#this is an unoriginal remake of a set I made a year ago

[bruehl]

Daniel Brühl as Helmut Zemo Captain America: Civil War (2016)

[tokuxsenshi]

Power rangers 2017 review

so the other day me and my friend watched the 2017 movie. I’m just gonna let this out right now I do not like it so if your just gonna read this to get mad I won’t waste your time. 

so I’ll start with the plot. it starts with Zordon and Rita fighting on earth which is stupid because what would you rather watch and epic space war with a moon witch conquering many planet or a scene on an earth so grey and drab it makes the post apocalypse cry. well Zordon tells Rita shes a shit power ranger and she kills him and goes into the ocean or something. we flash forward. 10,000 year ooo big surprise. And we go right to suggested  cow molestation! what an opener!  then Billy from stranger things gets hit by a car and should probably be dead and he just gets detention despite he later seen with an ankle monitor you don’t get those for braking into a school with a cow you get them for being on probation with the law and if hes on probation with the law THEY WOULDN’T LET HIM IN SCHOOL! Here where we go into what I call movie number 1 the breakfast club remake that was to short. we meet Other Billy and he gets beat up by who me and my friend like to call Canadian Ed Sheeran name Corn Wallace or just Bully even though there were bullies in MMPR named Bulk and Skull couldn’t even be Corn Bulkmire. then we meet my least favorite character Trimberly and just send nude pictures of a teenager without concent like a sexual predator maybe she should have the ankle monitor... Then she pulls sissors out of a wall that another girl shoved into the wall but how fucking strong are these damn teens then she used to give herself the most wild can I speak to the manger bob cut. After school Billy from Stranger things goes to Other Billy house and his mom kinda wild but still more personality then any other character. so Other Billy teaches up how to disabled an ankle monitor. Thanks Other Billy! Then they go to the one location close to actual power rangers ABANDON QUARRY! there we meet Kini and Zack their introductions aren’t to dramatic. So we switch over to Billy from stranger things watching Trimberly trying to kill herself but diving into dirty quarry water hoping either the water isn’t deep enough or the leeches would get her. Sadly doesn’t work. Then Other Billy blows up a mountain with probably illegal dynaminte. apparently everyone has a criminal record. In the mountain they find some geodes pretending to be Power coin. Then like the amazing role models are they run from the police in their wood panel 2016 model mini van.But remember kids if you out run police you go to hell before you die and get hit by a train. Then we switch over to the REAL power rangers hanging out with the family at the juice bar while the new shows a report of the others dying... I WISH! okay so they wake up and find out they have powers? Uh when did the power rangers ever have actual powers in MMPR I mean before they got the ninja powers in the later season but Ninjor wasn’t in this movie. Then Ed Sheeran tries to brake Other Billys hand and the way he tries to brake it makes me assume he also has powers and they go to  Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters so the rangers aint special. They go back to the mountains and all try to kill themselves jumping off a cliff and call into MORE QUARRY WATER!!! Then swim and find a.. A space ship??? where did this come from and in it we meet Micky from Bobs burgers pretending to be a robot alien and Hal from Malcolm in the middle with his head in a pin toy. Zordon shows them a weird sexual vision don’t worry this isn’t the last one. I think at this point they pull Rita out of the ocean and put her dead body on a pile of fish they expect people to eat. and Alpha brings them TO THE PIT! They train Rita pretend to be in Lord of the rings Generic pop music plays. Then Rita Kid naps them and kills other billy not to upset bout that and instead of maybe tellin his mother while playing genric sad music they throw him in the quarry and find a new Billy. Just kidding they go to the space ship an bring him back to life meaning this movie officially has no stakes. THHEN FINALLY THEY MORPH! And they all look like Master Chief from Halo. The MMPR movie version of the theme plays for 5 seconds their zords like shit then they fight putties that look like literal shit a fight happens.Then you think they send her to the moon setting up a squeal... nope she dies in space?? DESPITE BEING FROM SPACE!!! then the movie ends when the Megazord sexy dances and I kill my self by jumping into a dirty Quarry.Also they okay I got the power at the end just like MMPR the movie does it was very weird.

Okay now to talk about my least favorite part the characters. HAHAHAHAHA THEY HAVE NO CHARACTER! These are the most bland unoriginal uninspiring characters I ever seen in a movie they have so little personality Dr.K as a computer screen puts them to shame. Jason just the main guy character Trini and Kimberly are so interchangable I though they were played by the same actress Billy is okay hes fine I don’t really want to be offensive but did antone kinda catch after getting super powers he wasn’t autistic anymore. Zack probably the only character I like because hes the only one with character but I kinda wonder being hes Chinese and his mom only speaks Chinese why does she call him zack. 

Rita okay shes kinda the only reason to watch the ,movie she chews the scenery so much so eats it at some points

Alpha 5 and Zordon arent even worth meantioning their okay maybe Alpha could been less like a drug uncle but whatever. 

