#(With this more intense and dramatic feel to it. Though the voiceover was also still there so maybe they decided to lean more to that?)

[qwuilty]

All the Postal 1997 original beta screens, from what i've been able to uncover so far (with transcripts):

(Note: This text also appears for the Good Morning / what would later become the Home level in the 1997 developer showcase, thank you to KeshaFilms on youtube for the clearer recording)

The Construction Site

10/17/97 The demons are real and they are here. Fate has delivered me into their midst and given me the opportunity to save my species from a million years of dominion.

Parade of Disasters

10/18/97 I can hear the rumble, the thunder of drums in the distance. If i find them there, then i will know the Old One was right.

The Junk Yard

10/17/97 In the hands of the Old One, I am a weapon of destruction spitting death all directions to slay the enemies of mankind.

[nellie-elizabeth]

Outlander: A Life Well Lost (7x01)

We're back! It feels like it's been forever since this show was on the air, but I guess it was May 2022 when we last left off, in quite a dramatic fashion, with Claire arrested for a murder she didn't commit, and Jamie separated from her, desperate to save her before it's too late!

Cons:

To start, I do not like the new vocals on the intro. Mostly they were okay, but that weird breathy whisper thing at the very end fading into the episode title card, was just bizarre.

The voiceover is still a weakness of the show. A holdover from a concept that wanted to use Claire's first person POV from the books. There's one instance of it early on from Claire where she's talking about how she knows how long the Revolutionary War will stretch on, and it just felt like an unnecessary emphasis on something we could have gotten just from looking at her face as the other prisoners spoke of the hardships they were facing.

Brianna is still the weak link as an actor. I think I've realized that she's no good at anything but the extremes. She has a really infectious sweetness when she's playing super hyped and excited, and I've seen her do despair and pain very well too. But when she just needs to have a normal conversation with her husband, it sounds super stilted and I feel like I can basically see her reading the lines off a script. It's too bad, I really wish I liked her more. Book Brianna is going to reign supreme, I'm afraid.

I remember that in the book, the nature of Malva's wrongdoing was left a little more vague. We get the story here from Christie that she is in fact the daughter of his wife and his brother, that both Malva and her mother were witches and constantly doing wicked, evil things. The extent to which Tom is just being a violent misogynist is more vague in the books, I feel. This episode felt a bit too sympathetic to Tom's perspective, seemingly giving him a free pass on abusing his daughter because of her "wicked" ways. Which, from what I can tell, include things like "wanting to have sex" and "being terrified of her father finding out about her pregnancy with her own brother". I wish this episode had been a little less kind to Tom. I know he's about to do this incredibly brave and noble thing, but still.

Pros:

The strongest part of the Roger/Bree plot: Roger quoting Ali and getting recognized by Wendigo Donner! I don't think it happens quite like this in the book, but it's the same idea, someone else from the future recognizing a fellow traveler based on a reference to future pop culture. It happened with Geillis when Claire quoted JFK, I believe. I like the ambiguity here, the way Wendigo's presence with Brown's men makes Roger think about the nature of being a bystander. Brianna insists that Wendigo is culpable for Claire's horrible abuse at the hands of Brown and his men, because he stood by and did nothing. Roger points out that he found himself working for Bonnet when he first came through the stones, and was thus witness to his horrible actions, and was unable to do anything to stop him. When do we give people second chances? Does the fact that Wendigo is from the future create a bond between him and the other travelers? I'd certainly be curious and fascinated to find other time travelers if I were Bree and Roger!

The main plot can basically be broken down like this: Claire is a prisoner, but gets pulled onto the Governor's ship to help care for his pregnant wife. Tom Christie decides to turn himself in for the murder of his daughter Malva, out of love for Claire, and also responsibility for Malva's actions, and Claire thus gets to go free.

This is pretty book accurate, though it's a lot more fleshed out with detail in the novel from what I remember. Claire has to pose as a forger for a time on the ship, which is fun. I did think this all worked out very well. Jamie's intense focus on finding Claire is of course great, and I love Ian going to bat for his Auntie, doing everything he can to help protect her.

The comedic highlight for me is when Jamie and Claire are first reunited, and they fall into each other's arms on the ship, kissing passionately. The guard stands there awkwardly for a while and then says: "Excuse me, this is not permitted." It was really funny.

Also, gotta do a shoutout for our first mentions of Lord John of the season; Jamie uses John's name in order to get an audience with the governor and dodge suspicions of being a rebel, straddling a fine line. I love Jamie using Lord John's super intense and inappropriate crush on him in order to further his own ends, that's never not going to be funny to me. I hope we get to see John this season.

Probably the dramatic highlight for me was Jaime and Tom talking about what Tom was going to do for Claire. Jamie ultimately talks about the respect he has for Christie, the ways in which even through their disagreement, he wants to honor him. I think Tom is a bad person, or whatever, but I think Jamie is giving a man walking to his death, the last gift he knows how to give him. I love that Jamie has the capacity to be a jealous person, but when he knows that Tom is in love with Claire, he doesn't resent his love for her. He sees it as the great gift it is, given the circumstances.

So, yeah, there we are! I will say that this episode doesn't feel much like a season premiere, in the sense that it's clearly continuing on (and indeed wrapping up) a story that we spent all of last season on, but I think that's because of pandemic stuff, were they had to cut the last season short, and this one is almost like a "part two" of season six. I'm excited to see where we go from here; I've read all the books in this series, many of them more than once, but they're so long and so much happens, that often I'm only remembering the details once I see them play out on the screen!

8/10

[vanessakirbyfans]

Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby play 19th-century farmers' wives who develop a passionate connection in Mona Fastvold's drama co-starring Casey Affleck and Christopher Abbott.

A friendship that blossoms into romance offers two mid-19th century farmers' wives refuge from their joyless marriages and routines of menial drudgery in Mona Fastvold's The World to Come.

Adapted from Jim Shepard's moving 2017 short story of the same title, this Venice competition entry is set in a rugged upstate New York where the winters are harsh and the patriarchy hangs heavy. Resignation seems to be the default mode for Abigail and Tallie (Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby, respectively), the women at the story's center, whose lives revolve around keeping their husbands' stomachs full and their ambitions afloat. The initially halting, increasingly urgent intimacy that grows between them comes as a relief, but also a frustration — an agonizing taste of what life could be like if they weren't locked into roles dictated by their time, place and culture.

The World to Come has much to recommend it, including the polish and precision of Fastvold's directorial touch and a terrific quartet of leads (Casey Affleck and Christopher Abbott play the heroines' spouses) who, among other things, deliver mouthfuls of unwieldy period dialogue with dexterity and conviction. Kirby, especially, is a marvel, radiant and haunting as the more outgoing of the central pair.

That the movie succeeds to the extent it does is somewhat of a miracle given how often it gets in its own way. Indeed, The World to Come is nearly undone by a single glaring flaw: The drastic over-reliance on voiceover composed largely of lines lifted from the short story. On a sentence to sentence basis, what we hear — mainly Abigail's diary entries, read by Waterston — is vivid, at times strikingly lovely. But it's also so jarringly literary, and so extremely frequent, that it yanks us out of the delicate spell cast by the film's painterly, austerely beautiful images and nuanced performances. Meant to draw us into the outwardly placid protagonist's churning inner world, the voiceover has the opposite effect: one of distancing and interruption. Rarely have I so wanted to tell a first-person narrator to — for lack of more delicate phrasing — put a sock in it.

Shepard, the story's author, is credited as co-screenwriter (along with novelist Ron Hansen), so it's tempting to diagnose the problem as excessive fidelity to source material. Admittedly, the narration makes dramatic sense. Abigail is a stifled intellectual, and writing is her talent and escape; the passages from her journal give us access to feelings that her air of sleeves-rolled-up stoicism doesn't immediately suggest and her everyday duties — baking bread, plucking chickens, milking cows — don't provide an outlet for. The World to Come uses voiceover as its primary tool in building a portrait of female interiority.

But that choice underestimates the other tools at the film's disposal — namely, the director's own visual gifts and her first-rate cast. Waterston is a skilled enough performer and Fastvold an evocative enough stylist to conjure the depths of Abigail's desires and disappointments without having her give an emotional play-by-play. Much as I admired and was at times stirred by The World to Come, I'm convinced it would be a significantly stronger movie with 75 percent of the narration stripped away.

Early scenes pull us into the daily grind of Abigail and her taciturn husband Dyer (Affleck) as they struggle to keep their farm functioning while mourning the loss of their young daughter. There is distance between them — which Dyer openly deplores — though remnants of tenderness, too. Mostly, for Abigail, there is a numbing sameness to the days that pass.

A ripple in that sameness comes in the form of a new couple in the area: Tallie and her hog farmer husband, Finney (Abbott). From the moment Abigail lays eyes on Tallie — with her luxuriant tangle of red hair, splash of freckles and alert blue eyes — she's fascinated. Tallie returns Abigail's curious gaze.

Before long, the women are paying each other regular visits, candid Tallie coaxing reserved Abigail out of her shell. The two share gossip, grievances and, eventually, personal confidences as they create a space away from the men — the lives — they have settled for. Fastvold and her leading ladies establish the characters' dynamic and trace their dawning attraction persuasively, as Abigail finds herself dazzled by Tallie's boldness and independent spirit while Tallie is moved by Abigail's kindness and sharp intelligence. Their closeness is built from a gently crescendoing accumulation of gestures — stolen smiles and glances, the graze of a finger, a bundle of birthday gifts, a foot massage, a hungry kiss — and rendered more intense by their shared sense of looming danger; Abigail and Tallie know that if they're caught, the consequences will be dire.

The omnipresence of Abigail's narration during the movie's middle stretch may call to mind the recent work of Terrence Malick, a great filmmaker whose use and abuse of voiceover has become a devastating weakness. The heroine's musings here may be less drifty and dreamily existential than their Malickian counterparts, but there are eye-rollers of various types — from flowery ("my heart is like a leaf borne over a rock by rapidly moving water"); to obvious ("Astonishment and joy," she sighs following her first embrace with Tallie. Then, in case we didn't get the memo: "Astonishment and joy. Astonishment and joy."); to TMI (when Dyer falls ill: "I've restored him somewhat with an enema of molasses, warm water and lard").

