#poe as a worker would have been funny but he was already a writer and is probably too socially anxious for it

[note-boom]

Lowkey obsessed with the idea of Cafe Uzumaki being a hotbed for former ability user criminals. Like sure so far it's only Lucy who's decided to get a job in the cafe....

But it would be SO FUNNY to me if all the sorta-redeemed antagonists also just started ending up at the cafe if ONLY for the fact that if anything like Episode 30 happens again, the former murder-repressed ability users would just....grab their guns and go feral on the attackers.

[ticklinglady]

The Guild's actions during the story are so insane, when you think about them properly, you know? When I first read the arc with them, this moment hasn't really occurred to me, as I was too busy going nuts over finally seeing the names of the familiar writers, but now when I think of that... I am not sure, I comprehend how they managed to achieve such a ferocious reputation. I have already made a little post about how extremely dysfunctional the DOA members are, but at least those guys have a plan, which actually makes sense more or less, even despite the gang using cheatcodes/the Book. The same cannot be said of the Guild however archghhjkn. Like, what the hell were these guys even doing??? XD

So here are just some moments, which weirded me out the most

At first I'd like to address the entire story with everyone's favorite tsundere, Lucy Maud Montgomery. Her introduction leaves quuuuite an impression in the best way and nothing makes me happier than the fact, that she gets a chance to find happiness in the following chapters and actually becomes a reoccurring character! HOWEVER, her entire involvement with the Guild is super odd... I still can't wrap my head around her getting fired. She is a girl with a hella powerful ability, who got taken to the Guild from a terrible, terrible orphanage in order to fight for them in the war for the Book, so not only is she very strong, but she's also immensely dependant on the organisation and wouldn't do anything outside of its interests. Yet Lucy is also put under extreme pressure. As she herself puts it, the Guild doesn't tolerate failures and will kick her out the moment she screws something up.

Later we see that this is exactly what happens, when she messes up her first mission. Fitzgerald himself confirms that, since she failed and revealed her ability to the enemies, she's no longer useful, so now a powerful esper, like Lucy works for free as a... laundress?

EXCUSE ME??? WHEN HAVE THE GUILD MEMBERS EVER DONE ANYTHING, BUT FAIL AND REVEAL THEIR ABILITIES?

Let's be real, these dudes were successful like only once or twice...

This fact not only makes Fitzgerald look like an idiot for wasting such a talented and useful worker, because of one mistake, but also as one hell of a hypocrite, cause he is more than fine with everyone else fucking up. And in case of Lovecraft and Steinbeck: fucking up twice. To add to the oddity, we later learn, that Louisa genuinely cares for Lucy and despite her social anxiety actually stood up for her during the entire story, but even that wasn't enough to change Fitzgerald's mind on the issue, though Louisa is one of the few people, whose opinion he respects. Honestly, this is such a waste of a truly useful subordinate. And speaking of which....

The Guild has never even tried to implement Edgar Allan Poe during the war...

This man is actually rather op when you think of it. He can capture and neutralise literally any ability user in Yokohama (besides Dazai, Mori and Ranpo ofc) just by throwing a book at them. Seriously, as we see with Chuuya, they don't even have to read it, they just need to see the pages. Plus the book can be actually sent via email!!! So why has there been an absolute zero amount of strategies with the use of this ability??? They could actually try to catch Atsushi by sending him such email containing any of Poe's mystery stories and then safely carry him back to their base. And it doesn't have to be just Atsushi, it could be literally any of their enemies. Non-combatant, like Ranpo could use this pretty damn well to his advantage and it doesn't take a genius to understand the potential of the "Black Cat in Rue Morgue". But nooooo, it seems like everyone has just forgotten of Poe!!! (Tho to be honest, I can actually see this situation in a funny extra awfgbfggfjj. Not the main story however) The agency would never even learn of his existence, if he didn't personally decide to try to fuck Ranpo's life up. Like, what does Poe even do in the Guild? He's the master architect and, according to him, the third ranking man in the organization, but we never see him be of any use, so Idk. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Lucy at least got to do something, unlike this poor man.

Then there's the entire drama with the Guild's decision to destroy Yokohama. Where do I even begin...

First of all, Fitzgerald has no way of knowing that Atsushi is going to come to Moby-Dick to fight him. Poor guy is the Guild's primary goal and has already gotten himself captured once, so it would have been safe to assume that the ADA decided to hide him somewhere and not send him on any dangerous missions for the time being. That basically means Fitzgerald could have burned down not just Yokohama, but also the only person, who could actually help him find his precious Book.

But if we're to ignore this, let's also go with Wikipedia then~

"Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu. Yokohama is also the major economic, cultural, and commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area along the Keihin Industrial Zone."

..........................

Good luck making up for the destruction of THIS, Fitzgerald 🖕

And if this in itself wasn't bad enough, most people, including me, tend to forget that all Guild members are actually big shots in the American government, which I think is very sad. Because first of all, can you imagine any of the Guild members actually working as politicians?!! The sheer idea makes me hysterical avshbgj. Like, just consider Lovecraft working as a senator or something. This eldritch horror of a man leaves the ocean once in three years at best LMAO. Second of all, I have a feeling, that the destruction of Yokohama at the hands of influential politicians from a foreign country would have resulted in an international conflict or two~ Like as if random deranged rich Americans arriving in Japan, wreaking havoc over there and destroying the second largest city in the country wasn't bad enough, these Americans just HAD to be super influential businessmen and politicians. Louisa, my dear, I understand that it wasn't your intention, but it's as close to a declaration of war as it can get, you know? Fitzgerald may be ready to do anything to resurrect his dead daughter, but I'm not sure, that the execution of himself and the rest of the Guild at the hands of the Hunting Dogs is something he'd like.

