#or this worked better in a romantic comedy movie that put more emphasis on the comedy

[maddie-grove]

This is so depressing.

[the-rewatch-rewind]

New episode! Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most-watched movies in 20 years. Today I will be talking about #38: MGM’s 2001 comedy Legally Blonde, directed by Robert Luketic, written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith based on a novel by Amanda Brown, and starring Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, and Selma Blair.

Legally Blonde is the story of Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), who thinks her boyfriend Warner (Matthew Davis) is about to propose, but instead he dumps her because he thinks she’s too frivolous for him. So to prove him wrong, Elle gets into Harvard Law School, which is where Warner is headed, but when she arrives she finds that he has already gotten engaged to another law student, Vivian (Selma Blair), who fits into the law school scene much better than Elle does, at least at first. After many setbacks, Elle starts to realize that she’s actually more interested in becoming a lawyer than winning back her boyfriend.

I still vividly remember the first time I was made aware of this movie. I happened to walk into the room where my mom was watching it, and she was at the scene in the restaurant when Elle thinks Warner is about to propose, and I thought it looked like the worst movie ever, and I immediately left in disgust. At some point around then I also saw part of the trial scene as an example of how courtrooms are portrayed on screen, but I don’t think I put together that they were from the same movie. Once I actually gave Legally Blonde a chance and sat down and watched the whole thing, I absolutely loved it. The first time I watched it was in 2006, and I saw it five times in that year alone, and then three times in 2007. After that I calmed down a bit, and watched it once each in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020. So I’ve seen it 15 times, and over half of those were just in 2006 and 2007. I think it’s appropriate that my first impression of Legally Blonde turned out to be so inaccurate because that’s basically the theme of this movie: so many people misjudge and underestimate Elle, and she proves them all wrong in an extremely satisfying way, just as the movie turned out to be far more intriguing and powerful than it appeared from that one out of context scene. This was a good and important lesson for me to learn as a teenager, and I really do feel like this movie helped me become a less judgmental person overall.

Given my emphasis in the previous episodes on how much I love that Mary Poppins and Emperor’s New Groove don’t have romantic storylines, it may seem strange to immediately pivot to a romantic comedy, but Legally Blonde is no ordinary rom com – in fact, I’m not convinced it even is a rom com. Though the story begins romantically, with Elle focused on marrying Warner, as it progresses the romantic aspect becomes less and less important. Watching Elle realize that she doesn’t have to just be the trophy wife of a successful man, which was the only future she’d been able to see for herself before, is beautiful. And while there are some romantic elements to the rest of the story, the movie places just as much, if not more, emphasis on friendship than romance, something I personally would love to see more of.

From the very beginning, even when Elle thinks she’s getting engaged, we see her surrounded by her sorority sisters. And after the breakup, those same friends help her work on getting into law school. They don’t really understand her struggles once she’s there, but two of them do show up to her first trial, which I love both because they’re very funny and because it shows that you don’t have to fully understand a friend to support them. The first close relationship Elle forms after moving to Harvard is a friendship with manicurist Paulette, played by the fabulous Jennifer Coolidge. Granted, a significant part of their friendship involves dating advice, which I don’t love – I think my least favorite part of the movie is the whole “bend and snap” scene, it just never made sense to me – but there’s a lot more to it than that. Elle helps Paulette get her dog back from her ex, and Paulette helps Elle gain confidence in her new role as a law student. This relationship helps Elle through the toughest part of law school when all the other students disdain her, although eventually she befriends some of them. It’s awesome to watch Vivian and Elle go from rivals to friends as they both realize that Warner isn’t good enough for either of them. Elle also befriends David Kidney (Oz Perkins) – again initially by helping him get a date, but their friendship soon progresses beyond that. Also fun fact that I just relatively recently learned – Oz Perkins is the son of Anthony Perkins, as in, the Anthony Perkins who played Norman Bates in Psycho.

And speaking of movie stars from the 1960s, Raquel Welch makes an appearance in Legally Blonde, as Mrs. Windham Vandermark, the first wife of the murder victim in the trial that is the main focus of the second half of the movie. One of Elle’s professors, Callahan (played by Victor Garber), is defending the victim’s second wife, who is accused of the murder, and Elle is one of the interns helping with the case. The team sends Elle to interview the first wife when they find out she’s at a spa because they assume she and Elle will get along, but they very much do not, which is another example of characters misjudging and misunderstanding her. Elle does, however, get along very well with the defendant, Brooke Taylor Windham (Ali Larter), who was in the same sorority as Elle, though not at the same time. Most of the legal team seems to think Brooke is probably guilty, but Elle knows she’s not, using the flawless logic that since Brooke is a prominent fitness instructor, and therefore exercises a lot, as I quoted at the end of last episode, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t shoot their husbands. They just don’t.” The rest of the team doesn’t exactly buy this, but Elle’s belief in her leads Brooke to trust Elle more than she trusts anyone else, and that, in addition to Elle remaining true to herself despite being encouraged not to, is what allows them to win the case.

So far I’ve neglected to mention Emmett (Luke Wilson), the lawyer who supports and believes in Elle, and apparently starts dating her after the trial. I personally don’t love that they end up together, I feel like it kind of undermines the message that she doesn’t need romance to be fulfilled, although it is pretty clear that this relationship is just icing on the cake rather than her whole reason for being, in contrast to her relationship with Warner. Elle and Emmett do have some cute scenes together, but we don’t really see them interact in a way that indicates they’re anything other than friends. The movie never really feels like it’s about their romance, which makes sense because originally they weren’t even meant to officially end up together.

The film was going to end with Elle walking out of the courtroom after winning the case. The scene of her dumping Warner plus the whole epilogue with her graduation speech and the words on screen explaining what happened to everyone were added because test audiences thought the story felt unfinished. While it is extremely satisfying to watch her telling off Warner and to know for sure that she excelled in her remaining two years of law school, it’s a little frustrating to know that in the original version I would have been able to cling to my headcanon that Elle and Emmett were friends. From a storytelling perspective, I appreciate the symmetry of beginning with Elle thinking she’s about to get engaged and ending with her actually about to get engaged, but from an aroace perspective, I’m irritated that marriage has to be part of the happy ending even in this otherwise romance-light film. I’m happy for Elle that she found someone who loves her for who she is, but I don’t like the implication that every close, supportive relationship between a man and a woman must necessarily be romantic and sexual. It also bothers me that the ending tells us that Warner has no girlfriend as if singleness is the worst possible fate, although that may be an unfair interpretation. We’ve seen that he doesn’t really treat women as people, so it’s probably good that he doesn’t have a girlfriend, and it also says that he graduated with no honors and no job offers in addition to no girlfriend, so it’s not like singleness is his only punishment. I just don’t like how often singleness is treated as the just deserts of the villain, as if being single is inherently miserable. But the ending doesn’t say anything about Vivian having a new boyfriend, just that she dumped Warner and is now friends with Elle, so it’s not quite as straightforward as the heroes get romance and the villains are single, which I appreciate.

Even with this ending, Legally Blonde is very clearly a movie about identity and friendship and integrity that also includes some romance, not a romantic film. So it’s very interesting to me that it is often categorized as a romantic comedy. It’s almost like the fact that it’s pink and has a female protagonist and was written by women leads people to assume it must be a “chick flick”, and obviously all chick flicks are rom coms because all women want is a fluffy story about a woman falling in love with a man, right? I want to make it clear that I’m not disparaging rom coms or the people who enjoy them; what I’m criticizing here is the all-too-common practice of shoving rom coms along with any other movie marketed toward women into the same inferior category. The funny thing is, by seeing these movies this way, people are making the exact same mistake Warner makes at the beginning of Legally Blonde (and admittedly the same one I made before I’d watched the whole thing) of equating femininity – or at least, a certain type of femininity – with frivolity. But just as Warner turned out to be the loser when he dumped Elle, people who dismiss this movie are missing out. It is delightful and powerful, and Reese Witherspoon’s performance in particular is fabulous. Her comedic timing and sensibilities are flawless. And the feeling of watching her in the courtroom after Elle takes over the case, start off floundering and unsure of herself, and then seeing that lightbulb go off when she figures it out, is so elating. A big part of what makes that moment so satisfying is how realistically and sympathetically Elle has been portrayed throughout the movie. It would have been easy to make a character like this too over-the-top and ridiculous, but the writing and acting keep her grounded and real while also portraying her as quirky and unique, and the movie is worth watching for that alone.

However, I must say that certain aspects of Legally Blonde have not aged particularly well. For example, it bothers me more and more that, with Brooke’s alibi that she doesn’t want to reveal, they get so close to addressing the harm of placing impossible body standards on women, but don’t quite go there, portraying Emmett as unreasonable for pointing out that she made her fortune by telling women that they’re too fat. The movie also has a few gay characters, but the representation leaves much to be desired, as one might expect from a film made in the early 2000s. They’re basically reduced to stereotypes, and the public outing of a gay man against his will, based on his knowledge of shoe designers, is played for laughs – although, while outing someone is horrible, I would argue that lying about sleeping with someone to get them wrongfully convicted of murder is worse, so…it’s complicated. But, like forcing the happily ever after to include romance after emphasizing that romance is not the most important thing, the movie again undermines its own message here. It’s odd that it puts gay people into stereotypical boxes when the whole story is about how people are so much more than the way society sees them. As a queer teen who didn’t know I was queer, just that I was somehow different from most of my peers, it was incredibly satisfying to watch Elle learn that she didn’t have to fit into a pre-existing mold and could just be herself. But in some ways now it kind of feels to me like it’s saying, “Be yourself and don’t care what other people think of you – as long as you end up in a heterosexual relationship” and I don’t love that. So that’s probably part of why I don’t watch it as much anymore. But I don’t mean to imply that these problems completely ruin the movie; it still has a lot of great moments, and I would still recommend it. I should also mention that I’ve never read the book this movie is based on or watched the sequel, and I’ve also never seen or listened to the musical adaptation, so it’s possible that some of these issues might be at least somewhat rectified in one or more of those versions.

Overall, despite its flaws, this is a movie that encourages people to embrace the parts of their identity and personality that others dismiss, and that was a message I desperately needed to hear as a teenager. There are certainly other movies that portray this even better, but Legally Blonde happens to be one that I latched onto, probably at least partly because I had such low expectations and was then pleasantly surprised.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most-rewatched movies! Remember to rate and leave a review if you want, and subscribe or follow to hear more. Next up is another movie I watched 15 times while keeping track that is only two minutes longer than this one, although unlike Legally Blonde I had seen it multiple times before 2003. As always I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

[byneddiedingo]

Audrey Hepburn, James Garner, and Shirley MacLaine in The Children's Hour (William Wyler, 1961) Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner, Miriam Hopkins, Fay Bainter, Karen Balkin, Veronica Cartwright, Mimi Gibson, Debbie Moldow, Diane Mountford, William Mims, Sally Brophy, Hope Summers. Screenplay: John Michael Hayes, Lillian Hellman, based on a play by Hellman. Cinematography: Franz Planer. Art direction: Fernando Carrere. Film editing: Robert Swink. Music: Alex North. Time has not been kind to Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour, either the play or the second film adaptation. It had been filmed once before, also under the direction of William Wyler, as These Three, in 1936, only two years after it had become a Broadway sensation. At that time, the central accusation that the two schoolmistresses, Karen and Martha, were lesbians had to be changed to a heterosexual moral transgression -- that both were lovers of the same man, Dr. Joe Cardin. Despite this bowdlerization, there are many who think that the earlier movie is the better one, largely because it puts the emphasis on what Hellman said was the play's theme: "the power of a lie." In our contemporary climate, the idea that Karen and Martha might be lovers has much less power to shock, so that to our eyes, the furor that arises from a child's confused and devious accusation seems excessive. But perhaps more to the point is an artistic one: In today's LGBT community the idea that a work of fiction dealing with non-heterosexual relationships has to end in the death of one or more of its supposed transgressors has been labeled a "kill the queers syndrome." Even more recent films such as Boys Don't Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999) and Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005), though praised for dealing candidly with transgender characters and gay relationships, have been faulted for too easily resolving their plots by having their central characters murdered by bigots. The Children's Hour falls more blatantly into this trap with Martha's suicide, which seems not to come out of anything integral to the character but instead out of the need for a dramatic conclusion to the play and film. It's a film with good performances, though its actors sometimes have to struggle against their star personae. James Garner was so familiar as a smart aleck on the TV series Maverick that he feels a little miscast as Dr. Cardin, Karen's fiancé, who is unable to convince her that he may indeed have believed in the rumor about her relationship with Martha. Audrey Hepburn, too, carries the aura of winsome romantic comedy heroine into her performance as Karen, but is more successful at overcoming the image. Of the three leads, Shirley MacLaine is the most successful, since she doesn't have to deal with a too-precisely established screen persona, and she brings real depth to Martha's conflicts, including her simmering resentment of Karen's supposed abandonment of their plans in order to marry Joe, and her anguished recognition of her possibly repressed lesbianism. But the real standouts in the cast are the supporting players, Miriam Hopkins (who had played Martha in These Three) as the flibbertigibbet Aunt Lily and Fay Bainter, Oscar-nominated for her role as Amelia Tilford, whose credulity when her niece tells her the lie about Karen and Martha brings about the crisis. Wyler's direction is, as always, precise and professional, and the art direction of Fernando Carrere and the cinematography of Franz Planer make the primary setting, the girls school, follow the film's changes in mood, from innocent to grim.

[theromanticscrooge]

Thoughts on Apriltello Across the Animated TMNT Series

After watching the Rise of the TMNT episode “Donnie Vs Witch Town,” I’ve been wanting to chime in on this topic.

My big introduction to TMNT in general was the 2012 series, so I’ve kept a few tabs on Donnie and April in the 2003, 2012, and 2018 series. From what I can tell, there’s been more of a highlight on these two as each new animated series comes out. It just depends on how Donnie or April are set up and written in each one as to what kind of dynamic they share.

2003

In the 2003 series, April seems to be a few years older than the turtles. Over the course of the series, she becomes the older sister figure of the group. She and Splinter are the guardian/parental figures of the group in certain situations. The turtles are ready to deliver nosy sibling banter and jokes when she goes out with Casey. And she’s lived in the sewers with the turtles as often as they’ve taken temporary residence above her antique shop.

In combat situations or missions, April usually acts as back-up, filling the role of ongoing research assistant to the turtles when they’re out in the field. Or, for a better description, she serves a role similar to what the Oracle does with Batman.

In regards to her dynamic with Donnie in specific, I’d say that they’re best friends and lab partners. They share strong mutual interests in science and technology. They even collaborate often enough to where Donnie has commented on how valuable her feedback is to him.

There’s one scene in particular where Donnie gets excited after April makes the comment “I could kiss you!” after he steps in and tries to rescue her. This is a one-off scene, though. April’s romantic interest is focused on Casey. And Donnie never expresses interest in trying to make any moves or pursuing any kind of romantic relationship. I think Donnie would go for it if April showed genuine interest. Otherwise, he’s satisfied being just friends.