Those lines would be a heavy lift for any performer, and there's something a bit mannered in the hushed pitch and lilting cadences of Waterston's voiceover. She's much more affecting in her scenes with Kirby, the Modigliani-esque graveness of her face melting into a warm, giddy smile.

And how could it not? Kirby gives Tallie a mischievous gleam in her eye and a low, slightly naughty voice that makes her every utterance sound like a confession. The actress conveys more with a slightly cocked eyebrow and clench of the jaw than most do with an entire face-full of emoting, and her magnetism here feels effortless; Tallie isn't as flamboyant as Kirby's flouncy, fancily frocked Princess Margaret from The Crown, but she's somehow just as full of spark and drama.

Affleck and Abbott, meanwhile, lend their characters dimension and specificity, making them more than cardboard impediments to their wives' fulfillment. Speaking in a hoarse, wounded whisper, Affleck locates something deeply human in the hapless, love-starved Dyer, a limited man who nevertheless is capable of seeing beyond his own needs — of having "sympathy," as he notes at one point. Dyer becomes a partner to Abigail at a crucial moment, something that differentiates him starkly from Kinney, a rigid prig who can't conceive of Tallie as anything but an extension of himself. Abbott plays him with a flicker of madness, a streak of sadism that gives the story's turn toward darkness a kind of queasy inevitability.

Even with its flaws, this represents a step up from Fastvold's last movie, the creepy but slight mood piece The Sleepwalker (2014). There's a sense of confidence and control here, starting with DP André Chemetoff's evocative compositions and scrupulously judged camerawork, which favors stillness over movement and balances close-ups with longer shots situating the actors within rustic, sparsely decorated interiors or more majestic outdoor spaces. The setting is stunning (the film was shot on 16mm in Romania), but The World to Come never succumbs to period-drama prettifying. Nature is a seen as a wild, threatening force — Tallie's trek through a blizzard is captured with cacophonous nightmarishness — wielding as much power over the characters' lives as their own choices.

Daniel Blumberg's supple score, by turns mournful, playfully jazzy and full of roiling menace, is one of several other contributions that collectively create an impression of sensitive craftsmanship. Luckily for The World to Come, that impression lingers longer than the film's aggravations.

[askaceattorney]

Dear askrikkaiandhyotei,

Thanks for waiting, first of all.  I’m finally finished with all the essay requests that came before yours.  As Nahyuta might say...

So, an essay about the Last Rites Prosecutor?  Let us begin our journey down the path of enlightenment.

In order to properly talk about this prosecutor monk, I first have to talk briefly about the concept of religion -- not any specific one, but religion as a whole.  Throughout history, religion has been described a thousand different ways -- something necessary for life and society, something needless or even harmful for life and society, and just about everything in between.  The reason I bring this up is that Nahyuta does a great job of portraying both the positive and negative sides of religion through the use of a fictitious one called Khura’inism -- a pretty bold move on Capcom’s part, but if you ask me, it paid off pretty well.

We first meet him in his natural habitat, as peaceful as anyone could be.

His peace is interrupted when the police drag a captured member of the Defiant Dragons into the temple.  As a prosecutor of high reputation, this rebel could be described as Nahyuta’s mortal enemy, but his attitude toward him, while disdainful, is far from unpleasant; he in fact offers him mercy on behalf of the Holy Mother if he’s willing to submit himself to the court’s judgment.  Even knowing how empty of a gesture this is, considering the unfairness of every trial in Khura’in since the enactment of the DC Act, it’s still somewhat refreshing to see him speak so calmly to someone considered to be the lowest of the low in Khura’in.  His patience stems from his calm nature, but also from his loyalty to the deity he serves, as evidenced in his words:

“O Holy Mother, as your humble servant, you would have me act to save this wretch’s soul?  I suppose this, too, is part of my fate.”  This demonstrates one of the nobler sides of religion -- a willingness to leave one’s fate in the hands of a higher power.

The next time we see him, he attempts to stop a potentially brutal fight between the police and a fugitive, who happens to be holding a knife to Maya’s neck.  His desire for a peace is admirable, especially in such an intense situation, but what he says next is of questionable virtue:

It’s here that Nahyuta displays one of the less noble parts of religion -- looking down on those who don’t share one’s beliefs.  Sure, a guy who’s willing to use an innocent bystander as a shield obviously needs some form of help, but what exactly are those condescending words supposed to do for him (or Maya, for that matter)?  Not surprisingly, he refuses to listen, but luckily, Nahyuta has reflexes like Little Mac.

Interestingly enough, immediately after this, we see his compassionate side again.  He not only rescues a foreign visitor, but wishes the Holy Mother’s divine favor on her.

As uppity as he’s shown himself to be, it’s hard to dislike someone who treats a stranger so well -- especially one who, as we know, has been through some serious rough spots in her life.  This introduction of Nahyuta -- a disdainful yet compassionate man of faith -- leads us to wonder if he’s meant to be a protagonist, antagonist, antihero, or something else.

And we haven’t even gotten into the game proper yet.  There’s still a lot to unpack about this guy.

Our next bit of info comes from his unlikely detec- sorry, forensic investigator, Ema Skye:

Like a lot of new characters, he’s shrouded in mystery from the very beginning.  We at least learn what his reason is for choosing the prosecutor’s path, and where his courtroom nickname came from:

We’ve seen all manner of bizarre prosecutors up until now, but so far, Nahyuta is the only prosecutor who wears his beliefs on his sleeve, especially in the courtroom.  For him, prosecuting is about more than seeking justice for the guilty -- it’s about seeking salvation for their victims.  In other words, it’s not only his professional duty, but a religious one.  Interestingly enough, his professionalism is no less strong than his religion -- according to Ema, he’s known for solving difficult cases around the world.

But religious, professional, or otherwise, Nahyuta proves to be the same as every other prosecutor, as well as every human being -- capable of making mistakes, both big and small.  Before we get to that, though...

Well, what do you know?  Looks like we have yet another connection between a new character and a current one.  Apollo, just how many people do you know that you never talk about?

The importance of their relationship is put to the side as we learn how Nahyuta operates as a prosecutor.  At first, he seems like a “gentle-mannered soul,” as Athena puts it, but that visage disappears in the next moment.  Like pretty much every prosecutor we’ve seen, he’s proud, demeaning, and flat-out brutal when he wants to be.  He even has a favorite adjective for describing his opponents.

Then there’s the sutra he often chants as a fancy way of telling them to “get real.”  And as if that wasn’t enough, he uses his “duty as a monk to punish sinners” as a way of claiming the moral high ground, even going so far as to threaten to cast the defense and defendant “into the pit of hell.”  It’s hard to blame anyone for getting upset after hearing that, is it?

But hey, at least there’s no physical abuse this time around, right?

...Oh.

And as fate would have it (or perhaps some divine being who decided to have some fun), his favored forensic detective is a lover of science.  Talk about a perfect match, am I right?

At least the clash is more on the hilarious side in this case.

But anyway, on to Nahyuta’s mistakes.  Aside from his sickening hypocrisy (which is par the course for most Ace Attorney prosecutors, anyway) and the oversights he makes in court, there’s one blatant sin of his that sticks out: ascribing to a principle that anyone, religious or not, should be able to see problems with -- namely, the DC Act and the persecution of those who defy it.  To be fair, his motive for doing so is a humanitarian one -- protecting his family’s honor and safety -- but his willingness to look the other way as his own countrymen are wrongfully imprisoned and executed (not to mention his father having to stay in hiding because of it) is quite the opposite.

This brings us to his signature catchphrase, which could also be called his motto:

There are a lot of situations where this would be good advice, but in Nahyuta’s case, it’s a convenient excuse for him to give up on dealing with the problems of his past and remain loyal to the whims of Ga’ran.  More specifically, it’s a mask he uses to hide what he feels inside, which we don’t discover until it’s forced out of him: a lack of faith.

Even as someone as who has no trouble believing in the Holy Mother, Lady Kee’ra, and the Twilight Realm, Nahyuta struggles to believe in change, no matter how much his family, his friends, and his nation need it.  And it’s here that we see one of the most beautiful twists in his story -- when it comes to change, his father and surrogate brother have more faith than he does.  It takes some persuasion from Apollo to make him realize it, but it turns out he hasn’t quite given up on righting the wrongs of the past.

Nahyuta’s unwillingness to confiscate his father’s badge is all the proof Apollo needs that his faith in Dhurke’s fight for freedom hasn’t disappeared completely.  After proving this and Dhurke’s innocence, he finally forces Nahyuta to do something few people have the courage to do -- look at his own sins.

Unlike Claude Frollo, Nahyuta managed to turn his focus inward and realize his own imperfection.  It took some push from a close friend for it to happen, but better late than never.  And as it turns out, his faith in Dhurke’s creed was as close to him as his right hand all along -- in fact, it was on it.

Much like with Rayfa’s moment of transformation, Capcom was nice enough to give us a voiceover for this pivotal moment.

Nahyuta’s story in SoJ ends with him beginning a journey down his own path of redemption as he attempts to undo the damage caused by Ga’ran and his obedience to her.  He’s even bold enough to ask for Apollo’s help in continuing Dhurke’s mission of restoring Khura’in’s legal system.

I love character redemption as much as anyone, but one thing I love even more is when a character takes it a step further by joining the same cause they were once fighting against.  Whether it was brought on by the Holy Mother’s will, a love for his family and country, a mixture of the two, or something else, Nahyuta ultimately becomes a changed man.  Transformations like this are a sight to behold, especially knowing how much struggle it takes to get there.

So, religion -- is it good overall, evil overall, or somewhere in between?  That’s a mystery we probably won’t solve here, but Nahyuta and his religious devotion provide an excellent example of both the good and the evil that can come from it.  As both a cliche religious bigot and someone who’s willing to make sacrifices for others, he illustrates the crucial fact that no one is perfect, and that religion doesn’t do much (if anything) to change this, but faith certainly does.

And finally, I have to agree with your analogy of Nahyuta as Apollo’s Edgeworth -- the two of them knew each other from a young age, grew up together, were separated by unfortunate circumstances, and followed very different paths, one being less noble than the other, but eventually undergoing a dramatic change in direction.  It makes me wonder what a spin-off game with Nahyuta as the protagonist would look like.  It might just be interesting...as long as we don’t have to chant that sutra into a microphone.

