#[I think you might be confusing Andrew with Cassidy]

[ask-the-second-chance-frights]

Greg, my dear friend, there something you need to know about Fetch, you see Fecth had a very vengeful soul of the dead child caused by William Afton who go by the name Cassidy. She was a very angry soul who refuse to move on, later after William's death (mostly from his body explosion) her soul soon found it's way to Fetch and possessed him, causing him to act very aggressively to maybe anyone except you since the real Fetch is trying to gain back control with his body. So please understand that it was really Fecth's fault for the murder and for ruining your reputation.

[phillipcole]

Post-AGT Appearance 1154: Real time with Bill Maher August 6

I messed up again.  I have 2 chapter 1149s so I now skip 1153 to 1154.

My cousin survived heart surgery but was in the intensive care unit longer than planned.  By August 6 I would be adequately composed to appear live in person with limited guests on Real time with Bill Maher.  He would bring me out early, prepared both for a hasty exit and an extended visit.  

The John Williams Avonelle Medley would continue slowly sinking while the Bond Covid Medley would be rising into the 80s on the weekend of August 1.  I can only write from the library now.  The notebook tracking the exact position is at mother’s house.  The notebook with the list of cast members of The Cheerleader Killings is also there.  I can’t risk traveling with them.

Maher: Our first guest tonight is an entertainer with a lot of enemies and a few good friends.  People have tried to blacklist him but they can’t.  His humor is so honest you never know when the joke ends and a lecture begins and it doesn’t matter.  It’s all from the heart.  Please welcome Phil Cole.

(I come out bowing but stay far from Maher as we sit.)

Maher: I see you’re taking no chances.  I recovered from the corona virus.  You can shake hands, hug or kiss me.

PBC: It was never safe to kiss you bill.

Maher: let’s not get too honest.  I notice you’re still wearing a mask.

PBC: 3 masks tonight Bill.  They are all available from Shacocouture.  This is the one I designed myself.  Please note that is not an American flag.  It is just a set of stripes and stars, but you could never get near 50.  Also note the eagle is not facing forward, so it won’t confuse anyone about the size or shape of your nose.

(I remove the outer mask.)

PBC: The second mask is basic black, because black masks matter.

Maher: He said it, not me ha ha ha ha.

PBC: Aha!  The fourth laugh means it’s funny, not rehearsed.

Maher: Ha ha ha?

PBC: That was planned.  

(I remove the second mask.)

PBC: This is one of our specialty masks, made to order.  We do businesses, charities, you name it.

Maher: I. T. N. A. C.  What does that stand for?

PBC: Is there not a Cause.  It’s a charity in the Caribbean.  My wife’s cousin runs it.

Maher: The one you write all the songs about?

PBC: Yes.

Maher: Including this one...

(He plays a brief clip from the John Williams Avonelle Medley.)

PBC: Yes.

Maher: Now, for the record, she ran in 2015 and lost to a man named Dr. Keith Rowley.  Do you see him as Darth Vader?

PBC: Not quite, but she is a real saint.  

Maher: And, let’s get all the plugs out first.  You have another song on the charts right now, the Bond Covid Medley.

PBC: Yes, thank you.

Maher: This is about the sixth release of a song about the virus.  None of them have cracked the top 10.

PBC; The 2 Bette Midler songs made the top 40.

Maher: Do you attribute the difficulty with the unpopularity of the corona virus, or your own?

PBC: Don’t know, but I keep writing and hope for the best.

Maher: And you have a big announcement about your next film.

PBC: Bill Maher has joined the cast of The Cheerleader Killings.

Maher: Thank you, thank you.  I plan to really have a ball doing this, not to mention a share of the profits.

PBC: If any.

Maher: Who else is in the movie?

PBC: Matthew McConaghey, Ashley Tisdale, Tom Holland, Diana Agron, Haley Pine, Katie Cassidy, Seth Rogen.

Maher: Well if he’s in it, it can’t be too good.

PBC: It’s a murder mystery, so we need a lot of suspects.

Maher: And a lot of good looking cheerleaders.

PBC: I’m very pleased with the casting and it’s not over yet, so someone might get in...for the right price.

Maher: Are you in it?

PBC: Just a cameo at some board meetings.

Maher: Now there are a lot of hot women in the movie.  How many have you slept with?

PBC: Only one.

Maher: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha which one?

PBC: Katie Cassidy.  We were sitting on a couch watching the rushes from Attack of the Lysol Rabbit and I dozed off for a few minutes.

