#◦•● Interactions [Sidney & Faith] ●•◦

[x-theevilinside-x]

Sure, Faith had grown up in a dysfunctional household with an alcoholic mother who often neglected her responsibilities. But instead of succumbing to the same destructive path, Faith had found a way to rise above and break free from that cycle. She greatly admired that quality of Faith and wished she could find a way to do the same. A significant portion of her time was consumed by dwelling on the past, anxiously dreading the possibility of becoming like her mother. That's why she has a tendency to never get too close to anyone she dates.

" Yeah, what do they know anyway..." That was more of a declaration rather than a question. She had hardly any time to relax lately, wherever she went, there was always a camera thrust in her direction. They truly disregarded the emotional distress they were causing her to relive. The invasive interrogations insinuated that this recent murder was somehow linked to her mother's death, as they were both killed in a similarly gruesome manner. It seemed like as long as they obtained their grand story, they didn't care about the harm they inflicted on others in the process. It was disturbing, distasteful, and highly disrespectful to everyone that was affected.

" Why not get both? We got all night, right? " As Faith carried on with her duties, her gaze sweeping across the store. She did raise a valid argument regarding the films. " How about while you finish up here I'll look around and pick a few movies out? I know you like the Lost Boys and it does have a lot of hot guys in it. " Sid grinned. " Besides, I wouldn't exactly consider that to be a horror movie. At least not in my book. " It was more of a Horror/Comedy and she was okay with those.

" Don't worry about it, tonight on me. Once we get back to my place I can order us a few pizzas and Dad left more than enough beer in the fridge before he left for his business trip. By the time he gets back, he'll be too tired to even remember he had any left. " Her eyes landed on the eighties-era section. " Think of anything else we might need and we can stop on the way and pick it up. " From there Sid wiggled on over and sure enough the first movie she snagged was The Lost Boys.

"Nah, it's always the youth that's wrong. Callin' us counter-culture when their culture is practically Pilgrim crap," she said, snapping her gum loudly. Faith knew that one all too well. Problem child, acting out- and yet she's the one deemed a nuisance, not her alcoholic mother. But Sidney didn't need to hear all that- 'sides, Faith was always bitching about her upbringing, despite the fact that she was doing just fine for herself, thank you very much.

Still, she couldn't help but feel the needle spiking over to the red zone with the camera crews and lookie-loos pouring in over Woodsboro, acting like they suddenly could give a damn when they could get a story out of it. But people like her and Sid? They were living it day to day and no one was bothering to check in. People acted like everything was fine here, because they didn't want to find out it really wasn't.

"Comedy's good with me, but if I'm watching for cute guys, I'm thinkin' I like that Westley in Princess Bride," she added. Never mind she'd really rather be touching herself to Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys. Faith scanned in a few other return tapes and then sucked her teeth as she discovered one that hadn't been rewound. "Ugh, what happened to 'be kind, rewind', dillweeds? I'm going to have to make a note on someone's file. And it's Citizen Kane? Sheesh, are you kidding me?"

She smiled up at Sidney and rolled her eyes playfully. "Okay, but what are we doing for food? Pizza's a necessity, right? I can probably sneak a few beers from my mom's place if you're into that -- she probably won't even remember she didn't drink them in the first place."

[deathb1ooms]

sidney + mark for reasons

I love you

neil and maureen prescott weren't strict per se, but you could call them cautious and overprotective. maureen had never told her husband about her past, but she had made it very clear that she didn't trust boys when it came to her daughter. he was very similar in that vein and wasn't very enthusiastic about sidney's wanting to date. despite all of this, a persistent billy loomis got sidney to agree to date him when they were sixteen years old. the first year sidney attempted to take things slow as she heard her mother's pleas to ' just be careful '. after her mother's death, sidney became sex adverse but couldn't explain why. after the reveal of billy's actions, sidney began to understand that it was because she had known deep down that he wasn't who he said he was. for the next two years, sidney went through sex repulsion from the fact that she allowed herself to sleep with the man who'd murdered her mother. she didn't feel taken advantage of in that way, instead feeling angry with herself for not trusting her gut and giving in to prove that she wasn't withholding from him. after meeting derek in college though, sidney again talked herself into being okay with being touched and allowed herself to trust another man again. sidney was intimate with derek without actually going all the way with him, one thing being a lot more important than the other. but in the end, derek ended up a victim solely due to the fact that he cared for her.

all of that to say ― sidney does not trust mark in the beginning.

when she first arrives to the city, after pleasantries and catching up, her first question is to ask dewey if kincaid is to be trusted. the only police officer and man that she has allowed to care for her is dewey and if he had said in that moment ' I don't trust him ' they would not have ended up together. that is a promise. but he had faith in the detective and that immediately meant sidney did. there is clear chemistry between the two as they interact throughout and the way they connected over ' what's your favorite scary movie ' ' my life ' ' mine too ' pointed in a very clear direction.

after the events of scream 3, things get hazy because of course scream 4 does not exist to me.

sidney never would have pursued mark because she would have believed it to be a quick death warrant signed, but mark seems the type to do it. he would call and text, persistent without being creepy, and would be insistent on being able to protect himself from anything and anyone who came for her. it would take a lot of convincing but she would inevitably give in.

once she finally gives in to him, she spends so long scared of the other shoe dropping. it affects their relationship for a long time because she just can't let herself relax. but he's there. always there. ready and willing to understand what she's been through and her fear and apprehension for what could happen. his resilience and stubbornness is what gets them through the rough patches and then when she finally believes that he won't hurt her, and that he agrees to the chance of getting hurt by being with her, she agrees to move in with him and then eventually marry.

after experiencing a shitty high school relationship, the fact that the first man she ever let touch her murdered her friends and mother, her second boyfriend was murdered for being with her and trying to protect her, it took a lot for her to get comfortable with anyone. but something about mark just fit with her so well. he understood her and didn't judge. he didn't blame her for everything that happened, even on the days when she blamed herself. he was strong in the ways that she was weak and weak in the ways she was strong. if nothing else in her life went right, he was the one thing. he saved her life.

[motivesrincidental]

This is just a quickie post to let you guys know who is who and what the basic plot is for the Scream affiliated verse!

Plot: It's the start of the school year before the Woodsboro massacre! I want you guys to have the plots you want so I won't get too detailed but we can definitely do parties and proms but remember this is a horror franchise first and foremost so even though the other students don't know it, Billy and Stu are still highly dangerous as is Faith!

Rules:

All basic rp rules apply, like no god-modding or ship shoving. Don't be an ass and we'll all get along!

This is a canon verse so don't get too crazy with in-verse headcanons! Nothing big at least that would change canon up until now. Obviously you gotta have some headcanons but let's not get too out there. I mean Randy's never gonna be a ladies man loool.

I know this makes no sense with the timeline but for legal purposes all muses are 18 or over except Martha who's an non-shipping npc.

You're not required to interact with everyone in the verse but I hope you do!

I'll try to drop plots and parties or other fun stuff from time to time! And scary stuff too ofc :)

Be nice to each other but if you have a problem with somebody come talk to me we'll figure it out.

Crossovers have to be run by me but stuff from the 90s is your best bet. Stuff with supernatural elements are ok! There just has to be a teen drama side to it or a horror side to it so it fits with Scream.

Don't pressure people to reply. This verse is casual and for fun and they will reply when they can!

Ask me before any big changes or life changing stuff!

Roster: Scream

Billy Loomis: @popularmxnster

Stu Macher: @iwilltotallyprotectyou

Tatum Riley : @vntagetee

Sidney Prescott: @nxtinmymovie sideblog npc until we get a great Sid, written by @thatslayer

Martha Meeks: @martha-meeks sideblog npc written by me

Dewey Riley: tbd in talks with mun

Crossovers: Dawson's Creek

Pacey Witter: @pacywitter

Jen Lindley: @vntagetee

Crossovers: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Faith Lehane: @thatslayer

[sunbentsky-archived]

Hi hello 🤠 I have a solid chunk of my new muse list figured out, but I'm on the fence about a couple of muses, some old that didn't see much interaction and some brand new. Here's the provisory list, with the last two groups being the ones I'm uncertain about. So, please help a fella decide and vote on this poll with which muses you'd like to see. You can select as many as you like, but I'll go with the top choices. Thank you!! 🧡

NOT GOING ANYWHERE EVEN IF I WANTED THEM TO:

Saskia - canon, the witcher

Letho - canon, the witcher

Oles - oc, the witcher

Villen - canon, the witcher

Bogdan - oc, red dead redemption / western

Ecaterina - oc, red dead redemption / western

HAVEN'T DONE A LOT WITH THEM BUT THEY'RE AROUND:

Myr - semi-canon, the witcher

Raymond - oc, fandomless / western

Ursule - oc, fallout: new vegas

Fred - oc, the outer worlds

Legion - canon, mass effect

IDK IF I SHOULD BRING THEM BACK:

Kaska Tomicka - oc, the witcher | dwarf, artist, fabric dyer, painter, art and literary forger

Mercer - oc, fandomless | hacker, DYI bio enthusiast, biopunk, organ harvester

Sidney - oc, fandomless | salvage diver, pirate, fence, con artist, ordinary thief, the soul of a magpie

Felix Millstone - canon, the outer worlds | dockhand, rebel without a cause, big-time dreamer, sportsball fan

Jolly Shepard - oc, mass effect | lieutenant-commander, spectre, butcher of torfan, savior of the fuckin' galaxy, overworked, dead woman walking

Nika Kader - oc, dragon age | dwarf, ex-general of orzammar's army, ex-queen consort to king endrin aeducan, mother of prince bhelen aeducan, would-be usurper, grey warden, warden-commander of ferelden

Rory Amell - oc, dragon age | human but barely so, blood mage, necromancer, goth, mortalitasi, arch-mistress of the mourn watch, sometimes the hero of ferelden

NEW FACES / POTENTIAL ADDITIONS:

Mike Haywood - oc, far cry 5 | musician and composer, member of project at eden's gate, devoted to faith, angel "herder" and "mc" (he's in charge of the music which controls faith's angels), almost an angel himself

Maddie Kouvatsou - oc, far cry 5 | singer and bass player, repentant sinner (allegedly), ex-member of project at eden's gate, one of the young women who took on the mantle of "faith seed" before rachel jessop, deemed unfit for the role

Sinclair Stoyanov - oc, far cry 5 | prizefighter, boxer, animal liberation front activist,  mama's boy, eden's gate brawler, not a chosen, not a vip, just some guy, although he'd appreciate the promotion, ironically, vegan

Will Douglas - oc, fandomless | zoologist (herpetologist), gator wrangler, wildlife rehabilitator, guitar player, rowdy cowboy without a horse

Arthur Morgan - canon, red dead redemption | you know him, we all know him

[autolenaphilia]

Granada Holmes (series review)

The 1984-1994 Granada series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes are regarded by fans as a milestone among the many adaptations of Sherlock Holmes that were made. Brett is said to be “the definitive Holmes”. And I would largely agree with that, despite it not being my favourite version, and it having some flaws and weak episodes, especially as the series went on.

The first thing that set this show apart is that it went back to the original stories and adapted those. Now, it isn’t the first version to do so, as some people (including Brett, apparently) claim. The 1920s silent film series with Eille Norwood was fairly canon accurate, and the 1960s BBC tv series with Douglas Wilmer and Peter Cushing also followed the canon. There is also the 1979-1986 Soviet Russian series with Vasily Livanov. And on radio you have more canonical dramatizations, such as the British John Gielgud 1950s series and the BBC Carleton Hobbs series from the 50s and 60s. People have an unfortunate tendency to ignore radio in favour of screen adaptations.

Still, it must be granted that Granada at its best is probably the supreme screen adaptation of the canon. The production values and acting are far superior to what the 60s BBC tv series had.

