#i hope this is one of those rare cases where the film adaptation is better than the book

[epiclong]

Exposition in film

EXPOSITION IN FILM MOVIE

EXPOSITION IN FILM FULL

EXPOSITION IN FILM SERIES

These “soundtrack” albums, nowadays, are used less as promotional tools and more as capitalizing efforts. These albums were released under the name “music from the motion picture soundtrack.” Over time, the terminology shifted from this to “motion picture soundtrack”, to “original soundtrack”, and to the now oft-used-in-the-world-of-emoticons “OST”.

EXPOSITION IN FILM MOVIE

In the 1940s, studios started releasing records with samples of the movie music as a promotional effort to market their films (after Walt Disney made a buck or two doing it for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). That is why it is a little unfair to the technological geniuses that we have come to refer to the musical selections of a film as the movie’s “soundtrack”. We live in an era where the soundtrack reigns supreme. We often get so caught up in the characters and action and the screen that we don’t give a lot of the credit to the sound engineers backstage who had, simply put, given life to the entirety of the movie’s action. The “popcorn flick” has become more an exhibition of sound than anything else, which is one reason why movies like that are better viewed in movie theaters than at home. The ability to make a good soundtrack has become an art form in today’s cinema and this is one of those very rare elements of film-making which an educated film-connoisseur could fairly argue has improved over time. While the dialogue track is normally created during filming, things like the music track and sound effects track will be frequently created post-production, so that a more conclusive edit of the film can be used, off of which they can base the sounds and properly synchronize them to the images on the screen. In sound film, there will always be a sound effects track, there will almost always be a dialogue track, and there will frequently be a music track. “Soundtrack” (it can be one or two words) is actually the composite of multiple tracks of different types of sound that are recorded for the film. What we, in our generation, often refer to as the “soundtrack” is an adaptation of a movie’s “music track” that has been packaged for commercial consumption. That is certainly the case with the word “soundtrack”. And, I hope, we can discuss those succinctly yet thoroughly in the following paragraphs.Īdaptations and evolution of the lexicon occur gradually, but often. But, how much of a positive influence does good music create for a film? There are real positives and real negatives in regards to movie music when it comes to film theory. From songs in musicals, to orchestral scores, to songs that play during opening and closing credits, and songs that just play in the background of a scene, music is an integral part of great cinema. The topic at hand? As you guessed by the title of this chapter, we will be talking all about movie music. These lists, I believe, will require a chapter all of their own, because they involve a topic that we haven’t yet tackled in this blog.

EXPOSITION IN FILM SERIES

The difference being I used more of the action lines showing characters doing things as opposed to dialogue. If you only read the dialogue, you don’t get nearly everything you need.Īnd that’s the key you want the action lines of your characters to be as essential as the words they speak-most of the time, more.Ģ.As we continue through my “Great American Screenplays” series with a series of reviews focused solely on films which came out in 1939, I would like to take a moment to introduce a few lists that I will be featuring alongside the reviews. See how the second one was more visual to the first.

EXPOSITION IN FILM FULL

Stuffs a big wad of cash in an already full jar. SARAH, his mom, sits in the living room hears the door open. Visual Example: Danny walks in the house fighting sleep, dressed in a Ben and Jerry's uniform. There isn’t anything technically wrong with this piece. It says everything the audience needs to know to move the story forward, but let’s see a more visual example. SARAH Hey, where are you going? DANNY I'm taking an extra shift at the Ice cream store. Let’s look at exposition in dialogue or what you don’t want to do.ĭialogue example: Danny runs downstairs, bolting out the door, SARAH his mom sits in the living room. Your character is an eighteen-year-old who works at an ice cream shop to save money. We picture what people do far more comfortably than anything else. A character’s actions are, by far, the most important visually.

[maxwell-grant]

It's been suggested that Mr Nicolas Cage may play Count Dracula in the forthcoming RENFIELD movie - may I please ask what you think of the idea?

I'm a liiiittle leery in regards to the forthcoming Renfield movie, Renfield's a character I have a lot of thoughts on and one that's usually been handled extremely poorly (even by the already abysmal standards of Dracula adaptations) and the project seems like it's a comedy? It's described as "an adventure with a comedic tone set in the modern world", with Robert Kirkman describing it as "an extremely violent comedy", also involving the Lego Batman director and a writer who, from his IMDB page, was involved with some of the better Rick and Morty episodes (at least as far as I remember, I quit that show on S2 and never really cared what they did afterwards). I'm not remotely opposed to funny takes on Dracula, I made that pretty clear as is, but something about this one specifically is giving me only a little pause.

I think that's mostly because everything indicates that this is gonna be more of a Dracula parody than a straightforward take on the material and I've rarely seen one of those that I enjoyed (haven't touched Dracula: Dead and Loving It, although even Mel Brooks fans seem to treat that one like a dud). I was extremely on board with Nicholas Hoult playing Renfield, even when my initial reaction to the announcement on a Renfield movie was something along the lines of: "...Look, the idea kinda makes sense, Renfield's story is one of the most tragic and compelling elements of Dracula and one element of it that could even work as a standalone story, but I don't trust Dracula movie adaptations, especially with treating Renfield with anything resembling dignity for what the character actually is in the story, instead of the pop culture stereotype".

I was super onboard with Nicholas Hoult playing Renfield and I still think the casting is perfect, but hearing that the whole project's gonna be tending more towards farce? ...Yeah, I’m not exactly sure what to expect here, I think it's really gonna depend on what the project does with it. And that's how I feel about Nicholas Cage as Dracula, too. Because, to a lot of people, and I hope this isn't the case for the people actually making the film, Nicholas Cage as Dracula is a funny idea, an inspired idea for memes and that's it, get the meme actor to play a funny Dracula, do some over-the-top stuff and whatnot.

Which is, fine, I like Nicholas Cage memes sometimes, I imagine a creative team who's worked on Lego Batman and Rick and Morty is definitely aware that this is a no-brainer idea and can definitely make for a great joke. But I sincerely hope that this isn't what they're going for because that could be such a sad, sad waste of what Cage has to offer here.

Let's just completely put aside that Nicholas Cage playing Dracula is a dream come true for the man, as someone who's openly professed playing Dracula to be one of the three characters he's dreamed of playing since he began acting, who began producing films specifically to get Shadow of the Vampire made, who's admitted Christopher Lee's Dracula as his inspiration for getting into horror films, nevermind all that stuff about him owning a bunch of castles and pulling allnighters at Vlad the Impaler's Castle while shooting Ghost Rider 2 and whatnot. Let's also put aside that Cage has also recently started to gain some respect back with performances in films like Mandy and Pig where he gets to show off how good he is of an actor, with or without playing bugfuck maniacs, and focus on another thing that makes Cage a great choice for Dracula: The fact that he's already played one of the most unnervingly monstrous film takes on vampires ever made.

Say, has anyone here watched Vampire's Kiss? That movie where Cage has that meme face while yelling at his secretary and runs down a street screaming he's a vampire and that's all that anyone really remembers of it? Fun stuff, right? Oh yeah it's also the movie where Cage plays one of the most vile protagonists in film history who spends the entire film gradually unraveling into further and further delusions, who becomes a psychotic murderer and ends the film a broken wreck shambling in the streets begging people to kill him before he's put out of his misery, and hey class, show of hands, anyone who’s watched the film can tell us the exact moment where all humor leaves the film and suddenly you’re feeling pretty damn awful for thinking this was gonna be a comedy?

Yeah, I went into Vampire's Kiss thinking it was gonna be a goddamn laugh riot, and got hit with a deeply uncomfortable film that hinges entirely around Cage playing the most absurd performance long past the point where it stops being funny and does a 180 into being absolutely disturbing and no one's laughing anymore, and the character he’s playing makes Patrick Bateman look like a model citizen and paragon of stability. The film’s marketing was made to hook people in with the expectation of this being a romantic comedy only to be hit with psychological horror, where the least horrifying thing that could happen would be the protagonist actually becoming a vampire. If anything, Cage’s character in Vampire’s Kiss could very well be seen as an extremely dark take on Renfield, particularly in Renfield’s attempts to emulate Dracula (Cage ate a live cockroach for this film). Vampire’s Kiss makes a terrific argument for Nicholas Cage as Dracula as well as Renfield.

I’m probably sounding a bit too negative with this post and, all things considered, I do expect to enjoy Renfield at least a little, even if it’s mostly a parody take on the source material. I hope Cage gets to at least get Dracula out of his system with this and I sincerely, dearly hope that the film is aiming for more than just playing around with the stock pop culture perception of Renfield and Dracula. I’m used to being let down by film takes on Dracula but, I wanna start going to theaters again, and I wanna try to be a little less cynical towards upcoming movies.

[mixingpumpkins]

I agree that, how Thor was treated in the marvel adaptation was BAD, it wasn’t funny AT ALL. But to say that God of Wars Thor is capitalizing off that?? Where did they get that? Seriously I think they’re just pulling that out of their ass. All we have is a design? Where and how did the creators ever make it seem like a joke? 😅

If the creators have indicated they were doing it as a joke or specifically in homage to MCU Thor, I haven't seen it, like I said the other day.

So I agree - to assume God of War Thor was designed that way to capitalize off of fat!MCU!Thor is, as of now, a stretch.

But without wanting to assign motivations to or belittle the original anon, I can see where it's a concern.

Historically, the entertainment industry hasn't been kind to fat characters. They haven't been kind in their representation of a lot of populations.

So when a game or a show or a film or whatever shows up with a character in one of those populations - in this case, a large-sized god/person - of course there's going to be suspicion.

Because experience says that character isn't going to be treated well.

And even when preliminary signs point to good or at least positive representation, there's still going to be suspicion, because unfortunately, experience also says this could be "bait."

That suspicion is totally valid and totally the entertainment industry's fault, because they are responsible for the overwhelmingly negative/poor representation of the characters in that population in the past.

And with the more popularized push for better representation/"wokeness" in entertainment, they're also responsible for the god awful bait-and-switch when they pretend that a character is going to be good rep of such-and-such and then it isn't.

For now, outright bad rep still happens far more than even an attempt at good rep. And what looks like potential positive rep unfortunately ends up being negative rep more than it ends up being good rep. So I really don't blame people for being suspicious and not wanting to get hopes up.

Where the cynicism loses me is where it completely stops giving things a chance to be better.

I know shitty rep sucks. I know being baited with good rep and then getting shitty rep sucks. It really fucking hurts. It carries over into things far more serious than the entertainment industry and causes real harm. People are allowed to be angry, hurt, and tired about it.

But to be frank, seeing the potential for a positive/well-represented character and immediately telling ourselves "it's going to be shitty" - before we even know anything about it - doesn't help us.

It doesn't actually protect us from getting hurt or being disappointed if the character/show/whatever ends up being shitty. It just gives us a tiny paradoxical boost of satisfaction that we were right, we saw this was problematic before it even had the chance to prove it was problematic, yay us.

But it doesn't actually fix the problem or make things better.

We need the good/positive representation for that - enough of it that it's the norm, and that the shitty rep is a rare, disappointing shock rather than an expectation... for a start.

But we're never going to get there if we tear down everything potentially good before it even has a chance to be good.

There has to be a process. We can't wake up one day and suddenly the media is flooded with all the perfect/positive representations of these populations (whether the characters are fat, gay, trans, whatever) that they've been denied since before Hollywood began.

Somebody has to be the first to do it. And the second. And the 50th. And the 1000th. And more than that. And chances are, given that our understanding of what "good" or "positive" representation for any given thing is changes over time, even the best-intentioned attempts at good representation aren't going to be perfect.

That doesn't mean we have to settle, or that we're not allowed to criticize it, and that doesn't mean we can't point out where representation can be better when we see it. But progress really is our friend more than perfection here.

The people in the industry who really care about making those positive steps and getting that positive representation out there are going to be discouraged from even trying for it if we crucify them for the smallest mistake - or before they've even had a chance to try.

We need them to keep trying, because, spoiler alert - the people who don't care about good rep aren't going to be swayed by callouts, or they would have been already. At best, they'll do the bait-and-switch to show they're "trying," then use the complaints in response to that as the excuse to go back to outright shittiness.

We need the people who are trying for the good rep, and to support the good rep that exists (even if it's not always perfect), until the good rep becomes the norm. Because the people who are still making the fat jokes and killing the stereotypical gays and being racist AF and everything else have already shown that they don't care, they don't care that we don't like it, and the only reason they'll stop is not people yelling and "cancelling" them but the industry itself changing around them and leaving them outdated.

That may be a long, long time in coming, but let's not make it longer by shitting on the people who do care about positive rep - or the potentially good content they're producing - before we've had a chance to see it, yeah?

(Slight tangent, I know.)

But yeah, the only other thing I can think of that the original anon might have meant is that they thought the only reason God of War was willing to have a fat Thor design was because the MCU did it? (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, anon.)

But that, again, like I said yesterday, doesn't seem likely.

But if God of War Thor ends up being awesome - and not a shitty fat joke opportunity or whatever - so what if they only felt able to design a fat Thor because the MCU did it first (albeit shittily)?

So what if studios aren't the first to do something right, and a good choice (that's still seen as "risky") was only greenlit because somewhere else did it first?

I'd rather have more decent representation for less-than-100%-perfect reasons than none because we're waiting for everything about it - including the reasons the creators made the decision - to pass an impossible purity test.

Idk. Just my really long two cents, I guess.

[ohlayarfp]

Film Review - Misteri Dilaila by Syafiq Yusof

Misteri Dilaila is a Malaysian horror thriller film that went viral in 2019. I rarely watch Malaysian films because when i do, it’s usually the same plot all over again. Drama, romance, action, comedy and everyone’s favourite, Horror. I feel like these genres are the usuals everywhere but what makes it unbearable for most of us Malaysians is how similar every story is. Rich boy meets a poor girl. Rich boy falls in love with her and when they get married the mother hates the poor girl. They fight and one day someone dies and the end. For horror, it’s just about some people getting haunted by a ghost that was sent by a close friend of theirs.

The thing I understand about the horror hype for Malaysians is how our culture is deeply rooted with mystical beliefs and as religious as we tend to be, ghost stories seem to intertwine with our faith for countless years. Personally, I believe in Asian ghosts more than the western versions. This is probably due to my own family having our fair share of sights into the world of the undead. 

The reason why I chose to talk about this film is because of how disappointed I felt when I watched it. Unlike most Malaysian films, it had the potential to be a great one. The look of the film was far better than the usual ones we got and the story building had a Gone Girl vibe. What made me disappointed was the fact that while watching that film I was hopeful and excited thinking finally a Malaysian Filmmaker is making a psychological horror instead of those in your face jump scares. 

The story is about a married couple, Jefri and Dilaila, who were spending their holiday together at a luxury vacation home in Fraser’s Hill. After a petty issue where they end up quarrelling at each other, Jefri discovers his wife went missing the following morning. Next thing he knows, a mysterious woman who also goes by the name of Dilaila shows up one night where she claims to be his wife. Adding more confusion is the supernatural occurrences that regularly haunts Jefri whenever he’s alone in the house.

Throughout the whole film, I was at the edge of my seat thinking that there’s finally a malaysian filmmaker that is about to introduce a character with a mental illness as the protagonist which would’ve justified his hallucinations of the ghost. Unfortunately, it was just like other films where there’s no actual context to the sightings, they were just ghosts being ghosts and haunting him for no reason. Well that’s for the 2nd version of the film.

Another fun fact about this film is that it went viral due to the alternate endings it has. When the film came out in the cinemas, people were surprised to hear that they had different endings when they discussed it with their friends. This was purely the filmmaker and his team’s intention. Different halls have different endings and this was meant to be a surprise for the audiences. It was a great marketing strategy and considered as a genius way of thinking for some people while some were mad that they were being ripped off. 

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

As a person that watched both versions, I was unsatisfied with both versions as both endings angered me. Nevertheless, I didn’t think it’s an absolute flop though. Both versions have the fair share of plot twists. The first version revealed that the protagonist we thought all along was the actual antagonist. He was the one that killed his own wife whilst every supporting character was a part of the police team that were acting to make him confess to his wrong doings. It was then stated that the hallucinations he got was a result of his guilt and him being under the influence of drugs all along.

The second version on the other hand is more mystical. The ghosts made more appearances in this version. The protagonist is still the good guy but the inspector that was involved in the case turned out to be a fake policeman and he was working with the imposter Dilaila. Towards the end, Jef found out that his wife has been dead a long time ago and the ‘wife’ he was holding turns out to be something else (this we never see on screen though). 

Personally if i were to choose an ending, I would choose the 1st version as it makes more sense logically but I can understand why people love the 2nd Version.  Malaysians and their thirst for horror films explains the statistics. But a famous film reviewer on YouTube (ZhafVlogs) once made an instagram poll and asked his subscribers to choose between the two versions and surprisingly it was a tie. This proves that the director made the right decision to come up with alternate endings. 

*END OF SPOILERS*

The film then landed in a controversy within the next few weeks after the premiere. Someone noticed that the story was awfully familiar. It was then proven that the story was 90% similar to a few films from India, America, Russia and more. People were comparing it to a film called “Vanishing Act” and they were right. 

As a film student, I am aware about the concept of adaptation so I personally see no wrong in the filmmaker’s act. However, I can understand why people are mad. The filmmaker went silent once news got out about him “stealing” the idea and “claiming” the story as his. But based on my research, I never found him claiming the story as his before. Although, he also never mentioned about him making a remake of the initial film as well. The filmmaker went silent for a long time and people kept sending him hate comments but soon died after a few months. 

