason, and honestly, based on what I’ve seen, I’m still weary now. I’ve seen a lot of anti posts, and these are basically my thoughts. This entire thing is in no way comprehensive, and it’s my own opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. If I wanted to be thorough about this, I would’ve included manga panels, excerpts from the light novel, shots from the anime, links to other posts/essays/metas that have inspired this, etc. but I’m tired and not about that life right now, so, this is what it is. This is poorly organized, but maybe I’ll return to fix it.

Let’s begin.

Bakudeku in Canon, And Why Anti’s Need to Calm the Fuck Down

There are a lot of different reasons, that can be trivial as you like, to ship or not to ship two (or more) characters. It could be based purely off of character design, proximity, aversion to another ship, or hypotheticals. And I do think that it’s totally valid if someone dislikes the ship or can’t get on board with his character because to them, it does come across as abuse, and the implications make them uncomfortable or, or it just feels unhealthy. If that is your takeaway, and you are going to stick to your guns, the more power to you.

But Bakudeku’s relationship has canonically progressed to the point where it’s not the emotionally (or physically) abusive clusterfuck some people portray it to be, and it’s cheap to assume that it would be, based off of their characterizations as middle schoolers. Izuku intentionally opens the story as a naive little kid who views the lens of the Hero society through rose colored glasses and arguably wants nothing more than assimilation into that society; Bakugou is a privileged little snot who embodies the worst and most hypocritical beliefs of this system. Both of them are intentionally proven wrong. Both are brainwashed, as many little children are, by the propaganda and societal norms that they are exposed to. Both of their arcs include unlearning crucial aspects of the Hero ideology in order to become true heroes.

I will personally never simp for Bakugou because for the longest time, I couldn't help but think of him as a little kid on the playground screaming at the top of his lungs because someone else is on the swingset. He’s red in the face, there are probably veins popping out of his neck, he’s losing it. It’s easy to see why people would prefer Tododeku to Bakudeku.

Even now, seeing him differently, I still personally wouldn’t date Bakugou, especially if I had other options. Why? I probably wouldn’t want to date any of the guys who bullied me, especially because I think that schoolyard bullying, even in middle school, affected me largely in a negative way and created a lot of complexes I’m still trying to work through. I haven’t built a better relationship with them, and I’m not obligated to. Still, I associate them with the kind of soft trauma that they inflicted upon me, and while to them it was probably impersonal, to me, it was an intimate sort of attack that still affects me. That being said, that is me. Those are my personal experiences, and while they could undoubtedly influence how I interpret relationships, I do not want to project and hinder my own interpretation of Deku.

The reality is that Deku himself has an innate understanding of Bakugou that no one else does; I mention later that he seems to understand his language, implicitly, and I do stand by that. He understands what it is he’s actually trying to say, often why he’s saying it, and while others may see him as wimpy or unable to stand up for himself, that’s simply not true. Part of Deku’s characterization is that he is uncommonly observant and empathetic; I’m not denying that Bakugou caused harm or inflicted damage, but infantilizing Deku and preaching about trauma that’s not backed by canon and then assuming random people online excuse abuse is just...the leap of leaps, and an actual toxic thing to do. I’ve read fan works where Bakugou is a bully, and that’s all, and has caused an intimate degree of emotional, mental, and physical insecurity from their middle school years that prevents their relationship from changing, and that’s for the better. I’m not going to argue and say that it’s not an interesting take, or not valid, or has no basis, because it does. Its basis is the character that Bakugou was in middle school, and the person he was when he entered UA.

Not only is Bakugou — the current Bakugou, the one who has accumulated memories and experiences and development — not the same person he was at the beginning of the story, but Deku is not the same person, either. Maybe who they are fundamentally, at their core, stays the same, but at the beginning and end of any story, or even their arcs within the story, the point is that characters will undergo change, and that the reader will gain perspective.

“You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you. If you think you’ll have a quirk in your next life...go take a swan dive off the roof!”

Yes. That is a horrible thing to tell someone, even if you are a child, even if you don’t understand the implications, even if you don’t mean what it is you are saying. Had someone told me that in middle school, especially given our history and the context of our interactions, I don’t know if I would ever have forgiven them.

Here’s the thing: I’m not Deku. Neither is anyone reading this. Deku is a fictional character, and everyone we know about him is extrapolated from source material, and his response to this event follows:

“Idiot! If I really jumped, you’d be charged with bullying me into suicide! Think before you speak!”

I think it’s unfair to apply our own projections as a universal rather than an interpersonal interpretation; that’s not to say that the interpretation of Bakudeku being abusive or having unbalanced power dynamics isn’t valid, or unfounded, but rather it’s not a universal interpretation, and it’s not canon. Deku is much more of a verbal thinker; in comparison, Bakugou is a visual one, at least in the format of the manga, and as such, we get various panels demonstrating his guilt, and how deep it runs. His dialogue and rapport with Deku has undeniably shifted, and it’s very clear that the way they treat each other has changed from when they were younger. Part of Bakugou’s growth is him gaining self awareness, and eventually, the strength to wield that. He knows what a fucked up little kid he was, and he carries the weight of that.

“At that moment, there were no thoughts in my head. My body just moved on its own.”

There’s a part of me that really, really disliked Bakugou going into it, partially because of what I’d seen and what I’d heard from a limited, outside perspective. I felt like Bakugou embodied the toxic masculinity (and to an extent, I still believe that) and if he won in some way, that felt like the patriarchy winning, so I couldn't help but want to muzzle and leash him before releasing him into the wild.

The reality, however, of his character in canon is that it isn’t very accurate to assume that he would be an abusive partner in the future, or that Midoryia has not forgiven him to some extent already, that the two do not care about each other or are singularly important, that they respect each other, or that the narrative has forgotten any of this.

Don’t mistake me for a Bakugou simp or apologist. I’m not, but while I definitely could also see Tododeku (and I have a soft spot for them, too, their dynamic is totally different and unique, and Todoroki is arguably treated as the tritagonist) and I’m ambivalent about Izuocha (which is written as cannoncially romantic) I do believe that canonically, Bakugou and Deku are framed as soulmates/character foils, Sasuke + Naruto, Kageyama + Hinata style. Their relationship is arguably the focus of the series. That’s not to undermine the importance or impact of Deku’s relationships with other characters, and theirs with him, but in terms of which one takes priority, and which one this all hinges on?

The manga is about a lot of things, yes, but if it were to be distilled into one relationship, buckle up, because it’s the Bakudeku show.

Power is Power: the Brain-Melting Process of Normalization and Toxic Masculinity

One of the ways in which the biopolitical prioritization of Quirks is exemplified within Hero society is through Quirk marriages. Endeavor partially rationalizes the abuse of his family through the creation of a child with the perfect quirk, a child who can be molded into the perfect Hero. People with powerful, or useful abilities, are ranked high on the hierarchy of power and privilege, and with a powerful ability, the more opportunities and avenues for success are available to them.

For the most part, Bakugou is a super spoiled, privileged little rich kid who is born talented but is enabled for his aggressive behavior and, as a child, cannot move past his many internalized complexes, treats his peers like shit, and gets away with it because the hero society he lives in either has this “boys will be boys” mentality, or it’s an example of the way that power, or Power, is systematically prioritized in this society. The hero system enables and fosters abusers, people who want power and publicity, and people who are genetically predisposed to have advantages over others. There are plenty of good people who believe in and participate in this system, who want to be good, and who do good, but that doesn’t change the way that the hero society is structured, the ethical ambiguity of the Hero Commission, and the way that Heroes are but pawns, idols with machine guns, used to sell merch to the public, to install faith in the government, or the current status quo, and reinforce capitalist propaganda. Even All Might, the epitome of everything a Hero should be, is drained over the years, and exists as a concept or idea, when in reality he is a hollow shell with an entire person inside, struggling to survive. Hero society is functionally dependent on illusion.

In Marxist terms: There is no truth, there is only power.

Although Bakugou does change, and I think that while he regrets his actions, what is long overdue is him verbally expressing his remorse, both to himself and Deku. One might argue that he’s tried to do it in ways that are compatible with his limited emotional range of expression, and Deku seems to understand this language implicitly.

I am of the opinion that the narrative is building up to a verbal acknowledgement, confrontation, and subsequent apology that only speaks what has gone unspoken.

That being said, Bakugou is a great example of the way that figures of authority (parents, teachers, adults) and institutions both in the real world and this fictional universe reward violent behavior while also leaving mental and emotional health — both his own and of the people Bakugou hurts — unchecked, and part of the way he lashes out at others is because he was never taught otherwise.

And by that, I’m referring to the ways that are to me, genuinely disturbing. For example, yelling at his friends is chill. But telling someone to kill themselves, even casually and without intent and then misinterpreting everything they do as a ploy to make you feel weak because you're projecting? And having no teachers stop and intervene, either because they are afraid of you or because they value the weight that your Quirk can benefit society over the safety of children? That, to me, is both real and disturbing.

Not only that, but his parents (at least, Mitsuki), respond to his outbursts with more outbursts, and while this is likely the culture of their home and I hesitate to call it abusive, I do think that it contributed to the way that he approaches things. Bakugou as a character is very complex, but I think that he is primarily an example of the way that the Hero System fails people.

I don’t think we can write off the things he’s done, especially using the line of reasoning that “He didn’t mean it that way”, because in real life, children who hurt others rarely mean it like that either, but that doesn’t change the effect it has on the people who are victimized, but to be absolutely fair, I don’t think that the majority of Bakudeku shippers, at least now, do use that line of reasoning. Most of them seem to have a handle on exactly how fucked up the Hero society is, and exactly why it fucks up the people embedded within that society.

The characters are positioned in this way for a reason, and the discoveries made and the development that these characters undergo are meant to reveal more about the fictional world — and, perhaps, our world — as the narrative progresses.

The world of the Hero society is dependent, to some degree, on biopolitics. I don’t think we have enough evidence to suggest that people with Quirks or Quirkless people place enough identity or placement within society to become equivalent to marginalized groups, exactly, but we can draw parallels to the way that Deku and by extent Quirkless people are viewed as weak, a deviation, or disabled in some way. Deviants, or non-productive bodies, are shunned for their inability to perform ideal labor. While it is suggested to Deku that he could become a police officer or pursue some other occupation to help people, he believes that he can do the most positive good as a Hero. In order to be a Hero, however, in the sense of a career, one needs to have Power.

Deviation from the norm will be punished or policed unless it is exploitable; in order to become integrated into society, a deviant must undergo a process of normalization and become a working, exploitable body. It is only through gaining power from All Might that Deku is allowed to assimilate from the margins and into the upper ranks of society; the manga and the anime give the reader enough perspective, context, and examples to allow us to critique and deconstruct the society that is solely reliant on power.

Through his societal privileges, interpersonal biases, internalized complexes, and his subsequent unlearning of these ideologies, Bakugou provides examples of the way that the system simultaneously fails and indoctrinates those who are targeted, neglected, enabled by, believe in, and participate within the system.

Bakudeku are two sides of the same coin. We are shown visually that the crucial turning point and fracture in their relationship is when Bakugou refuses to take Deku’s outstretched hand; the idea of Deku offering him help messes with his adolescent perspective in that Power creates a hierarchy that must be obeyed, and to be helped is to be weak is to be made a loser.

Largely, their character flaws in terms of understanding the hero society are defined and entangled within the concept of power. Bakugou has power, or privilege, but does not have the moral character to use it as a hero, and believes that Power, or winning, is the only way in which to view life. Izuku has a much better grasp on the way in which heroes wield power (their ideologies can, at first, be differentiated as winning vs. saving), and is a worthy successor because of this understanding, and of circumstance. However, in order to become a Hero, our hero must first gain the Power that he lacks, and learn to wield it.

As the characters change, they bridge the gaps of their character deficiencies, and are brought closer together through character parallelism.

Two sides of the same coin, an outstretched hand.

They are better together.

How to Kill Middle Schoolers, and Why We Should

I think it’s fitting that in the manga, a critical part of Bakugou’s arc explicitly alludes to killing the middle school version of himself in order to progress into a young adult. In the alternative covers Horikoshi released, one of them was a close up of Bakugou in his middle school uniform, being stabbed/impaled, with blood rolling out of his mouth. Clearly this references the scene in which he sacrifices himself to save Deku, on a near-instinctual level.

To me, this only cements Horikoshi’s intent that middle school Bakugou must be debunked, killed, discarded, or destroyed in order for Bakugou the hero to emerge, which is why people who do actually excuse his actions or believe that those actions define him into young adulthood don’t really understand the necessity for change, because they seem to imply that he doesn’t need/cannot reach further growth, and there doesn’t need to be a separation between the Bakugou who is, at heart, volatile and repressed the angry, and the Bakugou who sacrifices himself, a hero who saves people.

Plot twist: there does need to be a difference. Further plot twist: there is a difference.

In sacrificing himself for Deku, Bakugou himself doesn't die, but the injury is fatal in the sense that it could've killed him physically and yet symbolizes the selfish, childish part of him that refused to accept Deku, himself, and the inevitability of change. In killing those selfish remnants, he could actually become the kind of hero that we the reader understand to be the true kind.

That’s why I think that a lot of the people who stress his actions as a child without acknowledging the ways he has changed, grown, and tried to fix what he has broken don’t really get it, because it was always part of his character arc to change and purposely become something different and better. If the effects of his worst and his most childish self stick with you more, and linger despite that, that’s okay. But distilling his character down to the wrong elements doesn’t get you the bare essentials; what it gets you is a skewed and shallow version of a person. If you’re okay with that version, that is also fine.

But you can’t condemn others who aren’t fine with that incomplete version, and to become enraged that others do not see him as you do is childish.

Bakugou’s change and the emphasis on that change is canon.

Parallels in Abuse, EnemiesRivals-to-Lovers, and the Necessity of Redemption ft. ATLA’s Zuko

In real life, the idea that “oh, he must bully you because he likes you” is often used as a way to brush aside or to excuse the action of bullying itself, as if a ‘secret crush’ somehow negates the effects of bullying on the victim or the inability of the bully to properly process and manifest their emotions in certain ways. It doesn’t. It often enables young boys to hurt others, and provides figures of authority to overlook the real source of schoolyard bullying or peer review. The “secret crush”, in real life, is used to undermine abuse, justify toxic masculinity, and is essentially used as a non-solution solution.

A common accusation is that Bakudeku shippers jump on the pairing because they romanticize pairing a bully and a victim together, or believe that the only way for Bakugou to atone for his past would be to date Midoryia in the future. This may be true for some people, in which case, that’s their own preference, but based on my experience and what I’ve witnessed, that’s not the case for most.

The difference being is that as these are characters, we as readers or viewers are meant to analyze them. Not to justify them, or to excuse their actions, but we are given the advantage of the outsider perspective to piece their characters together in context, understand why they are how they are, and witness them change; maybe I just haven’t been exposed to enough of the fandom, but no one (I’ve witnessed) treats the idea that “maybe Bakugou has feelings he can’t process or understand and so they manifest in aggressive and unchecked ways'' as a solution to his inability to communicate or process in a healthy way, rather it is just part of the explanation of his character, something is needs to — and is — working through. The solution to his middle school self is not the revelation of a “teehee, secret crush”, but self-reflection, remorse, and actively working to better oneself, which I do believe is canonically reflected, especially as of recently.

In canon, they are written to be partners, better together than apart, and I genuinely believe that one can like the Bakudeku dynamic not by route of romanticization but by observation.

I do think we are meant to see parallels between him and Endeavor; Endeavor is a high profile abuser who embodies the flaws and hypocrisy of the hero system. Bakugou is a schoolyard bully who emulates and internalizes the flaws of this system as a child, likely due to the structure of the society and the way that children will absorb the propaganda they are exposed to; the idea that Quirks, or power, define the inherent value of the individual, their ability to contribute to society, and subsequently their fundamental human worth. The difference between them is the fact that Endeavor is the literal adult who is fully and knowingly active within a toxic, corrupt system who forces his family to undergo a terrifying amount of trauma and abuse while facing little to no consequences because he knows that his status and the values of their society will protect him from those consequences. In other words, Endeavor is the threat of what Bakugou could have, and would have, become without intervention or genuine change.

Comparisons between characters, as parallels or foils, are tricky in that they imply but cannot confirm sameness. Having parallels with someone does not make them the same, by the way, but can serve to illustrate contrasts, or warnings. Harry Potter, for example, is meant to have obvious parallels with Tom Riddle, with similar abilities, and tragic upbringings. That doesn’t mean Harry grows up to become Lord Voldemort, but rather he helps lead a cross-generational movement to overthrow the facist regime. Harry is offered love, compassion, and friends, and does not embrace the darkness within or around him. As far as moldy old snake men are concerned, they do not deserve a redemption arc because they do not wish for one, and the truest of change only occurs when you actively try to change.

To be frank, either way, Bakugou was probably going to become a good Hero, in the sense that Endeavor is a ‘good’ Hero. Hero capitalized, as in a pro Hero, in the sense that it is a career, an occupation, and a status. Because of his strong Quirk, determination, skill, and work ethic, Bakugou would have made a good Hero. Due to his lack of character, however, he was not on the path to become a hero; defender of the weak, someone who saves people to save people, who is willing to make sacrifices detrimental to themselves, who saves people out of love.

It is necessary for him to undergo both a redemption arc and a symbolic death and rebirth in order for him to follow the path of a hero, having been inspired and prompted by Deku.

I personally don’t really like Endeavor’s little redemption arc, not because I don’t believe that people can change or that they shouldn't at least try to atone for the atrocities they have committed, but because within any narrative, a good redemption arc is important if it matters; what also matters is the context of that arc, and whether or not it was needed. For example, in ATLA, Zuko’s redemption arc is widely regarded as one of the best arcs in television history, something incredible. And it is. That shit fucks. In a good way.