2012

In the 2012 series, April is fifteen; the same age as all four turtles. She’s a friend, confidant, fellow kunoichi, and an adoptive member of their family.

Donnie is smitten with April from the moment he sees her and his infatuation grows deeper over the course of the series. His feelings are painfully obvious, he can get overbearing with his attempts to flirt with or impress April, and he can come across as clingy and creepy. He places April on a pedestal to the point that he can’t relax around her enough to get to know her as a three dimensional person rather than an idealized love interest.

One episode shows Donnie developing enough self awareness to approach April and tell her he’ll be better about giving her space. But it doesn’t really stick. Or, more specifically, there aren’t any other significant scenes or moments that show a deliberate shift in Donnie’s behavior or his dynamic with April.

On April’s part, she likes Donnie well enough. He’s her favorite turtle and she’s been openly affectionate in expressing her gratitude or fondness towards him. She appreciates him going out of his way to help her and her dad. The largest problem is the lack of communication. Donnie and April don’t really share their feelings well: Donnie is too forceful and can’t read the room where April seems reluctant to outright address Donnie’s feelings for fear of hurting him or otherwise.

It’s dubious how much Donnie and April have in common, too. Science and technology are the center of Donnie’s life. Sometimes, April calls one of his inventions “cool,” but there’s also been a scene where she looked bored to tears as he was describing one of his latest inventions. Donnie and April watch TV together in a big group, but there’s little to no hints at mutual interests they share or activities they’d exclusively do together.

Compare Donnie and April with Casey and April. Casey and April share chemistry from their first scene onward. He has just the right amount of self-confidence and awareness that his flirting is cool and casual. They’re comfortable around each other. April openly flirts back, banters, and has fun with Casey. She even uses “date with Casey” as a plausible cover for her outings with the group at large. If April did start up a committed romantic relationship with any character, Casey would be the most likely choice. It’d just take a couple of scenes where they had a more meaningful stare, kiss, whatever. In short, the groundwork was there. Casey and April have exactly what Donnie and April lack in more casual settings and situations.

There’s hints that Donnie and April are together in the last season. Because of how big a part Donnie’s crush on April is to his character, I’m not keen on hand-waving that all of that development happened off-screen. When romantic relationships contribute to a character’s growth or writing in a significant way, I want to see what leads up to that and how it impacts that character.

As a concept, I think Donnie’s intense crush is an interesting setup and painfully relatable. The way he acts is believable and accurate to what a lovesick socially awkward nerd can be like. But I wanted to see Donnie back off and actively work on how he acts around April. As in, he catches himself before he makes yet another awkward gift or unwanted over-the-top gesture. For me, the ideal end result would be an organic, gradual shift towards Donnie developing a healthy friendship with April.

2018

In the 2018 series, April is sixteen. According to the ages listed in the fan wiki, she’s a year older than Donnie. She’s considered part of the family to the point Splinter coaches her as much as his own kids and makes a point of wanting to meet her parents. She’s good friends with all of the turtles and it’s implied she hung out exclusively with them until she met Sunida.

But Donnie is definitely her best friend. He’s the first one she calls for help with tech related issues. They have the same taste in Jupiter Jim movies and video games. And Donnie designed part of his metal shell to accommodate April if they travel by air. There’s also a handful of episodes that specifically follow Donnie and April; and these two are the most likely dynamic duo to star in a one-off episode out of the main cast.

Unlike the 2003 and 2012 series, there’s plenty of scenes and dialogue to articulate what kind of dynamic these two share. They’re visibly comfortable around each other, share fantastic chemistry, and have complementary personalities. Donnie is snarky, arrogant, and puts on a front to mask his insecurities or doubts. He doubles down unless someone pulls him aside and talks things out. More often than not, April’s willingness to be blunt and no-nonsense helps reign him in. Where Donnie helps April troubleshoot tech, she keeps him grounded.

These two have a solid enough dynamic that a friends to lovers setup could play out in a satisfying, well done way; as long as they still had the same open communication anyway. That said, though, I prefer them as just friends in canon. They’re one of the better guy and girl friendships I’ve seen in a more comedy-centric episodic cartoon in awhile (after Rad and Enid in O.K. K.O.). 

Conclusion

Rise of the TMNT has the best Donnie and April dynamic in my opinion.

It pretty much boils down to Rise giving characters individual attention and writing as well as Rise knowing exactly how this take on Donnie and April works, how they fit, and why they fit. The 2003 series was more focused on telling a grand, ongoing adventure than much emphasis on the characters themselves. There just wasn’t as much of Donnie and April highlighted in the ’03 series as there is in Rise. The 2012 series was bogged down with enough exec mandates and other writing issues that Donnie and April probably got sidelined in favor of other plot points and character writing. It needed more time and focus to feel more fleshed out and cohesive than it turned out.

I used to write long, rambly takes called The Shipping Corner on why I thought Character A was a good fit for Character B. When I’d sit down to cobble something together, I felt like I had my best results if I could unpack why a character acted a certain way and articulate how the other character fit into or impacted their life. If given a week or so, I think I could write up a Shipping Corner for Donnie and April in Rise. I don’t think I could write one for them in the 2012 TMNT.

It’s been a few years, but The Shipping Corner still determines some parts and pieces of my shipping interests or even how I analyze some characters.

[yinxiong]

do u have any anime recs?? ive only watched the popular ones like haikyuu, bnha and aot but its kinda overwhelming to look for new ones so im asking u since i know & trust that u have good taste

ooohhhhhh boyyyy im vibrating bc 1) you’re asking me for anime recs 2) yOU SAID I HAVE GOOD TASTE HDJK THANK 🥺💞

okay but being serious here ,,, i’m not sure exactly what genres you’re looking for so i’ll put a list of my favorites + other ones similar to those 3 you might enjoy :))) if you have anything specific in mind lmk !!! i recently compiled a list of everything i’ve watched / tried to watch (it’s quite embarrassing actually) so hopefully there’s something you’ll like on there 😊

fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood

genre: shounen, action, fantasy, women characters being badass

very brief summary: two boys learn alchemy and try to get their bodies back, ends up unravelling government conspiracy in the process

this is my all time favorite uhdfdjks

top tier, a masterpiece truly

i'd rate it 100/10 but it surpasses that honestly

it's just really REALLY good

might be a little bit slow in the beginning but trust me it picks up quickly

if you’re interested it’s originally a manga and has some more details the anime left out !!!

assassination classroom / ansatsu kyoushitsu

genre: shounen, school, action, kids being kids but with knives and guns

brief summary: a class of kids are assigned to kill a super monster before he blows up the earth in exactly one year - the catch is that he’s their homeroom teacher :D

basically kids learning how to be assassins but also trying to pass school and it's all very heartfelt and you WILL adopt them all

10/10 i cry every time

honestly watch this first it’s very easy to follow

also a manga with a few storylines the anime left out, not crucial but i recommend anyways since i read it first before the anime even came out and it just has a special place in my heart

noragami

genre: shounen, urban fantasy, gods being literal disasters someone pls help them

brief summary: a girl accidentally meets an unknown god and asks him for his help, slowly learns more about his world (i’m so sorry this is really vague but it’ll all be covered in the first episode trust me)

the gods can find spirits (dead people) and turn them into weapons if that’s cool

sexy animation !!!!!

only big flaw with the anime is that they mess up the main character’s characterization a little bit so you might want to read the manga? also only has two seasons and the manga is further along ,,, but everyone is currently stressed tf out over the plot ohmygod ,,,

gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun

genre: romantic comedy but heavy emphasis on comedy, slice of life, literal chaos

brief summary: a girl has a crush on a guy who turns out to be a manga artist, she winds up being his assistant (this barely covers it though)

a bunch of high school kids being chaotic and oblivious

just watch it i can’t really explain it in words you’ll be laughing a lot

only one season so if you enjoy there’s also more chaos in the manga

your lie in april / shigatsu wa kimi no uso

genre: shoujo, classical music !!!!

brief summary: a former piano prodigy who no longer plays because he can’t hear music meets a violinist that brings color into his life once again

look

this is top tier

so beautiful hhdjfdks

i watched this on my new tv and shed real tears

as a pianist/musician i adore it a lot hhhhh the pieces they chose to play are all the favs (i performed a medley with my violinist friend for a show once hahahah)

a little sad tho beware of feels

the opening song is like . so freaking well known omg

akame ga kill!

genre: shounen, action, lots of fighting and blood, war

brief summary: a boy joins a group of assassins who are working to overthrow the shithole government (yea sounds kind of basic but there’s more to it)

mainly just girls with weapons

i mean there’s guys too but the girls are the best characters

the weapons are lowkey magical too

yea this is where my nickname came from lol

the anime gets a 7/10 but the manga probably 8/10

manga is darker, more graphic but better plotwise

no game no life

genre: shounen, a bit of ecchi ugh, lots of mind games

brief summary: two genius gamer siblings get transported to a world where everything is decided by games, they decide they want to beat god

very colorful and pretty animation!!!!

there’s some questionable “fanservice” moments but ignoring that the plot is legit

only one season tho :(( pls it was so popular when it came out where is s2

there is a movie prequel, a lot more angsty but still vv good

ao haru ride

genre: shoujo, the usual high school romance, slice of life

brief summary: a girl meets the guy she used to have a crush on, only to find that his personality has completely changed (she has too though)

insert falling back in love

one of the shoujo classics haha

i binged this in one night a few weeks ago

not sure if it was worth it but i had fun lmao

just a low stakes cute anime

also very pretty

only 12 eps, the manga finishes later

given

genre: just music boys being gay lol (jk it’s kind of sad)

brief summary: a boy learns to move on from his ex by joining a band (this is possibly the shittiest summary ever but i dont wanna give anything away hdjhkjs)

just watch it lmao it’ll make sense

idiot boys

band boys !!!

feels but not overwhelming

the comedy is top notch though

i adore given so much hhjkdf waiting for the movie to come out

THE MUSIC IS SO GOOD

all the songs are on spotify i listen to them way too much

yuri on ice

genre: figure skaters being gay that’s all you need to know

brief summary: a figure skater falls into a slump, somehow winds up with the top skater as his coach (yet another shitty summary sorry)

hmm this isn’t actually one of my favorites but it’s popular enough so why not

i just really love figure skating hfjdks

it’s pretty accurate i’d say! there are even easter eggs of top men skaters irl hahah

definitely dramatized lol

but still pretty fun

bungou stray dogs

genre: shounen, urban fantasy, very dapper mafia / detectives

brief summary: a kid on the run after getting kicked out of his orphanage accidentally saves a detective, shit goes down from there

pretty fun as you learn about their powers, watch them solve mysteries

the fighting is cool too

until the machine guns appear ugh i just tune that part out

oh yea all the characters are named for actual literary figures and i didnt realize until s2 💀

fairy tail

genre: shounen, magic/fantasy, action, friends !!!!!

brief summary: just mages in guilds going on quests lolol what more do you want

fr it’s honestly quite chill

like there’s definitely an ongoing plot and lots of subplots / arcs

but it’s very character driven

so many cool character designs

was OBSESSED w this in middle school ,,, highkey embarrassing omg

one of the big anime/manga, if you like bnha i’m sure you’ll have fun with fairy tail

this was a stupidly long list and im clearly way too excited ,,, if you have any questions or just want to scream about any of these, my inbox is always open ;)))

[notthefilmreview]

I watched SET IT UP because I love LUCY LIU and ZOEY DEUTCH

Hey, it’s Dana!

The title basically says it all. Who doesn’t love Lucy Liu? (you can fight me if you don’t) She is seriously a *goddess*. As well as this, she was also the female Asian representation we had before the likes of London Tipton and Lara Jean (who are both, in their own way, utterly *iconic* - especially London because we need some dumb Asians once in a while, please and thank you).

This leads us into a nice segway to Zoey Deutch who starred alongside Brenda Song in The Suite Life on Deck as Maya (if you didn’t already know). It was a nice callback to my childhood because Zoey Deutch seems to be starring in more films (such as Zombieland 2) and is getting more publicity. But I will always remember her as Maya from Suite Life.

As for the two male leads, I don’t really know them that well but it does seem as though there is a lot of diversity and representation in the cast so I’m quite excited!

I love how her hair is just *chaotic* reflecting her job as an assistant being so overwhelming and crazy, which we witnessed in the opening scene with all the examples of assistants doing all the dirty work for their bosses.

OMG look at her! She is such a boss queen I love her so much!

A bit unrelated but his office looks really clean but quite empty. His office looks a bit like a shopping centre which is a bit off-putting. 

I’m a bit confused about why she cries over sports so I hope they answer that with a backstory or something. However, even if they do decide to explain it with a backstory it’s probably going to be a weird one that’s meant for comedic effect. 

Talking about the comedy, they do try to make a few jokes (such as her getting emotional over senior citizens playing sports in front of her boss and her crying once again over sports in her own home) but they haven’t actually made me laugh yet. So I really hope they improve the comedy or I’m going to be a tad bit disappointed.

I didn’t think it would annoy me this much but the fact that his office looks like a shopping centre keeps distracting me! Lucy Liu’s office looks perfecting fine it’s just Rick’s office which is quite annoying because the film predominately takes place in their offices.

Okay, so I think I finally (possibly) understand why Zoey Deutch’s character cries over sports so much because she wants to write for Kirsten’s website so she has a weird passion for sports - POSSIBLY…

However, I still remain utterly confused.

Awwwww the Creepy Maintenance Guy Tim is actually so *adorable* - I can’t! All he wants is a “SUCCULENT” but no matter how much he cares for them they just end up slowly dying because he works on the ground floor.

Also, it was quite nice of him to help them get Rick and Kirsten get stuck in the elevator.

That elevator scene, on the other hand, was seriously horrible. I believe it was an attempt at comedy (which actually seemed more comedic in the trailer) but played out, it was more awkward and sickening than funny.

Actually, they should bring back Creepy Tim because he was the only one who made me laugh a tiny bit.

“I hope you took the stairs.”

That was actually kind of a funny callback to the elevator scene where the guy who got locked in the elevator with them said he would only take the stairs because he’s claustrophobic but that day he decided to take the elevator instead…then he pissed himself.

This kiss cam scene was quite fun especially when the whole stadium started chanting for them to kiss.

My only critique is that there was a lot of anticipation and buildup in the lead up to the kiss but the camera only stayed on the kiss cam for about a few seconds before panning back to the assistants. I think it would’ve been a lot more *impactful* if they decided to leave it on Rick and Kirsten for a while and even zoom into their faces so we could see their full reaction to kissing each other and their realisation that they like each other. Then they pan the camera to their assistants and everyone cheering for them.

Lucy Liu just looks stunning in this suit. Omg, slay!

That’s it.

