#one thing lead to another and I was at rubens place with John and we did the nasties all 3 of us lmao

[anytimebitchess]

I had a dream, and I’m still recovering from it so I need someone to write a fic about it.

[travellvogue]

The Gaffers Daughter, Returns

ooooo here we go again ladiesss, strap yourselves in for once again another emotional rollercoaster👀😜

Chapter 1- Back Again

“Back again” you’re greeted by the cheery voice of one of the personal trainers. Forcing a smile onto your face as you let out a fake breathy laugh and nod your head, “couldn’t get enough” you reply back sweetly, watching him chuckle and get back to making notes. The familiar smell of the training ground filling your nose as you walked aimlessly around, each separate room holding so many memories. Some you wish you could desperately forget about, looking over at the table you were sat at when Kyle dangled your panties in front of you. Remembering who you were sat with, the way he didn’t speak, avoiding eye contact in a fear his glare would reveal all the thoughts he was thinking, broken by his silence. But then remembering who did stick up for you, who was there to hold your shaking frame as you sobbed into his chest, the small ‘I love you’ you pretended not to hear because you were so scared to say those three words back. Truthfully you never knew who to say those three words to, or if you ever said them to the right person at the right time.

The canteen area opposite you, where you stood in line on your first day, that gentle giant turning around and introducing himself, the sweaty handshake. You laughed at the memory, if only you knew where that encounter would lead you, the happy and the heartache. The windows looking out onto the training pitch, the cones set out in perfect squares, a pointless job you’d once been given, accompanied by John and some heavy flirting, which of course led to those mysterious texts... that led to that night, to say you regret doing it would be pointless, but you wish you hadn’t let your walls down so easily, especially due to the betrayal that followed you. You can’t lie, you were relieved when your dad told you they weren’t in the squad this time around. 

Each room holding so much emotion, the ‘boots room’ with all there windbreakers hung up, the one you’d once worn not there anymore, the ‘RLC’ initials nowhere in sight. Walking past the games room, flashbacks of all the boys filling your mind as you smiled gently to yourself, leaning against the doorway as your eyes scanned the room, smile fading at the chessboard on the coffee table. You find yourself lost again, head spinning simply at the thought of him. His smile. His voice. Stood there indulged and reminiscing in your past that you had to move on from, the picture had been repainted. 

“There she is!” you turn to the voice, volume almost making you cringe, “the famous Gaffer’s Daughter” he pulls you into a hug, something about his warmth making you instantly feel comfortable in his presence, “Mason right?” you ask, watching him nod with the most genuine smile, “what brought you back darling? Wanted to meet me didn’t ya” he winks making you giggle, “Of course” you tease back, “Uh nah I am- things didn’t really work out... life wise” you chuckle so it doesn’t seem like you’re throwing him in the deep end. He only nods understandingly, arm thrown over your shoulder as you walk through the corridors together. He was clearly one of the first ones to arrive alongside Declan. The two of them chatting away to you, clearly having no clue of your past in this place. In a way it felt refreshing, knowing they weren’t going to judge you for your past actions, your past humiliation. You knew the newbies would find out at some point, you’d witnessed first hand how fast rumours spread in this place. But for now, it put you at ease. 

He’d taken you to the ‘handshake room’ as you called it. Slowly more and more players trickling in. The one you wished to see at home, injured and wishing he was back on the pitch. His handsome everything etched permanently into your memory. It felt like you’d left a piece of your heart at home, wherever home was now. 

But another piece of your heart just walked into the room, the ‘happy birthday’ wishes already giving away who was here. Eyes watching him as the photographer asked for a few photos, his thick scouse accent had always been a sound you could never get bored of. Something you hadn’t heard for such a long time, despite the ‘stay friends’ promise neither of you could bare the heartbreak, no texts, no calls, no form of communication at all. Sometimes you wondered what life would be like if your mind chose him, seeing him and Ruben as a ‘choice’ made you feel physically sick inside, wondering how you’d even managed to get yourself into that position in the first place. 

His wide smile faded slightly when his eyes met yours, your heart pounding in your ears, legs wobbly with anticipation. Tired eyes watching you the whole time as he thanked each one of the lads that wished him a happy birthday, pretending as if the girl whom he’d loved for so long wasn’t right in front of him. The love that brought him hope, yet only stepped him into pain. An ache he’d never experienced before, an ache he didn’t want to experience again, but would happily do so if it meant he could look into your eyes, to hear you say those three words one last time.

Your gentle smile a medicine to his soul, as if you’d put all the broken pieces of his heart back together. He was laying his eyes on perfection once again, a perfection that wasn’t his. 

“Hi” he said gently, fighting everything inside he to not just smash his lips against yours, to tell you he loved you again- just one last time. Falling in love with you was the easy part, admitting to himself that you are in love with someone else is the hard part. 

“Hi” your voice matched his, it felt like his heart was going to jump out of his throat. Your voice. His favourite noise. Your smile making him feel like invisible arms were reaching around him and holding him close. “Um, happy birthday” you say sweetly, the history the two fo you had still playing on your mind, watching him look at you slightly confused, almost like he’d forgotten it was his birthday in the mist of emotions, snapping himself out of it and stuttering as he replies. “I- uh, thank you” he nods, scratching the back of his neck. “Um, how have you been?” the whole conversation was so beyond awkward, but you never wanted it to end. “Uh yeah I’ve been okay I guess… it’s been eventful, but I’m okay” you nod, watching the corners of his mouth stretch into a small smile, as long as he knew you were okay, that was all he needed. 

Then the dreaded question wiped that smile straight from his face, he didn’t want to ask but he knew he should. “How are you and Ruben?” he asks awkwardly, pretending he wants to hear the words of heartache, watching your face drop, eyes settling on his feet, a wash of nerves suddenly drowning you. “Uh, um-” you stutter, fiddling with the lanyard around your neck, avoiding eye contact as you spoke the truth, “-we, uh- we broke up…”

[clexa--warrior]

Apparently now in Fear The Walking Dead, the concept of a "bad guy" or "villain" is someone who always lets the good guys go, never harms anyone or is even particularly threatening, and wants to help people, only they're a little more willing than Morgan to use force to get what they want.

That's . . . not a great concept for a bad guy in a zombie apocalypse. I don't mind having the bad guys think they're doing the right thing, or even pretend to be good for a while before showing their true colors (like the Governor in The Walking Dead) but that's not what's going on here.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what's going on with FearTWD these days. It's so boring. Sunday night's episode focuses on Al and Morgan in the A plot and Daniel and Grace in the B plot. We'll start with Al and Morgan.

Right off the bat, things are just cringe-inducing in 'Today and Tomorrow'. The episode opens on scenes of Morgan talking to the camera. Turns out, he's watching recordings . . . of himself?

Al suggests they head on back to the convoy because they don't have much gas but he insists that they drive around and waste more precious supplies by dropping off more boxes, because it's important. Al disagrees, because logistical considerations are also important, but Morgan refuses to budge. Who cares if they run out of gas? So long as they're "helping people" all is well. Later we discover that he's avoiding going back because he's been stuck (always stuck!) and was afraid of seeing Grace.

In any case, they run into a dude in the parking lot who steals some of their gas. He's in bad shape, and it turns out that he's running away from the Virginia and the Pioneers. Some of the horsemen show up just then and the three of them hide in a van. It's funny that pretty much right at the exact same time that this new group shows up at the oil refinery, they also show up where Morgan and Al are, even though they're so far out of range with the walkie-talkies. Virginia just happens to be right over in that neck of the woods also? It's another silly coincidence.

The guy says his sister is in the place they were staying that the Pioneers took from them, so of course Morgan and Al go to find her. Al also wants to find the helicopter chick, thinking that maybe this new group is the same one she was with, despite them riding horses instead of helicopters, and cowboy hats instead of zombie-resistant hazmat suits. She's sorely disappointed later when she asks Virginia and Virginia points out that they just now gained access to gas.

Al wants to find her crush so badly, that she insists on going in to the compound alone while Morgan gets the guy to safety. Because splitting up in dangerous situations is such a great idea. What could possibly go wrong?

They end up going in together. The sister has escaped, but the Pioneers capture them both. Somehow Virginia knows that the sister got away and left a zombie behind in the room, despite Morgan being the one to find and kill that zombie. I'm a little confused about that.

Still, getting captured by bad guys in Fear is about as worrisome as encountering a zombie. Zombies never kill characters anymore, and bad guys just let the good guys go without so much as a slap on the wrist. Virginia not only lets Morgan and Al walk free, she has one of her people fix his stick for him. Virginia knows all about both of them thanks to that ridiculous PSA they made in episode 9, and she thinks it was a brilliant idea. She must be the only one, because that remains one of the most ridiculously stupid things I've seen on TV. Ever.

Most of the subplot with Daniel and Grace was pretty excruciating. Daniel's character has been reduced to a boring old grandfatherly dude without any edge. All the hard lines are gone. All the struggles he faced with his past, his mental illness, his fury, all vanished. Now he sits and pats Grace's hand and tells her everything will be alright.

I will admit, the one bright moment of this entire episode for me was when Daniel and Grace sing a little duet together. They're in a bar and they find an acoustic guitar and Grace picks it up and starts singing. Daniel chimes in. They sound pretty good, too. That's not surprising. Karen David (Grace) was one of the leads in Galavant and she has a terrific voice. Now that was a good TV show.

In any case, over in Morganland, he has a revelation. Somehow him telling Virginia that they're stuck in the past has dislodged something in his brain and he's realized that he, too, is stuck in the past. He hops on the walkie-talkie and radios Grace. Daniel is on the other end and says that a minute ago (like, when they were singing?) she seemed fine, but now she's in bad shape.

Cut to Grace who looks ill, right on death's door. Morgan wants to talk to her. He needs to come quick, though, because she thinks it could all be over quickly.

What? What on earth is going on here? I'm no medical professional, but I'm pretty sure you don't go from "just fine" to "on death's door" from radiation poisoning that you acquired weeks earlier, in that span of time. You either get enough radiation right off the bat that it kills you pretty quickly, or you get just enough that it kills you slowly over time. It doesn't just suddenly kick in three months later and then kill you in an hour.

Am I wrong? It just doesn't feel right at all. It feels like yet another lazy, stupid attempt at creating tension and teasing viewers with a cliffhanger. "Oh no, what are we going to do if Grace dies?!" As though they've given us any reason to care about any of these characters anymore. If they all died and only Skidmark made it out alive, I'd be perfectly fine with that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still a fan of Daniel and Alicia and Dorie and a couple others, but only in an abstract sense. I like who Daniel used to be, when he was a tough-as-nails ex-military guy who never put up with any nonsense.

I like the way Alicia was growing as a character, right up until they chopped off her character growth at the knees and made her just another Morganite.

I like John Dorie in theory, and he could have been a really fascinating character if he was a diamond in the rough, a truly good man in a world where everyone else's morality was a lot more grey. But instead, Dorie is just one of many morally pure do-gooders now, robbed of his most interesting qualities, or rather those qualities have become camouflaged thanks to the quiet assassination of pretty much everyone's personality.

All these actors--Ruben Blades, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Garret Dillahunt, etc.--deserve better roles in better shows, and if AMC can't get Fear back on track, I can't imagine they'll stick around for long. I can't imagine that Kim Dickens or Frank Dillane have any regrets at this point.

And so here we are. Two episodes left. A brand new group of boring villains. All the characters on the show far less interesting and compelling than they ought to be. A story that has rambled and wobbled since the start of Season 5 and still managed to get nowhere.

I swear, you could just cut almost this entire season and it wouldn't matter. You could skip the whole thing and it wouldn't matter. Nobody has died. Nothing has changed. We've picked up some new characters along the way, but they haven't brought anything very worthwhile to the table. The apocalypse itself is a timid, milquetoast affair.

The one mildly interesting character was Logan and he showed up just to get killed off by the Pioneers. He was little more than a totally pointless red herring. Dwight showed up, shaved his beard, and promptly fell into the Hive Mind, pissing away whatever personality he had left to become an acolyte of the great prophet Morgan.

What a mess. What an utterly inexcusable, entirely avoidable disaster. There's no two ways about this. Showrunners Andrew Chambliss and Ian Goldberg have, with the blessing of Scott Gimple and the higher-ups at AMC, managed to completely ruin this show. And there's no sign it's going anywhere but down. I honestly can't believe they haven't been replaced at this point, and I cannot fathom why AMC would keep them around to ruin Season 6 as well. Maybe if ratings keep slipping and fans keep raging, we'll get the change we so desperately need.

The only question is whether or not it's too late.