A year later, the issue was raised yet again by someone and this caused the filmmaker to finally speak up. He explains the concept of adaptation and how he was inspired by a scriptwriting book called Save The Cat which said that “A good artist copy, but a great artist steals”. He also states about there being so many films abroad that have the similar concept to an older film such as Fast and Furious with Point Break, Avatar with Pocahontas and Inception with Paprika. He finally came clean and stated that he was inspired by a stage play from France called “A Trap for a Lonely Man”. He then added his own twist by adding some horror elements knowing that it being the target audience favourite genre.

Also regarding the quote from Save The Cat, (in my opinion) I feel like what the author was implying is about ‘stealing’ stories from life. Not stealing the exact plot codes from other films. This is based on my understanding from the phrase which I assume Syafiq may have misinterpreted it.

He raised logical points from a filmmaker’s perspective and he also raised some issues about being pressured from his father (Yusof Haslam) and brother (Syamsul Yusof) who were well known filmmakers as well. He said that everyone kept on telling him to be better than his father and brother. Sadly, when he was at his lowest, even his family turned their backs on him and said that it’s fully his fault. 

From my point of view, I was initially furious with him for not being able to defend himself by explaining about the adaptation because I feel like most Malaysian audiences are unaware about it. People assume adaptation is from book to film when it's more than that. I, myself, learnt that from film school. And I’m not entirely defending him as well, I’m still disappointed in him for not speaking up sooner. But I do empathise with him as well. The audience were quick to attack him. The film industry in Malaysia is not entirely in the best state for these past few years. So a film like Misteri Dilaila made everyone hopeful for more quality films like it only to be betrayed at the end when they found out that it wasn’t his own creative idea and a total rip off. I still feel like he did a good job with his visuals which was an improvement from the local films around that time.

Reading through the whole issue and looking at how this decision to “copy” the plot codes as he was inspired from the Save The Cat book has opened my eyes. As a filmmaker, I feel like i should always do research before starting on a project and the best thing is to always be honest with our intentions. If it’s inspired by a remake, then set it straight and give credit to the original piece. Don’t keep it to yourself. It is terrifying though, being in his state where everyone turned their backs on him, even his own family. He released a few films after that, saying that film is his job and that it is his source of income so as much as it may seem hard sometimes, life still goes on. Sadly, he received a lot of backlash and people lost their faith in him. People were being sarcastic and teasing him if the film was even his.Seeing that happened to him opened my eyes. People may let it slide but they’ll never forget. Once you screw up, people will remember and use it against you. 

Pictures of the set:

Links to Film Reviews:

A Non-Horror Fan's Guide To Watching 'Misteri Dilaila'

https://rojakdaily.com/entertainment/article/6414/a-non-horror-fan-s-guide-to-watching-misteri-dilaila

Misteri Dilaila (2019) Review

https://www.caseymoviemania.com/2019/02/misteri-dilaila-2019-review/

Movie review: Misteri Dilaila

https://www.thesundaily.my/style-life/reviews/movie-review-misteri-dilaila-DJ649603

Link to news about the controversy :

Is Local Horror Film ‘Misteri Dilaila’ a Rip Off? Here’s What The Director Had To Say..

https://juiceonline.com/is-local-horror-film-misteri-dilaila-a-rip-off-heres-what-the-director-had-to-say/

Horror fans slam ‘Misteri Dilaila’ for ripping off Hollywood film ‘Vanishing Act’

https://www.malaymail.com/news/showbiz/2019/03/05/horror-fans-slam-misteri-dilaila-for-ripping-off-hollywood-film-vanishing-a/1729154

Clarification/Statement by the Director about the issue (in Malay);

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=649749852534594&set=pcb.649750949201151

[queenmaracasandlove]

Love Of  My Life Series - Joe Mazzello x F!Reader - How They Met

Word Count: 2400

Summary: Y/N works on a new Netflix project with Joe Mazzello but is deeply annoyed by him.

Warnings: Mention of alcohol

A/N: The ‘Love Of My Life Series’ will be a series of short One Shots featuring members of the BohRhap Cast x Reader. Although you will be able to read them indepedently, they will all follow the ‘same couple’ if that makes sense. They are not aimed at being very long and I will try to post one a week at least ! Hope you enjoy it. 

MASTERLIST

It was her first important job and the last thing she wanted was for the experience to be ruined by a stupid fellow actor. Working for Netflix was quite a big deal. If the show was successful it would be a big step in her career and she knew it. Unfortunately someone was particularly getting on her nerves, Joe Mazzello. Unlike her he was used to big productions and had been in the business for so long. But to her, he just acted as if  he was somehow entitled to take more space than the others. He loved to have a laugh between takes when all that she wanted was to go over her lines and notes before the camera started rolling again. 

She did not have a lot of scenes together in the episode that they were filming and still, she always found herself at hair and makeup as the same time as him and even though he needed much less work than she did, they often finished at the same time. She thought it was mainly because he was always joking around and that made her even more upset. To be completely honest she were also a little jealous of the way he was able to seem so at ease with everything, so relaxed. She wished she felt the same but unfortunately it was not the case right now and all she wanted was some peace. 

‘Could you please turn the music down?’ she asked

‘Excuse me. Did you just talked to me?’ He joked, looking at you

She frowned, what was he playing at again? She was definitely not in the mood. She did not want to be rude but the music was preventing her from focusing on the script. Usually he played stuff that she did not know but today it was like he was playing all her favourite songs and she could not help but singing all the songs in her head. 

‘Yes, sorry. I was just wondering if you could…’

‘You don’t like it?’ he asked, before you could even finish your sentence

‘No it’s just… I’m trying to…’

‘Learn your lines. Come on Y/N, I’m starting to wonder if you are not learning all the roles just in case.’

She pinched her lips. She was just doing her job, there was nothing wrong with it. She had worked so hard for this and she was completely terrified. 

‘Sorry Y/N I was just…’ he started

‘Joking’ she said, being the one finishing the sentence this time, ‘Yes I know. I’ve realised you did that a lot’

‘Do you have a problem with me?’ he asked. He did not seem angry, mostly saddened. 

‘No’ she simply answered

‘Great. So happy we could talk’

That was the end of the exchange and he came out of the caravan before her. After this they rarely were in the same place at the same time. Days passed and things felt a little better. She always needed time to adapt but mostly to trust herself with what she were doing. She always felt out of place and not good enough. But time was the greatest helper and the good comments from the team had lightened Sher mood. She was more comfortable with her character and everybody who was working on the project. Everybody except Joe. He did not annoy her half as much as he did at first. In fact, he was just quite cold with you.

To be honest she knew it was your fault. She had not been the nicest to him. Over the last weeks she had paid more attention to him, not only to things that had annoyed her at first but to the rest. She was actually quite impressed with his acting and could see he was very into it, she also noticed how he was deeply interested in the directing aspect of it. And she had to admit, some of his jokes were not as bad as she might have thought. But it was too late now, he rarely even looked at her when she was not in the same scene and barely ever talked to her. 

Tonight was one of the cast member’s birthday and they all had been invited. She thought that it would be the perfect occasion to relax even more and enjoy the experience while she could, maybe even apologize to Joe. She was never good at knowing what to wear but she had picked one of your favourite dress, a little sexy and very pretty, the type that made her feel empowered. She hoped that her feet would manage the high heels for the night and got off the taxi that had arrived in front of the restaurant. Her eyes looked for some of your colleagues but she quickly realised that she was early, as per usual. 

She went towards the bar and ordered a drink. As she was getting yourself on one of the stool, she looked at the door to see Joe coming in. She gave him a timid smile as he was looking in her direction. He seemed to hesitate but eventually made his way towards her. He did not seem especially pleased to see her and her gaze focused back on her drink. 

‘Hi Y/N’ his cold voice uttered

‘Good Evening Joe’ she answered, trying to sound as warm as possible

He ordered a drink and for what seemed to be eternity there was an awkward silence between the two of them. She was thinking about what to say, how to apologize about the other day, say something nice or find a completely neutral subject. But before she could open her mouth, a group of people entered the restaurant and shouted both of their names. She had been saved from this uneasiness. 

------------

The party was great. The meal was delicious and the drinks numerous. Presents had been opened and it was now time to dance. She felt really good and the inhibition had been replaced by confidence, due in part, to intoxication. She  laughed as her and her colleagues were moving on some of the best 80s tracks, her favourite type of music to dance to. Joe was dancing across the dancefloor and she could see that he was looking at her from time to time. She walked in his direction and extended her arm, an invitation to dance with her and maybe a peace offering.

He grabbed her hand and her body suddenly felt even warmer than it already was. His eyes were still fixed on her. She started dancing again and he followed her. Finally he started to smile and she relaxed a little bit. She did not what to say, maybe her gesture would be enough for him to understand that she was sorry. She was not great with words, but he probably had figured that out already. She tried to smile as he was starting to be goofy again. His dance moves were, interesting to say the least. 

‘Can I offer you a drink?’ 

The tip of his nose brushed her ear as he came closer to deliver those words. She shivered and agreed. They both walked towards the bar where the music was not as loud. They were both short of breath after the dancing. He ordered the drinks without even looking at Y/N. She was surprised to see that he had chosen your favourite drink. 

‘How did you know?’ she asked

‘You drank the same thing all night’ he smiled

‘Are you stalking me or something?’

She had said that in a tone that was much more reproachful that what she intended. A frown replaced the smile on his face and she felt stupid all over again. Before she could say anything he grabbed his fresh drink and walked back towards the others. 

‘Joe! Wait!’ she called him

‘What Y/N? What have I done wrong this time?’

‘Nothing… I just wanted to say sorry. I know I’ve behaved like a selfish brat’

He looked at her, surprised. She was kind of expecting an answer but nothing came, making the moment even more awkward than it already was. At first she felt like she was about to apologize even more before she noticed how he was trying to repress a smile.

‘Are you enjoying this?’ she asked

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about Y/N.’ He said with a smile testifying of the contrary ‘But apology accepted.’ 

‘Good’ she sharply said

‘I feel like I should apologize for always upsetting you but it’s not like I’m doing it on purpose’ he said playfully 

She did not how to react. It was not so much that he was upsetting her but the way he always unsettled her. He was standing right here, probably waiting for an answer. Clearly, she was not the kind of person who liked to lose an argument and he seemed to know it. 

‘You are not upsetting me’ you tried, not very convincing

‘Really. Why are you giving me the silent treatment everytime you see me?’ 

‘As if you had not been avoiding me !’ she retorted

‘What do you mean?’ he asked with confidence

‘Since I asked you turn the music down you always stand on the opposite side of the room or go somewhere else or…’

‘How did you notice? Are you stalking me?’

She rolled her eyes. He was clearly teasing her and yet…

‘What do you mean I noticed?’ she realised ‘So you were doing it on purpose. I was right’

‘Y/N…’ he softly said ‘For someone who always wants to be attentive to every detail, you are not very perceptive’

‘So you just did so to annoy me?’

‘Not really’ he sighed

‘Then what?’

‘Let’s talk about it when you’re less drunk alright. Your clearly too intoxicated if you’re not able to understand what I am trying to say’ he reckoned

And because she thought he was probably right, she followed him as he was joining the others. For the first time in a while she did not try to have the last word.

---------

She had spent the whole Sunday in her room, trying to get over the massive headache that alcohol had left her with. She only vaguely remembered what had happened after her fourth cocktails. While reading her script for the following day, she had noticed that she would be sharing a scene with Joe. She knew that she had apologised but the end of the exchange was a blur although you did not if this was caused by the alcohol or the lack of comprehension of what he was trying to say. 

She had thought about him most of the day. Sometimes she found herself thinking that although his dance moves were not always great, he knew how to move. She also thought about how a simple white shirt looked great on him. How he was always teasing her but was never mean. She had arrived early on set and could not help but be saddened by the fact that he was not in the hair and make-up caravan with her. She almost regretted putting on the playlist that she had made (yes,she had made a playlist while fighting the urge to sleep the previous afternoon) with the songs she remembered him sing when they were both getting ready a few weeks ago. It now felt suddenly ridiculous but as she was grabbing her phone she saw him getting inside. 

‘Morning everybody’ he simply said

Everybody answered and he almost did not look at her. It seemed stupid to her but Y/N felt a little hurt by this behaviour. She almost said something but he seemed to be captivated by something on his phone so she decided let it go. It was time to go on set and she found herself looking in Joe’s direction very often. They were playing in the same scene but everytime the director said cut he would be doing something on his own, looking at the script or his phone. Without realising she was talking louder than usual, asking questions in the open so maybe he would hear her. But at the end of the day he still had not talked to her. 

She was now worried and felt completely stupid. She was supposed to focus on work and not on some dumb guy who was teasing her all the time. As she was on the way to the caravan that she was sharing she suddenly froze and started walking in the opposite direction. She was more determined than ever. She kept reading all the names on the caravan’s doors before finding the one she was looking for. She knocked with determination and waited for an answer but nobody came. She looked at the window and saw that there was light inside. 

‘Joe. Are you here?’ you asked ‘Please, it’s Y/N’

A few minutes later he opened the door and all her confidence disappeared as quickly as it had came. He looked at her  and started smirking and she instantly knew that she was right. 

‘You were trying to impress me’ she said

Everything she had done today, the music, the loudliness, the urge to talk to him, it was exactly how he had behaved with her before she finally made him stop. But now she wished she hadn’t.

‘That might be a little strong. Let’s say I was trying to get your attention’ he admitted

She would usually have felt happy because she had found the answer, she had had the last word. But something in her stomach still felt weird. But it was not anxiety or anger, it was something different. 

‘But why?’ she said 

‘Why did you try to get my attention all day?’ he enquired, leaning on the ‘you’

She looked down and bit her lips before her gaze crossed his again. And she smiled. She did not know why Joe Mazzello would be interested in her but she definitely was not able to say he annoyed him anymore, on the contrary. And for the second time since she had met him she did not know what to say and was left voiceless. 

‘Are you free tonight?’

[watchathon]

BONUS: The Last Airbender

In case you’re finding this post just by browsing the tags I’ve used for this post, this is the Watchathon, a blog where I’m hoping to watch an episode of a show (or in this case, a movie) every one-to-two days, with a short blog post where I give my thoughts on what I’ve just seen. Each new point starts with a hyphen and a bolded first word.

- Like so. 

But today, I’m subjecting myself to the notorious live-action film The Last Airbender, to... Well, to “celebrate” its tenth anniversary. I initially planned on doing it either after Book 1, or after Book 3, but for whatever reason, I have decided to do this now.

Fair warning, this is going to be one of my rare posts where I’ll be mostly negative.

So much for “gushing about things I like”...

Also, so much for “the rare occasion I cover movies”, but that I don’t mind so much. The Lilo & Stitch post was a ton of fun to make.

- So, first things first, I don’t tend to be a fan of live-action movies based on animated properties in general. But it’s not like I don’t give them a chance. 

Sometimes I even like them better than the original. I could never get through The Jungle Book in one sitting as a kid, but the 2016 live-action remake? I adored it!

Even the worst ones I tend to be “meh” about rather than flat-out disliking. But The Last Airbender? I hated it when I watched it as a kid... Emphasis on the past tense. I could well change my tune because of this, though I can’t imagine I’ll end up liking it.

- They recreate the “Water, earth, fire, air” part of the intro but without narration. Which, to be frank, just makes it look pretty silly.

- “The four nations. Water, Earth, Fire, and Air Nomads.” Sooo are they all nomads?

- Awvatar? Pronouncing Aang as Awng, I could sorta get, but... Awvatar? Really?!

- It feels oh-so-weird to see a white Katara and Sokka, when they, and all the people of the Water Tribes, had the darkest skin in the show.

- Something that really strikes me about this movie already is that it’s so... humorless. Sokka described himself once in the show as “the meat and sarcasm guy” if I’m remembering right, and not even five minutes in I can already tell we’re missing half of that description.

- Not only is this movie humorless, it can seem strangely... smaller, than the cartoon. In the cartoon, Katara got Aang out of the iceberg by accidentally using powerful Waterbending. 

But here, Sokka causes the ice to crack by accident, revealing the iceberg with Aang inside. Then Katara grabs Sokka’s boomerang and whacks the iceberg twice with it. 

- More about the lack of humor: There’s not even a mention of penguin sledding once Aang is out either.

- And not only are our most prominent Waterbenders white, the Fire Nation (who had light skin in the cartoon) have the darkest skin of the whole main cast. Juuust great...

- Aang’s heroic moment from the cartoon is taken away from him. In the cartoon, Aang was on his way out of the Southern Water Tribe when he saw the Fire Nation approaching, at which point he turned around and helped them.

Here? Aang sits in a tent until one of the Fire Nation soldiers sees his tattoos and drags him out.

- “We found that boy, he’s our responsibility!” Katara sounds like she’s talking about a stray puppy they found. “I’ll feed him, and bathe him, and teach him!”

- It crosses the line into unintentional hilarity when, as Katara and Sokka are discussing Aang, there’s just Appa noises in the background, entirely unremarked upon. The only take a glance in that direction once they’re done talking, ironically after Appa’s quietened down somewhat.

- Nobody gets out of this movie without major changes, but if it weren’t for Iroh referring to Zuko as his nephew, I’d have never guessed it was him. Also, Eeroh. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if Zuko isn’t pronounced Zucko.

- Katara and Sokka’s grandmother pronounces Avatar correctly. Why don’t Katara and Sokka? Or, heck, why doesn’t she pronounce it “Awvatar”? It’d be better if they stuck to one rather than the inconsistent pronunciation.

