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ac-liveblogs · 1 year

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Trigun vs Stampede

OR: Trigun newbie ponders if Stampede was a good adaptation or not, actually.

I lost my original draft. I think this one’s longer. The TL;DR is I liked them both. But.

I’m sure a lot of Trigun Oldies are pretty annoyed with Stampede, and as an obnoxious FF7 purist with an axe to grind with the “remake” myself, my sympathies are certainly with them. It’s really annoying to just want a faithful adaptation of the thing you like without people trying to get CLEVER about what made them good in the first place - especially if the changes don’t land!

However, as someone brand new to Trigun my attitude is more along the lines of “hey, three cakes!”, and I figure I’m in a pretty good position to provide a fairly unbiased comparison of the two. My Trigun creds are as follows; I’ve watched Stampede, I’ve read up to vol 3 of Maximum, I’ve watched Badlands Rumble (and didn’t like it), I’ve never seen ‘98 but have seen out of context clips and had very careful conversations with a coworker that has ONLY seen ‘98 and Stampede to try and share enthusiasm but still avoid poisoning each other with spoilers.

My original takeaway from Stampede: It’s a fun show that needed more episodes to accomplish what it was trying to do. I still stand by this. However, I think that Stampede has made a lot of clever decisions in adaptation, and I’m feeling pretty positive about the reboot in general.

Vol 1 of the original Trigun introduces us to Vash, Meryl and Milly; we have a volume of world-building and character-establishing shenanigans (as well as teasers about the “Lost July” incident) before meeting Legato and a handful of the Gung-Ho Guns in volume 2, after which we get some fights, hook up (ha) with Wolfwood and head to Jeneora Rock.

And then Jeneora explodes.

Stampede is simultaneously a prequel and a reimagining of these first two volumes. In the interest of giving us a 12-episode narrative with character arcs for all 3 main leads, certain events have been either brought forward or pushed back. For example, while we keep the fight with the Nebraska Family and the trip on the Sand Steamer, Lost July ceases being a backstory event and instead replaces Vash’s destruction of Jeneora Rock as the “season finale” - allowing Knives to serve as the arc villain for Stampede whereas Trigun ends with him being (temporarily) resurrected.

Some clever changes are made to facilitate this; if Vash destroys July at the end of season 1 there’s no reason to have him also destroy Jeneora, so establish Knives as the Big Scary Arc Villain by making HIM do it instead. Then, end the season with his apparent death at Vash’s hands - since Legato is the main villain in vol 2 and wants to resurrect Knives, push him back to season 2 so you can add some real crunch between his fanaticism and Vash’s guilt. Wolfwood is more prominent here; have HIM kill Monev the Gale instead of Legato. Then, you can have him project all over Rollo just in time to reveal his backstory and you won’t even feel the loss of Vash refusing to kill Monev too badly because the Nebraska Family is used to display Vash’s pacifistic ideology before Wolfwood gets a chance to shoot a hole in it.

That doesn’t mean Stampede is flawless; I have real problems with Wolfwood and Home’s inclusion, mostly down to the episode count, but I like a lot of the changes made in eps 1-5 and 10-12. Episodes 6-9 were strongest for their flashback segments; besides that, the pacing was fucked. Trying to accomplish FAR too much in too little time - don’t think anyone’s gonna argue with that.

Quickfire adaptation notes before I dig into the changes in characterisation;

It’s a shame that Stampede didn’t have time to do more world-building - Legato’s nonsense aside, that was my favourite part of the first two volumes.

Vash vs Monev the Gale was more fun in the manga than Stampede, but I liked the expansion on his backstory that Stampede gave us more than “I TRAINED… FOR 20 YEARS…”

EG the Mine was more fun in Stampede than the manga.

I recognise the need to get Meryl and Roberto on the Sand Steamer after Roberto wanted to leave, but the Bad Lads Gang were barely worth bringing back.

I wouldn’t have even bothered introducing Legato this season beyond a stinger at the end of episode 12; I get they’re trying to do Something with him and Wolfwood, but we really didn’t have the time.

Rem was cooler in the manga.

The trip to Home feels like a waste of time at this point, but I can only hope introducing Brad & Luida early means that if the Gung-Ho Guns decide to break in like in the manga things are gonna hurt more. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been more prudent to just go to Hopeland Orphanage instead to really dig into the tragedy of Wolfwood’s situation before rocketing into him completing the contract in July. Would’ve added more to Vash’s insistence that Wolfwood’s a good person, too - he’s objectively right, but would’ve been nice to see it more concretely.

In service of remixing the plot into a pseudo-prequel, our main 3 leads - Vash, Meryl and Wolfwood - all present as much less mature characters who are still growing into the roles they hold in the original. Vash’s bounty is considerably lower, he’s never hurt anyone himself yet (no Lost July ‘til the finale) and he’s much less capable of playing the clown to hide his true feelings; Meryl is a straight-laced rookie traveling with her mentor rather than a confident senior partner to Milly; Wolfwood is more openly caustic and is “the Punisher” and an undertaker rather than “Chapel” and a priest (whatever any of this means in the Eye of Michael), though they all more or less get there in the end.

Whereas in the original Trigun we spend a lot of time in Vash’s head reading his internal monologue, Stampede presents him more as a character to be observed or speculated on from a distance and, as such, somewhat more of an enigma. I think there’s an interesting line to be drawn between Vash’s missing POV and Stampede giving him a real consistent lack of agency - Meryl is often a catalyst for the plot, Wolfwood is transparently present to direct Vash to July whether he likes it or not, and Nai’s… absolutely everything all serve to give Vash less control of the decisions made in his life (I AM MEDITATING ON THE SAND STEAMER).

I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that we only really get Vash explaining his feelings in episode 12 when he’s finally worked up the courage to fight Nai again, or that we get more information about his past from flashbacks than in the modern day.