I’m not a big super hero fan and this movie kinda shows everything I hate about the heros journey plot its so generic and bland they couldn’t even Try making it even resemble the show maybe if these were oringal characters I’d be fine with it but their not its trying to make character who were built 24 years ago at the time into all new one but made them worse. maybe when hasbro makes the new one it’ll not be about MMPR or at least be more like the show or even the comics honest  I’d watch a shatter grid movie. Thats all I can really say can’t wait for the hate comments.Bye - Dr.K

[duhragonball]

Reading your DBZ live blog I was surprised there is only two episodes of filler during the three year time skip before the androids show up. In your opinion was it a good thing they did this or do you think they should have had some more three year filler episodes so as to have less filler during the actual events of the android/cell sagas?

That throws me off too sometimes.     I remember a couple of months ago looking over the episodes that were coming up and thinking “Wow, there were only two here, weird.”   I think that just speaks to the high quality of Episodes 124 and 125.   They packed a lot of story in those two, so it’s easy to think of it as lasting longer than it did.  

It would be easy to say “Yes, more of this, please,” but we live in a world where they keep making sequels and remakes and bonus content for just about everything that’s popular.   I haven’t watched WWE in months but from what I understand they don’t bother puttiing anything cool in the third hour of Raw because everyone accepts that no one watches the entire show anymore.   Why is there a third hour?   Because the USA network finds it more profitable than running something else in that hour.    But the fans don’t want it, and WWE doesn’t know what to program for it, so it seems like a waste.   

With regards to filler episodes in anime, I get the sense that Toei only produced those for Dragon Ball when they absolutely needed to.    Generally, their preference seemed to be for adding filler scenes to pad out episodes mostly based on the manga.    But the  Frieza Saga’s structure made that very tricky to do, which is why you have so many filler episodes in and around the Trunks Saga.    I can’t really see Toei deciding to just add an extra one in for the sake of it.   

The thing you have to remember is that there were eleven filler episodes before Trunks showed up.  The Garlic Junior Saga was ten, and then Episode 118 showing what the characters were up to before Frieza came to Earth.   Then you have Trunks do his thing from 119-123, an then you get “Z Warriors Prepare” and the Driver’s Ed episode.    That’s a pretty long run, and I’m guessing if some writer pitched an episode about Tien and Yamcha having a side-story together, they would have nixed it, no matter how good it might have been.   “We’ve been doing filler for the last four months, it’s time to get back on track.”   That’s probably what they’d say.  

And I’m speaking as someone who enjoys the Garlic Junior Saga, but it generally hasn’t been well received by fans, and with good reason.   It doesn’t advance the main story, it’s missing a lot of key characters, and the plot isn’t exactly groundbreaking.   Toei’s main goal was to meet deadlines more than anything else.    Episodes 124 and 125 were much better, but they’re not necessarily indicative of Toei’s output at the time. 

I know the fanbase is fascinated with that time period, mainly because that’s when Vegeta and Bulma got together, and there’s plenty of other things that could have happened during those three years.   But I think most of the appeal is based on the mystery.   If they made a spin-off series set during that time period, I think it would disappoint a lot of people, just because it wouldn’t live up to their expectations.

I’ll give you an example: I used to be really fascinated with Darth Maul.   Where he came from, how he was trained, what he was up to before Episode I happened, and what might have happened if he survived that movie.    Then Lucusfiilm (and later Disney) actually started producing stuff with the character.   They fleshed out his origin story and resurrected him as a cyborg so he could run around in their cartoons.    I liked some of that stuff, but I think they missed some good opportunities to re-kill him in a suitably epic style.  Instead, they just sort of left him running around in the background.   He’s a side-villain in Rebels, and he’s the secret mastermind in the Solo movie, and both of those roles seem beneath a guy who used to be the Dark Lord of the Sith.    If anything, the Maul revival just proves why they were right to kill the guy in Episode I, and why there should only be two Sith Lords at a time.   A third one just dilutes the concept.  

I detest the whole chesnut about writers “giving the fans what they need, and not what they think they need.”   It’s been used as a cheap rationale for hacky writing, and nonsensical plot twists.    Even so, I think there is some wisdom to it, in the sense that you can’t just give people more even when they say they want it.  

The other thing I was thinking about recently was Michigan J. Frog, the character from the classic Chuck Jones cartoon, “One Froggy Evening.”   If you haven’t seen it, this singing, dancing frog gaslights a construction worker for seven minutes.    It’s a good cartoon, and people love the character, but there’s really no good way to do more of that.     They used the character again in the 90′s, but not in the same context.    There was a Tiny Toon Adventures short where he heckles a turtle who’s trying to to cross a busy freeway.    The WB network made him their mascot, which amounted to him singing jingles and not much else.   

Today, I discovered the obscure sequel cartoon, “Another Froggy Evening”, made in 1995 which was probably made as some sort of cross-promotion for the WB network.   But it’s just the same gag as the original 1955 cartoon.  Different characters through history find the frog, think they can make money off of his act, only he won’t sing on cue, and they suffer for their hubris.  It’s just the construction worker from the original, only he’s wearing different historical garb.  

