#its funny because ripley voice ripley | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

phykios · 4 years

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people on ao3 were thirsty for this fic so... here you go, tumblr ❤

put on the red light M, sex work au, modern royalty au, no powers au [read on ao3]

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Sometimes, she really regrets being best friends with Piper.

Said best friend still gapes at her from across the table, jaw practically on the floor. “Never?”

Annabeth rolls her eyes. “Never.”

“Not even, like, at school?”

“When I would have had the time?” she asks. “I was attempting a five-year program in four years, and then… well, you know.” And she does know, all about the very exciting drama that went down in Annabeth’s senior year.

Piper is still flabbergasted. “Not even high school?”

Annabeth takes a sip of her drink. “I wasn’t exactly a hot commodity in high school.” She’d been passively pretty all her life, but she hadn’t exactly been what some might call Girlfriend material, capital G. She’d stuck to her fifteen year plan to the letter, eschewing most social contact, working herself into the ground to overcome ADHD by sheer force of will and get into Harvard, a plan which allowed approximately zero time for a boyfriend. Not that there were even boys that she had really liked at the time.

The only boy she had ever considered liking in that way, well. She had lost contact with him a while ago.

“I can’t believe this.”

“Believe it or not, Ripley, it’s true. I’ve never had sex. You happy?”

“I mean, if you don’t mind me asking, are you ace?” Piper asks. “Because that’s totally cool, of course.”

She shakes her head. “Definitely not ace.” She has a minor collection of personal massagers and insertable devices should she ever need to take care of an urge, and plenty of fantasies she can call on whenever the need arises--a system which has worked just fine for years.

“I just…” Piper stares, unconvincingly. “How?”

Shrugging, she takes another sip of coffee. “Just never got around to it, I guess.”

It’s not something she’s proud of, but by the same token, it’s not something that brings her shame, either. It is what it is; Annabeth, a notable workaholic, has never had sex with another person in her life. In some ways, it sucks, sure, but in other ways, it’s been a blessing in disguise. After all, no previous partners means that there’s no one to spread any dirt on the newly minted Princess Anja Elisabet of Sweden.

But Piper isn’t having it.

“Do you… want to have sex?” she asks. “Like, ever?”

As the daughter of one of the biggest movie stars in the world, she knows that Piper has had her fair share of high profile relationships, something that earned her a little bit of a nasty (and, quite frankly, racist) reputation among the paparazzi, which is ridiculous, since Piper is one of the most effortlessly gracious and classy people Annabeth knows. Piper does not go slinging herself and her partners around in the media like some of her contemporaries; instead, she likes to keep her personal details a bit closer to the chest, sharing them only with trusted confidants, like Annabeth, who knows full well how much Piper enjoys the act of sex. Sex for Piper isn’t dirty or taboo, it’s fun and it’s being close with other people, it’s liberating and exciting and intimate, and she extols its virtues whenever asked to give her opinion.

She makes sex sound really good, but never in a way that makes Annabeth feel ashamed for never having done it. Until now, of course. “Well… yeah,” says Annabeth. “I’d like to. I mean, I think it’d be kind of nice, you know, to do it at least once.”

“But then you’d have to start dating,” Piper surmises.

“Yeah,” says Annabeth, glumly.

Dating is a notorious problem for people in her line of work. Royalty, not architects, that is. Dating for architects is easy; just find someone who doesn’t mind the type A personalities and the obsession with work. Dating for royals is… significantly harder, and not really something she wants to engage with right now. She’s only been a royal for a few years, after all—she still feels like it’s a big cosmic joke, that someone is going to unearth some old documents or reveal a couple of forgeries that will bring the whole thing crashing down, and she doesn’t want to bring an outsider into all that drama, let alone deal with it herself.

Piper takes a sip of her drink, thoughtful, then lays out her next question carefully. “Have you ever considered a one-night stand?”

Annabeth stares. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not! People do it.”

“Yeah,” she scoffs, “people. Not me.”

“It’s really not hard,” Piper says, “I’ve done it plenty of times.”

“What, you want me to make a tinder?”

She laughs. “God, wouldn’t that be a riot. But no, I mean, there have to be other single royals or celebs around. Why not one of them?”

“Because they’re all insufferable social-climbing jackasses that make me want to rip my skull out of my face every time I’m forced to listen to them at a state dinner.”

“Okay, then.” Never one to be deterred, Piper pulls out her phone, then waits until Annabeth has taken a sip of her drink, presumably to keep her from immediately disagreeing, before dropping the bomb to end all bombs. “Let’s get you an escort.”

Annabeth snorts iced coffee directly out of her nose.

“Shit! Sorry!” Piper shoves a handful of napkins at her. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, do you need water?”

Wheezing, Annabeth shakes her head. “Give me a sec,” she coughs, fingers covering her mouth.

Thank God she’s got her trusty, anti-pap hat on. If anyone took a picture of her like this, her uncle would probably disown her.

“What the hell, Piper?” she rasps when she can finally breathe again.

“I’m so sorry, I should have timed that better.”

“No, I mean—” she coughs again. “The other thing.”

She raises an eyebrow. “The escort?”

“Keep your voice down!” On instinct, she glances around the London cafe, looking for any stray microphones. Satisfied that no one is listening for the moment, she turns back to her insane best friend. “Yes, the… that thing.”

“It’s not that crazy,” says Piper, turning back to her phone. “We’ll find you a really nice one, someone super high class and discreet, draw up an NDA, and then you can cross it off your bucket list. Man or woman?”

“Man, but—" she sputters. “I—I can’t see a prostitute! Can you imagine the scandal if it got out?”

Forget the iced coffee thing. The princess of Sweden, caught with a hooker… Annabeth is nauseous just thinking about the media circus.

“Not a prostitute,” Piper corrects. “An escort.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Same umbrella, but no.” She types away, faster than Annabeth can keep track of. “Pimping is illegal here, but escorts usually have managers.”

“Be that as it may,” because Piper seems to have forgotten the key part of this conversation, “I can’t have sex with an escort.”

“Why not?”

“Because…” The million and a half legitimate reasons not to go through with it all fly through her mind, getting lost somewhere on the way to her mouth. “Because!”

Piper just smiles at her. “I’ll get you a really nice one, promise. Think of it as a late birthday present.”

“It’s September.”

“Early Christmas, then.” And she grins, full of teeth. “Just trust me, okay? Let me take care of it.”

Famous last words, she thinks, popping a bit of scone in her mouth.

***

7PM, the Dorchester Hotel. Dinner first, then… whatever, later.

Annabeth can’t help but arrive early. She’d never been a punctual person before, but apparently now it’s been beaten into her with all the rest of her princess training.

Five-star hotels are still something of a novelty for her, even though she’s stayed in quite a few by now. Thankfully she’s never stayed here before; she’d be too worried someone on staff would recognize her.

She had thought that she’d show up early, psych herself up a little, get emotionally prepared, or at least have a little time to calm her racing heart before her… date… showed up.

Unfortunately, as punctual as she is, apparently, he’s beaten her to the punch.

He’s exactly where he said he’d be, wearing exactly what he said he’d be wearing; black suit, blue tie, gold watch. Her heart is beating so loudly, she’s sure he can hear it from across the room. “Um, excuse me,” she asks, a little more timid than she’d like, sidling up to the man. “Paris?”

At his name--well, she assumes it’s his name, but it’s probably a pseudonym now that she thinks about it--he lifts his head up, his lips already quirking up in a smile that she can only describe as troublemaking. “Bethany?”

Right. She used a pseudonym as well. A second pseudonym—one other than Anja. “Yeah,” she smiles in return, her shakiness easing.

“Hey!” He stands up from his seat in the lounge, leaning in and kissing her on the cheek. “It’s so nice to meet you!”

“You too.” She realizes with a pang; he is so tall. He’s tall, with broad shoulders and a trim waist, startlingly green eyes and thick, curly black hair. And… “You’re American?”

“I am,” he says, unashamed. “The accent gave me away, huh? Hope you weren’t looking for something else.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she assures him. “I just wasn’t expecting it. It’s fine!"

He grins, crookedly, and she feels her heart skip a beat. “I’ll take it. Shall we head to dinner, then?”

***

Dinner was amazing, of course. The food, the atmosphere, and the company, she fully admits—all exceptional. Paris is an amazing conversationalist, she discovers, smart and funny and attentive, even gently teasing her a little. “You’re American, too, you know,” he’d said, sipping on his glass of wine, “so you can’t give me any grief over my lack of an accent.”

“I don’t live here,” she’d retorted, pointing her fork at him, “unlike some people I could mention.”

“Where do you live?”

“Ah, well—” Covering up her hesitation by taking a bite of chicken, she’d thought quickly. “Grew up in the States, but recently I moved to, um, Sweden, to be closer to my family.”

He’d nodded. “Expat, huh?”

“Something like that.”

He’d listened to her, really listened, chimed in at appropriate moments, made surprisingly insightful comments about her job and her life, and, well, he’s kind of perfect. If he weren’t an escort, he’d make an amazing boyfriend. She tells him as much, in the elevator on the way up to his room.

“Aw, thank you!” He smiles at her, a single dimple popping out under his strong cheekbones. “That’s very kind of you to say.”

“Why do you do this, anyway?” she asks. “I mean,” oh God, that question is some kind of faux pas isn’t it, Christ what the hell happened to all her etiquette training, “you don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to—”

“No, it’s okay,” he says as the elevator door opens. They’re up on a high floor, where the higher high rollers like to stay, and she follows him as he walks confidently down the hallway. “It’s not an offensive question.”

Still, she feels pretty shitty for asking. “I’m sure you get asked that all the time.”

“Most clients honestly aren’t all that interested,” he admits, shrugging a shoulder. “They need something, I can provide it. It can be a little transactional at times, but I’ve met a lot of really cool people, so it all balances out in the end.” Arriving at their door, Paris swipes his keycard, holding it open for her like some kind of butler. “After you.”

The room is enormous, even for a five-star hotel. It is a full-on suite, with a seating area and separate bedroom, a large wooden desk off to one wall, a gorgeous, floor-to-ceiling window that looks onto Hyde Park, full of lights dotted about like mini constellations. “Wow,” she breathes, “look at that view.”

“I never get tired of it,” Paris says, coming up behind her. “No matter how many times I come here.”

“You come here a lot?” she asks. She almost follows it up with a question on how he can afford it, but she ruthlessly quashes that down.

“My clients like it,” is all he says.

“I’m not surprised, all that 1930s deco in the lobby. The façade is a little plain, though, in my opinion.”

“Oh yeah? How would you do it better, Miss Architect?” She gets the sense that he’s teasing her. It feels oddly intimate for the situation—he’s not a friend, or a boyfriend, or even a date. He’s an escort. Providing a service, as he put it. He shouldn’t be so friendly with her.

And yet. “Well, I love Neoclassical, but honestly, I’m not super into hotels.”

“What are you into, then?” Casually, he undoes his tie, sliding it off his neck. She swallows.

“Um.” Focus, girl. “Office buildings, monuments. I dunno. I just want to… I just want to build something good, you know? Something permanent. Proof that I was here, you know?”

“Something permanent, huh?” He speaks softly, a respectable distance away, but she’s drawn in anyway, by his open shirt collar and his easy demeanor and his stupid sea green eyes that remind her so much of— “That sounds really nice.”

Then he steps up to her. His hand, warm and big, draws up her arm, fingers tracing lightly over her skin, and she shivers. He cups her neck, fingering the hair at the base of her scalp, and leans in, his lips parted. He smells like salt, like the perfume of the wine they shared, like the sea on a sunny morning.

“Wait,” she murmurs against his lips.

Immediately, he pulls back. “Is something wrong?” he asks, concerned.

“No, no, it’s fine, I just—” She swallows, her heart racing. “I just need a minute.”

“Of course.” He takes a step back, and she has to stop herself from pulling him in further. “Do you need anything? Water, champagne? They always stock the minifridge.”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m fine. It’s just, I’ve never… done this before.”

“What, hire an escort?” He grins, rakish. “I can tell.”

“Not that—I mean, yes, that too, but I mean—I’ve never—” She huffs, annoyed she has to have this conversation twice in one week. “I’ve never had sex before, okay?”

That shocks him a little. His eyes widen, taken aback. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” Chuckling weakly, she rubs a hand on her arm, looking out the window. “So… yeah.”

“So, don’t take this the wrong way,” says Paris, “but, there are easier ways to get laid than by using a professional. I mean, I’m grateful for the business and all, but, well, look at you.” He looks her up and down, somehow simultaneously respectful and entirely indecent. “I don’t think you’d have a problem getting a date.”

“It’s… complicated.” Understatement of the fucking millennium. “My friend thought this would be the easiest way to… go about it.”

Paris laughs. “You don’t agree.”

“I don’t… not agree,” she says. “I’m just. A little nervous.”

He nods. “I’d bet.” Chewing his lip, he looks towards the bedroom suite, and Annabeth tries not to think about how those teeth would feel on her mouth instead. “How about this; why don’t you take a shower? It might help calm you down a bit.”

“Won’t you be lonely?” she quips, a moment of reckless bravery.

“I have a few calls I can make,” says Paris, eyes dancing. “Go on. Make yourself comfortable.”