I’m… fine with both, honestly. Vash being a bit of a black box in Stampede makes it harder to understand his feelings on certain topics, but I have to wonder if - assuming he’s now ‘reclaimed his agency’ - he’s going to be more vocal about his feelings going forward. I’ll be curious to see the Stampede version of the Eriks arc, anyway. Also, controversial (apparently) but I really like his Stampede design a lot more than OG - it being more ‘modern’ makes thematic sense for a character from the age of Lost Technology, and he looks less dangerous than OG Vash who… well, Diablo, you have shown your true face, Tristamp Vash isn’t there yet til the finale, etc. etc. That said, he needs a new design for season 2, and I hope it incorporates more elements of his OG.

Not much to say on Nai; he’s got a larger role in Stampede than OG. Obviously.

I think that Stampede did Meryl a LOT of favours - where OG Meryl gets more time on the page, Stampede’s Meryl is IMO set up to become a stronger and more impactful character in the long run. I found that OG Meryl and Milly blended together a bit too much; two halves of one comedy skit that were often difficult to meaningfully differentiate.

Stampede’s Meryl gets to establish herself separately from Milly and has a much more obvious counterpoint in Roberto, who gets to die a tragic mentor death and propel Meryl’s character forward into, apparently, an exhausted chain-smoking slacker assigned a bright-eyed newbie to mentor and, honestly? I think that’s really sexy for her.

Stampede has also gone on to give Meryl more agency; whereas in OG her goal is to follow Vash exclusively, changing her profession to a reporter in Stampede allows her to follow other plot threads independently of him. It also ties in nicely to her theming as a “witness” to the changes about to rock No Man’s Land; this is part of the reason the perspective change from a heavy focus on Vash’s POV to him as a character that can only really be observed by others works for me just fine, though Wolfwood tends to ‘observe’ Vash while Meryl seems to ‘observe’ events. Also, I really do adore her being paired up with Zazie.

It can also be noted that unlike OG, Meryl is the catalyst for a lot of events that occur in the show; she finds Vash, she has Vash take them to Jeneora Rock; she helps Vash SAVE Jeneora Rock; she runs over Wolfwood which brings HIM into the party; it is her being kidnapped that brings the plot to July and she is the one that saves Vash from Nai. She’s got far more forward motion at this point than her original counterpart, and while I HOPE that changes for OG Meryl she has basically vanished for about 3 volumes at this point and I haven’t felt her absence much.

I don’t have much to say on Milly and Roberto; Milly’s not the type of character I’m especially drawn to, her presence in vols 1&2 is pretty weak and I don’t think she adds much outside of occasional comedy. I like Roberto for the role he plays in Meryl’s storyline as well as the more unique texture he adds to the group but wish he got more time to develop. Next.

Okay, so. Wolfwood. My special boy, the most importantest bestest guy in both the world AND my heart. Uh, so. He’s… not in volumes 1&2 except for the last 3 chapters, and those… basically just exist to go “hey Wolfwood exists! He does NOT want to be at this staff meeting!” which, mood, but it also means that (I assume) a lot of his story beats get introduced quite a bit earlier so that he can also grow into his new role at the end of Stampede.

As of vol 3 of TriMax, we’re still piecing together what Wolfwood’s deal even is and I would even go so far as to speculate that if TriMax Wolfwood is meant to deliver Vash to Knives… well, that’s already happened, so where are we going from here? Are we pulling other plot points forward even sooner, or have we already derailed in a big way?

It doesn’t really help that Stampede’s time crunch was never more obvious than in the Sand Steamer & Home, which makes Wolfwood’s storyline a real casualty of all that lost time. In OG, the Sand Steamer was its own arc involving the Bad Lads Gang where we get to learn that Vash is connected to Plants; in Stampede, it’s… Livio shows up, Wolfwood’s backstory gets dropped, Legato is introduced, the Bad Lads are still there, Hopeland almost gets steamrolled because Legato must always be the least normal person in the scene AND THEN we figure out Vash is a Plant… and then Home. It’s so much. It’s too much. There’s no breathing room to think about the tragedy of Wolfwood’s situation because we don’t know him very well and we jump straight into Vash’s backstory straight afterwards. I assume Wolfwood had a mental breakdown off-screen.

It’s going to be difficult to speculate on what Stampede is doing with Wolfwood until season 2 comes out AND I’ve finished Maximum, but where I’m very optimistic for Meryl I’m a lot more cautious here because while I GET why they needed to introduce elements of Wolfwood’s backstory to tie him into the same theme of moving into a new stage of their lives that Vash and Meryl have, they’re going to need to do some real damage control in season 2 because otherwise I don’t think this is going to hit right.

Like, I do GET why Wolfwood was introduced early, seriously - he’s such a major part of Maximum that with Stampede’s goal of remixing Vash and Meryl’s arcs they couldn’t leave him for season 2 (unlike Milly, who... doesn’t do much) and they can make this work, but... he’s where things are most likely to fall apart here, and that sucks.

So like, IS it a good adaptation (of the first two volumes)? Yeah, I think it’s fine? There are more changes I’m excited about than concerned about, which might change as I progress further into Maximum, but I can only assume events are going to get remixed further (the stinger about Earth in particular makes me think that) so I think Stampede and TriMax will ultimately be two very different beasts by the end of things.

And ultimately, I think I had more fun watching Stampede than reading the Trigun manga at this point. (Trigun, not Trigun Maximum, I’ll get to that later)

But Stampede needs more episodes. Seriously. Spring for a 24 episode season, Studio Orange, take like 4 years if you need to, because the biggest problem Stampede has is timing, and that’s going to hurt the emotional impact of any plot points going forward. We can live with it in s1 where the fallout for some of those has yet to hit, but that grace period won’t last forever.

Final Verdict:

Tristamp 8/10 “needed more episodes” Trigun 7/10 “legato saves you, seriously”

In conclusion: “Whoa! two cakes!”

