#wife gary saga

[player1064]

Love your drabbles! I cannot stop reading and sharing them. I have another prompt if you are still taking them! It would be interesting to see Gaz defend his Jamie when he is invited as a special guest to that CBS show Jamie is on. Would love to see protective Gary against Kate Abdo with Big Meeks laughing in the background and Titi being torn between helping Kate or (rightfully) knowing when a battle is lost. Maybe a dib at Kate how being a host is easy money compared to being actual pundits & analysts

kinda obsessed w this prompt being sent like a day before Jamie ran his big mouth on live tv and got in trouble for it (though tbh he's ALWAYS running his big mouth and what he said abt kate not being loyal wasn't even up there with worst mistakes imo it's just the one that happened to go viral). but also YES I am obseeeeessed with the UCL Today gang's dynamic the banter.... the thinly veiled dislike between Jamie and Kate.... chefs kiss

Also, this ficlet can be considered part of the wife-gary saga and having said that I'm wondering if I should have that as a tag so the other prompt fills in that universe are easier to find......

---

“Joining us in the studio today is one of the most decorated British footballers of all time, with over a hundred appearances in the Champions’ league and two titles to show for it, it’s Gary Neville. Gary, welcome to the show.”

Gary, who’d been grimacing awkwardly through Kate’s introduction, shakes his head around a bit and then gives her a smile. “Glad to be here, I –”

“—hold on, hold on,” Jamie interrupts, “can we go back to the ‘two titles’ thing for a second?”

“Yes, James, I have two Champions’ league medals,” Gary says, turning to look at Jamie with one unimpressed eyebrow raised. “As many as everyone else in this studio combined, I believe. What’s not clickin’, can you not count that high?”

To Jamie’s left, Micah doubles over with laughter, but Jamie just shakes his head, reaching a hand out to Gary’s chest, pushing him back in his seat. “No, no, Gary, why don’t you tell our audience how many games you played to earn that second medal, eh?”

Before Gary has a chance to defend himself, Kate primly says “about thirty more across his career than you did, Jamie,” which sets the whole table off laughing again while Jamie sits glaring in the middle of it all.

*

Jamie, as the lone Scouser in the cast and the only one not to have won a Premier league (besides Kate, obviously, but she doesn’t count), often feels ganged up on at CBS. And to have Gary on as a guest, even though he’d agreed to the idea (and quite enthusiastically, though don’t tell Gary that), feels like an extra kick in the shin.

Because not only is Gary, Mister Manchester United, getting obvious favouritism from lifelong United supporter Kate, he has the more crucial advantage that nobody in America knows who he is.

This means that Gary on CBS is not ‘below-average defender who only achieved what he did through obsessive hard work and sucking up to Fergie’, no, Gary on CBS is ‘best full-back of his generation, Manchester United and England legend, one of the top 10 most decorated British footballers of all time, and David fucking Beckham’s best mate.’

When you look at it like that, it’s a lot harder to find something to tease him about.

Jamie still manages, of course, he’s spent the past decade making a career out of insulting Gary Neville and he’s damn good at it. Over the course of the show he’s able to get in a few digs about his nose, his hair, his weight, his dress sense. But that’s all appearance stuff, which is easy – one look at Gary and the jokes basically write themselves.

What that says about Jamie, the idiot who went and married him, he’s not sure.

Everyone around the table is joking about Istanbul, which is easy enough to do if you weren’t there, which none of them were, and it’s enough to get Jamie’s blood boiling. He’s getting ready to launch into a rant about how it was one of the greatest games in footballing history when Kate cracks a line about how Jamie’s successes were all dumb luck, and Gary’s face scrunches up in displeasure.

“Oh, I’m – I’m not sure that’s fair, really,” he says quietly, glancing back at Jamie as he does. “Don’t get me wrong, that Liverpool team were nowhere near Champions’ league winner quality, I’m sure James would agree w’me on that –” Jamie, very reluctantly, nods. “—I mean, they finished fifth in the league that season, got knocked out of the FA cup their first game. There’s always a bit of luck to be fair, gettin’ to a Champions’ league final, but credit where it’s due – they were a scrappy little team, and that win was well deserved.”

On Gary’s right, Thierry nods in agreement, which is quite possibly the highest praise Jamie’s ever received from the man, and even Kate gives Jamie an awkward little smile once Gary’s done talking.

Under the desk, Jamie drops a hand to Gary’s knee and gives it an appreciative little squeeze.

*

As soon as the cameras are all off Jamie wastes no time in grabbing Gary by the wrist to pull him onto his lap, where he sort of half-perches half-hovers because he’s nervous about putting all his weight on Jamie’s knees (even though Jamie keeps telling him it’s fine).

Gary makes no complaints at being manhandled, just smiles fondly down at Jamie and pinches his cheek. “Look at you, you vain fuck. What I said were barely complimentary and it’s still got you all over me.”

Jamie ignores this (because they both know it’s true) and surges forward to kiss Gary instead, paying no mind to the others still in the vicinity of the desk while they get their earpieces and microphones unhooked. He hears a groan from Micah, and an exasperated sigh from Titi, but they can both go fuck themselves because Jamie’s horrible bastard of a husband willingly said something nice about Liverpool on live television, and if that’s not cause for celebration then he doesn’t know what is.

When Gary breaks the kiss with a pleased little hmph and gets up to wander over to the snack table, Jamie is left to face his colleagues, all three of them looking at him with faces twisted in an attempt to suppress their laughter.

“Man like Jamie,” Micah says gleefully, clapping his hands together. “I knew you was bringin’ the missus on for a reason, this is like foreplay for the two a’yous, innit?” As soon as he finishes the sentence, he shudders at his own words, then adds “oh, ew, that’s like thinking about your parents, don’t want to know any more.”

“I think you’re onto something there, Meeks,” Kate laughs, “and here I was thinking he’d brought him on to show off his trophy wife.”

Jamie wants to protest that he did not bring Gary onto the show, he’s not the one who made the suggestion and it’s definitely not showing off or foreplay or whatever else his colleagues can come up with, but then Kate’s nudging him in the side with a smirk and saying “Trophy wife, Jamie, get it? Because he has a lot more trophies than –”

Jamie stomps off to go find his stupid annoying and very very successful trophy wife before Kate is able to finish the thought and prompt him to say something he might regret.

[influencermagazineuk]

Selena Gomez Unveils Wizards of Waverly Place Sequel: Wizards Beyond Waverly Place

Image: Twitter / X Selena Gomez and David Henrie are reprising their iconic roles as the mischievous siblings, Alex and Justin, in the much-anticipated sequel to Wizards of Waverly Place. After months of speculation, Disney Channel finally revealed the title of the upcoming installment during its 2024 upfront presentation: Wizards Beyond Waverly Place. Alongside the title announcement, the channel treated fans to a sneak peek with first-look posters featuring Gomez and Henrie, along with new additions to the Russo family. The original fantasy series, which aired from 2007 to 2012, captured audiences with its magical adventures, culminating in a television movie and a standalone continuation in 2013. As Selena Gomez's Alex Russo took the lead, her on-screen brother Justin, portrayed by David Henrie, added depth to the Russo family dynamics. The unveiling of the sequel brought excitement as set photos showcased Gomez and Henrie in character, wielding their magic wands and flashing smiles that harken back to the beloved series. Moreover, the sequel's plot details hint at a new chapter in the Russo family saga. Justin, now leading a normal life with his wife Giada and their children Roman and Milo, finds himself drawn back into the world of magic when Alex seeks his help in mentoring her daughter, Billie. As the siblings navigate their magical responsibilities, they must also safeguard the future of the Wizard World. The storyline builds upon the legacy of the original series, where the Russo children inherit their family's magic, with Alex ultimately becoming the Family Wizard. Set years after the events of the original show, the sequel promises to explore the Russo siblings' continued adventures and the complexities of balancing magic with everyday life. In addition to reprising her role, Selena Gomez takes on the role of executive producer alongside David Henrie and Gary Marsh. With production underway, Wizards Beyond Waverly Place is slated for release later this year, offering fans a nostalgic return to the whimsical world of wizards and spells. Read the full article

[ardentpoop]

sometimes i wonder what kripke thinks of his show abt his hypermasculine gary stu OC and his sensitive brother-wife exploding into an odyssean gay saga so massively popular that its original heart got beaten to a bloody pulp over the course of its obscenely long runtime

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week # 147 (Year 3/Week 43):

Loro ("Them"), my 7th decadent film by Paolo Sorrentino, the breakneck, modern-day Fellini. An epic, outrageous, over-the-top look into the outlandish life of charismatic billionaire king Silvio Berlusconi. MTV-style music video of power, sex, ultimate corruption and unlimited money. A sprawling saga of a modern day Citizen Kane, promiscuous, charming and greedy. As well as a young pimp who runs an escort service, and supplies him with a harem of girls.

I love noticing chronological symmetry in movies, for example, at the exact middle of the movie (starting at 1:11), there’s this central, electrifying scene of a telephone sales pitch, even better than DiCaprio selling 40,000 penny stock shares at 'The wolf of Wall Street'. Between serving as a prime minister and serving time, Tony Servillo's Berlusconi, the greatest salesman in Italy, is in a funk, and he needs to find his groove again. So late at night he opens a telephone book at random and calls some old lady from a listing, and in 6 minutes, he sells her an overpriced apartment that have not even been built yet. I wish I could find an isolated clip of that scene somewhere. Bellissimo!

And just today, I read about the real Berlusconi’s need to accumulate, his vast, 25,000 item art collection!

🍿

"Fugayzi, fugazi. It's a whazy. It's a woozie. It's fairy dust..."

So - because of the scene above - I had to stop everything I do, and indulge, one more time with Scorsese's The wolf of Wall Street. A similarly decadent, excessive, cocaine-fueled roller coaster ride of money and addiction. With judge Fran Lebowitz, Spike Jonze as Dwayne, the broker above, and of course Palm Spring's Cristin Milioti as the first wife.

So far I’ve seen only about half of Scorsese’s 42 full features, so after ‘Flower moon’ I’m going to deep dive, and watch all the ones I’ve missed.

🍿

Another film I’ve been re-watching over and over, Paweł Pawlikowski's heartbreaking romance Cold War. When I saw it the first time, I thought it was very complex (maybe I was stoned), but it's actually extremely simple, accessible and direct. Joanna Kulig's ethereal beauty and the powerful life force of her character 'Zula' are unforgettable. 10/10.

[Waiting for his next film, The island, with Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara.]

🍿

John le Carré X 3:

🍿 Errol Morris's most recent documentary, The Pigeon Tunnel, a lengthy conversation with the fascinating writer le Carré. Based on his auto-biography of the same name. It's mostly about deceit and betrayals, as well as his tortured relationship with his larger-than-life conman father, "Ronnie". Lots of elaborate re-enactments, staged and fanciful. My best friend Danny (RIP) used to be an avid le Carré reader and fan.

🍿 First watch: The masterful The spy who came in from the cold. The first classic film adaptation and based on his spectacularly successful debut novel. Double and triple crossing in the dark days of the cold War. It was supposed to be the Anti-James Bond, and established a prolific genre of 'Flawed Spies', "a bunch of seedy squalid bastards like me, little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants playing 'Cowboys and Indians' to brighten their rotten little lives." Magnificent Richard Burton play.

[I also have to dig in and do a Martin Ritt marathon one day!]

🍿 Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy (the 2011 film, not the Alec Guinness TV series): A slow, melancholic and perfectly atmospheric thriller, with an all-star cast (Including a cameo of le Carré himself! Photo Above). Gary Oldman's vacant gaze got me to want watching his complete filmography. Also, it's funny how many movies open or end with Charles Trenet's La Mer!

Superb! 9/10.

🍿

2 horror films from British director Steve McQueen:

🍿 While waiting for his latest ‘Occupied City’, I caught his horrifying directorial debut Hunger from 2008. A re-telling of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike, where 10 IRA volunteers starved themselves to death, as a protest against the British government. It is told from inside the prison cells. Very few films were able to transfer the horror and hopelessness of being abused by ruthless authorities like this one.

And in the middle of this gruesome narrative, there's an astounding scene, unbroken and shot with a static camera on Bobby Sands and a priest who came to see him, talking that lasts for 17 minutes. Simply amazing.

Best and most chilling film experience of the week.

Like Norm McDonald used to say (about Hitler): 'The more I learn about Margaret Thatcher, the more I don't care for her'.

🍿 Western Deep, a 2002 short, an near-abstract poem about the workers / slaves who work at the world's deepest gold mine in South Africa. Dark, jarring and claustrophobic. 1/10.

[Now that I've seen McQueen's 4 features, I have to move on to his 'Small Axe' television anthology.]