[dailyfeartwdgifs]

Fear The Walking Dead Season 5, Episode 1 Review: Crash And Burn 

I'm having a really hard time mustering up any sort of enthusiasm for Fear The Walking Dead, and the opening episode of Season 5 isn't helping. 

It's not that last night's episode was terrible. It even had a few good moments, and an interesting twist with the mysterious armored zombies and the documents Al found, all pointing to the same group that whisked away Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead's most recent season. 

Likewise, when Strand (Colman Domingo) discovers that the guy Al (Maggie Grace) knows who has a plane is Daniel (Ruben Blades) and looks so distressed, I had a good chuckle. Strand and Salazar are not on the best of terms. 

I even liked the ragtag group of kids that the survivors run into, as well as the new sort-of-bad-guy Logan played by Honey I Shrunk The Kids alum Matt Frewer. I don't think I've seen Frewer in anything since that 1989 film, but I recognized him instantly. I say "sort-of-bad-guy" because the dude has a point. Just because Morgan and his group moved into the Mill doesn't make it theirs necessarily. If he owned it before the apocalypse, I see no reason why he shouldn't own it now. He got them out of there without firing a shot, also, which is pretty nice for a villain, especially compared to basically every other villain in either Walking Dead show. 

But other than that, and some cool Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) zombie killing moments, the episode just fell enormously flat for me. I think part of it is the premise now that the show has adopted Morgan (Lennie James) and his do-gooder philosophy. I guess now our heroes are literally heroes, out trying to help people no matter the risk. 

Crash Landing 

I mean, they somehow managed to get a plane which none of them knew how to fly, and then flew somewhere in order to help Logan (who was tricking them) with no real gameplan. I'm not sure how they were going to fit everyone in such a small plane after this theoretical rescue, but considering that they didn't even know how to land the thing and could have all died in the process, this just strikes me as enormously stupid. 

Almost as stupid as not drinking the damn ethanol when the tanker got shot up last season. My goodness, it's like watching a show about the stupidest people alive somehow managing to survive a zombie apocalypse. It's painful to behold. It would be funny if that was the actual premise (seriously, I'd watch the Idiocracy version of The Walking Dead) but alas, these are supposed to be tough, smart survivors. Not the imbeciles they've been written as. 

In any case, they crash land and Luciana (Danay Garcia) is impaled in the crash. Nobody else is severely injured. This would have been a good time to kill of Luciana who hasn't been an interesting or useful character since she became Nick's girlfriend shortly after being introduced as a badass leader, but no. Rather than mercy kill her, the character assassination will continue apace. 

Also, while I'm happy to see Daniel return (he's by far the most interesting character other than Alicia at this point) I'm not sure why Blades would want to return to this sinking ship. Maybe (hopefully) the season improves after this episode, but I'm not getting my hopes up. The fact that Al has also interviewed him is just too convenient, too much of a coincidence, on top of her having also interviewed Madison before meeting up with Morgan and John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt). Al just knows everybody, I guess. And everybody just magically shows up in the same vicinity as one another for some reason. 

Speaking of John Dorie, I really do like his character but they're just not using him for anything interesting at this point. I'm also having a hard time buying his and June's relationship. June (Jenna Elfman) is another character I just have no feelings for whatsoever. Why did they make her a nurse when she's basically a doctor? Nurses don't operate on people. They don't perform major life-saving operations like this at trauma centers or anywhere else. I could believe that she'd make an attempt in a pinch like this, but the whole notion that she's some seasoned surgeon at this point is just silly. Just make her a doctor in the first place if this is how you're going to use her character. 

I don't know exactly what it is that rubs me so wrong about June, but I guess maybe it's both Elfman's performance to some degree, as well as her character arc and how she's been written. The whole "nobody can help me" character always running away suddenly transforming into another of Morgan's Avengers just didn't land for me. And I'm not really feeling much chemistry between her and Dorie, though that may be a symptom of the writing. 

Stupid Is As Stupid Does 

In any case, Al is knocked out and captured by one of the mysteriously armored people because I guess she thought it was a good idea to go back to the crash site in the dark and rain by herself to investigate for some reason. Like everyone else on this show, and for reasons known only to the writers and producers, Al is a total idiot. 

Meanwhile, Logan pulls a fast one on Morgan by tricking them into going to a distant truck stop (we still don't know where, but I guess it was far enough that they had to fly in a plane they found somewhere but didn't know how to actually pilot, oh my god who writes this stuff???) and then peacefully taking back what was his to begin with. He even dumped a bunch of their stuff outside the fence in the process. In yet another scene of abject stupidity, when Strand and his new trucker pals, Sarah (Mo Collins) and Wendell (Daryl Mitchell) show up and see other people have occupied their base, they all get out of the truck and point guns at them, just standing there right out in the open, outnumbered, making themselves the easiest targets imaginable. If Logan had been a more ruthless foe, he would have had them all shot right then and there and wouldn't have faced a single loss. 

Who does this? Nobody, that's who. Nobody would just walk out there like that, knowing they could be easily shot and killed, with no semblance of strategy and apparently no lines of dialogue either. Also, they'd need to actually help Wendell get out of the truck and into his wheelchair, so now I'm just picturing how ungainly and awkward that must be when you're trying to have a proper standoff. Like, sorry yguys can you just not shoot at us while we get our friend out of the truck and into his wheelchair? 

Ugh. What a letdown. This show has really tanked since the new showrunners took over and since virtually the entire main cast was killed off and replaced. I was never the biggest fan of Madison, but she grew on me in Season 3 and it really was a show about her and her kids, and now Nick is dead and Madison is dead and it's like we're watching an entirely different show now. Why not just make a new show instead of cramming this new cast together? It's all so jarring. Morgan makes no sense on this show. I can't stand him and I can't believe they've actually made this show into a "let's help people" story. It was so much more interesting when Madison was playing both sides of the Otto/Native American conflict, or when we had characters like Troy around keeping us on our toes. 

It's gone from a zombie show about morally grey characters to one led Morgan Jones for goodness sakes. Morgan is a fine character, as a secondary character, as Rick's mentally disturbed friend, as a moral compass for the main group. He's not a leader or a lead. 

It's a crying shame that it's come to this. I am not particularly hopeful for this season, though they've surprised us before. Last season I actually really enjoyed the first few episodes before it went over the cliff, jumped the shark, killed off the best characters and introduced the lamest villain any zombie show has ever seen. So maybe the opposite will happen here, and the writing will improve and our heroes will stop acting so stupid all the time and we'll get a decent conflict.

Yeah, I don't think so, either, but it never hurts to have a little hope. Rebellions are built on hope.

[haphapner]

The Madonna of Allentown

It happened again at Big Len's place in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  A steady flow of true humanity came through there every day.  Big Len's specialized in cold beer to go and weekly room rentals, an odd mix but it had been around for years.

I had just returned from buying a carton of cheap cigarettes.

It was my daughter’s sixteenth birthday.  I hadn’t been pregnant for fifteen years, eleven months and nineteen days.  On that morning, I experienced a miraculous conception.  What would come from my womb some months later would not, indeed could not, be, from a man.

Long ago, I recognized that one should take these things as they come.  The years and more than five-hundred-fifty pregnancies have tempered my weariness and bone crushing sadness with wisdom.  Inexplicably I felt driven to invest in this child so that it would be more successful than all the others combined.

One minute, I was walking up the backstairs to my bug-infested room, a communal toilet and shower down the hall.  The next, a fresh new soul spontaneously generated in my ancient womb.  The cigarettes slipped from my grasp and bounced down the dingy stairs, bounding higher as they picked up speed.  The carton cracked against the door and burst open spewing cellophane wrapped pleasure across the sun-lit landing.

“Shit!”

I can’t explain it; I just knew it had happened again.  It’s like Zen, if you’ve experienced sartori, you get it; otherwise, you’re shit-out-of-luck.

I sat down three quarters of the way up the steep stairs.  “Shit, shit, shit … I’m too tired for this.”  I slammed my elbow against the wall; dingy, faded wallpaper fluttered. “How does this always catch me off-guard?”  I took a long drag on a generic cigarette, my last.  “So many myths about gods becoming men and walking among us, the gods of mythology were too chicken-shit to become women.”  I ripped at a piece of wallpaper exposing years of corrupted paint.  “Woman’s work my ass,” a sarcastic laugh slipped out. “Men should try motherhood.”

My story starts in the mists of time, before I conceived the collective unconscious of humankind. Known by a thousand names – Eve, Ishtar, Isis, Mother Earth – I am the Oracle of Delphi who doled out visions, generation upon generation, ad infinitum.  The Greeks referred to me as Gaia, the one who sprang from Chaos and became the mother of all things.

Myth cloaks the truth trapping humanity in ancient prisons of ignorance.  A son once said, “The Truth shall set you free.”[1]  I have born more grief than the mind can conceive.  In vain, I have staggered through humanity searching, always searching for true companionship, a true equal.

Jung wrote, “Whenever the earth mother appears it means that things are going to happen in reality; this is an absolute law.”[2]  His words were confused.  I do not appear.  I never disappear.  I keep moving, looking into eyes that cannot see, listening for words that convey meaning. Carl understood one thing.  For those who come to know me, reality takes hold.  Through the mind-numbing millennia, I have witnessed pockets of hope, people whose peaceful coexistence drew me toward the mainstream.  Such communities were but flickering flames blown out by human progress.

Every sixteen years I become pregnant and carry the baby to term – which is usually some time during the twenty-fourth lunar month.  I neither consult nor require a patriarch to participate in these sacred events. These children of fiat are my offering, my sacrifice to humanity, gifts meant to foster evolution so that humanity might come to a full realization of their divine nature.

Through the centuries, I have mothered some famous and infamous people.  Ishmael and Isaac, those naughty boys who denied the goddess, were mine.  Siddhartha and Jesus were my sons as were Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, and Mohamed. You see, I am doomed to have sons, boys and men who must throw off the fear and oppression of women or die.  Warriors, orators, gurus, and shaman alike I have birthed, but very few wise men.

Sid was a rebellious boy in the beginning.  Jesus died too soon.  I fled the Christian lands after seeing so much harm done in his name.  Humans constantly teeter on the brink of madness.  After the first jihad, Mohamed tried to honor me in his book, “Christ, the son of Mary, was no more than a messenger; many were the messengers that passed away before him.  His mother was a woman of truth.  But they had both to eat their food.”[3]  Can you imagine?  My own son did not understand the divine reality of the one who bore him into this world.  With a broken heart, I slowly made my way north and west.

Sadly, most of my sons turned out to be self-centered egomaniacs.  Tragedy seemed my only companion.  Witnessing their utter lack of respect for women and the goddess, I began to desert my boys by their sixteenth birthday.  Hitler broke my heart long before he broke the world.  I fled to the west.

I arrived in the new world just after the turn of the century.  My next child, Sunnyland Slim, soulfully interpreted my heart through his fingers and songs.  But the moral decay and utter inhumanity of the last several centuries had brought me low. I took a long vacation, which brought me to Big Len’s with my only daughter.

Human potential for greatness is exceeded only by its arrogant individualism.

Around each child’s thirty-third birthday, when the calendars of the sun and the moon align, is a powerful opportunity in their lives.  At those times, the collective unconsciousness draws toward the surface of conscious thought throughout the earth’s inhabitants.  At that time, every generation faces the great question – will they accept their maker as she is.  Only during that powerful alignment of the lunar and solar phases, is vision able to break the bonds of human limitation and broach the domain of collective reality.  That unified vision is the key to human evolution.

I loved the renaissance when men nearly grasped the divine nature of humanity.  Rubens honored me, and all women, with his exquisite art. Things had always been dicey with the boys, but they really went downhill fast during the industrial revolution. My son Karl wrote about a community of equals, but he was no Jesus.  He thought economics could alter the human condition.  He could not see that lasting social change will only come through an evolved race.

For thousands of years, since the men of this species overthrew the goddess, violence toward women and children has run rampant.  The prehistoric patriarchal revolt disfigured the male capacity for love, trust, and connection.  In the process, my heart fractured and so began my perpetual search for wholeness.

The myth of the ages is that human men become mature. Their adult lives are lived as an extension of their boyhood.  They do not mature they merely age.  Their deeply buried true self rarely surfaces.  Panic ensues in the hearts of men when they glimpse their feminine side. The fear of homosexuality is but a disguise.  Their terror lies in something sinister and primal that they cannot face.

They fear me in them.  In the gap between Eden’s fall and recorded history, they knew me as the goddess of all things dark and uncanny.  Men’s hearts filled with fear, knowing I could strike them down with arrows of conscience even from afar.  In rebellion against the true nature of all things, they have subjugated women since the dawn of human history.  Once they seized control, they denied their essence and proclaimed their superiority.