***

She has to hand it to the five-star hotels; the shower is always outstanding. Amazing pressure, amazing heat, it definitely rivals the plumbing in some of the castles she’s stayed at. And the robes, always so soft and warm, though a little on the small side. This one just barely covers her ass, which she figures isn’t a huge problem for tonight, but still.

When she steps out of the bathroom, she can hear Paris talking. “Uh huh,” he says. “Yeah. No, it’s going great. Professor Kleio said she’d write me a recommendation. She was really impressed with the last build. Yeah.” She runs her fingers through her wet hair, pushing it back from her face. “No, the conference is next month. Probably. Pretty sure I can get Tyson to help, but I don’t think it’ll get that far before the end of the week. Uh huh.”

Paris had taken off his suit jacket at some point; she can see it hung up in the closet on a hanger, perfectly pressed. He’s still in his shirt, but he’s unbuttoned it, the sleeves rolled up around his forearms. It is effortlessly attractive, even from the back. She coughs lightly, unwilling to startle him, and he turns, giving her another up-and-down, this one decidedly less respectful than the first.

“Hey, I gotta go, I’ll call you tomorrow. Say hi to Estelle for me. Love you.” And he hangs up.

“Your girlfriend?” she asks.

He smiles, all soft. “My mom.”

Something in her melts at his tone. “Aw,” she coos. “Is she back in America?”

“Yeah. I don’t get to see her all that often, so I try to call her every day.”

It is so unfathomably sweet, sweet and… humanizing, as weird as that sounds. He’s not just an unbelievably handsome man with a jaw cut like a diamond and a five-star rating, according to Piper, he’s a person with a whole other life that she knows nothing about. It’s liberating, in its own way. She can make mistakes with him, and he’ll understand. He won’t judge her, not against his other clients, or even his other partners.

Swallowing, she slides the robe off her shoulders, slowly, achingly. Maybe he turned the heat up while she wasn’t looking, because all of a sudden, she feels hot all over, from her cheeks to her chest and down, and down. Maybe it’s all coming from him, from the heat of his gaze on her, his pink tongue coming out to wet his lips. She wants it, wants them, wants him, on her and in her and all over her.

But he stays on his side of the room, waiting for her to take the plunge.

She steps up to him, close but not touching, breathing in the heady, strong scent of him, raking her eyes up his body for a change. Even through his shirt, she can tell he’s fit, the exposed skin of his arms tanned a deep brown, thick, coarse, dark hair running up to his wrists. On his right arm, there is a black trident long and straight, crossed by an old, white scar. “What happened here?” she asks, lifting her hand to trace it, leaving visible goosebumps in its wake.

“Sailing accident,” he whispers. “Long time ago.”

There’d been a kid at her summer camp for troubled teens who’d gotten thrown off his boat and hurt like that, once. She remembered so vividly, because she’d been on infirmary duty that day, and all she could think about while wrapping up his arm was how fucking stupid he'd been, how he could have gotten himself really hurt, how badly she’d wanted to kiss him.

She'd moved across the country before she'd gotten the chance, though, and no one else had ever made her feel like that since. Until now. “Got any other ink to show me?”

But instead of answering, he leans down, and he kisses her.

She’s been kissed before. She’s never had sex, but she’s done some kissing in her life. It’s usually pretty awkward, in her experience, too much of one thing and never enough of another.

Nope, not Paris. Of course, he’s also a phenomenal kisser. Why she expected anything else, she’s not sure.

His hands come up to circle her neck again, his thumbs running against her cheekbones. He kisses her, pouring passion and intent into her, his mouth soft and sweet against hers. And then he slips her some tongue, and it’s a whole different ballgame.

“Take off your shirt,” she whispers into his mouth.

He does, effortlessly, without detaching himself from her. It’s a smooth, easy motion, and she is delighted to discover that he is as firm as she suspected he was, the muscles jumping under her touch.

Almost without her realizing it, he backs her up towards the bed, her knees hitting the edge of the mattress. He lays her out against the sheets, his bare chest hot against hers. “Before we go any further,” he says, and she can feel the vibrations of his voice all throughout her body, “tell me—have you ever made yourself come?”

She flushes at his words, the dirty talk which should sound stupid but instead comes out all sultry and sexy. “Yes,” she says, breath hitching as he nips at her neck. “Yes, I have.”

“Good.” He smiles into the skin of her collarbone, traveling down, and down, and down. “I want you to show me how.”

“Isn’t that,” she pants, “your job?”

“Hmm, you’re right.” He pushes her thighs apart with his shoulders, bright eyes staring up at her as he licks his lips. “Let me get to work, then.”

Breathing heavily, she curls her fingers into the ten thousand count sheets, eyes fixed on the ceiling pattern. She can’t look at the dark head between her legs, can only breathe in through her nose as he kisses up the skin of her thigh, higher and higher and higher until…

Jesus fucking lord almighty.

***

“I found the perfect guy for you.”

“Piper, come on.” Theses brunch dates of theirs were starting to get a little repetitive. “I let you set me up with a professional, but I draw the line at a blind date.”

“Have I steered you wrong yet, your highness?” Piper asks, knowing grin firmly on her face.

Annabeth blushes. So what if that night with Paris was the most incredible experience she’d ever had? Doesn’t mean she’s ready for a full-on relationship, yet. “No,” she says, rubbing her temples.

“Great!” Then she does something that Annabeth doesn’t expect—she starts packing up. “So he’ll be here in a few minutes.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” she smiles, so bright it borders on painful, her nose scrunching up. “I invited him to brunch. But he’s really, really nice, I promise.”

“Does he know about—”

“No, he doesn’t, but if you wanted to spill, he’s a fantastic secret keeper.”

“How do you even know—”

Piper glances over Annabeth’s shoulder, eyes lighting up, waving a hand. “Friend of a friend of Jason, he’s a grad student at Cambridge, he’s doing his dissertation on naval history, so you know the king will love him.”

“Piper!” Annabeth half-calls, half-hisses at her friend as she stands up “Piper, you can’t just—”

“Hey,” says a voice behind her. A very familiar voice. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was joining us.” She turns around. Slowly. “Nice to meet you, I’m… Percy…” he trails off, sea green eyes widening behind a pair of thick, black glasses, beneath dark, curly hair. On his arm, a black trident stood out against his skin, straight and proud.

“Percy, meet Annabeth,” Piper says. “Annabeth, meet Percy. Okay, have fun you two!”

And she waltzes out of there, completely unaware of the absolute shitstorm she left in her wake.

#my fic #pjo #percabeth #the rivalry ends here #percy jackson #annabeth chase

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trainsinanime · 4 years

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Expanding the Bechdel Test

I see a lot of people (sometimes, it comes in waves) spending a lot of time trying to evaluate whether movies, books, or individual episodes of TV shows pass the Bechdel test, and I want to talk about that.

As you may know, the Bechdel test, named after its inventor Allison Bechdel, is a test originally for movies. To pass, the movie must have:

Two named female characters

Who are talking with each other

bout something other than a man.

I would like to add something to this; not to replace it, just to make it easier to use. Specifically, I would add the condition that:

If you have seen the movie, read the book, watched the episode, listened to the audiobook or played the zoetrope recently, and you now have to spend more than ten seconds thinking about whether it passes the Bechdel test, then it automatically fails by default.

You might say that’s vague and unscientific, because it is. But I think it clarifies what the test is really about. Let’s rewind a bit.

The Bechtle test is a joke. No, I mean literally. It was first published by Alison Bechdel, a prominent LGBT activist, in 1985 in her comic strip „Dykes to Watch Out for“. You can see the literal strip in question here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test#Criteria_and_variants (I’m not embedding it here because copyright).

To summarise, two women (who at this point in the strip’s life did not have names yet) are talking about whether they want to watch a movie, and one tells the other that she has this rule (which has now become the Bechdel test). The last movie she was able to see was apparently Alien, because Ripley talked with the Alien queen.

So the point here is that here is what is essentially the lowest possible bar for female representation, and the punchline is that almost all movies still fail, and those that pass may often end up doing so by accident. It’s funny because the world is horrible.

An aside: Many people who first hear about the Bechdel test point out that it’s stupid because movies may pass despite having no feminist content at all. That is true; famously Transformers passed because another woman gave Megan Fox’s character a compliment about her hair. But the very first occurrence of the test already acknowledged this objection, because that is not actually the point.

The point of the Bechdel test is to illustrate a systemic problem in media. Compare, in particular, how the reverse test is completely meaningless. Two men who talk about something other than a woman? Yeah, any given movie is almost certain to have that, a lot, and it’s going to be central to the plot.

That means the test is really mostly useful in aggregate. For any individual movie, the fact that it fails or passes is almost irrelevant; what matters is why it fails or passes. Does it pass by accident, like so many do? If it fails, why? Typical answers include, for example:

Women just exist attached to one or more men, as mothers, daughters, wives or love interests

The elite action team has one and only one member whose defining attribute is that she is a girl

All robots are coded as male, have male-looking bodies and speak with male voices, because someone thought „we’d have to justify why the robots would be girls“

…

The list goes on, but all of them illustrate part of the problem.

So back to my expansion above: If you know the movie, but you have to spend a long time thinking about whether it passes the Bechdel test, maybe even go back and rewatch it, that fact alone already tells us something about the quality of female representation in it, doesn’t it? Even if you do eventually find two women who briefly tell each other that weather exists, the movie is probably still going to be part of the problem that the Bechdel test is trying to illustrate, rather than the solution.

#bechdel test #i sure hope i haven't posted this before because i've been thinking this for a while now

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior Is Back!!! Raya and the Last Dragon, Chaos Walking and More

Welcome back to the Weekend Warrior!

This is probably going to be a little different from any of my previous columns, because New York City theaters reopen on Friday, and I swore that once they do, I would be writing about box office again. But this will also essentially be a previous column, so it will include reviews, it will include festivals and repertory series, and basically, whatever the hell I want to write about.

But let’s be realistic here. While there are a lot of movie theaters in New York City, not all of them will open, and they’ll all still have a capacity ceiling at 25% or 50 people in the larger theaters. Many of the larger multiplexes like AMC will be able to show films on two, three or more screenings to be able to make up for the limited capacity, but smaller theaters and those who have been doing well with the virtual cinema may remain closed. I know that the Angelika will be reopening to show some of the indies that haven’t had a theatrical release in NYC yet like Minari, and the IFC Center is reopening but with insanely strict protocols. (Don’t you DARE take off your mask even if you’re watching a three-hour movie! The good news is that they’re showing a lot of great movies on reopening including a comedy series that includes a number of Lynn Shelton movies.)

There’s also the issue of New Yorkers who are still petrified of being out in public, even those who have already been vaccinated and are possibly spending time in congregate settings that are just as likely to cause COVID spread than movie theaters. (I’m not gonna go on a rant about the egotistical and elitist film critics and journalists who have been ranting about movie theaters reopening for the past six months – for some reason, they think they’re as important as essential workers. Guess what, NAME REDACTED, you’re not.)

The big release of the weekend is the Disney animated movie RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, which will hit probably around 2,400 theaters on Friday as well as be available for a premium on Disney+. I honestly don’t know a ton about this premium streaming release, but this is the second one after last year’s Mulan, which came out (better sit down for this) six months ago!

This magical fantasy adventure centers around Raya (a teen girl voiced by Kelly Marie Tran), who is trying to save her world that has been relegated to dust by the destruction of a valuable magical gem that contains destructive spirits imprisoned there by the legendary dragons. When Raya finds the last dragon, Sihsu (voiced by Awkwafina), the two of them must travel across the land collecting the separated pieces of the gem to reassemble them and restore their world. Raya is thwarted along the way by her arch-nemesis Namaari (Gemma Chan) who wants to reunite the gem pieces to help her own city of Fang.

(Raya is preceded by the animated short Us Again, which is a nice wordless short about a cranky old man who reflects back on his younger days dancing with his wife. It’s okay, nothing particularly memorable.)

Raya and the Last Dragon, on the other hand, is pretty wonderful, a mix of action, adventure, magic and humor, directed by Don Hall (Big Hero Six) and Carlos Lopez Estrada (Blindspotting) in a way that blends those disparate elements in fun ways. I’ll freely admit that I was a little worried that Akwafina’s schtick was going to annoy me, but after a while her wise-cracking dragon grows on you. In fact there are actually so many other funny characters to add to the laughs that the more brought in the mix on Raya and Sihsu’s journey, the more enjoyable the film gets.

One of the reasons the film works as well as it does is that unlike last year’s Onward, it wasn’t just the two characters and what they had to offer but how their situation changes as it goes along and they visit different cities. I was pretty surprised by how well the film keeps you entertained and invested in the journey.

I also absolutely loved the score by Thomas Newton Howard, which may be even better than his score for News of the World, which I honestly think he’ll get another Oscar nomination for. This is a film that explores all sorts of emotions as well as its Southeast Asian myths, so I feel that I was always going to be a complete and total patsy for this movie since it combines a lot of things I like such as fantasy and Asian mythology. In that sense, Raya is also a nice companion to the recent Mulan, which made my Top 10 last year, but sadly never even got a nominal theatrical release.

So let’s talk about box office, something I haven’t done in almost a year. Last weekend, Warner Bros’ Tom and Jerry had a fairly spectacular opening of $13.7 million. Raya is the first new wide release Disney movie since Pixar’s Onward literally a year ago. That ended up opening to $39 million in 4,310 theaters but only grossed $61.5 million domestic after its legs were cut short by COVID one week later. Raya will likely open in about 2,500 theaters by comparison and that’s with limited capacity for safety, but it should fare decently against the second weekend of Tom & Jerry, and I could easily see it bringing in $15 million or even as much as $18 million, but again, we’re in the baby steps part of the reopening, and things are going to start slowly and keep building as the vaccine continues rolling out.