Jeremy Brett was a revolution in Holmes performances. The previous era defining Holmes, Basil Rathbone, as great as he was, made Holmes into too much of a straightforward hero. Brett brought back the eccentricities (including the drug use), the nervous energy and the character’s general moodiness and emotionality that was there in the text.

Holmes in the Granada series was ultimately on the side of good and a benevolent figure (if occasionally rude), but fictional justice perhaps had never an odder champion. He did everything from sitting weirdly, jumping over couches to taking drugs. Holmes felt neurodiverse, and indeed Brett used his own experiences with bipolar disorder in the performance.  And it was true to canon, in a way we seldom had seen on screen before.

Jeremy Brett’s performance as Holmes is extremely influential and often imitated by later screen adaptations, but has never been surpassed. The portrayal of Holmes in BBC Sherlock and the movies with Robert Downey Jr. is clearly inspired by Brett’s nervy eccentric genius Holmes, but ends up a bad parody. Holmes in the Granada series can like his canon counterpart occasionally be rude or careless towards other, but it was lapses, not a general trend. They seemed to be caused by an eccentric brain on another wavelength from the people around him, rather than any malevolence. Holmes in BBC Sherlock is a male nerd wish-fulfilment fantasy, where the character’s eccentric genius are allowed to excuse any crimes.

At its height, Brett’s Holmes is an awe-inspiring performance, with the actor pouring everything of his skill and energy into it. You could criticize it as melodramatic over-acting, but it makes for great viewing and fits the man who said “I never can resist a touch of the dramatic”.

The Granada series gets much credit for rehabilitating the role of Watson. Both of the actors playing him depicted as very much intelligent and capable. It is somewhat overstated of course, the turning away from the comedic figure Nigel Bruce portrayed started already with Andre Morell’s Watson in the 1959 Hammer Hound of the Baskervilles. Still, the Watson depicted by the Granada series is still one of the show’s chief draws.

The series had a switch in the actors playing Watson, with David Burke portraying him in the first two seasons of 13 episodes  and The Empty House featuring Holmes return to a Watson portrayed by Edward Hardwicke. And honestly it is hard to choose between them, because they are both great and there is a consistency in the writing that makes them feel like the same basic character. 

Burke’s Watson comes across as younger and more energetic of the two actors and has perhaps the better comedic dynamic with Holmes. He is perhaps my pick, as despite his actual age while playing the part, he feels closer to the young Watson of the canon.

But that is no serious slight against Hardwicke’s performance, which is still first-rate. Hardwicke’s Watson feels older, despite the difference in age between the actors being but a few years. The performance is also defined by an effortless charm and warmth, giving Watson an avuncular aura. But Watson is not at all infirm and is still an intelligent medical man and an experienced soldier, ever ready with his revolver.

An interesting change from the Canonical stories is that Watson never gets married and moves out of Baker Street. The Sign of the Four features Mary Morstan, but at the end she walks out of the story without any romance between her and Doctor Watson. The reason this was done, is that it simplifies the set-up of the stories. With Watson in 221B, he is always on hand to join Holmes. No need for a scene at the beginning of Holmes taking Watson away from wife and practice. Also it saves them keeping track of when Watson was married or not, something that Conan Doyle himself got into a serious continuity tangle about.

As producer Michael Cox (quoted in David Stuart Davies’s book Starring Sherlock Holmes)  noted, Conan Doyle himself probably regretted marrying off Watson, considering The Empty House has Watson suffering from a “sad bereavement” and then moving back in with Holmes. So it is a very much acceptable deviation from canon.

It also frees the writers to focus on the most important relationship in the canon: the friendship between Holmes and Watson. The canon has been called “a textbook of friendship” by Christopher Morley, and the chemistry and relationship between Holmes and Watson is vitally important to any adaptation. And that aspect of the stories is wonderfully conveyed here, with both actors playing Watson working together with Brett as Holmes well to convey the odd but close friendship between the two men.

Rosalie Williams plays Mrs. Hudson, and she is excellent in the role. The Granada series has a lot of little scenes of Mrs. Hudson added into the canonical cases, and they work excellently, giving her more of a presence. Many of them are comedic, making jokes about how a difficult and eccentric lodger Holmes is, but there is a clear undercurrent of affection throughout their interactions.

The recurring cast members include Charles Gray as Mycroft Holmes and Colin Jeavons as Inspector Lestrade.

 Gray as Mycroft is close to ideal, fitting the character of the overweight, lazy and intelligent canon character perfectly. He was such a good fit for the role that he had actually earlier played the part in the film adaptation of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution.

Jeavons fit the part of Lestrade and his acting is superb, capable of showing the full extent of Lestrade’s character, having both smug over-confidence at times, yet also having genuine respect and affection for Holmes.

The acting skills of the actors playing characters who only appear in one episode is also generally very high. And that is part of the general high quality of execution the show had for most of its run. The period sets and the directing was of a similar high standard. The music by Patrick Gowers is excellent, and I suggest any fan take a listen to this Youtube playlist of his soundtrack.

The scripts are quite excellent, for the most part sticking close to the Conan Doyle stories. Of course there are always infidelities here and there, and sometimes the episode would go on non-canonical tangents.

Usually it was to make the story work better on screen. For example, the villains in The Greek Interpreter escape from Holmes and Watson, ending up being killed “off-screen” as it were. So the Granada version of the same tale has a non-canonical ending of Holmes, Watson and Mycroft confronting the villains on a train, something that works rather well. Another example is The Musgrave Ritual which entirely ditches the original story’s framing device of Holmes telling Watson the story of an early case of his. In the Granada version Watson is with Holmes on this case, and it works better that way.

And with all of these elements working together, for most of its run, the Granada series is perhaps the definitive screen adaptation of Sherlock Holmes. The first four seasons of 50 minute episodes, which were broadcast under the titles of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Return of Sherlock Holmes from 1984-1988 plus the feature length adaptation of The Sign of Four are pretty much all great. It went from strength to strength, consistently making very well-made adaptations of the canon.

The Sign of Four is probably a good pick for Granada’s peak, due to its epic nature. And it is definitely the best of the five feature-length films they did. Outside of leaving out any romance between John and Mary, the film is faithful to the book, although it goes too far in that direction in keeping in the racism of the story. But it also has all of the book’s virtues as a story too, and fine acting from Brett, Hardwicke, and John Thaw as Jonathan Small make for an enjoyable viewing experience.

There was however a decline in the series later years. The lynchpin of the series was Jeremy Brett, and his health began to seriously fail him by 1987, leading to his death in 199 (my source of information on Brett’s health decline and general behind the scenes things is mostly Davies’s book Starring Sherlock Holmes) Once lean and looking remarkably like the Sidney Paget illustrations of Holmes, his conflicting medications for his heart problems and bipolar disorder caused him to retain water and bloat, causing him to no longer look like the lean figure he once was. His looks wasn’t really the problem, what was however was that his health problems drained him of the energy that he once was able to put it into his performance, creating through no fault of his own a more lethargic and weaker Holmes.

There was also a growing lack of care shown towards the series by Granada itself. The budgets began to shrink by 1988, and while the series looked good for the most part, it did impact the show.

Probably the first disappointing episode is the double-length adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles from 1988. You would expect the Granada series, with their excellent leads and excellent track record up to this point, to create the definitive version of this often-filmed story, but it just isn’t. It isn’t bad, but it is ultimately mediocre in a way that is hard to pinpoint. My guess is that the direction and cinematography doesn’t manage to create the suspense the story needs, resulting in a slow-paced and slightly boring experience.

It also ends up show-casing the problems the show would now begin to have, with the production crew not having the money to do location shooting on Dartmoor and Brett obviously showing the signs of his failing health.

The Hound film was followed by a season of six 50-minute length episodes, called The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes. And these were mostly fine, considering the circumstances. The budget had been reduced compared to earlier seasons and you could tell the writers sometimes lacked a first-rate canonical story to adapt.

There were one or two weaker episodes, but those were due to the original story being weak. For example, the season ended with a faithful adaptation of The Creeping Man and it is as good and well-made a tv adaptation you could ever hope to make with such a bizarre plot. The result is of course pure camp, but so is the original story. When the show had a good Conan Doyle story to adapt, like The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Problem of Thor Bridge or The Illustrious Client, the results are indeed up to the standards of its past.

The real nadir of the series came later, however, when in 1992-93 the series decided to do three double-length episodes. Granada wanted the Holmes series to copy the success of Inspector Morse and its 100 minute tv film format. The problem was the show would still adapt Conan Doyle’s short stories into a format that was far too long for them. So the scriptwriters had to pad the stories out with their own inventions.

This sort of worked for the first film of these three films, The Master Blackmailer. It was based on Charles Augustus Milverton, which is one of the shortest stories in the canon, but one of the most rich in dramatic potential. Writer Jeremy Paul’s script decided to show in detail what is merely mentioned in the story, such as Milverton blackmailing people and Holmes courting Milverton’s maid in order to gain access to his home. The end result works, it is somewhat slow-paced but is ultimately coherent and at its best feels like you are watching the backstory to the canonical events.

The same can’t be said for the second and third of these films, The Last Vampyre and The Eligible Bachelor. The Last Vampyre is an almost completely incoherent non-adaptation of The Sussex Vampire, where elements from the canonical story probably make up less than 5% of the resulting film. There is an attempt to create intrigue and suspense around the original character Stockton, but the film is so vague about what he is and what threat he poses that the resulting film makes no sense.

The Eligible Bachelor is a similar adaptation of The Noble Bachelor, where the canonical story elements that remain is entirely subsided by a new bizarre plot where Lord St. Simon is now a ruthless Bluebeard-like villain. It is slightly better than The Last Vampyre, simply because the villain here poses an identifiable and somewhat coherent threat. Still, the film has to pad things out with bizarre subplots, like Holmes having prophetic dreams, which ultimately doesn’t lead anywhere.

Wisely, the series returned to the 50 minute format for the last season of six episodes, which aired in 1994, under the name of “he Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. It was with this season Jeremy Brett’s health problems and the lower budgets really began to seriously affect the show. Brett was in a bad state at this point, and the description of the production in Davies’s book makes for sad reading.

During the filming of one episode in this season, The Three Gables, he had to use a wheelchair between takes and supplementary oxygen to ease his breathing. His performance is naturally lacking in the energy he once had, but the fact it is a performance at all is testament to his commitment. The Three Gables is actually one of the better episodes of this season, as it actually manages to improve on one of the weakest stories in the canon.

Edward Hardwicke was unavailable to film The Golden Pince-nez, and they couldn’t re-schedule the shooting dates (which I suspect was a budget issue). So the writer wrote out Watson and replaced him in the role of Sherlock’s assistant with Mycroft, since Charles Gray was available. The result is well-made otherwise, with guest stars Frank Finlay and Anna Carteret giving great performances, but the lack of Watson is sorely felt. It is fun to see Charles Gray’s Mycroft again, but it feels contrary to his character to accompany his brother like this.

And before he could film The Mazarin Stone,  Brett’s health gave out on him and he was hospitalized. Again Charles Gray was called in by the producer to play Mycroft as a substitute. It is nice to see Mycroft for a fourth time, but Mycroft doing this doesn’t feel true to his character. And this episode is one of the weakest in the series, due to the script. Not that I blame the scriptwriter too much, The Mazarin Stone is one of the worst stories in the canon. The efforts to improve on the story by combining it with another weak story  The Three Garridebs don’t at all manage to rescue it.

However, there are still some rather good episodes in this season . The Red Circle is good and The last ever episode of the series, The Cardboard box manages to close out the series on a good if dark note.

Jeremy Brett died in 1995 due to heart failure, ending all hope of any future series.

I might have delved too much on the series failures in this essay. Because all of that is outweighed by the consistent high quality the series managed to achieve in the first four seasons, and with a few failures, still managed to sometimes achieve again in the later ones. Those adaptations are perhaps the peak of Holmes on screen.