- I’ll give them props: The idea of testing if Aang is the Avatar by setting four objects representing the elements in front of him is pretty cool. Does become kinda silly, though, when the rock just... wobbles and goes upright. They could have had it, like, cracking, but instead, wobbly rock.

- I might be misremembering, but it felt like Aang’s escape from Zuko’s ship was a lot... more, in the cartoon. I know, time constraints of fitting a twenty-episode season into a two-hour movie. But I have to tilt my head at just how much shorter (and milder) this particular scene is than its animated counterpart.

- It’s weird how Katara’s narration calls Aang by name, then like a minute later (at most) we see her ask him for his name.

- Wow, is it weird to see Aasif Mandvi playing Zhao when I watched The Daily Show as a teenager.

- Exposition is always fun when it’s delivered in the form of a roast.

- “But we will let [Zuko] wear [the Fire Nation uniform] today, like a child wearing a costume.” And nobody even smiles at Zhao’s sick burn.

- Hey, at least they have Iroh drinking tea. But cartoon Iroh probably wouldn’t do that so casually while his nephew is fighting Zhao’s soldiers. And cartoon Iroh would probably smile. At some point in time.

- And movie Katara and Sokka have apparently gone all the way to the Earth Kingdom without learning that Aang is the Avatar.

- “He was bending tiny stones at us from behind a tree! It really hurt!” I gotta be honest, that’s not a bad joke. It does feel kinda out of place with the general tone of the movie thus far, but whatever. I’ll take the lighthearted fun moments where I can get them.

- I can sort of understand why they would want the Earthbenders imprisoned by the Fire Nation to have some sort of earth to bend without the Gaang going to all that trouble to get the coal. But putting them in a quarry is more than a bit overboard.

- Aang gets a big Katara moment from the cartoon. And the thing is, Katara doesn’t really get that much time to shine in this movie. She could have used a moment like this one. Heck, Aang could’ve joined in to confirm that the Avatar has returned.

But no... In this scene, Katara just shoves a Fire Nation soldier who’s being rude to Aang.

- Ah, the infamous pebble dance. And the thing is, in the cartoon, this would’ve been a joke. 

Aang would go through this huge, over-the-top dance just to make a relatively small rock float slowly towards a Fire Nation soldier. At which point, Toph would make the rock move much faster before teasing Aang about what he just did.

- Ohhh, gosh, I’m half an hour into this hour-and-a-half movie, and the post already looks like... this.

- “Teachers to teach you bending.” A lot of attention gets given to another repetitive line later on in the movie, but we shouldn’t ignore this beauty.

- Weird to see Ozai in plain view. Especially considering how, later on, he will be framed in shadow.

- Agni Key... What is it with this movie and changing pronunciations? I wouldn’t even care if that was the only problem, but with how it is, it’s one of several things that make this movie feel like “Avatar but wrong”.

- “Yip yip.” Gosh, does it feel weird to hear those words in a movie that tries to be more serious than the cartoon.

- I had to stop and continue this in the morning since it was late, so I might be forgetting something... But was it established before the Blue Spirit that Zuko knew Zhao would be hunting the Avatar?

- Hard to take it seriously when Zhao looks at his soldiers, chained by their hands to the ceiling, and simply mutters “fools.”

- “You think my son is this person the soldiers are calling ‘Blue Spirit’?” *pause of at least four seconds* “...Yes.”

- “My brother and the princess became friends right away.” First off, that’s really underplaying it. But second, Sokka’s face is so blank as Katara says this that I can’t buy even that.

- Zhao really becomes a much less threatening force when it’s Ozai who tells him to kill the spirits, when it’s Ozai who starts talking about their destiny.

- “HOOOOOOOOO” lives in a pineapple under the sea?!

- Everything in the Spirit World is compressed into this one dragon. Which makes it seem a lot less like a Spirit World than just the home of this dragon.

- I would say that the whole bit of Aang trying to avoid Zuko even though he’s right behind him is more like something from the cartoon... But, the dramatic music really makes it seem like this is supposed to be a serious moment. And it just doesn’t work as one.

- Iroh’s trying to stop Zhao is nowhere near as good as it was in the cartoon.

- “He’s making fire out of nothing!” I don’t understand why they made the change that this is uncommon. The Fire Nation are the villains, they should be stronger than other benders.

- “It’s time we show the Fire Nation that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs.” I don’t understand how anyone thought this could work as a serious line.

- Back to the whole thing of this being smaller than the cartoon, Aang doesn’t turn into Aangzilla here. He accomplishes a very impressive feat of Waterbending, but when I just watched the cartoon version last week, it feels lesser in comparison.

- I imagine this is supposed to be Aang bowing in response, since he didn’t with the monks. But it doesn’t look like bowing. It just looks like an elegant dance move.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Yeah, I still don’t like it much. But I’ll say this: Now that I’ve watched it again, I appreciate the cartoon so much more.

I appreciate the characters. I appreciate the tone, I appreciate the pacing. And I appreciate all the things that are lacking from this movie.

I can only hope that the new live-action adaptation will be better, even if I know the cartoon will still be my preferred way of experiencing the story.

[twentiethcenturymoviesandtv]

The Princess Bride: Legacy and Impact

There are no shortages of books that have been adapted into film, some successfully, some less so.  For every To Kill a Mockingbird, it seems, there’s a Dune.  Some books are adapted faithfully, others with considerable liberties, and there’s honestly no way to tell which is going to be better for a film immediately.  Some of the best adaptations had very little in common with the original novels, such as Jaws, The Shining, or Blade Runner, whereas others, such as The Godfather or Stand By Me remain true to their original story roots.  

In most of these cases, due to the nature of film and adaptation in general, the film version ends up more well-known to a popular audience than the original novel: examples like The Wizard of Oz, Psycho, or the aforementioned Jaws, Blade Runner, and The Shining are perfect examples of films that end up surpassing the original novel in terms of memorability, if not always quality.

While most readers who turn to the film adaptations will tend to claim that the book version was better, there are a few rare cases that the movie version ends up better-liked than the novel, as well as better known in the public consciousnesses.

Such is the case for the cult classic: The Princess Bride.

The Princess Bride is one of those films that has a reputation of appealing to just about everyone.  As the Grandpa in the film says:

“Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…”

He’s not exaggerating, either.  High adventure, romance, fantasy and magic and one heck of a dry sense of humor all roll together to make up the somehow-consistent tone of Rob Reiner’s adaptation of William Golding’s novel: The Princess Bride.  Framed as a book being read in-universe by a grandfather to his sick grandson, The Princess Bride manages to encompass multiple genres, becoming a little bit of everything to appeal to a wide variety of people.  The film is packed full of memorable quotes regularly spouted to this day, a cast of names that remain well-known, and is often touted as one of the funniest and best fantasy films of all time, if not among the greatest films of all time, period.

Which is quite an honor.  Very few comedy films can be considered truly great films, and it is a rare movie that can make an audience laugh as much as it can make them cheer.

Yet The Princess Bride has been doing it for decades.

Considering the recognition and acclaim that the movie has received, including an outraged backlash against the rumor of a remake, it can seem kind of surprising that that film wasn’t actually terribly well received.

Not that it did badly, mind you.

The Princess Bride wasn’t exactly a box office bomb, but it didn’t smash any records.  Pulling down $30.8 million on a $16 million budget, The Princess Bride went mostly unnoticed during the time of its release in 1987.  Coming along in a string of fantasy films in the 1980s (Alongside Ladyhawke, Krull, Highlander, Excalibur, Clash of the Titans, Legend, Willow…the list goes on), The Princess Bride, despite having so many different elements to recommend it, wasn’t really translated very well into marketing.

The fact was, the marketing companies didn’t know what exactly to do with it.  Sure, there were swordfights, pirates, giants, and all the rest, but the title was still The Princess Bride.  They couldn’t market it on the romance, there was way too much of the other stuff in there, and on the other hand, they really couldn’t claim it was a pure adventure flick either, thanks to the huge romance subplot.  In the end, the film wasn’t really marketed at all: no trailers, no TV spots, nothing.

As a result, the film was mostly forgotten, until VHS rentals and sales brought curious viewers to it, and in time, The Princess Bride became one of the most beloved films of the 1980s, easily one of the most quoted movies of all time.

The audiences may have missed it the first time around, but within time, The Princess Bride quickly gained status so widespread, it is no longer a ‘cult’ film, but a genuine classic.  Regularly referenced, quoted, and discussed, to the point where a remake was declared “inconceivable”, by fans who can’t imagine this film with anything changed.

So, as always, our question is, why?

What was it about The Princess Bride that became so well-loved after a mediocre original run?  Was is that great all along, or was there something in the film that improved with age?

Why has this film, an oddball among the blockbusters best remembered today, considered one of the best of the ‘80s, of fantasy, and of film in general?

That’s what we’re going to be looking at in the articles ahead.  Stay tuned, and thanks so much for reading!  I hope to see you in the next article.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior 12/4/20 – HALF BROTHERS, THE PROM, I’M YOUR WOMAN, BLACK BEAR, LUXOR, ANOTHER ROUND, ALL MY LIFE, NOMADLAND, MANK and Much More!

I hope everyone had an absolutely wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was relatively uneventful, and I only spent most of my time watching movies.  And holy shit, there are a LOT of movies out this week, but at least a few of them I’ve already seen and reviewed, and there are others that are actually pretty good, so I might as well get to it, hm?

First up is this week’s Focus Features theatrical release, HALF BROTHERS, a buddy road comedy directed by Luke Greenfield (Blue Streak, Let’s Be Cops) that’s fairly high concept but also with quite a bit more depth than the director’s previous movies. It stars Luis Gerardo Méndez as Renato Murguia, a wealthy Mexican businessman whose father left him to come to America when Renato was just a child. Just as Renato is about to get married while having issues connecting to his future stepson Emilio, he gets a call that his own father is dying, so he begrudgingly goes to see him. Once there, Renato’s dying father sends him on a scavenger hunt to find someone named “Eloise” with his annoying slacker half-brother Asher (Connor del Rio), because that will provide all the answers Renato is looking for on why his father never returned from America, remarried and had another son. What could possibly go wrong?

If you’ve seen any of the ads for Half Brothers, you may already presume that this is a fairly high-concept buddy road comedy that is constantly going for the zaniest and craziest of laughs. That probably would only be maybe 25% of the movie. Instead, this fairly mainstream comedy finds a way to take a very common comedy trope and throw in enough heartfelt moments that you can forgive the few times when it does go for low-hanging fruit. We’ve seen so many movies like this where two guys (or sometimes ladies, but not as often) are paired with one having zero patience or tolerance for the other, who is beyond aggravating to them. (Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of the better ones.) Obviously, Renato fits snugly into the first category, and Asher could not be more annoying, very early on stealing a goat for no particular reason.

The Mexican angle and the fact that a lot of the film is in Spanish – Focus getting into Pantelion territory here? – does add to make Half Brothers feel like more of a personal story than we might normally see in this kind of movie, touching upon the immigrant experience, from the viewpoint of a low-paid worker as well as a well-to-do industrialist. It also deals with things like fatherhood and brotherhood and what it means to be one or both, so everything ultimately connects far better in the end than some might expect. I also want to give the filmmakers credit for putting together a cast of mostly unknown or little-known actors and getting such great results out of them.

On the surface, Half Brothers seems like just another buddy comedy, but underneath, it’s a heartfelt and emotional journey that touches in so many ways and ends up being quite enjoyable.

Another movie opening nationwide this Friday is ALL MY LIFE (Universal), starring Jessica (Happy Death Day) Rothe as Jennifer Carter and Harry (Crazy Rich Asians) Shum Jr. as Solomon Chau, whose wedding plans are thrown off when he is diagnosed with liver cancer. They realize they have to get married sooner since he might not live to make their planned date, so their friends launch a fundraiser so that they can get married in two weeks. The movie is directed by Marc Meyers (My Friend Dahmer), who is a more than capable filmmaker with this being his third movie in the last two years.

Now that I’ve actually seen the movie… I’ll freely admit that this is not the kind of movie I usually have very high expectations for, and maybe that’s because I’ve already been burnt twice this year with real-life romantic dramas, first with the faith-based I Still Believe in March and then more recently with Two Hearts. In both cases, I could count the issues and why they failed to tug at the heart strings as they were meant to do.  Even though I’ve generally enjoyed Meyers’ past movies, I wasn’t even sure he could pull off this type of studio romance movie without having to cowtow to the corny clichés that always seem to slip in – or at least find a way to make them more palatable. (And let’s be realistic. This is the kind of movie that snobby film critics just LOVE to trash.)

First of all, Meyers already has two truly fantastic leads working in his movie’s favor.  I’ve been a true Jessica Rothe stan ever since seeing her kill it in Happy Death Day and its sequel. Shum is perfectly paired with her, and the two of them are so good from the moment they first meet and we meet them.  In every scene, you feel like you’re watching some of that rare on-screen romantic chemistry that’s so hard to fake. Their relationship is romantic and goofy, and you’re just rooting for them all the way through even if you do know what’s to come.

Eventually, Sol does fall ill, and it does lead to some more dramatic and tougher moments between the couple, but all of it is handled so tastefully, including their need to raise money so they can have their wedding rather than waiting. I am living proof that people really do come together to step up when they see someone in real need, so I couldn’t even tut tut at something like their fundraiser getting so many people to chip in. On top of his two leads, Meyers has assembled such a great cast around the duo, the most recognizable being Jay Pharaoh from Saturday Night Live, everyone around Jess and Sol handles the requisite emotions with nary a weak link.

There’s just so much other stuff that adds to the enjoyment of watching All My Life from the use of Oasis and Pat Benatar in the soundtrack just to the quality storytelling that makes it all feel quite believable. These sorts of movies tend to be rather corny and the diehard cynic who doesn’t have an ounce of romance or love in their body will find things to hate.

All My Life finds its way into your heart by being one of those rare studio romance movies that understands how human emotions truly work, and there’s nothing corny about that. It’s a beautiful movie that entertains but also elicits more than a few tears. Watch it with someone you love.

This week’s “Featured Flick” is Chloe Zhao’s amazing film NOMADLAND (Searchlight), which I reviewed out of its Toronto International Film Festival premiere, but it’s (sort of) being released in theaters this week. It stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a woman living in her van as she moves from place to place taking odd jobs within a community of nomads. It’s another amazing film from the filmmaker behind The Rider, who will make her foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe next year with The Eternals, which I’m just as psyched about. There’s no denying that McDormand gives a performance that’s a knock-out, even better than the one in 3 Billboards if you ask me, and there’s also a great supporting role for David Strathairn, who I’ve been hoping would have another role as good as this one. Zhao is just a fantastic filmmaker, and I’m glad to see that The Rider was no fluke.

Unfortunately, Nomadland is only getting a one-week Oscar qualifying run, and I’m not even sure where it’s getting that run since theaters in New York and L.A. aren’t even open yet. Maybe Searchlight will do some drive-in screenings like they did for the New York Film Festival and Telluride? It will get a stronger theatrical release (hopefully) on February 21, just to make doubly sure it qualifies for Oscars.

Opening in theaters this week before streaming on Netflix December 11 is Ryan Murphy’s adaptation of the Broadway musical THE PROM, the first feature film he’s directed in ten years. The multiple Tony-nominated musical is about a high school girl named Emma (newcomer Jo Ellan Pellman) who wants to take her girlfriend (Ariana DeBose) to their senior prom, but the head of the PTA (Kerry Washington) cancels the prom instead. The national outrage the situation creates gets the attention of a quintet of self-absorbed Broadway actors who decide to improve their PR by taking up Emma’s cause. Oh, yeah, and those actors are played by Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and actual Broadway stars Andrew Rannells and Kevin Chamberlin. What could possibly go wrong?

I’ve never had any sort of positive or negative gut reaction to Murphy’s work on television over the past few years, but I’ve definitely been mixed on the three movies he’s directed to date. I wasn’t a huge fan of his Eat Pray Love, though I vaguely remember enjoying his debut, Running with Scissors. Either way, he certainly has found his niche with musicals from Glee (a show I’ve never watched)  and finding a musical like The Promseems to be a perfect fit between filmmaker and material.

Having not seen The Prom on Broadway – surprise, surprise -- I was a little worried that it was going to go down the path of nudge-nudge wink-wink inside Broadway path that helped Mel Brooks’ The Producers become a Broadway hit. That I saw, and I didn’t hate the movie based on it, although I’m by no means a total movie-musical stan. There’s some obvious older ones I love, some newer ones that others love but I hated – Rob Marshall is about 50/50 for me -- and you might be surprised by which of them I liked best.

What I thoroughly enjoyed about The Prom is that Murphy manages to truly surprise everyone watching it, whether it’s in Kerry Washington’s single song – who knew she had such an amazing singing voice? – or how enjoyable Keegan-Michael Key is as the school’s Principal Hawkins, who not only loves musicals but actually admires Streep’s two-time Tony-award winning Dee Dee Allen. Considering my frequent disdain for Streep’s over-confidence, knowing full well that she’s one of the best living actors working today, she’s actually pretty amazing in the role of what many must assume Streep is like in real life, which makes her character more than a little META. In some ways, I can say the same for Corden, who is pretty fantastic as Dee Dee’s frequent stage co-star Barry Glickman, who has his own connections to Emma’s plight having been disowned by his mother (Tracey Ullman, who only shows up for one brief scene late in the movie) when he came out to her. Corden has one dramatic moment so powerful I was taken quite aback.