Being released theatrically by Lionsgate this Friday is CHAOS WALKING, the adaptation of Patrick Ness’ future-set young adult novel The Knife of Never Letting Go, which stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley. Holland plays Todd Hewitt, a young man living in a world with no women where men’s thoughts can be perceived by everyone around them. One day, he discovers a mysterious girl named Viola (Ridley), when she crash lands on this planet but her very presence puts Viola’s life in danger, so Todd agrees to accompany her to find her own people.

Yeah, where do I even begin with the latest film from director Doug Liman that was probably filmed two or three years ago and was being delayed even before COVID came along? That’s already a bad sign, but when see how “The Noise,” the way that we hear all of characters’ thinking emerges, it immediately feels like it’s gonna be a problem. Sure enough, it’s such an awkward plot device to watch smoke billowing from the heads of the various characters as we hear their thoughts that it takes most of the movie to get used to it, and yet, it’s still so comically inept a concept that you can’t help but laugh when Holland continually rants, “My Name is Todd Hewitt,” over and over to keep Ridley’s Viola to hear his pubescent teen boy thoughts on experiencing his first girl.

The thing is that the scenes with just Holland and Ridley aren’t bad, but when you have a movie with actors like Mads Mikkelsen, David Oyelowo, Demian Bechir and Cynthia Erivo, it’s disappointing that they can’t elevate the movie above anything other than the most obvious sci-fi (and Western) pastiches. Mikkelsen is the town mayor who is so obviously another bad guy, that he doesn’t bother to put too much into his performance cause we’ve seen him do it so many times before.

Liman is more than a competent filmmaker but he clearly is unaware of how watching clouds pool around the heads of characters as we hear and see their thoughts become material, and even the introduction of the particularly silly-looking aliens – called, get this, the “Spackle” -- makes you forget that this is a sci-fi film from the director of Edge of Tomorrow (or whatever it ended up being called). It’s not even particularly surprising when we find out what really happened to the women in Todd’s community.

I have a feeling that the problems within Chaos Walking come straight from the Patrick Ness source material and the fact that he decided to adapt it himself may have made him tone-deaf to how hard it is to make the film’s central premise work without eliciting guffaws even from the most dedicated or devout fans.

This is also opening in IMAX theaters this weekend, and when it comes to New York, that might be the ideal way to see it (if you so choose) since it’s generally bigger theaters with a maximum of fifty people. Honestly, I don’t think Chaos Walking will make more than $5 million this weekend even in what should be over 2,000 theaters and with the presumed star power of Holland and Ripley from their franchise work. This could be seen as counter-programming from the animated movie, although any teens ready to go back to the movies might stick with Raya as well. Honestly, how this didn’t end up getting dumped to streaming compared to some of this weekend’s better movies is beyond me.

Offering a bit of indie counterprogramming for the two (relatively) big studio movies is Eddie Huang’s BOOGIE, the directorial debut of the Fresh Off the Boat producer, being released by Focus Features into who knows how many theaters? (1,000 or less, I’d Imagine.) It’s a coming-of-age movie starring Taylor Takahashi as Alfred “Boogie” Chin, a Queens high school basketball ace who dreams of one day playing in the NBA but whose temper gets him in trouble with the scouts for college where he’s hoping to get a scholarship.

I was kind of looking forward to this one, because I generally enjoy Fresh Off the Boat, and I’m interested in what stories Huang has to offer as a filmmaker. The film has its merits but it’s not necessarily Takahashi, who isn’t strong enough to really keep the viewer’s interest.

On the other hand, Huang was wise to cast the amazing Taylour Paige (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) as Boogie’s love interest and even better than both is Pamelyn Chee as Boogie’s “Tiger Mom” mother who is sugary sweet when it comes to wooing possible recruiters but also is a complete nightmare to his ex-con father (Perry Yung).

Thinking back on the movie, I definitely didn’t hate it as there were character relations and dynamics I enjoyed, but not all of it clicked with me, and it’s hard to imagine this one connecting with audiences as well as some of the other movies out this week, unless you’re into college hoops, which I am not.

As far as box office, I’m not sure this will be in more than 1,250 theaters (if even that) and even if it plays in New York City (where it would normally find its biggest audience), I just don’t think there’s much awareness for the movie out there. In fact, I see it only playing in one movie theaters in NYC, and that’s way up in Harlem, presumably hoping to get the street ball fans, but I’m not so sure too many up there will be interested in an Asian-American story, so honestly, I don’t think this will make more than $500,000 or $600,000 tops.

Besides the reopening of movie theaters, the other big excitement this week is the launch of Paramount+, the relaunch, spin-off, rebranding of CBS All Access that I had also been considering checking out. It will launch on Thursday, March 4, with the animated family movie THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SPONGE ON THE RUN, which was supposed to be released by Paramount Pictures last year and did get a bit of a theatrical release in Canada while theaters were open there last year. This one involves SpongeBob and his buddy Patrick trying to retrieve SpongeBob’s beloved pet snail Gary, who has gone missing.

I generally enjoyed the first to SpongeBob movies, even though I never watched the show, and the regular creators and voice actors always seem to step up their game in terms of the wackiness whenever they’re given a chance to bring the lunacy to the big screen. In this case, it comes in the form of some of the guests including Snoop Dog and Danny Trejo in an odd Western section complete with musical number or Keanu Reeves introduced in the same section as a tumbleweed named Sage. (Oddly, this also features Awkwafina providing the voice of a robot, and I kind of liked her in more of a subdued role like this.) Although SpongeBob and his friends are CG animated, the movie doesn’t try too hard to integrate the live action in as fluid a way as last week’s Tom and Jerry – live actors just kind of show up – but it’s still pretty darn entertaining to watch another movie in which everyone involved, including director Tim Hill (who shockingly directed last year’s awful The War with Grandpa!), just going about making the movie as crazy and wacky as possible, something that should appeal to kids and… THC-laced adults (preferably not those watching with kids) … to get an overall enjoyable experience. Maybe it’s no surprise that I was particularly tickled with SpongeBob and Patrick’s adventures in Las Vegas.

Along with that, the streamer will have a new animated series called KAMP KORAL: SPONGEBOB’S UNDER YEARS, which is a CG-animated series that focuses on SpongeBob and friends when they were younger, which actually is one of the funnier bits in the movie as well.

There’s a lot of great stuff coming to Paramount+ that should make it a real player in the streaming world, and that includes all of the Paramount movies that will be streaming on it, both those that are getting a theatrical release this year and the studio’s absolutely vast library over the past 100 or so years.

And that’s not all! This weekend also sees the release of the sequel thirty years in the making, COMING 2 AMERICA, which will launch on Amazon Prime Video on Friday (after being sold to the streamer by Paramount, oddly), so yeah, there’s plenty of options to keep people home this weekend even with theaters reopening.

Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall are back as Prince (now King) Akeem of Zamunda and his trusty aide Semmi, and in fact, almost every character and actor from the movie has returned, as the duo return to America to find Akeem’s illegitimate son Lavelle (Jermayne Fowler) in queens, hoping to teach him the Zamundan way so he can take over as King after him. Unfortunately, Lavelle is joined in Zamunda with his family which includes mother Leslie Jones and uncle Tracy Jordan.

Unfortunately, reviews are embargoed until Thursday, so I’m not sure I’ll get to review this one, but I did like the movie, more than I thought because my rewatch of the original 1989 movie led me to believe there was a good reason I hadn’t watched it in over thirty years. The sequel offers a lot of originality and humor in the forms of Leslie Jones and Tracy Jordan, but that’s all I’ll say about it for now.

Incidentally, you can check out an interview I did with director Craig Brewer over at Below the Line AND I also talked to the film’s make-up team, and after you see the movie, you’ll understand why I’m holding it until after people have seen the movie.

Another movie that would probably have gotten a theatrical release but now will be seen on Hulu is the Joe Carnahan-directed BOSS LEVEL, reteaming him with long-time collaborator Frank Grillo as a man who cannot die, because he’s living in a single day that’s being repeated over and over as he takes on a series of assassins sent to kill him.

This as a really fun action-comedy that never lets down in terms of either half of that genre, and it’s kinda groovy to see Mel Gibson playing a fairly key role since he became the master of that action genre with the Lethal Weapon movies. But this really is Frank Grillo’s show as a leading man, and while I can understand some thinking him not having enough charisma for that sort of thing, I respectfully disagree.

We get into this high-concept premise pretty quickly as we watch his character, Roy Pulver, take on a string of assassins for his over 100th attempt to do so, and as per the title, it is a lot like a video game where Roy has to defeat all of the assassins on his way to the big boss, Gibson’s The Colonel. Apparently, Roy’s wife Gemma (Naomi Watts) has been killed by the Colonel or his thug (Will Sasso) so Roy is now on a quest for revenge. But first he has to survive the onslaught of killers, all of whom he’s given cute nicknames.

Easily my favorite of the killers is Selina Lo’s Guan Yin, a feisty swordswoman who proves to be the most formidable opponent for Roy. I won’t say how he bests her, but it does involve Michelle Yeoh, who has such a strange nothing appearance in one section of the movie, you wonder what she’s doing there. In fact, the movie does hit a slight lull after the initial concept is introduced, but it

Listen, I’ve long been a fan of Carnahan’s dark sense of humor and to some, it might seem mini-spirited, to me it harks back to one of my favorite movies he directed, Smokin’ Aces, a similar movie with a crazy ensemble cast, though maybe a slightly smaller budget. Still, Carnahan is a terrific action director, which makes this one of the stronger action movies in a while, and he finds a way to take a fairly simple premise and make it bigger in that Roy’s dilemma turns into something where he has to save the world, but also something more emotional and personal as he tries to bond with his son before said world ends. I guess in many ways, it’s hard to put into words what makes Boss Level so special, but I can only hope that Ryan Reynold’s Free Guy is as good as this after being delayed so many times, because this will be a tough act to follow for sure.

Over at the Metrograph, still closed physically unfortunately, they’re doing a series this week called “David Fincher/Kirk Baxter” which looks at the relationship between the director and his frequent editor, showing a series of movies over the course of the week: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network

The Metrograph has a lot of movies as part of its digital membership (just $5 a month) including Chloé Zhao’s very first film, Songs My Brother Taught Me, which was available to members through Wednesday night. (Sorry, I tweeted about it multiple times if you missed it.)

This week also launches the 26th annual “Rendezvous with French Cinema” up at Film at Lincoln Center, which was actually one of the LAST events to happen up there LAST year. This year, they’re keeping things safe by holding it virtually. It runs from March 4 through March 14, kicking off on Thursday with Sébastien Lifshitz’s Little Girl, which will be released by Music Box Films in the Fall. There’s a lot of fairly recent French films with an all-access pass available to rent all 18 films for $165. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything, so can’t really recommend anything but I’ll probably be checking out the free talk “How Music Makes the Film” on Monday, March 8.

Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood) and Sigourney Weaver star in Philippe Falardeau’s MY SALINGER YEAR (IFC Films), based on Joanna Rakoff’s book. Set in New York of the ‘90s, Qualley plays Joanna, a grad school student who dreams of becoming a writer who gets hired as an assistant to literary agent Margaret (Weaver), whose biggest client is J.D. Salinger. Although Joanna’s role is more of a glorified secretary, she gets to go through Salinger’s fan mail from around the world, and she decides to start answering some of the letters to the author, an experience that helps her find her writers’ voice.

I wasn’t sure if this movie would be for me, but I find Qualley to be quite delightful, and this was a light film with a comedic tone from the Canadian filmmaker of the boxing movie, Chuck, and the Oscar-nominated Monsieur Lazhar. I enjoyed its look at the New York literary world of the 1990s, and it kept me quite invested even if I’m not particularly invested in Salinger’s work or an obsessive with The Catcher in the Rye as many are. Weaver is also fantastic as Joanna’s boss – think of a lighter version of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada – and also enjoyed the tentative relationship between Joanna and her writer boyfriend Don, played by Douglas Booth.

Basically, Falardeau has created another generally wonderful and crowd-pleasing movie that sadly missed its opportunity at a festival run to build an audience after debuting at the Berlinale almost exactly a year ago. Presumably, this will open at the reopened IFC Center this weekend. (In fact, IFC Center released its reopening schedule and it’s a pretty cool mix of IFC Films movies from the past as well as some of the Netflix movies that weren’t released in NYC previously.)

Okay, let’s get to some other releases from the week, beginning with Ivan Kavanagh’s SON (RLJEfilms/Shudder), the latest film from the Irish director of The Canal, a fantastic horror film that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival about seven years back. In this one, Andi Matichak from Halloween plays a single mother whose son David (Luke David Blumm) suffers from all sorts of maladies but when she starts getting closer to a local detective (Emile Hirsch), he discovers that there’s a lot more to her past and to her son’s ailments.

Honestly, I do not want to say too much about the plot, because there are so many shocking surprises in the movie once you think you know where it’s going, although I will say that it has connections to films like The Lodge and shows like Servant, but it also does a good job fucking with the viewer’s head, so you never know what’s really happening and what might be in the characters’ heads.

