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liskantope · 4 years

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Some brief (and sometimes not-so-brief) reactions to major Disney films 1937-1967

Around a month ago I made a temporary switch from Netflix to Disney+ with the goal of watching all major Disney movies in order, roughly paced so that one year of Disney film-making equals one day of real life. I should clarify here that by “major Disney movies” I mean mostly just all the animated ones plus a few hybrid live-action/animated ones, and a few of the most popular live-action ones (at least the ones I remember having a song considered good enough to feature on one of the Disney Sing-Along videos, a staple of my video-watching as a kid growing up in the 90′s). I would have been interested to see Song of the South, which I’ve never seen in its entirety, but it’s not included on Disney+ for fairly obvious reasons. As I get further into modern Disney, I’ll probably skip over most of the sequels and other features I strongly expect not to like (with the exception of Belle’s Magical World, which is said to be so legendarily bad that I just have to see what the fuss is about).

This time range of three decades happens to include more or less exactly those Disney productions that Walt Disney himself took a major role in (he died shortly before the final version of Jungle Book was finished). I’d like to do this again in another month, when I will have gotten up through the late 90′s, but honestly this post wound up way longer than I was imagining and took several more hours than I expected (or could really afford), so I’m not promising myself or anyone else that.

Looking at Wikipedia’s list of Disney productions, I’m a little taken aback at what a low percentage of these are animated features, which to me form the backbone of that company’s legacy; visually scanning the list makes the line of animated films look shorter than I had always imagined, but really what this is showing is that Disney produced far more live-action movies than I ever knew about, including (and perhaps especially!) in its early days. Right now I’m continuing on through the 70′s films, but this set of mini-reviews represents the first month of watching and three decades of Disney magic.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 1937

This is the full-length feature that began them all and which had the burden of defying contemporary skepticism that a full-length animated feature could be taken seriously at all. We are already far beyond the earliest days of animation and have progressed lightyears beyond the quality of “Steamboat Willie”; throughout the film I marveled at the sophistication of the animation with a newfound appreciation of how groundbreaking a lot of the sequences must have been.

I know I watched this at least a couple of times in childhood and I think once when I was a bit older, but even that was long ago.

Snow White is based on one of the simpler classic fairy tales, and the writers had to come up with ways to flesh out this very short story enough to occupy well over an hour. This was done not by exploring the character of Snow White or the Queen or even filling in extra plot details (the fate of the hunter is never addressed) but by spending a lot of time on the dwarfs. The detail spent on individuating them took a lot of work from the animators, but I think their efforts paid off. I can’t say the same about the attention paid to Snow White or the Queen (pretty much the only remaining characters). Snow White has an almost entirely flat personality, with no sense of curiosity or concern whatsoever about the Queen’s designs to have her killed, just having literally only one goal in mind: to marry this Prince who she’d only seen for about two minutes and run away from out of shyness. (This is of course a trend we’ll see with Disney princesses for a long time.) The Queen similarly only has the goal of being “the fairest in the land”. Something about the particular harshness of her voice strikes me as The Quintessential 1930′s Female Villain Voice (“I’ll crush their bones!”), whatever that means -- maybe I got my idea of what this should be from the movie Snow White in the first place.

I still think “Heigh Ho” (which I’ve known well since early childhood) is an excellent song in its utter simplicity, especially when complimented with the “Dig Dig Dig” song (which I did not remember at all until a few years ago when a Tumblr mutual posted the excerpt containing it!). I’m not enormously fond of “One Day My Prince Will Come”, although I did enjoy playing it on the violin at a couple of gigs with one of my musician friends back during grad school -- I was convinced then, and up until watching Snow White just now, that it belonged to Cinderella.

Pinocchio, 1940

This was a favorite movie of mine in earlier childhood; we owned the VHS and I watched it a lot. As a child, I had no sense of one Disney movie coming from a much earlier time than another one; it was only much more recently in life that I understood that Pinocchio really comes from all the way back eight decades ago. Pinocchio taught me the meaning of “conscience” (both in the dictionary sense and in a deeper sense), and it shaped my notion of what fairies may look like -- for instance, my mental picture of the Tooth Fairy, back when I believed in her, was inspired by the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio.

It’s amazing just how much the quality of Disney animated features improved from the first one to this one, the second. It helps that both the story and the characters are far more complex than those of Snow White. The plot from the original book (which I’ve read in Italian and English) was more complex still, of course. There is one gaping hole where it’s never explained how Gepetto somehow found himself in the belly of a whale (I don’t remember whether or how this is explained in the book), but I’ll forgive that.

It’s interesting to see the 1940′s caricature of “bad (early teenage?) boy” shown in the animation and voice of Lampwick. Phantom Strider talks about the turning-into-donkeys scene as a notoriously dark scene for adults who didn’t find it as terrifying when they were children -- count me in as one of those adults! It’s especially terrifying to see the whole mass of boys-turned-donkeys being treated as slaves in the hellhole known as Pleasure Island and realizing that this is never going to be resolved in the movie -- it’s rather unusual in Disney stories for some great evil to be left unresolved with no recompense even for the chief villain. In fact, Pinocchio is pretty much the only Disney story I can think of where the worst villain doesn’t meet some kind of dire fate. Really, the range of Pinocchio’s view is much narrower: it’s just the coming-of-age story of one puppet in his quest for Real Boyhood. (And yes, I still giggle at how intricutely Jordan Peterson analyzes particular scenes from the movie to support his beliefs about neo-Marxism or whatever.)

Disney+ heads many of the descriptions of the older movies with “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.” I’m a little surprised they don’t do this with Pinocchio, given what appears to me a rather derogatory depiction of Gypsies.

“When You Wish Upon a Star” has become a timeless hit, for good reason. And I still find “Hi Diddle Dee Dee” extremely catchy.

Fantasia, 1940

I saw this one multiple times growing up (for earlier viewings, I was not allowed to see the final number “Night on Bald Mountain”). My mom, for her part, saw this in theaters at the age of around 4 (even though it originally came out long before she was born) and thought for years afterwards that there was no such film in real life and her memory of seeing it had been just a pleasant dream.

I have nothing much more to say about this one except that, representing a very different approach from most animated films, Disney or otherwise, 1940′s or otherwise, it succeeded exquisitely. The “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” number was particularly perfection; it was as though the composer originally had every motion of the story in mind when writing the music. At the same time, having the main character appear in the form of Mickey Mouse in some way seems to cheapen the effect.

The Reluctant Dragon, 1941

I watched this for the first time, not having known it existed. There isn’t really much to say. All that stuck in my mind was one of the shorts, “Baby Weem” (amusing in a disturbing way), and the longer segment which gives the movie its title (also amusing, in a different kind of disturbing way). It was especially interesting to see a 1940′s cartoon portrayal of a very effeminate man, or should I say, male dragon.

Dumbo, 1941

I saw this maybe two or three times growing up, and not in very early childhood. It was never one of my favorites. Later on, I learned that it was done very low-budget to make up for major financial losses in the Disney franchise. This definitely shows in the animation. However, if there’s one thing I can say in praise of Dumbo, it’s that it’s incredibly daring in its simplicity, not only to have such elegantly simple animation but in having a mute title character (instead the main “talker” in the film is the title character’s best friend, who had much more of a New York accent than I’d remembered).

In some ways I find this film incredibly cold and dark by Disney standards, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, and I remember feeling this way even on earlier watchings when I was much younger. The stark cruelty of the humans running the circus, as well as the elephants other than Dumbo and his mother, just really gets to me. (I vividly mis-remembered one of the lines I found most memorable in childhood as “From now on, Dumbo is no longer one of us.” The actual line is, “From now on, [Dumbo] is no longer an elephant”, which in a way, is even more chilling.) In this regard, there was no need to make a modern, woker remake of Dumbo containing an explicit anti-animal-exploitation message -- the 1941 version conveys this message loud and clear. Now that I’m writing this, I suppose it could be argued that this is another instance of what I described under “Pinocchio” of leaving a major evil unresolved in a Disney film. And apart from that, while the ending for Dumbo is meant to be a very happy one, as an adult I find it incredibly naive: Dumbo is now super internationally famous for his extraordinary gift and is entering the life of a child celebrity, and it’s just going to be smooth sailing from now on? I hate to say it, Dumbo, but your troubles are only just beginning. (I was glad to see Dumbo reunited with his mother in the last scene, however, which I hadn’t remembered happening at all.)

“Look Out For Mr. Stork” is a skillfully-written song I’d completely forgotten about for two decades or so but remember knowing well when I was young. I still think “When I See an Elephant Fly” is a fantastic song, especially with all its reprises at the end -- I’d had some bits of it confused in my memory but had kept the main chorus with me over all the years. Now it’s widely decried as racist, or at least the characters who sing it are decried as racist caricatures. For whatever my opinion is worth, I’m inclined to disagree with this, in particular on the grounds that the crows seem to be the most intelligent, witty, and self-possessed characters in the movie. I’m also pretty sure I heard critical things about it over the years which are false. For one thing, not all of the crows are played by white actors -- only the lead crow is, while the rest of the voices are members of a black musical group called the Hall Johnson Choir. Also, I’m not clear that the lead crow was actually named Jim Crow by the time the movie came out (no name is given in the movie itself). Now an earlier, much more forgettable song featuring black men singing about how they like to work all day and they throw their pay away... yeah that seems awfully racist.

Bambi, 1942

I have surprisingly little to say about this one -- it’s just very distinct from other Disney films of the time, in its story’s lack of magical elements, its characters all being animals and animated in to realistically model animals’ movements, its lack of musical numbers, and its plot reaching the same level of simplicity as that of Snow White. Not to mention actually having a benevolent character die, which I don’t think had been done up to that point. I remember watching this a couple of times as a kid; I was never terribly eager to watch it again and I feel the same way now, despite having majestic beauty that I can really appreciate.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, 1949

This is the first of Disney’s animated features that I never had seen before. What a strange movie, or should I say, two smaller, unrelated movies rolled into one. I liked Mr. Toad’s half better than Ichabod’s half, or at least I found it more entertaining. I was brought up with the book The Wind in the Willows and recall seeing a non-Disney animated rendition of it (which was better and somewhat more thorough than this half-movie-length rendition). I was kind of excited when the “The Merrily Song” started because it unlocked a song from my early-childhood memory that I’d forgotten about for more than twenty years but knew from one of the Disney Sing-Along videos. I still think it’s a not half bad song, especially with the harmony.

The Ichabod story was not at all what I expected, not being familiar with the original book version (I had always assumed that Ichabod must be the name of a villain). I found it completely boring until the final horror sequence. As a child I would have found the courtship part even more boring (at least now I can muse on how man-woman courtship dynamics were shown in the late 40′s), and I would have found the horror part at the end very scary (in fact, maybe this is the reason my parents never showed the movie to me). It is a little shocking in being the only Disney story I’ve seen so far with a decidedly unhappy ending.

Cinderella, 1950

This one I only ever saw once or twice as a child. This is not counting a very vivid memory I have from around age 6 or 7 when I was watching a part of it over at another family’s house and their child, who was almost my age and nonverbal autistic, rewound and repeated the same 2-minute sequence involving the mice for probably about an hour (I was impressed because I at the time didn’t know how to work the controls of a video player).

I suppose this could be considered the second in the main trifecta of the most conservative fairy tale princess stories that Disney did in the earlier part of its history. I think one can argue that Cinderella has the strongest and most fleshed-out character out of those three princesses. I like the spirited internal strength she reveals in her very first scene. That said, like the other earlier princesses, she seems to have one singular goal in life, and that is to find her true love, not, say, to escape her abusive stepmother and stepsisters.

My reaction to this movie is overall positive. The mice were fun (I also like how their voices seemed a lot more like how mice “should” talk than in most other Disney cartoons); the dynamic between Cinderella and her evil relatives, and the dynamic between the stepmother and stepsisters themselves, was shown in a rounded way; and the fairy godmother is a great character despite having only one scene. The character of the king is pretty odd (very selfish yet his main dream is of getting to play with his future grandchildren) while not especially memorable or well fleshed out. There are certainly some great classic songs in this one -- not the most stellar that Disney has ever produced, but solid.

Alice in Wonderland, 1951

I was curious about what I would think of this one, since we owned the video of this at my home growing up and I watched it many times during childhood but as I got older I fell in love with the original Lewis Carroll books which, together, I often consider my favorite work of written fiction ever. I had not seen the Disney film Alice in Wonderland for around two decades, although I made the mistake of catching parts of more modern, live-action adaptations of the story more recently. I wondered what I would make of the old animated Disney adaptation after getting to know the books so well.

There is simply no way that any movie can recreate the true flavor of the books, but Disney’s Alice in Wonderland does a fine job of creating the general nonsensical, sometimes bewildering dream atmosphere, and, perhaps more importantly, capturing the essence of Alice’s personality. I give a lot of credit to Katherine Beaumont for this -- she has the major girl’s role in the next movie on this list as well, but she especially shines as Alice. Two other very distinctive voices, Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter and Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat, also add a lot to the cast of characters.

While mixing around some of the scenes of the original book Alice in Wonderland, with some scenes of Alice Through the Looking Glass inserted, the progression of the plot is a long, dreamlike sequence of strange situations with only a few common threads, true to the original first book (Looking Glass had a little, but only a little, more structure). In the movie, everything breaks down at the end with many of the previous scenes and characters swirling together and Alice frantically trying to wake herself up. One could object that this is not how the dream ends in the book Alice in Wonderland, but there is a similar sort of breakdown at the end of the dream in Looking Glass and it feels very real somehow, as in my experience this is sometimes how vivid dreams disintegrate.

Oh, and did you know that Alice in Wonderland has a greater number of songs in it than any other Disney film? There are nearly 25 that made it into the film, even if lasting just for seconds, with a around 10 more written for the film that didn’t make it.

So, does the Disney film do a good job of conveying one of my favorite books of all time, within the confines of being a children’s animated film? I would say yes. For reasons I described above, and from the fact that it manages to avoid working in a moral lesson for Alice, or depicting Alice as a young adult, or manufacturing an affair between Alice and the Hatter (ugh), like some film adaptations, I would say that this classic Disney version is the best Alice in Wonderland adaptation that I know of.

Peter Pan, 1953

Although I never knew this one super well, this movie has a special place in my heart from the way the flying sequence enchanted me in early childhood. I have to differ with the YouTuber Phantom Strider when he dismisses the 40′s/50′s-style song “You Can Fly” as just not doing it for him, because that song along with the animation of the characters’ journey to Neverland had a major hand in shaping my early-childhood sense of magic and wonder and yearning. I distinctly remembering a time, around age 6, when I just didn’t see much point in watching other Disney movies, or movies at all, which didn’t have flying in them, because what could possibly top the sheer joy and freedom of feeling able to swim through the air? I’ve had hardly any exposure to Superman, and so the kind of bodily flight I imagined in fantasy or performed in dreams was almost entirely shaped by Peter Pan. (At the same time, the crocodile in Peter Pan influenced my nightmares at the same age.)

I only ever saw this one a few times, but I distinctly remember the most recent of them being when I was a teenager, perhaps even an older teenager, and I remember thinking at the time that it was a pretty darn solid Disney movie. I still think the same now, while granting that some aspects of the movie seem a little antiquated and certain sequences with the Native Americans are quite cringe-worthy from the point of view of modern sensibilities. Only a couple years ago, when visiting my parents’ house, I finally took down the book Peter Pan from the shelf and decided to give it a read and found it a beautiful although slightly strange and offbeat story. In particular, I was shocked at how nasty and vengeful Tinker Bell was (particularly in trying to get Wendy killed), when I had remembered her as sweet and naive in the movie. It turns out I was wrong about the movie -- Tinker Bell tries to get Wendy killed there also! -- but somehow the tone is moderated well enough that in this version I never really feel horrified at her behavior, nor do I feel disturbed at the situation of the Lost Boys in the way the book made me view them. The song of the lone pirate who sings about how a pirate’s life is short, right before Captain Hook fires his gun and we hear a dropping sound followed by a splash, is one of the more masterful executions of dark humor that I’ve seen in Disney animation for children.

While most of the songs in Peter Pan, considered as songs on their own, are pretty good, I think the best one is the one whose lyrics didn’t make it into the film: “Never Smile at a Crocodile”.

Lady and the Tramp, 1955

Despite being more obscure than most of the old Disney animated classics, I used to know this one quite well since we had it in our home. I’ve always considered The Great Mouse Detective as the most underrated Disney film of all time, but I think it has serious competition here. Lady and the Tramp is an absolute gem. While not quite as Disney-fantasy-ish with its lack of magic and other fairy tale elements, in my opinion Lady and the Tramp is, in most ways, superior to everything else on this list save Mary Poppins. Beautiful animation which shows Lady and most of the other animals moving realistically in a way we haven’t seen since Bambi*. Everything visually and conceptually framed from the dogs’ points of view. Great voice acting. Consistently solid dialog without a single line too much or missing. A story evoking the dynamic between humans and pets, class inequality, and deep questions about the place of each of us in society and choices between a stable existence among loved ones and striking out to seize life by the horns. Our first female lead who stands on her own two four feet and whose sole goal isn’t to get kissed by her true love (one could argue that Alice was the earlier exception, but she is a little girl whereas Lady is actually a romantic female lead). When Lady is approached by her two best (male) friends in a very awkward (perhaps especially from a modern sensibility) but sweet scene where they offer to be her partner, Lady makes it clear that she doesn’t want or need a husband just for the sake of having a husband to make babies with -- her standing up for her own wants in this way doesn’t in the least turn into a Moral Stand that dominates the movie. Excellent music all the way through.

Oh, and this movie was my very first introduction, in early childhood, to the Italian language (”Bella Notte”), which some 25 years later sort became my second language of sorts.

