#this is based on footage that was 90% blocked by someone's head so I might be totally wrong

[leek-inherent]

“In fact some would say it’s something quite beautiful...”

2 weeks ago Andrew Barth Feldman said on Alex Boniello’s twitch that he heard there was a “funny choreography change” in sincerely me that Gaten came up with, and after watching that one recording I am going to assume it’s when Jared puts his hand on Evan’s cheek. Which I agree is very funny. 

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior Home Edition May 8, 2020 – CLEMENTINE, SPACESHIP EARTH, BLUE STORY, VALLEY GIRL, ARKANSAS, HOW TO BUILD A GIRL and more!

And the summer that never was continues with no new movies in theaters unless you include a number of select drive-ins scattered across the country. There’s a lot of new stuff out this weekend, some good, some bad, but we’re getting to a point where every distributor big or small is dumping their movies to VOD in hopes of making money. But I guess that means there’s a lot more options of things to see, right?

The Virtual Oxford Film Festival continues this Friday with the virtual premieres of Steve Collins’ comedy I’ve Got Issues and the unrelated doc feature, I Am Not Alone (Note: both of these are only available for folks in Mississippi!). Also, the Hello, Gorgeous Shorts block (love the names they come up with to put these shorts together!) will debut with 8 new shorts, including Bad Assistant. You can get tickets to all of these things at the festival’s Eventive page.

For the next few days only, you can also win the Oxford Film Festival award-winning short Finding Cleveland right here for free! The film directed by Larissa Lam that follows husband Baldwin Chiu’s journey to Mississippi to investigate his roots will have its feature version, Far East Deep South, premiere as part of Oxford’s virtual festival in June.

One of the better films I watched this week (I guess that makes it this week’s “Featured Film”) is Lara Gallagher’s feature debut CLEMENTINE (Oscilloscope), a seemingly simple two-hander indie drama showcasing two fantastically talented actors in Otmara Marrero and Sydney Sweeney (HBO’s Euphoria). Marrero plays Karen, a young woman looking to get away after ending a relationship with a significantly older woman, deciding to break into her lover’s isolated lakeside home. There, she encounters Sweeney’s Lana, a mischievous younger teen of indeterminate age who Karen befriends. The two of them get closer as Karen is still in mourning for her previous relationship, but as she learns more about Lana, things clearly aren’t what they seem.

Gallagher has written a sweet and subdued character piece that at times veers into thriller territory but never goes so far across that line to take away from the drama. At the film’s core is the mystery about the two young women and their respective pasts, because we don’t even learn that much about Karen before heading to the lakeside house.

where there’s a lot of mystery about both of the young women at the story’s core, There were aspects of the movie that reminded me of the recent dramatic thriller Tape, where there’s also an aspect of sexual abuse and revenge, but it really never goes to places that might be expected. I’m a little bummed that I missed this at Tribeca last year, and part of that can be blamed on the enigmatic title which doesn’t really give a sense of what the movie is about at all. But Gallagher and her cast have done a fantastic job with a film that’s not necessarily easy to define or describe but leaves you with a warm feeling that films like this can still be made. (See Never Rarely Sometimes Always as another example of this.)

Now might be the perfect time for Matt Wolf’s new doc, SPACESHIP EARTH (Neon), which is all about the eight people who locked themselves into Biosphere II in the early ‘90s with the plans to live inside the ecologically self-contained environment for two years. Neon had two amazing scientific docs in 2019, Apollo 11 and The Biggest Little Farm, both which were in my Top 10 for the year, so imagine my disappointment when neither of them received Oscar nominations. Wolf previously directed 2013’s Teenage and last year’s Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, the latter being a decent doc using archival footage, and Spaceship Earth mixes all of the amazing archival footage with interviews with many of the key characters. In case you weren’t familiar with Biosphere II, it was an experiment set up where 8 individuals would spend two years inside an environment that’s meant to be fully self-sufficient. Wolf’s film goes back to the start of what was essentially a theater group who put together a number of global projects before tackling Biosphere II, a project that wasn’t taken very seriously by the scientific community because there were no scientists among the group. It was seen as “ecological entertainment” by some and a cult by others, and those feelings increase when it was discovered that not everything is what it seems. When an accident causes one of the “biospherians” to have to go outside, she ends up sneaking things back into Biosphere II, which is against the rules set up by the group. It’s a fairly fascinating doc if you were around during this time but only heard about it filtered through the news and the PR, but Wolf’s film goes deep into the project and the controversy surrounding it, as well as when it inevitably goes wrong. Wolf manages to get many of those involved, including the group’s leader, John Allen, and there’s even an appearance by another figure from U.S. politics who had their own documentary just last year! This is a really strong doc that is getting a digital release and apparently, it will even be screened on the sides of some buildings, which is a cool idea in this time where there aren’t many theaters.

A relatively big hit in the UK, BLUE STORY (Paramount), the directorial feature debut of British rapper Rapman, adapted from his own YouTube series, is now available via digital download, having originally been planned to get a US theatrical release in March. It’s about the friendship of two young British teens, Timmy and Marco, from the Peckham area of London but from opposite sides of what’s become a violent street gang feud. I saw this movie way back on March 11, and I had to rewatch it more recently since I had forgotten whether I liked it or hated it. I’m probably somewhere more in between, as I thought the young leads, Stephen Odubola (Timmy) and Micheal Ward (Marco), were both terrific in a movie that generally had some storytelling and pacing issues. 