-The Co-Mod

[sanctuaryforalluniverses]

Getting inside Danny Williams’ brain, movie edition (“Partners” DVD extras)

For those of us who write fanfiction, one of the weird world-filling-in activities we sometimes have to do is try to come up with a comprehensive list of a character’s preferred leisure time activities. Sometimes they’ll give us hints on the show, but in most cases the show focuses far more on what they do at work than what they do during their off hours. Fanfiction, on the other hand, is often written about a character’s off hours, leaving us writers to gather clues and try to extrapolate from there.

Which is how I ended up having a very weird weekend trying to come up with a definitive list of movies I was certain Danny would really like. Because I honestly don’t think he’s a huge movie watcher (his go-to “crap there’s nothing on TV” option is usually sports of some kind) but he’s got too much movie knowledge not to appreciate the medium at least a little. Unlike Steve, Danny’s response to being forced through several different romance movies was to analyze them, deconstruct the various tropes, and learn to predict them in other movies. Casual viewers, in my experience, just don’t DO that.

Also, the one movie we know he loves, “Enemy Mine,” is a freakin’ classic.

The thing is, though, that it’s kind of a weird classic. For those who haven’t had the pleasure of experiencing the movie for themselves, “Enemy Mine” is a 1985 West German-American science fiction film starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. The two are pilots on opposite sides of an interstellar war, and they both crash land on the same planet. They hate each other, slowly become friends, and when Gossett’s character dies in childbirth (his species can reproduce all by themselves), Quaid’s character promises to take the kid back to Gossett’s home planet for a naming ceremony. He raises the kid for awhile, accidentally gets “rescued” and taken away from him, and steals a ship to get the kid back.

Unsurprisingly, the movie was a total box office bomb. That’s what tends to happen when a movie is really, really, good, but also completely fails to follow any conventional box office formula for success. If you boil it down to its bare essentials, “Enemy Mine” is about talking, aliens, and feelings. There’s a solid chunk of sci-fi fans who are fond of it, and count it AMONG their favorites, but it’s pretty rare for someone who isn’t a fan of sci-fi to like it. Let alone love it as much as Danny clearly does.

And Danny… there’s no way I’m buying a secret fondness for sci-fi. Someone in his life must have been a fan (I’m suspecting Matt, who I imagine must have been a big fan of escapism) but that man is so non-nerd he couldn’t casually come up with SUPERMAN when trying to put a name to his red-caped “costume” in the season 3 Halloween episode. I hadn’t even thought that was POSSIBLE. (He manages a reference much later in the series, but that’s after DC’s latest spate of movies. The marketing saturation was so dramatic at that point anyone who consumed even the most casual media couldn’t escape it).

Feelings, however… Danny’s a BIG fan of feelings. He was so openly moved when we saw him watch “Enemy Mine,” and he would ABSOLUTELY be one of those people who enjoyed sobbing over movies because he could never let himself cry in real life. Also, the man is a deeply emotional, deeply sentimental asshole, no matter how hard he tries to pretend he’s a tough guy. So if he’s going to seek out a movie on his own, it’s probably going to have to offer the same dialed-up-to-11 emotional catharsis that “Enemy Mine” does.

Also, he clearly doesn’t mind movies where the characters spend most of their time just talking to each other. Hell, he probably even loves it.

On that note, here’s a not-comprehensive-but-definitely-reliable list of some of Danny Williams’ most-watched movies, in no particular order.

Arrival

This one… Danny has to save this one for special occasions. The things the movie says about parenthood and consciously letting your heart get broken because of the sweetness along the way hits him right in the heart every single time, but there’s also a dead kid involved. Yes, she’s sort of at the edges, but we also get Amy Adams talking to her dead daughter in voiceover and it just wrecks Danny EVERY SINGLE TIME. Some of the things the movie says about choices and accepting pain also mess him up, but it touches on some deeper issues and he really doesn’t like to look at any of that too closely. It’s a beautiful, well-made movie (he WILL rant about how Adams deserved an Oscar for it), but sometimes he just can’t allow himself to get emotionally wrecked like that.

Steve only sort of understands why he gets so emotional over it. But every time they watch it together, he keeps his arms around Danny the entire time and doesn’t say a word about any tears he sees.

Beaches

Listen – I will physically fight anyone who tries to tell me this isn’t one of Clara Williams’ favorite movies. I am dead certain she watched this ALL THE TIME when Danny was growing up, and I’m sure he’s told several people that he suffered through it. But listen – lifelong friendship, massive weepiness, AND New Jersey? Danny loves this movie nearly as much as his mother does, and will absolutely watch it any time it happens to be on TV.  He’s seen it so many times he can actually recite the lines of some of the big scenes along with the movie, but is careful not to let himself do that too often.

Steve absolutely teases him about this one, but if Grace catches him watching it she’ll sometimes sit down on the couch and watch it with him. Like her father, she also likes the movie far more than she’s willing to admit to, and is the one person Danny will actually let himself say the lines with (she does it with him). For the funeral scene and the bits after, Grace will inevitably get weepy and snuggle up close to her father.

Gifted

This one is just super obvious. In the movie, Chris Evans spends the entire movie figuring out how to raise his adorable super-gifted niece despite pressure from nearly everyone to give her up, and in between tries and fails to have some kind of dating life. It’s a celebration of the fathering spirit, and Danny relates HARD to it. It doesn’t get him as teary as some of the other ones, but there are enough emotional moments to leave him satisfied.

Up

Who DOESN’T cry during Carl and Ellie’s life together at the beginning of the movie? Danny found this one when Grace was still young enough that Disney made up a huge portion of her movie diet, but he’s stuck with it even though she hasn’t. He’s actually grown to like the movie more and more over the years, and what he hasn’t realized yet is because it’s really closely tied to the fact that he got dragged to Hawaii the year after the movie came out. The idea of a curmudgeon traveling to a hellish wilderness in the middle of nowhere and finding a family and new purpose in life when he gets there just started RESONATING with him for some reason, you know?  

Bonus movie that Danny USED to watch all the time and now just can’t anymore: Ghost

Honestly, “Ghost” used to be one of his go-to movies. It’s got nearly the feels-per-minute ratio of “Beaches,” and is slightly less embarrassing for a grown man to be watching. Plus, Danny is a very intense, very specific kind of romantic, and the idea of a love that outlasted death appealed to him on a really fundamental level. Of course, he mentally classified as a fantasy, not so much because of the ghost as the idea that a married couple could actually love each other that much. But hey, who doesn’t enjoy a good fantasy now and then?

But after he and Steve got together… well, he’s TRIED to watch it in the years since. More than once, in fact. But it’s not long before he sees Patrick Swayze staying close to his wife, or trying to protect her from his murderous business partner, and thinking about how Steve would absolutely do that if he could manage it at all. Or he’ll see Demi Moore having such a tough time after her husband dies, and he can’t help but think about how destroyed he’d be if anything happened to Steve. If any of the close calls he’s had over the years were just a little bit closer. How easy it would be, even with Steve being more careful, for someone to shoot him one day.

Ever since then, he hasn’t ONCE managed to watch the movie all the way through. Eventually, he just stopped trying.

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 73: Too Far

“I hope you understand. I want to understand.”

Pearl might have a flair for big dramatic moments of antagonism, but on a day-to-day basis, Amethyst has always been the meanest Crystal Gem. This doesn’t mean she’s cruel, as this is a fundamentally sweet show, but it’s not nothing. Her tough exterior can lead to gruffness, her sensitivity can make her lash out, and she’s a lovable goon even on a good day, reveling in teasing Steven and getting a rise out of Pearl. She’s the friend that always remembers to punch you on your birthday.

I say this because we’re meant to empathize with Amethyst when Peridot merrily needles at all of her insecurities. And I do! The last thing Amethyst needs is for a certified Kindergartener to confirm that she literally came out wrong. She should be a massive brute with a body that matches her attitude, but in her runty frame, all that berserker energy comes off as scrappiness instead. We’ve really gotten to know Amethyst by now, and seeing Peridot dismantle the self-esteem she’s been building up since Reformed is rough stuff. 

Buuuuut yeah this is Amethyst’s fault.

Amethyst spends the first half of Too Far making fun of Peridot. The intent here is debatable: an ungenerous reading could say that Amethyst is straight-up bullying her, but I doubt that’s what she meant to do. I’m pretty sure she’s just joshing around like she always does, and this is her teasing olive branch. But regardless of intent, look at this from Peridot’s point of view. She’s a captive of a planet that’s doomed to explode and is stuck working with a team that she’s been fighting until very recently. The leader of this team just put her on a leash, and one of its members is laughing at the way she talks. When they get to Kindergarten, Amethyst calls her a nerd, and even if she doesn’t know what the word is, she shows that she doesn’t like it. Peridot is then incited to roast Garnet and Steven, which earns laughter and starry-eyed approval. 

So we’ve got this hyper-literal stranger who knows she’s being teased, but is also getting laughter for saying what she feels, and gets even more laughter when she bluntly assesses two of Amethyst’s friends, one of whom is right there with them. Why would Peridot think that Amethyst would get upset by continuing these analyses? Especially because she's saying what she thinks are nice things about Amethyst at first.

Based on the model for friendship that Amethyst has presented, Peridot is doing the right thing. Then Amethyst changes the rules, Peridot doesn’t understand, and at the end of the episode she’s made to apologize. But Amethyst, for whatever reason, is not.

Peridot is hardly pure and innocent. The reason she was tied up in the first place was her overt fusionphobia, and even if a bigot doesn’t understand that their toxic views are wrong, it doesn’t excuse harmful behavior. (They should also be educated, but we’ll get to that in Log Date 7 15 2.) She hasn’t learned her lesson from Back to the Barn, and only reluctantly acknowledges Pearl’s skills. She’s still ornery and is still coming off many, many episodes of being the bad guy.

But it’s made very clear that Peridot doesn’t understand basic things about Earth—that’s the whole impetus for Amethyst messing with her—so it’s super unfair to expect her to understand the nuance of Amethyst’s capricious enjoyment of mean humor. And it’s okay that Amethyst is unfair about this. It’s totally within her character to be hypocritical about this. But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t apologize for her part of this conflict, and teach all the little Amethysts watching that if your language of friendship is light bullying, you better be able to take what you dish out.