While it is a bit overexaggerating to argue over Korean BBQ, it was a bit rude of Rick to not let Kirsten invite him to come to dinner and show him how to eat the food he’s never tried before. Rick just seems a tad bit too proud to be with a strong, independent, entrepreneur like Kirsten.

Also, not to take any sides (but we can all see that I love Lucy Liu too much to not take her side) but Rick just seems like a man-child because he keeps smashing valuable items. I know he’s probably worth billions of dollars but computers and printers are *expensive* and every time he smashes one it hurts my soul.

Drunk Rick is lowkey funny though…(is it rude to say that I like him better drunk?)

But damn Lucy Liu does look fine…

I support Duncan and Harper’s friendship!

I do see what they’re trying to do here by creating this friendship to compare with Suze (Charlie’s girlfriend), who Duncan had previously said had no personality. I think they’re attempting to do the gay best friend trope to have Duncan push Charlie and Harper together by the end of the film.

I did find it funny when Harper revealed the first guy she ever had sex with came out as gay while coming inside of her probably because of the play on words (and the dirty joke, duh).

I did like this dancing scene because it was just weird and wacky. The lighting and the music was just so fitting. 

I am enjoying the buildup of Harper and Charlie’s relationship and it was fun to watch Charlie spin her while she was all drunk.

Also, when she said “I want pizza” after he spun her around - I relate so much! The romantic music playing while they were eating the pizza was actually quite funny but also magical at the same time because you can really tell they’ve finally fallen for each other. And it was over PIZZA. 

If that’s not romance then I don’t know what is.

Just a sidetrack but I love Zoey Deutch’s outfit with the tartan skirt.

Oh wow, okay! Just when you thought you could finally allow yourself to like Rick he goes, he decides to have a one night stand with his ex-wife! Before his wedding! With Kirsten!

Kirsten just deserves way better than Rick and only Harper knows that she does! #KirstenDeservesBetter.

This part before the ending is one of those cliches where she finally gets the time to write her article and he gets that promotion he wants and they both realise the mistakes they made until they finally come back together.

I usually find these bits boring and useless because they’ve been played out so many times in several different movies that you know everything’s going to be sorted out by the end of the movie.

Not to hate on Suze but she does take incredibly small bites of a $70 steak and she does put her cutlery on the table while she eats. They may be eating in a fancy restaurant where everything is super clean but that’s still quite unsanitary. Sorry, Suze.

Finally! I’ve been waiting for this moment since I laid eyes on Rick and he got what he deserves! Also, it was quite funny when one of the guys mistook Charlie’s big speech as him trying to win Kirsten from Rick. Not gonna lie, but if I was Charlie I would have just gone with it, grab Kirsten, then yeet off far far away from Rick.

Ahhhhh! Okay, this ending was fantastic! I love how he was just straightforward with the yes “I like you” and I love their cute little banter just before kissing. 

So overall this movie wasn’t great at first, as they tried too hard to be funny when the jokes just didn’t quite land. However, as the movie progressed, the jokes were still not great but they did deserve a small laugh or grin (emphasis on the *small*)

The relationship between Kirsten and Rick did play out well and it was a good choice to finally have Kirsten dump Rick’s ass after she realised they truly did not know anything about each other (and she needed someone who was more of her equal rather than a man-child who’s threatened by a strong woman). I did want Charlie to tell Kirsten that Rick got back with his ex-wife before their wedding because that would’ve been the icing on the top of the reasons why everyone should hate Rick! (Get rid of the Rick’s in your life, girls, just saying!)

As for Harper and Charlie’s relationship, I’m quite satisfied with how it progressed slowly through the movie with the highlights of their relationship being the dancing scene and them eating pizza together, then that final kiss (which was just perfect!)

What movie should I watch next???

Bonus:

Yayyyyy Crazy Tim! This was actually a nice callback to Crazy Tim by having him see them kissing on the CCTV camera because we all know he just loves love and wants everyone to fall in love and be happy!

#CrazyTimDeservesLove!

[scribblewriting65]

Top 5 YouTube Channels

Intro

Communication is a powerful and ever-changing force; especially with the rise of the Internet in recent decades. And no online service knows this better than YouTube. Hosting thousands of channels and millions of videos, no website has sucked away our free time quite like Big Red.

Today I would like to acknowledge 5 of the platform’s strongest creators, in my eyes. Whether it be for their intelligent content or the sheer fun they bring, to me, these guys are some of the best of the best; and proudly hold some of my greatest respect.

Quick disclaimers: This is my first writing like this, and as you know, opinions can change over time; so please lower your pitchforks and know that there are plenty of channels I love. Also, when writing this, I don’t have a particular order in mind (Except for #1). Whether you find your favorite on the bottom, top, or nowhere at all, know that these guys deserve a watch (if my digital mouth has any impact on your choices, that is).

Enough talk though. Onward, to appreciation!

#5: JT Music

Art is mankind’s most unique unifier, and no art brings people together quite like music. Whether it be country, funk, or rap in this pick’s case, you can look just about anywhere for a good time.  And while rock star NateWantstoBattle is a close second in this regard, no musician really does it for me quite like JT.

While most would look at the genre “Video Game Rap” with an upturned nose, those that stick around won’t find anything quite like what Skull and Pat bring to the table. Their weekly tunes always bring a fire to my subscription feed, whether they’re putting me into the role of a badass superhero, or dragging me into the darkest abyss, I can just about always have a good time nodding my head to the beat.

Not only is their work consistently fun, but it’s also wide in diversity, and constant in quality. Hits like Follow Father, No Hero, and Hungry for Another One capture their source material perfectly within a musical context. Even their cameo appearances in tracks like DAGames’ We Want Out and Zack Boucher’s Ultimate Super Smash Bros. Rap steal the show with their wild energy. I always find myself smiling when I find their newest song; getting a small amount of enjoyment even in my less liked tracks.

Consistent fun and passion can be felt in the notes, and I can’t help but rock my skull out when JT Music starts playing.

#4: GameXplain

Games offer a wide variety no matter where you look. No matter if you’re looking for a deep insight into 30 second clips, latest updates on a title, or general thoughts on an event, you can always find something, or someone, explaining the perspective for you.

I’m a funny guy, aren’t I?

GameXplain has certainly explored over the years. From Cool Bits and Missing In Action in the past, to their famous modern Analyses and Discussions, Andre and friends have always hosted an approachable place with a variety of outlooks from its diverse crew, like Andre’s obsession with Stunt Race FX and Ash’s knowledge and love of Mega Man.

Even if you aren’t super into any of their interests, you’ll still find a laid-back but insightful pool of content. Their discussions are a personal favorite of mine, bringing fun, thoughtful ideas to events or ideas occurring in the gaming industry. I can’t help but get caught up in their hype, especially for Nintendo Directs or the annual E3 Show.

Even if I don’t quite understand the excitement that something is receiving, I can always go to these guys for a solid explanation and platform to join the hype train.

#3: Mithzan

It seems that no matter where you go, Minecraft can be found there. Games, books, plushies, animations, even an entire convention; those familiar blocks pervade some space of modern culture. While this space has hosted some incredible creations, simplicity also has its own beauty.

Mithzan uses this simplicity to great effect. With his buddies Ross, Pooki, Jerry and frequent guests, Max is always there to give me a laugh. And while Minecraft holds a variety of fun games like Would You Rather and Never Have I Ever, Mithzan also offers experiences outside of the blocks, like Uno and Dead by Daylight.

Along with the wide content, the experiences and humor are also varied, sometimes employing puns or old-fashioned smack talk, to name a few. Even with the different conversations and games, the fun and heart are always there. Whether he’s playing a wacky or horrifying game, Mithzan is approachable and honest with his style of play.

#2: Mother’s Basement

Appearances can be deceiving, no matter where you look. Assumed bullies are victims themselves, ‘loner’ people are simply introverted, and the most stubborn ones find themselves lost in an unexpected niche. All it takes is a little looking around, and you’ll find a new lesson or friend more often than not.

And what better place to look for insight than in a Mother’s Basement?

While not all people can see the artistry that anime brings to the table, Mother’s Basement brings its potential to the limelight. With weekly insights and discussions on things like how animation enhances an atmosphere or what makes a fight extraordinary in Animelee, the ideas and thought put into these discussions is top-notch.

Along with this, Geoff (the host)’s voice is great support, staying calm but strong, adding great emphasis on major points. He even provides touches of comedy and actual life advice into his videos. I find myself especially entertained with his analyses on My Hero Academia and Fullmetal Alchemist, but Geoff also covers topics like best romantic partners and essential shows to watch (and avoid), and pointing out his reasons why. Even if anime isn’t your style, there are some videos dotted in discussing topics like the nuances of binge-watching in “Is Binge Watching Bad for Us? (Netflix vs. Disney+)” and other media like movies (“Spider-Verse: The Ultimate Spider-Man Movie”) and video games (“Insomniac’s Spider-Man is Truly Superior”).

While it took some time to grow on me, I’m glad to have been welcomed into Mother’s Basement. With plenty of insight and care put into each video, Geoff is just about always a good choice for fun education on how artistic Japanese animation can be.

#1:Fawful’s Minion

The world is full of stories; they’re simply part of human nature. Whether it be fantasy, drama, or comedy, all of us have the potential to weave tales that inspire. And none have inspired me on YouTube quite like Fawful’s Minion.

This mean bean gaming machine has the mouth of a divine artist. His videos always bring a bright smile and incredible awe to me for just how much quality and care goes into each video. Fawful’s Top 10’s have never let me down with their fun, reasons, and pure passion that is tangible in every project.

Not only are the videos fun, but they’re also inspiring too. Fawful’s linguistics is beyond captivating, even partially motivating how I speak and write. Along with constantly being a good time, I’m always inspired to write or gain a storytelling voice whenever I watch an FM video.

And the touches of insight into his personal life give Fawful an air of relatability. Now, I realize I may make him sound like some sort of Shakespearian poet, but he also dispels this through his more colorful language, bringing in modern terms (and curses) and joyful, nearly maniacal at times, laughter and emotion into his speech, making himself grounded and relatable.

Most of all, Fawful’s storytelling skills were, and still are, a big reason why I write and tell my own stories. I want to enrapture others with my words like Fawful does, so he gets a big thanks and respect in my book. Balancing fun, humor, emotion, and creativity, Fawful’s Minion has made a goon out of me, running towards the goal of becoming a true storyteller.

Outro

If you made it here, thanks for sticking around! I wanna maybe try these sorts of blog/list posts more often, so tell me what you think! If you like this and want to see more, feel free to check out my AO3 Page: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribbleWriting65. I hope you enjoyed this little list, and I’ll see you next time!

[vmheadquarters]

By Alexis Soloski

When we last saw Veronica Mars, the greatest private investigator Southern California has ever birthed and tanned — shut it, Philip Marlowe — she had ducked a corporate law job and returned to Neptune, her beachside hometown, resolved to defend the weak, defy the powerful, wisecrack with the best of them. Happily ever after, on her terms.

But why be happy when you can be hard-boiled? As Veronica’s inventor Rob Thomas said, “Happy and noir don’t go well together.”

“Veronica Mars,” a snappy, sophisticated crime drama about a high school P.I., debuted in 2004 and ran for three critically celebrated but lightly watched seasons, first on UPN and then on CW, returning in 2014 for a fan-funded movie.

That seemed to be the end of it. Its star, Kristen Bell, continued a successful film and TV career. Thomas went on to create and run “iZOMBIE.” But you know the noir trope where a character thinks she has outrun her past and then the past comes on at a sprint? It applies.

In a genre-appropriate twist, the show is back, revamped for the streaming age. An eight-episode fourth season will drop on July 26 at Hulu, where the first three seasons are already available.

Reboots and revivals are as thick on the ground as Neptune beachgoers. A long-gone show that returns after so many years with its original cast, led by Bell’s Veronica, and its distinguishing style (think Dashiell Hammett after a few blender drinks) mostly intact? That’s rarer, and not without its dangers.

Continuing a beloved series after so many years risks tarnishing its legacy. (If we’re being honest, the uneven third season was risk enough.) Besides, how do you make a show about a child prodigy when that child prodigy can apply for a fixed-rate mortgage?

The season’s big mystery, according to Thomas: Is a 30-something Veronica Mars “an interesting enough character on her own to continue to attract fans?”

A few weeks ago, I met Bell on a gloomy June afternoon in her trailer on the Universal lot, an overheated box befrilled in demoralizing beige. She was in the middle of a shoot for her other show, “The Good Place,” and had two caffeinated drinks going, which partly explained the pep. (The messianic zeal she feels for Veronica explained the rest.) In her costume, a lilac sweater over an embroidered blouse and green chinos, she looked about as noir as an Easter basket.

And yet “Veronica Mars,” she said, is the show that launched her, that shaped her, that taught her comedy and responsibility and a commitment to social justice. She will quit it, she said, when everyone in Neptune is dead.

“That’s when I’ll do it,” she said, pushing her cane-sugar soprano into a lower register. “That’s when I will let her go: When the last body is buried.”

“Veronica Mars,” which The Times described, on a list of the 20 best TV dramas since “The Sopranos,” as “a peerless blend of neo-noir mystery and teenage romantic drama,” was always a show ahead of its time. Its heroine, 17 when the show began, looked like a Barbie and scrapped like a G.I. Joe. She was as quick with a comeback as with the Taser she called Mr. Sparky, but still vulnerable to problems personal and systemic.

More politically minded than your average teen soap, “Veronica Mars” had love triangles and cliffhangers and, from its first episode, a sustained interest in wealth inequality. In its depiction of gendered violence, it anticipated much of the #MeToo conversation.

“It continually kept questions about gender inequality in view,” said Susan Berridge, a lecturer in media at the University of Stirling who has written about the series. “There were so many story lines involving sexual violence and other forms of gendered abuse that it became impossible to see these issues as one-off aberrations.”

If you don’t identify as a Marshmallow, the name ride-or-die “Veronica Mars” fans adopted, here’s the back story: A onetime popular girl, Veronica became an outcast when her best friend Lilly was murdered and Veronica’s father, Keith (Enrico Colantoni), then Neptune’s sheriff, mistakenly accused the town’s most powerful man. Keith lost his job and his home. Veronica’s mother deserted the family. Her former friends ostracized her. During a party, she was drugged and raped by persons unknown. At some point she gave herself a terrible haircut.

“It was an adult show about a teenage girl,” Mr. Colantoni said, speaking by telephone. “This wasn’t ‘Saved by the Bell.’”

During the first two seasons, Veronica would solve episodic mysteries while also seeking justice for Lilly and for herself. The third season, which brought Veronica to college, dispensed with the case-of-the-week in favor of longer arcs. It also assigned Veronica a nice-guy boyfriend, Stosh “Piz” Piznarski (Chris Lowell), though most fans shipped her and the poor-little-rich-boy Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring).

Facing cancellation, Thomas tried to interest networks in a revival that saw Veronica working for the F.B.I. No one bought it. Presumed dead, “Veronica Mars” was briefly resurrected when Thomas decided to try crowdfunding a movie. He raised $2 million in less than five hours, drawing the highest number of donors for any film or video project in Kickstarter history.