Honestly, I didn’t understand a lot of what was going on due to the heavy accents (even with the necessary subtitles), but it also didn’t really stand up to last year’s Les Miserables,  a film set in a similar setting in France, but that one  was nominated for an Oscar after being submitted by France. Besides writing and directing, Rapman also acts as the film’s ad-hoc narrator through a number of raps that gives his film a bit of a hip-hop musical feel. I’m not sure I was crazy about this decision since a lot of the time he is recapping something that we just saw take place.

The film definitely has a unique energy, as the first half alternates between youthful innocence and faux machismo, neither which generally does very much for me.   I did enjoy the film’s romantic underpinnings as it shows young love between Timmy and a classmate named Leah (Karla-Simone Spence) , but that storyline comes to an abrupt and shocking halt about 45 minutes into the movie before the story jumps forward three years into something very different.  (To be honest, the romantic aspects were handled in a far more interesting way in the recent indie Premature.) The movie does get far more dramatic and tense in this last act, while it also shows what a talented cast Rapman has put together in order for them to shift gears into the very different tone the movie then takes. It’s a jarring change, but it adds to what Rapman was trying to do in making Blue Story an almost-Shakespearean coming-of-age story set against an authentic urban landscape. I’m not 100% sure Blue Story will connect with young urban Americans in the same way as it clearly did in the UK, because the dialect and slang that pervades the film often makes it difficult to follow, but it’s quite a striking debut from the rapper/filmmaker.

Next up is VALLEY GIRL (Orion Pictures), a musical remake of Martha Coolidge’s 1983 movie that introduced many people to one Nicolas Cage. The new movie is directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg (A Deadly Adoption, “The Mindy Project”), and it stars the wonderful Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day) as Julie Richman, the valley girl of the title who is going to high school with her valley girl friends but becomes enamored with the punk kid Randy (Josh Whitehouse), who comes from a very different world. I’m not sure what else I can tell you about Valley Girl, since I’m under embargo on this one until Friday, so I’m not sure if I can tell you if it’s good or bad. I will say that if you like popular ‘80s groups like Modern English and others, the movie may give you a smile. It also stars Alicia Silverstone as the older Julie, telling her own daughter this story in a framing sequence, as well as Judy Greer as Julie’s mother and others, such as Mae Whitman, who can really belt it out in her role as Randy’s bandmate, “Jack.”  This is supposed to open in some of those aforementioned drive-ins, as well as being available digitally.

Getting away from this week’s musicals, Clark Duke co-wrote and stars in his feature film directorial debut, ARKANSAS (Lionsgate), based on John Brandon’s novel. I haven’t read the novel, but Clark plays a lowlife named Swin, a drug-runner along with his partner Kyle (Liam Hemsworth), both of them pretending to be park rangers. Kyle is particularly interested in learning more about their enigmatic boss, the Arkansas-based drug kingpin known only as “Frog,” but their business arrangements get more complicated.

I had a few problems with this movie, much of it coming from the relatively weak writing that comes across like it was made by someone who has watched way too many Scorsese or Tarantino movies without really understanding why those filmmakers’ movies are so brilliant. I hate to say it, because I generally like Duke as an actor, but casting himself in the role of Swin without doing much beyond growing a moustache to make himself look sleazier really didn’t much for the material. He was a very odd pairing with the rugged and tougher Hemsworth.

The best part of the film is when it flashes back to 1985 West Memphis and we meet the actual “Frog,” played by Vince Vaughn, and we see him interacting with Michael K. Williams’ “Almond,” who he betrays to take over his drug business. I liked this bit of the movie even if Vaughn’s accent wasn’t great, but then we’re back to Duke and Hemsworth in present day, and that doesn’t hold up as well. Clarke overcomplicates things by creating a non-linear narrative that jumps back and forth in time and between two storylines – again, like Pulp Fiction – but the storytelling and dialogue doesn’t do enough to make up for the confusion this cause.

Clark certainly has brought on some decent actors, such as John Malkovich and Vivica A. Fox, but making himself the focus of much of the movie compared to the far more charismatic Hemsworth, hurts the movie more than helps it. I didn’t hate Eden Brolin as Swin’s love interest, Johnna, but they really didn’t enough chemistry to make them believable as a couple.  Don’t get me wrong. I definitely commend Clark on taking on such a big project as his directorial debut, and it definitely grew on me, but it’s an erratic piece that pays tribute to far better films and that is its biggest detriment.  Originally planned for a theatrical release on May 1, Arkansas will instead hit Apple, Amazon, On Demand platforms, DVD and Blu-Ray on Tuesday.

Beanie Feldstein from last year’s Book Smart stars in Coky (“Harlots”) Giedroyc’s HOW TO BUILD A GIRL (IFC Films) as Johanna Morrigan, an ambitious 16-year-old from Wolverhampton, England who gets a job at music magazine “D&ME.” She creates an alter-ego pseudonym for herself in Dolly Wilde, and quickly learns she has to be mean in order to succeed and earn the respect of her peers as one of the UK’s most hated music journalists, even after falling in love withs (and then betraying) rock star John Kite (Alfie Allen, who also was on “Harlots”).

Based on British journalist Caitlin Moran’s 2014 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, I definitely should have liked this movie more, having been a regular reader of the Melody Maker around the time Moran would have been writing for it. The screenplay she’s co-written adapting her own book isn’t great, and everyone involved just seems to be trying too hard to be funny and failing miserably.

I guess the biggest issue, once you adjust to Beanie Feldstein’s British accent, which falls somewhere between Harry Potter and the Beatles, is that it’s hard to care about her character even a little, since she’s acting all quirky one second and then becomes a monster as the film goes along. Johanna is just annoying and when she transforms into “Dolly,” she becomes even worse.