It is not my favourite adaptation, that is the BBC radio drama versions made starring Clive Merrison as Holmes from 1989 to 2010. Those were just as consistently good, with Merrison and Williams/Sachs as Holmes and Watson being on the same general level as Brett and Burke/Hardwicke as performances. In fact, the BBC version is more consistent, never going off the rails as the Granada version sometimes, and it actually managed to achieve the goal Brett had hoped for: adapting every canonical story.

Still that doesn’t take away from Granada’s great achievement in adapting the Holmes stories with such quality. It is an achievement that later movie and tv adaptations haven’t been able to surpass.

[foxofsunholt]

ROs reaction if in the middle of one of their travels the party rescue a (very cute) baby and have no other choice to care for it until they can leave the baby in the next city (some weeks of travel until they get there)

Adelaide: That scene from Wonder Woman (2017) when Diana sees a baby and just goes “A BABY!” Though she’s never actually cared for one, but she’s excited to help and learn! The baby: babbling nonsense. Adelaide: taking notes “you’re so wise, little one”. Would completely forget she’s on a journey to save the world, now it’s just about this baby.

Camille: “get this thing away from me” tried to interact with the baby once and made it cry so now she stays 10 feet away from it. She uses her magic to create a warm bed to lull the baby into sleep, but other than that she tries her best to interact with it the least.

Mars: Somehow he’s got a baby carrier and he’s walking around like that trying to fight off bandits with the baby strapped to his chest until the more sensible members of the group take the child away from him. Like Camille, he’s awkward around the baby but at least he tries! Speaks to the baby like they’re a fully grown adult, overly concerned about the child’s safety (despite being the same person who tried to fight a group of bandits with the baby on his back asjhdkas)

Sidney: Having been around babies before and even helped take car of a few, he knows what he’s doing. Sings the baby lullabies, makes bird noises when he’s feeding it. He’s the best with the baby, and probably the primary caretaker of it until they reach the next city. Every time the baby cries with one of the other ROs, they just hand it to Sidney

Faith: Loves kids, not so great with babies. Baby: cries. Faith: cheers bro I’ll drink to that. Will use the baby to get more out of people “Oh! Look at me! I’m a poor hot single mother who is sexy! Spare a coin!” Likely is teaching the baby how to run street scams

Yoon: Constantly suggests they name the child something very bizarre “this is soup” “let’s call him....pestilence” when the baby cries he hands them a gold coin to stop. “babies can have wine...can’t they?” Like Camille, he tries to spend the least time with the baby, but is weirdly fond of it “I will miss you....cream of wheat”

[roseate7]

(my no good utterly pretentious reaction to Geno’s interview in Russian wherein he expresses himself in a way we non-Russian-speaking fans rarely get to see and I go into an absolute asjafjsaghjas)

I just think about how lonely Geno has been in with such a hostile spotlight so young, the kind of thing I haven’t seen since the first defectors. Growing and maturing and then attending a draft alongside another Russian phenom bred to be lauded along his journey from league to league, by comparison Geno’s own hype and success ended up on a journey that paralleled those first Russian pioneers to NHL hockey more than any other player of his generation. In particular, a stark almost flip-opposite to the one his fellow draft alumnus experienced.

The NHL that Geno had begun to dream about joining in his teens had developed a different relationship to Russian players since his very early childhood. It was a stage set almost perfectly for the star rising elsewhere who would one day become The Russian Superstar in commercial terms and popularity that not even the Russian greats before him had managed to be. What’s relevant in particular is that Ove is famously known as an un-Russian type player, and was made so more or less by design. His destiny was patently to go out and “conquer” (to use his and his press’ patter) the NHL. His playing style is much more that of a North American power forward and the C*pitals’ hierarchy that places his scoring chances as top priority is the perfect environment for his style to flourish. He is the THE superstar, even having been mentored by Fedorov during his tenure with Washington. All and sundry around Ove have been driven toward his accomplishments. (Fed himself called Ove’s style not at all typical for a Russian. Ove’s falling out with his Russian coach at Sochi in some part to this.) Btw I know tumblr tends to be hyper sensitive and reactionary about this kind of thing, so just a reminder that these are facts that are *constantly* corroborated every year by every sports pundit and player, including respected colleagues and friends of Ove’s. The overwhelming majority of C*ps fans, and the entirety of the franchise, are perfectly happy with it! And thanks to getting a Cup into the bargain, very proud to continue it. To paraphrase him, if it never breaks then don’t “fix” it!

I bring it up with regards to How Very Russian Indeed Geno is by contrast, and now especially amid the many Ov*chkin-ized Russian NHLers. It marks a turning point in how Russian players in the NHL are presented and interact.

Geno in no small way represents the Old Gods. He’s got far more in common with Alexander Nevsky than Alexander Ov*chkin, if I can be allowed to be so pretentious and very historically loose. His choice to keep the A on another C’s team rather than seek out his own personal superstardom elsewhere - which would absolutely have been the parallel to Ove’s, as their close draft class status has proven repeatedly through the years - is Russian to the core. The desire to reflect on his own position in a club in terms of broader, collective success is - albeit to a North American anyway! - achingly Russian.

The many old world fables his story resonates with come right out of Russian stories: rags-to-riches; daring defection from his home country; from “jewel in the crown” of home to persecution as a perceived traitor; dramatic arrival to his new foreign city, including the first meeting with the young phenom he had followed since their childhood; the cruel and abrupt challenge of faith in himself at his first appearance on NHL ice; from cultural and linguistic isolation to half of a dual leadership with one of hockey’s greatest players on a three-time Cup winning team. It’s all there in fascinating, ever-revealing detail.

The Russian Five were my personal fascination when I was a teen early in my hockey fan days and the mention of them in this interview reminds me of how, in just one player, I have seen that same Old Russian magic revive again. The fierce loyalty to the new guard he belongs to but that unmistakable, slightly haunted aura of traveling with his heritage in everything he does is a lot more of what I was used to seeing in Russian NHLers than the more casual, comfortable relationships Russian players have with North American media and fans nowadays. I know we all have to be cautious about the Russian Bear analogies, especially as they relate to the media- and opposition-feeding frenzy that seeks to vilify him as having some sort of pathological level of rage and lack of control. Especially when spoken at the same time as North American players with blatant anger issues are coddled into fantasies of ‘simply doing their job’ good guys or flat out victims themselves. Geno has pride and a hockey temper, but it only looks out of proportion to the average pride and pugilism of any other player targeted for aggression, by those who don’t feel that he’s presenting himself in a way that is palatable to them. Most modern Russian NHLers return home and relax into very different personalities than the big smiles, laugh-along, don’t-talk-about-anything-serious versions of themselves that keep NW fans and media happy. Even if they find themselves in the box far more often or just as much as Geno, if the public already considers them a friend then much is forgiven. No armchair psychology of “anger issues” needed, no matter how bad the high stick or how many PIM. (and I won’t even get started on who ends up staying on referees radars more often than others, because it absolutely happens but most folks stay in denial unless it serves their own purpose)

As for the nature of his pride, Geno himself says that staying on a team he believes in is worth more than his own C. It’s worth taking a cut in money to help cap space. It’s worth being on the second line, and using his intelligence and vision to work with who he’s given to form his own leadership. And that leadership becoming seen by all as an equal and vital part of the captaincy - no “alternate”. With any other captaincy than Sid’s, Geno would absolutely have left to find his own rightful dominion. But for the grace of Sid being born and made with “hockey is a team-first and team-only effort” as his defining characteristic, Pittsburgh would have lost 71 and seen him become number one elsewhere… and very likely winning his own Cups. Geno’s loyalty to the city and franchise does not at all end or limit itself to Sid, but it absolutely begins with him. One superstar’s personality kept the other on his team, and that other’s personality is why he stayed on the other’s.

The Russian Five felt like “fish put back in the water” when put together. Geno has used his own tenacity, bravery and ingenuity as a generational superstar to find a swift current with that most Canadian of archetypes, Sidney Crosby. The combined effort is perfectly fluid, perfectly aligned, with not even a faint whisper of friction or disturbance in thirteen years. There have been and will continue to be many dynamic duos in hockey: there’s a reason why this one is called unique. They’re both natural born captains and each chasing each other within a delicate margin along the record books. They absolutely work well together on the ice, but genuinely operate best when leading their own lines. Maybe psychologically there’s an argument about how much they lean on each other, but I think it’s much more to their credit to point out that Geno found himself in familiar waters with a fellow leader who shares exactly the same principles as him. Side by side, and more than once proving capable of taking the team on their own back when one is out injured.

It’s a big part of why a major club like Pittsburgh has made the often baffling decisions throughout these thirteen years to take on hard-luck cases or players nearing the back end of their careers. A team whose leadership is founded and successful on load-sharing and listening is the perfect environment for players who still have the fight and/or the skill but who have lost their way. Or perhaps aged out of their old club. All you have to do is your best and the Pens will try to find you. But if you want to be the superstar or leap ahead of the guys who’ve done more time, you won’t find any sympathy in Crosby and Malkin.

And it’s just so poetic that Geno’s story, told by himself so beautifully by himself in this interview, is one of heart and good faith overcoming adversity after adversity. And that he did it by making wise decisions for himself, while holding himself unnervingly well in response to his own feelings of guilt and responsibility. And how his success in Pittsburgh has been to make the smart decision about staying with a club because of his faith in it. And that his personal successes and pride are the result of endurance and patience rather than a succession of fireworks, or even getting the credit he deserves.

Sid absolutely represents the ‘anything is possible through hard work’ and the more nurturing side of the Pens’ leadership. But Geno is the steely resolve and quiet rumble leading to powerful force that bears aloft even unlikely rosters to their absolute best.

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(asterisks and spelling changes used because I don’t know how tumblr searches tags anymore and I’m being careful - if you still somehow found this and get huffy about what I said wrt Ove then swallow it down and move along. Nothing I said is untrue or considered an insult even by Caps hockey pundits. It’s all factual and highly relevant in terms of how NHL hockey has changed for Russian players. Don’t blame me for watching hockey for decades and stating what absolutely everyone else does, including the Caps coaching and management! Their style is not under my control lol.)

[theonceoverthinker]

OUAT 4X01 - A Tale of Two Sisters

Awww! The Frozen Arc! It’ll be ICE to see it again!

Let’s hope my review is better than my puns! Give it a read below the cut, if you are so kind!

Main Takeaways

Past

I can’t get over how GOOD the casting and chemistry was for the Frozen cast. I’m partially convinced that Disney has machines that construct people from their CG counterparts! XD I feel like the story fro this episode is perfectly good. This segment really just had to show off that it understood the Frozen cast and delivered a story that allowed for the story to continue in an engaging way, and I think they did a pretty solid job of it!

Present

”Your intentions don’t matter.” While this phrase is often a good point in terms of actions mattering more than intentions, it’s not here. While yes, I know that this ends up being Zelena, at the time, Emma was saving an innocent woman. I get that Regina’s upset and it makes sense for her character to be upset in this situation, This is a hard arc to watch. That said, I do like that Emma stands her ground here. While she’s sorry she caused Regina pain, she won’t apologize for sparing Marian. “That was the person I was, not the person I am.” But the thing is, you still have to answer for the sins of the person you were. The harm she caused didn’t go away because you’ve done better. It honestly frustrates me to see Regina deflecting back to this aspect of her character. That said, as I’m often one to defend Emma from criticisms against her walls popping up all the time, I want to make the effort to do the same for Regina. And I do think that not blaming others for her mistakes is the general trajectory of her character, and this arc is interesting because we see a more redeemed Regina put in a similar situation to the very actions that made her The Evil Queen to begin with. The immediate show of growth honestly helps here too. It’s clear by the end of the episode that Regina won’t go back to her old ways, and the engaging part now is how she reconnects with the rest of the mains.