“Veronica Mars” the movie may not have been a masterpiece — The Times called it “a likable, unmemorable, feature-length footnote” — but it melted the gooey hearts of most Marshmallows. Thomas and Bell could have let their gumshoe-made-good ride into the sunset in her secondhand car, placating the fans with the occasional tie-in novels Thomas co-writes. (“‘Co-writer’ is being generous to me,” he clarified.)

But last year, Thomas called Bell and asked her if she would consider playing Veronica again. It was a big ask: Bell had already committed to a final season of “The Good Place” and a “Frozen” sequel. Also, noir involves night shoots and Bell has two young daughters, which means a lot of missed bedtime.

Weighing the commitment, Bell recalled asking herself, “Do I want a world where my daughters know she exists? Or do I think there’s enough out there for them to look to?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “And I thought, yeah, I have to do it.”

And — “this is going to sound so corny,” Bell added — she still needs “Veronica Mars” in her life, even after all this time and all her success. The show gives her a place to put both her anger at a world that is still unequal and unjust, and her faith that individuals and communities can make it better.

“Just knowing Veronica exists has allowed me to pull strength in certain situations,” she said.

This installment picks up five years after the film ended, with Veronica sleuthing alongside her dad at Mars Investigations and living, reward check to reward check, in the oceanside apartment she sometimes shares with Logan, now an active-duty naval intelligence officer. There are a few B- and C-plots, but mostly Veronica works just one case involving a series of bombings threatening Neptune’s spring breakers.

Thomas and Bell, an executive producer, chose the eight-episode format partly because that’s all Bell’s “Good Place” schedule allowed, but also because they were impressed by what shows like “Fargo” and “Sherlock” were able to do in short seasons. They sold the show to Hulu, which was also able to acquire the past seasons. Craig Erwich, Hulu’s senior vice president of originals, described the revival as “an opportunity to see a beloved character grow up.”

Unlike the movie, this new season doesn’t pander — a few Marshmallows may feel scorched. The emphasis on wealth inequality and structural bias is, if anything, starker. The moral palette is grayscale, and the tone (Thomas described it on Twitteras “Hardcore So-Cal noir”) is dark, though maybe not that dark. “There are a lot of jokes,” Thomas said. “I don’t think we can go full ‘Handmaid’s Tale.’”

Though the earlier seasons of “Veronica Mars” shot in San Diego, the show relocated its exteriors to Huntington Beach, nearer to Los Angeles, where Bell lives. Certain sets, like the Mars Investigations office, have been faithfully re-created and shouldn’t upset continuity hard-liners, though Thomas is wary of checking his Twitter feed once the episodes drop.

The dialogue has stayed slangy. “What’s with the fakeloo, our mark’s no Jasper,” Keith scolds Veronica in the fourth episode. (Among this season’s writers: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “It never got normal,” Thomas, a basketball fan, said worshipfully.) And Veronica can swear now, though not much. The sex scenes are a little more explicit, the relationships a little more complicated and the emotions real, just like they used to be. “Even when we were teenagers, we all meant it,” Dohring said.

Here’s the big change: A former child prodigy who could out detect men decades older, Veronica has become age appropriate, maybe even immature when it comes to her personal life. (If the series followed real time, Veronica would now be about 32, but these episodes edge her into her mid-30s, closer to Bell’s age.) Thomas wondered if her superpowers — her bravery, her righteous anger, her lack of interest in what others think of her — would seem as impressive on an adult woman. (Speaking as an adult woman: Yes.)

I spoke to Thomas on the telephone a few hours before I met with Bell. Before we hung up, I asked him what he thought I should ask her.

“Ask for her window of availability in 2020,” he said. “That’s what I want to know.”

So I did. Bell told me she had set aside a few months next spring to shoot a follow-up. “As long as people want to watch it, I will do it,” she said. (Hulu is “definitely open to the discussion” about making more of the show, Erwich said.)

But here is what I wanted to know. As a viewer, I’d grown up with Veronica, too. And I’d looked to her as a character who had survived trauma and had accepted how that trauma had changed her, without ever having to sacrifice her humor or her mean-street smarts or her self-confidence. “Veronica Mars was this girl that other girls and boys could look to as an option of what to do with pain, and how not to let it sink you,” Bell said.

So would she ever get that pony? Would we ever see her happy?

“I don’t think we want to,” she said, speaking as Marshmallow in chief. “We want to see her match lit. We want to keep her fight in her. When she’s truly content, the story will be over.”

[ginnyzero]

Variety Beats Tokenism Any Day

Women come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, personalities and career paths. This isn't reflected in our media. And it's a big problem, one that I see is making more and more people discontent. People want to see more female characters that have variety of roles and personalities. That is, enough female characters in a body of work that the sole female doesn’t have to stand in as the symbol for every female everywhere. It’s hard to have a lot of variety in female characters, if there is only one female to a movie and she’s surrounded by a bunch of boys. That puts a lot of symbolism into that female character. It implies that being female is by definition whatever that female character is in the story and she can’t be anything else. Take Pacific Rim for example and how much emphasis got put on Mako Mori. The amount of emphasis put on her character and her story in the movie was ridiculous for what the movie was. They even tried to make a new feminism test based upon her character. It was out of control.

Now, yes, I understand that Pacific Rim was based upon Japanese mecha anime like Evangelion. And traditionally in most mecha animes like Macross and such, the pilots are male because Japan. But this was a Guillermo Del Toro (who did Pan’s Labyrinth and should know better) making a big budget film from Hollywood. He could have put more than two female pilots in the story. He chose to put just two female pilots in the story. Because he didn’t, Mako became a huge symbol who couldn’t live up to her own hype!

I also then see, “you don’t watch a lot of female oriented media, do you?” My retort is, why are there only a bunch of females in “female oriented” media? Not every female is particularly minded to watch so called “female oriented” media. I watch a romantic comedy a year if that. I love action movies. If I want action movie style female oriented media, I’m stuck with Underworld, Ultraviolet, Tomb Raider, maybe Resident Evil and a bunch of stuff aimed at 4 to 16 year olds. And notice, all the movies I just mentioned at most have two female characters and one of those will be disposable.

Look, I went through the Sailor Moon phase as a teenager. I love Sailor Moon. It got me into astrology and blood type personalities and to an extent numerology. I’ve watched my fair share of Ever After High, Monster High and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. So, why can’t there be a group of kick ass action varied female characters in an adult show or movie that is oriented at well, everybody. X-Men to a certain extent tried, but there were still two males to every female. Becca pointed out that this is partially a source problem, however, I can rattle off a bunch of females from the comics that it doesn’t take a rocket science to find and use. Fox just chose not to do so.

This is ridiculous. I shouldn’t have to watch something that is aimed at a thirteen year old girl to get my fix of varied characters. (Not that I don’t love Monster High and Ever After High mind you. I wish they’d been out when I was a teenager myself. Just, I want to see that type of variety in other media aimed at other age groups.)

Men and women are routinely pressured by media on what a ‘true man’ and what a ‘true female’ looks and acts like. However, the men at least, usually get a wider selection of terrible stereotypes and archetypes to model themselves after, while the women are either told “you’re a butch tomboy lesbian who can keep up with the boys type or you’re a pink loving, fashion conscious bimbo who ends up being the damsel in distress.” There doesn’t seem to be any in between. This is hurtful to our young girls and also to the men. Either way a girl goes, they are told they are “wrong.” If they go the tomboy route, well, it’s in the name, they aren’t girly enough. They aren’t ’female.’ But if they go the ‘female’ route, they’re deemed weak and useless. This is where having a single female in media has left us, tokenism.

The token female puts a huge burden on young girls of “this is how they are supposed to be.” Whereas, if there were a lot of different female characters in media that is targeted at everybody (not just romcoms and girl power cartoons) they would get the message that there are a lot of different ways to be female in all sorts of situations. Females come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, interests and personality traits. Women in today’s society can and are doing the same things that men do. They should have the courtesy of being portrayed in their many faces and facets in media.

But Hollywood chooses not to.

Maybe with the success of Mad Max: Fury Road and the amount of positive commentary it got for having many female characters who were strong, they’ll see to be putting more female ensembles on the screen. The upcoming reboot/remake/sequel or whatever it is going to be of Ghostbusters looks promising. But, I’m still not getting my hopes up just yet. (Though it'd be nice instead of having a remake property, that we women would get an original property. Just saying...)

[nitrateglow]

Thoughts on Limelight (1952)

I really hope this doesn’t come off as a rant. If it does, I apologize in advance.

Limelight is considered by many to be Chaplin’s last great movie. I had been meaning to see it for years now, ever since I became a silent film fan, ever since I saw the scene with Chaplin and Keaton on the same stage clowning it up together, ever since I read these incandescent notices of how tragic and beautiful it is.

Let me just say, if Limelight is considered Chaplin’s true swansong, then I dread watching A King in New York and A Countess from Hong Kong.

I was frustrated like crazy by this movie. I was relieved when its two-hour-plus runtime rumbled to the inevitable tragic conclusion. I have NEVER felt that way about a Chaplin movie ever. Even his more minor efforts like The Circus are still well-made, entertaining, and moving works.

I admit, I’ve never been as taken with Chaplin’s talkies as with his silent work, but I think The Great Dictator is a fine humanist classic (if not up to bar with his finest silent films) and Monsieur Verdoux is a well-made dark comedy with moments of true genius. Even if these films represent an artist who’s gone beyond his peak, they’re still worthy of attention and very enjoyable.

Chaplin is often criticized as being overly maudlin, but his work rarely, if ever, strikes me as such. He is an emotional filmmaker, sure, one who isn’t afraid to go for tears, but generally, he knows how to tug at those heartstrings in ways that aren’t forced or cheap. At least, that’s what I thought until Limelight, which has a melodramatic, sad-sack conga line of a narrative.

Chaplin plays Calvero, an aging, alcoholic musical hall comedian who rescues young dancer Terry (played by Bloom) from an attempted suicide. Discouraged and suffering from hysterical paralysis, Terry believes life sucks. Calvero delivers sermons about human consciousness and willpower, then gets her back into the theatrical life.

There’s a romantic subplot with a musician (played by Chaplin’s son Sydney) that never goes anywhere interesting, mainly because Terry is too besotted with Calvero to give the musician the time of day. Then Calvero’s acts grow more and more unfunny. We get a rather pretentious ballet sequence. Calvero gets one last shot at the big time, succeeds, then tragedy strikes.

I have a myriad of problems with Limelight, but the one word that best encapsulates how I feel is “self-indulgent.” Half of the movie is dedicated to Chaplin trying to sound poetic and profound, delivering these overdone philosophical speeches to a one-note Claire Bloom.

Claire Bloom’s Terry is such a one-dimensional presence, wholly dependent upon Calvero to do just about anything. I feel she exists just to hear Chaplin’s long-winded pseudo-philosophical pep talks about consciousness and Freud and the sun. Bloom’s performance has two registers: weepy and shrill, and twinkle-eyed schoolgirl gentleness. It might be Bloom’s youth, since I have enjoyed her later performances in Richard III and The Outrage, but I think the writing itself may be more to blame. 

Terry just isn’t allowed to be her own person. Calvero proclaims her a great artist, but her own artistic impulses and style aren’t given nearly the same attention as Calvero’s—and even if this is Calvero’s tragedy, Terry’s rise to fame should still be given proper development and attention. The opening intertitles do say this is the story of “a ballerina AND a clown” (emphasis mine).

I cannot believe I’m actually agreeing with Pauline Kael on something, but I totally get what she meant when she said in her own critical piece on the movie that the film is more interested in showing how sensitive Calvero is about art than showing Terry as an artist in her own right.

One of my most common complaints about Chaplin’s talkies is that sometimes he doesn’t know when to stop talking. Most are aware of Roger Ebert’s criticism of the last speech in The Great Dictator and I myself have some issues with Chaplin’s speeches in Verdoux, but those movies had so much better stories that such problems are just blips, nitpicks.

Ohhhh, but not here. Here, Chaplin never knows when to just shut up. Far too many are the sections where he just rambles on and on, most of the speeches being high-flown and literary in style, but rather trite in substance. Take his proclamation, “Desire is what makes a rose want to be a rose.” It’s something that sounds profound until you actually think about it. And when you actually think about it, it doesn’t mean a damn thing at all.

Calvero is off-putting and often comes off as full of crap. Now, the full of crap part might be intentional—toward the mid-point of the film when Terry and Calvero’s fortunes begin to take opposite trajectories, Terry does bring up that the despondent clown isn’t taking his own advice about enjoying life despite hardships. But I’m not sure… so much of his “wisdom” is played off as profound truth and the movie practically begs you to feel sorry for the aging clown, the scorned genius.

Or should I say, “genius,” because the comedy routines we see are pretty dismal, with the exception of the ending skit with Buster Keaton. Aside from the decent chemistry between the two men (Keaton’s droll character provides an interesting foil to the melancholy Calvero and could have been an interesting character in his own right, had he been developed), here the comic business is a thousand times more inspiring than the flea circus or the comic “banter” with Bloom. It comes in like a breath of fresh air after all the weepy pathos and dreary philosophical wanking have set your brain to dead.

Calvero says at one point, “I lost touch with my audience.” Limelight doesn’t really go into why this is so, though the prominence of WWI in the background does suggest the ending of an age, but I know why I think this is the case. Calvero does not go onstage to cheer people or express himself or for any aesthetic purpose. He does not serve the audience or seek to give them anything. The audience is there to gratify his ego and when they aren’t doing that, it’s THEY that are the unfeeling monsters. How dare they not be amused by Calvero scratching at imaginary fleas!

Oh Lord, I don’t mean to be this snarky or mean. I’m just so… SAD. I don’t want to dislike a Chaplin movie. The man is really worth all the hype and a true master, but this is definitely not him at his best. I just do not get the praise for it AT ALL.

There are fleeting moments of interest, sure, and occasional moments of wit (I like when Terry asks why he enjoys theater if the sight of the theater itself depresses him, Calvero responds, “I don’t like the sight of blood, but it’s in my veins”), but they don’t add up to a masterpiece.

I’d call this movie his worst feature film to that point—which, once again, has me terrified for the two movies which followed this. I get it’s a personal film for him. I like some of what it’s trying to do. But it feels like a very messy, undisciplined film driven more by ego than by any desire to talk about death or youth in an honest way.

Anyway, forgive me. Maybe one day I’ll rewatch it and it will all click. But after this initial viewing, this is how I feel.

[elenafisher]

chelsea watches (read: is agonized by) “avengers: endgame”

i just got home from endgame and i have a lot to say about it!