Criticisms? Well, the baby was animated rather stiffly and unnaturally, but that was like half a minute of the movie at most. And there’s the whole segment with the Siamese cats, which produced a great song purely music-wise (fun fact: Peggy Lee provided the voices of the cats) but nowadays comes across as rather racist. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it, but I will say that I’m sure in the minds of the creators this was no different than having animals of all other nationalities (Scottish, Russian, Mexican) appearing in the film with voices reflecting the respective accents.

*There may be a few exceptions, like Peggy, who seems to be modeled after the musician Peggy Lee and moves like a sexy human woman. The way that human sex appeal is conveyed through the animals’ movements in this movie is quite impressive: my mom confesses to having somewhat of a crush on Tramp growing up and not quite understanding how that could be possible when, well, he’s a dog.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, and Old Yeller, 1957

I don’t want to say about these movies, as they don’t really fall under the category of animated classics. I just want to say that, while I saw each of them once growing up, on seeing them again I recognize each as a great movie in its own adult point of view way that is not necessarily very Disney-ish.

Sleeping Beauty, 1959

I think this was the movie I was watching at the time I decided it would be fun to write a bunch of mini-reviews for Tumblr, as my reactions were changing a lot as I was watching. I went into the movie very curious, because while I only remembered enough of the fairy tale story to know that it was another of the very simple ones, and I remembered the one song as a waltz by Tchaikovsky, and I knew I had seen the movie once (and probably only once) as a kid, I couldn’t remember anywhere near enough to possibly fill a full movie time. What was actually going to happen in this hour-and-a-quarter long film?

I wasn’t watching long before I came up with the description “spectacularly forgettable”, in part to justify why I’d managed to forget practically all of my one previous viewing. The story doesn’t have much substance and feels sillier than even the other fairy tale Disney plots, like even minor twinges of critical thought, even granting the magical rules of the universe, are liable to make the plot topple. There is some filler to flesh out the movie, but (unlike with Snow White’s dwarfs) none of it is as amusing as the creators seemed to think it was. The only characters with actual personality are rather boring -- the capers between the members of royalty and the jester are a bit on the annoying side in my opinion. Maleficent seems to have no motive whatsoever. She actually calls herself something like “the mistress of evil” later in the movie. This is pretty black-and-white even by Disney standards, where the bad guys usually at least want to think that they’re on the right side of things or justified in their aggressive behavior. Aurora (the title character) has the least personality of all the Disney princesses. Literally all I can say to describe her is that she has the Disney Princess Trifecta of characteristics: she has a good singing voice; she is friends with all the “nice” animals; and her only goal in life is to be reunited with her True Love who she met once for all of a few minutes. The reason why I couldn’t remember any songs other than the Tchaikovsky one is that there aren’t any.

The one thing I consciously really enjoyed while watching was the fact that the score throughout was Tchaikovsky; the idea of having one work of classical music as the entire score seems like a bold one for a Disney film. As I was digesting the movie afterwards (and watching the short documentaries supplied on Disney+ helped here!), I came to realize that this classical music backdrop was complimented in quite an interesting way by a fairly unique animation style. I had been disappointed by the animation early in my watching, disliking how a lot of the figures in the beginning castle scene (for instance, various people’s faces), looked very “flat” somehow. But I’ve come to see this as part of a style where everything looks almost like a series of cut-outs superimposed on each other, to incredibly beautiful effect in a lot of the outdoor scenes.

My conclusion? If you watch this the same way you watch most Disney animated movies -- focusing on plot, characterization, action, and meaning of the main story -- it will just be kind of forgettable at best. But if you watch it as more of a purely visual and musical piece of art without trying to make much “sense” out of it (so, more like I would watch a ballet), you may find it uniquely beautiful among Disney classics.

One Hundred and One Dalmations, 1961

Whew -- what a complete and utter contrast from its predecessor! I can hardly imagine a film that’s still distinctively Disney while being more different from Sleeping Beauty in every aspect.

I remember seeing One Hundred and One Dalmatians a handful of times in childhood (when I was around 5 and it had just come out on home video, my mom almost bought it for me but decided to go with Beauty and the Beast instead explaining that it had better music -- I grew up knowing the preview for Dalmatians that showed at the beginning of our Beauty and the Beast VHS than the dalmatians film itself). I remembered a number of scenes very distinctly, including a lot of the Horace and Jasper bickering and Cruella smashing one of their bottles of beer into the fire and knew Lucky’s line after getting stuck behind in the snow almost word for word, while I had entirely forgotten all of the country/farm characters and entire sequences involving them. I had forgotten, but soon remembered, the television scenes including the Kanine Krunchies jingle. (Some years later, I think as an older teenager, I read the original book with some interest.)

Although I wasn’t around in 1961, everything about this movie’s style strikes me as very contemporary -- the animation in particular seems like the current style for 60′s cartoons. Something about the dialog and humor feels that way as well, as though it closely represents a sort of 60′s young-people-in-London culture that I’ve never seen myself (I was struck for instance by Cruella being asked how she’s doing and cheerfully answering, “Miserable dahling as usual, perfectly wretched!”). It was a little strange and offputting to see television so prominently featured in Disney animation from so long ago, and to see such a decrepit bachelor pad (with the accompanying lifestyle and attitudes) as Horace and Jasper’s in a children’s movie. The crazy driving in snow at the end startled my adult sensibilities (as I now have some memorable experiences driving in snow) in a way that didn’t affect me as a child -- scenes like that just didn’t feel like Disney after having just watched all the previous films. All in all, these novel features made the whole movie a wild ride.

I’m bemused by the fact that, despite taking place in London (which I hadn’t remembered -- I thought it took place in America), the only accents which are fully British are those of the villains Cruella de Vil, Horace, and Jasper.

Main criticisms: I found all the stuff with Rolly being characterized by his body shape and only ever thinking about food to be in poor taste (although not surprising for the times). And while “Cruella de Vil” is a great jazz number, the movie has no other music to speak of -- my mom was quite right to choose Beauty and the Beast over it.

(I realized when finishing this review that this is the only one of all the movies in the list that I’d actually enjoy seeing again sometime soon. Not sure what to make of that. Something about it is more interesting than most of the others? Especially the human-centric parts?)

The Sword in the Stone, 1963

I never saw this movie until later childhood or maybe even early teenagerhood, when I quite liked it. On watching it again, I was overall pretty disappointed. This movie has some decent songs and some fun aspects to the story, but a lot of it is kind of weak and forgettable and it’s all just sloppily done.

The story has a clear moral message which is generally pro-education and about reaching one’s full potential, but in my eyes it comes out kind of muddled because the story shows Wart ending up as a legendary king only out of the arbitrary happenstance that that happens to be his divine destiny. Merlin’s motives seem kind of inconsistent as well, with him sometimes seeming to support Wart in his desire to become a squire, then flying off in a rage when Wart chooses squirehood over fulfilling a “greater” destiny, then joyfully returning after Wart pulls the sword from the stone and is now set on the fixed path to being king, even though this involved exactly zero change of attitude on Wart’s part. The message that actually comes across looks more like, “We have to just follow whatever fate has in store for us” than “We must strive to be the best we can be”. And, it arguably even comes across as subtly disrespectful to more mundane lifestyles and career paths.

The animation is not great by the high standard of full-length Disney features (I noted how I especially disliked how tears were shown). Wart’s voice seems to change a lot, sometimes broken and sometimes not yet broken. I found out after watching that this is because the character was played by three different actors, sometimes with more than one of those actors in the same scene! This was purportedly because the voice of the first actor cast for the role started to change, but then why does Wart sometimes sound like his voice has already changed anyway? Sloppiness all around.

Still, some parts of The Sword in the Stone are fun even if none of it is stellar, and it entertained me more when I was younger, so worth watching once, especially if you’re a kid, I guess?

Mary Poppins, 1964

I came into this one far more familiar with it than with most of the other Disney movies, including the ones I watched many times when I was young, so it feels a little strange to try to summarize a similar-length review of it. Mary Poppins is in my book without a doubt one of the top three Disney movies of all time, in some respects the very best, and certainly the masterpiece of Walt Disney himself, the culmination of literally decades of determination on his part to turn Pamela Travers’ children’s works into a movie. (I would feel sorrier for Travers about how strongly Disney twisted her arm to turn her books into a movie whose style was entirely antithetical to hers, if it weren’t for the fact that the Disney version of the story is just way better than her rather weak set of stories. I give Travers ample credit for having created an amazing character in the person of Mary Poppins, but for coming up with good stories, not so much.)

I didn’t see the full movie Mary Poppins until later childhood (although I knew many of the songs) and it quickly became a favorite of mine. I went a gap of a number of years without seeing it before I copied the soundtrack from someone when I was in college, which spurred me to go out and rent it (back when Blockbuster was a thing) and so I managed to reconnect with it at the age of 20. More recently I’ve become somewhat of a Mary Poppins enthusiast -- feeling pretty alone among my generation in this regard, with the possible exception of the theater subculture -- having seen probably most or all of the documentaries there are on its production and learned a ridiculous amount of trivia about it, not to mention knowing the whole soundtrack pretty much in my head.

Mary Poppins seems to be Disney’s longest children’s classic, at 2 hours and 19 minutes. All it lacks, really, is an animal-themed or classic fairy tale atmosphere and a proper villain. But what can you get out this movie? Stellar child acting (especially for that period) and excellent performances all around, apart from some awkward but endearing aspects of Dick Van Dyke’s acting (while his singing and physicality is superb). A complex and multi-layered story combining magic, comedy and a little tragedy, appreciable in equal measure from a child’s level and from an adult’s level. Revolutionary special effects which include the first extended hybrid live-action and animation sequence. Timeless words and phrases which have permanently entered the lexicon. One of my favorite extended musical sequence of all time in any movie (”Step In Time” takes up 8 minutes and change, and I’m glad they didn’t go with the “common sense” measure of cutting this “unnecessarily long” number). The Sherman brothers at their very best, in a musical soundtrack that easily scores in my top two out of all Disney movies (the other one being The Lion King). A beautiful message (among several big messages) about the little things being important (or at least, that’s a very crude summary), exquisitely encapsulated in the most beautiful song of the movie, “Feed the Birds” (this apparently became Walt Disney’s favorite song ever, and I’m pretty close to feeling the same way -- I’m determined that one day when I finally have a piano I’m going to learn to sing it along with the piano). I could go on and on here.

If I try really hard I can come up with the sole nitpick of feeling that maybe the parrot head on the umbrella’s handle shouldn’t only reveal itself as a talking parrot head in only one scene right at the very end -- this should have been shown at least once earlier. Even granting that, this film is still practically perfect in every way.

The Jungle Book, 1967

(Let’s get the Colonel Hath in the room out of the way first: “The Jungle Book” is a terrible title for a movie. You know, when you base a movie on a book you don’t have to give it the same title as the book...)

I saw The Jungle Book several times as a kid and, despite not considering it nearly as good as Mary Poppins, similarly reconnected with it in adulthood (particularly the soundtrack). Only several years ago I found myself thinking of getting hold of a double album of classic Disney songs that I thought I’d heard about but couldn’t seem to find online. It soon occurred to me that mostly what I really wanted was some of the songs of The Jungle Book, so I got that movie’s soundtrack instead. I soon learned for the first time that The Jungle Book’s songs were written by the Sherman Brothers*, precipitating an “Ah, that explains why I remember them as so good!” moment. (“I Wanna Be Like You” seems like the clear winner among the songs.) Of course hearing the soundtrack made me curious about the movie, which I did eventually get hold of several years ago; thus I had seen this film exactly once already since childhood.

It says a lot about the music and the overall technique behind this film that I still look back on it as one of the great classics, considering how weak the story is. In particular, I consider a story arc to be pretty flawed when characters that seem significant and/or memorable come in without really living up to their expected big role: the wolves who raised Mowgli play a crucial role in the beginning before more or less disappearing (and it doesn’t entirely make sense to me why Bagheera, rather than they, is guiding him to the man village), and King Louie (who is a well-formed character that I particularly enjoy watching) really ought to come back into the story later somehow (an alternate, and much more complex, ending had him make a reappearance). The villain Shere Khan is not especially well developed in terms of his character and motives, but I do enjoy his menacingly bass voice. Still, the voice acting, the action, the animation, and the overall setting are all very solid here.

I’ll end with some random observations about the song “That’s What Friends Are For”. I think the likeness of the vultures to the Beatles was mostly lost on me as a kid (along with the recognition that this movie came out in the Beatles’ heyday). More interestingly, even when I was old enough to understand how vultures eat, the fact that every single line of the song is a clever macabre double-entendre went completely over my head. I do think it was a very obvious mistake, by the Obvious Standards of Cinematography, to give Shere Khan the last line of the song and begin that line with the “camera” on him, rather than have his voice come in “off-camera” and Mowgli and the vultures looking thunderstruck before panning to him, but maybe I shouldn’t be pushing for overdone techniques here.

* An exception is “Bare Necessities”, which was written by Terry Gilkyson, the original songwriter Disney received submissions from, who wrote two hauntingly beautiful other numbers which were deemed not Disney-ish enough to be put in the film.

Some general stray observations:

These older Disney films love gags involving alcoholism and drunkenness, a bit of a questionable emphasis given that the audience is children. This trend continues into the 80′s at least, but I don’t think one sees it much in modern Disney movies.

Watching these animated films I often find myself flinching as characters’ heads smash into things or gigantic objects smash over their heads, feeling almost surprised when they come out of it pretty much fine. I guess this a staple element of cartoon action throughout the decades, but I can’t recall a more recent Disney animated film where we see this (guess I’ll soon find out!)

There is a certain style of vocal music, with unified rhythm and lyrics but complex harmony and a capella, which seems to have been immensely popular in the 40′s and 50′s and distinctively appears in practically every single one of the 40′s and 50′s films above (“You Can Fly” is a typical example). I recognize it also from some non-Disney-related old records my parents have that were passed down to them. I’m curious about whether this style has a name.

For years I thought the Sherman Brothers did only the soundtrack for Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, only discovering they did The Jungle Book songs rather recently as I explained above. It turns out they were involved in most of the major Disney films around that period, including The Sword in the Stone and The Aristocats (although not its best-known number “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat”).

There is a particularly sad instrumental passage, played by the string section starting with a minor-key violin melody going downward and joined by lower string instruments, which I knew well from my Jungle Book soundtrack (partway through “Poor Bear”) but was surprised to hear in desperately sad moments of several of the other movies around that time (including One Hundred and One Dalmatians and Robin Hood, or at least a close variant of this passage with slightly different endings). I have no idea who wrote this or how it came to be reused so many times.

I knew the name Bruce Reitherman as the voice of Mowgli in The Jungle Book, but in watching all of these other features back to back I’ve noticed that there are some other Reithermans in the front credits of quite a few of them.

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noreencarmen-blog · 4 years

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The truth is that men evolved in small hunter gatherer bands

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spiders-hth-is-an-outlier · 5 years

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13 Queliot recs 4/4

of places where you thought that love would be found by @margosfairyeye

I’m not much for soulmates, but that means that I’m often fond of stories that start off with soulmates and soulmate marks, then do something weird with it. This is a great example of that subgenre; Quentin has a mark that’s unlike any other (a nice parallel to his canon problem of being a Nothingmancer for so much of his life); Eliot has Margo’s mark. And yet, and yet, and yet. Obviously this is one of those rewrite-the-stars stories; it’s not really full of surprises, but it’s lush and sensual and draws you in, laying out the longing and the edge of hopelessness and then the hope in a very visceral, intimate kind of way. This one really could do almost anything and scrape by on sheer aesthetic quality, but I think what it does is exactly the right call. It’s not terribly long, and I’d love to see sequels; I think it’s an interesting universe, and I’d like to see their in-universe nontraditional relationship unfold further.

* His name is Eliot, he says, and Quentin doesn’t think he knows a nicer name. Quentin can’t stop looking at Eliot’s form, his long legs and the fabric wrapping closely against his chest; but more than that he can’t stop looking at his eyes. Quentin remembers some cheesy quote about the eyes being the window to the soul. He thinks it might be less bullshit that he’d thought.

Quentin watches Eliot’s eyes look him up and down, and he feels excited, and confused, and slightly nauseous. He remembers something someone told him, recently, about how the first time they saw their soulmate, it was like being hit simultaneously with the flu and a contact high. Quentin doesn’t feel dissimilar to that description.

He tries to look at Eliot’s hands, his arms as they walk, but Eliot doesn’t give him a lot of time for study. It’s presumptuous to ask someone what their soulmate mark says, most people consider it slightly personal information (with the exception of people like Julia who just give no fucks). But Quentin thinks that if Eliot has a picture, like his, he’ll be able to tell from a quick glance, and he can’t figure out a way to phrase asking that, anyway.

He can barely contain how excited he feels as they walk, and have snippets of conversation, and his wondering grows into full-on hope. Eliot opens a door and Quentin finally catches enough of a glimpse. It’s on the wrong side of Eliot’s arm for him to see clearly, but Quentin can definitely see a distinct letter ‘M’. So not him, then. *

press your love into my palm by @propinquitous

There are a lot of Mosaic stories in the fandom, many of which share the basic plot of “they have sex in the Mosaic timeline.” And a lot of them are really good! I picked this one because it’s a stand-out example for me; it really just picks up from the moment of That Kiss and just keeps going, so what you’re going to get is what you expect. But I just think it’s so beautifully done, the sweet edges of humor, Quentin’s shivery, hopeful boldness, Eliot being so blown away at how much he’s sold Quentin short in his mind. I love a story that could seamlessly be canon, and this is exactly that story -- no one can tell me it didn’t happen just like this, because I read it, and I am a believer. Just a blue-ribbon, five-star, standing-ovation They Have Feelingsy Sex story.

* Eliot pulled him in without hesitation. In some former life he'd been embarrassed of this kind of tenderness, save for maybe with Margo. It was always in him, though, and Quentin had been tugging at its thread for years. He'd almost completely unraveled in the time they'd spent working on the mosaic; every night that Quentin spent curled against him, desperate to quell his fear and frustration, frayed his edges. By the time Quentin kissed him, Eliot felt as threadbare as the clothes he'd arrived in.

