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alexzalben · 3 years

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What do you think of all the backlash the last Riverdale episode received? I’ve never seen the writers speak out like this before on all the hate.

This is a pretty complicated topic that I probably can’t do justice with one Tumblr ask, but I’ll try to address some of the broad strokes ideas here. And hang tight, because this is gonna go long.

First of all, a caveat: I have by no means read through every comment the writers were responding to, nor do I know what they discussed or how they’re feeling about things, nor do I speak for them in any way.

However, I do think one of the joys and downfalls of making TV in the social media era is the accessibility of the creative team to fans. Joys because it opens up new ways of understanding how a show is made, demystifying the process, which is always a good thing. Downfalls because to some fans - not all fans, by any means - it makes them feel like they have a say in what happens in the show.

On the latter, it’s not to say that the writers aren’t listening, on many series they’re well aware of what fans think about their show, the plots, the ships, etc. Sometimes they’ll even shift where they’re going based on fan feedback. Nikki and Paolo on Lost are the example I always go to, where they were introduced to show the outside perspective of what other survivors were doing while Jack and his gang were going on adventures... And everybody HATED THEM. So much so that plans changed and they were literally buried alive on the show by the end of the season, in a very unsubtle metaphor.

That said, there’s a difference between what I perceive to be the tone around Nikki and Paolo, which mind you was pre-Twitter days, and what some shows have to deal with now: one is constructive criticism presented as “hey we don’t like this”; the latter sometimes veers into “you suck and you should kill yourself.”

I want to emphasize again: this is not everyone. Usually there is a small section of any group of people that delves into hyper-negativity, and they always get an outsized focus to the number of people who actually do that. Again, example here, but for a while I was part of a pretty popular online sketch comedy group. We got tons of views, tons of comments, I’d estimate 95-99% of those comments were great. Did I internalize those? Of course not. I internalized the one comment out of 100 that told me what a shitty writer I was. That’s the one that rolled around in my head all night, because it seeped into the fear that most writers have that they do suck and will never be successful, at any level. It’s Imposter Syndrome, plain and simple, and it affects everyone no matter how famous (or not) they are.

Reason I mention that is it’s entirely possible that 99% of the comments to the writers of Riverdale this episode were mostly fine, but if 1% of them were of the “fucking kill yourself” variety, that hurts, a lot. It’s not on everyone, by any means, but that pulls the focus, and it’s horrifying every time no matter how often it happens (and believe me, it happens far too often).

Specifically with Riverdale, there are another few factors that are exacerbating this. One is, and I don’t want to diminish this: the pandemic. We’re a year in and people are crumbling mentally. Nothing has been “normal” for a year, that impacts every single aspect of your life, and some things are easier to lash out at than others, like a TV show. If a deadly virus is causing inconsistency? Not much you can do about that. If your fave TV show is shaking up the broadcast schedule and changing your favorite couples? Complain to the writers, the directors, the actors, etc.

The other is the arc of this season so far, which I do think is driving people fucking nuts. This again gets back to the pandemic, but ending with episode 19, waiting months, and then coming back for a premiere that is actually the third to the last episode of the season? That’s unsettling. It throws you off kilter, because it’s not the right rhythm. I know this sounds a little silly, but it’s actually very important: stories have a rhythm to them, and a lot of TV shows in particular have had that rhythm broken. Riverdale had three episodes that were all essentially climax, then upended the show with a time jump, and has continued to mix things around almost every episode. And then it’ll be going into another three month break.

This is definitely the point where someone says “mix things around? they’re doing the same couples they always did.” Sure, theoretical person. But having sifted through fan comments and tweets over the past couple of weeks, every single week one section of the fanbase has been 100% sure it is their ship’s time to shine, and the next they’re being told it’s done forever, and then the next they’re back on, then the next they’re done... It’s an emotional rollercoaster ride, and that’s how the writers designed it, and it’s frankly not over yet. But add in that pandemic uncertainty above, and you have a recipe for people panicking.

Also, and again, this is a small section of any fanbase, but it’s very clear that because of this hyped up panic, some people are being absolutely terrible assholes to other fans. I know I don’t usually curse this much, but the amount of gloating I’ve seen from people on all sides, back and forth, is super gross. Personally, if someone is sobbing for whatever reason, my reaction has never been to quote tweet them with “you lost, get over it” and a peace sign emoji. It sucks when people are sad, and we have a moral obligation to make sure other people feel okay. Don’t know if you’ve ever heard this one, but “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Sort of an important life rule.

Overall, I think a fanbase is stronger is they support each other rather than engaging in ship wars, and I do think there’s a lot of people who do do that. Or just express their displeasure, without attacking people. But there are some people who do, and that’s overall making the whole tone of the discussion that much worse.

So what’s the solution here? I always emphasize to my writers that it’s okay to have a negative take as long as you provide something constructive about a way out of the situation, and I’ll apply that both to the Riverdale fanbase, as well as this extremely long Tumblr ask.

There are three things I’d suggest, and both of them are on you. By “you” I mean the general you, and the reason I suggest them, versus what the writers and creators of Riverdale can do is that “you” are the thing you can control and change.

The first is changing the tone of the discussion. Realize that there are people deeply, emotionally impacted in different ways by this TV show. Allow that they may be having different emotional reactions than you, and give them the space and the support to work through it. If you’re a Varchie fan, it actually makes you a better fan to check on a Barchie fan and see if they’re okay. If you’re a Barchie fan, it’s okay to be happy for a Varchie fan and sad at the same time. Mainly because none of you had anything to do with it. This isn’t even a case where you wore your lucky socks and your fave team won the game. The writers are writing what they wrote, and you are a passive observer, not involved other than the involvement you bring to it. So if everyone supports each other regardless of the circumstances, that will improve things overall.

The second? Disengage. Take a break. Stop watching the show. You have no obligation to tweet, or go on any other social media outlet for this series, nor do you have to keep watching the show if it hurts you. In fact, taking a show break if you feel too involved is a very good thing. Check out, clear your head and come back much later and look at it with fresh eyes.

Third? Think before you comment. It took me a long time to get here with this one, and I’m still working on it, but before you comment: pause, read it over again, and think “is this something I really want to send?” You do get that rush of taking whatever anger you’re feeling and getting it out of your body and mind, but ultimately it’s usually more damaging than either waiting, posting something a little more thoughtful, or not posting at all. It’s really thinking about what you’re adding to the conversation, and what you’re hoping to get back.

So there you go. Lots of thoughts there, and I’m sure there’s lots more to say. This is only my outside perspective on this, and I hope it’s helpful at least in some small way. And if not, that is cool, too!

#Riverdale

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grigori77 · 3 years

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2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 1)

30. BODY CAM – in the face of the ongoing pandemic, viral outbreak cinema has become worryingly prescient of late, but as COVID led to civil unrest in some quarters there were a couple of 2020 films that REALLY seemed to put their finger on the pulse of another particularly shitty zeitgeist. Admittedly this first one highlights a problem that’s been around for a while now, but it came along at just the right time to gain particularly strong resonance, filtering its message into the most reliable form of allegorical social commentary – horror. The vengeful ghost trope has become pretty familiar since the Millennium, but by marrying it with the corrupt cop thriller veteran horror screenwriter Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) has given it a nice fresh spin, and the end result is a real winner. Mary J. Blige plays troubled LAPD cop Renee Lomito-Smith, back on the beat after an extended hiatus following a particularly harrowing incident, just as fellow officers from her own precinct begin to die violent deaths under mysterious circumstances, and the only clues are weird, haunting camera footage that only Renee and her new partner, rookie Danny Holledge (Paper Towns and Death Note’s Nat Wolff), manage to see before it inexplicable wipes itself. Something supernatural is stalking the City of Angels at night, and it’s got a serious grudge against local cops as the increasingly disturbing investigation slowly brings an act of horrific police brutality to light, until Renee no longer knows who in her department she can trust. This is one of the most insidious scare-fests I enjoyed this past year, sophomore director Malik Vitthal (Imperial Dreams) weaving an effective atmosphere of pregnant dread and wire-taut suspense while delivering some impressively hair-raising shocks (the stunning minimart sequence is the film’s undeniable highlight), while the ghostly threat is cleverly thought-out and skilfully brought to “life”. Blige delivers another top-drawer performance, giving Renee a winning combination of wounded fragility and steely resolve that makes for a particularly compelling hero, while Wolff invests Danny with skittish uncertainty and vulnerability in one of his strongest performances to date, and Dexter star David Zayas brings interesting moral complexity to the role of their put-upon superior, Sergeant Kesper. In these times of heightened social awareness, when the police’s star has become particularly tarnished as unnecessary force, racial profiling and cover-ups have become major hot-button topics, the power and relevance of this particular slice of horror cinema cannot be denied.

29. BLOOD QUANTUM – 2020 certainly was a great year for horror (even if most of the high profile stuff did get shunted into 2021), and this compellingly fresh take on the zombie outbreak genre was a strong standout with a killer hook. Canadian writer-director Jeff Barnaby (Rhymes for Young Ghouls) has always clung close to his Native American roots, and he brings strong social relevance to the intriguing early 80s Canadian setting as a really nasty zombie virus wreaks havoc in the Red Crow Indian Reservation and its neighbouring town. It soon becomes clear, however, that members of the local tribe are immune to the infection, a revelation with far-reaching consequences as the outbreak rages unchecked and society begins to crumble. Barnaby pulls off some impressive world-building and creates a compellingly grungy post-apocalyptic vibe as the story progresses, while the zombies themselves are a visceral, scuzzy bunch, and there’s plenty of cracking set-pieces and suitably full-blooded kills to keep the gore-hounds happy, while the horror has real intelligence behind it, the script posing interesting questions and delivering some uncomfortable answers. The characters, meanwhile, are a well-drawn, complex bunch, no black-and-white saviours among them, any one of them capable of some pretty inhuman horrors when the chips are down, and the cast, an interesting mix of seasoned talent and unknowns, all excel in their roles – Michael Greyeyes (Fear the Walking Dead) and Forrest Goodluck (The Revenant) are the closest things the film has to real heroes, the former a fallible everyman as Traylor, the small-town sheriff who’s just trying to do right by his family, the latter unsure of himself as his son, put-upon teenage father-to-be Joseph; Olivia Scriven, meanwhile is tough but vulnerable as his pregnant white girlfriend Charlie, Stonehorse Lone Goeman is a grizzled badass as tough-as-nails tribal elder Gisigu, and Kiowa Gordon (probably best known for playing a werewolf in the Twilight movies) really goes to the dark side as Joseph’s delinquent half-brother Lysol, while there’s another memorably subtle turn from Dead Man’s Gary Farmer as unpredictable loner Moon. This was definitely one of the year’s darkest films – largely playing the horror straight, it tightens the screws as the situation grows steadily worse, and almost makes a virtue of wallowing in its hopeless tone – but there’s a fatalistic charm to all the bleakness, even in the downbeat yet tentatively hopeful climax, while it’s hard to deny the ruthless efficiency of the violence on display. This definitely isn’t a horror movie for everyone, but those with a strong stomach and relatively hard heart will find much to enjoy here. Jeff Barnaby is definitely gonna be one to watch in the future …

28. THE MIDNIGHT SKY – Netflix’ big release for the festive season is a surprisingly understated and leisurely affair, a science fiction drama of big ideas which nonetheless doesn’t feel the need to shout about it. The latest feature in the decidedly eclectic directorial career of actor George Clooney, this adaptation of Good Morning, Midnight, the debut novel of up-and-coming author Lily Brooks-Dalton, favours characterisation and emotion over big thrills and flashy sequences, but it’s certainly not lacking in spectacle, delivering a pleasingly ergonomically-designed view of the near future of space exploration that shares some DNA with The Martian but makes things far more sleek and user-friendly in the process. Aether, a NASA mission to explore K-23, a newly-discovered, potentially habitable moon of Jupiter, is on its return journey, but is experiencing baffling total communications blackouts from Earth. This is because a catastrophic global event has rendered life on the planet’s surface all but impossible, killing most of the population and driving the few survivors underground. K-23’s discoverer, professor Augustine Lofthouse (Clooney), is now alone at a small research post in the extreme cold of the Arctic, one of the only zones left that have not yet been fully effected by the cataclysm, refusing to leave his post after having discovered he’s dying from a serious illness, but before he goes he’s determined to contact the crew of Aether so he can warn them of the conditions down on Earth. Despite the ticking clock of the plot, Clooney has reigned the pace right in, allowing the story to unspool slowly as we’re introduced to the players who calmly unpack their troubles and work over the various individual crises with calm professionalism – that said, there are a few notable moments of sudden, fretful urgency, and these are executed with a palpable sense of chaotic tension that create interesting and exciting punctuation to the film’s usually stately momentum, reminding us that things could go suddenly, catastrophically wrong for these people at any moment. Clooney delivers a gloriously understated performance that perfectly grounds the film, while there are equally strong, frequently DAMN POWERFUL turns from a uniformly excellent cast, notably Felicity Jones and David Oyelowo as pregnant astronaut Dr. “Sully” Sullivan and her partner, mission Commander Adewole, and a surprisingly subtle, nuanced performance from newcomer Caoilinn Springall as Iris, a young girl mistakenly left behind at the outpost during the hasty evacuation, with whom Lofthouse develops a deeply affecting bond. The film has been criticised for its slowness, but I think in this age of BIGGER, LOUDER, MORE this is a refreshingly low-key escape from all the noise, and there’s a beautiful trade-off in the script’s palpable intelligence, strong character work and world-building (then again, the adaptation was by Mark L. Smith, who co-wrote The Revenant), while this is a visually stunning film, Clooney and cinematographer Martin Ruhe (Control, The Keeping Room) weaving an evocative visual tapestry that rewards the soul as much as the eye. Unapologetically smart, engrossingly played and overflowing with raw, emotional power, this is science fiction cinema at its most cerebral, and another top mark for a somewhat overlooked filmmaking talent which deserves to be considered alongside career highs such as Good Night & Good Luck and The Ides of March.