It was confirmed that Azula was also going to get a redemption arc, had Volume 4 gone on as planned, and it was tentatively approached in the comics, which are considered canon. She is an undeniably bad person (who is willing to kill, threaten, exploit, and colonize), but she is also a child, and as viewers, we witness and recognize the factors that contributed to her (debatable) sociopathy, and the way that the system she was raised in failed her. Her family failed her; even Uncle Iroh, the wise mentor who helps guide Zuko to see the light, is willing to give up on her immediately, saying that she’s “crazy” and needs to be “put down”. Yes, it’s comedic, and yes, it’s pragmatic, but Azula is fourteen years old. Her mother is banished, her father is a psychopath, and her older brother, from her perspective, betrayed and abandoned her. She doesn’t have the emotional support that Zuko does; she exploits and controls her friends because it’s all she’s been taught to do; she says herself, her “own mother thought [she] was a monster; she was right, of course, but it still [hurts]”. A parent who does not believe in you, or a parent that uses you and will hurt you, is a genuine indicator of trauma.

The writers understood that both Zuko and Azula deserved redemption arcs. One was arguably further gone than the other, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are both children, products of their environment, who have the time, motive, and reason to change.

In contrast, you know who wouldn’t have deserved a redemption arc? Ozai. That simply would not have been interesting, wouldn’t have served the narrative well, and honestly, is not needed, thematically or otherwise. Am I comparing Ozai to Endeavor? Basically, yes. Fuck those guys. I don’t see a point in Endeavor’s little “I want to be a good dad now” arc, and I think that we don’t need to sympathize with characters in order to understand them or be interested in them. I want Touya/Dabi to expose his abuse, for his career to crumble, and then for him to die.

If they are not challenging the system that we the viewer are meant to question, and there is no thematic relevance to their redemption, is it even needed?

On that note, am I saying that Bakugou is the equivalent to Zuko? No, lmao. Definitely not. They are different characters with different progressions and different pressures. What I am saying is that good redemption arcs shouldn’t be handed out like candy to babies; it is the quality, rather than the quantity, that makes a redemption arc good. In terms of the commentary of the narrative, who needs a redemption arc, who is deserving, and who does it make sense to give one to?

In this case, Bakugou checks those boxes. It was always in the cards for him to change, and he has. In fact, he’s still changing.

Give it to Me Straight. It’s Homophobic.

There does seem to be an urge to obsessively gender either Bakugou or Deku, in making Deku the ultra-feminine, stereotypically hyper-sexualized “woman” of the relationship, with Bakugou becoming similarly sexualized but depicted as the hyper-masculine bodice ripper. On some level, that feels vaguely homophobic if not straight up misogynistic, in that in a gay relationship there’s an urge to compel them to conform under heteronormative stereotypes in order to be interpreted as real or functional. On one hand, I will say that in a lot of cases it feels like more of an expression of a kink, or fetishization and subsequent expression of internalized misogyny, at least, rather than a genuine exploration of the complexity and power imbalances of gender dynamics, expression, and boundaries.

That being said, I don’t think that that problematic aspect of shipping is unique to Bakudeku, or even to the fandom in general. We’ve all read fan work or see fanart of most gay ships in a similiar manner, and I think it’s a broader issue to be addressed than blaming it on a singular ship and calling it a day.

One interpretation of Bakugou’s character is his repression and the way his character functions under toxic masculinity, in a society’s egregious disregard for mental and emotional health (much like in the real world), the horrifying ways in which rage is rationalized or excused due to the concept of masculinity, and the way that characteristics that are associated with femininity — intellect, empathy, anxiety, kindness, hesitation, softness — are seen as stereotypically “weak”, and in men, traditionally emasculating. In terms of the way that the fictional universe is largely about societal priority and power dynamics between individuals and the way that extends to institutions, it’s not a total stretch to guess that gender as a construct is a relevant topic to expand on or at least keep in mind for comparison.

I think that the way in which characters are gendered and the extent to which that is a result of invasive heteronormativity and fetishization is a really important conversation to have, but using it as a case-by-case evolution of a ship used to condemn people isn’t conductive, and at that point, it’s treated as less of a real concern but an issue narrowly weaponised.

Love in Perspective, from the East v. West

Another thing I think could be elaborated on and written about in great detail is the way that the Eastern part of the fandom and the Western part of the fandom have such different perspectives on Bakudeku in particular. I am not going to go in depth with this, and there are many other people who could go into specifics, but just as an overview:

The manga and the anime are created for and targeted at a certain audience; our take on it will differ based on cultural norms, decisions in translation, understanding of the genre, and our own region-specific socialization. This includes the way in which we interpret certain relationships, the way they resonate with us, and what we do and do not find to be acceptable. Of course, this is not a case-by-case basis, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who hold differing beliefs within one area, but speaking generally, there is a reason that Bakudeku is not regarded as nearly as problematic in the East.

Had this been written by a Western creator, marketed primarily to and within the West (for reference, while I am Chinese, but I have lived in the USA for most of my life, so my own perspective is undoubtedly westernized), I would’ve immediately jumped to make comparisons between the Hero System and the American police system, in that a corrupt, or bastardized system is made no less corrupt for the people who do legitimately want to do good and help people, when that system disproportionately values and targets others while relying on propaganda that society must be reliant on that system in order to create safe communities when in reality it perpetuates just as many issues as it appears to solve, not to mention the way it attracts and rewards violent and power-hungry people who are enabled to abuse their power. I think comparisons can still be made, but in terms of analysis, it should be kept in mind that the police system in other parts of the world do not have the same history, place, and context as it does in America, and the police system in Japan, for example, probably wasn’t the basis for the Hero System.

As much as I do believe in the Death of the Author in most cases, the intent of the author does matter when it comes to content like this, if merely on the basis that it provides context that we may be missing as foreign viewers.

As far as the intent of the author goes, Bakugou is on a route of redemption.

He deserves it. It is unavoidable. That, of course, may depend on where you’re reading this.

Stuck in the Sludge, the Past, and Season One

If there’s one thing, to me, that epitomizes middle school Bakugou, it’s him being trapped in a sludge monster, rescued by his Quirkless childhood friend, and unable to believe his eyes. He clings to the ideology he always has, that Quirkless means weak, that there’s no way that Deku could have grown to be strong, or had the capacity to be strong all along. Bakugou is wrong about this, and continuously proven wrong. It is only when he accepts that he is wrong, and that Deku is someone to follow, that he starts his real path to heroics.

If Bakudeku’s relationship does not appeal to someone for whatever reason, there’s nothing wrong with that. They can write all they want about why they don’t ship it, or why it bothers them, or why they think it’s problematic. If it is legitimately triggering to you, then by all means, avoid it, point it out, etc. but do not undermine the reality of abuse simply to point fingers, just because you don’t like a ship. People who intentionally use the anti tag knowing it’ll show up in the main tag, go after people who are literally minding their own business, and accuse people of supporting abuse are the ones looking for a fight, and they’re annoying as hell because they don’t bring anything to the table. No evidence, no analysis, just repeated projection.

To clarify, I’m referring to a specific kind of shipper, not someone who just doesn’t like a ship, but who is so aggressive about it for absolutely no reason. There are plenty of very lovely people in this fandom, who mind their own business, multipship, or just don’t care.

Calling shippers dumb or braindead or toxic (to clarify, this isn’t targeting any one person I’ve seen, but a collective) based on projections and generalizations that come entirely from your own impression of the ship rather than observation is...really biased to me, and comes across as uneducated and trigger happy, rather than constructive or helpful in any way.

I’m not saying someone has to ship anything, or like it, in order to be a ‘good’ participant. But inserting derogatory material into a main tag, and dropping buzzwords with the same tired backing behind it without seeming to understand the implications of those words or acknowledging the development, pacing, and intentional change to the characters within the plot is just...I don’t know, it comes across as redundant, to me at least, and very childish. Aggressive. Toxic. Problematic. Maybe the real toxic shippers were the ones who bitched and moaned along the way. They’re like little kids, stuck in the past, unable to visualize or recognize change, and I think that’s a real shame because it’s preventing them from appreciating the story or its characters as it is, in canon.

But that’s okay, really. To each their own. Interpretations will vary, preferences differ, perspectives are not uniform. There is no one truth. There are five seasons of the show, a feature film, and like, thirty volumes as of this year.

All I’m saying is that if you want to stay stuck in the first season of each character, then that’s what you’re going to get. That’s up to you.

This may be edited or revised.

[alastanor]

Hazbin Hotel Crash Course for New Fans

I am creating this post with the idea that with all the misinformation out there, that perhaps this will serve as a kind of resource for those just beginning in the fandom. And perhaps, in some regard, it can serve as an FAQ for others. I will mostly be covering Hazbin Hotel and lightly touching on Helluva Boss as the spin-off it is.

Who created Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss?

This is an important first question. The creator of both shows is none other than our Mistress of Miscreants and Mischief, Vivienne "Vivziepop" Medrano. She is a Salvadoran-American artist and animator that was born and raised in Maryland and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, graduating in 2014.

Vivienne has worked on previous projects like the comic Zoophobia, an animated music video of one of her characters from that series on her channel she credits for giving her channel a subscription boost. Other works include Too Loud, a project she worked on for DreamworksTV with Hunicast host Ashley Nichols.

Vivzie is currently working as creator, director, lead animator, lead writer, storyboard artist, character designer, all for both shows, and the producer of Helluva Boss.

What is Hazbin?

Hazbin, short for Hazbin Hotel, is an American animated musical comedy series for adults that aired it's pilot on Youtube on October 28, 2019. The show focuses on the theme of redemption and consequences and by August 2020, had earned a solid fanbase and had accumulated nearly 50 million views. A goal it later accomplished in December of the same year. As a result, Hazbin was picked up from television production by A24. As of this post, no information regarding production or a release date is currently known. The show currently has comics of Angel Dust and Alastor on the official website.

What is Helluva Boss?

Helluva, also called Helluva Boss, is a spin-off series set in the same universe as Hazbin Hotel, with a different cast of characters. Vivziepop has described both shows sharing the same setting, but having different concepts behind their story focus. Unlike Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss is still a project being created entirely by Freelance artists and is not restricted in it's voice actor casting. Because Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss share the same universe, details regarding Hell and how it functions are sometimes expanded upon in Helluva Boss. The show itself is it's own separate entity, however, and should not be lumped in with Hazbin.

What Does A24 Picking Up Hazbin Hotel Mean?

As previously mentioned, unlike Helluva Boss, Hazbin Hotel was picked up for production and distribution through major media channels by A24. A24 distributes to channels like HBO, TruTV, and Showtime but they also distribute to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.

Hazbin Hotel could launch on HBO, Showtime, Hulu, or Netflix. But as of right now, that information is unknown. What we do know, however, is that Hazbin Hotel will not continue on Youtube. The pilot shall remain there but the first season will air elsewhere.

A24 picking up Hazbin also means the voice acting talent is more restricted, actors are required to be apart of the voice over union. This means some actors who played parts in the pilot of the show will no longer be present in the first season. Examples of this happening include, allegedly, Jill Harris who played Charlie in the pilot. The state of other voice actors remaining are unknown, however when asked by concerned fans on Twitter and again on his Twitch, Ed Bosco who voices Alastor responded he "was going nowhere."

Previous freelance artists, such as Ashley Nicols, are also no longer working on Hazbin Hotel. The same is true for many other talents who previously worked on the show. As a result, they have no idea as to the state of Hazbin's production and are unable to comment. Even Vivzie herself is unable to comment much to the state of Hazbin, however Vivzie has stated that the project is very close to her heart which leads many to believe the project is still in the works. It has simply been given a very tight lid against leaked information.

Cast of Hazbin Hotel

In this section of the post, I will be exploring each character, what we know about each character from a fully canonical perspective (and not the soft canon or outdated information that unfortunately lingers on the fan wiki).

Charlie Magne

Charlotte Magne, or "Charlie," is a compassionate yet naive princess of Hell who believes the reformation of sinners in Hell will help solve Hell's overpopulation crisis. It is an idea that has gotten her mocked, scorned, and laughed at many times. Nonetheless, she is stubborn and capable of handling herself when necessary. Charlie was voiced by Jill Harris in the pilot, with Elsie Lovelock as the singing voice.

Vaggie

Vagatha, more commonly known as Vaggie, is a sinner of Hispanic ethnicity short on patience yet displayed as one of the more sensible and prudent of the Hazbin cast. She is a lesbian and the girlfriend of Charlie Magne. She is also the manager of the Happy Hotel. For an unknown reason, she has a distrust towards men. Vaggie is believed to have died in 2014. She is voiced by Monica Franco in the pilot.

Angel Dust

Angel Dust, whose true name was revealed by Vivziepop to be Anthony, is a gay adult film star and voluntary guinea pig of the Happy Hotel. He uses the hotel as a free living space, and doesn't take Charlie's experiment of demon rehabilitation very seriously when we first meet him in the pilot. Angel Dust was a member of a strict Italian crime family, and died of an overdose in 1947. He is voiced by Michael Kovach in the pilot.

Alastor

Alastor is a part-Creole Louisiana native who mysteriously died in 1933. He is so nicknamed "The Radio Demon" for how he tore down Hell's original overlord hierarchy and broadcast his carnage throughout Hell. He demonstrates the voice and mannerisms of an old radio host, and is amiable, gentlemanly (in most situations), and polite. Despite this, he is a known cannibal, has been stated to have been a serial killer in life, and is described as asexual though Vivziepop is keeping his romantic orientation a secret. Alastor is voiced in the pilot by Edward Bosco.

Husker

Husker is a grumpy, sarcastic, and unenthusiastic pansexual alcoholic with a gambling problem. He is the front desk clerk and bartender of the Happy Hotel, mysteriously believed to have died in the 1970s. Not much else is known about Husker. He is voiced by Mick Lauer in the pilot.

Niffty

Niffty is the spontaneous, easily entertained and excitable housekeeper of the Happy Hotel. She displays being a bit boy crazy and a strong dislike for messes. Niffty is believed to have died in the 1950s, but not much more is known about her. She was voiced in the pilot by Michelle Marie.

Cherri Bomb

Cherri Bomb is the self-confident and daring cyclops demon from Australia with a penchant for explosives. She is a best friend and partner in crime to Angel Dust, believed to have died in the 1980s. Not much else is known about her. She is voiced in the pilot by Krystal LaPorte.

Other Characters

Other characters not mentioned, such as Sir Pentious, Mimzy, Baxter, and others are not mentioned because they have either not yet appeared and therefore are still prone entirely to soft canon, or even less is known about them than what has been shown above.

What is soft canon?

Soft canon, for ease of this post, is the word I am using for canon that is not official canon. And what this means is that it has not been solidified by the show or has not been reconfirmed since after the pilot by Vivzie as canon.

Vivzie herself has admitted to changing her mind on things (such as Alastor no longer being afraid of dogs), or adding things last minute (such as Cherri being Australian). Until either of these things happen, old information that predates the pilot should not be taken as infallible, solidified canon.

Response to Hazbin Hotel and About Fandom

The overall response to Hazbin Hotel has largely been positive. Within a mere few months, Hazbin's pilot accumulated views in the millions, and has ignited inspiration, creativity, and passion in dozens of fans.

However, there exists a loud minority on social media who believe Hazbin is harmful to the LGBTQ+ community due to the portrayal of characters in sex work, and other characters reduced to minority stereotypes.

Others believe it is sick and wrong to portray sins as something cute or sexy, and that Hazbin Hotel is an abuse of talent.

Others simply think the humor is not "adult enough" for them, and that the show is too childish.

These beliefs have ignited passionate discussions and arguments from both sides throughout multiple forms of social media.

Of course, there are also issues with those who claim to be fans of Hazbin Hotel. Those who display entitlement, and essentially ruin it for others. There have been those who have bombarded VA Twitch streams and demanded the VA do their voice request, which unfortunately makes the fandom less enjoyable for them.

There are also those who demand things from Vivziepop and other people they believe to be apart of the project. Regardless if they still are or not. These people make the interactions between fandom and artists more unpleasant and toxic. These people, unfortunately, think that because they have access to communication with creators, that it entitles them to make demands. It does not, but it paints fandom in a bad light and drags down the mental health of the artists working on Hazbin.

Others make social media posts highlighting their entitlement and lack of understanding.

The reason I bring up these people is in the hopes that, those new fans reading this, will think twice about acting the same way. Or stop someone who may.

Where to Find More Information

This is something that should be emphasized, and that is that the wiki can be used but the information on the fan wiki should be taken with a grain of salt.

Vivziepop has stated before that the fan wiki is outdated, and much of the other information that is confirmed canon is mixed in with old information and fan theory that has been perpetuated as canon. Making the majority of what exists on the wiki "soft canon."

If you are interested in finding more accurate sources of information, options include gaining access to Vivziepop's discord through her Patreon.

Following Vivziepop and the VAs on social media (this does not mean you should pester them for information), as well as tuning into any social media channels A24 may have.

Occasionally you will get snags of information pertaining to Hazbin through the grapevine on the Hunicast discord, however that is much more sparse and less likely given that Ashley Nichols is no longer affiliated with the Hazbin project.

Things for Fans

So you have watched the Pilot dozens of times now, and are looking for things to do that will tide you over until more information surrounding Hazbin is released. Or better yet, until Hazbin's first season is released.

Well, here are some options to consider.

1. Have you ever considered making a sinner OC or an Impsona? An Impsona is more in line with Helluva Boss, but it is still the same universe. Designing an OC and concocting how they would fit in the world is time consuming, and fun to think about.