I gotta say, I remember LOVING the initial idea of Marian coming back to life and I still do in the universe where more had been done with it. So much of Storybrooke has forgiven Regina because they’ve seen her take on Pan’s Curse and Zelena, but here comes someone who not only hasn’t seen this redemption, but has a strong connection to Regina’s boyfriend. The conflict there just SCREAMS of potential for all involved. Marian’s got a strong personality, Regina would get to truly prove her redemption to someone with no faith in her, and Robin would get a more intricate conflict and potential for deeper characterization that could contribute to him growing as a member of the main cast. And...nothing like that really happened. I think watching this episode tends to open up old wounds for me because this was an arc that I really looked forward to getting into the meat of and because the meat amounted to that found on a chicken’s foot, I can’t say that I’m that happy.

Basically every line at Neal’s grave had me filled with feels! What a beautiful and touching goodbye from Rumple to his son. It’s such a powerful moment. When it comes to Rumple this episode, they set him up so much to make the ultimate change just to not. Now, in the context of the episode as a vacuum, that’s fine and is a pretty classic Once-y twist. However, I feel like in the service of the arc as a whole, it would’ve been better maybe to show more of the reasons why the Sorcerer’s Hat was so tempting, and if not here, then in another episode. The closest we’ll get is Rumple’s speech to Regina in “Heroes and Villains,” which merely touches upon the effects of dying, being a slave at Zelena’s hands for a year, and losing Bae. And look, I like his declination back to villainy for that reason. Bae was his moral compass -- the person who had just enough doubt and love for Rumple that he would be able to keep Rumple on the path of good just with his willpower and lack of full trust -- and losing him at the end of what amounts to a torture conga is the kind of thing that would cause him to get more slippery with his morals. Belle in certain contexts can be easy to fool and I can see those small rationalizations build up in a way that would match up with the following arc.

”I know you, cause you’re like me.” Not to get too shippy, but I feel like the interaction between Robin and Regina in the office where Robin points out their similarities is a character point that should’ve been given more focus. Yes, from an abstract point of view, Regina and Robin are similar because they used to do villainous things, whereas Robin was a thief, Regina murdered, and that’s an entirely different league of villainy. And I swear I’m not trying to put Regina down here, but I think that difference is one that should be a focal point of their dynamic. Robin went through a redemption arc of his own in a way, and seeing him try to pass on those tactics and fail because they’re not compatible with Regina’s brand of villainy and grow from that to have a better understanding of Regina and take on a different approach to helping her. Getting into the meat of that and establishing those differences could’ve made them stronger for me.

I hate the way “monster” is used in this episode. The context of the episode frames “monster” as something undeserved being thrust upon someone, applying to Regina and Elsa. However, in the context of the episode, Regina’s being called a “monster” by Marian, someone whose most recent memory of Regina is saying that she’ll be happy with her head upon a spike and Marshmallow is being called the monster in Elsa’s case, though she attributes that as an extension of herself while Marshmallow is literally attacking a town. Just...this isn’t like The Beast being called a monster when he’s not attacking anyone and I don’t feel like the framing was entirely there for it. THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, I do think the retraction of “monster” towards Regina was well deserved! She saved Marian, even with all of that rage in her heart and that’s pretty freakin’ great!

Stream of Consciousness Thoughts

-This opening may have one of the most fantastically created storm. Look at the water and the panic of the crew as they try to fight it off!

-So while I don’t blame anyone from being a little nervous at the possibility of Regina going evil again (She spent half of the scene talking about how being a hero screwed her over and she does try to plot to kill Marian with Sidney in the vault), props to Henry for his faith in her!

-Dab, Elsa! Dab!

-”And once more, I’ve started it with a lie.” That was a really poorly-worded segue. He wasn’t talking about lying in the previous part of that speech and it’s not like he brought up lying about Milah’s “death.” It’s just one line, but it could’ve been better constructed.

-”I’ll spend my life repaying you for that.” Well, you’re not wrong.

-Damn, there’s a really interesting contrast in Robin and Regina’s scenes in the office between the finale and here. In the finale, they were on the floor, relaxed, and touching whereas here, they’re sitting on the couch, stiff as boards, and the distance between them looks more like a chasm.

-Okay! Watching this episode after the auction and seeing everything everyone bid on is hysterical!

-As we’re spending a lot of time in the mayor’s office, I’ve got to say that I LOVE the interior design here. I love the black and white that allows for the colors (Especially the reds) to pop against it. I love the forest-like wallpaper. It’s just so pretty!

-I gotta say, I’m really happy seeing Sidney again. The actor just rocks!

-Breaking and entering honeymoon? Sign me the fuck up! :D

-I need a map of Storybrooke SO badly. For a while, I HC’d the mansion as being closer to the town line, but I guess it’s closer to the docks? Thoughts?

-I gotta say, I think it’s a little dumb having Rumple be able to stop people in their tracks like that and have it only happen again like one or two times.

-Speaking of the auction, kind of weird that the Sorcerer’s Hat never came up in it.

-I really like how The Enchanted Forest was given an actual name. It’s not that I don’t like calling it The Enchanted Forest, but calling it Misthaven makes it feel more like a place with a history and a life to it rather than just...a place.

-”I need my beauty sleep.” Woowww, Pabbie. Way to leave in the rudest fucking way ever! Like, I’m bored, byeee! Your in-laws are there, clearly upset about this! Put in some more fucking effort!

-Anna, I don’t think Elsa’s “making excuses” when she’s the queen and can’t abandon her country!

-One of my favorite jokes that’s so underrated is how the “DO NOT BLOCK GATE EVER” fence just gets fucking stepped over! XD

-That snowman doesn’t even look scared! He just looks annoyed! Someone, make this dude a tiara!

-Nathaniel--I mean Kristoph! It’s you! ...I think watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend might have made it impossible for me to fully immerse myself into this character.

-Fuck yeah, Marian! Going in for the fight! ...I do wonder. I guess had Regina not decided to save her, Zelena would’ve revealed herself in order to not die.

-”I don’t know what that [Netflix] is but sure.” I love this line so much!

-”Unless...another monster appears and kills me.” ...Welcome to your life, ma boy.

-I’d like to think that during that pause when Sidney wouldn’t appear, he was talking to Ingrid and plotting.

-Damn, Belle! You pull that off! Or rather, I suppose it was pulled off of you! ;)

-RUMPLE AND HIS SEXY ASS ARMS! WE HAVE RUMPLE AND HIS SEXY ASS ARMS! NOT A DRILL.

-...Anna, that’s not how you wear a necklace!

Favorite Dynamic

Emma and Regina. You would think given how I really don’t like what’s to come that this episode would’ve done no favors for me, but honestly, I love Emma and Regina’s dynamic here! As I said before, while I roll my eyes at a lot of the lines given to Regina here, I do think it makes absolute perfect sense -- not deserved, but make sense -- for Regina to be angry at Emma. And Emma is adamant that she doesn’t regret saving her life, but still feels terrible that Regina lost Robin in the process. It’s a very nuanced aspect of this conflict. I also feel like their reactions to their fight were really well written. Emma is trying to live up to both her job as the Savior and her resolve to fight against her walls by trying to find Regina to talk while Regina’s more reserved character aspects kick into high gear and she slinks back to think on the matter.

Writer

Adam and Eddy are our main guys today, as per usual with season openers and they did a great job! In a vacuum, so much of this story is great and sets up a lot of the conflict and mystery of the next half season. And while the rest of the half season doesn’t hit bullseye at every point, they do succeed more often than they don’t.

Rating

9/10. This episode is a little hard to watch in hindsight because of the potential of some things that just really didn’t pan out, BUT within the context of this episode, the initial quality of these arcs is so present and that’s what this review is mostly here to judge. While not balanced in the sense of giving everyone something to do, I do think that there was a perfect balance of character usage. Everyone placement and actions feel right and appropriate for their characters. Finally, I know I’m in the minority, but I LOVE the Frozen cast. They added a nice bit of charm to the episode and made a very memorable first impression.

Flip My Ship - The Home of All Things “Shippy Goodness”

Captain Swan - I really like the CS plot here. Romance, especially after Neal’s death, isn’t the easiest thing for her and especially given what just happened with Regina, she doesn’t want to let herself be happy, but Killian’s making sure that she gives herself that chance. So, also, I always grinned when I saw Emma fall right on top of Killian. I love when that happens with romantic pairings! And their kiss is just fantastic here! Emma is still very much interested and she feels guilty putting Killian on the side while she deals with her feelings and circumstances.

Rumbelle - I freakin’ love the breaking and entering honeymoon! RUMBELLE PORN! Just...that dance. That music. Robert Carlyle’s smile. My only regret is that we had to sacrifice the awesome outfits Rumple were already wearing (Though they make it up later in the bedroom! ;) ) AND SPEAKING OF THE BEDROOM. Yeah, Belle looks pretty freakin’ satisfied with whatever kinky shit they just got up to!

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Hey everyone! So, I altered the review style a little bit. I don’t know whether or not I’ll stick with this or return to the old format, but I feel like this was a better way to condense my thoughts. The Season 3 Overview will be posted...at some point, tbh. I don’t know why, but it is really hard to write right now and since I’m already behind, I figured that I’ll just jump into Season 4!

Thanks to the fabulous folks at @watchingfairytales and to my badass boss of a friend @daensarah! Finally, thank you to my loyal readers! Happy holidays to you all!!!

Season 3 Total (9/230)

Writer Scores: Adam and Eddy: (9/60)

*Links to the rest of my rewatch will no longer be provided. They take posts with links outside of searches and I spend way too much time on these reviews to not give them that kind of exposure. Sorry for the inconvenience, but they still can be found on my page under Operation Rewatch.

[reviewdoctorwho]

Marco Polo- All the Splendor Telesnaps Can Display

This is one of my favorite First Doctor serials, which is saying something since none of it actually exists. For those of you who aren’t aware, back in the 60s and 70s the BBC (among other channels) wiped a metric ton of master videotapes from many TV series, Doctor Who included. Since the First and Second Doctors were filmed exclusively onto videotapes, it meant that every one of their master copies were destroyed forever. Over time people have found copies of episodes around the world, artifacts left over from old BBC foreign broadcasts. Some serials, such as this one, are completely missing, while some others are missing just one or a couple episodes. Even more interestingly, sometimes in missing episodes there will be a snippet of someone getting shot or a monster blowing up or some other violent acts, because all that survived were the pieces cut out of the broadcast in foreign markets due to censorship. As a result of this wiping, a huge percentage of the First and Second Doctor serials only exist in reconstructions made with the audio (every single episodes exists as audio even if the master tapes were dumped) and telesnaps, screenshots of the recording television screen kept for record keeping purposes. Thanks to the people who piece these together, we have a very thorough idea of what these episodes would have been like, but we are still missing out on the hard work put into our favorite show back in the day. Every Classic Whovian has a missing serial they’d love to see completed, and for me it’s this one (it used to be Enemy of the World, but they found that several years ago and it is literally as amazing as I could’ve ever hoped for).