🍿

My first 2 films by Romanian Cristian Mungiu:

🍿 His latest contemplative drama R.M.N. is set in a backwater multi-ethnic village in Transylvania, where long-simmering tensions erupt over questions of national identity, globalization, prejudices and xenophobia. It opens with pig slaughtering, and ends with an old man who hangs himself in the forest. It's harsh, and coarse, and repressive. But it's told in a sublime style. And in the middle of all the ugliness and misogyny, a woman practices her cello by playing Yumeji's haunting theme from 'In the mood for love'. 9/10.

🍿 So I finally also saw his highly-acclaimed 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days from 2007, considered as 'one of the greatest films of the 21 century'. But the depressing story of a desperate young woman who's trying to obtain an illegal abortion in the last dark days of communist Romania, was as pleasant as a visit to Nicolae Ceaușescu's dungeon: Dingy, stressfully-ugly and miserable.

🍿

“…Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?…”

Airplane!, another re-watch of this classic evergreen - the No. 1 modern American comedy on most lists? With cameos by Ethel Merman, young Mike Ehrmantraut and James Howe, one of the most prolific character actors of all time, as a Japanese general committing Harakiri. Isn't it strange that the guy who played Ted Striker never had a career in Hollywood after that?

Maybe it's time for Edgar Wright to re-make 'Airplane 2024!'?

🍿

5 more by female directors:

🍿 Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, a dark dialogue-rich, two-person crime drama about old friendship and betrayal over one long night in Philadelphia. John Cassavetes is a small-time hood with a contract out on his life. And Peter Falk is his lifelong friend who may or may not be trying to help him escape his fate. A nuanced portrayal of fragile masculinity.

🍿 The royal hotel, my second film by Australian Kitty Green, and also starring Julia Garner, playing another powerless young woman suffering male abuse and exploitation (after 'The Assistant'). Two young backpackers take a job at an outback bar, in "the middle of nowhere". A scary, ominous thriller with escalating threats and an uncomfortable sense of mortal danger. Too unpleasant for me - 4/10.

🍿 Bus Girl is the first film directed by Jessica Henwick, who plays the 2nd girl in 'The Royal Hotel'. A cute little culinary fantasy, shot entirely on a cell phone. 6/10.

🍿 Aurora’s Sunrise, my second Armenian film (after ‘The colour of pomegranates’). An adult animated feature about the Albanian genocide, through the eyes of a real life young woman, who survived the hellish years, and escaped to America, where she became celebrated Hollywood star in 1919, when she played herself in 'Carnival of souls'.

Ethnic cleansing, mass murder, exterminations, cruelty and hatred ... Armenians, Jews, Palestinians, Uygurs, American Indians, Tutsis... It's always the same fucking thing!

(Via).

🍿 Affairs of the Art, a British-Canadian craziness by Joanna Quinn, nominated in 2021 for best animated short. Spectacular and surrealistic visuals about a 59-year-old lady, a zany artist at heart, and her fully-eclectic family. Very Roald Dahl. 9/10.

🍿

On the fringe, a recent Spanish social drama with Penélope Cruz. Stressful and depressive story about folks that are being evicted from their homes. Focus on grey, marginalized and helpless people, ground up by bureaucracy, nickel and dimed by poverty, lack of time and resources is a tough watch. Especially when the story is not wrapped up with optimism or a happy end. 6/10.

🍿

“I’m glad we had this conversation…”

Viking, an alternative, "indie" science fiction allegory, scientifically naive, and featuring low-low tech and drama. An odd, simulated Canadian proximation. In spite of mirroring some scenes from '2001' and 'The Shining', it's not close to either one. Meh. 2/10.

🍿

"Kill the wabbit!"

Chuck Jones's What's Opera, Doc?, considered to be the greatest animated short film of all time. A 7 minutes riff on Wagner's Nibelung and Disney's Fantasia, and the first cartoon short to be selected for preservation for the National Film Registry. With Mel Blanc and Elmer Fudd.

🍿

... No fellow could ignore / The little girl next door / She sure looked sweet in her first evening gown / Now there's a charge for what she used to give for free ... 

"Today, I learned" that satirist & mathematician Tom Lehrer is still alive, at ninety five! He was extremely popular in the 60's and basically retired in 1972. Also, that [like Jonas Salk] he transferred all the songs he ever recorded to the public domain - "For the greater good!"

In 1967, he recorded his excellent Copenhagen concert for posterity. Delightful!

2 extras: I got it from Agnes (which is about the spread of VD), and Bergman's actor Lars Ekborg’s singing I Tom Lehrers vackra värld in Swedish.

🍿

The Insurrectionist next door, my first documentary by Alexandra Pelosi, Nancy's daughter. She was trying to humanize about a dozen individuals who participate in the January 6 attack, by befriending them and their their families, and by allowing all of them to explain that they were "just at the wrong place at the wrong time". In the end, it was just sad to see the poor children who had to cry goodbye when their father went to jail.

🍿

(My complete movie list is here)

[xtruss]

A Look Back At Waco — 30 Years After The Siege

— By Gavin Newsham

Charismatic "cult" leader David Koresh was the head of the Branch Davidians, and was killed in April 1993 by government agents during a raid on his Waco, Tx. compound following a 51-day standoff with the FBI and ATF. Three decades after the tragedy, its few survivors -- and those who tried to negotiate their release -- contend the outcome could have been far less deadly. Shutterstock

There was a time when David Thibodeau didn’t think about the events outside of Waco, Texas. back in April 1993.

Now 54 and living in Maine, Thibodeau was too busy drumming in his band to allow himself to relive the horrors of what took place there. “In a way, you start to forget and it kind of goes away,” he tells The New YorkPost.

“But then you turn on the TV and there will be footage of the burning buildings and it all comes flooding back.”

Thibodeau was one of just nine people to leave the blazing Mount Carmel Center alive following a 51-day standoff between the FBI and the center’s residents – the religious community known as Branch Davidians.

The standoff ended in the deaths of 76 people, burned alive as FBI attempts to end the siege failed catastrophically.

Thirty years later, Thibodeau’s almost surreal recollections of what took place typify the experiences of the few who managed to survive – as well as many of the law-enforcement agents and negotiators who attempted to deliver them to safety.

Top: Heather Jones was one of a handful of Branch Davidians to survive the government siege on their compound near Waco, Texas. Bottom: A memorial to those who perished 30 years ago next month at the Mt. Carmel compound run by the Branch Davidian religious group. Photographs New York Post

The saga at Waco began on February 28, 1993, when 75 agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms tried to serve an arrest warrant for weapons charges on David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians.

During the fracas, officers shot the group’s dogs, which prompted a gun battle with the compound’s residents that saw Koresh wounded along with four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians killed.

Born Vernon Howell in Houston, Texas, in 1959, Koresh had been a member of the Branch Davidians since 1981, becoming the leader in 1990 and changing his name in the process.

While previous leaders believed they were prophets of God, Koresh maintained he was the son of God – sent to Earth to prepare for the end of days while heading the messianic, apocalyptic Christian movement founded in 1955 as an offshoot of Seventh Day Adventism.

Under “orders” from God, Koresh took as many as 19 wives, reportedly fathering 13 children with them. His only legal wife was Rachel Jones, whom Koresh had married when she was just 14 years old.

Heather Jones was Rachel Jones’s niece, born at the compound in October 1983.

Left: Former FBI agent Gary Noesner attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Koresh-led standoff but was sent packing after weeks of no action. Jeffery Salter for NY Post. Right: David Koresh — seen here with his wife Rachel, and their son Cyrus — not only believed he was a prophet of God but the son of God. Sygma via Getty Images

Her family’s association with the Davidians dated back to the 1950s when her grandparents became members around the same time the group established their headquarters 13 miles north of Waco.

“Growing up in Mount Carmel was fun at times,” she says. “We had lots of animals. We had a lake and a swimming pool.

“[But] I hated the long church services.”

Jones lost her grandfather, Perry, in the initial ATF raid and, later, her father, David, in the final assault almost two months later.

Her mother, Kathy, survived, having left Mount Carmel in 1990 when she separated from her husband.

Jones also lost her aunt Rachel, who died alongside the three children she had with Koresh, as well as another aunt, Rachel Jones’s sister, Michelle.

She still remembers being woken by the sound of bullets smashing through her bedroom walls and people nearby being wounded or killed when the ATF began the initial raid. “There is not one day that goes by that I don’t think about the events that happened in 1993,” she says.

“I’ll never have any closure.”

There’s widespread suspicion when writers such as myself contact those who were at Mount Carmel — ranks seem to close as word spreads about your interest in what transpired three decades ago.

On the “Branch Davidians Survivors Waco’ group on Facebook,” there are messages warning members to “trust no one.”

Former group member Kat Schroeder, whose husband died in the first ATF raid, is “pretty sure I’ve already answered every question that could be asked.”

Another Branch Davidian, Livingstone Fagan, can’t see the point in discussing Waco any further. “We’ve been down this road many times before,” he messages, before highlighting the “misinterpretation and disinformation” that typically occurs whenever Waco is discussed.

Fagan left the compound with his two children, Renae and Neharah, on March 23, but lost his wife, Evette, and mother, Doris Adina during the raid.

Top: Former Attorney General Janet Wood Reno (Born: July 21, 1938 – Died: November 7, 2016), in Office: (March 12, 1993 – January 20, 2001) testified at a congressional subcommittee in 1995 as part of hearings into the tragedy at Waco. AFP via Getty Images. Bottom: Smoke pours from the headquarters of the Branch Davidians following the FBI siege on their compound in April 1993. Getty Images

Losses endured by folks like Fagan and Jones were not untypical.

Ofelia Santoyo, who left on March 21, had her daughter, Juliette Martinez, 30, and her five grandchildren, aged 3-13, perish at Waco.

Sheila Martin, then 46, also left that day to be reunited with her two children, Kimberly and Daniel, who had been released earlier. But she left behind her husband, Douglas, and her four older children, all of whom died.

Among the dead, meanwhile, were 24 British followers – many recruited when Koresh toured the United Kingdom in the late 1980s looking for new followers.

A few hours after the ATF’s initial raid, FBI negotiator Gary Noesner was on a plane headed for Texas. “I don’t know that anyone can truly be prepared for an event as challenging as Waco,” he tells The Post. “It’s not so easy to come into such a scenario and say, ‘Forgot all the prior stuff, trust me, let’s make a deal and end this peacefully.’ ”

Noesner’s negotiating strategy sought to distance the FBI from the ATF’s more aggressive style and, in doing so, establish a new relationship with the Davidians.

“From the beginning, it was quite clear that Koresh had an inflated sense of self-importance,” he tells The Post. “But I believed he was still someone that we could find a way to work with.

The aftermath of the fiery siege on the Branch Davidians compounds which saw 76 members perish from smoke and fire — including 22 children. Sygma via Getty Images

“We didn’t lecture him. We found we achieved more when we stayed away from religion. “You cannot expect to talk someone out of their core beliefs.”

It seemed to work – at least initially.

In the first week of the standoff, 21 children were allowed to leave, including Heather Jones and her brothers, Kevin, 11, and Mark, 12.

Fourteen adults also left.

But no more.

Top: An aerial view of the Mt. Carmel facility today, where a memorial ground and chapel are open for public visit. New York Post. Bottom: State troopers and members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) stop a motorist during the 51-day standoff in Waco. Corbis via Getty Images

Dick DeGuerin was the lawyer tasked with negotiating on Koresh’s behalf. Based in Houston, he was hired by Koresh’s mother, Bonnie Haldeman, but was initially denied access to his client.

One month after the first raid, however, DeGuerin was granted permission to speak with Koresh. “I made it clear that I was not a shill for the FBI,” DeGuerin tells The Post.

His first face-to-face meeting with Koresh was conducted through the compound’s front door, with DeGuerin sitting on a chair outside.

Later, he was allowed inside. “I found Koresh to be a very intelligent and articulate person,” recalls DeGuerin, now 82 and living in Houston. “He was also dyslexic but had still memorized the whole of the Bible.”

For DeGuerin, there was no problem working with Koresh. As he saw it, the force used by the ATF had initially been excessive, and Koresh’s resistance was understandable.

It’s a view later reinforced by the acquittal of 11 Branch Davidians on murder charges relating to the initial ATF raid in February 1994. “As a lawyer, my job was to defend David Koresh at any trial.

“Yes, he would probably be charged with murder or conspiracy to murder, but I had to convince him that he would be treated fairly under the criminal justice system.

“And I think we did.”

Top: Koresh’s defense attorney Dick DeGuerin in his Houston home this month; the sculpture was made from a burned wheelbarrow and car part that was salvaged from the Waco compound. Scott Dalton for NY Post. Bottom: At its height, almost 650 government personnel were stationed at Waco during the standoff with the Branch Davidians which ended so tragically. Shutterstock

But progress was slow.