2. If you have some spare cash floating around, how about supporting one of the community's artists and commissioning them for some art of your OTP, your OC, or your favorite character doing something interesting?

3. Consider reading more information floating around, things that other fans have noticed in Helluva Boss or Hazbin Hotel. Things such as theories based on behaviors and habits seen in the pilot, or in the comics. Headcanons are fun too, but sometimes people can perpetuate them as canon. Remember what makes something canon, so you can distinguish between theory and headcanon.

4. Enjoy Helluva Boss and it's expansion of the world and universe.

5. Engage in the occasional streams, events, merch dumps, and print signings perpetuated by Vivziepop to help keep interest in Hazbin alive.

6. Watch the Pilot and ADDICT music video just because you can and you have a mental stimulation craving.

7. If you are the creative type, you can create your own art or fanfiction of the characters you enjoy most.

8. Some members of the fan community have made fan comics, you could search those.

9. Watch the old Hunicasts on youtube, but remember that again Ashley is no longer affiliated with Hazbin, they are no longer allowed to do Hazbin streams, and the VAs cannot do voice requests. So if you attend a live Hunicast expecting there to be Hazbin, you will be disappointed. Regardless, the old Hunicasts are entertaining and fun, and can ease some of the Hazbin cravings.

10. Watch some of the animatics created from some of the funniest moments from the Hazbin Hunicasts on Youtube.

Let me know if I missed anything, but this was essentially me trying to put essential information for newer fans to the community all in one place. Hope it helps.

[dreamsofthescreen]

The Abstract Point Of A Clockwork Orange - Review

Released for streaming on Netflix two years ago, is this a so called ‘masterwork’ of a film, or just cinematic satire?

Malcolm McDowell in 'A Clockwork Orange'

Based on the book by Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of ‘A Clockwork Orange’, proved greatly controversial, yet influential. The dreamy, edgy swinging 60s sets up the scene for ultra violent home invasions and tortuously explicit murders performed by ‘The Droogs’. Released for streaming on Netflix two years ago, is this a so called ‘masterwork’ of a film, or just cinematic satire? Surrounding the idea of free will, this can be tossed around endlessly and reviewed in philosophy as something problematic. But is this film’s talk of freedom and suppression all really necessary? It’s upfront commentary on humanity that can be deemed as abstract, yet is this label of abstract just an excuse to glamorise the utter violence? Or does ‘A Clockwork Orange’ stand strongly with a point in hand? We can say both. The retro aesthetics, in terms of costume & production design that Kubrick can be recognised for, do play into the significance and absurdity of this work.

Set in a dystopian England where the governed rules are anything but at liberty for citizens, morals aren’t only tested, but are completely rejected. In this world, the government find order in good behaviour, something that the main character, Alex, (Malcolm McDowell) completely detests. Alex has no moral limits and gains pleasure from violence with no concern for the consequences. Within the first half an hour of the film, we see him and his gang of ‘droogs’ beat up a homeless man and mercilessly invade an old mans home, robbing it as well as raping and murdering his wife. Though labelled as a lesson in testing how far freedom of choice can go, A Clockwork Orange’s meaning can seem scattered.

Seen to represent someone so outwardly alive in his lack of concern for society, Alex’s mad challenging of human morals tests the meaning of freedom. But given themes, are they just barren and only strive to portray substance? It can just be seen as senseless violence for many. The intensely rebellious attitude is a reflection of the oppression faced in this film’s universe, and ultimately is an exaggerated comment on society today. Yet, you could say this about a film like Dirty Harry or Pulp Fiction, given their brutality. This theme, focusing on order vs chaos in society, is no doubt relevant, but however meaningful is it? The meaning left in it could be that, through it’s distressing realism, it so rawly opens ones eyes to today’s illicit society. Commenting on the confusion surrounding the film’s meaning, Kubrick stated that, “It is a story of the dubious redemption of a teenage delinquent by condition-reflex therapy. It is, at the same time, a running lecture on free-will.” Furthermore, author Anthony Burgess writes in ‘A Clockwork Orange Resucked’, that the meaning is in the title, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ referring to one who “has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or the Almighty State”. In saying this, Burgess does confirm that from his perspective, this is a comment on human nature being sucked away by a totalitarian government. Yet, even given the comment from the author, our perspective as an audience is truly subjective.

In the author’s word, commenting that ‘A Clockwork Orange’ reflects someone who “has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour…but is only a clockwork toy to be wound up by the Almighty State”, refers to our potential for evil, and the importance of it in human nature. This is certainly a thought provoking theme, as most of the film is. The extreme capabilities of human beings can be an incredibly positive light or looming darkness, given which we choose to act on. Yet when this potential is squashed by a higher state, we can question whether one has free will, if it is still controlled. In a scene where Alex’s rebellion in lessened by Ludovico’s Technique, a process in which he is brutally forced to watch films of atrociously violent acts, with treatment in order to make him physically sick at even the thought of committing any crime. In hope to make him less of a threat to present society, he is less of himself. Again, we can think about the fact that is is of course necessary to change such wicked behaviour, but we can also think about how it could be, had we not chosen to create any governed rules.

After seeing state officials confirm that Alex has been cured of his homicidal behaviours, a prison chaplain states, “Choice! The boy has not a real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. The insincerity was clear to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.” In total, Alex’s behaviour is ceased to be wrong, but he is also ‘ceased to be capable of choosing for himself, since he had been rewired to believe what the state had wanted him to believe - that acts of violence simply are wrong. To the normal mind, this isn’t a hard concept to grasp, as we are surrounded by basic morals that tie in with our empathy. Yet to someone with more sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies, this concern isn’t there. So, again, Kubrick leaves us questioning whether or not people in this state of mind should have the choice there in the first place, as they are unable to distinguish that morals are important in humanity.

Furthermore, in 1973, Kubrick decided to ban A Clockwork Orange in the United Kingdom, due to continuous upheaval. Renowned film critic Roger Ebert gave it two out of four stars, stating that it was an “ideological mess”. Comments on it’s explicit sexuality, dehumanisation and violence were made, with some thinking that the point of the film in itself was missed. As some claimed it’s content was to create a raw piece of art, others claimed it an offensive excuse to pointlessly portray horrific scenes. And horrific the scenes are, though with fashionable features, the torturously disturbing scenes of ‘The Droogs’ murders’ are certainly crude, and have no backstory whatsoever. These brutal scenes can be seen as damaging to on audiences, or even dangerous. What kind of insight are audiences given when shown such destructiveness?

If we talk about the stylistic features of Kubrick’s adaptation, they have certainly played into it’s iconic status, having audiences sometimes classify it as a performance art piece, rather than a film. The renowned costumes of ‘the droogs’ have been used repetitively as Halloween costumes, as well as the storyline being referenced in The Simpsons. The production design is, without a doubt, gorgeous, kooky and as abstract as the film’s meaning. The interiors stun with colour blocking wallpapers, framed pictures of 1960s models and record players spinning in one room. The sense of 1960s jazz certainly is there, with a slanted, modern design, that Kubrick is known for in other works like ‘The Shining’. Whilst Alex and his gang members commit crime, they dance along to Gene Kelly’s ‘Singin’ In The Rain’, and as Alex is tested through Ludovico’s Technique, a recognisable symphony by Beethoven is played. The 1960s wardrobe bursts with colour, an exaggerated view of the Britain in the swinging sixties. Audiences are attracted to these joyful features like music and fashion, the stylistic features making it such a cult classic. A cult classic needs to be fashionable, but is this fashion in the film pretentious? Especially when surrounded by such violence, as though to say that it’s chaos can be softened by pretty interiors or a recognisable score. Or does it make it all the more disturbing through adding joyful song or colourful designs, as they so oppose the distressing acts that Alex and his droogs perform. Had it not had Kubrick’s touch, would we view it the same way? Though Academy Award winner Milena Canonero’s costumes and John Barry’s production design remaining outstanding, does their glamorisation gloss over the underlying trauma of the plot? This type of questioning is something we can participate in throughout watching Kubrick’s production, as both it’s ideas and meaning are not black and white. 

Kubrick’s adaptation of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is clever in that it has us wondering whether or not it has a point, yet regardless, audiences are still left thinking about the impact of immoral behaviour and how our society responds to it. However consequential it attempts to be, it really can also be seen as blank, leaving audiences to decide on which to focus on. The pop-art aesthetics of the film can overrun the meaning or either try to stir us away from the barren landscape that it can be seen as. However strongly critiqued and analysed it may be, it’s meaning is all the more subjective, both creating interest and successfully winding up audiences.

Stars Out Of Five: 3.5/5

[nathalie-sancoeur-assistant]

This is filled w/ spoilers

So here it is, time for me to pull myself together and post all my thoughts and feelings on the new episode into one big long post. 

So my overall feelings?

I am upset

Not because it was a bad episode- it was amazing, literally so good- nope, it’s because of Nathalie- but I’ll get into that in a moment. I’m gonna put a read-more here cause this is gonna probably be really long- and could very well be a recap of the whole ep with my commentary. 

-----

First off, when Plagg seemed not to like Adrien’s birthday present for Marinette, he seemed so concerned (these screenshots aren’t going to be very good quality because I REALLY don’t feel like going through all the trouble of making them look nice & take hours on one post)

Look at the little bean! SO concerned. It’s perfect Honeybun, she’ll love it. 

Then onto the next scene...

Even during meals, they sit so far away from each other. Why? I’ve often wondered what the point of such a long table with so many chairs could be, especially in a house that’s so big yet so empty. I suppose that it could do well for meetings, but still, this is a family meal, not a company get-together or business meeting with people you have to impress. They have to practically yell at each other to be heard. 

Also, look at this

He basically asked Nathalie for approval. “Should I let him?” “Yes sir, I would.” “Very well, Adrien.”

Also, the fact that Gabriel and Lila have the same meeting place each time. He isn’t just driving by hoping to catch her, they have a time and place set up. And the idea that Marinette is a bad influence? Preposterous! But of course, this is Lila. 

Screw Lila. 

“You work to hard, sir” 

Yes Nathalie, I’m sure you know what working to hard feels like. You’re not exactly relaxing, yourself. 

---

Next scene! 

Ms. Bustier: Marinette, would you bring your school bag to me please, I need to check something

Okay so first off, you’re going off of an anonymous tip that one of your best and most well-behaved students (Aside from being late quite often) is a thief and a cheat? And secondly, you really think that she is SO STUPID that if she had taken them knowingly, she wouldn’t have maybe removed them from her bag? Third, why did Marinette not FIND them in her bag before school started, take them out, and maybe call Alya or something. 

“That’s impossible Marinette, Lila got the worst grade in the class” not impossible if she stole them after the test- also, way to be subtle on grades. I thought teachers were supposed to keep that stuff relatively undercover. 

And Adrien really said “Marinette Rights”

---

So.

There’s no sound of crashing. 

Lila just yells “Ready?” in the most mischievous voice she can

Then she starts screaming

And no one stopped to think “Hey, not only is Marinette really not known to assault people, but we didn’t hear a single thud that would have sounded like someone falling down the stairs preceding her screams.”

“She keeps calling me a liar, getting the others to gang up against me...” SINCE. WHEN?

Also. 

“Oh...I have proof”

How would she have known that the proof was in Marinette’s locker? And again, if she knew, why would she be surprised to find the pendant in Marinette’s locker??

UGH. 

---

Now we get to the part that started lil miss me to get so upset. 

“Are you ready, Nathalie?”

“More than ever.”

She just bounces out from behind him, ready as she’ll ever be. 

Look at her 

Then she goes on to call him the Almighty Scarlet Moth and I just smh 

Awww. She looks like she’s ready to punch those butterflies in the face. You punch those akumas. 

Varity Queen? Princess Justice? Oh yeah. I wanna see those. 

And now to the scene that hurt me

“What’s wrong?!”

“Nothing, everything's fine! Keep going..”

She was so ready to just fall down and choke while he continued his fight and she would have still loved him if he hadn’t stopped to help her

But this seen makes it so clear

he loves her too

Even if it’s just as a friend and assistant, he loves her. And it just...the voice acting, her voice actor was so good, it physically hurts me to watch that scene. 15/10.  

And Tikki yelling at Marinette...well not really yelling...but holy crap, there is a lot riding on this 14 year old girls shoulders when it comes to her own emotions. She’s still learning what some of them are, puberty is far from over with her, so now she just has the added pressure of not being able to feel the natural emotions that occur with hormone fluctuations and righteous anger from being falsely accused without having to be fearful of Hawkmoth’s akuma. 

But on the bright side, Alya FINALLY believes Marinette! She may have her flaws and push Mari a bit to much IMO when it comes to Adrien but hey, when it comes right down to it, she’ll stick it out with her pals. A true friend. 

---

Is that the same doctor we saw at Master Fu’s?

And despite her state, still the only thing she’s thinking about is him, his goals, what he wants- and he’s not even thinking about that right now. 

He looks so distraught too. He needs her. But she’s just so laser focused on one thing that she’s not thinking about the other possibilities. Mark my words, her persistence is what’s going to drive him to stop being Hawkmoth. 

“I don’t care, Gabriel. I want to help you.” I swear, I’m gonna start crying again. She’s telling him how she feels when she says stuff like that! It’s loud and clear. If he hasn’t seen it by now, when it’s more obvious than Marinette could ever hope to be- then literally nothing but her straight up saying the words “I’m in love with you” is gonna make it click. He has to know!

“Not at that cost! Never at that cost again...” then it cuts to his family portrait. 

Why, pray tell, does it cut to his family portrait? Of all things. Why did it cut to anything at all? They didn’t need to go to the trouble of creating a whole new picture to cut to if they didn’t NEED to. It’s saying something. And Im pretty sure that its that he’s not willing to give up Nathalie, not even for Emilie. 

I would also like to point out that in that picture, he is wearing blue- but now, he primarily wears red. What is a combination of blue and red? Purple. The color of Nathalie’s suit. 

Hmm...

Nathalie: Shh

Me: *handing Nooroo pots and pans*

She’s so desperate to help him- and look at how she treats Duusu. She isn’t being cruel. Duusu just told her “No, you should be resting” and she’s just like “Yeah, but what if I didn’t?” not “Don’t tell me what to do!” or any crap like that. Instead she stops and explains herself. And then Duusu...

No, not it’s not romantic. It’s twisted. I love Gabriel and Nathalie as a pair, but this isn’t a romantic gesture. Nathalie is losing herself in her desperation to help him, get the miraculous, end it once and for all, and her desires to please Gabriel even if it means that he’s not going to want her in the end. She is fighting a losing battle, no matter what happens, she’s going to get the short end of the stick- and it just breaks my heart that she is so willing to throw her life away when there are other ways she could be assisting him that don’t include her deteriortating. That’s why I cried so much during this ep- she wants to prove a point by using this miraculous when it isn’t necessary. And that is why I officially HATE seeing Mayura- because each time she transforms she’s one step closer to falling down and not getting back up. 

Also, I thought this scene was super interesting. That’s how she creates a sentimonster? That is so cool. 

Moving on, when Adrien pulls out his phone 

“I am Mayura, and I’m about to annihilate Ladybug, Mwahahaha!” Points for subtlety, Hon. XD

She’s so cute

“I’ve always gone out of my way to hide my true feelings for you but I just can’t do it anymore” possible foreshadowing? Hmmm?? “Your feelings for me haven’t changed and mine are growing stronger every day” I can’t help but think she was speaking from her own heart in some of that. 

And our poor little kitty

So desperate for love, he refuses to believe that

Ladybug wasn’t actually moving on

“She’s so perfect” “I’m nowhere near as perfect as her.”

Also “Senticharm!” *gets big gun blaster thing*

“Lucky Charm!” *gets fork*

Seriously Gabriel and Nathalie belong together at this rate. 

“Nathalie?!”

“Nooroo why didn’t you wake me up?” “I couldnt bring myself to you were sleeping so peacefully” because “Im scared of you and Nathalie told me to Shh” wasn’t the right response. 

She gets tired even when using the miraculous

And she still goes out in the field 

Heeeerrres Hawky!

Legit tho, this is what an anon was talking about earlier from the Gabenath ask meme I did a while back. I said that what I look forin a fanfic would include Hawkmoth needing to save Mayura on the battlefield. And it JUST became canon. Lord have mercy, I think I’ve died XD

Also 

“You’re the real monster!” 

“Oh, that...you’ll find out very soon” He doesn’t even care tho. Like, where’s all his givacraps fly off to? Oh yeah that’s right they’re akumatizing people, they just keep flying away.  

He is huge compared to them. And just going to town trying to whap this 14 year old girl into oblivion. Boy. 

“All I need to do is wait a few minutes until you two turn back into regular kids, so fragile, so easy to break” Absolutely no filter. Do you think that’s going to make you seem less like a villain? We don’t say stuff like that! You can’t just take that back! I swear, if you have a redemption arc it had better be Paarthurnax/Zuko-level convincing because there are very few people willing to forgive you after you say things like that with no remorse. 

“Release her”

You can’t tell me he doesn’t love her- he sucks at it, but he does. Im really hoping he’ll learn from this mistake and never ask her to use the peacock miraculous again- if she uses it, it has to be on her.

“Don’t mind me” Babe if he doesn’t mind you and you’re discovered then it’s just a hop skip and jump from Hawkmoth being Gabriel Agreste, 

He’s carrying her again

Idk if I should focus on how little Nathalie seems to care about how much danger she put herself in or the fact that we have a Gabriel booty close-up

He’s reprimanding her, she starts coughing, her glasses fall off, and he immediately softens up. 

Look at that soft look. And the music that’s playing in the background? It’s so...sad..and enhances the way he’s looking at her. 

And now.....Adrien

As soon as the adults leave, he growls and the music gets more aggressive. Intimidating. 