Then, after. The second kiss was less chaste, more everything else. Eliot opened his mouth against Quentin's and ran his thumb over his cheek, felt him go slack under his touch. He tested, bit at Quentin's lower lip gently and tugged at the shorter hairs toward his nape. Eliot curled his fingers over Quentin's and he could feel the slight shudder as the arm supporting Quentin buckled and threatened to give out.

"Hey," Eliot said again when he finally pulled away. He didn't sit back and he didn't take his hand from Quentin's face. Instead he breathed in Quentin's heavy exhales and leaned his forehead against his, watching and waiting until Quentin opened his eyes.

"Hey," Quentin finally whispered.

"This conversation is riveting," Eliot said. Quentin smiled then and, Eliot thought, looked almost bashful.

"Well, I mean," he managed to say before he pushed forward again and didn't stop, his mouth firm against Eliot's until he had pushed him back and straddled his lap.

"Should I keep talking?" Quentin asked, running his hands up Eliot's chest. *

Shine Through My Memory by PanBoleyn, @eidetictelekinetic

This is kind of two separate stories in one, covering all of season 4, beginning with the alternate Brian and Nigel identities as they meet and fall in love, vaguely aware that there’s more to their connection than they can make sense of, and dropping into an alternate Monster plotline. I don’t always like s4 stories, just because -- all the reasons and all -- but this is a really good Quentin, stubborn and fierce and heartbroken, juggling for all he’s worth to keep the layered memories of Brian/Nigel and the Mosaic timeline and the current clusterfuck separate and under control before he snaps under the weight of them. It’s a little heavy, but there’s one chapter left to go, and I’m really looking forward to the release of the ending. You really can’t get a more balanced and sturdy combination of dark canon!fic and romantic fix-it -- it’s truly the best of both worlds.

* “Colored chalk on my hands,” Brian murmurs, tasting the vanilla-caramel-white chocolate of his latte but remembering the taste of plums instead. He doesn’t even like plums, which makes the whole thing weirder, because in this not-memory he does. “I don’t understand any of this. Tell me it’s as weird for you, because I -” A long-fingered hand closes over his own, and Brian looks up into gold-hazel eyes that he knows/doesn’t know and sees - all of it, reflected back. “I don’t get it either,” Nigel says, voice soft. “But I think maybe I’m better at just rolling with the punches than you are, hmm?” “I don’t. Roll with, with anything,” Brian says, and his voice isn’t steady anymore. “I don’t know how, my life is a predictable bore and I like the predictable part if not the bore part. But I think you have to tolerate being bored to keep things predictable so. So I tolerate it.” Tolerates a job he hates because teaching is better than a cubicle at a 9 to 5, and because the paintings and the newly-begun manuscripts that are Brian’s only love won’t pay the bills. “I’ve dated the same woman off and on six times because neither of us care enough to say no the next time one of us is lonely enough to offer, there’s been a man or two in the off points but no one. Nothing like -”

My dreams make no sense, and I feel more in them than I’ve felt in years. It’s not something he can say out loud, though. *

Veins Fit to Bursting by @amagpie

It’s a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fusion! It’s a REALLY GOOD SMART WONDERFUL Buffy fusion! Everyone kind of maps onto BtVS characters in a clever way, but it’s by no means a remake -- they remain very much themselves. BtVS is obviously deep in the DNA of The Magicians, in terms of layering worldbuilding on top of an essential bone structure of coming-of-age, and this story is just an absolute bullseye in terms of understanding that. Quentin’s general depression encompasses but isn’t limited to his feelings of being the useless sidekick, and Eliot’s transformation from mousy nerd to the undead version of the Champagne King is not only very William/Spike, but it builds this lovely foundation of connection between him and Quentin, neither of whom are living quite the life they once imagined they would. There’s a very quarterlife-crisis vibe to the whole thing, which is perfectly in harmony with both shows, and a light touch to the voice that suits this slightly lost Quentin perfectly -- honestly, it may be my very favorite version of Quentin’s inner voice. It’s early days yet in this WIP, but it’s fully earned my confidence in the first few chapters, and I am 100% down for the ride.

* “Okay, so I guess you could maybe say I’m a vampire hunter. But it’s not like it’s my job or anything,” Quentin pushes out in a rush.

A slow smile spreads across Eliot’s face: scary and genuine. There seems to be real interest in his eyes. Eliot settles himself onto a bench, patting the seat next to him. Quentin settles himself on the very far end of the bench to put at least a few feet between them. He’s down for a chat, not to get murdered.

“So it’s an extracurricular?” Eliot prompts. Quentin chuckles with how close to the truth it actually is, looking away. They do have an official college club to make research sessions easier - the Ancient Sumerian Culture Club . They have a budget and everything - which Quentin submits as treasurer - although it more often gets used for pizza and wooden pegs than flyers.

“More like a duty. Or well, not exactly my duty.” Quentin furrows his brows. “Do you remember Julia?”

“I think so? Your friend, really tiny…?”

“Yeah, so, um, Julia is the slayer.”

Quentin looks back at Eliot to take in his reaction to the news. Eliot’s eyes widen, his hands tightening for a second on the bench beneath him. Something like pride coils up in Quentin.

“Huh,” Eliot finally says. *

#queliot fic #queliot recs #the magicians

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buzzdixonwriter · 5 years

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Once Upon A Time In Hollywood [SPOILERICIOUS]

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is now my favorite Quentin Tarantino movie even though I think a few of his others are better made films.[1]

But, man, does it ever capture the era and the vibe. In that sense it's like La Dolce Vita (and in another, like Singin' In The Rain).

I know this era, and I know Los Angeles of the time -- from the Summer of Love in ’67 through the year of unraveling in 1968 to the end of the era in ’69.

And while Hunter S. Thompson’s brilliant Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas marked the official death notice of the Swingin’ Sixties in 1971 (with a few die-hards like the Symbianese Liberation Army literally dying hard in 1974), the truth is 1969 was when it all came to an end.

Nixon won, thanks to his own now well documented treason behavior and to a few million white bigots voting for George Wallace instead of Hubert Humphrey, and (as Thompson himself noted two years later) “with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Now some of you are saying, “But wait -- how can little Buzzy boy -- a mere lad of 13 summers in 1967 and not yet fully 16 when he finally actually visited Los Angeles for the first time in 1970 – how can he know what Los Angeles was like in that era?”

Ah, for that, my friends, we can thank television.

. . .

For those of you too damn impatient to get into the meat of my review of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, just skip this block and go to the next one.

I’m gonna pull a Tarantino here and seemingly meander in order to set up what comes next.

Even though I lived in the rural South (Appalachia mostly but with a few years in the Piedmont of North Carolina), we had this invention called television, and on this invention were these shows.

I’m not talking about Shindig! or Hullabaloo or even The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (though the latter interestingly paralleled in real time the rise and fall of what we now call “The Sixties”).

I’m not even talking about that perennial American Bandstand which started in 1952 and ran a staggering 37 seasons, grinding to a halt only in 1989 at the tail end of the Reagan Era, a pop culture show that lasted long enough for the grandchildren of its initial audience to be watching it when they finally pulled the plug.

No, I’m talking about cheap-ass, under-the-radar syndication efforts like Where The Action Is (itself a spinoff of American Bandstand) and The Lloyd Thaxton Show a Bandstand imitation that relied more on whacky humor, proto-music videos, and local-to-LA pop culture icons.

We’d see these shows (briefly back-to-back during Where The Action Is’ short run) not as cheap entertainment for teens and tweens but rather as a glorious portal into that land of myth and magic: Southern California.

In particular, Los Angeles.

(It’s not as if nobody ever did this before. In all its variations from the mid-1950s through Walt’s death in 1966, Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color seemed to make every 4thshow either about Disney Studios or Disneyland itself, thus by extension priming the national pump for interest in Southern California.)

Where The Action Is and The Lloyd Thaxton Show needed to squeeze the most out of their bare minimum budgets, and the cheapest way to fill screen time was to convince some local SoCal / LA attraction to let you shoot footage of young kids (with disposable incomes, one might add) having a good -- no, great time at said attraction while listening / dancing to top forty tunes lip-synched by an astonishing roster of talent.

Look, this was back when TV was big but before it became H*U*G*E. Successful show biz folks made money but they didn’t make that much money, and popping down for an afternoon to lip-synch your latest release for Lloyd or Dick Clark was a sure way to guarantee a few thousand more sales across the country, a few more paid gigs in the hinterlands, so whyda hell not?

The Monkees tried covering the same territory on prime time, but as popular as that show was (and it stands up well to this day albeit more as an artifact of its time), it felt just too slick, too packaged, too ersatz compared to the scruffiness of Where The Action Is and The Lloyd Thaxton Show.[2]

Add to this almost weekly illustrated news and culture stories of SoCal / LA and the youth movement delivered to even the most remote rural homes via Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, and The Saturday Evening Post, and it was pretty much hard not to be aware of -- and influenced by -- Los Angeles culture in the 1960s.

And if like little Buzzy boy you were interested / intrigued / enthralled by that culture, there was a virtual tsunami of sights and sounds to wallow in, even if you lived 2,467 miles away.

On my first visit to Los Angeles in the summer of 1970, when I had just stepped off the airliner, when I was no further into the city than the gate of the airline terminal, I looked around, took a deep breath, and realized: I’m home.

. . .

So here’s the plot of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood:

Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a fading TV star, frets over his career.

Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his stunt double buddy, tries to boost his spirits.

Rick lives next door to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a vivacious young actress married to a world famous director.

Cliff the stunt man bumps into members of a crazy criminal cult.

Weirdness ensues, but everything ends happily (except for three of the cultists).

A conventional movie would have put points 1, 2, & 3 in Act One, made point 4 part of Act Two but then stretched that act out with a big pointless chase and a few small fights, and finished with point 5 as Act Three.

20 pages / 80 pages / 20 pages

Not our lad Quentin.

A screenwriting guru once observed It's A Wonderful Life has a traditional 3 act structure only it's constructed so act 1 occupies 80% of the picture. Likewise Casino opens with virtually a 45 minute documentary on the casino business so they won't have to stop and explain things as they go along with the main story.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is like that: Two hours to build up to a literal life-or-death moment in order to show that for all their sins and short comings, Rick and Cliff would not merely survive but be worthy of survival.

(Most "assemble the squad" movies have a similar structure only they disguise it by indulging in hijinks along the way viz The Dirty Dozen spending most of their movie just training.)

Points 1, 2, 3, and 4 above are Tarantino’s Act One, and based on the 161 minute running time, I’m guessing it occupies the first 130 pages of the script.

Point 5 is his Act Three, and I’d say 20 pages sounds about right there.

But what about Act Two?

That’s the beauty of this story.

Act Two is about ten minutes long and is told mostly with narration (provided by Kurt Russell, who may or may not be speaking in character as Randy, the stunt director).

The crisis point in Rick and Cliff’s story is not that they’ve intersected with the Manson family, it’s that Rick decides their friendship must end.

Now, ostensibly this is because Rick’s new Italian wife, Francesca (Lorenza Izzo), wants to cut expenses and move out of his home in Benedict Canyon and into a condo in the San Fernando Valley, a move that we know from Rick’s earlier statements that he would find shameful and a mark of his slide in status , but the unspoken reason may be that the volatile Francesca learned of Cliff’s own troublesome past (see below) and wants nothing to do with him.

So Act One tells us who these two guys are, explains their relationship in part, hints at an elephant neither wants to acknowledge, and carries us to a point where they can no longer continue as once they had.

Act Two consists of the final decisions the two make as part of this friendship, not really wanting to break it off, Cliff clearly hurt by Rick’s abrupt dismissal, yet trying to have one last good time together before parting, ostensibly not forever but…yeah, forever.

Their respective decisions impair their ability to respond to the dangers posed by the trio of killers in Act Three.

. . .

Let’s talk about Rick Dalton for a moment.

Leonardo DiCaprio proves himself to be one of the gutsiest actors of all time, playing a whiny, petulant, rude, brusque, self-involved, over-anxious crybaby of a man…

…and getting us to admire him because despite his myriad character flaws, the sonuvabitch has two things going for him and the first is a fierce dedication to his craft.

A conventional movie would cut the scenes of Rick practicing his Lancer dialog all by himself.

Tarantino realizes the audience needs to experience that in full, because otherwise they won’t appreciate his frustration at blowing his lines during filming the next day.

And when he blows his lines, Rick erupts in a epic full-bore meltdown rage aimed at himself and himself alone.

And this points to the second thing Rick has going for him: Rick knows when and how to accept help, and is thankful for it.

Without the lengthy scene of him practicing at home (and drinking too much in the process), audiences would dismiss Rick blowing his lines as par for the course.

We need to see Rick make a conscientious effort to prepare for his role, see him screwing up by getting hungover, see him blow his lines, then see him correctly shouldering the blame and taking positive steps to overcome his error and deliver an outstanding performance.

The help that Rick accepts in this scene comes from “Maribella Lancer” a.k.a. Trudi Fraiser (Julia Butters), a child method actress who refuses to break character between takes. (This is one of the most delightful scenes in the film and well worth the price of admission alone.)

Despite a rather awkward-bordering-irritating meeting, “Maribella” / Trudi feels empathy for Rick as he inadvertently confesses his own career anxiety by talking about a pulp Western he’s reading.

That he can accept this empathy from a child stands well in Rick’s favor. It shows he actually listens to others and accepts their feedback and input.

And it pays off for both of them when Rick not only comes back from his lunch break meltdown all fired up and determined to give an outstanding performance (which he does), but also when we learn he suggested a bit of business for “Maribella” / Trudi that delights both her and the director (Sam Wannamaker, a real life actor and TV director of the era, played in this film by Nicholas Hammond).

And when “Maribella” / Trudi tells Rick that his acting was some of the best she’s ever seen, he’s genuinely moved to tears.

We may shake our heads at some of the stuff he does, but we like this guy.

. . .

Part of the headshaking is due to his relationship with Cliff, his stunt double / majordomo / best friend.

Rick often seems like an arrogant prick with Cliff, seemingly bossing him around, acting like Cliff is at his constant beck and call.

We’re about two thirds of the way into the film when we learn that without Rick to champion him, Cliff would pretty much be persona non grata in Hollywood.

Cliff is known throughout the town (and Hollywood ain’t that big, folks) as a wife killer.

While some (such as Rick) argue he was absolved of any criminal intent, there’s no doubt he deliberately and personally caused the death of his wife, he didn’t merely have an accident that left her dead.

He’s a wife killer.

Most of the people in town assume he got away with murder.

Francesca, despite being an Italian starlet, may have heard the stories from other Americans working in Italy and that is the real reason she laid her foot down re Rick selling his house and abandoning Cliff as his friend.

Hell, even nearly blind old George Spahn (Bruce Dern) holds him in contempt.

Cliff can’t get hired in town unless Rick asks for him to be employed as his stunt double.

Even then he runs into strong pushback, viz Randy the stunt director who is reluctant simply because he doesn’t like the vibe Cliff gives off, and is especially reluctant because his wife, fellow stunt coordinator Janet (Zoë Bell), nurtures an enormous hate-on for Cliff based on the presumption he did indeed murder his wife and get away with it.

Cliff blows his chance of working his way back into Hollywood’s good graces by getting in a fight on the set of The Green Hornet with Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) that caves in the side of Janet’s car.

But what’s crucial in that scene is Lee explaining his refusal to fight: “My hands are registered as lethal weapons. We get into a fight, I accidentally kill you. I go to jail.”

“Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight, they go to jail,” says Cliff. “It’s called manslaughter.”

Sounds like Cliff may know what he’s talking about from personal experience.

When Lee learns Cliff is a wife killer, his reluctance to fight him disappears.

Nobody in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood disputes Cliff killed his wife, they dispute if he got away with murder or not. In view of his comment on manslaughter to Bruce Lee, the coroner’s verdict may not have been murder or accident but justifiable homicide

We don't know what happened on the boat in the flashback scene with him and his wife (Rebecca Gayheart).

If she attacked him with a weapon (the spear gun they carried onboard or a knife or a wrench or whatever) and he defended himself from her attack but unintentionally inflicted a lethal injury on her, then both a charge of manslaughter and verdicts of "not proven" or "justifiable self-defense" are possible.

We don't know, and that ambiguity is what makes Once Upon A Time In Hollywood such a morally and ethically complex film.

(When I next see the film, two things I'm keeping tabs on the contents of Rick's store room and when Cliff's various scars appear.)

. . .

And Sharon Tate, the third leg of this triad?

She is depicted in this movie by Margot Robbie as light and as airy and as harmless as dandelion pollen blown on the breeze. She is a perfect wish fulfillment character, not merely because so many men desire her, but because she appears to live a blissfully stress free, rewarding, and happy life.

This is where real life collides with “reel life” and if you haven’t guessed by now, we’re up to our necks in spoiler territory.

You have been warned.

For audiences half my age, Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) is vaguely known in a Jack the Ripper-ish sort of way (i.e., a really, really bad guy who did some really, really terrible things but just what they don't fully know) while Tate is unjustly forgotten.

The glory of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is that for however briefly, for however artificially, it lets Sharon Tate come alive again and enjoy the happy ending she deserved.

What is that happy ending?

To be honest, we don’t know.

At the end of the film she meets Rick, recognizes him from his TV shows, and the implication hangs in the air that she’ll introduce him to her husband, Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha) who in real life at this stage of his career had not yet descended to drugging and raping 13 year old girls.

I hope in “reel life” that never happens, just as I would hope that Polanski’s criminal moral failing would never have materialized in the real world had Tate and her unborn child lived.

We just don’t know.

We assume Rick will meet Polanski, and from that meeting his career would shift to A-list motion pictures, and his dreams of success and security would come true.

We just don’t know.