Maher: Ha ha ha ha ha now to politics: do you think Andrew Cuomo should resign?

PBC: Well, good people, under this kind of pressure, resign whether they are guilty or not.

Maher: Like Nixon, Sarah Palin.

PBC: Right.

Maher: But Andrew Cuomo is not a good person.  Don’t you think it’s wrong for him to have this problem over a little thing like sexual harassment?

PBC: It’s a real shame that a man as slimy as he is goes down for this.

Maher: Ha ha ha ha ha.

PBC: Destroying Andrew Cuomo over sexual harassment is like putting Al Capone in jail for tax evasion.

Maher: That’s funnier than you think.  The relative silence brings to mind your colleague Phillip in a coma.  Is there any chance Andrew Cuomo is the last name on Phillip’s list?

PBC: Well he was already famous and disgusting in 2014, so logic would make him a suspect.

Maher: Now you have a tour coming up in the fall.

PBC: That’s right, about 40 spots so far: California, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Washington state.

Maher: And I understand you will start making jokes about politics again after skipping the subject for most of the Trump administration.

PBC: Yes, I plan to.

Maher: Even jokes about the Biden administration?

PBC: Thanks for mentioning it Bill.

Maher: It was in the script your agent sent us ha ha.

PBC: Making sure that Donald Trump does not become President again is the most important thing any American can do for their country.

(Loud, long applause)

PBC: Now that I’ve said that it is time to freely make the same kind of jokes about Joe Biden as we did when the worst thing that could happen is the President loses the next election to a nice guy from the other party.

Maher: Thank you so much for being here.  Best wishes on all your projects.  

[monstrousthingsrp]

Time Period Quick Reference:

Courtesy the lovely Erin (@incre-et-painture) we now have a handy-dandy little reference to help us all “flow with the times” without having to struggle between either spending precious time researching or winging it and hoping for the best! She actually lived in England during the period in which our game is set, so if you have additional questions about the setting she’ll be happy to help you out--

Although keep in mind that this is an alternate universe. As such, specific individual facts and historical events may be different. So don’t worry about getting bogged-down in the details; after all, this is a world in which The Cold War was replaced by The Worldwide Witchunt Wars. There probably was no Cuban Missile Crisis; there may not have even been a Space Race! We’ve left particular historical details vague enough that we can tailor them to suit whatever plot-points we all decide to develop.

So just as with the timeline, view the following as a reference guideline, not a checklist to obey!

Technology:

This is probably the most important one for us, as unlike most Potterverse games we’re actually playing in a world where your character very well might have access to the sort of technology that we take for granted in our current lives -- albeit several generations older than what we’ve got on hand now!

Most computers operate using ethernet cords to connect to the internet, laptops weigh an extremely portable 52 pounds, basically, and camera phones are cutting edge technology. The pictures taken with them are notoriously grainy at this stage and definitely not the crystal clear video we’re used to.

Most mobile phones operate on a “top up” method where you pay for minutes. They’re called track phones in the U.K. Also, most people are paying per text message sent, but it’s still a popular method of communication. You can top up your minutes in most convenience stores and by calling into your provider’s number. There aren’t any smartphones, apps, and other things like that. Public payphones still exist, although they are fading out by this point.

Travel is done by taxi, bus, and tube. Lyft and Uber do not exist. Londoners love the Tube and definitely travel that way frequently. For frequent travelers, Oyster cards are refillable cards that are similar to the Metro cards we use in the US. In fact, 2004 was the first year that Oyster cards existed. They can also be used on the bus and train, but not on taxis.

Please also remember that trains are a popular method of travel for Europeans. They’re also very reliable and a great way to get around. (As for whether people would be comfortable sharing a carriage with someone who’s got stars by their eyes, well...)

Pop Culture: Sport

As much as it breaks my heart, Manchester United won the FA cup in 2004. (Mod Note: her Erin, maybe in this messed-up world West Ham isn’t a total lost cause? I mean, sport doesn’t have to have happened the same as it did in reality, and we’ve got so many crazy things going on here already -- wealthy Weasleys, werewolf-friendly Blacks, a living Regulus...stranger things could happen, right?)