Synopsis: Interestingly, this story is narrated by the titular Marco Polo as he writes his memoirs. He begins telling an interesting story about the strange group of people he met in 1289…

The Doctor and crew land in the snowy Pamir mountains, their TARDIS completely broken and shut down after escaping the craziness that was the previous serial. They begin to investigate their surroundings, trying to find a way to survive and avoid the Mongols they discover looming in the area. The Mongols track them down and are about to kill them, thinking they are evil spirits who have just materialized on the mountain, when Marco Polo arrives on scene and stops them. The crew join Polo’s caravan, which is headed to see the Kublai Khan, and the Doctor tells Polo about his “flying caravan” and how it needs to be repaired so they can leave. Our four heroes are introduced to Tegana, a Mongol warlord on a peace mission to see the Khan, and Ping-Cho, a young Chinese girl whom Polo is escorting to the Khan so she can be wed to a 75 year old dignitary. Tegana and Marco Polo begin creating their own plots to steal the TARDIS- Tegana so that he can use it to destroy the Khan, and Polo so that he can use it as a bargaining chip to earn his freedom from the Khan- as soon as the Doctor repairs it. Over the next several episodes, the caravan moves across the Gobi desert, with the TARDIS crew trying to figure out how to escape now that they know that Polo intends to take the ship for himself. Tegana’s attempts to steal the TARDIS get more cunning and more violent, but he manages to escape blame on merit of his (seemingly) faithful servitude to Polo and the Kublai Khan.

Eventually, the crew makes it to the Khan’s summer palace. The Doctor meets with Kublai Khan and they end up becoming friends, bonding over their old age and all the issues that come with it. They start playing backgammon, and the Doctor makes bank but then bets it all on the freedom of his TARDIS and loses. After some arguments over who the TARDIS should belong to, our four heroes are locked up yet again and only escape when Ping-Cho and Susan tell them about a plan they overheard in the palace, a plot created by Tegana to sneak into the throne room and kill everyone, including the Khan. The crew escape capture yet again, alert Marco Polo, and they all head into the throne room to find Tegana having killed many a dignitary but subdue him before he can kill the Khan. Tegana takes his own life rather than have it taken by the Khan’s men, and as a reward for saving the Khan The Doctor and his companions are given the key to the TARDIS and allowed their freedom. Things even work out well for Ping-Cho, who is freed from her dreaded arranged marriage to the 75 year old dignitary when he is found dead after drinking an elixir of life (mercury). She chooses to stay with the Khan’s court and enjoy freedom in splendor. As the TARDIS fades away, Polo is granted freedom to go home back to Venice.

Background Info: 

This is one of the hard-historical serials that were present in the first season (which was 50% historical and 50% hard science fiction since it was supposed to be an educational show)

This is the first serial to feature The Doctor interacting with a famous historical figure

First serial written by John Lucarotti. Lucarotti had worked with show creator Sidney Newman on several of his largest shows both in Canada and in England, and he contributed three serials to Doctor Who, all First Doctor stories.

A photo from this serial was the first ever Doctor Who cover photo on the magazine Radio Times. The show and Radio Times have a long-standing history of cover features, and this was the very first one to receive the treatment.

This was the second and final directorial credit for Waris Hussein on the show. He was the director for An Unearthly Child and had been supposed to direct half of all episodes of season 1 (of which there are 3 more serials after this), but left because he wanted to direct more plays.

Opinion: I love this serial. Yes, at times it does drag on (I mean, how many times can shady stuff happen and people literally bring you evidence that Tegana did it before you start thinking they may have a point?), but that’s what happens in these old 7-part serials. The shame with these telesnap reconstructions is that you can’t see what they actually looked like in action. The shots of the sets, especially with regards to the caravan, are so lavish looking. I imagine that if we had the actual episodes in full it may not look as opulent, but it is far and away one of the best set designs we’ll see for a long time. Every character is incredibly strongly written and I love the scenes between Ping-Cho and Susan as well as Ian and Tegana because the actors’ chemistry is so great that you can feel it without even having to see it. Phil Sandifer points out an interesting quirk about this episode, one that I loved without realizing that I loved it until I saw it pointed out in his review. The characters in this serial that we encounter throughout the entire thing are surprisingly diverse. Even currently on Doctor Who we tend to focus on one culture and/or race at a time. Typically, if the Doctor is getting involved with a group of people, they are often fairly homogenized. In this one, however, we get a western man, a Chinese woman (although the actress is actually Burmese, but still, yay not-yellowface!), and a myriad of Asian characters (sadly, these are almost entirely yellowface. Gotta love the 1960s) all interacting with each other as they trek across the desert. I just think that this story is fascinating because the hard-historical episodes are pretty rare, making up half of the serials in this season but then dropping rapidly until there were no hard-historical ones anymore by season 5. Out of all the ones I’ve seen so far, this one is the first where I could really get invested in the history without being bored to tears. John Lucarotti used the actual memoirs of Marco Polo to create his story, and it shows. I definitely wouldn’t want to show this as anyone’s first Classic Who serial or anything, but once you’re comfortable with the tone and format I’d recommend giving this one a watch. Or, more accurately a listen. It’s on YouTube if you’re interested!

Favorite Moment: Like I said, I enjoy the whole thing, but let’s just all gather ‘round and enjoy these lovely colorized photos from the set that shows you just how amazing this serial looks.

[ssteezyy]

Meet the Cats of Bohemian Rhapsody

I went to see Bohemian Rhapsody on opening day in November, and have seen it a few more times since then. I loved everything about the movie: the wonderful portrayal of Freddie Mercury, the perfect casting and phenomenal acting, and of course, the music. The movie had me spellbound and that’s something that rarely happens for me. And then there were the cats!

It’s well known that Freddie Mercury adored his cats, and I was delighted that the biopic incorporated that part of his life. And I wanted to know more about the adorable cats in the movie. Yesterday, I had a chance to talk to Film and TV Animal Trainer Charlotte Wilde, who provided the cats for the movie.

Meet Charlotte Wilde, Film and TV Animal Trainer

Charlotte owns a London-based animal agency which supplies professionally trained animals to top photographers and TV and film production companies. She got into the business in 1984, when her family’s horses were stabled at the property of a woman who owned an animal agency. Charlotte went to help out on school holidays, and even though there wasn’t enough work to make it a full time career at the time, she kept working with them. “Back then, it was very much wrangling,” said Charlotte. “I guess I learned how to not do it back then,” she said. In 1994, she started working with animals full time, using reward based training. “I’m passionate about welfare and training. It became second nature to me to make sure the animals were safe and happy.” The cats are closely monitored while working. “We take pride in our cats,” said Charlotte.

Meet the cats of Bohemian Rhapsody

Almost all of the cats in the movie are Charlotte’s own cats.

Sidney and Chester, a brown tabby and a ginger and white cat, came to her when she was looking for a tabby kitten for another film. When she found them, Charlotte didn’t want to separate brother and sister and adopted them both. “They’ve both been amazing,” she said. “I trained them from the time they were 12 weeks old.” Chester has had a few health issues, including a blocked bladder at one point, but he’s healthy now. “Every time I picked him up then, it was to give him pain relief, and he now hates being held,” said Charlotte. “I could probably train it out of him, but I’m not going to force him. I don’t step over the line with any of them. They’ve got to have some personal choice in what they do.”

The movie’s producers were especially excited about Paddington, the blue point Birman, because he looks so much like Freddie’s cat Tiffany.

Chinchilla is a green-eyed Persian. You can see him in the scene where two cats look out the window at the Rolls Royce as it’s pulling away to take Freddie to Live Aid.

Texas, the black cat used in one of the scenes in Freddie’s apartment, was a stray. “A friend called and said ‘oh, can you pick up this cat?'” said Charlotte with a wry laugh. “He’s a super super silly little cat.” He loves working, “but he’s not the  brightest cat.”

Orlando, a ginger cat, was used in one of the scenes in Freddie’s apartment. “Orlando, being Orlando, he’s a real character, decided to jump out the window,” said Charlotte. “It was only on the first floor, but he panicked a bit when it happened.” Orlando was fine and returned to work like the pro he is.

They also used two Bengal kittens in the film. Charlotte got them from a responsible breeder friend. “She’s so excited that her cats are in the movie,” said Charlotte. There was a scene when one of the kittens was supposed to be asleep. “I think we had the liveliest kitten in the world,” said Charlotte, but eventually, the scene was shot and you can see the kitten peeking out from under a blanket in the movie.

Charlotte spent about ten days on the movie’s set. “We didn’t shoot on all of those days, maybe six or seven days total,” she said.

The most challenging scene

The most difficult scene to film was the opening sequence of the movie, when the cats are all eating. “Because they’ve got food in front of them, they don’t give a stuff about what you’re saying to them,” laughed Charlotte. “Also, we had the food lined up in two lines, and we had to stay out of the way. It was difficult to guarantee one’s not going to finish before the other, and then they’re going to walk away,” she said. “Full belly, I can’t hear you!”

Working with the cats on set

I asked Charlotte about the scene when Freddie and Mary are sitting on the sofa watching Love of My Life being sung by an audience of hundreds of thousands in Brazil. The cats can be seen on the bed in the background. I remember thinking how remarkable it was for the cats to just quietly sit there when surely there were dozens of people involved in filming the scene. “We teach them to sit, stay and lie down,” said Charlotte. “Generally, we have at least four trainers on set. You’ve got a set of eyes watching everybody. You’ve got to make sure you don’t cast a shadow on the scene so you’ll be squeezed in a corner sometimes. We find something for the cats to watch, that helps – basically, a piece of meat on a stick.”

Charlotte acknowledged that “once the cats jump off something, you’re done. Chester is particularly cheeky. If he breaks your eye contact or eye contact with the food on the stick, he’ll be ‘oh, I’ll be back in a minute.’ The problem with that is, because it’s so natural looking, the director goes ‘this is great,’ but then you can’t ever repeat it!”

Rami Malek is allergic to cats

If you watched the interactions between Freddie and the cats in the movie, you’ll notice that there’s never any direct contact. This is because Rami Malek is allergic to cats. “In the breakfast scene, Sydney was going to be on his lap and he was going to be feeding her,” said Charlotte. “They decided to let the cat be on the table instead, which made it much easier for Rami.”

“Working on the movie was a great experience.”

Charlotte said working on the movie was a great experience. “It’s nice when you’re on a set and the crews actually have faith in what we can do and respect us,” she said. “In addition to the great cast, director Dexter Fletcher was a delightful, lovely guy to work with.” She had previously worked with him on other films and commercials. “When we went back to do some pick up shots once they started editing the film, he came up to me and said ‘I’ll make sure that your cats get a close up.’” Looking at the final version of the movie, it looks like Fletcher kept his promise.

Could your cat be a movie star?

I asked Charlotte how cat parents can determine whether a cat is suited for film work. “How comfortable is your cat going to the vet?” asked Charlotte. “That’s a really good indicator. If your cat is happy to go in the cat box and come out relaxed on the other end, that’s probably the easiest way to gauge whether she’d do well on a film set.”

At the time that we talked, Charlotte had not seen the movie.

  Image of Chester walking across the piano and image of the cats eating: screenshots from the official trailer of Bohemian Rhapsody (20th Century Fox,) all other images ©Charlotte Wilde, used with permission

The post Meet the Cats of Bohemian Rhapsody appeared first on The Conscious Cat.

[lovesimos]

  Last summer began with a few MJ’ estate executor’s interviews informing the fans that there would be no other forms of un-released songs or albums, but there would soon be an announcement of new projects. In fact, (cannot say the timing was like a Swiss watch) a press release announcing a special Michael Jackson Halloween animation theme would be televised in the fall on CBS. Predictably, the reaction of many fans was once again very critical in relation to this new project of the Estate.

“Thriller” 3-D version announcement arrived. A world premiere at the 74th Annual Venice Film Festival, alongside its original matched film “The Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller” – the hour-long behind-the-scenes documentary whose broadcasted sale to MTV and Showtime and released in VHS format at that time. The “Making of Thriller” has never been released in any other format, and Thriller has never been released on Blu-ray. We also had much hype announced of a fans-useless “Scream” compilation, but I have no word to spend for it.