As the siege entered its fourth week, Noesner’s bosses began to change tack as a sense of fatigue set in. The FBI had more than 650 personnel at the compound and costs were mounting.

“They felt the best strategy was to ratchet up the pressure to force the Davidians out,” recalls Noesner. “[But] As a negotiator I knew this was not the way to go.”

Thibodeau agrees. “I think a lot of the Feds had never experienced anything like a religious group, committed to the scripture, that put God before everything,” he says.

Noesner left Mount Carmel on March 26, halfway through the siege as pressure mounted for a more aggressive approach. But “nobody came out after I was reassigned,” he says.

Still, by April 14, the situation appeared to be headed toward a nonviolent resolution. DeGuerin brokered a deal with Koresh for his surrender, providing his client was given time to complete his manuscript on the Seven Seals prophecy in the biblical Book of Revelations.

“I’d worked it out with the Texas Rangers that I would go in on the day of the surrender and walk out with Koresh and hand him over,” adds DeGuerin.

“Koresh even put it in writing.”

Thibodeau confirms this chain of events.

“I think a couple of more weeks at most and Koresh would have finished,” he says. “But the FBI thought it was another stalling tactic.” And the groundwork for the final – and fatal – assault began.

The following day, on April 15, FBI Commander Jeff Jamar headed to Washington, DC, to meet newly-appointed Attorney General Janet Reno and seek permission to end the standoff.

Top: Heather Jones gave a tour of Davidian’s former compound earlier this month. New York Post. Bottom: The Mt. Carmel headquarters was initially purchased by the religious sect during the late 1950s. Corbis via Getty Images

Various strategies were discussed, from digging tunnels to drugging the Davidians, but the preferred method – using tear gas and armored vehicles – was signed off on April 17.

Two days later, at around daybreak, the plan was put into action – with devastating consequences.

When the Davidians refused a final opportunity to surrender, the FBI, using tanks and combat vehicles, fired tear gas grenades through the building’s windows and smashed through walls.

A fire eventually broke out inside the compound. Fanned by strong winds, it tore through the large timber buildings.

David Koresh and 75 others died, including 22 children. Thibodeau still faults the government’s heavy-handed tactics.

“Those kids suffered immeasurably – I can’t imagine what they went through,” he says. “And yet the government asked why the kids just didn’t come out of the holes the tanks had made in the building.

“How the f–k do you grab your kids and come out with all that going on? Tell me that.”

Only nine people escaped with their lives, one of whom was Thibodeau. “Right place, right time” he reflects. “I climbed out a window because I didn’t want to burn to death.

“Yes, I thought they were going to shoot me but that’s what I would have preferred to be honest.”

Thirty years on, the blame game continues.

Author and Waco-survivor David Thibodeau says the trauma of what he endured during the siege remains with him “on a cellular level.” WireImage

The FBI and the Justice Department maintain the Branch Davidians started the fire deliberately, while survivors insist it was the FBI’s tear gas that ignited the blaze.

Noesner believes the siege could have ended differently. “We had a chance to get everyone out alive but that’s not the general opinion of the FBI personnel there,” he says.

While some FBI actions were criticized in the official Danforth Investigation into Waco in 2000, federal officials were cleared of any wrongdoing, leading to accusations of a whitewash.

“At every single stage, the government were the aggressors,” says Thibodeau. “They came in with helicopters and tanks. They shot the dogs. Even when the negotiations were working, they increased the pressure.

Noesner, meanwhile, became Chief of the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit and wrote a book about his career, “Stalling For Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator.”

A placard welcomes visitors to the former headquarters of the Branch Davidians known as Mt. Carmel outside of Waco, Texas, USA. New York Post

DeGuerin remains convinced Koresh would have surrendered. “It was just a matter of time,” he says.

While the siege was over, for survivors it was the start of a lifetime of trying to come to terms with events.

Heather Jones, for instance, is now a 39-year-old nurse living just 12 minutes away from Mount Carmel.

She still suffers from severe PTSD and remains angry about the coverup she believes happened. “I still live in fear to this day,” she says. “They will never tell the truth about what they did to us and all the horrible things they did to my family.

Thibodeau also still struggles to process what happened.

“The trauma stays with you on a cellular level,” said the author and musician. “And that’s a very hard way to live your life.”

— The New York Post, April 12, 2023

[bornredheadedme-blog]

Memories

After 72 years, there are bound to be lots of memories, good and bad, that float around my feeble brain. Like the time Gary O and I bought our first house. We were happy renting, but my MIL (Gert) had other ideas. When her husband Gordon died suddenly, she was given the proceeds from his life insurance, $30,000, which seemed like a lot.

Gert decided to give us the money for the down payment, and when we resisted, she cried that she wanted to see her grandchildren grow up in their own house with a yard. She expressed dislike for the friends by whom we were surrounded, including my best friend. So, began the tug of war over my family. She loved her son, and his children, but I was the necessary evil she had to suffer in order to have what she loved.

She packed up and moved to Milwaukee to take an apartment above her brother and his wife. She loved the view of Lake Michigan out her front windows, and the fact that she and her daughter, Gwen had easy access to the annual Frolics. Then, she was in a car accident, and injured her neck. Back then, she had few options, all of which included surgery. She had a cervical spinal fusion, which required that a part of her pelvic bone to be used.

Being a brittle diabetic, my MIL had some health issues that her doctors didn't take into consideration. Like the fact that her body didn't heal the same way a non-diabetic did. Somehow, the wound on her hip became infected. Her complaints of pain were initially ignored until she was writhing. Finally, they opened up the wound and discovered an enormous pocket of infection that now involved several nerves, including her sciatic nerve.

They cleaned it out and put a drain in (I've seen the vet do this) and eventually it healed, but the pain of the damaged nerves never stopped. She suffered for several years trying various treatments, including alcohol at the suggestion of one of her doctors. Eventually, she simply resigned herself to living out her remaining years in severe pain.

The memory of her end of life saga reminded me that we must be cognizant of our own karmic energy. During the first 14 years of our marriage, she made my life a living hell. I had never met anyone who didn't like me on sight until her. When Gary O and I fell in love, she made an effort to convince Gary that I was not good enough for him. Maybe I wasn't, but we were together for 47 years in total so I think she missed the mark.

Three weeks prior to her death, she and I had a heart to heart talk while my children played at the table, and she apologized for being so difficult throughout my marriage. "I could have been nicer," nearly made my jaw hit the floor. I left there that day thinking we might have a chance at a relationship after all. Then she died. So, now I had something else I couldn't forgive her for. Teasing me with the possibility of a friendship with the one person whose approval I craved and then BAM! Gone.

The lesson I took from this is that either she anticipated her imminent death (suicide?) and was assuring her entry to heaven, or karma didn't care that she had become human after all and took care of her retribution. I am a firm believer that we are entitled not only to decide how to live our lives, but also how we choose to transition out. As a therapist, I must be convinced that an individual is making an informed choice, but they are entitled to that choice.

If she did take her own life, she had the means with all of the pain medication she was prescribed. I have to wonder if she finally realized that nothing would change since her doctors were ineffective. First causing the damage and then being unable to help her with that damage, they themselves would have to deal with their own karmic response.

I'm left with my own musings on this since there is only one person left who might shed some light on the subject, but her guilt at not being a good enough daughter would push her over the edge, I'm sure. Gwen is a sweet, very giving woman who has spent her life giving to others, often ignoring her own needs in the process. She expressed such grief at the loss of her mother, especially since Gwen left for work in the morning without checking on Mom. My heart breaks for the sadness Gwen has felt since.

My memories of my husband's family are tinted by my own poor self image and I sometimes wish we could have a do-over, but it's unlikely that I will get the opportunity in this lifetime. I'm much better at setting boundaries but that doesn't help now that everyone is dead.

I'll just have to live with these memories, and hope that in my next life, I'll do better by them.

[mosleykeegan6]

hermes mini kelly 2

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[goldenhydreigon47]

Aight since Pokémon Journeys is coming close to ending, I may as well make predictions about upcoming battles and the finale.

Top 16: Ash (Sirfetch'd, Dragonite, Gengar, Lucario, Pikachu, Infernape) vs Paul (Magmortar, Drapion, Honckrow, Torterra, Ursaring, Electivire)

Top 8: Ash (Dragonite, Dracovish, Pikachu, Gengar, Lucario, Charizard) vs Lance (Charizard, Salamence, Hydreigon, Aerodactyl, Shiny Mega Gyarados, and Dragonite)

Top 4: Ash (Infernape, Lucario, Gengar, Dragonite, Greninja, Pikachu) vs Cynthia (Spiritomb, Togekiss, Roserade, Lucario, Milotic, Garchomp)

Finals: Ash (Pikachu, Charizard, Krookodile, Lycanroc Dusk, Greninja, Infernape) vs Leon (Aegislash, Haxorus, Dragapult, Seismitoad, Rhyperior, Charizard)

As for the finale, after winning the World Championships, Ash holds a massive party with all his Pokémon as well as all of his companions (Brock, Misty, May, Max, Dawn, Iris, Cilan, Clemont, Bonnie, Serena, Lana, Mallow, Kiawe, Sophocles, Lillie, Goh, and Chloe), all of his rivals (Gary, Morrison, Tyson, Paul, Bianca, Trip, Stephan, Cameron, Sawyer, Alain, Gladion, Hau, Marnie, Hodge, Bede, and Hop), and even Team Rocket and N. Team Rocket apologize for pursuing Ash for Pikachu and promise to be there to help if he needs it. Ash's Pokémon friendly mingle with their rivals as well as some Pokémon interacting (Gary and Paul's Electivire's fist bumping, Ash's Charizard talking with Gary's Blastoise, Ash's Infernape and Paul's Ursaring having a friendly scrap, etc.). Then, Ash, using Sceptile, Swellow, and Pikachu, then finally battles Max, using Mightyena, Gallade, and Jirachi (yes, THAT Jirachi from Movie 6) before Ash then uses Pikachu, Lucario, and Dragonite to battle Goh, who uses Inteleon, Flygon, and Cinderace. Afterwards, Oak announces that some special guests have arrived. These are Ash's released/training Pokémon, namely Butterfree and his wife, Pidgeot, Primeape, Squirtle, and Goodra, but others show up like Jigglypuff, who doesn't Sing and instead congratulates Ash on his win, the Fearow flock, now having made up with Pidgeot, and even Arbok and Weezing, who are there both to congratulate Pikachu and also say hi to Jessie and James. Ash then gets notified his father is here. Its Giovanni. He apologizes to Delia for being such a bad influence on the world, congratulates Ash and says he's proud of him, and announces he's disbanded Team Rocket. Jessie and James are given their Pokémon back and go to start a fashion business with Butch and Cassidy. Meowth also makes up with Giovanni's Persian. Ash then confesses his love to either Misty or Serena before he and Goh have a tearful goodbye. We then say goodbye to Greninja again, before Ash returns to Pallet Town. The final scene before the credits is Pikachu motioning Ash to something. He reveals a Thunder Stone and, as a World Champion and having proved his strength, finally evolve into Raichu. The camera goes back into the sky as Ho-oh flies over Ash's house with the Narrator and Dexter wishing us farewell, before we cut to a short preview of Goh's upcoming journey. Cut to credits with the original opening playing while showing highlights of all of Ash's Pokémon, even the released ones. The final image of the show (or at least Ash's saga) is of Ash, his companions, his rivals, his mother, Jessie, James, Meowth, Giovanni, N, Professor Oak, and all of the Pokémon of the mentioned trainers all waving farewell.

[ninja-muse]

i’m trying to branch out and read outside my genre (fantasy) do you have any book recs for someone whose heart is in fantasy but needs to see what else is out there?

Hi anon! Thanks for the ask! Fantasy’s such a wide genre, and this is such an open ask, that I’m mostly going to be recommending books with similar feels or themes from other genres, to push you a little outside the fantasy bubble and introducing you to different genres and types of storytelling. If you have a favourite subgenre or trope or author, I can maybe get a little more specific or offer read-alikes.

Also, I don’t know if you knew this before asking, but fantasy is my favourite genre too, so some of these recs are books that pushed me out of the genre as well, or that I found familiar-but-different.

And this is getting long, so I’m going to throw it under a cut to save everyone scrolling.

Science fiction

the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold - This is space opera, which means it’ll have fairly familiar plots except with science-y things instead of magic. There’s an heir with something to prove, heists, cons, and mysteries, attempted coups and assassinations, long-suffering sidekicks, and a homeworld that’s basically turn-of-the-century Russia but with fewer serfs. It was one of the first adult sci-fi books I read and genuinely liked.