Paddy Considine plays Johanna/Dolly’s father, who still has aspirations of being a rock star after giving birth to a huge brood of children. There’s a few other small roles from other actors like Emma Thompson, Michael Sheen and Gemma Anderton, many of them portraying Johanna’s author inspirations talking to her from her wall of idols.

How to Build a Girl is just another example of the sad state of British comedies, although there are a few shining stars like last year’s Yesterday, which was in my top 10, and this year’s Emma. This one just isn’t particularly funny, and there’s a general feeling of been-there seen-that, as it tells a fairly typical rise and fall story where Dolly’s debauchery turns into an awful human being, and it’s not like I liked her much to begin with.  She isn’t as funny as intended and then she gets awful, and it’s impossible to feel bad for her when things ultimately go wrong. Anyway, five minutes later, everything is fine.

It’s the type of autobiographical thing that a writer writes to make themselves look like some kind of hero, and it reminds me a bit of last year’s Blinded by the Light in some ways. h I know a lot of people liked the movie, but I wasn’t really a fan at all. This movie is even less funny and not particularly original, making it feel about as pretentious as the British music press became in the ‘90s. Either way, it will be available to watch at home via VOD as well as in some open drive-ins where applicable.

There are a ton more movies this week, and unfortunately, I didn’t get to fully watch many of the movies below, though I still hope to watch more of these over the next few days and may add a few more reviews.

I heard good things about Christophe Honoré’s comedy ON A MAGICAL NIGHT (Strand Releasing), particularly about Chiara Mastroiani’s performance as Maria, which won her an acting award at last year’s Cannes. She plays Maria, a woman dissatisfied with her marriage of 20 years, who moves into a hotel room across the street after getting into an argument with her husband (singer Benjamin Biolay). I haven’t gotten through it yet as it seems, like so many French movies, to be very talky, but I’ll try to get to it. It will open virtually as part of Film at Lincoln Center’s virtual cinema, following its debut at the “Rendezvous with French Cinema” series that was unfortunately cut short midway this year.

Also continuing this weekend is Cinema Tropical’s “Cinema Tropical Collection” of Brazilian films, this week’s being Caetano Gotardo’s YOUR BONES, YOUR EYES,  in which the filmmaker stars as João, a middle class São Paulo filmmaker who has long conversations and monologues with the people around him.

There are a few other docs available virtually this week, including Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s REWIND (FilmRise), a collection of home videos from 20 years ago, when his father would film family gatherings but also documenting a family secret that would lead to a media firestorm and a court battle.  The film will be available to stream and download on iTunes, Prime Video, GooglePlay and Microsoft this Friday, and then will air as part of PBS’s Independent Lens on Monday, May 11.  

The Maysles Cinema in Harlem is continuing its virtual cinema with Alex Glustrom’s MOSSVILLE: WHEN THE GREAT TREES FALL, which will be available for a 48-hour VOD rental for $12 from Thursday through April 14 with a Zoom QnA with the filmmakers on Saturday at noon Eastern. The film centers around Mossville, Louisiana, a community founded by former African-American slaves that has been overrun by petrochemical plants and toxic clouds that have forced residents from their homes. Glustrom’s film focuses on Stacey Ryan, a man who refuses to abandon his family’s land and fights for his own human rights.

Apparently, William Nicholson’s HOPE GAP (Screen Media) is getting a second chance to be seen on VOD after a rather half-hearted theatrical release on March 6. It stars  Annette Bening as Grace who is dealing with her husband of 29 years (Bill Nighy) leaving her and how that break-up affects their grown-up son (Josh O’Connor).

Following its premiere as part of the virtual Tribeca Film Festival, Emily Cohn’s sex comedy, CRSHD (Light Year), will get a virtual theatrical release in New York, LA and other regional markets. It stars Isabelle Barbier as college freshman Izzy Alden who goes with her best friends (Deeksha Ketkar, Sadie Scott) on a journey to help Izzy lose her virginity.

Also in select theaters, on demand and digital this Friday is José Magán’s The Legion (Saban Films/Paramount), starring Mickey Rourke, Bai Ling and Lee Partridge. It takes place during the invasion of Parthia where two Roman legions are brought to a standstill in Armenia’s snowy mountains where they’re dying from the cold. Their only hope against the cold and the Parthian patrols is half-roman soldier, Noreno, who must cross the mountains to find the men who can help them change the course of this losing battle.

On VOD starting Thursday is Spa Night director Andrew Ahn’s Driveways (FilmRise), starring Hong Chau from HBO’s “Watchmen” and Alexander Payne’s Downsizing as Kathy, a single mother who is travelling with her 8-year-old son Cody (Lucas Jaye) to her dead sister’s house with plans to clean and sell it. There, she befriends a Korean war vet named Del (played by the late Brian Denneny), who quickly bonds with her young son.

Also in theaters and On Demand is Tom Wright’s Walkaway Joe (Quiver Distribution), starring David Strathairn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, a film about an unlikely friendship between a young boy and a wandering loner, who helps the boy look for his father in pool halls across the country.

STREAMING AND CABLE

This week’s Netflix offerings including the comedy special, Jerry Seinfeld: 23 Hours to Kill, presumably taped at one of his nights in residency at the Beacon Theater. The hour-long special is now available and has been said might be Seinfeld’s last special. The Michelle Obama doc, Becoming, will also be on Netflix by the time you read this. It’s the first feature length doc from Nadia Hallgren, and its produced by the Obamas, much like the recent Sundance opener, Crip Camp, and last year’s Oscar winner, American Factory.  The second season of Dead to Me also debuts on Friday as well as a number of other series.

In case you missed it earlier in the week, you can now watch last year’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on Disney+, which means the entire nonology is now on Disney+. You can also watch a new docuseries about the making of last year’s hit, The Mandalorian, called Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, which has Jon Favreau doing roundtables with some of the creatives with the first episode, “Directing,” now on the service and the second episode, “Legacy,” premiering on Friday.