(And here's another funny thing that stems from them being politicians 🤭 As @originalartblog wittily pointed out, Fitzgerald wasting all his money fighting sskk has probably resulted in a market crash and recession over in the USA)

I also have some other questions in regards to this entire plan, such as why did they have to waste Moby-Dick just to destroy Yokohama? Yes, it works in the short term, but in the long term they loose a super powerful fortress with the stealth mode and as the practice shows, you better have a safe base, unless you want another lemon freak to blow it all up. I mean, you could just ask Lovecraft to destroy everything for free. Or, if the device is the only way to stop the giant whale from crashing, why didn't Fitzgerald just take it to a far away bunker or something and waited things out there without the need to spend millions of dollars just to survive the explosion? (And it would have been extremely funny, if during the fight with sskk he just threw the device overboard) But I think I have already rambled for long enough already atxhghbgv XD

The Guild is an even bigger mess than the DOA and I think that's glorious 🙌

[curious-minx]

Left Behind In The Halloween Parade: Late Review of Bob’s Burgers And The Simpsons.

The First Sunday of November, and the Last Sunday of the Trump and Biden election, found Hulu finally uploading the Bob’s Burgers and Simpsons Halloween episodes. So in the spirit of taking your sweet ass time that is exactly what I did with this review. The Bob’s Burgers Halloween episode is probably the weakest of the series, a series that is practically a Hallmark card company in terms of the amount of holiday-inspired content they have churned out. Episode “Heartbreak Hotel-oween” isn’t a particularly offensive in any way it just fails to live up to Halloween episodes such as my personal favorites Season 8 “The Wolf of Wharf Street,” which remains one of the most visually stunning episodes of the series,  and  Season 4, the series’ second Halloween episode,“Fort Night,” which has incredibly gruesome stakes and the most satisfying entry in the Louise versus Millie feud. 

“Heartbreak Hotel-oween” is still ultimately pretty good and though it took a second viewing to fully appreciate it I do like watching the Belcher children deftly sail through the world of adults. The tantalizing plot thread of a Bob’s Burgers Delivery service is dangled and I would like to see more Delivery based plots. Getting these characters into different areas and expanding upon the ambitious Jersey shore town. Having the kids deliver a burger to an older woman using the burger as a lure for her seance is flattened against a brown and forgettable after thought of a hotel. Everything with the Belcher kids is good and interesting and with the help of Andy Daly voicing the Hotel Manager; Lindsey Stoddart doing Quarantine duty and voicing multiple characters including the old woman Dolores conducting the seance, and Loren Bouchard Home Movies collaborator Melissa Robbins stops by as a bystander character as well. 

The episode starts getting in its own way with the adults blood bank centric B-plot. The entire plot is given in a single exchange with Teddie being excited about donating blood and everyman Bob with his everyman  O-negative blood finds giving blood nauseating and gross. That’s it. That’s the whole plot and besides the blood banker workers being dressed up as vampires there are no other comedic games being played and it is total unmemorable fluff, which has been a common issue for the ongoing series. One thing this episode does right is at least get Bob, Linda and Teddie out of the restaurant and into a new environment. A lot of the verbal exchanges between Bob, Linda and Teddie feel a lot more stilted due to Covid recordings and the lack of non-scripted banter is sorely missed. I have noticed this season having more John H. Benjamin monologue Bob by himself moments, which only work when Bob’s imagination is in full flight. Where was the talking bag of Bob’s blood? Hell I wouldn’t even had objected to hearing a dang song sung by the vampires to help soothe Bob into giving blood or something beyond: Bob doesn’t like giving blood because it makes him woozy, he gives blood and get’s woozy. 

Overall this is a perfectly serviceable episode: three Ghost-baiting cheeseburgers out of five. 

////

Intermission. 

Fox is certainly using the Loren Bouchard & Molyneux sisters brand like a blood bag with the recent announcement of the new series The Great North. Wendy Molyneux is a frequent writer, (executive) story editor since Bob’s Burgers inception. She is the writer of  “The Wolf of Wharf Street” and the episode of Bob’s Burgers I have watched the most - “There's No Business Like Mr. Business Business,” because I am a cat fanatic, John Oliver fan, and have been the pet companion of a standard poodle exactly like Snoodle named Faust that I love dearly. Basically, I am excited for this show. Molyneux is also a deeply connected collaborator with Megan Mullally writing on all 74 episodes of Mullally’s forgotten by the ages The Megan Mullally Show. A show according to Wikipedia’s citation of Fox News, “viewers were disappointed to find out that Megan is not anything like Karen in real life,” and if there is any white woman out there that is an anti-Karen it is Mullally. Mullally is not the focus of the show but her more visible and commercially accessible husband Nick Offerman is finally being anointed into the annals of TV Dads. With his three sons voiced by Paul Rust, Will Forte and National Treasure Aparna Nancherla and sole daughter voiced by Bob’s Burgers alum Jenny Slate, who recently honorably stepped down from a lucrative tv series Big Mouth deal like the real champ that she is.  Mullally will show up as Jenny Slate’s character’s boss andThe cast is undeniable the backdrop of Alaska has a lot of promise for elaborate or interesting set pieces. I am ready for this show! Will this be Bob’s Burgers Futurama? That’s probably a vicious hex based on how Futurama was infamously jerked around by Fox. FOX has already given the show a promising two-season deal, which is already a lot better than what Netflix did for Tuca and Bertie. Faint nowhere discussions of the Bob’s Burgers movie were also mentioned in an interview with Bouchard who has a cantankerous “theater release only” policy, which bums out a little, but I would much prefer they take as long as possible. The Bob’s Burgers movie cannot end up carrying out the Simpson movie curse.