For those of you interested in talking football, here are the league tables for that season. Please keep in mind that different teams are in different leagues so, if your character follows a team, make sure you know who they play. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004%E2%80%9305_Football_League

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004%E2%80%9305_FA_Premier_League

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004%E2%80%9305_Football_League_Championship

Pop Culture: Telly

The Television lineup in Britain in real 2004-2005 contained the shows:

Little Britain

Spooks

Eastenders

Still Game

Dr. Who (the new series had just started, but the reruns were still extremely popular and well-loved by a majority of British people)

Casualty

The Doctors

Holby City

River City

Blue Peter

Strictly Come Dancing

And news is broadcast on the BBC News

For a comprehensive list, please see this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_television_programmes_broadcast_by_the_BBC

Please pay attention to the years listed for each program to make sure that it’s applicable...and feel free to make up shows of your own that might exist in this reality! Just keep in mind that TV in England was a much smaller, lower-budget, more contained entity than the overwhelming glut of channels going on in America.

Pop Culture: Music

This will be a painful trip for some of us. After all, I think we’d probably all rather forget that Kelis ever proclaimed that her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard. However, it’s a sad fact that she did, and this is the time when it happened!

Now again, we are living in an alternate reality here, so feel free to make up other songs and singers and groups -- both mundane and magical; maybe the Weird Sisters and Celestina Warbeck don’t exist here (and maybe they do) but there are surely still some magical musicians (maybe some taking advantage of the “dangerous” aura their magic grants them, while others might try and downplay it) so please, let your imaginations run wild! Maybe this Brittany Spears never sang Toxic but rather Cursed...maybe this Goldie Lookin Chain wrote Wands Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do. Who knows, have fun! The following list is for reference so that you know what kind of music and what kind of bands (probably) exist in this world and this time. And, maybe, to give you all a trip -- pleasant or otherwise -- down nostalgia lane. Enjoy!

Here are the Top 100 Songs of 2004 in the UK:

01 Eamon ~ F**k It (I Don't Want You Back)

02 Eric Prydz ~ Call On Me

03 Anastacia ~ Left Outside Alone

04 DJ Casper ~ Cha Cha Slide

05 Usher featuring Lil' Jon & Ludacris ~ Yeah!

06 Frankee ~ FURB (F U Right Back)

07 Kelis ~ Milkshake

08 Mario Winans featuring Enya & P Diddy ~ I Don't Wanna Know

09 3 Of A Kind ~ Baby Cakes

10 Michelle McManus ~ All This Time

11 Britney Spears ~ Everytime

12 Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jules ~ Mad World

13 Destiny's Child ~ Lose My Breath

14 The Shapeshifters ~ Lola's Theme

15 Outkast ~ Hey Ya!

16 LMC vs U2 ~ Take Me To The Clouds Above

17 O-Zone ~ Dragostea Din Tei

18 The Streets ~ Dry Your Eyes

19 Busted ~ Thunderbirds / 3AM

20 Usher ~ Burn

21 Britney Spears ~ Toxic

22 Natasha Bedingfield ~ These Words

23 Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne ~ Changes

24 Boogie Pimps ~ Somebody To Love

25 Kelis ~ Trick Me

26 The Rasmus ~ In The Shadows

27 Band Aid 20 ~ Do They Know It's Christmas?

28 Nelly ~ My Place / Flap Your Wings

29 D12 ~ My Band

30 McFly ~ 5 Colours In Her Hair

31 Girls Aloud ~ I'll Stand By You

32 Cassidy featuring R Kelly ~ Hotel

33 Jamelia ~ Thank You

34 Peter Andre ~ Mysterious Girl

35 Maroon 5 ~ This Love

36 Eminem ~ Just Lose It

37 Rachel Stevens ~ Some Girls

38 Khia ~ My Neck My Back (Lick It)

39 Christina Milian ~ Dip It Low

40 McFly ~ Obviously

41 JoJo ~ Leave (Get Out)

42 Deep Dish ~ Flashdance

43 Lemar ~ If There's Any Justice

44 J-Kwon ~ Tipsy

45 Will Young ~ Leave Right Now

46 Sean Paul featuring Sasha ~ I'm Still In Love With You

47 Brian McFadden ~ Real To Me

48 Girls Aloud ~ Love Machine

49 Katie Melua ~ The Closest Thing To Crazy

50 2Play featuring Raghav & Jucxi ~ So Confused

51 Twista ~ Sunshine

52 Sam & Mark ~ With A Little Help From My Friends / Measure Of A Man

53 Robbie Williams ~ Radio

54 Blue ~ Breathe Easy

55 The Black Eyed Peas ~ Shut Up

56 Twista ~ Slow Jamz

57 Busted ~ Who's David

58 Ice Cube featuring Mack 10 & Ms Toi ~ You Can Do It

59 U2 ~ Vertigo

60 Girls Aloud ~ The Show

61 N*E*R*D ~ She Wants To Move

62 Christina Aguilera featuring Missy Elliott ~ Car Wash

63 Nina Sky ~ Move Ya Body

64 Anastacia ~ Sick And Tired

65 Maroon 5 ~ She Will Be Loved

66 Ja Rule featuring R Kelly & Ashanti ~ Wonderful

67 Goldie Lookin Chain ~ Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do

68 The 411 ~ Dumb

69 Usher ~ Confessions Part II / My Boo

70 Special D ~ Come With Me

71 Kelis featuring Andre 3000 ~ Millionaire

72 Keane ~ Somewhere Only We Know

73 Duncan James & Keedie ~ I Believe My Heart

74 Jamelia ~ See It In A Boy's Eyes

75 Natasha Bedingfield ~ Single

76 The 411 featuring Ghostface Killah ~ On My Knees

77 Franz Ferdinand ~ Take Me Out

78 Gwen Stefani ~ What You Waiting For?

79 Basement Jaxx featuring Lisa Kekaula ~ Good Luck

80 George Michael ~ Amazing

81 D12 ~ How Come

82 Kylie Minogue ~ I Believe In You

83 4-4-2 ~ Come On England

84 Jay Sean featuring The Rishi Rich Project ~ Eyes On You

85 Avril Lavigne ~ My Happy Ending

86 Rachel Stevens ~ More More More

87 Enrique featuring Kelis ~ Not In Love

88 Ultrabeat ~ Feelin' Fine

89 Jennifer Lopez ~ Baby I Love U

90 Green Day ~ American Idiot

91 The Streets ~ Fit But You Know It

92 Sugababes ~ Too Lost In You

93 Victoria Beckham ~ This Groove / Let Your Head Go

94 Ronan Keating ~ She Believes (In Me)

95 Shaznay Lewis ~ Never Felt Like This Before

96 Britney Spears ~ My Prerogative

97 Ashlee Simpson ~ Pieces Of Me

98 Busted ~ Air Hostess

99 Outkast featuring Sleepy Brown ~ The Way You Move

100 The Black Eyed Peas ~ Hey Mama

For the rest of 2004 in music in the real world, please go to this wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_in_British_music_charts

Random Stuff:

Since the standard closing time for a pub is 11 PM, that’s when “Needles” closes. There are after-hours nightclubs, and people probably go to them, but Needles does its last call at 10:45.

Prostitution is not illegal in Britain, but running a brothel is. Basically, a person can sell themselves, but you can’t sell other people. (I just feel like this is useful information.)

Gun Control Laws had banned both automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Rifles were still allowed for those with hunting permits.

Courtesy Millie @theinvisibleboi: 2004 is also the year Facebook launched (although at that point it would have still been restricted to school e-mail accounts) and the Olympics were held in Athens, in case anyone wanted to feel old! (Probably wix would not be allowed to compete...but if anyone wants to create some kind of controversial Olympics history or event for this world, or otherwise alter history to conform to to AU, please feel free!)

Again, please use this wonderful collection of data that Erin has so helpfully provided us with for as general reference, not uncompromising and stone-set facts that you must know, utilize, and memorize! None of us are expert historians and unless you do something really obvious like reference an iPhone or One Direction, we aren’t going to call you out on it -- especially when an “error” might just be a difference between this world and our own. This is just to help you get in the “vibe” of the time period, not information that you’ll be tested on later. So don’t panic, stay loose, and feel free to get creative!

Thanks once more to Erin for putting this together for all of us, and remember that if you have questions about anything else regarding England in 2005, please feel free to message her and she’ll help out as best she can!

[focalwriterworks]

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

After the animated family films Happy Feet (2006), and its 2011 sequel, and 1998’s Babe: Pig in the City, Australian director George Miller returns with a rejuvenated vengeance to his violent, fashionably post-apocalyptic, punk rocking Mad Max origins.

The Story: The leader of a cult-like, waste-land totalitarian dictatorship who calls himself Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne, who also played the villain Toecutter from the original Mad Max (1979)), sets out on a chase across the desert to retrieve a possibly endangered, or hijacked, caravan delivering precious cargo to another tribe.  Rebellious follower Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) instigated this deviation from Joe’s plan, or so it will also look to be an attempt at escaping his, and other tribe leaders’, oppression.  She’s determined to part ways with these weirdoes—this future civilization call them War Boys—as we come to realize, for good, sane reasons, since these men rule with messed up beliefs on how to treat a lady.  Or ladies in general.  And that becomes our movie’s good message of equality.

