#you know how some movies just... capture lightning in a bottle so to speak

[sillimancer]

so I've been watching Bluey and I'm on episode 37/52 in series 1 so I feel like I've seen enough of it to have genuine thoughts (I skimmed the wikipedia page too)

the reason I started watching it was because of its reputation among millennials with kids who have been swearing up and down that it's basically free therapy for our age group. I'm definitely in the market to having my brain chemistry altered but after 37 episodes, I don't know that I'm there yet. there is still a lot of show left to go though, and some of the most-circulated clips I've seen on social media have been in episodes I haven't come across yet, so that is subject to change.

what I CAN say is that Bluey is objectively a very good tv show that 100% deserves its Peabody award. it's thoughtful, fun, and honestly funnier than it has any right to be. I've laughed out loud more than once. Joe Brumm made the show with the intention of it being entertaining for both kids and parents and he absolutely nailed that balance, I think. in that way, it's not a kid show; it's a family show. and I like that (and I'm pleasantly surprised by how well it works!).

I haven't been a kid for a long time so it's hard for me to put myself in the shoes of a child, especially in a world that is so drastically different from mine. I think this is the first kid show I've seen that prominently features things like smartphones. I know those shows exist--the new Blue's Clues is a good example of how things have been updated to suit modern audiences--but it's something that caught my eye as an Old Fart (in internet years). Not as a bad or good thing, just as a "wow I'm getting older and it's getting harder to relate to or even understand childhood" kind of way. Maybe that's why people want to be parents so badly. To reconnect with that. I can sympathize with that feeling.

the show focuses a lot on Bluey and her sister and friends navigating the world through imaginative play, which I love and has a solid backing in child developmental psychology. I actually just started learning a little bit about play therapy (I follow a play therapist on tiktok who kinda got me into it, I love her), so I feel like I've been getting a little bonus bit of enrichment out of the show for that. it's like when you're watching a movie that's partly in another language and you don't speak the language but you recognize it and can maybe pick out a couple words? it's like that.

I think Brumm really captured lightning in a bottle with this project. you can feel the love it's made with. the storylines are grounded with just the right touch of an almost magical or fantastical quality that really makes you feel childlike wonder even as a cynical and deeply depressed 30-something. There's conflict and mess, sure, but built on a foundation of safety and community, and I think that's probably what's resonating with (american) millennials. we inherited so much instability and pain from our previous generations that it's hard to believe a world or even a family unit like Bluey's could exist. parents who love each other? who are active in their children's lives? who apologize when they do something wrong? COULDN'T BE US!

all this to say I'm enjoying the show, it's heartwarming, it's charming, it's delightful, and I hope Joe Brumm lives forever. but it's also very much designed for children so like. I worry the millennial parents crying over this show on tiktok may be overselling it.

[bozojesus]

   you know... the more i think about 3FH the more it feels like kind of a “bonus” movie rather than being an official part of the original series.

   with the first two, everything kind of... fits into place? feels Right?? even though rob made Ho1kC without any plans for a sequel, i bought everything that happened in TDR. the reveal that cutter is baby’s dad felt like a total eureka moment, not an asspull, for example. because his character and connection to the family is so ambiguous in the first one, rob’s decision to make cutter the patriarch of the fireflies just made Sense. it gave him motivation to be involved with the story and with the family.

   everything in 3FH just feels so... rushed? sloppy? last minute? i understand that rob might have had a very different vision of the movie when sid was fully involved, and that he was more or less left to scramble and string things together when sid was forced to back out. i understand that. i sympathize with that. but my god, it really shows in the finished product.

   i like foxy a lot but the idea that otis had this brother that we never knew about feels like something straight out of fanfiction. it also kind of... takes something away from his characterization in the first two, imo, because his entire deal was that he was a complete loner & never had a family until he met the fireflies. that meant something. i kind of wish they just kept foxy a friend of otis’ and not a family member, or maybe a relative on baby’s side. his appearance still would’ve been a bit random, but that angle feels a bit more believable.

   i also hate that we saw such a sloppy retread of wydell’s character in aquarius. the reason why wydell worked is because he was a fully developed character who the audience got to know pretty well, and who played a key role in the story. i bought him as george’s brother. i liked the concept of a firefly victim having a relative seeking revenge on their behalf and the fireflies being forced to suffer the consequences of their actions that way.

   with aquarius everything felt so... strung together. like, rondo Just So Happened to be doing labour at the same time as otis? he Just So Happened to have a son in mexico where the remaining trio Just So Happened to go? it was really fucking contrived. i didn’t feel anything for aquarius the way i did for wydell because aquarius wasn’t really... an actual character. he was a plot device to give the fireflies someone to fight against and it really showed. with wydell, i felt sympathy and horror and disgust. with aquarius, i didn’t feel much of anything.

   i already talked about some of the dialogue feeling like a “greatest hits collection” in my initial reaction to the movie so i don’t wanna repeat all that but yeah. still think it was cringey and lazy. really feel like if 3FH had been made 10 years ago it would’ve been a much different, much better film. rob either should have left the franchise alone or should have jumped on the sequel concept a lot sooner, because sid and bill Did try to warn him not to wait until they were too old and look what happened.

   “but carling, you said you really liked it!” i really liked Aspects of it and I enjoyed the last Hour of the movie. i don’t hate this movie or think it’s a badly made or badly acted film. i deeply appreciate it for helping rekindle my love of captain spaulding and of the series. but it’s definitely messy and as a big fan of the first two, and someone who pretty much grew up with these movies, i can’t help but point these things out and feel kind of bothered by them. not to the point of hating the movie or wishing it was never made, but definitely looking at it like :/ to some extent.

[rosecoloredwriting]

Best Friend Tings~

A/N: This idea came to me and then boom! This might be a whole series of headcanons i got so many ideas bro!!!! 

Summary: Sometimes in life having a best friend is better than getting a s/o 

Pairings: Izuku Midorya x GN!Reader(Platonic), Katsuki Bakugou x GN!Reader(Platonic), Shoto Todoroki x GN!Reader(Platonic), Hitoshi Shinso x GN!Reader(Platonic)

Izuku Midoriya

We can see from the show he didn’t have any friends before u.a(katsuki doesn’t really count)

So boy must have been lonely before ua like todoroki

He nerded out by himself, no one else to talk to other than mama inko

So meeting you made his life better

he’s up to date on meme culture too

You slide in one vine reference during a convo ONCE when you met and he responds back subconsciously with his own

Instant connection

Like lightning strikes and you both just do the spiderman pointing at each other meme

Vine might be dead but that won’t stop you

Both of you start turning into beams of light

He gets sparkle eyes when you both don’t stop with the vine references

Numbers exchanged and you both find out to be major nerds for certain shows

Late nights are spent sending each other memes/videos and the next day you both are holding in fits of giggles

When the dorms are put in place pure chaos

Yall are inseparable 

There’s a lot of sneaking around because guess what you’re doing instead of sleeping 

watching✨✨TikToks✨✨

Or watching those Russian car crash videos

You go into a youtube deep dive at 3 am together

One brain cell is shared between you two ok

Deku squad are the vibes ok

Ilida can’t believe how 2 of some of the smartest people he knows can turn the exact opposite

“Ilida can you do us a favor? Would you be willing to run while holding us like balloons?”

“What are you talking about!?”

“Ilida me and (Y/N) thought of having Uraraka join us by making us float and have a rope tied around us with you running around!”

“As your class president I will not allow you to do such a thing-!” Cutting him off you turn to Izuku

“I told he wasn’t gonna say yes.” Sighing in disappoint.

“Should we try Kacchan?” 

“I’ll do the talking got it!” You leave behind a dumbfounded Ilida wondering why his friends can be so smart yet do such stupid actions.

Do not be fooled though

You call out izuku when necessary, you both may be chaotic with one another but like hell!!!! you’ll let him slip up because you’re besties and actually have brain cells(sometimes)

From the glare you’re sending him he feels like a disappointment because he caused his bestie trouble and worry

In conclusion: Yall are ride or die

Were talking the strength of the pillars of those temples in Greece

Katsuki Bakugo

It kinda just happened before the classes eyes

Like no one gets how bakugo manages not to blast your eardrums everyday

He just somehow sees you’re genuinely trying to be friends with him and get to know him

At first, he thought you were some extra following him like the rest of Baku squad at first and somehow saw that you don’t see him godly or anything you just really enjoyed being around him

Slowly you both understand one another

He’s kinda scared cause I don’t think bakugo has ever been like close close with someone before

So it’s slow like his friendship with Kiri

Speaking of Kiri cause this is a package deal if your friends with bakugo

You both will just watch him when someone pisses him off 

“Someone tried to test him right,” you said while passing Kirishima a water bottle. Coming back from the vending machine.