Even with those two actors and Kidman likely to get much of the attention, there’s no denying that the romance between Hellman and Debose, and the three or four numbers they have together, makes up the true heart and soul of The Prom. So here you have this amazing cast, and it’s a musical made-up of very fun and quite catchy songs, and that’s long before you get to Andrew Rannells as out-of-work actor Trent Oliver, who practically steals the whole movie with his showstopper of a number, “Love Thy Neighbor.” And then watching Key holding his own with Streep, both musically and dramatically, you might start wondering, “What is going on here?”

Like I said before, it’s pretty obvious that Murphy has fully poured his passion of movie-musicals into every second of The Prom, and it shows on the face of everyone joining him on this adventure. As much as the subject at the film’s core is fairly serious and a hurdle that many gay kids across the world every day, it’s also quite funny. Kudos must be given to Murphy for being able to emphasize those moments as well as the more dramatic ones. Besides that, Murphy really takes advantage of being able to go to different locations, including a sequence on Broadway that could have been done during the pandemic (it actually was built on a soundstage), another number at an actual mall and even at a monster truck rally. It also doesn’t hurt that Murphy hired Matthew Libatique, a god-like cinematographer in my book, to film the movie either.

Like most musicals, The Prom might lose a little as it goes along, since it gets to be too much that goes on for too long, but then there are more than enough great moments to pull you back. It’s by far one of the stronger movie musicals I’ve seen in a very long time, and just the right feel-good experience we all need right now.

I’ve already reviewed David Fincher’s MANK – a few times, in fact – but if you’re in one of the places where it opened theatrically in November, you can finally see it on Netflix starting this Friday. This is the general problem with the way things are these days because even though this only opened a few weeks ago, I already feel that it’s been discussed and forgotten before most people will have a chance to see it.  Anyway, if for some reason, you’ve managed to avoid things about the movie, it essentially stars Gary Oldman as Herman Mankiewicz, the Hollywood screenwriter who ended up co-writing Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane in 1940. The film follows Mankiewicz as he mingles with the Hollywood elite in the 30s, including billionaire William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his young ingenue girlfriend Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried) who would be the influence for his Oscar-winning screenplay. I expect to be writing a lot about this movie as we get closer to Oscar season sometime next year.

Also on Netflix this week is Selena: The Series, starring Christian Serratos. It’s the kind of thing that I probably would never watch unless I have an excess of time, and as you’re about to learn from the rest of the column, that doesn’t happen frequently.

The third chapter of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe Anthology,” RED WHITE AND BLUE, will debut on Prime Video this Sunday, starring John Boyega as Leroy Logan, a young black man who joins the Metropolitan Police after seeing his father assaulted by police and wanting to make a difference in the racist attitudes from within. You might remember that I reviewed this out of the New York Film Festival a couple months back, so not much more to say there.

A week from Sunday, on December 13, McQueen’s fourth film, ALEX WHEATLE, will hit Amazon, and guess what? I’ve already seen it, so I will review it now. How about that? Alex Wheatle is also a true story, this one starring Sheyi Cole as the award-winning young adult writer when he was a younger and just learning the ropes as a drugdealer/DJ in Brixton before his involvement in the 1981 Brixton riots gets him thrown in jail.

As with the other three movies in the “Small Axe Anthology” there are recurring elements and themes in Alex Wheatle, mostly about the way the immigrants to England from Jamaica and other islands are treated by “The Beast” aka what they call the Metropolitan Police. It does take a little time to get to that, as McQueen, working from a screenplay co-written by Mangrove’s Alaistar Siddons, takes a far more non-linear approach than the other three films. We first see Wheatle being taken into prison where he’s thrown into a cell with a constantly-shitting Rastafarian, but we then cut back to his schooling for a short sequence that reminded me of Alan Clarke’s Scum. Both in prison and in school, we see Alex being abused by classmates and head matron alike, and this portion of the film includes another one of arty moments of actor Cole laying on the ground eyes wide open staring for what seems to go on forever. In some ways, this sequence reminds me of McQueen’s fantastic early film Hunger, since it seems to be cut from similar cloth.

Eventually, Alex gets to Brixton and that’s where this chapter in “Small Axe” really takes off as we see how naïve and green he is while dealing with quite a tough crowd and trying to adjust to city life among the Rastafarian community.

As with the other “Small Axe” chapters, I love how McQueen and his team used reggae music to help set the tone and vibe for the episode, because like Baz Lurhman’s Netflix series The Get Down, the music is frequently a key to this biopic working so well. Of course, it’s also due to the performance by Cole and the actors around him that helps make you feel as if you’re seeing a real part of history.

As with Mangrove, this chapter culminates with an amazing recreation of the 1981 Brixton Riots, done in protest after a house party fire in New Cross that the police don’t bother investigating. The actual riots were a much bigger and scarier event going by Wikipedia which says that 279 police were injured and 56 police vehicles set fire, which makes it sound more like the ’92 L.A. Riots.

I’m not sure Alex Wheatle does as good a job explaining how the young man goes into prison as a DJ and comes out as an author, but like Red, White and Blue it’s still an important and inspirational story that adds quite a bit to the previous three “Small Axe” films.

And once again, here is my interview with McQueen from over at Below the Line.

Also, I should mention that Darius Marder’s excellent Sound of Metal movie, starring Riz Ahmed, hits Amazon Prime Video this Friday, too. Check out my review!

The magnificent Andrea Riseborough stars in Zeina Durra’s LUXOR (Samuel Goldwyn), playing British aid worker Hana who while spending time in the ancient city of Luxor, runs into her former lover Sultan (Karim Saleh), as she reflects on past decisions and her current uncertain situation.

I was quite interested in this one sight unseen, not only because it’s another great starring role for Riseborough. (Honestly, she is one of the best actors working today, and I strongly believe she is just one role away from being the next Olivia Colman, who had been amazing for years before everyone in America “discovered” her in The Favourite and then The Crown… which I still haven’t watched! ARGH!). I was a little anxious about the movie, having seen Rubba Nadda’s Cairo Time, starring Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig, which seemingly had the exact same plot.

Durra is a much more capable and confident filmmaker and there’s a lot more overall value in watching Riseborough exploring Egypt as Durra quietly allows Hana’s story to unfold through her interactions with others, as well as her time alone, often languishing in one luxurious hotel room or another.  Then there are the quiet and sometime awkward scenes between her and Saleh, the two of them having been lovers when they were both much younger. We also see Hana in far more vulnerable moments, so we know that she’s by no means actor, and it takes a great actor to really pull off such a dichotomy and bring such dimension to a character with so few words.

There’s something that’s almost comforting watching her dealing with emotions like loneliness in such a tranquil way. I’d even go so far to say that Luxor works in many ways similar to Nomadland, which obviously is getting the far more high-profile release with lots of festival love long before its actual release.  Like that movie, Durra’s film benefits from having masterful cinematography by Zelmira Gainza and an equally gorgeous score by Nascuy Linares, to boot.

Luxor is a quiet, beautifully-made film that really took me by surprise. It acts as much like a travelogue of the title city as it does a tourist’s map to what it must feel like being a woman very much on her own in a foreign land.

I also spoke with Luxor filmmaker Zeina Durra, an interview that will be up at Below the Line hopefully sometime later this week.

With all the talk about Aubrey Plaza in Happiest Season (now on Hulu!), this would be a great time to release another one of her indies that played at the Sundance Film Festival this year, right? What can possibly go wrong?

In Lawrence Michael Levine’s BLACK BEAR (Momentum Pictures), Plaza plays Allison, an actor/filmmaker who arrives at the remote lake house of Christopher Abbott’s Gabe and his pregnant partner Blair (Sarah Gadon), to relax and work on a screenplay, only for the night to turn into philosophical discussions that transform into angry and even violent squabbles. In the second part of the movie, Gabe is the director, and Allison his actor wife, who thinks he’s sleeping with Blair, who is also acting in Gabe’s film.

That plot might seem a little vague, and I can’t exactly tell you whether there is much connection between the two parts of the movie other than it features the same three characters. The first half turns from a drama into a thriller before ending abruptly, while the second part is equal parts comedy and drama as we see a larger part of the world around the trio. In fact, the second part of Black Bear reminded me somewhat of Olivier Assayas’Irma Vep, one of my favorite movies, and that might be one of the highest compliments I can pay a movie.

But first, you have to get through the more quizzical and dramatic first part, which easily could have been done as a three-handed stageplay as we see the changing dynamics between the three people as things get crazier and crazier with one “Holy shit!” moment after the next. (It reminded me a little of Mamet or the play “Gods of Carnage,” although I only saw that as the movie version Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski.)

The fact the connection between the two parts is never explained might confound some people who were otherwise enjoying what is a pretty decent three-hander, but the common theme involves jealousy between the two women. Plaza is a fine dramatic actor when she wants to be, and Gadon is absolutely fantastic, which makes Abbot almost literally the odd man out, but the three of them just have great scenes together.

Black Bear is certainly an enigma of a movie, as much a mystery about what must be going on inside Plaza’s head during some of her softer and crazier scenes, but if you want to talk about range, this gives her so much material for her demo reel that no one could possibly doubt her as an actor again.

Thomas Vinterberg’s new movie ANOTHER ROUND (Samuel Goldwyn) reteams him with his The Hunt star Mads Mikkelsen for a comedy…. Ish… about a group of four middle aged Danish teachers who decide to hold an experiment to prove a theory that people only reach their maximum effectiveness and creativity when they’re .05% drunk. It starts out innocently enough but soon, the men are drinking heavily at school, leading to horrible and unfortunate side effects. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Even knowing Vinterberg’s knack for strange and twisted “comedies,” Another Round is definitely on another level, opening with a scene of drunken kids playing a drinking game that gets them so out-of-control drunk and rowdy. We then meet Mikkelsen’s Martin, a history teacher, whose rowdy seniors are so bored by his classroom technique that Martin is put in front of an inquisition of parents who think he’s going to make their kids fail their final exams. Martin’s home life isn’t much better with his wife Anika (Maria Bonnevie) or his own teen sons. Although Martin says he won’t drink when he has to drive, his friend Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) convinces him by announcing his theory about how everyone needs to always maintain a certain percentage of alcohol in their system.  Over the course of the rest of the movie, we’re shown the alcohol level of our “heroes,” although most will see their behavior as some kind of synced-up middle life crisis. For Martin, it’s a breakthrough, as he starts feeling more confident and assertive towards his students, even trying to connect with them via their drinking activities, as seen in the opening montage.

Another Round is quite a different beast from The Hunt, because there’s a more humorous tone to the point where I could totally see an American studio trying to remake this with the likes of Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler, which would probably lose a lot of the poignancy of what Vinberberg was trying to achieve here. At one point, he throws in a montage of seemingly drunk world leaders, which is kind of amusing even if it’s not quite so apparent why it’s there. There’s a lot of really bad white guy dancing, too, for anyone who is into that sort of thing.

There is definitely a good amount of grief and sadness to the way this story resolves, although Vinterberg still finds a way to leave Martin in a place of joy with a closing scene that may surprise a lot of people. Another Round is another tremendous feather in the cap of the Vinterberg/Mikkelsen collaboration, and it will be in select theaters this Friday before going to digital on December 18.

Another Round will be in select theaters this Friday and then on digital December 18.

Fast Color director Julia Hart returns with I’M YOUR WOMAN (Amazon), once again co-written with husband Jordan Horowitz. It stars Rachel Brosnahan from The Amazing Mrs. Maisel (which I haven’t seen) as Jean, a woman unable to have a baby with her small-time crook husband Eddie. One night, Eddie brings home a baby for Jean, but then he quickly vanishes and Jean finds herself on the run with a stolen baby and one of Eddie’s accomplices, Cal (Arinzé Kene), and there are bad men wanting to question Jean about her missing husband’s whereabouts.

This is another movie where I really didn’t know what to expect, and having not watched Brosnahan on her award-winning show, I was watching this movie trying to figure out what all the fuss was about.  It’s evident from the start that Hart/Horowitz were trying to make a ‘70s-set movie with all the trappings of ‘70s fashion and music, but when you throw in the crime element, it comes across a little too much like last year’s The Kitchen, which wasn’t very good but also wasn’t based on very good source material.

One would presume that the genre elements and a few scattered set pieces, like a shootout at a club, would be the main draw, but it’s almost 30 minutes before we even get any sort of plot, and that’s a big problem. An even bigger problem is that I’m Your Woman just drags for so much of the movie, and it’s pretty obvious that Hart-Horowitz were trying to create a ‘70s movie like some of the films by Scorsese and the movies John Cassavetes made with wife Gena Rowlands. By comparison, I’m Your Woman is stylized almost to a pretentious degree.  Brosnahan does show a few glimpses of there being a good actor in there, but the material just really isn’t quite up to snuff. It also doesn’t help the movie to have the baby crying almost non-stop throughout.

Jean eventually pairs up with Cal’s woman Teri (Martha Stephanie Blake), her son Paul and Cal’s father (played by Frankie Faison), and this is when she learns more about Eddie’s life that she doesn’t know about. Eventually, things start to pick up in the last act, but the multiple problems Hart has with maintaining a steady pace or tone only mildly is made up for by her terrific DP and whoever put together the musical score.  Essentially, the last 30 minutes of I’m Your Woman does make up for the previous 85 minutes, but it’s going to be very hard for many people to even get through how dull the movie is up until that point.

This is a week with some very fine docs, the first one being Weixi Chen and Hao Wu*’s cinema verité film 76 DAYS (MTV Documentary Films), which goes behind the doors of the Wuhan ICU Red Cross hospital over the first 76 days of the COVID pandemic after it hit the rural area of China. (*One of the film’s co-directors/cinematographers shot the film anonymously.)

Here I thought that Alex Gibney’s Totally Under Control would be the best or maybe even only movie about the pandemic released this year, but here we have a fantastic documentary that captures what it was really like in one Wuhan hospital as it was nearly overrun months before COVID started to rear its ugly head in the States. The film begins in January 23, 2020 and follows a number of cases as we watch the personnel, all decked out in head-to-toe PPE, trying to save lives and keep people calm while trying to struggle with all the stresses that come their way. There’s actually a little bit of humor in a cranky elderly man (clearly with some form of dementia) who keeps wandering around the hospital, frustrating his tenders, but there’s also a very moving story of a young pregnant woman who has contracted COVID, who ends up being separated from her baby after a Cesarian section.

There are moments early in the movie where you can see panic starting to set in as we see how out of control things begin, but the anonymous health care workers soon get things underhand and manage to find a way to deal with the panic that’s setting in. There’s no question that these doctors and nurses – many whose faces we never even see -- are the definition of frontline workers, trying to deal with this unknown virus without all the answers and solutions that have been discovered over the past ten months.

76 Days will open via the Film Forum Virtual Cinema as well as other places presumably.

I’m glad I had Dana Nachman’s DEAR SANTA (IFC Films) to watch after 76 Days, because I don’t think I could have handled another dark or deep movie after that one. This doc is all about “Operation Santa,” the amazing group of volunteers and adopters who receive the letters young kids write to the North Pole and go out of their way to fulfill the kids’ wishes.

I was a big fan of Nachman’s Pick of the Litter, so I’m thrilled to say that Dear Santa is just as wonderful and joyous, starting with a bunch of kids explaining Santa Clause enthusiastically, because they really believe in Jolly Saint Nick. Over the course of the film, Nachman profiles a number of Adopter Elves, who look through the letters written to Santa by unfortunate kids and pick a few to fulfill their wishes. A lot of them are in New York and Chicago where the program has led to a number of non-profits, but Nachman also goes to Chico, California where many of the families from Paradise, the town destroyed by fires in 2018, ended up relocation. One story of an Adopter Elf named Damion is particularly wonderful, since he, like many of those who get involved in the program, are trying to give back and pay it forward.

Operation Santa is such a great program and Dear Santa is such a wonderful movie, I challenge anyone to watch it and not tear up from how big their heart will grow while watching it.

Julien Temple’s doc CROCK OF GOLD: A NIGHT WITH SHANE MACGOWAN (Magnolia Pictures) is pretty self-explanatory from its title, but as someone who was never really a Pogues fan, I was almost as entertained by Temple’s film as I was by Alex Winter’s Zappa about a musician who I actually was a fan of. Temple uses MacGowan’s own narration to tell his story from growing up in Ireland, the early days of punk that led to the Pogues and eventually, mainstream success.

My absolute adoration of well-made music docs is fairly well-known at this point, and you can’t really get much better in terms of music doc makers than Julien Temple, who had his cameras rolling in the early days of punk, captured one of David Bowie’s more interesting mainstream phases and also made a very cool movie about The Clash frontman, Joe Strummer.

Although I never really cared for The Pogues, that’s probably because I didn’t know them from their rowdier days and more from their mainstream success from “Fairytale of New York” but Temple’s movie rectifies that with some amazing footage from the band’s earlier days. Even more impressive is the footage and pictures of MacGowan during the late ‘70s dancing in the audience at Sex Pistols and other punk shows. (Temple even interviewed MacGowan during this period in the ‘70s, then put the footage in the movie.) As MacGowan tells his own story about growing up in Ireland, Temple frequently uses varied animation to recreate the stories being told, and that does a lot to embellish the cartoon nature of MacGowan’s storytelling.

I still think MacGowan is a bit of an asshole -- I’m sure he’d agree with that assessment -- but Temple has found a way into this very difficult musician, sometimes using close friends like Johnny Depp (a producer on the film) and Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream to try to get MacGowan to open up about as much as he ever might. Crock of Gold is certainly an eye-opening portrait of the Pogues frontman that surprisingly offers something to enjoy even for those who never got into his music, but it also shows another dimension to his many fans. If nothing else, it’s a fine testament to why Temple is one of the best music doc filmmakers.