The new Hulu animated series, Solar Opposites, will premiere on the streaming service this Friday. It’s the new series co-created by Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan (respectively the co-creator and former head writer of Rick and Morty), and it features a voice cast that includes Roiland, Thomas Middleditch, Mary Mack and Sean Giambrone with a huge line of guest voices, including Alan Tudyk, Alfred Molina, Christina Hendricks, Tiffany Haddish and many, many more!

The final film in Lionsgate’s Friday Night at the Movies will be Keanu Reeves’ John Wick, which will show for free on the Lionsgate website on Friday night starting at 9pm Eastern.

Next week, more movies not in theaters!

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

[fictionfromgames]

The Malevolence (Amalgam, Dark Claw, MURPG)

((Character sheet and setting info after the break)) Logan awoke, bound to the ground, hearing a series of memories played out on monitors around the room, and confusingly, smells from across his lifetime.

“Where, at forty, I attributed my looks to my mother, and my liver to my father,” Logan paused for the tepid laughter, “At sixty, I am forced to admit there were other forces at play.”

1992, when he’d come out as a mutant. Not as Dark Claw, just a billionaire who’d inherited even more luck than most people. He tried to play it off as though his power was just his health. As with all mutants then, he was banned from blood and tissue donations, making it easier to stave off his aging rivals from pestering him on a day to day basis. It made occasional extra work for Dark Claw, however.

Sentinels crashing down onto New Gotham streets, assaulting Wayne Tower and the Thompkins School for Mutant Education and Outreach. Shots of the Friends of Humanity storming DC.

93, he noted as he tested his bindings. They’d snap, but not soon.

Talia, wailing as he shot down Ra’s al-Pocalypse with a rocket launcher.

“Ninety-five,” he said, methodically pulling and relaxing, “What do you need to prove?”

The Joker laughing at a shrieking pitch, almost as if to cover up Sparrow’s screams.

“Bastards,” he growled. His head should have cleared, but there was something else buried into the scents they vented into the room. He blinked. How were they even witness to that?

Seeing Jubilee dying again started up the adrenaline, though. He cursed and spat, trying to slip out the way he knew he had to. Before the next parts.

Jean da Costa, the Dark Phoenix, caught off guard and killed by Erik Magnus via magnetokinetic stroke.

Logan saw red. Killing mad. There was grief in his scream. The mystery behind the Ravens might give way to the immediate need to end them, a quiet but resolute voice tried saying over the din in his mind.

The obituary of Thomas and Elizabeth Wayne, interspersed with grainy footage of the three of them, together.

One of the leg binds snapped as he did, and one of the odd, synthetic looking ropes had stretched just enough for a hand to slip free, allowing his left hand to cut away his remaining binds. flipping to his feet, still shouting. And then the lights went out.

They knew he tracked by scent, which was still confusing due to the manufactured nostalgia in the air, but they did not consider how well he heard. It was a good posture, to always sniff whenever he noticed something out of sight, in case someone was watching.

They were quiet, but not enough. He slashed out with his right hand, raking two someones across their torsos, while feeling blades sink into his left forearm, which had risen to block the assailants he knew were on that side. He growled and plunged his free claws into someone’s face.

Death cries at least drowned out the sounds of his past on the walls. There was enough light from the panels that he noted more arriving, which suited him well. He needed to get something out before he could work properly.

The Malevolence of Ravens was resourceful, even these assassins knew more of what they were doing than the typical street goon. Archival footage of most of this was plentiful. But how the hell were they there for the Joker?

He was losing blood faster than he liked, meaning if he didn’t speed this up, he’d be captured again, or worse. A lot of self defense worked differently with knife hands, but that just made forearm strikes less predictable than a punch or and elbow. It really only worked because of the adamantium, most peoples forearms would have fractured doing what he did, but it made openings for smaller jabs and sideways swipes with extended claws.

The last one stood well into the gloom of televised history. He was not afraid, but based on their rote fighting form, he was not prepared either. The assassin went for an overhead knife strike, which Dark Claw caught in between two blades and twisted sideways, so as to spare his knuckles some grief, and he drove his right fist into the man’s gut. The adamantium claws slid in effortlessly.

“How’s that work for ya, bub?” Dark Claw drew in close.

No response except a gasp and a gurgle behind a black bird mask. They could have been plague-doctor themed if the beaks were longer. Dark Claw dropped him and strode out of the room. Violence sated, for now. Just had to find the bigwig.

********************

The Amalgam Universe

Back in the day, Marvel and DC used to do cross promotion in Versus titles, and a couple of years, the Amalgam Universe, a big ole cross-company mishmash of heroes and villains and plots. The one character they co-owned was Axel Asher, whose power was to traverse between the two multiverses, and across timelines as well. He also had the power to smoosh heroes together, which tended to happen on accident if he stayed on one or the other side too long.

He, however, was not the only character who knew what was going on. Dr Strangefate, the amalgamation of Dr Strange, Dr Fate, and Charles Xavier, knew much too well what was happening, and was Axel’s main antagonist. See, the conflict was, Axel’s job was to keep the multiverses separate, and Dr Strangefate, being a product of the merged multiverse, wanted them to stay so he could live, alongside all of his loved ones native to the Amalgam Universe.

It didn’t stick, and they never collaborated like this again.

THIS Amalgam Universe

So in at least one instance the Amalgam Universe survived in smaller forms, waiting to reborn. Mostly, Strangefate rebuilt it for a return in 1997, but he is depicted as dying at the end of it all.