27. PALM SPRINGS – the summer’s comedy highlight kind of snuck in under the radar, becoming something of an on-demand secret weapon with all the cinemas closed, and it definitely deserves its swiftly growing cult status. You certainly can’t believe it’s the feature debut of director Max Barbakow, who shows the kind of sharp-witted, steady-handed control of his craft that’s usually the province of far more experienced talents … then again, much of the credit must surely go to seasoned TV comedy writer Andy Siara (Lodge 49), for whom this has been a real labour of love he’s been tending since his film student days. Certainly all that care, nurture and attention to detail is up there on the screen, the exceptional script singing its irresistible siren song from the start and providing fertile ground for its promising new director to spread his own creative wings. The premise may be instantly familiar – playing like a latter-day Saturday Night Live take on Groundhog Day (Siara admits it was a major influence), it follows the misadventures of Sarah (How I Met Your Mother’s Cristin Miliota), the black sheep maid of honour at her sweet little sister Tala’s (Riverdale’s Camila Mendes) wedding to seemingly perfect hunk Abe (the Arrowverse’s Superman, Tyler Hoechlin), as she finds herself repeating the same high-stress day over and over again after becoming trapped in a mysterious cosmic time-loop along with slacker misanthrope Nyles (Brooklyn Nine Nine megastar Andy Samberg), who’s been stuck in this same situation for MUCH longer – but in Barbakow and Siara’s hands it feels fresh and intriguing, and goes in some surprising new directions before the well-worn central premise can outstay its welcome. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the cast are all excellent – Miliota is certainly the pounding emotional heart of the film, effortlessly lovable as she flounders against her lot, then learns to accept the unique possibilities it presents, before finally resolving to find a way out, while Samberg has rarely been THIS GOOD, truly endearing in his sardonic apathy as it becomes clear he’s been here for CENTURIES, and they make an enjoyably fiery couple with snipey chemistry to burn; meanwhile there’s top-notch support from Mendes and Hoechlin, The OC’s Peter Gallagher as Sarah and Tala’s straight-laced father, the ever-reliable Dale Dickey, a thoroughly adorable turn from Jena Freidman and, most notably, a full-blooded scene-stealing performance from the mighty J.K. Simmonds as Roy, Nyles’ nemesis, who he inadvertently trapped in the loop before Sarah and is, understandably, none too happy about it. This really is an absolute laugh-riot, today’s more post-modern sense of humour allowing the central pair (and their occasional enemy) to indulge in far more extreme consequence-free craziness than Bill Murray ever got away with back in the day, but like all the best comedies there’s also a strong emotional foundation under the humour, leading us to really care about these people and what happens to them, while the story throws moments of true heartfelt power at us, particularly in the deeply cathartic climax. Ultimately this was one of the year’s biggest surprises, a solid gold gem that I can’t recommend enough.

26. THE LAST DAYS OF AMERICAN CRIME – Body Cam’s fellow heavyweight Zeitgeist fondler is a deeply satirical chunk of speculative dystopian sci-fi clearly intended as a cinematic indictment of Trump’s broken America, but it became far more potent and prescient in these … ahem … troubled times. Adapted by screenwriter Karl Gadjusek (Oblivion, Stranger Things, The King’s Man) from the graphic novel by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini for underrated schlock-action cinema director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, Colombiana, the last two Taken films), this Netflix original feature seemed like a fun way to kill a cinema-deprived Saturday night in the middle of the First Lockdown, but ultimately proved to have a lot more substance than expected. It’s powered by an intriguing premise – in a nearly lawless 2024, the US government is one week away from implementing a nationwide synaptic blocker signal called the API (American Peace Initiative) which will prevent the public from being able to commit any kind of crime – and focuses on a strikingly colourful bunch of outlaw antiheroes with an audacious agenda – prodigious Detroit bank robber Bricke (Édgar Ramiréz) is enlisted by Kevin Cash (Funny Games and Hannibal’s Michael Carmen Pitt), a wayward scion of local crime family the Dumois, and his hacker fiancée Shelby Dupree (Material Girl’s Anna Brewster) to pull off what’s destined to be the last great crime in American history, a daring raid on the first night of the signal to steal over a billion dollars from the Motor City’s “money factory” and then escape across the border into Canada. From this deceptively simple premise a sprawling action epic was born, carried along by a razor sharp, twisty script and Megaton’s typically hyperbolic, showy auteur directing style and significant skill at crafting thrillingly explosive set-pieces, while the cast consistently deliver quality performances. Ever since Domino, Ramiréz has long been one of those actors I really love to watch, a gruff, quietly intense alpha male whose subtle understatement hides deep reserves of emotional intensity, while Dupree takes a character who could have been a thinly-drawn femme fetale and invests her with strong personal drive and steely resolve, and there’s strong support from Neil Blomkampf regulars Sharlto Copley and Brandon Auret as, respectively, emasculated beat cop Sawyer and brutal Mob enforcer Lonnie French, as well as a nearly unrecognisable Patrick Bergin as local kingpin (and Kevin’s father) Rossi Dumois; the film is roundly stolen, however, by Pitt, a phenomenal actor I’ve always thought we just don’t see enough of, here portraying a spectacularly sleazy, unpredictable force of nature who clearly has his own dark agenda, but whom we ultimately can’t help rooting for even as he stabs us in the back. This is a cracking film, a dark and dangerous thriller of rare style and compulsive verve that I happily consider to be Megaton’s best film to date BY FAR – needless to say it was a major hit for Netflix when it dropped, clearly resonating with its audience given what’s STILL going on in the real world, and while it may have been roundly panned in reviews I think, like some of the platform’s other glossier Original hits (Bright springs to mind), it’s destined for a major critical reappraisal and inevitable cult status before too long …

25. BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC – one of the year’s biggest surprise hits for me was also one I was really nervous about – the original Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its just-as-good sequel Bogus Journey have been personal favourites for years, pretty much part of my geeky developmental DNA during my youth, two gleefully dorky indulgences that have, against the odds, aged like fine wine for me over the years. I love Bill and Ted SO MUCH, so like many of the fans I’ve always wanted a third film, but I knew full well how easy it would have been for it to turn out to be a turd (second sequels can be tricky things, and we’ve seen SO MANY fail over the years). God bless Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves for never giving up on the possibilities, then, and for the original screenwriters, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, for writing something that does true justice and pays proper respect to what came before while fully realising how much times have changed in the TWENTY-NINE YEARS that have passed since Wyld Stallyns last graced our screens. Certainly times have moved on for our irrepressible pair – in spite of their convictions, driven by news from the distant future that their music would unite the world and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity, Bill and Ted have spectacularly failed to achieve what was expected of them, and they’ve grown despondent even though they’re still happily married to the Princesses and now the fathers of two wonderful girls, Billie and Thea (Atypical’s Brigette Lundy-Paine and Ready Or Not’s Samara weaving). Then an emissary from the future arrives to inform them that if they don’t write the song that unites the world TODAY, the whole of reality will cease to exist. No pressure, then … it may have been almost three decades, but our boys are BACK in a riotous comedy adventure that delivers on all the promises the franchise ever made before. Winter and particularly Reeves may have both gone onto other things since, but they step back into their roles with such ease it’s like Bill and Ted have never been away, perfectly realising not only their characters today but also various future incarnations as they resolve to go forward in time to take the song from themselves AFTER they’ve already written it (a most triumphant and fool-proof plan, surely); Lundy-Paine and Weaving, meanwhile, are both absolutely FANTASTIC throughout, creating a pair of wonderfully oddball, eccentric and thoroughly adorable characters who would be PERFECT to carry the franchise forward in the future, while it’s an absolute joy to see William Sadler return as Bogus Journey’s fantastically neurotic incarnation of Death himself, and there are quality supporting turns from Flight of the Conchords’ Kristen Schaal, Anthony Carrigan, Holland Taylor and of course Hal Landon Jr., once again returning as Ted’s grouchy cop father Captain Logan. The plot is thoroughly bonkers and of course makes no logical sense, but then they’re never meant to in these movies – the whole point is just to have fun and GO WITH IT, and it’s unbelievably easy when the comedy hit rate is THIS HIGH – turns out third time really is the charm for Matheson and Solomon, who genuinely managed a hat trick with the whole trilogy, while there was no better choice of director to usher this into existence than Dean Parisot, the man who brought us Galaxy Quest. This is the perfect climax to a trilogy we’ve been waiting YEARS to see finally completed, but it’s also shown a perfect way to forge ahead in new and interesting ways with the next generation – altogether, then, this is another most excellent adventure …

24. TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG – Justin Kurzel has been on my directors-to-watch list for a while now, each of his offerings impressing me more than the last (his home-grown Aussie debut, Snowtown, was a low key wallow in Outback nastiness, while his follow up, Macbeth, quickly became one of my favourite Shakespeare flicks, and I seem to be one of the frustrated few who actually genuinely loved his adaptation of Assassin’s Creed, considering it to be one the very best video game movies out there), and his latest is no exception – returning to his native Australia, he’s brought his trademark punky grit and fever-dream edginess to bear in his quest to bring his country’s most famous outlaw to the big screen in a biopic truly worthy of his name. Two actors bring infamous 19th Century bushranger Ned Kelly to life here, and they’re both exceptional – the first half of the film sees newcomer Orlando Schwerdt explode onto the screen as the child Ned, all righteous indignation and fiery stubbornness as he rails against the positions his family’s poverty continually put him in, then George MacKay (Sunshine On Leith, Captain Fantastic) delivers the best performance of his career in the second half, a barely restrained beast as Ned grown, his mercurial turn bringing the man’s inherent unpredictability to the fore. The Babadook’s Essie Davis, meanwhile, frequently steals the film from both of them as Ellen, the fearsome matriarch of the Kelly clan, and Nicholas Hoult is similarly impressive as Constable Fitzpatrick, Ned’s slimily duplicitous friend/nemesis, while there are quality supporting turns from Charlie Hunnam and Russell Crowe as two of the most important men of Ned’s formative years. In Kurzel’s hands, this account of Australia’s greatest true-life crime saga becomes one of the ultimate marmite movies – its glacial pace, grubby intensity and frequent brutality will turn some viewers off, but fans of more “alternative” cinema will find much to enjoy here. There’s a blasted beauty to its imagery (this is BY FAR the bleakest the Outback’s ever looked on film), while the screenplay from relative unknown Shaun Grant (adapting Peter Carey’s bestselling novel) is STRONG, delivering rich character development and sublime dialogue, and Kurzel delivers some brilliantly offbeat and inventive action beats in the latter half that are well worth the wait. Evocative, intense and undeniable, this has just the kind of irreverent punk aesthetic that I’m sure the real life Ned Kelly would have approved of …

23. MUST MERCY – more true-life cinema, this time presenting an altogether classier account of two idealists’ struggle to overturn horrific racial injustices in Alabama. Writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, The Glass Castle) brings heart, passion and honest nobility to the story of fresh-faced young lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) and his personal crusade to free Walter “Johnny D” McMillan (Jamie Foxx), an African-American man wrongfully sentenced to death for the murder of a white woman. His only ally is altruistic young paralegal Eva Ansley (Cretton’s regular screen muse Brie Larson), while the opposition arrayed against them is MAMMOTH – not only do they face the cruelly racist might of the Alabama legal system circa 1989, but a corrupt local police force determined to circumvent his efforts at every turn and a thoroughly disinterested prosecutor, Tommy Chapman (Rafe Spall), who’s far too concerned with his own personal political ambitions to be any help. The cast are uniformly excellent, Jordan and Foxx particularly impressing with career best performances that sear themselves deep into the memory, while there’s a truly harrowing supporting turn from Rob Morgan as Johnny D’s fellow Death Row inmate Herbert, whose own execution date is fast approaching. This is courtroom drama at its most gripping, Cretton keeping the inherent tension cranked up tight while tugging hard on our heartstrings for maximum effect, and the result is a timely, racially-charged throat-lumper of considerable power and emotional heft that guarantees there won’t be a single dry eye in the house by the time the credits roll. Further proof, then, that Destin Daniel Cretton is one of those rare talents of his generation – next up is his tour of duty in the MCU with Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings, and while this seems like a strange leftfield turn given his previous track record, I nevertheless have the utmost confidence in him after seeing this …

22. UNDERWATER – at first glance, this probably seems like a strange choice for the year’s Top 30 – a much-maligned, commercially underperforming glorified B-movie creature-feature headlined by the former star of the Twilight franchise, there’s no way that could POSSIBLY be any good, surely? Well hold your horses, folks, because not only is this very much worth your time and a comprehensive suspension of your low expectations, but I can’t even consider this a guilty pleasure – as far as I’m concerned this is a GENUINELY GREAT FILM, without reservation. The man behind the camera is William Eubank, a director whose career I’ve been following with great interest since his feature debut Love (a decidedly odd but strangely beautiful little space movie) and its more high profile but still unapologetically INDIE follow-up The Signal, and this is the one where he finally delivers wholeheartedly on all that wonderful sci-fi potential. The plot is deceptively simple – an industrial conglomerate has established an instillation drilling right down to the very bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest point in our Earth’s oceans, only for an unknown disaster to leave six survivors from the operation’s permanent crew stranded miles below the surface with very few escape options left – but Eubank and writers Brian Duffield (Spontaneous, Love & Monsters, Jane Got a Gun, Insurgent) and Adam Cozad (The Legend of Tarzan) wring all the possible suspense and fraught, claustrophobic terror out of the premise to deliver a piano wire-tense horror thriller that grips from its sudden start to a wonderfully cathartic climax. The small but potent cast are all on top form, Vincent Cassel, Jessica Henwick (Netflix’ Iron Fist) and John Gallagher Jr. (Hush, 10 Cloverfield Lane) particularly impressing, and even the decidedly hit-and-miss T.J. Miller delivers a surprisingly likeable turn here, but it’s that Twilight alumnus who REALLY sticks in your memory here – Kristen Stewart’s been doing a pretty good job lately distancing herself from the role that, unfortunately, both made her name and turned her into an object of (very unfair) derision for many years, but in my opinion THIS is the performance that REALLY separates her from Bella effing-Swan. Mechanical engineer Norah Price is tough, ingenious and fiercely determined, but with the right amount of vulnerability that we really root for her, and Stewart acts her little heart out in a turn sure to win over her strongest detractors. The creature effects are impressive too, the ultimate threat proving some of the nastiest, most repulsively icky creations I’ve seen committed to film, and the inspired design work and strong visual effects easily belie the film’s B-movie leanings. Those made uneasy by deep, dark open water or tight, enclosed spaces should take heed that this can be a tough watch, but anyone who likes being scared should find plenty to enjoy here. Altogether a MUCH better film than its mediocre Rotten Tomatoes rating makes it out to be …

21. PENINSULA – back in 2016, Korean director Yeon Sang-ho and writer Park Joo-suk took the tired old zombie outbreak trope and created something surprisingly fresh with their darkly satirical action horror Train to Busan. The film was, deservedly, a massive international smash hit and a major shot in the arm for the sub-genre on the big screen, so a sequel was inevitable, but when the time came for them to follow it up they did the smart thing and went in a very different direction. Jettisoning much of the humour to create something much darker and more intense, they also ramped the action quotient right up to eleven, creating a nightmarish post-apocalyptic version of Korea which has been quarantined from the rest of the world for the last four years, where the few uninfected survivors eke out a dangerous day-to-day existence amidst the burgeoning undead hordes, and the value of human life has plummeted dramatically. Into this hell-on-earth must venture a small band of Korean refugees, sent by a Hong Kong crime boss to retrieve a multi-million dollar payday in stolen loot that got left behind in the evacuation, led by former ROK Marine Corps Captain Jung-seok (Secret Reunion’s Gang Don-won), a man with a tragic past he has to make up for. Needless to say, nothing goes according to plan … Train to Busan was an unexpected masterpiece of the genre, but I was even more bowled over by this, particularly since I got to see this on the big screen on Halloween night itself, just before the UK cinemas closed down again for the Second Lockdown. This certainly is a film that NEEDS to be seen first on the big screen – the fully-realised hellscape of undead-overrun Seoul is spectacularly immersive, the perfect cinematic playground for the film’s most impressive set-pieces, two astounding, protracted high-speed chases with searchlight-and-flair-lit all-terrain vehicles racing through the dark streets pursued by tidal waves of feral zombies. Sure, the plot is predictable and the tone gets a little overblown and maudlin at times, while some of the characters are drawn in decidedly broad strokes, but the breathless pace rarely lets up throughout, and there are moments of genuine fiendish genius on offer here, particularly in a truly disturbing centrepiece sequence in which desperate human captives are set against slavering undead in a makeshift amphitheatre for sport, as well as a particularly ingenious use for radio-controlled cars. And the cast are brilliant, with Don-won providing a suitably robust but also pleasingly fallible, wounded hero, while Hope’s Lee Re and newcomer Lee Ye-won are irrepressibly feisty and thoroughly adorable as the young girls who rescue him from certain death among the ruins. Altogether, this is horror cinema writ large, played more for thrills than scares but knuckle-whitening and brutally effective nonetheless, and in a year where outbreak horror became all too real for us anyway it was nice to be able to enjoy something a little more escapist anyway – given the strength of its competition in 2020, this top-notch sequel to a true genre gem did very well indeed to place this high. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t say no to thirds …

#body cam #body cam movie #blood quantum #the midnight sky #Palm Springs #palm springs movie #the last days of american crime #bill and ted face the music #true history of the kelly gang #just mercy #underwater #underwater movie #underwater 2020 #peninsula #train to busan presents: peninsula #2020 in movies

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thelatelockdownlist · 3 years

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A Series on Series 04: Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy: A Discovery of Witches/Season 1

Hi! I’m Alex, a YouTube Newbie and this is The Late Lockdown List where I talk about the list of things I’ve got on my mind since the lockdown started.