I’ve never appreciated any of the products the estate has released after MJ’s demise, but Thriller 3-D clearly intrigued me; especially since having seen Captain EO as far back as 1992 – when Disneyland Park Paris was called Euro Disney – and it was stunning and I could not ask for more. I was so amazed to see MJ in 3-D in Captain EO and I would not be surprised to be thrilled for “Thriller 3-D”. This is definitely something I will not miss. The 3-D vision is an experience and has nothing to do with going to the cinema to see a movie. You are in the movie! Having a Smart TV with a cinema home setting, I also appreciated the 3-D effect in the extras of the “This Is It” documentary, (introductions to Thriller, Earth Song, and Smooth Criminal) which are pretty nice to see. Some of the visual effects seemed to emerge from the screen straight into the room!

  It’s not a big surprise if I share publicly that there is not one single release from the estate that causes a vibration of my soul.  However, I never thought I’d have reason to doubt that Mr. John Landis would allow anyone to ruin a direct “relative” of his dream movie.  It might be that many don’t remember the 1981 “An American Werewolf in London”. Landis wrote the script when he was a teenager. Rick Baker won the first Oscar for makeup for that movie.

And Michael Jackson was a big fan of both. That’s why he called Landis and told him of his appreciation of An American Werewolf in London and of Baker’s work particularly while asking him to direct his “Thriller” video.

Unfortunately, public disputes in the community were set in motion following an interview with Engineer Martin Nessi explaining the technical issues he had on mixing the “Thriller” for Dolby audio.

Fans screaming “to the sacrilege – the sound has been disrupted, tarnished” jumping to conclusions such as ” the original audio track is lost – Why couldn’t be provided – Sony archives are crap” – (I also jumped on this bandwagon at first).

And with the “Scream” London party the tragedy begins. Despite the fantastic restoration and the exciting 3-D interjection, the sound is strange. The result is that many other component sounds are totally missing except for the percussions.

Our poor engineer, Martin Nessi, comes onto twitter attempting to give a professional explanation but soon withdraws from the scene due to the rudeness he was apostrophized; after having to do a titanic job he had to deal with even the most stupendous insults.

Now, those who dared to insult the engineer cannot be stopped! “Bullshit walks”, and there is NO way to face unreasonable speech. Insults come like rain, in less than 30 minutes you have been cast off as a fan and suddenly you find yourself in the category of the “bullshitters”. Oh well…an approach to be proud of.

News from the next “Scream” party in Sidney assures that Sony sent a new audio and that the sound is mostly conformed to the original.

Good! We have the privilege to have another clip on the web and again fans screaming: “chopped, reframed, cut”…

Say it again? But it’s not that….did people forget that the video has been transformed into another format and we are talking about a 3-D interaction?

Even if the Adobe is only a preview of a 3-D broadcast,  the details and beauty of the restoration are notable. Plus you need  to appreciate 3D.

I agree that everyone can have opinions but I believe that a video taken with a smartphone while sitting in a chair and displaying the shadow of a row of chairs at the bottom of the screen, proves nothing from the technical point of view; it’s what can be called a “glimpse”. And complaining for the sake of it denotes a cruel intent to stir things up in an already conflictual community.

 “All of the copies of Thriller out there now are duped,” Landis tells Billboard, “and it used to drive me crazy. I’d been trying to get to the negative for a long time as the new digital technologies are amazing at restoring films. And Michael and I always intended for people to see Thriller in a movie theater”.  

In more than one interview John Landis emphasized that his primary interest was to get the original master and restore the negatives of the video clip Thriller and “The making of”.

Restoring old films from the negative with new technology is crucial for their preservation in the years ahead.  “There are countless films that disintegrate because the chemical base of the film corrodes over time. Once the camera negative, internegative and last print of a film are gone, the film is gone forever.”

And the 3-D has nothing to do with the original clip. It’s an alternative way to see it. It is a homage to Michael Jackson that a technology he loved very much was used. The shift from 2-D to 3-D is very impactful.  It’s an almost faithful representation of the real world. It creates an illusion so real and reactive that it trumps our senses and becomes every bit as real as the physical world itself. If you don’t like it, never mind. You still have the original video wholly restored from now on. That’s the most important thing!

The good news is that the videos have been restored!  The Estate of Michael Jackson put some real Michael Jackson money into the preservation of Michael Jackson’s work! And surely a good chunk.

I know, with all the goodies the estate has spoiled us with during this 8 years –  fake songs – garbage remixes – DVD of grotesque quality –  probably no one noticed but it actually and strangely happened.

It is not necessary to thank and worship Sony or his estate executors, is their duties to celebrate and take care to Michael Jackson artistry.

Yet in the end, Martin Nessi’s explanation is more than reliable.  He did nothing other than the same procedure (with a different technology) done in 1983.

In fact in the book “I Want My MTV” written by Craig Marks, there is an anecdote of how the audio for the video clip Thriller came out:

“The version of the song in the video is different from the one on the album. On the album, the song begins with a series of spooky sound effects that don’t lend themselves to dancing. Editing the song for the video was a challenge since producer Quincy Jones wouldn’t release the master tapes. Landis explains how they got around this restriction. “The song was five minutes long, and I needed it to be 12 minutes for the video,” he said. “So Michael and I went to the recording studio at three in the morning. We walked past the guard – ‘Hi, Michael.’ ‘Hi’ – put the tracks in a big suitcase and walked out with them. Then we drove across Hollywood, duped them, and put them back.”

Landis told the same in an interview in 2008 for the release of “Thriller 25” to the magazine  “Horrorhound” September/October 2008:

 “Making the Music Video”

The music in the video and this is so interesting to me that no one has ever figured this out. But “Thriller”, the song, is just over five minutes long and the song in the movie is about twelve minutes long. Landis explains the difference. Quincy Jones the producer of the album and Bruce Swedien, the mixer said that we couldn’t get the original track. So Michael, George and I went to the studio in the Valley and we stole the tracks. There were only about 38 tracks. It wasn’t that complicated a song. We mixed down and then re-cut it completely – they’re TOTALLY different songs. Really different! And people don’t hear it. Even the Vincent Price rap was re-recorded for the video. What happened was the original takes were tied in with a synthesizer track and I couldn’t separate it. I asked Vincent Price to come back and re-record, and he did. “

So, as you can read, they had to proceed in a very similar way as Martin Nessi, already explained in his interview at https://www.izotope.com/…/3d-thiller-mixing-michael-jackson…

Concerning the restoration of the movie and the “making of thriller” Landis supervised the restoration and conversion from the original 35mm negative, provided by the Jackson estate archives. In addition to the visual work, the film’s audio – the song, the effects, and Elmer Bernstein’s original score – has been upgraded to 5.7, 7.1, and Atmos standards.

We know the estate artistically is far from the mark.  We should not buy things that do not suit us, it seems to me the minimum. It will not necessarily change much as long as the general public continues to buy any record.  I’m sure one day the fans will, once again, be the target. That’s why it is useful to formulate constructive criticism and let the estate know that fans will not buy anything. But I think it seems important to differentiate between a 3-D Thriller and a “Scream”.

I also would like to remind all concerned that Michael Jackson always wanted to do something “special” for Halloween, and a project was already planned to air on CBS in 2009.  When Michael Jackson signed with AEG Live for the concert at the O2 Arena in London, his agreement had a specific requirement;  AEG had to help him venture into the cinema. The first thing Michael wanted was to produce something special for Halloween on television, focusing on what he had done in the field of horror with “Thriller” and “Ghosts”. And Randy Phillips organized a meeting between Michael and the program’s producer, Ken Ehrlich. The meeting took place before rehearsals on June 24, 2009, at the Staples Center on the eve of Michael Jackson’s death. Ken Ehrlich, who was to produce the show for Michael, later said, “When I saw him the day before his death, we had a meeting on a Halloween project that Michael wanted to do with CBS.” The intention was to create an annual Halloween special on television. Michael was going to be the guest and perform in the show.  Michael wanted to put forward his short film “Ghosts” and the first “Michael Jackson Halloween Special” had to be broadcast on October 31, 2009, on television.

It would have been the perfect timing for all the involved parties and Michael would have been free thanks to a three-month break planned during his tour. The first part of the tour was due to end on September 29, 2009, and Michael Jackson was not scheduled to return until January 7, 2010, the start of the second part.

Since Michael was not on tour during the broadcast, his performance for the special would have been taken from a series of high definition footage that AEG Live had planned to capture during the first part of the tour. Thriller, Ghosts and Threatened live shows were also scheduled for this special evening, giving the audience the opportunity to see Michael Jackson’s triumphant comeback, and also giving AEG excellent publicity that the tour will continue in cities around the world.  Frank Dileo said that Michael was satisfied to see the special Halloween he wanted with the film Ghosts and his own participation. He agreed with all of this.   Everyone knows, unfortunately, this special Halloween eventually did not take place.

So for once let’s take this sign in a positive way, even if we know very well that this Michael Jackson Halloween season is not what it could have been with him not being in charge of the project.¨ (Read the story at Damien Shield website:  http://www.damienshields.com/michael-jacksons-halloween-special-that-never-was/) 

Let’s not forget that the power of MJ’s message created an event such as “Thrill the world” in 2006; an annual international dance event and world record-breaking attempt. The title of the event is an allusion of another one of Michael’s songs, “Heal the World”. http://www.thrilltheworld.com/

The syllogism that through a “monstrous” dance we can “heal the world” is simply fantastic.  It is an invitation to the world to dance simultaneously in an almost tribal dance that goes beyond the “thriller”. A sort of spiritual dance about the struggle that is taking place between good and evil, light and dark. Warding off evil spirits with the art of dance and a proving that connecting the world in a fun, a joyful celebration is a key to understand that you can do more than you think you can.  In addition to sharing the joy of dance, the celebration of community and the passion for living, the communities participating in the simultaneous dance use the event to raise money for local charities to help others in need.

It’s also an encouragement to people to pursue any dream, vision, idea, and passion that they would like to see realized. Nothing is impossible. Impossible just means it hasn’t been done yet. Do the impossible!

It is a celebration of the genius of Michael Jackson and his commitment to better the world.

For once let’s not think of who is behind these events development, but think of the beauty to have a worldwide event in honor of Michael Jackson.

This is Michael!  His work, his legacy, and just one of the many reasons of why he will be remembered forever.

      Sources:

http://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/813388/grammy-awards-producer-dishes-michael-jackson-tribute

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Werewolf_in_Londonhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson%27s_Thriller_(music_video)

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7890127/michael-jackson-thriller-3d-world-premiere-venice-film-festival

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-ujlaki/keeping-cinema-alive-by-r_b_5585774.html

http://www.irmt.org/

  THRILLER RESTORED: THE FIRST REAL INVESTMENT FOR MICHAEL JACKSON’S LEGACY Last summer began with a few MJ’ estate executor’s interviews informing the fans that there would be no other forms of un-released songs or albums, but there would soon be an announcement of new projects.

[paulzvr33629004-blog]

Arts And also Learning.