OVERALL:

i... liked it? i think? i can’t tell. 

there’s probably going to be a lot of complaining in this post, yet i didn’t actually hate the movie. but there was a lot to digest, so i’m sure my feelings will change over the next couple of weeks.

this movie was edited weird and i think it gave me whiplash. 

the tone was dramatic and desperate, then lighthearted and fun, and then back to dramatic and desperate before i could so much as blink. it was very jarring!

it also made me cry. 

robert downey jr. has always been very earnest in his portrayal of tony stark, but he gave all he had in this one. i was on the edge of tears watching him the whole time, really. there’s definitely a sense of finality to his performance.

those last 20 minutes had me weeping a bit. when they put the arc reactor on the bundle of flowers... oh, my heart. :’(

THE GOOD:

(most of) our characters are back! 

but was there ever any doubt? the stakes were made to feel high, but they never really were. you always came away with the feeling that they were all gonna make it.

no word on vision, though! pretty confused about that one. i know he was killed after the snap occurred, so i don’t think they actually can bring him back, but i always thought that he would, since they have this to film still.

it was very well made. i hope they keep bringing back the people who work on the sets, the cinematography, and the lighting, because it was all so well done.

we need to raise one for alan silvestri and his amazing soundtrack. 

oh, did anyone else notice the emphasis on DAUGHTERS? 

tony’s daughter morgan

scott’s daughter cassie

clint’s daughter lila

thanos’s "daughters”, nebula and gamora

to me, it felt like they were setting up these girls for potentially taking up their father’s mantles, which would actually be cool as fuck.

morgan stark is absolutely the cutest little bean i’ve ever seen in my life. 

I LOVE YOU 3000!

her scenes with tony were so sweet.

that cheeseburger parallel... oh man.

really, every scene that every person shared with tony was really good. you can just feel that everybody was giving everything they had because they knew they only had so much time left to play these characters together, and they wanted to get these final performances right.

tom holland, you heartbreaker. the audience in my theater went absolutely nuts when he finally returned. but when he was crying as he was talking to tony for the last time, oh man. 

“i lost the kid.” please...

THE BAD:

i still don’t really get what they’re doing with thor.

i don’t share this opinion much because this is tumblr and everyone loves this movie, but i didn’t like ragnarok, and i don’t like what’s become of thor or bruce. i wasn’t really checking on these two before, but now they’re just the comedy reliefs of the MCU.

chris hemsworth is funny, of course, and thor is a badass, of course, but they were just trying so hard with him. 

it kind of feels like they’re just pulling him apart, like one group still wants him to be the noble leader of asgard and the other just wants him to be the court jester. so, rather than decide, they just mushed their ideas together.

captain marvel: i knew she wasn’t going to be in the movie much, because she would’ve done everything in, like, 30 minutes, but they really, really underutilized her. seriously, she was only in this one, at most, for five minutes.

but, in those five minutes, she got a new haircut and kicked all kinds of ass, which are both wins.

THE UGLY:

STEVE ROGERS, SIR, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

i can’t believe they hit the undo button on cap’s story.

rather than have him grow and develop in his new role in the future he never wanted or expected to receive, they just had him go back in time to marry the one that got away.

but don’t get me wrong y’all; steve and peggy hurt me so good. i live for their angst. but they weren’t supposed to get together like this!

it’s gross because peggy moved on. she was able to pick up the pieces and create something wonderful for herself by having a fulfilling career and a happy marriage with another man.

steve should’ve accepted her choice. if he loves her so much, he should’ve accepted that he lost her and, since she moved on without him, he has to move on without her.

i can almost get the poetic cinema that they were going for: after tony loses his chance at having a family and living his life, steve is woken up and realizes how much he’s been missing out on, so he decides to go out there and discover what he’s been running away from all this time.

but, rather than do those things, or literally anything else, steve goes back in time to... marry peggy.

like, he could’ve traveled the world with sam and bucky, or gone solo for a while, or even hit up sharon again. 

sharon carter, what a waste. they really couldn’t commit to the idea of her and steve together, could they? 

but as soon as they confirmed sharon to be peggy’s niece, there was just no way a romance could blossom. it’s kind of hilarious how in a cinematic universe where raccoons talk, characters time travel, and AIs can be 3D printed, kissing the niece of your former flame is still considered to be the weirdest thing about it.

seriously: i find it all so vulgar and manipulative.

the one good thing that came out of this was sam wilson, the only worthy captain america, receiving the shield. 

i’ve read that some people are upset that sam got the shield instead of bucky. like, did y’all watch the last movie? let bucky have his plums and his goats. he’s done fighting other people’s wars.

THE EVEN UGLIER:

i got problems, y’all, and those problems have two names: natasha romanoff and clint barton.

i ship these two because everything in the avengers (2012) led me to believe that these super cool assassins who were fighting each other were actually in love with each other and it was them against the world (which doesn’t sound familiar at all, i know).

the characters had history and scarlett johansson and jeremy renner had chemistry. i saw it and i know all y’all saw it. 

so, y’all can imagine how goddamn appalled i was when i first read that natasha and clint were not only not lovers, but that clint actually had a secret family, with a secret wife, on a secret farm, and that we were going to be told this with absolutely no build-up whatsoever. 

but y’all could tell that the russos were as tired as i was when it came to accepting those facts! 

they decided to throw caution to the wind and show some more intimacy between natasha and clint, which was delicious. finally, some good fucking food.

i mean, the necklace? she was wearing her necklace again!

to me, it seemed like natasha had fallen in love with him all those years ago, but he was either already married or had turned her down (or both?), and she was never able to act on her feelings for him. i think that clint was also in love... and perhaps knew that he could never be with her, because of their lifestyles and her past, and chose laura instead. or something agonizing and unfulfilling like that.

(i really hope her upcoming movie expands on this.)

and i do think that she loved him. like, romantically. she couldn’t stop touching him the whole movie (HER HANDS ON HIS FACE!!! she’s so worried for him i’m crying) and was shaking, she was so relieved, upon being reunited with him.

it is some consolation that no matter what, you are never able to deny that natasha and clint love each other: even when they’re not romantic partners, they are definitely platonic life partners. their mutual devotion to one another, in almost every universe in the comics and in these movies, is incredibly strong and moving. 

so, rather than endure clint’s death, natasha chose to sacrifice herself so that he could get the stone and, ultimately, be reunited with his family. and, on paper, it sounds okay... except, it really isn’t.

y’all wanna know why it’s not okay?

it’s not okay because natasha was an original avenger, and we were never given the chance to spend time with her, or become emotionally invested in her journey, or to care about her reasons for making the ultimate sacrifice. 

like, i cared about natasha, but i felt that i would’ve cared so much more (and that the audience could’ve, as well) had we’d been able to have a front row seat to her “atonement” arc. 

because, as an audience, we sort of started in medias res: while she was not initially forthcoming with who she was or what she was doing, natasha came to be seen as a reliable and capable ally by the avengers, her second appearance onscreen. we are given no real reason to distrust her because she’s so desperate to find redemption, which she’s made apparent in almost every movie, and it’s hard to hate somebody working so strongly for another chance.

i mean, this journey would’ve been made so much more badass by us experiencing it firsthand, rather than relying on the hearsay from the directors, writers, and actors. we should’ve gotta a miniseries starring natasha romanoff as the black widow, so we could finally see what she did to become so disgusted with herself and so feared by everyone else. 

this is (partially) why so many people adore bucky. we’ve seen him as the best friend, the fellow comrade, before he was forced to become a mindless killing machine. we’ve seen him kill and cause absolute mayhem. but now we’re watching bucky grow out from that and become something more (and, hopefully, something better). 

basically, natasha romanoff should’ve received that same treatment. we needed to explore all of her facets, not just some of them. 

tl;dr: we should’ve had more time with natasha.

it’s also not okay because natasha’s sacrifice, one that was both irreversible and absolutely pivotal to the fate of the final battle, was not given nearly the same amount of respect that tony received after his demise.

while we all owe a lot to robert downey jr. for his choice to portray, and continue portraying, tony stark / iron man, he is not the most important avenger. 

it’s also worth noting that he did not have to be the one to snap his fingers. i mean, anyone could’ve been given what tony was wearing and then wielded the gauntlet. but, like natasha, he made a choice to sacrifice his life for the greater good.

yet, only tony was given an elaborate funeral. no matter how you slice it, it’s enormously disrespectful to a veteran team member. for this ultimate sacrifice to be made by the only woman on the original crew is doubly insulting.

AND ALL OF THIS IS MADE WORSE BY THE FACT that natasha’s death mirrors gamora’s. they’re identical, right down to the music that plays and how the camera focuses on their bloody bodies.

the russos were probably trying to invoke poetic cinema again here, but the scene comes across as somewhat lazy and insincere. like, they can’t even kill her right!

as terrible as this scene is, i want to give scarlett and jeremy a round of applause for it. you really got the sense that these characters were more than ready to die for each other, and that’s only because scarlett and jeremy were able to sell the emotional intimacy of the scene so well. 

all of it is too little, too late, however.

allow me to conclude this rambling nonsense by stating that i also think they condensed her character arc too much. like, i know this branches off of what i was just talking about a dozen bullet points ago, but even if natasha were to receive this ending, i feel that she received it too soon, y’know?

there should’ve been more scenes in the previous films dedicated to her, and her feelings, and how she relates to any given situation, because another problem that drags this scene down is the lack of any information about natasha. 

like, even when assembled with the other avengers, she feels remote.

perhaps that’s intentional, given that the character’s a spy and has been enigmatic about every other area of her life for so many years. but i think she’s been written to be too enigmatic.

[okimargarvez]

THE PUNISHER- 1

Original title: The punisher.

Prompt: mental and physical torture, guilt, contrast love, dark drama, punishment.

Warnings: Luke OOC, sexual content.

Genre: romantic, smut, comedy, angst, drama, friendship.

Characters: Penelope Garcia, Luke Alvez, BAU team, Roxy.

Pairing: Garvez.

Note: oneshot.

Legend: 💏😘😈👓🔦🐶❗👻.

Song mentioned: none.

The Punisher- Masterlist

GARVEZ STORIES

Note: this story stems from the vision of the program "Monster in my family”. I repeat: Luke is OOC, especially in the last parts of this story. If you don’t want to read, don’t do it.    

Part 1

**

About a month before

 A simple evening with the team. Nothing else. There will also be the new agent (ex-new), but it doesn't matter, she'll be able to bear him, at least for one night. There is to celebrate. They finally caught Mr. Scratch. Hotch will stop hiding. Spencer will leave the prison. Everything will be great.

So why does she feel that emptiness inside?

It's an evening just for smiling. She is the queen of smiles, hugs, anything positive and full of joy. Yet she sounds terribly false her voice as she greets the others and reaches them at the table. Obviously the only free place is between Walker and Luke. Well, it will mean that she'll focus on the real newcomer and on his baritone and relaxing voice.

-Garcia, what a beautiful bag!- Tara is right. Dressed in that way the brunette is almost unrecognizable. The mission is much simpler than expected. Agent Alvez ignores her completely, joking all the time with JJ and Rossi. Well, what do you expect? That he would did more, just because some time ago he tried to console you for Reid ? You sent him away, stupid. Or at least you tried. In order to get rid of that voice from the head, she decides to get up and go to the area where some people dancing. She really does not intend to do it, doesn't even think about it. It was more pleasant to watch Morgan doing it, even if him was immediately surrounded by female specimens of the most varied genre, attracted like bees to honey, flies to...

-Hey, baby, you're all alone?- she looks up and sees a man who is about her age, the look of someone who drank a few too much beer, empty, however well dressed and combed. She tries to ignore him, but him grabs her arm and tries to bring her closer to his body. -Where are you going? I just asked you a question. It's education to answer.- oh no, the bad and controversial binge. She is about to turn to the table with the others to see if anyone has noticed, but before she can succeed, a hand is rests on the man's arm and tightens until the grip on her is loosened.

-You don't hear, friend?- she recognizes her savior by his voice and remains speechless. -The lady said she isn't interested.- it seems like a line from a fifties movie.

-Actually, she didn't say not...- he is silenced by another dirty look and eventually the guy disappears. With great difficulty, she strives to lay her eyes on him. With that light blue shirt, he's more attractive than usual, the old-fashioned pants... and doesn't need many accessories to seem handsome. She must be able to thank him. Even if he interfered in things that didn't concern him... yet. It's too difficult and all she can do is give him a smile.

-Are you ok?- he seems worried. She nods. -This place is filling up with scum, lately ...- he does everything to start talking, or it's just an impression? -Garcia...- he hesitates -You want to go take a walk?- and now? But she can't say no and then follows him to the exit. She has time to catch the strange and mischievous looks of their friends and colleagues. -There's one thing I have to tell you, a burden from which I have to free myself... I can't keep it up.- it can't be that what she thinks is about to happen. It's not possible. But everything leaves believe this. He takes her by the shoulders, as if to seek strength from contact with her -I'm in love with you, Penelope and I'm practically from the first moment I saw you. I think you're beautiful and I struggle to keep my eyes away by your body, when you're not there I imagine you, at night, by day, with open or closed eyes. You're always in my mind. Seeing you feel so bad for Reid killed me. Hearing you joke with Walker made me so much jealous. I can't even think of you with Morgan, how it must have been your relationship... I can't. I just want you to look at me at least once in the way you looked always at my dog.- the speech was too long and in the end he is silent. Gradually the emphasis seems to leave the human body and keep only mix of sadness and despondency. As if he was convinced that she can't feel anything for him.

He actually said this. He said he is in love with me. Love at first sight. I can trust? It could be a joke, or put to the test, like that of Tara with the story of his brother, about how I wouldn't be able to keep to myself a private conversation? They wouldn't go that far. All's fair, but don't play with feelings. But if he is sincere, he is definitely waiting for an answer and she can't even open her mouth, let alone to make him understand that she likes him. So, there's only one thing to do. And if it was a joke, at least she'll take off the pleasure.

Penelope puts her hands on his shoulders and bracing herself rises on tiptoe to put their faces at the same height. I said that he was too tall. I need a ladder to reach his lips. She leaves spend a moment in which stares intently in his dark eyes as hers and then leans her mouth on his gently. When she tries to move away, she feels his arms wrap her back and press her firmly against his body. She feels all the muscles through the thin layer of tissue, and something else, that moving lower. This can really there for me? Judging by how he leads her in this waltz of tongues, the answer is yes.

After they nearly ended in apnea, while maintaining tight control over her, he approaches his lips to her ear and whispers -We're moving to a place... more comfortable?- if she was another person, if she was one of those women with super model physical, perhaps she would think that he just wants to sleep with her. But someone like her, things like that don0t happen. However...

-But... and the others?- all she can say as a protest. He shrugs indifferent. The hand so big and hot lands on her right hip with his fingers toward down, a bit 'too enterprising as to leave foreshadow what awaits her.

