#so far my only success has been fleabag

[thelowcalcalzonezone]

watched tangled on friday with my roommate and it made think about the sheer lore of the series. like damn they didn't have to go that hard but they DID.

also i'm desperate to share the show with them but it's too late they started watching outlander 😔

[denimbex1986]

'There’s a scene in Andrew Haigh’s new film All of Us Strangers that felt a bit like watching my own life in flashback. It takes place in the Whitgift Centre in 1980s Croydon, south London, where key parts of the film were shot. Also included is Haigh’s actual childhood home in nearby Sanderstead, where he lived until around the age of nine, before his parents divorced and he moved away. The scene in question lasts only a few seconds as a young boy (Adam) crosses the sombre shopping mall. But it was enough to transport me back to my own experience as a young kid growing up in the same London borough, a few years after Haigh’s time there.

In the 80s and 90s, Croydon felt like an incredibly oppressive place to grow up in. Head down there today, and you’ll find that the shopping centre hasn’t changed much, save that it’s largely lined with discount stores rather than the popular high-street names that once filled it. Meanwhile, the sense of alienation that comes with being a young person in this incongruous suburb tacked onto the southwest of sprawling megacity London feels hauntingly familiar.

“It’s those English suburbs, they’re very, very conservative. They always were,” Haigh says when we meet for our interview in Soho on an unseasonably warm autumn afternoon. “Back then, they were not a pleasant place for someone that’s different to grow up.”

In All of Us Strangers, young Adam is beginning to realise that his sexuality is setting him apart from the comforting familiarity of his beloved parents’ world. Sadly, this is not an experience unique to the 80s, but one that resonates with LGBTQ+ people even now.

The grown-up, contemporary-era version of Adam is played by Andrew Scott. The Fleabag star plays a lonely gay man that is struggling to let go of the past in order to find happiness and move forward. One day, Adam meets the younger and far more outwardly free Harry — exceptionally played by Paul Mescal — who lives in the same apartment block. They begin an intoxicating affair that at last allows Adam a sense of connection and freedom he has denied himself.

You’ll likely know Haigh’s work from his 2011 breakout romantic drama Weekend, starring Chris New and Tom Cullen, which resonated with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Its frank depiction of an overnight affair between two gay men captured the attention of a community that responded well to seeing a sexual and emotional relationship being handled in such a refreshingly candid way on screen. The film’s commercial and critical success opened doors for Haigh in the US. HBO courted him to create Looking, the cult TV series starring Jonathan Groff, Russell Tovey, and Murray Bartlett. But it’s the intense and challenging All of Us Strangers that has propelled the director back into the spotlight.

“When I wrote [All of Us Strangers], I did feel like my intention was to tell an experience of a very specific generation of gay men,” says Haigh. “I think it’s been called by other people the ‘middle generation’, the generation of gay men that came into their sexuality, or came to understand their sexuality, while AIDS was affecting and killing so many people. So, you’re not in the generation before, who grew up coming into sexuality before AIDS, and you’re not in the generation who came after, where there is now medication, and it’s no longer a death sentence.

“Coming out in the 90s, in the shadow of AIDS and HIV, to be gay and to have gay sex equated with death, disease, and social isolation. I remember growing up thinking there was literally no future for me: ‘I cannot be a gay person in the world.’ That carries a lot of shame and a lot of self-hatred. It takes a lifetime to get rid of that,” he reflects. “You don’t have to scratch the surface very far to feel how you used to feel.”

While legislation may allow gay people greater equal rights, Haigh underscores that social attitudes are still a way behind. The wounds of growing up in the years post-AIDS are still raw. “Today, straight people have decided it’s OK now. They’ve decided that now we’ve got gay marriage, that it should be fine for us now. And they’ve forgotten how they used to treat us. We haven’t forgotten; we can still remember,” says Haigh, his calm and measured tone belying a defiant message. “We’re being told we should be happy. It doesn’t mean we are actually fully embracing who we are.”

On shame, Haigh highlights how it never just vanishes. “We’re supposed to have got rid of it, but of course, it still lingers. It doesn’t go away, but you can soften it and deal with it. But I also feel like that’s not necessarily a queer thing. Any kind of difference can make you feel isolated and alone. And lots of people have things that make them different.”

In terms of realising his own sexuality, Haigh remembers finding other men attractive as a kid. “There was always something about boys that I wanted to be around. I’d see a teenage boy and be like, ‘Why am I staring at that person’s hairy legs?’” says Haigh of those early impulses. On a trip to London, he was confronted with a poster about HIV featuring a man and a woman. “It was like, ‘Which do you prefer?’ I remember thinking, ‘I definitely prefer that picture of that man.’ It was the first time I really realised. It’s of no surprise that those things became connected.”

Closeting himself through school and university, Haigh had girlfriends to hide his identity. After university, he found himself living in London. ‘I cannot do this any longer,’ he told himself. “I was wandering around Soho after work looking in the windows of sex shops and wanting to buy a porn video, finally plucking up the courage to buy one. Then, sneaking it back to my flat and watching it and being like, ‘Oh my God, I know what it is that I want.’”

With his newly accepted sexuality, Haigh did what most gay men in the 90s did: he hit the scene, from Heaven to Popstarz and Wig Out at The Ghetto. “I remember going to G-A-Y in the Astoria and seeing what felt like a thousand gay people all in one room, and I was like, ‘Fuck. Oh my God, all of these people are like me.’ It makes me a bit sad that some people maybe don’t experience that now, because those things don’t exist in the same way.”

It was through London’s gay scene that Haigh came across his first film subject: an escort named Pete, who would become the focus of his semi-dramatised 2009 documentary film, Greek Pete. The film’s naturalistic style was the perfect precursor to Weekend, which felt relatable to so many gay men for its forthright take on love-at-gay-sight, and the giddy highs that come with exploring somebody new, and how you can give of yourself to them so unreservedly. “You have a chance, don’t you, to redefine yourself when you meet someone new,” says Haigh, “and you don’t have so much baggage that you have with friends and family. You get a chance to be like, ‘Actually, I’m going to say this thing about me or express this feeling,’ which you might not have ever said to anybody before.”

Arriving over a decade later, All of Us Strangers is viewed by Haigh as having a conversation with his breakthrough second film. “I’m 12 or 13 years older than when I wrote Weekend. I’ve changed, and my understanding of my own queerness has changed and developed,” muses Haigh of the two films’ thematic connections.

“I wanted to expand things that I had been thinking about for a long time. People had always asked if I was going to do a sequel to Weekend, and it just never made sense to me. Weekend is crazy because I had no concept that that film would be seen by people. Or, I think if I did know, I probably would have been more timid at the time about certain things.” Where Weekend may have been audacious for its time, the years since have allowed Haigh to fully release the restraints in All of Us Strangers.

There are many complex, intertwining layers in his universally lauded new film, All of Us Strangers: addiction, shame, grief. While they all pull at the characters, it never at any point feels excessive. Striking that balance was pivotal to making the film feel authentic. “I knew that it was about a lot of things all working together, and all of those things come from a similar place, essentially,” says Haigh. “The grief of losing a parent, the trauma of that, and also the trauma of growing up in a time, and the grief that your childhood wasn’t what you wanted it to be. I wanted the film to feel like there were so many things wrapped up together that linked to other things that can lead to addiction, that can lead to pain, to someone shutting down and not allowing anyone into their lives.

“They’re wrapped up together in a way that you can’t tell where the edges of all of those things are. They’ve all become this knot, essentially. What’s driving the film is the only way to soften that is to find people that care about you. And perhaps, more importantly, how you do that for other people. Adam and Harry, they realise that they need to do things for each other. That being there for someone else is as important as them being there for you. I think sometimes you can be quite selfish with love, expecting that you need to be loved, without realising you actually need to make sure that you’re giving that to someone else.”

The uncanny isolation of the characters is even more tangible seeing as the film was written during the Covid pandemic. “There’s an element of that, of being locked literally inside your house, but also into yourself. And I think when you focus in on yourself, the past comes back. Relationships from the past come back,” observes Haigh.

Another way All of Us Strangers sets itself apart from the director’s filmography is the unnaturalistic cinematography and vivid lighting that fills many of Scott’s scenes with Mescal. “I knew that the only way for this film to work was if it felt slightly shifted from reality,” says Haigh. “I wanted it to exist on a slightly different plane. You had to feel like you were somehow suspended. I wanted to be plunged deeper into some kind of psychological state.”

The actors are similarly beguiling in their roles. Mescal excels as Harry, bringing an effortless toughness and tenderness in equal parts. “I wanted this character to be someone who you felt like his version of falling in love was caring for that other person. That’s what you see unfolding. His version of love is: ‘I care about you, and I want to help you, and I want to know you,’” says Haigh of messy Harry. “Paul’s a really compassionate person. He genuinely cares about people, and is emotionally engaged in other people’s struggle. You feel that. His performance is really beautifully judged in terms of that.”

Mescal was fully aware that the role would only work if it didn’t compete with that of his on-screen partner. “He’s a very generous person and a generous actor. He knew that this is a film essentially about Adam, and he’s a supporting role in that. That’s not easy for an actor. They know they are supporting, but they know they need their role to be important, too.”

Scott’s portrayal of Adam is similarly enthralling. The character’s inner conflict is tortured, and Scott pours himself into the role, but never once does it feel unwarranted. Scott plays Adam delicately in moments, then viscerally in others. “I know that he felt so connected to the material,” says Haigh of Scott. “When I started giving the scripts to people, they’d say, ‘This feels like it’s written for me and about me.’ And Andrew felt that. This is a film about the past bleeding to the surface. When you see it in Andrew coming to the surface, it’s genuine. It’s a beautiful performance, and it feels so real.”

Haigh applies a considered touch to the more intense scenes, which never feel like they’re being played for a reaction. In different hands, with a different actor, a different director, they could have failed. “There’s lots of sadness in the story,” says Haigh. “I was like, ‘OK, I want people to have an emotional reaction to it. But I don’t want them to feel completely manipulated into that emotion.’ You’re trying at every stage to work out, ‘Does this feel genuine?’”

From the older married straight couple played by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay in 45 Years (for which Rampling was Academy Award nominated) to All of Us Strangers, solitude and loneliness are consistent themes in much of Haigh’s work. If the British are renowned for their emotional reservedness, Haigh would be something of an auteur of the British condition on film.

Something the director is not shy to confront is how society also forces us to seek the comfort of others to mask loneliness. “We feel like that is the solution. But if you’re still hiding it, you’re still hiding it. And you can be very alone in relationships. You can be very alone with all of your friends,” he says. “But also the essence of being human is that we are essentially alone in the world. And our whole life is about dealing with that until the day we die, when you’re essentially alone again. It’s a greater existential question that will never go away, and we pretend it has. ‘Oh, no. I’m happy, everything’s great, we’re all good.’ We’ll buy things, we’ll do stuff, we’ll have fun. We’ll go and have a nice meal in a restaurant. It doesn’t escape the essential aloneness.”

On telling queer stories, Haigh is aware that LGBTQ+ people have been starved of on-screen representation for so long that people have a tendency to lash out at anything that either does not mirror their experience or presents them less than positively. “People can react with real vitriol, real hatred. I understand it when you’re desperate for representation, you want that representation to be you, essentially,” says Haigh about reactions to series like Looking or Russell T. Davies’ actually rather good Cucumber.

Haigh continues, “But it’s not you. It’s representing the person that’s made that show. It feels like that might be changing now. I feel like people are starting to be a little bit more compassionate to difference within the community, rather than it needing to be a strict representation of them.”

Part of these extreme reactions, Haigh says, is also down to the disparity between generations. “There’s a lot of anger from a younger generation against my generation. I’m like, ‘You’ve only just come out, please. We’ve dealt with our own shit.’ You just wish that everybody could realise that we’ve actually all been through the same fucking shit. We should as a community be supportive of each other. Even if we are very different and have different viewpoints on our lives.”

When it comes to those perspectives, there really is only one that Haigh can be responsible for: his own. It’s served him well. Over five remarkable films and his television work, he’s gradually unpicking what it means to be alone in a world that moves on regardless of our feelings, and what it also means to exist in the context of being loved in the same.

Haigh’s under no pretence that the medium of directing is a mirror through which he interprets his life. “It reflects my concerns, my ideas, my thoughts. I never want my films to be narcissistically about me. I’m not interested in that. But the films are an expression of how I see things,” he says as our conversation finds its natural conclusion. “It’s often what I find quite difficult, because [in terms of fame] I don’t want to be necessarily ‘in the world’. But I’m also making films that go into the world in a big dramatic way. So, there’s a tension there, and that triggers a lot of emotional things in me. But it definitely is, it’s a mirror, without a doubt.”'

[kingstylesdaily]

Paul Roberts: How he taught Harry Styles his gloom-busting Kindness moves

When the Harry Styles video for Treat People With Kindness was released it became an immediate hit. Its choreographer Paul Roberts had created dances for One Direction - though with 1D there was no Phoebe Waller-Bridge to consider. So how did Roberts combine the two stars' talents to create the energy-lift which people have been craving in the Covid gloom? 

Styles' video for Treat People with Kindness came out on New Year's Day - though it was shot in London in February 2020.

Choreographer Roberts had worked often with Styles in the One Direction years. Roberts says the timing of the shoot, at the art deco Troxy in Stepney, east London, turned out to be fortuitous.  

"We had a great time but we didn't know how lucky we were. Looking back it was about three weeks before the world started to burn. Maybe that's partly why people are loving it now - the video has such a carefree sense to it."

Roberts has had 20 years as one of the UK's most in-demand commercial choreographers. He created dances for the 2019 Spice World tour and has worked with everyone from Katy Perry to Sir Paul McCartney. 

He devised work for the dance group BalletBoyz and, as well as stage work, he choreographed One Direction in videos such as Kiss You, Steal My Girl and Best Song Ever.

"So when Harry got in touch to say he wanted me for a new video it was a thrill. The only definite thing was it would be a song from the album Fine Line - but we didn't even know which song would be chosen."

With One Direction, Roberts spent six years working with a hugely successful boy band whose members insisted dance would never become a major part of the act.

'Waiting for 10 years'

Wasn't that a choreographer's nightmare?

"It was always really interesting working with One Direction. I knew very early on that there was a magic about them and I could see they had other skill-sets aside from being this very good-looking five-piece - and then four-piece - band.

"In personal moments you got to see them flourish. They'd mess around doing silly dance moves but I'd think, 'Actually if you wanted to dance really well you sure as hell could do it.' 

"So when Harry contacted me and we spoke about doing a video with a lot of dance I was like, 'Well I've been waiting 10 years for this.'" Styles knew he wanted Phoebe Waller-Bridge to have an equal presence.  

"I believe Harry went to see Phoebe in the West End when she had her success with Fleabag. They went out to dinner and got on really well. That's when Harry started to think how they could  work together in some way."

Before shooting began there was a five-week rehearsal period - far more generous than most projects ever get. But a lot of the time Styles and Waller-Bridge weren't in the same room or indeed country.

"I was with Harry in a dance studio in London and we had all kinds of music to try out from modern alternative stuff to old school big band and Glenn Miller. We were exploring. Only on the third day did we begin to apply what we'd done specifically to the Treat People With Kindness track.  