Okay, so that’s my big gripe with Too Far, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the episode. Even if it doesn’t stick the landing, there’s some terrific character work for Peridot and Amethyst here. Peridot gets a lot more to do, because she’s the one who’s allowed to grow here, but I like how Amethyst gets uncomfortable even when Peridot is praising her as “the only Crystal Gem that’s actually a Gem,” as anything that makes her stick out of place among her family is unwelcome attention. And her ensuing bad mood is played just right: she’s not having a meltdown, she’s just a sullen teenager. Peridot will appreciate the practice when Lapis comes to town.

But yeah, in terms of growth this is Peridot’s episode through and through. It includes the first appearance of her tape recorder, which allows us an unprecedented level of narration on this voiceover-free show, and this stream-of-consciousness helps quickly develop her in a way that other characters, who’ve had seventy-odd episodes to burn, haven’t needed. It’s our first look into Peridot as a new source of metacommentary, starting with her legendary description of Pearl’s main activities: “Singing, crying, singing while crying.” She’s starting to settle in and care about what the Crystal Gems think, and it’s cool to see her actually being helpful instead of projecting competence to spite Pearl: taking a drillhead from an injector is a good idea!

I think the coolest thing about this episode is how her desire to please Amethyst gets extra context from Message Received, where we see just how seriously she takes the hierarchy of Homeworld. Her reverence for Yellow Diamond shows that she’s as invested in being a subordinate as she is in lording over Pearl: the notion that every Gem has her place is Peridot’s gospel, so of course she sees Amethyst as “the best Gem here” compared to a pearl, a fusion, a hybrid freak, and a lowly peridot. Even without her explicitly talking about Amethyst’s rank, we see Peridot trying to get on her good side in a way she never does with any other Crystal Gem, Steven included. Then the same behavior is seen when the Ruby Squad mistakes Amethyst for Jasper in Back to the Moon, further making sense of Peridot’s deference. This is the sort of thing that makes rewatches so fun.

Despite Amethyst mostly being the cause of the episode’s conflict and a springboard for Peridot to change, we get a lot of groundwork here for her future. It takes a while for her Season 2/3 arc to really rev up: by the time we get to the meat of it in Crack the Whip, Garnet’s and Pearl’s are long done, even though Amethyst’s actually starts first (Reformed barely precedes Sworn to the Sword and Keeping It Together). But I sort of love that. Because as we learn in Too Far, her issues largely stem from arriving late.

The episode wisely avoids direct comparisons to Jasper, even if it’s easy to leap to that image when Peridot describes the ideal quartz. We also don’t mention an even more obvious comparison, Rose Quartz, whose class is in her name and who we know was gigantic (even though Pink wasn’t a true quartz and was several times larger than the new form she chose). Instead, the knowledge of what these bigger Gems are “supposed” to look like is a ticking time bomb for Amethyst’s self-image, which wasn’t great to begin with. There’s way too much to deal with right now to delve too deeply, but it’s nice to have Too Far set things up here so Amethyst’s inevitable breakdown isn’t out of nowhere.

Garnet is fantastic, obviously. She’s efficiently used for humor and has room for a badass character moment that’s just the right amount of petty. Pearl is in full work mode, so of course she gets a small freak-out, but her understated competence continues to nicely contrast Peridot’s intensity.

Steven is ever-attentive in his new job as Peridot’s Earth Coach, which honestly does give an in-universe reason for her one-sided apology; I’m sure Amethyst would’ve seen the error of her ways if the show’s conscience was hanging out with her instead. I love that the emotion he coaxes out of Peridot is “smallness,” because that’s how she’s conditioned to see the universe. Big Gems are important, small Gems aren’t. There are obviously exceptions (pearls are tall, if reedy), but Steven allows her to express herself in her own terms while Amethyst teases her for it. Yes, he still laughs along with Amethyst, because he’s not perfect and also is a kid, but his empathy is what allows for their stirring final exchange.

It is big of Peridot to admit that she’s wrong, even if she needs to take baby steps like a prerecorded message to do it. She’s still learning. For me, her apology is what confirms that she has potential as a Crystal Gem, and not just as a friend of Steven’s. It took a couple episodes, but Peridot has gone from experiencing Steven’s overtures of friendship to trying them out for herself. Despite some great storytelling to make us doubt her as the season nears its end, the damage is already done, and her heart has been exposed. She even gets a little moment of star-like hair, which I doubt was the intent, but I love it!

(But guh just apologize already Amethyst. Drives me nuts.)

Future Vision!

Man, Peridot would’ve had a way easier time getting tools from her leash’s radius if she had some sort of, I dunno, metal powers or something.

I’ve never been to this…how do you say…school?

Florido’s High School AU is our main promo art once again; I love the little touch that they’re fighting in the AV room. And that Pearl is the one who went off to tell an adult. What a narc.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

There’s so much good here, but sorry, I do think it’s really important that all the Amethyst-like kids out there see a story where they’re actually held accountable for their unintentional riling. So it ranks a little low, but not too far down. 

(Not as good as Steven’s drill pun, but what is?) 

Top Fifteen

Steven and the Stevens

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

The Return

Jailbreak

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Winter Forecast

When It Rains

Catch and Release

Chille Tid

Keeping It Together

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

No Thanks!

     5. Horror Club      4. Fusion Cuisine      3. House Guest      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

[robynthomsonnapierfilm]

'You Will Never Walk Alone' - documentary film

1. Planning/Filming

Jagoda had some film maker friends in Poland so we got them to record footage of the protests, people raying, the ant-abortion propaganda, and whatever else was happening at the time in Poland involving the new abortion laws.

Once we received this footage it felt like we were finally in a good place to start officially bouncing around ideas and thinking about the narrative we wanted. Through various meetings with Sana, she suggested the idea that Jagoda should play more of a prominent part in the documentary than we had originally intended - especially because it was her voice we would be seeing throughout. At first we were uncertain, as we feared having her seen throughout might take away from the topic and seem to centred around her, rather than the crisis as a whole. Nevertheless, we went on to film various bits and peaces involving Jagoda (i.e. her painting the symbols you see at the end of the doc, her around Edinburgh, etc.)

In the end, I am so glad we went for the decision to have her more present in the doc, as I feel it makes the voice over feel far more emotionally driven and heightens this feeling of helplessness due to seeing Jagoda in Edinburgh and far from the protests happening in Poland.

2. Editing Footage/Sound/Colour

Laura did such an amazing job of editing our documentary! She was so efficient with it and was great at taking in any notes and feedback given to her from both Sana/Leo, and Jagoda and I. I am so happy with our combination of archive footage and our own personal footage, as well as the screenshots of social media, as I feel this mix of various formats makes the documentary far more interesting and diverse, and gave it a nice balance.

Once we had picture lock, it was my turn to edit the sound. Unfortunately, we had quite a struggle with exporting the project from Laura's laptop to mine. Solving this problem shaved a number of days off of the amount of time we had left to edit sound and colour grade, which was disappointing as I felt I maybe didn't have enough time as I would have liked to experiment with different sounds. In the end though, I am very happy with what I managed to accomplish in the time I had considering I ran into issues with sounds randomly disappearing, on top of learning how to use the software for the first time! Throughout the sound editing process, I would send my drafts back and forth to Jagoda, Laura, and Leo, who would give me really helpful feedback. (couldn't have done it with ought you guys :) )

Once the sound was locked alongside the picture, it was sent off to Jagoda to colour grade.

3. The Crit

Jagoda, Laura and I couldn't have been more pleased with the feedback we received from Sana, Leo and the rest of the class during the crit. We went into it slightly nervous to hear what people had to say, but everyone was so enthusiastic and kind about our work!

Here are some examples of what was said:

"i dont even know what to say, i loved this film! my main critique is a small thing about the typing sounds behind the date 'october 22nd' they didnt sync and i think even if they had they wouldn't be necessary, i also wanted to share that i loved the shot at the end with the umberella and subtitle about 'a bloody revolution' and i want it on my wall"

"I was impressed at the balance between the informational parts and the personal parts. I loved the bit where all of the instragram posts popped up. It was powerful and informative."

"What an incredible film. All of these elements are so striking on their own but the relationship between all of them together is so, so so powerful. I cried throughout. The sense of urgency established by that switch from old-distant-archive to the social media notifications is brilliant. Jagoda's voiceover is so touching and her delivery of it, too. Something that stands out for me is the titles; I think the horror style of them is still great but the font just takes me out a bit. I also think the symbols don't need to be explained - I also think there's power in knowing and not being told. Like the ability to recognise these symbols is a testament to the experience? Idk, like "if you know you know"

"I am blown away. It was like watching something straight off of VICE !! I like decision to avoid music, I think it really grounded the film. The way Jagoda's voice over established the culture and the dramatic shift to talk of revolution at the end is incredibly powerful"

"This was a very powerful film. It really portrayed the female experience incredibly powerfully. I love the decision to have most of it be in polish and think it would have maybe be more impactful to have the entire film in polish? My only notes is i think the edit could be tightened up a bit to be more concise. I think the sound design could have been utilised more to really up the intensity of the riot and protests so we can hear the sound of everything we are seeing (sirens etc). I also though the credits could have been slowed down a bit and have the screen academy logo move at the same speed as the rest of the credits (although I think that wasn't you) Overalll it's fantacstic, moving, important and powerfull. Absolutely something to be proud of."

Along with all of these lovely positives, there was also some - I wouldn't say negatives? - constructive criticism! (that sounds less harsh) This includes:

The typing sounds I added over the words 'OCTOBER 22ND 2020' should be accurately synced with the speed at which the letters appear on screen.

People didn't seem to be keen on the font as they felt it was too 'horror-like' for our documentary. I personally both agree and disagree with this feedback. Part of me completely sees what they mean, as it may be a tad too 'in your face', which takes you out of the doc, since Jagoda's voice over is pretty soft and I didn't go too over the top with sound. on the other other hand, I like that it gives our doc that edge, since I feel as if the subject matter is pretty brutal and this scary font adds to that. Although it could be seen as a little out of touch so I am happy for us to change this.

The edit could be tightened up and made to be a tad more concise.

The sound design could be more intense - especially over the protest sounds as they were a bit lacking considering how busy and 'loud' the shots looked. When editing the sound, this did cross my mind, but I was scared to go too over the top with sound incase it was overbearing for Jagoda's voice over. However, now that I know people feel this way I will be more confident with the sound when going back into it in future.

The credits can be made longer so they move up screen slower, as now they are too quick for people to read them easily.

The voiceover's should be a bit louder.