He is ticked. “Because we’re friends aren’t we?” that was just laced with venom and malice. They say demons run when a good man goes to war. 

Well Adrien’s started packing. Lila better watch her step. 

And in the end, she basically outed herself as a pathological liar. She admitted it, though she likely didn’t word it that way. 

Well, that’s all I have to say. Remember, God made you special and he loves you very much. *veggie tales theme starts playing*

[multimetaverse]

Andi Mack 3x16 Review

One Girl’s Trash really showcased why Andi Mack is such an important show though I wish they would have spent more time on the stereotypes plot. Let’s dig in!

Positives: 

When Andi Mack is at its best there’s really nothing like it anywhere on TV and it’s going to leave such a void when it ends and I hope something fills that void sooner rather than later. 

A really strong A plot by Elena Song, it makes such a difference that the diversity we see on the show is mirrored in the writers room. I was so happy that they actually had Andi used the word Asian when talking about the stereotypes she was facing; it was a big improvement from the more coded way they had to talk about the racism Buffy faced back in S1 in regards to her hair. Words truly do matter and being able to openly and accurately describe these kind of things is so important.

Lilan and Peyton posted on how much this ep means to them and I hope we’ll be seeing more plots like this on kids TV. 

Honestly my only real complaint about the A plot is that it felt too short and I wish Celia had been in this ep and that Bex could have been brought in to, seeing three generations of Asian woman supporting each other would have been great. 

I also liked that Andi said that Mrs. Frankel turning the stereotyping into a teachable moment wasn’t fun which of course would be true in reality. I also appreciate that the show continues to put black women in positions of authority.

It was great to see Andi so into art again and it makes for a good way to bring her story to a climax.

Andi’s art project looked like something a 14 year old might come up with and I liked that she was inspired but didn’t immediately know what she was going to do for her project. 

Hangry and resting happy face were very funny jokes. 

A rare Andi and Cyrus scene. Liked the callback to the rainbow wig and the protest and the experiment; definitely a show reaching to its past as it prepares for the end.  And we get two callbacks to the party tonight to set up the finale. It did feel a bit tacked on but that’s likely because the writers wanted to get in some solo time for this duo before they run out of time. 

Stellar acting from Trent and Lilan this ep. Bowie talking about wanting to one day see Andi get married in Bex’s dress and how it wouldn’t happen now was so sad. That was some good Bexie angst. and it actually felt earned.  I’m glad it’s all out in the open now. Bex’s biggest flaw is that she runs from her problems and she was being willfully blind to the fact that obviously Bowie wanted to get married. Now she has to face reality and make her choice. 

Jonah was hilarious tonight. Asher was killing it with the comedy. His groan when he said he’d have to breakup with Amber again? Emmy worthy. There’s really not much to Jonah other than Frisbee and dimples and I like when they just use him as comic relief; it usually lands better than when they shove Cyrus in that role. 

Jonah is definitely true to life for the average 14 year old boy but in fairness at least he recognized that he didn’t reciprocate Amber’s feelings and that he had to eventually be honest with her. 

Nice little callback to 3x07 with Jonah wearing the same blue sweater he wore when he was with Libby at the school. And a nice realistic touch since he would be re wearing clothes. 

It was good of him to actually take her on a real date and I liked the detail of him winning tickets on the radio. 

Andi really is being a good friend to both Amber and Jonah and is giving good advice, though how long that lasts remains to be seen. 

Amber was the most likeable she’s ever been. Really strong performance from Emily tonight. Disney PR posted that she actually was driving the go kart which is cool. Must have been really fun to shoot. 

I liked that we opened on community service, too often this show just ignores the events of the previous ep. 20 hours of service for trespassing and theft versus 100 hours for playing with a gun is interesting

More set up for Buffy’s injury. 

Negatives: 

Jamber is a huge mess and really not a wise use of precious screen time. Amber is clearly looking for the affection she’s not getting at home and Jonah is probably the worst possible character on the show to seek that from. I really don’t know what exactly Amber’s version of a happy ending will be; there’s really nothing the show can do to solve her parents problems or her financial problems. 

Amber has always been an oddly written character. She’s never gotten the full redemption arc TJ had and the writers never seemed to truly settle on an arc for her. I get why she was in so many eps this season: unlike Garren they had Emily available from the start and didn’t have to work around her schedule and unlike Luke she’s not playing a gay character who’s story needs to be delayed until the very end but I really don’t think we needed Amber in 11 of the original 21 eps this season.

Jonah is another character who has been woefully under developed. I don’t think the writers ever decided what exactly was the deal with his not liking labels or commitments yet also being a chronic relationship hopper. He’s right that what he and Amber have can just be fun instead of love but then why is he dating her? Just stay friends! Part of the problem is that Jonah is first and foremost a love interest and they don’t tend to get much development but because Cyrus’ story has so many constraints the writers were forced to focus more on Jonah than they would have if Cyrus had been straight without really having much in the way planned for him. 

Cyrus’ shirt at school was ugly. A really bad misfire by the wardrobe department. 

Looking Ahead:

So the original casting notice released by our friends at Yun Casting was correct and Rachel is still Marty’s current girlfriend and the official Disney synopsis describing her as Marty’s ex is incorrect. I don’t think it’s ever happened before where the synopsis got a detail like that wrong. Obviously they break up at the bowling alley so maybe that’s why Disney wrote it that way? The casting notice describes Rachel as a co-star so she won’t get much screen time. 

It’s going to be very messy making Buffy a homewrecker. Her saying ‘’oh you’re real’’ to Rachel is quite a power move but then again Driscoll doesn’t draw.  Likely we see her twirling her hair at Marty since Cyrus is there and is the only one who knows about that tell. 

Good on Rachel for seeing what’s right in front of her. She was obviously just a rebound for Marty and he’s clearly been spending a lot of time with Buffy once she reached out to him. Not a good look to have him be emotionally cheating on Rachel for the last several weeks but I’m sure that will be swept under the rug in order to get that Muffy endgame. 

Buffy seems to be hobbling a bit so clearly her foot is getting worse. Does it get injured at the bowling alley or later on since she seems to be injured before the game itself in 3x18. 

Still no hint when the new Muffy pro player plot happens. It was meant to replace their scenes at the original wedding and it really does seem like the original wedding happened pretty quickly after 3x17 so I don’t know if they can delay those Muffy scenes all that long. 

It does look like the timeline is fairly smooth, it’s only been a few weeks since costume day and the rest of the series probably only spans another few weeks or a month in universe. 

Andi goes to SAVA. Does she stay there or transfer to a school elsewhere? Is it her moving in the finale or is Jonah moving far away? 

3x17 had Ham so we’re going to see some sort of cuts or re-shoots. The texts released before this ep had a convo between Bex and Bowie and Andi about a movie night do-over that was pretty clear foreshadowing for an ‘’I Do-over’’ convo in 3x17 even if that’s now cut. Bex talked about having a movie night do-over and Bowie questioned if it was a do-over if it never happened in the first place and Bex replied that she would give Bowie the movie night her deserved. Swap in wedding for movie night and you have a rough outline of the kind of convo we likely would have seen in 3x17 before the re-shoots. 

Ham obviously had an important role to play in getting the wedding back on track but what exactly we don’t know. And how Bex goes from not wanting to get married to agreeing to get married and agreeing to Celia’s lavish wedding plan in otl is an open question. The show has always struggled with pacing and they really should have had Bex call of the wedding earlier in the season rather than rushing it like this. It will be interesting if nothing else to see what kind of Mack family scenes we’re getting next week; there’s a range of possibilities from most of them being cut to a brief Mack family only wedding happening.

Therapist Cyrus is usually pretty boring and I wonder if his advice actually helps. His meddling often backfires like when he accidentally convinced Jonah to get back together with Amber in S1. 

I really don’t know if they can keep Andi completely romance free for the rest of the season. I did wonder if her asking Jonah to share a milkshake was going to lead to something.  She’s been very supportive of both Amber and Jonah but it seems like the kind of situation where the writers would make things messier for the drama, even if they didn’t fully think it through. 

This could very well be the last time we ever see the GHC inside Andi Shack. And come to think of it we’ve never seen Jonah inside of it and maybe we never will.

These last 4 eps are going to be wild. Until next week folks.

[jbuffyangel]

Timeless 2x11 Reaction: “The Miracle of Christmas Part 1 and 2″

And thus Timeless is officially over. How did the writers fair with the series finale aka The Timeless movie? Pretty freakin’ fantastic.

Let’s dig in...

It’s been several months between Timeless’ Season 2 finale and their series finale tonight, so the writers wisely include a “Previously on Timeless.” We flashback to all their adventures while Unhappy Future Lucy (who looks a little scary if I’m being honest) narrates. It helps because I seriously forgot her mother is dead. (They kill Susanna Thompson on every damn show!)

The beginning is a little jarring because storylines I expected to happen in a season or two are all happening RIGHT NOW. My brain needs time to downshift, but I eventually adjust.

First things first - dealing with the third point in the love triangle, Garcia Flynn. Timeless isn’t interested in drawing out the shipper war because Wyatt and Lucy are kind of a mess. They require some screen time so they are fixed in a realistic manner. 

Scary Future Lucy gives Present Day Lucy and Wyatt her diary. Spoiler alert: Lucy hooks up with Flynn. Spoiler alert: They break up sometime down the road because she is really in love with Wyatt. They play out Lucy and Flynn’s entire relationship in under 3 minutes. I’m not joking when I say they breeze through three to four seasons worth of triangle.

I love Goran Visnjic, and while I adore Lucy and Wyatt, I was never opposed to Lucy and Flynn. I mean yeah he’s a murderer. That’s a real negative, but it’s friggin Goran Visnic. Have you seen this guy? He’s so hot. Where Dr. Luca goes so goes my nation.

Kidding aside, the writers convey the depth of Lucy and Flynn’s relationship with just a few lines, which is an impressive writing achievement. I love how Flynn is all “I can’t believe you date me because I tried to kill you a bunch of times.” HAHAHA. Classic. And true! Ah the joy of television romance. But it ain’t gonna be you Flynn, so mosey along big fella. 

Jessica is not pregnant. UGH. I HATED THIS STORYLINE SO MUCH. 

I appreciate the writers giving it a fast and hard death, but this is one of the ways I think Season 2 went wrong. Timeless is a show that defied the typical television tropes and that’s what made it so interesting in Season 1.  However, I think their Season 2 renewal, and desire to snare more viewers, created a “throw everything, but the kitchen sink” mentality. 

They used every romance trope they could think of in Season 2 to see what would stick. It was just... not good. I don’t blame Timeless anymore than I do any other show that does this (and it’s pretty much all of them). It was just disappointing to see the show move in this direction, when previously they’d been so good at avoiding those kinds of storylines.

Flynn sacrifices himself by going back to 2012 to kill Jessica, so Rufus never dies. REDEMPTION ARC BITCHES!!! YESSSS!! 

Seriously, he is so bad ass. Flynn puts a couple bullets in Jessica (plus one extra to be sure) after a ninja knockdown fight. He knows the effects of traveling to his own timeline will kill him... or something. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Then he watches 2012 Flynn with his beautiful and living family through a window before he dies. 

Flynn leaves a goodbye letter for Lucy that pretty much says he loves her, but he knows she loves Wyatt and he wants her to be happy. So yes, GARCIA FLYNN sacrifices himself for Rufus, ensures Lucy and Wyatt find the happy ending they deserve even though he is in love with Lucy, helps stop Rittenhouse and save the world. I AM SO EMO ABOUT MY BOY RIGHT NOW!

As for Lucy and Wyatt, they tiptoe around each other for most of the two hours. Wyatt thinks she ends up with Flynn and Lucy doesn’t want to be second choice. They are the only two who remember the Jessica history. Dear God, can we all forget too? Everyone is pretty much, “Why aren’t y’all together because y’all were together before and it was perfection?” So meta.

Wyatt almost dies in an explosion while delivering a baby during the fall of North Korea. Yes, you read that correctly. WYATT LOGAN IS HERE TO SAVE NATIONS AND DELIVER BABIES!

Lucy realizes she almost lost Wyatt and they are wasting time worrying about the past. 

This part of the finale feels really predictable to me. There’s no way they are killing off Wyatt, especially after Flynn dies. Lyatt is endgame, so the two characters dancing around it for so long feels like prolonging the inevitable.

“After that explosion I thought you were dead. And for a moment I saw my whole life without you and my world ended Wyatt.”

But damn though, what a speech Lucy gives him. 

Honestly, it is slightly annoying she did most of the talking because Wyatt is the one who screwed up. At least he offers up a “I wanted to pick you Lucy, but I felt I owed Jessica because she was my baby mama” explanation. Of course, we all knew this. 

Lucy accepts Wyatt’s “I am a big pine tree” explanation because facts. Things really get cooking with some Lyatt mistletoe kissing. 

Source:  sisterzelda

Ah, a time honored holiday trope I will never grow tired of. Then they have sex

BUT CUT AWAY TOO SOON! Boo NBC!

Rufus is alive, but doesn’t remember being dead. Jiya remembers Rufus being dead, but he doesn’t remember Jiya living in Chinatown for three years in the 1800s. I think. 

Jiya is concerned she’s no longer the woman Rufus fell in love with (re: see three years of trauma). I argue Rufus fell in love with a bad ass and Jiya is still most certainly one. It is frustrating how quickly they had to go through her physical and emotional trauma from Chinatown. Ugh, this is some seriously important drama that could have been a multiple season deep dive. Stupid cancellation.

Rufus and Jiya realize they are still perfect for each other, because they are perfect for each other. They start a company together and become billionaires saving the world. Jiya’s hair color is extremely pretty in the final scenes too. I feel this is very important detail to include. I heart them. 

Source:  katie-mcgraths

Lucy and Wyatt discuss how they don’t want to become scary Lucy and Wyatt from the future and THEY DON’T BECAUSE OF FLYNN. They get married, Wyatt works for Agent Christopher on special projects, and Lucy is a tenured history professor who focuses on important historical women. BECAUSE THERE AIN’T NO TIME FOR THE MEN! That’s right fellas. Drink your tea and wait your turn.

Unfortunately, Lucy is not able to get her sister Amy back. She gives an poignant speech about grief and loss, which could be the show’s mission statement. This is how you write a series finale:

"Everybody loses someone they love. And no matter how badly they want to they can't get them back. In spite of that they find a way to go on. That's everyone's history." 

What connects all of time is our humanity. We are born. We live. We love. We suffer grief, pain and loss. We find joy. We endure. This is the thread century after century. In the end, we aren’t so different after all. 

THEN LUCY AND WYATT GET MARRIED 

Source: @splitscreen

AND HAVE TWIN GIRLS NAMED FLYNN AND AMY. 

Source: @splitscreen​

ALERT!!!!!!!!!! MULTIPLES CONCEIVED! IT IS THE DREAM! EVERYTHING IS AMAZING!!!! 

The final scene is 2023 Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus traveling to 2014 to tell Garcia Flynn about the time machine. Lucy tells Flynn he doesn’t lose his humanity even though he never gets his family back. He is the hero the team and the world needs in the end. It connects the beginning and end of Timeless so seamlessly. This was probably always going to be the bookend. I just wish we had a few more seasons in between it.

They hint at a future time machine being invented by a young girl Rufus took an interest in at the science fair. The morality of the time machine is debated between Agent Christopher and Connor. She wants to destroy it, but Connor argues they need to keep it so they can stop others from abusing its power. You can’t un-invent something. Someone sooner or later will create the same technology Connor and Rufus did. They have a responsibility to make sure time travel is not abused and another Rittenhouse does not rise. So, the time machine is kept, covered, guarded and waiting.

Do I think we’ll see a resurrected Timeless about this girl and her time machine? No. I don’t. This is the last stop on the Timeless train and, while it was a wonderful ride, it is over. Actors are released from contracts. Writers, producers, crew, etc have all moved on to other gigs. It’s a freaking miracle they even made the movie. (Apropos episode title).

Timeless approached the series finale the correct way, which is what’s important to me. They didn’t leave a bunch of loose ends. The world was saved and I saw all our beloved characters living their happy lives in peace. I need to know these characters are going to be okay, so I can say goodbye. 

Thank you Timeless for the insightful way you approached history, your cast of wonderful characters, humor and unflinching honesty. I look forward to the streaming deal so I can rewatch again and again.

Source:  yasmin-khan

Stray Thoughts

The finale is one EPIC Lucy speech after another. My girl runs this show.

Nobody was dressed appropriately for a North Korea winter. 

It looked like the mother threw her newborn into Wyatt’s arms as her son came running to her. LOL Nice catch, soldier.

"I've loved you since the Alamo." Girl is that ever right. 

Don't mock. Saint Christopher is for REAL. He has helped me out of many jams.

Hahaha. Wyatt said m'am. That's how you know it's the end.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior’s January 2021 Preview

Happy New Year!

So we’re gonna do things a little different this month. If it works out, I might do this as a regular thing until I feel comfortable writing about box office on a weekly basis again. It may be a long while. As you’ll see, this is a fairly comprehensive preview of the month ahead, as it stands on the first day of posting this, which hopefully is Wednesday, January 6.

I will be updating this post regularly with reviews and any date changes, etc.  If you want to keep track of which movies I’ve reviewed, your best option is to bookmark my Rotten Tomatoes page, since more than likely, any new reviews will be added there at the same time they’re posted here.

Why do I have this bad feeling that doing the column this way is just gonna give me more work? (I was correct. Instead of writing about 6 movies every single week, I ended up writing about nearly 30 movies in one week.)

What’s surprising is that there are far fewer wide releases in January than any previous year, as I only count two or three in total. That’s not good.