"Meanwhile Phoebe was in Canada working on the James Bond script. But fortunately I had a brilliant assistant on the project called Jared Hageman so Jared flew out to work with Phoebe. And eventually Harry needed to be in LA so I went there.  

"He was amazingly devoted to the whole thing. He'd be shooting the Watermelon Sugar promo in Malibu and they'd wrap at 8pm but he'd get in a car and come to the studio and we'd rehearse moves until gone midnight."

Roberts says by then it was clear the choreography would at least nod to the Hollywood of an earlier age.  

'Dance language'

"The directors Ben and Gabe Turner sent me a link to a black and white movie from 1943 called Stormy Weather. There is a justly famous sequence in it with the Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, called Jumpin' Jive.  

"I think it's the greatest dance-sequence ever filmed and Gabe and Ben and Harry all wanted our video to have some of the same feel.

"I think in Harry's head he wanted to push himself to the absolute limit of what he was capable of.  We were never talking about just an average soft-shoe shuffle.

"So the reality was that I and Jared would talk constantly and exchange material from thousands of miles part. And of course Phoebe and Harry would also pitch in ideas.  

"We wanted to find a dance language that would take things as far as we could possibly go with Phoebe and Harry, without it becoming comedic. 

"Actually my big worry was practical - that they'd both start out with massive energy but that as the weeks progressed you'd have these two incredibly busy people with no time for everything needed to make the project special. But neither would give up, not for a moment."

Nostalgia for better times

He says it was important the dancing had a contemporary edge as well. "Harry and Phoebe are modern artists and very intelligent. They're fashion forward-thinking.

"I find that once you've stopped giving artists their steps it's often quite nice to step back and just watch how they interpret the music. Sometimes little gems can be grabbed and put into the mix.

"It was discovered very early on that both Harry and Phoebe had huge potential. The delight came from their energy combined with the talent of the film-makers plus the extended period of time we had to rehearse.

"I work in a world where budgets have shrunk considerably so it was a big investment for managements and Harry's label."

Roberts remembers the two stars finally came together for little more than the last week of the project, including the shoot. But there was still time to bring in a ballet dancer to give guidance on "port de bras" - how to hold your shoulders or extend an arm gracefully.  

"Harry and Phoebe are both decent and generous beings. So we all kept it fun, despite the blood, sweat and tears which had gone into the preparation.

"When finally we were together they could layer on little side-eyed glances or maybe some tiny movement of the face which the camera would pick up. Above all we wanted a sense of style [no pun intended] and panache."

He says the fact most of us feel a real lack of either style or panache in our lives has given Treat People With Kindness an impact as a video it might not otherwise have had.

"The whole thing has a nostalgia for a time where you could be in a club and socialise with friends with no social distancing. I think the chemistry Harry and Phoebe have together just oozes joy. And for most people joy is in short supply."

via BBC.com

[hlupdate]

When the Harry Styles video for Treat People With Kindness was released it became an immediate hit. Its choreographer Paul Roberts had created dances for One Direction - though with 1D there was no Phoebe Waller-Bridge to consider. So how did Roberts combine the two stars' talents to create the energy-lift which people have been craving in the Covid gloom?

Styles' video for Treat People with Kindness came out on New Year's Day - though it was shot in London in February 2020.

Choreographer Roberts had worked often with Styles in the One Direction years. Roberts says the timing of the shoot, at the art deco Troxy in Stepney, east London, turned out to be fortuitous.

"We had a great time but we didn't know how lucky we were. Looking back it was about three weeks before the world started to burn. Maybe that's partly why people are loving it now - the video has such a carefree sense to it."

Roberts has had 20 years as one of the UK's most in-demand commercial choreographers. He created dances for the 2019 Spice World tour and has worked with everyone from Katy Perry to Sir Paul McCartney.

He devised work for the dance group BalletBoyz and, as well as stage work, he choreographed One Direction in videos such as Kiss You, Steal My Girl and Best Song Ever.

"So when Harry got in touch to say he wanted me for a new video it was a thrill. The only definite thing was it would be a song from the album Fine Line - but we didn't even know which song would be chosen."

With One Direction, Roberts spent six years working with a hugely successful boy band whose members insisted dance would never become a major part of the act.

'Waiting for 10 years'

Wasn't that a choreographer's nightmare?

"It was always really interesting working with One Direction. I knew very early on that there was a magic about them and I could see they had other skill-sets aside from being this very good-looking five-piece - and then four-piece - band.

"In personal moments you got to see them flourish. They'd mess around doing silly dance moves but I'd think, 'Actually if you wanted to dance really well you sure as hell could do it.'

"So when Harry contacted me and we spoke about doing a video with a lot of dance I was like, 'Well I've been waiting 10 years for this.'" Styles knew he wanted Phoebe Waller-Bridge to have an equal presence.

"I believe Harry went to see Phoebe in the West End when she had her success with Fleabag. They went out to dinner and got on really well. That's when Harry started to think how they could work together in some way."

Before shooting began there was a five-week rehearsal period - far more generous than most projects ever get. But a lot of the time Styles and Waller-Bridge weren't in the same room or indeed country.

"I was with Harry in a dance studio in London and we had all kinds of music to try out from modern alternative stuff to old school big band and Glenn Miller. We were exploring. Only on the third day did we begin to apply what we'd done specifically to the Treat People With Kindness track.

"Meanwhile Phoebe was in Canada working on the James Bond script. But fortunately I had a brilliant assistant on the project called Jared Hageman so Jared flew out to work with Phoebe. And eventually Harry needed to be in LA so I went there.

"He was amazingly devoted to the whole thing. He'd be shooting the Watermelon Sugar promo in Malibu and they'd wrap at 8pm but he'd get in a car and come to the studio and we'd rehearse moves until gone midnight."

Roberts says by then it was clear the choreography would at least nod to the Hollywood of an earlier age.

'Dance language'

"The directors Ben and Gabe Turner sent me a link to a black and white movie from 1943 called Stormy Weather. There is a justly famous sequence in it with the Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold, called Jumpin' Jive.

"I think it's the greatest dance-sequence ever filmed and Gabe and Ben and Harry all wanted our video to have some of the same feel.

"I think in Harry's head he wanted to push himself to the absolute limit of what he was capable of. We were never talking about just an average soft-shoe shuffle.

"So the reality was that I and Jared would talk constantly and exchange material from thousands of miles part. And of course Phoebe and Harry would also pitch in ideas.

"We wanted to find a dance language that would take things as far as we could possibly go with Phoebe and Harry, without it becoming comedic.

"Actually my big worry was practical - that they'd both start out with massive energy but that as the weeks progressed you'd have these two incredibly busy people with no time for everything needed to make the project special. But neither would give up, not for a moment."

Nostalgia for better times

He says it was important the dancing had a contemporary edge as well. "Harry and Phoebe are modern artists and very intelligent. They're fashion forward-thinking.

"I find that once you've stopped giving artists their steps it's often quite nice to step back and just watch how they interpret the music. Sometimes little gems can be grabbed and put into the mix.

"It was discovered very early on that both Harry and Phoebe had huge potential. The delight came from their energy combined with the talent of the film-makers plus the extended period of time we had to rehearse.

"I work in a world where budgets have shrunk considerably so it was a big investment for managements and Harry's label."

Roberts remembers the two stars finally came together for little more than the last week of the project, including the shoot. But there was still time to bring in a ballet dancer to give guidance on "port de bras" - how to hold your shoulders or extend an arm gracefully.

"Harry and Phoebe are both decent and generous beings. So we all kept it fun, despite the blood, sweat and tears which had gone into the preparation.

"When finally we were together they could layer on little side-eyed glances or maybe some tiny movement of the face which the camera would pick up. Above all we wanted a sense of style [no pun intended] and panache."

He says the fact most of us feel a real lack of either style or panache in our lives has given Treat People With Kindness an impact as a video it might not otherwise have had.

"The whole thing has a nostalgia for a time where you could be in a club and socialise with friends with no social distancing. I think the chemistry Harry and Phoebe have together just oozes joy. And for most people joy is in short supply."

[atruththatyoudeny]

Monthly Reads | June 2020

Another 28th, another fic rec for you. Here are all the fics I read and loved this month. Happy reading!

✸ Caves End | jacaranda_bloom | famous/not famous - slow burn - hurt/comfort - angst - minor injury - miscommunication - fluff - 40k When a recurring injury cuts short Harry’s time as the Captain of the English Football Team, he needs to rethink his career and his future. His best mate and manager, Niall, decides that what Harry really needs is a change of scenery, time to relax, and to get some perspective on his life. What Harry doesn’t expect is for them to end up in Australia, on a farm, with the most gorgeous man he’s ever laid eyes on. OR the one where Harry has lost his future, Louis has lost his past, but maybe together, they can find a way through the dark.

✸ Just for Tonight (I can be yours) | SadaVeniren | a/b/o - royalty - secret identity - secret realtionship - arranged marriage - mpreg - 42k Harry, prince of Cestrescir, has been betrothed to Ludvic, prince of Yorvik, since birth. He'd accepted a loveless marriage as his duty to his country, until an accident threw him in the path of a gentle alpha

✸ Falling in the Wrong Direction | FallingLikeThis | past character death - grief/mourning - homophobia - internalized homophobia - secrets - angst - fluff - hurt/comfort - emotional hurt/comfort - enemies to friends to lovers - 25k When Harry’s fiancé, Liam, passes away just before their wedding, he doesn’t know how to cope. As time goes on, Harry learns to heal, but is left living in the house his fiancé used to share with his best friends and Harry is uncovering a lot of secrets he didn’t know Liam had... while possibly falling for the one person who helped Liam keep them from him. Harry never quite got along with Louis, but maybe he’s the one person who can help Harry bridge the gap between the life he thought he would have and the one he is now living. A Catch and Release au

✸ we can only look behind | hereforlou | growing up together - childhood friends - slow burn - friends to lovers - friends with benefits - pining - internalized homophibia - Coming Out - 66k His mum said there was no getting an idea out of his head once it was stuck in there and Harry thought she was right. It wasn’t like he did it on purpose - his ideas were just really sticky. (Or, the one where Harry fixates through the years.)

✸ somewhere in between lightning | jassy117, nauticalleeds, shiningdistractionwrites | Love Island Au - exes to lovers - angst - pining - miscommunication - fluff - reality show - 99k As Louis took another bite, he thought back to how he had once believed that the hardest thing about being on Love Island would be Liam handling his social media. He had been wrong. It was Harry Styles, peeking over at Louis as he forked a pancake into his mouth, and gauging his reaction. It was having to quench the swelling of his heart, which felt simultaneously like hope and the breaking of a thousand pieces. --- A summer gone wrong (or very right) when, under Liam’s persuasion, Louis finds himself drunkenly applying for Love Island, and getting accepted. Oh, well. A summer spent on an island paradise couldn’t be all that bad, right? Imagine his surprise when Louis arrives in sunny Majorca to find that his first love and ex-boyfriend, Harry, is another contestant, about to capture the hearts of everyone in the villa. Most normal people don’t have to face their ex on an otherwise straight TV show. Most normal people don’t fall for their ex again in front of the whole nation, either. Too bad this whole situation isn’t normal.

✸ Dreams Once Remembered | Chelsea Frew (chelseafrew) | rape/non-con - kidnapping - mpreg - unplanned pregnancy - angst - emotional hurt/comfort therapy - child loss - kid fic - rape recovery - 78k 16-year-old Harry Styles is on the verge of a life-changing moment. He has been put in a band on The X-Factor and he and his new bandmates are about to get ready for a glorious adventure together. In one terrible moment, all of that is stolen from Harry. Kidnapped, Harry spends the next seven-and-a half-years in a twelve-by-twelve shed, suffering repeated assault at the hands of his captor. One of these assaults results in a daughter Harry has raised entirely on his own in the small space they call Room. Now that Darcy is five, Harry is determined that she be allowed to experience the real world, and he devises a plan for them to escape. Should they escape, there are many questions. Can Darcy adjust to the outside world? Can Harry start over? What kind of relationship, if any, can he have with the band that moved on without him? Even with success far from assured, Harry knows he has to take a chance. For him, and for his little girl.

✸ No Friends and An Empty Heart | Maelstrom_Roots | Fleabag AU - mentions of suicide - attempted sexual assault - therapy - sex addicition - angst - grief/mourning - 36k When Louis Tomlinson gets an invitation for dinner with the family he's been estranged from for a year, he has only one goal: to get his sister to talk to him again. But when an unexpected guest in the form of a hot priest is also at the dinner table, Louis may have to accept that the universe has other plans for him. A Fleabag Season 2 AU featuring Fleabag Louis Tomlinson and Hot Priest Harry Styles.

✸ Still the One | dandelionfairies | kid fic - past cheating - post-divorce - 54k Harry was 15 when he met Louis, 17 when they made love for the first time, 19 when they got engaged and married. One would think he has a perfect life, right? It’s what he thought. He was 21 when he learned that Louis had an affair. It was only one time. That’s what Louis had told him. Harry tried to forgive him. He tried to move on from that horrible moment, but he couldn’t. It was his 22nd birthday when he signed the divorce papers, leaving England behind. After finding himself living in a small town in Nebraska, Harry learns to live on his own. He becomes a preschool teacher at the local school and spends his free time continuing his own painting. He’s even been lucky enough to sell a few pieces. He’s 25 when his life is turned upside down once again by the single father who has moved into the house on the property he just happens to park his trailer.

✸ You Left all your Dreams on the Threshing Floor | LadyLondonderry | fashion - journalism - bullying - past sexual assault - 27k Marcel will go home after work and he’ll clean his vest and he’ll bleach his shirt and tomorrow will be a new day. He’s got other things that he can spend his time focusing on. How to fit in a third quote onto the cover of the fall issue of Mod Mag without covering any details in the model’s face, for instance. Maybe he’ll switch to gluten-free banana bread for the meeting on Friday. He knows some co-workers likes to eat gluten free, at least. Someone will have to accept his friendship advances eventually. They’ll have to. Right? - Louis Tomlinson gets a job at Mod Magazine. He’s quickly drawn to the one person in the office who won’t give him (or anyone) the time of day; Marcel Styles, Senior Layout Editor.

✸ Shadows Come With The Pain That You're Running From (Love Was Something You've Never Heard Enough) | Anonymous | a/b/o - emotional hurt/comfort - angst - fluff - pack dynamics - mutual pining - secrets - slow burn - 51k “Thanks, Ni, I guess I needed to hear that,” Harry sighed and wrapped his own arms around Niall and squeezed him tightly not caring if Liam would be mad. He missed Niall so much. “Does it really come as a surprise to you that I’m right? Shaking my head, Haz. You should know me better,” the brunette teased. Harry giggled again. “You know Hazza, you really are so different to all the other alphas out there. You’re soft, caring, cuddly and sweet and those damn dimples. So freaking pretty, it’s almost annoying. I would hate you if you weren’t my best friend. You’d really be a brilliant omega. Nature really did a number here,” Niall mumbled. It was his turn to smash his nose into Harry’s neck and Harry was extremely thankful for that because he wasn’t sure he had his facial expression in check at all. Or a Band AU in which Harry isn't allowed to be who he really is and the North American Tour might bring some unexpected truths into the web of lies and also a bit of heat that has very little to do with the summer in the US.