Overall, I am super proud of what we managed to achieve when taking into consideration the time constraints, technical difficulties we faced, the fact we weren't in Poland to make a documentary ABOUT Poland, and of course... covid.

Thank you so much to Jagoda, Laura, Sana, Leo, and to the class for their kind words :)

[snoopctm]

CtM Thursday Thoughts

CtM Issues–Birth Control

This week I’m back with another Issues post, about a topic that’s been dealt with in a few different ways on the show, from comic to intensely dramatic. It’s an issue with many facets, and an important one for today as well as for the time in which the show is set. More thoughts follow:

The issue of birth control has been brought up on the show in several different ways since series 1, and there’s every indication that the subject will come up again in future episodes. What’s interesting to me is the varying tone of how this topic has been covered. It’s been joked about, as well as being the subject of some of the most dramatic guest plots on the show. It’s fascinating just thinking of the variety of plots and approaches to this subject on this show.

The first time birth control was an issue on the show, it was done in a mostly comic way, with Chummy’s condom demonstration for married women in episode 1x05. This is shown primarily as a “character moment” for Chummy, who has to go out of her comfort zone to present this somewhat awkward demonstration, although the seriousness of the issue is implied as well, and we hear Dr Turner mention the potential religious objections, although we also see Sister Bernadette displaying no qualms whatsoever about the issue when she offers to give the presentation in place of the nervous Chummy. Eventually, Chummy gives the talk and everything works out, but the mothers joke around about it as well. It’s mostly a lighthearted approach to the subject.

The next time it’s brought up as a major plot point is in Nora Harding’s story in 2x05. This time, the topic is treated in a much more serious, nearly tragic tone as it leads to a botched abortion which almost kills Nora. I’ve seen a lot of people mention this story (and Dorothy Whitmore’s in 5x03) as an example of “what happens when abortion is illegal”, and that is definitely a valid point, but as I see it, that’s not the primary message of this story (and arguably, it’s not the *primary* message of Dorothy’s story either, although that message is certainly there, as well). In this story, the primary message seems to be about contraception. If Nora had been able to have reliable, free contraception, she wouldn’t have needed to consider an abortion at all, legal or otherwise (although a safe, legal one would certainly have been a better option than going to Mrs Pritchard). This episode shows the hardships for families who have too many children without being able to afford to care for them, as well as not having an adequate, reliable means of preventing pregnancy. Even though the Pill wasn’t available yet, Nora inquired about getting her tubes tied but was told she couldn’t unless it was deemed “medically necessary”, so the idea of women not having options because other people decide they know what’s best is also there. The voiceover at the end stresses the difference between Nora’s time and that of her daughters in adulthood, when the pill was around and it was much easier to prevent unwanted pregnancies.  

The next time birth control is brought up as a major point, it’s in series 5 when the Pill is introduced, and then we see religious reservations brought up again, to a degree, although I still contend that Sister J’s issue was *never* with married women using it (or, by implication, with married couples having sex without making babies). Her issue was about single women using it and creating a culture of “encouraging” casual sex out of the confines of marriage.  Still, even though the issue of the Pill was brought up here, it was in more of a theoretical sense, since the Pill wasn’t officially released yet, even though we do get to see some of the realities of life without it–the stigma of out-of-wedlock pregnancy (which, I think, was the main point of the Dorothy Whitmore story in 5x03) and the pressure for couples to get married when an unplanned pregnancy occurs. Then in the subsequent episode (6x08) we see the Turners being disappointed because the Pill is restricted only to married women, although again we don’t see a real case of someone using it. That doesn’t happen until the issue of the Pill is revisited in episode 6x08, with the contraceptive clinic’s being opened at the Community Centre.

6x08 is an interesting episode, because the issue of contraception is treated both seriously and with comedy in two different stories in this episode. In both cases here, the issue is focusing on contraception for married (or very-soon-to-be-married) women. The comic approach is shown with Barbara, who goes to the clinic to get fitted for a diaphragm in preparation for her marriage to Tom. This is treated as somewhat awkward, but a bold step for Barbara. It’s also notable here that Tom, who is a curate, displays no objections to Barbara’s decision (religious or otherwise). There’s some awkwardness in how she tells him, but that seems to be more because of the implications of impending wedding night activities. Still, it makes for some funny scenes but is still seen as a positive thing, and an indication that the Herewards aren’t planning to have babies right away after the wedding, and that there is communication and respect in their relationship. It’s also more of a “modern” decision in that Barbara apparently wants to keep working and not have babies right away.

Barbara’s telling Tom of her appointment at the clinic is a direct contrast to the more dramatic Story of the Week in this episode–Wilma’s. Wilma, who already has three children, wants to go back to work, although her husband wants to have more kids because they only have daughters and he wants a son. So Wilma takes the Pill in secret. She’s also shown not taking it correctly (taking three pills at a time in one scene, and taking it at various times of day). She ends up getting a blood clot and, eventually, a pulmonary embolism, which tragically takes her life. There are a lot of messages here, and there’s been some debate about whether or not it was a good idea to show the first woman shown taking the Pill dying from it, but I think the main idea here is that while contraception is a good thing, the Pill is also medicine that comes with complications, especially if not taken as directed. There’s also a message of the underlying misogyny of the era, because while ideally Wilma should have been able to tell her husband what she was doing, she didn’t feel like she could because she knew he wouldn’t approve. He also seems to just barely tolerate the idea that she wants to go back to work in the first place. The idea that he has to be the main provider (and also that, to him and a lot of men, sons are more important than daughters) creates a condition that makes Wilma feel like she needs to keep secrets from him, which contributes to her health issue as well. In a more modern, ideal situation, she would have been more informed of the potential complications of the drug, and he’d know she was taking it, so both would have been more able to spot the warning signs and seek medical attention when needed.  Instead, it’s 1962, the Pill is new and the information about its complications isn’t well communicated, and Wilma feels like she has to hide it from her not-supportive husband so when she does start having issues, neither of them has any clue that something more serious could be going on, and she dies. It’s basically a snowball effect of multiple issues piling up and leading to tragedy.

That’s not the end of the story, though, most likely. This is still early days in terms of the Pill, so I’m sure the issue will be brought up again. It looked to me like the contraceptive clinic was being established as a regular thing at the Community Centre, so I’m guessing it will be a recurring fixture of the show. More women will be seen going there, and I’m sure there will be more stories of different issues that arise because of the Pill and other forms of contraception. There is so much potential for more stories about this issue, and I’m sure there will be positive stories as well as the negative ones. It will be interesting to see when and how this topic gets brought up again. It’s certainly an important issue, and I’m sure it will be revisited more in the future.

[cto10121]

Vérone - movie version

Because this is my blog and if i want to air out my headcanon!RetJ movie, by God, I’ve a right to. Feel free to skip.

N.B: For the purposes of this post and my weirdly exact imagination, this movie!RetJ will be an English adaptation. I know, I know. Take a deep breath and think best-case-scenario-under-the-BEST-circumstances. Think young!Stephen Sondheim doing the lyrics. Think whatever you need to think in order for this to make sense and/or be in the slightest way palatable. Okay. Roll film. 

FADE IN: 

So. It’s the Overture. Voiceover Narrator Guy gives it as the shadows of pre-dawn Verona come into view. Introducing Death dancing, as she does, eerie and graceful and beautiful because this is Hollywood/RetJ and everyone in this thing is hot as a general Rule. Maybe there is some nice animation that summarizes the events of the musical neatly. Either way, the Overture ends, and Death for once is still. She is expressive even in her stillness, cold and unearthly.

Then she gestures to her left. It’s the Montagues, all in blue, randomly appear in formation. She gestures to her right. It’s the Capulets, all in red, also randomly appearing in formation. She is complete control of them. They face each other, and then fight. 

Fight ballet, Redha-inspired, with lots of sharp movements and whirling bodies, scraping the ground, leaping in the air. More realistic fighting choreography than WSS, but still balletic. Let’s not inflict actual damage here, this is mostly symbolic. The feeling given is frenetic, intense. You catch glimpses of Tybalt and his male posse, Mercutio and Benvolio with theirs. The main male fighters are Sampson and Gregory on the Capulet side, Abram and Balthazar on the Montague one.   

At the climax the dancers, all Montague and Capulet youths, make way for Mercutio’s and Tybalt’s macho face-off, circling them. Mercutio taunts a coiled Tybalt while Benvolio tries to restrain Mercutio. Knives are out. 

But of course, the music changes, and so everything changes. Strings hold a fermatta in the air. Everyone knows what’s up. A lookout finally calls out: 

“The Prince!”

Staccatto strings on the bass clef. The French horn playing a chord variation of the melody. At the sound of it, your blood starts to pounding like African drums. “Yes,” you breathe, although it sounds more like “yaaas.” You know what’s going down. It’s the Prince of Verona, who has arrived with his guards, Veronian flag carriers, two royal family members, Paris and Valentine - pretty much the whole train. Death is not intimidated, but even she does something suspiciously like a flourish. She is the one who changes the Montague and Capulets’ youth’s direction. 

This Prince in question is more original French than Revival one, so think cold!badass rather than street rapper!badass. This Prince is one golden tower of barely restrained power, but it still shows, of course. It’s in the way he raps out the first verse and everyone instantly bows down to him. He enters, in my imagination, either on the balcony (not THAT one yet, but still, it’s ~suggestive) of a palatial capitol building or on the utmost step of the square’s dais. Either way, he’s on high. He looks down at these quarreling youths, who join him in a chorus.

They sing about their divided city, Verona. Their houses. Their blood and their honor, which they strive to defend at all cost. These two houses have been enemies for centuries and now their noble youth is repeating the same mistakes as their elders. Each side believes God is on their side, have been since Day 1. Each one knows they are in the right. Hence, the division. Hence, this (dare we say it...) polarization. Hence, Death.

The Prince, for his part, is cynical about this ancient quarrel, and has little hope in solving the problem permanently. All he thinks to do is curb its excesses, flex a bit of strong arm. What concerns him the most is keeping him and his family in power. In a way, he feels the exact same way as the youths themselves: This is Verona. We are Verona. It is what it is. 

He motions for the guards to quietly surround the youths, make sure there is no further trouble. During the song, there are some signs of renewed violence as they get overly excited, mostly on Sampson and Gregory and Abram and Balthazar’s part. They are reined in by said guards. 