With the multiverses constantly expanding and contracting, there is always space for something weird. Even if it’s a pocket dimension, Axel Asher is swanning about in both properties and it could, fictionally speaking, always happen again, so right now, it is!

But it’s not the same one. Some of Access’ (that’s Axel’s superhero name) amalgamations were incredibly different depending on who was around, so my version of the Amalgam Universe has different stuff according to taste. Maybe it’s a cast off from the Queen of Nevers.

Dark Claw

Starting with Logan Wayne! I owned the two Dark Claw comics as a kid, because Batman and Wolverine were my favorites, and the Dark Claw Adventures looked like the Timmverse.

Logan Wayne was born in 1932, and orphaned at 8 years old after seeing the Gray Ghost. He would live in his parents’ estate until he was 18, attending New Gotham University. He’d go on to spend his summers travelling, and eventually, did so full time after graduating.

The 50s were a good time to learn how to drop off the grid. Besides postwar Europe, the Pacific saw continued conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Japan was his last official known location from 1954 until 1970.

A man matching Logan’s description was found wandering in British Columbia. He wouldn’t claim his name or his birthright until 1973 after regaining enough of his fractured memories to give anyone his social security number.

Wayne Enterprises did not take this resurrection well. While the family’s estates had been held by the family butler, Edwin Pennyworth, the company fought any ownership claims or attempts at involvement for the next several years. It was during this time he had, back in New Gotham, full of skills and instincts he couldn’t quite place the origins of, that he took on the mantle of Dark Claw.

Street crime was at a fever pitch, and organized criminals ran rampant. With only a base of operations, a set of mutant powers, and an adamantium clad skeleton he still couldn’t account for, he set about clearing out New Gotham’s underworld.

The year after toppling the Silvermane regime, Logan Wayne finally accrued enough stock for control over Wayne Enterprises, rooting out the men that kept him locked out of his family’s company and installing a new board of directors. 1978 was looking up for Logan Wayne. And then the Joker appeared.

The Joker (an amalgam of the original, Sabretooth, and Whiteface) introduced to both mutant and costumed villainy. A series of gruesome killings, victims all stuck in a rictus grin, led Logan on a trail that ended with the Joker’s debut-- a plot to kill everyone in New Gotham with the Whiteface Poison. The Joker in this case is a little more clowny than the green backhaired Hyena. In this case, to represent the Sabretooth side, he’s got a healing factor, Sabretooth’s claws, keen senses (though played less animal than Logan or Creed would, more comedic), and a green fur trimmed coat instead. To add a little Whiteface (he’s from Supreme and is basically just an homage to Mr J), add the little red painted on dimples and vertical eyelines to the Joker’s normal face.

The Joker would become a consistent foe for decades to come, similarly living longer than he ought to and surviving things like adamantium claws.

The 80′s took Logan to Japan, where he would fight the League of Assassins for the first time, and have a romance or two. The 90′s, coming with an influx of mutants that society could no longer ignore, had him come out as a mutant too, in order to immediately establish the Leslie Kafka Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach, drawing an immediate line in the sand against the reactionary Friends of Humanity and other paramilitary orgs that preyed on mutantkind.

It was also a time that brought him his first sidekick, Jubilee, codename Sparrow. She would assist him for several years until the Joker killed her Jason Todd style. Logan tried to murder him then, though at that point, he hadn’t figured out how to kill anyone with a healing factor.

The standing rule from then on was “no sidekicks; no one else dies,” which would last from 1999 to 2010.

The year of this fluff is 2005, and Logan was puzzled and annoyed at the idea that any organization could have been ruling New Gotham they way the Court of Ravens claimed to without his knowing. It plays out mostly like Court of Owls, with added exposition for my setting’s benefit, and Wolverine style violence mixed in.

2009 brought the Near Apocalypse, perpetrated by Ra’s al-Pocalypse, risen again. Ra’s’ reasoning was that humans needed to end en masse, giving way to the true stewards of the planet, mutantkind. Logan heartily disagreed, as did an assortment of other heroes, and that’s why it became the Near Apocalypse.

2010 brought the second Sparrow in the form of Kitty Grayson, a phasing metamutant that had lost her family in a circus accident. She convinced a grudging Logan to take her on, the reasoning being that her phasing ability made her effectively untouchable, unkidnappable, and that he wouldn’t be able to stop her from visiting the Claw Cave anyway.

Ra’s’ back up plan came to light as well. The lead agent of the League of Assassins, Talon, came into her own. Initially mute, save for growling, Cassandra Kinney came at Dark Claw with everything she had, “everything” being an exact duplication of his powers and adamantium claws. She proved too resourceful for Dark Claw alone, but as mentioned, he was not alone. Sparrow provided him backup, and Logan ended up offering Talon help in the form of extensive therapy from Leslie Kafka and a spot in the Dark Claw Family.

Jubilee hadn’t stayed dead. She rose again on a full moon in 2000, becoming the independent hero Moonwing, and moving to Bludhaven to strike out on her own.

There’s a lot more, and an entire decade to explore for just a few characters since, but this is already long

The Marvel Universe RPG

The MURPG is a diceless system from 2003. It uses an energy resource pool and is entirely effort based, which I think is super cool!

One of the biggest problems is the “death spiral.” Your effort is diminished when you take damage, which sounds like a good idea until you realize that epic comic book style fights don’t tend to peak at the first punch and go entirely downhill from there. There are two ways around this that sound reasonable enough--

Second Wind

Taking one turn in which your character does not spend any energy (red stones), that character gets double energy regeneration the following turn.