I will say that the movie is very dark and quite disturbing with lots of gruesome gory sequences, but if you’re a fan of smart horror, you’ll want to check out Son. (I’ll have an interview with Kavanagh over at Below the Line next week.)

Sony Classics is finally releasing Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s doc THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS (Sony Classics), which has been playing on the virtual festival circuit all the way back to Sundance last year, so we’ll see how many people are left to see it. It’s set in the forests of Piedmont, Italy where a handful of 70-to-80-year-old men are on the hunt for the rare white Alba truffle, which has resisted all modern science to be cultivated.

For whatever reason, I procrastinated on watching this movie for most of last year, maybe because I’m not that big a fan of cinema verité docs, but this is infinitely entertaining between the various men featured – including a lot of real characters in there – and how the movie shows their close bond with their truffle-sniffing dogs. This is a genuinely enjoyable movie that I feel can appeal to a wide range of viewers, although be aware that is in Italian, so maybe one should consider that even with the cute dogs, this should probably be watched by teen or older rather than small kids. (I don’t remember anything particularly racy, but the movie is Rated PG-13.)

Staying in the dog realm, Magnolia Pictures is releasing Elizabeth Lo’s documentary STRAY on Friday, which documents the life of Zeytin, a stray dog living on the streets of Istanbul, and some of his dog frenemies. Actually, this was a pretty wonderful film that I quite enjoyed, although there were a few dog fight sequences that disturbed me a little bit. But it’s a great look at Turkey through the eyes of some of the canines on the street, how they interact with the humans around them. Essentially, Stray is the dog version of Kedi, but I’ve seen other similar docs like this including Los Reyes – this one is just as strong as either of those movies, the images of all the beautiful dogs accompanied by gorgeous string music by Ali Helnwein that helps you understand the dogs’ complex emotions. Seriously, if you like dogs, you can definitely do worse than the previous two movies mentioned. Stray is available via Virtual Cinema, including that of the Film Forum.

Filmmaker and EDM artist Quentin Dupieux (Rubber) is back with his latest, KEEP AN EYE OUT (Dekanalog), starring Belgian comedian Benoît Poelvoorde as police officer, Commissaire Buran, investigating a guy (Grégoire Ludig) who has discovered a dead body in a puddle of blood outside his apartment building. The prime suspect is then left alone with a one-eyed rookie, and if you’ve seen any of Dupieux’s other films, you’ll probably know to expect the unexpected as things get crazier and crazier. (I seem to remember seeing this last year at some festival, maybe FantasticFest, but I’ll have to watch again before remembering if this was one of Dupieux’s movies that I liked.) This will be available in select theaters and also in virtual cinema this Friday. (Oddly Dupieux’s last movie, Deerskin, debuted at last year’s “Rendezvous with French Cinema” right before theaters shut down for a year, and I don’t want to be superstitious, but yeah, I’m worried.)

Barnaby Thompson’s Ireland-set crime thriller PIXIE (Saban/Paramount) stars Olivia Cooke (Sound of Metal) and Alec Baldwin with Cooke playing Pixie Hardy, a young woman who wants to avenge her mother’s death by pulling off a heist that will allow her to leave her small town. The crime goes wrong, and she’s forced to team up with a group of misfits including Baldwin’s Father McGrath.

Bradley Parker’s action-thriller THE DEVIL BELOW (Vertical) deals with a team of researchers who are investigating a series of underground coal mines in Appalachian country that have been on fire for decades where they discover a mystery. It’s getting a combined theatrical, VOD and digital release Friday.

Phil Sheerin’s directorial debut THE WINTER LAKE stars Emma Mackey (Sex Education) as Holly, a young woman with a secret that’s uncovered by her unstable neighbor Tom (Anson Boon from Blackbird) and the two of them are pulled into a confrontation with her father, who wants to keep the family secret buried. This will be in select theaters on Friday, On Demand on Tuesday, March 9 and then on DVD March 23.

Dylan McCormick’s SOMETIME OTHER THAN NOW (Gravitas Ventures) stars Donal Logue and Kate Walsh, Logue playing Sam who is stranded in a small New England town after his motorcycle crashes into the ocean seeking refuge at a run-down motel run by Walsh’s Kate, a similarly run-down and lost soul. When Sam learns that his estranged daughter Audrey, who he hasn’t seen in 25 years, lives in the town, he starts to learn more about why he ended up there.

Jacob Johnston’s DREAMCATCHER (Samuel Goldwyn) stars Travis Burns as Dylan aka DJ Dreamcatcher who meets up with two estranged sisters at the underground music film festival, Cataclysm, where they become entrenched in 48 hours of violence and mayhem after a drug-fueled event. Sounds delightful.

Some of the other VOD stuff hitting the ‘net this week include: 400 Bullets (Shout! Studios), Sophie Jones(Oscilloscope), Dementer (Dark Star PIctures), Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know (Giant Pictures)

That’s it for this week. Next week, theaters hopefully will remain open, and we’ll have some new movies to write about.

#TheWeekendWarrior #Movies #Reviews #RayaAndTheLastDragon #ChaosWalking #SpongeBobMovie #BossLevel

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experimentalmadness · 4 years

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Visitation

More Harvey Dent and OC nonsense featuring my trash-fire of a character, Jacky Ripley. This is still set prior to any villain shenanigans on Harvey’s part, but only just. Jacky tries to sneak into the hospital to see him after the attack, but things go...wrong.

No real warnings, but a content check that an unstable character does refer to herself in less than great mental health terms.

---

It was late. It was raining—as usual. And she was making stupid choices on purpose.

The hospital looked like something out of a nightmare. Stark, backlit with a glowing fluorescent from the ER driveway. Jacky was soaked through her jeans and sweater. Her hair was plastered to her face even with the hoodie up.

Cop cars littered the parking lot, lights flaring without sirens making it look like even more surreal.

Jacky couldn’t feel her feet, couldn’t feel her legs. Didn’t really notice as she approached the building. She couldn’t go inside. That clarity kept her grounded in only mild stupidity instead of outright suicidal idiocy. Scaling a building at 1am in the rain was not her favorite task, but she had done it countless times before for work.

She’d have to mount the ledges and sidle along the entire circumference.

She couldn’t ask which room he was in.

Miri told her she shouldn’t go. Couldn’t go.

Gilda had left ten messages on her phone since last week.

Jacky, I know I can’t ask…

Jacky, he would want….

Jacky, please answer….

Jacky rushed over to the bushes to vomit. Hands and knees, stomach cramping so hard and so sudden her back arched in pain. Her throat burned, her eyes watered. It tasted like the bottle of whiskey she had downed in earnest. Funny, she didn’t feel drunk. She felt more sober than she had in her entire life.

Climbing the hospital felt even more impossible now with her limbs shaking every which way. She could barely see through the rain. Just as she was psyching herself up to make the first jump even thought she’d probably miss, fall, and break even bone in her stupid body; she was hoisted off the ground by one leg. With a grunt that gave way to a dull scream, Jacky went flying upwards through the rain, shooting straight up to the roof. She bobbed precariously over the edge of the building, headfirst. Her first thought was this was certainly odd, the second was that if she died right now it would be quick.

“I’m surprised it took this long for Moroni to send someone to finish the job,” a grating voice growled at her in the darkness.

“I...who…?” she couldn’t see through the rain and shadow, and being held upside down certainly did not help. “I don’t work for Moroni.”

Something pushed her, causing her to spin round, facing the skylights. “Falcone then.” A shadow moved past the lights, and the voice spoke with authority. Whoever it was it knew her old boss. Age-old reflex made her anxious until Jacky remembered everyone in Gotham knew her boss now, and knew exactly who she really was. Three months out of prison was not long enough for people to forget the Ripper case.

But whoever this was, was no cop.

Jacky had an inkling. It did not comfort her.

“I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

“The string of dismemberments at Flannigan’s begs to differ.”

How did he know about that? No one should know about that for the next five hours by her own calculations. She kept her mouth shut. He had no proof. Moroni’s men deserved it. She’d killed her career and put a price on her head in the same stroke, and she’d do it again. Jacky felt wild in a way she knew wasn’t the whiskey. She kept the crazy all shut in, but tonight it just had to come out. She’d made it hurt. She’d done it special; crazy only came out when Falcone wanted a message sent. This one was the first time she’d done a message all of her own.

“I wanted to see Harvey.” Crazy went right back into its box as she heard his name out of her own mouth, desperate, raspy, pathetic.

“Why?” The Batman jerked on the line keeping her suspended.

Because if she hadn’t told Harvey to stay away from her after her release from Blackgate she’d have known how in deep he was in going after Moroni. Because if she hadn’t bought into Harvey convincing her she still had a chance, that she could be a better woman, she wouldn’t have stopped working for Falcone and she could have heard about the hit. Because if she hadn’t lied in the first place she’d be a normal woman inside the hospital taking care of her friend. Because if she just had minded her own business the first day that stupid man had come into her shop she wouldn’t be here right now….

“I just wanna know how he is.”

“That line might have worked on the nurses, it won’t on me.”

“It’s the only line I got.”

Jacky was exhausted. She swung out and back from the roof to the abyss, her head going numb from being upside down so long. That was it then. Her grand plan to sneak into Harvey’s room, no muss no fuss, and back out was a bust. Batman didn’t make a move to haul in the line. She was sure he was going to drop her off in one of the cop cars below and tell the others to arrest her on trespassing, and hell, why not add murder to the list of offenses. No sense in being coy now.

“Is he dying?” Saying the fear out loud made her stomach cramp up again.

Silence from the Batman. He still thought she worked for Falcone. He still thought this was some play for ulterior information. He wasn’t going to believe her and he was right! He shouldn’t. She’d spent so much time lying and playing innocent shop girl no one should believe her ever again. And here was a fitting punishment. For the first time Jacky struggled on the line. The drop of crazy made her dizzy. It was only to be used for Miri’s sake, for the family, for money when she could make it work for them. “If he’s dying I just wanted to see him before...you don’t have to trust me. You can arrest me. I just need to know. Tell me...TELL ME, OR I’LL…”

“Or you’ll do what, Jacqueline?”

The sound of her full name gave her pause. Batman finally lowered her to the roof, cutting the cable and letting her fall in a shivering heap. She pulled herself to her feet, balling her cold hands into fists. “I’ll make it hurt.” Now that, assuredly, was the whiskey talking.

But it was going to hurt. She hoped it did. She deserved it.

Jacky winced when, instead of a punch, a hand descended on her shoulder. The strength of the grip was frightening. It rooted her in place, but offered no violence. “He’s not dying, Jacquline.”

“Oh, that’s good,” was all she managed before she burst into tears.

The hand on her shoulder was all that prevented her from giving way and sinking to the floor. Harvey wasn’t going to die. Things could still be okay. She’d be going back to Blackgate, but that was where she belonged anyway, no point in running from it. She could write to him in prison, but she wouldn’t. Because she was a coward in her core.

“S-sorry. Thank you. You can arrest me now,” she sniffed, straightening, looking up directly into the masked eyes of the Batman.

“Come with me.”

The hand never moved from her shoulder as she was shoved along. Batman booted open the roof access hatch and forced her down into the stairwell. Everything echoed inside. The rain falling off her clothes, her skin, plinking onto the metal stairs. The thick boots the Batman was wearing in lock step with her own, softer, sneakered tred. And he never said another word, just marched her down flight after flight. Around and around.

Back to prison. Miri would be so upset. She had forgiven her once, Jacky doubted she would a second time. She had tried to be a good sister, the little double act she had between their shared bakery and her night errands for Falcone had only been for her sake. But this city beat most people down eventually and Jacky knew at some point the killing hadn’t really ever been just a paycheck had it?

At least Gotham hadn’t claimed Harvey. It had tried. He’d still show them. That was enough to live with. She hoped Gilda would be alright. Maybe she could sneak one quick phone call to at least tell her how sorry she was she had stayed away. The DA and his wife shouldn’t be seen in the company of a convicted killer. She had just been trying to help. She’d only ever just wanted to help.

The white light of the hospital blinded Jacky for a moment, but Batman kept her moving. Nurses and doctors parted in quiet shock as they made their way through. No one was going to argue with the Batman, especially not when he was holding a perp. The brand of killers he brought in were on another level far beyond her. Maybe she should feel flattered. Mostly she just felt tired.

They stopped at a door, that grip tightening to levels that made Jacky grind her teeth. “If you try to make a break for the window,” he growled. “You’ll be caught before you hit the ground.”

“What?”

He opened the door, shoving her inside, releasing her. She could feel him still in the darkened room. This was not an arrest. There were no cops in here. Just the steady beep of a heart monitor and…

“Harvey?”

For a man who always made life feel so much larger than it actually was it was so much harder to see him lying in the small hospital bed than Jacky had anticipated. She waited for some trick from the Batman, turning back to face him. He only stood in the shadows, watching. She allowed herself to move towards the bed.

Gauze and mesh covered the left half of his face, his neck, and his arm. She knew the extent of the attack from the news. There would be scars. And that was the best news ever, because scars meant he’d be alive.

She jumped when he shifted on the bed. Jacky hadn’t counted on him being awake. She didn’t want him to see her! She backed up into the dark. “Jacky?”

His voice was not his own. Maybe the acid had damaged his vocal chords.

Caught, she stood in limbo between the bedside and the door. “Hey.”