At the key change, expect the heads of houses to arrive. First the Capulets, Lord Capulet, looking nicely parochial, and Lady Capulet flaky and fashionable in glittery burgundy, with a female servants for LC - maybe even the Nurse and the Mute girl, her servant. These servants will be distinguished by their uniform clothing, compared to the individualized ones for the M&C youths. The Poet is a servant/factotum of Lord Capulet, and accompanies him here. 

On the Montague side, Lady Montague arrives with her servant/lover in tow, a fierce, badass widow ready to take on the dysfunctional Capulet couple. She is ready. Come at her, bro. She faces off with Lord Capulet. 

“We are Verona,” ends the Prince. If this weren’t sung, we'd obviously hear the irony in that statement. 

So everyone of (immediate dramatic) importance in Verona is now gathered here, in this square. The architecture is half-Renaissance, half-modern, a sleek anachronism that works wonders. Where the hell is this set? Anywhere where people feud and fall in love, that’s where. 

The Prince descends closer to his citizenry, towards the glaring head of houses. The citizenry fall into predictable social scripts, one non-anachronism this film will allow. The servants on both sides kneel, touching their foreheads to the ground. The M&C female youths go down on one knee, the males bowing at the waist. The guards are erect, stiffly so. The heads of houses either bow slightly or do not do anything. Death raises her head haughtily. She is her own queen and she knows it. 

The Prince lets out his freak side at last and begins his rant. He is through, he says, with their fighting. He calls out Tybalt and Mercutio by name, ouch. Tybalt bows like the obedient if fucked up little soldier he is, but Mercutio? Mercutio of Escalus? He doesn’t give a fuck. 

His uncle is long-suffering. Mercutio can make even the most cold-stone badasses temporarily look like they’re in The Office. Mercutio sarcastically gives a bow. The Head P finally delivers his ultimatum: No more fighting or your ass is cooked. Except somewhat fancier. It isn’t iambic pentameter or anything, but it’s still fancier. The Prince also calls on Lord Capulet to meet him to hash out this truce agreement, with Lady Montague following later. Naturally. She has to sing with Lady Capulet first. 

He leaves with his train. The M&C youths do not leave, though. They still itch to fight. Perhaps it is Death, still doing her thing. Their movements become sinuous, less frenetic, but still deadly. Their fight-dancing has the touch of the tango to it. They are split now into M/C male and female couples. Let’s not kid ourselves here: There is an erotic component to this violence, and how it looks, well, rather intimate at turns. A Montague male extends a hand to a Capulet female, taking her hand - amatory? conciliatory? - and then thrusting her violently away. The opposite, too, occurs: A Capulet male goes down, but the Montague female gives him something kin to a caress.

This city is a treacherous one in many ways. The boundaries, however clear they appear on the outside, are not so clear when looked at more closely. Perhaps there is still a chance for this hate to turn into love (see what I did there?). But Lady Montague and Lady Capulet are not aware of this component to the feud, and what it implies. All they can see is hate. 

[ionecoffman]

The HIV Activists Who Ushered in a New Era of Gene Therapy

When the nurse slipped the IV needle into his arm, Matt Sharp was calm. Yes, he knew the risks: As one of the first humans ever to receive the experimental treatment, he could end up with mutant cells running amok in his body. But he was too enamored of the experiment’s purpose to worry about that. For two decades, Sharp had been living with HIV. He’d watched the height of the AIDS crisis claim dozens of his friends’ and lovers’ lives. Now, he believed he was taking a step toward a cure.

A few months earlier, researchers had drawn white blood cells from Sharp’s body and manipulated his DNA with tiny molecules, deleting a single gene in each cell. He was about to receive an infusion that would reintroduce the tweaked cells back in his bloodstream. The procedure aimed to change the genetic makeup of these cells to make Sharp’s body resistant to HIV. Gene therapies like this had been tried before for other diseases, but experiments were put on hold when a young man died in 1999. Sharp’s body would allow researchers to test the safety of new molecular tools called zinc fingers.

The infusion took place in June 2010 at Quest Clinical Research, a nondescript grey building near The Fillmore in San Francisco. Sharp’s cells arrived frozen in a liquid-nitrogen filled shipping container that looked like R2-D2 from Star Wars. After thawing them in a hot-water bath, his nurse plugged the bag into his IV line. Cloudy yellow fluid slowly drained into Sharp’s arm. Within 30 minutes, he headed back to work with billions of genetically modified cells reproducing in his arteries and veins.

[Read: Chinese scientists are outraged by reports of gene-edited babies]

Over the past decade, HIV patients like Sharp have played a major role in pushing forward the vanguard science of gene editing. The community’s close-knit advocacy networks, paired with the fact that there are clearly identifiable genes that make humans vulnerable to the HIV, have made people living with the virus ready candidates for innovative—though sometimes risky—experiments. A gene-editing procedure related to HIV rocked the fields of science and medicine last month with the Chinese researcher He Jiankui’s explosive claim that he had manipulated the genomes of twin babies who do not carry the virus in an attempt to make them resistant to it, a covert and reckless move that was widely condemned by the scientific establishment. But adult HIV patients have voluntarily participated in scientifically condoned experiments that have paved the way for further gene-editing work on, for instance, cancer and blindness.

Sharp’s journey since he signed up for his pioneering infusion illustrates the potential DNA editing has in expanding the possibilities of being human—and also the limits of genetic medicine as a miracle cure.

Sharp, who’s now 62, has been campaigning for innovative experimental medicine since the 1980s. As a veteran of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, he says he was arrested at least eight or nine times—he can’t remember exactly—during protests against slow progress in AIDS treatment and research. He first encountered the founder of Quest Clinical Research, Jay Lalezari, in San Francisco back in the early 1990s, when the young doctor was making a name for himself with daring experiments with potentially toxic drugs. Lalezari’s research offered early hope for surviving HIV, but he initially had an uneasy easy relationship with activists: ACT UP staged a “die in” at one of his talks at an AIDS conference.

Over time, the activists began to trust Lalezari. Hundreds of people now credit him for saving their lives. In 2008, Lalezari was involved in an earlier gene-therapy study, funded by Johnson and Johnson, that reported unspectacular results. So when a small biotech company, Sangamo Therapeutics, approached him with a gene-editing experiment involving the new zinc-finger technology, he was skeptical that it would be a “cure.” But after careful consideration, he decided to launch an experiment and enroll 65 patients with HIV.

When Sharp learned about the gene-editing trial, he jumped at the chance to participate and agreed to be patient number two in the safety study. To everyone’s relief, Sharp only experienced one side effect after the initial infusion: An intense smell lingered around his body. When he returned to Quest the next day for a check-up, his nurse could smell him coming down the hall. Paperwork from Sangamo had said to expect a garlic odor from a chemical agent that would fade after a few days, but the nurses agreed that Sharp and his fellow gene-editing patients smelled more like rancid creamed corn.

When the earliest results came back, Sharp saw dramatic improvements in his medical charts. For the first time since he was diagnosed with HIV, his T-cell count—a key marker of immune-system function—jumped up to normal healthy levels. Sharp wanted to be in the audience when the full data were unveiled at a leading HIV conference, so he flew to Boston in February 2011. He didn’t know if his cell counts were an idiosyncratic fluke. When Lalezari presented a slide showing a significant increase in the other patients’ T-cell numbers as well, Sharp says the audience gasped.

Over the next couple of years, follow-up procedures were more uncomfortable for Sharp than the initial infusion. During rectal biopsies, he watched a video screen that showed where “the scope was going into my butt, where the clippers were going, and exactly where they were taking the snips,” he says. He was under local anesthesia and didn’t feel any pain, so he decided to narrate the procedure with an omniscient booming voiceover: “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

No serious problems were identified among the patients in the study with the rectal exams, blood samples, and general check-ups in this study. But Sharp’s lack of complications was unusual. Other patients did have notable side effects, including fever, chills, headaches, and muscle pain. According to one study, these symptoms were likely a reaction to billions of cells being reinfused into the body, rather than from the genetic modifications. Still, there are other concerns. The study’s three-year monitoring period may not have been enough to detect long-term health problems, like cancer, caused by genetic damage from the experiment.

More pointedly, the experiment did not deliver the dream of a complete cure. Some patients experienced no lasting benefits. Sharp found long-term improvements to his immune-system health. He thinks participation in the study was worth it, but he still takes daily pills to keep the virus under control. Other patients claim that they were “cured” and stopped taking standard medicine when their bodies did, in fact, become able to control HIV.

Lalezari insists that it is irresponsible to bandy about the word “cure” when interpreting results from this initial research. The study was promising, but preliminary; the “primary outcome was safety,” researchers say. Current HIV medications have few risks, can reduce the virus to undetectable levels, and are increasingly affordable. Lalezari points to other HIV experimental treatments—involving antibodies, pharmaceutical drugs, and small molecules—that seem even more promising than gene editing.

The most important next step for Lalezari after his 2011 presentation in Boston was more research. If his studies could, in fact, produce a one-time treatment, as some of his patients claimed, gene-editing truly would be a game-changer. But his work abruptly stalled out when it ran into a fickle reality of cutting-edge experimental work: funding troubles. Sangamo Therapeutics, the biotechnology firm that bankrolled the initial study, decided to sideline their HIV research, and instead develop treatments for other diseases with their proprietary gene-editing technology.

This enraged HIV-positive activists. “The company put it back on the shelf because they couldn’t figure out how they were going to make enough money,” says Mark Harrington, the executive director of the Treatment Action Group in New York City. Sharp, dismayed by the setback, signed an open letter to Sangamo, calling for new research initiatives. “They simply refused to follow-up the initial experiment with funding for further studies,” he says.

[Read: China is genetically engineering monkeys with brain disorders]

The reasons why the funding dried up are disputed. In 2013, Sangamo had become flush with cash as they signed a $320 million deal. But then their shares plummeted as an insider-trading scandal threw the company into disarray. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Sangamo’s then–vice president of clinical research, Winston Tang, for participating in a scheme that netted more than $1.5 million in “illegal profits.”

“When Winston Tang was carted off to jail, Sangamo completely dropped the ball,” contends Lalezari, who says he maintains contact with the biotech firm to leave open the door to future experiments. “If you want to do research with industry, you can never forget that you are dancing with the devil.”