✸ Confessions of a Fabricated Alpha | Anonymous | a/b/o - non-traditional a/b/o - secret identity - famous/not famous - fake/pretend relationship - rape/non-con - public humiliation - anxiety - depression - sex work - 18k Hearing it now almost made Harry hang up the phone, but he sighed and pressed one to be connected to one of their alpha operators. He’d already committed to this low point in his life and hanging up meant he couldn’t wallow in it and he was in a wallowing mood. “You are being connected to alpha operator number forty-four. Rogue will be with you shortly.” The name was said in a different voice like a voice mailbox someone might have on their office phone. It made him snort out a laugh at how stupid it all was. It felt like a budget sex line. or famous alpha Harry Styles has a secret and paying an alpha to roleplay a relationship with him over the phone is the only way he can be himself.

✸ Iron Hearts, Fire Souls | hopelesswriter | a/b/o - non-traditional a/b/o - alpha/alpha - co-workers - fluff - 26k "Lou..." “I know, Harry! I know what you’ll say, we can’t right? We can’t help each other’s needs? We can’t be what the other needs? But fuck, what about what we want?! And I say we because you’ve been saying yes to all of our dates and you've been flirting back all this time and-“ He took a deep breath. “And there is nothing that I want more right now than to kiss you.” Or the one where Harry and Louis are two single and unmated Lawyer Alphas that have to share an office and even though they shouldn't be that attracted to each other's scents, it sure isn't a big deal, right? I mean, what could go wrong?

✸ last blues for bloody knuckles | creamcoffeelou | a/b/o - strangers to lovers to strangers to lovers - mob au - religious themes - pregnancy - angst - 34k “Hi, love,” A too-familiar voice greeted him from the other side of the door. He had a cigarette dangling from his lips that he brought between two fingers as his eyes raked over Louis. All Louis could do was stare, wide-eyed at the alpha that he’d left behind so many years ago. “Harry?” His voice felt far away, like it wasn’t him that was speaking. On the other side of the door stood the one man he never thought he’d see again, and maybe the only man he never wanted to see again. A few steps behind him stood Liam and someone else he didn’t recognize, with guns tucked into their front pockets. “I need you to come with me.” OR Styles was a name everyone knew. It had evolved into something of a fairy tale, a far away problem that normal people didn’t have to deal with. Louis never thought he’d find himself falling in love with him. When he finds himself pregnant with Harry’s child, he knows he has to leave the life, and Harry, behind. For her sake. He never expected Harry to show back up on his doorstep five years later. A mob au.

✸ It Feels Different When You’re With Me | Rearviewdreamer | sign language - slow burn - 45k Harry fell in love with sign language as a kid. He never imagined the first love of his life would lead him straight to his second.

✸ let me carry your weight | soldouthaz | trainer Harry - insecure Louis - pining - smut [check tags for specific smut tags] - 28k louis is fresh out of a bad relationship with someone who made him feel awful about how he looked. on his journey to better himself, he meets harry - the ridiculously attractive and fit personal trainer.

[lastsonlost]

“‘Little Women’ Has a Little Man Problem.”

So reads the headline for an article on Vanity Fair’s website this month about the latest screen adaptation of the beloved Louisa May Alcott novel. The film has been lauded by critics and ostensibly possesses many of the qualities awards voters look for: an A-list cast (including Saoirse Ronan, Timothée Chalamet and Meryl Streep); a respected actress-turned-director (Greta Gerwig); and beloved source material.

But so far it has been noticeably underrepresented during awards season — two Golden Globe nominations and zero Screen Actors Guild nods — and Vanity Fair described the audiences at early advance screenings as “overwhelmingly comprised of women.” One of its producers, Amy Pascal, told the magazine she believes many male voters have avoided it because of an “unconscious bias.”

While the box office numbers following its release on Wednesday suggest the movie has found a decent audience — it placed third, behind the new “Star Wars” and the latest “Jumanji,” on opening day — that unconscious bias has seemed to trickle down to the casual male viewer as well, if Twitter is any indication. The New York Times critic Janet Maslin recently tweeted her surprise at the “active hostility about ‘Little Women’ from men I know, love and respect.”

She also described the movie’s “problem with men” as “very real.” Someone tweeted in response: “It’s not a ‘problem.’ We just don’t care.”

In 2019, this attitude seems like history repeating itself. When Ms. Alcott’s book was first published in 1868, it was an instant success — it was favorably reviewed by many of the top magazines and has never gone out of print — but that made it an outlier. At that time American women’s novels were not most critics’ idea of “serious” writing. While their female British counterparts — Jane Austen and Fanny Burney, for example — were considered giants on the literary landscape, in the United States a different spirit ruled.

The predominantly white and male guardianship of the literary and intellectual high ground tended to view the essential American story as a solo confrontation with the wilderness, not a love triangle or intimate domestic saga. Nineteenth-century men of letters “saw the matter of American experience as inherently male,” the literary critic Nina Baym wrote in her 1981 essay “Melodramas of Beset Manhood.” It was a complete negation of women’s points of view, not just an artistic dismissal.

That doesn’t mean American women’s fiction wasn’t popular — like “Little Women,” Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” could barely keep up with demand after its 1852 publication. But that widespread appeal was used to slight the genre out of hand and further relegate it to the status of mere entertainment. As Ms. Baym noted, Nathaniel Hawthorne, for one, complained in 1855 about the “damned mob of scribbling women” whose inexplicably popular work he feared would hurt his own book sales.

There’s some truth in the notion that women strove to write works that would sell — Ms. Alcott herself said she wrote “Little Women” “at record speed for money” while men toiled away on epics like “Moby-Dick” that would fail to generate much income. This was in large part born of necessity; women had far fewer opportunities to earn decent money, usually forced to unskilled labor. Who wouldn’t write a book for money?

In some ways, we live in a different, more progressive era where recent onscreen stories by and about women have been highly regarded: the Emmy-winning “Fleabag”; the crowd-pleasing “Hustlers,” which outdid expectations at the box office and could lead Jennifer Lopez to her first Oscar nomination; “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” about a romance between two women in 18th-century France, which was nominated for the Palme d’Or, the highest prize at Cannes, this year. It’s not as if men have shunned these women-led stories.

It may be that on its surface, “Little Women” doesn’t seem as fresh and progressive, comparatively. Maybe men feel it’s too familiar — the book has been turned into a movie no fewer than seven times, including a little-seen version released just last year. But in an era when sequels and remakes clog the film landscape (many of them male-centered), it’s hardly an exception.

Or perhaps the movie’s marketing undersold just how inventive Ms. Gerwig’s adaptation — which takes many interesting creative liberties, such as ditching the linear narrative — is. The bucolic imagery in the trailer underlines the cozy, even slightly sappy aspects of Ms. Alcott’s book: the March sisters with their flowing locks and billowing gowns, looking as though they just stepped out of a John Singer Sargent painting. Knitting around a fire. Lots of dialogue centered around whom the young women will marry (in England, the second half of the book was called “Good Wives”). Some may feel the story is solely about getting a husband.

But the book has always been about more than this; in the character of Jo March (played in this iteration by Ms. Ronan), Ms. Alcott created a rebellious, tomboyish heroine eager for adventure. “I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy,” Jo declares in Chapter One. “And it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with Papa. And I can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman!” From afar “Little Women” may look like a standard 19th-century romance, but Jo is ready to subvert conventions from the start.

Ms. Gerwig’s film inhabits this spirit throughout. As in the book, the March sisters are intellectually curious, avid readers and artistically inclined, eagerly performing Jo’s melodramatic plays. Amy eventually goes to Europe to pursue a career in art, Beth excels at piano, Meg shows talent as a performer. In a pivotal scene late into the movie, Jo tries to describe to her mother what writing means to her and why she isn’t defined by wifely feelings. Women, she says, “have minds and they have souls as well as just hearts.”

There’s reason to believe this new “Little Women” has appeal beyond a predominantly female audience. Several male film critics have given enthusiastic reviews, and on Wednesday Ms. Maslin tweeted her belief that male opposition has receded now that the movie is out. “Men are loving it,” she wrote. “Even ones who said they wouldn’t go.”

Yet that this concern even existed to begin with is disheartening. If many men haven’t wanted to give it a chance because they don’t think it’s meant for them, we still have a way to go in considering all kinds of narratives about women to be deserving of thoughtful attention.

We can turn to a much-canonized American male writer, David Foster Wallace, for a vivid phrase not far off from Jo’s cry to her mother: Fiction writing “is what it is to be a [expletive] human being.” That’s what “Little Women” is — a plea for women to be seen as human beings.

----------

SO Let me see if I got this straight. People who are in fanatical support of a movie that has nothing to do with men, who's target audience isn't men and was never marketed to men seem to think it's mens faults but it bombed.

WHY DO THESE PEOPLE THINK MEN ARE OBLIGATED TO JUST GIVE UP THEIR MONEY?

Men that don't only one there Financial labor.

[thatsparrow]

(fleabag/priest • read on ao3)

I love you, too.

It'll pass.

Much like God, that last bit turned out to be a lie. 

—

It's two years later and things are—fine, actually. Good, even. Cashiers ask you how you are, and you say, "I'm doing well, thanks," and it doesn't even feel like a lie. The cafe is, somehow, still a success—enough so that you can afford to do things like buy a new awning and replace the linoleum. You even spend a weekend with drop-cloths spread out over your nice, recently-replaced linoleum and give the interior a new coat of paint. You choose this pastel, light-washed teal color that looked cheery on the swatches but mostly reminds you of watered-down mouthwash. Still, when the sun comes in during the afternoons, it looks nice. You get compliments on it.

All the guinea pig pictures are still up, of course.

Both Hillary and Stephanie (who is, you remind people, actually a hamster) are also doing well, which feels like a miracle. A few months back, Hillary caught some sort of guinea pig flu and that had led to an emergency vet visit and several very-panicked Google searches about guinea pig lifespans, but then she'd gotten better and apparently they live for four-to-eight years anyway, so, she'll likely be around for ages yet.

(Hamsters, on the other hand, only live about two. Sorry, Stephanie.)

That banker—or, former banker? You never did find out what his new job was—still comes by. At least once a month, and usually on Chatty Wednesdays. He brings his wife, too, as he'd said he would. She has kind eyes—which is the sort of description you don't use very often, but suits her—and is both soft-spoken and full of questions. You learn that she bakes, because of course she does, and every so often she brings along a cloth-lined basket of lavender cookies or rose-frosted cupcakes or something equally Martha Stewart. They're fucking delicious, too.

Claire still commutes from Finland, but less often, now that she lives there. She has an apartment in London for when she visits that's obscenely beautiful and rarely-ever used—dark granite countertops and these funny-looking geometric sofas and lots of tasteful artwork (though, none of them done by your cunt stepmother). It should all be gathering dust, but Claire pays someone to clean it once a week and to keep the fridge stocked (on the off chance she comes for a sudden visit, which she never does). Sometimes, when you've been out late and your own place is too far away, you stay there for the night. Claire did give you a spare key, after all, and it seems a shame that no one is getting any use out of those million-thread count sheets or the quinoa salads in the fridge. You don't particularly like quinoa, but that isn't the point. 

The two of you don't talk often, but often enough. You know that she's busy, and when she does call, it doesn't feel like an obligation. Like, sure, maybe your sister needs a calendar reminder to phone you, but when she does, she sounds genuinely happy to hear from you. (She also just sounds genuinely happy about her life, which is such a wonderful change of pace.) Tall, blonde, beautiful, Finnish Klare posts pictures of the two of them on Facebook sometimes (yes, you got a Facebook just to friend him)—mostly selfies, all taken by him, of him and Claire in various corners of the world. Stern-looking, northern cities where the sun doesn't rise part of the year, and bright, fruit-flavored beaches where the sun never sets. Claire looks half-annoyed in all of them, but the kind of annoyance that's covering up how pleased she really is. Like she isn't allowed to look too happy about her tall, blonde, beautiful, Finnish boyfriend and how much he clearly adores his tall, brunette, equally-beautiful, British girlfriend.

"If you have a child, will you also name it Claire?"

"What? Don't be silly, we're not having a child. I don't even know if we're going to get married."

(She does, and they are.)

"You could spell it with a ch so it's a little bit different. Something silly and American, like C-h-l-a-y-r-e."

"Stop it."

(She's smiling on the other end of the phone. You expect they'll announce the pregnancy by the end of the year.)

"It's gender-neutral, too, so you're set either way. Come on—you both have perfect bones and perfect hair and it'd be such a shame to waste that. "

"You're ridiculous."

"Always, but I think I'd be a great Aunt to little Chlayre."

"I'm going, now."

Apparently, having sex with someone who has the same name as you is weird, but you get used to it. And, apparently, the sex has been so amazing anyway that it's worth a little weirdness. Good for her. God knows she needed it.

(Speaking of God—)

He moved parishes shortly after the wedding. Not God, of course, but—well, you know. You'd thought it a little dramatic to move entire cities just because you'd had sex, but it was also arguably less dramatic than his leaving the Church, so. Likely he had made the right call. You probably would have ended up hating each other by the end, anyway, if he'd stayed. It wouldn't have worked out, because when do these things ever? It's good that he left. (It isn't.) It is.

Still.

You think about him less than you used to, less than in the days after—I love you, too. It'll pass—the bus stop, when it was all still so fresh and new. When you were feeling dramatic (drunk), you'd liken it to the feeling of having lost a limb, like he'd taken one of your hands or some vital organ when he'd walked away. When you're feeling less dramatic (sober), you liken it to having lost something you'd only been promised—something fanciful, like someone told you that they'd invented the ability to breathe underwater and it had all turned out to be a lie. 

Except it wasn't a lie. He did love you. He just loved God more.

One afternoon, you'd been running errands that had happened to take you past the church (six blocks out of your way, actually, but close enough) and ducked inside—not even to say anything, just to see him, maybe—but it had been empty except for Pam arranging some pamphlets at the front. You'd asked about him, because of course you had, and she'd said he was "gone."

"Gone gone? Like—"

(Dead?)

"No, sorry, my mistake. Moved. This lovely parish on the coast whose own priest passed away a few weeks ago. A little quiet, but he says it's very charming."

"You've spoken to him, then?"

"Yes, of course."

Of course—like it's so simple.

You leave ten minutes later, after Pam's talked you into donating another ten pounds to the collection and volunteering at another church event the coming weekend, but it doesn't really hit you until you're nearly back at the cafe that he's—gone. Not dead gone, but might as well be. That, much like Harry taking that stupid dinosaur toy, he'd wanted to close the door permanently. Maybe he knew you well enough to know that you'd come back to the church someday, or maybe he knew himself well enough to figure it was only a matter of time before he turned up on your doorstep, and so he'd taken the choice away from you both. What a stupid, frustratingly-adult thing of him to do.

You hate him and love him a little bit more for it.