The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey - I finished this recently, and the second book of the trilogy just came out. This is post-apocalyptic sci-fi, but not grim or particularly complex. (Some SF gets really into the nuts and bolts of the science elements; this isn’t that.) Basically, Koli’s a teenager who wants more than his quasi-medieval life’s given him, and finds himself in conflict with his village (and then exile) because of it. I could see where the story was going pretty much from the start, but I loved the journey anyway.

The Martian by Andy Weir - This doesn’t have much in common with fantasy, but it’s my go-to rec for anyone who’s never read science fiction before, because it’s funny, explains the science well, and has a hero and a plot you get behind right away. In case you haven’t heard of it (or the film), it’s about an astronaut stranded on Mars, trying to survive long enough to be rescued.

Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh - This is an alien first contact story, about a colony of humans in permanent quarantine on an alien planet. The MC is the sole social liaison and translator, explaining his culture to the aliens and the aliens to the human, and working to keep the peace—until politics and assassins get involved. It’s been over a decade since I read this, so my memory’s blurred, but I remember the same sort of political intrigue vibes as the Daevabad trilogy, just with fewer POVs.

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor - One from my TBR. It looks like dark fiction about women, outcasts, and revenge, which sounds very fantastic and the MC can apparently do magic—but it’s post-apocalyptic Africa.

Speaking of political intrigue and sweeping epic plots, the Expanse series by James S.A. Corey has both in spades. Rebellions, alien technology, corrupt businesses, heroes doing good things and getting bad consequences, all that good stuff. It takes the science fairly seriously, without getting very dense with it, and will probably register as “more sci-fi” than my recs in the genre so far.

Oh, and Dune by Frank Herbert is such a classic chosen-one epic that it barely registers as science fiction at all.

Graphic novels

It’s technically fantasy, but assuming you’ve never picked up a graphic novel before, you should read Monstress by Marjorie Liu. Asian-inspired, with steampunk aesthetics, and rebellions and quests and so many female characters. It’s an absolutely fantastic graphic novel, if you want a taste of what those can do.

I’d highly recommend Saga by Brian K. Vaughan. It’s an epic science fiction story about a family caught between sides of a centuries-long war. (Dad’s from one side, Mom’s from the other, everyone wants to capture them, their kid is narrating.) It’s a blast to read, exciting and tense, with hard questions and gorgeous tender moments, and the world-building somehow manages to include weaponized magic, spaceship trees, ghosts, half-spider assassins, and all-important pulp romance novels without anything feeling out of place.

Historical fiction

Hild by Nicola Griffith - Very rich and detailed novel following a girl growing up in an early medieval English court. It’s very fantasy-esque, with battles and politics and changes of religion, and Hild gets positioned early on to be the king’s seer, so there’s “magic” of a sort as well.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry - A widow goes to the Victorian seaside to heal and reawaken her interest in biology. Slow, gentle, lovely writing and atmosphere, interesting characters and turns of plot. Doesn’t actually deliver on the sea monster, but still has a lot to recommend it to fantasy readers, I think.

Yiddish for Pirates by Gary Barwin - The late-medieval Jewish pirate adventure you didn’t know you wanted. It’s funny and literary, full of tropes and set pieces like “small-town kid in the big city” and “jail break”, and features the Spanish Inquisition, Columbus, the Fountain of Youth, and talking parrots, among other things.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - A thousand pages about the building of a cathedral in England, mostly focusing on the master builder, the monk who spearheads the project, and a noblewoman who’s been kicked off her family’s land, but has several other plots going on, including a deacon with political ambitions, a war, and a boy who’s trying so hard to fit in and do right.

Sharon Kay Penman - This is an author on my TBR, who comes highly recommended for her novels about the War of the Roses and the Plantagenets. Should appeal to you if you liked Game of Thrones. I’m planning to start with The Sunne in Splendour.

Lady of the Forest by Jennifer Roberson - Either a Robin Hood retelling that’s also a romance, or a romance that’s also a Robin Hood retelling.

Hamnet & Judith by Maggie O’Farrell - A novel of the Shakespeare family, mostly focused on his wife and son. Lovely writing and a very gentle feel though it heads into dark and complex subjects fairly often. A good portrait of Early Modern family life.

Mystery

There’s not a lot of mystery that reads like high, epic, or even contemporary fantasy, but if you’re a fan of urban fantasy, which is basically mystery with magic in, then I’d rec:

Cozy mysteries as a general subgenre, especially if you like the Sookie Stackhouse end of urban fantasy, which has romance and quirky plots; there are plenty of series where the detective’s a witch or the sidekick’s a ghost but they’re solving non-magical mysteries, and the genre in general full of heroines who are good at solving crimes without formal training, and the plots feel very similar but with slightly lower stakes. Cozies have become one of my comfort-reading genres (along with UF) the last few years. My intros were the Royal Spyness novels by Rhys Bowen and the Fairy Tale Fatale books by Maia Chance.

If you like your urban fantasy darker and more serious, and your heroines more complicated, try Kathy Reichs and her Temperance Brennan novels. Brennan’s a forensic anthropologist, strong and complicated in the same ways of my fave UF heroines, and the mysteries are already interesting, with a good dash of thriller and a smidge of romance.

Two other recs:

Haunted Ground by Erin Hart - The first of four books about a forensic anthropologist in Ireland, who’s called in when the Garda find bodies in the peat bogs and need to know how long they’ve been there. They’re very atmospheric—I can almost smell the bog—and give great portraits of rural Ireland and small-town secrets, and since not all the bodies found in each book are recent, they also bring interesting slices of the past to life as well.

A Burnable Book by Bruce Holsinger - This is essentially a medieval thriller about a seditious book that’s turned up in London. I liked the mystery in it and that it’s much more focused on the lives of average people than the rich and famous (for all that recognizable people also show up).

Classics

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift - I swear this is actually one of the first fantasy novels but few people ever really class it as such. Basically, Gulliver’s a ship’s doctor who keeps getting shipwrecked—in a country of tiny people, a country of giants, a country of mad scientists, a country of talking horses, etc. It’s social satire and a spoof of travelogues from Swift’s time, but it’s easily enough read without that context.

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll - Another, slightly later, fantasy and satire! Even more amusing situations than in Gulliver’s Travels and, while it’s been a while* since I read it, I think it’ll be a decent read-alike for authors like Jasper Fforde, Genevieve Cogman, and that brand of light British comic fantasy.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare - Also technically a fantasy! I mean, there are fairies and enchantments, for all it’s a romantic comedy written entirely in old-fashioned poetry. It’s a pretty good play to start you off on Shakespeare, if you’re interested in going that direction.

On the subject of Shakespeare, I would also recommend Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, and King Lear, the first because it’s my favourite comedy, the others because they’re fantasy read-alikes imo as well (witches! coups! drama!).

the Arthurian mythos. Le Morte D’arthur, Crétien de Troyes, The Once and Future King by T.H. White, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, etc. - I’ve read bits and pieces of the first two, am about 80% sure I read the third as a kid (or at least The Sword in the Stone), and have the last on my TBR. Basically, these stories are going to give you an exaggeratedly medieval setting, knights, quests, wizards, fairies, high drama, romantic entanglements, and monsters, and the medieval ones especially have different kinds of plots than you’ll be used to (and maybe open the door to more medieval lit?) **

Beowulf and/or The Odyssey - Two epics that inspired a lot of fiction that came later. (There’s an especial connection between Beowulf and Tolkien.) They’re not the easiest of reads because they’re in poetry and non-linear narratives, but both have a hero facing off against a series of monsters and/or magical creatures as their core story.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - The first real science fiction novel. It’s about the ethics of science and the consequences of one’s actions, and I loved seeing the Creature find himself and Frankenstein descend into … that. It’s also full of sweeping, gothic scenes and tension and doom and drama.

* 25 years, give or take

** There are plenty of more recent people using King Arthur and associated characters too, if this "subgenre” interests you.

Other fiction

Vicious by V.E. Schwab - I don’t know if you classify superheroes as science fiction or fantasy or its own genre (for me it depends on the day) but this is an excellent take on the subject, full of moral greyness and revenge.

David Mitchell - A literary fiction writer who has both a sense of humour and an interest in the fantastic and science fictional. He writes ordinary people and average lives marvelously well, keeps me turning pages, plays with form and timelines, and reliably throws in either recurring, possibly-immortal characters, good-vs-evil psychic battles, or other SF/F-y elements. I’d start with either Slade House, a ghost story, or Utopia Avenue, about a ‘60s rock band. Or possible The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I fully admit to not having read yet.

Devolution by Max Brooks - A horror movie in book form, full of tension and desperation and jump scares and the problems with relying on modern technology. The monsters are Bigfeet. Reccing this one in the same way I’m reccing The Martian—it’s an accessible intro to its genre.

Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson - Contemporary fiction with a slight literary bent, that doesn’t pull its punches about Indigenous life but also has a sense of humour about the same. Follows a teen dealing with poverty and a bad home life and drugs and hormones—and the fact that his bio-dad might actually be the trickster Raven. Also features witches, magic, and other spirit-beings, so I generally pitch this as magic realism.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones - Another Indigenous rec, this time a horror novel about ghosts and racism and trying to do the right thing. This’ll give you a taste of the more psychological end of the horror spectrum.

Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia - A good example of contemporary YA and how it handles the complexities of life, love, and growing up. Follows the writer of a fantasy webcomic who makes a friend who turns out to write fic of her story and who suddenly has to really balance online and offline life, among other pressures. Realistic portrait of mental health problems.

Non-fiction

The Book of Margery Kempe - The first English-language autobiography. Margery was very devout but also very badass, in a medieval sort of way. She went on pilgrimages to Jerusalem, was possibly epileptic, frequently “saw” Christ and Mary and demons, basically became a nun in middle age while staying married to her husband, and wound up on trial for heresy, before talking a monk into writing down her life story. It’s a fascinating window into the time period.

The Hammer and the Cross by Robert Ferguson - A history of medieval Norse people and how their explorations and trade shaped both their culture and the world.

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor - Travel writing that was recommended to me by someone who raved about the prose and was totally right. Fermor’s looking back, with the aid of journals, on a walking trip he took across Europe in the 1930s. It’s a fascinating look at the era and an old way of life, and pretty much every “entry” has something of interest in it. He met all sorts of people.

Tim Severin and/or Thor Heyerdahl - More travel writing, this time by people recreating historical voyages (or what they believe to be historical voyages, ymmv) in period ships. Severin focuses on mythology (I’ve read The Ulysses Voyage and The Jason Voyage) and Heyerdahl’s known for Kon-Tiki, which is him “proving” that Polynesians made contact with South America. They both go into the history of the sailing and areas they’re travelling through, while also describing their surroundings and daily life, and, yes, running into storms and things.

Hope this helps you!

[rasoir-national]

Barricade Day Book list

So one thing I learned being Online is that people here seem to Really like Les Miserables. And that warms my heart. But Les Mis is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to french literature. So in honor of Barricade Day, I thought I’d share a list of other french classics that carry the spirit of the barricades.

So if you liked Les Misérables, you might want to try :

Sweeping Epics

The Thibaults by Roger Martin-du-Gard : the seven-part story of a family at the turn of the 20th century and under WW1.

The Count of Monte-Christo by Alexandre Dumas : the revenge of an injustly imprisoned man.

Books about the working class

The Dram Shop and Germinal by Emile Zola : part of a 20 books saga about one family under the 2nd Empire. Both focus on extreme poverty in the industrial age (the first one focusing on alcoholism in poor urban areas, the second on a northern mining community)

Elise, or the Real Life by Claire Etcherelli : a love story between a french woman and an algerian immigrant who meet in a factory.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aimé Césaire : anticolonialist poem set in Martinique

Plays

The Marriage of Figaro by Beaumarchais : you probably already know this one, but it’s an absolutely hilarious and darkly subversive play that was banned under the latter days of the monarchy

Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco : absurdist play about the rise of fascism

Endgame by Samuel Beckett : post-apocalyptic meditation on class war.

Antigone by Jean Anouilh : Rereading of the greek myth as a metaphor for defying power structures

The Maids by Jean Genet : inspired by a real-life sordid murder that took place, it reivents it into a story of class struggle and oppression

Books by French resistants

Man’s Hope by André Malraux : autobiographical account of the Spanish Civil war

A European education by Romain Gary : fiction centered on the Polish resistance

The Silence of the Sea by Vercors : Contemplative fiction covertly published during the Parisian Occupation to give resistants hope

Short Stories by Louis Aragon (especially The Bells of Bâle) :  Louis Aragon was a communist poet and resistant who explored the uneasy unity within the french resistance

The Human Species by Robert Antelme : Account of the author’s deportation to Buchenwald

War: A memoir by Marguerite Duras : Antelme’s wife, Duras wrote a semi-fictionalised account of the same events. Somewhat controversial but Duras is a fantastic writer

Feel free to add to this list !