Postgraduate study can accelerate your career, is actually a possibility to research study something you're enthusiastic about, and also could be the first steps to coming to be a first-rate scientist. Like numerous Universities, Sidney Sussex possessed its own brewery until the overdue 19th century, making weak (called 'tiny') draft beer for the regular usage of trainees and also staff each time when water was often dangerous to consume. If you have any issues pertaining to wherever and how to use saludable-club.info, you can call us at our web site. To use to the University of Akron, visit our Admittances webpage If you are actually an existing UA pupil which would love to find out about putting on the Bacc/MD plan satisfy review the admission/application needs listed here. Pupils are to take note that they will definitely be permitted to rest for exam component this study-unit and also will definitely be granted a level just if they have actually routinely joined speaks as well as practical courses, if they have actually sent any kind of assignments, featuring practical reports as well as if they delight all various other study-unit demands. The 12-credit Grad Certification System emphasizes the critical skills associated with social economic monitoring. The courses in educational and institution psychology and also instructional research are located on the 3rd flooring, and also the Office from Student Companies is actually located on the 1st floor. Undergraduate Admission offers information to high school pupils as well as move pupils who want seeking a bachelor's degree. This module will definitely take into consideration the anatomy and feature from typical tissues, bodies and also organs and after that describe their primary pathophysiological disorders. Pupil will definitely keep customer data according to Suit Management Suggestions as well as Pupil Directories containing draughts and also research products. Trainees will certainly be motivated to appraise vitally his memoirs as well as recognize that behind claims of progression prepared a ruthless problem for the monetary army sources of Europe. Unique identifiers (like Social Safety amounts) are actually picked up coming from Web site visitors to confirm your identity and also for make use of as account numbers in our record system. UA's brand new game plan are going to invigorate Alabama's front runner through acquiring its own continuing effectiveness and also driving that to new heights. Third, the element uses the crucial guidelines of resource pricing to aid comprehend the behavior of prices across these asset classes. This module is actually concerned with academic perspectives on ethnicity, religion, and ethnic culture as ideas; example in the legal and social record from nationality and also faith; overview of modern lawful guideline of these classifications in UK law. Pupils will certainly be able to see the interaction of powers as well as ideas that brought about a dispute that handful of, if any sort of, lasted and wanted for longer compared to anyone anticipated.

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[its-just-like-the-movies]

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (62, A)

It feels a little cheap saying that I’ve had a hard time even figuring out where to start with my review of Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Forgive me though, because talking about Long Day’s Journey is so stymying in that particular kind of way where a film is so unbelievably fantastic that you can only start by praising the whole, where saying everything about it is absolutely perfect sums it up pretty fucking well, thank you very much, and after that you can get to the specifics. Sure, there’s a favorite part or a conversation it particularly inspires in you, something you see in this you don’t see in most or any other movies made now or contemporaneously. I walked into this with a little bit of borrowed goodwill: I’d read the play, as had my sister, who says it’s the best play she’s ever read; the praise of a specific film critic who’d called this Katharine Hepburn’s best performance; and my own allegiance to the few Kate performances that I’d seen walking into the picture - The Lion in Winter, The Philadelphia Story, and Suddenly, Last Summer - finding her absolutely brilliant in all three and tremendous again here, in a way distinct from those previous performances and in ways I can only hope to find even more valuable as I watch her in Alice Adams, Stage Door, Adam’s Rib, and all her other nominated and/or treasured performances. Director Sidney Lumet, who I’d loved for his work on The Verdict, liked with Equus, and cannot believe I still haven’t seen Network and Dog Day Afternoon at the time of writing, creates an even more remarkable triumph in realizing Eugene O’Neill’s play without changing a single word of his prose. Dynamics in conversations change on a dime, and Lumet finds the perfect angles and shots to let the actors share the space and do their work while nevertheless shaping the performances and the relationships of the characters within heroically long shots, cutting sparsely and using cinematic language to bring the story to full force. Lumet’s touch and Ralph Rosenblum’s editing finds the right tone to make the film the most brisk 174 minute picture that I’ve ever seen, digging into every theme and character to bring out the fullest potential of the source material. “Just doing the play” is a phrase that’s mainly used today as a dig against theatre adaptations that seem uncomfortably lodged between cinema and stage in their own films, but Long Day’s Journey Into Night manages to find the perfect balance between cinematic techniques and theatrical accents in the whole project to make the film as potent to watch as it is to read, becoming the best version of itself while gracefully hopping pitfalls that modern adaptations seem to find insurmountable.

I don’t mean this to inherently dig on modern Broadway-to-film transfers as whole, but that perfect balance of a powerful director, a sterling cast, and basically leaving the script well the fuck alone feels surprisingly hard to come by nowadays. The Meryl Streep helmed trifecta of Doubt, August: Osage County, and Into the Woods all illustrate how difficult it is, each one buckling under mediocre to outright poor direction, the dulling of the material’s riskiest and most thematically relevant or singular edges to shorten the runtime and make it more audience friendly, and the inconsistency of their ensemble casts in rising above those obstacles. Fences would probably have fulfilled this trio had Denzel Washington shaped the material more as a director before the final third rather than planting his camera in front of that titanic, stage-supplanted ensemble and just letting them nail it. I’m more than open to any recommendations from the last thirty or so years that could prove me wrong, but I haven’t found or heard much to suggest that there’s a modern miracle I’m missing out on.

If we take the immaculate quality of O’Neill’s story of the Tyrone family as a given - I’m not saying it’s absolutely flawless, but any particular slights against it are just no match for everything it gets so immeasurably right - it’d be almost too easy to imagine a director simply letting the strength of the prose and the actors quite literally speak for themselves without bothering to do all that much with or to the material, hopping from close-up to close-up. For sure that’s as much a symptom of modern storytelling techniques as much as anything else, and giving Lumet credit for letting the actors interact with each other within the frame is more or less the way movies were made back in the 60’s. But what’s for sure distinct about it is Lumet filming these sequences in incredibly long takes, moving side by side with the characters, letting them breathe each other’s air and interact so fully that it matters when we cannot see the face or the body of the person they’re speaking to. The entire third act, a long conversation between Mary Tyrone and her maid Catherine, gives itself over to Mary once she becomes fully lost in her own memories, making the cuts back to Catherine almost a shock to the system as we and Mary remember she’s even in the room. The self-serving nature of some conversations, often admissions of wrongdoing or reveries about the past, are conveyed by the infrequency of how often we are allowed to see the reactions of the person they’re ostensibly talking to, allowing the actors to stand by their characters even as Lumet refused to let them go unquestioned.

The other characters do plenty of questioning themselves, though. Their constant pacifications of each other are a much a sign of discovery as they are of genuine apology to hitting a raw nerve, and we learn as much about them through what makes them angry as we do through their apologies or excuses for asking those questions, or how they respond to them. James Tyrone Sr.’s pushing of responsibility on the person he’s talking to is as notable as Edmund’s desire to share the blame and put the thing to bed, or Jamie’s constant brushing it off based on how natural it was for him to ask what he had asked or respond the way he responded, or Mary putting it on herself in hopes of letting it drop. Even more noticeable is Mary’s anxiety at these small confrontations, trying to gauge if her boys have lost faith in her, why they’re staring at her, if she’s hiding her addiction well enough even as she’s visibly slipping back into old mannerisms. Even if Catherine belongs in the hall of fame for thankless theatre roles, Jeanne Barr’s reactions to Mary’s increasingly lost reflections show a dim but terrified awareness of how far off the deep end her mistress has gone. James, Edmund and Jamie’s responses to the non-question of Mary sliding back into bad habits is as complicated as the play ever gets, as is the whole family’s response to the very likely possibility that Edmund’s illness is worse than it looks, and must force him to go to a sanitarium for six months in the hopes of getting cured. Ideas and reminiscences are humored because it’s better than talking about anything else, because keeping someone here to talk about their father keeps them from running off to have a drink or get high or hire a prostitute, because talking like a family is the only thing that’s able to hide how badly this family is splintering off from itself and retreating into their own world.

But if the assets of the characters seem like they’re baked into the script rather than the specific triumphs of this cast and crew, then let’s get down to it. Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards, and Dean Stockwell all do nuanced takes on James, Jamie, and Edmund Tyrone, navigating their characters with the same kind of tone as Lumet’s direction, approaching this heavy material with the right balance of pathos and lightness of touch to make the whole thing land without belaboring the point. All three do great work at specifying their characters and providing rich backstory to all their conversations, making their relationships lived-in in a way that shows just how much new and old ground is being sewn with every conversation on new and old topics. The way they dote on and worry over Mary, swap between haranguing Edmund and fretting for his life, scorning James’s misery tendencies that overpower his best impulses as a father and husband, and trying to find the good in Jamie in spite of his active black sheep status, are present in how every character relates to themselves and each other, with every actor putting over these complicated relationships in their own ways that still feel deeply rooted in long-standing family behaviors and idioms. Each one brings a distinct energy that lets the narrative flow just fine with or without them. Time doesn’t stop at any one of their discussions or accusations or speeches, and they’re as instrumental as Rosenblum’s editing, Lumet’s direction, and Boris Kaufman’s cinematography. The sharing of the Best Actor prize at Cannes between the three of them is as richly deserved as Katharine Hepburn’s Best Actress win that same festival, and it’s mystifying that she was the film’s sole representation at the 1962 Academy Awards.

That being said, hers is a genius performance that manages to uphold almost everything I’ve ascribed to the men on a much higher wire, in a completely different key, and with a far more pronounced and transformative arc to manage. Hepburn manages to play in a more heightened register than her co-stars while being able to flow in and out the narrative as well as everyone else, even if hers is the character haunting the whole picture. She also inspires some of Kaufman’s most visually interesting images and spectacles: trying to get up off the floor after talking to Catherine, the way she clutches her chest and hangs off the wall after hearing she may be alone in this dreadful house, even the way her presence is invoked in how the banister staircase up to her room and the spare room. Her relationships to the men are just as felt, even as her presence in the present becomes increasingly tenuous. In her first scene, talking to her husband, Mary is the most there she’s ever going to be but already floating away just a little bit. Hepburn sets the stage for a woman as caught up in present events as everyone else but, as she becomes more and more influenced by her vices, is increasingly disconnected as she sinks further and further into the past. She’s living in the moment, but that moment is actually decades ago, physically in but psychologically out of time in way that’s scary and sad all at the same time. And it’s also, in its own way, gloriously against type for Hepburn, albeit based on the small sampling of her films I’ve seen. In the previous performances I’ve seen - hell, her own persona and personality was built around this - Hepburn’s characters always come across as women of strong presence, self-awareness, and remarkable intelligence. Mary Tyrone, by contrast, is a palpably emptier woman than any of those characters, nervous and unsure of herself even when she’s putting on her best face. Her long walk to the table at the end, isolated from the rest of the family by blocking and extreme, dream-like lighting, shows not just how far she’s gone but how similarly trapped by their own delusions and vices the rest of her family is. It’s a harrowing performance of one of the most difficult characters ever written for the theatre, and Hepburn realizes her Mary Tyrone with uncommon skill and a performance style so unlike what she’s best known for.

None of these triumphs would be possible without Lumet’s shaping of the material. He firmly stands with the Tyrones even as he undermines their speeches and refuses to pull any of the punches O’Neill inflicts on this family. He finds the right mood of precariously built family comfort to set the stage for the upcoming tragedy and finds the right kind of dread to seep into it and accrue over the course of the film, a culmination of so many internal and external squabbles in itself. The vices of the Tyrone men are taken as much for granted as Mary’s is painfully, horrifically obvious, and all of their foibles are given equal attention by Lumet as their narratives float in and out of centrality to the story and topic of conversation. He’s as much to credit for the power of the actors, the fluidity and magnetism of the editing, and the poetry of the camera in its heroically long takes. All four of the contemporary pictures I listed at the start of this review all lost out the most because of their directors, all of them ranging from the simply serviceable to the outright terrible. We simply wouldn’t be getting the Long Day’s Journey Into Night we were getting if he was gone, even if everyone else stuck around to do their thing.