Would Tate herself have gone on to bigger and better roles?

The odds are not in her favor.

As the writer David Gerrold said: “Hollywood uses up young women as if they're disposable. It is one of the worst things about the industry.”

Very few female actors of that era enjoyed a sustained shot at A-films, especially if they were regarded primarily as eye candy.

By the time of her murder in real life, Tate had a good role in a minor but good movie nobody saw (Eye Of The Devil), a good role in a major bad movie everybody saw (Valley Of The Dolls), and provided eye candy in three mediocre movies (including The Wrecking Crew, part of the gawdawful Dean Martin “Matt Helm” series[3]).

Her career might well have stalled out as so many other promising young starlets’ careers stalled out.

We’ll never know.

But even a stalled career would be preferable to what really happened to her.

. . .

A lot of people get second chances at the end: The four[4] at the Tate house, for sure, but also Rick (who finally gets to move into Polanski's circle) and Cliff (who has atoned for killing his wife either by accident or a well staged murder).

But y'know who else gets a second chance?

Charles Manson.

Cliff sees Manson at the Tate house but never learns his name. When he visits Spahn Ranch, he hears constant references to "Charlie" but never meets him since Manson has taken the family's children on an outing to Santa Barbara.

He recognizes Tex (Austin Butler) and Susan Atkins (Mikey Madison) and Patricia Krenwinkel (Madisen Beaty; many people mistake her character in this scene for Squeaky Frome, played by Dakota Fanning in an earlier scene) from his visit to the Spahn Ranch, but for all he knows they've come after him for revenge after he beat up Clem (James Landry Hébert) at the ranch.

Since Cliff was out of the country for 6 months stunt doubling for Rick in Italy, the lapse in time is accounted for: They waited until he returned.

When the hit team doesn't come back and there's no news reports of a mass murder, Manson knows his plan failed and has an opportunity to flee the LA area, either by himself, with a small group of followers, or the entire Family.

If the police do trace Tex and the women back to Spahn Ranch and they do confront Manson on this, Manson can feign innocence. If they bring up Cliff's visit and fistfight, Manson can say he knew the three were angry over the incident but he never knew they plotted revenge.

With the three would-be killers dead and Linda Kasabian (Maya Hawke) presumably fleeing LA to escape the Family there's no link between Manson and the attack on Rick's house.

Manson is in the clear. The police consider the matter closed (movie star kills three drug crazed hippies; why look further?) and Manson gets a breather to ponder his next move.

Maybe he realizes how close a call it was. Maybe he realizes he's got a nice little scam going with the Family. Maybe he focuses on that and becomes a garden variety cult guru who, with viral marketing, becomes a prominent New Age personality.

Stranger things have happened...

. . .

To be honest, I approached Once Upon A Time In Hollywood with some trepidation when I heard the ending would not synch up with reality.

Tarantino most notably did this before with Inglorious Basterds, but most of his movies occur in the Red Apple universe, so named after a popular brand of tobacco that appears in those films (I can’t remember if Red Apple products appear in Jackie Brown and have not seen either Kill Bill movie).

The Red Apple universe almost-but-not-quite synchs up with ours.

The biggest and most obvious deviations from the norm is Inglorious Basterds, where Tarantino wipes out Hitler and the Nazi high command in a fiery climax later echoed in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, but Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction suggest a world far more immersed in its own pop culture than we are.

The Hateful 8 is another Red Apple universe film (again specifically referenced in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) that strongly implies Abraham Lincoln survived the assassination attempt against him and negotiated a post-Civil War peace that saw the Confederate states reunited with the rest of the country much sooner than actually happened but in return saw them agree to full emancipation and equality under the law of all formerly enslaved people. There's still a lot of racial tension in era of The Hateful 8 but there is also an explicit acknowledgment of equality under the law.

As such, race relations in Tarantino’s films Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood do not synch up with the reality of our own era.

. . .

On the one hand, there’s not as much carnage in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood as there is in most Tarantino movies.

On the other, there’s just as much only we don’t recognize it for violence because it’s presented in the form of “play acting”.

It’s not real.

It’s all a movie (or a TV show).

Or so we think.

Even Manson’s own killers debate this point, one of them arguing that all American TV shows “except for I Love Lucy” glorify in murder and violence, so why not visit murder and violence on those promoting it?

Really, what separates the violence of bounty hunter Jake Cahill (a name that’s an amalgam of two John Wayne Westerns: Big Jake and Cahill, US Marshal) from Rick Dalton playing Jake Cahill from Leonardo DiCaprio playing Rick Dalton playing Jake Cahill from the violence of Leonardo DiCaprio playing Rick Dalton at the “reel life” climax?

And what do we make of Brad Pitt playing Cliff Booth who doubles for Rick Dalton (as played by Leonardo DiCaprio) playing Jake Cahill, especially in the end when Cliff’s under the influence of LSD and isn’t sure if what he’s experiencing is real?

You tell me.

. . .

Tarantino’s flamethrower beats Chekov’s gun

By this I mean if you need a flamethrower in act three, you set it up and pay it off in an entirely different context in act one or two, but you also establish however obliquely that it’s not impossible for it to be present though uncommented on in act three.

We see Rick Dalton use a flamethrower in a film; we see a flashback and hear him say he practiced long and hard to master the weapon.

This fits in nicely with Rick’s character, both poking fun at him for not being the tough guy he portrays onscreen yet establish his willingness to learn a dangerous skill if it enhances his performance.

After all, he could always request Cliff, his stunt double, handle the flamethrower in that scene.

Dalton is also established as a person who collects memorabilia about himself, reinforced repeatedly though not always blatantly thru the film (viz Cliff bringing in a huge framed poster of one of Rick’s Italian movies just prior to the climax).

So when Rick pops out with a fully functional flamethrower at the end, our suspension of disbelief goes, “Yeah, he’d still have that”. (When I next see the film, I’m paying close attention to the contents of the storage room prior to Cliff fixing the antenna; if we don’t see the flamethrower stored there, Tarantino missed a bet.)

Part of the genius of this film extends to the trailer.

There is a big honking clue to at least part of the climax when Rick is shown using the flamethrower and the images freeze frames while a title announcing it as Quentin Tarantino’s 9th film is superimposed. That’s brilliant marketing as it preps audiences for what would otherwise be a deus ex machina before they've even seen the movie.

. . .

re the flamethrower and Cliff’s scars: This is a film that will endure multiple repeat viewings just to catch all the details. There's a shot of Cliff driving down the 134 Freeway that if you aren't a Los Angelino you won't recognize he's driving past Forest Lawn, thus prefiguring the ominous background of the film.

When Pitt goes to see the elderly George Spahn at the infamous Spahn Ranch, he passes by two photos of Zorro and the Lone Ranger -- both with masks over their eyes -- as Squeaky tells him "He's blind."

The background is filled with posters and billboards and books and magazines and memorabilia, some real, some ersatz.

That being said, I do not think it will age well.

To the degree it skillfully recreates an era, that will be studied.

But as time puts more and more distance to the actual events, the impact of the film will lessen.

Casablanca loses some impact when we aren’t aware of how vicious the real life Nazis were, but in the context of the story they’re big enough bastards for us to understand why it’s important to stand up to them.

After The Fox is a delightful comedic romp that is hilarious even if you don’t know anything about Italian neo-realism, but if you do know anything about Italian neo-realism It. Gets. Even. FUNNIER!

But you really need to know what happened on August 9, 1969 at 10050 Cielo Drive to fully appreciate what Tarantino hath wrought.

Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, future generations of viewers will appreciate the skill and artistry employed, but they just won’t get why it makes such an impact today on many viewers.

Gordon Dickson wrote a classic sci-fi story back in 1962 called “Three Part Puzzle”. Without spoiling it, it’s safe to say a big hunk of the story’s appeal lays in the efforts of aliens to comprehend why human children are delighted by the old fairy tale of The Three Billy-Goats Gruff.

To the aliens, the story contains a simple, straight forward message: Wait until your strongest team member arrives before engaging an enemy.

What they don’t understand is the morality behind the story.

To the aliens, goats and trolls are all equal, there is no reason to take delight in the victory of one over another.

But to humans…ah, to humans there’s a far deeper, much more important message than a mere tactical stratagem.

This is the risk Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will face in the future, that audiences as yet unborn will come to see it as a big, goofy buddy action movie in which two friends (and the wife of one and the dog of another) take on a trio of killers, dispatching them in spectacular fashion.

The catharsis may be lost, and in losing that, so will be lost the heart and soul of the film.

Enjoy it now while you can.

[1] I rank Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, and The Hateful 8 above it in terms of cinematic quality.

[2] In real life, for reasons too involved to go into here, Charles Manson actually got a courtesy audition for The Monkees; he was never seriously considered for a role and if I remember correctly, the show had already been cast by that point but the formal announcement had not been made. Nonetheless, if the quantum physics hypothesis of alternate timelines is correct, somewhere there’s a universe where Charlie Manson is a beloved 1960s pop culture icon and people still talk about the infamous Peter Tork murder cult.

[3] Do yourselves a favor and track down the original Matt Helm novels by Donald Hamilton. They’re far superior to the crappy movies.

[4] There were actually five victims that night but Steven Parent, who had been visiting the property's caretaker William Garretson at the property's guest house, was shot in his car as he prepared to drive away. Garretson, apparently under the influence of drugs and / or alcohol, first claimed to have slept through the horrendous attack and was a prime suspect until forensics cleared him. (Years later he admitted to witnessing part of the attack and doing nothing for reasons he never made clear.) Tarantino left Parent and Garretson's presence out of the film presumably because it would have been too much of a diversion to explain them if they weren't going to be victims.

#Quentin Tarantino #Leonardo DiCaprio #Brad Pitt #Manson #Manson Family #Los Angeles #Hollywood #1960s #Sharon Tate #Roman Polanski #TV Westerns #film making #morals #ethics #history #catharsis #Once Upon A Time In Hollywood #Red Apple

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undeadwicchan · 5 years

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Rewatching RWBY: Volume 1, Episodes 6-10 [Live Blog]

The second half of Volume 1, and yes if you combine the parts. Volume 1 is actually only 10 episodes long.

[Episode 6]

I know it’s first volume and the budget isn’t as big as it is now, but Ruby’s arms in her uniform are unusually long.

Blake is actually somewhat OOC during the ‘Banzai’ then again, Blake is one of Miles’s hardest characters to write and it’s Volume 1 so…

Omg that Achievement Hunter poster

It’s always the quiet ones hehe.

I don’t understand why Ruby would cut the curtain to this very day unless it was an accident.

Weiss is womanlet compared to Yang omg.

Oh right, JNPR’s room is right across from RWBY’s!

“Remember when STRQ was late to class? Good times”

Okay so who is that guy with the black hair and green shirt?!

Also hello Port!

Yeah just yell at Ruby while Yang and Blake were cheering too lmao.

“Sheesh what’s with her,” tell me about it.

“Ozpin made a mistake” Oh hell no.

“My ‘Ruby is having a conflict with herself or with someone’ senses are tingling” - Ozpin, probably.

I love Ryan voicing Port omg.

“I have made more mistakes than any man, woman, and child on this planet” can we talk about how tired and sad Ozma sounds here? Yes, I strongly believe that this is Ozma in control talking to Ruby.

Boy I wonder how that opinion that Port has of Ozpin is going to change now…

You tell her Port.

Yeah, you see Weiss. Ruby is working very hard. Baby girl is doing her best and that’s all that matters. ;v;

HHHhhhhh Weiss is so sweet omg

And now it’s time for probably the most skipped on and criticized arc in the series. Jaundice.

[Episode 7]

Now isn’t that some alluding regarding the characters they’re based off of.

So it’s been a considerable amount of weeks and a few months before the Vytal Festival kinda sorta starts. Interesting.

Omg Ren’s and Nora’s story telling.

Ruby and Pyrrha are on the same wavelength regarding their concern for Jaune

I WILL 1v4 YOU TEAM CRDL IF YOU CONTINUE TO BULLY VELVET.

Oh my god, I know it’s for comedy relief but, that’s kinda messed up Cardin would send Jaune trapped in a locker flying.

Cardin. You. Me. 1v1 now. You dare hurt the Bun?! Speaking of, I know Velvet’s teammates designs aren’t completed, but they would kick Cardin and his team’s ass.

“It must be hard to be a faunus” Yeah… Looking at how shitty society treated Adam and Ilia, it is not much of a brainer.

OOBLECK!

Aw poor baby is so hesitant to speak out about the discrimination she faced as a faunus :c

C’mon Jaune….

Oh man, Adam would just… have a field day with the way Cardin would show his disgust over the faunus .

YES BLAKE. GO PYRRHA. TEAR THAT MAN APART AND DRAG HIM

I wish I had a teacher like Oobleck back during my days of High School.

“You know, I really will break his legs” please do Pyrrha.

...F...Forever Fall is that you I hear? ;v;

I’m sorry guys, but the lyric version of Forever Fall messed me up so much, that if I hear it I start to tear up a bit…

Pyrrha deserves the world god damn it.

This arc does give some perspective on Jaune’s character and how he can grow. I actually love the Jaunedice arc.

SCREW OFF CARDIN.

[Episode 8]

I can’t even blame Pyrrha for being mad and disappointed with Jaune here.

I love this moment between Ruby and Jaune, they’re very supportive of each other and I really like they let each other lean on the other’s shoulder if needed to be. Lancaster man…

C’mon Jaune…

Okay. So we got a tease of Forever Fall in Maya via Adam and Blake shorts but, I really hope we see the forest again!

Pfftttt Nora.

How did Glynda not notice that box of wasps?

You hurt Pyrrha. I hurt you.

Don’t do it….

Yeah Jaune!

Oh no Jaune!

LMAO

Oh because I’m watching on the blu-ray it contains the bonus scene of Nora stealing Pyrrha’s collected sap.

YEAH JAUNE!

Cardin deserved that one.

“Time to save the boyfriend.” - Pyrrha and Ruby, probably.

Go Jaune, go!

I’ll give Cardin this. He actually does keep Jaune’s secret a secret.

*cries internally* God damn Forever Fall…

Ah, there’s that smile from Pyrrha.

And so begins Jaune’s training arc.

[Episode 9]

Alright the Vytal Festival is coming!

Weiss being excited is so precious.

And so begins the Blake vs Weiss arc.

That’s racist, Weiss.

S U N. MY SUNNY BOI.

I miss him having gray eyes omg.

Okay so, Sun winked at Blake. An angelic choir suddenly starts playing and it makes it seem like Sun is introduced as Blake’s future love interest.

Blake looks like he took her breath away or just confused or both.

P E N N Y. MY BABY GIRL.

FRIEND.

Asdfghjkl I miss Penny omg. ;v;

“It’s a combat skirt” iconic.

Where did she find the time to draw that picture of Sun lmao

God damn it Weiss. That’s rude af.

I can feel the discomfort from here too…

“There’s no such thing as pure evil,” now if only a certain part of the FNDM can be aware of that….

Weiss’s anger is valid, but she shouldn’t be generalizing all faunus with the same mind set like that….

Damn, Adam managed to steal an entire train worth of dust even after Blake left all on his own?

Speaking of Adam, he indirectly caused Weiss to have a difficult childhood, I hope people remember that.

“Well maybe we were just tired of being pushed around!” How many do you want to bet Adam said the same thing…

I always wondered if there was a connection between the Faunus and the Grimm….

Awww Volume 1’s purple ears.

And so the S.S. Blacksun sails.

Jfc Weiss

In the manga it’s only been a like not even a full day, but here it’s been two days that Sun has been with Blake.

[Episode 10]

Sun’s disgust over the White Fang is interesting tbh like did he ever encounter them in Vacuo or Mistral?

The only time you see Blake with brown hair.

Okay so… the silhouette on the right…. That looks… an awfully a lot like Adam if you get rid of that tail…

Ffs Weiss….

That slow realization lmao.

What great teammates they are lmao

Sun is great here, he tries to help whenever he can.

Yang is still thinking about Weiss’s words, “Is she innocent?” “She’s our teammate we have to at least talk to her…”

Some nice insight….

Touche.

Yikes, Roman is pretty racist towards them too.

Battle time!!

Man Roman’s dialogue is so witty I love it.

GUN CHUCKS. GUN CHUCKS.

Sun has one of the best fighting styles, but I imagine it’s a pain in the ass to animate it though.

“You hurt my friend, now you’ll pay”

Get em’ Penny!!

Rip those members of the White Fang. Seriously how does Adam manage to bullshit his way into making them help Roman still after this.

“Kinda cute” Bless Ruby

Weiss get some off screen development

And Blake… finally is starting to get her wings… *cries*

How is Ozpin is getting that kind of live feed?

Wings plays and the credits roll for this volume…

But wait there’s more!

Volume 1 Mercury and Emerald look wack. I’m glad they look so much better in Volume 2!

And that’s Volume 1, and now onto Volume 2…. Where the bees start really buzzing since… I hardly could spot a thing for Yang and Blake except during their initiation in Volume 1 and Yang wanting to be understanding. In contrast to where Blake and Sun have established a friendship. But, Volume 2 hoo boy… Buzz buzz.

Buzz.

#RWBY #Yuuri rewatches RWBY

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searbao · 6 years

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(The Sunday Times article for those of you unable to read it)

Last Sunday, just days after being nominated for an Oscar, Timothée Chalamet bounded into a busy London bar like a man who still believes nobody knows who he is. Heads turned. Autograph hunters were in the yard outside. At one point during our interview, he shouted “Boom!” so loudly that tables of drinkers turned, stared, turned back, then turned around again. “It’s, it’s...” one said, slightly uncertain as to who he was or, more likely, how to pronounce his first name.

It’s plain old “Timothy”; and what filmgoers recognise him for is his breakthrough role in Call Me by Your Name, a gay coming-of-age story that has grown from cult hit to mainstream contender. He is smart and sensitive as Elio, who falls for his family’s American hunk of a guest, Oliver (Armie Hammer), during a picturesque Italian summer.