[player1064]

kate for someone reason thinking jamie is homophobic not sure why or how but she does (sara has me obsessed with the idea that they can’t stand each other now lol) and then him introducing her to gary and she’s like 🤯 ft. micah in the corner like you didn’t know he never shuts up about him???

god Kate and Jamie literally CANNOT STAND EACH OTHER!!! I'm OBSESSED with that dynamic tbh!!!!!!! As always. this one is much longer than intended...

Also, don't need to have read it but this is technically intended to tie in to my fic Happy wife, happy life (but tldr Jamie regularly calls Gary his wife partly to keep their relationship under wraps but mostly bc. he finds it funny to call Gary his wife.)

---

“Obviously we’re done for the season right before pride month kicks off,” one of the CBS producers is saying, eyes darting over something on an iPad. “And since you four have been pretty popular we were thinking of including you in some of those ad campaigns, so if I could just get some dates off of all of you –”

“No,” Jamie says immediately.

All three of his colleagues snap their heads up to him, but only Kate looks at him coolly and says “no?”

Micah, because he’s Micah, chuckles and slaps Jamie in the shoulder, trying to diffuse some of the new tension in the air. “Not like you to turn down extra cash, Carra.”

Jamie rolls his eyes, pretends not to notice the way Kate’s eyes are burning into him. “Check my contract. Wish I could, honest,” he says to the producer, feeling very very glad that he had a clause added to his contract specifically so that he doesn’t have to take part in things like this, “But it just wouldn’t be do-able. You lot ‘ave fun, though, with yer rainbows and yer glitter.”

Kate just looks at him incredulously. “This is one thing you decide to take a stand on, mister ‘I don’t care about politics’?”

Rainbows just don’t really suit Jamie, is the thing. Nor does the extra scrutiny that comes from wearing rainbows.

Doesn’t really matter to him what Kate thinks of him, though, so he just shrugs and continues packing up his stuff for the day.

*

“Jamie – Jamie, I finally got onto Raya, can you have a look at my profile?”

Jamie looks up at Micah with a frown. “What the fuck is a Raya?”

“It’s a dating app,” Kate says from her end of the desk, in that unimpressed tone of hers that makes Jamie wonder why she’s bothering to insert herself into the conversation at all.

“An exclusive dating app,” Micah corrects, wiggling his phone in front of Jamie.

“Weren’t you already seeing someone?” asks Jamie, but he accepts the phone with a sigh and puts his glasses on. “I don’t – I’ve never used one of these things, what am I meant to be lookin’ at?”

Micah shrugs. “Didn’t work out,” he says breezily. “How have you never used a dating app, you’ve not been married that long. And look at yourself, you can’t tell me you weren’t a player before Mrs Carra came along.”

Jamie had got around a bit, in his playing days. Not much, mind, because he’d had to be careful, but he’d done alright. Unfortunately – and this is not something he’ll ever admit to anyone, even under duress – any thoughts of that had gone out the window the moment he’d walked onto the Sky campus after retiring.

“You’re right,” he says with a wink, “look at me. As if I’d need an app to find myself a bird. Why’d you want me to look at this, I’m not exactly your target audience. ‘less there’s somethin’ you’re not tellin’ us,” he adds, elbowing Micah and waggling his eyebrows.

Kate looks on unimpressed as the two of them double over in laughter. “Not that any of us would have a problem if you were, right Jamie?” she says haughtily.

Jamie catches Micah’s eye and has to fight back another bout of laughter. “Dunno,” he says, “I can think of one or two problems I’d ‘ave if Big Meeks here suddenly tried hittin’ on me.”

Micah bursts out laughing again, his hand clapping to Jamie’s forearm, and Jamie can’t help but join in – it’s infectious, okay?

“God,” Micah says, wiping a tear from his eye, “can you imagine how your missus would react. I’d never be able to work in television again.”

“Nah, she’d prob’ly send you a fruit basket, thank you for taking me off ‘er hands.”

Kate clears her throat and the two of them sober immediately at the sight of her raised eyebrow. “Maybe cool it with the outdated banter,” she says, “or do I need to remind you boys that you’re not in a dressing room anymore?”

She storms off, he heels click-clicking away as Jamie and Micah look at each other and try (and fail) not to start laughing again.  

*

“You didn’t want to bring your wife to the end of season party, then?” Kate asks politely, looking slowly around the room.

“Huh?” Jamie says eloquently, because he’s had a couple of glasses of prosecco and he’s not thinking as quickly as he usually might. “Oh, the missus. Yeah, she’s here but  – I dunno, she’s a bit shy, like. You didn’t invite Malik?”

Kate rolls her eyes, the way she always does when Jamie mentions her boyfriend. “Well, he lives in America. So.”

“Carra,” an annoying voice calls from just behind him, “Carra, come over ‘n meet Schmeichel? I’ve not seen ‘im in years, d’you know, I think I’d forgot how tall he was.”

Jamie puts a hand on the small of Gary’s back to keep him from bouncing around too much (the man is such a lightweight, it’s embarrassing), and says “I’ve already met Peter, you dolt. I work with ‘im, remember?”

Gary squints at him for a second. “You drag me all the way down to London, and then y’can’t even be bothered to –” he finally seems to realise that Jamie had been talking to someone, because he quickly shakes his head around a bit and holds a hand out to Kate with a smile. “You’re Kate, right? I love what you do on the show, honest, I’m always sayin’ people need to be meaner to James here.”

Jamie thinks he sees Kate blush a bit, like she hadn’t realised anyone else had noticed her dislike of Jamie, but she takes Gary’s offered hand anyway. “And of course you’re the famous Gary Neville, I’ve heard a lot about you,” she greets. “But aren't you still with Sky? What brings you to our little operation here?”

“Scopin’ out the competition,” he says with a wink, then turns back to Jamie. “Carra – Peter?”

“I said no! I’ll talk to him later, stop badgerin’ me.”

“Did you two travel down from Manchester together?” asks Kate, “You know, Jamie seems so invested in my relationship but none of us have ever met his wife, do you know where she’s got to?”

“Ah, his fuckin’ wife,” Gary mutters, smirking up at Jamie. Jamie winks in reply and slips his hand down a bit to pinch him on the arse.

Micah comes over, his tuxedo strained against his biceps, and he pulls Gary away from Jamie to throw an arm around his shoulder in a half-hug.

(Gary squirms a bit at the unexpected contact, but he still gives Micah a friendly pat on the chest.)

“Big Nev! It’s been ages, man – Jamie told us you were coming, but he’s promised that before and not delivered.”

“Been pretty busy, up in Manchester,” Gary says with a shrug, carefully extracting himself from under Micah’s arm and returning to Jamie’s side. “But I’m obliged to do the plus one thing at least two –” (“Three,” Jamie corrects,) “—fine, three times a year, and I figure there’re worse places to be.”

“Aw, you love it really,” Micah says. “I’ve always kind of wondered what it’s like to be a WAG.”

Gary rolls his eyes. “It’s a thankless job, to be fair.” He pokes Jamie in the bicep and adds “I’m going back to talk t' Peter, you miserable old twat. Honest, I’m always talkin' to Scousers fer you.”

“I already know –” Jamie starts to protest, but Gary’s already wandered off. “Ugh. Sorry about ‘im. You can’t take Mancs anywhere, can ya?”

The two Mancs he’s talking to look at him, unimpressed.

“He seemed nice,” Kate says carefully.

“He’s not,” Jamie replies.

*

“Good summer?” Micah asks, their first show back after the break.

“Brilliant,” Jamie replies with a grin. “It were my turn to choose the destination, so –”

“Ibiza?”

He nods. “Ibiza. The house was done just in time, too.”

“You know, I can’t really imagine Gary in Ibiza.”

“Oh, he hates it. Complained the whole time, but he does that wherever we go.”

He becomes aware that Kate is watching them from across the desk, not trying to hide that she’s listening to their conversation with curiosity. Jamie nods to her, all polite like. “Hows about you, Kate, good summer?”

“It was fine, I –” she shakes her head. “Sorry, you’re saying you go on holiday with Gary Neville?”

Micah scoffs. “Who else would he go with?” he asks, and Jamie points to him in agreement.

“I dunno, his wife?”

Jamie blinks.

He thought he’d got all this out the way, dragging Gary along to the party a couple of months ago. Apparently not.

“Gary is my wife,” he says, then suddenly feels very stupid saying that to someone who’s not already in on the joke, so he corrects to “my husband, I mean. Obviously he’s not – he’s a man. Obviously.”

Kate’s eyes are wide, unblinking. She looks between Jamie and Micah, lips pressed together while her brain seems to be buffering.

“You’re married to a man?” she says eventually. “But you’re not gay, I mean – you’re –”

Jamie, who last time he checked definitely was gay, raises an eyebrow, amused. “I’m what?”

“You’re a footballer,” she attempts, and oh, this is far too easy.

“Bit ‘omophobic, that, sayin’ footballers can’t be gay,” he replies, holding back a smirk.

“Oh shut up, you know what I – you’re a lad! You’re always with the banter, and the…”

Thierry wanders over, freshly brewed cup of tea in hand. “What have you two done this time?” he asks, looking pointedly at Jamie and Micah.

Jamie raises his hands to protest his innocence.

“Thierry,” Kate asks, reaching a hand out towards him, “did you know Jamie’s married to a man?”

Thierry rolls his eyes. “Ugh, fucking Neville,” he replies, and goes to sit down.

[f9-teljes-film-2021]

Halálos iramban 9 Teljes Film Magyarul - HD 2021

Halálos iramban 9 Teljes Film Magyarul - HD 2021

F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021 á n teljes film Ingyenes online próba. F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án [BlUrAy] | Nézd meg F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án Online Film 1933 HD ingyenes HD.720Px | Nézd meg F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án Online Film 1933 HD HD HD !! F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án 1933 angol felirattal letöltésre kész, F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án 1933 720p, 1080p, BrRip, DvdRip, Youtube, Reddit, Multilanguage és kiváló minoségu. F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án (1933) teljes film magyarul

🔴 HD Minőség Letöltése »»»»»»»  https://pemburudollar.starmovieseries.com/movie/385128/f9.html 🔴 Ingyenes Online Streaming »»»»»»»  https://tinyurl.com/5fkk5epm

        Halálos iramban 9 2021         8.2/10 által 95 felhasználók Dom Toretto visszahúzódva él egy félreeső helyen Lettyvel és fiával, a kis Briannel, de tudják, hogy a veszély állandóan ott les rájuk a békés horizonton. Ezúttal ez a veszély arra kényszeríti Domot, hogy szembenézzen múltbéli bűneivel, ha meg akarja menteni azokat, akiket a legjobban szeret. Összehozza csapatát, hogy megakadályozzanak egy olyan tervet, amely megrengeti a világot. A terv kiötlője a legképzettebb bérgyilkos és legprofibb sofőr, akivel valaha találkoztak – és aki történetesen Dom elveszett öccse, Jakob

felszabadított: 2021-05-19 Runtime: 145 percek Műfaj: Dráma, Akció, Kaland Csillag: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, John Cena, Charlize Theron Rendező: Sanja Milkovic Hays, Clayton Townsend, Gary Scott Thompson, Neal H. Moritz, Vin Diesel

Letöltés : MP4 360pLetöltés F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021 [ 5,184 Kb/s ] 480pLetöltés F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021 [ 7,682 Kb/s ] MP4HDLetöltés F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021 [ 8,647 Kb/s ] FULLHDLetöltés F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021 [ 9,692 Kb/s ]

Letöltés : MP4 360pLetöltés Raya és az utolsó sárkány 2021 [ 5,184 Kb/s ] 480pLetöltés Raya és az utolsó sárkány 2021 [ 7,682 Kb/s ] MP4HDLetöltés Raya és az utolsó sárkány 2021 [ 8,647 Kb/s ] FULLHDLetöltés Raya és az utolsó sárkány 2021 [ 9,692 Kb/s ]