/////

I am no Simsons scholar. I could not give you an active ranking of favorite Tree House of Horror episodes. I could tell you that I really like Bart as an Edgar Allen Poe’s Raven. You don’t need to be Simpsons scholar to safely state that “Treehouse of Horror XXXI” should be ashamed to show its “funny face.” For starters the entire appeal of the anthology style of storytelling has been completely deflated by having two of the previous episodes in this season being gimmicky non-standard episodes. The only positive thing I can say about this episode is that it is an important teaching tool for what the most broken and shittiest, laziest satire imaginable would look like and the 2020 Election cold opening is actually pretty solid. All of the good will earned by the strong opening is completely squandered starting with an inexplicably CGI Toys Story sketch. I am assuming the animation department went with CGI because the source material is CGI. The CGI is really bad and makes me really miss the 3D models of Simpsons Hit And Run and perfectly charming The Simpsons Game. Instead this sketch’s particular animation looks like the animators were most inspired not by Pixar’s clean and craftsmen like CGI models but were going for more of a Fanboy & Chum Chum look. A Toy’s Story parody in this day and age is asinine in its laziness, but it’s still an evergreen territory. A good Toy’s Story parody is possible, but simply having Bart play out the role of Toy Story’s Sid except he gets lobotomized by his own toys. I did appreciate the writer’s making the explicit moral of the story to not buy toys, which for a Disney product like the Simpsons is pretty rich. 

Behold! The last recorded instance of a quality Toys Story satire from China, IL

The next two parodies go down slightly better simply because they aren’t sporting that eye bleeding animation but paying homage to Enter The Spider-verse and Russian Doll/Happy Death Day 2U in 2020 feels just as dated as Toy Story. What kind of fool is still writing about Russian Doll in 2020? The Enter the Homer-verse sketch is at least ambitious and showcases how masturbatory  the show has come whenever it is showcasing Dan Castellaneta’s various vocal talents. I get it dude, you like having dump trucks of money given to you for barely making an effort and doing Hannah Barbara impersonations that sound more like a bad Woody Allen. Regardless, this is still the one sketch that makes the most attempt to have comedic games with its multiple iterations of Homer and even throwing out some alternative universe Burns and Smithers for good measure. The final third Russian Doll sketch that let’s you know that this sketch is more Russian Doll than Happy Death Day by using the same exact Harry Nilsson “Gotta Get Up”  piano riff. This sketch had potential but once again the show writers and creatives seem to only indulge the worst possible instincts and cast Lisa as the lead of the sketch. So that means we get to watch this 8 soon-to-be 9 year old girl and fellow child Nelson get murdered in a variety of banal and brutal ways, and it’s just not fun or pleasant to watch. The obvious choice is an unexpected Springfield resident and if it has to be a Simpson having Marge or one of her sisters be the Nadia surrogate makes far more logical sense and Marge’s birthday would carry more emotional weight. 

Reminder to myself to check out this lost late series entry where Natasha Lyonne is the voice of Krusty’s daughter. 

I completely understand why The AV Club canceled their coverage of The Simpsons. The whole series has a very masochistic and sadistic pull and tug between creatives and fans. The sweet and simple souls of Den of Geek are still reviewing the Simpsons and offer a far more favorable review: https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-simpsons-season-32-episode-4-review-treehouse-of-horror-xxxi/.  Google results also yield one another publication reviewing this current season published on medium that has been taken by for violating medium rules. Will the Simpsons be coming for me next? 

Skip this episode! Judging by the synopsis of the season’s next ep finding the Simpsons, once again, finding themselves somewhere other than Springfield is looking to be another skippable entry. I want to be proven wrong! The latter day Simpsons seasons usually have a memorable or decent episode here or there. So far the only thing remarkable about this season is how much it wants to try to be different and think outside of the Springfield box but in the process give the season an overwhelming sense of hollowness. I shall forge ahead with my coverage, because I am either a masochist or a sadist depending on the weather. 

[uomo-accattivante]

On 21 August 2017, the Great American Eclipse caused a diagonal swathe of darkness to fall across the United States from Charleston, South Carolina on the East Coast to Lincoln City, Oregon on the West. In Manhattan, which was several hundred miles outside the path of totality, a gentle gloom fell over the city. Yet still office workers emptied out onto the pavements, wearing special paper glasses if they had been organised; holding up their phones and blinking nervously if they hadn’t. Despite promises that it was to be lit up for the occasion, there was no discernible twinkle from the Empire State Building; on Fifth Avenue, the darkened glass façade of Trump Tower grew a little dimmer. In Central Park Zoo, where children and tourists brandished pinhole cameras made from cereal boxes, Betty, a grizzly bear, seized the opportunity to take an unscrutinised dip.

Across the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Oscar Isaac, a 38-year-old Guatemalan-American actor and one of the profession’s most talented, dynamic and versatile recent prospects, was, like Betty, feeling too much in the sun. It was his day off from playing Hamlet in an acclaimed production at the Public Theater in Manhattan and he was at home on vocal rest. He kept a vague eye on the sky from the balcony of the one-bedroom apartment he shares — until their imminent move to a leafier part of Brooklyn — with his wife, the Danish documentary film-maker Elvira Lind, their Boston Terrier French Bulldog-cross Moby (also called a “Frenchton”, though not by him), and more recently, and to Moby’s initial consternation, their four-month-old son, Eugene.