Sandy Macrae, the president and CEO of Sangamo, disputes such an inference, claiming that the decision to move away from HIV came before the Winston Tang insider-trading scandal. But the company acknowledges that it didn’t see HIV as the most valuable investment. Macrae took the helm of Sangamo last year, shortly after the company’s stocks bottomed out at around $3 a share, and he has been working to turn things around. The company’s headquarters sit next to a boat-parts store in Richmond, California, a neighborhood at the edges of the Bay Area that is also home to a train yard, a Chevron oil refinery, a yacht club, and Rosie the Riveter National Park.

“I had to make a decision about where our portfolio was best applied,” he says, pointing out that existing HIV medicine is already effective. “My company has only so many things we can do. When I looked at HIV, they had done a lot of work trying to get a product. The current version ... doesn’t feel like it is there.”

Sharp remains undaunted. After failing to get funds from Sangamo, he began lobbying U.S. government officials and HIV researchers. Thanks in part to his efforts, Rafick-Pierre Sekaly, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, was inspired to continue gene-editing research on HIV. The National Institutes of Health awarded Sekaly $11 million earlier this year for a new experiment called TRAILBLAZER that pays Sangamo for access to their gene-editing technology.

Sharp “has always been extremely passionate. He has always been very forceful, pushing us to do more,” Sekaly says. Now, a new cohort of HIV patients are joining Sekaly’s experiment. They are helping open up a future where gene editing could be a routine part of medical care.

Exactly what this future might look like remains to be seen. “If we could all be engineered to resist HIV,” Sharp says, “then the stigma associated with the disease might completely disappear.” If the technology becomes more effective, then a wide range of genetic diseases could be fixed. But gene editing carries other risks, besides technical problems. Existing gene therapies are very expensive, up to $475,000 per treatment. Gene editing could produce a new era of inequality in medicine, to say nothing of the fears some people have of “designer babies” or controversies about children engineered to resist HIV from birth.

There are subtler, more surprising possibilities, too. Tim Dean, an HIV-positive queer theorist known for flipping conventional scripts, speculates that gene editing could create a new class distinction among gay men in hook-up culture. “In some techno-future, I can imagine cruising apps including a category, in addition to HIV status, that would differentiate the edited from the unedited,” he says.

Sharp, for his part, just wants to see research on a cure move forward. He doesn’t care if the cure is DNA editing, an antibody, or a new pharmaceutical drug. “I have already volunteered for 12 clinical trials,” he says, “and I am willing to try anything new if it looks like it might work.”

Article source here:The Atlantic

[littlethoughtsandfeelings]

The Bachelor Australia 2017 Recap – Episode 2

Loving the quirky music for the opening. It fits perfectly to introducing us to the girls who are CASUALLY sitting around the house CASUALLY chatting. We have a recap from some Talking Heads (still no idea who is who) of the Dress-gate situation from last night. Apparently this is a very DRAMATIC and IMPORTANT thing, and we must never forget it.

In true form, Osher materialises from nothing delivering a date card, which he reveals is for a single date, and (surprise, surprise) everyone wants it.

SOMEONE (honestly they all look the same) opens the date card. The clue reads, “I felt a spark immediately. Let me see your wild side.” It’s nice that this card is definitely hand-written by Matty J with a quill as he gazes over the sunset, and not by some unpaid intern with coffee burns on their wrist.

Elora the fire twirler gets the date, and cue our Villain Number 2, Jennifer, being pissed.

Right, we’re wasting no time – we’re on the date already. Elora walks across the sand littered with a million seagulls, and it’s nice of the producers to work with Mother Nature in providing a rainbow for today’s date. (Side note: Remember those awful sponsorships that were in last year’s show? What if tonight’s episode just had a “Brought to you by… Mother Nature!” segment?)

Elora’s voiceover says that, “Finding the right love is the key to a good life”, and I just groaned so hard.

Matty and Elora greet each other with what can only be described as the preparation of a cartwheel, with both arms directly in the air, unmoving. They board a boat, which is not being used as a mode of transport as one might expect, but instead, IS THE ACTUAL DATE. Can you imagine if they just got in a car and sat in it? This is the equivalent of that. But on water. And with seasickness.

Matty, clearly on a sobriety streak, offers Elora orange juice, making up some bullshit thing about how it’s bad luck to cheers without alcohol. Elora quickly turns this into a positive, saying they should make it good luck instead. Nice one.

The two discuss Elora’s entrance (REMEMBER HOW CRAZYYYYY AND TOTALLY UNEXPECTED IT WAS?!?!?!) and it’s very boring and just to fill in everyone who didn’t watch last night’s episode.

Elora asks Matty how old he is, which, honestly Elora, there’s a level between stalking his Instagram every day for six months and this. You should have done some RESEARCH, girl. But then it’s revealed that SHE SPEAKS FRENCH AND IS SO EXOTIC AND GORGEOUS, and I forgive her.

Mother Nature does even better than the rainbow and bloody throws dolphins into the mix, and Matty and Elora watch them.

This. Is. A. Riveting. Date.

They both change into their swimwear and Matty J manages to sneak both a boob graze and an unblinking ass check-out in the space of a minute, so I’m guessing he’s pretty keen. They’re literally all over each other in the water, which is to be expected.

Back at the mansion, the girls bitch about Elora in completely useless ruminations and speculations which is such easy time-filler for the show. I’m not buying this anymore – it’s just so boringgggg.

Villain Number 1 and Villain Number 2 are conversing. They look like they’re in some kind of friendship group, which surprises me, given “friendship” falls right at the bottom of their list of priorities between “selflessness” and “generosity”.

Jennifer (Villain Number 1) admits that she will have to “destroy” Elora. This confirms my suspicion that Jennifer thinks she’s in a video game, which totally explains her one-dimensional BIG BADDIE personality.

Back at the boat (which still seems like it’s the whole date) Matty and Elora flirt with each other, which basically consists of them fake giggling and touching each other. They take pictures with a polaroid camera (for some reason), and I’m guessing she gets to keep these and put them under her pillow so she can kiss them before going to sleep each night.

STOP EVERYTHING. SHE GOT A FOREHEAD KISS. HE GAVE HER A FOREHEAD KISS. THEY’RE CUDDLING. GAME OVER. SHE HAS WON.

Just kidding, but I can attest that there is no greater sign of affection than a forehead kiss. 

Back at the mansion, Evil McEvilson has a new date card. It’s a group date, and the clue is about the first time they fell in love and blah blah blah we all know that it’s the cheerleading date so let’s just get this over with. 

Cobie, Elizabeth, Sian, Laura, Florence, Tara, Simone, Natalie, Leah, and Jennifer herself are all on this date. And don’t worry, I don’t know who half of them are, either. Are we sure they’re not just sneaking new girls in just to mess with us?

Jennifer’s self-described “posse” (not kidding, she actually said that) is together on the group date, and Jen says they’re going to get more time with Matty than all the other girls. This suggests to me some kind of group work going on, which although it will be a first for this show, honestly isn’t the worst idea. (I mean, it’s hardly a chocolate bath).

Back on the date and WAIT GUYS I TOTALLY SPOKE TOO SOON! The date consists of a boat ride, AND sitting on a couch in a different location (which I’m not entirely confident isn’t just below the boat deck).

Elora and Matty J cuddle on the SEXYTIME COUCH and gaze into each other’s eyes. They say they LIKE each other, but it isn’t the L word we’re all looking for.

They talk for what seems like is ten hours about what the other one is thinking. “Tell me what you’re thinking”, “Haha you tell me what you’re thinking”, “Haha stahp!” 

My face is deadpan.  

Then Elora’s talking head says they have “intense chemistry” and she could feel “her whole body heating up”. Now we’re talking! We might need to give them some space so we can finally see something happen on this show.

Unfortunately, before we can get to the action, Matty J’s talking head says he doesn’t want to rush things with Elora. It’s funny how the producers try and find some deep reasoning for each action (or non-action) Matty takes. Maybe he just didn’t feel like kissing her. Is that so crazy?!

And then, Elora asks about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named: Georgia. Finally, we might get some real drama instead of the contrived dramahhh! Hang on, I forgot what show I was watching. Apparently Matty saying he wants the best for Georgia is the most amazing thing a guy has ever said, and Elora fawns over it for about five minutes in a talking head.

So she hasn’t been in love since her first boyfriend, and she loves travelling. Man, they’re really trying to push this exotic gypsy/nomad vibe aren’t they? And, almost like I predicted it, Matty’s talking head says he wants to settle down, and he’s worried Elora has the wanderlust bug.

Matty says there’s a spark, and the date is pretty much over. (Side note: Is it just me being grumpy, or is this season soooooo boring so far?)

Oh wait, he offers her a rose, and I’m back in. She accepts it, and they have a cheek kiss and a quick hug.

Elora says she forgot about the rose and for once, my cynical heart believes her. Her talking head says it’s “getting scary really fast”, which is normally my reaction to all theme park rides, so you could say we have a lot in common.

Back at the mansion, the girls are CASUALLY sitting around CASUALLY talking about how long Elora has been gone. By total coincidence, Elora walks in! The girls ask if she kissed him, and she very cleverly doesn’t answer. Elora explains to the ladies that she might not reveal everything that happens between her and Matty J, and to mind their own gosh darn business. Seriously though, fair play to her. It’s always seemed weird and kind of masochistic to me to want to know what the other girls did with the guy you’re interested in.

The self-described “clique” Jennifer is a part of grill Elora and won’t let her answer properly, and honestly I’m having such flashbacks to high school. The “Evil Squad” (as I’m now dubbing it) keeping asking Elora if it felt REAL. Seriously? Like their dates would be any more real in this constructed TELEVISION SHOW.

And then Simone steps in to defend Elora from the meanies. YEAH SIMONE! I don’t even know who you are, but you’re on my radar now!

Oh, we’re on the group date now. Again with the smooth transitions.

Osher reveals they’re recreating a photoshoot for none other than Woman’s Day, and the girls are ermehgerd! So! Totally! Excited! It’s almost like they didn’t do this for the past ten years in a row!

But, there is a twist, because this is a new season of The Bachelor, and they’re going to take some RISKS! Kidding, it’s an 80s themed photoshoot. (You know in Aladdin where at the end Genie is working for Jafar and he has the little flag, and he’s like, “Jafar, Jafar he’s our man…” and he looks so bored? That’s me right now. Also, spoiler alert, I guess, if 25 years counts for nothing.) (Side note: I looked at the release date to make this joke work, and OH MY GOD! I’M THE SAME AGE AS ALADDIN! HOW HAVE I NEVER NOTICED THIS BEFORE?!)