In person, Chalamet’s hair bounces, as does the rest of him. He is thin and wiry; as graceful as a ballerina and as energetic as the Duracell bunny; fond of light physical affection. He talks at the motormouth clip typical of Hell’s Kitchen, New York, where he grew up.

I have never met anyone as delighted to be alive as he is right now. Who can blame him? At 22, he is, for Elio, the youngest best actor nominee since 1944. He would be the youngest ever winner: not bad, considering he was previously best known for a bit part in Homeland and quit Columbia University to audition for, but not be cast in, Manchester by the Sea and the latest Spider-Man. In a fortnight, he will be at the Baftas for both lead actor and the coveted rising-star prize. But everyone knows it’s the Academy Awards that matter most. How does all that feel?

“This is how it matters to me,” he says. “Call Me by Your Name has gone beyond my wildest dreams. People came out because of that film. But I don’t want to be known for something that happened when I was young. So [the nomination] comes with tremendous gratitude and is something I’ll humblebrag about to my friends and family, yet this is hopefully just the start. There’d better be more.”

The good news, I say, is that he is unlikely to win, as voters seem unable to look past Gary Oldman’s prosthetics in Darkest Hour. So the accolade might be a millstone, but not as heavy as it could be. He laughs at my cheek.

“The truth is, you want to prepare a speech, but — I don’t know,” he says, frozen. “These ceremonies are overwhelming enough, independent of having to get up in front of legends and have your mouth move.” A fellow nominee, Daniel Kaluuya, the young British star of Get Out, is equally excited. “When we lock eyes,” he says of Kaluuya, “we give each other a look of ‘What the f*** is happening?’”

The crazy thing is that Call Me by Your Name is only the second best film starring Chalamet nominated for best picture this year. The best is Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s exquisite straight coming-of-age story, in which Saoirse Ronan’s titular teen struggles with men and her studies. It’s an astonishingly astute film, with Chalamet playing Ronan’s second boyfriend. He sits by the pool reading literature, looking brooding — which is exactly what Elio does. Chalamet claps along loudly when I bring up typecasting. He’s too hot now to sweat the small stuff.

Gerwig has been nominated for best director at the Oscars, which makes her the story of the night. Although other awards have found room for Lady Bird in several categories, they have overlooked the one that counts: best director. Some thought her film was simple compared to, say, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, with its crew of hundreds moving a boat off a beach, and that such traditionally male-made projects are simply harder to do. Size matters, it seems, to panels of predominantly male voters. Or perhaps they just don’t like women to direct.

“There’s no difference in being directed by a woman,” Chalamet says sharply. “But in the public representation, there is a huge difference, and that’s why it’s so important Greta was nominated, and so shocking she is just the fifth woman to be so.”

He looks bemused as I float the idea it might be easier to make a film that is character-driven, as is Lady Bird, than something on a grander scale. “And it’s interesting,” he adds, “that the conversation is framed in relation to production of the movie, because it’s clear that it’s way harder to get an audience for smaller films. Budgets are significantly less.” He sounds irked, clearly finding questions about the battle of the sexes dated and odd.

Yet Chalamet should be used to this by now. He has come into the industry in the era of Time’s Up, which strives for better treatment for all, especially women. It’s hard being in the middle of a storm that’s still raging. There was a late caveat to this interview, namely that I couldn’t ask Chalamet about Woody Allen. The actor recently donated his salary for the director’s forthcoming movie, A Rainy Day in New York, which he filmed last summer, to funds including Time’s Up. He had made a statement about it a couple of weeks ago, and that was that.

I pushed back. Journalists have been accused of dodging difficult questions, but if the interviewee refuses to be asked, that leaves us in limbo. I was then allowed one specific question about Allen, by email. I asked three. Chalamet answered this one: “You were the first lead to donate your salary for a Woody Allen film. What has been the reaction to your statement?”

He replied: “I’m just focusing on the work as much as possible. I mean, I literally get to have this conversation with you in relation to Lady Bird, which freshly presents a female coming-of-age story, independent of a male romance being the catalyst; and to Call Me by Your Name, which similarly presents male coming-of-age with a new lens… Thanks to these films, I’m getting new opportunities. But I’ve also learnt that, along with the opportunities, I have new responsibilities, and none of this is lost on me.”

I have sympathy for him. Allegations against Allen have been public for years, and it’s not as if established A-listers such as Cate Blanchett or Javier Bardem are quizzed about their decision to work for the director. Chalamet’s feeling, I imagine, is that his salary statement was enough, and such a move has probably helped end Allen’s career anyway. I’d be stunned if anyone sees A Rainy Day in New York, and gobsmacked if a leading actor signs up for his scripts again.

Still, although we can’t talk about Allen, we can discuss Time’s Up. Chalamet is in a business going through a great upheaval. He calls it a “really important moment in Hollywood”, and there’s a sense that, like every new generation, he looks at those above him with suspicion, at times even disdain. “I’m in a new wave of actors that doesn’t stand for stuff like this and is part of that change,” he says proudly. “It’s actually been a lesson for me to learn what the — well, prejudices isn’t the right way to put it — the old-school way of thinking was. How they used to talk about these things.”

Does he expect the change Time’s Up seeks will be organic? “It would be a little passive to say it’s going to be totally organic,” he says bluntly. “But we’ve seen in the last months that there is real momentum.”

I can’t shift from my head some theatre I saw him do online from five years ago. The monologue was from White People by JT Rogers. After a largely satirical diatribe, he ended with a furious — and heartfelt — “What right does any human being have to be hateful?” before storming off stage.

Call Me by Your Name’s fandom is now at such a pitch that it already has its own nerds. They have noticed that the opening line of Love My Way, the track Armie Hammer does an elaborate dance to, is: “There’s an army on the dancefloor.” Cute. “OK, I did not know that,” Chalamet admits. Just that morning, they were discussing a possible film in which “he plays a president and I play a KGB spy”. They are the Brangelina we need right now.

Yet leave any film in the sun for long enough and it will get burnt. First, there has been press and online comment that it’s a story about grooming, which is weird, given that Elio is 17, Oliver is 24 and the age of consent in most American states is 16; in Italy, it’s 14. Still, that criticism persists. As does one about straight actors — which Chalamet and Hammer are — playing gay men. It can’t have been for box office, given that the former was unknown, but critics have questioned why out actors couldn’t be cast instead.

Chalamet pauses, which is rare, and answers carefully, as if they teach actors how to make a statement in the age of the hashtag along with the Stanislavski method.

“Well, first, it’s important for actors of all identifications to be represented, so any propulsion to bring that movement forward is good,” he begins. “But as relates to Call Me by Your Name, this is a story that presents love, sexuality, identification and orientation in a definitionless way. That’s one of the beautiful things about the movie. Ultimately, Luca [Guadagnino] is the best person to talk to, because this is his film and he does what he wants.”

“I don’t know anything about the sexuality of Armie or Timothée,” the director said huffily when I interviewed him last year, before adding that he didn’t think Elio would necessarily be a gay man later in life. Maybe the amount you care about the sexuality of the cast in Call Me by Your Name is directly related to how binary you consider sexuality. The film’s youngest actor, like most of his millennial peers, simply doesn’t care.

What about a sequel? “F***, yeah,” Chalamet says. “It’d be a dream. And the great thing about being an actor is that the storytelling would have nothing to do with me.”

I wish him luck with “those awards” as he leaves for another ceremony. He laughs. I meant the Oscars. “Oh, those awards?” He laughs louder, as if it hasn’t sunk in, and disappears into the lift. Up, up he goes, and, hours later, is named actor of the year by the London Critics’ Circle, beating that Oldman.

#timothee chalamet #call me by your name #lady bird #i hate paywalls #putting under read more so i dont get a dmca for this lol

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Text

"Vietnam as it really was"

Oliver Stone sprang up in bed and found fear staining his sheets. A dream had startled him awake. He was 16 years out of Viet Nam, but in the dream, "they had shipped me back. Somehow they found me at the age of 38 and sent me back. I woke up in a sweat, in total terror." That was two years ago. Now Stone, who earned a Bronze Star and a MASH unit's worth of physical and emotional wounds in the jungles of Viet Nam, has transformed his war experience -- the bad dream he lived through for 15 months in 1967-68 -- into a film called Platoon. With craft, crackle, a little bombast and plenty of residual rage, he has created a time-capsule movie that explodes like a frag bomb in the consciousness of America, showing how it was back then, over there.

Begin with a birth: a baby-faced soldier, Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), is delivered from the womb of a transport plane into the harsh light of Viet Nam. He will find death soon enough: four patrols in the film, four wrenching revelations. On Chris' first night patrol he watches, paralyzed with fear, as the enemy approaches and another new boy dies. On a second patrol the platoon enters a village that might be My Lai; anger goads Chris to spit bullets at the feet of a petrified Vietnamese, and before the day is over the group's leader, Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), has seen to the slaughtering of villagers before the entire place is torched. During a third battle, Barnes tracks down a woods-wise sergeant, Elias (Willem Dafoe), who had interrupted Barnes' massacre, shoots him and leaves him for dead. On the final patrol Chris flips into heroism or psychosis, wipes out a nest of North Vietnamese and confronts the demon he has almost become. End with a murder -- the last of too bloody many.

Welcome to the old nightmare -- the one neither Stone nor the 2.7 million American soldiers who went to Viet Nam can shake. Welcome back to the war that, just 20 years ago, turned America schizophrenic. Suddenly we were a nation split between left and right, black and white, hip and square, mothers and fathers, parents and children. For a nation whose war history had read like a John Wayne war movie -- where good guys finish first by being tough and playing fair -- the polarization was soul-souring. Americans were fighting themselves, and both sides lost.

Platoon pushes the metaphor further, thousands of miles away from the "world," into the combat zones of Nam. Platoon says that American soldiers -- the young men we sent there to do our righteous dirty work -- turned their frustrations toward fratricide. In Viet Nam, Stone suggests, G.I.s re-created the world back home, with its antagonisms of race, region and class. Finding no clear and honorable path to victory in the booby-trapped underbrush, some grunts focused their gunsights on their comrades. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army (NVA) were shadowy figures in this family tragedy; stage center, it was sibling riflery. Stone's achievement is to pound and hack this theme into a ripping yarn about a good man, an evil man and an Everyman -- a young, romanticized Oliver Stone -- suspended between them with his life and ideals in the balance. In vivid imagery and incendiary action, Stone's film asks of our soldiers, "Am I my brother's killer?" The answer is an anguished yes.

And a resounding "you bet" to the question, Can a ferocious movie about an unpopular war, filmed on the cheap with no stars and turned down by every major studio, find success, controversy and the promise of an Oscar statuette at the end of the tunnel? In its early limited opening, Platoon is already a prestige hit, and the film shows signs of becoming a blockbuster as it opens across the country over the next three weeks. It has captivated intellectuals, movie buffs and urban grunts -- astonishing, across-the-board appeal for a hellacious sermon. It has ignited a fire storm of debate, from political swamis and Viet vets, on its merits as art and history. It is the fountainhead for a freshet of Viet Nam exploration: We Can Keep You Forever, a BBC documentary about the mystery surrounding MIAs, will be aired Wednesday in 21 U.S. cities, and this spring will see two new movies set in Viet Nam, The Hanoi Hilton and Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. In a movie season of Trekkies, Dundees and dentist-devouring houseplants, Oliver Stone has proved that a film can still roil the blood of the American body politic. Platoon the picture is now Platoon the phenomenon.

It is a picture first and foremost, a series of pictures that lodge in the mind with other indelible images of war. The prop wash from a landing helicopter blows the tarpaulins off three bodies, their shrouds torn off, their makeshift graves defiled. In the village, after the slaughter, the soldiers carry Vietnamese children on their shoulders -- G.I. Joes, big brothers to the kids whose village they have just destroyed -- and the soldier who bashed a man's head takes a tourist snapshot of the holocaust. More than any other film, Platoon gives the sense -- all five senses -- of fighting in Viet Nam. You can wilt from the claustrophobic heat of this Rousseauvian jungle; feel the sting of the leeches as they snack on Chris' flesh; hear all at once the chorus of insects, an enemy's approaching footsteps on the green carpet and Chris' heartbeat on night patrol. The film does not glamourize or trivialize death with grotesque special effects. But it jolts the viewer alive to the sensuousness of danger, fear and war lust. All senses must be alert when your life is at stake, and Oliver Stone is an artist-showman who can make movies seem a matter of life and death.

Until Dec. 19, though, when Platoon opened, Hollywood had thought the picture a matter of indifference. It had taken Stone ten hungry years to get the project going. "For two years in the late '70s," says Producer Martin Bregman, "I banged on every door in California to get it done, but at that time Viet Nam was still a no-no." Tom Berenger, the film's showcase psychopath, imagines that "it must have made Stone feel like an old man, carrying the project around for so long. He said it broke his heart." Then something interesting happened: people went for Platoon. Most critics were impressed, many were impassioned, and even those who trashed the picture helped make it the season's top conversation piece. Soon long lines were forming outside the movie's Times Square flagship -- at lunchtime, on weekdays, in the hawk bite of a January wind -- and after midnight in early- to-bed Hollywood. In 74 theaters on the Jan. 9-11 weekend, Platoon averaged more than $22,000, the highest per-screen take of any new film.

In the industry, Stone's old colleagues and fellow directors have laid on their benedictions. Woody Allen calls it a "fine movie, an excellent movie." Says Steven Spielberg: "It is more than a movie; it's like being in Viet Nam. Platoon makes you feel you've been there and never want to go back." James Woods, who starred in Stone's previous film, Salvador, calls him an "artist whose vision transcends politics. Everyone from the ex-hippie to the ex-grunt can be moved by Platoon. And his passion isn't bogus -- he doesn't play Imagine at the end of the film to break people's hearts." Brian De Palma, who filmed Scarface from a Stone script, sees him achieving a volcanic maturity in Platoon: "He has now channeled his feeling and energy into a cohesive dramatic work. He's an auteur making a movie about what he experienced and understands. Seeing Platoon get through the system makes the soul feel good."

With its critical, popular and insider acclaim swelling, Platoon began to shoulder its way toward the front rank of Oscar favorites. By now it would have to be counted as the front runner, and Hollywood is furrowing its back with self-congratulatory pats for making this big bold message movie. To Stone, Hollywood's claim of paternity for Platoon must seem a rich joke. He and Hollywood both know that Platoon -- like The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, The Boys in Company C, The Killing Fields and nearly all the serious movies about the war in Southeast Asia -- secured its major financing from foreign producers. "It was a picture we wanted to support," says John Daly, chairman of Britain's Hemdale Pictures, which also produced Salvador. "We respect Oliver's passions. Besides, he spent only $6 million on Platoon" -- about half the budget of a typical Hollywood film.

The typical film, though, does not provoke a political free-for-all. Many conservatives have taken up arms against Platoon. In the far-right Washington Times' Insight magazine, John Podhoretz castigates it as "one of the most repellent movies ever made in this country." The film, he says, "blackens the name and belittles the sacrifice of every man and woman who served the United States in the Viet Nam War (including Stone)." Politicians are eager to return the salvos. Former Senator Gary Hart, aware of the electorate's fondness for presidential candidates with movie credentials, campaigns for the film by urging that "every teenager in America should see Platoon."

Now ask a man who's been there: David Halberstam, who covered the war for the New York Times and, in The Best and the Brightest, documented two Administrations' slides into the Big Muddy. "Platoon is the first real Viet Nam film," Halberstam proclaims, "and one of the great war movies of all time. The other Hollywood Viet Nam films have been a rape of history. But Platoon is historically and politically accurate. It understands something that the architects of the war never did: how the foliage, the thickness of the jungle, negated U.S. technological superiority. You can see how the forest sucks in American soldiers; they just disappear. I think the film will become an American classic. Thirty years from now, people will think of the Viet Nam War as Platoon."

Neither Sly Stallone nor Oliver Stone can put the whole picture of Viet Nam on a movie screen. There were 2.7 million stories in the naked jungle. Each veteran has his own view of the war, and each will have his own vision of Platoon. More than a few are disturbed by its presentation of a military unit at war with itself. Says Bob Duncan, 39, who served in the 1st Infantry at the same time Stone was in the 25th: "He managed to take every cliche -- the 'baby killer' and 'dope addict' -- that we've lived with for the past 20 years and stick them in the movie about Viet Nam." Says another veteran, Nick Nickelson, 43: "I hope this doesn't bring back those old depictions. God help us, I don't want to go back into a closet again."

Other vets deny the prevalence of dope smoking and the depiction of military officers as either psychos or cowards. But John Wheeler, 42, a veteran who is president of the Center for the Study of the Viet Nam Generation in Washington and chairman of the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial Fund, argues that "there were drug cultures; there were green lieutenants. Stone wanted to clean out the festering part of the wound. The next Viet Nam movie may be the one that tells the whole truth: that we were the best-equipped, best-trained army ever fielded, but against a dedicated foe in an impossible terrain. It was a state-of-the-art war on both sides. But Platoon is a new statement about Viet Nam veterans. Before, we were either objects of pity or objects that had to be defused to keep us at a distance. Platoon makes us real. The Viet Nam Memorial was one gate our country had to pass through; Platoon is another. It is part of the healing process. It speaks to our generation. Those guys are us."

Listen to these guys, and you may suspect that Platoon is not so much a movie as a Rorschach blot. But that is part of the caginess of Stone's approach. The French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once wrote that when a good film is also a popular film, it is because of a misunderstanding. Platoon could very well be misunderstood into superhit status. The army of Rambomaniacs will love the picture because it delivers more bang for the buck; all those yellow folks blow up real good. Aging lefties can see the film as a demonstration of war's inhuman futility. Graybeards on the right may call it a tribute to our fighting men, in whatever foreign adventure. The intelligentsia can credit Platoon with expressing, in bold cinematic strokes, Stone's grand themes of comradeship and betrayal. And the average youthful moviegoer -- too young to remember Viet Nam even as the living-room war -- may discover where Dad went in the 1960s and why he came home changed or came home in a body bag.