#ac watches trigun #ac reads trigun

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blogkerlon · 2 years

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Mark wahlberg contraband

MARK WAHLBERG CONTRABAND MOVIE

Although they are similar, Contraband is actually a remake of the 2008 Iceland made Reykjavik-Rotterdam, of which Baltasar Kormakur was the producer.Ĭhris just happens to be made "ship's boy," which allows him to clean the bridge where the charts and maps are he needs to look at without seeming out of place. Worse of all is that both plots are packed with wild coincidences, that if taken away each film would have fallen apart. Both must jump through hoops to protect a hot blonde they love. Both feature a tough guy forced into dangerous situations at the behest of a baddie. He was good in The Fighter, but how can anyone put him on a pedestal for it when the supporting cast stole the film from him? Just as Van Dam had Dolph Lundgren, Wahlberg can act circles around John Cena, whose 12 Rounds was likewise filmed in New Orleans.Ĭontraband is also similar in plot to 12 Rounds. The Bostonian Wahlberg is to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon what Jean Claude Van Dam is to Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Giovani Ribisi and Mark Wahlberg in Contrabandīecause Mark Wahlberg acted in a film in which others involved received award attention, Wahlberg is now at a lofty height in film making? Bullshit.

MARK WAHLBERG CONTRABAND MOVIE

There's not a lot to think about while watching it and we've seen some of this plot before in other films, but for a movie opening in January, it's actually pretty damn good. And sure, this isn't a part that's going to win him awards, but it seems silly to criticize him for making an action film. Ironically, Wahlberg's success as an actor has lead to complaints in some reviews that this part is a step backwards for him. A blonde Kate Beckinsale (Why'd ya do it Kate? As a brunette you are hawt, but as a blonde, not nearly as much) however, is under-used as the wife who is just there to be put in jeopardy. Simmons provides some comic relief as the Captain of the ship where Chris is doing the smuggling. Ben Foster, who reminds me of a lesser Ryan Gosling, also does a good job as the best friend with a secret. He's not physically imposing, but he's so charged that you're never sure what he's going to do next. There's then a race to get the load back to the ship before it sails.Īlong with Wahlberg there are several standouts in the supporting cast. Chris's time in Panama, where he goes to pick up a large shipment of counterfeit money, features some of the best action as he's forced to partake in an armored car heist in exchange for the bills. The action scenes are plentiful and there are several moments of edge of your seat tension. The pace of the film is pretty brisk, despite its nearly two hour running time. Al Pacino even provided the concept's tagline in The Godfather III when he so memorably said, "Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in." That has to be the most overused plot in crime movies. It is this idea of the former crook having to do one last job that is the movie's biggest cliche. When Chris's brother-in-law runs afoul of Tim Briggs, a smalltime gangster played with psychopathic quirkiness by Giovanni Ribisi, Chris is forced into doing another smuggling job in order to pay off his brother-in-law's debt. Wahlberg plays Chris, a former smuggler who has gone legit, becoming a husband and a father with his own business installing security systems in New Orleans. It's also impressive that after all this time and success he's still managed to hold onto his blue collar cred. So even while he doesn't stretch himself in this film, he still holds its familiar plot together. He possesses a naturalness in front of the camera that's appealing and he's developed real acting talent. After nearly 20 years in the biz though and Mark Wahlberg has won me around. When Marky Mark, with his pecs and abs, first started making movies back in the 90s I wasn't his biggest fan. Mark Wahlberg and Ben Foster in Contraband.

#Mark wahlberg contraband

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inmyarmswrappedin · 3 years

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Im gonna pin a small part of skam's lost allure on Tarjei and the rest on NRK/remakes. For Tarjei's part, his character is credited for being a large part of the reason that skam found int'l success, but my dude wanted no parts of the fame/small celebrity that came with it. He stomped out that hype. As for NRK, in signing off on remakes that mostly cheapen the skam name, they fried the skam legacy. Disposable remakes that don't ever inspire/require a rewatch = the slow death of a fandom

Hi anon 🗿 I mean, I guess? This is such a weird ask. I don't doubt you feel this way, along with other people. I just don't think what appealed to you about Skam is what appealed to everyone.

First off, your ask appears to praise Tarjei for disappearing after Skam, but at the same time lowkey places responsibility upon him for Skam losing its ~allure. And tbh, the only thing that Tarjei has done differently is avoiding fan conventions. He has done many interviews, both print and video, and talked about Skam. He has gone to Pride events for Skam. He has participated in awareness campaigns for Skam (such as the pink elephant one). Hell, he made himself super available both during Skam and after, by participating in low budget stage plays like those of Antiteateret, which were very easy for moneyed stans to attend and then demand that he do stagedoor for. And if that weren't enough, his last year and a half of high school was turned into a meet and greet that he didn't sign up for. If he didn't attend fan cons so stans could get some residual evak dopamine hits, that doesn't mean he turned his back on his Skam fame and celebrity lmao. He seems very aware that he can afford to do whatever he wants because of Skam (not in terms of money because I’m pretty sure Skam didn’t pay that well, but in terms of industry cred and the roles offered to him).

Needless to say that, for me, fan conventions don't keep Skam's ~allure alive or are what appealed to me about Skam in the first place. Again, I don't doubt that people (many people even) are in it to continuously relive evak over and over, be it through Isak season remakes or through being in Henrik's vicinity at conventions or his mom's defunct restaurant.

As for the disposable remakes. First off, it's clear NRK did its best to protect the brand as much as it could. It required a number of things from the remake teams, such as compulsory research among local (to the remake country) teens. It's also pretty obvious (to me anyway) that one of the seasons had to be about a LGBTI main, another about a girl of color, and another touch on sexual assault. I'm pretty sure they'd have sold the show to many more countries if said countries could pass on one or more of these mains. There were reports that many more countries than ended up signing were interested in Skam. And tbh, if NRK didn't give two fucks about the Skam name like you suggest, if they were only in it for the money, then what stopped them from allowing every version to do an Even season, a lesbian Vilde season, a white gay Mahdi/Penetrator Chris/Jonas/background actor season, etc? I'm not going to say NRK hasn't signed off on some dodgy original season concepts, but lol idk about blaming NRK for the remake teams being incompetent.