You don't really know what moving on looks like, but you figure it out. You drink a lot, at first, and then a little bit less. You stop feeling weepy whenever you see a Bible, or a G&T, or photos from the wedding. Rebound sex isn't as good as you'd imagined (except with the Hot Misogynist), and so you quit bringing people home quite so often—at least until you can stop comparing everyone to him. You still masturbate over him, of course, but it feels less like a need and more like a way to treat yourself. Like, if you eat all of that kale salad and only have a glass of wine with dinner, then tonight you can wank over his stupid strong arms and his stupid beautiful neck and that stupid little smile of his. If you just make it through a whole lunch with your dad and your cunt stepmother and not say anything too profane, then you get to touch yourself and imagine waking up with him in the morning and him making you pancakes and other sickeningly domestic fantasies.

It's been two years, so of course you've moved on, but you've moved on in a way that lets you keep loving him. Perhaps it's irresponsible, but you're not willing to let him go entirely. Not yet, anyway.

 —

 Then, your cunt stepmother announces that she and your father are adopting a baby.

"I'm sorry, what—"

"You've got to be fucking kidding—"

They'd waited until Claire was in town to make the announcement. They'd invited you both over for tea, and you should've known something was strange about that, but then you're sitting in the garden with a mouthful of Earl Gray and your cunt stepmother says she's adopting and you have to flip a coin between spitting out the tea all over her tasteful linens or scalding the inside of your throat.

You end up swallowing the sip, but it's a close call.

"Well, you know, I've never really ruled out having children—it's such a blessed, beautiful part of life—but, unfortunately, I can no longer conceive naturally, and so your father and I have been discussing—"

(It wasn't a discussion.)

"—and we submitted the applications and met with a mother this week. Lovely girl, terribly awful home life, can't afford to raise the baby on her own, but she's just got the most marvelous cheek bones."

(Cunt.)

"Anyway, she's due in a couple of weeks and then we'll be bringing little Felicity home—"

(Felicity?)

"—and we'd just love it if you two were there for the christening."

"Yeah, because this family has such a great record with godmothers."

Your cunt stepmother is still smiling but the look she's giving you is acidic enough to peel paint.

"Oh, look, I don't know." Claire's grip on the teacup is so tight, you're surprised she hasn't cracked the porcelain. "I've just taken time off to come home, and I'm really not sure I'll be able to again so soon—"

"No, but you must—mustn't she, darling? Your father just couldn't bear it if you weren't there for such an important day, and we did so miss you at the wedding reception."

(Two years, and she still hasn't let that go.)

"Say you will, Claire. Please? Promise us you'll be there." How your cunt stepmother manages to look so pleading is a mystery, but fuck her if she doesn't have it nailed. Your father is still mostly silent, as he's been throughout this whole ordeal, but Claire must see something in his expression because she relents with a, "Yes, fine, alright. I'll be there."

For the christening. The christening of the baby they're adopting. Your father's going to be in his fucking seventies at the kid's graduation.

"Oh, how marvelous! It won't be for a few months or so after the birth, so you should have plenty of time to get everything in order. The whole thing will be just splendid."

(It won't be.)

 —

 The day of the christening creeps up like a bad dream.

(You know those events when you think you'd rather get a bikini wax and then take a bath in lemon juice than attend? This is one of those days.)

You found a dress that seems like a good church dress, a boat-neck, sky-blue thing that doesn't really do anything for your figure, but it is a christening, so. You get there early because your cunt stepmother asked you to (demanded it), and because Claire will be getting there early as well, and maybe the two of you can sneak some of the church wine. You figure you'll probably be handing out programs or directing people to their seats or whatever else happens at a christening. It'll last about an hour, and then there will be a tasteful reception with champagne and sparkling cider and your dad and cunt stepmother showing off baby Felicity in her white, wedding-like christening gown, and then you can go home and forget the whole thing ever happened.

That's the plan, anyway.

You get to the church a half-hour before the christening starts (which is still later than you were meant to be here, but fuck it) and your cunt stepmother is already in—well, a tizzy. She's wearing this funny, artsy-looking gown that's patterned like stained glass and you wish it looked worse on her than it does. She's not yet holding baby Felicity (because this day isn't really about baby Felicity) but she is deep in conversation with the priest up near the altar, who's already dressed in his own decorative christening robes. Then your cunt stepmother looks up and sees you standing in the aisle, half-debating whether you could hide under the pews, and she's calling out your name and saying, "Thank God you're finally here—sorry, Father," and, "Oh, do you remember—?"

(It's him.)

"—he's the priest who officiated our wedding. He's not in the parish anymore—such a shame—but when I knew we'd be adopting little Felicity, I contacted him to find out if he'd be willing to perform the ceremony. Such a dear, isn't he?"

(It's him.)

"I do so love the symmetry of it. And it seemed such a hassle trying to find another priest we'd connect with when we already knew such a nice fellow."

(It's him, it's him—fuck me—it's him.)

He smiles when he sees you, a nice, polite, church smile. Of course, he's had however many weeks to prepare for this whereas you've just had an anvil dropped on you like you're Wile E. fucking Coyote.

"Pleasure to see you again," he says. He even sounds sincere.

"Likewise—" you say, but then your cunt stepmother is coming down from the altar and shepherding you into the back and putting you to work folding programs—"Make sure you're lining up the corners, dear,"—and you've never hated her quite so much. Of course, if it weren't for her and baby Felicity and the whole stupid christening, he wouldn't be here in the first place, but you're willing to ignore that for the sake of hating her. Fuck, he'd looked good, too. And here you are in your fucking church-appropriate dress folding fucking programs and by the end of the day he'll be gone back to the fucking coast and—

You need a cigarette, or ten. Fuck the programs.

It's quiet in the alley, enough so for you to take a couple of slow, deep, wonderfully nicotine-filled breaths and get yourself together. It'll be fine. It'll be miserable, but it'll also be fine. You'll sit in the pew, and you'll watch him perform the ceremony, and try very hard not to think about how beautiful he is underneath the fancy christening robes, and tonight you'll drink yourself unconscious and then wake up tomorrow and forget the whole day ever happened. It'll be the worst day of your life, but then it will be over.

(Second-worst, actually.)

The cigarette is nearly burned down to your fingernails, and you're about to stub it out when you hear the side door opening, and you say, "Sorry, Dad, I'll be there in a moment, I'm just—"

"Got a light?"

It's him.

(It's him.)

You nod, your breath feeling very shallow as he comes up next to you, leans in towards you with the tip of his cigarette. The orange light looks like paint on his skin, like he's been pulled from a Renaissance painting. He still smells the same.

"Aren't you worried about ash on your—" you gesture down at the fancy christening robes.

"Not really." He exhales, slow; his hand is shaking a little. "I doubt anyone but your stepmother would notice, anyway."

The thought gives you a sudden rush of satisfaction. Fuck, you do love him.

"I tried to quit for a while," he says after another breath, the smoke hovering in front of him, "then found I didn't really want to."

(You hope he isn't actually talking about cigarettes.)

"Better than me—I've never even tried to give it up."

(You, at least, are definitely not talking about cigarettes.)

"How have you been?" he asks.

(Miserable, then less miserable, then better, and now miserable all over again.)

"Good, actually. Haven't run myself out of business yet, so. That's something. How about you?"

"I was pretty lonely, for a while. New parish and all that. But it's not so bad now, and I quite like being so close to the water."

(You're happy that he's doing well, and also a little unhappy that he isn't doing worse.)

"That sounds nice, actually. And it's good of you, to have come all the way back for the christening. You didn't have to."

He's giving you a look. You hope it's the sort of look that means, yes, I did.

"Well, your stepmother can be awfully persistent."

"Yeah, well, she's a cunt."

He laughs at that, both amused and unsurprised. "I don't think I can mention that during my speech."

"No, probably not."

His own cigarette is nearly gone; you'll have to go inside, soon, and then the moment will be over. You really, really don't want it to be over.

"Do you ever think about moving back?" Your palms somehow feel very dry and very sweaty at once.

"Sometimes. Often, if I'm being honest, but—" he exhales instead of finishing the sentence. "There's plenty to keep me busy where I am now."

"And how's—God?" You're just fishing for time now. Badly. 

He raises an eyebrow at you. "Mostly the same. A bit disappointed in the state of the world, but still filled with an infinite capacity for love, forgiveness, et cetera."

"Right. I think I remember something like that in the Bible."

"Love, forgiveness, et cetera?"

"Exactly."

He laughs again, then pauses. "Do you still have it, then? The one I gave you, I mean."

(You know what he meant.)

"Yeah, I've got it somewhere." 

(In your nightstand, but he doesn't need to know that.)

He nods, then lets his own cigarette fall to the pavement.

"Well, I should—"

"You should probably—"

If you were braver, you might kiss him. If he were braver, he might kiss you. You don't really want him to leave, and he doesn't particularly look like he wants to go, but without being brave, neither of you knows what's supposed to happen next. He'd go back inside and then go back to his new parish, probably, and you'd never see him again. It's painful, how much you don't want that.

"Can I ask you something?"

He looks both curious and a little afraid for the question. "Yeah, of course."

He'll be going anyway, whether or not if you fuck this up. There's no reason not to try—other than that you're a little bit of a coward, but that's not really an excuse.

"You said it would pass." You feel a little dizzy. "Did it?" His jaw goes tight a little, like there's a wire running through it. "I'm just—curious, I guess." You take a slow breath. Fuck, what you wouldn't give for another cigarette right now, or an IV filled with whiskey. "Because it didn't, for me."

At that, he lets go of whatever tension he was holding in his jaw. He lets out a half-laugh that seems—relieved, almost. "No?"

You shake your head.

"No. It didn't for me, either. I feel like I've spent the last few years cheating on God—loving him and loving you."

There it is, in the open then. I love you, too.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

You want to kiss him, or maybe have him fuck you against the wall. You think he probably would, too. It's exhausting, feeling this elated and miserable at once; by the time you go back inside, you hope the needle has landed on one or the other, you almost don't care which.

"What does that mean, then?"

He laughs again. "Fuck if I know. Like I haven't wasted two years trying to figure that out." He sighs, impossibly weary. "I still don't want to leave the church."

"Okay."

"But I don't want to spend any more time without you, either."

"Okay."

"It would help if you said anything else."

"I would, if I knew what else to say."

(Kiss me, fuck me, marry me—none of those are particularly solution-oriented, though.)

"It's been a while since we were friends. We might not like each other anymore."

(Bullshit. To the friends part and the not liking each other part.)

"Yeah, maybe."

"We could still end up hating each other."

(We wouldn't.)

"Also true."

"But—I could come back. See you again. See if this is still—"

(It is.)

"I'd like that."

He nods, weighty, like you were just discussing how to solve world hunger instead of whether or not he'll move a forty-minute drive back inland. 

"I should actually get back inside, now, before your stepmother castrates me—"

(Which would be a shame, now, after all that.)

"—but I'll be in touch? If you want?"

"I—yeah. Yes, I do."

He nods, and then he's stepping away, back towards the side door and the interior of the church. You wish he'd moved the other way, wish he'd push you up against the pitted brick wall and kiss you like it'd kill him to do anything else, but he doesn't. He's already in his fancy christening robes, after all, and it'd be a shame to wrinkle them now. Besides, you've waited two years. You can wait a few weeks or months more. You can wait, and then the two of you will figure out what happens next. He loves you as much as he loves God, and that already feels like a better place to start.

You brush the ash from your own dress and go back inside.

(You had said this was a love story.) 

[this-is-a-love-story-fleabag]

Fork you, then (7/?)

Fleabag saves her friend Boo’s life and earns a spot in the Good Place, but is everything here really so perfect? And what’s up with the hot priest next door? 1010 words. Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Also on ao3.

It's my third day in paradise and honestly, I think I might be bored of pornography.

I'm feeling slightly more at home in my house than I was, partially due to the aforementioned pornography, but mostly because I've turned all the photos on my mantelpiece face down. Checkmate, feelings.

It's my third day in paradise and honestly, I think I might be bored of pornography.

I'm feeling slightly more at home in my house than I was, partially due to the aforementioned pornography, but mostly because I've turned all the photos on my mantelpiece face down. Checkmate, feelings.

I'd still prefer to be spending the night next door, but I suspect that option isn't on the cards for now. In retrospect, finding a priest that secretly wants to fuck you and then literally handing him a piece of forbidden fruit is probably a bit on the nose. I don't know if he wants to talk to me, but I haven't left the house in order to find out.

I've been trying very hard to keep my mind off things, but there's only so much time that you can fill with bottles of wine and adventurous wanks.

It turns out my magic TV screen can show me what my loved ones are up to on Earth right at this moment, which is probably the worst thing ever. Boo has so far composed five different songs about my death, which she has been playing on the ukelele to our guinea pig and any hapless customers that foolishly wander into the café.

Some of them are actually quite catchy.

Dad's stoic, but I caught him having a little cry into his muesli this morning. My godmother has not been able to wipe the fucking smile off her smug face, except for when she's wailed theatrically in public and rended her garments. I bet she'll make an exhibition about this. I bet it'll be successful, too. For fuck's sake.

I flick the channel over to watch Claire striding through her office, somehow having made herself even busier than usual. She's got new ombre highlights since yesterday, which I strongly suspect is her own way of mourning me. It's quite sweet, really.

I hear a knock and have to pause the screen to go and investigate. I open the door and Tahani swoops in, kissing me on both cheeks and sitting down daintily on my sofa, settling her skirts around her like a fainting Victorian romance novel heroine. "Oh, is that a family member?" she asks, noticing the screen. "She looks just like you. What an unusual choice of hairstyle!"

"My sister," I say tightly, clicking off the screen and hoping that she'll change the subject. She does not get the hint and carries on talking.

"I never got on with my sister. I was always too jealous of her, to tell you the truth. I wish we'd been closer. Were you close?"

I snort. "Well, I don't think she was jealous of me."

"Do you miss her?"

"Yeah," I say, surprising myself. "It's like she's... dead. Like they all are. I don't know what to do with all my unfinished... everything."

I could never quite find the right way to be close to Claire. I was always needling her or making jokes, or just generally putting up emotional barriers. She tried to tell me that she loved me, once, and I just made a loud farting sound and left the room. I could have bridged that gap if I'd just tried being sincere for five minutes but it's a bit fucking late now.

Dying is the worst fucking thing that's ever happened to me.

"Why are you here?" I ask, a little more sharply than I mean to.

"I just came over to see if you would come and join me for a spot of frozen yogurt. I feel like I've barely gotten to know you yet."

"Oh, I wouldn't recommend getting to know me."

"Come on, let's try out some of the new flavours. They've got sprinkles that taste the way it feels to perfectly dip a Rich Tea biscuit into your tea so that it's soft, but it doesn't fall in."

Sold.

Tahani seems entirely at home as we walk through the neighbourhood arm-in-arm, and she starts telling me a long-winded story that is probably supposed to impart some life advice, but mostly is just a litany of the names of famous people she was acquainted with on Earth.

"It's like I said to my friend Andrew Scott and my best friend Phoebe Waller-Bridge," she's saying. "Sometimes you just have to sit down in a Quaker hall and think about tits."

"OK?"

"On reflection, that might not be a universally applicable piece of advice. Still, there we are." She brightens as we approach the restaurant and begins to describe to me the flavours available and what she thinks various members of the British royal family would think of them.

My eyes alight on the priest, who is sitting under a sun umbrella and gingerly poking at a bowl of frozen yogurt. He notices us and gives a sheepish grin.

"Oh look, it's Father," Tahani coos, and swoops in to kiss the priest on both cheeks. "How lovely to see you here."