The only innovation is the ending, where  Marvn the Martian finds Michigan, and he accepts him unconditionally, because he’s just happy to have a singing frog, whether he actually sings or not.   Also, Michigan’s croaks are apparently him speaking Martian, so Marvin likes that even better.   It’s kind of cute, but it also has nothing to do with the original appeal of the 1955 short.    I don’t think anyone liked the frog for the frog.   It was never about the character, it was the strange enigma he represented.    No one knows how he can sing or why he only does it for one person at a time.   Was he being a dick on purpose, or did humans simply misunderstand him?    I don’t think we were ever supposed to know.    I will say that my favorite thing about “Another Froggy Evening” is that they kept the metal box he was stored in from the original short.    Somehow the frog is immortal, but the metal box has always been around too, even in caveman days.   So in that, at least, Chuck Jones preserved a sense of mystery.

And that’s why you really can’t do more of Michigan J. Frog, because if you repeat the same story, it’s unoriginal, and if you take the story in new directions, you lose the original appeal.  

That’s not to say that it’s pointless to try to tell more stories with characters.    Dragon Ball Z’s cast has a much wider range than Darth Maul and Michigan J. Frog.    I just mean that sometimes it may not be worth the attempt, even if there’s popular demand for it.   Sometimes it’s best to just leave the party early. 

[secretlyatargaryen]

July 2019 Reviews

Games

Walden, a game - A delightful experience for those who love games and literature and the idea of them together. The best parts of the game are the quotes from Thoreau's book that appear on the screen when you examine something closely, like a fox or a maple tree, complete with great voice acting. The ecological detail put into the game is impressive. The worst part is that the game mechanics for completing tasks are clunky and there is very little time each day before the game forces you to go to sleep and begin the next day, and your hunger, fuel, and shelter meter always seems to be low, causing you to spend the majority of your daylight hours picking berries and collecting firewood. I get that this is supposed to mirror the experience of "living simply," but 1) it is boringly repetitive and if anything calls to mind the irony of “being one with nature” in a computer game and 2) there are a lot of other interesting things to do in the game which you do not have enough time to do, such as helping escaped slaves on their way to the underground railroad. I learned playing this game that Henry David Thoreau was basically every guy I met in college who hated the government and whose solution to its atrocities was to fuck off into the woods and smoke pot instead of actually doing anything about it. This analogy is completed by the fact that you are able to go into town and get food and clean laundry from your parents' house if you get too low on those things.

Black Mirror (2017) - No, not the Netflix series. This is a re-imagining of the Black Mirror series of adventure games developed in the early 2000s. The original game is considered a classic of point and click adventures but suffers from an unoriginal plot (obligatory part where I once again complain about horror games and their obsession with "Surprise! You're crazy! Dead women!") and the unfortunateness of early 3D polygon graphics. The second and third game took the series in a completely new and original direction and were quite good, so while I had never heard of the remake before I came across it during the steam summer sale, I was cautiously hopeful. Even if it was trash, it's just the kind of gothic-mystery-exploring-a-haunted-castle trash that I like to throw my money at. The gameplay is pretty fun (minus some quick time events where you can get killed by ghosts mostly by failing to operate the somewhat clunky controls - the game was originally ported for PS4) and the story is original but also expands upon the series mythos. An enjoyable trashy gothic yarn, although the story also felt incomplete, even to someone who has played the original games, and was both wrapped up too quickly and left weirdly unresolved.

Books

Greenglass House, Kate Milford - I started this book a while ago and it’s been on my radar for a while, and I restarted it again when I heard it was going to be on this year’s BOB list. A fun young adult adventure story which utilizes one of my favorite mystery tropes, the closed circle. The story is that preteen Milo lives in the eponymous house, which his family runs as an inn. The house used to be a meeting place for smugglers back in the day, which means there’s buried treasure somewhere in the house, and when the story starts a slew of guests arrive at the house and are stranded by a snowstorm, when things start getting mysterious. Someone in the house is a thief! I really like this book and the way that the story’s original folklore is woven into the plot. There are also several dungeons and dragons elements that play a role in the plot - to solve the mystery, Milo and his friend Meddy pretend to be characters in a role-playing game, and I love the way the story makes connections between games, stories, and language, since that happens to align with my interests.

Serafina and the Black Cloak, Robert Beatty - Another BOB book, this one also has been on my radar for a while because the series is very popular among my students, and when I went to Beatty’s website recently I saw that Disney had already put their name on it, lol. What I didn’t know was that the series takes place in my state. The setting is the Biltmore Estate in the late 1800s, and the story is a historical fantasy that utilizes some of the local folklore in some really interesting ways, although it’s more fantasy than historical. An enjoyable read with an interesting female protagonist.