Today, on the fourth episode of A Series on Series, I’ll be talking about Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy, starting with the first book, A Discovery of Witches

and the basis of the season 1 of the TV series.

Let’s dive a little bit into it.

Why is it called the ‘All Souls Trilogy’?

I could do research, but having read the entire series, I think it’s because the male lead, Matthew Clairmont or Matthew de Clermont, in the book belongs to the All Souls College at Oxford University.

A bit of trivia: All Souls College does not have undergraduate members, and it’s unique in the sense that all members automatically become fellows -- full members of the college’s governing body. The examination for the fellowship has once been described as ‘the hardest exam in the world.”

If you’re not familiar with the book or the TV series, just know that there are going to be a lot of spoilers. With that out of the way, first a primer:

The two main characters here are Diana Bishop

-- a Yale historian, visiting scholar at Oxford (where she also got her PhD) and reluctant witch.

She’s the daughter of two very powerful witches,

but due to the tragic death of her parents she’s shied away from witchcraft and very seldom uses her power, if at all. After her parents’ death, she was raised by her maternal aunt Sarah and her partner Emily who are both witches.

They tried to teach her, but Diana’s grief at her parents’ death caused her to all but reject magic.

Then we have Matthew Clairmont (aka Matthew de Clermont of the powerful vampire de Clermont family, aka Matthew Roydon), a geneticist, All Souls College fellow and 1,500-year-old vampire.

There are creatures in this series: daemons, vampires and witches. They’re not HUMAN. That’s why they call themselves ‘creatures’ -- to differentiate themselves from us. Daemons

are blessed with creativity and cursed with madness.

Vampires

are -- well, the usual kind that we’re familiar with. Here, though, they mate for life, like wolves.

Witches

have magic -- different kinds like time walking, precognition, flight, transmogrification, telekinesis, witchwind, witchfire, witchwater, and manipulation of the elements.

Basically, if you’re familiar with Harry Potter and Twilight, then you know what witches and vampires are. Speaking of the whole Harry Potter and Twilight thing, The New York Times calls this the ‘Harry Potter for grownups’

and NPR calls it ‘Twilight for the intellectually restless.’

Make of that what you will.

For me, I don’t compare this with the other two. I think it stands very separately from those. Since this is written by an historian, the approach is markedly different. It’s well-researched -- as are most historical romance novels -- because it does deal with a certain time period.

What I love about this -- and you’ll be hearing this from me a lot -- is the world building. I judge a book by the world it creates for me. I have to be able to LIVE in that world. And in most cases, I have to WANT to live in that world.

This is a world inhabited by creatures I’ve been fascinated with my entire life -- except for daemons. I did my first thesis on vampires -- let’s not talk about why it didn’t get accepted. It’s still a sore point for me even after so many years later. And as for witches, well… family tradition has it that my maternal great grandmother was a witch. In fact, growing up, I’d heard

whispers of her supplementing her income by being a ‘healer.’ I’m not sure how much of that is true but I like to believe that it is.

So vampires and witches, I’m sold. I can tolerate the daemons.

Another thing I love about this are the well-written characters. While I can’t actually relate to Diana Bishop, I don’t have to for me to like her. She just needs to be alive for me in the book. And she is very much so. I envy her graduate degrees -- I wish I had the discipline to obtain a PhD. And spending time at the Bodleian. *sigh*

Anyway, I can understand her rejection of magic. After all, in a way it’s what took her parents away from her. But I like how she was able to adjust when she realizes that she’s got this power -- which is far stronger than anyone thought it would be.

As for Matthew -- *sigh* -- I’m a sucker for vampires. Yes, I went there. I love him. He’s a scientist and he’s good with his hands. By that, I mean he used to be a stone mason so he can build things. What? I like a guy who’s handy.

I also like the love story. Matthew and Diana are equals -- in the sense that they are partners in the relationship. Of course, with Matthew having been alive for more than a millennia -- plus vampire, plus a guy, he has a tendency to be domineering, convinced that he’s doing all things to protect Diana. However, Diana is a POWERFUL witch. She’s a scholar, too. She can take care of herself. Matthew may be physically stronger, but Diana is a POWER. And as she grows into that, Matthew struggles to keep up as well curb his tendency to be overprotective. For the most part, they do keep this balance.

On to the differences of the book from the show:

Overall, the TV series was faithful to the book. Most of the scenes in TV series are in the book. The show is gorgeous. I love the architecture and just the overall mood. I think Teresa Palmer makes a good Diana, but I love Matthew Goode. Period. But he is very, very good as Matthew Clairmont.

I know Teresa Palmer is Australian and Diana Bishop is American so I’m not sure if it’s just me, but I do hear Teresa’s native accent here and there. It’s not distracting, but since I know that the one she uses for her character is not her original accent, I can’t help but hear the Australian one. Matthew Goode, on the other hand, is British, and Matthew Clairmont is as well. Well, for the last couple of centuries he is, but he’s originally French. But overall, I have no problem believing they’re really Diana and Matthew.

As for Gillian Chamberlain,

the other witch at Oxford who in the TV series is sort of Diana’s friend… in the book, they’re merely acquaintances. She’s played by Louise Brealey aka Molly Hooper in Sherlock.

I love the actress and I love that I found Gillian both slightly annoying and a bit pathetic. Because in the book, she is. So I love that that’s how she’s also played in the series.

Then we have Aunt Sarah. When I saw Alex Kingston, my first thought was, “River!” If you don’t know, Alex Kingston played ‘River Song’ in Doctor Who.

And I loved her in that. So I knew I’d love her here, too. I do have the same ‘thing’ with her as with Teresa. Alex Kingston is British and here she plays an American. I can hear the accent. It’s not distracting, but it’s there.

And then there’s Peter Knox.

In the book, I found him arrogant, condescending and just a generally irritating person. In the series, he is more so. And the actor who plays him played Ser Alliser Thorne in ‘Game of Thrones.’

He was one of the Night’s Watch who tormented and had a hand, literally, in killing Jon Snow. But he got his comeuppance when he was hanged with the rest of the traitors. He was very convincing as a conniving SOB in GOT. And he is here, as well. In fact, he’s equal parts menacing and irritating. Which is a terrifying combination because if he’s just irritating, you can swat him away like a gnat. But because he’s menacing, you know you have to watch your back.

Satu Jarvinen

in the show is exactly how I thought she would look like when I read her in the book. In fact, the actress Malin Buska, infuses her with a somewhat edgy, emo attitude that really works. You can see why Satu and Peter work well because they seem to have something missing inside them that they think the other one has. It’s not a romantic connection -- more that of villains who don’t think they’re bad people.

And Ysabeau de Clermont.

Lindsay Duncan plays her, who also played Lady Smallwood in Sherlock.

She does have the whole ‘lady of the manor’ aura -- both regal and frightening. I really liked how she snobbishly said how modern day witches are so uneducated -- all because Diana even with her post graduate degrees didn’t speak Occitan.

FAVORITE SCENES:

The rowing scenes:

This is very self-serving because I like rowing. I haven’t had a lot of chances to row in the water. I bought a rowing machine at the start of the pandemic and actually did a few months of rowing for 20 minutes three times a week. Then I stopped. I can’t remember why. But I love the scenes of Diana rowing -- which she does to rid herself of excess energy caused by her power -- because I imagine rowing along the Thames myself.

Any time they’re in the Bodleian: I love libraries. I’ve loved them since I was a child. I loved them when I was in college. I was actually really excited that my university decided to extend the library hours on Fridays just so I could stay there and read to my heart’s content. Also, whenever I go to a foreign country, I always go to the national library.

This isn’t in the show, but in the book, but I love how everyone at the Bodleian scrambled to cater to Matthew when he went to the library. I liked how irritated Diana was that this guy took her spot… that they gave it to him solely on the basis of his being an All Souls fellow. In the TV series, they don’t really emphasize how much of a big shot Matthew is at Oxford.

I like how Matthew, when he was talking to his daemon friend, Hamish Osborne, was self-aware enough not to immediately think that Diana had the same feelings for him as he did for her. Since he’s a 1,500-year-old vampire who knew Charles Darwin, of course he’s a great resource for a history of science researcher.

I love that part when Diana was trying to guess how old Matthew was and she asked, “Survived the fall of Carthage?” and he says, “Which fall of Carthage?” It was a playful exchange, and you can see that he was showing off a bit.

Sept-Tours:

literally ‘Seven Towers’ and is the current family home of the de Clermonts. It must be hell to heat, but as most of the residents are vampires, it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s beautiful and like Matthew, I would probably claim my own tower as well.

While it’s not my favorite scene, I think they did the part of Satu torturing Diana

-- in the pretext of trying to ‘open her up’ to see what her power is -- was done well. When I read that scene, I was wondering how much of it they were going to put in the book. So it was heartening to see that ‘horrifying’ scene there.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ‘instalove.’ You know that thing that sometimes happens where the leads just fall in love at first sight? In the series, it feels like it’s instalove. Diana and Matthew first meet at the Bodleian -- the day after Diana experiences the magic in Ashmole 782. It’s a book all creatures have been trying to find. Matthew, in particular, has been searching for it for more than a century. It’s thought to explain the origins of all creatures. Matthew is initially drawn to Diana because she is able to “call” the book.

Anyway, going back to the idea of ‘instalove,’ I mean, sure there was chemistry… but... In the books, their connection was fostered both by the time they spent with each other and their curiosity about Ashmole 782. I was more convinced in the book about that part than in the TV series. Or maybe it’s my deep-seated and sometimes difficult to conceal bias FOR the book versus its live action adaptation.

The Congregation: Secret island!

It’s actually on an island in Venice, concealed from humans. It has nine members, 3 from each supernatural race. And since the de Clermont patriarch established it, one of the rules is to always have a de Clermont on the Congregation. It was created during the Crusades as a self-regulating body for the creatures. Because most of the creatures abused their powers and abilities to influence outcomes during the Crusades, they attracted unwanted attention from humans. Ostensibly to keep the creatures safe from humans, the congregation agreed to several covenants: the main ones being that they must not interfere in human politics and religion and for creatures not to mix together, especially in terms of romantic relationships.

This is the covenant Diana and Matthew break. In fairness to Diana, she had no idea. She didn’t even know about the existence of The Congregation, much less the covenant. And so Matthew does this whole ‘noble idiot’ thing where he denies his feelings for her… but of course, in the end, they end up together.

Moving on, the first book ends with Diana and Matthew going back to New York to Aunt Sarah’s and Aunt Em’s house. The original plan was for Diana to learn more about her magic from her witch aunts. The problem is that Diana’s magic isn’t the same as theirs. And they need someone to teach her so she can call the book again -- this time intentionally.

They’re joined by married daemons, Sophie and Nathaniel; two vampires: Marcus, Matthew’s vampire son, and Miriam, an ally of the de Clermonts and Matthew’s colleague at the lab, and Hamish. As there are now 3 witches (Sarah, Em and Diana), 3 vampires (including Matthew) and 3 demons, this is in effect a ‘coventicle’ -- this will be important later in the books.

They’re all gathered there for different reasons: Sophie, because she’s meant to give Diana something that has been passed down in her family for generations (and one that’s needed for the timewalk, the vampires to update Matthew regarding their research (and I guess for moral support as well), and Hamish both because he’s Matthew’s best friend and lawyer (real world legalities must be observed before one undertakes a timewalk).

They leave for Sept Tour, which Matthew volunteered as their HQ of sorts, on Halloween. That night, Matthew and Diana are going to timewalk. And seconds before they could do so, Gerbert de Aurillac, Peter Knox and Satu Jarvinen arrive to stop them.

Of course, they don’t and we see our couple land somewhat shakily in 1590 London…

And the season ends there, setting us up for the next one and The Book of Shadows.

FINAL NOTE:

I LOVE IT!

Like I said earlier, it’s faithful to the book in the sense that I didn’t find anything that was off.

If you loved the books, I’m sure you’ll love the TV adaptation as well.

I was a little nervous that I wouldn’t love it as much. I’d been burned before, you see. (I’m looking at you, American Gods. Even Ian McShane and Orlando Jones’ Mr. Nancy couldn’t keep me hooked.)

However, I wasn’t disappointed in this one. There’s a lot to love here and I’m glad that there’s a second season -- and now they’re even done filming the third.

So that’s it for the first book and Season 1. Catch you in the next episode for The Book of Shadows and Season 2. Bye!

#the late lockdown list #a series on series #a discovery of witches #review

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bananaofswifts · 4 years

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Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore’: Album Review

It’s hard to remember any contemporary pop superstar that has indulged in a more serious, or successful, act of sonic palette cleansing than Swift has with her eighth album, a highly subdued but rich affair written and recorded in quarantine conditions.

While most of us spent the last four months putting on some variation of “the quarantine 15,” Taylor Swift has been secretly working on the “Folklore” 16. Sprung Thursday night with less than a day’s notice, her eighth album is a fully rounded collection of songs that sounds like it was years in the interactive making, not the product of a quarter-year’s worth of file-sharing from splendid isolation. Mind you, the words “pandemic hero” should probably be reserved for actual frontline workers and not topline artistes. But there’s a bit of Rosie the Riveter spirit in how Swift has become the first major pop artist to deliver a first-rank album that went from germination to being completely locked down in the midst of a national lockdown.

The themes and tone of “Folklore,” though, are a little less “We can do it!” and a little more “Can we do it?” Because this new collection is Swift’s most overtly contemplative — as opposed to covertly reflective — album since the fan favorite “Red.” Actually, that’s an understatement. “Red” seems like a Chainsmokers album compared to the wholly banger-free “Folklore,” which lives up to the first half of its title by divesting itself of any lingering traces of Max Martin-ized dance-pop and presenting Swift, afresh, as your favorite new indie-electro-folk/chamber-pop balladeer. For fans that relished these undertones of Swift’s in the past, it will come as a side of her they know and love all too well. For anyone who still has last year’s “You Need to Calm Down” primarily in mind, it will come as a jolting act of manual downshifting into actually calming down. At least this one won’t require an album-length Ryan Adams remake to convince anyone that there’s songwriting there. The best comparison might be to take “Clean,” the unrepresentative denouement of “1989,” and… imagine a whole album of that. Really, it’s hard to remember any pop star in our lifetimes that has indulged in a more serious act of sonic palette cleansing.