"Hello," he says, giving me an apologetic little wave.

"Hi," I reply, feeling just as uncomfortable as he looks. "I'm just going to-" I make a move to walk inside the restaurant but Tahani stops me.

"No, no, sit down and relax, I'll pick up yours for you. I know exactly what you'll like." Tahani boops me lightly on the nose, making me go cross-eyed, and strides inside the restaurant, leaving us alone together. I perch on the chair opposite him and eye him expectantly.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," he says after a moment of awkward silence. "I shouldn't have... I was just having a bit of a metaphysical mind-fork of a day."

"It's fine." I'm being magnanimous today. "What flavour did you get?"

"It tastes like beating a traffic warden to your car just when they're on their way to give you a ticket." He picks up a little bit of it on his spoon and holds it out to me. "Here, try some."

I'm really not trying to make eating frozen yogurt off a spoon look sexy, but I guess I just can't help it. His eyes catch on my lips before he clears his throat and looks away.

"Mmm," I say after licking it clean. "Tastes both relieved and a little bit smug."

"Yes," he says in a strangled tone. "It's, uh, it's quite distinctive. You've got, um-" He gestures to my lower lip, where I've left a smudge of yogurt, entirely deliberately.

"Did I get it?" I ask, wiping at my chin.

"No, let me," he says, and reaches over to swipe his thumb over my lip. His hand lingers there, fingers stroking over my jaw, and my lips part ever so slightly as he drags his thumb over them. For a moment, I think he might be about to...

Tahani bustles back over, and he snatches his hand back. "Here you go, darling," she trills. "I went for mint choc chip with a swirl of waking up without a hangover after a night of heavy drinking."

I cannot help the obscene moan I let out on taking a bite of this particular concoction. "That's amazing."

"Oh, I'm so glad you like it!" beams Tahani. "Personally, I went for the flavour of the bee pollen acai bowl my dear friend Meghan made for me once at her home in Frogmore Cottage."

The priest and I make eye contact and he stifles a laugh.

"It doesn't really matter what she's the Duchess of," she finishes lightly, in a way that she probably thinks is self-effacing. "Now, I must go and ask Eleanor something. I'm so glad you could come out." She kisses us both on the cheeks and departs in a cloud of perfume and self-assurance.

"I guess I should be-" I say, just as he says "Do you want to go for a drink?"

"Oh," he says, immediately deflating. "If you've got somewhere else you need to-"

"No," I reply, a small smile growing on my face. "A drink... a drink sounds good."

[immaculate-benediction-batch]

Sherlock season 5 - what the heck is going on?

Three years and counting...

BY ABBY ROBINSON

 21/11/2019

Where is Sherlock season 5, eh? Come January 2020, it will have been three years since we last saw Benedict Cumberbatch as narcissistic genius Sherlock Holmes on our screens.

The BBC series first kicked off back in 2010 and ran for four seasons (plus a special), but there's been zilch since the beginning of 2017, which has naturally caused confusion among fans of the show given the complete absence of any concrete updates.

Showrunners Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss (who also plays Mycroft Holmes) have always taken their time with the show's rollout – a year and a half between seasons was the minimum viewers were made to wait.

But Sherlock series 5 still hasn't materialised.

So, what gives?

In a recent interview with Radio Times, Gatiss did acknowledge that there is scope to continue, but it's not top of his list of priorities at the moment.

"You could go back," he said. "But there are no immediate plans."

*sighs*

In a previous interview with Radio Times, Moffat also echoed the same sentiment: "We've never said necessarily goodbye to Sherlock. No, we'll see!"

Gatiss added: "One thing at a time. Dracula occupies a lot of headspace."

The pair have teamed up once again for a brand new TV adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel of the same name, which will air first on BBC1, before heading over to Netflix for viewers outside of the UK and Ireland.

Sherlock season five is also heavily dependant on whether its stars would return.

Both the central cast (and the writers) are all currently in demand, tied up in other projects, with more on the horizon.

Benedict Cumberbatch has had his plate full with Marvel, Brexit: The Uncivil War and Patrick Melrose, to name just a few, while Martin Freeman (John Watson) has been busy with A Confession and Black Panther.

But if the pitch was right, Freeman would happily sign up.

"If it's something really special, and if it's something really meaty and interesting, then I think we'd all be open to that," he told Collider.

"We couldn't come back with something that was quite good. It would have to feel really, really special. It was that kind of show."

He added: "They're few and far between, the discussions about Sherlock, just because Mark and Steven, the writers, and Benedict and I, are all lucky enough to be not only working on stuff that we like and are interested in, but we know what Sherlock is.

"You don't look that gift horse in the mouth 'cos that sort of stuff doesn't happen very often in someone's life. It's a huge, huge, worldwide hit, and way beyond anything we could've imagined."

Andrew Scott (Moriarty), who has since 

appeared in Black Mirror, Fleabag and Modern Love, would also be game for round five if both the timing and the narrative was right.

Speaking exclusively to Digital Spy, Andrew said: "I think everybody's sort of doing their own separate thing just at the moment," he said. "I know Stephen and Mark have done a version of Dracula which I'm looking forward to seeing.

"For me, the door is never fully closed. It's closed at the moment, but that doesn't mean it can't be opened at some point in the future. But it's definitely not something that's on the agenda in the foreseeable future."

He added: "I would just listen to what their idea was, and just put forward a couple of my suggestions.

"I feel very protective of him. I'm very proud of what we did on that show. If it's the right time, we'll all talk about it again.

"But at the moment, I do think it's provided such great opportunities for everybody in the show. So everybody's got to do their own thing. But the idea of doing that at some point in the future is not an unhappy one."

But if you are in desperate need of some more Sherlock action, there is an unconnected series in the works for Netflix, titled The Irregulars, which follows a group of crime-solving street urchins. The show sees Holmes claims their successes as his own. Charming.

They are based on the Baker Street Irregulars boys, who appear in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books as intelligence agents for the protagonist.

"Sherlock Holmes [in the books] had a group of street kids he'd use to help him gather clues, so our series is what if Sherlock was a drug addict and a delinquent and the kids solve the whole case whilst he takes credit?" said writer Tom Bidwell to BBC Writersroom.

"It's my dream project and my oldest idea. I've been pitching it for 10 years.

"Netflix are incredibly supportive for our vision for the show, and it's allowing us to be very ambitious with the way we're telling our stories."

The cast were recently papped filming in Liverpool's Georgian Quarter, and production is expected to continue until May.

Here's hoping it's a success because it could be the only slice of Sherlock we'll be getting for a long time.

Just whatever.

I love these inside scoops about Sherlock.

Will they or won't they?

Not!!!!

[stokan]

The Top 20 Things of 2019

1. “Shallow” at The Oscars How can something be so anticipated, so hyped, so seemingly bigger than the freaking Oscars themselves, and yet still somehow exceed all expectations? We now know the answer: by completely subverting them. That’s why it makes perfect sense that the greatest moment of Lady Gaga’s career would be the simplest one. Her and Bradley Cooper simply standing up from their seats still gives me chills every time I watch it (and I’ve watched it A LOT). And the close up on their faces needs to be shown in sex ed classes.

If I could travel back in time, sure going back to kill baby Hitler would be great, but mostly I’d just want to go back to the exact second the curtain starts to raise on this performance, before I knew where it was headed next.

2. Olivia Colman winning Best Actress at The Oscars If you think it’s weird that there are two separate things from the same awards show on my list of the top things from the entire year, then, well, you’ve come to the wrong place.

This is the absolute platonic ideal of someone winning an Oscar. Our genuine shock at hearing their name, THEIR genuine shock at hearing their name, the genuine emotion from everyone involved, a speech that is heartfelt, human, funny, and charming in a way that only a true star could ever dream of being, all in equal measure. And it’s all part of a YouTube clip you can watch endlessly and find new things every time. (Glenn Close’s reaction when she loses is like an entire drama in and of itself.) Sure awards shows may be dumb, but then also, this is why they’re not.

3. Sharon Van Etten - “Seventeen” in advance of this year’s Oscars I just want to be on record that my favorite movie from 2019 about aging, feeling that life is passing you by, grappling with mortality, the passage of time, and the generation coming up behind you is Closing My Eyes And Listening To “Seventeen” By Sharon Van Etten. It has it all: the creeping melancholy and regret, the sense of doom that you try to dance away, the feeling that the past was maybe just a dream, the urge to yell into an increasingly uncaring void.

Part of the curse of aging is everyone becoming their own Casandra. Now you know, but no one will listen. And part of the joy of aging is realizing it doesn’t really matter if they do.

4. The writing on Succession

“Proof that, as long as the writing is there, TV doesn’t need to be anything more than people having conversations in rooms.” - theringer.com

I have a rule with these year end lists that I can’t feature something I’ve listed in a previous year. But it’s actually illegal to write about the best of 2019 without mentioning Succession. So I’m going to get around my self-imposed rule by this year specifically highlighting the writing on the show.

The amazing thing about Succession is how watchable it is not despite, but almost BECAUSE of the fact that not much actually happens. People talk a lot about things they are GOING to do, or MIGHT do, but there’s not a ton of actual DOING. And that’s actually great, because what we’re really here for is the talking. Every character talks with the biting wit of an Armando Iannucci character, the deep intelligence of an Aaron Sorkin character, and the realism of an actual human being. I find myself constantly rewinding just to make sure I took in the brilliance of each dialogue exchange. And literally every line Kieran Culkin is given to say would be the best line of the entire season on 90% of the shows on TV.

Everyone talks about how great the acting on Succession is, and rightly so, but actors are nothing without good words to say. And on Succession, to paraphrase a president of the United States that I’m sure ACN would love, they have the best words.

5. The chemistry of Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein in Booksmart My favorite movie of 2017 was Lady Bird. My favorite movie of 2018 was Eighth Grade. So suffice it to say I was well prepared for how much I loved Booksmart. But what I was not prepared for at all was the incredible chemistry of two actors I had previously never even heard of before: Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein. It feels impossible that the two of them aren’t real-life best friends. Life-long friendship is such a specific bond it feels impossible to fake, and yet somehow Kaitlyn and Beanie pulled the magic trick off. Experiencing the giddy contact high of their chemistry felt like being in the presence of a miracle. And anyone who says the romantic comedy is dead clearly didn’t see Booksmart, because maybe the best romantic comedy of the decade was the story of two people realizing the deepest, purest, most unique love of all can sometimes be the love you have for your best friend.

6. Fleabag Season 2 What on earth is there left to say about Fleabag that hasn’t already been said? And yet somehow even with all the discourse about this show it has still maintained its status as the rare cultural phenomenon with a 100% approval rating. To be as massive and as beloved as Fleabag and yet inspire zero backlash, not even a stray contrarian take from an online troll, feels impossible, and yet also, in the case of Fleabag, totally right. If (the now VERY problematic) Louie was the beginning of giving people money to make their idiosyncratic, personal, not-quite a drama not-quite a comedy TV shows, then Fleabag is the end. The apex of the art form. There’s nowhere to go from here but down. 2019 was the year television finally peaked. It was the year we all witnessed perfection. And it was the year that we fittingly all had a priest to guide us there.

7. Chelsea Peretti’s monologue at the WGA Awards Ironic that the year that proved that awards shows don’t need hosts is also the same year that gave maybe the best example ever of what a great awards show host can do. Chelsea goes so far inside baseball it gives new meaning to the phrase “corker”, and it’s all the better for it.

8. Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride If you don’t think Father of the Bride is the best album of 2019 then congrats on not being a late-30s straight white man. But as a late-30s straight white man myself I’ve got two big things going for me:

1.) A life that has benefited from a history of privilege and near-total control over society stretching from the beginnings of civilization up until today 2.) An understanding that Father of the Bride is the best album of 2019

But what about Bon Iver and Wilco and The National and Sturgill Simpson and Big Thief, didn’t they all put out albums for late-30s straight white men this year you ask? To which I say: did any of those albums have a song on them called “Unbearably White”? No they did not! And that sort of ironic self-awareness is the kind of shit that has fueled a million straight white male sketch comedy scenes. It is the air we breathe. Also, have you heard “Harmony Hall” lately? Or “This Life”? Or “Stranger”? I mean, come on, leaving Brooklyn to make your “settled down in LA” album is the sort of late-30s straight white guy catnip James Murphy could only DREAM ABOUT. I may not have much these days, other than unlimited power and privilege, but at least I will always have Vampire Weekend, and they will always have me.

9. Lizzo Every year there is one thing that defines the year. One thing that 50 years in the future when someone mentions that year, it will be the first thing that pops into everyone’s head. And in America for 2019 that thing will be the impeachment of Donald Trump. But if there is a second thing, then it’s Lizzo. She was there when the year started, only got bigger as the year progressed and was arguably still getting more popular as the year ended. And she was everywhere. She was on massive stages and behind tiny desks. She was at the movies, she was on TV, she was coming out of every open car window. And she was definitely at every wedding you went to this year. Lizzo WAS 2019.

With the impeachment of Donald Trump I don’t know how far down the presidential line of succession we have to go before we get to Lizzo, but I know we would all be better off if we would hurry up and get there. Lizzo is the best of us.

10. This picture of Baby Yoda 

Ok I was wrong. Take everything I said about Lizzo and double it for This Picture Of Baby Yoda (you know the one, or if you don’t, click the link above). On the wikipedia entry for the year 2019 that definitely needs to be the picture. 

11. Kodi Lee on America’s Got Talent I realize you probably weren’t sitting around watching America’s Got Talent this summer. I certainly wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t happened to be working the live show tapings. But lemme tell you, if you didn’t see the show, you missed out on something truly magical this year. Something that makes you rethink what human beings are capable of. Something that goes so far beyond inspirational that I don’t think our language has a word to fully express it. Kodi Lee is a real life superhero, and provoking emotion is his superpower. Making it thru a full Kodi Lee performance without crying should be the new Turning Test. Forget America; Humans Have Talent indeed.

12. Taylor Swift - “Cruel Summer” Look I didn’t expect to ever find another “Teenage Dream”, but, well, here we are. I mean, a Taylor Swift single produced by Jack Antonoff and co-written by Annie Clark is pretty much genetically engineered to be one of my favorite things ever, but still: wow. Do the kids still use the term “banger”? Because if so, this is why the term was invented. I would have more to say about how great the rest of Lover is as well, but sorry, I gotta go now. I have to listen to “Cruel Summer” for the eight millionth time.

13. Michelle Williams in Fosse/Verdon If there was an award for best acting performance in any medium this would be the clear winner for 2019. In fact, can you win an EGOT for one single performance? What about a Nobel Prize? I can’t come up with an award or a title big enough to truly honor Michelle Williams’ work in Fosse/Verdon.

As a fellow actor very rarely a performance will come along that will make me think: ok we’re done here. Let’s all the rest of us pack it up and go home, because someone just won acting. This is one of those performances. So congrats to Dame Michelle Williams, you’re the new Pope.

14. American Factory My favorite line in all of Shakespeare is “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. And nothing is evidence of that more than the piece of art I have thought about most this year: the documentary American Factory (available on Netflix right now!). So many of the things we in western societies believe are universal bedrock virtues and value are in fact simply products of the society in which we were raised. Individualism, personal expression, autotomy, the importance of leisure time, and so many other things, are not absolute human values, only relative ones. What is important to someone in America, can be ridiculous and incomprehensible to someone in China. And vice versa. And neither side is right or wrong, only thinking makes it so.