“Yeah he did” he replies deadpanning at Bakugou’s antics

You may be mostly a duo but its also a trio sometimes

So when he gets captured there’s a 50/50 chance that he will come to you

you managed to get knocked out during the attack so seeing one another safe really just lifts the blanket of fear off

So when the dorms come in he will barge into your room and start up your console and play

This distraction won’t last long cause at some point he just sits there stuck in his head

He holds back tears but you just help him through

Really just strengthens your bond

From then on he comes to you and he’s very vague on details but you just comfort him

somehow you both from this experience learn how to read what the other is feeling

If you have something going on the perceptive as ever bakugo will see and somehow do the thing that just gives you a boost, he’s not either an intimate or verbal guy

He’s trying his best alright

The same goes for you in bakugo accept your just a tad slower and use your words instead 

Best friend soulmate ✨✨tings✨✨

One of your past times is either playing fighting games or just relaxing in his room

Like you both will lay on the ground, speaker blasting, taking turns putting on songs

Feeling the vibrations 

Its how the aggressive boy cools down/relaxes

Being angry all the time is tiring

One time you were in a room with someone as they insulted bakugou

Right in your face not only did you defend your best friend but you also whooped some ass that day

Conclusion: the best friends that just get each other 

Shoto Todoroki

(If you’re an endeavor stan I don’t know what to tell you for this one)

Now hear me out on this

You find Endeavor hilarious

He is just the funniest person to you

Like just looking at him makes you cackle

So when todoroki fights midoriya and he used his fireside everyone was shocked because no one has seen him use it yet!!

But when you see endeavor on the other side of the stadium scream “SHOTOOOOO!” you burst out full-on laughing!!! WHEEZING IF YOU MAY!! Like do you not see his face

When he came back to the stands you just turned to him holding in a laugh

“Hey, Todoroki how are you so serious all the time with your dad looking like that all the time?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Don’t get me wrong he was pissed because like baby just had a mental breakdown but this type of comment is new to him

“Don’t you see how ridiculous he looks with those flames of him like damn. Of all the places! Why his fckin calves!!!!! Like what kind of egotistical man does that”

Todoroki hates his dad so you bashing him really opens up doors for you

Now to me, I think todoroki throws insults at everyone without even knowing himself

Like under his breath he will say a comment you will catch it and hold in a laugh

So you bashing his father made you an a+ in his book

And so the duo begins

Since todoroki does insult people without knowing you are there to be his audience

You will stifle and hold in giggles and laughs as you stand right next or behind him

Once he realized this he subtly increases the amount he says on the daily(These arent basic insults either but they aren’t harmful, plain fun ok)

One time your laughing got to the point Aizawa threatened to separate you two

But still, you helped cracked the boy’s frozen heart

Lots of hugs though cause the boy needs it

Once you’re close enough in the friendship you jump and hug the boy in surprise

Gets a little startled but loves the gesture cause guess what yall are besties

Opening his door, Todoroki meets the sight of you holding a pile of food. Ready for movie night. Quickly placing it down on the coffee table you jump and give him a hug. He stumbles a moment before he wraps his arms around your waist.

“Why are you hugging me? We saw each other all day.”

“Just thought you needed it.” Mumbling a thank you you go to the coffee table. The surface spilling with bags of snacks.

“I have my soba and more if you want any. I even got those candies you like.”

“Really! Thanks Sho-kun! I also got those chips you really enjoyed the last time. So you ready?” With a hum you both sit down opening the food you'll be eating for the rest of the night. Grabbing the remote Shoto hits play, the screen lights up to show the Disney logo.

Many movie marathons and binge-watching nights because you need to show him so much

When these hangouts happen you have hardcore munches together

You both will have a buffet of food because boy does he love his soba and you love to do to bring an entire pile and bag full of food

Just appreciates you and all you do for him

Will definitely sneak in really expensive gifts to you

Loves to watch Disney movies with you 

Conclusion: you are the best friend he needs, he wouldn’t have you any other way

Hitoshi Shinso 

Both of you met in gen studies class

At this point, everyone in the class knew one another names and stuff and when word got to you of his quirk oh boy

He was minding his business sitting in his desk

Slightly wishing he was dead or wanting to vibe at home

But here you come strutting on over and say hi to him

He was kinda nervous cause everyone knew his quirk and just got all those villain comments

You just talk and say how cool his quirk is and he’s like ‘aw shit here we go again’

Instead, you just ask why he isn’t in the hero course

Like his quirk amazing for that shit

He’s shocked alright

So you both just stick together

You are his wild friend taking him on adventures as he complains saying he would rather watch a movie or do something

Low key in on your plans 

He trusts you with his life so don’t take advantage of that

Teases you on a regular basis

Is the type of friend where if he makes fun of or teases you 

You’re his friend

at the sports festival, you treat him to lunch because he deserves it!!!!

He made it to the last round

And fought MIDORIYA!!!

“You don’t have to do this you know.” Dragging Hitoshi around the food stands he tries his best to stop you from doing this. Even if it’s your treat he rather pay himself.

“Hitoshi I swear if you don’t just pick what you want for lunch I’m fighting you.”

“I’m being serious you don’t have too. I didn’t even win against him.” You come to a halt both hands on his shoulders. Looking him in the eye you reassure him.

“You may not have won but you made it to the 3rd round. Do you know how amazing that is! A general studies student made it that far! You did that! You showed everyone we might as well be just as good as the hero course students! As your best friend to, I must treat you for this accomplishment.” This time he grabs your wrist. Pulling you around until he sees a food stand that peaks his interest. A soft smile on his face happy to call you his friend and to have someone care for him like you do.

He is the reason why you're an insomniac now

When you blame him for your sleeping schedule he just says in the deepest and seductive voice “it was part of the plan”

Makes you want to punch that handsome face of his(but you wouldn’t you love the boy too much)

Sometimes you guys sneak cats in like your dorms just somehow manage to have cats in them

The fur is everywhere but their you fur babies

You both spend your time playing board games and sometimes inviting the deku squad cause Hitoshi has a pretty chill relationship with Izuku(plus their too social for their own good)

So things become waaaaaaaay more lively

Both of your social batteries though are completely empty

There is late-night cuddling though as weird as it sounds

when you take turns slipping in one another’s dorm you both manage to hug like it’s super platonic and just find it comforting waking up to one another

the bond so strong that you protect one another even when you sleep

Conclusion: the besties that mess around one another but are like this🤞

[scripttorture]

Hey, I am writing a torture scene in a Star Wars fanfiction, where a character is tortured both with interrogation devices and with the Force. How do I make the use of the Force in torture seem as awful and realistic as the interrogation devices? Sorry if that is confusing, I've never written a torture scene in fic before and I am nervous about doing this one right.

Welcome. :) It’s a perfectly understandable fear, let’s get stuck in.

 There are some issues around some of the canon torture devices in Star Wars. The short version of which is that high tech equipment isn’t realistic in torture and it can often suggest torture is ‘advanced’ or ‘intelligent’ when it is not. But this isn’t really the core of your question and I don’t want to discourage you on your first try.

 For more realistic low-tech alternatives I have a post on common torture techniques in the modern era over here. You can read a little more about why I think ‘interrogation devices’ are leaning in to torture apologia by looking through the ‘high tech torture’ tag.

 You can read a bit more about it in this Star Wars review here or by looking through this tag.

 Central to this is how you communicate pain in a story. Because that’s really what we’re talking about here. How do you capture a type of pain that your reader hasn’t experienced?

 It might be helpful to know that pain isn’t one sensation. We actually process different kinds of pain differently and we each have different thresholds for different sorts of pain.

 That might sound complicated but what it boils down to is that knowing someone likes their curry hot doesn’t tell you how they’d deal with a head ache or a twisted ankle.

 So if I was approaching this my first question would be: what kind of pain do I want to make the Force feel like?

 There are a couple of little bits from various parts of the franchise that suggest the dark side feels ‘cold’. But I think you do have leeway to really decide what you want this to be like.

 I would lean in to the way the Force can cause pain without leaving obvious wounds. Because a lot of torture, both historically and today, does the same thing and these ‘clean’ (non-scarring) tortures are often dismissed. The damage they cause is downplayed, the pain they cause is underestimated. And unfortunately survivors of clean tortures (the majority of torture survivors today) are dismissed because we expect torture to leave scars.