Plus, he’s seen this kind of thing before. “I was in Guatemala in 1992 when there was a full solar eclipse,” he says the next day, sitting at a table in the restaurant of a fashionably austere hotel near his Williamsburg apartment, dressed in dark T-shirt and jeans and looking — amazingly, given his current theatrical and parental commitments — decidedly fresh. “The animals went crazy; across the whole city you could hear the dogs howling.” Isaac happened to be in Central America, he’ll mention later, because Hurricane Andrew had ripped the roof off the family home in Miami, Florida, while he and his mother, uncle, siblings and cousins huddled inside under couches and cushions. So yes, within the spectrum of Oscar Isaac’s experiences, the Great American Eclipse is no biggie.

Yet there is another upcoming celestial event that will have a reasonably significant impact on Isaac’s life. On 15 December, Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be released in cinemas, which, if you bought a ticket to Star Wars: The Force Awakens — and helped it gross more than $2bn worldwide — you’ll know is a pretty big deal. You’ll also know that Isaac plays Poe Dameron, a hunky, wise-cracking X-wing fighter pilot for the Resistance who became one of the most popular characters of writer-director JJ Abram’s reboot of the franchise thanks to Isaac’s charismatic performance and deadpan delivery (see his “Who talks first?” exchange with Vader-lite baddie Kylo Ren: one of the film’s only comedic beats).

And if you did see Star Wars: The Force Awakens you’ll know that, due to some major father-son conflict, there’s now an opening for a loveable, rogueish, leather-jacket-wearing hero… “Heeeeeh!” says Isaac, Fonzie-style, when I say as much. “Well, there could be, but I think what [The Last Jedi director] Rian [Johnson] did was make it less about filling a slot and more about what the story needs. The fact is now that the Resistance has been whittled to just a handful of people, they’re running for their lives, and Leia is grooming me — him — to be a leader of the Resistance, as opposed to a dashing, rogue hero.”

While he says he has “not that much more, but a little more to do” in this film, he can at least be assured he survives it; he starts filming Episode IX early next year.

If Poe seems like one of the new Star Wars firmament now — alongside John Boyega’s Finn, Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Poe’s spherical robot sidekick BB-8 — it’s only because Isaac willed it. Abrams had originally planned to kill Poe off, but when he met Isaac to discuss him taking the part, Isaac expressed some reservations. “I said that I wasn’t sure because I had already done that role in other movies where you kind of set it up for the main people and then you die spectacularly,” he remembers. “What’s funny is that [producer] Kathleen Kennedy was in the room and she was like, ‘Yeah, you did that for us in Bourne!’” (Sure enough, in 2012’s Bourne Legacy, Jeremy Renner’s character, Aaron Cross, steps out of an Alaskan log cabin while Isaac’s character, Outcome Agent 3, stays inside; a few seconds later the cabin is obliterated by a missile fired from a passing drone.)

This ability to back himself — judiciously and, one can imagine after meeting him, with no small amount of steely charm — seems to have served Isaac well so far. It’s what also saw him through the casting process for his breakthrough role in Joel and Ethan Coen’s 2014 film Inside Llewyn Davis, about a struggling folk singer in Sixties New York, partly based on the memoir of nearly-was musician Dave Van Ronk. Isaac, an accomplished musician himself, got wind that the Coens were casting and pestered his agent and manager to send over a tape, eventually landing himself an audition.

“I knew it was based on Dave Van Ronk and I looked nothing like him,” says Isaac. “He was a 6ft 5in, 300lb Swede and I was coming in there like… ‘Oh man.’” But then he noticed that the casting execs had with them a picture of the singer-songwriter Ray LaMontagne. “Suddenly, I got some confidence because he’s small and dark so I said to the casting director, ‘Oh cool, is that a reference?’ And they were like, 'No, he just came in here and he killed it.’” Isaac throws his head back and laughs. “They literally said, 'He killed it.’ It was so good!”

In the end it was Isaac who killed it in Inside Llewyn Davis, with a performance that was funny, sad, cantankerous and moving. The film was nominated for two Oscars and three Golden Globes, one of them for Isaac in the category of: “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — comedy or musical” (he lost to Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street). No cigar that time, but in 2016 he won a Golden Globe for his turn as a doomed mayor in David Simon’s HBO drama, Show Me a Hero. This year, and with peculiar hillbilly affectation, Vanity Fair proclaimed Isaac “the best dang actor of his generation”. It is not much of a stretch to imagine that, some day very soon, Isaac may become the first Oscar since Hammerstein to win the award whose name he shares. Certainly, the stars seem ready to align.

Of course, life stories do not run as neatly as all that and Isaac’s could have gone quite differently. He was born Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada in Guatemala City, to which his father, Óscar, now a pulmonologist, had moved from Washington DC in order to attend medical school (having escaped to the States from Cuba just before the revolution) and where he met Isaac’s mother, Eugenia. Five months after Isaac was born, the family — also including an older sister, Nicole, and later joined by a younger brother, Michael — moved to America in order for Óscar Senior to complete his residencies: first to Baltimore, then New Orleans, eventually settling in Miami when Isaac was six.

Miami didn’t sit entirely right with him. “The Latin culture is so strong which was really nice,” he says, “but you had to drive everywhere, and it’s also strangely quite conservative. Money is valued, and nice cars and clothes, and what you look like, and that can get sort of tedious.” Still it was there, aged 11, that he took to the stage for the first time. The Christian middle school he attended put on performances in which the kids would mime to songs telling loosely biblical stories, including one in which Jesus and the Devil take part in a boxing match in heaven (note the word “loosely”). For that one, Isaac played the Devil. In another, he played Jesus calling Lazarus from the grave. “So yeah,” he laughs, “I’ve got the full range!’