Magnolia held a bunch of one-night only theatrical screenings on Tuesday and will have more on Thursday, but if you miss those, you can catch it On Demand/digital this Friday. (I also have a really enjoyable interview with Julien Temple over at Below the Line that you should check out.)

A.J. and Jenny Tesler’s doc MAGNOLIA’S HOPE follows four years in the life of their young daughter Magnolia (aka Maggie), who has Rett Syndrome. Maggie’s filmmaking parents talk about noticing her strange behavior and finding out that she had a genetic disorder that makes it harder for children to retain what they’ve learned in terms of movement but also might led to far worse disorders. It makes it almost impossible for her to communicate with her parents, which makes it heartbreaking but also quite inspirational that the parents would allow us into their very own difficult journey to try to get their daughter to use and develop all of the skills she learns by making her practice them every single day. The movie will be available to watch for the month of December on the streaming platform Show and Tell, but it’s such a personal movie and another one where I think it will be hard for many to watch without getting a little teary but more out of joy than sadness.

Also out this week is David Osit’s MAYOR (Film Movement), which follows Musa  Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah during his second term of office and determined to make his city a beautiful and dignified place to lived despite being surrounded on all sides by soldiers and Israeli settlements. It will open today at the Film Forum’s Virtual Cinema in New York after winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2020 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

What there’s more? How about Braden R. Duemmler’s WHAT LIES BELOW (Vertical Entertainment), a thriller starring Ema Hovarth from Quibi’s Don’t Look Deeper as Liberty (aka Libby), a teen girl returning from camp only to learn her mother (Mena Suvari) has a hot younger boyfriend named John (Trey Tucker), who Libby soon begins to question whether he’s human. What could possibly go wrong?

I knew I was in trouble when Suvari is picking her daughter up from archeology camp (that’s a thing?) and I misheard her asking her daughter “Any nice digs?” (think about it), especially since Suvari is playing a stereotypically over-sexed cougar, something that becomes far more obvious once we meet her boyfriend that she’s been sexing up at her lake house. There’s certainly a danger of What Lies Below turning into a prequel to a Pornhub video, but thankfully, Duemmler gets away from the inappropriate sexuality inherent in John’s presence and into the weird behavior that gets Libby suspicious.

Sure, maybe calling the movie “My Stepfather is an Alien” would have been more apropos, and there’s elements of the movie that reminded me of the Tom Hanks’ movie The ‘burbs, and not in a good way. Even so, Hovarth, who really looks like Suvari’s daughter, does a fine job holding this together and keeping you invested in how things might pan out, as things get weirder and weirder and the movie eventually transforms itself into a halfway decent and creepy “body horror” flick.

Weird but well-done, What Lies Below is not even close to the worst thriller I’ve seen this year. That might seem like damning praise, but it’s the best I can do for this one.

Debuting on Shudder this Thursday is Justin G. Dyck’s ANYTHING FOR JACKSON (Shudder), a “reverse exorcism” movie in which a seemingly kindly couple, played by Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings, kidnap a pregnant woman (Konstantina Mantelos) in hopes of getting the spirit of their grandson Jackson, who died in a car crash, and put him into her baby… with the help of demons. What could possibly go wrong? (If you hadn’t guessed, this is the theme of this week’s Weekend Warrior.)

I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the horror delivered by streamer Shudder this year, and Anything for Jackson is no exception. In fact, going over Dyck’s filmography, it’s kind of surprising how decent a horror filmmaker he is, because most of his other movies seem like Hallmark-style Christmas movies? Crazy. There are aspects of Anything for Jackson, written by Keith Cooper, who wrote some of those holiday movies for Dyck. I honestly can imagine the two of them making this movie just to be able to do something different, so they come into the horror realm with tons of fim making experience and easily transition into horror.

At the heart of this movie are McCarthy, Richings and Mantelos, who are all fine actors who do a great job selling the horrors but do just as well during the quieter dramatic moments.  Not that there are that many of them, as Dyck/Cooper throw so many absolutely horrific moments at the viewer so that diehard horror fans will not be disappointed. Things shift into another gear when Josh Cruddas joins in as a Satanic cult leader they bring in to help them when they realize they’re out of their league. The results are something akin to Insidiousin terms of the types of demons and ghosts thrown at the viewer.

At times, Anything for Jackson was a little hard to follow, maybe due to its non-linear storytelling, but at least it has a substantial amount of decent replay value, since the demons and kills are so gloriously gory.

Eric Schultz’s dark and trippy sci-fi thriller MINOR PREMISE (Utopia) stars Sathya Sridharan as neuroscientist Ethan, who gets caught up in his own risky experiment involving memory loss when he becomes trapped in his home with his ex-girlfriend Allie (Paton Ashbrook), and he doesn’t remember how they both got there.

For his directorial debut, Schultz has taken the cerebral indie sci-fi film route that we’ve seen in other filmmaking debuts like Shane Carruth’s Primer, Darren Aronofsky’s Pi or Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko, and if you’re a fan of those movies, you’ll already know if this would be for you or not. This is also the kind of movie that really requires the closest attention and fullest focus, which is not something I’m great at right now. Because of that, I don’t have a ton to say about a film that does a good job pulling the viewer in with its intriguing premise.

Schultz is a pretty decent filmmaker and discovering Sridharan, who has done a lot of single-episode TV appearances but nothing major, is quite a coup since this is quite a solid showcase for the young actor. I wasn’t as crazy about Ashbrook, which makes it for a rather uneven two-hander.

Minor Premise is just fine, and I think some people will definitely like it more than I did. I definitely will have to watch it again when I’m not so distracted by ALL THOSE OTHER MOVIES ABOVE THAT I JUST FUCKING REVIEWED!

It will be in theaters, in virtual cinema, and digital/On Demand this Friday, so check it out for yourself.

And finally…

Director Dennis Dugan of Big Daddy and Happy Gilmore directs LOVE, WEDDINGS AND OTHER DISASTERS (Saban Films), a “Love American Style” rom-com anthology with a cast that includes Maggie Grace, Jeremy Irons, Diane Keaton and more. Grace plays Jessie, a fairly inexperienced wedding plan hired to orchestrate the high-profile wedding of Boston mayoral candidate (Dennis Staroselsky), and then… oh, you know what? I’ll leave the rest of the description to the review portion of our review.

We meet Grace’s character as she and her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend are skydiving, which goes horribly wrong as they end up fighting all the way down and crashing through an outdoor wedding, caught on a viral video that gets her dubbed the “Wedding Thrasher.” Imagine what a PR disaster that would be for mayoral candidate Rob Barton to have her planning his wedding, but Jessie quickly bonds with his fiancé Liz (Caroline Portu) and begins preparations. Meanwhile, Barton’s problematic brother Jimmy (Andy Goldenberg) has gone on a game show called “Crash Couples” (that’s hosted by no less than Dugan himself) and he allows himself to be chained to a Russian “lawyer” named Svetlana (Melinda Hill) who is actually a stripper. They’re willing to stick it out since the winner gets a million dollars.

Surely, that’s more than enough stories, right? Nope. Turns out that Jessie’s main competition to plan the wedding is a legendary caterer named Lawrence Phillips (Irons) who is set-up on a blind date with Diane Keaton, who is blind. Oy vey.  Also, there’s Andrew Bachelor as Captain Ritchie, who gives humorous sightseeing tours of Boston via the Charles River in an odd land/water vehicle, but one day, he encounters a young woman with a glass slipper tattoo, and he becomes quite smitten. We’ll get back to him. Maybe. In fact, Duggan spends so much time setting up different stories and relationships without much connection that you wonder whether he can tie things up in the oh-so-predictable way these things normally go.

Although the movie starts out fine, and it’s actually not a bad role for Grace, as soon as Duggan introduces the game show, then we learn that Svetlana (real name Olga) is a tripper connected to the mob and they get involved, things just start going downhill very fast. Also, the idea that Keaton -- who I haven’t seen in a good movie in almost two decades --  would not think twice about playing a klutzy blind person. As soon as she shows up and immediately knocks over one of Phillips’ signature champagne glass fountains, I knew we were in for a very long haul. I didn’t even mention the other storyline involving a musician named Mack (Diego Boneta) whose band Jessie is trying to get to play the wedding – one of the multiple meet-cutes in the movie -- although Mack is squabbling with his bandmate Lenny (Jesse McCartney) who has a new Asian girlfriend who is intruding in their friendship.  (I’m sure the fact her name is “Yoni” is meant as as Yoko Ono reference.)

Then on top of that, Dugan steals the gimmick from There’s Something About Mary, by constantly cutting back to Elle King and Keaton Simmons as they’re playing folksy songs in the park. Okay, the fact that Dugan wrote many of those pretty decent songs they perform is pretty impressive.

But the movie is very predictable, especially how it all comes together for the finale, which obviously has to take place at the wedding to which everything has been building up to.

Otherwise, Dugan’s film is maybe 20% an okay movie but the other 80%? Yeesh!! It’s about as romantic as a date with the Marquis de Sade, and it somehow manages to be an equal opportunity offender... in terms of offending blind people, Asians, Jews, Arabs, gay people and even strippers and Russian mafia. It took Dugan 14 years to get this passion project made, and it’s pretty obvious why.

As usual, there were a couple movies I didn’t have time to watch, but not quite as many as the ones I did make time to watch:

King of Knives (Gravitas Ventures) End of Sentence (Gravitas Venture) Billie (Greenwich) Godmothered (Disney+) Wander (Saban Films) Music Got Me Here (First Run Features) Stand! (Fathom Events, Imagination Worldwide) HAM: A Musical Memoir (Global Digital Releasing) In the Mood for Love (4k Restoration)

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

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[INTERVIEW] IN2IT, Dreamcatcher, AleXa collaborate with UNESCO to release ‘Be The Future’

Be it a revolution, a social movement or words of motivation, music has been an important component to induce ambition and initiation. It's a rare case when one does not find a movement lined with the beats of a drum, chants and inciting music -- language no bar.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, came a disarray of routine and emotions. But artistes have been coming forth to provide inspirational tracks to help fans cope with the situation. Korean artistes IN2IT and Dreamcatcher along with soloist AleXa joined hands with UNESCO to release 'Be The Future' -- a vibrant track that reflects on the difficulties the current situation forces upon us and how to adapt to them.

Mirror Online spoke to IN2IT and AleXa to take us through the production process of the song, as well as what they think the future has to offer. Excerpts from the interview:

It’s rare to see three groups/artistes collaborating for one song. What was the experience like? Could you share a little anecdote from the time of filming this music video?

Yeontae (IN2IT): It was the first time we collaborated with someone else, so it was exciting and a lot of fun. I think we learned a lot by watching Dream Catcher and Alexa. I learned about expressions and gestures. I did a scene with Gahyeon and it was added later but she really accommodated me and went with it to produce good results.

AleXa: It was certainly an honour to stand beside my senior groups Dreamcatcher and IN2IT for this project~ They are very hard working, and watching them on set gave me insights into their own creative processes - it was fascinating, and I have so much to learn. The final scene we recorded was all of us dancing together, which was very fun; everyone had such good energy together.

Quarantine has gotten the most of us spending time with loved ones, and tapping into new skills. In fact, it’s rare for artistes like you to get some time off from your packed schedules. How have you been spending your quarantine?

Inho (IN2IT): I had been so busy working that I didn’t get to spend much time with my family, so observing the safety precautions while spending time with my family made me realize how precious it was. I mean, family is an important priority for everyone. Some members spent time by themselves, another did some recordings, and another studied languages, so everyone spent time on personal development that they hadn’t been able to do before. I was in self-quarantine but thinking that I was taking a break and spending time on myself helped me get through it.

AleXa: In order to better protect each other, we are all practicing social distancing and keeping good hygiene. These days, I’ve been spending my days working and practicing to better myself for future projects.

What are your plans post quarantine? What would be the first thing you’d do once the situation across the globe smoothens out?

Hyunuk (IN2IT): The first thing I would do is to go meet all the IN2U members around the world who have been waiting for us for so long. I want to bring fun performances, concerts and contents to IN2U who have had a hard time and are exhausted from the unfortunate circumstances. And I want to continue making great memories with IN2U around the world.

AleXa: Once all is right with the world again, I would LOVE to set off on some sort of tour. Where exactly? Not sure. But I would love to visit my fans around the world and give them strength after such hard times. 

The title of the track is 'Be The Future'. In your opinion, what do you think the future holds in store for us?

Isaac (IN2IT): In the upcoming future after this pandemic period, I think everyone will be more aware of cleanliness and health and be it those who have lost their loved ones or not, more will care and cherish for people around them. The economy may or may not get back to the same like the past but we all survived this period, so I feel like everything will be back to normal or get even better.

AleXa: As long as everyone works together for the greater good- keeping EVERYONE’s, not just THEIR future in mind, we will be triumphant and we can go about our daily lives once again.

Finally, do you have any special message for your fans?

Inpyo (IN2IT): The first thing I’d like to say is that I hope you’ll all follow the safety precautions to keep your family and friends safe so that we can meet again in person very soon! I’ll be rooting for you so see you soon! Love you!

AleXa: I know times are tough right now, but we can and will get through it! Check in on your friends and distant family, when you can, and give them love and strength while we all face this pandemic. We will overcome this together.

© Mumbai Mirror

[bbclesmis]

Andrew Davies on Les Miserables: ‘I’m rescuing it from that awful musical’

Give Andrew Davies a piece of classic literature and he will show you the erotic desires and deep-rooted anxieties that lurk beneath. Think of the passions he unleashed in the nation’s living rooms when he sent Mr Darcy for a dip in his full-blooded 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or the consternation he provoked when he inserted a spot of incest into War and Peace in 2016.

Yet even to Davies, a new adaptation of Les Misérables – which he claims “will rescue Victor Hugo’s novel from the clutches of that awful musical with its doggerel lyrics” – posed a challenge. Perhaps the biggest question was how to represent the sexuality of its two principal characters: Jean Valjean, the prisoner who breaks his parole (played by Dominic West); and his nemesis, Javert (David Oyelowo) the policeman who hounds him until the end of his days.

Over tea in central London, Davies tells me that he was surprised to discover that, in Hugo’s 1862 novel, neither character mentions any sort of sexual experience, leaving the 82-year-old screenwriter wondering, at least in the case of Javert, whether it was indicative of a latent homosexuality.

“His obsession with Jean Valjean represents a kind of perverse, erotic love,” Davies says. He doesn’t stop there. In capturing the febrile atmosphere of post-Napoleonic France, he also shows how the innkeeper’s daughter Eponine (Erin Kellyman) expresses her desire for the earnest student Marius (Josh O’Connor).

“One of the best things Hugo does is to have Eponine tease Marius with her sexiness because he is a bit of a prig,” says Davies. “So I have introduced a scene where Marius, even though he is in love with Cosette [Valjean’s adopted daughter], has a wet dream about Eponine and feels rather guilty about it. I think it fits into the psychology of the book.”

Another problem that needed solving was Cosette, “a pretty nauseating character in the book”, whom Davies has made “strong and optimistic, rather than just an idealised figure who doesn’t add anything at all.” In the past, he has spoken about how he has turned the more saccharine depictions of 19th-century womanhood he has found on the page into women with the power “to disconcert men”, by injecting into them a little of his own mother’s character. I ask if she also makes her presence felt in Les Misérables. “I don’t think so. Was she like Madame Thénardier?” he wonders, referring to the sometimes violent innkeeper’s wife, here played by Olivia Colman. “No, that would be awful. Although she was quite keen on smacking people. The women in this book are not terribly complicated.”

I suggest that this might not sit well with modern viewers. “Well, I suppose Fantine goes on one hell of a journey,” says Davies, effecting a cod-American accent. “She develops a sort of animal ferocity and that is all because of how she has been treated.”

Davies’ childhood sounds rosy by comparison. No sooner had he started at his Cardiff grammar than he wrote a naughty poem about two of the modern language teachers, which went around the whole school in samizdat. He recites it for me:

He kissed her, she kissed him      

back.  

He took her knickers off and put    

them in a sack.

She took his underpants and put    

them in her bag.

He said: “Excusez-moi, but may I    

have a shag?”

After that, his writing career settled into a slow burn. He studied English at University College London, then moved to Kenilworth, where he met his future wife, Diana Huntley (they have been married since 1960 and have two children) and began teaching literature at the Coventry College of Further Education. He wrote the odd TV play and a whole host of radio scripts – sadly, now all deleted. One 1972 play about wife swapping, Steph and the Single Life, received complaints from those who denounced it as “obscene, disgusting rubbish”.

More solid success came to Davies in the Eighties, most notably with his greatest original work, A Very Peculiar Practice, based on his experiences at Warwick. Heavy on existential gloom, it concluded with the campus being sold to a private American company, which turned it into a defence research base. Never has a series ended to quite such a peal of mirthless laughter and its extraordinary scheduling (9pm on BBC One) was, thinks Davies, a mistake.

At that point, it was hard to imagine that Davies would, a few years later, be the person to turn costume drama into sportive heritage TV. His Middlemarch came first, in 1994, and was followed 18 months later by Pride and Prejudice, one of the most popular TV series of all time. I wonder how he feels about Nina Raine’s forthcoming small-screen adaptation.