 Our vision is a big part of how we judge other people’s pain. We find it very easy to instinctually imagine (and sympathise) with injuries we can clearly see. Things like broken bones, burns and cuts seem to be easier for us to understand. I’d use that, in the same way I would if I was writing a non-magical clean torture scenario.

 I’m going to describe the reported sensations/type of pain caused by three different clean tortures; stress positions, pumping and electrical torture using a magneto. (You can look up any of those in the tags for more information.) Feel free to use any of these.

 Stress positions cause muscular pain throughout the body. Think of the sharp pain the comes with pulled muscles and imagine that throughout the body. That tension, the feeling that the limbs are giving way, everywhere. A building muscular pain punctuated by sharp bursts. It’s trembling afterwards, weakness, staggering, falling. A burning, pins and needles sensation as circulation returns to raised limbs.

 By contrast pumping is internal, organ pain. It’s a stomach ache that’s like being stamped on. A stabbing pain that doesn’t end. If you’ve had a bad E coli infection then think of that. Nausea, the awful empty feeling afterwards. Switching from one type of pain to another until it starts all over again. The way your head reels and your awareness narrows.

 As for electrical torture, well here’s Alleg’s description of his experience with the French military in Algeria (I have edited to focus on his description of physical sensation).

 ‘Suddenly, I leapt in my bonds and shouted with all my might. Cha- had just sent a first electric charge through my body. A flash of lightning exploded next to my ear and I felt my heart racing in my breast. I struggled, screaming and stiffened myself until the straps cut into my flesh. All the while the shocks controlled by Cha-, magneto in hand, followed each other without cease.[…]

 ‘Suddenly I felt as if a savage beast had torn the flesh from my body. Still smiling above me Ja- had attached the pincer to my penis. The shocks going through me were so strong that the straps holding me to the board came loose. They stopped to tie them again and we continued.

‘After a while the lieutenant took the place of Ja-. He had removed the wire from one of the pincers and fastened it down along the entire width of my chest. The whole of my body was shaking with nervous shocks getting ever stronger in intensity, and the session went on interminably. They had thrown cold water over me in order to increase the intensity of the current and between every two spasms I trembled with cold. All around me sitting on the packing cases, Cha- and his friends emptied bottles of beer. I chewed on my gag to relieve the cramp which contorted my body. In vain’

 Obviously you don’t have to use any of these examples if you don’t like the sound of them. The basic idea is to think about a type of pain and use that to create an evocative description.

 You could even use your own experience if you wanted to. Think about the kinds of pain you’ve had in the past, migraines or pulled muscles or eating a curry that was too hot, and use that as a basis for magnifying the same sensation.

 That’s all Step One.

 Capturing the full impact of torture means more then the torture scene. It means warping the story under the weight of abuse. It’s the lasting effects on the survivor and the knock on impact on their friends and family. It’s the way that impact can radicalise people, even witnesses. It’s the effect torture has on the organisations that use it and those that it is used against.

 A story does not necessarily need to give all of these elements a lot of narrative space.

 If your story doesn’t focus on the survivor then their symptoms might just take up a sentence as the main characters ask whether they ‘made it’. And in that case you hammer home the impact by showing the effect on these people who are at a remove. Their fear, their anger, their resolve to stop this. Perhaps even a few lasting symptoms they develop as witnesses to a traumatic event.

 The original Star Wars movies don’t leave a lot of time to focus on lasting effects on the main characters but they still show each of them resisting torture in different ways. They show torture radicalising characters who witness it. They show it galvanising opposition and they show torture as ultimately undermining the organisation that uses it.

 Essentially think about the sort of story you’re telling and how much space each of these elements needs in your story.

 Most of the writers who come here are focused on a survivor character and want to write that character recovering. So I’m going to talk about that in more depth.

 If however you’d rather talk about systems in your story I do have some masterposts that’ll help. There’s one here on the common justifications for torture in democracies. There’s one on why torture doesn’t work as a method of interrogation here and a more detailed discussion of the effect torture has on investigations here. There’s also a post on common misconceptions over here.

 I also think you should read the post on clean torture.

 So, let’s talk about how torture effects people.

 Torture does cause lasting symptoms in survivors, witnesses and torturers. Survivors are left dealing with symptoms for the rest of their lives. But that doesn’t mean they never recover and it doesn’t mean survivors don’t go on to have fulfilling lives.

 Recovery is about learning to live with symptoms rather then mental health problems vanishing.

 Now we know the possible symptoms of torture. But survivors don’t generally experience all the possible symptoms and we don’t really understand why there’s so much variety in what individual survivors experience. We also, generally speaking, can’t predict which symptoms any individual will get*.

 From a writing stand point that means we’re free to decide what fits best in any story. I’d encourage you to pick 3-5 symptoms from the list here for any survivors characters. There’s a more detailed discussion of memory problems in particular here. Memory problems are extremely common in reality and very rarely portrayed accurately/well in fiction.

 Personally I think the best way to pick is by looking at the list and thinking about which symptoms will add to the story you’re trying to tell. Think about what might add interesting obstacles in the plot, what might create opportunities to show your audience more about the character and what might change the relationships characters have.

 So if your character needs to be charismatic and social does giving them anxiety create an interesting barrier to that? If your character is determined or holds their ideals really high, does giving them depression help illustrate those qualities by showing what the character is battling with every day? Would intrusive memories prompt deeper discussions with their friends about mental health, their fears?

 Wrapping up I would really encourage you to look at that masterpost on the common misconceptions about torture. Because so many of the ways we’re used to seeing torture portrayed are tropes that have no basis in reality. And a lot of them are based on really harmful misconceptions about torture and torture survivors.

 This probably feels like a lot. It is. Torture is a complex topic to tackle and the sheer volume of misinformation out there makes it that much harder to do it right.

 Read the links. Think about what you want to write. Practice.

 And if you have any more questions feel free to send them in when the ask box re-opens. :)

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

*There are a handful of exceptions here but for the most part whatever the torture technique the possible long term symptoms are the same. Exceptions include sleep deprivation, starvation and solitary confinement.

[veilingofthesun]

2, 21, 28, 38, & 40 for the musical ask!!

This will be fun:) Thanks for the asks

2. What musical got you really  into theatre?

I loved The sound of music with all my heart as a child. It is my mum’s favourite movie. For some reason it was shown on Swedish TV every christmas season, so we'd watch it at least once a year. My mum had (and still has) the LP, me and my sister would listen to it and look at the pictures on the sleeve a lot. We'd play the Von Trapp children and sing the songs all the time. Our parents took us to see a local amateur production when I was about 8-9 and I fell in love with it even more and wanted to play Brigitta. For various reasons, my interest in musicals faded away for a number of years.

Fast forward several years later and my sister had started to get interested in musicals again. It began with Matilda the Musical and soon we came across Kitt & Yorkey’s work. Matilda, N2N and If/Then were the musicals that really got me back into musicals again. A year or two later I went to London and watched musicals for the first time in several years. The year after I went to Malmö Opera to see Billy Elliot and after these trips I was hooked. Now here I am, obsessed with musicals and running a blog about Swedish productions.

21. Best Disney musical:

I have only seen two,The hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast. You’d think it would be easy to pick one since I’ve only seen two, but I really enjoyed both of them. Both productions were amazing, so I can’t really choose. I’ll say both.

28. What book, tv show, movie, biography, video game, etc. should be turned into a musical?

I would like to see a big, full scale of production of the book Ronja Rövardotter (Ronia the robbers daughter) by Astrid Lindgren. It’s a childrens book that I love a lot. There’s been a lot of adaptions for TV and some smaller plays based on her books, but not a a musical. Plus Ronja has been overlooked in terms of stage work. A high budget musical with a big cast and advanced scenography and lightning to capture the mood and look of the book would be amazing.But the director would also have to capture the sad themes of the story and the relationships between the characters.It’s a deep story about coming of age (among other things)and you have to take it seriously. Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson would be the dream composers because the score has to be quite grand and dramatic and also a bit of Swedish folk musicish.

38. Favourite dance break.

It’s a very fitting question for a dance lover like me! :) It seems like people define dance breaks a bit differently, so I’ll just go with the first thing that came to mind. I really like the bottle dance/wedding dance from Fiddler on the roof. I like the intricacy and how it accelarates with the music. Seeing it live was really special.

40. What’s a musical more people should know about?

If/Then, of course, it deserves much more love and recognition. The concept, the story, the characters, the beautiful music and lyrics, I love it so much. It makes me think, laugh, cry and connect with all the characters in different ways. I never tire of If/Then. I always come back to it.