He enjoyed the mixture of the attention and the “extreme nature of putting yourself out there in front of a bunch of people”, plus it gave him some release from stresses at home: his parents were separating and his mother became ill. His school failed to see these as sufficiently mitigating factors for Isaac’s subsequent wayward behaviour and, following an incident with a fire extinguisher, he was expelled. “It wasn’t that bad. They wanted me out of there. I was very happy to go.”

Following his parents’ divorce, he moved with his mother to Palm Beach, Florida, where he enrolled at a public high school. “It was glorious, I loved it,” says Isaac. “I loved it so much. I could walk to the beach every day, and go to this wild school where I became friends with so many different kinds of people. I met these guys who lived in the trailer parks in Boynton Beach and started a band, and my mom and my little brother would come and spy on me to see if I was doing drugs or anything, and I never was.”

Never?

“No, because I didn’t drink till I was, like, 24. Even though I stopped being religious, I liked the individuality of being the guy who didn’t do that stuff. Maybe it was the observer part of me… I liked being a little bit detached, and I wasn’t interested in doing something that was going to make me lose control.”

When he was 14, Isaac and his band-mates played at a talent show. They chose to perform 'Rape Me’ by Nirvana. “I remember singing to the parents, 'Rape meeee!’” Isaac laughs so hard he gives a little snort. “Yeah,” he says, composing himself again, “we didn’t win.” But something stuck and Isaac ended up being in a series of ska-punk outfits, first Paperface, then The Worms and later The Blinking Underdogs who, legend has it, would go on to support Green Day. “Supported… Ha! It was a festival…” says Isaac. “But hey, we played the same day, at the same festival, within a few hours of each other.” (On YouTube you can find a clip from 2001 of The Blinking Underdogs performing in a battle of the bands contest at somewhere called Spanky’s. Isaac is wearing a 'New York City’ T-shirt and brandishing a wine-coloured Flying V electric guitar.)

Still, Isaac’s path was uncertain. At one point he thought about joining the Marines. “The sax player in my band had grown up in a military family so we were like, 'Hey, let’s work out and get all ripped and be badasses!’” he says. “I was like, 'Yeah, I’ll do combat photography!’ My dad was really against it. He said, 'Clinton’s just going to make up a war for you guys to go to,’ so I had to have the recruiters come all the way down to Miami where my dad was living and they convinced him to let me join. I did the exam, I took the oath, but then we had gotten the money together to record an album with The Worms. I decided I’d join the Reserves instead. I said I wanted to do combat photography. They said, 'We don’t do that in the Reserves, but we can give you anti-tank?’ Ha! I was like, 'it’s a liiiiiittle different to what I was thinking…’”

Even when he started doing a few professional theatre gigs in Miami he was still toying with the idea of a music career, until one day, while in New York playing a young Fidel Castro in an off-Broadway production of Rogelio Martinez’s play, When it’s Cocktail Time in Cuba, he happened to pass by renowned performing arts school Juilliard. On a whim, he asked for an audition. He was told the deadline had passed. He insisted. They gave him a form. He filled it in and brought it back the next day. They post-dated it. He got in. And the rest is history. Only it wasn’t.

“In the second year they would do cuts,” Isaac says. “If you don’t do better they kick you out. All the acting teachers wanted me on probation, because they didn’t think I was trying hard enough.” Not for the first or last time, he held his ground. “It was just to spur me to do better I think, but I definitely argued.”

He stayed for the full course at Juilliard, though it was a challenge, not only because he’d relaxed his own non-drinking rule but also because he was maintaining a long-distance relationship with a girlfriend back in Florida. “For me, the twenties were the more difficult part of life. Four years is just… masochistic. We were a particularly close group but still, it’s really intense.” (Among his fellow students at the time were the actress Jessica Chastain, with whom he starred in the 2014 mob drama A Most Violent Year, and Sam Gold, his director in Hamlet.) He says he broadly kept it together: “I was never a mess, I just had a lot of confusion.” He got himself an agent in the graduation scrum, and soon started picking up work: a Law & Order here, a Shakespeare in the Park there; even, in 2006, a biblical story to rival his early efforts, playing Joseph in The Nativity Story (the first film to hold its premiere at the Vatican, no less).

By the time he enrolled at Juilliard he had already dropped “Hernández” and started going by Oscar Isaac, his two first given names. And for good reason. “When I was in Miami, there were a couple of other Oscar Hernándezes I would see at auditions. All [casting directors] would see me for was 'the gangster’ or whatever, so I was like, 'Well, let me see if this helps.’ I remember there was a casting director down there because [Men in Black director] Barry Sonnenfeld was doing a movie; she said, 'Let’s bring in this Oscar Isaac,’ and he was like, 'No no no! I just want Cubans!’ I saw Barry Sonnenfeld a couple of years ago and I told him that story — 'I don’t want a Jew, I want a Cuban!’”

Perhaps it’s a sad indictment of the entertainment industry that a Latino actor can’t expect a fair run at parts without erasing some of the ethnic signifiers in his own name, but on a personal basis at least, Isaac’s diverse role roster speaks to the canniness of his decision. He has played an English king in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood(2010), a Russian security guard in Madonna’s Edward-and-Mrs-Simpson drama W.E. (2011), an Armenian medical student in Terry George’s The Promise (2017) and — yes, Barry — a small, dark American Jew channelling a large blond Swede.