“How did...you get...in?”

“Light breaking and entering. I...I didn’t mean to disturb you. I know I shouldn’t have come, but…” If she cried again, warning or no warning, she was going to throw herself out that window.

“Shut up,” he snapped, grabbing her hand. “I’m glad to...see...you.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “I don’t think I can stay long, my escort won’t let me,” she gestured back to the moving shadows behind her. “But you’re gonna heal up fine.” This was the part where she was supposed to say she was grateful he wasn’t dying, or dead. Where she said because he was the most important friend in her life and losing him was unfathomable. But she didn’t.

“Doctors...won’t let me see. It’s...not good...is it?”

“Think how intimidating you’re gonna look in court. You’ll win by default.”

A gurgling, raspy, laugh was her only reward. “Think you can...stay?” His hand gripped her tighter and Jacky almost wanted to tear herself in half.

“Don’t think my escort is gonna let me, Harv. I...I did something bad tonight. I’ll probably be back in Blackgate by the time you get out of here. And I’m sorry. I let you down.” She could feel him staring at her. His one good eye, searching hers, that grip pulling her closer.

“What did you do?”

The grip on her hand turned into a claw, nails digging into flesh so hard it hurt. He didn’t sound angry, and she didn’t stop him. “Got some of Moroni’s guys. It was worse than what you brought me up for. I’m sorry, Harvey, but they deserved it. I only wanted—”

“Payback.”

The pain medication was what made him sound so cold. Just the drugs making him a little confused. Even in the dark she could see the outline of a smile that was and was not his.

“Jacky, we always knew...there was a reason...we liked you.”

#Harvey Dent #Two Face #Jacky Ripley #More adventures with an OC that refuses to confess her FEELINGS

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awfully-sadistic · 5 years

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Spooktober Quickie #3

There wasn’t an annual take-your-kid-out to anything in the Haushold but there really should have been.

The closest the Family got was scheduled trips to places of learning conducted by Angelo Frenzy’s class as a reward for the students who did all their work and did a relatively good job in them. So suffice to say, the three biggest troublemakers in his class, Ripley, Bennett, and Cavon, never got to go. But the students who DID get to go consisted of Beauregard, Cooper, and the children who were capable of attending school; Remy, Joshua, Alma, Alessa, Little Walter, Denzel, Marlene, and Raphael; the big brother for the day that was tasked with helping Angelo and Dot with corralling the children.

Of course, Cooper and Beau could have helped but they were part of the class and Angelo had insisted they enjoy themselves as the reward. They still helped where they could, good boys that they were especially if it earned brownie points with Dot who was otherwise preoccupied with the children. It had been a fun day, filled with laughter and learning, something that Angelo could appreciate. They were on the last stretch of the tour now, having visited all of the rooms that the New Senzannini National Museum of Arts and History had to offer. A smorgasbord of exhibits ranging from children-friendly displays and interactions to the more adult (and boring-like) displays that could appeal to anyone of all ages and tastes.

“I was quite excited for this room,” Angelo divulged unable to hold back the note of excitement in his voice. Still, much like him, it was composed and professional. The tired look that usually overtook his features seemed somewhat lifted the closer they got to it. “I saved it for last.”

Dot had to smile, holding onto Little Walter and Remy’s hand; the youngest of the group of children. Angelo had been a good tour guide that Dot knew the learning experience had been what put him into gear, explaining and teaching the children (and two grown-ass adults) about the exhibits they had seen today. He had soon led them into a sign pointing towards an Egyptian exhibit. Dot’s mouth formed a small ‘o’ having felt the contagious energy Angelo had been emitting as soon as they saw the sign.

“Oooh, that is a nice surprise.” Dot praised which caused Angelo to look over, approval in his own gaze. He stayed back, allowing the two bigger adults lead the group of children inside. He had wanted to enter with Dot; a silly notion but it meant a lot to him because he got to share something he had been passionate about.

The room had been decorated accordingly, wrapped with all the detail of an ancient Egyptian civilization housing numerous artifacts and splendors. Angelo continued, “This is New Senzannini’s first Egyptian exhibit. They had spent so much money to renovate and expand its room to even host these items.”

Cooper whistled lowly, having ducked down to check out a noble looking bust of some ancient pharaoh. “These guys knew how to live.”

Beau agreed, turning to look at what had caught Cooper’s attention, “They worshipped cats. I think that’s cool.”

The little children present were delighted by the vibrant colors of the displays, branching out and around to look at masks, vases, and funny pictures of people depicted sideways. Marlene, Alma, and Alessa giggled, their heads bowed together as they pointed at the hieroglyphics. “They draw pictures just like us,” Alessa said.

�� “I like this one,” Marlene pointed, showcasing a cat on a throne and many people seemingly worshipping it.

Beau ran over, gasping. “I knew it.”

“Look at this!” Denzel said suddenly. Dot had glanced over to see what the young boy had been excited about. Of course, Josh and Raphael were with him, having been staring at some of the weapons on display. Boys being boys, they were tempted to touch and play with the items. Big blocky black letters read on a sign, DO NOT TOUCH, that had been the only thing that stopped them from doing just that. They were content enough to talk amongst each other about how cool it looked and whether this weapon looked cooler than that one, and what they could have been used for.

Dot glanced down at the two younger boys holding her hands, smiling. They turned their heads up, their big, round eyes curious about what they were seeing but not quite understanding. Dot wanted to show them something that’d knock their little socks off! Something to get them excited about, too! She looked around and Angelo, seeing her dilemma, gently gestured towards the center of the room where a huge, rectangular display sat long ways and undisturbed from their visit. Dot’s eyebrow perked, wondering if that was what she thought it was.

Angelo looked proud as he replied without her prompting, “That’s why everything had been so expensive. They brought over a mummy for us to visit.”

At the word “mummy”, everyone’s attention hitched on the word and heads turned. Of course everyone was interested in a real life mummy! Beau and Cooper, adults but also big kids, were immediately hyped. Angelo had to remind them to keep their voices lowered.

“A real life mummy?” Cooper asked, excited whispers threatening to turn into another shout. “Like, one you see in the movies?”

“Or a grown-up version of Horus?” Beau asked, looking over at Dot with a grin.

Dot laughed, “We should have brought him. I’m sure he would have loved seeing another mummy…”

It was Raphael who turned, catching the grown-ups’ attentions with his bored-toned expression, “Something’s happening.”

The group turned, children and adult eyes alike, watching the display. It was a sarcophagus with intricate designs. There should have been a sign around here somewhere stating who had been inside, a long dead pharaoh, perhaps, and details about his life and circumstances of his death. But Angelo hadn’t the time to read such a thing. And if the thought had crossed his mind, he had surely forgotten. In the middle of the display, the lid to the sarcophagus started to move. It was a small movement at first, almost like nothing had been happening but the thing must have been heavy. Then, the lid started to move some more, gently, to the side. But slowly. Now more obviously. There was a hushed whisper as Cooper asked, “Sarcophagus’ aren’t supposed to open… right?”

Angelo whispered back, “Sarcophagi. That’s the plural.” He corrected before adding, “And they can open. Just not… by themselves.”

If there had been a mummy inside, it wasn’t there now. The group of adults nearly gasped as they had spotted nothing in the dark depths of the Egyptian grave. The children, who were more fearless than adults, were amazed that the thing moved on its own and had their little faces pressed up against the glass. Dot had to try to steer their attention away, gesturing for them to come over. Closer where she could keep an eye on them and away from harm, even if she had to put herself between it and them.

“Where’s… the mummy?” Beau asked, looking around. He was on the verge of using his phone; Helen on one of his numbers on speed-dial.

Then the lights suddenly went off; it cast the entire room in a darkness, only a few back up lights perhaps running on a generator illuminating the space they were in. Dot looked over at Angelo, Cooper and Beau looked at each other. They had questions but they didn’t know where to start. Perhaps getting out would be the best plan of action.

Angelo was just about to say such when a low groan came from the only entrance of the room. Everyone’s attention turned immediately, spotting a limping figure wander into the room.

“It’s the mummy!” Denzel pointed, gaping.

“How’d he get out of his box?” Alma asked, tilting her head with curiosity. Weren’t they supposed to be in there?

But that wasn’t the only thing that caught the kids’ attention. And it was quicker than the adults caught on too.

“The mummy has candy!” Josh stated which had caused the group of children to flock to the mummy, their little faces expectant of the treats. Upon closer inspection, the mummy had a bowl of candy in his hands and a friendly smile on his face. It was just bad make up and one of the employees. It took the adults a while to catch on when they discovered it was just a little surprise for them. Perhaps in BAD TASTE but the kids had not been scared at all!

Dot could feel her heart rate return to normal, a hand to her chest as she looks over at Angelo. “We always knew kids didn’t fear as much as adults, I guess this kind of proves it.”

Angelo chuckled, placing a hand on the small of Dot’s back; it was a gesture meant to be comforting. “Even if it was a real mummy, there would have been no way any of us had gotten hurt.”

Dot was under the impression that Angelo surely meant that he’d protect them but it was Cooper who tacked on his own reasoning, “Yeah, half of those kids are scarier than any real-life mummy.”

Dot chuckled, then nodded because… well, Cooper was right.

#{{ original drabbles: spooktober 2019

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energywarning · 2 years

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Can we have agent 4 (alex) headcanons please

Ok ^_^

- she loves Speedcore/happy hardcore/rave music/music that goes fast and gives you the shakes.

- and dancing to said music. Not in a professional way LOL but like she lets her body go wild. So much fun!

- sometimes she draws chibis n stuff. (Like the hijinks her, 3 n 8 get into on missions or just every day life.)

- likes racing Viddy games . 1000hours on marizhdk (i forgot the name they gave mario in sploon universe) kart 8.

- watches some anime too, recommends new good animes to ripley (bc they refuse to go check on their own)

- thinks wrestling is cool. Designed an outfit for every member of the new new squidbeak splatoon.

- gives silly nicknames to her friends.

- she was bullied hardcooooooore. Fucked w her self esteem Lol but also she has this like Rancid Vibe Detector built in now.. sees thru fake smiles easy.

- used to be ashamed of her red eyes. Wore contacts.

- she thinks being down 2 earth and trying ur best to have fun in life is very important. Yolo, like they say... be kind its sparkle on monday etc.

- watches one (1) horror movie and cant sleep the whole night.

- related. plays horror video games even if shes scared shitless for the fun factor of being scared if that make sense? When shes playing w ripley and eight and she screams at a jumpscare and it makes ripley laugh because or smth she thinks its funny.

- pineapple juice enthusiast. Her favorite drink lol...

- #1 hydrohomie. DRINK UR WATERS dang it.

-goofs enthusiast. Hijinks enjoyer even

She Dislikes...

- infilration missions bc shes not very... Stealthy.

- being called devil diabolical stuff like that.

- related. being called "devil child" or "devil's child" if you call her that well she wont have a fun time lol.

- diss-pair (theyre boooorrrringggg *4 voice*)

- when marie speaks to her on missions telling her tips n tricks she already knows of like Bro I Know. Sometimes she just mutes her lol.

- meetings... falls asleep like immediately.

- dangerous pranks. Thinks theyre stupid. Fun is meant to be fun idiots... >:*(

- cooking. 1.Shes bad at it 2. Shes bad at it.... (not as bad as eight tho)

Probably had more but #iforgot so yea. Ty for the ask !

#alex(4)#sillies

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justanothercinemaniac · 6 years

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Epic Movie (Re)Watch #242 - Paul (2011)

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) The prologue for this movie is particularly strong. For one thing, the name of the dog, “Paul,” stands out. It’s hard to watch this movie without knowing the title. And it shows that the film isn’t just making fun of sci-fi but playing in the genre. There’s a nice sense of atmosphere to the short prologue and it poses many interesting questions. Namely: what the hell just crashed on earth?

2) I appreciate how earnest Simon Pegg and Nick Frost come across as nerds in the movie. So often people who are enthusiastic about pop culture are portrayed as the joke, their existence is a joke. But with Graeme and Clive yes they can be funny but the joke isn’t the simple idea of, “Look at how funny the nerds are!”

3) Another line of humor I appreciate in the film is that while Graeme and Clive are often mistaken to be a couple, they’re never really uncomfortable with people thinking they’re gay unless they are in a situation with some homophobic assholes. And in that case the discomfort isn’t the threat to their masculinity but the threat to their safety. It’s a nice distinction from how these types of storylines typically go.

4) Look, do I even need to talk about the on screen chemistry between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost? They have proved it countless times across film and television. They’re a legendary on screen duo. Abbott & Costello, Fred & Ginger, Gene Wilder & Richard Pryor, now Simon Pegg & Nick Frost. They’re great together always, even when the films may be a little less than stellar they are not. And Paul is no exception. Their chemistry is on point, they’re as strong alone as they are together, it just works. We spend enough time with their characters before Paul shows up that we clearly understand the relationship, something which is not only the result of strong writing but strong acting as well.

5) The waitress played by Jane Lynch is wonderfully supportive of the duo’s nerdy nature. She doesn’t make fun of them for their interests, she doesn’t see it as odd. She encourages it! And even when the two jackasses show up she’s supportive and only suggests they leave because she knows the bearded truckers could start trouble. I really like that.

6) Seth Rogen as Paul.