Also, Kristina från Duvemåla and Så som i himmelen. Kristina från Duvemåla is like the peak of Swedish musicals, based on one of the most beloved Swedish book series ever, music and lyrics by Björn and Benny and the most loved and successful Swedish musical of all time.

Short synopsis: The story concerns two Swedish peasants, Karl-Oskar and his wife Kristina, who emigrate to the United States from the south of Sweden with their children and some friends during the famine of 1848. After a difficult journey, they arrive in Minnesota and start a new life. They manage to survive in their new country but Kristina still longs for her homeland.

The songs have been translated into English and performed in concert versions in both the UK and the US, but there’s never been an English speaking production.

Så som i himmelen is based on Swedish movie from 2004. Short synopsis: A successful international conductor suddenly interrupts his career and returns to his childhood village in Sweden. He is asked to listen to the church choir and from that moment nothing in the village is the same again. The choir grows, and the conductor makes both friends and enemies and finds love.

It’s a beautiful, sad, funny and hopeful story about ‘normal’ people and the power of music and relations with other people. It’s got a beautiful score, well thought out characters and it’s adapted really well. I actually love the musical more than the movie.

It might sound silly to say that more people should know about these two, but they're not very well known outside of Scandinavia. I realise it’s hard to get into Swedish musicals when you don’t know the language and don’t have any connection to these books and movies, but these are two amazing musicals. The stories and themes of both musicals are quite universal, too.

[rockrevoltmagazine]

INTERVIEW: STIX ZADINIA OF STEEL PANTHER

L.A. rockers Steel Panther return with their fifth studio album Heavy Metal Rules, set to be released on September 27th. Building off of a repertoire of already legendary anthems Steel Panther made sure to deliver more of the same but different tunes. RockRevolt had a chance to speak with the man behind the kit, Stix Zadinia, about the recording process for Heavy Metal Rules, playing the legendary Download Festival at Castle Donington, UK and what Stix’s parents think about their son’s career path.

RR: Being in a high profile heavy metal band has it’s benefits with money and everything else at your finger tips including women, any celebrities on that list?

Stix:  We keep that close to the vest.  I will tell you though that every show I put Charlize Theron on my guest list.  She has a standing invitation to our show because I’m in love with her.  Whether or not she’s in the country it doesn’t matter she goes on Steel Panther’s guest list.  I’d like to use this opportunity as an open invitation to Charlize, come chill with me.

Let me know what show she’s going to be at as she’s on my list as well.  On a more serious note I’m sure you guys take yourselves very serious being great musicians.  With that being said what does it mean to you that the Grammy’s have considered Steel Panther for the best comedy album category?

I’ll tell you what, it’s interesting because what we do is we take not being serious very seriously.  If we got attention for being a comedy band I don’t really give a fuck as long as people are listening to us.  It doesn’t matter what category people would consider us because at the end of the day we make music for people who dig fucking heavy metal, who dig having a good time, who just want to rock.  I highly doubt that we would end up even getting nominated for a Grammy, it just feels like Steel Panther is super not Grammy.  But if they want to put us in a comedy category it wouldn’t matter to me.  I wouldn’t be offended by it at all, I’d be down.

It’s pretty fucking cool just to be in that conversation, right?

Yeah to be recognized by anyone, a kid down the street at his house to dig Steel Panther or the Grammy’s that would be cool too.  The whole goal for us is to have people pay attention and listen to what we do and dig it.

Well there’s no doubt people are listening as your fanbase continues to grow.  Let’s talk about the new album Heavy Metal Rules which seems to have a heavier edge to it.  Can you take us behind the scenes and review what the writing process is like and is there a primary band member these creative ideas come from?

I would say Satchel our guitar player is our main writer.  The guy is a freak in the best way.  The first time he and I jammed together both of us went ok there’s something that happened here between the two of us musically that we just clicked.  He comes up with a lot of ideas, I’ll send him riff ideas.  I’ll send him song title ideas.  The song “Fuck Everybody” for instances was Satchel and I backstage at the House of Blues in Cleveland and one of us was serious and said fuck everybody! Someone else said everyone can suck my dick.  Then I said what if that’s a song and he comes up with a riff right on the spot.  He has an acoustic guitar backstage.  And then goes dude check it out, that was the germ of that song.  For us on this record in particular as opposed to say the first record.  The first record for us we wanted to really define Steel Panther, it’s your first record you want to make a real clear fucking impression.  We put out Feel the Steel and it had songs and elements of all the cool shit that 80’s metal could offer.  I feel like on this record I don’t think we rested on any of our laurels.  I feel like we pushed the fucking envelop and we wrote songs and recorded songs that stretched our sound musically and it’s fucking exciting man.  I mean a song like “I’m Not Your Bitch” is one of the heaviest things we’ve ever done.  It’s fun to be at this point in our career where we can put out a fifth record and it sounds like Steel Panther but it doesn’t sound like shit that we’ve done before.  I feel like people will be like fuck man they keep staying fresh because it doesn’t sound like another album of the same shit.  It’s the same shit but it’s different.

I completely agree, when I was listening to the album, I took from it right away that it’s heavier.  Just like you said it’s different but it’s still Steel Panther.  That’s important for a band with an identity, you don’t want to stray too far from that but make it different enough that it doesn’t sound like you’re repeating yourselves.  Now on your new record is there a track that stands out for you or more specific one that showcases Stix? Maybe a track that was challenging for you?

Oh man, you know “I’m Not Your Bitch” is one of those songs where in the chorus it has that syncopated riff with some double kick in it.  That was a little challenging to make it feel good and right.  That’s what you’re trying to do when you record an album, capture that fucking lightning in a bottle and get the right feel.  We don’t fix shit and make it perfect.  We keep it rock intentionally, it’s important to us because that’s how our favorite records were recorded and sometimes it’s a little bit off, but off in a way that makes you feel good.  We try to record the songs from top to bottom instead of sections because if you record it in parts it can feel sterile.  When you play it top to bottom there’s that dynamic flow that happens that you won’t get if you do it in sections.  For us we just try to perform the best we can on the record and try to capture what we think is super fucking cool.

What do you have upcoming tour wise?

We are doing an album release party at the Whiskey (in L.A.) on the 26th I believe of September and we’re going to have our friends in this band California play with us.  Our tour manager Joe Lester is actually in the band so that’s exciting for us.  Then we are going to do Sammy Hagar’s Beach Festival two days later at Huntington Beach.  Then we start the Heavy Metal Rules Tour in the states in October for about two and a half weeks on the east coast.  Come home then more touring in the states in November and December.  Then we have some special shit we have not announced for the beginning of the year that I can’t quite say yet because we like to keep shit top secret.

Glad you guys are hitting up the east coast, I’ll see you at the Portland, ME stop.

We love coming to the east coast.  Portland is great, Boston is fucking amazing.  There’s a lot of rock and roll fans on the east coast.  It’s always exciting for us to go there accept when it’s in the dead of winter.  You guys have cold fucking winters.  But we’ll warm it up, we’ll bring the heat.

I caught you guys at Download Festival (UK) in 2012 and 2014, it’s just an amazing festival.  What’s it like playing in front of 100,000 people? It’s got to be unbelievable, a complete mind fuck.

Ok I’m going to tell you how it is.  Imagine being on stage in front of 100,000 people.  That’s exactly how it is (both of us laughing).  There is no fucking analogy that you can give to someone to make it feel any cooler.  It’s fucking scary, it’s exhilarating, it’s fucking crazy.  I’ll tell you this there have been moments, I think it happens every time we do a festival.  Just going back to Download, yes everybody in the states needs to go to Download, there’s a few festivals in the world that really stand out to me.  Download is one of them, Wacken is one of them, Hellfest is one of them.  There are a few festivals that there are so many people it’s unbelievable, you have to go to experience it.  When we’re playing “Community Property” and you have 100,000 people singing “Community Property” all at the same time I’ve gotten fucking choked up.  I don’t cry at movies, that’s not my shit.  I’m trying to sound macho I just don’t really get effected like that but when I fucking see and hear and feel all those people doing the same thing at the same time and it’s because of something that I was a part of creating I’ve fucking gotten choked up.

It’s unbelievable just being in the crowd.  And it makes sense there is no analogy that can describe it.  Of course at the 2012 Download Festival Cory Taylor (Slipknot, Stone Sour) joined you on stage, you’re know to have a lot of special guests participate.  Is there someone on the list you’d love to have play with you that has not already?