American Factory is documentary that doesn’t say WHAT IF EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW WAS WRONG, but instead shows something that is perhaps even more powerful: what if everything you know is simply just that, a thing you know.

15. White Claw Life is an endless parade of infinite options, possibilities, and choices. So I have no idea how you personally chose to spend your 2019. With one exception: I Know What You Did Last Summer. You drank an alcoholic seltzer water. Probably many of them, but at least one. At a park, at a beach, in a backyard, definitely at a party. If at some point this summer your paws weren’t wrapped around a White Claw (or a similar product) then you didn’t actually experience 2019. Because this is the year we all collectively got obsessed with combining America’s two hottest drink trends: flavored sparkling water and…hold on, lemme look up the name of this stuff…alcohol?

History may record summer 2019 as Hot Girl Summer, but those us who actually lived it know the truth: it was Hard Seltzer Summer

16. Marriage Story A movie that fundamentally misunderstands things I care about deeply - theater, Los Angeles, how the entertainment industry works - is my favorite movie of the year because of how deeply it gets right the thing I care about most: human beings. The way we talk, the way we behave, the way we love, the way we hurt, the way we create bonds that never fully go away. It’s been said a lot, but part of the beauty and magic of this movie is that it doesn’t take sides. Both people are right and both of them are wrong. And that’s how human relationships often work in real life, but rarely in art. There are no heroes, there are no villains; there’s only being alive.


(Also, Adam Driver, Imma let you finish, but Raul Esparza doing “Being Alive” is one of my favorite YouTube clips of ALL TIME. If you ever need to weep uncontrollably and you don’t have time to watch Marriage Story, then Raul Esparza’s “Being Alive” will do the trick)

17. Lil Nas X - “Old Town Road” “What kind of music do you like” used to be a very important question. Your sense of identity used to be defined by the type of music you listened to and what that choice said about you. But now music-as-cultural-signifier is as dead as the concept of owning music itself. Rap music is for elementary school kids. Country music is made by queer black Americans collaborating with Dutch teenagers. Billy Ray Cyrus and Korean pop stars appear on remixes of the same song. A song about an old road and an antiquated mode of travel becomes a massive hit thru the brand new music app TikTok. What kind of music do we like in 2019? All of the “kinds” of music at once, in one marvelously inescapable two minute burst of joy. Music is dead; long live music.

18. Chernobyl If you thought it was crazy that the year’s biggest song was a novelty country/hip-hop track by an unsigned artist rapping about trying to find parking for his horse, then wait until you find out what the summer’s biggest hit TV show was about! I mean, nothing screams “summer fun” like nuclear radiation and shooting dogs. But as always, no one ever truly knows what people will want until you give it to them. And clearly what we really wanted in our LOL Nothing Matters age was a captivating reminder that life on earth truly could end at any moment. Some things very much DO matter. And that something as dramatic, devastating, and consequential as Chernobyl could have happened in the fairly recent past and already have been largely forgotten about is incredible. But if you can take such a compelling story and tell it as well as the makers of Chernobyl did, then people will watch and learn and better understand an issue of vital importance, no matter how seemingly uncommercial it might be. So in a very 2019 sentence: thank you creator of the the Hangover franchise for your miniseries about a 1980 Russian power plant explosion. It was our collective summer obsession. (2019 was a weird year.)

19. Raphael Bob-Waksberg - Someone Who Will Love You In All You Damaged Glory

“I think about how loving someone is kind of like being president, in that it doesn’t change you, not really. But it brings out more of the you that you already are.”

Back in the day, Raphael Bob-Waksberg had a tumblr that was so good it both single-handedly inspired me get much better and writing my thoughts and putting them on the internet (thus what you are reading right now) and intimidated me out of doing it more often (why I now do this only once a year). In fact, I’m almost positive I had his tumblr listed as one of my top things of a year in the past, which is really the highest honor a tumblr account can receive. It was one of the single most impactful forces in the direction of my creative life. And now Raphael has taken the voice that created that tumblr and created my favorite TV show (BoJack Horseman) and wrote my favorite ever Craigslist post, and used it to create a book about love and loss and being human. And it feels like a wonderful treasure that was written just for me. It IS my worldview, expressed better than I ever possibly could. When I meet people now rather than doing the usual introductory small talk I am just going to hand them a copy of this book.

20. The New One - Mike Birbiglia Speaking of art that felt deeply personal to me…just hearing even a rough outline of the story Mike Birbiglia tells in The New One was enough to start me on a path of perhaps reconsidering one of my most deeply held beliefs. By talking about parenthood in a refreshingly honest and shockingly open way, he is able to possibly change lives. I know finally actually seeing the show in person (and it’s now available on Netflix) felt like a possible turning point in mine. Is it theater? Is it standup? Does it matter? Here’s what there are no questions about: it’s hilarious and deeply felt and perfectly constructed. It’s an absolute master class in story telling. And it’s my favorite thing I saw this year.

[magxit]

Taylor’s mention in the ringer article.

I have tried very hard to make my peace with “ME!,” but the “Hey kids, spelling is fun!” bridge is a slap in the face every single time. Taylor seems to be gunning for a whole new generation of teenagers, but she suddenly sounds way younger and far less worldly/savvy/poised than, say, 17-year-old Billie Eilish. And yet, this past weekend, the long-apolitical Taylor criticized Trump directly in a letter to her senator, Lamar Alexander, declaring her support for the Equality Act. (She also endorsed Tennessee Democrats Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper in the 2018 midterm elections.)

Her public statements are growing more “purposeful,” in short, as her music gets more childlike. How do you reconcile her increased activism with the giddy regression of “ME!”? Is reconciling that even necessary? Is the key to being a pop star adult to studiously avoid singing like one?

Zoladz: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why “ME!” repulses me so, and I think it’s because the chorus sounds like a non-ticklish person trying to convince someone that they know how it feels to be tickled and that is deeply unsettling to me? HEE HEE HEE. HOO HOO HOO HOO OOH! Is this the scientific opposite of ASMR?

Taylor is turning 30 this year, and the sonic-fluffernutter first single off #TS7 does not exactly scream, “I am entering a new decade of maturity.” (Not to bring her new cat up again, but it feels important to note that his name is Benjamin Button.) Swift’s growth has been reflected more in her public image than her music, though, and I agree that it’s a little difficult to reconcile that chasm. I do appreciate how direct she’s been in her political targets, focusing less on empty, headline-baiting jabs at Trump (why feed the trolls?) and more on direct action at the state and local level, which is how most change is made anyway. Hey kids, civic participation is fun!

All of these once-reigning pop stars are suddenly having to contend with new peers, and you’re right to bring internet-bred next-generation upstarts like Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X into the conversation. But we also have to talk about the pop star who’s had the biggest glow-up since these three were last on the scene, Ariana Grande. I see Grande as the middle ground between these two camps: She definitely has the old-fashioned industry backing of someone like Katy or Taylor (thank u, scooter braun), but she’s also rebranded herself quite gracefully as a dominant pop star of the era of the endless scroll. Grande is popular right now because she’s very good at two crucial streaming-generation things: She’s figured out that one big album every three years is no longer a fruitful model of relevance (her more off-the-cuff 2019 release thank u, next came out just six months after her Proper Release Sweetener, and it’s been even more commercially successful.) But she’s also made the boundary between her music and her public persona incredibly porous. “Thank U, Next” was such a smash because of how directly it dealt with what we already knew about her personal life. We’re a long way from Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”—Ariana was out here naming names. Even her nod to the “7 Rings” royalties controversy in her one-off single “Monopoly” feels incredibly savvy, proof that she (or at least the people around her) has one eye on the memes. Do you think Katy, Taylor, and Miley could stand to learn something else from their insurgent contemporaries?

Harvilla: Taylor is definitely our reigning champion at Naming Names—“Dear John” remains undefeated—but I agree that Grande has devised a more fluid, nimble, modern, and above all human approach to calling out crap dudes in transcendent pop songs. The #TS7 rollout has only just begun and already feels endless: The pastel Instagram makeover, the endless Easter eggs, her sweaty attempt to glom on to various pop-culture phenomena from Fleabag to Game of Thrones … it all feels so slow, so traditional, so antiquated. And yes, as you say, a 2013 approach counts as antiquated. It’s too perfect that a song as Maximum Internet as “Old Town Road” has already stolen so much of her thunder, to say nothing of everyone else’s.

The problem is that the very thought of Taylor trying to be hip and revolutionary and internet-savvy leaves me exhausted. Moreover, what most people seem to want from her in 2019 is, for her, the ultimate regression: a country album. And a surprise drop of #TS7 would feel like she was ripping off Beyoncé yet again. She’s too big to fail but also too entrenched to innovate; she can’t break the music-industry wheel because she is the wheel. She’s a throwback and a bit of a relic in her very hugeness.

As a near-30-year-old with 10-plus years of fame to her credit, Taylor is also far too young to go the Pink or Kelly Clarkson route and age gracefully into brassy empowerment anthems that all sound like pleasant Ellen episodes unto themselves. But she’s far too old to compete with—or sing like, or convincingly pander to—actual teenagers. (Carly Rae Jepsen, whose new album Dedicated is a very enjoyable slight letdown, is likewise struggling with this what’s-my-age-again dilemma, though she’s already more of a critical enterprise than a commercial one.) Taylor has tons of precedents and tons of disciples, but aspects of her conundrum—how “mature” she can act and how “disruptive” she can really get—still feel unique to her.

[patrickjane92us]

10 original series on Amazon Prime

Here are my picks for the top 10 original series on Amazon Prime that you can watch right now.

 10. Goliath 

Goliath is the story of an impoverished lawyer Billy McBride who seeks Redemption by fighting against a legal system which only favors the rich and powerful Goliath first season was premiered in Amazon Prime in October 2016 followed by a sequel in May of 2018 for season 1.  Billy Bob Thornton the main lead in the series received Best Actor for television series drama at the 74th Golden Globe Awards 2017 holding a score of 8.2.

 09. Sneaky pete 

 Sneaky pete is a story of calm man Marius Josie Povich who on his release from prison finds himself at a difficult position where a gangster who Marius had cheated in the past tries to hunt him down.  Marius running from his past assumes the identity of his former cellmate Pete as the story drags on he catches up with Pete's family and the rest continues. Season one of sneaky pete premiered on august 7 2015 with its next episodes in early 2017 and its sequel later came in March of 2018 and it made tenth 2019 the release of its third season turned out to be the last of this crime drama webseries it has an overall rating of 8.2. 

 08. Good Omens 

Good Omens is a web miniseries co-produced by Amazon Studios along with BBC Studios it is based on the world fantasy award nominated novel written by English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Set in the year 2018 the series shows the demon Crowley in the angel Ezri FL longtime friends who being accustomed to life on earth seek to prevent the coming of the Antichrist and with it Armageddon, the final battle between heaven and hell. On the 31st of March 2019 all the episodes were released on prime video and will be broadcast on BBC 2 in the UK later this year. Good Omens has received many nominations at the Saturn Awards and Primetime Emmys, which will be held later this year. It has a rating of 8.2 and this TV series is something you should consider watching.

 07. Bosch 

 Bosch  is an American detective fiction based drama web series that revolves around the story of Harry Bosch a Los Angeles police detective over the course of multiple sequels. Harry Bosch can be seen solving multiple crime mysteries first released in the year 2014 as of now there are 5 sequels seasons available on Amazon Prime video and the premiere of its sixth season is scheduled to be in April 20 20. Bosch received many nominations and multiple award shows like the Emmys and Saturn Awards with a rating of 8.4.

 06. Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan 

Jack Ryan is an American action political drama web series based on the characters developed by Tom Clancy. Jack Ryan as the name suggests leads the story-line Jack is a CIA analyst who discovers dubious series of bank transfers from the Middle East and anticipates the role of some terrorist organizations in harming national security he swaps his office jobs with his field one in order to stop any potential threat along with other CIA agents the only season so far premiered on the 31st of August 2018 and season 2 has been released Jack Ryan was well received by critics and it also received many nominations that award functions held last year with an overall rating of 8.2. It's a must watch for action lovers.

 05. Patriot 

Patriot is a comedy-drama web series that revolves around the story of an intelligence officer John Taverner whose current assignment is to avoid Iran from going nuclear for this assignment John takes a non-official cover in an industrial piping firm Patriots season one released on the 5th of November 2015 through the first episode in other episodes released later in 2017 season 2 followed up in November of 2018 Amazon later in 2019 canceled the series saying they don't have any plans for the future both seasons receive generally positive reviews among the critics as well as the common audience the overall rating of Patriot is 8.4.

 04. Grand Tour

 Grand Tour is a motoring web series hosted by the team of Jeremy Clarkson Richard Hammond and James May the format is very much similar to the BBC's Top Gear which was also hosted by these three but due to some disciplinary controversy Clarkson was sacked and later Richard may and Andy Wilman also resigned from Top Gear all four together were approached by Amazon regarding the creation of the brand-new show called the Grand Tour. The show contains car views discussion of Motoring topics live audience conversation along with some car racing and challenges. The Grand Tour season 1 was released on the 18th of November 2016 followed by season 2 and season 3 releasing on November 2018 and April 2019 season 4 has been under production and Amazon also plans for a season 5. It has a rating of 8.7. This TV show is a must watch.

 03. Fleabag 

 Fleabag is a tragic comedy web series created and written by Phoebe Waller bridge who is also in the lead role. Fleabag is adapted from Waller bridges 2013 Edinburgh Festival Fringe one-woman play of the similar name which won the fringe first award. The show is co-produced by Amazon Studios along with two brother pictures the series shows the life of the lead a young woman trying to cope with her life in London while coming to terms with a recent tragedy flee back premiered on the 21st of July 2016 and concluded its second and final season on 8th of April 2019. It has been rewarded a large number of nominations throughout 2016 to 2019 also claiming massive numbers of awards under its belt. It's a very successful web series regarding the number of laurels to its name especially its second season the overall rating for the show is 8.6.

 02.  The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel 

 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is an american period comedy-drama television series which follows the story of miriam midge Maisel a housewife in 1958 NYC who discovers she has a knack for stand-up comedy the series premiered on the 17th of March 2017 on prime video. Season 2 was released in December 2018 and his third series is expected to drop later this year the series received critical acclaim and won the Golden Globe Awards for Best television series Musical or Comedy in 2017 and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2018. Alongside this lead actress Rachel Brosnahan won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series in 2018 and two consecutive Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress television series Musical or Comedy in 2018 and 2019. This shows how well it was received by critics and audiences and has an overall rating of 8.8.

01. The Boys

The boys is basically a superhero web series but with a twist it's based on the comic books of the same name by Garth Ennis and Derek Robertson. The boys basically shows a team of seven superheroes who are on fire private corporation for marketing and monetization matters their team is called the seven but apart from them being superheroes some of them are also arrogant and corrupt they are opposed by team of common people who have their personal agendas with members of the seventh. The story shows despite being without superpowers how they contain the threat of the seven on the world the boys received a lot of praise among the critics as well as the audience's this year when it released especially for the clever changes in a standard superhero script, with an overall rating of 8.9.