Being the titular character of a movie carries a to of weight with it. You have to be the most memorable part of the movie. Think of Beetlejuice, for example. That’s a lot to live up to. Our intro to Paul shows off much of his character and his down to earth nature (no pun intended). We get introduced to his crude and profane language, his sense of humor, and even a little bit of his heart. It is the latter of these things which helps make Paul a character and not just a gag. You understand his intentions, what he wants, what motivates him, and you can relate. It’s a bit of E.T., actually. He just wants to go home. We get to especially see this when interacting with Blythe Danner’s character later in the film, how vulnerable he allows himself to be and how he grows to care about the safety of others.

Seth Rogen nails it as the character. Rogen is no stranger to voice over work and sometimes I honestly forget I’m listening to him. This isn’t because he does anything particularly tricky to disguise his voice, but just because it fits all the above mentioned characteristics of the alien so well. It just works and I think the film is better for Rogen’s casting.

7) Jason Bateman as Agent Zoyle is a fun addition to the movie. Bateman plays the character as reserved and intensely focused, a straight man to some of his more chaotic counterparts. That’s where most of the humor comes from and Bateman’s precision with the role only benefits it.

8) Joe Lo Truglio and Bill Hader have a fun chemistry in this film and add a nice amount of life to the movie. They have fun with their characters and each other making it all the more fun to watch.

9) This film is just dripping with references to great sci-fi films, some subtle and some not so subtle.

Paul [asking for food at a gas station]: “Hey! Reese’s Pieces!”

10) Chekov’s dead bird.

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

Paul showcasing his ability to heal things, even partially, sets up an important alien power of his that also leads to a great gag with his little snack.

11) The film does well with giving each character their own personality and arc. Bill Hader’s character specifically gets a well written storyline of drive and upward mobility. Not everyone would think to give him that storyline.

12) I like Paul’s planet.

Paul: “Everyone’s bi on my planet.”

13) I’m a sucker for these kinds of jokes. Specifically, how Paul was SUCH an influence on pop culture. That the stereotypical alien look came from his face so people wouldn’t freak out so much when they saw him, that he talked to Steven Spielberg (who does a voice over cameo as himself) about E.T., or that, “Agent Mulder was my idea!” I dig it.

14) Kristen Wiig as Ruth.

Wiig is charming and sweet in her portrayal of Ruth. She’s a nice addition to the film and is able to hold her own against the chemistry between Pegg and Frost. She doesn’t feel out of place or tacked on, even getting a really great arc of her own (scientific?) awakening. I appreciate that.

15) On a more personal note, I disagree with the idea that there has to be this complete divide between religion and science as the film largely presents it. You’re either one or the other which to me doesn’t make a ton of sense. Not to get too into my own personal beliefs but I believe in the idea of a creator behind the universe but that doesn’t undermine things like evolution or the big bang or anything else. But I think I’m getting off track.

16) There are some surprisingly strong action scenes in the movie. Often comedy that fall into a subgenre like sci-fi or fantasy rely heavily more on the comedy then set pieces. There’s nothing wrong with that if pulled off well, I just always forget that Paul has a number of well paced chase and action sequences too.

17) I like that the film takes time to develop the relationships with Clive and Paul as well as Graeme and Ruth. They fell organic, natural, and they’re not static either they grow and change. I like it.

18) It took me a while to understand this joke because I didn’t know what Mac & Me was.

Clive: Ever since I saw Mac and Me, I've dreamed about meeting you!

For those who don’t know, Mac and Me is basically an ET rip-off that is often listed as one of the worst films ever made that some see more as a commercial for McDonald’s and Coca Cola than a film.

Also that thing is creepy as hell.

19) Ruth trying out profanity throughout the course of the movie is fun to watch and actually, now that I think about it, mirrors my own attempts with cursing as a kid.

youtube

20) At its core, Paul is a fun road trip movie. It’s about going somewhere but it’s also about the journey. The trouble you face on the road and the friends you have to see you through it. It just also involves aliens and the government.

21) The country bar version of “Cantina Band” is nice.

22) I think the bar scene works because it’s basically the eye of the shitstorm. Everything the group has been running from - the truckers, Ruth’s dad, the government - all converges upon them at the same time. It makes for a fun and ripe conflict that’s interesting to see the characters deal with.

23) Is this some sort of crack about Bob Dylan’s current music not “measuring up” to his early stuff or whatever?

Paul [about his drugs]: It's pretty strong shit. I get it from the military. I think this is the stuff that killed Dylan. Graeme: Bob Dylan’s not dead. Paul: Isn’t he?

24) Random Keith Nash is random but nice.

25) Blythe Danner as Tara is a nice late addition to the film. Danner puts a lot of heart and soul into what is essentially a tragic character. A space alien landed on her dog, was taken away by the government, and she was dubbed a freak by society only for telling the truth, something which required years of therapy. But Tara’s no push over. Danner is able to make her strong, tough, and pretty funny when the opportunity arises.

26) The whole scene where the group has to escape the feds at the farm is the film’s best action sequence. It is incredibly well choreographed, tightly paced, and there is a wonderful escalation of insanity and action as the scene progresses. I really like it.

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27) This film is Wilhelm Scream certified.

28) The movie is basically a big love letter to sci-fi movies created by the likes of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. The previous mention of Reese’s Pieces, the fact that the mountain from Close Encounters of the Third Kind is where Paul goes to phone home, and the line from Jason Bateman, “Boring conversation anyway,” mirroring Harrison Ford’s line from the original Star Wars. It shows not only just how much those kinds of films meant to the filmmakers but also how important it is they express that love in cinema. I think honesty admiration always leads to great filmmaking.

29) Sigoruney Weaver’s role as The Big Guy is basically a glorified cameo but I love it. Her casting is pitch perfect. As soon as she actually shows up you know shit just got real. Why? Because it’s Sigourney Weaver! It’s Ellen Ripley for crying out love. She just commands the scene and the fact that the oft mentioned “big gun” from earlier in the film is literally just a big ass gun is great.

30) The twist that Zoyle is actually on Paul’s side totally surprised me the first time I saw the film but it adds a lot of rewatch value. It totally makes sense in a second viewing and helps deepen his character from more than just a standard gov antagonist.

31)

Zoyle: “Call me Lorenzo.” Clive & Graeme: “Lorenzo Zoyle?”

I did not understand this reference at all when I first saw the movie. I had to google it extensively. Apparently it’s a reference to the 1992 George Miller directed film Lorenzo’s Oil that’s a family drama about a sick kid and has nothing to do with sci-fi. So after I learned what the reference was I googled some more to figure out why it was a joke in the movie. Apparently it was Nick Frost’s idea.

“It’s just one of those things that I kind of like doing, that thing that you take one letter from the surname and add it to the forename and it becomes something completely different. It’s possible someone could be called Lorenzo Zoil.” (source)

32) Graeme’s “death” actually packed a punch with me watching this. You kind of figure he’ll survive, I mean we’ve seen Paul use his healing ability before, but still I think that it does pull at your heart strings speaks to how well the film does in making you care about these characters and their relationships.

33) THE SHIP FUCKING LANDS ON SIGOURNEY WEAVER AND THAT’S HOW SHE DIES! YES! I LOVE IT!

34) I really like the in-credits epilogue. Like, the ship taking off slowly is a good final gag and leads to the emotional finale of the film. But the in-credits epilogue ties up some loose narrative strings and feels a bit more finite than just everyone standing in the now empty field. I dig it.

Paul is a lot of fun. It’s not really the same level of genre comedy as the Cornetto Trilogy per say, but why even make that comparison? I only mention that because I heard someone at work saying this movie sucked because it wasn’t Hot Fuzz and I was like, “That’s your criteria?” It is a charming, earnest, fun, well acted, and enthusiastic comedy. It’s a good time with lots of great gags and character moments. I like it and hopefully you will too.

#Paul #Simon Pegg #Nick Frost #Kristen Wiig #Paul 2011 #Jason Bateman #Sigourney Weaver #Joe Lo Truglio #Bill Hader #Epic Movie (Re)Watch #Blythe Danner #The More You Know #Movie #Film

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watusichris · 7 years

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A Dylan a Day Annex: Narrow is the Way

“…[W]e don’t care about the atom bomb, any of that, because we know this world is going to be destroyed, if not by the word, and Christ will set up his kingdom in Jerusalem for a thousand years. When the lion lies down with the lamb, you know the lion will eat straw on that day. Also, if a man doesn’t live to be a hundred years old, he will be called accursed, that’s interesting, isn’t it? But we don’t mind, we know that’s coming. And if any man have not the spirit of Christ in him, he is a slave to bondage. You know bondage? I know you all know bondage.”

So who said that? Pat Robertson? Joel Osteen?

Mike Pence, maybe? Roy Moore?

No, it was Bob Dylan, born-again vessel of his Lord Jesus Christ, speaking on the stage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Nov. 19, 1979, at a show (a benefit for the Christian relief organization World Vision) that I attended and reviewed. The date was among the first of what may be called Dylan’s “gospel years” tour, which ran on stages around the world through November 1981.

Dylan raved on in a similar fashion through many of the ensuing shows he played in 1979-80; he dialed things down considerably during his 1981 gigs, at which he performed some of his earlier non-Christian material.

However, you’d never know it from the contents of Trouble No More, the new eight-CD/one DVD package devoted to Dylan’s evangelical years, just issued by Sony Legacy as the 13th installment of its “Bootleg Series” comprising previously unreleased material from his catalog.

I’ll have more to say about that particular piece of archival legerdemain in a moment. First, some historical background, in case you need it.

Dylan turned to Jesus in early 1979, after a tumultuous period that saw his divorce from wife Sara and the release of his poorly received album Street-Legal and his calamitous four-hour feature film Renaldo & Clara. He had experienced something like a religious epiphany after someone threw a small cross on stage during a Nov. 17,1978, show in San Diego. He soon began attending services and Bible study classes at the Vineyard Fellowship, an evangelical church based in Reseda, in the San Fernando Valley.

In early ’79, he wrote a brace of Christian-themed songs; his first thought was to give them to his backup singer (and future second wife) Carolyn Dennis, but in the end he decided to record them himself.

Those songs ultimately appeared on the albums Slow Train Coming (1979) and Saved (1980); nearly all that material was drawn on during his 1979-80 tours. Some further Christian-themed numbers were released on the 1981 album Shot of Love, though by that time Dylan had begun to inch away from sermonizing and (probably at the insistence of concert promoters) had started to perform his earlier, secular material on stage again.

Trouble No More leans heavily on concert recordings from this period. Of the 102 tracks on the set, 74 are drawn from live shows; two of the eight discs are drawn from Dylan’s April 1980 shows in Toronto, and two are devoted to a June 27, 1981, gig at Earls Court in London. Another 18 songs recorded in San Diego on Nov. 28, 1979 (nine days after the date I attended in Santa Monica) are included on a two-CD bonus set offered to Dylan fans who purchased the boxed set through his official web site.

Additionally, the DVD, a one-hour film directed by Jennifer LeBeau, contains 10 songs filmed by Ron Kantor at Toronto’s Massey Hall on April 20, 1980 (and long bootlegged in a full-length alternate cut comprising 16 Dylan performances, numbers by his backup singers, and onstage patter).

I will freely admit that my anticipation for Trouble No More, which surveys the most divisive years of Dylan’s career, was not nearly as high as it was for the previous two “Bootleg Series” sets, which were comprehensive reconsiderations of the “basement tapes” with the Hawks of 1967-68 and the classic first electric sessions of 1965-66. (Both those packages deservedly won Grammy Awards as best historical album.)

I have never had any patience or affection for Dylan’s gospel recordings, save for a few tracks on Shot of Love, which was issued when Dylan already had one foot out the church door. I won’t dwell on these records. I put down my thoughts about the albums of this period in a series of 2013 Tumblr posts; you can scroll down on this page to find them, or, if you like, you can read them in my 2016 collection Together Through Life, which follows Dylan from his first album through “the Sinatra years.”

I continue to consider Dylan’s religious material an accumulation of tics: The songs are dogmatic, didactic, pedantic, schematic, simplistic. Though the official rubric for Trouble No More is “You Will Believe!,” the copious live material therein has done nothing to alter my original opinion.

The inclusion of such songs as “Ain’t Gonna Go to Hell For Anybody,” “Ain’t No Man Righteous, No Not One,” “Trouble in Mind,” and “Stand By Faith,” none of which appeared on the original LPs, supplies only further evidence of Dylan’s airless and accusatory approach. Over the course of the eight discs, the multiple concert versions of the 19 songs on Slow Train and Saved instill a cumulative affect of Jesus fatigue.

I will confess that the box led me to reconsider my original aversion to Dylan’s band of this period. At the Santa Monica Civic show I attended, I was so thoroughly pissed off by the throngs of vocal, adoring Christians in the heavily papered house (and the acolytes waving their placards, Bibles, and religious tracts at the venue door) that I closed my ears to what was coming off the stage, and I condemned Dylan’s players as “hacks.”

My humblest apologies. The recorded evidence suggests that guitarist Fred Tackett, keyboardists Spooner Oldham and Terry Young, bassist Tim Drummond, and drummer Jim Keltner, backed by a phalanx of black female vocalists, stirred up a soulful noise on stage. They were easily one of Dylan’s finest touring units. Dylan responded to the group with some of the best singing of his entire career – his voice on the ’79 and ’80 performances is full, rich, and flexible. It must be added, however, that by 1981 the band, now augmented by additional guitarist Steve Ripley, had grown strident and hammering.