Oh man I’d like to have Lady Gaga come up.  I think it would be fucking cool to have Lady Gaga come up.  We’ve had Pink come up so I can’t say her or else I would say her again because she’s fucking amazing.  Man we’ve had so many of my fucking favorites up with us.  It’s like a hard question to answer because I can’t think of people I haven’t jammed with.  We’ve had Jerry Cantrell and Tom Morello, Sebastian Bach, Kip Winger, a bunch of people man.  We are very, very fortunate that people are down to get up and rock with us.

Is there one of your headline shows that stands out?

Yeah, Wembley Arena.  When you go to Wembley and headline they give you a plaque that says congratulations you made it.  When you pull up to the arena and get out of the bus, you park underneath of the arena, and I see all the people putting the show together – the stage, lights and the sound, all those people are doing that because of this thing that we created.  It’s intense.  Then you do that show, headline show of 12,000 people it’s pretty unbelievable.

What does Mr. & Mrs. Zdinia, your parents think of how and what Stix is doing these days?

I’ll tell you what pops Zdinia is very proud.  And mom, I think they’re proud of their boy.  Look it’s not lost on me being able to fucking rock and roll for a living is a rare opportunity.  It’s not something that you can apply for.  You don’t work your way up the corporate ladder to do.  I feel like I was born to do and they feel like I was born to do it.  I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.  And I think that they’re really happy that I’m not in a gutter somewhere.

Let me ask you this, if you weren’t a Trump fan before did you become one after it came out about his locker room banter about grabbing her by the pussy was revealed? What is your take of the man in the Oval Office?

You know what I tend to stay away from that shit.  You know why, I don’t get involved in that because the moment you say some shit 50% of the people are going to go fuck you.  My station in life is to provide good fucking rock and roll.

Can you quickly give us your top 5 records?

Shout at the Devil, Motley Crue;  Pyromania, Def Leppard;  the first Winger record;  Steel Panther Heavy Metal Rules;  Queensryche, Rage for Order. 

Stix any final words for the fans?

Thank you for fucking letting us do what we do and supporting us.  And get ready because Heavy Metal Rules is going to rip your dick and tits off.  And you’re going to freak out because you haven’t heard a record like this and it’s going to be more of the same different shit.

I can attest to that, it is a kick ass record.  You’re going to have great success with it.  Best of luck with it and the upcoming tour.  Appreciate your time today, thank you!

Thanks Brett I appreciate it. 

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INTERVIEW: STIX ZADINIA OF STEEL PANTHER was originally published on RockRevolt Mag

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Borat 2 Reportedly Filmed and Already Screening for Audiences

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You want to know about something that’s very nice? Well, depending on your opinion of 2006’s Borat, that’s exactly what you might be saying right now with reports that Borat 2 is not only in the works, but it’s also in the can. That’s at least what a new report from Jeff Sneider at Collider suggests.

While specifics are exceedingly scarce, Sneider reported that social media rumors about Sacha Baron Cohen portraying the character of Borat again on the streets of Los Angeles in August are true, and further the film is already wrapped. Indeed, the website elaborates the film is already screening for “industry types,” although reports of the actual content of the film—and just how the humor works when most people should have at least a faint memory that Kazakh TV personality Borat is a shtick the actor Cohen does—are conflicting and ambiguous. Still, the main point remains: Borat is back.

Is this cause for excitement? When the original film, under its full title of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan debuted in 2006, it was a surprise runaway hit. With Cohen’s affected accent, bushy mustache hanging over his lip, and cornucopia of ready-made catchphrases at its center, the film saw Borat penetrate American pop culture in the same way the character traveled through the heartland, implicitly mocking his real-life subjects via faux-interviews. The interviewees often appeared oblivious to the joke. Hell, some of the audiences seemed to miss the point too!

The film opened to $26 million in the U.S. and went on to gross $262 million worldwide, a shocking figure for a comedy in the 2000s, especially one with a meager budget of $18 million. It also elevated Cohen from fringe counterculture celebrity thanks to his Da Ali G Show (where he proof-tested his bizarre characters) to Hollywood star. Shortly thereafter he attempted to repeat the trick by playing chic European gay man Bruno in a movie of the same name and in the same format. But that film proved more caustic and challenging to both critics and, perhaps especially, large swaths of Borat’s audience who finally realized the joke was on them during a climax in which Cohen rounded second base with another man in front of a UFC cage fighting audience.

Cohen has since tried his hand in other sorts of comedy and even drama, including in musicals like Tim Burton’s underrated Sweeney Todd and Todd Hooper’s overrated Les Misérables. He’s also set to star in Aaron Sorkin’s next film The Trial of the Chicago 7, which is due out next month. But in terms of mainstream comedies, he’s struggled to find a beloved film like Borat and instead has been met with a fair share of disappointments like The Dictator.

So returning to the well with a belated comedy sequel is a risky endeavor. In fact, he cameoed in one of the most financially successful attempts in recent memory with 2013’s Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues but that movie’s, uh, legend, alongside other belated comedy sequels like Zoolander 2 and Dumb and Dumber To, speak to the challenge of capturing lightning in a bottle the second time.

The post Borat 2 Reportedly Filmed and Already Screening for Audiences appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[mrallentompkins-blog]

Two Brooklyn Mugs Hang Out on a 40 Year Old Movie Classic

Okay.”

The conventional way to end a “take” while directing a movie is to say loudly “cut”!

The director of this movie says, “Okay.” He’s unconventional. He looks like an intellectual, but flashing back four decades I guess it’s just his signature black-rimmed glasses that create that impression for me. He’s wearing a Ralph Lauren tweed sport coat with leather elbow patches over a worn-at-the-collar button-down plaid shirt, and brown wide-whale baggy corduroy pants that hang over a pair of clunky worn-out shoes. No flash, just a simple lived-in look. More like a dude who has escaped from a PBS fundraiser. To a street-smart cat from Brooklyn, the skinny little guy looks un-cool except for his distinct walk. The man has a cool, confident, urban boppin’ walk. I will come to learn that this dude is really smart, but far from a nerdy intellectual. His public persona of a neurotic intellectual is a movie character creation. The guy I will come to know better has legitimate Brooklyn-bred street-smart self-confidence. Before the movie finishes shooting months later, I will have formed a very gradual, unexpected, life-long friendship with this iconic New York character.

By the time I was hired as the unit still photographer on this untitled film, the director/writer/actor had already made a cluster of movies none of which I had seen.

Eventually, I would see them all. My old school, (pre-yuppie and pre-hipster) Brooklyn upbringing had made me a cautious street-guy, wary about the people with whom I became friends. It’s a matter of trust; a skeptical survival instinct. Plus, I have a deep aversion to ass-kissers, and the movie business breeds insecurity and greed. Sometimes “solid” people turn into embarrassing ass-kissing sycophants. I will learn, the director of this movie will never brownnose anyone about anything.

The dude with the signature black-rimmed glasses is Woody Allen.

The movie he’s directing will eventually be called: Annie Hall. It is the spring of 1976 as we start shooting in the Hamptons. I observe that Woody is a quiet, private man. He rarely speaks to actors or crew members. But he’s not a snob either. If someone asks him a question he will give a slightly shy and succinct answer. He’s a refreshing antidote to some conventional directors who feel obligated to become unqualified junior-psychologists, over-explaining everything to cast and crew about motivation and meaning.

Then there is the unique guy with the signature glasses.

The first day of shooting is eaten up mostly with boring running shots of cars. Later in the day when the light is soft with overcast – Woody’s favorite light – Gordon Willis, the great cinematographer who looks like Rembrandt, finishes lighting the exterior (with a hint of tungsten coming through the windows from inside) of a Hamptons house where the famous “lobster scene” is being shot. “Gordy,” another man of few words, uses irony with a splash of cynicism as his best defense verbally and brilliant lighting visually.

He turns to us in the camera crew, “Is my lighting funny?”

All good, Gordy...

Gordon Willis and Woody Allen would become a brilliant team.

As Woody later says in many interviews, and as I will witness first-hand on several of their classic collaborations, Gordon’s gift to Woody is a formal filmmaking foundation. He gets a daily on-the-job teacher-student master class in filmic skills, which Woody admits he simply did not possess on his previous movies. Gordon’s unique eye becomes a visual partner to Woody’s winning words. Together they create lightning in a bottle.

After several days in the Hampton’s, we are shooting in a tiny apartment on the Upper West Side. In between lighting set-ups, I am sitting on the building’s stoop. For those of us who grew up in this fantastic city of New York, especially those of us from the outer boroughs, a stoop is a social hang-out place of significant importance. It provokes talk. And laughs. And dreams. The stoop is where at a young age we juked and jived, talked sports and girls, complained about our shortness of dough, and occasionally ranked on each other or gossiped about stool-pigeons in the neighborhood. If you are a stool-pigeon from old-school Brooklyn you are marked bad for life. Woody can dig all this too.