[tocinephile]

The Morning After - The Golden Globes 2020 Edition

Morning/Afternoon/Night have lost meaning to me in this post holiday stupor, but I assure you I watched Sunday night’s awards.  Our methods of media consumption have altered every so slightly each year that at least 1/3 of the celebrity outfits I was checking out this year came from my Twitter app compared to the big TV screen in front of me (which often had a split screen happening to begin with).  No matter, it made it all the easier to share via my own twitter and to send to friends who sent me their comments and input through the pre-show and ceremony.

Even more than usual, the Globes felt like a warm-up to me this year.  I’ve barely digested the turkey and finished my Top Films of the Decade list and we’re already off to the award season races.  As a result, I’m not quite prepared to comment on every single win/loss, but what I can say I have embedded in the list below:

Best Motion Picture — Drama

“The Irishman” (Netflix) “Joker” (Warner Bros.) “Marriage Story” (Netflix) “1917” (Universal) (WINNER) “The Two Popes” (Netflix)

1917 has rocketed to the top of my movies to see list as a result of last night’s Best Drama and Best Director win.  Need to see this before the SAG Awards.

Best Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy

“Dolemite Is My Name” (Netflix) “Jojo Rabbit” (Fox Searchlight) “Knives Out” (Lionsgate) “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” (Sony) (WINNER) “Rocketman” (Paramount)

Let it be known here and now, 2020 is going to be the first (and hopefully only) time I speak out against Quentin Tarantino winning an award.  I don’t dislike Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood, not at all, I just didn’t think it was anywhere near his best and in the awards race, there were far better this year. I’ve seen all the films in this category with the exception of Rocketman and I liked Jojo Rabbit and Knives out much more, and Dolemite is My Name equally as good as Once Upon A Time.

Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Drama

Cynthia Erivo (“Harriet”) Scarlett Johansson (“Marriage Story”) Saoirse Ronan (“Little Women”) Charlize Theron (“Bombshell”) Renée Zellweger (“Judy”) (WINNER)

I’ve actually only seen Marriage Story and Judy in this category. Renee is phenomenal no doubt, but part of me did question whether her performance would shine through an otherwise mediocre film.  Turns out it did.

Best Actor in a Motion Picture — Drama

Christian Bale (“Ford v Ferrari”) Antonio Banderas (“Pain and Glory”) Adam Driver (“Marriage Story”) Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”) (WINNER) Jonathan Pryce (“The Two Popes”)

Joaquin was the favourite in his stacked category, but I recommend all of these performances (though The Two Popes slightly less as a film, not my cup of tea). I was really on the fence about his acceptance speech though, the delivery was channeling too much Joker though the message was in the right place.

Best Actress in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy

Ana de Armas (“Knives Out”) Awkwafina (“The Farewell”) (WINNER) Cate Blanchett (“Where’d You Go, Bernadette”) Beanie Feldstein (“Booksmart”) Emma Thompson (“Late Night”)

Another stacked category (I’m gonna make the assumption that Emma Thompson was great in Late Night), these are all movies to see.  Awkwafina being recognized in a non-comedic role is a boon for the Asian community. Sidenote: I seem to be in the minority when it comes to Where’d You Go Bernadette, but I quite liked that movie. 

Best Actor in a Motion Picture — Musical or Comedy

Daniel Craig (“Knives Out”) Roman Griffin Davis (“Jojo Rabbit”) Leonardo DiCaprio (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) Taron Egerton (“Rocketman”) (WINNER) Eddie Murphy (“Dolemite Is My Name”)

I’ve not seen Taron Egerton’s performance but predicted he would win anyway. 

Best Actress in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Kathy Bates (“Richard Jewell”) Annette Bening (“The Report”) Laura Dern (“Marriage Story”) (WINNER) Jennifer Lopez (“Hustlers”) Margot Robbie (“Bombshell”)

Should have been J. Lo. (opinion based on having seen 2 of the 5 performances)  Not that Laura Dern isn’t spectacular in everything she does, but is her character in Marriage Story not identical to her role in Big Little Lies?

Best Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture

Tom Hanks (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) Anthony Hopkins (“The Two Popes”) Al Pacino (“The Irishman”) Joe Pesci (“The Irishman”) Brad Pitt (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) (WINNER)

Brad Pitt’s good, and this is one of the awards that I’m cool with Once Upon a Time picking up, but was he better than Pesci and Pacino? I mean, is anyone??

Best Director — Motion Picture Bong Joon-ho (“Parasite”) Sam Mendes (“1917”) (WINNER) Todd Phillips (“Joker”) Martin Scorsese (“The Irishman”) Quentin Tarantino (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”)

Again, the winner is the only film I haven’t seen.  I can vouch all the other directors were great.

Best Screenplay — Motion Picture Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story”) Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin Won (“Parasite”) Anthony McCarten (“The Two Popes”) Quentin Tarantino (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) (WINNER) Steven Zaillian (“The Irishman”)

Ok, it pains me to say this, but Tarantino should not have gotten this one.  Give his film any other award but this one! He did a decent job of directing, his cast gave great performances, the wardrobe and production design was fabulous, the editing is solid, even the music was alright (ok, fine, don’t nominate the film for its music neither)... but the weak link in Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood is the story.  It’s so beneath what QT can do, it’s like QT made palatable. So please don’t recognize him for this script out of all his scripts.  Don’t encourage him to write more scripts like this one.  Nevermind that every other film on this list had a better script than his. If I got to pick, I’d have chosen The Irishman, but would have accepted any of the other three as winner.

Best Motion Picture — Foreign Language

“The Farewell” (A24) “Les Misérables” (Amazon) “Pain and Glory” (Sony Pictures Classics) “Parasite” (Neon) (WINNER) “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (Neon)

“Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films” Preach Boon Joon-Ho!  I’m actually very impressed with the list of nominees this year and I’m even more pleased the best film won.

Best Motion Picture — Animated

“Frozen 2” (Disney) “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” (Universal) “The Lion King” (Disney) “Missing Link” (United Artists) (WINNER) “Toy Story 4” (Disney)

Best Original Score — Motion Picture

Alexandre Desplat (“Little Women”) Hildur Guðnadóttir (“Joker”) (WINNER) Randy Newman (“Marriage Story”) Thomas Newman (“1917”) Daniel Pemberton (“Motherless Brooklyn”)

I don’t know that any score in particular stood out for me this year, but now that you mention it, Joker did have a pretty great score.  It was mentioned that Hildur Guonadottir also wrote the score for Chernobyl and that one was affecting.

Best Original Song — Motion Picture

“Beautiful Ghosts” (“Cats”) “I’m Gonna Love Me Again” (“Rocketman”) (WINNER) “Into the Unknown” (“Frozen 2”) “Spirit” (“The Lion King”) “Stand Up” (“Harriet”)

Why don’t I know a single one of these songs?

Best Television Series — Drama

“Big Little Lies” (HBO) “The Crown” (Netflix) “Killing Eve” (BBC America) “The Morning Show” (Apple TV Plus) “Succession” (HBO) (WINNER)

I should watch Succession.

Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy

“Barry” (HBO) “Fleabag” (Amazon) (WINNER) “The Kominsky Method” (Netflix) “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” (Amazon) “The Politician” (Netflix)

I should really watch Fleabag.

Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

“Catch-22″ (Hulu) “Chernobyl” (HBO) (WINNER) “Fosse/Verdon” (FX) The Loudest Voice (Showtime) “Unbelievable” (Netflix)

Everyone should watch Chernobyl.  I stood in front of Reactor 4 shortly before the series aired and when I shared my photos from overseas people were freaking out. I got home and watched the series for myself and truly understood why.

Best Actress in a Television Series — Drama

Jennifer Aniston (“The Morning Show”) Olivia Colman (“The Crown”) (WINNER) Jodie Comer (“Killing Eve”) Nicole Kidman (“Big Little Lies”) Reese Witherspoon (“The Morning Show”)

Best Actor in a Television Series — Drama

Brian Cox (“Succession”) (WINNER) Kit Harington (“Game of Thrones”) Rami Malek (“Mr. Robot”) Tobias Menzies (“The Crown”) Billy Porter (“Pose”)

Best Actress in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy

Christina Applegate (“Dead to Me”) Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) Kirsten Dunst (“On Becoming a God in Central Florida”) Natasha Lyonne (“Russian Doll”) Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”) (WINNER)

Best Actor in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy

Michael Douglas (“The Kominsky Method”) Bill Hader (“Barry”) Ben Platt (“The Politician”) Paul Rudd (“Living With Yourself”) Ramy Youssef (“Ramy”) (WINNER)

Best Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Kaitlyn Dever (“Unbelievable”) Joey King (“The Act”) Helen Mirren (“Catherine the Great”) Merritt Wever (“Unbelievable”) Michelle Williams (“Fosse/Verdon”) (WINNER)

Michelle Williams for best acceptance speech for the night - amiright?

Best Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Christopher Abbott (“Catch-22”) Sacha Baron Cohen (“The Spy”) Russell Crowe (“The Loudest Voice”) (WINNER) Jared Harris (“Chernobyl”) Sam Rockwell (“Fosse/Verdon”)

Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Patricia Arquette (“The Act”) (WINNER) Helena Bonham Carter (“The Crown”) Toni Collette (“Unbelievable”) Meryl Streep (“Big Little Lies”) Emily Watson (“Chernobyl”)

Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television

Alan Arkin (“The Kominsky Method”) Kieran Culkin (“Succession”) Andrew Scott (“Fleabag”) Stellan Skarsgård (“Chernobyl”) (WINNER) Henry Winkler (“Barry”)

Well, that’s me and my two cents. Between the SAG Awards being a couple weeks away and us being in the midst of our January 30 Films in 31 Days film challenge I gotta get back to watching more films stat!

[fullregalia]

hindsight.

2020 is almost here, and looking back on the decade, well... I am not entirely sure if I see things with more clarity (though I did finally get new glasses). The end of a decade! I don’t know if we learned anything besides the fact that tiny sunglasses will always look dumb. This decade basically continued the downward trend of good things while all the bad things seemed to happen at an increasing clip. Thinking about all of that would be far too depressing (RIP David Bowie, democracy, the climate), so I’ll stick with a year in review. As usual, I try to have my annual recounting of the months that have elapsed a little more thoroughly in December, since Rosh Hashanah kicks off this season of thinking ahead and looking back. 

I think a lot about this line in Vampire Weekend’s “How Long?” off Father of the Bride: “Why’s it feel like Halloween since Christmas 2017?″ Honestly, the latter half of this decade has been haunted in so many ways--and a new decade perhaps brings with it opportunities for change (are you registered to vote?). While most of the ghosts of twenty-teens past haunt me in mournful ways, some of them loom large in productive ways as they led me to making some of the biggest steps I’ve taken in my life in a long time.

The most obvious break in time this year was my move to Philadelphia in August. The beginning of 2019 was filled with uncertainty about where I’d get into school and what the end of my year would look like. While I don’t regret moving to Philadelphia, something happened to me recently that has been a truly unfortunate note to end the year on: I was attacked and mugged in my neighborhood a week and a half ago, and it’s been a difficult experience to reckon with. I’ve been going back to NYC about once a month since I left, and it’s been really good to have these monthly trips to get to Abraço or visit the Met--and given the shock of being assaulted, it was even more of a mental salve just to be in a city that shaped the past 12 years of my life (for better and for worse, if we’re being frank). 

So there was beginning grad school, and moving, but there was also all the cultural markers of the year that make these changes much easier to cope with. Here’s a round-up of (some of) the works and words that shaped my year, made me laugh, or engrossed me enough to take me out of my own head for a few hours at a time: 

MUSIC According to Spotify, John Coltrane happened to be my artist of the decade, but as referenced above, Vampire Weekend’s new album dominated my ears this year. Hilariously and fittingly, “Unbearably White” was my most played song in 2019. FoTB also introduced me to Steve Lacy and The Internet, thankfully. I tried to get a little more prog rock into my aural diet, and there were also more contemporary albums that came into heavy rotation. There was the revelation of Big Thief (the guitar on Cattails) and the brief, beautiful Purple Mountains project; Solange’s Binz helped me to do laps around the reservoir in Central Park, and there were nights alone when all I needed was to just put on Angel Olsen when I got home from work. As fall semester took over most of my time, I turned more to classical standards like Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet to get me through the work, and as ever I rely on Popcast to keep me up to speed on what the kids are listening to (looking at you 100 Gecs and Billie Eilish).  

BOOKS The beginning of grad school made it harder to keep up with my reading for fun, but I managed to get through enough books (28) to make a few recommendations. First, there’s Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror, which I thought was funny and thoughtful, and an eloquent and incisive analysis of what it means to be alive, and particularly a thirty-something, in this truly bizarre era. 

There were also a lot of series in my hold list this year: the Rachel Cusk trilogy and Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet. I mostly read women, and read more non-fiction this year than last (shout outs to Anand Giridharadas, Eric Klinenberg, and Samuel Stein--all of whom recommend public sector solutions to a private sector failures). As with every year, the list of books I want to read grew even longer. This winter break has proven itself thus far to be a week of recovering from being mugged and having a bad cold by mostly watching Netflix, maybe there will be more time to read in the second half of break and during the spring semester.

On a related note: there was a lot of great longform journalism this year. While there was very important work done about foreign affairs, corruption, and structural inequities, there were also many articles about how ridiculous living in Brooklyn (and LA) is. 

TV But the former PBS employee in me wouldn’t be able to finish up an overview of 2019 without writing about the medium that I love so much I had to abstain from it for the past four months, for fear of a distraction I couldn’t resist. As we all know, Succession is the best rich person melodrama we have, and I’m grateful for its place in my Sunday night routine while I settled into grad school. I have already written 2,000 words on it before, so I will simply leave you with this beautiful monologue: “I’m an enigma. You can’t pigeonhole me. I’m there and then I’m gone. I’m intellectually promiscuous, but culturally conservative. I work hard but I don’t play hard, I play easy, why would you play hard?”

Before my tv hiatus began in August, I was tempted to actually say sod it and move to England for grad school when Fleabag season 2 dropped. (Forgive me father, for I have sincerely wanted to see a priest make out with a parishioner.) But while Fleabag put canned G&Ts and hot priests on the map, Russian Doll payed homage to the past life of Tompkins Square Park, and got Harry Nilsson stuck in all our heads for the month of February. And what would my twitter feed have been without the irreverent brilliance of “You have no good car ideas!” guy from I Think You Should Leave? (*dabs, yells “you love your mother in-law!”*)

There was an overwhelming choice of streaming, movies, and podcast content this year. My podcast diet remained mostly the same (Who? Weekly, Talking Politics, Why is This Happening?, FiveThirtyEight, Slate Money) but I added What a Day--along with adding a crush on Gideon Resnick to my “unattainable ‘face for podcast’ dudes who will never date me” crush list, and getting Akilah Hughes’ headlines jingle stuck in my head. I miss Kara on Keep It! but I am also grateful for Naomi Ekperigin’s presence on Hysteria (and every other show she makes better with her presence). Throughout this year, and increasingly over the past decade, podcasts have kept me company, kept me in the loop, and kept me going on the most difficult days.