To survive I had to go on the lam.  Of course, modern humans have no recollection or understanding of these things.  Primeval instinct leads men to oppress and deny their nature and needs.  They do not comprehend that their claims of physical superiority and manifest destiny are born of fear.

Men need not fear.  I am the self-existent One.  Ex nihilo I made all things.  I am woman and man, the beginning and the end, the lover of all things.  I draw many into oneness creating a race of divine equals, who knowing their origins choose to embrace their divine nature.  I alone procreate – the divine begetting the divine.

A sign flashed above my head, Sacred Heart Hospital.  I floated along into an elevator.  Everything smelled clean and white.  Doors parted, closed, and opened again.  People rushed past my horizontal floating frame.

“She’s in trouble.  Get her into surgery.”

Who could they be talking about?  How long had I been here?

I hear my daughter’s voice, “What is it?  What is wrong?”

“She’s hemorrhaging.  We need to take the baby now.”

“Looks like a lot of scar tissue, possibly an acute ectopic. Get the on-call surgeon.

“Blood pressure’s dropping, pulse is dropping.”

“She’s going into shock; we’re losing her.  Come on people!”

~

The doctor explained that they had done a “clean house” hysterectomy.  I would never have another child.

My firstborn daughter, now eighteen stepped forward and looked into my eyes.  She held her new little sister with pride and hope.  “Mama, she’s the one; the last one.”

[1] Holy Bible, New International Version, John 8:38

[2] Douglas, Claire, Editor.  Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930 – 1934 C.G. Jung. Princeton University Press.  1997. Page 790.

[3] Koran 5:75

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior October 2, 2020 – ON THE ROCKS, MANGROVE, SCARE ME, POSSESOR, BOYS IN THE BAND, THE GLORIAS, SAVE YOURSELVES! and More

It’s October, which means we’re finally getting Patty Jenkins’ long-awaited Wonder Woman 1984 after a number of delays from its original June release. Now that it’s finally coming out, maybe we can finally see movie theaters rebound with such an anticipated superhero blockbuster ready to fill those theaters right back up to 100% capacity. What’s that? It’s been moved to Christmas Day? Movie theaters in New York and L.A. are still closed and other movie theaters are only at 25-40% capacity? So we’re not getting Wonder Woman 1984 this week? So what are we working with here… Something like 30 other movies that few people have been chomping on the bit to see? Great… well, then never mind.  We’ll see how far I get through the insane amount of movies being released this week, but I can tell you right now, that it might not be very far.

Possibly the highest profile release this week is the new film from Sofia Coppola, ON THE ROCKS, which is being released theatrically by A24 (where movie theaters are open) before its inevitable Apple TV+ streaming premiere on October 23. I had the opportunity of seeing Coppola’s film as part of my New York Film Festival coverage, where it got a sneak preview last week.

It’s a fantastic film starring Rashida Jones as Laura, a woman who has been married to her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) for long enough that they have two young daughters, although she’s started to suspect that he’s losing interest in her and maybe sleeping with his assistant. As she gets more paranoid, her lethario art-dealing father (Bill Murray) shows up and tries to help Laura find out the truth about her husband’s fidelity.

Like many, I was a huge fan of Coppola’s earlier films, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation – in fact, interviewing Coppola for the latter was one of my first roundtable experiences ever – and though I liked Marie Antoinette just fine, some of Coppola’s other films in recent years just haven’t connected with me. Maybe it took for her to do a full-on New York City film, as On the Rocks is, for me to return to the film but there’s so much other stuff to like about it.

First of all, it seems like a much more personal film than something like The Beguiling but she also has a fantastically vibrant lead in Jones, who doesn’t often get roles that really shows off her abilities. It’s hard not to think about some of Noah Baumbach’s movies, particularly last year’s Marriage Story, while watching On the Rocks because Coppola uses a similar segmental storytelling format. What sets it apart from just about every other film is Coppola’s ability to acknowledge that the best way to use Bill Murray in your movie is to just let him be Bill Murray and do what he’s going to do. That immediately lends itself to some great moments where father and daughter can go out on the town (and eventually to Mexico!) where Jones essentially acts as the audience for her father’s shenanigans.

But this is very much Jones’ movie even as she’s surrounded by the likes of Jenny Slate as a single mother kvetching about her dating life and Wayans, possibly playing his most serious and dramatic role since Requiem for a Dream.

I really enjoyed On the Rocks more than any of Coppola’s movies maybe going back to Lost in Translation. I think that she does have something to say as a filmmaker in terms of something as personal as this vs. a genre film like The Beguiled, and she does a particularly good job capturing New York City in a way that I really miss right now.

You can also read my more technically-minded review of Coppola’s latest over at Below the Line.

While I haven’t had the time to see as much of the 58th New York Film Festival as I like, I did get to see MANGROVE, the next chapter of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe Anthology” which also played at the NYFF this past week. In fact, it’s the first chapter of the group of five movies about England’s West Indian community, both chronologically and when it will air on Amazon (November 20). 

This one takes place in 1970, focusing on the Mangrove, a Notting Hill restaurant where the West Indian and black communities regularly congregate, but also, a target for the racist local police who are constantly raiding it and causing misery both for the customers and for the shop owner Frank Crichlow, played by Shaun Parkes. Some of the people who frequent the tiny shop are Black Panther’s Laetitia Wright as (what else?) Black Panther activist Althea Jones, but after a number of police disruptions, the people have had enough and decide to march to protest, which inevitably leads to a conflict with the same police.

Unlike Lovers Rock, which is just over an hour long, Mangrove feels like a real movie with a beginning, middle and end i.e. a simpler three-act structure, but it also runs for over two hours. Honestly, this could have been shown in theaters on its own, and I would have been satisfied, although I’m more than curious how that ties into the other movies.

The first act of the movie is similar to Lovers Rock as you’re allowed to look into this community and how they try to enjoy their lives together but having difficulty doing so due to the violent police raids, much of this part focusing more on Crichlow than the others. The actual protest march is the film’s biggest set piece where a lot of the players come together including the PC Frank Pulley, as played by Sam Spruell. This leads to the third act, which is basically a court trial of about a dozen of the people who frequent the Mangrove, including Crichlow, many of them defending themselves. If there was racism in the way the black people of London are treated by the police, it’s exacerbated when they’re put to trial in a courtroom where the jury only has 2 black members. The judge is so clearly on the side of alleviating the police of any responsibility for what happened that you just get madder and madder as it goes along.

As much as the film is very much Parkes as the lead, the strong support from Wright and the likes of Malachi Kirby as Darcus Howe, who has some amazing courtroom scenes, and Jack Lowden as Ian MacDonald, another one of the barristers. Almost every scene gives McQueen and his crew a chance to show off how well they were able to recreate every aspect of the times, whether it’s the neighborhood or recreating the Old Bailey where the trial takes place. I was just really impressed with everything about the movie from the screenplay, cowritten by McQueen with Alastair Siddons, to the cast and every single performance. All of it comes together so well while telling the very true story of the Mangrove 9 in a way that feels like McQueen doesn’t need to exaggerate anything for the viewer to really feel the injustices in play during that era.

This is an epic film that reminds me a bit of Mike Leigh’s underrated Peterloo last year. Not only did I think Mangrove was better than Lovers Rock, but I also think it’s better than McQueen’s Oscar-winning Best Picture, 12 Years a Slave, so it’s kind of odd that this wasn’t chosen to open the NYFF vs. the far shorter film.

Since it’s October, we might as well start with some scary or semi-scary genre movies, three of which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, at least two in the Midnight Section.

I’ve said before how impressed by the movies that horror streamer Shudder was sharing with its audience and Josh Ruben’s SCARE ME (Shudder), which debuts on Thursday, is no exception. I generally love horror comedies, but this one is more of a comedy horror, mainly being a two-hander as two horror writers hang out in a remote cabin in the middle of winter, trying to scare each other by telling stories. Ruben himself plays Fred Banks, a typical writer/actor/director from Hollywood who really hasn’t written or directed much, but when he meets extremely cynical bestselling horror writer Fanny Addie, as played by Aya Cash (from The Boys), there’s a certain amount of competitive flirtation that you know will lead to a fun movie.

So yeah, I’m not going to say too much about the stories they tell each other or what makes them so riveting and hilarious, but Ruben is not afraid to make things very heightened, whether it’s the performances by the two actors or the use of music or sound FX to really emphasize the horror aspect of the film. It’s hard not to think of something like The Shining or Misery due to the house out in the middle of nowhere, but Ruben also tends to show his horror influences in his script. The movie is working so well as a two-hander before Chris Redd from SNL shows up as the pizza delivery guy Carlo, drugs come out and things start to get even more outrageous and hilarious.

I have to say that I haven’t seen a horror movie this year that I enjoyed quite as much as Scare Me, since it’s so fun even when it starts to get exceedingly more dark in the last act. This is a great deconstruction of the horror genre that manages to create a truly original premise out of a mash-up of horror tropes.

In theaters and drive-ins this Friday and then available digitally next Tuesday, October 6, is Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s SAVE YOURSELVES! (Bleecker Street), a genre comedy starring John Reynolds and Sunita Mani (GLOW) as a squabbling couple who decided to take a retreat to a cabin in upstate New York to work on their relationship sans any electronics… only to miss the alien invasion that is progressively destroying the rest of the country.

It’s kind of funny seeing this back-to-back with the above Scare Me, because they’re both very funny two-handers, although this one was not quite as funny as I was hoping for, maybe because the main couple are cute, but they’re also quite deliberately clueless. They seem very much like a lot of younger people these days who want to try to better themselves but they’re so addicted to their smartphones, they don’t always realize how bad their behavior looks.

I did like what the filmmakers managed to do with mostly just the two actors and the semi-adorable gas-guzzling furball aliens who show up and terrorize the duo for the second half of the movie. Like with Scare Me, I don’t want to say too much about what happens to them, because that’s more than half the fun of watching the ordeal they end up going through, but it’s a different directorial debut and a great showcase for the talents of Mani (who I’ve seen a few things) and Reynolds (whose work I really didn’t know at all.

Basically, the four of them take a fun concept and do a lot with what is also essentially a two-hander that gets stranger and stranger but never is as outright funny as I was hoping it might be with such a great premise.

Brandon Cronenberg (yes, that Cronenberg) drops his second movie, POSSESSOR UNCUT (NEON), which debuted in the midnight section of Sundance earlier this year. Unfortunately, like the two movies above, it is one where knowing too much might detract from actually enjoying what happens. Essentially, Andrea Riseborough plays Tasya, an assassin who is transplanted into another body via her handler (Jennifer Jason Leigh) but one particular hit, which puts her into the body of Christopher Abbott’s Colin Tate goes horribly wrong.

I think that’s enough of a set-up for a movie that you will probably know immediately whether it will be for you as you watch, particularly after an intensely gory murder which you’ll watch with very little context of what is happening. In fact, you might spend quite a bit of Possessor Uncut unsure of what is going on, and that’s both a plus and a minus towards my overall enjoyment of the movie. Again, I don’t want to give too much away but much of the movie deals with what happens when Tasya is transplanted into the body of a man dealing with his own inner demons (Abbott), leading up to her having to conduct the hit on her target, Tate’s future father-in-law, as played by Sean Bean.

There’s something quite futuristic and other-worldly about all aspects of Possessor Uncut, but Cronenberg handles all the sci-fi elements in the film in such a matter-of-fact way that we never assume this is too far into the future but just watching another version of our own reality. I love Riseborough so much, as she’s easily one of my favorite actors, although I’m a little mixed on Abbott, so mainly seeing him acting like what she might be like controlling his body, it’s a little off-putting to be honest.

What really helps Cronenberg’s bizarre vision more than anything is his second collaboration with his DP Karim Hussain who has grown so much as a cinematographer in the 8 years since Antiviral. Every aspect of the movie’s otherworldliness is enhanced by Hussain’s use of colored filters to keep the viewer off-balance and unsure of what exactly one is watching. But those who are onboard for the type of violence and gore we get early on might be disappointed in how long we have before we get to more of it. In that way, Possessorreminds me of the recent

There’s no denying that Brandon is his father’s son with the type of storytelling he wants to explore, and he brings the same type of auteurish angle to his gore-filled genre filmmaking that is likely to be similarly divisive on who loves and appreciates it vs. those who just won’t get it at all. Either way, Possessor is as daring as it is weird and freaky and your mileage will vary depending on what you’re expecting.

I had never heard of Aaron Starmer’s book SPONTANEOUS (Paramount Pictures), but Brian Duffield, writer of “The Babysitter” movies on Netflix, makes his directorial debut with quite a dark romantic comedy that seems like a great companion to Words on Bathroom Walls from earlier in the year. Katherine Langford from Cursed and Knives Out plays Mara Carlyle, a senior at Covington High School, who is sitting in class one day when one of her classmates explodes, and as others also start exploding, she ends up bonding with Charlie Plummer’s Dylan, as the two young lovers stand together to try to survive.