Movies

Ready Player One - I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would. I had heard going into it that it was not a great adaptation from friends who loved the book, which I haven’t read. That might be why I did enjoyed it so much. I don’t think it’s anything that memorable, but it is enjoyable. I can see why the book became so popular, although I’ve read books with similar storylines. I guess a book like this is more relevant nowadays with the popularity of VR in the modern gaming market, but the story relied on some tired cliches nonetheless. I also was a bit annoyed when the story acknowledged the issue with the main character falling for Artemis’ idealistically beautiful avatar without really knowing her...and then had her turn out to be stunningly gorgeous in real life. Okay, she had a wine-stain disfigurement on her face, but she was still traditionally beautiful, and the main character gets to be with her in the end while meanwhile, his actual best friend, who turns out to be an unfeminine black girl in real life and who obviously has a crush on him, is left behind.

Picnic At Hanging Rock - I come across this movie on gothic film recommendation lists every so often and have wanted to watch it for years, and I happened to find it on youtube, which surprised me. The original movie is from 1975 and is a cult classic for a reason. Stunning visuals and a story that leaves you confused in the just the right way. After watching it, I was itching to learn more and came across last year’s amazon prime series with Natalie Dormer and watched all six episodes, and although the series was enjoyable and a good extension for anyone who enjoys the original movie, it does not have the charm or brilliance of the original. The series expands on the story, but part of the beauty of the original movie is the way the story is told in what isn’t said, and in carefully choreographed scenes where nobody on screen says a word. I can see why the movie is called “gothic” as it has some of the trappings of the genre. It takes place in 1900 at a remote and mysterious boarding school in Australia. Three girls vanish during a school field trip, seemingly without a trace. What happened to them may have been supernatural. Or they may have been murdered, kidnapped, or run off on their own. Also, I’m pretty sure everyone is gay.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - I’m a huge fan of the Shirley Jackson novel which this movie is an adaptation of, and unlike Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House, this movie is actually a fairly straight adaptation of the novel. The movie captures the gothic feel of the book as well as the anxiety about gender and class from which it gets its themes, and there are solid performances all around, but the movie does seem a bit devoid of a life of its own. Despite, and possibly because of, the voice-over narration, Merricat never really comes alive as a character the way she does in the book. This is, I think, a problem with a lot of book to movie adaptations that rely on voice-overs to tell the story. I can see the appeal of this, especially with a book like this which is both heavily steeped in POV and characterized by an unreliable narrator, but I found myself really wishing the movie would just let itself tell the story rather than the narrator.

Shows

American Gods - I watched all of season two on the starz website except for the finale, which I was told that I needed to upgrade by account to watch, so if you are watching on the website or the app be aware of that. I enjoyed season two, although it lacked some of the urgency of the first season. I do enjoy some of the adaptational choices made that update the novel a bit, such as having Technology be outsourced by New Media. Also, season two saw the arrival of my daughter, Sam Black Crow. I’m also looking forward to the Lakeside subplot next season (I assume) as it’s my favorite part of the novel.

Stranger Things - I watched the first four episodes of season one when it came out, and then for some reason never finished it. I know, I know. It didn’t take me very long to watch all three seasons, which I sort of interpreted as one as a result, although I do think there’s a drop in quality somewhere in the second/third season, but overall it’s a fun show that definitely kept me interested and invested in the characters. Also, every scene relating to the upside down motivated me to clean my bathroom.

[ginnyzero]

Knock Offs, Counterfeits, Clones, and Plagiarism

And how does this apply to Fashion and writing.

I’m a fashion person. I’m also a writer person. And the last three years or more I’ve spent more time being a writer person than I have been a fashion person. (My current dream job is putting together a girl targeted AAA noncombatant horse MMO with enough clothing skins to rival GW2. Yes. Goals! GW2 is known as Fashion Wars.) But both industries, and a lot of industries have a major problem with theft.

I’m not going to talk about outright e-book download theft and how that hurts authors. I’ve already done that.

No. I’m talking about creative theft. Writers and Fashion Designers stealing from other Writers and Fashion Designers. I’m talking about companies stealing the designs/ideas of Designers and Writers and copying them. I’m talking about knock offs and counterfeiting, genre clones and plagiarism.

Theft is the reason why we have copyright, trademarks and patents. Because human beings like to steal from each other for some reason and the easiest thing to steal are ideas. Ideas are hard to prove to be original. It’s hard to prove who had the idea first. (Fashion is just beginning to tiptoe into patents. Trademarking has been standard for years.)

So, what is the difference between a knock-off and a counterfeit?

Well, both are stealing. The knock off however doesn’t try to pretend that it’s from a famous brand name.

A knock off design is a long standing tradition in fashion. Designers like Worth would put out their designs for the new seasons in the windows, other seamstresses would come and sketch the designs and go back to their studios and make the same designs out of different fabric at a lower price. (And quite possibly a lower quality.) Apparently, I had a relative that could do this! She could go look at the designs in the window, sketch them and come home and pattern them out for herself. As far as I know, she did this without any formal training.