The tone of this release won’t come as a midnight shock to anyone who took spoilers from the announcement earlier in the day that a majority of the tracks were co-written with and produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, or that the man replacing Panic! at the Disco’s Brendon Urie as this album’s lone duet partner is Bon Iver. No matter how much credit you may have given Swift in the past for thinking and working outside of her box, a startled laugh may have been in order for just how unexpected these names felt on the bingo card of musical dignitaries you expected to find the woman who just put out “Me!” working with next. But her creative intuition hasn’t led her into an oil-and-water collaboration yet. Dessner turns out to be an ideal partner, with as much virtuosic, multi-instrumental know-how (particularly useful in a pandemic) as the most favored writer-producer on last year’s “Lover” album, Jack Antonoff.

He, too, is present and accounted for on “Folklore,” to a slightly lesser extent, and together Antonoff and Dessner make for a surprisingly well-matched support-staff tag team. Swift’s collabs with the National’s MVP clearly set the tone for the project, with a lot of fingerpicking, real strings, mellow drum programming and Mellotrons. You can sense Antonoff, in the songs he did with Swift, working to meet the mood and style of what Dessner had done or would be doing with her, and bringing out his own lesser-known acoustic and lightly orchestrated side. As good of a mesh as the album is, though, it’s usually not too hard to figure out who worked on which song — Dessner’s contributions often feel like nearly neo-classical piano or guitar riffs that Swift toplined over, while Antonoff works a little more toward buttressing slightly more familiar sounding pop melodies of Swift’s, dressed up or down to meet the more somber-sounding occasion.

For some fans, it might take a couple of spins around the block with this very different model to become re-accustomed to how there’s still the same power under the hood here. And that’s really all Swift, whose genius for conversational melodies and knack for giving every chorus a telling new twist every time around remain unmistakable trademarks. Thematically, it’s a bit more of a hodgepodge than more clearly autobiographical albums like “Lover” and “Reputation” before it have been. Swift has always described her albums as being like diaries of a certain period of time, and a few songs here obviously fit that bill, as continuations of the newfound contentment she explored in the last album and a half. But there’s also a higher degree of fictionalization than perhaps she’s gone for in the past, including what she’s described as a trilogy of songs revolving around a high school love triangle. The fact that she refers to herself, by name, as “James” in the song “Betty” is a good indicator that not everything here is ripped from today’s headlines or diary entries.

But, hell, some of it sure is. Anyone looking for lyrical Easter eggs to confirm that Swift still draws from her own life will be particularly pleased by the song “Invisible String,” a sort of “bless the broken roads that led me to you” type song that finds fulfillment in a current partner who once wore a teal shirt while working as a young man in a yogurt shop, even as Swift was dreaming of the perfect romance hanging out in Nashville’s Centennial Park. (A quick Google search reveals that, yes, Joe Alwyn was once an essential worker in London’s fro-yo industry.) There’s also a sly bit of self-referencing as Swift follows this golden thread that fatefully linked them: “Bad was the blood of the song in the cab on your first trip to L.A.,” she sings. The “dive bar” that was first established as the scene of a meet-cute two albums ago makes a reappearance in this song, too.

As for actual bad blood? It barely features into “Folklore,” in any substantial, true-life-details way, counter to her reputation for writing lyrics that are better than revenge. But when it does, woe unto he who has crossed the T’s and dotted the I’s on a contract that Swift feels was a double-cross. At least, we can strongly suspect what or who the actual subject is of “Mad Woman,” this album’s one real moment of vituperation. “What did you think I’d say to that?” Swift sings in the opening lines. “Does a scorpion sting when fighting back? / They strike to kill / And you know I will.” Soon, she’s adding gas to the fire: “Now I breathe flames each time I talk / My cannons all firing at your yacht / They say ‘move on’ / But you know I won’t / … women like hunting witches, too.” A coup de gras is delivered: “It’s obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together.” It’s a message song, and the message is: Swift still really wants her masters back, in 2020. And is really still going to want them back in 2021, 2022 and 2023, too. Whether or not the neighbors of the exec or execs she is imagining really mouth the words “f— you” when these nemeses pull up in their respective driveways may be a matter of projection, but if Swift has a good time imagining it, many of her fans will too.

(A second such reference may be found in the bonus track, “The Lakes,” which will only be found on deluxe CD and vinyl editions not set to arrive for several weeks. There, she sings, “What should be over burrowed under my skin / In heart-stopping waves of hurt / I’ve come too far to watch some namedropping sleaze / Tell me what are my words worth.” The rest of “The Lakes” is a fantasy of a halcyon semi-retirement in the mountains — in which “I want to watch wisteria grow right over my bare feet / Because I haven’t moved in years” — “and not without my muse.” She even imagines red roses growing out of a tundra, “with no one around to tweet it”; fantasies of a social media-free utopia are really pandemic-rampant.)

The other most overtly “confessional” song here is also the most third-person one, up to a telling point. In “The Last Great American Dynasty,” Swift explores the rich history of her seaside manse in Rhode Island, once famous for being home to the heir to the Standard Oil fortune and, after he died, his eccentric widow. Swift has a grand old time identifying with the women who decades before her made fellow coast-dwellers go “there goes the neighborhood”: “There goes the maddest woman this town has ever seen / She had a marvelous time ruining everything,” she sings of the long-gone widow, Rebekah. “Fifty years is a long time / Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / Free of women with madness, their men and bad habits / Then it was bought by me… the loudest woman this town has ever seen.” (A fine madness among proud women is another recurring theme.)

But, these examples aside, the album is ultimately less obviously self-referential than most of Swift’s. The single “Cardigan,” which has a bit of a Lana Del Rey feel (even though it’s produced by Dessner, not Del Rey’s partner Antonoff) is part of Swift’s fictional high school trilogy, along with “August” and “Betty.” That sweater shows up again in the latter song, in which Swift takes on the role of a 17-year boy publicly apologizing for doing a girl wrong — and which kicks into a triumphant key change at the end that’s right out of “Love Story,” in case anyone imagines Swift has completely moved on from the spirit of early triumphs.

“Exile,” the duet with Bon Iver, recalls another early Swift song, “The Last Time,” which had her trading verses with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol. Then, as now, she gives the guy the first word, and verse, if not the last; it has her agreeing with her partner on some aspects of their dissolution (“I couldn’t turn things around”/”You never turned things around”) and not completely on others (“Cause you never gave a warning sign,” he sings; “I gave so many signs,” she protests).

Picking two standouts — one from the contented pile, one from the tormented — leads to two choices: “Illicit Affairs” is the best cheating song since, well, “Reputation’s” hard-to-top “Getaway Car.” There’s less catharsis in this one, but just as much pungent wisdom, as Swift describes the more mundane details of maintaining an affair (“Tell your friends you’re out for a run / You’ll be flushed when you return”) with the soul-destroying ones of how “what started in beautiful rooms ends with meetings in parking lots,” as “a drug that only worked the first few hundred times” wears off in clandestine bitterness.

But does Swift have a corker of a love song to tip the scales of the album back toward sweetness. It’s not “Invisible String,” though that’s a contender. The champion romance song here is “Peace,” the title of which is slightly deceptive, as Swift promises her beau, or life partner, that that quality of tranquility is the only thing she can’t promise him. If you like your love ballads realistic, it’s a bit of candor that renders all the compensatory vows of fidelity and courage all the more credible and deeply lovely. “All these people think love’s for show / But I would die for you in secret.”

That promise of privacy to her intended is a reminder that Swift is actually quite good at keeping things close to the vest, when she’s not spilling all — qualities that she seems to value and uphold in about ironically equal measure. Perhaps it’s in deference to the sanctity of whatever she’s holding dear right now that there are more outside narratives than before in this album — including a song referring to her grandfather storming the beaches in World War II — even as she goes outside for fresh collaborators and sounds, too. But what keeps you locked in, as always, is the notion of Swift as truth-teller, barred or unbarred, in a world of pop spin. She’s celebrating the masked era by taking hers off again.

Taylor Swift “Folklore” Republic Records

#taylor swift #folklore #review

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calzona-ga · 3 years

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SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you haven’t watched the March 11 crossover episodes of “Station 19” (“Train in Vain”) and “Grey’s Anatomy” (“Helplessly Hoping”) on ABC.

RIP, Andrew DeLuca: surgical attending at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, ex-boyfriend of Meredith Grey, brother of Carina DeLuca, and, as of ABC’s crossover episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Station 19″ on Thursday night, murder victim by the hand of a henchman in a trafficking ring. Yes, DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) was stabbed by one of the human traffickers he and Carina (Stefania Spampinato) had chased through Seattle, and despite receiving care at his own hospital, he died. But his efforts weren’t in vain, we learn: The traffickers are all arrested.

It was the culmination of a “Grey’s Anatomy” story that had been cut short by the COVID-19 production shutdown in March. In what turned out to be one of the final episodes of Season 16, DeLuca suspected a patient was being trafficked by her so-called “aunt” who had brought her to the hospital, but because he was in the middle of a manic episode, no one believed him. In the midseason finale of “Grey’s” in December, DeLuca — medicated for his bipolar disorder, well-rested and clear-eyed — spotted the trafficker, Opal (Stephanie Kurtzuba), and this time, he wasn’t going to let her get away.

In an interview with Gianniotti, who was on “Grey’s” for seven seasons, he said that when he learned how his character was going to die, he’d wanted to make sure that it was apparent that DeLuca — “a very brave and noble person,” in Gianniotti’s words — go out as “a pillar of representation for people struggling with mental health.”

“It wasn’t that he was unmedicated and unrested, and that’s what led him to put himself in a dangerous situation,” Gianniotti said. “This was the most DeLuca thing DeLuca has ever done.”

In the episode, as DeLuca hovered between life and death, he communed with Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) on the beach where she has spent most of this season, also in a liminal state, having been taken down by COVID in the season premiere. There, Meredith has hung out with Derek (Patrick Dempsey), her dead husband, and George (T.R. Knight), her dead friend — as well as characters who are still alive.

Of his beach scenes with Meredith, Gianniotti said: “You see DeLuca more happy and relaxed than you’ve ever seen him ever on the show, because all of those stressors are all gone. And he’s with the person whom he loves, which puts them even more at peace.”

“Grey’s Anatomy” — now its 17th season, and still the one most watched shows on television — is itself in limbo, according to showrunner Krista Vernoff. With negotiations with Pompeo for a contract extension ongoing, Vernoff told Variety she has to “plan for both contingencies” as she and the writers room map out the end of the season — or the series.

Though DeLuca is dead, Vernoff revealed that we haven’t seen the last of him — that’s what the beach is for, it seems. And Gianniotti, mentored by “Grey’s” executive producer-director Debbie Allen, returned recently to direct an episode that will air in the spring. He will miss the fans, Gianniotti said: “I’ve never seen a show be so beloved. To feel that love, and have felt that love over the seven seasons has really been remarkable.”

As Vernoff said, “He’s still in the family.”

In an interview, Vernoff talked about how she conceived of DeLuca’s death, the difficulties of not knowing whether the show is ending and how shooting during COVID has changed “Grey’s Anatomy.”

And what in God’s name is happening on the beach!?!

You killed DeLuca.

I’m the worst.

How did this story come about?

Honestly, the story told itself to me. I went for my walk on the beach to come up with my pitches, and these episodes came in whole cloth, like a vision. And I was like, “Oh, no! Really, that’s the story?” And it was. We knew as I pitched it that it was the midseason finale story.

Sometimes stories tell themselves to you, and your heart just breaks. You’re like, “That’s not what I want the end of that story to be!” But that’s so much of life this year.

Can you talk about killing a major character this season, and having the cause of death not be COVID?

That was born, I’m certain, of my psyche wrestling with all of the ongoing tragedies and traumas in the world not stopping due to COVID. There’s this feeling of injustice, like, no, COVID is enough. But sometimes you’re going through all of it at once.

Can you talk about putting DeLuca on the beach with Meredith, and the larger meaning of the beach as a storytelling device this year?

The beach was born out of desire to have an escape from the pandemic.

We came back before almost anyone else. And the actors were scared, and nobody really knew for sure that all the safety protocols were going to work. Doing the pandemic felt like the right thing creatively, but it also felt like the thing that was going to make the actors feel safe to come back to work, because they were all going to be able to be in masks. And if they weren’t, they would be outside. And once the decision was made to do COVID, and then the decision was made to give Meredith COVID, it felt like a way to get Meredith outside without a mask, and in a non-pandemic world.

If you’re a magical thinker like I am, that beach is a real magical in-between place. But if you’re not, if you are not a believer in magical things — if you are an atheist, a scientist, a whatever, my stepsons don’t believe in a magical place — we’ve designed it very carefully so that it also could just be a dream. So anytime someone’s on that beach with Meredith, they are also in her room so she’s hearing their voices from her hospital bed.

When DeLuca visits her on the beach, for me, DeLuca’s between life and death. For my stepsons, Meredith heard in her hospital room that something happened to DeLuca. So now she’s dreaming DeLuca! I wanted very much for the motif to work no matter what you believed.

It just feels to me like whatever you believe, that’s right.

DeLuca has been on the show for a long time. What did you want his final episode to say about him?

I think he went out a hero. I think that he went out fighting for what he believed in. And he was through his mental health crisis. He’d become a very productive member of the hospital staff. And he wasn’t going to let this woman walk away again.

What was it like when you told Giacomo Gianniotti what was going to happen to DeLuca?

He was so relieved that I was not having him kill himself, or go out in a mania frenzy. And he was excited to play it — he played the hell out of it. He actually does appear in a couple more episodes this season. And he’s directing an episode.

I’m going to assume that Meredith wakes up and finds out that he’s dead. Do you see the beach as a place she’ll have an awareness or a memory of in any way?

Yes.

OK!

I don’t have too much more to say about that, because I don’t want to spoil too much. And also: Sometimes I change my mind. But at the moment, yes.

It’s been such a heavy season for both “Grey’s” and “Station 19,” reflecting the world right now. But I know that’s not necessarily where your heart is as a storyteller. Can you talk about where the thinking is on continuing “Grey’s Anatomy”?

When you’re living through a pandemic, and you’re coming back amidst a pandemic, and you decide to do the pandemic, the nature of the storytelling turns a little bit darker. And so for this moment, it is where my heart is.

And I also feel like my heart as a storyteller, my sense of light, and my sense of hope and beauty and joy that infuses most of what I do is expressed through that beach. The joy, the collective joy for all of us in getting to see Derek Shepherd again, getting to see George O’Malley again, in getting out of the hospital and getting onto the beach, and seeing Meredith’s relief there — I know that we’re worried about her, but also there’s joy.

And in terms of whether or not it’s the last season of “Grey’s Anatomy,” I don’t know. And that’s the truth. I wish I knew. It’s a source of frustration at this point. And it sort of doubles my job, my workload, because I have to plan for both contingencies. But I am. And God willing, I’ll know soon.