As for rewatchability... eh. That's such a subjective aspect. For instance, Robbe's season is so boring and just badly made as far as I'm concerned, but some people think it's even better than Isak's season and certainly contains more shower scenes. People still rewatch Cris' season a ton, and I assume same goes for Lucas L's. @liburnapworld posted screenshots showing clips from Nora G's season reaching 10+ MILLION views. And I have personally rewatched Matteo's season more times than I care to mention. I would even rewatch what was out even while the season was still dropping. I also find that Skam Austin s2 is very rewatchable because you can see how the team was developing the side characters' future storylines in ways that most remake characters were probably not allowed to be developed. (Because the Austin contract had different clauses, like for instance Jo would've been allowed to have a season, and probably Kelsey as well.) Again, I don't doubt that many evak stans watched the s3 remakes (and only the s3 remakes, not the s1 and s2 remakes) once to relive the evak dopamine hit, but otherwise found them to be cheap and disposable. It just feels like that's not taking into account the people who showed up for Cris, Joana, Matteo, David, Lola, Shay, Jo, Fatou, Nora M, Nora G, Kieu My or Ava, and liked Eva, Noora, Isak and Sana well enough, or even A LOT, until these remake characters showed up.

#ask #Anonymous #the thing is I love isak so much still #so I should find common ground with evak stans #but I find opinions like these so alienating like...#no. I don't think tarjei not going to cons is what made skam less alluring #I think it's aspects like the writing or the soundtrack or the clip transitions or the length of clips tbh #these are aspects that aren't immediately obvious but which set skam apart from other teen shows

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caainhurst · 3 years

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THE HISTORY OF CRISPIN GLOVER’S BIZARRE DEBUT ALBUM

POSTED BY WITNEY SEIBOLD ON SEPTEMBER 20, 2017 VIA NERDIST.COM

Actor, artist, and lovable weirdo Crispin Glover first caught the public’s eye in 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, when he did a spasmodic dance to Lion’s “Love is a Lie.” The next year, he was George McFly in Back to the Future, the highest-grossing film of its year, and deeply entrenched within the geek canon. He also retained a good deal of street cred by appearing in River’s Edge, the film to win Best Picture at the Independent Spirit Awards in 1986. It wouldn’t be until 1989 that Glover would return to film. It was during this very brief hiatus that Glover, perhaps possessed by the muses, decided to explore his capacity for writing books and performing music.

For many young, upcoming stars, this is a rite of passage. Remember when Lindsay Lohan released two studio albums? Hailee Steinfeld is currently finding her feet as a pop sensation. Crispin Hellion Glover, however, wasn’t concerned as much with pop, and is not known for his dulcet singing voice. Even at the time, Glover was known for being a jittery weirdo; many may remember his infamous appearance on Late Night with David Letterman when he appeared as his fictional character Rubin Farr, answering every question with a non-sequitur. Rubin Farr was to eventually appear in 1991’s Rubin and Ed. In 1987, it made no sense.

So of course, Glover’s studio album debut was one off the most oblique, abstruse pieces of pop ephemera to come out in the ’80s. In 1988, Glover recorded and released THE BIG PROBLEM ≠ the solution. The Solution = LET IT BE. (complete with that punctuation), which is, to date, his only record. I own it on CD. Yes, it’s every bit as strange as one can imagine.

THE BIG PROBLEM, released by Restless Records, is a 13-track concept record that includes a few singles stand-alone songs, and multiple readings of strangely worded poetry set to dreamlike, atonal electronic or accordion music. Glover hooked up with famed novelty musicians Barnes & Barnes (Bill Mumy and Robert Haimer), who performed and recorded all the album’s music. Well, almost all the music. One of the accordion tracks,“Selected Readings from OAK MOT, part III” featured “Weird Al” Yankovic, who’s credited for a wild accordion solo. But fans of Barnes & Barnes likely hear the duo’s influence all over the record. It has the same sexually frustrated, echoey, strained vocal quality as the best of Barnes, and the same willfully simplistic, near-emetic tone. Glover and Barnes were a great pairing, and they amplified each other’s strangeness.

THE BIG PROBLEM was part of a larger multimedia art project that also incorporated two art books that Glover published that same year. Both books, Oak Mot and Rat Catching, were disturbing books of impenetrable poetry which repurposed existing books into nightmarish photo collages; Rat Catching was more or less an 1896 textbook that he re-drew page by page. Unsurprisingly, images from Rat Catching appear in the opening title sequence of the 2003 remake of Willard starring Glover. Glover toured with the books, giving live readings that were accompanied by slide shows and selected tracks from his album.

The album’s poetry readings are hypnotic, but the songs are outright comedic. There’s a rap about masturbating (“Auto-Manipulator”), a wonderful, wonderful, screeching, crying rendition of “These Boots Are Made for Walking,” and the big hit, a song about a clown called “Clowny Clown Clown.” Part of that track was featured on David Letterman until the annoyed host cut it short. The video, as you’ll see, also features Rubin Farr, whose photograph is in the record’s liner notes.

THE BIG PROBLEM feels like a prank, something that should not have been allowed to happen. There are no hints to its intentions, and no solutions to the titular problem. Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a hint. On the back of the album, Glover slipped in the inscription “All words and music point to THE BIG PROBLEM. The solution lay within the title; LET IT BE. Crispin Hellion Glover wants to know what you think these nine things have in common.” He left a telephone number so you could call up and give your own theories: (213) 464-5053. I called it, but it’s been disconnected. I’d love to know what was on that tape.

What do you think? I have no hotline, but I’d love to hear your theories.