I could probably do this, but I do have formal training. I choose not to.

The knock off design isn’t pretending to be a gown from Worth or any current famous day designer. The Knock Off looks the same usually in different materials at a different price point and gives the customer a feeling that they have luxury goods even if the label is different.

In Asia, the customers are so obsessed with brand names and labels, that the high end companies have made it a point to have their products in three or four different price points so that all the customers can have their goods. (Or else no doubt knock offs and counterfeits would abound even more than they already do.) Now, this was a good decade ago. It might have changed. This policy hasn’t been instituted anywhere else that I’m aware of. But this is one way that big name brands can discourage knock offs, basically, by doing it themselves by embracing more than their “core customer.”

A knock off in writing. Well, it’s a clone.

Remember when the Hunger Games came out and everyone compared it to Battle Royale? And Suzanne Collins swore up and down that she’d never read that series or seen the movies or even heard of it. (Unless she was into anime, I’d believe her. Battle Royale was a bit niche even for anime.)

Dungeons and Dragons “ripped off” Tolkien. (As did Forgotten Realms.) Warhammer “ripped off” Dungeons and Dragons. WarCraft “ripped off” Warhammer. (Only because Warhammer backed out of a game deal with Blizzard and they had too much money invested to abandon the project. I bet Warhammer is wincing now.) And lots of MMOs ripped off World of Warcraft.

They’re clones. They’re genre clones. The difference between all of them is that none of them are claiming that they’re Tolkien. (Tolkien created a mythos based off the legends and tales of Europe, Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Christianity.)

It doesn’t become a counterfeit or plagiarism until the writer directly lifts words from the other writer or tries to pass the garment/handbag/pair of shoes as coming from a high end company when they really don’t.

We’ll get to trademark infringement in a moment.

Using someone’s design stitch for stitch, color for color and putting in a label that can be mistaken for a high end company’s label like Gucci or Fendi etc is counterfeiting. Taking someone’s words, word for word, from another book, more than 50 words, without credit is plagiarism.

It’s stealing

Stealing is wrong.

Now, yes, to a certain extent knock offs are wrong too. Let’s not get into the idea that “oh, because I presented it as my own, it’s okay.” Knock offs and genre cloning are really this grey area. So, here is where we get into trademarks.

Trademarks were created by the gov’t in order to protect, along with copyright, intellectual property. Trademarks deal with words and visuals and in fashion, they deal with overall design details. Trademarks, the applying of trademarks and not applying for frivolous trademarks and trademark infringement is one of those things that gets lawyers involved and no one makes any money.

The Lord of the Rings is a trademark. Elves aren’t trademarked. Dwarves aren’t trademarked. The Lord of the Rings as a property is trademarked.

That eye searing color of pink that T-Mobile uses on its products and stores. Trademarked.

The double stitching on denim back pockets, the red tag on the back right pocket and the specific leather back tag on Levi Jeans, trademarked. (In fact, they even might be registered which is a step beyond trademarking.)

These are things that make each brand different. If you want to write high fantasy, you can’t use the series title “the Lord of the Rings.” Sure, go ahead and have rings in your story. The Shannara Chronicles did it, there is another series that did it that I can’t remember the name of. But you can’t title it, “The Lord of the Rings.”

If you’re a phone company, don’t even think about bothering to use anything close to that color of pink that T-Mobile uses. They’ll sue you for trademark infringement. Customers might confuse your store for theirs. And they can’t have that!

If you want to design a jean, don’t use double stitching across the back pockets, ban the color red from all your tags and for all that is holy don’t think to use the Levi Logo on a brown leather square on the back of the waistband (or that color of brown for that matter.) Those are Levi’s. People may see those things and think you’re wearing Levi’s. (And I mean, no line of double stitching in any design. It’s a no go.)

Creative people draw from other works of art and writings and from the world around them all the time. There are trends in media and there are writers/corporations/designers that want to jump onto those trends and try to get a bit of that money that everyone is spending on that particular trend at that particular time. (All the dystopian novels that came out after the Hunger Games. All the little WoW MMO Clones. Kanye West’s designs showing up in the windows and on the racks of H&M.)

There are literally writers dedicated to writing stories to fit Amazon search term/graphs. There are writers who take the themes and stories from other writers, dress it up in slightly different trappings and try to peddle it as original. They clone the work without changing it significantly. They use imagery and ideas and even words similar to other popular writers in order to try and leech off those other writer’s fan bases.

Now, I have an entire rant about not worrying about being too original because it’s all been done before.

What I’m saying here is don’t be so unoriginal and draw only from one work of stories or deliberately tread into another author’s trademarked series in order to try and present their works and brand as your own works and brand.