The Goods: I say tribe because we get the impression cities as we know them don’t exist.  And if we’re following the original trilogy—Mad Max, The Road Warrior (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)—the future is sort of city-less and is “nationed” by rogue societies of nomads jacked on the fumes of desert hotrods and monster muscle cars salvaged from the past generation’s war-torn leftovers.  

Joe’s minions, brain washed on a diet of slavery, starvation and naive god-like imagery of Joe as their messiah, fight one another to serve in Joe’s army of fanatics.  After all, Joe supplies them, and the people of their tribe, with scarce sources of water that only Joe controls.

This is a future of shortages, primarily water shortage, whereas petrol was the resource of Mad Max movies of old.  And speaking of Max (Tom Hardy), a former police officer from when society had police, he may very well be stark raving mad, as the moniker Mad Max implies—another sort of embellishment from past films, as Max’s past haunts him here.  He’s been taken hostage, found roaming the desert in his supercharged, engine-poking-from-the-hood Ford XB Falcon Coupe and is being used for his blood, as sort of an intravenous drip bag, chained down and muzzled to the front chase vehicle driven by Nux (Nicolas Hoult).  Nux is transfusing-in Max’s blood which somehow gives him power.  Possibly a clan ritual, possibly the blood of someone outside of the fold as we later might gleam Joe’s closest followers may be of his own loins.  An incestuous population?  Possibly, though it’s never stated overtly. That’s just how crazy things appear, and as we discover there’s a very maternal matter at hand that makes Joe’s vision of the world pretty darn creepy.

Mad Max: Fury Road is an audacious return to form for George Miller.  I’d say surpasses a return to form and obliterates the film form in general.  This is a simple plot, it’s a journey if you will, sort of like Dante’s Inferno, as we travel through the fires of hell, metaphorically, visually, through a sort of calm purgatory, and back.  Along for the ride is this hero, Max, who as a hero in a movie challenges preconceived ideas of such a character in today’s commercial narrative films.  Because this story is really not about him, his screen time is not the most prevalent, and like the message unfolding Max and Furiosa are equally tasked with hero-ing this film.  While the plot is oversimplified this notion of hero as stumbled upon side-kick (I even mention him late in this review), as hero but not hero, is sort of anti-Hollywood narrative.  It’s one of many sub-structured layers that work on your subconscious as you’re watching the film, telling you over and over that there’s something different about the movie, other than seeing gruesome things you don’t see every day, that says it’s special. Your expectations of what the hero should be doing isn’t happening and surprisingly you’re not confused by it; that this somewhat skewed notion of hero doesn’t disrupt your ability to suspend disbelief and have a good time.  When people say it was a good movie, how do you define it? How do you define good?   We can start by noticing that form like this in Mad Max: Fury Road—structure and definition of character—challenges popular filmmaking traditions, and Miller makes it work for this story.

It helps too that the sheer spectacle of death and destruction by awesome machines and stunts, that puts Fast and Furious and Marvel films to shame here, is also giving this film its wow factor. These are not things you see every day in films and quite honestly haven’t seen since Miller’s Road Warrior, or, in a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark (1982) which whole sequences—acts no less—in Fury Road are reminiscent of, in terms of natives or bad guys storming the stagecoach in western films of old, like John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939).  The whole of Fury Road, beginning and end, could be described as one big “Indiana Jones steals the Ark of the Covenant from the Nazi truck” scene.

And it’s brilliant. Lucasfilm, Disney and Marvel, because of the sheer volume of shots and the velocity at which they appear, with moving cameras no less, pushing in on the action as Joe, the War Boys and their armies threaten our heroes while in movement at outrageous speeds across the desert, should be reason number one for hiring Miller as their resident film professor.  He’s going to teach the Alan Taylors, the Gareth Edwards’ and even the J.J. Abrams, Joe Cornish and Edgar Wrights of the Disney-Marvel-Pixar-Star Wars universe how to make action films; how to give the audience a ride for their money.  No disrespect to Joss Whedon, or Brad Bird, but Miller proves here that he is more akin to the Spielberg school of storyboarding and shot sequencing, and has had to have some kind of mystical walkabout to have returned with this caffeine-induced visual madness.  Also, giving him a greater edge here in the 21st century, is digital imaging.  Visual effects teams like Peter Jackson’s Weta Workshop.  Which by the way, if you see Jackson’s earlier work, in The Frighteners (1996), you’ll see a Miller influence.