Definitions:

Theatrical – Movie will play in any number of movie theaters, either in select locations or nationwide. Some of these may have a digital/VOD component.

Streaming – Movie is available to watch any time as part of a subscription streaming service aka Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Apple TV+, Shudder, Hulu, etc.

Virtual Cinema – Movie is available to watch through a ticketed system which shares profits with any number of local or nationwide arthouses or festivals. Some of these may be geoblocked.

VOD – Video on Demand, movie can be rented, downloaded and watched either for a set amount of time (24 hours+) or bought to watch any time, available on a variety of platforms including iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Fandango Now and others. (Also may be called “Digital,” “PVOD,” “TVOD,” or merely “On Demand,”)

TUESDAY, JANUARY 5

Digital/VOD: Gun and a Hotel Bible (Freestyle Digital Media) Scooby Doo director Raja Gosnell teams with Alicia Joy LeBlanc to adapt the award-winning play starring Bradley Gosnell as Pete, a desperate man who is about to commit a violent act when he encounters Daniel Floren’s Gideon, a personified hotel bible, as they get into a philosophical discussion. It will be available to buy or rent on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, DirecTV, On Demand, YouTube Movies, Vudu, Xbox, & FandangoNOW.

Streaming:

History of Swear Words (Netflix) No less than Nicolas Cage stars in Season 1 of the “educational series” on swear words that goes into the origins of all of your favorites!

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6

Virtual Cinema:

MY REMBRANDT (Strand Releasing) Dutch filmmaker Oeke Hoogendijk’s documentary looks at a few of the just 37 private owners of Rembrandt paintings, particularly Amsterdam’s Jan Six, a young art dealer and member of a family who has owned many Rembrandts, but he’s obsessed with an unknown painting that might even have Rembrandt having painted himself into the picture. Another owner, Baron Eric de Rothschild, is obsessed with selling two paintings, creating a bidding war between two top art museums.  The film will be available through New York’s Film Forum Virtual Cinema and others.

Streaming: SURVIVING DEATH (Netflix) The new six-episode doc series is directed and exec. produced by Ricki Stern (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work) and based on Leslie Kean’s best-selling book that looks into the possibility of an afterlife.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 7

Streaming:

FEATURED FLICK!

PIECES OF A WOMAN (Netflix) Kornél Mundruczó’s drama starring Vanessa Kirby and Shia Labeouf as a Boston couple who lose their baby in a difficult home delivery will hit the streamer.  You can read my review of the film here.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 8

Theatrical:

FEATURED FLICK!

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI… (Amazon Prime Video)   Regina King’s narrative directorial debut will open in more theaters after playing in Miami over the past few weeks will expand to other cities nationwide for a one-week theatrical release before streaming on Prime Video. You can read my reviews of the film here and here.

FEATURED FLICK! 

THE REASON I JUMP (Kino Lorber) Naoki Higashida’s best-selling book that was translated into English by David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas) is turned into an arty doc directed by Jerry Rothwell. It’s based on Higashida’s revelations as a 13-year-old boy suffering dealing with autism blended with portraits of five other young people with autism.

Quick Thoughts:  I haven’t read Higashida’s book or its English translation, but it makes a beautiful and lyrical  accompaniment, as narrated by Jordan O’Donegan, for this look inside the life of a number of young autistic people, as their parents talk about trying to help their children without fully understanding what they’re going through. In many ways, this doc may offer some of the best insights into what it’s like to be autistic or dealing with an autistic family member in order to create some much-needed empathy for a condition so many face. The film is haunting and even horrifying at times, but it’s beautifully filmed to create a fully immersive experience.

REDEMPTION DAY (Saban Films) Hicham Hajji’s action thriller stars Gary Dourdan (CSI) as U.S. Marine Captain Brad Paxton whose wife Kate (Serinda Swan) is kidnapped by a terrorist group while working in Morocco, which forces him back into action to save the woman he loves. It also stars Andy Garcia, Ernie Hudson and Martin Donovan, and it will get a limited theatrical release and be available on Tuesday, Jan. 12, On Demand and Digital.

Quick Thoughts: While Hajji seems to bring some authenticity to this Mideast revenge thriller, the film starts out as a tribute to our fighting troops but then soon turns ridiculous, first with the kidnapping of his wife less than 24 hours after going to Morocco, and then some of the politics involved with helping her. Eventually, Dourdan goes in guns a-blazin’ in a way more apt for a movie from the ‘90s, and Hajji undoes a lot of the good will the film would have received if things were handled even somewhat tastefully.  Appearances by better-known actors like Garcia, Hudson and Donovan tends to distract from the story more than adding or enhancing what was already a problematic premise.

IF NOT NOW, WHEN? (Vertical) Actors Meagan Good and Tamara Bass make their directorial debuts with this movie about four high school friends (Good and Bass are two of them, presumably) who are brought back together to help one of them during a crisis. From the official summary: “It’s a story of love, forgiveness and the incredible bond between women.)

Digital/On Demand:

STARS FELL ON ALABAMA (Samuel Goldwyn Films) V.W. Scheich’s romantic comedy stars James Maslow as successful Hollywood agent Bryce Dixon who returns to Alabama after 15 years for his high school reunion, only to learn that he is one of his few friends not married with children, so he pretends his client Madison Belle, to pretend to be his girlfriend. American Idol winner Taylor Hicks appears in the movie as himself.

FEATURED FLICK!

THE DISSIDENT (Briarcliff Bryan Fogel’s documentary about the murder of journalist Jamal Kashouggi will be released On Demand today via ITunes. Reviewed in the previous Weekend Warrior column.

Deon Taylor’s thriller Fatale (reviewed last month) will also be available to watch via VOD starting today.

Streaming:

WORTH WATCHING!

PRETEND IT’S A CITY (Netflix) No less than Martin Scorsese directs this 7-part limited series about his long-time friend, critic and essayist Fran Lebowitz, as they explore New York City, presumably pre-pandemic. As someone who is celebrating my 34th year in New York City this week, I absolutely loved the series. Lebowitz is absolutely hilarious and Scorsese really pulls some amazing stories from out of her in this series that’s like a “how-to” for anyone who might ever want to live here. A truly joyful albeit crotchety take on New York living, which is the perfect combination to keep this series entertaining.

FEATURED FLICK!

HERSELF (Prime Video) Phyllida Lloyd’s dramedy, starring Clare Dunne (who co-wrote the script) as a single mother trying to create a home for her two daughters and who decides to build an affordable home for them, hits the streamer today.  Also reviewed in the previous Weekend Warrior column.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 10

Critics Choice Super Awards The inaugural edition of the Critics Choice’s genre film and television awards show will be broadcast on the CW tonight, hosted by Kevin Smith and Dani Fernandez.

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

TUESDAY, JANUARY 12

Digital/VOD: SKYFIRE (ScreenMedia) The Simon-West directed thriller is set on the Tianhuo Island in a Pacific Rim volcanic belt where a young scientist (Hannah Quinlivan), who has invented a volcanic warning system, returns to prevent more death only to find that it’s been turned into a volcano theme park by Jason Isaacs. Okay, then. This will available On Demand.

THE BID (GVN Releasing) Marquis Boone’s directorial debut has him and co-writer Richard Harris (not that one) playing Philadelphia rappers who get framed by a police officer who sends them to prison to fight the prison system from the inside. As I started that last sentence, I presumed it was a comedy until I got to the last half of it.

CURSE OF AURORE (Freestyle Digital Releasing) Mehran C. Torgoley’s horror film is about a “Dark Web” thumb drive found by a YouTuber that involves a trio of American filmmakers including Liana Barron’s Lena, who are in Quebec researching the true crime case of a young girl named Aurore Gagnon, murdered in 1920 by her parents in a case of child abuse. As the filmmakers investigate the place where she was killed, they experience paranormal occurrences… and yes, it’s 2021 an we’re still getting Blair Witch Project “homages.”

GO/DON’T GO (Gravitas Ventures) Alex Knapp writes/directs and stars in this “psychosexual thriller” in which he plays the sole survivor after an unknown cataclysm with visons of his best friend Kyle (Nore Davis) introducing him to Olivia Luccardi’s Kay, the love of his life. It will be out via digital and cable VOD platforms.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13

2021 New York Jewish Film Festival This long-running series from Film at Lincoln Center will run virtually this year, beginning with the Ophir Award-winning Here We Are from director Nir Bergman (who won Best Director), a road trip tale of a divorced dad hitting the road with his autistic son. The festival’s centerpiece is Winter Journey, co-directed by Anders Østergaard and Erzsébet Rácz, and starring the great Bruno Ganz. The festival also includes Israel’s entry to this year’s Oscars, Ruthy Pribar’s Asia. You can read all about the films in the program here and can get a 17-film All-Access pass for the entire line-up for $125.00.

FEATURED FLICK!

THE WHITE TIGER (Netflix) Ramin (99 Homes, Man Push Cart) Bahrani directs this comedic adaptation of Balram Halwai’s 2008 Man Booker Prize-winning bestseller. Halwai is played by Adarsh Gourav, as it follows his journey from being a poor driver who uses his wit and cunning to become a successful entrepreneur in India.  Although Balram has been trained by society to only be a servant, he finds a way to work his way up through the system and try to change things from a new position within society. This will get a very limited theatrical release today before hitting Netflix on January 22.

Streaming: STALKER: THE HUNT FOR A SERIAL KILLER (Netflix) Tiller Russell’s docuseries tells the story about a serial killer that struck Los Angeles in 1985 in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave, the victims ranging from six to 82 years old.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 14

Theatrical/On Demand:  BLOODY HELL (The Horror Collective) Alister Grierson’s violent horror-comedy stars Ben O’Toole as a man with a mysterious past who flees the country to escape his personal hell only to end up somewhere much worse. It opens in select cities and On Demand, and then will be on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, January 19.

Streaming:

LOCKED DOWN (HBO Max) The Doug Liman-directed romantic comedy, starring Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor, about a heist set during a pandemic that’s written by Steven Knight will hit the streamer today. This movie was fully made during the pandemic.

HUNTED (Shudder) The live action English debut from Persepolis and Chicken with Plums director Vincent Paronnaud will stream on Shudder today. It stars Lucie Debay as Eve, who becomes the target of a misogynistic plot against two men who pursue her through the forest where she’s forced to survive. From the synopsis: “But survival isn’t enough for Eve. She will have revenge!” (Okay, that exclamation point is my own. Definitely sounds like something that would require one.)

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15

Note: This is Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday weekend, so many government agencies and schools are off on Monday. Not sure that will really have an effect on anything.

Theatrical:

THE MARKSMAN (Briarcliff/Open Road) (NEW REVIEW!) Liam Neeson stars in his second theatrical release in the past six months, Robert (Trouble with the Curve) Lorenz’s action-thriller in which Neeson plays a rancher on the Arizona border who ends up defending a young Mexican boy who is trying to escape from cartel assassins that followed him into the States. I haven’t seen this yet, nor do I know if I’ll have a chance. I’m guessing this is being released as a typical January release and not as an awards contender with the Oscar deadline pushed back to February 28.

Mini-Review:  Here we’re into a brand new year, and yet, we’re getting the third movie about an old man watching over a young child. This time it’s Liam Neeson as Vietnam sniper Jim Henson, who is living on his ranch in an Arizona border town with his dog Jackson with financial problems that might take his home away from him. A chance encounter on the border when Jim witnesses a single mother with her son being chased by the cartel, leaves the mother dead and the young, Miguel (Jacob Perez), in danger of being next. Jim decides to take the boy across the country to his family in Chicago, chased the entire way by the cartel.

While The Marksman attempts to create a topical action-thriller, it isn’t one that necessarily feels very timely, only because we’ve seen so many border-set movies over the past few years, maybe for obvious reasons. Director Robert Lorenz is a long-time Clint Eastwood collaborator, both as producer and assistant-director, and you probably will notice a number of similar stylistic flares in common –  you also can totally see Eastwood playing the Neeson role if he was twenty years younger.

The movie comes across more like last year’s Let Him Go rather than Neeson’s own 2020 movie, Honest Thief, and maybe that’s for the better since this seems to be better suited for his specialized skills, both in terms of action and drama.  Not that there is a ton of action in the movie, but the few shootouts and chases are decent enough, but nothing too insane. I’m sure ultra-liberals might have issues with certain scenes like how easy it is for Jim to buy a gun or teaching the young Miguel to use one, but that just seems creating an unnecessary political overlay.

While the majority of the film is Jim and Miguel on this road trip, there’s a nice role for Katheryn Winnick as Jim’s border police—well, it’s never really clear if she’s his daughter or not--but otherwise, the Mexican actors are not particularly good compared to Neeson – sadly, very stereotypical – and the writing is probably on the weaker side compared to the score by Sean Callery that goes a long way towards enhancing the emotions and tension when needed.

The Marksman is a decent enough dramatic thriller that feels a little by-the-books but gains enough humanity from Neeson’s performance to make it a worthwhile watch.

Rating: 7/10

THE DIG (Netflix) Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes star in this drama that takes place just before WWII with Mulligan playing a wealthy widow wo hires Fiennes’ archeologist to excavate the burial mounds on her estate in which they make a historic discovery. I like when movie titles are very literal like this one. Will be released to select cinemas before its Netflix debut on January 29.

MLK/FBI (IFC Films) Sam Pollack’s doc that’s had a successful festival run will get a small limited run as well as be available On Demand today. As the title implies, it studies the FBI’s attempts to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as his movement towards the Civil Rights Act continues to gain momentum. I didn’t like this as much as a few of Pollack’s other docs, including the recent Two Train Runnin’ and his co-directed doc, Mr Soul!

SOME KIND OF HEAVEN (Magnolia Pictures)

Lance Oppenheim’s first feature doc, co-produced by Darren Aronofsky, looks at the largest retirement community in America, the Villages in Central Florida, where a few residents are unable to find happiness despite the community’s pre-packaged paradise.

Quick Thoughts: This was a very different movie than I was expecting, since at first it seemed to thrive on the quirky personalities of the resident and their party-centric activities, but it then quickly focuses on three very particular cases, an elderly man named Dennis who is living in his van on the site of the Villages, trying to find himself a relationship (hopefully one with money). There’s also a couple who has been married for 47 years with a woman who has to deal with her husband’s ever-increasing eccentric behavior that involves drugs and troubles with the law. Lastly, there’s a widow who is trying to find happiness and companionship in the Villages, which is a particularly lonely experience as she goes from one group or club to another. All three of these stories keep the viewer invested but especially Oppenheim’s look at loneliness of people in that age group, which made it impossible for me not to think of my mother who has been suffering through the loneliness of the pandemic and not being able to be around other people her own age because of it. A terrifically insightful film that makes you think and hard about your own aging and mortality.

FLINCH (Ardor Pictures) Camron Van Hoy’s crime-thriller stars Daniel Zovatto as a young hitman who lives with his mother (Cathy Moriarty) who falls in love with a girl (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) who sees him kill someone. Since he can’t kill her, he instead brings her home and learns there’s more to her than he thought. This will ALSO be on TVOD starting on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

ACASA MY HOME (Zeitgeist, Kino Lorber) Romanian filmmaker Radu Ciorniciuc’s directorial debut doc, which premiered at Sundance last year (receiving an award for its cinematography), about the Enache family who lives in harmony with nature in the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta. When the area is turned into a public national park, they’re forced to move to the city where things are very different. It will open in select cities and via virtual cinema.

GOODBYE, BUTTERFLY (Gravitas Ventures) Tyler Wayne’s directorial debut is this crime thriller starring Adam Donshik (House of Cards) as Ryan Olsen, a family man whose five-year-old daughter is murdered, but with no leads, Ryan starts suspecting his oddball neighbor Stan (Andy Lauer), so Ryan takes the law into his own hands. This is getting day and date theatrical with TVOD (no idea what that is) and digital.

VOD:

AMERICAN SKIN Nate Parker’s second film as a director following the Sundance Prize-winning Birth of a Nation has him starring as a Marine veteran working as a school janitor who tries to fix things with his son, who is killed by a police officer who isn’t even put to trial for the death so he takes matters in his own hand. The drama also stars Omari Hardwick and will be available on iTunes and other VOD platforms.

Two of my favorite movies of 2020, Emmerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman (Focus Features), starring Carey Mulligan, and Paul Greengrass’ News of the World (Universal), starring Tom Hanks, will be available starting today via PVOD, rentable for 48-Hour rental. These both should be in the Oscar race, so don’t miss them!

Virtual Cinema: 

TRIBUTE TO SAM POLLARD Film at Lincoln Center is running a one-week retrospective to editor, producer and director Sam Pollard to tie in with the release by IFC Films of MLK/FBI, which played at the New York Film Festival last year. It will include some of his own docs (including, hopefully, the excellent Mr. Soul!), as well as his collaborations with Spike Lee, St. Clair Bourne and Henry Hampton. Hopefully, there will be a line-up as it gets closer to the series start, and I’ll add that when it becomes available.

FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO (Cinema Guild) Over a period of 35 years between 1984 and 2019, Lynne Sachs used various media, including 8 and 16mm film, videotape and digital images to capture a portrait of her father, Ira Sachs Sr, a Park Cit, Utah businessman, in order to understand the web that connects a child to her parents and a sister to her siblings. This will open in Virtual Cinema through the Museum of the Moving Image, Laemmle and others around the country. MOMI will also be holding a  30-year virtual retrospective of Ms. Sachs’ work, starting on Jan. 13.

MY LITTLE SISTER (Film Movement) Switzerland’s official Oscar entry is Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond’s drama starring Nina Hoss (Phoenix) as Lisa, a brilliant playwright who has stopped writing and now lives with her family in Switzerland. She dreams of returning to Berlin to be with her stage acting twin brother Sven (Lars Eldinger from Proxima) who is facing an aggressive leukemia. Lisa’s attention to her brother causes a rift in her marriage, but she hopes to write something that will get Sven back on stage before the inevitable. You can find a list of theaters showing this via virtual cinema here.