I generally like coming-of-age and high school movies and I definitely have some favorites, both classics and more recent ones. Let me say right now that this one is VERY dark but also very funny and enjoyable, so it immediately reminds me more of something like Heathers in the fact you’ll just be enjoying some part of the story and then some kid explodes in fully gory glory.  Yeah, it’s something that might be tough for some, because it doesn’t take the typical boy meets girl, lovey-dovey kissy-face movie, although the relationship between Mara and Dylan plays a large part in the movie.

I’ve already been a fan of Plummer’s from some of his previous work, but Langford is really fantastic in this, and this allowed me to see her in a whole new light as much as I thought she played a fine part in Knives Out. It was also great to see unlikely candidates like Rob Huebel and Piper Perabo playing her parents, and I also dug Haley Law as Mara’s best friend Tess.

The movie starts out as one thing but by the second half, it’s turning into something more akin to George Romero’s 1973 The Crazies where all of Covington’s seniors are locked up in a facility being tested with drugs that hopefully will keep them from exploding.  The only real problem is that it does get very dark including one plot point that might lose a lot of those that have enjoyed watching the Senior Class of Whenever spontaneously exploding.

In a week where we have a truly dreadful high school movie about heroin addiction (see below), who would have imagined that a far better movie would be the one where high school kids are randomly blowing up as they frequently do in Spontaneous? This is a pretty fantastic directorial debut by Duffield, a devilishly funny take on an overused genre but one that also stands up with the best of them. Here’s hoping Duffield gets to direct another movie because from this and “The Babysitter” movies, it’s clear he has very distinct voice and style ala Election-era Alexander Payne that would could lead to some great stuff in the future.

Next up, we have one for the boys and one for the girls…sorry. Ladies.

The Ryan Murphy-produced based on Matt Crowley’s 1968 stageplay THE BOYS IN THE BAND hits Netflix on Wednesday. Directed by Joe Mantello, who also directed the recent Broadway revival, it’s an ensemble piece featuring  Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer as three of seven gay friends who congregate the Upper East Side apartment of Michael (Parsons) to celebrate the birthday of Harold (Quinto), his birthday party including a number of surprise guests including Michael’s married college friend Alan (Brian Hutchison) and a stripper known as “Cowboy.”

I’ve never seen the stageplay on which this is based, although I know a lot about it, including the fact that it takes place on a single night all on one set. Mantello’s movie includes the entire cast from the recent 2018 Broadway revival which he also directed, so you just know everyone will be bringing their A-game. While there are some big names from the screen in the cast, there are just as many amazing moments from some of the other characters, including Robin De Jesus’ Emory, Larry (Andrew Rannels), Bernard (Michael Benjamin Washington), Hank (Tuc Watkins), as well as Bomer playing Michael’s good-looking boyfriend Donald.

That obviously well-rehearsed cast brought a lot to my first experience with  Crowley’s beloved play, their hilarious patter and interaction making the first part of the movie so light and entertaining, particularly a campy dance number to the song “Heawave.” But the film also gets quite serious by the second half, and that’s despite taking place over a decade before AIDS reared its ugly head.

Much of that drama arrives at the same time as Michael’s homophobic college friend Alan shows up without ever saying why he needed to talk to Michael so urgently – we definitely can put two and two together but it’s never confirmed out loud. When Harold finally shows up, he acts like a complete asshole to everyone, but it’s quite an amazing and standout performance by Quinto, although he becomes more of a spectator as the night goes on.

But the entire cast is amazing and they’re all given moments to shine. Parsons really blew me away with his performance, and De Jesus is absolutely at first but handles the drama just as well, and I can go on and on about what a tight ensemble producer Murphy brought from stage to screen.

Boys in the Band doesn’t just deal with homophobia in the late ’60s, as it also allows these very different gay men to come to terms with their sexuality, talking about how they first realized they were gay, as well as talking about monogamy and fidelity. It would certainly be interesting to see an updated version of this set in present day, but the 1968 text and context still works just fine.

If you’ve never seen any other iteration of this play, Mantello and his cast have done a pretty fantastic job turning a one-location play into something that’s far more cinematic. I think we can expect Boys in the Band to be included in a number of Emmy categories next year.

If Boys in the Band is too much of a sausage factory for you, then there’s THE GLORIAS (LD Entertainment, Roadside Attractions), hitting digital and Amazon Prime on Wednesday i.e. today. I can’t think of any filmmaker better than Julie Taymor to tell the story of Gloria Steinem, because this is in fact a biopic about the feminist activist, as played by Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander and two talented young actresses during the earlier scenes.

I have to be honest that I never really knew much about Steinem except for her role in the Women’s Movement and trying to get the Equal Rights Act passed in the ‘70s and her involvement in so many important women’s movements in recent years, including #MeToo. As with much of her work, Taymor takes a very different approach to the classic biopic, switching between as a little girl in the past, her time spent in India seeing women there struggling with equality, to her fierce fight for women’s rights to have autonomy over their own bodies, which includes getting abortions.

I feel like I need to go back to her childhood where her eccentric father Leo (played by a barely recognizable Timothy Hutton) is always taking her family from one place to another to Steinem as a young woman (as played by Vikander) in India. There’s no question that when Moore enters the picture of the older Steinem where it starts to get interesting. She’s also far better than the generally good Vikander, whose accent doesn’t match up with any of the other actors playing Steinem.

I was a little disappointed that we really didn’t get to see very much of Steinem’s relationship with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, as played by Janelle Monae, who basically appears for two scenes and is gone. Fortunately, it gets more into her affinity for Native Americans, particularly Kimberly Guerrero’s Wilma Mankiller.  Other supporting roles of note include Bette Midler as Bella Abzug and Lorraine Toussaint as Flo Kennedy.

It takes a little time to adjust to the jumps in time and not everyone is going to like the rather pretentious decision to have Steinems from different time periods having conversations on a bus together. On the other hand, Taymor’s recreation of the 1977 Womens Conference is quite impressive, and the movie includes a fun fantasy sequence. The movie essentially does what it’s meant to do, which is to instruct and educate about why Steinem’s place in history is so important, and Taymor does a good job shaking off most of the usual biopic tropes, sometimes to success and other times not so much.

Darren Lynn Bousman, director of a bunch of the “Saw” movies including next year’s Spiral, helms DEATH OF ME (Saban Films), a psychological thriller starring Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth as married couple, Christine and Neil Oliver, who find themselves stranded on a remote island near Thailand where the couple are trapped when a typhoon hits. The couple wake up confused about what happened over the previous 12 hours until they find a video of Neil killing and burying Christine. Hilarity ensues. (No, not really. This is in fact a deadly serious psychological thriller.)

Listen, I love Maggie Q, and I’m so happy to see her in a third movie this year, even if it’s a little strange that this one is set in a similar island paradise as the generally superior Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island from earlier in the year. This one is also similarly high concept, even borrowing a bit from The Hangover (still, not a comedy), except that the premise gets so diluted by vague and esoteric nightmarish scenes used to keep Christine (and the viewer) in a constant state of confusion.

This feels like such a different type of movie for Bousman, maybe because of the environment or the lush look created by that location which informs the film. In some ways, it reminded me of Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow, and I usually like this type of mind-fuck type movie, but Death of Me just goes too far down that rabbit hole, and the only answer it gives in terms of what is happening is a fairly lame twist near the end. There’s no question this might have been worse in the hands of a less adept filmmaker, because the movie does look good, but I had a hard time connecting with any of it. You’ll notice that I didn’t have much to say about Luke Hemsworth’s character and that’s because he has so little personality when he mysteriously vanishes midway through the movie, you just don’t miss him at all.

At times, Death of Me comes across like a Southeast Asian Midsommar, and Maggie Q generally gives a terrific performance to help sell the terror her character must endure. Unfortunately, that effort and her talent is wasted, because the movie frequently goes so far overboard it’s impossible to get back once it begins to go too far off the rails.

Going from psychological thriller right into futuristic sci-fi with Seth Lamey’s 2067 (RLJEFilms), starring Kodi Smith-McPhee as Ethan Whyte, a young man living during a time when the earth has been disabled by the lack of oxygen. Ethan works in the mines with his older brother (Ryan Kwanten) but he’s suddenly called upon as the potential savior of earth, as he’s sent 400 years into the future to bring back a cure for earth’s woes.

Where do I even begin with a movie that generally should be something I like, but it takes so long to get even remotely interesting? This one had me vacillating between enjoying what was going on and generally being annoyed by everything. I’m not even sure where to begin except for the central premise of all plant life being dead meaning there’s no oxygen for humans. It’s a decent idea for sure but one that’s quickly lost when you realize that this is going to be another well-intentioned movie that isn’t executed very well.

The entire set-up for the movie doesn’t particularly work, but when Ethan is shot 400 years into the future via something called “The Chronicle,” he’s suddenly on an earth full of lush vegetation and no way of getting back. The movie does get slightly better at that point, because it doesn’t rely on people walking around in gas masks – cause there’s no oxygen, get it? – but Smit-McPhee really struggles to carry this section, frequently leaning on Kwanten once Ethan’s older brother shows up. I just don’t think Smit-McPhee has aged well nor has he improved much as an actor, so making him the lead is already questionable, especially when you put Kwanten into more of a supporting role, and that’s really just the tip of the iceberg for the movie’s problems.

Unfortunately, 2067 is harder to follow than most time travel movies but mainly because it chooses to jump back and forth in time, frequently stealing liberally from Blade Runner’s futuristic noir and other movies.  The writing is pretty bad, and the weak cast does little to elevate it with way too much over-emoting in almost every scene.

Even the score, which would have been great if used to embellish a better movie, tends to overpower everything, essentially used as a crutch to instill emotion for characters that are hard to care about. On top of that, the storytelling is all over the place to the point where few will be focused enough to care.

Sure, there’s some nice production design at work despite substandard VFX, and otherwise, 2067 is mostly bland and highly derivative sci-fi that comes off like a bad low-budget episode of Doctor Who with little of that show’s entertainment value.

Where do I even begin with SNO BABIES (Better Noise Films), a heavy-handed PSA about drug addiction written by Michael Walsh and directed by Bridget Smith that’s available via VOD right now. It stars Katie Kelly as Kristen McCusker, a Princeton-bound high school senior who has turned her first taste of oxy into a full-blown heroin addiction as we see her dragged down a rabbit hole of absolutely every possibly awful thing that could happen to her over the course of two hours, just so that…  well, I won’t spoil what happens.

There are times while watching a movie when you’re not too far into it, and you quickly realize that you’re watching a very bad movie. I certainly didn’t have to go that far into Sno Babies before seeing Kelly’s character being put through so much awfulness that it made my skin crawl more than any sort of torture porn. Whether it’s watching her or her awful friend Hannah (Paula Andino) sticking a hypodermic full of heroin into her tongue or seeing her getting raped at a party because she’s in a heroin-fueled stupor. And that’s just the first 15 minutes of the movie!

Instead of staying focused on Kristen’s journey, which is like a cross between Mean Girls and Requiem for a dream, the filmmakers also introduce a young couple, Matt and Anna (Michael Lombardi, Jane Stiles), who are trying to have a baby, Matt’s sister Mary, Kristen’s mother Clare and her real estate business, as well as a problematic coyote that takes up much of Matt’s time. Yes, this coyote ends up playing as larger and larger role in the plot and how it comes together that even if you think you know where things are going (and are probably partially right), you will be left incredulous by everything that happens over the course of the movie until it’s absolutely ludicrous last act.

So yeah, the writing is not good, the actors are very bad and every aspect of the film is so poorly made and directed, it’s impossible to even appreciate it as what it’s intended – to make a PSA for teenagers to try to keep them off of … heroin.  (Yes, there are lots of other drugs that are far easier to get in the suburbs, but for whatever reason, they decided to go with heroin.) Except that the movie is so bad few teenagers will be able to get past the first 15 minutes, which means it’s a failed effort from jump.

Kelly is certainly put through a lot, including a lot of bad FX make-up, but in many ways, Andino plays a far more interesting character with a better arc, but there’s no way of realizing that until the very end, which just makes the whole thing even more bonkers.

The filmmakers behind Sno Babies must have some sort of sadistic streak to make viewers endure everything various characters are put through, but especially Kristen and Hannah. Listen, I’m never been one to get so mad at a movie that I ever actually yelled at my laptop… until Sno Babies.  Let me just say that it’s a good thing I don’t have direct neighbors because they would start thinking they live next door to a psycho who keeps yelling odd things out of the blue. 