-I go in and I say that you don't feel very well and cause I have to get up early, I'll take you home.- he simply offers. She would never have done him so strategist. In fact, she doesn't know what imagined about him. She knows so little about him. And that doesn't make him even more intriguing? If she had a mirror might be able to see what looks abandoned and nods, as she drifts like a mannequin into the car with him, the way she wears the seat belt and promises to wait for him there. As soon as he disappears inside the room, her curiosity gets the better and she opens the dashboard, seeks to capture more information as possible from what it's inside. But she remains disappointing. As well as his desk, it's just as empty and anonymous. She closes it with a disappointed sigh. Then she starts to giggle with nervousness.

Fortunately, Luke reappears after a few minutes. He opens the door, check that the rearview mirror is correctly positioned and then, grabbing her chin, greets her with a kiss that makes immediately tighten the eyelids to Penelope. She usually isn't leave so much the reins to another, but with him comes naturally, is very different from Kevin or Sam. She detaches but keeps only a few millimeters between them -Now we can go.- his smile is sly, satisfied. Gratified.

 -Why don't we play a game, Penelope?- the request had seemed strange, but in the end she had never liked the normality. And so, she had accepted, without knowing what game. Big mistake. The first in a long series. -Do you like role playing?- her perfectly groomed eyebrows were arched in surprise. He doesn't want to playing doctor and nurse? Fortunately, the imagination of the ex-agent of the task force was much more developed. He hadn't waited her answer too long. -You are a young attractive woman- the latter adjective had sounded as if he were describing a dessert, suggesting to clients to try it -which comes home after a long day of work. You put the key in the lock- she was beginning to see puns everywhere? -then you place your hand on the knob and open the door. You close it behind yourself. You're exhausted and therefore you don't mind the fact that the window is slightly open and the wind is doing dancing the curtains.- a poet, a screenwriter hid behind those muscles and that dark hair and curls -You direct to the bathroom and you start undress and throw your clothes and with them the stress you have accumulated in all these hours. You take your clothes off very slowly. Every move you made seems to be directed toward an outside observer. When you're completely naked, you open water to take a shower, but at the last you remember that the bubble bath is finished. And when you turn to pick another...- yes, she felt fear in hearing him tell a synopsis of the genre, it had reminded her Psycho and beyond. But she couldn't deny having feel too many chills and vibrations and something down there, it was moving in her too.

And then there she was to carry out his instructions very carefully. After being a few minutes in the car to give him time to get it first and make sure that Roxy didn't become a third wheel. She opens the door, moves so nonchalant, thinking of being on a stage and not in real life. She likes to play. She goes to the bathroom, trembling but not showing it on the outside. To know that he is back there and that soon he'll see her natural, it makes her very anxious. And if it doesn't please him the show? But he is not a kid and she never wore things that suggest him horizons that couldn't be reached. He's got to get an idea of ​​what hid her clothes, which are now a pine cone of strips accumulated at her feet. Soon they are also achieved by the underwear. Penelope only wears her glasses, when she does the last action prescribed by her director for a night. At the exact moment when she turns his back to the shower curtain and whoever is behind it, to grab the bottle, she doesn't know what she should be expected.

Certainly not a rough hand that goes to cover her left breast, while the other sends a few fingers to exploration of unknown places. And although he is being completely busy, he is able to make her turn in his direction and kisses her, obtaining in this way the complete control over every part of her. No need to lubricate her, because she is already excited and ready for the next step. But he seems to have intended to extend more this strange game. Occasionally he is sinking with greater force, almost hurting her, only to re-emerge and immediately return inside. If she were not unable to do so, the blonde would scream at the top of her lungs, but her moans turn off inside Luke's mouth. And these are just the fingers. Think the rest...

When he seems to loosen his grip for a few seconds, Penelope finally opens her eyes and realizes that he has no clothes too. His chest spark, sweat caressing his muscles. She sees her own hands groped to brush it, almost with fear that might prove to be a chimera.

-You are so beautiful, Penelope, so infinitely beautiful. I would spend hours looking at you.- and she believes him, because basically the human being clings to what it can to survive. And she needs to feel loved, desirable, perhaps both together. He makes her walk backwards, at every step she risks of stumbling, but two male arms are there to support her. At the end she collides with something soft that she understands is a mattress. Luke raises her to the hips and puts her on it. She opens her eyes to see his eager expression. He really wants me so much? But how can he pretend so good, not being porn star? -I want to show you how I'm crazy about you... don't do anything and just relax...- it's easy to say this! He passes a hand over her eyes and pushes her to tighten the eyelids. Quickly the fingers return to deal with the lower part of her body, making precise movements and always different; but this time she doesn't have his hand to stop her to express all the pleasure she feels. After some initial embarrassment the blonde leaves herself go completely, allowing feelings to drag her into their vortex. Too soon she feels a contraction, the muscles stiffening and a liquid substance but dense come out of her. She can't do without blushes, but the fear wears off quickly when she lifts the eyelashes and she sees the satisfied expression of man, like him was the one that has had an orgasm. -You are more relaxed, now?- he asks and Penelope can only nod. Since she has entered to this house she seems to have lost the power of speech.

Luke smiles, then decides to devote himself to another area of ​​her, which is particularly interesting. -You have no idea how difficult it was to stay focused on the case, when the screen turned on and you appeared, with your colorful clothes and your necklines... unseemly.- he chuckles and manages to make her laugh too. -I saw them there and they called me, like the sirens of Odysseus, with their songs attracted me and I just wanted to cross that transparent wall and finally be captured, to discover what was left to the intuition...- he speaks so good, how good he is to flatter her. It makes her pleasure to think that she has (not completely voluntarily) put him in difficulty. Imagine him as he tried to follow the speeches of others and instead what went through his head was of a very different nature... Penelope runs her tongue over her lips, unable to hide the excitement caused by this fantasy. Luke doesn't go straight to the point, but he starts from below: from the sides of her, he touches the ribs, goes up to the shoulders and then, finally, he reaches the goal. Penelope feels shortness of breath when he first holds one breast and then the other, then both together. The rough tongue makes fun of her nipples and Penelope feels faint. She needs him to do it now; she can't resist for a long time.

And maybe what he wants is just that. -Please- she pleads him, not so differently than when he had found her in tears in her office, after she had returned from her visit to Spencer. -Please, Luke.- she replies -I cannot resist.- he stops doing what he was doing and stares her intensely. His pupils light up.

He doesn't need further pleading. The phrase that was about to turn from thought into words, is cut short in the bud and stops in Penelope's throat. Before she can even just open her mouth all the oxygen is torn off by a thrust, an intrusion that burned her. -Oh, it's so beautiful.- fortunately, she is not fully aware of the absurdities she utters. She follows his movements, she moves with him, tightens her legs around his chest to try to get even more invasive penetration. Nothing else exists: not the time before, nor the ghosts of her ex (Shane, Kevin, Sam) nor that of Battle, nor that of Derek, but not even the time after; there is only the natural scent of his skin, that of something else that she isn't able to identify, perhaps the result of the meeting of their fluids (by the way, he didn't wear a condom), there is the naked skin that rubs at each new surge, her nails planted in his back and at one point their hands intertwine, those of her with palm up, like a prisoner. She isn't able to formulate too coherent thoughts, but only to give herself to the idiot, for not having allowed herself first the privilege to discover the hidden talents of the profiler in formation.

And then a senseless melancholy takes over. No matter how beautiful and overwhelming it may be, I don't just want sex. And so far, Luke seems to have been interested in just that. And what do you want? Penelope1 asks to Penelope2. I want... walks with Roxy. Romantic dinners in strange places. Text like "We're coming, I missed you". A shoulder to cry on. Ears willing to listen to my nonsense. But above all... a person who falls in love with my sad look and not with my smile, is the answer of the latter. It's something that has always happened to her, that of having moments in which the excitement seems to vanish all at once.

She doesn't know if he realizes it, but he presses her harder on the bed, making her feel as if she couldn't do anything to stop what is happening, only endure it. And this thing reignites the spark, just in time to feel invaded by his semen. He doesn't move away immediately, he stays there. To wrap her like a human blanket. After a few seconds he hugs her and places her head on his chest. And after some time, he takes her chin with one hand to lay his lips on hers. Their legs intertwine.

-I have always dreamed of seeing you wear my shirt... at least from the first time you called me Newbie...- Luke breaks the silence, while the hands caress her cheeks, hair, everything they find in their path. Penelope shows herself for once strangely shy, by her standards.

-Are... are you sure I'll can wear it?- she tries to joke, but the irony goes off instantly in the clash with what she feels like a sad truth. And maybe a part of the blonde wants to test him.

-Did not you believe me when I told you you're beautiful? I can't imagine you different than you are. Your generous curves remind me of the Venus of Botticelli.- he knows also art? But who is he? -The aesthetic beauty standards haven't always been those of today, you know it, no?- he not wait for her to nod. -In prehistoric cultures the ideal woman was even more shapely than you.- he laughs, a laugh with soft hints. He grabs the cell phone that is on the bedside table. He types some terms and then he shows her the result. He used Venus of Willendorf as a research key. The image is that of a statuette representing a stylized female figure: the characteristics typical of the genre, the prosperous bosom, the lower abdomen and wide hips; the rest is hardly sketched. Penelope's eyes widen, her eyelids blink. -What mattered, once, was that the woman was fertile and this could hardly happened, if she was a manikin who could barely standing!- Luke manages to snatch a smile from her. -You want to show so strong, Garcia- he voluntarily calls her by last name -but inside, you're so insecure. Don't let be conditioned you by the system. Don't do what you reproach others.- what the heck she can replay? Why he does make her feel so stupid and ignorant? Is not that Spencer has taken over the body of Agent Alvez?

The blonde thanks him with a tender kiss. -So... that shirt?- they burst out laughing.

 During the night Penelope has a nightmare and once gone out of it, she is afraid to open her eyes and discover that it's reality. But gradually she feels a pleasant weight, that of the man's arm around her waist. And when she trying to move her legs, the movement is partially prevented by a ball of about thirty kilos, including the hair. So, she immediately goes back to sleep with a relaxed and satisfied sigh, like the purr of the cat that she doesn't have.

________________________

TAGS: @arses21434 @kathy5654 @martinab26 @reidskitty13 @jenf42 @gracieeelizabeth27 @silviajajaja @smalliemichelle99 @charchampagne14 @thinitta   @myhollyhanna23 @garvezz @mercedes-maldonado  @shyladystudentfan @cosmicmelaninflower @avengerquake123vanuusims

[tessatechaitea]

Team Titans #12

Didn't the Team Titans change the present enough to erase the future that wants them dead?!

It doesn't go great.

This goes a long way toward exposing one of the worst tropes in romantic comedies. It puts the emphasis on the man's feelings of love. His love being reciprocated by the woman he adores is more important than the woman herself. Romantic comedies nearly all have one message: if the guy tries long enough and puts in enough effort, the woman he desires will eventually fall in love with him. It doesn't matter if the woman just thinks of him as a friend or is already married or has told him to fuck off numerous times simply because she's not interested and he's being a fucking creep. By the end of the movie, she'll have seen the light! His love is the truest love and he deserves to be fucked by her. But when the woman is the protagonist, the guy she loves and desires usually winds up being a fucking dick so she settles for the guy who loved her all along and she just didn't notice. Why can't the woman's love be so powerful that the good looking asshole she totally wants to fuck eventually comes around and falls for her? Oh, that's right. Because good looking assholes don't write sappy wish-fulfillment romantic comedies! Anyway, Battalion, who looks like a gigantic fantasy dwarf, decides it's a good idea to go to this stranger's place of work and introduce himself as the man an alternate version of her loved. It only takes two pages for Essie to come around and be all, "You know what? I'm not afraid of you for some reason! I think I might even love you, you big brute! Make like a rapist nerd in a teen comedy and eat my pussy!"

"Please, Essie! Don't be rational! Listen to your love box! It knows you want me!"

The creepy woman watching is Kole, the most boring Titan (somehow just edging out Danny Chase, Aqualad, and Cyborg). She's come to stop Battalion from kidnapping and raping Esther. Or maybe to just watch? Because, even though I said earlier that in two pages Essie falls for Battalion, she doesn't really. She just decides to trust him. Which winds up being a huge mistake because Battalion freaks out and runs off with her. But she eventually convinces him that she's not the woman he thinks she is and they part amicably. She's a better person than I am! I would have at least tried to gouge out his eyes and cut off his dick. While Battalion fails to shove his face in the first vagina he's ever been in close proximity to (because he's pretending to be that nerd from Revenge of the Nerds who, somehow, knows how to provide an excellent oral sex experience the first time out!), the Team Titans destroy another block of New York while fighting a person who arrived from the future to destroy them. So, you know, they're just like the Titans. They aren't actually protecting anybody in New York from harm. They're just saving their own asses and putting New York residents in danger. Councilwoman Alderman for president, please! Team Titans #12 Rating: Battalion learns a little something about consent with the least amount of consequences ever. And the Team Titans learn that if a new character is introduced into a comic book with too many characters already, that character will be dying as quickly as possible. RIP Sunburst, we hardly knew your ballbag hanging slightly out of your boxers during the fight. I think Terra's tribute to him should go on his gravestone: "He was a whiner. Maybe even a loser. But Sunburst was cute." Has a writer ever captured the experience of being female as well as Marv Wolfman?!

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #151 - The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Spoilers below.

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) The attempt to bring Andrew Lloyd Webber’s iconic stage adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera to the screen started all the way back in 1989. Back then, it was going to star Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman (who originated the roles of The Phantom and Christine, respectively). The project was ready to begin filming in 1990 with a November 1991 release date, but then Lloyd Webber divorced Brightman (they had been married) and production was stalled. In the interim, John Travolta, Heath Ledger, Matthew McConaughey, Meat Loaf, and Antonio Banderas were considered for the role of the titular character (with Bandera specifically training his voice for the role for years, only getting a chance to sing it during a Royal Albert Hall celebration of Andrew Lloyd Webber). At one point it was going to star Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, but Jackman was busy with Van Helsing and Hathaway had The Princess Diaries 2 to film. Charlotte Church and Kate Winslet were also considered for the role of Christine before Emmy Rossum was cast. Through that time, Joel Schumacher had always been Lloyd Webber’s choice of director because of his work on The Lost Boys. In fact, the screenplay used was written by the pair all the way back in 1989. That means between writing of the screenplay and release, fifteen years went by. Now that I’m done with that fun fact...

2) I think this film improves on the Broadway shows prologue. The use of black and white is a nice touch, as is the decision to age up Patrick Wilson’s Raoul instead of having an elderly actor play the part. It is the first inkling of how the adaptation is able to use the differences between filmmaking and the stage to its advantage.

3) I first saw the stage production of this in August of 2009, then the film a few months afterward. It took me an embarrassingly long time (think years) to figure out that the broken chandelier was lot 666.

4) This adaptation REVELS in the freedoms you have in film versus what you have on stage, mainly through it’s use of three-dimensional space. On stage you have to present all the action in a single location and then orchestrate a scene change. But we get to see how the opera house is as much a character in the film as its titular Phantom of Christine. The film also utilizes the ability to shift POV between characters quite well, as again on stage your POV is stuck with whoever is in front of you. Here we can cut between characters in between scenes and get a fuller view of the picture. All this - as well as its well done use of special effects - gives the film a grander film. It is easy often times for a stage-to-film adaptation to feel stunted, but the team behind Phantom sure as hell knows how to avoid those problems. It’s one of the best parts of the adaptation.