"In any other war, they would have made movies about us too. Dateline: Hell!, Dispatch from Dong Ha, maybe even A Scrambler to the Front . . . But Viet Nam is awkward, everybody knows how awkward, and if people don't even want to hear about it, you know they're not going to pay money to sit there in the dark and have it brought up." So wrote Michael Herr in Dispatches, published in 1977, a year before the first spate of Viet Nam dramas. (The mid-'60s had offered a couple of World War II wheezes disguised as topical films: A Yank in Viet-Nam, so poorly received that it changed its name to Year of the Tiger, and John Wayne's hilariously wrongheaded The Green Berets, with its famous climax of the sun setting in the east.) 1978 brought three pictures -- Coming Home, The Boys in Company C and The Deer Hunter -- that touched on Viet Nam, and the following year Francis Coppola released Apocalypse Now.

Trouble was, most of these films were not about Viet Nam. Coming Home was a disabled-vet love story -- The Best Years of Our Lives with Jon Voight in the Harold Russell role. The Deer Hunter was . . . well, what was it? An incoherent parable about male bonding through Russian roulette. Bats and beautiful, it stood like Ishmael on the prow of its pretensions and declared, "Call me masterpiece." Apocalypse Now was fine as long as it accompanied its doomed, questing hero (played by Martin Sheen, Charlie's father) upstream on the River Styx; then it fogged off into fantasyland with Marlon Buddha. Only Company C, a standard-issue war film about recruits betrayed by their incompetent officers, spent much time in a Nam combat zone. But it really resided, with The Green Berets, in the twilight zone of World War II gestures and bromides.

Hollywood (and not just Hollywood) refused to see that Viet Nam was different. All the old givens -- beau geste, military master plans, unswerving belief in the officer class -- were fatally irrelevant to a guerrilla war. Forget the World War II narrative line of tanks and tactics, which moved with the ponderous sweep of a Golden Age Hollywood plot. Viet Nam, set in jungles without beginning or end, was a flash of episodic, aleatory explosions; it was modernism brought to war. And a new kind of war demanded a new look at the war-movie genre. Platoon fills the bill. It is a huge black slab of remembrance, chiseled in sorrow and anger -- the first Viet Nam Memorial movie.

Though Platoon is a breakthrough, it is not a breakaway. The film is traditional enough to connect with a mass audience. In its story line it holds echoes of Attack!, Robert Aldrich's 1956 psychodrama, in which a World War II infantry company is torn by a mortal struggle between two officers -- one messianic, the other deranged -- while a young man's loyalty hangs in the balance. Platoon's narration, in the form of Chris' letters to his grandmother, is often as stilted and redundant as silent-movie title cards. When a naive new boy shows Chris a photo of his sweetheart, you just know that, in the best '40s-movie fashion, the guy's a goner.

There are darker currents, too, of a passive racism. The black soldiers are occasionally patronized and sentimentalized; they stand to the side while the white soldiers grab all the big emotions. And the Vietnamese are either pathetic victims or the invisible, inhuman enemy. In the scheme of Platoon (and not just Platoon) they do not matter. The nearly 1 million Vietnamese casualties are deemed trivial compared with America's loss of innocence, of allies, of geopolitical face. And the tragedy of Viet Nam is seen as this: not that they died, but that we debased ourselves by killing them.

Of course, Platoon need not be every possible Viet Nam film to be the best one so far. It is enough that Stone has devised a drama of palpable realism that is also a metaphor for the uncivil war that raged in the U.S. and can flare up anytime in any family. Indeed, at the film's molten core is the tug of wills between two strong men, outsize figures of shameless strutting charisma, for parentage of their platoon and for their new recruit, Chris. Barnes, the staff sergeant, could be Chris' legal father; Elias, the romantic renegade, could be a spiritual father, even after his death. They are like Claudius and the Ghost wrestling for Hamlet's allegiance.

Both men are legendary soldiers who have survived long years in Viet Nam -- Elias by a kind of supernal sylvan grace, Barnes by simply refusing to die. Elias is Jesus crossed with Jim Morrison. He will literally take a load off Chris' shoulders, or share a fraternal toke with Chris through the barrel of a rifle, or moon over the night stars, or smile ingenuously at his killer. He is hard to know and harder to destroy, a creature of Stone's wild literary sentiment. Barnes, who says of some fresh corpses, "Tag 'em and bag 'em," has no sentiment at all. When he pulls a steaming metal shard out of a wounded G.I.'s side, it seems as much to display his expertise as to relieve the man's pain. He will do anything to achieve his objective: lead a suicide mission or send his rival on one; murder a village woman in cold blood or taunt his men toward murdering him. Chris, who feels an irresistible kinship to both men, says they were "fighting for possession of my soul." The film's most controversial question is, Who won?

At this point, readers who have not seen Platoon are excused for the next two paragraphs. The others, the grizzled vets, can ponder Chris' motives and actions at the film's climax. He believes (and we know) that Barnes has killed Elias in the jungle. He has already considered taking murderous revenge and been told, "The only thing that can kill Barnes is Barnes." On his last patrol, Chris' suicidal resolve turns him into a mean, obscene fighting machine -- a rifle with a body attached, as reckless as Barnes, as resourceful as Elias -- and he leaves half a dozen NVA in his wake. Now Barnes finds Chris and is ready to kill him when a blast knocks them unconscious. Later Chris revives and finds the injured Barnes ordering him to get a medic. The young man lifts his weapon and, when Barnes says, "Do it," does the bastard in.

In the movie theaters, this illegal shooting usually gets a big hand. Righteous vengeance. Good guy kills bad guy. It is the kind of movie catharsis that may make Platoon a megahit. But can Chris or the audience take moral satisfaction in this deed? Which "father" has he followed? Has Chris become like Elias, back from the grave to avenge his own murder? "You have to fight evil if you are going to be a good man," Stone says. "That's why Chris killed Barnes. Because Barnes deserved killing." Or has he emulated his enemy? Has he become Barnes in order to kill him? Stone has another answer: "I also wanted to show that Chris came out of the war stained and soiled -- all of us, every vet. I want vets to face up to it and be proud they came back. So what if there was some bad in us? That's the price you pay. Chris pays a big price. He becomes a murderer." A good man, and a murderer? It is a tribute to Platoon's cunning that it can sell this dilemma both ways, and a mark of Stone's complexity that he can argue either side and believe both.

The dichotomy was bred in him. Stone was born in 1946, the only child of a Jewish stockbroker and the French Catholic girl he met just after V-E day while serving as a colonel on Eisenhower's staff. Lou Stone wrote a monthly newsletter about economics and politics; his son describes the style as "right-wing Walter Lippmann, a view of the world every month. My father believed that life was hard. The important thing was to make a living." Jacqueline Stone was just the opposite: inexhaustibly sociable, the original bete de fete. "My mother loved movies," Stone says, "and every Monday I'd play hooky, and we'd go see two or three movies. From the start, I had the contradiction in me: my mother's outgoing, optimistic, French side and the dark, pessimistic, Jewish side of my father."

The Stones lived in Manhattan town houses and Stamford, Conn., homes; Oliver went to Manhattan's tony Trinity School and the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa.; he summered with his maternal grandparents and spoke French before he learned English. (From Viet Nam, Oliver would write his grandmother versions of the letters that Chris reads in Platoon.) At five he composed skits for a marionette show, casting his French cousins in the parts. At seven he wrote stories. To earn a quarter for a Classic comic book, he would write a theme each week for his father. And at nine he started work on a book, 900 pages about his family and his life.

Oliver stopped writing the book when he was twelve; the family stopped when Oliver was 16. "The news of their divorce came as a total shock," Stone recalls. "The Hill School headmaster was the one who told me. And when they were divorced, my father gave me the facts of life. He told me that he was heavily in debt. He said, 'I'll give you a college education, and then you're on your own. There's literally no money.' "

Lou Stone never recovered financially. "And yet," his son says, "I think his reversal helped push me to leave my privileged childhood behind. I finished Hill and spent a year at Yale, but I saw myself as a product -- an East Coast socioeconomic product -- and I wanted to break out of the mold. Then I read Lord Jim. Conrad's world was exotic and lush; it exercised a tremendous allure for me." It also propelled Oliver into a teaching job at a Chinese Catholic school in a Saigon suburb. It was 1965, the year a half million Yank soldiers landed in Viet Nam, and Stone was 18 years old. "I woke up in Asia," he says, "and it became an orphan home for me. It was everything I thought it would be: the heat, the green seas, the bloodred sunsets. In Saigon, the G.I.s from the 1st Infantry Division were just arriving. There were guys walking around with pistols, no curfews, shoot-outs in the streets. The place was like Dodge City."

Itinerary for a young wanderluster: on a merchant marine ship from Saigon to Oregon; in Guadalajara, Mexico, writing 400 pages of a novel; back to Yale, then dropping out a second and last time to concentrate on his writing. The book was now 1,400 pages. "It started out as a boy's suicide note -- not that I was going to commit suicide, but I was very depressed. It was Jack London- type experiences in a Joycean style. Totally insane, with great passages of lyricism here and there. I thought it was the best thing since Rimbaud. And when Simon & Schuster rejected it, I gave up. I threw half the manuscript in the East River and said, 'My father is right. I'm a bum.' I felt the solution was total anonymity. I had to atone. So I joined the Army. They'd cut my hair, and I'd be a number. To me the American involvement was correct. My dad was a cold warrior, and I was a cold-war baby. I knew that Viet Nam was going to be the war of my generation, and I didn't want to miss it. I must say, my timing was impeccable." If the young man had failed as Rimbaud, he might make it as Rambo.

Nope. "My first day in Viet Nam," Stone says, "I realized, like Chris in Platoon, that I'd made a terrible mistake. It was on-the-job training: Here's your machete, kid; you cut point. You learn if you can, and if not you're dead. Nobody was motivated, except to get out. Survival was the key. It wasn't very romantic." Each of the three combat units he served in was divided into antagonistic groups, as in the film: "On one side were the lifers, the juicers ((heavy drinkers)) and the moron white element. Guys like Sergeant Barnes -- and there really was a sergeant as scarred and obsessed as Barnes -- were in this group. On the other side was a progressive, hippie, dope- smoking group: some blacks, some urban whites, Indians, random characters from odd places. Guys like Elias -- and there really was an Elias, handsome, electric, the Cary Grant of the trenches. They were out to survive this bummer with some integrity and a sense of humor. I fell in with the progressives -- a Yale boy who heard soul music and smoked dope for the first time in his life."

Most of Platoon's starkest events come from Stone's backpack of Viet Nam memories. "I saw the enemy for the first time on my first night ambush," he recalls, "and I froze completely. Thank God the guy in the next position saw them and opened up. The ensuing fire fight was very messy. I was wounded in the back of the neck -- an inch to the right and I'd have been dead -- and the guy next to me had his arm blown off." He emptied his rifle clip at a man's feet, as Charlie does in the movie. "He wouldn't stop smiling," says Stone, "and I just got pissed off and lost it. But I did save a girl who was being raped by two of the guys; I think they would've killed her. I went over and broke it up. Another kid -- he's like Bunny ((Kevin Dillon)) in the movie -- clubbed this old lady to death and then kind of boasted about it. We killed a lot of innocents."

The battle at the end of the film was based on a New Year's Day skirmish less than a mile from the Cambodian border. "They hit us with about 5,000 troops that night. They laid bombs right on top of us; we dropped bombs right on them. It's possible that our high command was using us as bait to draw the Viet Cong out so we could inflict heavy casualties. We lost about 25 dead and 175 wounded; we killed about 500 of them. Their bodies were scraped up by bulldozers, just like in the movie. For that battle our platoon was on the inner perimeter, but two weeks later we went back into the same area and got hit by an ambush, like the one that gets Elias. We took about 30 casualties, and I don't think we got one of them."

For all the horrors of his season in hell, Stone admits he got what he went for, as a budding artist ravenous for material in the raw: "I saw combat at the ground level. I saw people die. I killed. I almost was killed. Almost immediately I realized that combat is totally random. It has nothing to do with heroism. Cowardice and heroism are the same emotion -- fear -- expressed differently. And life is a matter of luck. Two soldiers are standing two feet apart. One gets killed, the other lives. I was never a religious person -- I was raised Protestant, the great compromise -- but I became religious in Viet Nam. Possibly I was saved for a reason. To do some work. Write about it. Make a movie about it."

It would take Stone almost a decade, until 1976, before he could write the script of Platoon, and another decade to put it on the screen. But first he had to take his high, wired act on the road. The same month he arrived back from Viet Nam, he was busted for carrying an ounce of marijuana across the Mexico-U.S. border, and called his father, saying, "The good news is that I'm out of Viet Nam. The bad news is that I'm in a California jail, facing five to 20." Stone says his father helped get the charges dropped. "That was my homecoming," he says. "I got a true picture of the States. I hated America. I would have joined the Black Panthers if they'd asked me. I was a radical, ready to kill." Back home his mother noticed the change: "As a little boy he was impeccable. He had his valet; his closet was immaculate. But when he returned he was a mess, always leaving things on the floor. He was a different boy."

And now an unsolicited testimonial: "I know it sounds corny, but I was saved by film school." He enrolled at New York University on the G.I. Bill. "To be able to study movies in college, it was any movie buff's dream. It was cool too, like studying to be an astronaut. Martin Scorsese was my first teacher. He was like a mad scientist, with hair down to here. He was someone on an equal wave of nuttiness. And he helped channel the rage in me." Stone made a short film for Scorsese's class called Last Year in Viet Nam, about a vet wandering the New York streets; in another, Michael and Marie, Oliver's father played the victim. "Oliver was alienated, sarcastic and brooding," says his film-school friend Stanley Weiser, who is collaborating with Stone on a script about Wall Street crime. "A real macho man who carried the torture of Viet Nam with him but never talked about it."

In 1971 Stone graduated and married a Lebanese woman working at the Moroccan delegation to the United Nations; they divorced five years later. He wrote eleven scripts in his spare time, directed a low-budget Canadian thriller called Seizure, and in 1975 got an agent through the graces of Screenwriter Robert Bolt. A year later, as the tall ships clogged New York harbor, Stone sat down and wrote Platoon. "Essentially what I wanted to say was, Remember. Just remember what that war was. Remember what war is. This is it. I wanted to make a document of this forgotten pocket of time. I felt Viet Nam was omitted from history books. Like a battle I fought in during the war: a lot of people got hurt that day, and it wasn't even listed as a battle by the Army, as if they didn't want to admit the casualties we suffered. The script I wrote is pretty much the one I shot ten years later. But no studio wanted to make it; it was too 'depressing' and 'grim.' So I buried it again, figuring that the truth of that war would never come out because America was blind, a trasher of history."

A wild man who becomes a witness: that was Oliver Stone reborn. As he scythed his way through the Hollywood jungle, Stone earned the rep of a specialist with a social agenda. Four of the scripts that bear his name -- Midnight Express, Scarface, Year of the Dragon and 8 Million Ways to Die -- cataloged the seductive evils of the drug trade. Stone's third feature as writer-director (after Seizure and, in 1981, The Hand) laced his usual hip rants on pharmacology with a smart, anguished newsphoto montage of one more Third World nation torn by civil war and shadowed by the looming hulk of American weaponry. This was the gallivanting political melodrama Salvador. Stone dedicated the film to his recently deceased father. "I remember one conversation we had right before he died. He said, 'You'll do all right. There'll always be a demand for great stories and great storytellers.' So finally he forgave me for going into the film business."

In Salvador, Stone was learning to wind the cinematic mechanism until it coiled with productive tension, both on the screen and on the set. "Working with Stone was like being caught in a Cuisinart with a madman," James Woods opines. "And he felt the same about me. It was two Tasmanian devils wrestling under a blanket. But he's a sharp director. He starts with a great idea, delegates authority well, scraps like a street fighter, then takes the best of what comes out of the fracas." Says Dale Dye, the Marine captain who hazed Platoon's actors to firm them up for filming: "Oliver thrives on chaos, throwing together a crew of such diverse backgrounds and ideologies that there's constant friction. It's the kind of energy he thrives on." Platoon's star, Charlie Sheen, 21, found the director "brutally honest. Which is why we clicked. After a scene he'd say, 'You sucked' or 'You nailed it.' That's just my style."

Right now Stone is Hollywood's hot new guy. He is even entertaining the improbable idea of a Platoon TV series. But don't expect Stone to direct Indiana Jones III. Says Stanley Weiser: "Oliver's been around the block ten times and won't be seduced by money. He's not an easy lay." Stone and his second wife, Elizabeth, 37, look the family-album picture of swank domesticity in their Santa Monica home. They swore off drugs a few years ago, and now seem addicted only to each other and their little son Sean. "Success and Sean have made Oliver much mellower," Elizabeth notes. "But he's still a compulsive worker. Always reading or writing, he simply loves ideas. He's filled with them, and he's thrilled with them."

One suspects that the old troublemaker will find new trouble spots in the political landscape; the soapbox spieler will continue his spellbinding harangues. His mind and moral sense are too restless to relax in the glow of celebrity and the promise of statuettes. But for the moment, Oliver Stone has found for himself the one plot twist he would never have put in Platoon: a happy ending to his Viet Nam nightmare.