Sno Babies is like an Afterschool Special on heroin, in other words, it’s unwatchable trash. Your brain would have to be on drugs to stick with it through the end. As the worst movie I’ve seen this year, it would be an understatement if I were to say that the people who made this movie should never be allowed to make another movie again.

And then we get to all the movies I wish I could get to but just didn’t have time due to my insanely busy schedule right now. I hope to get to watch some of them later but didn’t want to hold up this week’s column too much.

Lydia Dean Pilcher’s A CALL TO SPY (IFC Films) seems like my kind of movie I might like, a WWII drama about how Churchill started recruiting and training women as spies for his Special Operations Executive (SOE) in order to conduct sabotage and rebuild the resistance. Stana Katic plays Vera Atkins, who recruits two such candidates, Sarah Megan Thomas’ Virginia Hall, an American with a wooden leg, and Radhika Atpe’s Noor Inayat Khan, a Muslim pacifist, as the three women infiltrate Nazi-occupied France. The film is based on true stories, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to see it.

Streaming on Netflix this Friday is Kristen (Cameraperson) Johnson’s new doc DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance earlier this year. This one is about her 86-year-old stuntman father and how she deals with the fact that he’s eventually going to die, but literally staging all sorts of cinematic ways of killing him. This one I actually did get a chance to watch before finishing the column, and it was pretty tough to watch, mainly since I’m dealing with my own coming to terms that my slightly older mother may not be around for much longer. This is such a strange and only mildly entertaining movie, because it is so personal for Johnson, but I’m kind of shocked by how many people in her life would go along with making such a morbid and macabre film.  This definitely won’t be for everyone, and I’m not quite sure how I’d feel about it if my mother died – my father’s been dead for 11 years, incidentally – but I’m not quite sure to whom this movie would appeal. Either way, it’s on Netflix so you can throw it on if you have nothing else to watch.

Other stuff streaming on Netflix this week includes the kid-friendly horror film Vampires vs the Bronx and the streamer’s latest true crime docuseries American Murder: The Family Next Door.

Another music doc that I’ll have to check out is Herb Alpert Is… (Abramorama), the latest from John Scheinfeld (Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary), and it will get a live world premiere on Thursday night at 5PM PST/8PM PST featuring a Q&A with Alpert himself via Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter and www.herbalpertis.com.  On Friday, it will be available via Amazon, iTunes and other platforms as well as via DVD… and lots of other formats, including “LP format featuring a coffee table book and a five-piece 180 gram vinyl set.” Wow. I’ve always been interested in Alpert from his amazing career as a musician to his equally fantastic career running A&M Records, which discovered some of the biggest artists over the decades that followed. I can guarantee that I’ll be watching this movie very soon.

Also, Daniel Traub’s Ursula Von Ryingvard: Into her Own from Icarus Films, an innocuous title about a woman of whom I’ve never heard, will open via Virtual Cinema. Apparently, she’s a sculptor, and that doesn’t do much to pique my interest, although the fact it’s only an hour long might mean I watch it soon, as well.

Also wasn’t able to get to Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s The Keeper (Menemsha Films), which will stream on Kino Lorber’s Virtual Cinema.It’s a biopic about Bert Traumann, as played by David Kross, about a German soldier and prisoner of war who becomes Manchester City’s goalkeeper, much to the consternation of the soccer team’s thousands of Jewish fans. It leads up to the team’s victory at the 1956 FA Cup Final that finally gets him fans. I’m also kind of interested in the historic epic The Legend of Tomiris (Well GO USA), which seems to be getting a digital only release, but I honestly haven’t heard peep about the movie’s release other than the fact it’s opening. That’s not good.

Another movie I was hoping to catch but there were JUST TOO MANY DAMN MOVIES! was Brea Grant’s 12 Hour Shift (Magnet Releasing), which stars Angela Bettis, and it’s a 1998 thriller set in an Arkansas hospital where a junkie nurse, her scheming cousin and a group of black market organ-trading criminals get caught up in heist that goes wrong.

To be honest, I really just didn’t have much interest in Adriana Trigiani’s Then Came You (Vertical), which actually received Fathom Events screenings before it’s On Demand/Digital release on Friday. It stars daytime talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford (who wrote the screenplay!) with Craig Ferguson, Gifford playing a widow who is travelling the world with her husband’s ashes before meeting Ferguson’s innkeeper.  Gee, why on earth would Ed be dubious of a movie starring a daytime talk show host and a former late night television host? Gee, I wonder. I didn’t see it. Maybe it’s great, but nothing less than being paid to watch this movie would get me to watch it, so there we are.

Other movies out this week in some form or another include Rising Hawk (Shout! Studios), The Antenna (Dark Star Pictures), Eternal Beauty (Samuel Goldwyn Films), Tar (1091), Do Not Reply (Gravitas Ventures), The Great American Lie (Vertical), Honey Lauren’s Wives of the Skies (Hewes Pictures) on Amazon Prime on Tuesday, The Call (Cinedigm), Chasing the Present (1091), Haroula Rose’s adaptation of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River, The Devil to Pay (Dark Star Pictures/Uncork’D Entertainment), and something called Alien Addiction (Gravitas Ventures). I’m sure there’s some good stuff in there, and congrats to the filmmaker for finishing a movie and getting it released but… and you may have heard this before… THERE ARE TOO MANY FUCKING MOVIES!!!!

A couple festivals starting this week includes the 43rd Asian American International Film Festival, which runs from October 1 through 11, and it seems to include a pretty impressive line-up of features and shorts, and though I haven’t seen many, the one I’m highly recommending again (as I have when it played other festivals) is the doc Far East Deep South.

Also, American Cinematique’s Beyond Fest starts this Friday at the Mission Tiki Drive-In in Montclair, California, running from October 2 though October 8. It begins with a double feature of the upcoming The Wolf of Snow Hollow (out next week!) paired with The ‘Burbs, then goes into a David Lynch triple feature of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway on Saturday and Saint Maud (a chronically delayed theatrical release) with the classic Misery on Sunday. Monday gets a double feature of new movies in Synchronic and Bad Hair.

Also, the Woodstock Film Festival begins this week, running from Weds. through Sunday, with screenings at the Greenville Drive-In, Overlook Drive-In and Woodstock Drive-In as well as an online component. Highlights include The Father (Opening Night on Thursday, October 1) and the Closing Night film is Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand on Sunday night. You can get tickets and more information on Eventive.

What it comes down to is that there are just too many fucking movies. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. This shit has gotta stop, because there’s no way any single movie can get any attention when so many are being dumped to digital/streaming/VOD/virtual cinema each week.

Next week, more movies not in New York City theaters, which will probably never reopen the way things are going.

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

[42inchtv]

Some Thoughts On The Best Movies Of 2018

Honorable Mentions: “Aquaman” (dir. James Wan), “Avengers: Infinity War” (dirs. Anthony and Joe Russo), “BlacKkKlansman” (dir. Spike Lee), “Blockers” (dir. Kay Cannon), “Eighth Grade” (dir. Bo Burnham), “First Reformed” (dir. Paul Schrader), “Isle of Dogs” (dir. Wes Anderson), “Mary Poppins Returns” (dir. Rob Marshall), “mid90s” (dir. Jonah Hill), “Ocean’s Eight” (dir. Gary Ross), “On the Basis of Sex” (dir. Mimi Leder), “A Quiet Place” (dir. John Krasinski), “Roma” (dir. Alfonso Cuarón), “A Simple Favor” (dir. Paul Feig), “Venom” (dir. Ruben Fleischer)

10. “Vice” (dir. Adam McKay) A thing about “Vice” is Shea Whigham (49) plays Amy Adams’ (44) dad and Christian Bale’s (44) father-in-law — and the movie makes no attempt to hide the fact that they all look the same. It's a weird and imperfect film, but I'm oddly drawn to it -- despite the fact that many of the negative things people have said about this movie are very true. Perhaps that's why I keep coming back to Boots Riley's tweet-review: "Adam McKay makes movies that get me mad because he does several things that I wish I did first. In 'Vice,' he doesn't just break the 4th wall -- he breaks it and comes and sits in the seat next to you with popcorn and hot sauce. I don't think he makes film, he makes theater." There is something transfixing about "Vice." It's a trainwreck, a complete blank-check movie, the work of an auteur who was not told "no" once during the process. So this thing rattles off the rails early and often and features performances and tones so wildly divergent that it feels like something entirely different than regular movies. But put it this way: I'd rather watch a movie like “Vice” than “good” movies like “First Man.” McKay goes for it here in a way that seems reckless and irresponsible -- as if he'll never get the chance to make another movie so why not throw every idea he's ever had at the screen. There's something laudable to that kind of ego and arrogance. “Vice” condemns everyone, including the audience. After what we’ve done, it’s the movie we deserve.

9. “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” (dir. Susan Johnson) Did everyone who bought high on “Set It Up” watch “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and feel slightly awkward? A winning coming-of-age romcom that should stand proudly next to “10 Things I Hate About You” on the list of awesome teen movies that people watch forever.

8. “If Beale Street Could Talk” (dir. Barry Jenkins) If there was a better scene this year than Brian Tyree Henry’s section of Barry Jenkins’ lush, wondrous, absolutely stunning “Moonlight” follow-up, "If Beale Street Could Talk,” I didn’t get around to seeing it.

7. “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” (dirs. Ethan and Joel Coen) The James Franco section feels incomplete and hurried — why wasn’t it axed completely after Franco’s sexual misconduct allegations? — and the Liam Neeson section is dark and slow. But the other four parts? Instant, rewatchable classics, some of the best things the Coen brothers have ever done. My fave at the moment is the Tom Waits one, but the Zoe Kazan segment is also not without its pleasures. For a movie exclusively about death and dying and the relative fleeting nature of life, “Buster Scruggs” is a delight. It’s an exception to the premise of the film: how could life be meaningless when this exists?

6. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (dirs. Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr., Rodney Rothman) As we've gotten further away from 2018, it feels like few movies from that calendar year will stand the cultural test of time. In five years, will people still talk about even the year's best gems, "The Favourite" and "Widows"? Maybe? At this rate, "A Star Is Born" will live in infamy, an Oscar front-runner that was basically shut out in the final calculus; even a film like "Roma," a wonderful movie that deserves its many awards, feels somewhat diffuse. Alfonso Cuarón's intimate epic has barely made a dent now, at a time when even the worst Netflix movie becomes meme fodder for weeks on end. All of which is to say, if one movie from last year winds up being *the* movie from last year, allow me to submit for consideration "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse." Its message is more powerful than the pablum of "Green Book" and it just seems so damn modern? Transformative? There's a reason "Spider-Verse" caught the attention of the zeitgeist. It's a now movie -- a dazzling, scattered, boisterous affair that's super funny and legitimately sweet. I slept on a lot of this the first time I saw "Spider-Verse" (literally, being a parent is tough sometimes!), but with clear eyes and full hearts, I watched it again and fell super in love. Time to re-do the 2018 top-10 list.

5. “Widows” (dir. Steve McQueen) How would “Heat” look if it were all about systemic white supremacy? A lot like “Widows,” apparently. What a blast of pulp fiction, with a stacked cast just knocking the crackling dialogue out of the park at every turn. Viola Davis was the headline story here, putting in a complex turn that feels comparable to Robert De Niro in “Ronin.” But the real star is Daniel Kaluuya, who delivers the best villain performance since Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh. Build a statue for him in lieu of his guaranteed Oscar snub.

4. Black Panther (dir. Ryan Coogler) Marvel's own version of “The Dark Knight,” “Black Panther” is the best MCU movie yet, a legitimate epic in league Christopher Nolan’s superhero classic but with a central conflict that feels like an extension of “Do the Right Thing.” Months later, Michael B. Jordan’s towering performance still rules: he’s every bit as impressive as Heath Ledger was as the Joker.

3. “A Star Is Born” (dir. Bradley Cooper) The closest thing to "Hamilton" released this year, Bradley Cooper's meme factory focuses on who lives, who dies, who tells their story. There’s a lot of Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical in “A Star Is Born" and the film is structured as such, up to a literal heart-clutch final moment that makes me cry just thinking about it (and rivals Eliza’s last gasp in “Hamilton”). Enough has been written about "A Star Is Born" that more isn't necessary, but let's just pause here to praise Cooper, the Actor, for a performance so great that it's easy to take him for granted.