5) Patrick Wilson as Raoul.

So at the risk of offending Phantom purists (something I maybe should have put as a disclaimer on this post), I have always found Raoul to be remarkably bland. No matter how good the performance is, I just have never found him an enticing character. He’s literally just there to be the healthy alternative to The Phantom’s love for Christine. I actually think Wilson does quite well as Raoul, making him the most interesting I’ve ever seen. He is able to make Raoul a bit more aggressive, a bit more strong headed, especially when going after The Phantom. But that’s about it. I think Wilson does admirable and he’s always been a favorite of mine, but I just find Raoul so damn boring.

6) Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry. 

Otherwise known as, “The only French character based on a French story in a musical which takes place in French who has a French accent.” Richardson is a talented character actress, as I noted in my Sleepy Hollow recap. She is able to make Giry compelling, interesting, mysterious. You understand that she’s hiding things, but her suspicion never makes her dislikable. To the contrary, the way Richardson plays the part makes Giry all the more fascinating. In my opinion, Giry is as mysterious as The Phantom in this film because of Richardson’s performance.

7) Okay, Firmin (one of the theater owners) making eyes at Christine is weird. Depending on the translation of the novel you read, she’s fifteen. And yes the actress was eighteen at the time of playing her, but still. Creepy. Also when Madame Giry says she’s an orphan this seems to encourage Firmin’s advances and I gag a little.

8) A little wink to another work of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s

Former Theater Owner [on how to deal with Carlotta]: “Grovel. Grovel, grovel.”

(One of the songs from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was “Grovel Grovel”.)

9) Minnie Driver as Carlotta.

I love Minnie Driver and she is absolutely perfect as Carlotta in this film. She is able to play the conceited diva MARVELOUSLY well (claiming to channel an old neighbor she had in Venice for the part). She totally loses herself in the part. This isn’t Skylar from Good Will Hunting, this isn’t Debi from Gross Pointe Blank, this is someone who is totally new. Driver is phenomenal in the part, although she didn’t do her own signing. She is a singer (contributing her vocals to the end credits song “Learn to Be Lonely”) but not an opera singer, so she had to be dubbed in. Nonetheless, she is an incredible addition to the film.

10) Emmy Rossum as Christine Daaé.

The protagonist of the film (more-so than The Phantom even), this was one of (if not THE) biggest roles the 18 year old had at the time. Rossum is great in the part, abel to capture Christine’s vulnerability without making her weak. Her honesty without making her naive. Christine is a character defined by her massive heart. She has incredible passion for music, a deep connection with her long dead father, incredible sympathy with The Phantom, and a wonderful friendship-turned-romance with Raoul. But she never come across as a damsel or as a fool. I think Rossum’s performance is a big part of that. You’re rooting for Christine and you love that she makes you do so.

11) Christine’s first number is her big performance of “Think of Me” for the opera house. During the neighbor the filmmakers gave her this angelic glow which I find...really distracting. Like it’s weird to me. I get they’re trying to emphasis her purity, but she looks a bit like a ghost.

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

12) I do like the chemistry Rossum and Wilson have as Christine and Raoul. It’s not hot sweats pure passion chemistry, but it is a trust and honesty they have with each other. They’re old friends and that comes through in their performances. You get that they’re the right fit for each other.

13) Gerard Butler as the titular Phantom of the Opera.

The casting of Butler has been a controversial one following the release of the film. He’s not a classically trained singer and at times it shows. When it does show it can be distracting, but that’s not to discredit his performance as a whole. For the most part his singing is top notch, I would say 95% of the time. It is just you can be a little thrown off when there’s that 5% that isn’t what you were expecting.

I personally do not find Butler to be bad in the part. Quite the contrary, I think he’s pretty great. In my recap of The Bounty Hunter I noted he didn’t have the right kind of charisma to play the romantic comedy angle. This is not true here. To start, Butler fills out The Phantom’s physicality very well. Just the look he has in the mask and the cloak is a powerful visual. More than that though, he is able to portray all facets of the Phantom with expertise and grace. His passion, madness, obsession, instability, sorrow, and later heartache all are done with the appearance of ease by the Scottish performer. There are times when he breaks your heart, there are times when you hate him, but you are never bored by him. He always holds your attention and I think that is key in playing such an iconic character. And again, Butler is just great in the role.

14) Nowhere is Andrew Lloyd Weber’s skills as a composer better showcased in this film than the double billing of “The Phantom of the Opera” and “Music of the Night.”

To start with, the titular song is able to be creepy, macabre, invasive, chilling, fascinating, and eerie all at the same time. It perfectly represents just the horror and mystery The Phantom carries with him. Then turn around right into “The Music of the Night”...

This is the song which particularly gives us an amazing glimpse of who The Phantom is as a character. Nowhere in the film is he quite as voluntarily vulnerable as he is right now. His hearts is on his SLEEVES as he sings to Christine of his world, of who he is as a character. Through the seamless transition from the chills of “Phantom of the Opera” into a piece of music which is moving, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and just as fascinating, “Music of the Night” is quite possibly the best song in this whole film.

Having said that, it is a song which requires acting to match it. And Butler is at his best during this number. That previously mentioned vulnerability is on full display through Butler’s performance. You can understand his compassion for Christine, not only through his voice but also through his physicality. He plays the heart of the scene incredibly well. Rossum is great here too, showing off her fascination and wonder of The Phantom and his own through no words or song, just movement and expression. They both do a great job of elevating the number as it should be.

15) When listening to “Music of the Night” I believe that The Phantom’s obsession is not exclusively about finding a romantic love with Christine, but more about finding someone to be with him in the night. He is devastatingly lonely and wants a companion with him in the darkness. Who is a more devoted companion than a spouse?

16) The scene where Christine unmasks The Phantom only for him to fly off the handles makes something perfectly clear: the mask is as much for him as it is for everyone else. The Phantom deals with INCREDIBLE amounts of self loathing and metal health issues. He is afraid of being the monster people call him, he is afraid of letting them define him. The mask is an attempt to define himself. As I will explain later, it doesn’t work as well as he would hope.

17) Notes/Primadonna.

The double billing of the song begins as a nice peek into the relationship with theater owners Firmin and Andrew and their friendship (romance?). It also begins to illustrate just how deep the conflict between The Phantom and the egotism of the Opera/rules of the world in light run. You begin to see the hinges coming off of The Phantom as he tries ordering around everyone, setting up the drastic lengths he will go to later on.

The “Primadonna” half of the number serves as a fine montage. Showing just how the owners convince Carlotta to participate in the show and what lengths they are willing to go to to keep her. And it continue the film’s use of movement through a three dimensional space to convey sense of scope and plot, something which cannot be done to such an effect on stage. It’s a nice number but - again, at risk of offending Phantom purists - could it have been cut? It works fine on the stage but this film is two-hours-and-twenty-three minutes long. Would it not have been as effective to cut it for the screen and just had a standard scene of dialogue and score to convince Carlotta to stick around? I know it is blasphemy to consider cutting any number from one of the most iconic Broadway musicals of all time, but I can’t help but wonder if the film would have been better off without it.

18) It was during “Primadonna” when I realized something:

Carlotta’s goal is the same as Lina Lamont’s from Singin’ in the Rain.

They are both incredibly popular actresses with annoying voices looking to destroy the careers of an up and coming actress to ensure their own future success.

Now that you can’t unsee that...

19) The duality of Christine’s compassion/sympathy for The Phantom mixed with her fear of him later one creates a nice conflict for her. Something which is interesting to watch and should parallel the audience’s own feelings.

20) “All I Ask of You”

The number serves mostly as a nice moment of trust and honesty between Christine and Raoul. It is here where one would start shipping them, so to say. Yet while in most productions of the stage play you learn that The Phantom was there the entire time AFTER the song is done, you see his reaction to hearing Christine’s and Raoul’s love DURING the song. His constant presence is heartbreaking, an emotion Butler plays so well. It’s not just that Christine is choosing Raoul over him, she’s choosing the light. She’s choosing day instead of night, cementing the Phantom’s loneliness. Making it all the more heartbreaking for him. This was his once chance to not die alone and he just lost it. And it breaks your heart.

21) “Masquerade”

This is my favorite number in the film. Largely because it is one of the few light moments in the production, but more than that it ties into The Phantom’s own personal struggles in a way you don’t first understand upon listening. The “heroes” of the day (in a kind of elitist way) are practically gloating at The Phantom’s disappearance in a way which is mocking to his pain. They wear masks for fun, he wears a mask because he has to. Because he has been beaten and torn down because of his face. The lyrics take on a much sadder meaning with the reprise later in the film.

22) How fitting is it that The Phantom shows up to the masquerade dressed as The Mask of The Red Death?

“The Mask of The Red Death” is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe where wealthy noblemen attempt to hide from a plaque known as the Red Death by hiding in an abbey. There, they host a masquerade ball when a figure disguised as a Red Death victim enters and makes his way through each of the rooms. His presence marks the deaths of every guest by the hands of the same disease they were so desperately trying to avoid. Basically a bunch of elitists try to hide from those beneath them and in their arrogance sign their own death warrants. I like that.

23) Briefly Raoul pursues The Phantom into a secret compartment under the opera house and finds a room full of mirrors, unable to determine which is the reflection and which is the man. This is not an element of the stage play, but an instead of the original novel. The Phantom would lock victims up in this room to drive them mad. I like the nod.

24) I first saw this stage production while it was traveling in 2009, then again when my alma mater put it on just a year after I graduated high school. I don’t remember Madame Giry going so in depth about The Phantom’s origins so much on stage, but I’m sure as hell glad the film has it.

Once again, the movie does an excellent job of utilizing point of view to add elements. Seeing just how terribly The Phantom was treated is devastating. As a child he was beaten, mocked, and treated like an animal for years. Referred to only as “The Devil Child” by his captors he only free himself by killing a man and then being forced to hide in the Opera House ever since he was a boy. No wonder the man went mad. No wonder he hides his face. He’s terrified of being exactly what people said he was, and because of the way he was treated that cruelty he’s afraid of is linked directly to his deformity. By hiding his face, he hides the monster. Or so he thinks.

25) I love this line, because it shows just how much we don’t know about The Phantom.

Giry: “He’s an architect and designer. He’s composure and magician. He’s a genius, mousier.”

If I’m not mistake, in the original novel The Phantom DESIGNED the opera house (as well as a palace for a Persian king). He is portrayed as being the greatest artistic mind of the century and the most mad. All in service of more depth to his character.

26) Again this is probably blasphemy to Phantom purists, but I always tune out during “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”. Rossum is great in the song, conveying the sorrow she feels over missing her father, but come on. Do we need a three to five minute number just to understand, “I really miss my dad, I wish he was here with me?”

I must admit the song is a beautiful piece of heartache and sorrow, while also giving us our best peek into Christine’s relationship with her late father, but it just slows down the pacing too much for me personally.

27) Similarly, the action of the following sword fight between The Phantom and Raoul is another thing that on its own I really like. The decision to add a bit more action to the film as well as giving Raoul more to do is something I appreciate. But it just slows down the pacing too much for me, personally.

28)

Christine [after they plan to use Christine as bait to lure out The Phantom]: “Raoul I’m frightened. Don’t make me do this.”

Can I just say I would like Raoul so much more as a character if he said, “Alright, I won’t make you do this. We can run for it. Just you and me.” I would love that, I would love if Christine came to the decision herself as, “No, even if I’m afraid I have to do this.” She sort of does that in the film as is but I would have liked both Raoul and that decision more if Raoul weren’t pressuring her to do it.

29) So the opera is performing The Phantom’s play Don Juan and the actor playing the titular Don steps off stage and The Phantom steps back on in costume as the don.

And I’m just thinking: really? No one immediately notices that the actor’s height, weight, and voice has changed? No one stands up and shouts, “Hey, that’s The Phantom!” and they just shoot him before he gets to close to Christine? They just roll with it? Do they people in the audience actually believe this is the tubby guy from before? Am I overthinking this?

30) Naming a song “The Point of Return” makes it pretty clear what is happening in the musical at this point, but beyond that the composition of the number does an excellent job of conveying its title. You feel the weight in the music more so than the lyrics, and that’s where the power is.

31) So The Phantom is ugly. He wears his mask to hide a hideous deformity that the world has totally shunned him for. It is this deformity which have caused him to be beaten repeatedly, tortured, and called the Devil’s Child as a kid. And then Christine goes to remove his mask and we FINALLY see the blood curling horror which is The Phantom’s face...

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

I do enjoy this film more than some others do, but come on. This is supposed to be one of the most hideously disfigured characters in all of fiction. He’s not even supposed to be human!

Anyway...

33) The decision to put the chandelier crash at the end of the film instead of the end of the first act I think is a smart change. When you’re doing a Broadway show you need a solid ending to act one, in film you usually want to hide the structure as well as you can. There’s no three acts (or at least there’s not supposed to be), there’s just one story. So it makes sense to have the chandelier at the end.

34) The film’s entire climax is incredibly key to The Phantom as a character, and Butler is absolutely stellar in the scene.

THIS is his madness as its greatest. His desperation and his pain has become total to him. There is nothing else. It is here that it becomes clear that the ugliness of his face has entered his soul. He has come the monster he was said to be as a child not because of any physical deformity but because of the mind crippling loneliness that deformity has brought him. He just doesn’t want to be alone anymore, and it is that decision that drives him to madness. And it is the first sign of companionship which brings him back to some form of reason.

Christine: “God give me courage to show you you are not alone.”

That is all The Phantom ever needed. Something real, something which showed him that he could be loved despite his face. He doesn’t lose Christine because of his scars. He loses her because of his actions. And the kiss shows him that. And he lets them go before listening to the music box singing the lyrics to Masquerade.

Phantom: “Masquerade...paper faces on display. Masquerade, hide your face so the world will never find you.”

35) Okay, ever since seeing the original stage production, this image of Meg finding the Phantom’s mask while dressed the way she is makes me want them to go on swashbuckling international adventures.

I really enjoy this adaptation. I think it conveys the stage musical in an effective and equally macabre way, that it uses the change in format to it’s advantage, and that it is acted remarkably well (even the controversial casting of Gerard Butler I think is pretty great). I just really enjoy this film and the heart it carries with it. If you’re a fan of musicals, horror, Andrew Lloyd Webber, any of the actors involved, or Andrew Lloyd Webber, I recommend giving it a view.