There’s a difference between a Lord of the Rings clone and a Lord of the Rings fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off. A clone is going to do more than just change the  “setting” and the “names.” A clone is going to introduce new plots and new ideas drawn from other sources than just Tolkien. Yes. It’s going to be, “Oh, this is similar to Lord of the Rings.” (The first Shannara book didn’t stray quite as far as it should have from Tolkien, for example.) But it’s still going to be different enough to say, “oh, and I see other mythologies and new themes are being explored and it’s advancing the genre.”

And if it doesn’t, then it’s a bad clone even if the names and settings have been changed. It remains that fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off of it.

In fashion, in general, I wince at “brands” that I can tell or have explicitly stated that they’re knock off brands.

They may not realize they’re knock off brands. If part of your company story is going to a store, buying a product and then finding out how to recreate it at a lower price point, then you’re a knock off brand. They may not get this because some, not all, the people who do this don’t have fashion training. And don’t know how fashion business works and why knocking off “styles” of stuff is bad. They didn’t design that style. They didn’t put thousands of dollars into researching how to make that shoe and make it comfortable from sole to last. They went and bought it at a store and copied it. Then they’re presenting it as their own under their name.

Why are they knocking off that handbag? Or shoes? Or item of clothing? Mostly, to make money. But their voice, their point of view as a person isn’t coming through because honestly, most of the time, they don’t have one. I’m talking about fashion brands here started by not fashion people who haven’t gone to school, or companies that don’t hire fashion designers. They make me whimper and cringe. Why? Why? Why? Money. Ohkay, profit isn’t a dirty word, but don’t you feel the least bit dirty taking someone else’s design and remaking it? How can you be remotely proud of that?

It bugs me.

Writers who deliberately want to make a Narnia clone or a Star Wars clone or insert popular trend of the moment clone make me wince as well. I have to ask myself, though I don’t ask them, what they think they’re bringing to the genre by just making another rendition of a popular thing? What questions are they asking? What themes are they exploring? Or are they just trying to make money? Do they really have their own story to tell? Where is their voice? Where is their personal experience?

Personally, if I want to read more of a popular universe, I go to AO3 or FF.net and I read fanfiction. Not only is it free, there’s roughly the same amount of good to bad that I’ll find on bookshelves. The characters are the characters I know and love and leaving a kudo or comment can make someone’s day! (Okay, leaving a review of someone’s book can also make an author’s day. Seriously! Leave reviews!)

When I sat down to write the first book of Heaven’s Heathens. I wanted to write Urban Fantasy. I like the worlds that Kim Harrison and Jim Butcher and Patricia Briggs and Laurell K. Hamilton create. And there is a lot of Urban Fantasy on the shelves and it’s mostly mysteries. And it’d be easy, oh so easy, to create a clone of one of those worlds to put in all the different races and the tensions and try to put my own spin on that. (And there are plenty of writers who have done that!)

And I do have an idea like that. My idea draws on another popular genre as well. (And I’m amazed at how popular that genre is to be honest. It baffles me like Amish romances baffle me.)

But that didn’t feel right at the time. I didn’t want to be another clone of another urban fantasy. I didn’t want to be dystopia either. Even though that was popular at the time. I wanted to write about bikers and werewolves and touch upon themes that were important to me; belonging, family, emotional labor, feminism, healthy masculinity, different types of dating.

Straight up urban fantasy didn’t seem a good fit. Putting it in today’s world might be a bit touchy. And the only place I could think of where leather was accepted was post-apocalyptic fiction. And with that, I could set it into the future and have fun with technology making it science fantasy instead of just pure urban fantasy. There’s more adventures in science fantasies and I’m good at writing adventures and action. (And silliness, I’m good at silliness.)

Originality comes from taking the building blocks of different ideas and different designs and fitting them together in different ways to say new and meaningful things in your own voice. Remember, stealing from one person is plagiarism. Stealing from many is research.

Knock offs and cloning, counterfeiting and plagiarism, the deliberate and with intent stealing of other people’s creative work, words, writing and designs and presenting them as your own is wrong. Counterfeiting and plagiarism is straight up illegal. Knock offs and clones aren’t as long as they don’t stray into trademark infringement. Though there is a very good question about morals and ethics if you want to knock off another design or another book.

The reason why there are so many kitchen sink urban fantasies out there outside of the popularity of the genre, is because they don’t stray into trademark infringement, the worlds are different, the protagonists are different even if they are essentially all doing the same thing; solving mysteries. And there is nothing wrong with having 101 different types of kitchen sink urban fantasy mysteries with private eye wizards or mechanics or nurses or bounty hunters or security people or line cooks at bbq joints that double as assassins. (And those are the ones I’ve read.) Because the world building is different, the characters are different, the rules are different. They may be clones but they aren’t direct copies trying to pass themselves off as from super popular writer.

And readers like this because that means there are more kitchen sink urban fantasies for them to read (regardless of quality.)

So, if you want to write a kitchen sink urban fantasy go right ahead. Just, remember, you need to take your voice and your experience and your themes and infuse them into your writing by creating your own characters and writing in your own world instead of using someone else’s.