THE WAKE OF LIGHT (Laemmle) Renji Phillip’s drama stars Rome Brooks as a young woman who has to choose between seeking love with Cole (Matt Bush), a young man she meets who wants her to join him on his road trip, or caring for her aging father . This will have a virtual theatrical release through Laemmle Theaters today and then be available through Digital Platforms on February 15.

MANDABI (Janus Films) Senegalese novelist and the “father of African film” Ousmne Sembène’s 1968 film about an unemployed man who finds a windfall of money will get a release through Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema.

Streaming:

OUTSIDE THE WIRE (Netflix) Anthony Mackie stars in Mikael Håfström’s sci-fi thriller, playing android officer Leo who is teamed with drone pilot Harp (Damson Idris) to locate a doomsday device in a militarized zone before insurgents do.

WANDAVISION (Disney+) The long-awaited Marvel Studios television series that ties directly into the MCU, spinning-off Elisabeth Olsen’s Wanda and Paul Bettany’s Vision into their own series that seems to be playing with other dimensions and worlds but also

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI… (Amazon Prime Video) Regina King’s powerful drama will finally stream on Prime Video, so those who haven’t had a chance to see it at a festival or awards screening or in theaters will get to see it. Woohoo!

SATURDAY, JANUARY 16

Streaming: SERVANT (Apple TV+) Season 2 of the M. Night Shyamalan produced thriller series will debut.  I hope to have some more to write about as it gets closer, since it’s currently under embargo.

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MONDAY, JANUARY 18 VOD/Digital:

STALLONE... FRANK, THAT IS (Branded Studio) Derek Wayne Johnson’s documentary takes an in-depth look into the life and career of Frank Stallone, the younger brother of the far-more-famous Sylvester Stallone, whose own four decade career has earned him three Platinum Albums, ten Gold Albums and five Gold Singles… which is odd, since I don’t think I could name a single one of his songs. He’s also done soundtracks for many of his brother’s films including The Expendables 2, the first three Rocky movies, Rambo II and more and appeared in 75 films and TV shows. Obviously, I’ll need to watch this doc to learn more about him.

YUNG LEUN: IN MY HEAD (Momento Film/Nonstop Entertainment) Henrik Burman’s doc about Swedish hip-hop artist Yung Leun aka Jonathan Leandoer, who turned his love for rap music into a career by making music on his computer and putting the results up on YouTube, but soon, the imaginary character he has been portraying starts to take over, leading to drugs and mental illness.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20

Virtual Cinema:

THE SALT OF TEARS (Distrib Films) Philippe Garrel’s black and white drama about toxic masculinity involving one young handsome man put amidst three vulnerable women will play as part of Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 22

Theatrical:

NO MAN’S LAND (IFC Films) Conor Allyn’s thriller stars Frank Grillo as border “vigilante” Bill Greer, whose son Jackson (Jake Allyn) accidentally kills a Mexican immigrant boy while on patrol. Although Bill tries to take the blame, a Texas Ranger, played by George Lopez, urges Jackson to flee south via horseback into Mexico to hide out, chased by both rangers and Mexican federales, as he seeks forgiveness from the boy’s father (Jorge A. JIminez). Simultaneous theatrical and VOD.

FEATURED FLICK!

OUR FRIEND (Gravitas Ventures/Universal) Casey Affleck, Dakota Johnson and Jason Segel star in Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s adaptation of Matthew Teague’s novel The Friend: Love is Not a Big Enough Word (adapted by filmmaker Brad Ingelsby), which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2019. It tells the story of the Teague family – Afleck’s Matt, a journalist, his wife Nicole (Johnson) and their two daughters – and how their life is upended when she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer, forcing Matt to take on more responsibilities as her caretaker and parent, so the couple’s friend Dane (Segel) offers to help out. The film will be in select theaters and On Demand.

THE HUMAN FACTOR (Sony Pictures Classics) Oscar-nominated doc The Gatekeepers director Dror Moreh takes a look at the peace process between Israelis and Arabs over the past thirty years through the eyes of American mediators, spending time with all of the key players in the conflict trying to find a solution.

BROTHERS BY BLOOD (Vertical) Jérémie Guez’s revenge thriller, based on Pete Dexter’s novel, stars Joel Kinnaman as Peter Flood, who as an 8-year-old saw his little sister be killed in a reckless driving accident, for which his father sought violent revenge. 30 year later, he’s still trying to deal with his guilt and tries to distance himself from his family crime business and his cousin Michael (Matthias Schoenarts) who has been rising up in the business. In select theaters, and on VOD/Digital.

PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN (RLJfilms/Shudder) Steven Kostanski’s horror-comedy follows siblings Mimi and Luke (Nita-Josee Hanna, Owen Myre), who resurrect an ancient alien overlord who had been entombed million years ago, nicknaming the evil creature “Psycho Goreman” aka PG (Matthew Ninaber), using an amulet to make him obey their wishes. Soon, lots of PG’s friends and foes from across the galaxy realize he’s been released, and they come to Mimi and Luke’s town to resume their battle.  This will also be in select theaters, On Demand and digital.

BORN A CHAMPION (Lionsgate)  (NEW ADDITION!) Dennis Quaid and Sean Patrick Flanery (The Boondock Saints) star in this mixed martial arts film directed by Alex Ranarivelo (American Wrestler: The Wizard) that hits select theaters, digital, and On Demand today before being released on Blu-Ray and DVD on Tuesday, January 26. Flannery plays fighting legend Mickey Kelly, who lost a blood-soaked jujitsu match in Dubai only to learn many years later, that his opponent cheated, so he has to get in shape for a revenge match.

Digital/VOD/Virtual Cinema:

IDENTIFYING FEATURES (Kino Lorber)  (NEW ADDITION!) Having just won the Gotham Award for Best International Feature on Monday (after winning the audience and screenplay awards in the World Cinema category at Sundance last year), Fernanda Valadez’s Mexican border thriller will be released on Kino Marquee and via various virtual cinemas nationwide. It stars Mercedes Hernandez as middle-aged Magdalena, who has lost contact with her son after he’s left their town to cross the border into the U.S. to find work. She ends up following on an equally dangerous journey to find him while a young man named Miguel (David Illescas), recently deported back to Mexico crosses paths with her. 

ATLANTIS (Grasshopper) Ukraine’s Oscar selection is this film from Valentyn Vasyanovych  set in a desolate post-war Ukraine where former soldier Sergiy delivers the rare resource of water and volunteers his time to recover the dead bodies of fellow soldiers in hopes of healing. This will open exclusively in Metrograph’s Virtual Cinema system Friday.

NOTTURNO (Super) (NEW ADDITION!) Gianfranco (Fire at Sea) Rosi’s new documentary is Italy’s entry to the Oscars, as the filmmaker spent three years on the borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon capturing the day every day life that follows the tragedy of the dictatorships and civil wars within those countries.  It will get an exclusive virtual cinema launch today and then be available on Hulu and On Demand starting Jan. 29.

COMING CLEAN The new doc from Ondi Timoner (Dig!, We Live in Public) takes a comprehensive look at the opioid crisis, and the part in it played by Purdue Pharmaceutical and how it deceived patients (and doctors) to lure them in and get them hooked. Available via Virtual Cinema after its virtual festival run.

PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN TIME (Greenwich) Hungarian filmmaker Lili Horvát makes a love story set in the male-driven world of neurosurgery, starring Natasa Stork as Márta Vizy, who returns to Hungary after time in America to discover that a colleague with whom she had a passionate affair says he’s never seen her before. This will open in Virtual Cinema at Film at Lincoln Center and other places. Part of Lincoln Center’s Virtual Cinema, as well as Hungary’s official entry for the International Film Oscar.

BREAKING FAST (Vertical Entertainment) Mike Mosallam’s romantic dramedy set in West Hollywood stars Haaz Sleiman as Mo, a practicing Muslim who recently had his heart broken. When All-American Kal (Michael Cassidy) agrees to come to nightly Iftars (the traditional Ramadan meal), they soon learn that they have more in common than they thought. Available on VOD and digital.

Streaming:

THE WHITE TIGER (Netflix) Ramin (99 Homes, Man Push Cart) Bahrani’s comic adaptation of Balram Halwai’s bestseller hits the streaming service today.

THE SISTER (Hulu) Neil Cross adapted his own novel Burial into this four-part original series starring Russell Tovey as Nathan, who has been keeping a secret from his past, a party that ended with the shocking death of a young woman. Only Nathan and Bob (Bertie Carvel) knew what happened, but then Bob appears on Nathan’s doorstep with horrifying news.

PIXAR POPCORN (Disney+) The Disney streamer debuts a series of short films starring your favorite Pixar characters from Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Cars and The Incredibles.

Blown Away and Busted! (Netflix) Season 2 of the glass-blowing competition reality series and Season 3 of the amateur celebrity sleuth series begin.

Fate: The Winx Saga (Netflix) Brian Young’s live-action version of the Italian cartoon “Winx Club,” a coming-of-age journey that follows five fairies as they enter the magical boarding school called Alfrea.

Derek Delgaudio’s In and Of Itself (Hulu) The comedy directed by Frank Oz and exec. produced by Stephen Colbert that’s “a new kind of lyric poem.” Telling “the story of a man fighting to see through the illusion of his own identity, only to discover that identity itself is an illusion.” Yeah, no idea what that means but even Oz isn’t able to describe it, so that’s pretty weird.

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TUESDAY, JANUARY 26

Theatrical:

WRONG TURN (Saban Films) Mike P. Nelson’s remake of the 00’s horror franchise will debut as a Fathom Event today. It stars Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley, Bill Sage, Emma Dumont, Dylan McTee, Daisy Head, Tim DeZarn and Matthew Modine. It involves a group of friends hiking the Appalachian Trail who… you guessed it… make a wrong turn and end up in the land of the Foundation, a community of mountain dwellers who want to protect their lifestyle.

Digital/VOD:

CAGED (Shout Factory) Aaron Fjellman’s thriller stars Kenyan-born actor Edi Gathegi (The Blacklist), Melora Hardin, Angela Sarafyan, Tony Amendola and James Jagger. Gathegi plays an affluent African-American psychiatrist who is convicted of murdering his wife (Sarafyan) and sentenced to life and put in solitary. While trying to file an appeal, he’s pushed to the breaking point by an abusive female guard (Hardin), causing him to question his innocence and sanity.

#LIKE Sarah Pirozek’s thriller stars Sarah Rich as a Woodstock, NY teenager named Rosie who a year after her sister Amelia’s death from suicide after being cyberbullied learns that the man responsible (Marc Menchaca) is back online looking for new victims. It will be available via TVOD on iTunes, Amazon Prime, Vudu, FandangoNow and more.

A WOMAN’S WORK: THE NFL’S CHEERLEADER PROBLEM (1091) (NEW ADDITION!) Yu Gu’s documentary, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2019, will be released on VOD today. It looks at a couple cases of professional NFL cheerleaders who re making far less than deserve, almost working at minimum wage while having to pay out of pocket for their own beauty, transportation and uniforms, putting them into debt. So they sue the Oakland Raiders in a class-action lawsuit.

WEDNESDAY, JANURY 27

Streaming: PENGUIN BLOOM (Netflix) Glendyn Ivin’s adaptation of Bradley Trevor Greive’s novel stars Naomi Watts as Samantha Bloom, an Australian mother of three boys who travelled with her husband Cameron (Andrew Lincoln from The Walking Dead) in 2013 and became paralyzed from the waist down after falling from a rooftop. She ends up bonding with a black and white bird her kids name “Penguin” that helps her heal.  

THURSDAY, JANUARY 28 The Sundance Film Festival begins today, running until February 3. Hope to have some coverage here and on Below the Line.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 29

Theatrical:

FEATURED FLICK! THE LITTLE THINGS (Warner Bros/HBO Max) John Lee Hancock directs this psychological thriller that puts Oscar winner Denzel Washington back into Bone Collectormode, as he plays Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon, who is sent to Los Angeles to gather evidence but ends up looking for a killer terrorizing the city with a local Sergeant, played by Oscar winner Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody). Getting involved in the case, brings up secrets from Deke’s past. A third Oscar winner, Jared Leto, presumably plays the killer. This will be in theaters and streaming on HBO Max day-and-date. I will have a review for this closer to release.

FEATURED FLICK! SUPERNOVA (Bleecker Street) Harry Macqueen’s drama stars Colin Firth and Stanely Tucci as twenty-year partners Sam and Tusk, who travel across England in a camper van visiting friends, family and places from their past after a life-changing diagnosis that will test their love for each other. Look for my review of this very soon.

FEATURED FLICK! MALCOLM AND MARIE (Netflix) (NEW ADDITION!)

A week before its debut on the stream, Euphoria creator Sam Levinson’s new drama, starring John David Washington and Zendaya, will hit select theaters. Made during the pandemic, Washington plays a filmmaker on the night of the premier of his first feature gets into a very heavy conversation about their relationship with his partner (Zendaya) who doesn’t think he appreciates her and her contribution to his craft. Will have a review of this sometime later this week.

SAINT MAUD (A24) (NEW ADDITION!) Rose Glass’ acclaimed directorial debut starring breakout star Morfydd Clark as Maud, a hospice nurse who becomes obsessed with saving the soul of her dying patient (played by Jennifer Ehle) but sinister forces try to stop her. This will get a theatrical release today and then will get some sort of Epix Pay TV release on February 12. The movie just received eight nominations from the London Film Critics Circle, but honestly, I saw the movie so long ago, I don’t really remember it very much.

APOLLO 11: QUARANTINE (NEON) (NEW ADDITION!) This new doc short by Todd Douglas Miller follows up his Emmy-winning documentary, Apollo 11, this one covering the astronauts of the first spaceflight to the moon as they quarantine for three days after arriving back on earth. This will open in IMAX theaters this day and then be available On Demand starting February 5.

FINDING YOU (Roadside Attractions) Brian Baugh’s adaptation of Jenny B. Jones’ novel There You’ll Find Me is a romantic drama starring Rose Reid as violinist Finley Sinclair who is studying abroad at an Irish coastal village after failing to get into a New York music conservatory. Once there, she meets heartthrob movie star Beckett Rush (Jedidiah Goodacre) who is there filming his fantasy-adventure franchise, and a romance blooms between them.

THE NIGHT (IFC Midnight) Kourosh Ahari’s horror-thriller stars Shahab Hosseini and Niousha Noor as a married couple with a baby who take shelter in the eerie Hotel Normandie after a night out partying with friends. Over the course of the night, they realize they’re locked in with a malevolent force.

HAYMAKER (Gravitas Ventures)   Nick Sasso wrote, directed, edited and stars in the action-thriller in which he plays a retired Muay Thai fighter working as a bouncer who rescues a transgender performer (Nomi Ruiz) from a thug and becomes her bodyguard and protector in a relationship that also forces him back into the world of fighting. It will open in select theaters, On Demand AND Digital.

Virtual Cinema: DEAR COMRADES! (NEON) (NEW ADDITION!) Andrei Konchalovski’s 1962-set Russian drama about a rebellion and a strike following the rising of food prices in the industrial town of Novocherkassk and the massacre that follows. Following its December one-week qualifying, it will open in virtual cinemas this Friday (Jan 29) and then will be available On Demand and on Hulu starting February 5.

On Demand/Digital:

SAVAGE STATE (Samuel Goldwyn Films) David Perrault’s French-tinged Western takes place at the start of the Civil War as a family of French colonists in Missouri decide to return to France, but first they have to cross the entire country to get back to New York, led by a dangerous mercenary named Victor (Kevin Janssens).

Virtual Cinema: WHAT HAPPENED WAS... (Oscilloscope) Actor Tom Noonan’s 1994 directorial debut is a dark comedy about dating based on his own play, starring Noonan and Karen Sillas as co-workers who are stuck together on a Friday night after an intimate dinner that goes sideways. This won the Grand Jury Prize and Screenwriting Award at the 1994 Sundance, and will be added to Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema.

THE FUNERAL HOME (Uncork’d Entertainment) (NEW ADDITION!) Mauro Iván Ojeda’s supernatural thriller, which premiered at the Fantasia Fest last year, will hit virtual theaters today before its digital release on Tuesday, February 2. It’s about the dysfunctional family of an undertaker who experience all sorts of paranormal manifestations, but it could just be that they’re all MAAAAAD!

THE REUNITED STATES (Dark Star Pictures) (NEW ADDITION!) Ben Rekhi’s doc is about a group of unsung heroes trying to bridge the political and racial divides in the country as it’s being ripped apart at the seams.It will be available via virtual cinema today and on VOD platforms February 9.

Streaming:

THE DIG (Netflix) The Cary Mulligan-Ralph Fiennes drama is scheduled to hit the streamer.

PALMER (Apple TV+) Justin Timberlake stars in the Fisher Stevens-directed drama as an ex-convict who strikes up a friendship with a boy from a troubled home, played by Ryder Allen. It also stars Juno Temple and June Squibb.

BEGINNING (MUBI) (NEW ADDITION!) Georgia’s (the country, not the state) Oscar entry is the debut feature from  writer-director Dea Kulumbegashvili, a drama about a Jehovah’s Witness who undergoes a dramatic crisis of faith. Ila Sukhitshvili plays Yana, the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness leader whose community is attack from an extremist group that creates Yana’s discontent to grow.

WE ARE: THE BROOKLYN SAINTS (Netflix)

The new four-part docuseries from Rudy Valdez (The Sentence) looks at the youth football program in East New York, Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Saints program gets 7 to 13-year-old boys ready to play and succeed in athletics, while also creating a community.