#crispin glover

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shaydixons · 5 years

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I don't disagree with remake anon but I think it's important to also acknowledge that some remakes actively court international fandom when the isak season rolls around bc they know that's the season that made skam an international name. italia, france and españa removed the geoblock for their isak seasons and france greatly benefited from their international fandom for their s5 fan campaign. 1/2

a lot of articles about italia mentioned that the show, unlike most italian shows, had a following abroad, as one of the reasons it should be brought back. and wtfock has also brought up that international fans think their social game is superior to other remakes when promoting the show to belgian audiences. skam nl also removed the geoblock in hopes of getting enough views from international fans to get them cred locally 2/3

the only remakes that seem to have no interest in international fandom are austin and druck. not saying they are the best bc they do that, just that their strategy/promotion appears not to include international fandom at all. 3/3

hmmmm yeah i think you’re right about that like it’s hard to ignore the international fandom presence but at the same time people should really realize when they are or are not the target audience (does not mean they aren’t allowed to criticize, but just something that should be acknowledged from time to time). i mean obviously the international viewers was a huge reason skam got sold to other countries (i assume) and clearly some of them do care about international viewers (esp. like skam france) & also people who try to gatekeep their country’s remakes are annoying but anyway!!!! good point

#ask

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dramatothethirdpower · 5 years

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Boys Over Flowers

So I did a thing. I watched Meteor Garden 2018 and I loved it. I did some small google searches, enough to know it was a remake of an earlier version of a show with the same title, but not a deep dive. (This is relevant, I swear.)

As I was watching it I had this really weird feeling of de ja vu, like everything was super familiar but I didn’t know why.

A couple of weeks later I started Boys Over Flowers, which I’d been saving because I remembered enjoying the manga a billion years ago.

I fire it up and I am flabbergasted. It’s Meteor Garden! I’m screaming at my tv what’s going to happen next and really, the whole thing was not pretty.

So, tl;dr, my dumbass didn’t know they were basically the same show based off (I’m assuming) the manga. I watched it anyway.

How Much I Loved It: ★ ★ ★ ★

Rewatchability: ★ ★ ★

Bingeworthy: ★ ★ ★ ★

Cringe: ★ ★ ★

How Many Times I’ve watched it: ★

Tropes: ★ ★ ★

Soundtrack: ★

Favorite Episode: Season 1 Episode 10

Favorite Quote: If the person you love is suffering because of you, can you let her go?

OTP: Jan-Di and Ji-Hoo

Some of my favorite things:

Jun-pyo’s sentimentality. He was so much more vulnerable and willing to give himself than Si in Meteor Garden 2018. His character was so much more fleshed out and endearing.

Ji-hoo and his unrelenting affection for Jan-di. Even in moments where it’s clear that she’s under Jun-pyo’s spell he never stops being there for her.

Woo Bin’s storyline. He’s dark, he’s mysterious, he’s into some stuff but if he told you he’d have to kill you.

The modeling plot line. I really wish everyone had given her a little more street cred after she showed up on a magazine cover, but I guess all these kids are already rich and powerful so they’re allowed to be unimpressed.

Things I hated

Can we talk about the valley girl speak? Oh. My. Gawd. I was snickering. Probably less out of place in the time it was filmed in.

The violence! I almost quit a few times because of it.

The amnesia plot line. I wanted to throw things at the screen. So mean!

Sometimes the relationship felt forced. I wasn’t feeling some big romantic, they have to be together, vibe, as much as I did in Meteor Garden. I’d have liked more on screen chemistry where Jan Di and Jun Pyo we’re actually interacting and giving me a reason to root for them.

The ending. It was so anticlimactic.

Overall I really enjoyed it, I flew through it! I did occasionally find myself relying on a storyline that was better fleshed out in Meteor Garden to close some gaps, so I think they work best together.

#boys over flowers #kdrama #review #netflix #binge

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lovemyselfloveyourself · 5 years

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Come back home isn't even a BTS song it's a remake. They deserve no creds for it except for the line "angry hungry yes I'm hangry".

I know it’s a coverThat doesn’t mean they don’t deserve credit on how they did the song justice in the way they remade it. Especially if Seo Taiji allowed them to cover it in the first place.

#also yes that line is funny but it doesn't define the whole song #Anonymous #don't get me started on this please

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skammohn · 6 years

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Hi! Just found your blog and just like you, I'm obsessed with skam and I'm watching the remakes. So far I've watched s1, s2 of skamfr and a little bit of s1 Italia. I want to start watching the others, but I can't find links for skam austin (I tried FB but I think because I don't live in the US it doesn't allow me to watch it). Could you help a friend? Thanks! :D

hey @lavieonblue !!! yeah I have a link I found on tumblr (creds to https://austinskam.tumblr.com) ! it seems like the skam austin team is trying to block/delete most google drives. hopefully this works! if not let me know or I would try a VPN so you can access the fb page.

try this link: https://mega.nz/#F!2fwCCKRL!eH7x5FjmZ6tMyvPKnhIGTQ via austinskam

#skam ask #ask me anything

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 8/6/21 - THE SUICIDE SQUAD, FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL, VIVO, ANNETTE, AILEY, NEW YORK ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL, JOHN AND THE HOLE, and More

After a week with three new wide releases and others coming up in August with three and even four (!), it’s kind of nice to get a “quieter” week with only one wide release, plus it's one that I’ve already reviewed. Yay!

With that in mind, that allows me to start things off with two film festivals that are near and dear to my heart, the first being the 25th annual installment of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs from this Thursday, August 5 through August 25. That’s three weeks, which is sort of the norm, although it will be a festival that blends virtual with in-person screenings making it a true hybrid festival. Personally, I would love to be up in Montreal for some of the in-person screenings, as they tend to be quite rousing and rowdy events -- and that will include an early preview of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad this Thursday -- but I will have to settle for the fest’s vast screener library inste ad. Not that I’ve actually had time to watch much as I watched my entire weekend and free time slip away in order to watch and write about other things, but there’s some good stuff.

For instance, they’ll be premiering Donnie Yen’s new movie, Raging Fire, directed by Bennie Chan, next Tuesday, a few days before it gets a theatrical release across North America. (Its International Premiere is actually taking place at the New York Asian Film Festival, which you can read more about below.) Fantasia will also have the World Premiere for Rueben Martell’s Don’t Say Its Name, a horror movie featuring indigenous talent both in front of and behind the camera. Let Me Make You a Martyr filmmaker returns with his new crime-thriller Ida Red, starring Joshua Hartnett, Frank Grillo and Melissa Leo.

This year’s Fantasia is going to close with The Great Yokai War - Guardians, the sequel to Takashi Miike’s The Great Yokai War which opened Fantasia way back in 2006. In fact, Miike has probably been one of Fantasia’s most consistent guests, having many movies playing at the festival that never get released in the United States in any form.