Usually my final paragraph is some indicator of is the film I’ve just been talking about would be a worthwhile thing to see, simply a drawn-out version of Nick Davis’ V.O.R. rating system, rather than doing what concluding paragraphs are usually meant to do. I think I’ve made it very, very obvious how much I think this movie deserves to be seen, but I wonder if its might is something that would be even richer after digging deeper into the filmographies of Hepburn and Lumet in particular. This, of course, applies to most great projects made by people with sterling careers, but perhaps all the points I’ve made about how against-type this is for Hepburn would be made more powerful if you go into it having seen more of her films. Lumet feels like a similar story, but one I’m in no place to really ask of anyone since I walked into this not having seen the two 70’s gems I listed above, which seem bigger in all kinds of ways from Long Day’s Journey Into Night. I’m certainly looking forward to seeing this again once I find more pictures of the Tyrone men, having only walked into this seeing Jason Robards’ back-to-back Oscar winning performances. Then again, why not start here and let the ways this is and isn’t a typical Katharine Hepburn performance, or a typical anything else becomes obvious in retrospect? That they’ve kept the same script seems to nullify the urgency to read the play beforehand, but why not? I know I need to read more, and it’s exciting to read something and see how it matched up against your own interpretations of those parts in your head, choices you would’ve expected or have assumed to have been made, and how well they were realized on screen. Whatever your interpretation of the prose, or anyone else’s - and by that I mean the recent Broadway adaptation where Jessica Lange thanked Todd Haynes on live TV - the choices made here are completely unimpeachable, not just as a legitimate interpretation of the play but as vividly lived-in and fully realized choices made by this specific cast and this specific production crew under the guide of this specific director. It’s as rare as a four-leaf clover to see work like this that’s so astounding, becoming the best possible version of itself without seeming to strain for any kind of import or tripping over itself in an effort to make the daunting challenge of its source text easier to digest, in this or any day in age, and if you’ve ever got three hours to spare, and aren’t sure what to do with the time, I promise you, you’re only limiting yourself by not accepting the challenge that these artists bring before you to the screen. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a masterpiece by any standard of artistic merit, as powerful as force to reckon with as it must have been over six decades ago, and any impulse to watch it should be jumped on at once. For if we are all to live in the past eventually, there are surely worse things to let your mind wander over than a work of art as challenging and rewarding as this.

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Paraded over attempted murder of Sen Melaye

The Nigeria Police Force the previous day paraded the Chairman of Ijumu Local Authorities Vicinity of Kogi Country, Taofiq Isaiah and five others over an assassination try on Senator Dino Melaye.dino Melanie wealth.

The police spokesman, CSP Jimoh Moshood, even as parading the suspects on the Force Headquarters in Abuja, stated guns and an ambulance used as operation automobile have been recovered from the suspects.

He stated following the attack with the aid of unknown gunmen on Senator Dino Melaye at his residence at Ayala, Ijumu LGA in Kogi Country on 15th April 2017 at about 12:30 am, the IGP ordered the police Unique Tactical Squad (STS) to analyze the matter.antonym for a parade.

He started after 10 days of investigation, the police arrested six contributors of the assassination gang liable for the attack.

He stated the predominant suspect is Taofiq Isaiah, who allegedly masterminded the execution strive. Is changed into presupposed to have directed one Abdulmumini a.k.An Iron, now at large, said to be his non-public assistant, to recruit other members of the assassination gang.

The opposite five arrested suspects include; Ade Osage, Abdullahi a.k.An Eko, Ahmed Ajayi, Michael Bamidele and ex-police Sgt Ede James.

Moshood brought that Abdullahi a.ok.An Iron changed into informed to recruit the arrested suspects with 4 others; Osama, Lukman, China and Adamu Aloha all at massive to assassinate Melanie.

Fielding questions from journalists in Ijumu, the chairman, Taofiq Isaiah, had earlier denied the allegation, pronouncing it become a step up and a charade.

  Mes Morado – Crimson Month within the Antique Capital of the Inca Empire, Cusco

The marching band, whose get dressed varies from brightly coloured conventional costumes, through simple black to the sand camouflage of the police gadgets, continue gravely over the cobbles, ahead of and frequently additionally at the back of an ornately dressed statue, carried at shoulder peak by way of 4 or extra strong cusqueños, natives of the town of Cusco.

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The statue could be one of the many incarnations of the Virgin Mary, but this month it is most probably to represent el Señor de Los Milagros, the Lord of Miracles, a saint whose origins lie in Lima, Peru’s capital metropolis, but who has been enthusiastically followed and revered by way of the inhabitants of Cusco. El Mes Morado, or the Purple Month, is so called due to the Pink robes used to dress the statue of the Lord of Miracles while he’s paraded via the streets. The color becomes firstly utilized by an order of nuns in Lima and turned into later adopted for the Lord of Miracles as a sign of the devotion felt by using his many fans.parade sentence.

The starting place of the Lord of Miracles is a little out of the normal, coming because it does not from an apparition of Christ or miracles executed by a normal character.Numerous hundred years ago, a collection of slaves painted an image of a black Christ at the pass on a wall in Lima. A huge earthquake later destroyed lots of the metropolis, but the wall and the photograph survived intact, and later earthquakes additionally didn’t have any impact on the wall or the photograph. The photograph came to be taken into consideration staggering and, having its origins outdoor the Church, which did strive (and failed) to have the wall destroyed, it united believers from many extraordinary faiths. Regardless of race, faith or creed, many devoted trusts the picture to have incredible powers and battle in hordes to get near sufficient to the touch it or the corresponding image while paraded via the streets.

Although you may see two or 3 of those small and no longer so small parades during any given day from any given point in the town, the satisfactory enjoy is to be had within the Essential Rectangular where you could see any variety of luxuriously clothed saints paraded around all through the day, every frequently accompanied by their personal cohort of musicians and brilliantly dressed dancers.

Parading the saints isn’t the best way wherein themes Morado celebrates the Lord of Miracles. Taking a quiet night stroll down the Avenida El Sol, one of the Most important avenues of Cusco, you could be as a substitute bowled over to listen quite spiritual tune from an otherwise abandoned street. As you walk on you come to a crimson carpet main to a podium adorned with plants and Purple drapes surrounding an image of the Lord of Miracles, while four-foot excessive audio system engulf you in hymns. And this isn’t always at the entrance to a church, however to a bank, and sixty feet similarly up the street is a similar show outdoor another financial institution. On accomplishing the top of the street, you discover a group of laughing teens, carefully pouring, scraping and sculpting diverse shades of colored sand into simple but 32012fd371b2d8bbf6e5e631dc96cdaf presentations at the subject matter of the religious significance of the Lord of Miracles. The display is long gone by way of the morning as the ever-busy road sweepers do their obligation No matter nonsecular fervor, but for days you may see the coarse colored sand within the cracks between the cobbles.

Unfastened Traditional Films: Sabotage, Doomed Shipment and Murder at Sunrise

Sabotage is one of the early Hitchcock films. Karl Verloc (Oskar Homolka) is a cinema proprietor. He’s married to Sylvia (Sylvia Sidney). Sylvia’s little brother, Stevie (Desmond Tester), additionally lives with them. Karl turns into a member of a gang making plans to vicinity a bomb at Piccadilly Circus with the goal of causing worry and panic. But He’s being watched by using Ted (John Loder), an undercover Detective Sergeant from Scotland Yard. Ted afterward becomes friendly with Karl’s spouse Sylvia and her more youthful brother Stevie. Whilst the crowd assigns Karl to position a bomb in the metro, he tells Stevie to supply it to Picadilly Circus and leave it in the cloakroom. However, Stevie is distracted by way of a variety of-of things and their plot starts of evolved to get to the bottom of.impersonating a police officer charges.

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The film’s most important casts are Desmond Tester, John Loder, Joyce Barbour, Oskar Homolka and Sylvia Sidney. Filming places include Gainsborough Studios, Shepherd’s Bush, London, England. This movie is also referred to as “I Married a Murderer”.

Nigeria Residence of Representatives in Display of Shame

The Nigeria House of representatives on Tuesday twenty-second June 2010 got worried in what should high-quality be described as a Display of shame and national embarrassment; as the lawmakers threw warning to the winds and engaged in fisticuffs within the full glare of publicity, with a few finishing up with damaged nose, damaged palms and torn garments.

Trouble began while 11 individuals of the House – Dino Melaye, Salomon Shinai, Ehiogie West Idahosa, Gbenga Oduwaiye, Independence Ogunewe, Austin Nwachukwu, Kayode Amusan, Bitrus Kaze, Abba Anas, Gbenga Onigbogi and Doris Uboh, accused the speaker Dimeji Bankole and the management of the Residence, of financial misconduct. The case turned into even stated to the Economic and economic Crimes Commission (EFCC) with the aid of Dino Melaye.dino delayed tribe.words from select.

The speaker of the House organized his very own group to try and intimidate the 11 participants who were bent on fighting corruption within the Residence. Their eventual suspension and a try to forcefully drag them out of the chamber brought about a bodily fight, during which a number of them (5 of the aggrieved contributors) had their garments torn to portions; one left with a broken nostril. But one in all them changed into capable of overpowering one of the aggressors, leaving him with a broken arm.

senator dino delayed cars

This Show of disgrace is arising right now whilst Nigerians have all end up weary of corruption; and the authorities of Dr. True good fortune Jonathan as trying to put in region higher mechanisms to remove corruption in Africa biggest country

However, why would the regulation makers visit that volume of taking laws into their fingers? Politics in Nigeria has become a funding platform; wherein humans make investments all they have as a way to get into the workplace after which later scouse borrow over a 1000% of what they invested. They want to take a seat tight in the workplace on account that it is the highest income yielding funding ever. As opposed to dropping such excessive yield funding, they would as a substitute lose their integrity and get their names rubbed with mud.

How can we manage this trend?

1. Pick Representatives based on integrity: Representatives of the people need to be chosen based totally on integrity and past data, and now not on celebration loyalty or affiliation. it’s far handiest through this technique that people with the person and tune information might be nominated to symbolize their constituencies

2. Supply constituencies electricity to remember erring Representatives: whilst constituencies are given the power and felony backup to recollect erring representatives, those who are elected to shield their hobby might sit up straight; because they realize they might be recalled ought to they disappoint their constituencies

3. Make corruption punishable: a whole lot of people are getting concerned in corrupt practices due to the fact there appears now not to be adequate punitive measures installed area to make corruption unattractive. The instant humans are punished in proportion to their crimes, they might no extra interact in corruption with impunity.

[x-theevilinside-x]

She prodded her elbow on the counter, rolling her eyes. " Well, Faith, you know how some people can be. Always looking for someone or something to blame for society's problems. You know what's funny? They never seem to take responsibility for their own actions. It's always easier for them to point fingers and blame others. It was downright irritating. " Sidney sighed and shook her head. " In other words, it's a classic case of passing the buck. It's like they never learned how to take responsibility for their decisions. "

Despite her best efforts, the constant media presence was taking its toll on her. Memories of her mother's tragic death resurfaced, reopening old wounds that she had worked so hard to heal. The uproar in Woodsboro only served as a painful reminder of the past, making it increasingly difficult for her to maintain her composure at times. She found solace in the support of her close friends, who stood by her side through it all. Faith is one of those friends. Sid almost felt a sort of sisterhood with Faith because she knew more than anyone what it was like not to have a mother around. But this wasn't the time for her to dwell on the past or what happened a few days ago.

" I say screw the horror flicks. How about some comedy? " She pursed her lips together in thought. " Maybe Weekend At Burnie's or something like that? You know Andrew McCarthy is kinda cute. "

@x-theevilinside-x {Sidney Prescott} gets a starter

Faith leaned across the video store counter, chewing her gum loudly. "Ugh, Sid. You wouldn't believe how many Puritan freaks have come in here today asking what sorts 'indoctrinating films' we're offering to 'impressionable youths', whatever that crap means." She used finger quotes to emphasize the offending phrases, rolling her eyes. "As if The Breakfast Club's debut made a whole generation of teenagers want to get Saturday detention."

Thankfully Randy handled those people, mostly. She was handling inventory and counting down the minutes 'til her shift was over so she and Sidney could get going. They were going to have a sleepover and watch flicks and- Faith's personal favorite- eat popcorn with M&Ms mixed in so they got all melty and warm. That one girl's murder kind of spooked Woodsboro, and for good reason- but it really wasn't something either of the girls should dwell on for too long. Strength in numbers, and all that, plus the media circus couldn't have been easy on Sidney.

"But hey, you don't need to hear about that crap. You got something picked out for the movie night? I'll rent out the tapes when I punch my card."