-Richard Corliss, Time magazine cover story, Jan 26 1987 [x]

#oliver stone #platoon #the vietnam war #time magazine #cover story #ptsd #richard corliss

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themanicgalaxy · 3 years

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SPN 1X17 Hell House

one episode this time around let’s see where this goes

so many of these start with people going where they aRE NOT ALLOWED

WHY

GUYS AT LEAST DO IT IN THE MORNING OR SOMETHING WHY GO AT NIGHT

yes go be macho there’s nothing that can go wrong here

also i meant to say this last episode but Dean’s machismo+self-sacrifice for his dad someone please give him a hug p le a s e

at least they don’t die

Sam being passed out completely backwards bahahahaha

Dean takes picture because yes, sibling prerogative

Damn and Dean’s having his fun with the music and the pranks

NAIR IN THE SHAMPOO DEAN WHAT THE FUCK

Sam using the word “misogynistic” in like 2005 threw me, damn this kid rly did go to a College didn’t he

this little montage of everyone having a different story? good perfect shit, good vibes

“hot...in a dead sort of way” “hoh..k” pfft

Lmfao and his name is Craig

DEAN IS HOLDING A KANSAS VINYL HES HOLDING THE VINYL

“only kills women” well good thing they’re both MEN absolutely NO conflict here

god I wish this show had a woman goddamn

leftover note: god i wish some of the actually cool female characters showed up again and not like...just the demon

the ghost hunterssssss

lmao Dean’s disgust at the business card

AMATEURS AHAHAHAHAHAHA

“emf?” Sam buddy oh my god

This is like that one scene in criminal minds where the girls pretend they don’t work at the fbi

does...does it erase people? whatever the monster is

PFFT PRANK WAR

I’m sure this won’t come back to bit them no sir

Jill going for the ghost instead of the pasty-ass gross motherfucker fine ok at least you have some sense

Not a lot because ur gonna get fucking murdered, ur not white or a male, sorry them’s the rules

this show....like i expected this but

I feel like the non-plot episodes are more pure Vibe, and the plot episodes aren’t as fun, but they have examination i guess?

AND SHE HAD A FULL RIDE TO UT AND A STRAIGHT A STUDENT COME ON

“Who you gonna call” ha

Sam’s fucking face when they get the ghost hunters, Sam cmon you like this at least a little bit

AT LEAST ADMIT YOU LOVE YOUR BROTHER A LITTLE BIT

WHEN IT SLOWLY CREPT UP BEHIND THEM FUCK

THAT WASN’T EVEN A JUMP SCARE THAT WAS REAL SUSPENSE

the smug face Dean pulled? good, good, liked that

BLUE OYESTER CULT LOGO OF FUCKING COURSE DEAN RECOGNIZED IT

Smug Dean is very funny, good content

...ok yeah I’m starting to see where at least some people started with the wincest thing, however it’s CLEARLY BECAUSE OF THE PRANK I HATE THIS

LMFAO THEY JUST SAID “Here you go Jensen” HAAH

the belief turns into something real oooo

THEOLOGY TEXTBOOK TURNS INTO CONCENTRATED THOUGHT TURNS INTO THE MORDECHAI MYTH THAT KEEPS GETTING SHIFTED THAT IS S O COOL

“how are we supposed to kill an idea” oooo sounds vaguely philosophy like

WHAT WOULD BUFFY DO BAHAHAHA

HEY LOOK A MONSTER HUNTING FEMALE PROTAGONIST WHY DON’T WE HAVE SOME OF THOSE

THEY’RE SO SHORT COMPARED TO THE LITERALLY 6 FOOT TALL MAIN CHARACTERS AHAHAHAHA

MAIN CHARACTERS GET 6 FEET HEIGHT

these fuckers really do put on a double act throughout the midwest

THE VERY SPECIFIC PISTOL FEAR TO HELP THEM KILL IT BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Is...Is dean trying to get Sam to relax and be like...kinda normal? Is that the reason behind the prank war????

ONE NORMAL WAY OF EMOTING IM B E G G IN G YOU

Fuckign glues his hand to his beer ha ha Sam

Did these fuckers just steal the laughing animatronic to lure the cops?? really??

and they nearly fucking shoot the ghost boys hahahahaha

*so anyway I started blasting WITH BOTH FUCKING PISTOLS*

Goes for the Camera

Do the guys?? know what’s up??

the micro expressions in the “great” (smile to quiver to serious mode)? holy hell

Sam you self sacrificial bastard

Dean workshops a fucking flamethrower

ayy he did the axe/baseball swing thing i love that

solution: set house on fire

Excellent, nice job Dean

I mean it works

“how many things survived cuz people believed in them” with the fire house? nice line, I like that line

Sam: calls them and tells them he’s a producer

Dean: puts a dead fish in their backseat

and they both laugh and call truce that makes me happy

hey the prank war thing was just...a prank war. no foreshadowing, just character relationships? that’s new

yippie kayak it’s wrap-up time:

1. Ok, the style and vibe of this episode? so good, so fun, so interesting. Lore is really cool, they leave it open-ended, all good. Like the sheer power of myth and people’s belief? ooo good shit

I have just realized that sounds like vague foreshadowing for the ~future~

however, I think this is built kinda like avatar where you build the characters in terms of a large goal, and tbh, I really like how it’s being done

2. actually speaking of: non-plot episodes, where both get a chance to shine, are fun, interesting, and honestly quite cool, while plot episodes are a bit more heavy, loaded and exposition-y. I hope that changes in the future tbh. The bible river dale energy is quite possibly the thing I’m not as hyped about, although that might be because I thankfully don’t have any religious trauma

the church scares me

3. Sam and Dean? good great, excellent bonding time. You have to wonder if the prank war was just Dean’s way of trying to reach out to his little brother, and tbh, it did kinda work. Anyway, they were both really fun this episode, both got good moments, 10/10 love these characters

4. The fact that they slipped and called Dean jensen makes me wonder how much the budget actually was. Like I saw on pinterest it was 20,000 entirely(which isn’t even minimum wage) and I could not find any kind of sources, so I’m inclined to believe that was very very fake. However, it’s definitely low budget(wikipedia says that no one wanted to take kripke up on this) and the fact that they managed to make something this good is a testament to the skill of the entire team working on this season. I cannot speak for the later seasons tho, as I have obviously not seen them.

5. Please. A girl character. Something. I’m begging you.

I know damn well it doesn’t happen and that makes me sad

Damn I had some thoughts this time around, that’s pretty fun. till next time~ i guess. Time to go put mom’s bday cake back into the fridge and sleep.

#pawswatchesspn #1x17 Hell House #ok see this was non plot and just everything i like #good good fun shit

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emmegoeswriting · 7 years

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Danielle Jackobson

Their phone:

★ what kind of phone do they have? Danielle mainly uses an iPhone -- and has gravitated almost completely away from using a land line except for when she's at work.

☆ what is their phone’s background? She just has a background from one of her trips overseas when she'd wandered around Scotland right after college.

✪ their standard ringtone? Standard telephone ring -- she takes too many work calls on her phone for it to be anything else.

❉ do they have any pictures on their phone? All different kinds and lots -- many from different outings with friends and different events that she's gone to.

✯ what do their texts look like? do they use emojis often? what kind? she's a stickler for using proper grammar -- until she's drunk and uses emojis sparingly, though she does enjoy sending kisses over text on a regular basis.

✦ the first five names on their contacts list? Andrew Wells Andrea James Becca Jackobson Cole Voss DO NOT ANSWER (Hunter Davids)

⍟ any games on their phone? what kind? how often do they play? She has solitare and Mario on her phone -- she's very sporadic in playing them though, tends to only play them when she's stuck in an airport or it's just a very slow day at work.

✹ five - ten songs on their iPod/phone? Starving (feat. Zedd) by Hailee Steinfield & Grey Believer by Imagine Dragons Good Die Young by Molly Kate Kestner One More Night by Maroon 5 Crave by Tove Lo Light up the Dark by Gabrielle Aplin

Their home:

♈ a description of their home - apartment building or detached house? how many rooms are there? colours of their walls? any decorations? Currently living in a two bedroom apartment -- walls are white, but she's done a fair job of covering with either pictures, paintings or the occasional fabric. She likes candles and keeps them regularly lit -- at least when it isn't a sweltering summer.

♉ what are their neighbours like? their relationship to them? Her neighbors get frustrated with her, given that she seems to come and go at all nights since she's been going to more and more events the more she's making a name for herself with the press. However, she has a decent relationship with them and tries to stay as quiet as she can when she's getting in late.

♊ what kind of mail do they get (except for bills)? have they subscribed to any magazines/newspapers? She's subscribed to the New Yorker since college and has a couple newspapers (most prominently the LA Times). As for other mail, it isn't much besides her bills which she's tried to get as paperless as she can with her busy schedule.

♋ do they read any newspapers/magazines? what kind? what topics are they interested in? do they flip forward to the cartoon page first? She doesn't read the cartoons except on bad days, but she still gets this thrill when she reads about foreign affairs, though she knows that realistically she may never break into that particular market in journalism. Right now, she'd be more content if she was doing in depth articles on people rather than drudging up gossip and half-truths.

♌ how do they drink their coffee/tea? Coffee. And she's insulted if anyone assumes that she would drink something different too (with the occasional hot chocolate thrown in). She prefers mochas though.

♍ any pictures on their walls? what kind/of who? Mostly family with a large amount through college though as well -- varying sizes but she's been gravitating more towards paintings the past year or two and is slowly moving the pictures into the spare room that works as her office currently.

♎ is their closet tidy or are the clothes just being thrown inside or lying on the floor? Her closet is tidy, though her shoes are in disorder almost constantly.

♒ their cleaning routine - laundry/dishes/cleaning the rooms She does laundry every Sunday morning and cleans the bathroom every Tuesday night -- the dishes get done as their needed, luckily she has a dishwasher that helps with that.

Digging deeper:

🌷 what do they have in their wallet? Her life? Just kidding -- sort of. She keeps business cards, debit cards and her credit cards, along with the few store membership cards that she has and uses regularly. She'll keep business cards of important contacts in her wallet as well. And her ever important press pass.

ꕥ what’s usually in their trouser/jacket pockets or purse? She keeps a notebook and pen in her bag at all times, period -- no exception. Extra toothbrush and a spare lipstick as well.

☘ how many keys do they have? for what? do they have any key pendants? Four keys: office building, vehicle, apartment building and her apartment door.

🍀 what kind of jewellery are they wearing? what’s their favourite peace? Occasionally will wear earrings, but she is always wearing her grandmother's wedding ring around her neck.

🌻 what do their bedsheets look like? colour? patterns? She prefers understated, a soft blue that feels incredibly soft every time that she crawls underneath the sheets.

🌹 what’s the colour of your muse’s underwear right now? black, to match her bra.

Getting closer:

× what does your muse smell like? what perfume/cologne are they using? Philosophy's Falling in Love -- vanilla, jasmine, lily of the Valley, musk and blueberry

� do they shower often? every day or just every couple of days? Danielle is a creature of habit -- she showers daily, always in the morning to wake herself up.

♻ how about brushing teeth? three times a day, or just in the morning? And brushes her teeth each morning and normally in the evening (except when she gets distracted).

⌘ do they rather shower or take a bath? Showers, hands down -- no questions asked about something like that. She'll take baths after a particularly stressful day though or when she's just feeling down.

♀ how long does your muse usually need for a shower/bath? She's all about streamlining things -- 15 minutes, maximum for a shower. Her baths are always long because she's trying to distress though.

⚣ how long does your muse need to shave? (this is also for the ladies!) My little creature of habit -- Danielle shaves twice a week because she wears dresses and skirts so often. Sometimes three times when she has an event to go to in he evening.

♂ does your muse put on make-up? how long do they need for it every day? She uses minimal make up -- foundation, eye liner, and mascara and a great lip color. Something easy to manage when she's not in her house. It ranges it day from 9 hours to 15 hours though.

⚢ what kind of make-up does your muse use? favourite colours? how much do they use? Mostly Urban Decay, though she also uses Bare Minerals.

Exploring their body:

♤ does your muse have any scars? where? what do they look like? how did they get them? She has a small scar on her shoulder from when she broke her collarbone and ended up with the bone breaking the skin slightly during her junior year of high school.

♧ any freckles/moles/birth marks? where? She has some freckles across the back of her shoulder (left side).

♡ are their fingernails dirty or clean? cut/long? She keeps her nails clean, a little bit longer but regularly painted.

♢ how much do they weigh? You never ask a lady how much they weigh! She hoovers around 140.

♠ any ‘weird’ characteristics on their body? one leg/arm longer than the other? Not necessarily.

♣ are their veins particularly visible when they’re angry/upset/sad? no.

♥ do they have more muscles or more fat on their body? She's more lean muscle -- regularly goes on jobs and keeps a fairly healthy diet.

♦ any tattoos? where? what’s the story behind them? As of currently, Danielle does not have any tattoos on herself.

Open your closet:

⦂ what clothes do they sleep in? She has a pair of shorts and a tank top that she always sleeps in.

♚ do they have a favourite piece of clothing? There's this little black dress that she keeps for special occasions or weddings that she fell in love with a year previously. Otherwise her favorite piece of jewelry is always going to be her grandmother's wedding ring. She wears it on a necklace around her neck.

❅ what do they usually wear when they’re not working? She prefers light dresses over staying formal. If she's not wearing one of those then she's wearing jeans and a button down shirt.

☏ what do they wear when they’re at work? Always dressed professionally, blouses and pencil skirts and high heels. Occasionally she'll throw in flats if she knows that she is going to have to walk around the city that day.

₤ how many shoes do they have? what kind? Shoes? Well, Danielle has a bit of a guilty pleasure when it comes to shoes -- all different types and general ones with heels to give her a little bit more of a height bump. That, and she likes how her butt looks in them.

Σ how many purses do they have? She only has a couple -- just one for each occasion. She prefers to carry a larger one though that she bought a few years ago.

⌚ how long do they need to decide what to wear in the morning? No time -- she picks out her outfits the night before so she can catch a little extra sleep.

⌛ do they go shopping for clothes often? how long do they usually need? More often than not, Danielle buys her clothes online these days, though when the bug strikes her, she'll take an hour two to browse.

$ how much money do they spend on clothes every month? She doesn't normally do a monthly budget on clothing -- simply because she doesn't shop every month. She'll snag things as they wear out now days as she has a decent wardrobe stocked up now.

@graceof1x1

#c: danielle jackobson #mycharacters

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dipulb3 · 4 years

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Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus review: Key extras give it an edge over other cheap tablets

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/amazon-fire-hd-8-plus-review-key-extras-give-it-an-edge-over-other-cheap-tablets-2/

Amazon Fire HD 8 Plus review: Key extras give it an edge over other cheap tablets

With models available in 7-, 8- and 10-inch screen sizes and priced as low as $50 before Prime Day discounts, Amazon’s line of Fire tablets have long been the go-to option for bargain gadget hunters. But with its 2020 refresh of the 8-inch Fire HD 8 tablet, long the Goldilocks of its line, Amazon is adding a twist that may leave you wondering which one to buy. There are now two 8-inch models to choose from: a baseline Fire HD 8 starting at $90 (£90), and the $110 (£110) Fire HD Plus, which adds wireless charging and slightly better performance. The tablet isn’t available in Australia but the starting price converts to about AU$160.

Faster processor

Wireless charging

Fast USB-C charging

Better front camera placement

3GB of RAM (up from 1.5 GB)

Optional wireless charging dock turns the HD 8 Plus into an Echo Show

Hands-free Alexa voice-assistant

Improved battery life

Don’t Like

Display is HD but not 1080p (could be sharper)

Amazon app store is limited compared to Google Play and Apple app store

Amazon Prime membership is a must

The two models look identical on the outside. The HD 8 Plus is only available in a slate color while the standard HD 8 is available in black, white, plum, twilight blue and slate. But apart from the white version, they all have a black bezel around the display. Both models improve over the previous 2018 Fire HD 8 version with a faster processor, USB-C charging, improved Wi-Fi performance and a bump from 16GB to 32GB of storage in the base model. The standard HD 8 has 2GB of RAM — that’s up from 1.5 — and the HD 8 Plus has 3GB of RAM, which is where you get the performance boost. The USB-C charging does help reduce charging times by about an hour from the previous HD 8, with the HD 8 Plus charging even faster.

The 2018 Fire HD 8 (left) is taller but slightly slimmer than the new Fire HD 8 and HD 8 Plus.

David Carnoy/CNET

What’s a big deal is that Amazon has moved the front-facing camera. It used to be at the top of the tablet when you had it in portrait mode. Now it’s on the side, so it’s at the top when you have it in landscape mode. That helps when you’re doing video calls with Zoom and other video calling apps, including Amazon’s own. The new model is a bit wider than the 2018 HD 8, but it’s shorter and the bezel is now a similar width around the whole display, which remains the same 8-inch size. Only a high-end tablet like the iPad Pro has more screen and less bezel: Other budget tablets typically have wide bezels.

Thanks to the combination of a new 2.0 GHz quad-core MediaTek 8168 processor and some software updates, battery life is now rated at 12 hours of “mixed-use” instead of 10. The other small upgrade is that the microSD expansion slot now accepts up to 1TB cards. Previously, the maximum capacity was 512GB.

So all in all, there are some substantial changes. And you’ll have to pay more for them. As stated above, the standard HD 8 now costs $90 instead of $80 and the HD 8 Plus with wireless charging and the extra gigabyte of RAM is $20 more at $110. The price for the Plus goes up another $20 if you buy the companion wireless charging dock for the Plus, which you probably want to do.

The Fire HD 8 now features USB-C charging.

David Carnoy/CNET

Both new Fire HD 8 models have the same 1,280×800-pixel resolution display as the previous HD 8. The screen is technically HD but it’s basically 720p and not 1080p. It’s fine for watching videos but it’s not nearly as sharp as the screen you get with, say, an iPad, which is why you’re paying a lot less for this. At 355 grams, the new Fire HD 8 weighs a touch less than its 363g predecessor.