That’s it for January. Again, check back over the course of the month to see what reviews/movies have been added. Hopefully, we’ll be back to your normal weekly Weekend Warrior by February, but we’ll see.

[vinylexams]

Dramathan - Into the Pink

I’m VERY excited to make this post because if you’ve been following VE for a while, you’ll recognize it as one of the only albums I’ve used this platform to help fund-raise to see it get pressed! Dramathan, or Jonathan as I know him, has been making noisy, DIY bedroom rock for a while now and Into the Pink is a big ol’ hunk of album with an even bigger story behind it. I won’t tell the story on his behalf, since there’s a pretty meaty interview waiting for you on our main website, but this album has a lot of backstory. Musically speaking, it’s really catchy pop-minded indie rock. It’s a little crunchy, it’s a little shoegazey, and it reminds me of the best-of-the-best college rock bands back in the mid and late 90s. Now, what’s even more exciting about this post is that it serves as your official heads up that I’ve also had a chance to interview Jonathan himself about this album and I’m including it in its entirety below the link to listen for yourself!

https://dramathantheband.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-pink

INTERVIEW:

Hi Jonathan! I’d love for you to tell us a bit about the album’s story and what you want us to know about the great music you’ve written here.

First of all, thank you! Not only for today, but for being one of the early supporters of this album. I’m aiming for brevity on this one because I know I have a lot to say! Into the Pink is my sophomore follow up to California Magick, both released on Kerchow Records.  It is an album I wrote and recorded in its entirety all by myself. It documents these past couple of years full of love, death, redemption, depression,fame, triumph, fame, and a life changing cancer diagnosis. Jayne Mansfield’s Pink Palace was the inspiration for the title and thought of moving into the house of love.  The remastered tracks are on Kerchow’s website and were the tracks used to press my new vinyl on pink wax! The vinyl can be purchased only through the Dramathan bandcamp.

Dramathan is a play on your name Jonathan, so tell us a little about that!

Like a lot of teens everything I experienced was just the end of the fucking world, a real costume drama. But in my defense my childhood was full of drama/trauma not completely of my own making. Yeah, I did wild things and was a chronic runaway. But what was I running away from? That’s the real question! But I digress. The short version is one day my mom called me that, it was funny and it just stuck. She was the only one who called me that for a long time.  It’s in the Urban Dictionary and they describe it as “an over dramatic gay dude” (which I may or may not had a hand in coining) but I think of it more now as queer who puts an end to the drama and cuts through the bullshit. It’s a bit strange having a band name or persona that’s actually ridiculously personal. That’s kind of a running theme in my life. I mean, if you see my IMDB I play myself on The Fine Bros. React channel on Youtube.  I’m lucky to have it though. It’s a name that really allows me to play to my moodiness musically and doesn’t pigeon hole me to a specific sound. Plus, It’s really the only good word play you can do with my name besides “Jon Not Thin” which is my IG handle, so there.

I shared a link to your GoFundMe page earlier this year to raise money for this pressing and also to help support your mother who is undergoing treatment for cancer. How has that campaign worked out?

In terms of funding, great. In term of community, it worked out better than anything I could have hoped for. I always thought I knew who my community was, but who it actually consisted of…well.. .that was a bit of a rude awakening.  People that I supported by showing up to their shows, donating money to, or by lending my name to their events were nowhere to be found. That was until the buzz around Into the Pink started! It was fans of music not fame that lifted me up from its inception.  There are so many people that claim to be supporters of poc-lgbtqia+-artists, so evolved in their inclusivity, but really are hypocritical or just surfing the trend for likes and followers.  And these are things that shouldn’t be made trendy, because the problem with making them trendy is that trends go out of fashion and we are here to stay!  These are real fucking people! The truth is people like me have to work twice as hard to get half as far in this industry.  My therapist would say “thoughts are things” and ask “Is this a narrative you’ve created?” To that I say, ‘Yeah , thoughts are things and people can create a narrative, but reality is a thing too!’ And the reality is Into the Pink is album that was created on the island of misfit toys. It doesn’t really fit into one genre and there are people that get it and love it!  Yes, I am aware that the story behind it resonates with a lot of people, but it wouldn’t be doing this well if it wasn’t a good album.  Here is where I show my hubris. The people who funded it know the back story, but the majority of people buying the vinyl don’t.  They want the music!!! I recorded this album all by myself, zero budget and on a phone! A damn phone, Nate! I had this one review where a sound engineer critiqued Into the Pink.  Not a rock journalist mind you, but a sound engineer.  They said things like “…not more than fuzzy guitars, drums and vocals…” well that’s what I had to work with! There was no producer and no studio! I love the Pixies but I’m not trying to be the Pixies! (another thing he threw out there, there are even references to the Sex Pistols which shows his musical pool to pull from).  Black Francis isn’t recording in his bedroom in between taking his mother to chemo. I did win him over though and at the end he recommended it. A fucking sound engineer! He said I did “a remarkable job with the tools he was working with” and that all my songs were “catchy” a term I used to hate but now embrace as one of my strengths. All this is extremely important for any artist to know (esp. marginalized ones) and I’m not afraid to speak on these things and really show my seams, because I want people esp. queer or people of color to know it’s hard, but also know that they can do it!!! So many people finally get through the door and get a seat at the table in this industry. But then they shut the door behind them, barricade it! Because they feel like there isn’t room for anyone else. FUCK THAT! I’m all about breaking down that damn door and holding it open for others like me.  I mean… the cream rises. You’re only afraid if you don’t have the goods. So, now I keep my circle tight, but right. Many of the campaign supporters were friends of React or Reactors themselves (Trudi, Ary, Faith and Jason). The trans community really stepped up and friends that know my mother.  They know my mom has spent her entire life helping people, fighting for gay/equal rights by being part of ACT UP, a Brown Beret who helped raised money for communities where people couldn’t pay for their families’ own funerals, and a social worker who always went above and beyond as an advocate for the people she was assigned to. It was time to give back to the woman who had given so much all of her life.

If it’s not too forward, how is your mom doing? I know we’re all sending her lots of good vibes and thinking of her as she goes through treatment!

It’s rough. I didn’t know that the heart could break so many times in a day. How many times until it’s just broken, ya know??? Some days I hear my mom’s very distinct laugh and I am so grateful for that day and then the next moment I find myself frightened I might forget it someday soon. I want people to know how hard it can be so they cherish every moment with their loved ones without being a total buzzkill. I live my life pretty publicly/authentically, but I can only tell my side of it. I will say she’s a fighting and kicking ass, but for once I wish things could just be easy for her.

Tell us a little about you, the musician.

Well… I’m an autodidact. Before I got into punk I listened to a lot of female R&B groups, oldies and those old school Jamz like “Lookout Weekend” by Debbie Deb. My mom played a lot of Pat Benatar, The Cars, and Janet Jackson around the house so I learned a lot about hooks from those artists, at least early on. But I picked up on how to write harmonies from bands like Veruca Salt not the Beach Boys!

What is your approach to songwriting? Who do you credit as some of your biggest influences?

I’m a fucking workhorse when it comes to music! For every song on this album there are at least two others that didn’t make the cut!  I will put out shit song after shit song until one feels right. (I shouldn’t say they were shit, but just weren’t up to my standards). I don’t wait for a muse to show up and guide my hands “Ghost” style. Sure, I get inspired, but I need to write and love doing so. This time though I stepped it up, I knew that I needed to write something people would buy! That’s the harsh reality of it.  I still create without an audience in mind with the exception of a younger me. Growing up I always wanted to hear songs about boys loving boys, magick, poc, etc. So, I create what I want to see more of in the world and share personal experiences in hope to lessen others’ alienation. I also didn’t listen to any music while writing this album! I did have a vision board that had pictures of Deborah Harry, Debi Martini (whom I dedicated the album to), Jayne Mansfield and Patti Smith. Also, a list of bands I love including: Hole, Huggy Bear, Red Aunts, Helium, Julie Ruin, Free Kitten, Kaito, Veruca Salt, Slant 6, Frumpies, and L7. It was less a vision board and more of a reminder. Like REMEMBER WHAT YOU LOVE LISTENING TO and WHY! Hole will forever be my number one influence, I think Courtney Love is an underrated lyricist even if a vast amount of people think she is an overrated anything else. It’s funny because I grew up listening to noise bands, red aunts, but what comes out of me is this weird alt. pop! I mean, I don’t know many noise bands with bridges and a hook. Go figure!

If you got to collaborate with one famous musician or band (alive OR dead), who would it be and why?

Patti Smith, but what would I bring to the table??? She’s a Poet laureate! I would just prostrate myself at her feet.

What made you want to press this album on vinyl and how did you get connected with your label, Kerchow Records?

That was always the goal from day one.  As a collector, why not my own wax? I read somewhere that on a digital format your ear/brain can get tired of the fixed sound. On vinyl it’s forever changing in the most miniscule of ways so it’s harder to tire of. We did do the cassette tape first because we weren’t fully funded and time was of the essence. The tracks weren’t mixed to my liking (my doing) but, I didn’t know how long we had with my mother. So, we released it just so my mother could see a tangible product.  Not to mention Kerchow is famous for putting out tapes so I am honored to be their first vinyl release. I know they did one before, but it was combined label release with two other labels. Into the Pink is their first solely Kerchow vinyl. I first met Nick Dolezal in Fresno through my then boyfriend, Taylor Rosario-Price.  Fresno is one of my hometowns. They have some of the best and worst people you will ever meet. Nick of Kerchow is one of the good ones. That is also how I met the brilliant Damaris Paz who made my vision for the cover come to fruition. All are amazing musicians/artists in their own right. I didn’t think they would be interested in my first album California Magick, because like I said before, my style didn’t really mesh with what I heard from their label or any for that matter, but I believe he was intrigued by how I was recording the songs before he heard the songs themselves. I didn’t even think to shop demos around for Into the Pink.  They believed in me before the Youtube success and I’m all about bringing people up with me. They believed in me from the beginning so I wouldn’t just do one release and leave… it’s called loyalty!

What does the vinyl format mean to you? If you’re a collector, how did you get started and what types of records do you like to collect?

I started in my teens with whatever I could find at thrift stores. “Sounds to make you shiver” was a good one and probably the scratched to hell “Rumours” by Fleetwood Mac (which I still have). It started with riot grrrl releases! There was a time when whatever Kill Rock Stars put out without question, without hearing it, I would just buy it, because I knew it would be amazing. I have an affinity for the female voices so the majority of my collection is that.  I have thousands of pieces of vinyl. Not to sound to snobby, but I only buy NM or Mint vinyl now.

Do you have any white whale records that you’ve never been able to find?

I’m going to say something I never thought I would say but I pretty much have all the records that I want.  I know what your readers are thinking ‘well there you have it he’s not a real collector’, not true!  It changed throughout the years. When I was doing my tumblr 365 it was an og pressing of Live Through This, got it. Not to mention a white label candy heart promo copy of Hole demos and rarities.  Then it was all about getting them signed.  I have signatures by: Kat Bjelland, Mary Timony, Louise Post, Janet Weiss, Theo Kogan etc. I even got The Craft soundtrack signed by Rachel True. Believe me, there are still records I would like to have but I know where they are. I still need singles like  LaVern Baker “Voodoo, Voodoo”, Donna Lynn “I’d Much Rather Be with the Girls”, April Stevens “Kiss me tiger”, and Betty Lavette’s “Witchcraft in the air”  It’s a cash issue as I am sure it is with a lot of collectors. Also, there are records that aren’t on vinyl that I’m waiting for like, Frumpies “One Piece”, the Jawbreaker soundtrack, Juliana Hatfield’s “Made in China”, even Sheryl Crow’s self-titled album lol!

Last Question! What’s a bit of Dramathan trivia that you’ve never told anyone in print before!

Until this album I had never wrote songs about one particular person.  Even if it’s an it’s a very devasting break up song or about a boy (usually a diss track) it’s always snippets of many different experiences tied together.  I feel in doing so, like, when you compile many different experiences that feel similar it has a synergistic effect and a lot more people can relate. Collecting all the teardrops to make the tidal wave sort of thing.  Also, I feel like if I were to hone in on one person I would destroy them psychically! One song in particular is about my best bruja Lily. Who in my darkest hour showed up in my dream and I did the same in hers on the same night. She told me I “dream jumped” and as an avid student of the esoteric believe she saved me both in my dream and in real life because I was really depressed.

Also, I mention Angelyne in the album because we met for coffee and she drove me around Hollywood in her iconic pink corvette (for free I might add) and while writing L.A. Water I kept the pink quartz crystal she gave me in sight.

[williamsjoan]

DualShockers’ Game of the Year 2018 Staff Lists — Grant’s Top 10

As 2018 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2018 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2018 releases — can be considered.

After the absolutely monstrous year of video games that 2017 had, I don’t think that we are going to see a year similar to that one in a long time. Hell, I thought that last year’s excellent lineup would put a damper on this year’s games no matter how good it was. However, boy was I wrong: 2018 straight up told everyone to put a sock in it.

What most surprised me about this year was the variety of games I thoroughly enjoyed. Throw in some indie titles, your typical single-player AAA experience, multiplayer shooters, VR titles, and you are left with a something to play for whatever mood you are in. Sadly, there are plenty of games that I need to get to that could have possibly made this list such as Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Hitman 2, and Monster Hunter: World. However, I plan on getting to them as soon as the holiday ends.

That being said, here are my top 10 favorite games from 2018:

10. Mario Tennis Aces

To start the list off, let’s discuss the best Mario Tennis game yet. Yeah, I said it! Mario Tennis Aces had a forgettable and easy single-player mode. But let’s forget all about that and talk about what really matters, the online mode.

Oh my god did I play so many Mario Tennis Aces multiplayer matches. The game didn’t have all too much content, but damn was that multiplayer addicting! The tournament system was genius; even though the scoring system doesn’t mean much, there was a two-week window where winning a tournament meant everything to me.

What was surprising was the vast difference in gameplay when playing as different characters. Playing as Boo had me curving tennis balls all across the court. If I wanted to just blast some tennis balls down the other player’s throat, Bowser was the right guy for the job. Yoshi could probably return almost every ball hit his way and I can only imagine the player on the other side throwing his Switch into the wall when I won a rally of 50 or more hits. Mario Tennis Aces was excellent, but it makes me want the one true king in Mario sports titles back, Mario Golf. In due time my friends. In due time.

Check out the DualShockers review of Mario Tennis Aces.

9. Moss

In a year full of wonderful PSVR experiences, Moss was one of the standouts. It showed me how clever level design can be in virtual reality and how many different ways that the new tech can be utilized. Rather than being in the typical first-person perspective, the all-seer perspective–as I like to call it–was such a unique way to solve puzzles and control the adorable Quill.

If I could describe Moss in one word, it would be “magical.” Playing the game was similar to being at Disney; everything just felt so wondrous. The storybook narrative, the incredible environments, and unique level design had me enthralled. Polyarc created one of the best VR games on the market, and I can’t wait to see what they have planned next.

Check out the DualShockers review of Moss.

8. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — The Champions’ Ballad

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is my favorite game of all time. I have had the time to reflect on it, and I can say that without a doubt is, as no other game has captivated me like it. So, of course, I was happy to jump back into Hyrule with the game’s second DLC expansion, The Champions’ Ballad.

I know that The Champions’ Ballad released last December, however, I didn’t get to it until January of this year, so it still counts! Even though the second expansion pass didn’t live up to some fans’ expectations, I still believe that it provides some of the best shrines and I would say the best boss battle in the game.

What might have helped was that I had not popped back into the game in a while. I beat it at launch and beat it a second time on Master Mode when the first DLC launched, so it had been a while since I had popped back in. It might be a short time for some, but for my favorite game of all time, it was a while for me. Revisiting my favorite open world was like going back home and having that favorite dish your mom makes.

The Champions’ Ballad provided me with new content to the most memorable, fascinating, and wondrous game I have played, and that might be all it needed to do to make me love it. Does that make me biased? Probably.

7. Marvel’s Spider-Man

I am not as high on Marvel’s Spider-Man as many of my colleagues: I found the missions to be repetitive and not many of the side missions stood out to me. However, swinging through New York City was so damn fun. I don’t think I had ever used the fast travel mechanic just because I would much rather swing my way around and over buildings. I am not sure how Insomniac Games made it so damn easy and intuitive, but they did a phenomenal job on not only the movement but combat mechanics. Combining brutal kicks and punches along with web attacks was fast, fluid, and surprisingly easy to get a grasp of after only an hour of playtime.

Insomniac also compiled a wonderful narrative, and much of that was due to Yuri Lowenthal’s performance as Spider-Man/Peter Parker. If it wasn’t for Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War, he would have been a shoo-in for the performance of the year.

I am personally not that big of a comic book/Marvel fan. Woah, whoah, whoah, before you raise your pitchforks: I do enjoy all the movies, I am just not as into them as others. However, I was incredibly invested in the story of Marvel’s Spider-Man, and I am eagerly anticipating the second entry into the series.

Check out the DualShockers review of Marvel’s Spider-Man.

6. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

It almost became just a part of my nightly routine. Around 8:30 every night at the beginning of the year, a couple of my buddies and I would hop on the Xbox One version of PUBG and try to win a few chicken dinners before bed. Even though it was frustrating as all hell to play sometimes at launch due to frequent crashes, terrible framerate, and entire buildings taking forever to just render, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was probably the game I played the most this year. Despite its hiccups, and it had a whole lot at launch, the game is still an experience unmatched by other Battle Royal shooters.