The literature, too, of Miller’s work rivals that of J.K. Rowling, in terms of a language, a vocabulary that is born of this strange, science fiction, fantasy world.  For the entire Mad Max trilogy before and beyond Fury Road.  Names like The Bullet Farmer, Cheedo the Fragile, Toast the Knowing (played by Zoe Kravitz), and words, combinations and fragments of the English language pieced together with parts lost over time that sound like the Nadsat slang in Andrew Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange.

And because Miller essentially has a dual hero team in Max and Furiosa, the new franchise limits are endless; films for him, films for her, films for boys and girls, and ancillary projects that tie in the very best of Fast and Furious car and stunt spectacle with a fantasy, science fiction, comic book-like world.  In many, many ways it’s what Marvel Comic films should be.  But Miller has the advantage in that he doesn’t have to incorporate the entire comic book world in each of his films.  He just focuses on the task at hand and gives us an extreme study of that one thing.  And when this version of Mad Max peters out, in Mad Max 5 which after Mad, then Max, then MM8, when they get around to The Maddest Max, they can bring in Mel Gibson, who played the original Max, back for a cameo.

What’s striking here, in contrast to what we can now call Miller’s prequels, is how freaking colorful this film is and how it plays with our senses.  Fiery red, orange and amber of hell and the blue of limbo, and the orange wash of sand that I know is digitally enhanced, like sprays of ocean waves, the sand color gradation incorporates all the colors of the desert, the fire, the sunset horizon, the death and blood we see on screen…it’s real art, and it’s hidden within the code of filmmaking that Miller has a firm grasp on.  Like you see his understanding of silent films; you see him incorporating copious fade-outs, and vignettes, sort of like he did with  Babe: Pig in the City, but to a greater degree in Road Warrior as a P.O.V. technique.  No one really uses wipes or fade-ins, fade-outs like this anymore. And Miller uses them here copiously.

Oscar winning cinematographer John Seale (Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)) also photographs this violent desert macabre opera as lavishly as he did The English Patient (1996), or even Dead Poets Society (1989), but on a wider, hopped-up-on-ecstasy scale. Music by Junkie XL then synthesizes the emotions of anguish and anger from the two camps of characters here, protagonists and antagonists, and marries them to the colors and images with such deftness you think you’re hearing a John Williams score, or Hans Zimmer compositions.  Oh so polished, and professional, and moving.  That moment when you first feel your emotions tingling and you feel sensually moved it’s because of what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing, all in one ornate bag of perfectly popped kaleidoscope popcorn. Skulls in your face.  Fire charring your brows.  Skinheads racing to take you away.  And then string and wind instruments sweeping in to lift you from the hell.

The Flaws: Bringing us back to reality then is this sort of watered down spirit, past the point where the film has already won us over; it is a denouement, or hand-held walk toward an ending that says this is a film for a wide audience.  That in the end, really, if they can sit through Mr. Miller’s Wild Toad Ride, then yes grandma can walk out of the theater feeling touched.  That there is a good cause to all this annihilation.  And there very well is in the premise of this.  That, no, Thelma and Louise were not criminals; that those ladies took their own lives into their hands, just like Butch Cassidy and Sundance before them, and regardless of how things ended for them you felt like they got their point across.

Men’s Rights activists complaining and boycotting Mad Max: Fury Road because of what they think is a feminist agenda?  Is ridiculous.  But that very strong message, as warm as it is, and as good as it is, sort of lends too much wholesomeness to this crazy death race into the desert and back (Death Race 2000 (1975) may have very well been one of the car-themed films that started it all for Miller). So it goes down a little too easy, so what.  It goes soft. That in the end it feels more commercial like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which I wasn’t a fan of at the time, in comparison to the first two.  Will all that really matter when you walk out of the theater splashing water on your face?

The Call:  Spend the ten. Best action film of the year…but also better than most films period because there is a moral significance amongst the mayhem.  A righteous cause for heroes, hinted at in The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome. Mad Max: Fury Road has a fantastic, polished, professional production value that rivals fricken’ Mission: Impossible films and most any big summer blockbuster. And yet it is token Millerism, heightened in a modern sense, in a contemporary sense with a nostalgic twist, as if the wiser, older and more commercially pliable Miller is paying homage to his younger, independent self without losing his newer Babe: Pig in the City, bill-paying, wide release maturity.

Rated R for intense sequences of violence throughout, and for disturbing images. Running time is 2 hours.  

By Jon Lamoreaux.