2. “Mission: Impossible - Fallout” (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) What if “The Dark Knight” but Tom Cruise? What if “Skyfall” but “Mission Impossible”? That’s “Fallout,” the best action movie since “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the best blockbuster in a great year for blockbusters. To use overdone online parlance, this movie fucks. From the jump too, with a prologue that combines elements of the first “Mission: Impossible” with a hilarious cameo and the Wikipedia entry to “Rogue Nation” to set the tone for what’s to come. “Fallout” is a masterpiece of action cinema – to wit: the second act is basically one giant action sequence segmented into separate movements – and a tightly wound spy game that does just enough with Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and his IMF team (Rebecca Ferguson remains a highlight) to make the characters worth caring about. A relentless, special movie – the best Cruise has done since “Edge of Tomorrow” – “Fallout” feels like the end of this beloved franchise. And why not? How do you top perfection? Why would you even bother to try?

1. “The Favourite” (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) The funniest movie of the year, “Mean Girls” in corsets with Rachel Weisz absolutely effing owning in the Regina George role, “The Favourite” is maybe the only perfect movie of 2018. Weisz, Emma Stone, and Olivia Colman are all incredible, a trio of co-leads in the tradition of “Goodfellas,” “Zodiac,” or “The Social Network.” Yorgos Lanthimos’ film belongs in the same zip code as those classics from a quality standpoint as well, with a sharp-edged script that powers the proceedings to its downbeat, darkly comic conclusion. And while this is a movie all about those aforementioned women, don’t sleep on at least one man: Nicholas Hoult, who hams it up with an abandon reserved for Ryan Phillippe in “Cruel Intentions.” A true classic.

[chicagopdlover]

A look at a terribly reviewed television show | KNSS 98.7/1330

A look at a terribly reviewed television show | KNSS 98.7/1330

As the 4th of July approaches, what is your favorite part of the festivities? Just enjoying a day off Hosting or attending a barbecue, picnic, or cookout Attending a fireworks display Fire off your own fireworks Watch a Fourth of July parade A look at a terribly reviewed television show Steve and Ted sample ABC’s “The Proposal” on The Blur 00:13:29 Download Transcript – Not for consumer use. Robot overlords only. Will not be accurate. He came in as the future of the morning Steve back into Ted Woodward at 830. The leader of Starbucks makes his drug days exit today on its feet and even your. For the coffee company Starbucks founder and executive chair 64 year old Howard Schultz officially steps down. Shields is seen as the architect of the modern Starbucks having overseen its expansion from a single coffee shop. Opening in Seattle’s Pike Place Market in 1971. In overtime. Growing the brand to more than 28000. Locations worldwide. In 1982 shall it’s becoming director of operations and marketing of Starbucks and is responsible for the company’s huge financial success. Schultz is known for being socially conscious and politically vocal on tripping York. In fact there has been speculation specials will run for office shields will now become chairman emeritus Hillary bar ski Fox News. Stuff fire department leadership is getting criticism from the firefighters union. Wichita fire department and aerial platform that was assisting in a fire at Saint Joseph Catholic church and and dale Sunday. Was recalled to Wichita before the fire was considered to be under control. In a social media post to the union said in part. The Wichita professional firefighters deeply regret the unfortunate situation to abandon our Brothers and sisters. Other Sedgwick county and surrounding volunteer fire companies during a difficult firefight. Here’s Wichita fire chief Tammy snow. We did not provide the service that we normally do to the citizens and then we regret that. And extremely sorry about that we’re still investigating as to hit the further details on. That’s like it’s been in the papers. Chiefs those said the incident was an error in judgment by staff members and they will be reiterating policies and procedures to staff the leadership. When it comes to offering mutual aid to other departments. Health and human services says they’re working to connect children separated from families of the border to their parents. And get unaccompanied minors with family members or sponsors. Immigration attorneys and advocates say they’re trying to learn more about house separated children will be reunited with their parents. Mark Webber with health and human services says all children apprehended at the border are in their care in shelters that. First thing we do when they come and HHS shelter and then 24 hours isn’t sure they are connected to a parent or family up why. And before their place for the sponsor or other family members he says the parent has to approve I have 32 parents here we’ll Satan. That is categorically. Untrue. Ruben Garcia director of annunciation house translated for a group of parents Monday who’s spoken El Paso about their difficulties contacting their children. Jack skip Rosenthal Fox News. Which are managed file the lawsuit against pizza house alleging the food companies delivery practices or at least partly responsible for a crash. That killed his mother had injured his grandmother Wichita eagle reporting Michael Capps filed a wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against Pizza Hut earlier this month. The lawsuit alleges a pizza chains promised to give customers hot pizza quickly. Is responsible for workers driving when he rear ended Karen and Juanita caps. A soldier who fought in World War II is set to posthumously received the medal of honor. After twenty years in this Stanley fighting for the upgrade army first lieutenant Garland Merle Connor will be honored at the white house with the medal of honor Connor Kentucky native who died in 1998 at age 79. Earned four silver stars won bronze star three purple hearts. And the distinguished service cross for his actions storing 28 months in combat tours in World War II. He’s being honored for his bravery on January 24 1945. When he volunteered to run 400 yards through an intense concentration of enemy artillery and France. He’s credited with stopping more than 150 German troops. And preventing heavy loss of life in his own unit Connery is said to be the second most decorated soldier from World War II. At the White House Jon Decker Fox News. Snell forecast with K innocent staff meteorologist Dan Holliday can morning Dan. Good morning we could see an isolated shower or thunderstorm popped up early on but most of those will be toward north and east. This afternoon breezy and warm with a high 92. Tonight becomes partly cloudy are low 73. And the National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory from Wednesday through Friday tomorrow’s high 101. Triple digit heat may continue through much of this week. I’m KM SS meteorologist Dan Holliday now partly cloudy 75 degrees on southwest wind gusting to 24 miles per hour. 835 now Stephen 10 in the morning here on K and it says it’s cyber entertainment news. The cooler with deliberate and it just are off today with a obituary now one of the fan favorites on History Channel upon stars. Has passed away the old man from pond stars has died at the age of 77 Richard Harrison. With the navy veteran and open the gold and silver pawn store in Las Vegas with a sonogram tell. Your rookie of the year is sure I’m a wonderfully old man because he doesn’t always crowd for very operative word slump don’t. Potency over ponds FaceBook page posted their fans will remember and. As these sometimes grumpy always loving however often wise cracking and of course most notably. Always the voice of reason on the history reality series Paris and was surrounded by loving family this past weekend and died peacefully. We shall we know Fox News. Let’s get a little celebrity news from the world of music the fox celebrity profiles. The siege for a country singer Craig Campbell recently released a new leave piece called see you try and. I’ve read new music sales so. 1 PM crazy excited about it. Get the new music yeah okay let’s fans know what ability known. He says a lot happened during that time that delayed the news and. It’s also on the ground. We don’t record label then close. Sounds of another record company and I and haven’t a couple of singles. Lay of the land James and his sister this time. He’ll be heading out on your friend is grateful to all those who buy a ticket. On this I feel like country music and somebody there to listen I’m one in 101000 in a matter will come have a good time. It’s. But I’m glad. To see. Actually the door again. Fox News. Former white house Press Secretary Sean Spicer working on a new gig if he was on the receiving end of a lot of questions during his six month tenure at the White House. Thank you thank you. Question now former Press Secretary Sean Spicer would be the one doing the questioning and a new TV show Sean Spicer is common ground which has aid pilot episode in the works according to syndicator Dan Maher Mercury. The plans first reported by the New York Times which says the show would feature Spicer inner viewing public figures chatting respectfully on topics ranging from the media to sports to marriage Michael love and not the attorney for porn star stormy Daniels says he was approached to be a guest on that first episode but declined. Lilian woo Fox News. Party B the sad to rise of X accessed and hostility and Sheryl Crow teams up with saint Vincent. I’m Michelle Marino’s Arabian Al Sadr officially married but act yellow wrapper tweeting and a confirmation Monday. That big TMZ story. The two have been married for awhile was true saying that you want to keep that moment private. Announced that wanted to give her proper engagement. So they did it at a later time on staying in marriage was star of the moment the public he and happened in October at that point. Need to marry. XXX tens this year and it was shot and killed last week at the age twenty. As most popular song in the country it’s sad to lead single from his last album rocketed to the top of the billboard went into this week. After an outpouring of grief following his death. According to Nielsen said was streamed nearly fifty million times this week. Anemia and Sheryl Crow recruited saint Vincent for her latest single what I wanna be like you which rails against political corruption. That’s fox rocks on Fox News. The latest round of performers at farm aid has been announced. Chris staple and the latest to join the performers for the 33 annual farm made in Connecticut organizers just announcing Monday the benefit for farmers being held that the extended. 22. Stapleton won a Grammy for best country album in February and he’ll be joining farm aid regulars Willie Nelson John Mellencamp Neil young and Dave Matthews. Other performers include Casey musgrave stirred Jill Simpson and Margo price farm aid is raise more than 53 million for grants to aid family farmers and lobby on their behalf wanna go tickets go on sale Friday through live nation I’m directly Carl Fox News. Twenty years ago on this night was the TV finale series finale of the TV shows step by step. You watch the show Steve Miller who I’m problem but did not who’s on the air for seven years. Patrick Duffy and Suzanne Somers as parents try to. Have a blended family all of it pretty much Brady Bunch of events for the late 1990s again. Hey it was on things on the air for seven years. And the series finale was twenty years ago on this night and they NB Davis on their high noon. You go step by step finished up twenty years ago. Steve fifteen years ago today it came out in Wichita movie theaters the Thomas crown affair. Yup they think at this point ample I enjoyed it. A father doesn’t domino is a big Steve McQueen for me alone. Of them and bullet. And this movie. It is a little bit and we’re pretty much came out same time bull in Canada and in a weird little rich guy alone. Electro Thais stayed in a way. The make up the dress she wore that was the sixties. He looked gorgeous. Gorgeous. Directed by Norman juiced Leah good movement. The book and it did didn’t they did deal that really hadn’t been done a whole lot of these is split screen yeah honestly I hear they would do a split screen so something’s going on the other analyzing the tired dollars and lives and dune buggy or whatever you do this and kind of use that which was pretty revolutionary times. McQueen did all his own stunts playing polo driving a dune buggy along the Massachusetts coastline. Now the moment and Jack Weston and it yeah. But it gas. And gothic Colorado now Jack Westin gases if people missed course good music I’m kilogram. Now he he wanted to he won a couple Oscar for that to renewals in your mind reels of your mind is that famous I know the movement. Pago Steve McQueen Faye Dunaway the Thomas crown affair that came up fifty years ago today. Finally Steve last night on ABC you had the proposal. Show that is just being ruhr ripped by the critics. This is the same people that came up with the bachelor. This is a deal where you got. Of some a woman or man introduced ten contestants trying to win them over. In some in and there’s a mystery person whose identity is concealed. It’s not getting good room in fact it’s getting pummeled. Said one revealer for bolster ABC kicked off this solely pageant and an episode where nearly naked women descend the staircase and painfully high heels. I feel confident than in the pro rained department’s ability to start they showed exactly the by the intended to create. Begging viewers to ignore the ego and another viewer said it. This thing has no dramatic through line the proposal trying to manufacture romances like the chef trying to make me a lot of half of a rice crispy streets. Here’s some of the men such goings on last night on the proposal. Thanks and load lately you know amazing how. This is so high and it really ends. I did this I have to go in I. I. It’s. I feel the intelligence being sucked already are now. Air X I feel dumber by the minute I’m Nicole and I added that. I took about 35 seconds out of that boy whose. Thanks out. Dude the proposal out. The vapid programming that ABC you may not crank out for the summer. Entertainment news in the blurs brought to you Larry good friends at pizza John indoor arena here’s something. Little satisfy you and read time event and on down McKay fifteen and stop in at 208 south Baltimore. And yourself let tasty pizza fire right there at pizza John did nerdy 44 Steven did give an airport. Editor bill Roy that was our business journal new contract for Boeing’s. More work for spirit that’s coming up Stevens in the morning on eight and as answer. FOLLOW US Phone: (316) 869-1330 When texting this station, message & data rates apply. Message frequency is recurring and varies. Reply STOP to cancel. No purchase necessary. Search our Website

from Christian David Biz https://ift.tt/2IAK9Ck via Article Source

[milliondollarbaby87]

England cruise to a historic win in their highest ever World Cup game with a stunning first half display against Panama. Scoring an incredible 5 goals in the first half with some fantastic play and even better set pieces. Harry Kane becoming only the third ever England player to score a hat trick in the tournament as well.

England 6 (Stones 8, 40. Kane 22, 45+1, 62. Lingard 36 ) -1 Panama (Baloy 78)

England: Jordan Pickford; Kyle Walker, John Stones, Harry Maguire; Jordan Henderson; Kieran Trippier, Jesse Lingard, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Ashley Young; Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling.

Panama: Jaime Penedo; Michael Murillo, Roman Torres, Fidel Escobar, Eric Davis; Gabriel Gomez; Edgar Barcenas, Armando Cooper, Anibal Godoy, Jose Luis Rodriguez; Blas Perez.