It can’t end like this! Can you reveal how many episodes will be in this season of “Grey’s Anatomy”?

17.

That’s a lot.

It is a lot. Yeah, it’s a lot, considering what we’re navigating.

Will anyone else be joining Meredith on the beach?

Yes! But I won’t tell you.

Returning cast members or current?

There are some surprises in store.

Now that you have shot more than half the season during COVID, can you talk about what you’ve learned over the course of the year?

The crew is exhausted because they’re behind masks and visors all day. The masks and visors are dehydrating and stultifying, and as a result, you need more breaks. You need to send everybody off the stage to take their masks and visors off to hydrate. You can’t ask everybody to be there for 12 or 13 hours at a stretch. So we’re shooting 10-hour days. And that is a really significant change to what we’re able to accomplish and shoot.

What I’ve learned, and I’m continuing to learn, is how to write the show in a way that makes it producible — we cannot have scenes with as many characters in them. And we cannot have as many scenes. And we cannot have as many locations! Because we can’t have as many company moves. All of it has to become smaller, and that changes the stories we tell. If you usually have five or six people in a scene, and now you usually have two people in a scene, sometimes the whole cast isn’t in the episode. You look at an episode and you’re like, “Where’s Amelia?” Well, she’s home with the kids! We didn’t make the company move.

I think that there are silver linings: Deeper, longer richer scenes are really beautiful things sometimes. But they’re different for “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Do you see a light at the end of the tunnel, both for these fictional characters and for all of us?

Yes, I do! I feel like we’re all living the light at the end of the tunnel right now as our parents and grandparents get vaccinated. And as we begin to emerge, hopefully, from this year of cocoon. I feel like we’re living in in some light, and I do see a light at the end of the tunnel for these characters,whether this is the end of the series or the end of the season.

There’s so much coming up! I know this one is going to be devastating for the fans. And I feel it too. I cried harder watching this episode, this cut, than I’ve cried since I watched the episode where George O’Malley died. And that is a really powerful tribute to the character that we built and to the actor.

#grey's anatomy #krista vernoff #andrew deluca #giacomo gianniotti #variety #spoiler #17x07

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cinematicnomad · 3 years

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1, 7, 25 for the fanfic end of year ask :)

001. favorite fic you wrote this year i have a soft spot for take my hand (take my everything) which was the first fic i wrote this year! and kind of the first step back into writing creatively on something new that wasn’t the 7 year monster sterek fic. also my first foray into 9-1-1 fic and was just a lot of fun!

007. longest completed fic you wrote this year the longest fic i wrote was my second for the year! so show me (family) wound up being around 16k+ for 9-1-1 which kind of burst out of me over the course of one 48 hour window unlike take my hand which took a few weeks to crank out.

025. a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read SO MANY FICS DUDE!!! i’m gonna rec a couple, some that i re-read this year and some that i discovered for the first time, all from a variety of fandoms. BUT heads up, you didn’t specify a fandom so it’s gonna be a little scattered. also someone else sent me this same question but specified 9-1-1, so i’m gonna reserve those recs for that ask. GET READY!!

and this, your living kiss by opal_bullets (7/7 | 84k+ | M) destiel; AU: college/university; john winchester’s A+ parenting; angst with a happy ending

only a very few people in the world know that the celebrated and reclusive poet jack allen is just kansas mechanic dean winchester, a high school dropout with a few bucks to his name. not that it matters anymore; life has left him so wrung out he never wants to pick up another pen.

until, that is, a string of coincidences leads dean to auditing a poetry course with one dr. castiel novak. the professor is wildly intelligent, devastatingly handsome...and just so happens to be academia’s foremost expert on the poetry of jack allen.

note: i discovered this fic back in the pre-pandemic times of feb 2020 and i’ve read this fic TWICE since, leaving a lengthy comment each time. the poetry in the fic itself is stunningly gorgeous and i have a habit of reading it out loud to myself while reading bc it begs to be heard. this fic is seriously beautiful and makes me want to read all the poet!dean au’s out there in the world. unfortunately there aren’t that many so i just keep coming back to this well. i don’t think i can express enough how much i love this fic.

lost time by ARCurren (105/105 | 350k+ | T) bransonxsybil; AU: canon divergent; outsider POVs; original characters; slow burn

the story of a free spirit who was asked to give up the man she loved for a system she didn’t believe in and what happened next. AU after 3.04.

note: did i think, when i stumbled across this fic years ago, that it would wind up being one of my all time favorites that i return to time and again to re-read? never. did i re-read it for like the dozenth time this year?? 110%. this fic is everything i want from fanfiction—it’s beautifully written, expands on canon, and shows me all the hidden moments the cameras never did (not to mention it’s historically accurate and delves deep into irish politics of the time). the first third or so of this fic is all about tom and sybil’s slow burn romance at downton, but the fic really bursts into its own when we follow the two to dublin and get introduced to all of the author’s deliciously detailed oc’s. heads up warning: this fic was never officially completed, though the final chapter is a beautifully written summary of the final arc of the fic. even so, it’s fucking worth it.

misfire by mothlights & unpossible (6/6 | 28k+ | T) sterek; time travel; angst with a happy ending; alive hale family; magic; alternating POV

“the debt must be repaid,” she says, and it has the weight of a vow. the words resonate through him, ringing through his ribcage and the bones of his jaw, and stiles loses his breath and maybe his grip on reality because she draws herself upright and where there had once stood a supermodel-level MILK now there is galadriel’s much hotter older sister, a presence of unmistakable power in their ordinary, smells-vaguely-of-thai-takeout hallway.

“oh shit,” stiles says.

note: this fic is the first in the misfire ‘verse and i need you to understand that it literally broke me when i binge read these fics a month or so ago. i am a sucker for a solid time travel fic especially bc there are such few good ones in fandom. but this gets at the heart of it all by exploring the idea of stiles getting the chance to save derek’s family and taking it...after he and derek are romantically together in his true timeline and then actually dealing with the ramifications of how that alters everything and how stiles survives in this new present where he and derek are virtual strangers. everyone should definitely read this, but you should also know that i fucking sobbed while reading the sequel (which also has a happy ending, but really digs deep into the nitty gritty angst of the repercussions).

map of the world by seperis (11/11 | 154k+ | M) destiel; end!verse; alternate universe; canon divergent; original characters; slow burn

the world’s already over and they’re already dead. all they’re doing now is marking time until the end.

note: look, if you don’t know about down to agincourt by @seperis, what are you doing with your life?? the series is over 1M+ words so far, the fic author is on book 4 out of a planned 8, and it’s fucking phenomenal. i know i’ve tagged a couple of these recs as slow burn but...this is the slowest slow burn to ever burn. canon!dean travels back into the end!verse timeline just as lucifer kills dean and somehow cas made it out alive and has to keep dean safe while he learns to become his end!verse counterpoint. the world building in this series is intense and i cannot recommend it enough. i’m still in the midst of my re-read bc it’s SUCH an endeavor but i highly recommend it to everybody.

invictus by ellanasan (116/116 | 355+ | M) hayffie; au: alive abernathy family; pre-hunger games; canon prostitution; slow burn

“so then, before i can even think about doing something stupid like trying to stab him with his fucking golden paperknife, he gives me a choice, see?” haymitch continued, almost detached. “either i play nice like all the other victors or he’ll kill my family. i could either become his puppet—greatest punishment he could give me, according to him—or i could become the example.”

AU in which haymitch’s family lives.

note: hello, have you ever wondered what the hunger games series would be like if haymitch’s family were alive? i fucking hadn’t until 2 years ago when i stumbled across this fic and fell head over heels in love with this ship. @ellanainthetardis is my go to hunger games fic writer for anything exploring canon and i’m obsessed with anything she writes about the OG victors pre-canon (finnick, joanna, chaff, etc). this fic is just 300k+ exploring that world and all the intricate details of how cruel the games could really be. HIGHLY recommend. i definitely re-read it this fall when i needed a pick me up.

don’t know what i’m supposed to do (haunted by the ghost of you) by crazyassmurdererwall (1/1 | 30k+ | T) sterek; canon divergent; angst with a happy ending; ghosts; stiles POV

stiles sees dead people. yep. seriously.

(he’s got this. he’s totally got this. so what if one of them is derek’s mom?)

note: did you know that @crazyassmurdererwall is one of my all time favorite people? and that she’s wicked talented? and that in our spare time she’ll send me a billion fic ideas that are amazing and i get to hear all the intricate details of her plot bunnies? but i digress. this fic is one of my all time fave sterek fics i’ve re-read it sooo many times. there’s just something about the heartache and stiles’ insecurity and the way he tries to shoulder it all on his own. and then there’s alli’s brilliant writing, the way she weaves through a scene and paints a picture just so and manages to tug at your heart strings with her precise word choice. there’s some amazing world building in this fic as it explores this other facet of the supernatural that canon teen wolf never touched upon, and i’m so grateful for that bc alli is the only one who should be allowed to write about ghosts and teen wolf together.

lagavulin and guinness by snarfle (10/10 | 163k+ | explicit) hartwin; slow burn; PTSD; suicidal thoughts; graphic depictions of violence; domestic abuse

plenty of people had looked down on eggsy throughout his life. he had gotten fairly used to it. didn’t mean it was fair, but he knew how these things worked. what really sucked was that the new arthur was worse than the old one.

“eggsy grimaced. he didn’t know how to explain to harry—who seemed like he hadn’t been discriminated against a day in his life—that the new arthur kept giving him what amounted to suicide missions, and that he was currently bleeding out in a warehouse because of the deliberately bad intel she had given him.”

also featuring: dean is harder to get rid of than eggsy thought, his mum is going off the deep end, there are way too many nefarious plots in play, and eggsy is really beginning to wish that harry would stop holding his hand and kiss him instead.

note: look, i know i recced this literally less than a week ago but i ALSO stayed up til 5AM re-reading this last night and it was a-m-a-z-i-n-g. i was on a bit of a kingsman kick earlier this year, so i’ve actually re-read this fic TWICE so far in 2020. i will give you a serious warning in that this fic delves deep into domestic abuse through the lens of a variety of different relationships. it also explores the potential for abuse in hartwin, bc this fic is one of the few that actually commits to the fact that they’re literal spies who murder people. actively. a lot. but seriously, this fic is one of my fave in the fandom and i STRONGLY recommend it.

waste of breath by bryrosea (1/1 | 22k+ | M) loganxveronica; canon compliant; missing scenes; navy; past child abuse

logan echolls, the nine years, and the navy.

note: bryrosea has an obscene number of amazing logan and veronica fics (her canon divergent series stay with me is another i re-read this year), but i’ve found myself returning to this fic a lot over the years. i’m a sucker for canon compliant fics that explore the missing scenes in between canon and this fic hits all the right buttons by diving deep into how logan echolls went from being a trash fire at hearst college at the end of s3 to being a decorated navy pilot by the movie. it explores logan seeking out therapy and making a life for himself that he can be proud of, all while pining after the girl who got away. and bc this author is amazing, she followed it up with a sequel from veronica’s point of view in the series done by only me.

the law of equivalent exchange by awed_frog (8/8 | 60k+ | M) destiel; POV castiel; pre-canon; post-canon; canon compliant; immortality; reincarnation

“and what’s the point of it?”

“of love? there isn’t one. loving is its own purpose.”

note: i mean??? i don’t really know what to say except that this is one of the truly most beautiful fics i have ever read. it follows castiel through time as he meets different reincarnations of sam and dean across history and falls ever more deeply in love. it is achingly tender and so ecstatically written that i die just thinking about it. and that summary? i mean. holy fuck break my heart why don’t you? i don’t know how i missed out on this fic for so long since it was published in 2015 but i only learned about it for the first time back in july and it was. life changing?? when the fic finally reaches the canon timeline and he meets THIS dean it’s peak yearning. 10/10 will read again.

ahead in the count by elisela (17/17 | 50k+ | E) sterek; AU: sports; pitcher!stiles; teacher!derek; long distance relationship; getting together

“yankee fan,” derek says, laughing when stiles makes a disgusted face. “the bronx bombers, stiles, you can’t be a new yorker and—”

“stop talking right now,” stiles sighs, shaking his head. “i can’t believe i still want to kiss you after that,” he says, pulling derek in by his coat. “this is making me rethink everything.”

“i’ll never watch them again,” derek promises, and stiles laughs against his mouth.

or: stiles is a starting pitcher for the NY mets when he meets and falls in love with derek. derek doesn’t know.

note: i read SO MANY of @elisela’s 911 fics this summer, which i loved, and then she got into teen wolf and started writing sterek and i just about died. this fic is amazing, one of my fave sterek AU’s that i’ve read in years. it’s just the right amount of drama and angst and fluff filled with all the joys of miscommunication and character relationships that makes reading sterek such a joy. reading this fic and finding out eli needed fic recs pushed me to dive back in to reading sterek fics for a bit this fall so i can say with the utmost authority that this is one of the best i’ve read in a long time.

i used to think one day we’d tell the story of us by notequitegucci (2/2 | 32k+ | M) gendrya; alternate universe—modern setting; outsider POV; friends to lovers; friends to lovers

9 times a stark encounters gendry + 1 time he meets the starks.

note: again, this is the first in a 2 part series titled love me like you do that explores arya and gendry’s dynamics together through the point of view of her family. game of thrones ended last year with a whimper but i keep returning to the gendrya tag on ao3 to seek out new, amazing content and also to re-read some old favorites. i can’t remember if i came across this for the first time last year or this one, but i’ve read it and re-read it more times than i can count since and i love it more than i can describe. i’m a total sucker for outsider POV fics and my biggest pet peeve in canon is the fact that none of the stark’s ever found out that arya and gendry had a history together. this modern au fic almost makes up for it by giving me a gendry encounter with every family member and then the big reveal. it’s peak content.

theeeeeeese recs got a little away from me. i wasn’t originally intending on adding lengthy notes to each entry but ... oh well!! these are all amazing so please enjoy.

fanfic end of the year asks

#lilolilyr #ask #if i knew an authors tumblr i tried to tag them in this #seriously my reclist got away from me for a bit #also if you're looking for 911 recs #like i said they will be in another ask where someone specified!!#fic rec #about kat writes

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bthenoise · 3 years

Text

Q&A: Tyler Posey Talks New Travis Barker-Featured, John Feldmann-Produced Solo Single “Shut Up”

Today officially marks the start of a brand new era for actor and musician Tyler Posey. After years spent in various bands, the outgoing singer/songwriter is officially stepping out on his own to showcase his distinct brand of pop-punk-inspired music.

Front and center for the very first time, Posey is treating listeners to his bold new single “Shut Up” featuring alt-indie artist phem and none other than blink-182′s Travis Barker.

Discussing the new John Feldmann-produced track, Posey said, “From start to finish, this song really did feel like something special. I wrote the verses on a trip in an RV with my dogs and my friend and felt like it was progressing so naturally in a perfect way.”

He added, “I took those bones to John Feldmann and phem and when she went into the vocal booth to record her vocals, I was so stoked. I had been wanting her on a track but was too nervous to ask. It was an emotional session and then finally to get Travis to play drums on it is just literally a dream come true. I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”

Diving further into the moving new song, the passionate performer spoke with The Noise all about working with an idol like Barker plus what he thinks the future of pop-punk will look like. To see what Posey had to say, be sure to look below. Afterward, make sure to stream “Shut Up” here.

youtube

How hard was it to keep it a secret that you made a song with Travis Barker?