A few years back, the HD 8 seemed sluggish, but its performance has steadily improved and now it’s pretty zippy (Amazon says the new HD 8s are 30% faster than the 2018 HD 8 thanks to the new processor and software optimization). It isn’t as responsive as an entry-level iPad, which is often on sale for about $250, but it’s overall pretty smooth and I didn’t have any problem running games like Asphalt 9: Legends. That said, the 8-core processor and GPU — the graphics processor — are faster in the 10-inch Fire HD 10, which also has a sharper 1080p display. When that model goes on sale for $100, it’s probably the best value in tablets. But some people are looking for a smaller, lighter tablet and the HD 8 is a significant bump up from Amazon’s cheapest tablet, the Fire HD 7.

When docked in the optional wireless charging dock, the HD 8 Plus automatically goes into Show Mode.

David Carnoy/CNET

I didn’t see a big difference in performance between the HD 8 Plus and standard HD 8, but the extra gig does help. Apps open a touch faster and it can help with multitasking and more graphically intense applications. It never hurts to have more RAM, I can tell you that.

The HD 8 Plus seems to wirelessly charge on any Qi-enabled charging pad — at least the ones I tried with 7.5 watts or greater charging power. But you really want the charging dock that Amazon bundles in for an extra 20 bucks. That’s because one of the big appeals of the Fire HD 8 Plus is that you can drop it in the dock and it automatically goes into show mode, essentially turning your tablet into an Echo Show 8, complete with hands-free access to the Alexa voice assistant. It’s still using the tablet’s internal speakers instead of a real speaker and the tablet doesn’t have a more extensive microphone array for picking up your voice like an Echo speaker does. But it works well enough and the sound is OK (it’s fine for watching video but not so great for music). You could wirelessly connect a Bluetooth speaker to augment the sound.

I put the dock in my kitchen and used the HD 8 Plus as a mini TV because I have Spectrum TV as my cable provider (like the Fire HD 10, the HD 8 now has a picture-in-picture mode for watching video in a small window in the corner of the display while using the tablet’s other applications). There happens to be a Spectrum app that gives me all my channels on the Fire HD 8 or HD 8 Plus so long as I’m on my home network (you get a reduced number of channels when you’re away from your home network). You could get a cover with a built-in stand — Amazon sells plenty of those, including its own nicely designed but expensive covers — and create the same set-up for watching videos. But you wouldn’t be able to wirelessly charge the tablet at the same time.

The wireless charging dock is an additional $20, which is a good value.

David Carnoy/CNET

The Fire HD 8 has always been a handy tablet for consuming Amazon content, whether it’s video, ebooks or music, and it’s still particularly useful for Prime members. You can also watch other streaming video services such as Netflix and Hulu, but the Amazon app store has always been limited compared to Android and iOS, especially for games. You won’t find apps for Vudu or HBO Max, for instance (though the latter may be coming sooner or later).

The Fire HD 8 runs on Amazon’s latest Fire OS, a customized version of Android P, which was released in the fall of 2018. And while Amazon doesn’t encourage it, you can install the Google Play store by following some instructions on the internet. That would allow you to run a lot more apps. But some people may feel intimidated by the process.

The Fire HD 8 is popular with parents who want an affordable tablet for their kids. If that’s who you’re buying this for, the standard HD 8 is going to be just fine. It’s a good value and it’ll be a bargain when it goes on sale. (There’s also a $130 Kids Edition that bundles in a protective case and a year of Amazon’s Freetime Unlimited all-in-one subscription service that gives kids access to thousands of age-appropriate books, videos, apps, Audible books and games).

I like being able to wirelessly charge the Fire HD 8 Plus and the dock is nicely designed. I think you’ll end up using the tablet more because it does double duty as an Echo Show; it’s basically always charged and ready to go when you want to use it outside the dock. So for me the HD 8 Plus with the dock bundle is the way to go, especially if it goes on sale. I do wish the screen was 1080p, but you apparently can’t have everything at this modest price.

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swisscoin4-blog · 5 years

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Lukewarm Stove: Reds “Extend” Iglesias, Cruz Drawing Interest, Six Teams on Syndergaard, Segura, More

Among the Cubs many options this winter, their plans for the back of the bullpen are among the most difficult to peg down. On the one hand, they already have two or three capable closers on the roster in Brandon Morrow, Pedro Strop, and Steve Cishek. But on the other hand, Cishek worked a ton last year and the other two guys experienced significant injuries. Morrow, in particular, is going to a risky bet for a full year’s worth of innings.

With that said, there are a number of high-quality relief arms available in free agency, but given the Cubs’ apparent desire to limit their spending, I’m not sure how active they’ll be on that front – at least, with respect to a sure-fire, shut-down closer. Then again, Morrow wasn’t an established closer when the Cubs signed him last year to be theirs.

Of course, they could also go the trade route …

To that end, they have made some high-profile trades for closers in the recent past (Aroldis Chapman, Wade Davis) and that could be the path forward this winter. On ESPN 1000 today, David Kaplan and Jesse Rogers mentioned Mariners closer Edwin Diaz (in a purely dot-connecting, dream-world kind of way) and, sure, if the Cubs parted with enough, he could be pried away, I’m sure (any Mariner can be had right now). But another name mentioned in the past is Reds closer Raisel Iglesias.

Perhaps not anymore?

According to Jon Heyman, Iglesias is getting an average of roughly $8M per year over the next three years, though this deal does not actually buy out any of the closer’s free agent years. Instead, it just added some cost certainty for a player who could’ve otherwise opted for arbitration (he had a unique contract) and a team who would like to know exactly where their budget will be. Typically, when a player signs an extension, a turnaround trade is highly unlikely, but because this doesn’t actually keep him in Cincinnati any longer than he was already under control *and* because it offers pretty reasonably priced terms, he’s still a candidate to be moved. Even for a very good closer, $8M per year is a lot for a small-market club trying to round out a roster. (It should be noted that the 28-year-old righty’s ERA dipped last year to 2.38, but his strikeout rate also dipped about 2.5 percentage points and his home run rate exploded from 0.59 per 9 in 2017 to a whopping 1.50 per 9 in 2018. That’ll happen when your fly ball rate goes up, AND your hard contact rate increases by 10 percentage points.)

Then again, the Reds may actually try next year, so he’ll probably just keep racking up saves for a last-ish place team.

Sticking with the Reds, Heyman writes that they and the A’s have interest in Matt Harvey. I would say signing Harvey, hoping for a rebound, and selling him at the deadline would be a great idea for the Reds, but they did that last year … and then just didn’t trade him. I genuinely have no idea whether the Reds actually have a big picture plan.

Jon Morosi writes that the Rays, Astros, and White Sox have all shown interest in free agent DH/OH Nelson Cruz, who has the most home runs since 2010 (tied with Giancarlo Stanton). Obviously, the Cubs (or any NL team) wouldn’t have interest in a pure DH like him, but he was pretty fantastic offensively last season (135 wRC+) and has been for a good long while. I bet he can still swing it next year.

Noah Syndergaard continues to generate interest on the trade market, with as many as six teams believed to be “real players,” according to Jon Heyman. Heyman points to the Winter Meets as a time/place something could go down. And I gotta say, if Harper, Machado, Realmuto, and Syndergaard all haven’t picked/been given a new team by then, these Winter Meetings are going to be NUTS.

Everyone will wonder whether the Cubs could be in on Syndergaard, but it’s hard to see them extending to get another starting pitcher unless they got REALLY creative and also unless the Mets were infatuated with guys like Kyle Schwarber, Ian Happ, and Addison Russell. I don’t see it happening. (And, as Brett said recently, it definitely isn’t going to happen with Kris Bryant.)

I actually hate this, because I think Michael Brantley might be pretty good next season:

It’s not like I want the Cardinals to miss out on Brantley and sign Harper in his place, but I don’t think they’re going to give Harper the deal he’d require, so Brantley feels much more likely. Brantley slashed .309/.364/.468 last season (124 wRC+) and was worth 3.5 WAR. The Cardinals could more easily add a corner infielder than an outfielder, but I’m sure they could make Brantley fit if they loved his bat.

The Phillies are considering moving Carlos Santana (which we knew, due to their desire to shift Rhys Hoskins back to first (especially if they pick up Bryce Harper)), but also Tommy Hunter and Pat Neshek. Hunter, the briefly-a-former-Cub, posted a 3.80 ERA (3.63 FIP) over 64.0 innings last season with an excellent groundball rate, a tiny walk rate, and almost no hard contact. He’s under control for just one more season at $9M and could be an interesting target for the Cubs in the right deal. Nehsek, meanwhile, will make $7M in 2019 and comes with a $7M club option for 2020, but is already 38-years old. That said, he did have a 1.59 ERA in 2017 and a 2.59 ERA in 2018, so … who knows! The Cubs need quality relief arms and they don’t all have to come via free agency.

The Mariners want to sell and the Padres want to buy so bad:

As we’ve discussed, Cubs are the sort of team that could have interest in Segura, but even at his current salary ($14.85 million for each of the next four years, plus a team option at $17 million thereafter ($1M buyout), he wouldn’t necessarily be a giveaway. Last season was his worst offensively since 2015, but he was still 11% better than average and finished with 3.8 WAR thanks to his quality defense up the middle. Segura never strikes out, but rarely walks, he hits for a lot of average, but not much power. In terms of a middle-infielder, though, he’s quite good and still only 28.

Brett Taylor contributed to this post.

Source: https://www.bleachernation.com/2018/11/21/lukewarm-stove-reds-extend-iglesias-cruz-drawing-interest-six-teams-on-syndergaard-segura-more/

0 notes

neilmillerne · 5 years

Text

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

However, if we can make ONE single decision at the start of the week to prepare food in a big batch, it eliminates every food decision we need to make the rest of the week. Not only that, but it makes the fast option the healthy option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these)

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

youtube

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

A serving size is 4 oz (if you have a cheap scale, it can REALLY help with portion sizes). If you want a visual, make a fist. That’s the size of a portion of chicken (it’s probably 2 – 2.5 tenderloin pieces).

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Frozen microwavable veggies. I like broccoli or cauliflower (with “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning on them). Each bag will have instructions on it. All you need to do is pour what you want to grub in a bowl. Microwave for like four to five minutes. Add salt and some type of oil (olive or avocado). Enjoy.

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Brussels sprouts. Chop up your sprouts into quarters. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil and parchment paper. Preheat at 400, and let your sprouts cook for 30 minutes. Give it a look halfway through tho.

Roasted broccoli or cauliflower. Again, let’s toss these bad boys in olive oil, salt and pepper. Throw them on your cookie sheet with foil into a preheated oven at 400 degrees. They’ll cook faster than the sprouts, so only cook for 15 minutes.

Asparagus. Cover your asparagus in olive oil, salt and pepper (I sense a theme). Throw them onto your foiled cookie sheet and place them into your preheated 400 degree oven. Let these cook for slightly more than 15 minutes, 18-20.

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

What about some healthy carb options? Carbs aren’t evil. Just make sure they meet your goals. And your goal should be to eat under your caloric balance for the day if you’re focused on weight loss.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

Also, screwing up isn’t the end of the world. You can always order pizza or Chinese food if you totally botch it. Just live life in beta mode: ready, fire, aim. Try it out, and work on getting better.

Portion out your food into separate containers for grab-n-go lunches. This is how Staci, our head female coach, does batch cooking like this each week. Portion your food out into Tupperware to bring with you to work.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

0 notes

joshuabradleyn · 5 years

Text

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these)

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

youtube

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

0 notes

ruthellisneda · 5 years

Text

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these)

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

youtube

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

###

All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

https://ift.tt/2DETBGG

#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

0 notes

almajonesnjna · 5 years

Text

Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

I’m lazy.

Given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’d probably choose nothing.

And yet, every day I have to find a way to feed myself. At the end of a busy day, that usually comes down to the simplest, fastest, laziest option.

Unfortunately, more often than not, that simple/fast/lazy option is also SUPER unhealthy and/or expensive: fast food, take-out, or delivery.

How can “home cooked healthy food” even compete with this convenience?

Great question.

If you’re somebody that’s more familiar with fast food than your oven, and like the IDEA of cooking for yourself but have no clue what you’re doing, fear not!

I’ve created this stupidly simple “Batch Cooked Chicken” video and resource for you.

This article and video assumes you know literally nothing about cooking.

Like, “never opened my oven” level of kitchen knowledge.

I considered calling this article “Batch Cooking for Idiots” but that’s not very nice. And I think you’re pretty smart.

So by the end of today’s article, you’re going to know EXACTLY how to prepare your food for an entire week’s worth of lunch and dinner!

Note: this is a simple chicken option with the laziest ingredients possible. If you know your way around the kitchen, consider checking out some of our more advanced recipes!

Why YOU NEED Batch Cooking in Your Life

Preparing dinner for a single meal takes 20 minutes. Preparing dinner for the week takes 30 minutes and provides you with food allllll week long.

Here’s why batch cooking RULES.

Right now, for each lunch and dinner, we have two choices:

“Should I prepare a healthy meal? Do I have the ingredients? How much time will this take? Ugh.”

“Should I hit a button on my phone or drive up to a window and grab food much faster?”

The unhealthy option is the lazier option, and after a long day of work or with screaming kids, it seems like the ONLY option.

After batch cooking, we instead contemplate our meals like this:

“Should I hit a button on my phone and wait for food? Or should I get in my car and drive to a restaurant? Ugh, too much work.”

“Should I grab the food in the fridge and put it in the microwave for 90 seconds? Done.”

When you can make the lazier option the healthier one, you’re going to win 9 times out of 10.

So, perfect! Batch cooking is the best.

Of course, it’s much easier said than done.

You’re scared. You’ve never opened your oven. You once managed to set water on fire. And you have no clue what you’re doing.

I got you covered. As a batch-cooking convert, I’m gonna walk you through this step by step. I’m going to tell you exactly what to buy. What to set the oven at.

And give you permission to start.

It doesn’t matter if you screw this up. You can always order food if it doesn’t pan out (zing).

Cool? Cool.

Batch Cooking Basics: What You Need to Buy

Today, we’ll be preparing a week’s worth of chicken, Brussels sprouts (or broccoli) and sweet potatoes.

If you don’t like Brussels sprouts or sweet potatoes, I’ll give you an alternative.

WHAT YOU NEED TO BUY:

1 bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

Salt

Pepper

Garlic powder (unless you’re a vampire)

OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning (alternative to salt, pepper and garlic)

Olive Oil Spray.

2 cookie sheets

Tinfoil (to line the cookie sheet)

Parchment paper (chicken won’t stick to it, easy clean up)

Tupperware containers – or Pyrex

Pot holders (I use these)

Depending on how much of a cooking noob you are, you might have some of this stuff already.

If you don’t, make the investment – everything listed above you can use for the next 12.37 years (approximately). You will never regret having these things in your kitchen.

Where I bought my stuff: Trader Joe’s.

Where you can buy your stuff: ANY grocery store.

Note that I didn’t even include things like knives and cutting boards, because you don’t need them to prepare the chicken above.

If you want to build out your kitchen arsenal, check out our Cooking 101 resource for exact things to buy!

How to Batch Cook Chicken

youtube

Watch the stupidly simple video I decided to film last night as I was batch cooking a few trays of chicken.

Here are the steps to remind you:

#1) Pre-heat your oven to 350.

#2) Line your cookie sheets with tinfoil and parchment paper.

#3) Grab your bag of chicken, put the chicken on the trays. Wash your hands with soap and water before handling your spices.

#4) Take your olive oil spray, and spray the topside of each chicken.

#5) Sprinkle each side with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (OR “Everything but the Bagel” seasoning).

#6) Flip them over (with tongs or your hands).

#7) Repeat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

#8) Put them in the oven for 25 minutes.

#9) At 13 minutes, check your chicken to make sure things are going well!

#10) At 25 minutes, take your chicken out of the oven. Cut a piece in half, make sure it is uniformly white throughout. No pink gooey chicken!

Put some on a plate to eat, put the rest in a container for the rest of the week!

What do I eat with the chicken?

Great question. This is just part one of our Batch Cooking series. And having a solid protein source for each meal is the most important part of a healthy nutrition strategy.

So what else goes on the plate?

Let’s chat about some side dish options.

UBER NOOB (ONLY MICROWAVE):

Fresh bags of microwavable veggies. Same idea as the frozen, but less time in microwave (two minutes). Again, read the instructions on the bag!

LEVEL 2 (OVEN): Check out our in-depth article on how to roast vegetables right here:

Don’t like veggies? We can change that.

If you have the room in your calorie budget for the day, here are my favorite carbs to put on the plate next to my chicken and veggies:

Trader Joe’s microwave quinoa: Stab holes in the bag, put it in the microwave, and be done.

Sweet potato wedges: Cut up your sweet potato into small bits, then put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper. Heat the tray in your oven at 400 degrees for 45 mins.

Baby potatoes: Cut potatoes in half. Put them on a tray. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper (there’s that theme again), then stick your halved potatoes in the oven.

Spaghetti squash: Mmmmm!

That will cover your protein, a vegetable, and a carb. Simple.

Batch Cooking Tips and Tricks

This is not rocket science. Don’t make this into a bigger deal than it needs to be. You’re cooking some chicken, a potato, and some veggies. It’s easy.

When in doubt, more chicken, more veggies, less sweet potato.

Try different spices. We have a whole big resource on how to do spices and flavors to dress up any healthy meal to also taste delicious.

What are your other newbie cooking questions?

I’d love to help more people become NOT afraid of cooking.

If you don’t know your way around your kitchen, has never turned on your oven, and are afraid of screwing up your meals, you’re not alone! That was me too, for a LONG time.

These days however, I can cook 6-10 different great meals. It allows me to reach my health and fitness goals without making me miserable.

YOUR MISSION: Cook this chicken, and post a picture of it in the comments below. Do it in the next week.

Good luck!

-Steve

PS: Just in case:

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All photo sources can be found right here[1].

Footnotes ( returns to text)

Photo: The Hunter, Chicken factory, kitchen utensils, brussel sprouts, Noodles, I’m back

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#Super Simple Batch Cooked Chicken For Lazy People

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