The general excellence of the playing aside, the performances were made in the service of a system of beliefs that was at its core heartless, intolerant, devoid of actual Christian love, and frankly loony at almost every turn. On many nights Dylan telegraphed his ideas -- about the imminent battle of Armageddon and Jesus’ coming return to triumph over Satan and save believers from damnation -- in convoluted, proselytizing on-stage raps.

Here we arrive at the central rub of the present collection.

It has never been a secret that Reverend Bob went off like a missile with serious trajectory problems during his concert tours of the era. In 1990, Dylanologist Clinton Heylin assembled some of Dylan’s more wacked-out soliloquys into a small, long out-of-print book for Hanuman Press, Saved! The Gospel Speeches. That tome has since been superseded by the comprehensive transcripts of Dylan’s sermonettes compiled on the Scandinavian web site About Bob (bjorner.com/bob.htm) as part of its running record of his ’79-’81 concerts.

To her credit, Trouble No More annotator Amanda Petrusich, possibly my least favorite contemporary music critic, takes the trouble to quote some of Dylan’s less coherent “sanctified jeremiads.” But her piece – like another in the box by celebrity atheist and Dylan fanboy Penn Jillette – collapses in apology, somewhat shockingly ascribing “inadvertent” humanity to Dylan’s songs.

Save for a mild boilerplate spoken introduction to “Solid Rock,” you will otherwise hunt in vain for any evidence that Bob Dylan was saying some really crazy shit on stage during his evangelical era. His sermonizing voice has been neatly expunged from the box’s highly selective version of history. You won’t hear him excoriating the city of San Francisco (where he debuted his evangelical music during a run of 14 shows at the Fox Warfield in November 1979) as some new Sodom of homosexuality, impugning the Muslim faith as “a funny thing,” or zinging rock contemporaries such as Bruce Springsteen and Pete Townshend as heathens.

Certainly you won’t find his condemnation of country musicians, which may be considered an implied indictment his early musical hero Hank Williams, the libertine author of “Help Me Understand” (heard in a live version on Trouble No More) and “I Saw the Light”: “I know a lot of country and western…sing ah, sing ah, what is it? ‘You can put your shoes under my bed anytime.’ And then they turn around and sing, ‘Oh Lord, just a closer walk with thee.’ Well, I can’t do that, That’s right, you cannot serve two masters. You gotta hate one and love the other. You can’t drink out of two cups.”

The apparent objective of the boxed set’s editorial maneuver is to represent Dylan’s brand of Christianity in a benign, benevolent light, by removing the music from the larger and highly problematic context of his apocalyptic beliefs. Nowhere is this strategy of decontextualization more obvious than in LeBeau’s film.

Anyone who has ever seen an uncut version of the 1980 Massey Hall show will almost certainly recall a nearly 10-minute Dylan spiel in which he surmised that Russia’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan was a prefiguring of the final conflict between Christ and Satan at Armageddon. It is slightly demented, and you will not hear it here. (You can find it on YouTube, though.)

The movie’s Toronto concert material, sans stage patter, is bracketed by scenes from a 1980 L.A. rehearsal; the documentary climaxes with a pretty but incongruous (and secular) duet between Dylan and his backup singer and then-paramour Clydie King on the 1968 Dion hit “Abraham, Martin and John (possibly as a hat-tip to Dion’s own born-again status).

The Toronto performances are intercut with newly filmed “sermons” written by Luc Sante and delivered, in what looks to be the gloomiest church in the world, by actor Michael Shannon.

Absent Dylan’s actual presence in his onstage pulpit, Shannon – who here resembles Richard Kiel’s menacing Jaws of the Bond films, minus the metal teeth – has been cast as a surrogate Bob-as-preacher. But the sermons themselves are nonsense, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the fiery furnace of Dylan’s religious universe.

Instead we get little homily-laden stories, folksily delivered by Shannon, of the sort you might hear at a Presbyterian service – maybe one in the early 20th century, when one bought two-by-fours from a sawmill (an anachronism that comes courtesy of Sante), and not at Home Depot. The messages: Love the poor; pity the alcoholic; beware of that greasy fast food. We hear not a word about the End Times in Pastor Shannon’s addresses to his unseen flock.

Since no scripture is actually cited in the sermons offered in the Trouble No More film, let me suggest a text for today. Matthew 7:13-14: “Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”

This passage, from Matthew’s account of the Sermon on the Mount, is cited in both Williams’ “I Saw the Light” and in Dylan’s “When He Returns,” the last track on Slow Train Coming. Dylan would return to it, cryptically, in “Narrow Way,” a song from Tempest, his last album of original material, released in 2012.

During the three years he spent making Christian music, Dylan pursued the path of “the straight and narrow.” Yet he evidently found that road to be so narrow as to be confining, both spiritually and artistically, perhaps even a dead end. He released no new music in 1982, and by the time he re-emerged in 1983, he had begun to explore the tenets of the Jewish orthodox movement Chabad; in 1991, he famously appeared on the group’s telethon, performing “Hava Nagila” with Harry Dean Stanton and son-in-law Peter Himmelman.

As early as 1984, in a Rolling Stone interview with Kurt Loder (collected in the new revised edition of Jonathan Cott’s Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews), Dylan denied had had ever been born again at all.

The producers of Trouble No More have taken a similarly narrow lane into the music of Dylan’s Christian period. In an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the music Dylan made at that time, which was rejected outright by many of his fans, the most troublesome doctrinal aspects of his work have been excised. Great effort has been taken to extinguish the fire and cool the brimstone of his evangelical message.

This strikes me as dishonest work, and I am not likely to return to it.

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ursafilms · 5 years

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My First Teamster!

The white-hot arc of my production career started during the Fall of 1984 with Suzy Miller at the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia. In December I reluctantly left that unpaid internship at KYW-TV to move back to New York City. My entreaties to find paid work in the City of Brotherly Love turned up absolutely nothing and my follow up to job postings on the NBC “Employment Opportunities!” site included more than one suggestion to “Perhaps look into the internship program at your local affiliate to gain some experience,” I returned to what is always touted as the world’s largest job market, The Big Apple.

I sent out 200 hard copy resumes. But since most of the people that received them didn’t get past the “G” in “George” at the top of my CV, I concentrated on getting the proposed recipients on the phone . . . yes, this was long before the millennial ideal of speaking with no one from the time you turned seven, through the moment of your untimely passing, invaded our work culture.

A typical conversation with a gatekeeper would go as follows:

Reception: “Good Morning. Big Enormous Productions.”

Me: “Hi. I’d like to speak with Joe Producer, please.”

Reception: “Who’s calling?”

Me: “Uh. Tell him it’s his mother.”

Reception: “You have a very deep voice for someone who’s been dead for six years.”

Me: “Uh, yes you’re right, and you might want to tell him it’s urgent.”

Reception: “This isn’t very funny.”

Me: “It’s not?”

Reception: “No. His mother isn’t dead, but you’ve tried this same routine three times now.”

Me: “I have? I must have lost track.”

Reception: “Oh, I believe Joe just got off the line. I’ll put you through.”

Me: “Ulp.”

Reception (SHOUTING): “JOE! IT’S THAT WISEASS P.A. LOOKING FOR WORK!!”

Joe Producer: “Did he use that bit about my mother again?”

Reception: “Yes.”

Joe Producer: “Let’s put him on the Maalox shoot, and tell the Teamster captain he called him a fairy.”

Reception: “Will do. (To me) Call time is 6am at Mothers Studios 2.”

This exchange has been embellished, and the end result is that I usually did not get hired, but once in a while someone would take pity on me and put me on a gig. Either that or they got sick of hearing from me every week or two.

At this point in the process, which was the first two months of 1985, I don’t know which I liked better, the pity hire or the annoyance hire. They both have certain characteristics.

The Pity Hire telegraphs to the producer and coordinator that you are a weak, sniveling wuss raised in a vacuum and owning a lot of bow ties. You will be humiliated publicly over this.

The Annoyance Hire connotes some strength, but at least one revenge job awaits you, and you will have to learn to throw a left jab, if you want to survive.

****

Bill Cote, owner of the cleverly named BC Studios on West 25thStreet in NYC gave me my very, very first P.A. job. He actually called me and offered lunch and no pay to work on a marketing video in his studio, which was a very nicely kept, smallish (1000 square feet?) photo stage.

Bill: “Crew call is at 8am.”

Me: “Would you like me to come in before them?”\

SILENCE

Bill: “This really is your first job, isn’t it?”

Me: “North of Philadelphia, yes.”

Bill: “New York is also east of Philadelphia.”

Me: “I worked in Atlantic City once.”

Bill: “In production?”

PAUSE

Me: “7:30am okay?”

Bill: “Make it 7am. There might be some gear to unload.”

Me: “Gear? I—”

Bill hung up, after not assuaging my fears of actually working on a set in New York City, which I realized was about to happen for the first time in my career. I had been on a set, but as a craft-service (That term I did know) gorging dancer.

The next day, a very cold typical January day for New York City, I sprang out of bed and joined the subway commuters on the 6 train at 77th and Lexington Avenue. If any of you survived the adventures of the videogame also known as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the 80’s, you know how much fun commuting with a bunch of Wall Street Yuppies can be. Given that I was, more or less, sleeping with one of them, I was sorta thrilled to be crushed by humanity as the already packed train pulled into the station and every doofus with an Ivy League degree turned the platform into a rave.

Made a promise to myself after this first morning. If rush hour commuting ever made it back into a regimen for me I was heading to the middle of as many women as possible. Their clothes at the time weren’t any nicer than the suits the men wore, but at least they smelled good.

I survived the subway ride and showed up at 6:55am in front of a bell/buzzer that read “X$#&%,” but appeared to be in the approximate area of the main door to Bill Cote’s studio on West 25th Street. I rang, and straight from the scene from FX, a window opened and a set of keys that would have made the managing monk at a Benedictine monastery proud, plummeted from a window. The ring included a genuine skeleton key about the size of Johnny Depp. The key ring cracked the sidewalk. I noticed several other weekend golfer sized divots nearby.

“It’s the copper colored one.” Came a voice that had just finished gargling razor blades.

There were six copper colored ones, not counting the Johnny Depp sized skeleton key. I tried three before I got in.

I stared at a second door that could have helped Ripley hold back the creatures in Aliens. I took the bold move of throwing the security bar off the jamb and turning the latch.

It opened, and not a single retractable-jawed alien stood on the other side. Just a hardwood floor room with several flavors of wall surrounding it. One brick. One wood paneled. One with a piece (Later I would be told this was called seamless) of gray paper covering it. And one wallpapered relic from the 50’s that held a multipaned door.

In the far corner, directly away from the Alien barrier, sat a man with an Ozzy Osbourne hair style. At least a dozen empty wine bottles in front of him at a kitchen table. He folded the lead foil from their necks into neat little blocks.

Me: “You must be Bill Cote.”

Bill Cote: “Why?”

I took it as an auspicious way to start my film career.

Me: “No reason."

Just as this in-depth conversation about German Expressionism, or was it Minimalism, was about to continue, the Alien barricade door swung open once more and slammed into the brick façade wall of the studio. Shortly thereafter a parade of cholesterol-challenged leg-breakers waddled in.

My first Teamsters.

One at the lead, wore the haute couture of a black T-shirt that read, “Mama’s Pizzeria, because someone has to work in this family,” a pair of bluejeans once owned by Levi Strauss, and work boots with the bloodstains from the body of the previous owner. During the man’s hour long trek across the forty foot studio floor, a sandbag in his left hand exploded, its contents spilling onto the hardwood. He stopped, which had the same effect as the QE2 trying to back up. His colleagues also applied their brakes at the rate of local government, and the five of them gathered round the sand pile.

The killer of the sandbag, looked down, dropped its cloth corpse onto the sand, and turned his head in the direction of Bill Cote. It might have been the most exercise the man had in a month.

Sandbag Killer: “Pffffww.”

Bill Cote: “George will take care of it.”

Sandbag Killer: “Who F$&K is George?”

Bill pointed his non wine bottle arts and crafts finger at me.

Sandbag Killer: “Pffffww.”

He turned and looked at his colleagues. They erupted into laughter that sounded like a half dozen tugboats competing for space in the East River. The lot of them turned like a fleet of 747s on a tarmac and waddled back out again.

Me: "Where are they going?"

Bill Cote: "Hennessy's. A place around the corner. They'll be back at wrap."

Me: "What will they do all day?"

Bill finally stopped obsessively folding lead foil and stood. He put his hands on his hips and gave me a quick up and down.

Bill Cote: "Yep. Your first job. Let's get started. You'll figure it all out as we go."

And in hindsight, two firsts for that day. Teamsters and a very prescient statement about the production industry. You just sorta figure it all out as you go.

NEXT SUNDAY: A seemingly harmless TV spot for Frito-Lay lands an actor in the Loeb Boathouse Lake and sets a personal record for Yours truly for hours worked. See you then.