I like this one because it can represent down time, like if you get beat up and the villain is monologuing. How often has a hero been hoisted by their shirt, blood on their lips, only to smirk and point out exactly what the villain has missed? I think even with energy regen tied to Durability, accruing additional energy while you’re beat up and climbing to a standing position (for instance) is very thematic.

Energy Independence

A lot of homebrew fixes just divorce red stone regen from health altogether, which works to form a more “whole-hearted” combat experience. This feels more like what you’d be playing like in other tabletop rpgs, where you can take plenty of damage and still swing for the fences.

In either case, it’s not called “the death spiral” because it was a walk in the park. Using any method to make player characters more survivable and feel like superheroes is encouraged, but don’t neglect a sense of danger.

[mechagalaxy]

John T Mainer 28840: It was that kind of war

It was that kind of war You have to understand, events from that war aren't going to make a lot of sense to people on the outside.  I was there, and at the time I totally understood and accepted that this was just right and holy, but even now watching the gun camera footage, it wierds me out a little bit.  Buckle up mecha jocks, its about to get strange. Time 3362 Faction War Battle 2 Place:  Division 1            Ice World Hoth Defending: Bouncing Blue Berserkers Our base in Hoth had been exposed by poor communications discipline by one of the supply ships.  As a result the Sith Lords had descended.  Their fleet of wedge shaped cruisers dominated the nearspace and the steady flow of mech sized laser blasts saturating the landing zone kept us from interdicting their landing.  Our own mining operations had revealed large caches of new mecha, including an up armoured version of the Fext, somewhere around a 4% stronger baseline with matching developmental improvements.  The Fext is the leading multipurpose 100 ton utility mecha in our fleet.  If you can't have a specialty mecha for any purpose, you can outfit a Fext to be a field expedient good enough to match any but the most dedicated specialty mecha.  We wanted them, everyone wanted them.  To get them we needed to hold Hoth. We aren't really all that good at defense.  I mean we are solid strategically, hard core professional soldiers and all that.  Mercenaries, and the top end of our trade, but there is something special about those called to be Bouncing Blue Berserkers.  The BBB or Bouncing Blue Brotherhood drew together in ancient times from the Smurfs, the Bunnies, Myth and Legend, Slaughterhouse 5, Star League, united by a common desire to stand together in the face of a galaxy where every hand was turned against the other.  We were united by one thing; we were crazier than the galaxy, no matter how wierd it got.  The Bouncing Blue Brigade went to war with a song on its lips and laughter in its heart.  That wasn't us. We were the Bouncing Blue Berserkers.  What was our problem on defense?  We had this little problem when the enemy came into sight. The majestic legions of the Sith lords marched in lock step across the ice plains,  sensors warned of sub formations moving into the badlands to flank us, 10, 20,30, 40. 55 ton scouts fought in ice caves and rift marked fells, on wind torn scree slopes where their claws scrabbled to hold onto the cliff side while armour flenced from their flanks like blubber off a butchered whale, but the main mass of unlimited tonnage walked with arrogant surety right into the heart of the plain, daring a confrontation of force on force their greater weight of metal made a foregone conclusion. Their challenge rang out with all the arrogance of the Sith. "Your pathetic defenses are no match for the power of the dark side.  Your friends cannot save you now, your alliance ends here.  Surrender and accept your fate" So Daniel "Hellbunny" Halbany hit him  with a Proton Blade, burying the axe helve deep in the Xango's intimidating cockpit.  I let Paladin my Redeemer cut loose with my Mjolnir which hit like the hammer of Thor himself to render a Sith Penner into a very finely polished heap of scrap iron.  I gave the only command needed to unleash the berserkers. "BLOOD AND SOULS!"  I screamed "BLOOD AND SOULS!"  They answered, and we unleashed hell. It was an oddly friendly hell, as both sides bathed in a soul deep love of slaugher, of rage.  Berserkers who gave themselves to the transforming ecstasy of rage, who drank pain and fear like lesser mortals drank wine, and chased it with the blood of their enemies met Sith Lords who powered themselves on hatred, on cold murder hunger, hot violent rage indulged in what was technically a battle, very nearly an orgy, and quite possibly the highest expression of violence as an art form. In a battle with Terry Cole, I nailed him cleanly with a Juggernaut, the power of the cannon punching through his shields with the true hunger for the murder-make that is the gift of the berserkerr, and I knew my shot hit true, for the energy surge of a critical kill washed over his Penn Killer Penner, only to see the dark crackling Force of his Sith arts restabalize his engine shielding.  The warning flashed on my screen "Critical Kill blocked".  Damn them and their dark side powers.  His return fire slammed my shield so hard it spun me around, and his second shot broke my mecha's spine.  That is when I saw it.   A lone Fext wandering across the field, a group of techs chasing it accross the ice calling "Here Fexty fexty fexty, come on boy!" I hit the open channel and screamed "CODE FEXT!" Like street hockey when someone yelled car, all the fighters locked their weapons down as the lone fext wandered accross the field like a lost pupply looking for its master, or someplace to pee.  When the techs gave us a cheerful wave and got the Fext into the hills away from our fire, we screamed at each other and resumed killing. As my former point mech Bun Bun (an old school Regis with more critical kill than sense) held a Notas by the cockpit in its Ferrite and crystal fangs as the pilot in the jaws laughed and urged him on. "Good, let your hate flow"  He said, ignoring his own position.  Bun Bun cut loose with his Galaxy Eye and tore the head from the armoured shoulder paldrons and neck baffles, to crunch in his fangs. I was standing on the ice in my body armour when it happened and swore intently.  "Odin curse you Bun Bun, we talked about this.  NO EATING PILOTS.  Bad Bun Bun.  They are Sith Lords not Telemarketers, and you can't eat them!" A rasping voice sounded behind me, I turned and Terry, sporting his dark creepy as all heck Sith Robes (which I noted seemed to be well heated for Hoth's ice world, better than my unpowered armour)..   "Don't discourage him, that Regis has a soul that was born for the dark side" Its not that he was wrong, its just that when the AI of our Regis was purged of its Forerunner sabotage, it got imprinted by one of our mecha bay bunnies.  Bun Bun the bunny had anger issues which were cute in a tiny fluffy bunny, and a serious war crime tribunal waiting to happen in a 90 ton Regis.  I guess Sith Lords have a really epic legal department, because they just thought it was cute not "lawsuit and bankruptcy risk" like we did. All across the field hatred was given free rein, perfectly good defensive positions were ignored by screaming maniacs closing to knife fighting range so they could feel the coolant splash on their armour from each strike, and bathe in the plasma flares of each engine kill.  The Sith were no better, pausing to coach and encourage each act of insane blood hungry murder frenzy they encountered, half way between being a death squad out to destroy us, and particularly good coaches who see real potential in an athlete and wish to push them past a performance plateau into a higher level of function. We had a good killing. The issue was settled within hours, the battle for Hoth was lost with the shattering of our main defenses, but both sides seemed to ignore this as trivial.  The battle was such a cluster frag that Sith mecha were spotted dragging Berserker mecha to the Sith repair depot to repair and rearm because they figured our repair backlog was getting bad enough that without help this pilot might not be able to get back into the fight in time for another round.  At one point I know I saw our field techs loading a Sith Specter with our missiles, shouting at the pilot  "Don't worry, we'll invoice you later".   When the horn sounded, the guns fell silent, we looked up and let the adrenaline fade.  Berskerkers and Sith were mixed in clots around the icy wasteland.  We had shot up the landscape so badly none of our mapping programs could identify our position.  Not one of either sides satelites were anything but radioactive slag from all the reflections and rebounds , so our GPS was out.  So much energy had been put into the ionosphere that we couldn't get a solid lock on the bases signal to direction find it for even a rough guide back to base.   There was an Apatotron burning in the middle of the field, and one of my mecha threw a Notas on top of it.  A Sith lord tossed a Humbaba with legs only on one side to join it on the pyre.   Pilots began to cluster around, tossing bits of battle killed wildlife on the armour plates sticking out of the fire as a makeshift BBQ.  Bottles began to circulate.  Screw it.  The techs can send speeders to collect us in the morning.  It had been a day of rage and murder, of fury and blood.  It would be a night of drinking and swapping lies.  We were at war yes, but it had been a good killing. A good killing indeed. John T Mainer 28840