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Its somewhat ironic that a movie about time travel can’t be reviewed properly until your future self rewatches the movie. It’s bold of Nolan to make such a thoroughly dense blockbuster. He assumes people will actually want to see ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án more than once so they can understand it properly, which some may not. This movie makes the chronology of Inception look as simplistic as tic-tac-toe. Ergo, it’s hard for me to give an accurate rating, without having seen it twice, as I’m still trying to figure out whether everything does indeed make sense. If it does, this movie is easily a 9 or 10. If it doesn’t, it’s a 6. It’s further not helped by the fact that the dialogue in the first 15 minutes of the movie is painfully hard to understand / hear. Either they were behind masks; they were practically mumbling; the sound effects were too loud; or all of the above. The exposition scenes are also waayyy too brief for something this complex — a problem also shared with Interstellar actually. (Interstellar had this minimalist exposition problem explaining Blight, where if you weren’t careful, you’d miss this one sentence / scene in the entire movie explaining that Blight was a viral bacteria: “Earth’s atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, we don’t even breathe nitrogen. Blight does, and as it thrives, our air gets less and less oxygen”). I guess it’s a Nolan quirk. Hopefully, a revision of the film audio sorts the sound mixing out. I do like the soundtrack, but it’s too loud initially. I liked all the actors. You think John Washington can’t act at first, but he can, and he grows on you as the film progresses. And Pattinson is his usual charming self. Elizabeth is a surprise treat. And so on. Its worth a watch either way. See it with subtitles if you can. And definitely don’t expect to fully understand whats going on the first time around. Its one hell of a complicated film. It will be very hard for an average viewer to gather all the information provided by this movie at the first watch. But the more you watch it, more hidden elements will come to light. And when you are able to put these hidden elements together. You will realize that this movie is just a “masterpiece” which takes the legacy of Christopher Nolan Forward If I talk about acting, Then I have to say that Robert Pattinson has really proved himself as a very good actor in these recent years. And I am sure his acting skills will increase with time. His performance is charming and very smooth. Whenever he is on the camera, he steals the focus John David Washington is also fantastic in this movie. His performance is electrifying, I hope to see more from him in the future. Other characters such as Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth, Himesh Patel, Dimple Kapadia, Clémence Poésy have also done quite well. And I dont think there is a need to talk about Michael Caine Talking about Music, its awesome. I dont think you will miss Hans Zimmer’s score. Ludwig has done a sufficient job. There is no lack of good score in the movie Gotta love the editing and post production which has been put into this movie. I think its fair to say this Nolan film has focused more in its post production. The main problem in the movie is the sound mixing. Plot is already complex and some dialogues are very soft due to the high music score. It makes it harder to realize what is going on in the movie. Other Nolan movies had loud BGM too. But Audio and dialogues weren’t a problem My humble request to everyone is to please let the movie sink in your thoughts. Let your mind grasp all the elements of this movie. I am sure more people will find it better. Even those who think they got the plot. I can bet they are wrong. ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án is the long awaited new movie from Christopher Nolan. The movie that’s set to reboot the multiplexes post-Covid. It’s a manic, extremely loud, extremely baffling sci-fi cum spy rollercoaster that will please a lot of Nolan fan-boys but which left me with very mixed views. John David Washington (Denzel’s lad) plays “The Protagonist” — a crack-CIA field operative who is an unstoppable one-man army in the style of Hobbs or Shaw. Recruited into an even more shadowy organisation, he’s on the trail of an international arms dealer, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh in full villain mode). Sator is bullying his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) over custody of their son (and the film unusually has a BBFC warning about “Domestic Abuse”). Our hero jets the world to try to prevent a very particular kind of Armageddon while also keeping the vulnerable and attractive Kat alive. This is cinema at its biggest and boldest. Nolan has taken a cinema ‘splurge’ gun, filled it with money, set it on rapid fire, removed the safety and let rip at the screen. Given that Nolan is famous for doing all of his ‘effects’ for real and ‘in camera’, some of what you see performed is almost unbelievable. You thought crashing a train through rush-hour traffic in “Inception” was crazy? You ain’t seen nothing yet with the airport scene! And for lovers of Chinooks (I must admit I am one and rush out of the house to see one if I hear it coming!) there is positively Chinook-p*rn on offer in the film’s ridiculously huge finale. The ‘inversion’ aspects of the story also lends itself to some fight scenes — one in particular in an airport ‘freeport’ — which are both bizarre to watch and, I imagine, technically extremely challenging to pull off. In this regard John David Washington is an acrobatic and talented stunt performer in his own right, and must have trained for months for this role. Nolan’s crew also certainly racked up their air miles pre-lockdown, since the locations range far and wide across the world. The locations encompassed Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and United States. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography is lush in introducing these, especially the beautiful Italian coast scenes. Although I did miss the David Arnold strings that would typically introduce these in a Bond movie: it felt like that was missing. The ‘timey-wimey’ aspects of the plot are also intriguing and very cleverly done. There are numerous points at which you think “Oh, that’s a sloppy continuity error” or “Shame the production design team missed that cracked wing mirror”. Then later in the movie, you get at least a dozen “Aha!” moments. Some of them (no spoilers) are jaw-droppingly spectacular. Perhaps the best twist is hidden in the final line of the movie. I only processed it on the way home. And so to the first of my significant gripes with ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án. The sound mix in the movie is all over the place. I’d go stronger than that… it’s truly awful (expletive deleted)! Nolan often implements Shakespeare’s trick of having characters in the play provide exposition of the plot to aid comprehension. But unfortunately, all of this exposition dialogue was largely incomprehensible. This was due to: the ear-splitting volume of the sound: 2021 movie audiences are going to be suffering from ‘~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  ánis’! (LOL); the dialogue is poorly mixed with the thumping music by Ludwig Göransson (Wot? No Hans Zimmer?); a large proportion of the dialogue was through masks of varying description (#covid-appropriate). Aaron Taylor-Johnson was particularly unintelligible to my ears. Overall, watching this with subtitles at a special showing might be advisable! OK, so I only have a PhD in Physics… but at times I was completely lost as to the intricacies of the plot. It made “Inception” look like “The Tiger Who Came to Tea”. There was an obvious ‘McGuffin’ in “Inception” — — (“These ‘dream levels’… how exactly are they architected??”…. “Don’t worry… they’ll never notice”. And we didn’t!) In “~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án” there are McGuffins nested in McGuffins. So much of this is casually waved away as “future stuff… you’re not qualified” that it feels vaguely condescending to the audience. At one point Sator says to Kat “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?” and she shakes her head blankly. We’re right with you there luv! There are also gaps in the storyline that jar. The word “~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án”? What does it mean. Is it just a password? I’m none the wiser. The manic pace of ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án and the constant din means that the movie gallops along like a series of disconnected (albeit brilliant) action set pieces. For me, it has none of the emotional heart of the Cobb’s marriage problems from “Inception” or the father/daughter separation of “Interstellar”. In fact, you barely care for anyone in the movie, perhaps with the exception of Kat. It’s a talented cast. As mentioned above, John David Washington is muscular and athletic in the role. It’s a big load for the actor to carry in such a tent-pole movie, given his only significant starring role before was in the excellent BlacKkKlansman. But he carries it off well. A worthy successor to Gerard Butler and Jason Statham for action roles in the next 10 years. This is also a great performance by Robert Pattinson, in his most high-profile film in a long time, playing the vaguely alcoholic and Carré-esque support guy. Pattinson’s Potter co-star Clemence Poésy also pops up — rather more un-glam that usual — as the scientist plot-expositor early in the movie. Nolan’s regular Michael Caine also pops up. although the 87-year old legend is starting to show his age: His speech was obviously affected at the time of filming (though nice try Mr Nolan in trying to disguise that with a mouth full of food!). But in my book, any amount of Caine in a movie is a plus. He also gets to deliver the best killer line in the film about snobbery! However, it’s Kenneth Branagh and Elizabeth Debicki that really stand out. They were both fabulous, especially when they were bouncing off each other in their marital battle royale. So, given this was my most anticipated movie of the year, it’s a bit of a curate’s egg for me. A mixture of being awe-struck at times and slightly disappointed at others. It’s a movie which needs a second watch, so I’m heading back today to give my ear drums another bashing! And this is one where I reserve the right to revisit my rating after that second watch… it’s not likely to go down… but it might go up. (For the full graphical review, check out One Mann’s Movies on t’interweb and Facebook. Thanks.) As this will be non-spoiler, I can’t say too much about the story. However, what I can is this: ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án’s story is quite dynamic in the sense that you won’t understand it till it wants you to. So, for the first half, your brain is fighting for hints and pieces to puzzle together the story. It isn’t until halfway through the movie that ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án invites you to the fantastic storytelling by Christopher Nolan. Acting is beyond phenomenal, and I’d be genuinely surprised if neither Robert Pattinson nor John David Washington doesn’t receive an Oscar nomination for best actor. It’s also hard not to mention how good Elizabeth Debicki and Aaron Johnson both are. All around, great acting, and the dialogue amps up the quality of the movie. The idea of this movie is damn fascinating, and while there are films that explore time-travelling, there’s never been anything quite like this. It has such a beautiful charm and for the most part, explains everything thoroughly. It feels so much more complex than any form of time-travelling we’ve seen, and no less could’ve been expected from Nolan. Oh my lord, the score for this film fits so perfectly. Every scene that’s meant to feel intense was amped by a hundred because of how good the score was. Let me just say though, none of them will be found iconic, but they fit the story and scenes so well. In the end, I walked out, feeling very satisfied. Nevertheless, I do have issues with the film that I cannot really express without spoiling bits of the story. There are definitely little inconsistencies that I found myself uncovering as the story progressed. However, I only had one issue that I found impacted my enjoyment. That issue was understanding some of the dialogue. No, not in the sense that the movie is too complicated, but more that it was hard to make out was being said at times. It felt like the movie required subtitles, but that probably was because, at a time in the film, there was far too much exposition. Nevertheless, I loved this film, I’ll be watching it at least two more times, and I think most of you in this group will enjoy it. I definitely suggest watching it in theatres if possible, just so you can get that excitement. (4/5) & (8.5/10) for those that care about number scores. At first, I want to ask Christopher Nolan one question, HOW THE HELL YOU DID THIS? Seriously I want to have an answer, How did he write such as this masterpiece! How did he get this complicated, fabulous and creative idea? What is going on in his mind? The story is written and directed perfectly, the narration style was absolutely unique. I have no idea how can anyone direct such as this story, that was a huge challenge, and as usual Nolan gave us a masterpiece that we’ll put beside (Memento), (Inception) and (Interstellar) The movie is so fast-paced in a good way, there was no boring moment. The chemistry between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson was great and funny and both of their performance was really good. Elizabeth Debicki performance was the best in the movie because she had the chance to show her acting abilities and she cached up that chance and showed us an A level acting. The music wasn’t unique and distinct as the music of Interstellar for example and I think this movie needed the touch of Hans Zimmer, I’m not saying that Ludwig Göransson failed but Hans Zimmer in another level. If there was something I’d say that I didn’t like it in the movie would it be that Nolan discarded any set up or characters backgrounds except Elizabeth Debicki dramatic story but it wasn’t that bad for me, I didn’t care about that, the exciting story didn’t give me the chance to focus on it. But the actual problem was the third act, it was really complicated and I got lost and I convinced myself to discard the questions that were in my head and enjoy the well-made action sequences and Elizabeth Debicki performance. I think this kind of movie that gets better with a second and third watch. I honestly don’t quite know where to begin with ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án. I love Christopher Nolan’s work but I have never seen a more complicated film (and I understood Memento). ~After nearly three hours, I came away from ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án not knowing myself, my mind reduced to nothing more than piles of ash. Was there time travel involved? Hmm, there was definitely something about time inversion. I mean, does Nolan even understand what he wrote? Look, I give credit to the director because he’s one of the few directors left who knows how to create a compelling and intelligent blockbuster. ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án is full of Nolan trademarks — the gratuitous Michael Caine cameo, a loud, really loud score, complete with stunning cinematography and slickly inventive action set-pieces. This time around however, Nolan has finally managed to ‘out-Nolan’ himself: the palindromic plot, whilst creatively ambitious, is simply far too complicated for its own good. ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án is overlong, overstuffed, pretentious and too exhausting to comprehend in its entirety — it makes Inception and Interstellar look like Peppa Pig by comparison. I’m aware of the technical wizardry and creative mastery in this film and lord knows I’ll have to watch this again. For those who want a puzzle, ~F9: The Fast Saga  [ Halálos iramban 9 ] 2021  án at least provides a unique cinematic experience. But to actually enjoy solving it Nolan wants you to work very very hard

[ecoamerica]

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

[watusichris]

You Oughta “Get Carter”

Another old Night Flight piece, tied to a Turner Classic Movies airing, about a movie I never tire of watching. (Unfortunately, the Krays film “Legend” turned out to be not so good.) ********** The English gangster movie has proven an enduring genre to this day. The 1971 picture that jumpstarted the long-lived cycle, Get Carter, Mike Hodges’ bracing, brutal tale of a mobster’s revenge, screens late Thursday on TCM as part of a day-long tribute to Michael Caine, who stars as the film’s titular anti-hero.

We won’t have to wait long for the next high-profile Brit-mob saga: October will see the premiere of Brian Helgeland’s Legend, a new feature starring Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises, Locke) in a tour de force dual role as Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the legendarily murderous identical twin gangleaders who terrorized London in the ‘60s. The violent exploits of the Krays mesmerized Fleet Street’s journalists and the British populace until the brothers and most of the top members of their “firm” were arrested in 1968.