TYLER POSEY: Fuck man, I mean, I've got blink-182 tattoos, they've been my favorite band since I was a kid and I've got posters of them on my wall that I'm looking at right now. It's such a big deal for me. But like, I think in some way, it was easier to keep it private because it's one of those things that you want to keep sacred. But at the same time, I’m super fucking stoked to release it. So it's like, it hasn't been that hard to keep it a secret because I'm just relishing in the fact that I got to play with him before anyone else knew. It's just so fuckin’ cool.

How did the collaboration come together? Guessing John Feldmann had something to do with it?

Yeah, exactly. I've always been piquing his interest in getting like my favorite people to collab with us. You know, I'm like, “Hey? What is Mark Hoppus doing today?’ if I’m ever at the studio with him. So this kind of came about like that. I was like, “What’s the possibility of Travis getting on the track?”

And [Jonh's] like, “Maybe the next album” because for some reason he thought sense this album I'm debuting just my name and kind of going solo, he thought [we should] keep the focus on that. But then, he hit me up one day after we recorded “Shut Up” and he FaceTimed me and he was in the studio with Travis. He's like, “Hey, so you want Travis to play on a song?” I was like “What!? Yeah, of course but I thought you said no.” [laughs]

So Travis was like right there and he's like, “What's up, dude?” And I was like, “Hey man! Yeah, so ‘shut up.’ If you dig that track then please I would love for you to feature on it.” And he loved it so that's how it started, kind of unconventional.

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A post shared by Tyler Posey (@tylerposey58)

Had you met Travis prior to this?

I have, yeah. So Feldy lets me fill in on bass for Goldfinger whenever Mike Herrera can't -- which is like the coolest thing to put on my resume, like I’m the fill-in bassist for Goldfinger. So, [John] has this Christmas party (or he used to before COVID) and he does it at his house and he has this huge fucking Christmas party where Goldfinger and all these other bands usually play and he sets up a stage. And one year, Travis was playing drums [for Goldfinger] and there's this one moment in “Superman” where it's just bass and drums and I like locked eyes with him for as long as I could before he cracked a smile [laughs]. So yeah, we’ve met a couple times before. He was super stoked to be a part of this song and he's just killing it with collabs lately so I was just honored that he wanted to work with me.

Speaking of Travis’ collabs, are you a fan of some of his recent crossover stuff with artists like Machine Gun Kelly and Trippie Redd?

Yeah, absolutely dude. Like, I grew up in the punk scene so, for some reason, when I was a punk kid going to Warped Tour all the time I was really headstrong about maintaining being “punk” and I didn't listen to anything outside of the genre. I was like, “Fuck everything else! I’m punk!” So it kind of took a little while to kind of break that. But that was like years ago so I love what [Travis] is doing with them. I think it's fucking cool too that it's putting -- so like I've been in the punk scene forever and I've always played punk music, no matter what I write, it just comes out punk -- so it's cool that pop-punk is now making a resurgence with Barker and Machine Gun Kelly and Trippie and all these other people. I think it's setting a cool precedence for punk bands that have been really trying to make it for years. So hopefully that happens.

It’ll be interesting to see what the future holds for pop-punk music thanks to people like Travis Barker and yourself who have a big platform and use it to help bring pop-punk music to a wider audience.

Yeah, dude. That's kind of how I met and got involved with all these punk bands. I was kind of vocal about them on Twitter like a long time ago, when I used to use Twitter a lot. I would just be listening to punk music and would just post a picture of it 'cause I wanted the kids to know about it so that's kind of how my involvement got started. Like State Champs hit me up and I got in good with them and rode with them on Warped Tour. Then I met Knuckle Puck and Neck Deep and just all these huge punk bands kind of brought me into the world and then it was kind of an easy transition once I started releasing my own shit. So I'm super thankful that they welcomed me with open arms and that I am, you know, part of this like, showing people the way of the punk [laughs].

So going back to “Shut Up,” how would you say this song differs from your previous projects like PVMNTS and Five North?

I think with every album, every artist says “we try to evolve” and for me it's just always been this progression. It hasn't really been anything that I've been trying to have happen, it’s just sort of happened naturally. So I think anything that I put out will always have that element of it sounding a little bit different, a little more mature [and] grown up. So I really like the song, it's polished. I love that phem is a part of it. I think it adds this kind of dynamic that I used to think my music writing was missing lately. I just think that it's more mature. Like I said, I can't really step out of like pop-punk world 'cause it's in my blood, that’s how I write. So it's not too different, it's just a more sort of mature vibe than I guess I was doing before. But like, with my last band Five North with Feldy, we really tried to experiment and kind of push the envelope a little bit. So we had like weird synth sounds but it all kind of worked because we always kept it like this pop-punk melodic sort of drive with driving verses and vocals. So it's kind of like the same vibe but just, you know, more mature. Long story short [laughs].

youtube

Is it nerve wracking for you to to put your name strictly on things now as a solo artist as opposed to having a band?

No, I don't think so. I think I've always sort of viewed myself as a solo songwriter. It's just, like, growing up in the punk scene, you know, you always had a band name and for the longest time I was part of bands that everybody, sort of, had an opinion and we all would song-write. But for what I've been doing lately, it's just been me so it felt right. It's more of like an experiment at this point. You know, I don't know how it's gonna be received, but it kind of frees me up to be a little bit more creative artistically. Whether it's writing, filming something. I just feel like it's the right move.

This song seems to makes sense as a Tyler Posey solo song considering how personal and open it is. Was it challenging for you to be that candid writing these lyrics?

No, no it wasn't. I've always viewed music as a kind of therapy. You know, it's just sort of been my outlet. As much as fuckin’ everybody says that, it holds true. So I've never really held back when it comes to writing music. Like, I've gone through a bunch of shit. My mom died like six years ago so I've written about that a bunch of times. So I've never really been one to struggle being open when it comes to writing lyrics. But this one, this one definitely is a heavy song. Like I got sober during the pandemic because I was just abusing a little bit too much and going too heavy and couldn't seem to get out of this cycle. So I was sober for a while, but like, I was just kind of dealing with an ex and kind of using that to lean on as sort of a new drug. So it's kind of what the song is about. But yeah, it's just coming together at a really vulnerable time in my life but it’s never really been too hard to be that open. I think that people deserve to know that everyone is going through the same shit that they're going through -- even if it's just one person.

For people who can relate to this song, is there any advice you can offer to them? Maybe how you felt when you were writing it?

Fuck [laughs]. My advice for somebody who's listening to this song – I don’t know dude. Life is fucking weird. Sometimes you try to do the things that you think are going to lead you to the right path but it feels like it's not. So I think that everything happens for a reason, as corny as that it. Like, if there’s some bad shit that happens, the reason is [because] you learn from it. So I think that's kind of the model for this song. Whether it's good or bad, you're gonna learn something from it and you're hopefully going to grow. It's just up to you if you want to grow from it.

That’s a great way to put it. So lastly, not giving away too much, should fans be expecting more solo music from you moving forward?

Yeah, absolutely! So this is just a sneak peek. I'm going to be releasing two EPs. We were going to do a full album but we just split the album in half and we're gonna do two EPs. The first one is called DRUGS and is all about my experience becoming sober, why I got sober and the shit that happens during that. Then the next EP, they're both going to be 7 tracks, I'm gonna release it later on in the year. So there's gonna be a bunch of shit coming out. This is kind of like the new course of action for releasing music for me, it's all going to be under my name.

That’s exciting! Guess there really isn’t much else to do during a pandemic so it makes sense to write and release a bunch of music.

Yeah dude, exactly. So I'm going to try and get some visual content out too. Start doing some videos, I’ll be filming the music video for “Shut Up” soon. So just going to keep on that course.

#Tyler Posey #John Feldmann #Travis Barker #Phem #Shut Up #Big Noise #Five North

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Creative Real Estate Financing Post Covid - Mortgage Notes and Real Estate

Why Creative Financing so Important in Today’s World

What is Creative Financing Black Swan Events Why Creative Financing has Always Come to the Rescue

Landlords are burning out. Tenants are behind on rent payments. Toilets are backing up.

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Brian Lauchner (00:00): All right. Welcome back everybody to NoteSchool TV. My name is Brian Lauchner. I'm on the teaching team here at NoteSchool, and today we have a very special episode, just like we do every single Wednesday when we go live at 11:00 AM central time. So make sure if you're wanting to get the latest and greatest content that's coming out, be sure to like, and subscribe this channel as well as turn on the notifications by hitting that bell notification. And it will tell you on your device, Hey, we're going live. And then you can jump in with your comments and we'd love to interact with you here while we're live on the show. So today here at NoteSchool TV, we've got a lot of great content. If you're wanting to learn more about the Note Business or NoteSchool in general, you could go to www.NoteSchool.com/TV to learn more, or you could actually attend an upcoming industry event called Note Expo.

Brian Lauchner (01:05): And you can learn more about that at www.NoteExpo.com. So today on our live show, we have some incredible content about the Creative Financing Space and really why is it so important that investors really know this information? And we've got the latest and greatest of people to talk about this as well. We've got Joe Varnadore and we've got the one and only Eddie Speed as well. Tons of experience to kind of bring the content into our homes and learn a little bit more. So joining me right now are going to be, and we're going to dig into, Hey Eddie, Hey Joe, why is creative financing so important in today's marketplace?

Joe Varnadore (01:44): You know, Eddie and I were talking back in March early March, when this whole thing started, right? The whole pandemic and Eddie says, Joe, he says, you know, I don't think there's ever been a better time for a couple of, you know, older, gray hair guys, to talk about the way to, you know, build your business, double your net worth during a period of time then right now. And that's because of Creative Financing. Eddie, why don't you share with us, you know, some of your experience from the past, right.

Eddie Speed (02:22): Well, you know, I started in the business. I started in the business in a market that was a black Swan Market. I started in 1980. And what's interesting guys is that when I started in 1980, I was calling on realtors, that their clients had created Seller Financing or Home Builders. They were creating Seller Financing for their clients to sell a house, a new house to them, right. A new home builder. And the truth of matter is I was calling on them. I was a rookie in the business, young didn't anything, you know, just, here I was walking into their office and they're like, it was like a morgue, right? I mean, they were just, Oh my God, we don't know what to do. And it's scary and stuff. And in this business, because I came into it from a different kind of a knowledge base, a different perspective, it was a Bonanza for me.

Eddie Speed (03:23): And I thought that through the years they'd been doing it for decades and I've been doing it for months yet, I was killing it and they thought they were getting killed. Right. They're the ones that should have been telling me how to solve the problem, not me telling them how to solve the problem. Right. So sometimes because somebody has been doing something a long time, doesn't mean they're thinking in a progressive way. So Joe and I spent a lot of time about, yeah, this gray hair does mean something, but this gray hair doesn't mean anything. If we're not looking on the market horizon and saying, what would be the most relevant changes we could make to our business that would affect our net worth and our income the most.

Joe Varnadore (04:08): And, you know.

Brian Lauchner (04:09): being that, Oh, go ahead Joe.

Joe Varnadore (04:12): No, I'm just going to say, and that, and you know that, so Eddie is, you know, he is our fearless leader, right? He's a, but he is our visionary as well. And you know, one of the sayings that, we say it NoteSchool, and Eddie nailed it is, don't have a crystal ball, but I do have a rear view mirror. And all of these events, these Black Swan events really has prepared us, right. For what's going on today in the marketplace, you know, you don't know what you don't know. So yeah.

Brian Lauchner (04:46): And before we dive into some of these things, like these terms, Black Swan events, Eddie, why don't you start off start us off by really getting everybody on the same page, because we really need to understand what is Creative Financing before we dive into it. Because kind of like you said, you know, you're going into your spot speaking to these realtors and they're supposed to be the ones with the solutions, but the solutions for what? and what that's supposed to look like. So tell us a little bit about what is Creative Financing. And then we'll dive into a little bit about the opportunity.

Eddie Speed (05:17): Well, let's define Creative Financing is some kind of financial structure that's different than just to normal traditional bank financing, right? Or traditionally how people generally focus on doing something. Now I started out in the Note Buying Business, meaning that people would sell or finance a property. They would not only be the seller of the property, but they would be the bank and they would carry payments over time. Right. They would collect payments and then they'd wake up one day and decide they wanted to cash in early. Right? Now we've come up with Creative Financing structures even to buy their notes. Right. So, Creative Financing could be a Note Buying Strategy, right. Because there's more than just one way to buy note. Right. But we also want to make sure that people don't see us as just, we teach people how to buy notes because I've taught thousands of real estate investors, how to creatively structure buying a property and reselling a property, Creative Financing when they buy it Creative Financing when they sell it.

Eddie Speed (06:28): Right. So, that's kind of, that's , when we say Creative Financing is like, what does that apply to? Anything related to what NoteSchool does it could be buying a note. It could be buying a property and getting the seller to carry terms, maybe using a private lender for part of the terms, all these different ways. And then the other side is Creative Financing. When we sell it, I like seller financing property in this market, right. Now, people say, well, don't you ever believe in rentals? Well, I mean, you'd be crazy not to believe in rentals when you could buy a rental property, Brian, in 2013 and 14 at the discounted price you could buy that, right? Because you had a high potential of its lift in value. But if you've reached a market condition that says that you pretty much have peaked out the top of the market, we can argue that debate. But wait a minute right now, if I could sell it and get a giant down payment, I could put some money in my pocket, reduce my investment costs in the property. And then I could carry owner finance paper over time, a wrap note. And and so those are all things that would relate to Creative Financing. It's not just to buy, It's not just the sale, It's not just notes, and it's not just property. It's, this is why it's so valuable is because you learn to intertwine these ideas. I call them puzzle pieces. If you understand the concept of this puzzle piece, you can apply it to the story.

Joe Varnadore (08:09): And, you know, Eddie, we know that sellers will agree to terms that banks would never, ever, ever agree to. Right. We know that there are things like, the ability to be able to buy the note that we created, we're the borrower on, but being able to buy our own note at sometime in the future to discount and things like that. So we've got, you know, we teach 50 plus deal points that you can add into that. So it's that whole process of knowing and how to structure a deal, right?

Eddie Speed (08:43): Yeah. The concept is this, we're in a hype at the moment. We're in a hyper competitive real estate market, whatever happens next year. Okay. We can argue about shadow inventory and why there's going to be a lot of distress properties on the market. We can do all that, but at the moment, Brian, as you well know a real estate investor at the moment, he feels like he's having to essentially overpay. So he's buying a property at what he thinks is, man, this ain't much of a discount, but on the other hand, there's all these people wanting to buy the property from him. And so he can, it's hard to buy, easy to sell, but the problem is the hard to buy, how many people does he make a discounted price to a cash offer? And now all of a sudden they won't accept it now, what's he going to do with that deal? If they won't accept his price, what does he end up doing with that lead? It's in the garbage?

Joe Varnadore (09:46): That's right.

Eddie Speed (09:46): How do you dig that deal out of the garbage and go make an offer? That is a higher price, but it's how you pay them back.