In fashion, it’s the same way. There are basic building blocks to fashion. There are basic ideas for clothes, the tailored jacket, the 5 pocket jean, the basic t-shirt, the pencil skirt and so on and so forth. And if you want to create a fashion label, then by all means, create a fashion label and remember that these basic building blocks (that everyone needs) are launching and jumping points for higher designed clothing. Don’t go out and buy someone else’s pencil skirt or t-shirt or bootie and cut it apart and trace their pattern. Take your voice, your experience with clothing and try to find out what is important to you in fashion, what types of things do you want to wear and others like you want to wear. Those are the fashion details you bring to your clothes!

Be yourself. Find your voice. Then, you don’t have to worry about being a clone or a knock off or being sued for copyright or trademark infringement. (Though looking into various fashion trademarks is a good idea to be honest.) If you have something you want to say and it’s important to you, you’ll find a way to say it without relying on the ideas of others.

[mrmichaelchadler]

NYFF 2018: Roma, Her Smell, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, At Eternity's Gate

When press screenings for the New York Film Festival begin every year as summer edges into fall, it can seem that the cinema year isn’t three-quarters over but just about to begin: many of the several dozen films the festival showcases hold the promise of being ones that will dominate discussions and tallies of the year’s best work as New Year’s approaches. When those screenings end a bit less than four weeks later, one’s earlier expectations have often been handsomely met, enough so that the contours of the year’s film accomplishments begin to take shape.

There is a remarkable consistency to this. Even if festival regulars invariably take issue with a few undeserving films it includes or deserving films that somehow get overlooked, the NYFF still manages to gather an impressive selection of international cinema that includes some of the most acclaimed films from earlier festivals, especially Cannes, but also including Berlin, Sundance, Venice and Toronto. It is a window on world cinema that’s expansive and clarifying, and sometimes stunning.

In many years, the festival supplies as many as half of the titles on my annual 10-best list. That won’t be the case for 2018, even though I found a lot to like in this year’s programs (my list, though, will almost surely include three films I saw at the 2017 NYFF: Chloe Zhao’s “The Rider,” Valeska Grisebach’s “Western” and Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed”). Yet the very last press screening I attended yielded the film that is pretty much certain to occupy the top spot on my 2018 list. Indeed, when I came out of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” I felt I’d seen the best film not only of the year but possibly of the decade.

The film, which premiered and won the Golden Lion at Venice and occupied the prestigious Centerpiece slot at the NYFF, is one of those rare, mesmerizing masterpieces that finds a filmmaker making a deeply personal statement while also reaching the peak of his craft. Directed, edited and shot in luminous black and white by Cuarón, it depicts several months in the lives of an upper middle-class Mexico City family (four kids, mom and a dad who skips out early on) and their two female servants during 1970-71. Though running just over two hours, the film feels like an epic, with the sweep and detail of a great 19th century novel.

While its title refers the neighborhood where the story takes place, and where Cuarón grew up, it also appropriately evokes the Italian capital and its cinematic traditions, from the searching humanism of De Sica and Rossellini to the social criticism and stylistic bravado of Fellini and Antonioni. One of the film’s most fascinating aspects is how it manages to parallel an intimate portrait of family life with suggestions of broader changes in Mexican society at large. All the while, Cuarón keeps our eyes riveted with his meticulous, distanced compositions, elegant lateral camera movements and a succession of strikingly mounted set pieces.

Mexican cinema has been going from strength to strength in recent years, yet “Roma” surely represents the peak of its achievements to date. Cuarón’s compadre Guillermo del Toro, who headed the jury at Venice, has said he regards it as one of the five best films ever made. Deserving of all the accolades it is sure to continue winning, this breathtaking tour de force won a prolonged standing ovation at Lincoln Center.

Coincidentally, the day after seeing Cuarón’s film I saw another work that’s sure to be high on my 10-best list this year. But Patrick Wang’s two-part, four-hour “A Bread Factory”—please see Matt Zoller Seitz’s great reviews of this extraordinary film, which opens in theaters on October 26—was playing in a special preview at Brooklyn’s Museum of the Moving Image. In my view, it should have been in the NYFF, and the fact that it wasn’t draws attention to the festival’s current weakness in showcasing important emerging New York auteurs.

Wang certainly merits that description, as the critical reception of his latest is sure to underscore. “A Bread Factory” might have dazzled both critics and audiences at the NYFF. Instead, among younger New York directors, the festival gave us “Her Smell,” the latest from Alex Ross Perry. Perry has been a regular at the NYFF in recent years, for reasons that can hardly be explained by the uneven, unoriginal quality of his work. Compared to an ahead-of-the-curve artist like Wang, he turns out movies that seem designed to impress film professors and festival programmers of 20 years ago.