Lastly, as I mentioned, being mugged was a horrible experience. But there were a lot of other things that happened this year that were far less traumatic and mostly just absurd. Remember WeWork? The Tesla truck? Cliff wife? 2019 was pretty dumb. Though I appreciated every meme on Hunter Harris’ twitter. In the less-dumb, slightly more life-affirming department: I saw good friends get married and have children, got my hands on clay, cooked and baked, drank amazing coffee in Copenhagen (and fell in love with the cesca chair), and did things that scare me (grad school, moving, meeting cool new people, introducing those people to deranged twitter memes). 

Getting back to where I started--How Long?--I’m writing this on Christmas Day, or as I like to refer to it, National Annual Fudgesicle Day™, and I hope you have all had a Jordan Christmas or at least an excessive amount of Chinese food. Christmas is usually a low-key day for me (even when it’s also Hanukkah) and even though the year has been decidedly high-key (Brexit! Beto stood on so many things! I saw Ilana Glazer in LA!!) perhaps we can turn 2020 down from 11, where it feels like we’ve been since 2017. With only a few days left in the decade, I don’t really think there’s much change that can happen between now and then, but I do hope that the beginning of this next decade--life goes on, elections are held, and unknown adventures await--can bring renewed motivation, and the chance to shed some of the hurt and grief of the last one. Here’s to the year to come, may it bring us all health, happiness, and peace.

[bigyack-com]

Golden Globes Nominations: What to Watch For

Will Netflix dominate with ‘The Irishman’ and ‘Marriage Story’?

LOS ANGELES — It is Netflix’s world. Hollywood just lives in it.When nominations for the 77th Golden Globes are announced Monday morning, Netflix is expected to dominate the film categories to a jaw-dropping degree. The streaming giant has only been a competitor on the film side of the Globes since 2016, when it received a sole nomination for Idris Elba in “Beasts of No Nation.” This time around, handicappers at Gold Derby, an entertainment honors site, predict that Netflix will receive at least 18 nominations in the 11 film categories alone.“The Irishman,” Martin Scorsese’s lavish gangster yarn, and “Marriage Story,” Noah Baumbach’s unnerving portrait of divorce, will almost certainly receive best drama nominations, with Fernando Meirelles’s Vatican succession dramedy “The Two Popes” possibly taking a third slot. Those Netflix movies and others from the service, including the Eddie Murphy vehicle “Dolemite Is My Name,” are expected to monopolize the actor, supporting actor and screenplay categories.Sprinkle in expected nominations for films from Amazon Prime Video (“The Report,” “Late Night”), and a cascade of TV entries from Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV Plus and possibly even Disney Plus (“The Mandalorian”), and it could be the year that streaming services and their seemingly bottomless checkbooks topple the Hollywood power structure: Out with the old.Or not.The group behind the Globes, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, has shed some of its reputation for eccentricity, but it still makes calculated choices — spreading nominations far and wide to ensure that every studio boss attends; honoring younger stars in an attempt to boost ratings. Members continue to split their top film prize into two categories, drama and comedy-musical, often in bewildering ways. Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” will compete as a comedy, perhaps landing a nod alongside the Nazi-themed “Jojo Rabbit.” Because what is funnier than the Manson murders and the Holocaust? In another puzzler, especially for an awards contest adjudicated by journalists from overseas, foreign-language films are ineligible for the marquee best-picture categories. So don’t look for much guidance on the Oscar hopes for Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell,” one of the few bright spots in indie cinema this year ($17.6 million in ticket sales), or “Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho’s acclaimed tale of economic inequality ($18.3 million).In truth, the Globes do not predict much. The press association only has about 90 voting members; roughly 9,000 film industry professionals vote on the Academy Awards. The top winning films at the Globes have only gone on to win the Oscar for best picture 50 percent of the time over the last decade. (They matched last year, however. “Green Book” was the big winner at both ceremonies.)NBC will broadcast the Globes on Jan. 5. Organizers decided to bring back the British comedian Ricky Gervais for a fifth time to host. Here are five more things to consider before Globes nominations are unveiled starting at 8 a.m. Eastern time.

The nominations could give films a shot in the arm.

The Globes are mostly coveted as marketing tools. Studio advertising executives will immediately roll out new TV commercials and digital billboards based on the nominations. Multiple nods for Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” could help Sony generate interest in the film’s Christmas Day release in theaters. Ditto for Clint Eastwood’s “Richard Jewell,” which looks at the bombing at the 1996 Olympics and arrives from Warner Bros. on Friday.As a stop on the road to the Oscars, the Globes could focus fresh attention on Taron Egerton, who seemed like a lock for the best actor race in the first half of the year for his risk-taking performance as Elton John in “Rocketman.” But now that heavy hitters like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro have entered the fray, he finds himself in the middle of the pack. Similarly, Globe voters could push Cynthia Erivo (“Harriet”), Alfre Woodard (“Clemency”) and Lupita Nyong’o (“Us”) deeper into the Oscar conversation.

The male acting races will be competitive.

Ahh, the year of the man. It seems strange given the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.But take a look at this year’s films. The number of notable male performances is rather staggering. Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”), De Niro (“The Irishman”) and Adam Driver (“Marriage Story”) are favorites for best actor in a drama, but where does that leave Antonio Banderas (“Pain and Glory”), Jonathan Pryce (“The Two Popes”), Adam Sandler (“Uncut Gems”), Christian Bale (“Ford v Ferrari”) and Paul Walter Hauser (“Richard Jewell”)? Best actor in a comedy or musical is only slightly less competitive. Murphy is a lock for a nomination for his outrageous “Dolemite” performance, as is DiCaprio (“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”). Egerton (“Rocketman”) should nab a nod. Vying for the remaining two slots are Daniel Craig (“Knives Out”), Himesh Patel (“Yesterday”), Shia LaBeouf (“The Peanut Butter Falcon”) and Roman Griffin Davis, the young “Jojo Rabbit” star.

Get ready to scratch your head over the best comedy and best drama categories.

Remember when the press association deemed the Matt Damon stranded-in-space odyssey “The Martian” a comedy? This kind of thing happens when studios try to game the system, submitting films and stars in categories sized up as more winnable. The press association received so much ridicule when “The Martian” was named best comedy in 2016 that members amended the rules to state that “dramas with comedic overtones should be entered as dramas.”That didn’t stop A24 from submitting its jeweler thriller “Uncut Gems” as a comedy this year. The press association bounced it to the drama group. But Sony’s submission of “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” as a comedy was allowed to stand.

A nomination for ‘Cats’ could be a boon for the movie.

“Cats,” set for release by Universal on Dec. 20, should be a shoo-in for best comedy or musical. But the filmmakers have been scrambling to finish the movie … err, make the fur visual effects less traumatic than they were in that infamous trailer. To make the movie eligible for consideration, Universal showed voters a rough version last week.Does the foreign press association go out on a limb and include “Cats” in the (meow) mix? It could certainly boost ratings to have Taylor Swift walking the red carpet, even if she leaves her Bombalurina tail at home. But voters could also be opening themselves up to disparagement.

The TV contenders include Baby Yoda.

The big question in the television categories is whether two new streaming services, Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus, can break into the best drama race.Globes voters have never been very keen on the “Star Wars” franchise, but Disney Plus hit a critical and cultural nerve last month with “The Mandalorian,” which introduced Baby Yoda. Apple’s centerpiece series, “The Morning Show,” received middling reviews from most critics, but there has recently been a backlash to the backlash. The soap, which stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, has a 94 percent approval rating among Rotten Tomatoes users.Globes voters have a habit of falling in love with new shows — they like to be seen as cultural arbiters — but more established series may be impossible to resist. “Succession” wrapped up its rapturously reviewed second season on HBO in October. “Game of Thrones” has never won best drama at the Globes — it has won a record-tying four times at the Emmys — and it will have one final Globes shot this year. “The Crown,” which won best drama at the Globes in 2017 and has adroitly reimagined itself with a new cast, is also a favorite. And don’t count out “Killing Eve,” “Big Little Lies” or “Pose.”On the comedy front, Amazon’s “Fleabag” and its creator and star, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, are the heavy favorites. The show already won big at the September Emmys ceremony. Not that many people noticed: the Emmys hit a new ratings low, attracting just 6.9 million viewers. Honoring “Fleabag” would also be a redemption move for Globes voters; last time around they inexplicably named “The Kominsky Method” best comedy.Best actress in a drama is another category to keep an eye on. It could shape up as a battle of the titans: the Oscar winners Olivia Colman (“The Crown”) and Nicole Kidman (“Big Little Lies”), the Emmy winner Jodie Comer (“Killing Eve”), the singer-actress Zendaya (HBO’s druggie “Euphoria”) and Aniston, who last won a Globe in 2003 for “Friends.”John Koblin contributed reporting from New York. Source link Read the full article

[swiftie-taylors-version]

The Light Of The Moon chapter 1 part 1

In The Moon's Light

🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜🌜

To call this a fleabag hotel would be a courtesy. In fact, this may not even be a livable place for germs. All though, it was a good hideout for what they were doing and what they were selling. William followed a man dressed all in white, the color a assault to the eyes. He could smell a sweet sickening smell form the end of the hall, he knew what it was and where was coming from. 

"I've never seen you before." The man in white mumbles, pulling a key from his belt. "Is this for you, or a gift for someone?"

"Does it matter?" William huffed, waiting for the door to open.

"No, just small talk."

"I hate small talk."

When they entered the room William was hit with the scent of omega, bodily waste and stale air. everyone got up to stand in a line. Twenty to thirty omega's. Boy and girls, all younger than fifteen. Their heads were down, trained to be submissive.

"Do you want a boy or girl? Girls make more offspring but boys... Well I think they taste better." The man in white smirked licking his lips.

"Let me see one." William needed to buy time, he was alone, and the good Doctor still hadn't showed up with their getaway ride.

Grabbing the closest one to them. "Come here girl!" The man in white grabs her forcing her into the light.

Holding her face up to the little light that there was, she had dark hair and blue eyes. It was hard to tell anything else as she was crying with her whole body.

"Shut up!" The man is white hitting her to stop moving, now turning to William. "If you want to try one out..."

"Have you tasted any of them?" William asked laughed.

"I have had my share..." His words cut off as William grabbed him by the throat lifting him off the ground.

"How many? How many do you think you have raped?" He tighten his squeeze.

"You think you can stop us? We are a supply and demand! As long as the demand for omega blood continues he will supply!" The man in white gasping each word out, reaching for the gun at his belt.

William hearing footsteps someone running towards the room, his eyes widened when he realized the man wasn't reaching for a weapon, but for a panic button.

"That's okay, as long as you stay in business so will I!" William hissed taking a tri-dagger twisting blade and pierced it into his heart, pulling it out in one swift motion. He let go of the man who was dead before he even hit the floor.

Banging came from the door, William had to act fast as the Doctor was still nowhere to be found, the omega's huddled in a corner crying. He pushed the bed in front of the door and whatever else passed as furniture. Looking out the window to see if they could climb onto the the ledge of the building. No. They were on the top floor of a twenty-five story building, the group of omegas and himself were not going to survive the fall either. Seeing no way out now, he prepared himself for a fight. Not knowing how many men will be behind that door, it could be one or a hundred, all he had to do was keep fighting until the Doctor could come and save the children.

A light now filling the room, he knew he was not alone anymore. He looked out and saw his zeppelin in all it glory with it's faded war markings. A submarine type airplane that in its  greatest success put fear into the hearts of man, and now thanks to William and the Doctor it was relieving its glory years .The door of the zeppelin open letting out a bridge, breaking open the window, and a tall man in a doctor's coat walked out.

The front now bursting open and before William could turn around the man in the doctor's coat pulled out his gun and fired three times hitting all three men with perfect aim.

Walking into the room he went over to the William. "Just once, Lord William, I will like to get through one of these appointments without using this." He placed his gun back onto his belt.

"As long as these appointments are needed, I do not see you ever putting down your weapon Doctor." William went over to the children, looking them over he could smell that they were not all omega's.

"Come along children, we have warm food, clean beds and the medical supplies you need." The Doctor ushering them on to the zeppelin.

"Please..." A small boy, no younger than eleven came up to William. "Let the rest go, and you can have me. I wouldn't fight you." His voice so small, his whole body shivering out of fear or cold or both. His dark hair dirty and oily covered his face.

"Where do you think I am taking you?" William kneeling in front of the boy.

"To your dungeons, I have had two heats already and have already taken a knot... I will not run, just let them go... please..." Now looking up William could see his eye, a pale gray with a great amount of fear in them.

"Do you know of a ship that takes children away? To land far away where nothing can hurt them?"

"Every omega has heard of it, and every omega knows it's a lie. I have been stolen twice now." The young boy refusing to look at him, tears now running down his face almost cleaning away the dirt. 

"Then you know the words. In the light of the moon..."

"There is no darkness." Now looking him in the eye almost not wanting to hope of such things. "Your lying." he said covering his mouth waiting to be struck by William.

"I'm a man of action, lies do not become me." He wiped the boys tears. "I promise on who I am and what I will be, I will take you to that land of safety and no one will ever hurt you again."

The boy took William's hand and they left, following the Doctor and the rest of the children.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Do you ever think about starting over?" William looked at the Doctor as if he had grown an extra head.

"I don't understand? We have tried so many other ways to get the children to safety. You know this is the only way Doctor." Cold and almost hopeless. 

"I mean looking for someone for you." The Doctor sat a plate of food in front of William.

"I am not hungry for love or for food, what is this anyway." He sniffed the plate. He could smell the truffle oil and it was heavenly 

"It's a mushroom risotto." He pushed the plate closer to the William. "Humor me and try a bite." 

"Fine, but a bite is all you will get. I have better things to do then stuff my face."

"Of course, do you have any clue on who the 'man in white's' boss could be?" The Doctor pouring them each a glass of wine.

"Aw, thank you, and no." William taking a drink he thought for a moment. "He, like other ring leaders, never does any dirty work, but he has to be rich for what he pays his workers."

"Do you think he may have his own dungeon's?" The Doctor asks, starting into his own food.

The dungeon's as everyone called theme where rooms that the most unspeakable things happen, omega's where raped and breed, some keep there to the day of birth then killed. Most where not dungeon's at all, but could pass off as a everyday guest room. Some treated as hostels, letting everyone in for the night with an omega.   

"No, I think he has a separate place of his own... He may even just sell and never really use, for all I know." He took another long drink. "Do you think you could get me a tuxedo?"

"Do you have a date?!" The Doctor almost fell from his chair.

"What? No! Don't be so absurd." William huffed, chuckling slightly at the doctors reaction. "I heard from Lady River there is an art opening and some of the more sinister seller's will be there. I must look the part."

"Oh, well yes. I can have some of your old clothes brought over. When will it be." The older  man not even hiding his disappointment from his voice.

"I told you Doctor, I am not hungry for love."

"Yes, yes, you also said you were not hungry for food but you've all but licked the plate clean and finished the wine." He smirked.

"You tricked me!" William laughed.

"Oh yes my Lord, I have tricked you into good wine and good food, and later I shall trick you into bed. Now if I could only find a way to trick you into a medical checkup." The Doctor picking up the empty wine bottle and dirty dishes.

"The only one who you need to look after is the children, and yes I think bed will be good for now. Wake me if anything shall occur."

@darb6226