[redantsunderneath]

Critical Accommodation

The first forum thread I ever started, on some televisionwithoutpity-type forum, was on the topic of simultaneously overrated and underrated art/artists.  Now, I don’t know if I expressed my ideas clearly or not, but in the email exchange subsequent to a strangely angry moderator deleting the post, clarity didn’t seem to be the issue as much as a failure on his part to admit to the idea that the relationship between quality and popularity could somehow be multivalent.  At the time, I probably used Radiohead or something as an example – underrated by any sort of mass audience but overrated by what you might a few years later have call pitcthforkers – but maybe Serial is a good modern equivalent.  I doesn’t hold enough interest for anyone who has seen more than 3 Datelines and thinks the idea of NPRing the concept up is boring, but elicits a little too much ado from the Slate reading contingent who, maybe, believe True Crime as a genre just got invented.

 I kind of lost interest in this as a concept as, after a while, all you can see are the social signaling aspects of this multi-audience interaction, maybe thanks to hipsters turning countersignaling into a game of chicken where they threw their steering wheel out the window. But it seems that multiple axes of “is it good” that coexist have become more obvious lately, and not just because people are starting to notice that everyone lives in a bubble. Case in point: I was involved in an exchange recently about the movie Suicide Squad, with a poster claiming that the response to the movie showed how pronounced the divide was between critics and the casual audience.  I had to ask what this meant because the critics I pay attention to have been very positive about Suicide Squad and the DC movies in general (in relation to the Marvel movies especially) and dismissive of the sea of internet opinions that call the films garbage.  The person bringing it up was talking about the actual moviegoing audience which made the movie immensely profitable because they weren’t told they were supposed to hate it vs. the majority of internet based and payed critics who poo-pooed the movie as you would expect.  Both of these critical-mass divides were true at the same time, but each of us preferentially saw one.

 I’ve written a lot about textual story and subliminal story in an effort to pick at the meaning of entertainments of all kinds.  But all this is making me think about the fact that there are more levels than just above and below and various audiences are habituated to look for satisfaction at a certain level. One problem is that no matter how smart and attentive the audience member is, they tend to privilege this one layer and, as a result, this strata is optimized for by producers (via a complex Darwinian system) if they are viewed as the primary audience.  So the actual most complicated and interesting multilayered stuff is going to suffer for any specific audience in that it will not be “the best possible thing” at the level they are trained to value the most.  The funny thing is, this system more and more doesn’t favor people who focus on depth and complexity in producing a serious work, but artists who are profoundly unhinged at some level who are willing to operate at the most superficial levels primarily with the deep stuff inadvertently spilling out like piñata guts.  These movies often don’t make intellectual sense.

 I think in order to consider this, text and subliminal aren’t going to cut it.  There is a superficial or visceral level of engagement – incident, big emotion… the action movie thing, but also at a different pitch the romantic comedy thing.  Crowd pleasers that satisfy the lower levels of Maslow’s pyramid – oral (safety, threat, need, good/bad) and anal (dominance, desire, will).  Then you have the mid level engagement of the genital (intricacy, complex relational, intellectual satisfaction) and basic social consciousness (mid to upper Maslow) which is common internet aesthete and print critic land.  If there is talk of screenplay structure or complex characters or representation, it is in this middlebrow-that-thinks-it’s-highbrow area. The Oscar zone.  

 There is another level, though, which me might call the ineffable, the preconscious, the deep structural, the semiotic, the transcendent, or the sublime.  People who I usually pay attention to are focused on this later level to some degree. The thing that ties these people together is an emphasis on visual storytelling (or poetics if we are talking about print) and a philosophical bent.  The escape of conscious forms, of spoken language and structure, receiving symbolic content and using that to construct meaning.  There is a lot of theory in this zone… it is not not intellectual, but rather senses something hidden or unintentional and wrestles that into the zone of language and reason.  This includes primal unexamined societal impulses where the motivations for politics and hatred lie.  

 So group 1 are the conscious experiencers (popcorn moviegoer).  Group 2 are the social intellectualizers (the maven or critic).  Group 3 have found some way to touch an unmediated submerged experience and bring it up to examine, which oddly gives them more in common with group 1 (the dredgers and deep divers).  Everybody at a higher number level has some experience with the lower numbers but what I have noticed is that most people in this hierarchy tend to limit focus to their preferred layer and stick there, losing the ability to really engage at the other levels with something that doesn’t satisfy on theirs.  I do run into more people who are able to put a foot on 1 and a foot on 3, people who go deep on trash cinema for instance, but these people usually take a shit on level 2.  Many of these people hate prestige TV very viscerally.  Others stick to 3 and tend to close read based on one particular “deep topic” like capitalism or gender.

 This leads to extremely insightful people who have a fixed level of focus.  I almost said “myopia” but a better ophthalmologic analogy is loss of lens accommodation, a common problem of age (the need for reading glasses after you turn 47 is this).  With this condition you can be nearsighted or farsighted or have 20/20, but you can’t focus very well outside of a narrow range of your focal length.  My very favorite writers on narrative art are able to focus up and down the scale and, importantly, experience the piece as a blank slate, so the reading can be guided by the piece and not a bias as to level of engagement.  Zizek is great, but I’d prefer it if he seemed to be able to be exhilarated, have fun, recognize bad pacing, or appreciate an actor/actress performance without making these a function of some Marxist/Lacanian equation.

 The good reviews of Batman vs. Superman I have seen dwell on the visual composition and fuck off attitude, but also focus on the movie as a critique of a kind of moral simplicity implicit in nerd/internet culture who can’t see what these characters are really up to.  The film is deliberately provoking the group that generates all the reviews.  Superman is an alien who is hyper aware of the conflict between humanity’s potential and its reality. His choice to act for the good in Man of Steel is that of a god in absolute agony as he has to take the war into himself, killing because moral choices are horrific and don’t have the external consequences they should in a just universe. Superman knows he chooses his path to suffer and serve the good and the universe could care less (Nietzsche’s Ubermench, anyone?). His suffering imposes a moral order on the universe.  In BvS he confronts the prospect of progressive inaction, the Obama path, do no harm because everyone seems to want you to be blamed, shamed into will-less-ness… one of the failure modes of the current American (masculine) spirit. Batman represents the other failure mode, the wallowing in the anger at traditional American values violated by the rise of selfishness and me first mentality.  Of course they need to fight – they are primal opposites: deflated optimism vs. pessimism on steroids, past vs. future, sun vs. void, naturally gifted immigrant vs. driven legacy born on third base.  

 These are gods, and are presented like gods, in a series of mise-en-scene straight ripped from renaissance paintings. It is wrong to speak of subtlety, because subtlety is the opposite of the point.  Look at those (Turin?) horses, gaudy symbols like oranges in the Godfather! The structure of the story is a mess by normal metrics, but there is a shape there, and that is enough when you are dealing with art film rules.  The collision of two celestial objects, awaiting the feminine to mediate their Hegelian synthesis and convert their masculine valances to the positive.  Dwelling on act structure is stupid.  Recognizing that they failed to make this a conventional narrative is useless.  Citing plot inconsistencies, “X wouldn’t do that,” and calling it emptyheaded and over the top mean you are watching a movie you can’t handle.  This is a skilled, smart but “off,” bodily centered outsider artist grappling with shit that is really, really big and deep.  It isn’t perfect, but no one should want that out of this (there are countless clockwork left brain things to watch)… you should come to this wanting a mess, gods of ideas punching your midbrain, opening you to experience the catharsis of basic archetypal struggles in the world.  You know, like superheroes work.  It is wrong to privilege level 2 which, remember, is where mass of expressed “learned” opinion is.  This is where the DC Verse lives.  Marvel is centered in DC’s hole, and it is right to talk of story as structure.

 My point is that the best thing you can do is learn to focus where the thing is most ready to connect with you and be flexible enough to let the thing tell you how to read it.  There is a lot of crap, but there is a lot of good stuff that gets critically ignored because too few are focusing in the right areas.  If you like more stuff, if you find everything more interesting and complex, you win. Not everything is good, but you can almost always find a way to engage it at its best.  You can say many bad things about the book Twilight, but damn if there isn’t something there about the subject/object struggle of being desired as a young woman, the disconnect of inner and outer experience, and the consideration of the choice of traditional-relationship-as-road-to-marriage in a modern context.  If you smirk and say Mary Sue, you have failed.  

 This three cluster model isn’t perfect, but explains a lot why I see lumpy, weird high budget stuff with the high viewership (mass audience), pissed off forums and think pieces (critical consensus/perceived audience if you live online), and elated jaded curmudgeons (deep critics) troika so often.  I think this is more than just a status economy (though that is clearly involved) but the production system has adjusted so that the qualities of the output levels align to the audience expectations.  The most interesting stuff is that which crosses levels, which requires risking a product that will probably seem suboptimal to everyone.  So, let’s have a toast for the auteurs who don’t fit, making movies that are a scrum of potential meanings that require you to get dirty and renounce the tyranny of “the way it should be done.” And I mean Michael Bay as well as David Lynch.  If they seem insane, it’s a feature not a bug.

[dandwyeroffscript-blog]

HELLO, DOLLY!

THE DIVINE MISS L.

All the actresses who’ve played Dolly Levi - from the original Dolly, Carol Channing, to even stand-up comic Phyllis Diller - have informed the role with their own persona. Dolly’s perfect for any diva: she was written by playwright Michael Stewart and lyricist and composer Jerry Herman for the Broadway legend Ethel Merman, who finally played the part at the end of HELLO, DOLLY!’s original Broadway, six-year run (and whom I saw perform it in my first Broadway play on a high school visit to New York City). But beyond persona or divaness, it’s hard to imagine any musical comedy actress defining the role with her own ACT (emphasis added) more than Midler. In this grandly entertaining revival of one of America’s most successful musicals, Bette Midler plays Bette Midler playing Dolly Levi.

Midler plays her diva card from the start, when, upon her entrance, she gets an ovation, not a standing one (although multiples of those occur later). Having captured the automatic adulation of the audience, Midler quickly turns to bonding with it like the legendary diva she's become.

In the performance I saw, in the first “book” scene in the first act, Midler (deliberately it appeared) dropped a line, called for it, then laughed at herself. Having kicked down the fourth wall, she delightfully romps - sometimes unapologetically hamming it up, reveling in her own, unique schtick - for the next two and half hours. (At a performance a few days later, I learned, Midler stops before beginning an Act 1 number to ask for a drink of water.)

There’s real method to Middler’s campy madness. She ingratiates herself by poking fun at herself about being too old for the part (she’s 71) and pre-empts the gossip that she tires too easily or that her voice isn’t what it used to be. (It's ok. Not the range it once was, naturally, but ok.) At one point, she takes a breath with broad vaudevillian flair. At another, after an especially robust ensemble number (there are multiple), she leans, winded, against the proscenium, wiping her brow. Phew!

Midler's Dolly is a chockablock of Midler's burlesque-style mannerisms - from the quick-footed, baby-stepped, butt-bustling, shoulder-shaking, wrist-swaying sashaying to her nasalized, elongated vowels (just hear what she does with Yaaaawnkers) she made famous in her concert acts back in the Seventies. HELLO, DOLLY! could be renamed THE DIVINE MISS L(evy).

First produced in 1964, HELLO, DOLLY!, based on Thornton Wilder’s play THE MATCHMAKER, tells the tale of the busy-body, widow Mrs. Ephraim Levy of Manhattan around 1900, who wheedles to wed widow Horace Vandegelder (niftily played by David Hyde Pierce) of Yonkers, a client whom she has brokered in pending marriage proposal to young New York widow Irene Molloy. By coincidence, Vandergelder’s shop assistants in his Yonkers’ feed store, Cornelius and Barnaby playing hooky from work in Manhattan, wander into Mrs. Molloy’s millinery shop, where they are discovered by Vandergelder. That ends Vandergelder's interest in Irene, so Cornelius escorts her for a night on the town, Barnaby the shopgirl Minnie Fay. In Act 2, everyone ends up that evening at the Harmonia Gardens restaurant where Dolly, knowing she has already doomed Vandergelder's interest, in the unattractive dinner date she's arranged for him, makes a splashy entrance (the big “Hello Dolly” number). Vandergelder again discovers Cornelius and Barnaby with Irene and Minnie Fay. Mayhem ensues. All but Dolly are hauled off to jail. When the dust settles, everyone gets their romantic match, and Vandergelder finally relents to Dolly’s persistence and charm, agreeing to marry her.

Second billing in this revival should go to Jerry Herman’s score, with its portfolio of well-known or instantly recognizable tunes, like “Before the Parade Passes By”, “It Only Takes A Moment”, “Put On Your Sunday Clothes”, “I Put My Hand In”, “Elegance” and, of course, the title song, arguably the most hummable - and viral - Broadway show tune ever composed.

The sets and costumes by designer Santo Loquasto are gorgeous. The painterly canvas backdrops evoke not only "opera" houses that sprang up all over late 19thc America but also city and Hudson River scenes from illustrated gazette’s like Scribner’s or Collier's of the time. The elegant costumes, layered in period detail, are nonpareil. Most dazzling are the outfits for the ensemble in “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” where Loquasto eschews naturalistic colors he uses in the rest of the show for almost Day-Glo solid pastels to a blaze of Technicolor effect that would make MGM movie musical genius Vincente Minelli wide-eyed.

The supporting cast is excellent, albeit peculiarly miscast in one pairing. Gavin Creel looks the virginal 33-year old Cornelius, boyish enough to be in his twenties. Kate Baldwin plays the youngish widow Irene Malloy but can’t disguise a sophistication of a middle-aged woman. The coupling oddly suggests a May - September romance. Age appropriate - though of different body types to charming effect - is the pairing of a short, cherubic Beanie Feldstein as a feisty Minnie Fay with the youthfully-framed Taylor Trensch as naïve, soft-spoken Barnaby.

David Hyde Pierce fares well against Midler’s Dolly. He creates a character, instead of playing himself. He’s costumed and made-up to look unkempt, disheveled and old. Pierce strikes the perfect misanthropic notes with his signature droll tone and impeccable timing and employs an authentic-sounding, old-fashioned New York accent to boot.

Warren Carlyle choreographs it all splendidly from the soft-shoe elan of “Elegance” to the razzle-dazzle, leg-kicking chorus line of the title number (goosebumps guaranteed). “The Waiters' Gallop” is a dizzying exercise in perfectly-timed athleticism. Veteran director Jerry Saks knows better than anybody how to squeeze every entertaining moment from all the showbiz on stage.

But, getting back to Bette. It’s all about Bette. She grabs the audience form her entrance and never lets go. She particularly entrances with a silent routine at the Harmonia Gardens, where she ravenously feasts alone after everyone has been hauled off to jail. Gnawing on chicken bones, gulping sauce out of a silver gravy boat, and then draining the silver serving tray, she concludes her meal by popping over a dozen dumplings into her mouth. At first it’s Chaplinesque, then like Lucille Ball in the chocolate factory skit, but alas, for me, it recalled Paul Newman in the hard-boiled egg scene from Cool Hand Luke. When Midler reached once again for the gravy boat, I’d had enough of the gag. (Pun intended). The audience loved it