It’s going to be an interesting mix of in-person screenings and on-demand virtual ones, and as in the past, it’s almost impossible to see everything. I think my only issue with Fantasia is that there are so many great genre films played there every year that it’s very hard to figure out which ones to watch when you’re not actually there on the ground.

And then closer to home in New York, another personal favorite, the New York Asian Film Festival is celebrating its 20th anniversary in a combination of virtual and in-person screenings running between Friday, August 6 and August 22. Sure, there can be a bit of overlap between the NYAFF and Fantasia, particularly in the Asian content, but there are also a few distinct things, like the festival’s opening night film, Escape from Mogadishu from South Korea’s Ryoo Seung-wan, which covers the same Somali civil war as Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down but from another perspective. It will also be released in theaters this Friday. Chinese actor Chan King Long’s directorial debut, Hand Rolled Cigarette, will also premiere this Friday, as will Aimee Long’s directorial debut, A Shot Through the Wall, both of them debuting at the Walter Reade Theatre (the latter on Sunday).

And there’s just a slew of virtual screenings of some of the latest and most recent Asian films, many of which will never get any sort of release in the United States. That is probably the best aspect of the NYAFF, because while there are many filmmakers like Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho, who will eventually break out here, many of the biggest Asian filmmakers first got their start with movies at NYAFF. That’s why those interested in international cinema should definitely be giving the NYAFF some of their time and money every year, since it’s such a terrific discovery festival… plus it’s also a lot of fun. I’m half tempted to go up to see some of the in-person screenings myself, this weekend.

I’ve never attended Geena Davis’ 2021 Bentonville Film Festival, but thanks to it also going semi-virtual or hybrid, I’ll have a chance to see a few movies I might not have otherwise. There are a few great films by women directors that have already played at other festivals and will be released soon, such as Sian Heder’s Sundance award-winning Coda (which opens next week!) and Natalia Morales’ Language Lessons, both excellent films that have played festivals this year. Other films I’ve seen and liked that are playing Bentonville, including the Van Jones doc, The First Step, and the comedy, 7 Days.

I’m also interested in the World Premiere of The Disappearance of Mrs. Wu, directed by Anna Chi; Waikiki, Christopher Kahunakana’s feature debut about a Native Hawaiian hula dancer trying to escape an abusive boyfriend; Edson Jean’s Ludi; and Andrew and Joe Erwin’s doc, The Jesus Music, which looks at Christian Music. Bentonville tends to be another great discovery festival. This is obvious when I look at winners from past festivals like Yellow Rose and The Garden Left Behind.

As mentioned above, there’s only one new wide release, and it’s James Gunn’s THE SUICIDE SQUAD (Warner Bros.), a semi-sequel to the 2016 blockbuster Suicide Squad directed by David Ayer that includes a few of the original actors but a few not of others, although it’s still the same general principle, only done in a far more comedic way. Got it?

In case you missed all that (or the original movie), The Suicide Squad is based on the DC Comics superteam, of sorts, made up of DC villains who are seen as expendable as they’re sent on missions by Amanda Waller (played again by Viola Davis). If they fail or try to escape, their heads get blown up by explosives planted at the base of their skull. Fun, huh?

The original movie opened with an amazing $133 million and grossed $325 million In North America alone and another $422 million overseas, although reviews were less than kind and the fans, maybe a little less kinder. Sure, some people liked parts of it, but there were other parts that were just a disaster, so the movie grossing over $300 million was astounding (similar to the “Transformers” movies, in fact.)

Along comes James Gunn, freshly fired from the third Guardians of the Galaxy, which he will be doing next…. After a Christmas Special next year, and a Peacemaker HBO spin-off from this movie that hasn’t even been released yet. Warners snapped up Mr. Gunn, hoping that he could do for their property what he did for Guardians. While this may not be the most important IP in their drawer but has already proven to make enough money that you couldn’t just leave it in there forever. Fortunately, Gunn convinced Warner Bros. to let him make the R-rated Suicide Squad movie that the first one should have been and without the reins of a PG-13 Disney-released movie, Gunn could go absolutely nuts, and he did.

Some might be worried about WIll Smith not being in the sequel, because let’s face it, Big Willie is indeed an A-list star with a wide variety of fans of different ages, creeds, and colors. The fact that Will Smith could help turn an Aladdin movie directed by Guy Ritchie into a significant hit for Disney, well, that shows his power.

Even without Smith, Margot Robbie returns as Harley Quinn, who was last seen in last year’s Birds of Prey, a movie that was expected to do a lot better than its $33 million opening last February, before it got completely hobbled by the rise of COVID in March. It ended up grossing just $200 million worldwide, less than half of that in North America, and it might have put a damper on DC doing another R-rated superhero movie… except The Suicide Squad was well under way. Also back is Joel Kinnaman as Col. Rick Flag, a regular in the comics, and a decent actor but not someone anyone could seriously consider a box office draw. Other than Suicide Squad, Kinnaman has starred in quite a few bombs including a Robocop remake that tanked with $58.6 million domestic (it did better overseas), and then Run All Night, directed by Jaume Collet-Sera of last week’s Jungle Cruise, which made half that amount.

More importantly, the movie introduces a lot of new characters, including Idris Elba as Bloodsport, replacing Will Smith’s Deadshot, which might seem like a bit of a stepdown considering that Smith may be one of the top A-list stars on the planet, while Elba is popular but nowhere on the same level. Hey, it’s truth. Granted, Elba played Heimdall in Marvel’s Thor and a bunch of his sequels, and he’s provided his voice in quite a few Disney hits, while also appearing in a few odds and ends in terms of genre films like Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (which hit the $100 million mark) and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, which did a little better. Still, Elba has created quite a fanbase around him for shows like Luther and The Wire, and his role in The Suicide Squad should help him line up more leading roles in bigger movies. I wouldn’t expect him to play James Bond but he’ll be around a long time.