Maybe that impression is particularly strong in “Her Smell,” since it is set in the indie rock scene of the 1990s. The story follows the decline, flame-out, rehab and return of a Courtney Love-like star played by Elisabeth Moss. The film has its strengths, especially in Moss’ high-octane performance, Sean Price Williams’ terrific cinematography and some very creative sound design. But the whole thing ends up feeling pointless, overlong and too much like other, better rock movies. 

Regarding older, more established New York directors, the festival did somewhat better, especially in serving up the latest from the Coen Brothers and Julian Schnabel.

The Coens, of course, are longtime NYFF veterans. I first encountered their work when “Blood Simple” made its dazzling debut at the 1984 festival. Thirty-four years later, they were back with “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” a compendium of six tales of the Old West that are presented as if drawn from a kids’ book of several decades back.

Reportedly, the tales were originally intended as a Netflix series before the Coens decided to turn them into a feature. As such, they work pretty well, even if the anthology form is tricky enough to remind us that it’s only produced one unqualified success in recent years: the Argentinian extravaganza “Wild Tales.” Although markedly different in tone and dramatic content, the tales here are united by a theme: death. There’s gunfire, mayhem and killing at every turn, which not only accords with the genre’s usual proclivities but also suggests a philosophical undertow not unlike those of “No Country for Old Men” and “True Grit.”

The funniest of the tales is the first, in which Tim Blake Nelson hilariously proves himself to be the fastest draw and deadliest shot in this part of the West until, as always happens, a newcomer arrives who’s even better. Subsequent tales give us cattle rustling, hangings, ambushes, lethal betrayals and rampaging Indians, and stars including James Franco, Tom Waits, Liam Neeson, Tyne Daly and Brendan Gleeson. For my money, the best of these yarns is the penultimate one, “The Girl Who Got Rattled,” which has Zoe Kazan as an Eastern lass who finds romance on a wagon train to Oregon but falls victim to the journey’s perils. Both romantic and tragic, this tale is rich and narratively substantive enough that it could have been fleshed out to feature length.

Whatever the variable interest of the individual tales, it should be noted that the Coens’ craftsmanship reaches a new peak in this large, complex production. The film’s cinematography, costumes, production design, special effects and spectacular western locations all make this one of the most impressively mounted westerns in some time. And the Coens’ screenwriting has seldom yielded such a rich trove of salty, droll, idiomatic dialogue (it suggests they may have undertaken their “True Grit” remake in order to take some lessons from the wonderful western vernacular in Charles Portis’ source novel).

Approaching the festival’s Closing Night film, Julian Schnabel’s “At Eternity’s Gate,” it’s perhaps best to begin with the obvious question: Does the world need another cinematic portrait of Vincent Van Gogh given the estimable ones created by three formidable directors: Vincente Minnelli (“Lust for Life”), Robert Altman (“Vincent and Theo”) and Maurice Pialat (“Van Gogh”)?

Actually, the better question might be: why not? Van Gogh’s story and image have an inexhaustible fascination, one that transcends the realm of mere artistic biography and makes him an icon of Christ-like suffering and spiritual aspiration. We could probably do with dozens more Van Gogh movies, and this one has the additional raison d’etre of being the first by a reputable painter-turned-filmmaker (Schnabel previously directed “Before Night Falls” and “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”).

But there’s one factor above all that more than justifies the creation of “At Eternity’s Gate”: Willem Dafoe. Van Gogh is a role this fine actor was born to play. You don’t have go to the movie to see what I mean. Just Google it and look at the production stills. Though there’s a significant age difference (Van Gogh died at 37, Dafoe is now 63), the resemblance is uncanny. There are times in the movie when we see Dafoe in front of one of Van Gogh’s actual self-portraits, and though objectively you can detect certain differences, spiritually they seem identical. 

This is more than just physical likeness. Dafoe also has the ability to visually convey—mainly through his eyes—the dismay, fear and agonies Van Gogh experienced, as well as his wonder and joy at the southern sunlight that he says is his main subject. More than just a compelling performance, the actor’s work here begs to be considered the cinema’s definitive Van Gogh.

Schnabel’s visual treatment of the painter’s wanderings in the final months of his life has an involving sensuality and sense of visual textures. His filmmaking eye indeed seems much like a painter’s as it observes Van Gogh wandering through the sun-dappled landscapes around Arles and trying to capture its colors on his canvases.

Narratively, Schnabel and co-writers Jean-Claude Carrière and Louise Kugelberg adapt a strategy that the press notes aptly describe as “kaleidoscopic.” Jumping around in time, their drama includes a number of fanciful, invented and even somewhat surreal scenes, but mainly it focuses on incidents recorded in his biography and letters, including interactions with his brother Theo (fine work by Rupert Friend) and Paul Gaugin (an excellent Oscar Isaac). Most of those incidents are of course well-known, and it can’t be said that “At Eternity’s Gate” dramatizes them in a way that gives us any startling new insights into Van Gogh’s character and genius. But they provide a fine frame for Dafoe’s brilliant incarnation of the artist, and that’s enough to make Schnabel’s film a highlight of this year’s New York Film Festival.

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