[gillespialfredoe01806ld]

Popular Midcentury Modern Homes Are Fetching Top Dollar

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

Architect Reja Bakh specializes in international mega projects, such as the cultural center and hotel complex he is designing in Beijing. But the project that has captured his imagination involves a tiny glass and stucco house in New Canaan, Conn., built in 1953. Known as the Alice Ball House, the home was designed by Philip Johnson—an icon of Midcentury Modern architecture.

“I looked at the house and said, ‘I must have this,’ ” said Mr. Bakh, 49 years old, who paid $2.3 million for the 1,500-square-foot rectilinear house in 2015. “We’re not building onto or doing anything to the original house—it would be like buying the Mona Lisa and taking a magic marker to it.”

Midcentury Modern architecture—a catch-all term that encompasses a wide range of styles, from Bauhaus-inspired glass houses to the California ranch home—has gained cultish popularity in recent decades.

For devotees, the classic Atomic Age house—picture a compact geometric design, an open-plan living space and a lot of glass—is as much an art object as a place to call home. But with their modest square footage, outdated kitchens and often idiosyncratic layout, classic Midcentury Modern homes can be a challenge to actually live in. Homeowners face a dilemma: How to modernize a modernist house without diluting its distinctive features? And where are they going to put all their stuff?

Philip Johnson’s Ball House in New Canaan, Conn., which architect Reja Bakh purchased in 2015.

Julie Bidwell for The Wall Street Journal

“It’s a more reserved, more streamlined way to live. It’s great for someone who is very neat, very organized,” said Hilary Lewis, chief curator of the Glass House—Philip Johnson’s former home in New Canaan—which opened as a museum in 2007. “A lot of people find it a little too restrictive, they want to have nooks and crannies in their home where they can pile up stuff.”

Mr. Bakh, who lives in New York City with his wife and their twin infant sons, has no plans to live in the Ball House. Instead, he is designing a contemporary glass house nearly 10 times its size at an estimated cost of $3 million, which will be tucked behind it on the woodsy 2.2-acre site. The Ball House, which the family uses as a weekend retreat for now, ultimately will become their art gallery.

A rendering of the $3 million home Mr. Bakh is designing for his family, which will be tucked behind the Ball House on the 2.2-acre site.

Bakh Design

Glass walls in the new home, shown in a rendering, will frame a view of the Ball House, which Mr. Bakh plans to turn into an art gallery.

Bakh Design

Architectural connoisseurs such as Mr. Bakh have been drawn in increasing numbers to New Canaan—a wealthy suburb distinguished by its trove of modernist houses designed by a group of Bauhaus-inspired architects dubbed the Harvard Five, who settled there in the 1940s and ’50s.

“In the 1980s, you couldn’t give them away. There would be regular families living in these houses,” said John Hersam, a real-estate broker with William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty in New Canaan, noting that dozens of the midcentury homes were torn down in the ’80s and early ’90s to make way for new construction. “The ownership has really changed. It’s really more a luxury market.”