After that, there’s sometimes-wrestler John Cena as Peacemaker, another less-than-known DC character, but Cena also brings his fanbase (sort of) from wrestling, to which he’s returning for WWW SummerSlam in a few weeks. Cena hasn’t necessarily made huge waves on the big screen, although we can’t forget that he was just in F9: The Fast Saga, the latest in the unstoppable franchise that’s one of the biggest movies of the pandemic year. He also starred in Paramount’s Bumblebee, adding to his franchise cred. As mentioned above, Cena already has warranted his own HBO Max series, so obviously, someone at Warner Media felt he was doing something right.

Other key roles include Sylvester Stallone voicing King Shark, David Dastmalchian from Ant-Man playing “Polka Dot Man” (about as D-list a DC character you can possibly get but used hilariously in the movie), as well as Ratcatcher 2, played by Daniella Melchior, not be confused with her father, Ratcatcher 1. Oh, and of course, Viola Davis, the Oscar-winning goddess who should have won another Oscar for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, but no, I’m not bitter that it screwed up my oscar pool. There’s a lot of other actors, many from Gunn’s other films like Mike Rooker, brother Sean Gunn, and Nathan Fillian, and if they were in the movie for very long, I would consider them something to consider, though their presences does insure that this is indeed a James Gunn movie.

As has been the case quite a bit since I revived this column to discuss box office, we have to take two things into account, one being COVID and the fears surrounding it that have kept many otherwise sane people away from movie theaters. Also, The Suicide Squad will be premiering concurrently on HBO Max, so anyone who has the WM streamer could literally just turn it on Friday and watch the movie for no extra charge beyond whatever they pay per month. Unlike other movies that had this kind of release, Warners is allowing theaters to play the movie for Thursday night previews, so there’s a lot of money that can be made there (and all weekend) from those who choose to see it in theaters. (Honestly, I have no idea why anyone would want to watch this movie, especially it’s absolutely enormous last act, on a computer or television, but welcome to 2021. Whine whine whine.)

I was ready to go north of $60 million on this one because it seems like the kind of movie that could get people back out into theaters, especially when you realize how much the original movie made and how the idea of heroes whose heads can be blown up at any moment (and in that case, the R-rating helps). Then I remembered Birds of Prey and how that came out pre-COVID and couldn’t even open over $40 million, so I had to lower my expectations, although I still think this will fare very well even with HBO Max and COVID in play, so I’m going with somewhere in the mid-$50 million range.

You can read my review of The Suicide Squad over at Below the Line.

This is how I see the Top 10 playing out at the box office:

1. The Suicide Squad (Warner Bros.) - $55 million N/A

2. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $17.5 million -50%

3. Black Widow (Marvel/Disney) - $3.6 million -45%

4. Stillwater (Focus) - $3.1 million -40%

5. Old (Universal) - $3 million -56%

6. The Green Knight (A24) - $2.8 million -58%

7. Snake Eyes (Paramount/MGM/Skydance) - $2.1 million -52%

8. Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros.) - $2 million -53%

9. F9: The Fast Saga (Universal) - $1.5 million -45%

10. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (Sony) - $1.3 million -42%

Hitting Netflix on Friday is the animated musical, VIVO (Netflix), which was produced by Sony Pictures Animation but then sold to Netflix rather than trying to make it work in theaters. Directed by Kirk DeMico (The Croods) and Brandon Jeffords, in features the voice of Lin-Manuel Miranda as the voice of the title character, an organ grinder’s monkey in Havana, Cuba with his organ grinder Andrés, voiced by Juan de Marcos González (Buena Vista Social Club), who desires to be reunited with his long-separated love Marta (voiced by Gloria Estefan), who went off to fame and fortune as a singer because Andrés didn’t want to express his feelings for her in fear of her giving up her singing career. Vivo ends up in Miami and decides to try to find Marta and reconnect the lovebirds.

Just really catchy numbers written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, so if you like his work from In the Heights and Hamilton and Moana, etc. etc, then there are more songs he wrote, which he sings… mostly in the body of an animated monkey. The story itself isn’t particularly great, as the movie takes what would be a unique and novel setting i.e Cuba and introduces a number of animated movie stereotypes, including the weird girl Gabby (Ynairaly Simo), who gets increasingly more annoying as the film goes on.

In general, I loved most of the songs and the musical production (other than Gabby’s theme, which I was not crazy about), more than the story or the actual animation. Because Vivo is a monkey, there’s a weird section of the film that talks about vaccines and quarantines, probably written before the pandemic, which just makes it that much weirder.

Vivo has some decent emotional beats and terrific songs, but otherwise, it seems very cookie-cutter in terms of the storytelling. It’ll be just fine for kids, but adults may have trouble staying very interested.

Speaking of musicals, the rock opera ANNETTE (Amazon), written by, and with music and songs from Russell and Ron Mae AKA Sparks, will hit theaters this Friday in advance of its debut on Amazon Prime Video on August 20. Directed by Leos Carax (Holy Motors), the movie stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard as stand-up comic Henry McHenry and opera singer Ann, respectively, who get married and have a baby girl named Annette, who is actually a puppet that sings. (I did warn you that this is from Sparks and Leos Carax, right?)

Annette is exactly what anyone should expect from this collaboration between the quirky L.A. avant-rock duo and the French auteur, even if you believe the FFS song that “Collaborations Don’t Work” -- which you would know not to be true if you went to see Edgar Wright’s documentary, The Sparks Brothers, as I recommended last month! But instead of dubbing this a musical, it’s gotta be called for what it actually is… a ROCK OPERA. Annette reminded me a lot of ‘70s musical movies like Tommy and Godspell, where you knew there must have been some drug use involved (cause it was the ‘70s).

Driver’s stage performances are definitely some of the aspects that will divide audiences, because he veers from being an outrageous shock comic (think a mopeyer Sam Kinnison) to just being an insane and abusive jerk who drives even his devout fans away. The two extended sequences show Driver at his most emotive, but he’s also the kind of character that could push the movie’s audiences away as effectively as he does his fans. On the other hand, Cotillard is absolutely brilliant, even if she isn’t singing her own opera, as is Simon Helberg -- yes, that guy from The Big Bang Theory -- as her piano accompanist who later becomes a conductor, and then more.