He grew up in Brooklyn. So when he bops out of the apartment building between shots he sits opposite me on the stoop railing.

Just the two of us.

I say nothing until he does. He tells me how much he admires my older brother Pete’s writing. They know each other casually from Elaine’s restaurant. I thank him. I will soon learn that Woody is very sparse with compliments (later, over years, I will observe that he hates to get compliments).But this breaks the ice and we chat for the next 45 minutes. He’s feeling me out. Trying to see where I’m at. It’s cool.

It was a ditto thing. And I start to feel that Woody is “good people” too. After this conversation we start to develop a very early-stage mental shorthand.

Back upstairs on the set we are both quiet. My job as a unit still photographer takes concentration and I am here to work. I am on high alert to capture defining moments that my training as a photojournalist has taught me. The essence of my job requires me to be ever-ready for that decisive release of the shutter to photograph a precise piece of action.

On movies, I am always looking to capture the most dramatic or comedic point of a scene. Between takes I shoot portraits of actors, candid animated moments between director and actors, director and cameraman, and shots of the splendid work done by all the very talented people involved. Basically, the same deal as journalism. A photo essay. In between set-ups I can also take a breather, shoot the breeze or break balls, all of which I am very good at.

As the day goes on, I notice that Woody is obsessive about magic tricks with a coin, always practicing to make it disappear. The room is small and I am standing next to him surrounded by a cluster of busy crew people setting up the next shot. He is not showing off, but rather perfecting his skills with the quarter for his own amusement.

Suddenly the quarter falls from Woody’s hand, and I follow it falling into the cuff of my pants. I am sure he has spotted it. But it’s clear he hasn’t as he looks for its landing at the couch next to him. I decide to fuck with him and not tell him right away that his quarter is in my cuff. Woody picks up the end-pillow—the quarter is not there. He searches the floor around his feet. No coin.

The First Assistant Director calls him in to watch the scene in the adjoining room. I leave the quarter in my cuff and enter the room to photograph the scene. After ten minutes and a couple of takes he says, “Okay.” Then he’s back in the living room tossing the couch again for his quarter. He picks up the big pillow closest to where he was standing. He searches thoroughly, frustration reddening his face. I am both amused that this talented guy is so flustered, but worried that if I give it up now he will have an unpleasant reaction to my ball-breaking.

He walks away for a moment, pivots back to the couch and picks up a second big pillow. No quarter. Now he’s down on one knee looking under the couch to no avail.

I’m thinking:

Should I give myself up?

Nope. I let it lay, for 30 years.

The next day we are shooting in the same apartment. I go into the empty kitchen and put my cameras on the table. As I change the film roll in one camera, Woody and Keaton enter the kitchen. Keaton is one of the nicest people I have ever worked with. Keaton and Woody can finish each other’s sentences. They are very close friends and have great chemistry on screen. Annie Hall will become their bases-loaded homerun.

They are goofing about something. And then start talking about a play they had both seen separately and did not like. I am not really interested in a convo about theater so I tune out. Suddenly, Woody turns to me and says, “What was the last play you saw that you liked?” I thought for a few split seconds and said impulsively, “I hate plays and don’t go that often.” There was an awkward, pregnant silence in the kitchen as Woody and Keaton snuck a peek at each other.

Woody finally says, “Seriously, you don’t like plays?”

“No, not really, I mostly go to plays out of politeness to friends who are actors in them. But most plays make me move my ass back and forth in the seat. I’m a movie guy. I love watching movies. My mother was a cashier at the RKO Prospect in my Brooklyn neighborhood so I got to see movies for free when I was a kid, and I went frequently.”

I could tell that both Woody and Keaton were surprised at my candor, and probably thought I was a cultural zero. Growing up our big Irish-American family was very well-read. Books were our refuge, our escape. But I was talking square business. Plays were harder to walk out of if you did not enjoy them. Movies were easier to cut short and they cost far less dough. And plays are an acquired taste for a street-mug from Brooklyn who grew up poor. As I got older and matured, I enjoyed plays much more as I now do.

Later, as the shoot was almost finished, I asked Woody if he had a title for the film. He said he was considering a title called: Anhedonia. I knew that it meant a psychological condition that prevents certain people from experiencing pleasure from pleasurable acts.

I laughed and said, “That title will sell six tickets”.

Woody laughed, which he did rarely in my limited observation on this movie. We would eventually share many more laughs over the years in the city we both love.

Although he worked as a stand-up comic in smoke-filled clubs in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco often on the same bill with potheads and the occasional junkie, Woody told me that he had never actually smoked a joint. He also said with a straight face that he didn’t think any good music was made after 1947. I was a Rock & Roll lover and weed head, so, of course, I told him I could not agree. I also, in forty years, never heard him use the word cool. Like I said earlier, the dude is unconventional.

I gave up weed in 1983. I am still a fervent Rock and Roll fan. I use cool every day.

I’ve done photographs on seventy-seven movies in thirty-eight busy years, and have done twenty-six movies with this cat, and I still think he is the most honorable, loyal person I’ve ever met in the movie business. In addition, his strong, well-read literary sensibility, his extensive knowledge of classic and art movies (American and Foreign), his enthusiasm for sports, and his verve and passion for music (plays clarinet) rubs off on you just by hanging out with him. It’s a good hang.

Words. Images. Music.

Movies.

NYC.

Loyalty.

It is hard not to stay interested in his skillful work, and his extraordinary wit. His unpretentious wisdom never made me feel like Woody displayed a superior vibe to others. Deep in his heart, he is a street guy.

I can proudly say the Woody Allen I know is a mensch and my friend.

Annie Hall is a wonderful movie with great dialog, smart jokes, realistic comedy, and for me a sentimental journey back in time through a nostalgic lens on both the pain and happiness of comedian Alvy Singer growing up in Brooklyn and searching for love in Manhattan. The wonderfully-written scenes were often touching, and some had side-splitting wit. It is, after all, a relationship movie that even a Brooklyn kid who grew in financial struggle could love. The ending is bittersweet, like real life.

The movie got released forty years ago this month, it was nominated for five Oscars, and won four including Best Picture. It is considered a classic. Most famous comedians love it. Woody didn’t attend the Oscars in 1978. He told my younger brother Denis in an interview for the LA Herald Examiner the day before the Oscars back then that he couldn’t take the Academy Awards seriously if they didn’t nominate Gordon Willis for Best Cinematography. He’s that kind of loyal.

In 2006, thirty years after we worked on Annie Hall together, we were sitting at The Garden watching the Knicks play. Woody has taken me lots of times to his paid for top-dollar season courtside Knicks seats. He is not a celebrity freeloader. He tips the waiters well. In fact, if he gives you his seats to go without him, he asks only that you tip the courtside waiters well. It’s not an act. He is hands down the most generous actor I ever hung out with. We have eaten many restaurant meals together, and I have tried, but Woody Allen will simply not let me pick-up a tab.

At half time, the Knicks were ahead when he turned to me to ask my thoughts on a personal matter, and, as usual, I gave him straight talk with my honest opinion.

He said, “I always knew I could trust you Hamill when you told me during the first week of Annie Hall that you hated plays. I did not agree with you, but I respected your honesty.”

“Hey Wood, thanks,” I said, “And I owe you a quarter.” He looked at me puzzled. I told him the story about him looking for his magic-trick quarter that landed in my cuff. He seemed further baffled, saying he had no recollection of the incident.

I said, “You see, you should have tried at least one joint.”

Brian Hamill

Brianhamill.com

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/two-brooklyn-mugs-hang-out-on-a-40-year-old-movie-classic_us_58e18796e4b0ca889ba1a764

Related article: A Year Of Being A Starbucks Mug Collector

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Historical War Epics of the 2000s Ranked

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“There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it, anything more than a whisper and it would vanish.” These were the words spoken by Richard Harris at his most regal in Gladiator, adding some blockbuster poeticism to the democratic ideals of the Roman republic—a dream lost long before Gladiator begins. But he could just as easily be speaking about the beauty and grandeur of the historical epics which inspired Gladiator .