Mr. Hersam and his colleague Inger Stringfellow are the listing agents for Mr. Johnson’s Wiley House. Built in 1952, it features a cantilevered glass cube with a double-height central living area, set atop a fieldstone base with four small bedrooms. The house, which last sold in 1994 for $990,000, is on the market for $12 million.

“It’s a really significant, internationally known property,” Ms. Stringfellow said.

Nationwide, the West Coast has the largest inventory of Midcentury Modern homes, according to data compiled by realtor.com. (News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, also owns realtor.com.)

Listings of homes for sale that mentioned Midcentury Modern as a selling point were most prevalent in California, Washington and Oregon in 2017, and they were priced at a premium. In Seattle, for example, Midcentury Modern houses were 44% more expensive than comparable homes.

“It’s become so trendy in L.A., a lot of art-world people want Midcentury Modern,” said Barry Sloane, who heads a department specializing in architecturally significant properties for Sotheby’s International Realty in Beverly Hills.

Nevertheless, an undiluted modernist aesthetic poses certain challenges in the current luxury market, as Mr. Sloane discovered when he was the listing agent for a house designed by Richard Neutra, a leading modernist.

“One of the biggest problems was the kitchen. Neutra was never very strong on kitchens. It had linoleum counters, very basic,” Mr. Sloane said. “No one wanted to be the philistine that would come along and rip that out.”

A floating desk in a 1953 glass house designed by Richard Neutra (exterior seen in top photo); the two small bedrooms have pop-up vanities.

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

Artists Lari Pittman and Roy Dowell own a 1953 glass house that Mr. Neutra designed for his secretary Dorothy Serulnic on a 5.5-acre hillside property in La Crescenta, Calif. The 1,382-square-foot house, which the couple bought from Ms. Serulnic in 1998 for $470,000, features many distinctive Neutra elements, such as mitered glass walls that dissolve boundaries between indoor space and the landscape, and inventive built-in furniture.

A floating desk in a 1953 glass house designed by Richard Neutra; the two small bedrooms have pop-up vanities.

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

“It’s the type of house that requires you to be conscientious about how you physically deal with it,” said Mr. Pittman, a painter and professor at UCLA, noting Mr. Neutra’s use of “humble materials” such as birch plywood and Formica.

Rather than remodel or upgrade the Neutra after living in it for more than a decade, the couple built a second house on the property—a seven-sided contemporary with an interior courtyard designed by Michael Maltzan —for $2.5 million in 2009. “We quickly realized that to preserve the house and honor the house it would be best to move out of it,” said Mr. Pittman, who now uses the Neutra as a guesthouse.

The patio. “The whole exterior becomes part of the house,” Mr. Pittman said.

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

Mr. Pittman and Mr. Dowell, who built a contemporary house on the property in 2009, now use the Neutra as a guesthouse.

Joe Schmelzer for The Wall Street Journal

The couple, who want to be closer to their L.A. studios, have listed the compound with its two homes for $4.5 million. Due to their efforts, the Neutra was designated a historic-cultural monument in 2006, safeguarding it against developers who might want to tear it down and preventing future owners from significantly altering its exterior.

“The house is set up for a person who is inclined to a certain connoisseurship of architecture,” Mr. Pittman said. “If you want a screening room and six bedrooms, you shouldn’t buy a Neutra.”

Matt Leaver and Krysta Lin (with Wesley, 18 months) spent four years restoring their 1953 ranch house designed by Cliff May, part of May’s Lakewood Rancho Estates development in Long Beach, Calif.

Jennifer Roberts for The Wall Street Journal

Matt Leaver and Krysta Lin spent four years restoring their 1953 Cliff May ranch house in Long Beach, Calif., which they bought in 2007 for $645,000. A developer, Mr. May widely is credited with inventing the ranch house, a single-story home that mixes elements of the Spanish hacienda and the western ranch with modernist floor-to-ceiling glass.

“It’s pretty ideal in terms of indoor-outdoor living, which is nice for California,” said Ms. Lin, a 40-year-old mother of two who designs children’s clothing for her own label, Youth Independent Party.

The family’s 1,421-square-foot “Californian” is part of Mr. May’s Lakewood Rancho Estates development of about 700 tract homes, built 1953-54. Many of the home’s hallmark features were intact, from its Douglas fir post-and-beams and redwood siding, to the translucent mistlite glass panels used throughout as room dividers.

Many of the home’s hallmark features were intact, including translucent mistlite glass panels that diffuse light throughout the house.

Jennifer Roberts for The Wall Street Journal

“A lot of those homes underwent some pretty bad additions with second stories being put on,” said Nate Cole, a real-estate broker whose Unique California Property firm specializes in homes by modernist architects.

He recently sold a sleekly renovated Californian in Rancho Estates for $920,000. “One block away,” outside the May development, “a similar sized house would be probably $675,000 to $725,000,” he said.

Consulting old magazines, sales brochures and photographs, Mr. Leaver, a 44-year-old graphic designer, had doors and windows fabricated to match the originals, stripped decades of paint from the birch woodwork, and replaced the shingle roof with a period-correct rock roof.

In one concession to the 21st century, the couple opened up the narrow galley kitchen, removing a pony wall that divided it from the living room and replacing it with a large island. “Women are not behind the kitchen wall anymore,” Ms. Lin said.

In one concession to the 21st century, the couple expanded the narrow galley kitchen of the May house, removing a pony wall that divided it from the living room and putting in a large island.

Jennifer Roberts for The Wall Street Journal

But living with all that glass, transparency and openness means that the couple is engaged in a constant battle with clutter. As Christmas approached, Ms. Lin told her daughter to expect just one gift from Santa.

“It was a watch,” she said.

The post Popular Midcentury Modern Homes Are Fetching Top Dollar appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

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