The siblings both died in prison after receiving life sentences. They’ve been the subjects of several English TV documentaries and a 1990 feature starring Martin and Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet. However, the Krays and their seamy milieu may have had their greatest impact in fictional form, via the durable figure of Jack Carter, the creation of a shy, alcoholic graphic artist, animator, and fiction writer named Ted Lewis, the man now recognized by many as “the father of British noir.”

Born in 1940 in a Manchester suburb, Lewis was raised in the small town of Barton-upon-Humber in the dank English midlands. A sickly child, he became engrossed with art, the movies, and writing. The product of an English art school in nearby Hull, he wrote his first, unsuccessful novel, a semi-autobiographical piece of “kitchen sink” realism called All the Way Home and All the Night Through, in 1965.

He soon moved sideways into movie animation, serving as clean-up supervisor on George Dunning’s Beatles feature Yellow Submarine (1968). However, now married with a couple of children, he decided to return to writing with an eye to crafting a commercial hit, and in 1970 he published a startling, ultra-hardboiled novel titled Jack’s Return Home.

British fiction had never produced anything quite like the book’s protagonist Jack Carter. He is the enforcer for a pair of London gangsters, Gerald and Les Fletcher, who bear more than a passing resemblance to the Krays. At the outset of the book, recounted in the first person, Carter travels by train to an unnamed city in the British midlands (modeled after the city of Scunthorpe near Lewis’ hometown) to bury his brother Frank, who has died in an alleged drunk driving accident.

Carter instantly susses that his brother was murdered, and he sets about sorting out a hierarchy of low-end midlands criminals (all of whom he knew in his early days as a budding hoodlum) responsible for the crime, investigating the act with a gun in his hand and a heart filled with hate. He’s no Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe bound by a moral code – in fact, he once bedded Frank’s wife, and is now sleeping with his boss Gerald’s spouse. He’s a sociopathic career criminal and professional killer – a “villain,” in the English term -- who will use any means at his disposal to secure his revenge.

Carter’s pursuit of rough justice for his brother, and for a despoiled niece, attracts the attention of the Fletchers, whose business relationships with the Northern mob are being disrupted by their lieutenant’s campaign of vengeance. As Carter leaves behind a trail of corpses and homes in on the last of his quarry, the hunter has become the hunted, and Jack’s Return Home climaxes with scenes of bloodletting worthy of a Jacobean tragedy, or of Grand Guignol.

Before its publication, Lewis’ grimy, violent book attracted the attention of Michael Klinger, who had produced Roman Polanski’s stunning ‘60s features Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac. Klinger acquired film rights to the novel before its publication in 1970, and sent a galley copy to Mike Hodges, then a U.K. TV director with no feature credits.

Hodges, who immediately signed on as director and screenwriter of Klinger’s feature – which was retitled Get Carter -- was not only drawn to the taut, fierce action, but also by the opportunity to peel away the veneer of propriety that still lingered in British society and culture. As he noted in his 2000 commentary for the U.S. DVD release of the film, “You cannot deny that [in England], like anywhere else, corruption is endemic.”

Casting was key to the potential box office prospects of the feature, and Klinger and Hodges’ masterstroke was securing Michael Caine to play Jack Carter. By 1970, Caine had become an international star, portraying spy novelist Len Deighton’s agent Harry Palmer in three pictures and garnering raves as the eponymous philanderer in Alfie.

Caine had himself known some hard cases in his London neighborhood; in his own DVD commentary, he says that his dead-eyed, terrifyingly reserved Carter was “an amalgam of people I grew up with – I’d known them all my life.” Hodges notes of Caine’s Carter, “There’s a ruthlessness about him, and I would have been foolish not to use it to the advantage of the film.”

Playing what he knew, Caine gave the performance of a lifetime – a study in steely cool, punctuated by sudden outbursts of unfettered fury. The actor summarizes his character on the DVD: “Here was a dastardly man coming as the savior of a lady’s honor. It’s the knight saving the damsel in distress, except this knight is not a very noble or gallant one. It’s the villain as hero.”

The supporting players were cast with equal skill. Ian Hendry, who was originally considered for the role of Carter, ultimately portrayed the hit man’s principal nemesis and target Eric Paice. Caine and Hendry’s first faceoff in the film, an economical conversation at a local racetrack, seethes with unfeigned tension and unease – Caine was wary of Hendry, whose deep alcoholism made the production a difficult one, while Hendry was jealous of the leading man’s greater success.

For Northern mob kingpin Cyril Kinnear, Hodges recruited John Osborne, then best known in Great Britain as the writer of the hugely successfully 1956 play Look Back in Anger, Laurence Olivier’s screen and stage triumph The Entertainer, and Tony Richardson’s period comedy Tom Jones, for which he won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Osborne, a skilled actor before he found fame as a writer, brings subdued, purring menace to the part.

Though her part was far smaller than those of such other supporting actresses as Geraldine Moffat, Rosemarie Dunham, and Dorothy White, Brit sex bomb Britt Ekland received third billing as Anna, Gerald Fletcher’s wife and Carter’s mistress. Her marquee prominence is somewhat justified by an eye-popping sequence in which she engages in a few minutes of steamy phone sex with Caine.

Some small roles were populated by real British villains. George Sewell, who plays the Fletchers’ minion Con McCarty, was a familiar of the Krays’ older brother Charlie, and introduced the elder mobster to Carry On comedy series actress Barbara Windsor, who subsequently married another member of the Kray firm. John Bindon, who appears briefly as the younger Fletcher sibling, was a hood and racketeer who later stood trial for murder; a notorious womanizer, he romanced Princess Margaret, whose clandestine relationship with Bindon later became a key plot turn in the 2008 Jason Strathan gangster vehicle The Bank Job.

Verisimilitude was everything for Hodges, who shot nearly all of the film on grimly realistic locations in Newcastle, the down-at-the-heel coal-mining town on England’s northeastern coast. The director vibrantly employs interiors of the city’s seedy pubs, rooming houses, nightclubs and betting parlors. In one inspired bit of local color, he uses an appearance by a local girl’s marching band, the Pelaw Hussars, to drolly enliven a scene in which a nude, shotgun-toting Carter backs down the Fletchers’ gunmen.

The film’s relentless action was perfectly framed by director of photography Wolfgang Suchitzky, whose experience as a cameraman for documentarian Paul Rotha is put to excellent use. Some sequences are masterfully shot with available light; the movie’s most brutal murder plays out at night by a car’s headlights. The breathtakingly staged final showdown between Carter and Paice is shot under lowering skies against the grey backdrop of a North Sea coal slag dump.

Tough, uncompromising, and utterly unprecedented in English cinema, Get Carter was a hit in the U.K. It fared poorly in the U.S., where its distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer dumped it on the market as the lower half of a double bill with the Frank Sinatra Western spoof Dirty Dingus Magee. In his DVD commentary, Caine notes that it was only after Ted Turner acquired MGM’s catalog and broadcast the film on his cable networks that the movie developed a cult audience in the States.

Get Carter has received two American remakes. The first, George Armitage’s oft-risible 1972 blaxploitation adaptation Hit Man, starred Bernie Casey as Carter’s African-American counterpart Tyrone Tackett. It is notable for a spectacularly undraped appearance by Pam Grier, whose character meets a hilarious demise that is somewhat spoiled by the picture’s amusing trailer. (Casey and Keenan Ivory Wayans later lampooned the film in the 1988 blaxploitation parody I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.)

Hodges’ film was drearily Americanized and relocated to Seattle in Stephen Kay’s like-titled 2000 Sylvester Stallone vehicle. It’s a sluggish, misbegotten venture, about which the less that is said the better. Michael Caine’s presence in the cast as villain Cliff Brumby (played in the original by Brian Mosley) only serves to remind viewers that they are watching a vastly inferior rendering of a classic.

Ted Lewis wrote seven more novels after Jack’s Return Home, and returned to Jack Carter for two prequels. The first of them, Jack Carter’s Law (1970), an almost equally intense installment in which Carter ferrets out a “grass” – an informer – in the Fletchers’ organization, is a deep passage through the London underworld of the ‘60s, full of warring gangsters and venal, dishonest coppers.

The final episode in the trilogy, Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (1977), was a sad swan song for British noir’s most memorable bad man. In it, Carter travels to the Mediterranean island of Majorca on a Fletchers-funded “holiday,” only to discover that he has actually been dispatched to guard a jittery American mobster hiding out at the gang’s villa. It’s a flabby, obvious, and needlessly discursive book; Lewis’ exhaustion is apparent in his desperate re-use of a plot point central to the action of the first Carter novel.

Curiously, the locale and setup of Mafia Pigeon appear to be derived from Pulp, the 1975 film that reunited director Hodges and actor Caine. In it, the actor plays a writer of sleazy paperback thrillers who travels to the Mediterranean isle of Malta to pen the memoirs of Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a Hollywood actor with gangland connections. Hilarity and mayhem ensue.

All of Lewis’ characters consume enough alcohol to put down an elephant, and Lewis himself succumbed to alcoholism in 1982, at the age of 42. Virtually unemployable, he had moved back home to Barton-upon-Humber, where lived with his parents.

He went out with a bang, however: In 1980, he published his final and finest book, the truly explosive mob thriller GBH (the British abbreviation for “grievous bodily harm”). The novel focuses on the last days of vice lord George Fowler, a sadist in the grand Krays manner, whose empire is being toppled by internal treachery. Using a unique time-shifting structure that darts back and forth between “the smoke” (London) and “the sea” (Fowler’s oceanside hideout), it reaches a finale of infernal, hallucinatory intensity.

After Lewis’ death, his work fell into obscurity, and his novels were unavailable in America for decades. Happily, Soho Press reissued the Carter trilogy in paperback in 2014 and republished GBH in hardback earlier this year. Now U.S. readers have the opportunity to read the books that influenced an entire school of English noir writers, including such Lewis disciples and venerators as Derek Raymond, David Peace, and Jake Arnott.

Echoes of GBH can be heard in The Long Good Friday, another esteemed English gangster film starring Bob Hoskins as the arrogant and impetuous chief of a collapsing London firm. Released the same year as Lewis’ last novel, the John Mackenzie-directed feature is only one of a succession of outstanding movies – The Limey, The Hit, Layer Cake, Sexy Beast, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels among them – that owe a debt to Get Carter, the daddy of them all.

[player1064]

“It’s still just as hard to return to his own bed afterwards as it had been four years ago” has RUINED me.. pls expand on them getting together omgggg

(in reference to my drabble from the other day)

me writing parts of the wife-Gary saga where they're in a committed relationship: fun. silly. these two idiots are so insufferable and drive everyone crazy w how in love they are.

me writing parts of the wife-Gary saga BEFORE they're in a committed relationship: they are so fucking tragic. and the REASON they are so fucking tragic is bc they are stupid. and repressed. and don't know how to have normal human conversations with each other.

---

 June, 2016.

“God, Carragher, ‘re you stalkin’ me? How is it that you’re always here after the shit games?”

“Calm down, lad, it’s only happened twice and I know you’ve had a lot more shit games than that. ‘Sides, ‘salmost like talkin’ about football is my job.”

“They should fuckin’ fire you, then,” Gary mutters.

Jamie raises a hand to his chest with an over-dramatic gasp. “But then we’d both be out a job. Think of the children, Gaz, how’re we gonna provide for them?”

Gary chuckles, but it comes out weak and bitter, shooting down any hopes Jamie has of lightening the mood.

He looks bad, is the thing. He looks really, really bad. Each month of the last six seems to have aged him an extra year, he’s pale and unkempt and he’s gained weight since Jamie had last seen him. And he’s looking at Jamie like – like he’d rather be looking at anyone else. Like he doesn’t trust him.

“That was cruel, Jamie, what you wrote,” he says flatly.

It’s my job, Jamie could argue, the articles get more clicks if I’m mean.

Instead, he looks Gary in the eye and says “I know. But someone had to say it.”

Gary rubs a hand over his jaw, huffs a sigh. “D’you not remember what it was like?” he asks, squinting at Jamie. “To wear the badge. I mean, I know it weren’t the same as Liverpool, for you. Weren’t the same as United for me, to be fair. But you must remember. End of the day, they’re just boys. We were too, all them years ago.”

“Gary, they played like shit,” Jamie says, gentle as he can. It doesn’t even occur to him to lie, to tell some meaningless platitude about how they tried their best. It was fucking Iceland.

“Yeah,” Gary says. “Yeah, I know.”

*

All Jamie wants is to say something mean, to tease Gary and make him laugh and for everything to just go back to fucking normal, for him to have seen Gary more than twice in the last six months. For those two meetings to have been after some fucking wins, instead of –

They sit side by side in the hotel bar, drinking in silence and staring blankly ahead.