Given the impressive opening half against Tunisia last week I was interested to see how they would react to an opposition like Panama, a team who were just happy to make it to the finals and no one really expected anything from them. Especially when you look at the yellow card stats from they’re opening game against Belgium with five players getting booked. They didn’t really start much different towards England in all honesty with the fouls and the wrestling in the penalty area. The best thing about that though was the referee was outstanding and did not hesitate with the two different penalty decisions. As well as plenty of free kicks, I think England must have been expecting this as we had some well worked corners and free kick routines which led to scoring goals. I had to double-check that I was actually watching England. Harry Kane showing just how to take two penalty’s in one game and both outstanding finishes, his third goal a deflection from his heel will probably be the flukest ones he will ever score but when your hot and on form everything goes in!

This is a different England. It is a new England. We no longer have our superstar that must play and everything must be formed around, trying to play all of the “world class” players of the supposed Golden Generation. No we have what looks a lot more like a hard-working team. A team that will fight for each other and keep going. Along with that we have outstanding pace, I don’t ever remember seeing an England side in my lifetime that had pace like this.

With that incredible pace though I feel I need to mention Rahem Sterling who I was pleased kept his place as deserved another chance after his good form in league football. But why does he find himself caught offside so many times? He could probably start 20 yards inside the defenders and still beat them for pace. But he was standing on the last man and was offside at least three times early on in the first half. It’s just a little bit frustrating when he should be playing off Kane.

The first half though was totally brilliant, an England team at the World Cup leading 5 goals to nil is honestly the stuff of dreams. The second half was as we would therefore expect really, it was awful. Some of the players yes Ashley Young and Kyle Walker just passing the ball to each other about 20 times and not going anyway was embarrassing and belittling their opponents. That was probably about 15 minutes before the game was over. You would think coming on as a sub Jamie Vardy, Fabian Delph and Danny Rose that this could be your opportunity to impress and push for a starting place for the next game and get into contention for the knockout stages?

That was not what they did though, they didn’t do well anything. I mean why did we stop playing and badly attempting to pass the ball around. We are not great at that, keep doing what you are good at attacking quickly with pace and creating chances to score. Stay in those good habits. Typical England though to give away a soft goal which was Panama’s first EVER World Cup goal! The second half really took the edge of a terrific first half display, but it was job done and we have qualified for the knockout stages. A big test on Thursday against Belgium is something I am looking forward to even more now and I hope both sides actually play a full strength team as they need to be match fit and sharp for the following stages.

It’s Coming Home!

It’s Coming Home!

It’s Coming Home!

It’s Coming . . .

Football’s Coming Home!

  World Cup 2018: England 6-1 Panama England cruise to a historic win in their highest ever World Cup game with a stunning first half display against Panama.

[travellvogue]

The Gaffers Daughter

CHAPTER 11- I’m Sorry

The light streaming through the window woke you up, a new day, a fresh start. Turning your head to find Ruben still asleep next to you. He’d stayed in your room last night claiming he didn’t want to leave you in the state you were in but it hurt him aswell, not only to think of you in bed with someone else, but to see you so broken, so ashamed of yourself when you didn’t need to be. He’d made you feel better, about the whole situation, it was nice to have him there, someone to trust, someone that’s always there to listen and never judge. You’d reminded him last night that you only had 10 days left here anyway so at least you wouldn’t have to see John and Kyle again, his face dropped when you told him that, sadness over his eyes as he heard the number 10, recognising that it was only a short amount of time. But you didn’t think much of it, mind too clouded to overthink any other situation. 

“Mornin” he’s deep voice startles you a little bit as his arm pulls you closer so your heads resting on his chest, bodies warm from being close to each other all night. “How ya feelin love?” he’s asking stroking his fingers up and down your spine as you nod a little, “it is what it is, can’t go back and change it” looking up and giving him a small as he winks at you. “Come on the missy, let’s get ready” he’s jumping out of fast way too quick for someone that’s just woken up, pulling the covers off your body so your laying in front of him in just one of his t-shirt’s- his eyes are soft as he admires the view, smiling at he leans forward to pick you up, your legs wrapping around his waist as your arms cross around his neck. Carrying you to the bathroom and placing you down so your feet touch the cold tiled floor, he’s leaning over and turning on the shower. “Get in there, I’ll be waiting outside ok?” and your nodding at him, surprised at the thought of him joining you that runs through your mind, but you quickly brush it away as he leaves the bathroom. You had a quick shower, warm water making you forget about yesterday’s events, drying off and walking back into the room in just a towel, a sight Ruben had seen before but it still took him by surprise. “Your so pretty” he’s smiling as you walk out of the bathroom, no makeup, hair scraped back so it wouldn’t get wet- and your smiling at him, the first genuine smile since last night. “Your so handsome” your replying with the truth, the boy was handcrafted by god himself. He’s winking at you and your whole body becomes hot under the towel, trying to hide the growing blush on your cheeks by making yourself busy and picking out an outfit, returning to the bathroom to put it on.

“You ready to head downstairs?” he’s asking cautiously, knowing this is no doubt going to be hard on you to have to face everyone after them finding out about your bedroom antics. Your only replying with a nod as he reaches over to hold your hand, thumb rubbing over your skin as you walk down to the canteen, grabbing matches breakfasts, several pairs of eyes watching you the whole time, voices dropping to whispers as you hear you name mentioned in conversations a few times, Ruben staying by your side the whole time. You gaze travels across the room, trying to find a suitable table to sit on, somewhere where you weren’t going to get pulled apart or teased. Looking round to a four seater table with one chair taken, the person occupying it looking rather solemn as he stirred his shreddies around the bowl. “I’m gonna go sit over there, you coming?” you ask Ruben as he looks in the direction your referring to, shaking his head slightly with a soft smile. “Think it’d be better if it was just the two of yous” he’s speaking calmly as you nod your head understanding his logic behind not joining you, and your both walking off in separate directions.

“Hi” you whisper timidly, not knowing how he’ll react to your presence, and he’s looking up at you, unable to read the emotions in his big brown eyes, a simple nod of the head being your greeting. “Um...” your lost at what to say, how to explain to yourself, how to make this all better. “You don’t have to apologise” he’s saying before you can continue, still looking at his shreddies instead of you. “But I am sorry T... do you not think I noticed how hurt you looked yesterday” your speaking, once again finding yourself at the verge of tears. “Should’ve thought bout tha before ya shagged him” he’s speaking bitterly, taking you by surprise as you furrow your eyebrows. “I’m sorry T, do you not think I was hurt” your voice broke at the end, emotions still raw, and he’s looking up at you seeing your saddened eyes, looking straight back down again and feeling another piece of his heart break away, desperately wanting to kiss you and tell you it will all be ok, that he’s here and he won’t let anyone hurt you- but you clearly don’t love him like he loves you. “You put yourself in that position, your hurt yourself” he’s whispering, almost crying as he looks up once more to see a tear travel down your face, eyes glossy with emotion as you meet eyes for the first time- it hurts him more then anything to see you so hurt to practically be watching your heart break infront of him, but there’s a constant reminder that you slept with someone else, making him feel physically sick. “I’m sorry” is the only thing you can say as you wipe away the tears that are threatening to spill. “Should we maybe go somewhere else?” ‘be the bigger person’ he’s telling himself, unable to bare watching you fall apart in front of him, noticing the eyes of many of the boys watching the two of you, some of those being Kyle and John, two people he desperately wanted to punch- to cuss out and tell them to stay away from his girl. And he’s watching you nod ever so slightly as he pushes he chair out, standing and leading you out of the room to one of the store rooms which held any spare equipment for training.... now’s your chance Trent.

[magicmenageriestuff]

I Can’t Win – Ry Cooder

9th June 2018

We went to see Ry Cooder last night in the Town Hall a wonderful old venue with a really intimate feel on 43rd St, built in 1921 by suffragette supporters.  Jenny knew the venue from an event a couple of years ago directed by her godfather Nicolas Kent – it was a staging of the transcripts of Trump’s picks for Attorney General I think.  The beer is served in plastic cups with logos which cost $5 thus the first round was $28.  She did warn me to be fair, and they only charge you for the cup once.  What a world.

Ry Cooder opened with an old song called Nobody’s Fault But Mine which was written by Blind Willie Johnson then covered by everyone including Led Zeppelin.  He sat centre stage with a battered old acoustic guitar, his white hair covered with a blue wool bobble hat (without the bobble) and there was a young man playing a treated saxophone at the side.  Treated electronically, acoustically, sonically who knows it was haunting all night.  Cooder delivered the song with the authority of a delta bluesman, picking notes, sliding his bottleneck up and down the strings which twanged and shuddered and whispered under his touch.  He was so connected to this song, with the changes and the lyrics, it was evident in every note.

I was introduced to Ry Cooder by Sir Nick Partridge.  He wasn’t Sir Nick in those days, he was Nick P., a fresh-faced and pleasant young man who lived in the flat on West End Lane that Pete and Sali owned and that I lived in too.  He was my flatmate. Known Pete since schooldays.  I’d just finished my degree in Law at the LSE and Nick had graduated from Keele University doing International Relations.  We were all post-graduates suddenly.  I was saving money for a further “year off” as we called them back then.  This was 1979 and the future lay ahead of us. Education and academia was, it seemed, finally behind us.  We used to go record shopping together because there was so much to discover !  There still is some 40 years later !!!

Nick Partridge and Ralph Brown in a North London record shop, 1989.  Picture taken by Pete Thomas.

I was painting and decorating that summer in Pinner, and later moved onto a house in St John’s Wood, definitely worthy of its own post.  My previous mentions of this vivid era of my young adult life were in posts about Talking Heads (My Pop Life #92 ) John Martyn (My Pop Life #153) and The Specials (My Pop Life #178) and Nick features in all of them.  We were a little musical commune up there between the railways of the Jubilee Line to the south and the Thameslink line to Hertfordshire to the north PLUS the North London Line which carried nuclear waste past our building overnight while we listened to Ry Cooder and The Gladiators.  My girlfriend Mumtaz was in Mecklenburgh Square and would come and squat cross-legged on the floor with us as we passed the bliss.

In the evenings and at weekends we were all obsessed with listening to music and going to gigs.  Pete was very much a reggae aficionado but also fond of the quirky post-punk world emerging from the rubble of 1977, a plethora of independent labels issuing interesting stuff of all kinds like Wah! Heat, SpizzEnergi, Flying Lizards, or The Auteurs all with picture sleeves and original music.   In my capricious memory Sal was more into rock and I was a student new wave ex-punk who listened to soul, but Nick was always different.  Later he would live on a houseboat in Amsterdam doing a blues radio show but that’s another story, if you’re lucky.

It was Nick who had Boomer’s Story and Paradise & Lunch and in the stoned democratic disc jockey world of West End Lane between the rails, when he got his turn for an LP side, it would often be one of these Ry Cooder records which were kind of country kind of bluesy kind of funky, but often with an added flavour from somewhere else.  Americana it would be called now.

Then in 1979 he brought home an LP that looked like a new wave record, bright pink with a guitar player who looked a bit Nick Lowe but no.  It was the new Ry Cooder album called, unfeasibly, “Bop Til You Drop” and now we would all choose this record when our DJ turn came around.  Opening with a cover of Elvis Presley’s Little Sister but thereafter delving into obscure 60s R’n’B – Go Home Girl, Don’t You Mess Up A Good Thing, Trouble You Can’t Fool Me, Look At Granny Run Run – and a brilliant original song called Down In Hollywood (‘better hope that you don’t run out of gas…’), the album had a fantastic production quality on the guitar and backing vocals particularly.  In fact Bop Til You Drop was the first album ever recorded digitally.  Cooder is a magnificently rootsy guitarist, not a show-off in any way, but just tries to get the soul out of the instrument, and the backing vocals on the album were by Terry Evans & Bobby King who would later record their own record with Ry Cooder producing and playing on every track.  What I didn’t know until last night (too stoned to read the liner notes or maybe just not that nerdy after all) was that Chaka Khan sings on Down In Hollywood and Good Thing.   He had roughly the same line up last night – although not the same players.  Jenny turned to me at one point – probably during The Very Thing That Makes You Rich (Will Make Me Poor) and said “What would you call this music?”  I said “country soul?”.  She could hear mariachi.  It’s funky.  It’s hawaian.  It’s blues.   It’s music.