But then, of course, there are roles he’s played where ethnicity was all but irrelevant and talent was everything. Carey Mulligan’s ex-con husband Standard in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive in 2011 (another contender for his “spectacular deaths” series); mysterious technocrat Nathan Bateman in the beautifully poised sci-fi Ex Machina (2014) written and directed by Alex Garland (with whom he has also shot Annihilation — dashing between different sound stages at Pinewood while shooting The Last Jedi — which is due out next year). Or this month’s Suburbicon, a neat black comedy directed by George Clooney from an ancient Coen brothers script, in which Isaac cameos as a claims investigator looking into some dodgy paperwork filed by Julianne Moore and Matt Damon, and lights up every one of his brief scenes.

Isaac is a very modern kind of actor: one who shows range and versatility without being bland; who is handsome with his dark, intense eyes, heavy brows and thick curls, but not so freakishly handsome that it is distracting; who shows a casual disregard for the significance of celebrity and keeps his family, including his father, who remarried and had another son and daughter, close. It’s a testament to his skill that when he takes on a character, be it English royal or Greenwich Village pauper, it feels like — with the possible exception of Ray LaMontagne — it could never have been anyone else.

Today, though, he’s a Danish prince. To say that Isaac’s turn in Hamlet has caused a frenzy in New York would be something of an understatement. Certainly, it’s a sell-out. The Sunday before we meet, Al Pacino had been in. So scarce are tickets that Isaac’s own publicist says she’s unlikely to be able to get me one, and as soon as our interview is over I hightail it to the Public Theater to queue up to be put on the waiting list for returns for tonight’s performance. (I am seventh in line, and in my shameless desperation I tell the woman in front of me that I’ve flown over from London just to interview Isaac in the hope that she might let me jump the queue. She ponders it for a nanosecond, before another woman behind me starts talking about how her day job involves painting pictures of chimpanzees, and I lose the crowd.)

Clearly, Hamlet is occupying a great deal of Isaac’s available brain space right now, and not just the fact that he’s had to memorise approximately 1,500 lines. “Even tonight it’s different, what the play means to me,” he says. “It’s almost like a religious text, because it has the ambiguity of the Bible where you can look at one line and it can mean so many different things depending on how you meditate on it. Even when I have a night where I feel not particularly connected emotionally, it can still teach me. I’ll say a line and I’ll say, 'Ah, that’s good advice, Shakespeare, thank you.’”

Hamlet resonates with Isaac for reasons that he would never have foreseen or have wished for. While playing a young man mourning the untimely death of his father, Isaac was himself a young man mourning the untimely death of his mother, who died in February after an illness. Doing the play became a way to process his loss.

“It’s almost like this is the only framework where you can give expression to such intense emotions. Otherwise anywhere else is pretty inappropriate, unless you’re just in a room screaming to yourself,” he says. “This play is a beautiful morality tale about how to get through grief; to experience it every night for the last four months has definitely been cathartic but also educational; it has given structure to something that felt so overwhelming.”

In March, a month after Eugenia died, Isaac and Lind married, and then in April Eugene, named in remembrance of his late grandmother, was born. I ask Isaac about the shift in perspective that happens when you become a parent; whether he felt his own focus switch from being a son to being a father.

“It happened in a very dramatic way,” he says. “In a matter of three months my mother passed and my son was born, so that transition was very alive, to the point where I was telling my mom, 'I think you’re going to see him on the way out, tell him to listen to me as much as he can…’” He gives another laugh, but flat this time. “It was really tough because for me she was the only true example of unconditional love. It’s painful to know that that won’t exist for me anymore, other than me giving it to him. So now this isn’t happening” — he raises his arms towards the ceiling, gesturing a flow coming down towards him — “but now it goes this way” — he brings his arms down, making the same gesture, but flowing from him to the floor.

Does performing Hamlet, however pertinent its themes, ever feel like a way of refracting his own experiences, rather than feeling them in their rawest form?

“Yeah it is,” he says, “I’m sure when it’s over I don’t know how those things will live.” He pauses. “I’m a little bit… I don’t know if 'concerned’ is the right word, but as there’s only two weeks left of doing it, I’m curious to see what’s on the other end, when there’s no place to put it all.”

It’s a thoughtful, honest answer; one that doesn’t shy away from the emotional complexities of what he’s experiencing and is still to face, but admits to his own ignorance of what comes next. Because, although Isaac is clearly dedicated to his current lot, he has also suffered enough slings and arrows to know where self-determination has its limits.

What he does know is happening on the other end of Hamlet is “disconnection”, also known as a holiday, and he plans to travel with Lind to Maine where her documentary, Bobbi Jene, is screening at a film festival. Then he will fly to Buenos Aires for a couple of months filming Operation Finale, a drama about the 1960 Israeli capture of Adolf Eichmann which Isaac is producing and in which he also stars as Mossad agent Peter Malkin, with Eichmann played by Sir Ben Kingsley. At some point after that he will get sucked into the vortex of promotion for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, of which today’s interview is an early glimmer.

But before that, he will unlock the immaculate black bicycle that he had chained up outside the hotel and disappear back into Brooklyn. Later, he will take the subway to Manhattan an hour-and-a-half or so before curtain. To get himself ready, and if the mood takes him, he will listen to Venezuelan musician Arca’s self-titled album or Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie and Lowell, light a candle, and look at a picture of his mother that he keeps in his dressing room.

Then, just before seven o'clock, he will make his way to the stage where, for the next four hours, he will make the packed house believe he is thinking Hamlet’s thoughts for the very first time, and strut around in his underpants feigning madness, and — for reasons that make a lot more sense if you’re there which, thanks to a last-minute phone-call from the office of someone whose name I never did catch, I was — stab a lasagna. And then at the end of Act V, when Hamlet lies dead, and as lightning staggers across the night sky outside the theatre, finally bringing the promised drama to the Manhattan skyline, the audience, as one, will rise.