Feels a lot like Barcelona.

“Ha,” Gary replies when he tells him this. “Fucking Spain.”

Jamie, who has never known Spain to do anything but take, raises his glass to that. “Fuckin’ Spain.”

Gary turns his head to look at him, makes a little high-pitched humming noise before shaking his head and staring down at the counter top instead.

“What?”

“Nothin’,” he says quickly. “’s stupid.”

Not like Jamie’s got anything better to do than sit and wait for Gary to get over himself, so that’s exactly what he does.

Eventually, Gary starts up again, voice unsteady. “I always wondered, um. If Spain was as shit for you as it was for me.”

“Well I never lost 7-0, lad, so I’m gonna go with no,” Jamie jokes, even though he knows that’s not what Gary means.

Because what he knows Gary means is –

“I mean Madrid, James. I guess – I’ve been thinkin’ a lot, obviously, about Spain. And how before all this –” he waves a hand vaguely in the air. “—before all this, Spain was just – it was only ever Madrid, tha’s all it meant to me. And I always wondered, ever since – d’you remember 2004? I always remember gettin’ to training camp, that year, an’ I saw you ‘n him, and I thought, I mean – I wondered, if maybe it was the same. For you, as it was for me. I remember thinkin’ that.”

2004 was… What springs to mind, when Jamie thinks of 2004, when he thinks of Gary Neville in 2004, is how much he fucking hated him. He remembers watching him at England camps, watching him with Beckham and wondering how the fuck they were able to carry on like nothing had changed, when it was taking all of Jamie’s energy to be civil to his oldest friend.

“I think…” he says carefully, ever so slightly terrified that he’s read this all wrong. “I think it was, yeah. I think it was the same.”

Gary breathes a sigh of relief.

He looks back at Jamie, unblinking, and asks quietly “what about Valencia?”

“What about it?”

“Was’at the same, for you. As Madrid. ‘Cause it felt – not the same, I s’pose, but – similar. Similar enough. For me.”

Jamie takes him in, the dark circles under his eyes, the hunched shoulders. The way he’s nervously biting his lip. Jamie takes it all in, and he thinks fucking Spain, and he thinks fucking Iceland.

“What’re you asking me, Gary?”

“Come up to my room with me?”

*

“Jamie,” Gary says breathlessly, eyes wide, as Jamie grinds their hips together like they’re a pair of fucking teenagers, “Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.”

“Christ, Gary,” Jamie huffs. Except it comes out softer than he’d meant it to. Christ, Gary. He splays one hand over Gary’s bare chest, scraping his fingernails over the pale skin. “You really don’t ever shut up, do ya?”

Gary flushes, brings a hand up to cover his mouth. Jamie grabs hold of his wrist and tugs it away.

“No, I didn’t mean –” he starts, painfully aware of what a fucking fool he’s about to make of himself. “I didn’t mean stop. ‘s nice. ‘s always nice, t’hear you dronin’ on.”

“Oh fuck you, Carra,” Gary says, but there’s a new twinkle in his eye. His blush has toned down to a delicious shade of pink, which makes Jamie want to do stupid things, like lean down and kiss him on the cheek, or say to him –

No. That can’t be what this is.

He smirks instead, says “think I’d rather fuck you,” delights in the way Gary’s grip on his arse tightens.

“Maybe next time, James, go easy on an old man.”

“Bit full of ourselves, are we? Thinkin’ I’ll be wantin’ a repeat performance?”

“More thinkin’ you’ll be wantin’ a rematch, ‘cause so far you’re a shit fuckin’ lay.”

“Am I fuck.”

*

The problem, when you really think about it, isn’t Jamie at all. He’s lying on his side, propped up with his elbow, and he’s watching Gary smile dozily at him.

The problem isn’t Gary, either. Or maybe it is, maybe the fact that he’s not the problem is causing a whole new set of problems, but Jamie can’t slow down his racing mind enough to deal with that right now.

No, the problem is fucking Spain, it's Valencia, it's Madrid, it’s David Beckham and it’s Michael Owen. The problem is this hotel in France, and it’s Iceland, and it’s Roy Hodgson, and it’s fifty years of hurt. The problem is about an hour’s drive down the M62, the problem is lying across from him, fingers lightly tracing the scars on his stomach, and the problem is saying “think I could love you, y’know,” as easily as you might say ‘it’s going to rain today’, or ‘Manchester United will never win the league again’.

And the problem, the real problem, is that Jamie can’t say it back. The problem is he’s never been able to say it, not to anyone.

So fine, maybe Jamie’s the problem.

He leans forward and brushes his lips against Gary’s, feels his pleased little hum, feels him try pull Jamie closer.

Jamie pulls away, slips out of the bed. He keeps his back to Gary when he says “I’ll see you at work when new season starts, then, yeah?”

“Oh,” he hears Gary say, voice small. “Oh, right. Yeah, I’ll – yeah.”

Jamie pulls his clothes back on and walks out the door. He’s got a flight to catch soon, anyways.

[abeypratama]

速度与激情9 F9: The Fast Saga(2021)完整版本

速度与激情9 F9: The Fast Saga-完整版Fast2021完整版速度与激情9 F9: The Fast Saga 2021 完整版速度与激情9完整版本2021FastFAST SAGA完整版速度与激情9 完整版速度与激情9速度与激情9速度与激情9 完整版本F9: The Fast Saga

曾主演过《速度与激情3：东京漂移》的男星卢卡斯·布莱克宣布将加盟《速度与激情7》，据悉，他不仅将加盟第七部，而且已经确定要参演第八部和第九部。这似乎证实了之前媒体的猜测：《速度与激情》的7-9将成为一部新的系列三部曲。

➥PLAY~玩 |✼✮☛ https://t.co/WhnjzfXmA9?amp=1

➥PLAY~玩 |✼✮☛ https://t.co/WhnjzfXmA9?amp=1

发布日期: 2021-05-19 运行时间: 145 分钟 类型: 动作, 惊悚, 犯罪 明星: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, John Cena, Charlize Theron 导演: Sanja Milkovic Hays, Clayton Townsend, Gary Scott Thompson, Neal H. Moritz, Vin Diesel

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In 1889, on November 1 in Gotha, Germany Anna Therese Johanne Hoch, who later would be known as Hannah Hoch was born. Being the eldest of five children, the girl was brought up in a comfortable and quiet environment of the small town. Her parents, a supervisor in an insurance company and an amateur painter sent her to Girl’s High school. However, at the age of 15 Hannah had to quit studying for the long six years to take care of her newborn sister. Only in 1912 she continued her education with Harold Bengen in School of Applied Arts, mastering glass design. As the World War I broke up Hannah returned to the native town to work in the Red Cross. The first years after war the young woman recommenced her studying, getting to know graphic arts. 1915 was highlighted by an acquaintance with an Austrian artist Raoul Hausmann, which grew into the long-lasting romantic relationship and involvement in Berlin Dada movement. For ten years till 1926 Hoch worked in Berlin’s major publisher of newspapers and magazines. Her task was to design embroidering, knitting and crocheting patterns for the booklets. Being on vacation with her beloved in 1918, Hannah discovered ‘the principle of photomontage in cut-and-paste images that soldiers sent to their families’ (National gallery of Art). This find affected greatly on her artistic production, and she created mass-media photographs comprising the elements of photomontage and handwork patterns, thus combining traditional and modern culture. Her prior preoccupation was to represent the ‘new woman’ of the Weimar Republic with new social role and given freedoms. Hoch was the only woman in Berlin Dada, who took part in all kinds of events and exhibitions showcasing her socially critical works of art. Till 1931 she participated in exhibitions but with the rise of National Social regime was forbidden to present her creative work. Till her last breath in 1978 Hannah Hoch lived and worked in the outskirts of Berlin-Heiligensee. The piece of art which is going to be analyzed in this research is ‘The beautiful girl’ designed in 1919–1920. It combines the elements of technology and females. In the middle of the picture one can clearly see a woman dressed in a modern bathing suit with a light bulb on her head which probably serves as a sun umbrella. In the background a large advertisement with a woman’s hair-do on top is presented. Maud Lavin describes strange human as ‘she is part human, part machine, part commodity’ (Lavin). The woman is surrounded by the images of industrialization as tires, gears, signals and BMW logos. A woman’s profile with the cat eyes, untrusting and skeptical, in the upper right corner is eye-catching as well. This unusually large eye symbolizes DADA movement — a monocle, which is present in almost every Hoch’s work. The colour scheme does not offer rich palette of tints, including mostly black, white, orange and red pieces. The photo is surrounded by the BMW circles which add the spots of blue. An apt description of the piece is given in the book ‘Cut with the Kitchen Knife’ and states that it is ‘a portrait of a modern woman defined by signs of femininity, technology, media and advertising’ (Lavin). In other words Hannah Hoch focused on the woman of the new age, free and keeping up with the fast-moving world. The artist promoted feministic ideas and from her point of view urbanization and modern technologies were meant to give hope to woman to gain equality of genders. With this photomontage she commented on how the woman was expected to combine the role of a wife and mother with the role of a worker in the industrialized world. The light bulb instead of a face shows that women were perceived as unthinking machines which do not question their position and can be turned on or off at any time at man’s will. But at the same time they were to remain attractive to satisfy men’s needs. The watch is viewed as the representation of how quickly women are to adapt to the changes. In a nutshell, Hoch concentrated on two opposite visions of the modern woman: the one from the television screens — smoking, working, wearing sexy clothes, voting and the real one who remained being a housewife. The beautiful girl’ is an example of the art within the DADA movement. An artistic and literal current began in 1916 as the reaction to World War I and spread throughout Northern America and Europe. Every single convention was challenged and bourgeois society was scandalized. The Dadaists stated that over-valuing conformity, classism and nationalism among modern cultures led to horrors of the World War I. In other words, they rejected logic and reason and turned to irrationality, chaos and nonsense. The first DADA international Fair was organized in Berlin in 1920 exposing a shocking discontentment with military and German nationalism (Dada. A five minute history). Hannah Hoch was introduced to the world of DADA by Raoul Hausman who together with Kurt Schwitters, Piet Mondrian and Hans Richter was one of the influential artists in the movement. Hoch became the only German woman who referred to DADA. She managed to follow the general Dadaist aesthetic, but at the same time she surely and steadily incorporated a feminist philosophy. Her aim was to submit female equality within the canvass of other DADA’s conceptions. Though Hannah Hoch officially was a member of the movement, she never became the true one, because men saw her only as ‘a charming and gifted amateur artist’ (Lavin). Hans Richter, an unofficial spokesperson shared his opinion about the only woman in their community in the following words: ‘the girl who produced sandwiches, beer and coffee on a limited budget’ forgetting that she was among the few members with stable income. In spite of the gender oppressions, Hannah’s desire to convey her idea was never weakened. Difficulties only strengthened her and made her an outstanding artist. A note with these return words was found among her possessions: ‘None of these men were satisfied with just an ordinary woman. But neither were they included to abandon the (conventional) male/masculine morality toward the woman. Enlightened by Freud, in protest against the older generation. . . they all desired this ‘New Woman’ and her groundbreaking will to freedom. But — they more or less brutally rejected the notion that they, too, had to adopt new attitudes. . . This led to these truly Strinbergian dramas that typified the private lives of these men’ (Maloney). Hoch’s technique was characterized by fusing male and female parts of the body or bodies of females from different epochs — a ‘traditional’ woman and ‘modern’, liberated and free of sexual stereotypes one. What’s more, combining male and female parts, the female ones were always more distinctive and vibrant, while the male ones took their place in the background. Hannah created unique works of art experimenting with paintings, collages, graphic and photography. Her women were made from bits and pieces from dolls, mannequins of brides or children as these members of the society were not considered as valuable. Today Hannah Hoch is most associated with her famous photomontage ‘Cut with the kitchen knife DADA through the last Weimer Beer-Belly Cultural epoch of Germany’ (1919–1920). This piece of art highlights social confusion during the era of Weimar Republic, oppositionists and government radicals (Grabner). In spite of never being truly accepted by the rest of her society, this woman with a quiet voice managed to speak out loud her feministic message. Looking at Hannah Hoch’s art for the first time I found it confusing, because couldn’t comprehend the meaning. It was quite obvious that every single piece and structure is a symbol of the era, its ideas and beliefs. However, after having learned about her life and constant endeavors to declare about female’s right, little by little I started to realize what’s what. As an object for research I chose ‘The beautiful girl’ as, to my mind, its theme and message intersects with the modern tendency: a successful, clever, beautiful and free woman has to become one in no time, cause the world is moving faster and faster. I enjoyed working with this artist as her example is inspiring and is worth following.