Joe Varnadore (09:55): We lovingly refer to paying somebody in the future, structuring a seller finance deal, or buying with Creative Financing is buying with monopoly money. And everybody kind of looks at us like we have four heads, right? It's not really buying monopoly money. What we're doing is we're paying the seller, their equity over time. And the reason we can do that, you know, people, you know, you could buy it at a discount being a wholesale deal, or if we can pay them almost, you know, full price for it. And because we are structuring the deal and paying them over time, we can pay them more money. Therefore, if it falls out of the deal hopper, because we can't buy it for for a discount, then obviously it we can buy it with terms and give them closure to what they're asking for.

Eddie Speed (10:47): Yeah. It's another option. It's another option that lets us close a piece of business that we couldn't close. If a guy is training at NoteSchool and he's a high volume real estate investor, or maybe Brian he's as low volume guy, right? Maybe he only buys five deals a year, whether he does five or 500, the issue is, he may, he spends X amount of money on marketing and energy and effort. And he closes X amount of deals essentially to put it under contract and flip it to somebody else. Right. That's a, that's a wholesale deal. Right? Brian.

Brian Lauchner (11:23): Yeah. That's it. And the other piece of this too, is that it's not just people who have it doesn't matter what your marketing budget is, right? If you were talking to sellers, the thing that you almost always have in common is the fact that there's going to be competition as well. So there's also this variable of if the seller always wants retail or some high price and all the wholesalers are kind of in this lower price, how do I start to separate myself so that the seller just talks to me? So then I can kind of transition, you know, how do I, if everyone's at a a hundred thousand price point or in that range, how do I start to say, Hey, I'll give you 135,000 or 125,000 to where now I'm just in such a completely different ball game that they're willing to have the conversation.

Brian Lauchner (12:05): And then I get the opportunity since they've given me some time now to hear me out, and now I have the opportunity to say, look, I can give you that money over time. And here's even why some, you know, here's some reasons why would be in your best financial interest. So from an acquisition standpoint, now I'm monetizing more leads, right? Because that one was going to go in the trash can if I didn't get it, but I'm also separating myself from the competition. And especially in times like this, where the seller sentiment in the market, which is what the seller believes, right? Whether it's true or not, doesn't really matter. It's when they believe. And when they believe that their house is worth this much, you know, it's my house. I will only sell it for a million dollars, Brian, because that helps down there.

Brian Lauchner (12:48): So for a million dollars and it's like, you try to use logic, you tried to explain to them, but that house is 7,000 square feet and your house is 2000 square feet. They're not the same thing. Right. They're stuck on that. And so how do we start to get closer to the fact that, okay, if you have to have that price, I can give you that price, but here's how it's going to look. Right? And so, again, it just, it gives me more opportunity. And as we know, when we start to bring creative solutions to complicated problems, that's where we start to, to make a lot of money.

Eddie Speed (13:23): Brian, and just the audience make sure that you know this, you were right down in where the rubber meets the road, right? You did this every day for a living. This was your full-time gig. You made your mortgage payment, your car payment, you've sent your kids to school based on your success of buying these houses at a discount. Now you weren't the note NoteSchool a few years ago. Right. And you heard these other concepts, but you said, I don't know. It's, I'm not sure this really applies. And then all of a sudden, as it progressed, the market got tighter and tighter. What did you have to go do?

Brian Lauchner (13:58): Yeah, I needed some sort of new result, right? I can't keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result because the market shifted. Right. And when we look at you know, a lot of wholesalers and people who are talking to sellers, whether you're wholesale or not, maybe you're talking to sellers to acquire your own rental properties. The bottom line is the market has shifted. And chances are, especially since March of 2020, you've seen that maybe your marketing isn't performing, or maybe the sellers are demanding something different. And at the end of the day, nobody's telling you to stop making cash offers. That's not what Eddie's saying. Just to be very clear, definitely go make your cash offer. There's nothing wrong with that. That's going to help you get to your goal. But what do you do with those leads that you make your cash offer?

Brian Lauchner (14:40): And they say, Hmm, can't really do anything about it. Right? And so, you've got to be able to have another tool in the tool bag. And what Eddie's referring to is in 2016, when I met Eddie, he was like, you really need to add Creative Financing to your acquisitions. It will change your entire business in 2016. I didn't need a change. Like things were fine. I could go make a cash offer to a seller and they'd be like, okay. Yeah, it's probably worth that. You're right. You know what I mean? There wasn't any, there wasn't that hesitancy, there wasn't that resistance to get the deal done. But by 2018, at least in my market, things did start to shift and I did have to make a change and call up uncle Eddie and say, I need help. What am I doing wrong? And he lovingly of course said, look, it's what I told you two years ago, we just let's get to work. Right.

Brian Lauchner (15:30): So it's just about implementing it into what I was already doing. And because of that too, it was a very smooth and quick transition, which again, kind of bringing it back to why it's so important. You know it today, is look, the market has shifted. Everybody's aware of that. Well, I say everyone is aware of this. Some people think that it's just going to keep going like this for the next couple of years. Right. But the reality is if you're in a spot where maybe I need a little something different, I need a little something new. I need to start monetizing some of these leads that I used to, but I don't anymore. This creative financing element and the words of Eddie speed in 2016, if you'll add creative financing to your acquisitions model, it can start to get you a lot of leads and a lot of deals, which ultimately lead to money in your pocket, even in a market like this after what Eddie calls a Black Swan event.

Joe Varnadore (16:22): And, you know, we see that over and over people that were, you know, they were listening like you were in 2016, but they weren't forced to take that next step. Right. They weren't forced to say, okay, something isn't working. So now I've got a look at what else I can do to keep my business growing. And that's what it was. Eddie. Why don't you talk just a minute about, you know, for the folks that are wholesales about the three reasons that a wholesale deal or that cash offer deal just doesn't or can't work well all the time.

Joe Varnadore (17:08): All right. We can't so Eddie, let me jump in there. You've got a little sound problem there. So maybe we can get that worked out.

Eddie Speed (17:17): I don't know. How about a little.

Joe Varnadore (17:21): There you go. perfect!

Eddie Speed (17:21): A little munchkin jumped up there on my computer, Joe, and muted me. One of those gremlins,

Joe Varnadore (17:28): We know about those gremlins. Every time we would go do a live event, we would have everything set up perfectly, And.

Brian Lauchner (17:33): That's the beauty of live TV.

Joe Varnadore (17:37): Amen.

Eddie Speed (17:39): A real estate investor. The other thing that they can do is you, if you're not a giant operator, right? You're just a small guy doing the business. What you have to remember is there so many people doing the business today in the trashcan is getting full, fuller and fuller of people that just won't accept the discounted price, make a go, make a deal with them. And we can show you how to do this, by the way, very clearly go make a deal with them to go dig through their trashcan leads and go work the leads that they, that the cash price ended up in the trash. And there's, you know, there's some filtering to that, you can't go work every lead, but here's some simple filtering processes that could be put together. And then all of a sudden, Joe, I might go work part of my business or maybe all of my business and just going and working my competition's leads and letting them make something if I'm able to close it.

Joe Varnadore (18:40): That's. Right. Yeah.

Eddie Speed (18:43): That's an example of you know, we call it getting the juice out of the lemon, right guys.

Brian Lauchner (18:50): Yeah. But there's three main reasons that they even had that bucket of leads to begin with. Right? And every wholesaler, every rehab or anybody who's ever talked to a seller ever understands that the reason you're not getting the deal is number one, it's too far. You're too far apart on price. Right? You're here, and they just won't accept that price because they're way up here. And you're way down here, they just won't accept the price. So the second reason is just they can't accept it, right? They owe $87,000 on the mortgage and you're offering them 65,000. They'd have to write a huge check to do that and that's not an option. Another, the third reason is just you don't have the right buyer. Right? And that could be because you don't have a buyers list yet. And that could be because it's a really obscure property out in the middle of nowhere, or it's just a really weird house that nobody really wants, you know, to kind of mess with.

Brian Lauchner (19:40): There are those. But when you look at those, you could either talk to another investor and work a deal with them. Or if you're already in a situation where you're talking to sellers, kind of, like I said, before, you now have a secondary option, Hey, we can't make it work because you can't accept the price or you won't accept the price. What if we go about doing this a little bit differently? And and we buy it on terms, which is you taking the same equity, but you taking it over time, right? You want this much money. I'll give you this much money in chunks over time. And if that's a solution for you, because it's going to allow you to accomplish whatever that goal is. Well, now we can start heading down the path of how do we make that happen? What do those terms need to look like for this to be kind of a win-win solution.

Joe Varnadore (20:22): And you know, it's not only what you say, it's how you say it. You know, Eddie calls it the talk off, right? It's knowing how to present this terms offer this creative finance offer. Eddie. You can talk about that for just a minute.

Eddie Speed (20:40): Yeah. I think that's one of the key things that I've learned in whether I'm coaching somebody, that's a Ninja real investor and did 300 deals last year, or I'm helping somebody that did three deals last year. There's an interview process that we try to teach, not we try to teach, we definitely teach. There's an interview process of asking them the right questions. So let me give you one simple example to kind of wrap it up as we do this today. So Brian, let's pretend that you have a property and that you have, you've demanded a price that my cash offer won't meet. And so I've said, Brian, I can pay you your price if you take your equity over time. Right? And Brian goes, okay, that might work. And we can work around that. And then the second thing is, you're saying, well, because essentially what I'm saying to you is you're going to sell or finance it to me. Right. Brian, I'm not exactly saying it that way, but that's what the end result is going to equal.

Brian Lauchner (21:48): Right. And the interest to me is that I'm okay with taking my payments over time. I'm not okay with taking a discount or maybe it's paying real estate fees or something like that. That's why this would be a potential solution to continue talking about it from the seller's perspective.

Eddie Speed (22:02): So real estate investors regularly set this up. They regularly say that, but here's a mistake. I believe they make, they say, well, Brian, if I were talking to you, Brian, I would say, well, Brian, how much down payment do you want? You see, I'm inviting a conversation that is not going to be good for me. Right? Instead, Brian, here's what I must say. What are your immediate cash needs? Right. So now all of a sudden, if you say, well, I need 20% of the price of the property as my immediate cash need. Then I'm just going to go get a private money first and get you to carry a second lien for the 80%. There's the hundred 20 private money, 80% second. So wait a minute, I bought the property for nothing down, but it's because I ask it in the right manner.

Brian Lauchner (23:03): And the thing about this, what Eddie calls the talk off is there is such a logical rational way to have this conversation. And I think one of the reasons people fail with pitching terms or pitching Creative Financing solutions is they use a slick salesy type of approach. Like they're trying to just kind of work around the, you know, work around the problem to kind of get them to agree to these little weird things when it's like, you can just be direct and it's a more logical approach. And Eddie has just nailed this. And it's something I think NoteSchool teaches really well, is that when you come in from a standpoint of look, let me show you the most logical rational way to do this. And then on top of that, Mr. Seller, I'm going to explain why this is in your best interest. Look, what the money is going to turn into. If I'm, especially if I'm paying interest, like that's the most common way. And if not look how you can get the money that you're wanting, right. To be able to meet your immediate needs.

Joe Varnadore (23:55): So we have a question there, So, does it guys, can we do this? We can do this on a hundred thousand dollar house, or we can do it on a $800,000 house, right?

Eddie Speed (24:09): Yeah. You can do it on luxury properties. You know, I would say that you're going to need a really tighten up some things to go do it on luxury properties, but financing for luxury properties has been very drastically affected by this mortgage credit availability. So it can work. This is probably a deeper conversation of things to tighten up. But, yes, I think it can work even on luxury properties.

Brian Lauchner (24:42): And I think when you, if you looked at a hundred different assets that were seller finance or a thousand, you would see they're all over the price point, right? There's a common misconception that seller financing, Creative Financing is for these cheap crappy houses that you can't sell anyway, so you might as well play the role of the bank so you can potentially get rid of it. Right? Whereas so many small businesses are sold with Creative Financing, so many apartments, so many, you know, whatever, small commercial tthey are sold with seller financing and any price point it applies to. And I think that if you were to go and look at a lot of these I have a great story of a motel that I teach in a one day class that, you know, motels are not commonly known for getting bank financing the old fashioned way, right?

Brian Lauchner (25:30): It's going to have a little bit more creativity to it, because that motel owner was exercising their full legal right to write off all the things they need to write off. So they pay less taxes, but a bank looks at the valuation of that and they say, wait a minute, you want to sell this for a million bucks, your books, don't say it's worth a million dollars, but me as an investor can be like, don't worry. I see the valuation and I can play the same game. So I'm interested. I just need you to sell me the property with seller financing. So every price point would definitely work. It's just a matter of the nuances of that specific deal.

Joe Varnadore (26:03): That's correct.

Eddie Speed (26:05): That's it.

Joe Varnadore (26:05): Yep. Absolutely.

Brian Lauchner (26:08): What about sellers who want cash to buy their next home? Would that that's kind of to Eddie's point, right? Is how much cash are they really needed in the immediate term? So the conversation will be something along the lines of, you need a new house, you're getting are you getting a mortgage? Okay, what kind of money are you meaning to put down in that property? And then starting to have that conversation, even if it's $50,000 to Eddie's point, I can borrow that 50,000. And if you have to have that 50,000, I can do that, but you're going to have to give up some other things in order to get that 50,000, if it's truly what's most important to you, I can make it happen. I just need these other things over here to be in my favor, to make those things work.

Eddie Speed (26:50): Remember this, the guy that was paying cash for the house, solved a problem one out of 20 times, 19 times, he did not solve the problem. They did not, the seller did not get their problem solved. Are we saying that we can solve all 19 problems? Of course not. Let me tell you what would be amazing. Brian, if I could solve one out of 19 problems, right? Just one in 19 where the seller was accepted in my terms, and I could structure the way that was really good for me. I just doubled my conversion rate. Now I close two out of 20 instead of one out of 20. So this is part of the filtering process, right? And by the way, I will tell you this, this interview process and going through the deal with the customer is under start understanding that when people say they need cash, you start investigating why they actually say they need cash. So some people say they need cash, they don't need cash. They just cash relates to the price to them. Right?

Joe Varnadore (27:56): That's right.

Eddie Speed (27:56): So kind of the customer that that's where we, that's a part of a filtering process that we develop. Excellent question. But the answer is no, I can't solve everybody's problem, but I can solve a lot.

Brian Lauchner (28:07): Yeah. And on those 19 examples, right? If you're getting one out of every 20, those 19 leads, you're chasing down, you already made a cash offer. You weren't going to get the deal anyway. So what, if you could add something to your acquisitions model, the way you buy houses in order to convert another deal and ultimately double the number of deals you're doing, which would basically be free money because you've already made your marketing money back on that first deal. So a lot of really, really great stuff today. Unfortunately, it's not a show we could talk for two days on. And so I want to just, I'm so glad we can at least talk about what Creative Financing is. These Black Swan events, these cyclical events that happen. They just happen over time because real estate has cycles. When the market shifts Creative Financing will always fill the gap in the marketplace where the conventional traditional money does it. Right.