The movie’s mood constantly shifts gears and direction, although it never is quite funny enough to be considered “comedy,” and if one really needed to categorize it, it would be placed in the realm of dark thriller… with music.

One thing that Sparks fans should know is that this is not a movie full of new Sparks songs, even if it is full of Sparks music. In other words, other than a couple actual songs -- like the opening overture -- there isn’t much of the music that might work separately or out of content with the movie or the story. Like in opera, almost everything is sung with very little spoken dialogue persé, and this was clearly a decision.

I’m not quite sure Annette will find either Sparks or Carax many new fans -- I definitely liked it more than Holy Motors, that’s for sure -- but for many, it’s going to be a strange experience to get through and maybe one they won’t necessarily need to see in theaters.

I finally got around to watching Jamila Wignot’s documentary, AILEY (NEON), which has been playing in theaters in New York the past few weeks and is expanding to other areas this Friday. Of course, the film is about legendary New York choreographer Alvin Ailey, whose work spanned six decades before his death in 1989 but not before he helped many dancers and other choreographers beak it into the contemporary dance scene.

It’s a little weird writing about this movie now, because just two weeks ago, I was writing about another dance doc called, Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters, about another specific work by a choreographer and the message it was sharing about AIDS. In fact, Jones also appears in this doc talking about the influence and assistance Ailey gave him earlier in his own career.

Ailey is a much more straight-forward portrait doc about Ailey’s life and career, and because of that, I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as Can You Bring It, but the two movies actually end up acting as nice companion pieces to each other despite being made by different filmmakers in different environments.

Lucy Walker’s documentary BRING YOUR OWN BRIGADE (CBSN) will play in theaters starting Friday and then on Paramount Plus and CBSN starting August 20. It looks at the 2017 fires that absolutely destroyed Paradise, California, and unlike Ron Howard’s Rebuilding Paradise, this is as much about the fire and how it affected people as the aftermath and figuring out how to rebuild. I thought it was pretty good, although it’s tough to

Incidentally, I wrote about and reviewed Edson Oda‘s NINE DAYS (Sony Pictures Classics) last week, but it’s going to expand into a few hundred more theaters this weekend, as well.

Legendary character actor Udo Kier stars in Todd Stephens’ SWAN SONG (Magnolia Pictures), which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival back in March, and I quite enjoyed it. It will get a limited theatrical release this weekend and then will be released digitally. In this comedy, Kier plays Pat Pitsenbarger, a flamboyant hairdresser who escapes from his Ohio nursing home in order to grant a former client her dying wish of having him design her hairstyle. Also starring Jennifer Coolidge, it will be in theaters this Friday and On Demand August 13, and hopefully I can write more about it next week, because I did quite like it but didn’t have time for another viewing.

Another movie from Sundance that’s finally hitting theaters (and digital) this Friday is Pascual Sisto’s JOHN AND THE HOLE (IFC Films), written by Nicolás Giacobone, who wrote Alejandro Iñárritu’s Birdman and Biutiful. It stars Charlie Shotwell as the title character, John, who traps his family in a bunker that he finds in the woods behind their home. I wish I could tell you that there’s more to the movie than that or that it offers something riveting or thought-provoking or something unforgettable, but I’d be lying. It’s not good.

It stars Michael C. Hall as John’s father and Jennifer Ehle as his mother, but Shotwell plays such a bland character that I just had a hard time finding anything that could really maintain my interest. The characters were boring, the writing was bland (which says a lot about how great a director Innaritu is), and there was just nothing I could glom onto. In that sense, the movie reminded me a bit of the first time I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable in terms of all the boring conversations that dragged that movie down, and this has a similar issue.

There’s just no way around declaring that there really wasn’t very much that I liked about this movie, and honestly, the fact I tried to watch it a THIRD time after my first two attempts tell me that I’ve done more than my share of trying. It’s just not a good movie.

Unfortunately, my schedule this week got derailed quite tragically, so there were a few other foreign films I hoped to get to but just didn’t have the time…

From Korea (via the New York Asian Festival, as mentioned above) is Ryoo Seung-wan’s Korean war thriller, ESCAPE FROM MOGADISHU (Well GO USA), as the movie is in Korean, but it’s about two Korean war correspondents caught up in the Somali war.

From Uruguay, Maxi Contenti’s THE LAST MATINEE is about an audience attending the last showing of a horror film in a downtown cinema that’s terrorized by a murderer killing them off one by one. (This is actually my kind of jam so I’ll try to watch and write something about it once I do. I just ran out of time this week.)

From Afghanistan comes Mariam Ghani’s doc WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED (Dekanalog), which takes a look at the state-funded filmmaking program during the country’s Communist era with a bunch of writers, actors and filmmakers talking about five unfinished and unedited projects made between 1978 and 1991.

The Film Forum in New York City is starting another film series (or rather, continuing it from when it started before COVID in March 2020) called “The Woman Behind Hitchcock,” starting this Friday, which is fairly self-explanatory, but it should be a great series with a lot of rare films being shown.

Also hitting Apple TV+ this Friday are the first few episodes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s MR. CORMAN, in which he stars as the title character, produces, directs and writes a bunch of the episodes. In it, he plays an elementary school teacher in L.A., who is trying to come to terms with a lot of portions of his life. I’ve seen about half the episodes in the first season, and it’s quite a different show than anything else out there. I’ll have an interview with the Cinematographer, Jarod Presant, over at Below the Line later today.

A few movies that I just didn’t get to this week, include: THE MACALUSO SISTERS (Glass Half Full) MATERNA (Utopia) FIREBOYS NIGHTDRIVE (Dark Sky Films)

Next week, it’s August 13, and we have three new wide releases! (See what I mean?) We get Ryan Reynold’s Free Guy, the horror sequel Don’t Breathe 2, and the Aretha Franklin biopic, Respect.

#The Weekend Warrior #Movies #Reviews #Box Office #Suicide Squad #Annette #Vivo #John and the Hole #Ailey #swan song

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