Decades before Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott reawakened that whisper to a mighty roar, historical war epics, from swords and sandals beefcake cinema to Napoleonic and Revolutionary melodramas, were the order of the day in Hollywood. Kirk Douglas’ Spartacus and Charlton Heston’s Ben-Hur were the superheroes of the early ‘60s, before the genre’s popularity receded to camp TV miniseries ignominy. Then came Gladiator (and to a lesser extent Braveheart five years earlier), and the bloated Hollywood historical epic was back. Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, muscular movie stars crossed swords, medieval chainmail was adorned, and Greco sandals were fitted. For a brief time in this century, bronze breastplates instead of capes were the costume of choice for Hollywood’s biggest leading men.

So with Gladiator turning 20 this summer, we felt it only fitting to rank the movies of that era from their worst to best. Note we are keeping this just to the movies released in the 2000s, but rest assured that if we included the final dregs of the early 2010s, Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood would be near the very bottom.

13. The Last Legion (2007)

The King Arthur myth remains a tantalizing conundrum for filmmakers in the 21st century. On the one hand, it is a set of legends so ancient they are all in the public domain many centuries over; on the other, no filmmaker or studio seems to know how to wrap their arms around them for a modern audience. Take for instance this dead-on-arrival action romp, The Last Legion. Three years after Disney’s more earnest attempt to remake Arthur in the blockbuster stylings of its day (more on that in a moment), Dino De Laurentiis produced this cheap, half-hearted failure that tried to find a middle way.

Centered on the dubious idea that Arthur is actually a Roman noble who’s come to save the Britons from themselves, and here is the son of the last Roman Emperor to boot, The Last Legion attempts to be a historical epic on a budget, but really plays like an expensive episode of Xena: Warrior Princess with Colin Firth standing in for Lucy Lawless. Granted this makes a certain type of sense given director Doug Lefler worked on that very show, but then that tells you everything you need to know about this less-than-magical experience.

12. King Arthur (2004)

One of the most obvious attempts to recapture Gladiator’s lightning in a bottle turned out to be among the worst in this misbegotten other “true story” telling of the King Arthur legend. Pivoting on this dubious marketing claim, Disney produced a movie which saw David Franzoni, the original screenwriter of Gladiator, take center stage without John Logan cleaning up his narrative lines and dialogue, and Clive Owen strike an unconvincing pose as a blockbuster leading man.

Loosely based on the final days of the Roman Empire’s rule in Britannia, the movie introduces Owen’s Arthur as a half-Roman officer who must reluctantly take his “Knights of the Round Table” (a dirty half-dozen) on One Last Mission™. It’s a development which bears a striking similarity to Tears of the Sun (2003), a movie Antoine Fuqua just happened to direct the year before helming this wannabe epic. Even with shots of Michael Bay-styled hazy spectacle centered around Hadrian’s Wall, and the unconvincing sight of Keira Knightley in blue war paint and leather straps as a pagan Celtic warrior—she’s Guinevere, by the by—there’s not a whole lot about this dull affair we would deem legendary.

11. Gods and Generals (2003)

This is a trickier one to include. While certainly a would-be historical war epic released in the 2000s, Gods and Generals is in earnest a prequel to producer Ted Turner and director Ronald F. Maxwell’s Gettysburg (1993). That earlier, superior film was a TNT miniseries, but it’s so enjoyable to history buffs that it eventually got a theatrical release… then came this.

If Gettysburg flirted with Southern Lost Cause revisionism, then Gods and Generals married the insidious mythology, settled down with it, and produced a cinematic ne’er-do-well as its legacy. Like the title suggests, this movie deifies Confederate generals Robert E. Lee (Robert Duvall) and Stonewall Jackson (Stephen Lang) while completely sidestepping the reasons they were rebelling against the Union. It even incredulously features a scene where Jackson assures a Black man the Confederacy will one day emancipate its slaves.

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Worse than any historical revisionism though, this movie is just a tepid slog across 220 minutes, with neither the budget nor cast of extras needed to infuse its battle scenes with a sense of authentic terror or excitement. Instead “both sides” are played by dignified, middle-aged reenactors who display no fears or self-awareness about sacrificing their lives for a cause the movie is too scared to accept.

10. Apocalypto (2006)

Ah, the first Mel Gibson entry on this list is also the picture he made after achieving brief godlike status among evangelicals and Tinseltown accountants via The Passion of the Christ (2004). With that level of box office clout, Gibson could do anything he wanted. So, tired of giving the British a bad look with his epics, he decided it was the ancient Mayans’ turn.

To be clear, there are elements to admire about Apocalypto. For starters, Gibson committed to having the actors speak in the Yucatec Maya language, an audacious choice for a Hollywood film. It really does create an irresistibly immersive quality. Dean Semler’s cinematography also goes a long way in forging a sense of reality to what is essentially a chase movie wherein ancient villagers of a remote tribe in Central America are conquered and then pursued by Mayans who desire to use their blood for human sacrifice.

Yet the sparseness of the story also makes it easy to get lost in visuals that seek to not only ‘Other’ the ancient past, but to also condescend to it in a movie that lazily equates Mayans and Aztecs as interchangeable; it was the latter who celebrated large scale human sacrifice of captured enemies. More troubling though is this seems intentionally mangled for the shock twist ending where we see the ships of Hernán Cortés arriving a full 600 years early, giving this movie the queasy realization that the whole thing is a cinematic justification for the conquest and violence of the Catholic Conquistadors.

9. Alexander (2004)

Behold, here lies Oliver Stone’s Waterloo. A testament to the filmmaker’s love for antiquity, Alexander is a big beautiful mess that cannot be saved no matter how many times Stone drastically recuts it. Indeed, there are three radically different versions of this well-intentioned ruin, but despite what the director says, none of them offer redemption. Still, it’s probably better than you remember.

With painstakingly accurate costumes designed by Jenny Beaven, gorgeous production design by Jan Roelfs, and extraordinary music by the always noteworthy Vangelis, there is a lot to aesthetically admire. But it comes to naught in this overwrought and underwritten melodrama with an Irish brogue. Yes, as mercilessly mocked in the press in 2004, star Colin Farrell speaks with an Irish lilt as the Macedonian conqueror. But hey no one is speaking ancient Greek either, so who cares? I’d argue the bigger problem is whatever Angelina Jolie is going for as Olympias, Alexander’s mother by way of Count Dracula.

More unfortunate is how Stone’s screenplay and direction reduces Alexander to a whiny, petulant, slob who bursts into tears at the drop of a toga. Despite the admirable choice by Stone to depict Alexander’s undefined queerness and love for another man (Jared Leto), one cannot help but sense the filmmaker is also relying on reductive stereotypes of the LGBTQ community to write Alexander while turning the life of a man who captured one-third of the known world into a bad soap where all he really wants to do is crawl into bed with mommy. But hey, the accurate depiction of battle tactics at Gaugamela is nifty.

8. The Patriot (2000)

One of the rare films on this list not influenced by the glut of battlefield glory spawned from Gladiator, The Patriot opened the same summer as an attempt to slyly remake Mel Gibson’s Oscar winning Braveheart in American Revolution garb. Keep in mind that both Gibson vehicles are gussied up revenge thrillers, ahistorical melodramas, and arguable propaganda intended to vilify a British Empire already quite susceptible to critique. In fact, the only significant difference may be Braveheart was directed by Gibson who, for whatever his other faults, is a hell of a storyteller, and The Patriot is helmed by the guy who gave us the Matthew Broderick Godzilla.

In between disaster flicks, Roland Emmerich took this brief stab at period piece respectability while indulging every hammy and histrionic Hollywood cliché. We have the reluctant hero in one Benjamin Martin (Mel Gibson); the wayward son who’s coming of age by proving he is exactly like the old man (Heath Ledger); and a generic British villain played by Jason Isaacs, whose nastiness errs closer to the Nazis in Occupied France than any specific Red Coat. Most incredulous though is that Gibson plays a South Carolina plantation owner who doesn’t own slaves. Yeah, that’s about as convincing as the rest of this laugh riot.

7. 300 (2007)

For many this is likely a movie where the memory is better than the film. Yes, 300 is loaded with ridiculously fetishized images of spears, corpses, and weird CGI deformities breaking like impotent waves across Gerard Butler’s chiseled abs. And sure, it spits out more quotable lines than Groucho Marx at a yacht club. But once you realize the best lines were taken from the actual historic record (at least according to Plutarch), and most of those shots already bopped in the much more digestible trailers, what we’re left with is a shallow, surface level video game cutscene that’s extended across two long hours.