PUBG provides some of the most suspenseful multiplayer gameplay on the market right now. You could run into ten other players depending on where you drop, or you could possibly get run into one other player and somehow get that sweet chicken dinner. I know that the game still has a multitude of issues that still are not fixed, but PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is still an experience like no other. Just one match sucks me right back in.

Check out the DualShockers reviews of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on PS4 and PC.

5. Firewall: Zero Hour

Firewall: Zero Hour, developed by First Contact Entertainment, is the game we all dreamed of when we were kids. With the power of PSVR, rather than just controlling the first-person shooter, you are now inside the first-shooter. I am still blown away by how well everything worked. Using the PS Aim controller to, well, aim of course, is incredibly intuitive and fluid. Besides learning how to move with the thumbstick on the aim controller, it is as simple as just pointing and shooting, and boy is it fun.

As a competitive tactical shooter, Firewall: Zero Hour is a mind-blowing experience and shows how limitless the possibilities are for PSVR. When an enemy was around the corner, I would peek my gun barrel around the corner and take them out. If I got pinned down behind cover, I could stick my gun over and blind fire to give myself an opportunity to get to safety. My only issues with the game were that it had some annoying quality-of-life issues at launch when it came to matchmaking, and how long it would take to start a new match.

Firewall: Zero Hour was my favorite VR experience this year, in a year that was absolutely packed with some of the best games that PSVR has to offer. Now, all the game needs is a rounds system like Rainbow Six Siege. Please, First Contact! I am begging you!

Check out the DualShockers review of Firewall: Zero Hour.

4. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate lives up to the Ultimate name. It is the definitive Smash experience and even though it released just a couple weeks ago, it has provided me with some of the most fun I have had all year. I mean, what did you expect? It’s Smash Bros. except, this time around, there is much more content to enjoy rather than just regular Smash battles with your friends.

World of Light, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s single-player/adventure mode, has had some mixed reactions across the internet. However, I am a firm believer that it is the best single player offering in any of the games in the series. Running into familiar and new faces while collecting Spirits has provided me with hours upon hours of enjoyment. Collecting and switching different Spirits in and out might sound tedious to some, but I have enjoyed every second of it. With a stellar single-player mode, the biggest roster in the series by far, a knockout soundtrack, and that same old, yet refined Smash gameplay, Ultimate is the best in the series and a must-buy for Switch owners.

Check out the DualShockers review of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

3. Celeste

Talk about a game that caught me off-guard. Celeste was not only a great platformer, but also had a very emotional story that impacted me in an unexpected way. Here I was thinking that I was just booting up a new, retro-style platformer. But next thing I knew, I was up at 3 AM, captivated by Madeline’s conflict with her own inner demons and also torturing myself to find strawberries. Celeste is the best platformer of the year, and I don’t think it is even close. (I haven’t played The Messenger or Guacamelee! 2 or many other of those types of games yet, but it just sounded cool to say)

I think what stood out to me the most, along with other many other players, was how unexpected of an experience that Celeste was. When I first started, I was thinking I was going to get a fun and challenging platformer, but that was going to be most of the experience. I never would have guessed how impactful the narrative was going to be and how it tackles deeper subjects such as mental health issues. At the time, I was going through some personal problems and this game helped me to cope with those emotions, as well as tackle them head-on. Maybe in a lesser year, Celeste would have taken my personal top spot.

Check out the DualShockers review of Celeste.

2.  Red Dead Redemption 2

It seems crazy that Red Dead Redemption 2 isn’t the definitive game of the year for everyone’s list. After the excellent Grand Theft Auto V and the almost infinite amount of money that Grand Theft Auto Online continuously makes even to this day, the sequel to Rockstar’s classic Western seemed like it was going to be the most ambitious game ever made, and I think it just might be.

Red Dead Redemption 2 had an absolutely phenomenal and heart-wrenching story; the downfall of the Van der Linde gang was a beautiful mess, even though we all know where it was heading. The world is by far the most immerse open world ever created. Roger Clark captured Arthur Morgan and his enlightenment so well, and these are only just a few parts of why I enjoyed the game so much.

While the game is groundbreaking in many aspects, there are still some little nitpicky things that I can point out that bug me, such as the lack of traditional fast travel systems, clunky gameplay, and that it might go on just a tad too long. However, Red Dead Redemption 2, despite its minuscule flaws, is one of the best open world games ever created.

Check out the DualShockers review of Red Dead Redemption 2.

1. God of War

To me, God of War might be the closest the closest thing to a perfect video game. In my opinion, there is not one flaw that I can point out. In fact, I think that most aspects of the game can be considered as the best we have ever seen from the medium.

The narrative in God of War reached a level of storytelling that I have didn’t think the industry could reach. The simple, yet extremely detailed story left me captivated. Christopher Judge made Kratos into a purposeful character and gave one of the best performances I have ever seen. The Leviathan Axe is my favorite video game weapon I have ever used, and it was just so damn satisfying to play with.

Cory Barlog and Sony Santa Monica created an absolute masterpiece that other developers will be studying for a long time to come. God of War set the bar so freaking high that it will be hard for any game to follow this up next year. It is the pinnacle for storytelling, gameplay, level design, world building, and artistry, and because of that, God of War is absolutely one of my favorite games of all time.

Check out the DualShockers review of God of War.

Check out the other DualShockers’ staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 17: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2018 December 18: Lou Contaldi, Editor in Chief // Logan Moore, Reviews Editor December 19: Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor // Tomas Franzese, News Editor December 20: Scott Meaney, Community Director December 21: Reinhold Hoffmann, Community Manager // Ben Bayliss, Staff Writer December 22: Ben Walker, Staff Writer // Chris Compendio, Staff Writer December 23: Eoghan Murphy, Staff Writer // Grant Huff, Staff Writer December 26: Iyane Agossah, Staff Writer // Jordan Boyd, Staff Writer December 27: Max Roberts, Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Staff Writer  December 28: Noah Buttner, Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Staff Writer  December 29: Steven Santana, Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer December 30: Travis Verbil, Staff Writer // Zack Potter, Staff Writer

The post DualShockers’ Game of the Year 2018 Staff Lists — Grant’s Top 10 by Grant Huff appeared first on DualShockers.

DualShockers’ Game of the Year 2018 Staff Lists — Grant’s Top 10 published first on https://timloewe.tumblr.com/

[newstfionline]

Parenthood lost: How incarcerated parents are losing their children forever

By Eli Hager and Anna Flagg, Washington Post, December 3, 2018

Lori Lynn Adams was a mother of four living in poverty when Hurricane Floyd struck North Carolina in 1999, flooding her trailer home and destroying her children’s pageant trophies and baby pictures. No stranger to moneymaking scams, Adams was convicted of filing a fraudulent disaster-relief claim with FEMA for a property she did not own. She also passed dozens of worthless checks to get by.

Adams served two year-long prison stints for these “blue-collar white-collar crimes,” as she calls them. Halfway through her second sentence, with her children--three toddlers and a ­14-year-old--temporarily under county supervision, Adams said she got a phone call from a family court attorney. Her parental rights, he informed her, were being irrevocably terminated.

Before going to prison, Adams had sometimes drifted from one boyfriend to another, leaving her kids with a babysitter, and she didn’t always have enough food in the house. But she was not charged with any kind of child abuse, neglect or endangerment. Still, at a hearing that took place 300 miles from the prison, which she couldn’t attend because officials wouldn’t transport her there, she lost her children. Adams’s oldest daughter went to live with her father, and her other three kids were put up for adoption. She was banned from seeing them again.

“I know what I did was wrong, and I had to pay the price for my actions,” Adams, now 50, said. “But this is the most extreme price there is.”

Mothers and fathers who have a child placed in foster care because they are incarcerated--but who have not been accused of child abuse, neglect, endangerment, or even drug or alcohol use--are more likely to have their parental rights terminated than those who physically or sexually assault their kids, according to a Marshall Project analysis of approximately 3 million child-welfare cases nationally.

In about 1 in 8 of these cases, incarcerated parents lose their parental rights, regardless of the seriousness of their offenses, according to the analysis of records maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services between 2006 and 2016. That rate has held steady over time.

Female prisoners, whose children are five times more likely than those of male inmates to end up in foster care, have their rights taken away most often.

To some adoption proponents, immediately finding children a nurturing home should always be the priority. Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor at Harvard Law School, said that while some parents turn their lives around when they leave prison, their children should not have to wait for a family.

“You never know if they’ll just go right back to a life of crime,” she said, “and kids deserve better than that.”

A growing contingent of family advocates, however, say that removing children from their birth families is a destructive act in itself. A prison stint alone, they say, should not be grounds for severing the bond between birth parent and child, which can lead to profound negative effects on children’s mental and physical health.

“The right to your children is the most fundamental one you have, but we strip it from incarcerated parents so casually,” said Kathleen Creamer, a family attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. “This is the family separation crisis that no one knows about.”

Over the past few decades, the number of imprisoned parents in the United States has skyrocketed. From 1991 to 2007, it jumped by more than 357,000. Today, more than half of the 2.2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails have minor children.

All the while, lawmakers have taken a tougher stance on troubled and absent parents.

In 1997, with first lady Hillary Clinton’s vocal support, Congress passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which mandated that federally funded state child-welfare programs begin termination of parental rights in most cases in which children had been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months. The measure’s supporters hoped it would pave the way to adoption for kids who had been languishing in temporary, often unstable homes while their biological parents tried to kick a drug habit or find housing.

The legislation also created bonuses for states that facilitate adoptions. Since 1998, the federal government has doled out more than $639 million in these rewards.

But the law’s largely unintended consequence was to make incarcerated parents, who now spend well more than 15 months on average behind bars because of the tough prison sentences of the same era, more vulnerable to losing their children.

According to the Marshall Project analysis, at least 32,000 incarcerated parents since 2006 had their children permanently taken from them without being accused of physical or sexual abuse, though other factors, often related to their poverty, may have been involved. Of those, nearly 5,000 appear to have lost their parental rights because of their imprisonment alone.

No significant racial disparities were found in the relative rates at which these parents’ rights are terminated. But given that African Americans are disproportionately incarcerated--1 in 10 black children have a parent behind bars, compared with about 1 in 60 white children--this phenomenon affects them in outsize numbers.

Family court cases are complicated, all the more so when parents are incarcerated. Inmates are by definition absent, and they sometimes have a history of other child-welfare disputes. Whether to terminate their parental rights is a multifaceted decision made by judges on a case-by-case basis, and the legal grounds for doing so vary by state.

Yet the ways that other parents with child-welfare cases can stave off that outcome--spending time with their children regularly, showing up for court hearings, taking parenting classes, being employed, having stable housing and paying child support to reimburse the government for the costs of foster care--are all next to impossible from confinement. Corrections departments are not obligated to drive inmates to family court, and county child-welfare agencies rarely have the resources to bring children to faraway prisons for visits with Mom or Dad.

Judges, in turn, sometimes make the life-altering decision to terminate imprisoned parents’ rights without meeting them.

“There’s an impression among some in our community that incarcerated folks don’t deserve to have a family,” said Judge Anthony Capizzi, immediate past president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

Malissa Gamble, a Philadelphia mother of two, went to prison for nearly 15 months in 2003 on a parole violation stemming from a charge of receiving stolen property. Within weeks of her release, there was a hearing scheduled to consider terminating her parental rights.

At one point, the judge said, “The mother in this case is not available because she is incarcerated,” according to Gamble.

“No she’s not! The mother is sitting right here! I’m here!” she said she shouted from her seat in the courtroom.

Because Gamble was freed in time to make it there, she was able to keep her kids.

Amanda Alexander, executive director of the Detroit Justice Center and a senior research scholar at the University of Michigan Law School, sees the dichotomy between what’s best for parents and what’s best for kids as a false one. The child-welfare system, she said, certainly must find young people a stable home. But it should also help their mothers and fathers stay in their lives in a productive way, along with siblings and other relatives.

“In most cases, kids are better off by all kinds of metrics when they have a relationship with their birth families,” she said.

Dorothy Roberts, an expert on race, gender and family law at the University of Pennsylvania, said the underlying problem in the child-welfare system is decision-makers’ bias against poor parents, especially incarcerated mothers of color. The just thing to do as a society, she said, would be to better support these families with affordable housing, food assistance, drug treatment and child care, including in prisons.

“Instead of actually responding to the struggles of poor families ... we’ve decided that it’s simpler to take their children away,” she said.

At the very least, said Corey Best, a fate so stark as losing one’s children should not be irreversible.

In 2004, Best was in a bad place: a New Orleans jail cell, facing an aggravated battery charge after getting in a fight with a drug dealer. Before then, he said, he had been close with his 3-year-old son, Corey Jr., practicing counting and reading with him before bedtime. But based on Best’s history of substance abuse and arrests, plus his six months of incarceration and the resulting lack of contact with his son, his parental rights were terminated.

“I needed drug treatment and services to be offered to me while I was in jail,” said Best. “But I love my son.”

Best, 45, has been sober for more than a decade and is a successful consultant and public speaker on child welfare. But he still isn’t allowed to contact Corey Jr., whose teenage years he has only glimpsed on Facebook.

Each year on his son’s birthday, he buys a card, writes a thought or aspiration, and places it in a special box. Corey Jr.’s adoptive mother, who declined to comment for this story, indicated through a friend that she might be willing to introduce the boy to his biological father, but only after he turns 18.

Meanwhile, Best said, he’s devoting himself to his second son, Corvin, an artistic and athletic 9-year-old who loves making paper airplanes.

“Maybe this is God’s way,” he said, “of showing me some kind of redemption.”

[deltamovies]

Jurassic World Free Full HD watch online & movie trailer

Release Year: 2015

Rating: 7.0/10 ( voted)

Critic's Score: /100

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Stars: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins

Storyline 22 years after the original Jurassic Park failed, the new park (also known as Jurassic World) is open for business. After years of studying genetics the scientists on the park genetically engineer a new breed of dinosaur. When everything goes horribly wrong, will our heroes make it off the island?

Writers: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins, Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Irrfan Khan, Vincent D'Onofrio, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Judy Greer, Lauren Lapkus, Brian Tee, Katie McGrath, Andy Buckley, Eric Edelstein, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cast: Chris Pratt –

Owen

Bryce Dallas Howard –

Claire

Irrfan Khan –

Masrani

Vincent D'Onofrio –

Hoskins

Ty Simpkins –

Gray

Nick Robinson –

Zach

Jake Johnson –

Lowery

Omar Sy –

Barry

BD Wong –

Dr. Henry Wu

Judy Greer –

Karen

Lauren Lapkus –

Vivian

Brian Tee –

Hamada

Katie McGrath –

Zara

Andy Buckley –

Scott

Eric Edelstein –

Paddock Supervisor

Taglines: The park is open.

Details

Official Website: Official site |

Official site [France] |

Country: USA

Language: English

Release Date: 3 Jan 2015

Filming Locations: Louisiana, USA

Gross: $1,670,400,637

Technical Specs

Runtime: 124 min

Did You Know?

Trivia: Gray shares a number of similarities to Tim Murphy from Jurassic Park (1993) the hyperactive son of divorcing parents, he's the younger of two siblings, though visibly intelligent for his age in addition to being obsessed with dinosaurs, similar to how interacting with Tim caused Dr. Alan Grant to open up more emotionally through surviving among the dinosaurs, Gray's experiences with Zach in Jurassic World helps to strengthen the bond between the two. See more »

Goofs: Zach and Gray enter the old Visitor Center driveway in one of the old Jeeps that are there. This would not be possible, since in the more than 20 years since the Jeeps were abandoned, the tires would have deteriorated and gone flat, the battery would have gone dead (which is why the boys are shown replacing it), and the gas would have become a viscous, almost varnish-like, gel. In addition the heat and humidity would have rusted many of the engine components. See more »

Quotes: [

User Review

Author:

Rating: 10/10 First of all I think people need to understand that film is a lot like music, you can't listen to a new Justin Bieber song and complain because it's not a Mozart masterpiece. And you definitely can't watch Jurassic World expecting a mind-boggling, emotional Inception type film. I would put Jurassic World in the same category as most Michael Bay films, the story line won't make you think, the characters won't go through any psychological changes but you will be thoroughly entertained by the special effects. I think it's fairly obvious throughout the original trilogy and this film that we are the visitors to the attractions, Steven Spielberg gave the parallel Earth a new unimaginable attraction, one which surprised the audience so much, it's rated as one of the best films ever. Period. Fast forward twenty two years past the films of Interstellar, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, we as a human race have seen a lot of original, unique things, a plain old dinosaur film will not bring us the same thrills as it did in 1993. Therefore we are once again, the visitors to the attraction. We will never feel the same buzz as first seeing that T-Rex crashing the gates over, or the same chill down the neck when first hearing that Raptor shriek. However, we can still be entertained. Which is what happens throughout the film. The characters are fairly bland, there are only a couple likable ones, but they all seem to grow on you near the end, the bloodbath that is left by the new Dino is quite emotional and gives you a side to pick fairly easily, the surprises throughout the film keep it exciting and the special effects, well we are in 2015 and they did have a lot of money to spend so lets just say they are incredible as expected. If you're looking to be on the edge of your seat for two hours and trust the film to not bore you, then you have nothing to worry about, the line graph representing excitement just climbs up and up, if you're expecting another Shawshank Redemption, well please don't slate the film when it doesn't satisfy your needs. I think that films should have two ratings, one for overall, and another for it's main sub-category, for example as an overall film I'd give it a 7.5-8, it's sub-category of excitement I'd give a solid 10, a comparison to the first Transformers which I'd give an 8 for excitement and a 5 overall. Therefore I really do recommend this film for anyone who like me, enjoys special effects, good excitement and two hours to just sit on the edge of my seat and thoroughly enjoy my time. I can only say I can't wait for the second one and I'm sure you will too after you watch it.

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