“I am very excited about it,” he says. Then he adds, “even though I wish her all the best, I hope it’s not as popular as my one. It gives me so much pleasure when people say, ‘I was feeling rotten and so I just went to bed and put on Pride and Prejudice’. People use it to get over bereavements – I’m better than a priest!”

This is not arrogance. Davies may be sharp, naughty and ironic, but he is embarrassed by anyone who makes a fuss over him. He worries that this month’s documentary about his work, Rewriting the Classics, is “a bit effusive”, and he seems too pragmatic to be affected by writerly insecurity. Is he sensitive?

“I am much less sensitive than I used to be. I remember being cast down when I had a play that went to Broadway,” he says, referring to 1980’s Rose, which starred Glenda Jackson as a schoolteacher and closed after only 68 performances. “Column after column was spent saying how terrible it was. I couldn’t eat solid food for a week.”

He had a similarly bruising experience with the film industry. A decade ago, Davies admitted that he was disappointed that his movie career had not been more buoyant (Bridget Jones’s Diary was a rare success). Talking to me now, however, he is more sanguine.

“And that’s because the writer is king in TV. In film, all the stories that people say, that they pay you a lot of money and treat you like s---, are true in my experience. I have been sacked from several movies without being told. You meet someone at a party and you say you are working on a picture and they’ll laugh and say, ‘No, you’re not.’ It’s not terribly nice.”

Two more Davies adaptations will be shown next year – of Austen’s fragment, Sanditon, and of Vikram Seth’s epic A Suitable Boy. He would love to adapt more 19th-century classics (Dickens’s Dombey and Son and Trollope’s The Barchester Chronicles are top of his list) but before that, we can look forward to his version of the Rabbit Angstrom novels by John Updike, an author whose perceived misogyny might not seem an obvious fit in today’s cultural climate.

“There are a lot of grim things said about Updike at the moment, but he is a wonderful observer of how we all behave,” says Davies. “I don’t think writers are there to be role models, they are there to say what the world is like from their point of view.”

If the number of irons he has  in the fire makes it sound as though Davies is spreading himself too thinly, he displays an air of toughness despite his advancing years and a recent double hip replacement. “I don’t feel old. I had my one-year check-up yesterday and my surgeon pronounced that he was pleased with his work. My hips are good for another 10 years.”

As well as his prolific adapting, I wonder whether Davies has the desire to tell the story of his own life. “I really ought to,” he says. “I would like to start with my parents’ lives, in the early days of their marriage, because something went wrong there.” I ask why and Davies lowers his voice almost to a whisper.  “I think it’s probably something to do with sex.”

Ben Lawrence, The Telegraph, 22 December 2018 (x)

[mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker]

Peter and MJ in Far From Home

SPOILERS!

I will be talking about the movie over all but I feel given the subject matter of this blog that this aspect of the film deserved it’s own section.

Basically they did our ship a disservice.

If you ever see anyone daring to bring up the MCU movies as superior to the Raimi films and are using the Peter/Mary Jane romance as ammo against the latter shut that shit down because they don’t have a leg to stand on.

I’m not going to die on the hill of the Peter/MJ romance under Raimi being the best thing ever or there being the greatest possible chemistry there. But at least from a plotting point of view it was competently executed, at least it was believable on paper. *

In this movie it’s like they hook up because the plot says so.

And I know this because in Homecoming, Peter had a crush on Liz and Michelle was...a rude jerk to him basically and then abruptly at the start of this film BOOM Peter has the hots for MJ. Out. Of. Nowhere.

In fact he’s MORE into her than he was into Liz.**

In Homecoming Peter’s drive revolves around his relationship with Tony whereas in this film his primary motivation at first is to hook up with MJ until that goal then has to be weighed against being a hero. Chunks of the movie are dedicated to him thinking about ways to get close to her, to get her the right gift, to take her to the right place, to charm her basically. And further chunks are dedicated to the obstacles he faces to that end (namely a deep cut comic book reference from Marv Wolfman’s run which was kinda cool)*** and her gradual reciprocation of his feelings...oh and her knowing he’s Spider-Man.

In contrast Peter’s feelings for Liz weren’t nearly as big of a deal and yet somehow were much more believable.

Oh and to say the PS4 game delivered a better relationship would be an understatement. I think we all knew that was going to be the case going into this but even I wasn’t expecting the chasm to be this big. I thought we’d get a competent teen romance story if nothing else. But we didn’t even get that.

As problematic (in all the ways you can use the word) as the John Hughes movies that MCU Spidey borrows from are, they were better than this.

I think the word that comes to mind the most when looking at the handling of the relationship is ‘rushed’.

And yet ironically when they finally do get together their first kiss is awkwardly overlong. I mean maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe that was the point because they’re awkward teenagers but I think it was just incompetence.

I look at both characters and I cannot really fathom why they like one another. They just do because the plot demands it.

You can headcanon and contort the plot as you like but the end result is the film gives you nothing. They are together because...Tom Holland is the lead and Zendaya is a hot property right now I guess.

Now MJ is better than in the last movie, much more likable and less Ally Sheedy from the Breakfast Club. I guess that goes against her prior characterization but I can buy it.

She’s gone from boring and someone you could never see hooking up with Peter because she’s a jerk to him to...well someone who’s a bland goth-lite stereotype I guess but is capable of the odd compliment.  Stiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill don’t see what either of them see in the other though. They have nothing in common and they also don’t have traits that balance one another out.

But that’s all looking at Michelle and the relationship unto itself...how does it stack up as an adaptation.

Well how should I put this?

FUCK THIS MOVIE, THIS ISN’T MARY JANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can’t believe Mary Jane has been given the Dark Phoenix treatment of screwing up once then getting a second chance only to screw up again.

What the fuck are (the live action) Spider-Man movie’s problem with just doing the female love interests from the comics rather than mix and match elements from different characters, AUs and OCs?

At this point Betty Brant and Liz Allan have been the most faithful!

...Sigh...

Okay so first of all if you were still holding out hope Michelle/MJ might not be Mary Jane sorry you are shit out of luck. When they kiss there is a visual reference to ASM #143, their first kiss. They also never refer to her as anything other than MJ in the movie.

So she’s MJ.

And no, despite your hopes she never dyes her hair red either.

As I already made clear her personality is nothing like Mary Jane’s. Which is like disrespectful even beyond how it’d be disrespectful for any character because Mary Jane’s personality is essentially her super power.

I died a little every time she was on screen and uttered some eye roll worthy bullshit about how people died here or there or how she likes broken things more.

It’s not even that they gave her a different personality to comic book MJ’s but rather that they almost went out of their way to give her the absolute opposite personality.

Just about the only thing they sort of took from the comics was her knowing Peter’s identity, but they play it more the way it was presumed she found out before Parallel Lives was published.

It even creates something of a plothole because it’s made clear she learned because it was an obvious secret, so why hasn’t anyone else deduced this besides this cynical high schooler?

I might write more about this as thoughts come to me but that’s all I got for now.

They fucked up MJ, they fucked up the relationship. Go rewatch that fucked awesome texting scene from the PS4 game.

*Hell in a rare instance where I will invoke the Webb movies and Gweema Stoney positively, even those movies did the romance better than this. Put aside the chemistry the pair had, at least you could understand why Peter and Gwen would like one another.

**I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I feel so sorry for Laura Harrier. Not only was she a good actress delivering a likable performance and had chemistry with Holland, but you could buy her and Peter getting together even if it was a bit fanboy wish fulfillmentey. Plus their relationship was seriously plot relevant beyond just coaxing one half of the equation to be in the right place at the right time and ultimately get themselves endangered.

And what did she get for her trouble?

Publicity played up Zendaya, Zendaya gets on the posters which Harrier is wholly absent from and she isn’t even mentioned in this movie.

***On a side note that scene where the SHIELD lady demands Peter strip in front of her and get into his new costume and then Brad stumbles across them...and takes a picture that he’s going to use to prove Peter was trying to hook up with her and thus torpedo Peter’s chances with MJ...

Um....WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An adult authority member lures a minor away into a secluded area and exerts their dominance by demanding they strip in front of them. Then in a state of undress another minor comes across them and their reaction is that this is perfectly fine but they’re going to use this as ammunition to protect their romantic relationship.

Like no dude you just stumbles across a scene from a PSA about pedophiles.

Why was this scene played for cringey laughs it’s really fucked up, imagine if the genders were swapped for a moment holy shit!

[parrishes-writes]

dante/genevieve ship headcanons

I saw these and HAD to do them for Dante and Genevieve. @crybabyxprince​ you’ve created a monster and I hope you’re happy with yourself!!!

1. Who makes the first move and how? It’s kind of a mutual thing? They watch a movie one night, by themselves–Vergil is out running errands, Trish is… somewhere, Lady is on another job, and it just… happens. 

2. Who is the most insecure and what makes them feel better? I would say Dante is the most insecure–boy has a shitload of trauma that makes him bounce around feeling like he isn’t good enough for her because of his demonic heritage and the things he’s done over the course of his life, anger and a little resentment that Viv had a normal life and she didn’t appreciate it before things happened, frustration because of the aforementioned emotions,and  feeling like he isn’t good enough for her because she’s good at so much. Also, their age difference. It isn’t huge, but it isn’t insignificant either–they’re both adults when they get together, but it still can weigh on Dante’s mind when he’s having a rough moment. 

3. Who is the most romantic? Dante would try to be romantic, bless his dumb little heart, but Viv is usually embarrassed by most stereotypical displays of romance, like the roses and the hearts, etc. because she doesn’t like being the center of attention… until she does. It doesn’t mean she’s opposed to romantic gestures, just don’t make a huge scene or give her anything. She’s picky. 

4. Who can’t keep their hands to themselves? Dante primarily, but Viv is not opposed to walking up to him and just… sticking her tongue in his mouth and absolutely going for it.

5. Who says ‘I love you’ first? Probably Viv… at least when they’re both awake. Dante may have whispered something in the dark of night when Viv was asleep. 

6. Who would they ask if they ever had a threesome? Dante would ask. Viv actually has. (She was in a polyamorous relationship prior to her time at DMC)

7. What do they get up to on a night out? They rarely go out, actually, because they’re both homebodies, but when they do it’s with their friends, who like to turn up, so when in Rome… do a bunch of shots and wake up the next morning with a vague memory of stumbling home and a splitting headache. 

8. What do they like in bed? Mutuality. Neither of them like feeling that their partner is somewhere else during the moment, so it’s important for them to always be present with each other. 

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other? Viv has been too drunk to walk in front of Dante, occasionally been stoned, puked her guts out for a variety of reasons, had wicked cramps, nearly crapped her pants, had migraines, been sick, been injured, you name it. Dante’s been impaled a more than a few times and is just generally embarrassing whenever he has to apply his brain to something even marginally complex, or make a good impression on someone. Trying to talk to authority figures with him around is an absolute nightmare. 

10. What two songs, two books and two luxury items do they take to a desert island? Bold of you to assume that Dante would bring a book, lol. Viv would bring a spellbook to try and portal them off of the island, and a bushcraft book to start covering the bases if they can’t. Dante would bring a guitar and a sword to hunt. Also, how would you bring a song? Like, one to sing? I don’t understand this part of the question :( 

11. What do they hide from one another? Dante hides his insecurity behind a mask of bravado and flippancy; Viv hides hers behind ruthless organization and prep and competency. Dante hides his anger behind jokes; Viv pushes all her negative emotions down and throws herself into work. 

12. What first changes when it starts getting serious? Dante gets extremely anxious about Viv participating in the business–she isn’t a combatant and never has been, but even her peripheral involvement in cases puts him on edge, because he doesn’t want anything to happen to her. Viv likewise gets anxious about Dante’s safety, but she trusts him to get back up if he gets knocked down. Mostly, though, they stop thinking about other people in romantic, or potentially romantic, frames of mind. 

13. When do they realise they should get together? Neither of them have a lightbulb moment, so to speak–they fall into it over time, so gently. It takes Viv longer, but it’s when they both realize that no other person is a possibility. You’re it. 

14. When one has a cold, what does the other do? Dante listens to Viv’s directions about what to do if she gets sick, because it’s not common for him to get sick. Viv will take care of Dante on the rare occasions he does get the flu, because she’s had a lot of practice. 

15. When they watch a film what do they choose and why? Who gets the final vote? For the most part they choose comedies or horror movies, because they both like those genres. Viv likes to watch dramas and thrillers and foreign films–Dante doesn’t care, which is fine by her because she actually enjoys cinema and film on an intellectual level, and prefers to watch the movies she’s interested in by herself anyway. She likes dumb screwball comedies and scary spooky movies, but she’s also a little bit of a snob, tbh. 

16. When the zombie apocalypse comes, how do they cope together? Dante handles the zombies–Viv handles the logistics and food, so… pretty much everything else. 

17. When they find a time machine, where do they go? Viv goes to ancient Egypt, the Salem Witch Trials, pre-Christian Europe, the Bering land bridge, Pangaea… she’d want to go everywhere. Dante would like to see ancient Egypt too, and also the raising and sealing of the Temen-ni-Gru. 

18. When they fight, how do they make up? They apologize, sincerely. Hugs are usually involved. Occasionally kisses, and often an act of service, like making Viv a cup of tea or getting Dante’s weapons ready.  

19. Where do they go on their first date? Hiking, because Viv likes to hike, and Dante tags along.

20. Where do they go on holiday? They don’t take many vacations, but Viv likes to go to isolated places with a lot of natural scenery and Dante likes to see her drool over it, so if they can get away they can go somewhere quiet. Dante doesn’t mind not being in a city, but he does need to have something to do–hiking, surfing, skiing, etc. He can’t just go into the middle of nature and meditate. Boy’s gotta have an activity. 

21. Where do they get nervous about going with one another? Viv feels like she sticks out like a sore thumb if she goes along to one of Dante’s shady haunts. On the other hand, Dante starts sweating bullets if he has to go anywhere even remotely normally respectable, like the school where Viv works with Kyrie, or dealing with law enforcement or some such. 

22. Where does their first kiss happen? On the couch, while they’re watching a movie. See no. 1. 

23. Where is their favourite place to be together? Viv likes Devil May Cry, don’t get her wrong, but it isn’t where she wants to live out her life. One set of grandparents were farmers, and they left her their house and most of their land. She loves that house, and it becomes a sort of haven for Dante–a place where he can leave his shit at the door, so to speak. 

24. Where do they first have sex? On the couch… watching a movie… after their first kiss… Viv climbs into his lap and the rest, as they say, is history. 

25. Why do they fight? Usually because Dante feels like Viv is putting herself in harm’s way, taking on more than she can handle, and just… doing too much overall. Viv can sometimes feel like Dante doesn’t trust her abilities–not that he babies her, per se, but that he doesn’t think she can take care of herself. Also, if Dante acts like a major fool–to the extent it actually causes a legit problem for the business. Viv does not play games with that shit. 

26. Why do they need to have a serious chat? Dante acting like a minor fool, usually. Viv will get on his ass for being lackadaisical and flippant about business stuff, because he needs to do work and use his brain for once and generally be a functional adult. But it’s mostly about day-to-day stuff, minor things. 

27. Why do their friends get annoyed with them? Dante making innuendos at Viv. Viv being snarky with Dante. The two of them tag-teaming whoever runs their mouth at them. Sometimes them not taking their disagreements somewhere else. 

28. Why do they get jealous? Dante gets jealous because of Viv’s friendships (and, more broadly, her life) outside of Devil May Cry, as well as her past relationships with other people–she’s still in contact and friends with three of her long-term former partners. Viv can get a little jealous because Dante is a legit snack, and she knows there are more than a few people out there who wouldn’t hesitate to hop on it. 

29. Why do they fall a little bit more in love? Dante falls in love whenever Viv smiles, when she’s happy, when she laughs so hard her eyes scrunch up, so he does everything he can to make her happy and laughing and smiling. Viv falls a little bit more in love when Dante shows the kind, sensitive, secretly-sweet, actually-smart man that’s buried underneath all the outlandish coping mechanisms, and that makes her smile–Dante opens up more, Viv smiles when he does… It’s a beautiful feedback loop. 

30. Why does it work (or not work) between them? They genuinely love each other and want the best for each other, and they’re willing to do what it takes to keep their relationship working, because they want to be together. They’re willing to learn, they’re willing to change, they’re willing to adapt. They’re gonna stick together. They’re in love. 

[iammarylastar]

Jai and Nat's interview for Forbes

“We had planned to build a boot camp situation and get to know each other slowly and hang out. We wanted to build and find that trust in those relationships,” Jai Courtney explained as he discussed the reality of making indie drama, Semper Fi. “Through the nature of independent filmmaking and everyone’s schedules, we ended up having to meet on a Saturday and started filming on the following Tuesday. We had a couple of nights to figure it out, but that was pretty lean, to say the least.”

The 33-year-old plays Callahan, a police officer and serving member in the Marine Corps Reserves. He’s faced with a big dilemma, helping his brother who is behind bars. His brother, Oyster, is played by Nat Wolff.

“The crazy part was Jai and I met one time in Los Angeles,” Wolff added. “We went out bowling, because our characters bowl, we got drunk, and we started saying things to each other in that conversation that we hadn’t even said to some of our closest friends. There was something about my connection with Jai. We talked about things in our upbringings, in our families, and in our lives that made it like it was meant to be for us to play brothers. I still have that brotherly connection with him.”

Both actors have similar approaches to their careers, and both have worked across indie and big-budget productions.  

Wolff explained: “For me, it’s really about where I’m finding the projects that I’m enjoying the most. I’ve never been a good predictor of the business or what’s going to be the best trajectory career-wise, and, honestly, if I start thinking that way, it makes me not want to be in this business anymore.”