Fashion by Allan Kennedy. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is out on 15 December. The December issue of Esquire is out now.

###

[juniper-and-lamplight]

Recent Reads--April 30, 2017

I’ve recently realized that it has been SIX MONTHS since I made a rec list, which is just…not on. So here’s a collection of fic I’ve consumed in those six months. You’ll notice it skews even more strongly than usual towards Johnlock–the blame for this rests squarely on Moffat and Gatiss for messing up Sherlock season 4 SO SEVERELY that I required excessive amounts of fic in order to recover. (J/k, I’ll never recover!) However, there ARE a few other fandoms and ships in here, so please have a little scroll-through, read what appeals you, and be sure to leave some love for the authors & podficcers <3</p>

His Name Is John Watson - ampersand_ch, translated by SwissMiss - 19k, Explicit, Holmes/Watson “A summer’s idyll in Sussex. Holmes and Watson seek some peace and quiet. But that’s not as simple as they imagine.” A gorgeous casefic in which Holmes and Watson confront the depth and intensity of their connection.

Speaker for the Bees - antietamfalls - 14k, Mature, John/Sherlock, AU “It isn’t always easy assisting a deaf detective. Luckily for John, they make a pretty good team.” After reading a completely different romance with a Deaf protagonist, I got curious and read a whole bunch of deaf Sherlock fic, and this one emerged as my favorite.

(Never) Turn Your Back to the Sea - @discordantwords - 40k, Mature, John/Sherlock “Baker Street is very much the same. Only different. And Sherlock is just trying not to drown.” I saw this fic recced all over Tumblr for weeks before I finally got over my fear of in-depth post-season-4 fic and read it myself, thus verifying that HOLY WOW YES the hype was deserved. The way the author captures Sherlock’s internal voice in this fic feels SO TRUE–his shattered hubris, his desperate resistance to vulnerability, and the believable way he and John finally get through it all is spot-on. This fic repaired some of the damage that season 4 inflicted on my heart.

look west from London - @fahye - 4k, Teen and up, John/Sherlock but only in the background, AU “There are almost no lies in the way that Molly presents herself, only omissions.” A wonderfully uneasy and darkish character study of Molly, and how she might have actually helped Sherlock fake his death.

The Price We Pay for Wings - Frayach, read by raitala - 13k, 80min, Mature (Harry/Draco, HP) “Scorpius Draconis Eltanin Malfoy read the first book in the Alford Ocamy series over Christmas hols when he was eleven. Well, he didn’t so much “read” it as he devoured it.” I CRIED ACTUAL LITERAL TEARS LISTENING TO THIS. Raitala’s podfic performance makes this already intense and moving story feel that much more vivid. 10/10 would be devastated by again.

Who I Want To Be - @hubblegleeflower - 3k, General Audiences, John/Sherlock “What happens when your author writes you wrong? When someone else has the power to decide who you really are? Does it matter?” Sort of AU, shades of RPF, definitely metafiction, and quite satisfying as a rebuke to the writers who made such a hash of season 4.

Intersection - celeste9 - 5k, Explicit, Finn/Poe, AU “Finn had managed to get seated beside a gorgeous, sweet, funny ex-military gay pilot… and he was one more rough patch of sky away from barfing all over his feet. Or, worse yet, all over Poe’s feet. It figured. It really fucking figured.” Am I sucker for a social worker AU? You bet I am.

One Week - JaneTurenne - 42k, Explicit, Holmes/Watson “An average week in the life of Our Heroes becomes a battle of wills when the boys make a wager.” A beloved trope executed beautifully.

Minor Interludes for the Solo Violin - Katie Forsythe, read by general_jinjur - 27k, 3hr, Explicit, Holmes/Watson “Wounded and traumatized by the Afghan War, John Watson falls in love with a detective who is also a remarkable violinist. Connected pieces of emotion and movement.” This podfic of a classic H/W is immersive and excellent, and the download link includes the sequel, Hallowed Be Thy Name, which is also excellent, though significantly darker and more difficult for the characters.

There’s Only One Sure Thing That I Know - leah k (blinkiesays), read by exmanhater - 20k, 2hrs, Explicit, Dean/Castiel “Dean doesn’t even get halfway through explaining before Bobby starts laughing. When he lets himself think about it for more than five seconds, Dean can almost see Bobby’s point: he’s faced down demons, witches, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, angels, and Satan himself and now he’s been defeated by the God damn Midwest.” A well-paced and gently humorous podfic in which an unexpected sojourn in Ohio forces Dean to confront love, honesty, and his fucked-up self esteem.

What He’s Like - magikspell - 3k, Explicit, John/Sherlock “‘I’m so in love with you,’ John says, a statement of fact. 'I will never not be in love with you.’ Realistic first time. They love each other so much.” FEEEEELS.

et faisons la grasse matinée - mazily (@ylizam​) - 1k, Mature, Phryne/Mac, Phryne/Jack (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) “'I do love you,’ Mac says. She’s not fond of saying it.” This one is short and has a slightly hazy, hungover feel (appropriate) that I adore. The only problem with Mac/Phryne fic is that there’s not enough of it, so extra blessings upon those who write it!

Time on my hands - Mildredandbobbin - 7k, Explicit, John/Sherlock “Virginity’s a construct, a concept—what does losing one’s virginity entail for a gay man anyway? Sherlock wants to fill that particular gap in his knowledge but John won’t, can’t, never will assist and there’s only so much desperately unspoken pining even Sherlock can take.” Despite the description, this one is more about practical sexual exploration than “virginity” or loss of same, which makes it a lot more interesting IMHO.