In bite-sized clips, 300 can be an oblivious homoerotic gas, ready made for frat houses everywhere. Yet after a hundred minutes of Zack Snyder’s slow-motion ramping, and Butler screaming ferociously as he impales another inferior androgynous man with his flexing spear, it all wears a bit thin. It’s tendency to also indulge in fascist iconography of a godlike white civilization (that practices eugenics) shattering the faceless hordes of monstrous, dehumanized others hasn’t aged like fine wine either.

6. Troy (2004)

When 300 came out, many including myself found its CGI landscapes refreshing when compared to the hulking excesses of Wolfgang Petersen’s old-fashioned Troy. And 15 years later, the latter is still cheesier than Kraft blue box macaroni; Troy could even be mistaken for ‘50s kitsch if not for its own use of CG and copious amounts of gore and nudity. But now that Hollywood’s moved so far away from on-location shooting and grand scale moviemaking, all those alleged faults suddenly play like endearing virtues in this big goofy reduction of Homer’s The Iliad to an evening of WWE Monday Night Raw.

With a silly screenplay by David Benioff that does away with Homer’s gods, Troy lives or dies on its spectacle and charisma, and it’s got a thousand ships’ worth of both. Brad Pitt is at his hunkiest as Achilles, but the movie really belongs to Eric Bana as poor doomed Trojan Prince Hector. Essentially Benioff’s first attempt at writing Ned Stark before Game of Thrones, Hector is portrayed as a noble, ass-kicking lamb to the slaughter. Kudos also to Orlando Bloom for agreeing at the height of his popularity to play such an off-putting coward.

Still, it’s the superb action scenes that make Troy stand out. Unlike most contemporaries, Petersen shoots the action in steady, clean wide shots, revealing intricate and often dazzling fight choreography, as well as brutal smash ups between the Trojans and Greeks. With Peter O’Toole also on hand to give the movie just a passing sense of majesty as old King Priam, you can come for the thrilling Hector versus Achilles fight but stay for the aftermath where O’Toole kisses the hands of his son’s murderer. For a few minutes, Troy grazes its much desired greatness.

5. The Alamo (2004)

A film mercilessly mocked for not being remembered like its namesake, John Lee Hancock’s The Alamo deserves better. Easily more interesting than John Wayne’s 1960 snoozefest of the same name, The Alamo ’04 took the novel approach of dramatizing the actual historical record of the doomed effort to defend a Spanish mission-cum-fort from Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana’s army.

Hancock’s movie likewise uses a warts and all lens on its three heroes of William Travis (Patrick Wilson), James Bowie (Jason Patric), and David Crockett (Billy Bob Thornton), intentionally demythologizing all men, particularly the last one, while still giving Thornton several scenes of mythic quality. The actual siege of the Alamo is appropriately brutal and swift, if in a PG-13 sort of way, but it’s how Thornton plays Crockett serenading both the Mexican and Texan armies at dusk with a fiddle on a parapet that makes this movie poignant. Its qualities even overcome how tacked on the ending is where Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) defeats the Mexican army at the later battle of San Jacinto.

4. The Last Samurai (2003)

Tom Cruise got in on the newest blockbuster fad of the current era, as is his wont, and did so with extreme conviction in The Last Samurai. The result was a satisfying and, at times, thrilling adventure picture that meshed Akira Kurosawa influences with the white savior storyline of Dances with Wolves. Problematic plotting aside, what makes The Last Samurai shine is the introduction of Ken Watanabe to American audiences as the true last Samurai.

Playing Katsumoto, a Samurai loosely based on the real-life Saigō Takamori, Watanabe dominates the movie all the way to an Oscar nomination as the lone warrior who will not get with the program. He rejects the rapid westernization of feudal Japan, much to the displeasure of his emperor and American and European patrons, thereby putting Katsumoto on a collision course with disillusioned U.S. Cavalry officer Nathan Algren (Cruise). 

Nathan, by contrast, comes to Japan as a simple mercenary after years of bitter American Indian warfare, but he stays as a convert, adopting the Samurai’s code and fighting alongside Katsumoto in a doomed battle against the emperor’s army. It’s a familiar and ludicrous tale told with sincere grace and effective direction by Edward Zwick. Plus, the Samurai versus ninja sequence is just all kinds of badass.

3. Kingdom of Heaven (2005) – Director’s Cut

Most folks have never seen the Ridley Scott director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven, which means most have never seen Kingdom of Heaven. Not really. There is of course a theatrical version, which in 144 minutes retains the narrative skeleton and action beats of the same story, but what’s missing is the film’s heart and much of its soul. When restored to its proper 190-minute length, Kingdom of Heaven is a visibly personal film to Scott, and an intoxicating one that gets swept away in a storm of medieval pageantry and pensive spiritual anxiety.

Loosely basing his film on the Fall of Jerusalem from Christian rule 1187—placing this between the Second and Third Crusade—Scott doesn’t care so much about historical fidelity as he does with creating a brooding snapshot of Western apprehension during the height of the War on Terror. He also makes a dense epic, captured in painterly cinematography and costumes, and stuffed with amazing performances. While Orlando Bloom is only serviceable as Balian de Ibelin, he’s surrounded by fantastic performers like David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Sheen, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons, and Alexander Siddig. Of special note are Edward Norton as King Baldwin IV, the Leper King whom Scott and screenwriter William Monahan mythologize as a philosopher shrouded by a silver mask, and Ghassan Massoud as Saladin. Between the empathy of these two highly fictionalized crowns, a true Kingdom of God could’ve existed.

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The other standout that deserves special attention is Eva Green as Sibylla, the Christian princess who becomes queen. In the theatrical version, studio edits reduced her to a simple love interest; in the director’s cut she is touched with the tragedy of Medea and the madness of Lady Macbeth when her son (wholly excised from the theatrical cut) becomes king… only to discover he’s also contracted leprosy.

2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

In almost any other year, Peter Weir’s meticulously crafted Master and Commander would’ve been the toast of awards season. Sadly, it was overshadowed by the splashier third chapter of Lord of the Rings. Nevertheless, you’d be hard-pressed, even 17 years later, to find a more intelligent and well-anchored epic than this naval adventure. Set during the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, and loosely based on several Patrick O’Brian novels, Master and Commander immerses viewers into the daily rigmarole of life in the British Royal Navy.

While Russell Crowe is appropriately dashing as the long-haired British captain in search of a French prize in the Pacific, it is the effect of a perfectly cast ensemble that gives Weir’s movie a lived-in authenticity. Paul Bettany stands out as the smart-to-bordering on insubordinate Irish doctor, but there’s also Max Pirkis as the young midshipman with a touch of destiny, or Lee Ingleby as the much older mid-level officer with the scent of weakness and specter of doom trailing in his wake. Hell, the entire collection of hard-weathered character actors comprising the crew buoy this movie to greatness.

With an interest in naturalism that outclasses almost any other movie of its kind, Master and Commander breathes its sea air in full, and rises and falls like the cresting waves of its ship’s victories and defeats. Bettany’s poor Dr. Maturin may never get to spend enough time researching the animals of the Galapagos Islands in the film, but his story among men-at-arms makes for its own fascinating study.

1. Gladiator (2000)

There is little that hasn’t been said about the glory and greatness of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, but here is space to revel again in how this movie’s deeds echo through eternity. When the movie came out, debuting as an unlikely leggy box office hit and an even unlikelier Best Picture Oscar winner down the road, it had its share of critics who dismissed it as an action trifle. Yet Gladiator’s legacy has outlived those naysayers. To be sure the movie paints in archetypes, but it distills them to their most visceral and operatic extremes in a passion play about three people: the unwanted son (Joaquin Phoenix), the loved surrogate child (Russell Crowe), and the much smarter daughter who must survive them all (Connie Nielsen).

With these people setting their drama on a stage no less grand than the literal Roman arena, Gladiator elevates the revenger’s story into something poetic and lyrical, thanks in large part to its highly literate screenplay. Though getting there took some time, the end result allows Scott’s visceral instincts to bask in the Roman sun and sand, and gives much meat for all of the principles to play with, making stars of Crowe and Phoenix, as well as a gnarly ensemble of acting statesman like Richard Harris, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, and Oliver Reed in his final, deliciously crusty performance.

Each of these elements build a sum greater than its already fine parts, leading to moments as satisfying as Crowe’s Maximus threatening Phoenix’s feckless Roman Emperor before an entire Colosseum, or as rapturous as Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard’s transcendent musical score ushering Maximus into the fields of Elysium. It pities and romanticizes them all, even Phoenix’s unloved tyrant, but it also bakes them in a cinematic confection so rich that the tigers and gladiatorial mayhem is just a blood-red icing on top. There’s a reason it spawned a decade of imitators and aspirants.

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