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sigurdjarlson · 7 years

Text

replies replies replies

thesseli said: His lips are gorgeous.

they really are though. oh lord they are..

demonhedgehog1 said: the pic quality makes the white floof look like a cryptid

CRYPTID SPOTTED

*mulder voice* SCuLLY YOURE NOT GONNA BELIEVE THIS

shadowphoenixrider said: I think he’ll live until Argus. Then we need be REALLY worried. (I know Velen’s gonna do something stupid because I’ve heard Khadgar go ‘VELEN WTF DUDE’ in the previous VO set.

fkdhdkfh I wouldnt be surprised after the whole “haha u killed ur own son” trick KJ pulled. i highly doubt he’s over that

dreamsaboutsky said: I hope they won’t. He is the only treasure

I will never forgive them if they take him from me boudiccandestruction said: khadgar is the best though he can’t die

RIGHT

skullkind said: lets all pray for the boy

prayer circle for khadgar everyone gather round

shadowphoenixrider said: But the dude’s already grey, how…??

his entire body just turns grey

skullkind said: we love you too <3

<33333

ghoulghoulneighbor said: A cohesive timeline? In MY blizzard franchise? Too unrealistic, bullshit it with the rest of us.

fkhkdfh I pretty much am x)

shadowphoenixrider said: You want to know what’s really annoying? MONKS. Especially BC race monks. Which expansion do you use?

...that’s a really good question omg. damn it blizz

protectoralyndrah said: Just sign up for groups anyways. I was an 894 Healer and getting invited to groups regardless. Or look for guilds who need extras.

everybody wants them healers tho. im just a humble hunter </3

casterlycosplay said: Pugging for heroic gul'dan is a niiiightmaaaare and I want to die.

its pure torture

shadowphoenixrider said: I'mma take the Archmage, and I’m gonna hide him so Blizzard can’t find and hurt him. That’ll show ‘em.

protect the khadgar. love the khadgar..

slagnarok said: This is honestly the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life and I love it.

medivh gotta feed his young trust *puking sounds*

shalar0s said: Swear to god, their relationship is my favourite in the whole show.

daryl and carol are the light of my life <3

eversongs said: Pleeeeease honestly I keep getting super sad over this. I’m not ready. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. I’m going to be 75 sitting on a rocking chair muttering sadly under my breath about this poor cinnamon roll and my grandkids are gonna stoP VISITING ME BECAUSE GRANDMA IS WEIRD AND WONT STOP CRYING

SAME THOUGH? “WHO’S KHADGAR, GRANDMA. WHO IS HE” and im just sobbing

shadowphoenixrider said: I just did the WQ where he makes the imp puns and the thought I’d never heard his ridiculous jokes just…they’re gonna hurt our boy…

NONONONONo

unidentified-starman said: “As the prophecy foretold: only true love’s kiss can make Badgar Radgar (or Dadgar) again.”

send this to blizzard and tell them to make raventrust canon

anzareveange said: go to old dungeons with an alt, send all the gear to your enchanter, get lots of materials. o w o thats what i do.

anzareveange said: or find someone to give you carry to old dungeons.

thats actually what I’ve been doing :D

ghoulghoulneighbor said: level one tailor making level 100 gear

excuse u ladelia is a level 54 mage making level 70 gear

unidentified-starman said: me @ Blizzard : *ellen ripley voice* Get away from him you bitch

we should all fight blizzard

shadowphoenixrider said: My heart sank as soon as I saw those words, because that is EXACTLY what happened with Arluin in Suramar too! THEY TOOK VOL'JIN AND NOW KHADGAR?! FUCK. FUCK!

SCREAMS

eversongs said: Join @highpriestessbriyanna and I’s pledge to send Blizz a vial of our tears every single day for the rest of our heartbroken lives as punishment for taking Khady away from us.

I will drown them in my tears

highpriestessbriyanna said: So he went to Karazhan AFTER the duel? …. There might still be hope but… I’m just… I’m going to take it as read that Khadgar’s going to die. If I do that and he doesn’t, it will be better.

i believe so but i still think its a good possibility. if he’s desperate enough I can see him doing it

“he will do anything.”

aqu1lamarin said: The audio drama is before the animated short harbingers. There is was shown Khadgar won’t go to the legion

I hope not!

kouseki said: Wonder Woman was SO GOOD ( certain things could have been better but otherwise…) GOTG was also really good!! Run run run to them!!

Ahhhhh I want to, man but i don’t have anyone to go with </3

shadowphoenixrider said: The Kurken! Draggka has him too!

R E L E A S E T H E K U R K E N

lovesdaryl said: God, the number of times I’ve been asked if I am really a female player … *rolls eyes* “I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TRULY FOUND A FEMALE GAMER!!111!!”

I know right?

its like..you never see them because the others ran away screaming before you could notice

anzareveange said: I do not like Sylvanas and of course I would love her to be the final boss of the expansion (so I could definitely kill her). But at this moment Jaina seems to me more directed to the evil, in spite of the selfish decisions of sylvanas, Jaina hates everything and everyone that oppose to her and very probably at the moment she is preparing something very bad.

kgfdkh SAME. I’d definitely be down with Sylvanas being the final boss.

jaina will break my heart but i think it’s more likely than not

highpriestessbriyanna said: …. ………… *shoves fic idea document under the rug*

I SEE THAT FIC IDEA

highpriestessbriyanna said: This is what I dread about getting Ballgar…

he constantly phases into her chest and its like...chill khadgar

highpriestessbriyanna said: Both. They’d crash into each other and argue over who gets to save him while Khadgar dies.

it’’s funny because its TRue

anzareveange said: lothar, because medivh sure cast a spells and send the bad guy out of the realm.

medivh would probably collapse in the middle of casting a spell askgdh. he tends to do that

shadowphoenixrider said: Medivh. I think there’s a term from Quake, what was it…‘tele-fragging’? That but with a Blink.

OH MY GOD..

KHADGAR PISSES HIMSELF

midnightfuckingmayor said: def medivh

No one hurts his young trust

shadowphoenixrider said: Smol chubby mage with tol kickass hunter. A++++

ahhhhhhh <333333

shadowphoenixrider said: Did he run out of mops?

.....yes. Moroes is very creative

highpriestessbriyanna said: That description made NO sense to me. I love Christie dearly, but .. um. I was like “bluh?”

someone paste wings over khadgar’s brows

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quinnmorgendorffer · 7 years

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I've just recently in the past few years gotten more into musical theater, so I have a lot to learn. I'm not a singer or anything, but I like to watch and listen. Also, I have to randomly ask something. Why the heck did " Glee" have Brian Stokes Mitchell on the show and not let him sing more? What a waste. Ha ha. What are some really underrated musicals?

That’s awesome! Nah man, you don’t have to be a singer to get into/like musical theater! We actually need more people to appreciate musical theater who don’t participate, honestly. Same with opera, but that’s another story I know no one here wants to get into lol.

Who knows, man? I mean, they had Victor Garber on and didn’t have him sing and fucking Cheyenne Jackson!!!! Even The Real O’Neals had Cheyenne sing!!!! And he was on one ep of that unlike being in several episodes like he was for glee.

Okay, so as I said, I’m a bit of an MT hipster. So I like a lot of weird shit lol. A not very detailed list is below, with some notes by yours truly lol. Sorry that this got so long omfg

Bat Boy - based on the Daily News articles, this chronichles the story of a bat boy found in a cave in West Virginia. He’s taken to the local vet, and while everyone in town just wants the doctor to kill him, the vet’s wife wants to take care of the teen, who she names Edgar, and teach him how to behave. The doctor kind of goes crazy and their daughter, Shelly, falls for Edgar. A lot of the parts in the show outside of the family are double casted, and it’s honestly hilarious and also makes me cry by the end, poking a lot of fun at “Christian Charity” (that’s the name of one of the songs that also gets a reprise) and the like. It’s extra loved by me for featuring the impeccable Kerry Butler (the original Penny in Hairspray, female lead in Xanadu, Catch Me If You Can...the ageless girl wonder)Reefer Madness - the Off-Broadway production opened the weekend of 9/11, which definitely effected its possible success. It’s, of course, based off the ridiculous propaganda film of the same name, though it takes it a bit farther and pokes fun at all of it and even more of the racist/sexist attitudes of the 1930s. While all/most of the others I’m talking about here only have CDs and maybe some bootlegs, this one has a movie version!!!! That actually is almost 100% like the stage version (at least based on what I saw). The movie features Kristen Bell as Mary Lane, the part she originated, and also features Alan Cumming and the forever under-appreciated Ana Gasteyer and Amy Spanger. Side Show - you can debate which version is better, but whether you prefer the original cast or the 2014 revival that changed some of the story to make it more accurate, it’s absolutely amazing. A musical based (loosely) off the true story of the conjoined Hilton twins who made a career of their oddity by working in freak shows, vaudeville, and even a few movies, though they were all critically panned. Features some of the best duets for female voices (most famously “Who Will Love Me As I Am?” and “I Will Never Leave You”). The original has Alice Ripley as one of the twins (Violet, and while I still think she screams a lot, she does a great job), and Norm Lewis as Jake. If you ever want to cry, just listen to his big song “You Should Be Loved” or the above duets. Or just read about the Hilton’s lives because it’s so depressing and the musical doesn’t even touch on that. I’m forever sad this never gets awards or the long runs it deserves. It should also be noted that Alice and her fellow twin, Emily Skinner (Daisy Hilton), were nominated together for the Tony.[title of show] - okay, this show is just...fucking........hilarious. “It’s a musical about two guys writing a musical about two guys writing a musical...” Just a lot of silly fun and also some great quotes, like “I’d rather be nine people’s favorite thing than a hundred people’s ninth favorite thing.” It also points out a lot of flaws in Broadway, like the lack of original musicals and how there are waaaaaaaay too many musicals based off movies lol. It’s a four person cast, all of whom are named after the people who originated the roles, and it manages to be just so funny and still inspirational and such a joy to listen to.Zanna, Don’t! - okay. so I get why most “oppressed group written as oppressors” stories are awful, like that whole “save our pearls” book or w/e that happened a few years back. But Zanna, Don’t was written by a gay man who just wanted to write some musicals with fun, catchy love songs for gay couples. So, in this world, being gay is the norm and straight people are the hated group. Zanna is an actual fairy (in high school) who matches up everyone in his town and never actually remembers to pair himself up with anyone. So when a straight A student and the quarterback of the football team fall in love...well, it finds a way to be cute, funny, and poignant all in one. Features Queer Eye “culture vulture” Jai Rodriguez in the title role and the show should get extra points for the line “what kind of world would this be if the football star wasn’t the lead in the musical??”In the Heights - not necessarily underrated so much as it’s just forgotten in Hamilton’s success. This tells the day in the life of people in Washington Heights. It also features a completely diverse cast and, imo, has some catchy songs that outdo some of Hamilton. If you don’t bawl while singing along to “Breathe” while stressing about failing at college/your dreams, what do you even do with your spare time? That used to be my most common activity.The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown - Idk if I can truly say it’s underrated since it really hasn’t been on Broadway so it’s never had a chance to get known...plus I think it’s popular among actual theater performers, but not enough of musical fans know about this. A lot of theater kids probably know “Freedom” and “Run Away With Me”, as the duet is a great choice for two women and shows a ton of depth/vocal prowess, while the solo can show a very tender male voice, but the show is more than those songs or “The Proposal” or “The Girl Who Drove Away”. The story starts with Sam sitting in her car. She’s supposed to be driving to college, but she’s fantasizing about driving away. She conjures up her best friend, Kelly, in her mind, and Kelly convinces her to relive her senior year and figure out why she wants to leave. You eventually find out Kelly died that year, and along the way you learn about Sam’s college applications, her boyfriend, and how lost she felt all year, all while still trying to learn how to drive. It’s so moving, and, honestly, “Freedom” is still a jam and probably does deserve to be one of the most famous songs from the show. The show might also inspire you to run away so...watch out for that. The bootleg I have is what inspire my love for Melissa, quite literally, since I had stopped watching g/lee at the time. The Boy from Oz - one of the better done jukebox musicals, since it focuses on the writer of those songs, and also is the best role Hugh Jackman will ever have. I’m sure a lot of people on my dash are familiar with Chris’ version of “Not the Boy Next Door” on g/lee. If you like it, you should check out Hugh performing that at the Tony’s. Anyways, it tells the life story of Peter Allen, whose songwriting credits include the above song, “I Honestly Love You”, and “Don’t Cry Out Loud”. He met Judy Garland and, of course, then met and married her daughter, Liza Minelli. I will never praise Stephanie J. Block’s Liza enough, she is perf. And, again, Hugh is flawless, and he originated the part both in Australia (Peter Allen’s home country) and then on Broadway. Getting to see the original cast in this was one of the highlights of my life.

That’s it for now. I’d also suggest checking out some classics. I didn’t put it on the list since it’s not underrated, but the original cast of Sweeney Todd is the best thing you could ever listen to - Victor Garber in his prime and Angela Landsbury is the forever best interpretation of Mrs. Lovett, #notsorry Patti. The movie version directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp is truly a disgrace compared to the actual version which has a legal taped version available for your viewing pleasure! You can see why it’s performed in opera houses nowadays!!! Though the video sadly doesn’t have the original Anthony (Victor Garber) and the Johanna is bad...not that I’ve heard a Johanna I truly like. Rodgers and Hammerstein should at least be somewhat known, though a lot of their stories are like...gross. But Sondheim is pretty damn solid -- and if you didn’t know, he wrote the lyrics for Gypsy and West Side Story. A lot of people seem to not know that, but like he was making some big strides long before Company was a hit. Which also deserves a listen

#long post #musical theater #Anonymous #bite me in the ask

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