“I read a lot of scripts, and frankly, I’m bored by most of them. I have to say that most scripts are full of tropes, they’re set up to make money, and that’s not me being cynical, that’s just being realistic. Finding interesting writing with a good team assembled can be a bit of a miracle; having the experience of the project live up to the image of it that you had in your head. Semper Fi is one of those rare examples. I think it’s also harder to market a movie that doesn’t tell you exactly what it is. A lot of people who have seen it said to me that from the trailer, they didn’t know what kind of movie it was going to be, but people are being moved by it. I don’t know if I’ve experienced anything like it since The Fault in Our Stars, something that created tears and emotions, that had people feeling this personal connection to it.”

“The last couple of years have been mostly smaller stuff, but for me, it is more about the role, the project, and the people I’m working with,” explained Courtney.” I don’t have an aversion to either end of the spectrum. The pace is usually what I notice the most. Sometimes I enjoy it more working with less because you have to think on your feet, there’s less time absorbed by the things that you have to create like colossal action set pieces or whatever. That said, it’s also awesome to break up the rhythm and come and do something like The Suicide Squad, where it’s a project with a huge budget, and you’re doing crazy outlandish, preposterous stuff that is a ton of fun.”

Both Wolff and Courtney have worked across the small and big screen, embracing a wide range of projects across wildly varying budget levels.

“Sometimes the more interesting stuff might be less commercial, so you take more financial risks, but it’s harder for those things to get seen, to find a home. The way that TV is shaping up, and how streaming platforms have shifted things, it’s a positive,” Courtney enthused. “It’s not something I’d be afraid of at all. Working in that medium could sometimes give you a chance to develop a character in a way that you can’t in cinema, and that can be a really exciting thing for an actor. I mean working long-form, getting to stay within a world for longer, and keep exploring it is exciting to me, and audiences are responding to that too. It’s not a case of one or the other. We can have both.”

Semper Fi is the latest movie to follow an increasingly popular trend of being released theatrically and on VOD on the same day.

Courtney mused: “There’s so much content being made, and we’re constantly exploring new ideas and approaches for pushing that out to audiences. I think it’s a really exciting time. It’s crazy because I think that it’s a tough time for the film industry. There are certain types of films that people are going to see en masse. For a movie like Semper Fi, it’s an interesting time. This is a classic throwback kind of story. It’ll find an audience.” 

“All the people that like this kind of movie will seek it out and love it, but there’s a generation of people who are probably not so attached to this kind of storytelling. They’re a little more attracted to movies that have a lot of moving pieces. It’s a hard time to get a film like this made, but I’m glad we did it, and I’m proud of it. I hope we continue to see stories like this get made.”

Courtney was on the phone from the set of The Suicide Squad, the sequel (also considered a soft reboot) to the maligned 2016 movie, Suicide Squad. He’s reprising the role of George “Digger” Harkness, aka Captain Boomerang. The original film cost $175 million to make and grossed $746.8 million at the worldwide box office. It also won an Oscar.

“We’re in our second week of shooting now. I think it’s going to be fantastic. I know it will,” Courtney confirmed. “It’s great. It’s different now, obviously, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s awesome to see some old friends and familiar faces, but I’m looking forward to seeing a whole dimension unfold, which includes the introduction of a bunch of new people. It’s one of those things that we’ve waited for, and we weren’t even sure it was going to happen at a certain point. So, if anything, it’s just great to be back, and it’s good to put the gold tooth back in.”

Meanwhile, Wolff has recently been announced as being cast in a new TV adaptation of Stephen King’s classic, The Stand.

“If my first real foray into horror is Stephen King, then it doesn’t get much better than that. The Stand is epic. There is no better horror book,” he enthused.

But what, bearing in mind his accomplished and diverse resume of work so far, hasn’t the musician and actor managed to do yet that he wants to?

“I really want to play Paul Westerberg. Josh Boone, who directed The Fault in Our Stars, has Trouble Boys, the book about The Replacements, and he has me attached to that. To play Westerberg would be a dream of mine,” he concluded. “I’ve been working on that movie, and I am excited for it to come to fruition, but maybe that’s bad luck saying that out loud? I don’t know. Hopefully, it will happen soon. I’m very excited about that.”

[silyabeeodess]

Thoughts on “The Promised Neverland” Season One

So... Yesterday, I binge-watched The Promised Neverland.

It’s amazing.

I’ll write down individual points I liked and disliked about the series below the cut, as there will be some spoilers; however for those who haven’t seen the show yet and don’t want to have anything ruined for them, I’ll just say here that I highly recommend it.  I’m not a big fan of the horror genre due to certain issues with story that tend to be commonplace in it--specifically in film/tv--but this series is near perfection.  You’ll be left on the edge of your seat at all times, placed in the constant unease and unknown that the main characters feel as they try to survive their situation.  In the very least, give episode one a watch: Fair warning though that you might not be able to stop.  

Jumping right off of that last note, let’s get to pacing. In short, it’s great!  In many cases with an anime’s first season, especially when they’re based on an ongoing manga series as intense as this one, they can fall into a trap where it seems that the creators just want to be sure to give the show a satisfying conclusion in the limited number of episodes they’re given at the start.  As a result, you can have a great manga series that gets rushed through in its anime adaptations.  Instead of pushing through a whole manga and/or giving the show original plot points to patch over the holes the former hasn’t touched yet, Season One of The Promised Neverland focuses on a selection of chapters in which to tell its story. I don’t know enough about the show behind the scenes to know if they’d already been given a second season, but either way, this was a wise choice.  Even though the season does end on a--in one sense, literal--cliffhanger, the conclusion is satisfying enough that it could’ve ended there if the anime didn’t gain enough popularity to keep going or couldn’t be finished for some other reason.  More importantly though, there isn’t anything regarding story or characters forcibly cut to makeup for adding in points that are important to the greater story overall.  Effectively, Season One was able to take its time introducing/developing the characters and setting in a self-contained story.  There are some time-skips, as the events occur over the course of a few months, but this never affects the greater points concerning the characters actions/end goals.  It’s only an issue regarding physical growth as the children work to build up their strengths in secret--and you see plenty enough on-screen action taking place over the course of the season to make this growth overtime apparent.   

This is largely a nitpick, so I figured I’d put it here even though it’s kind of out of place.  (Honestly, I wouldn’t know where to place it on the list beyond this anyway.)  There’s a point brought up in the show that you think would be a little more important to the story, where the kids bring up that winter is also on its way so they’ve got triple the urgency to leave while they have the chance. (Not only would they have to deal with the cold, but also a lack of food to forage as they survived on their own.)  However, you don’t see the weather change in the story despite time’s passing, so you don’t see the problem either with why they need to go before winter beyond Ray’s birthday in January.  Everything pretty much always stays green, which is weird because you know the place can get snow as seen from Norman’s flashback to when he was sick as a little kid.  It just seems like a silly point to bring up since it’s only mentioned once and even the setting fails to depict it.

For the characters, I’ll split this into a few points.  One thing that I enjoy is that no one character is painted as being solely in the right.  You can argue that Emma is the main protagonist we’re meant to follow, and I’d agree there, but we’re not meant to take everything she says or does as gospel as some shows like to depict their heroes/heroines. It’s stated early on and repeated at points later in the show that her idealism and naivety, while good, can also lead to tragic results if she allows them to get in the way of rational thinking. This creates a nice balance between the other two main protagonists, Norman and Ray.  Ray is pretty much the opposite of Emma, thinking of their situation from a “survival of the fittest” mindset and willing to go to whatever extreme to save his friends and secondarily himself: He’s critical and always willing to consider the worst, capable of tackling some of their hardest challenges as a result, with the others able to reign him back and show him what things he’s allowed to have hope in despite how impossible things may seem, never allowing him to give up even when that may be the only “rational” option. Norman can admire these strong aspects of both Ray and Emma, understanding Ray’s rationale while also working to meet Emma’s ideals, with both catering to his planning.  He can, however, also take too much onto himself--to the point of leaving others in the dark to some of his plans and martyrdom.  Granted, much of his use of controlling knowledge in this way is effective, but he can also assume what’s best without really consulting anyone else.  He assumes what he thinks others can or can’t handle, not entirely accepting their input and adding more onto himself than necessary. This is what makes decisions like Emma’s choice to tell more of the other kids the truth so important whereas Norman can keep even Emma in the dark, as much as he likes her, about some of the issues that arise with Ray following his reveal as the “traitor.”  They make for a very dynamic and engaging trio to follow.  

Even the antagonists, who both the heroes and the audience is made to fear, are given this treatment.  We all know about how a lot of stories try to make their villains “sympathetic,” for better or worse, and The Promised Neverland certainly does that--just never to the point where you’re willing to dismiss their actions.  Mama Isabella and Sister Krone can be as monstrous as the demons over them, and the show depicts this from their condescending treatment toward the children, to their willingness to kill without remorse for the sake of their own lives and positions, to their chilling facial expressions.  We’re just also given a glimpse as to how such monsters can be created.  Their actions are neither justified or ignored, but rather grimly understood.  Mother’s Basement on YouTube covered this in more detail on Isabella in particular, so I’ll link his video here for those interested.

One thing I will say negatively regarding characters though is that I don’t really like how Sister Krone was utilized.  Beyond shuffling through each chapter’s synopsis after the point where the anime ends because I really wanted to know what was over the wall and couldn’t wait, I haven’t read the manga; however, from what I’ve seen, a lot of people seem to be in agreement that Krone wasn’t used properly. Just compared to the treatment the other characters received in the anime, I have to side with them.  Krone’s appearance in the opening immediately interested me, and her polar behavior in her introduction to that just as much.  From that point on though, she remains kind of static.  We see a lot of interactions with her and this old doll that could’ve added to her character, but the dialogue and body language taking place then really only focuses on how creepy she is.  And that pretty much sums up her entire character for the longest while: She’s creepy.  She incredibly open about her goal to become a Mama to the audience, so there’s not much mystery there.  The softer, friendly façade we see her wear in the opening is hidden in the bulk of the show--to the point that, when she engages with the kids in a friendly manner that would actually make them think she can be trusted, she’s only shown as a silhouette and so we can't see her face.  When we do see her try to pretend to be amicable and on the kid’s side, she’s either taking them down in a “game” of tag like a berserker or grinning like a titan from Shingeki no Kyojin.  We already know the main children aren’t going to trust her, but it just doesn’t make her believably deceptive regarding the others.  There’s even some weird moments where her actions seem contradictory, such as trying to turn Isabella in despite--at least as far as Krone believed at the time--getting moved to be a Mama at another plant.  I get that she didn’t like Isabella, but there was just no point to continue going after her or anything to indicate that Krone would after getting what she wanted by becoming a Mama herself.  Why would her hatred of Isabella outweigh her main objective?  The one time we see Krone really develop as a character, sadly, is when she dies and we’re given a true first glimpse at how young girls are selected to be Mamas and Sisters beyond a scar and retelling.  I would’ve liked to have seen more exploration into her mindset and character, even if it could only be done in subtle actions. 

It’s rare to have a horror story without death, so let’s talk about how The Promised Neverland uses it.   Well, anyone who simply wants to see a bloodbath will be incredibly disappointed, but I’m certainly not!  The setup, showing, and aftermath first death in the very first episode is all that’s needed to establish the overwhelming threat of the demons and immediate threat that is Isabella.  It was orchestrated in a way where that horror seeps in slowly, even without actually seeing a character die onscreen and instead just the body.  You immediately know something’s wrong when the camera focuses on Isabella leading Connie away in near-complete darkness, without bg music, as Connie innocently tries to talk to her and only receives a bare smile in return.  The presentation of the corpse wasn’t a gorefest, but instead Connie’s greyed face--drained of life and lying in an awkward pose--looks as if her body was left abandoned for some time. This was a great artistic direction, not only nodding to the use of the flowers protruding from the body, but also to the cold manner in which she was killed as “cattle.”  This isn’t a bloody, aggressive killing, nor is any real respect shown to her remains: She’s a number, thrown away by Isabella and left to wait until the demons ship her off in a tank.  Krone’s death was orchestrated in a similar but different way, with flashes of the kids--unware of what’s happening--eating dinner happily as she fights for her life against a demon that hardly even seems to register her lashing out and approaches her steadily.  Again, a character is killed in a methodical fashion, the same flower piercing her in the chest with a slow and almost delicate as it is precise movement.  The fear seems to stem less from threat of death itself and more in the manner in which they’re conducted, not just in the treatment of humans as food, but the detachment of their killers. 

Now to the animation.  Personally, I really like it.  I’m a big fan of all of the subtle movements and expressions that were given focus, from a shaky hand to the crinkle of an eye.  This attention to detail can make the viewer almost hyper aware of how the characters move and react to things, which is pivotal to this show in particular given how much the characters themselves need to read one another’s body language in order to figure out what they’re hiding from each other.  This is brought up too at different points, such as Norman telling Emma to keep smiling and act normal, later paying off when Isabella tries to interrogate her about not being her “happy self” in the hallway, and Sister Krone recognizing that the kids know about the tracking devices based on their lack of a response to her telling them about it despite their playing dumb.  These explanations serve just as much as a way to tell the audience to pay attention.  

People sometimes bring up the CGI as a bad thing, but I actually like it.  Yes, it’s a little weird to look at, but I think it’s so off-putting that it actually adds tension to the scenes, especially during key moments when the characters are just walking through the House and the camera focuses on them doing simple actions like opening a door: The environment is supposed to feel uncomfortable.  You don’t know who’s around the corner listening in to your conversations.  You don’t know who’s going to come into the room while you’re in the middle of planning or hiding an important tool for your escape.  The House isn’t safe: If the whole area is a farm, the House itself is a cattle pen.  Everything just looks normal.  Therefore, using CGI as a technique serves as a good way to cater to those unnerved, off feelings than changing that environment itself would have.  It feeds into the perspective of the main characters, how they know how wrong everything is despite the illusion of a comfortable home. 

Last, but not least, we get to my absolute favorite thing about the show: The camera. I absolutely love the shots taken in this series.  My favorite thing is how often the camera will show characters with some kind of frame, be it the leaves of a bush or around the edge of a doorway.  This use of framing places the audience in the perspective of a spy, someone lurking behind the next corner and listening in on the kids’ plans of escape. It makes you feel like, at any minute, they could get caught during what is otherwise a still moment of dialogue.  Then, when they do actually get caught, it’s when the camera tends to be the most normal, catching you off-guard.  It’s just beautifully done.  

[tinsley-goldsworth]

with great power comes great responsibility (chapter 1)

summary: in a world where normal humans coexist with people with supernatural powers, ryan meets a girl who knows something about the dark future that lies ahead. after all, with great power comes great responsibility

read on ao3!

For somebody who believed in the supernatural, Ryan Bergara had a hard time believing in reality. As crazy as it sounded, it was true that people had gotten superpowers and that society was able to function normally. While this might sound surprising, there really was not much to adapting to this change as most of the superpowers weren’t powerful enough to make people superheroes who could save the world. Sure, healers were considered an important asset on the battlefield but other than that, superpowers didn’t have much of an impact.

Superpowers had been around since the late 20th century and to be completely honest, nobody knew where they came from, even if scientists claim to have figured it out. Only 15% of the human population had some sort of superpower and each person’s ability varied in terms of power. Some people were more powerful than others and sometimes that would get to their head so the government worked with people with powerful superpowers to create new rules and regulations to control these power-hungry people. The government invested a lot of money into enforcing rules and there was a dramatic decline in dramatic super villains who didn’t do much other than scare a couple of people.

Ryan was seven years old when he placed a name on his power. Ever since he was young, he had seen a faint light around everybody’s bodies but didn’t question it, assuming that everybody else could see these ring-like lights. But then, he learned about superpowers in class and he learned that the ring-like circles were called emotional auras that could only be seen by people with special powers and that those people were called empaths. Ryan did some research and found out that different colors corroborated with different emotions, and he excitedly told his parents about his superpower.

His parents were generally nice people and when they found out, they couldn’t help but feel a little worried. They didn’t know if this would put Ryan at a disadvantage and even if it did, they couldn’t take it away from his as it was innate. They did some research and eventually were able to accept Ryan and they took Ryan to a superpower specialist who helped Ryan enhance and control his powers.

By the time he was ten years old, Ryan could read the emotions of people easily and the colors of auras were more distinctive than before. When he was younger, auras were sort of hazy, grey-colored rings of light but as his superpower developed, he could identify the color from a mile away. His power was useful when trying to identify how a friend felt, and he usually helped out people who had rather blue auras feel better.

Ryan’s parents’ worries about discrimination became relevant when Ryan began applying for jobs as he grew older. Companies didn’t really want people with superpowers as there was still a lot of stigma around hiring people with supernatural abilities but he was able to become an intern at Buzzfeed. The best part of being at Buzzfeed was obviously the ability to create videos but another benefit was that it paid its employees with superpowers the same wage as their regular human employees.

Now that people knew supernatural powers existed, they began to accept conspiracy theories easily and Ryan also got caught up in the conspiracy storm. He had always been fascinated with unsolved crime cases as well as the unexplored supernatural world and decided to start a show at Buzzfeed called Buzzfeed Unsolved. He discussed unsolved cold cases and also visited haunted locations in hopes of finding evidence of the paranormal. His companion in these adventures was Shane Madej, a normal human who had a strong belief that “just because superpowers exist, it doesn’t mean that ghosts and demons do too”.