Brian Lauchner (28:58): And that's really what we're seeing right now is there's a huge need for creative financing in the marketplace right now, in my opinion, if you are an active real estate investor, you can't afford to not know this stuff. And as you learn more about it, you're going to start to find out this actually is the more profitable way to do a lot of different types of strategies. And so, again, thanks for joining us today. On NoteSchool TV, it is a live every Wednesday at 11:00 AM central time. I'm so glad you came again. Make sure you're liking it, subscribing to this channel, turn on the notifications so that you know, when we're live so you can engage like some of these others did and bring your questions to the table. If you're wanting more information, definitely go to NoteSchool.TV, I'm sorry. www.NoteSchool.com/TV to get engaged with us there and be sure to attend the upcoming industry event. Note Expo, go to www.NoteExpo.com to register. It's going to be an absolute killer event. Thanks so much for joining us this week. And we will see you next week on NoteSchool TV.

#NoteSchool #EddieSpeed #RealEstate #MortgageNotes #notes

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tlbodine · 3 years

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The History & Evolution of Home Invasion Horror

Here’s my prediction: In the next couple of years, we’re going to be seeing a sudden surge of home invasion movies hit the market. For many of us, 2020 has been a year of extreme stress compounded by social isolation; venturing outside means being exposed to a deadly plague, after all.

And while many people have already predicted that we’ll see an influx of pandemic and virus horrors (see my post on those: https://ko-fi.com/post/Pandemic-and-Pandemonium-Sickness-in-Horror-T6T21I201), I actually think a lot of us are going to be processing a different type of fear -- anxiety about what happens when your home, which is supposed to be a literal safe space, gets invaded. Because if you’re not safe in your own house...you’re not safe anywhere.

Home invasion movies have been around a long time -- arguably as long as film, with 1909′s The Lonely Villa setting down the formula -- and they share many of the same roots as slasher films in the 1970s. But somewhere along the way, they separated off and became their own distinct subgenre with specific tropes, and it’s that separation and the stories that followed it that I want to focus on.

The Origins of the Home Invasion Movie

In order to really qualify as a home invasion movie, a film has to meet a few requirements:

The action must be contained entirely (or almost entirely) to a single location, usually a private residence (ie, the home)

The perpetrator(s) must be humans, not supernatural entities (no ghosts, zombies, or vampires -- that’s a different set of tropes!)

In most cases, the horror builds during a long siege between the invader and the home-dweller, including scenes of torture, capture, escape, traps, and so forth.

To an extent, home invasion movies are truth in television. Although home invasions are relatively rare, and most break-ins occur when a family is away (the usual goal being to steal things, not torture and kill people), criminals do sometimes break into people’s homes, and homeowners are sometimes killed by them.

In the 1960s and 70s, this certainly would have been at the forefront of people’s minds. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood detailed one such crime in lavish detail, and the account was soon turned into a film. Serial killers like the Boston Strangler, BTK Killer and the “Vampire of Sacramento” Richard Chase also made headlines for their murders, which often occurred inside the victim’s home. (Chase, famously, considered unlocked doors to be an invitation, which is one great reason to lock your doors).

By the 1960s and 70s, too, people were more and more often beginning to live in cities and larger neighborhoods where they did not know their neighbors. Anxieties about being surrounded by strangers (and, let’s face it, racial anxieties rooted in newly-mixed, de-segregated neighborhoods) undoubtedly fueled fears about home invasion.

Early Roots of the Home Invasion Genre

Home invasion plays a part in several crime thrillers and horror films in the 1950s and 60s, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in 1954, but it’s more of a plot point than a genre. In these films, home invasion is a means to an end rather than a goal unto itself.

We see some early hints of the home invasion formula show up in Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left in 1972. The film depicts a group of murderous thugs who, after torturing and killing two girls, seek refuge in the victim’s home and plot the deaths of the rest of the family. In 1974, the formula is refined with Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, which shows the one-by-one murder of members of a sorority house and chilling phone calls that come from inside the home.

Even closer still is I Spit on Your Grave, directed by Meir Zarchi in 1978. Although it’s generally (and rightly) classified as a rape-revenge film, the first half of the movie -- where an author goes to a remote cabin and is targeted and brutally assaulted by a group of men -- hits all the same story beats as the modern home invasion story: isolation, mundane evil, acts of random violence, and protracted torture.

Slumber Party Massacre, directed by Amy Holden Jones in 1982, also hits on both home invasion and slasher tropes. Although it is primarily a straightforward slasher featuring an escaped killer systematically killing teenagers (with a decidedly phallic weapon), the film also shows its victims teaming up and fighting back -- weaponizing their home against the killer. This becomes an important part of the genre in later years!

In 1997, Funny Games, directed by Michael Haneke, provides a brutal but self-aware look at the genre. Created primarily as a condemnation of violent media, the film nevertheless succeeds as an unironic addition to the home invasion canon -- from its vulnerable, suffering family to the excruciating tension of its plot to the nihilistic, motive-free criminality of its villains, it may actually be the purest example of the home invasion movie.

Home Invasions Gone Wrong

Where things start to get interesting for the home invasion genre is 1991′s The People Under the Stairs, another Wes Craven film. Here the script is flipped: The hero is the would-be robber, breaking and entering into the home of some greedy rich landlords. But this plan swiftly goes sideways when the homeowners turn out to be even worse people than they’d first let on.

This is, as far as I can tell, the origin of the home-invasion-gone-wrong subgenre, which has gained immense popularity recently -- due, perhaps, to a growing awareness of systemic issues, a differing view of poverty, and a viewership sympathetic to the plight of down-on-their-luck criminals discovering that rich homeowners are, indeed, very bad people.

Home Invasion Film Explosion of the 2000s

The home invasion genre really hit the ground running in the 2000s, due perhaps to post-911 anxieties about being attacked on our home turf (and increasing economic uneasiness in a recession-afflicted economy and a growing awareness of the Occupy movement and wealth inequality). We see a whole slew of these films crop up, each bringing a slightly different twist to the formula.

* It’s also worth noting that the 2000s saw remakes of many well-known films in the genre, including Funny Games and Last House on the Left.

In 2008, Bryan Bertino directed The Strangers, a straightforward home invasion involving one traumatized couple and three masked villains. By this point, we’re wholly removed from the early crime movie roots; these are not people breaking in for financial gain. Like the killers in Funny Games, the masked strangers lack motive and even identity; they are simply a force of evil, chaotic and senseless.

The themes of “violence as a senseless, awful thing” are driven further home by Martyrs, another 2008 release, this one from French director Pascal Laugier. A revenge story turned into a home-invasion-gone-wrong, the film is noteworthy for its brutality and blunt nihilism.

2009′s The Collector, directed by Marcus Dunstan, is another home-invasion-gone-wrong movie. Like Martyrs, it dovetails with the torture porn genre (another popular staple of the 2000s), but it has a lot more fun with it. The film follows a down-on-his-luck thief who breaks into a house only to encounter another home invader set on murdering the family that lives there. The cat-and-mouse games between the two -- which involve numerous traps and convoluted schemes -- are fun to watch (if you like blood and guts).

In a similar vein, we see You’re Next in 2013, which starts off as a standard home invasion movie but takes a sharp twist when it’s revealed that one of the victims isn’t nearly as helpless as she appears. Director Adam Wingard helps to redefine the concept of “final girl” in this move in a way that has carried forward right into the next decade with no sign of stopping.

2013 of course also introduced us to The Purge, a horror franchise created by James DeMonaco. If there was ever any doubt as to the economic anxieties at the root of the genre, they should be alleviated now -- The Purge is such a well-known franchise at this point that the term has entered our pop culture lexicon as a shorthand for revolution.

Don’t Breathe, directed be Fede Alvarez in 2016, is one of the creepiest modern entries into the “failed home invasion” category, and one that (ha ha) breathed some new life into the genre. Much like The People Under the Stairs, it tells the story of some down-on-their-luck criminals getting in over their heads when they target the wrong man. However, there is not the same overt criticism of wealth inequality in this film; it’s a movie more interested in examining and inverting genre tropes than treading new thematic ground. The same is true of Hush that same year. Directed by Mike Flanagan, the film is most noteworthy for its deaf protagonist.

But lest you start to think the home invasion genre had lost its thematic relevance, 2019 arrived with two hard-hitting, thoughtful films that dip their toes in these tropes: Jordan Peele’s Us and Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, which both tackle themes of privilege in light of home invasion (albeit a nontraditional structure in Parasite -- its inclusion here is admittedly a bit of a stretch, but I think it falls so closely in the tradition of The People Under the Stairs that it deserves a spot on this list).

What Does the Future Hold?

I’m no oracle, so I can’t say for certain where the future of the home invasion genre might lead. But I do think we’re going to start seeing more of them in the next few years as a bunch of creative folks start working through our collective trauma.

Income inequality, racial inequality, political unrest and systemic issues are all at the forefront of our minds (not to mention a deadly virus), and those themes are ripe for the picking in horror.

I know that Paul Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World has been optioned for film, so we might be seeing that soon -- and if so, it might just usher in a fresh wave of apocalypse-flavored home invasion stories.

Like my content? You can support more of it by dropping me some money in my tip jar: https://www.ko-fi.com/post/Home-Invasion-Stories-A-History-R6R72RV7Y

#horror movies #horror history #horror analysis #home invasion movies #essential horror movies

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daggerzine · 3 years

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Sunday Runners.....the Corvair interview.

The music of Corvair fell into my hands recently thanks to Heather Larimer, who makes up one half of the band. The Portland duo, comprised of Larimer and her husband Brian Naubert (and drummer Eric Eagle for the recordings) haven’t been around for too long but being together a lot the past year or so gave them plenty of time to work on songs. I was a big fan of Larimer’s previous band, Eux Autres, and wondered if they were still around (see the first question) so was anxious to hear Corvair. I really liked what I heard. A healthy dose of all things 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s and not quite new wave, note quite indie rock but 100% deluxe. The S/T record, which was released in February, was a co-release between their own label and WIAIWYA label in the UK. Read on and find out the history of the band, where they’ve been and where they’re headed. Oh and make sure you listen to their music.

Heather and Brian and Brian and Heather

Tell us about the end of Eux Autres. Why did that band end?

It actually has not officially ended. While Sun is Sunk was coming out, we left SF because it felt like that city as we knew it was dying—all the artists we knew were moving out, and I moved back to Portland and Nick to LA. Then I had a baby and then Nick had a baby and then soon we each had another baby. With 4 little kids among us, it became really hard to fly back and forth to work on new material. We tried it for a couple years and then one day we calculated that at our pace, the record we were making would take 5 years. So we just kind of gave each other permission to prioritize other projects. Nick is working on some songs I truly love right now. They’re a real gut punch.

…and about the beginning of Corvair. How/when did the band form?

We had known each other for many years and then we got married three-ish years ago and suddenly neither of us had other musical projects going on. So we kind of shrugged and said, what if we worked together? We would sing in the car or while cooking or whatever so we knew our voices sounded great together. Then it was just a matter of figuring out what sort of project it would be. We went into the studio with a session drummer (Eric Eagle) in late 2019 and then a few months later, the pandemic suddenly gave as a LOT of time to make progress on the tracks. So the creative center of the record was defined in a weird apocalyptic bubble. But it was helpful to have that break with reality as we knew it, because we’ve both made a lot of records, and I suppose that could have somehow blunted our ambition or our edges. But we just hit the “fuck it” button and gave ourselves over to it completely. We were very nervous to mix, because no one else in the world had heard it, and we thought it was great, but we also could have been in a shared hallucination. Really, we’d be the last to know.

The debut....

Who came up with the name? I have always loved those cars.

Brian’s mom drove a Corvair with a hole in the floor. They would drive it on the special outings to the beach, the weekend adventures. So it was a very romantic car, and the name is just very nice to say. It makes you feel good. Both of us had been in bands with names that were a nightmare to tell someone in a crowded club, or really anywhere (Eux Autres and Ruston Mire). You’d have to repeat it 3 times, then explain it, and then they just kind of shrug with pity. We vowed to have a band name anyone could understand the first time.

Did the WIAIWYA label approach you about releasing the record (or co-releasing it)?

John had approached Eux Autres right after our second record and so we did an EP (Strangled Days) with him and then we were on his label ever since. Late last summer, I posted a picture of Brian and I holding the CD Master on my Instagram and John said, what the hell is this? And then I emailed him the record and he wrote right back: “It’s RAD Heather!” I’m not sure if he was making fun of me by saying “rad”--probably, actually. I think I used to say it a lot. But he immediately wanted to put out the record. Nick and I had some really great times in the UK and Europe thanks to John and he has a very devoted audience, so Corvair felt it was a great fit for us.

Is the Pink Room your own studio?

Yes, it is literally a room in our house that is pink. Brian has been making records at home for most of his life, since he was about 14. And despite having done fancier stuff like making studio demos for Columbia several times and recording with Peter Buck in a nice place, he really prefers to work at home because he likes to spend a ton of time on overdubs—they’re not even really “overdubs,” more like a second wave of writing for him. And I had found being in the studio very stressful in the past because I’m not a technically proficient musician and that makes me self-conscious. So I was grateful to be in the privacy of my own home, in my soft pants.

Single from last year

Did the songs on the album come fairly easily or did you feel like you labored over them?

The initial writing of them came very easily and fast. Brian did a couple of 30 day writing challenges where he wrote several songs a day. But then once we laid down the basic tracks, we spent a ton of time building them and experimenting with them. We actually recorded probably twice as many parts as we ended up using. And half of what we did in the mix was kill things. In fact, we cut five totally finished songs from the record.

Tell us about making those videos? Were you freezing?

Consistently very very cold, yes. Ironically, the one in the snow (Green Mean Time) was the warmest because we were properly dressed. But the ocean ones were just brutal. Especially Sunday Runner. The video was Brian’s idea, he had a very specific vision and made it sound all easy: OK, just go down to the beach and dance for 90 seconds. And I was like, huh?!? And then I kept falling down and got absolutely soaked to the bone. When we finished shooting, I couldn’t feel my hands or feet and he was steering me down the beach with his coat wrapped around me and these little kids were staring horrified, like, Mom what’s wrong with that lady?

Prior to the pandemic had you played out live much? Done any tours?

We have never ever played live as Corvair. Which is just wild. We will likely be recording this next album before we even have a line-up for performing. But we are very excited to play together. Likely this fall. Hopefully John will bring us to England soon so we will have a great excuse to get it together.

What are your top 10 desert island discs?

Brian:

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust

David Bowie - Low

Nada Surf - Let Go

Brian Eno - Another Green World

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of The Moon (yeah I know, but I don’t care)

Heather:

GBV - Alien Lanes

Kinks - Village Green

Elliott Smith - Either/Or

Radiohead - Kid A

Ruston Mire - Steady Jobs and Flying Cars

Who are some of your favorite current bands, local otherwise?

HL: I’m interested in the Dry Cleaning juggernaut. And I really dig Deep Sea Diver, Cloud Nothings, Courtney Barnett, Big Thief/Lenker. And then, I’m also very ready to embrace a new angry band whose music makes you think your stereo is broken when you play it--I’m taking suggestions.

BN: Alt J, Elbow, Doves, Metric, Foals, Snail Mail

What’s next for the band?

HL: We are recording this summer and trying to put some sort of live outfit together ASAP. Trying to stay out of the ocean for a while.

Closing comments? Words of wisdom? Final thoughts?

Thank you so much for having us!

www.corvair.bandcamp.com

youtube

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