Cooder plays without any ego at all, and often uses the concert (and indeed many of his record releases) to showcase other people and give them a turn in the spotlight.  Last night it was his wonderfully relaxed backing singers The Hamiltones who played a couple of numbers while he left the stage, then joined them on guitar for another.  Earlier it had been his son Joachim who opened proceedings with his own music.  Ry Cooder it was who travelled to Havana in the 1990s breaking the boycott and encouraging the old stars of the 1950s to team up and record again, the resulting film and album opening up Cuba to the world once again and introducing me to Ruben Gonzales, Ibrahim Ferrer and Compay Segundo playing together as the incomparable Buena Vista Social Club.

He has recorded with the great Malian blues guitarist Ali Farke Toure on Talking Timbuktu, with Captain Beefheart on Safe As Milk (see My Pop Life #205) with Taj Mahal in the band Rising Sons, with Randy Newman on 12 Songs, the Rolling Stones on Let It Bleed & Sticky Fingers, on Lowell George‘s original version of Willin’.  All playing slide guitar or bottleneck.  In 1984 he composed the soundtrack to Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas which starred Natassia Kinski and Harry Dean Stanton and following that became a sought-after soundtrack composer using his signature slide guitar.  He’s made albums with the latino community of Los Angeles such as Lalo Guerrero and Don Tosti (Chavez Ravine) and if left to his own devices appears to be following in the footsteps of his hero 1940s political folkie Woody Guthrie.  Or one of his heroes.

Woody Guthrie 1943

*

In a new song last night he sang of a meeting between Jesus & Woody in heaven, looking down on what is happening now, from the vantage point of the 1950s when we had beaten the fascists and the world stretched out before us.

Jesus & Woody

Well bring your old guitar and sit here by me Round the heavenly throne Drag out your Oklahoma poetry, ’cause it looks like the war is on

And I don’t mean a war for oil, or gold, or trivial things of that kind But I heard the news, the vigilante man is on the move this time

So sing me a song ’bout this land is your land And fascists bound to lose You were a dreamer, Mr. Guthrie, and I was a dreamer too

Once I spoke of a love for those who hate It requires effort and strain Vengeance casts a false shadow of justice which leads to destruction and pain Some say I was a friend to sinners But by now you know it’s true Guess I like sinners better than fascists And I guess that makes me a dreamer too

It was a chilling song but it wasn’t the only time that the name of Jesus was called.  One of his biggest hits was gospel standard Jesus On The Mainline,  and with The Hamiltones‘ soulful harmonies it was a standout moment at the gig.  And it became clear to Jenny and I that we were really at a gospel show.  In the sense that the black church in America has long been a vehicle for resistance to oppression, using the biblical metaphors and stories to illustrate the struggle and gospel music to inspire and strengthen courage.  Cooder never went preachy, but he was very clear where he stood.  He mentioned Trayvon Martin before playing a song called The Vigilante.  It was the lack of ego that was most striking in the end.  Playing the guitar to try and find the most expressive notes, not to show-off or strike poses.

Ry Cooder With Taj Mahal, 1968

And indeed, it seems to me this morning thinking back on Sir Nick as a young man in West Hampstead, smoking dope with a generous smile and a ready laugh that he had no ego then or indeed now.  He always had an easy manner where embarrassment was never far from the surface, mixed with laughter and great empathy.  I went to Hampstead Magistrates with him one day and watched him with his gentle phrasing and easy manner talk his middle-class way out of a conviction and get a finger-wagging in its place.

Sir Nick with Kirsten O’Brien

Shortly after the Amsterdam year he joined The AIDS charity The Terrence Higgins Trust in 1985 becoming Chief Executive in 1991 and finally moving on in 2013 after 28 years of service and a knighthood which followed his OBE.   We formed a close bond in those 1989-1990 days and nights and stayed in touch right up until today.  I had no idea that he was gay back then but he’s never made a big deal out of it or changed his basic persona of decency, sincerity and jokes.

Sir Nick talks with brother Andrew, Whitstable Bay.  My dad can be seen with check shirt on the pebbles between them

Paul Brown is 50 in his beach hut and quite a tremendous shirt

The first time any of us saw Nick after he was knighted in the 2009 New Year Honours was at my brother Paul’s 50th birthday celebration which he held in Whitstable, Kent.  It was a wonderful weekend of family – Dad & Beryl came down from Yorkshire, Becky was back in Sussex by then and Jenny and I had summer son Jordan in tow – Dee’s youngest who had a key period of spending the summer with us in Brighton.  Sir Nick was there in the beach-hut, Paul was back from Shanghai mixing cocktails in a straw hat, Richard Davies (Lady G) was probably DJing and drinking at the same time and a splendid time was guaranteed and enjoyed by all.

Nick and his husband Simon have been to New York since we moved here – I remember him asking me what he should see on Broadway – it was 2016.  I had a one-word answer : Hamilton.  He bought tickets online, then I had to go to work when he was here so I missed him, but he saw the show and, of course, loved it.

Paulette & Beverley Randall, Paul Brown & Sir Nick Partridge, London 2015

I did see him the year before when Paul was in London for his birthday a couple of years ago – 2015 I guess.  And then he came to send me off on my 60th birthday last summer when I hardly spoke to anyone, but hugged everyone.   I am extremely fond of him and will always be grateful for his friendship and for bringing Bop Til You Drop (and Memphis Slim…) into my life.

The last song on the album is called I Can’t Win and it is a haunting and soulful three-part harmony, simply a beautiful song about being in love with someone who isn’t responding.  We’ve all been there, but I haven’t made a habit of it thank god.  When the gig finished last night the entire band went off for about 90 cursory seconds then returned immediately as we all stood and clapped for the encore.  And they sang I Can’t Win with piercing harmonies that made the hairs on the back of our necks stand on end.  It was the pinnacle on a great night.  And it’s already up on Youtube.

Live at Town Hall June 8th 2018:

Album Version :

  My Pop Life #208 : I Can’t Win – Ry Cooder I Can't Win - Ry Cooder 9th June 2018 We went to see Ry Cooder last night in the Town Hall a wonderful old venue with a really intimate feel on 43rd St, built in 1921 by suffragette supporters. 

[raceandspeculation]

John McNally                                                                                                            2/19/17

Dr. Smalls                                                                                                                 English 3690              

                                    Ripley Perceived as a Maternal Figure

           In 1979 Ridley Scott redefined everything the public had previously known about the science fiction genre with his breakthrough film Alien. Unlike any popularized sci-fi movie before it, Alien captured a much darker side to the diverse genre and borrowed many elements from classic horror monster films. Through the aid of low-lit dynamic shots, slow camera sweeps, prolonged periods of silence that created profound feelings of uncertainty and dread Scott created a sort of harrowing, unsettling atmosphere that captivated audiences and left them with a certain anxiety as to what will happen next. Alien would soon become a colossal success commercially and breed many sequels and a few prequels, which would also create a divide among fans who argue whether or not the Alien films to come were for better or for worse. David Seed describes the film’s nature transitioning from being horrified to being anxious once the alien creature gets loose on the crew’s spacecraft. They write in their article Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction that “The alien then escapes into the Nostromo and the film builds up to a powerful claustrophobia as the crew attempt to track it down. Scott introduced a subsidiary theme in revealing that one of the crew members was an android under orders from ‘the company’ (never named) to bring the alien home.” (Seed 39) This creates an entirely new type of extreme concern because now not only does the threat of the face hugging alien on board loom, but it seems that the main character can trust only herself in this desolate setting.  The success of the series cannot be chalked up to Ridley Scott’s vision for an art house-esk, sci-fi monster movie alone and therefore we look to the other most vital and defining point in the series, the character of Ellen Ripley whom sort of acts as the first female lead in a science fiction film of this success level.

           Ellen Ripley, portrayed in the film by Sigourney Weaver, was unlike any typical hero seen in this genre before. Unlike stoic, rugged, and arguably boring white male space captains like James Kirk or Han Solo, Ripley was a rule following, protocol based solider whose goal ultimately became to survive and warn Earth of the alien lifeforms inhabiting the planet of LV-426 that wiped out the entirety of Ripley’s crew except for her and of course unlike the aforementioned space heroes that were designed for white male audience members to put themselves in their place, Ripley was a woman—Not a woman boxed into the ‘damsel in distress’ category but a unique and dynamic character whom many film critics regard as a sort of catalyst for female leads in the science fiction genre. In the words of Jennifer Lynn Ruben in her article Illusionary Strength: An Analysis of Female Empowerment in Science Fiction and Horror Films in Fatal Attraction, Aliens, and The Stepford Wives; “While some scholars argue against Ripley’s empowerment, other scholars suggest the female protagonist illustrates a woman’s empowerment in two ways: through 1) a traditional maternal role and 2) a nontraditional leadership role. Unlike the damsel in distress, Ripley displays characteristics of a mother, a leader, and a fighter.” (Ruben 28) Ripley is a female lead whom is not hindered by her maternity, which is how it seems to be most commonly perceived, but rather empowered by it. Her maternal nature is not quite as evident in Alien, though still highlighted from time to time through her caring of her cat “Jones.” At the end of the first film, Ripley freezes herself cryogenically embracing the cat, Jones, in her arms as if to symbolically sow the seeds of motherhood that would play as a much larger theme in the sequel Aliens.

           Aliens, directed by James Cameron, starts with Ripley in a hospital being greeted by a man, Burke, who tells her she was lucky to of even been found. Before Ripley agrees to be sent on another alien-chasing mission it is revealed that she had been in a frozen sleep for over fifty years and had lost a daughter. With no crew or child, Ripley seems devoid of purpose until ultimately agreeing to another journey into space, this time to a different planet where a group of rugged marines who seem to be excited for the sport of hunting aliens. Much like in Alien, characters are slowly picked off and the chain of command dwindles to the less and less qualified, until arriving at the character Private Hudson who is seemingly not up for the task and therefore Ripley must yet again lead. Ripley’s maternity is defined when on the planet they find the young girl, Newt, is the lone survivor on this planet invested with the same horrific, acid-blooded aliens from the first film. Ripley immediately seems concerned with the young girl Newt’s safety, in a way replacing the lost role of her daughter. Newt runs from the marines and will only talk with Ripley in a very intimate ‘mother-daughter’ scene in which in the two are talking in a small, womb-like room on the abandoned base and Ripley assures Newt’s safety. She puts herself and the remaining crew at great risk to ensure the safety of Newt, who all things considered is more of a liability than an asset, sort of cementing Ripley’s priority as a mother. Ripley is not the only character representative of motherhood, as the alien itself is as well. Often referred to as a ‘Queen’ the alien is characterized as more a ‘bad’ mother whereas Ripley is the ‘good’ mother. (Taubin 95) There are underlying race connotations between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mother as Ripley acts as sort of the ideal, white savior mother leaving the alien to be characterized as a profoundly stereotypical ethnic mother. “If Ripley is the prototypical, upper middle class WASP, the alien queen bears a suspicious resemblance to a favorite scapegoat of the Reagan/Bush era – the black welfare mother, that is a parasite on the economy whose uncurbed reproductive drive reduced hard-working taxpayers to bankruptcy.” (Taubin 95) The underlying comparison is entirely disturbing and reflective of the way a black mother was viewed in society during the film’s release.

           Despite any negative race connotation apparent in James Cameron’s Aliens, the series itself is generally held in a positive light by critics and film analysts for empowering women in the science fiction genre, even if Ellen Ripley still fits the role of the white savior, she was the first to truly do so as the female lead which arguably set the path for further representation for women in the science fiction genre. One is inclined, however, to question Ripley’s relationship to Newt. To me, it seems as the role of a mother is sort of thrust onto Ripley in the second film as if for no other reason than to feminize her further. As I stated before, Ripley in the first movie was very much a rule follower and insisted on doing things professionally and by the book for as long as she possibly could, which is why it seems odd that she is so quick and willing to put the entirety of her remaining crew at risk to save this child she knew nothing about. The inclusion of Ripley having a lost child too was simply just placed in our laps with no previous indication as if solely to justify the reason she cares for the young girl Newt so much—Replacing the role of Ripley’s lost daughter. Regardless of this personal critique of the mother daughter relationship of Ripley and Newt, Ripley has solidified her place in the history of science fiction as one of the first and most defining female leads.                                            

                                                                   Works Cited

           “The Alien Trilogy: From Feminism to AIDS,” Amy Taubin, Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader, edited by Pam Cook and Philip Dodd, Temple University Press, 1993, 93-100

           David Seed, Chapter 1: “Voyages into Space” (6-26) & Chapter 2: “Alien Encounters” (27-46) in Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2011

             Ruben, J. L. (2012). Illusionary Strength: An Analysis of Female Empowerment in Science Fiction and Horror Films in Fatal Attraction,

Aliens, and The Stepford Wives (Master’s thesis). Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio.

[just-a-gone-girl-blog]

Posting Tips and hints: Ten Strategies to Generate Transparent, Wash Prose

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