Ryan was determined to prove that ghosts were just as real as telepaths and the result was a five season-long series on the supernatural. It was wildly successful and as not many people with superpowers were famous for their work, many younger kids with superpowers looked up to Ryan. It was nice to know that he had an impact on people’s lives and Ryan decided to keep creating content for his enjoyment and for others’.

Today, Ryan walked into the office and read people’s auras per usual. Many interns had their usual heather purple auras, signaling that they were extremely stressed. Some people at the office had graphite grey auras that showed they were definitely not getting enough sleep and did not have enough energy to function. There were a select few people who were harder to read, like Jen Ruggirello, whose aura always seemed oddly hazy, but for the most part, people had parmesan yellow auras, meaning they were relatively content.

When Ryan and Shane had been participating in Kelsey’s Sims series, Kelsey brought up the analogy of auras being similar to the color of the Sims’ moods. There were some differences in correlation between color and emotions but for the most part, the colors in the Sims that matched with certain emotions matched with the colors of auras for those emotions. But even as accurate as the colors generally were, they didn’t express the full scale of human emotion. For instance, when somebody was feeling in love, the aura’s shade of pink would vary, unlike the standard fuchsia pink in the Sims. Sometimes the pink would be more magenta, which was more of a cautious feeling of love and coral pink was a very fleeting, lustful love that, if turned to a ballet slipper pink, could turn into more emotionally-connective love.

As Ryan took a seat down at his desk, he noted that Sara and Shane were standing across from each other as they talked, their auras radiating an intense ballet slipper pink and he caught Shane’s eye, making a mock face of disgust. Shane rolled his eyes and continued talking to Sara, who was showing him her latest drawings. Sara had the unique ability to communicate with animals and her interactions with various types of critters fueled her creativity. She drew elegant mythical creatures that seemed to pop right off the page with vibrant colors. Being an animal communicator was almost as rare as being an empath and it was even rarer for any people with superpowers to possess the amount of talent Sara had.

Ryan turned back towards his computer and right before he put his headphones on, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He swiveled around in his chair to face Steven, who had his usual, happy mustard yellow aura, and Steven grinned as he read Ryan’s thoughts. Steven was probably one of the nosiest and noisiest telepaths Ryan has ever encountered because even though Steven talked a lot, he was also chatty inside Ryan’s head. Every child had learned how to block their thoughts from a telepath from a young age but Ryan put a thin filter on his thoughts and allowed Steven to see the majority of them because he trusted Steven. But while Steven could be a sweet guy, he could also be an annoyance.

“Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. You know better than to be envious of people in love. I know you’re single but the sooner you put yourself out there, the less sad you’ll be around couples,” Steven reproached in a playful manner and Ryan shot him an annoyed glance. So what if he was a little bitter that everybody around him seemed to be in love while he was as single as he could be? Ryan knew that he should probably at least make an attempt to start going on dates but because work had been so draining lately, he couldn’t find the effort to.

“Shut up, Steven. Shouldn’t you be searching for a restaurant with golden truffles or something?” Ryan teased half-heartedly as he turned back towards his computer, clicking on a file to open it up. As ready as Ryan was for Steven to drop the topic, Steven wasn’t ready to let the conversation end.

“Seriously Ryan, you need to stop moping around and find somebody. I’m sure lots of people would want to date an empath,” Steven scooted over to next to Ryan, still sitting in his office chair. Ryan was tempted to push Steven off his chair to wipe the smug smile off his face but resisted the urge to do so. All he wanted was for Adam to teleport here and take Steven away to another location.

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind,” Ryan replied dryly and Steven took this as a victory, pumping his fists triumphantly before scooting back to his desk. Steven wasn’t a hundred percent correct about people wanting to date an empath; there was a good chunk of people who still found people with superpowers strange and refused to date them. This was yet another obstacle people with superpowers had to face and Ryan pushed any deep thoughts about the topic back into the recesses of his mind.

Ryan put his headphones on and began the tedious task of listening to all the audio files from the haunted location he and Shane had visited. He found some clips that sounded pretty compelling and saved them to show to Shane later. Later that day, Ryan filmed a post-mortem with Shane and Shane’s aura was a mustard yellow, which helped raise Ryan’s energy levels a little more. Ryan found that in addition to being able to read the emotions of others, he could also be influenced by others’.

After filming the post-mortem, Ryan called it a day and decided to walk to Starbucks to get a quick drink with caffeine so he could manage to stay up a little late to finish up some final touches on an episode. He wasn’t paying much attention to where he was walking as he was too busy scrolling through Twitter to look where he was walking and he bumped into somebody. Instantly, he lowered his phone and turned to the person, apologizing. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t looking where I was walking.”

The girl he bumped into turned towards him and Ryan almost lost his grip on his phone. She had the brightest aura Ryan had ever seen and it was probably brighter than the light of the sun and stars combined. It was a strange silver color that Ryan had never seen but at least it wasn’t an angry scarlet red. Her eyes were golden, meaning that she was a seer and could tell the future. Seers were rare and Ryan had never met a seer with such an intense aura. Her golden eyes flashed with recognition as she replied, “No worries. Have I seen you before?”

“Maybe? My name is Ryan Bergara and I’m the host of a show called Buzzfeed Unsolved. Maybe you saw me on the internet somewhere,” Ryan reasoned, still fascinated by her silver aura. He wanted to reach his fingers out and try to touch it as it seemed so metallic that looked physically smooth but suppressed the urge. The girl shook her head and her tangled curls bounced delicately.

“Doesn’t sound familiar. I’m Marielle by the way,” Marielle looked like she was about to say something more but her phone rang with a notification of a new text. She glanced down at the screen of her phone and quickly began typing a message. Before she left, Marielle met Ryan’s eyes one last and said, “I have to go. I’ll see you soon.”

“Soon?” Ryan’s question was left hanging as Marielle disappeared into the endless stream of people walking down the street. If Marielle was telling the truth, then there really was no need to answer Ryan’s question right now.

~

While society seemed like a utopia because of its ability to function normally with people with superpowers, it still had its faults. Many people were anti-superpower and firmly believed that people with superpowers had no right to be wandering around in the world and should be locked up. Los Angeles was a more progressive area and generally, people accepted those with superpowers, which is why Ryan was surprised when people showed up at the front doors of Buzzfeed, protesting.

Ryan had been minding his own business at work as he finished up working on an episode and admittedly, he had been letting his mind wander as he mindlessly checked for errors in editing. He couldn’t forget about Marielle, whose mysterious remark had been on repeat in his brain, and wanted to know more about Marielle. Ryan felt naturally attracted to Marielle because of her metallic aura but he also thought she was one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen. He hoped that she would be true to her word and they would somehow manage to meet again but for now, he had no way of contacting her so he could only wait.

Just as Ryan took off his headphones and prepared the file for sending, he heard a distant commotion outside and stood up, walking over towards the source of the sound. As he got closer, he could hear the chants of angry people and see a distant dark glow of red. Near the glass doors at the front of the office, there was a crowd of anti-superpower protestors yelling and holding picket signs walking down the street. A bunch of Buzzfeed employees were standing in the lobby, watching the protestors march down the street and Ryan walked next to Steven, Shane, Sara, and Andrew, who were watching with concern flashing in their eyes.

Their usual comforting auras now were a plum shade of worry as the protestors’ chants of “Freaks are making our economy stink!” rose louder and louder. The front doors of the office were locked as everybody at the office knew that protestors wouldn’t hesitate to try to attack Buzzfeed since the company paid people with superpowers equally. A couple of protestors left the horde to bang on the doors and picket signs were thrown at the glass doors. Ryan winced at the clunking noises as the signs hit the doors and Steven’s usual grin was now a painful grimace.

The protestors eventually stopped bothering the front doors and joined the rest of the mob as they continued down the street, causing a ruckus and worsening traffic. Shane had an arm wrapped comforting around Sara’s shoulders as Sara leaned into him, biting her bottom lip as her plum aura deepened to a sangria purple. She was scrolling through her phone and announced, “These protests are happening everywhere today. It’s like they all came together to protest on this one day to get their message across.”

“I still don’t understand why anti-superpower people don’t accept people with superpowers. I mean, people with superpowers lose their powers,” Shane frowned as he spoke and he left the last part of the statement unsaid. Nobody had figured out how to remove powers without killing the person and if anti-power protestors wanted to get rid of all people with superpowers, they might as well come together to commit mass genocide right under the government’s nose. It’s not like the government would act quickly enough to stop them.

“Some people think that having equality will result in them losing power but in reality, equality just means equal rights for everybody and they don’t have to lose power in order to have equality,” Jen walked up next to Ryan and Steven nodded in agreement. Many people didn’t like talking about politics but because politics now controlled their lives and rights, it was kind of necessary for them to discuss it.

Steven looked like he wanted to share more but one of the office managers walked into the lobby, telling everybody to get back to work and ignore the commotion. The small crowd of employees dispersed as everybody scrambled to get back to their respective workspaces. Ryan wasn’t a seer but he had a feeling that these protests were going to lead to something bigger in the future; he just didn’t know what this all could mean.

~

The protests only worsened and while the first few protests were organized throughout the nation, the hate spread and protests became a worldwide trend. Hundreds of people throughout the entire world came together to scream angrily about how people with superpowers shouldn’t be considered human. The protestors in Los Angeles constantly crowded around the Buzzfeed office to the point where Ryan had to enter the building through the back doors since the glass doors leading to the lobby were bolted and covered with planks of wood after a few protestors threw picket signs that smashed through the doors.

After a week of dealing with the protests, Ryan really needed a break from all the stress and as he walked back into his apartment, the last person he expected to see was Marielle. His first instinct was to dumbly think, “Wow her aura is still so bright”. His second instinct was to ask how she found her way in and how she knew where he lived but Marielle quickly closed the door behind him. Before he could ask the questions, Marielle stammered rapidly, “Your, um, roommates let me in. I told them I was here to help you with a video thing. I, uh, found your address by asking my friend. She knows you.”

“Oh, okay, yeah,” Ryan replied as if she had definitively answered all his questions. He wanted to ask more questions but Marielle seemed like she really was rushing to tell him whatever she needed to say so he kept his mouth shut as she continued to talk.

“Listen, I don’t have much time to say this but I came to tell you that you shouldn’t go to work tomorrow. Tell all your friends not to go too. I can’t tell you more and I don’t have that much time. It’s just… dangerous,” Marielle nervously curled one of her curls around her index finger as she spoke, clearly anxious about something, or maybe someone. She seemed like she was in a rush and needed to get out of Ryan’s apartment as soon as possible.

“Wait, why? Wait, sorry, right, you can’t tell me. Um, why this is going to sound weird but why should I trust you?” Ryan had trouble sounding coherent as he wasn’t used to sort-of strangers showing up at his place and telling him not to go to work the next day. He didn’t know Marielle that well but his instincts were telling him to believe what she was saying.

“I can tell the future. What else is there to make me more credible?” Marielle grinned as she scribbled something down on a random slip of paper lying on the kitchen counter with a pen from her pocket. She handed Ryan the slip of paper and he saw that she had written her number along with her name and a small smiley face. “Here’s my number. You’re gonna need it in the future. You’ll know when you need to. I have to go.”

Before Ryan could ask any more questions, Marielle brushed past him and left, closing the door behind her with a dull thud. Ryan was still in shock as he glanced down at the slip of paper in his hands, wondering what on Earth had just happened. He remembered that Marielle said they were going to meet again but he hadn’t imagined it to be like this. Ryan remembered the honesty in her golden eyes as she warned him of the dangers of going to work and glanced down at her handwriting on the slip of paper. Since she had predicted them meeting again a second time, Ryan should probably trust her words. So, he saved her contact in his phone and waited patiently for the time that he would need to talk to her again.

~

chapter 2 is here!

[fahrhaus]

The Price of Performance:  Do You Really Get What You Pay For?

WARNING: EXTREMELY LONG POST AHEAD.  SKIP IF YOU DON'T HAVE ABOUT EIGHTEEN HOURS TO READ IT.  

:)

For those of you who shoot Fuji or Nikon in addition to your Leicas, you may find this very unscientific or unfair and very practical (some say amateurish) rendering comparison to be of interest.  

It just so happens that I ...umm, just happened...to find my old Nikon D80, with a Nikon 35/1.8 G lens.  With a crop sensor and a CCD chip, it's a pretty interesting camera.  I bought it new in 2008 and used it solidly for 5 years before getting my first digital M (rarely shot my M3s those days, and I regret it now that I can't get film easily).

I had been planning to compare the  Fuji X-E2 output with the Fujinon 35/1.4 vs. my Leica TL2 with Summilux-M 35/1.4.  When I found the Nikon, I figured I'd add it to the list for giggles.  I mean, what could a decade-old camera possibly do better than a current one?To make it all more confusing, I decided to try the Leica Summilux lens on the X-E2 (Fotodiox adapter) as a way to get some clue into the sensor and software differences between a (when new) $700 camera and a $3,250 camera.

The results may or may not speak for themselves, depending on your aesthetic senses or ocular abilities.

The full-res image files (or at least the maximum Facebook allows) are attached, with corresponding watermarks describing the lens manufacturer and body (Fuji Fuji = Fuji lens and Fuj body, Fuji 35 Lux = Leica M lens used with an adapter for X-to-M).  The Nikon was used only with the Nikkor lens because I didn't have an adapter for that camera.

Now this is by no means a scientific comparison. But I promise I tried.  I kept the environment the same, and the shots were taken within a span of about 10 minutes, so lighting is roughly the same.ISO ranged from 320 at the lowests (on the Leica) to 1600 at the highest (I set that as the max for all 3 cameras, set it at ISO Auto, and limited shutter speed to a max of 1/60th).  Funnily, the Nikon's highest setting IS 1600 - the CCD sensor, I'm guessing.I'm sure others would have used tripods, and perfected focus, and flash (I have no idea how, or why, to use those things) but I was shooting manual lenses on the Fuji and Leica.

At my age, I probably missed tack-focus a few times, but it doesn't really matter - something, somewhere in each image is in focus.  I was most interested in the color rendering, bokeh, clipping, and flaring.

ALL PICTURES were shot in their RAW equivalents, and converted to JPG via Exposure 3.5 with NO ADJUSTMENTS made to any of the sliders other than White Balance because the Fuji was rendering very dark blue.  The Leica was perfect, and the Nikon a tad too warm.  I left everything else, including exposure and contrast, alone, as I really wanted to see what out-of-camera RAW looks like.

My thoughts:

The CCD sensor, as dated as it is (2007ish) has spectacular color rendering and pop.  To me, it's arguably better than the CMOS sensors on the Leica or the Fuji, but the Leica does come pretty close.  I saw similar differences in the M9 vs M 240, but some post production sorts it all out.

The dynamic range of the Leica is significantly better than the Nikon (14 stops vs 10 stops), and somewhat better than the Fuji (12 stops).  This is clearly seen when you examine the images in Lightroom or Exposure.  The TL2 uses almost the entire Histogram range, whereas the Nikon skews to the right-side highlights and the Fuji skews to the left (heavily)

The Fujinon glass is spectacular, and is noticeably sharper than the Leica but nowhere near as creamy.  Lovely bokeh, but not Leica boke.  I prefer the Leica by a large margin, because for street photography sharpness is meaningless (at least to me) and "attitude" is more important.

The Leica Summilux still holds its own against the Fuji and Nikon in terms of light gathering and overall rendering/color.  The lens I use is  47 years old (!) and is neither aspherical nor apochromatically corrected.  It has some haze and scratches, and its coating is probably deteriorated. The Nikon lens is 11 years old, and the Fuji lens is 4 years old.  And yet the Summilux kills it every time.  It was also once the smallest fast lens made by anyone.  

The X-E2 is a damn good clicker, even though mine is 5 years old and there's newer tech.  I'm pleasantly surprised by that.  This is a camera I bought as a stop gap whilst waiting for my M-P 240 to arrive, and I've rarely shot it since.  Given its light weight, good autofocus, and great X Trans sensor, I may start taking it out again.

The combination of the Fuji sensor and Fujinon lens is more pleasing to me than the Fuji with the adapted Leica lens.  The Nikon with Nikon lens is similarly great.  But the Leica with Leica lens is certainly more interesting and more "3D" than the others.  Seems like the OEM lenses work best on the respective bodies.  That makes sense, given that the sensors/software are optimized to OEM lenses rather than 3rd party ones.

Conclusions?  Very few, actually.  As I said, OEM Bodies with OEM Lenses seem to work best and/or make the best out-of-camera images.   I'm guessing this has something to do with tweaking sensors and software to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the related glass.  The TL2 is spectacularly good.  High ISO performance is better than my M.  The Fuji is a great buy for the money.  The X-E3 and 35/1.4 Fujinon lens will set you back about 1400 bucks.  The TL2 with the equivalent Leica lens would be about 7500.  

The Nikon D80 has no skin in this game.  Firstly, it's out of production, as is pretty much anything with a CCD sensor.  That's a shame, because studio work with decent lighting where you don't need to go above 1000 or so ISO is a great place to take advantage of a CCD's incredible depth and vibrance of color.  Secondly, I used it simply because I was curious about how it looked next to [the CMOS] Fuji and Leica images.  I am so pleasantly surprised that I think i may start carrying it around (in the daytime, of course) once in a while.

And so the chapter ends.  Next time I want to throw my M-P into the mix to see how the APS-C and Full Frame compete.

Hope this will be of interest to a few folks.  As I said, not a scientific comparison by any means, but rather, a real-world side-by-side that the pixel-peeper types will probably hate.  In which case, please keep scrolling

:)