Sentiment to Paper - @mistyzeo​, read by RickyPulsifer - 7k, 57min, Explicit, Holmes/Watson “No fewer than three times by the winter of 1883 had I heard Sherlock Holmes disparage the ways of lovers and their irrational tendencies toward writing letters. With this often and loudly-expressed opinion in mind, I was very surprised indeed to find a stack of unsent, unsealed letters in a drawer in his desk.” Here you will find a convincing Watson POV (complete with “damn my leg” in-joke), a secretly sentimental Holmes, and juuuuust enough miscommunication and tension to make the romantic (and hot) resolution feel very satisfying indeed. Additionally, RickyPulsifer’s podfic is a quiet wonder of smooth pacing, emotive delivery, and thoughtful production.

Splendid Creature - mistyzeo, read by RickyPulsifer and the_dragongirl - 2k, 20min, Explicit, Holmes/Watson "Holmes has tired himself out on a case and wants to go straight to sleep. After an orgasm or two. Watson is more than happy to help.” A sleepy, steamy PWP podfic featuring a trans Holmes. Really, you should just listen to all of Ricky Pulsifer’s ACD Holmes podfic recordings.

Grazed Knees - montparnasse (@montpahrnah​) - 5k, Teen and up, Luna/Ginny “The war is over, except that it isn’t, and Ginny is done fighting, except that she’s not.” A wonderfully atmospheric coming-of-age postwar fic. I think I need more Linny in my life.

Hearth and Home - @mycapeisplaid​ - 5k, Teen and up, John/Sherlock “Sixteen years after the east wind came and went, two men embrace their future.” A post-season 4 fic set well into the future, including a teenage Rosie Watson who knows her two dads better than they know themselves.

The Truth of the Musgrave Ritual - @mydwynter​ - 13k, Explicit, Holmes/Watson “It is my custom, you may have noticed, to save those little cases which we have solved until such time as danger to those involved has passed, or until Holmes otherwise suggests I may write about them.The happenings at Hurlstone Hall, however, received a very different treatment indeed.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you just can’t go wrong with mydwynter’s canon fic.

Shoreline - @penknife​ - 2k, Mature, Remus/Sirius  “Sometimes it takes being someone else to sort out who you are.” A short, angsty-yet-sweet character study of  one Remus Lupin, teen werewolf and aspiring cool loner.

Take My Breath Away - Quesarasara (@itsnotgonnareaditselfpeople) - 14k, Explicit, John/Sherlock “Sherlock opens his eyes and looks at his friend—his best friend—and slowly tips his chin down until his forehead rests softly against John’s. They stay that way for a long moment, lips just a whisper apart, warm puffs of air mingling as each of them struggles to breathe. It’s no wonder they ended up here, really, locked in this breathless moment balanced on the cusp of something new. They’ve spent years taking each other’s breath away…” Honestly, the “got your breath back?” thing is a brilliant way to organize a series of vignettes, and the sexy bit at the end is achingly sincere.

All Life is Yours to Miss - Saras_Girl, read by originally reads (@originally) - 114k, Mature, Harry/Draco “Professor Malfoy’s world is contained, controlled, and as solitary as he can make it, but when an act of petty revenge goes horribly awry, he and his trusty six-legged friend are thrown into Hogwarts life at the deep end and must learn to live, love and let go.” I have to admit that if had read this instead of listened to it, I might have noped out–mostly because it’s long, I’m impatient, and as Draco character studies go it’s much sweeter than my usual taste. Yet the podfic was well-performed, and the slower listening process made the resolution feel even more satisfying.

Revolutions - @scullyseviltwin - 3k, Explicit, John/Sherlock “Things got in the way, yeah, a whole fuckload of things.” It feels like cheating to call this a PWP, becuase even though it’s mostly sex, it’s the kind of sex that reveals things about the characters and their changing relationship.

Two Weeks - @shiftylinguini - 21k, Explicit, Harry/Draco “If Harry had to guess which out of he or his Auror Partner, and tentative new friend, Draco Malfoy, would turn out to have Veela ancestry, his answer would be: neither, because that is ridiculous. Finding out the answer is actually him, and that his Veela heritage is wreaking havoc on his ability to work, sleep, and above all be in the same room as Malfoy, is a surprise to say the least. But this is fine. Harry’s been through worse, and he can just sit this one out, regardless of how much his body is screaming for the one person he doesn’t want to ask for help. Can’t he?” I mean, that description tells you what you need to know. Delicious, delicious TENSION.

Diversionary Tactics - @shinysherlock, read by @fffinnagain - 2k, 16min, Explicit, Molly/Irene (BBC Sherlock AU) “Oh. This could be interesting. Irene’s fingers moved to the third button of the dress and paused. 'Shall I just … check the rest of you, then? Make sure you’re quite all right?’” A brief, hot, historical PWP, Mollrene style. UNF. Finnagain’s podfic performance is very…impassioned–maybe don’t listen in public ;)

His Almost Lover - @writcraft - 9k, Explicit, John/Sherlock “John grieves for Sherlock, dreams offering his only escape but no real satisfaction. When Sherlock finally confronts him, alive and well, John has to learn to love all over again.” A surreal, dreamy beginning leads into a very real post-Reichenbach coming-to-terms.

For further recs, check out my Fic Bookmarks or Fic Recs Masterpost; I hope to add some of these fics to my various faves lists sometime in the next few weeks.