Anyway, back to the show where they’re splitting up the girls into smaller, more manageable groups. Florence and Jennifer are paired together to recreate an awkward first date. Florence calls Jen “Jess” and it is hands down the best moment of the season so far. Cobie, Simone, and Tara are cheerleading, and Laura, Elizabeth, Natalie, and Sian are recreating a school formal (Prom, for those in the USofA).

And like it couldn’t have been written, Leah will be on her own, to recreate a possible first kiss. Leah immediately says she’s going for it, and I’m not sure if she meant to say this aloud or not. But to be honest, it doesn’t seem like there’s much Leah doesn’t say aloud. Osher, always the wingman, asks Matty J if he would be ok with that. YEAH, HAS ANYONE ASKED WHAT MATTY J WANTS? WHAT IF HE DIDN’T WANT TO BE IN A HOUSE WITH A BUNCH OF SINGLE, HORNY WOMEN? STOP FORGETTING ABOUT HIS WANTS AND NEEDS! (Don’t worry, MRAs – I’ve got your back. Imagine the winking, kissing emoji here for added sarcasm).

Guys, wasn’t I just talking about terrible product placement?! The girls are just CASUALLY getting their hair and makeup done, and lo and behold, someone just HAPPENS to be perfectly holding a packet of Extra chewing gum with the label facing perfectly towards the camera! How coincidental! 

Right, now the girls get their costumes. Evil Squad make fun of everyone’s outfits, and right now I love the producers for telling Jennifer to do that, because the next cut of her in her fully covered lifeguard’s outfit is the absolute best. Maybe she pissed one of them off and this was her punishment. Nah, just kidding. I’ve seen Unreal, I know how this works. (But only the first season so no spoilers please k thanks byeeee).

Florence is in a red bikini because reasons. Jennifer is mean to her and Florence’s talking head calls her a “Jewish banana”, which might be mildly anti-Semite so let’s just move right along. 

Jennifer is totally third-wheeling this photoshoot, and it’s nice to see her get her comeuppance, until…

She takes off her lifeguard top and jumps in the pool. Her talking head says, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner”, which OUTRAGES ME. It doesn’t make sense in the film, and it doesn’t make sense in this context, not least because they were in an open space outside.

Anyway, there is suitable outrage from the girls, as if this moment wasn’t scripted at all. Then Florence gets sideswiped and becomes the third wheel to Jennifer and Matty’s bike (is that where this saying comes from? A bike? Nothing else has two wheels…).

Jennifer makes sure to press her boobs right up against Matty’s bare chest, and the photoshoot is over. Um. Question: Is anyone going to tell her she’s got a massive wedgie?

Apparently not as we’re on to the girls’ school dance. It’s so tacky and so 80s and it’s amazing. Those costumes look so fun and they’re basically just dancing around. All the girls look like they’re having a great time, there’s no competition, and it’s lovely.

So naturally, it lasts two seconds. Enter, Evil Squad with their snide commentary. Laura seems lovely, who was she again? (Oh, my notes say she was the jewellery designer. Right). Anyway, Matty seems to notice her too, saying she stood out, and apparently this is all the praise she’s getting.

Jennifer says that Laura is a big threat in the competition. Sian is apparently in the Evil Squad too, but she’s on the photoshoot currently happening, so she needs to gets Matty’s attention away from Laura. With Jen yelling from the sidelines, “Go for it, baby girl! That’s my girl!” (Is she confused? Does she think she is this woman’s mother?), Sian does “the worm”. It’s weird.

There’s an ad break there and we come back to arguably the most sexist thing ever on this show, by having a cheerleading photoshoot. The worst part is that they’ve tricked the girls into thinking this is enjoyable. The girls have even made up a chant about how great Matty is, as if he needed his ego stroked more. Simone (in the group with Cobie (helium) and Tara (smiley face tattoo)) takes the opportunity to talk to Matty. Apparently she loves running. Not in love, hopefully, but marathon running. This is the only piece of information we have about her, as she was one of the montage girls, which is actually kind of sad because she seems pretty nice.

Cobie is so sweet in her talking head, and obviously doesn’t take the bait from the producers that she should say how annoyed she was at Simone, instead saying, “I was more than happy for Simone to chat with him.” Awwwww!

Evil Squad turn up again (sigh. I’m really over this already), and for some reason, they irrationally hate Simone. Matty’s appreciating the effort Simone’s taking in getting to know him. Well if that wasn’t a gentle letdown, I don’t know what is.

Now for the Leah and Matty photoshoot, where they will be recreating a first kiss moment, on a Harley, at night. Matty says she looks like a “smoking hot Olivia Newton John”, and I don’t know, to me she’s more of early-days Taylor Swift cut-out.

I’m only going to say this once: Leah, stop trying to be the new Laurina. You’ll never be the new Laurina. It’s like they’ve watched the attention people like Laurina and Keira got and actually TRY to be the villain.

This is awful. None of her talking heads sound genuine at all. She is literally reading from a teleprompter, I’m sure of it.

Obviously, Leah’s all over Matty in the photoshoot, and obviously, the girls are pissed, even her other Evil Squad members, which is ironic.

She gives him a kiss on the cheek, and Matty is looking like he wished the ground would swallow him up. Leah says she’s glad the girls are looking, because she wanted them to see it and wanted a reaction. Yes, it was DEFINITELY her idea.

Oh god, she went in for a kiss, and he turned away. He apologies, and says he didn’t think it would be appropriate in front of the other girls. YES! GO MATTY! KEEP THAT CLASS! And that marks the end of the photoshoot.

The next day (or month, or year… I actually have no idea how much time passes here), Matty arrives for a surprise visit at the house, and conveniently the girls are all gathered in the same room. HE HAS BROUGHT THEM MUFFINS, which is amazing and I won’t hear any word to the contrary.

The girls all admit that they are starving, because as we know, they survive on alcohol and each other’s tears. 

MATTY HAS COME TO ASK LISA TO A GAME OF TENNIS. LISA! ONE OF OUR FAVOURITES! YESSSSSS! (Remember she played tennis for 12 years so this is a very thoughtful idea).

There’s a tennis court at the house so I’m not sure why they’re leaving in the car, but hey, I guess it’s more impressive than just hopping the back fence.

There’s some joke about putting the roof down on the convertible, and Lisa doesn’t care about her hair because she’s totally low maintenance. Matty asks if she likes to wear makeup, she says no, and he says she’s saying all the right things.

Honestly, I hate this conversation so much for so many reasons. Firstly, she’s totally playing the Cool Girl (I mean, have they READ Gone Girl?!). It also implies that girls who like to wear makeup are too high maintenance and therefore not girlfriend material. It also implies that you have to fit a certain mould in order for guys to like you. This is just so awful and dangerous and I seriously hope there are no young girls watching this. 

Anyway, they get to the tennis court which was supposed to be on the property which means it’s a) not on the property and we were lied to, or b) on the property so we just had ten minutes of driving for no reason. They change into their tennis whites, and Matty can’t even get a serve over the net. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I can’t get a serve in either, so you know, glass houses.

Then, Matty wants her to help with his serve. They do a reverse pool-cue-helping thing that you’ve seen in thousands of movies, and because of this one-on-one coaching, he totally gets it in. The ball, I mean. To the square.

Matty’s talking head says he’s still got the moves. Um, do you mate? You only got one serve in.

And now for the other disgusting moment of the episode, Matty wants to place a bet: If he wins, he gets a kiss on the cheek, and if Lisa wins, Matty will give her strawberries, cream, and Pimms later on. Honestly this is so disgusting and I can’t even make a joke about it. Implying that a kiss from a woman is a reward to win/women trading their sexuality/entitlement of physical contact with a woman. I mean, there’s just so many directions to take it. I think what bothers me the most about this show is not the blatant misogyny, it’s the more casual stuff like this. I’m getting upset now, so I’ll just move on.

The editors have their work cut out for them trying to cut together shots to make it look like Matty and Lisa actually played a game of tennis.

Lisa wins, but Matty asks if he still gets the kiss, which honestly Matty, do you not get how bets work? She obliges him and gives him one. Sigh.

He takes her to the strawberries and cream (but there was no mention of Pimms…), which totally wasn’t planned and he will go to fix together right now.

Back from the ad break, they’re both suddenly in their swimsuits and she pushes him into the pool. I’m confused. Where is this pool? Is it at the mansion? Wouldn’t the other girls be there? Is it at his place? That would be a big deal though, him taking her back to his place. I’m worried this is just a random pool in the middle of nowhere and the fact that they aren’t explaining it is giving me major anxiety.

I’m also worried Lisa might be falling into the cool-girl-friendship zone, rather than the cool-girl-girlfriend zone. Look, it’s a fine line.

Now they’re just smothering cream all over each other’s face and it’s very flirtatious and seems like another sex ritual.

There’s some discussion about why Lisa applied to the show. Matty says they’re on the same page of looking for a partner, as opposed to all the other applicants of The Bachelor. He offers her a rose, she accepts, and it’s another cheek kiss. Is anyone else getting major Sam Frost vibes from her? Like, Sam Frost in The Bachelor vibes?

Matty says he has to cut the date short because they have a cocktail party to go to, almost convincing me that these episodes happen in real time.

Cocktail Party Time!!!

The two enter together, and it’s night time now (I have so many questions about this. Did she get ready at his place? How much time has passed? How did she get her dress? Did they arrive together? Did he bus over from his place? Did they get an Uber? Why does she need to bring her rose?)

Oh wait, it looks like the girls are eating red lollies, so that balances out the diet with the champagne.

Jennifer ironically says that Elora is very jealous, and that she thinks Elora thinks Matty is her boyfriend. Ha.

Elora says it’s hard to see that she isn’t the only one with a rose. Um. Does she know how this competition works? I mean, she didn’t even know how old he was. Did she just stumble onto this set one day and the producers convinced her to stay?

Whilst Matty is chatting away with Florence, the Evil Squad (which I think at this point is made up of Leah, Jennifer, and Sian), try to grill Elora. Simone stands up for her again (yeah, go Simone!).

Jen describes Leah as her “little drama queen”, yet again exhibiting that narcissistic trait that everyone is an extension of herself. Why does she own everyone?

Anyway, Elora steals Matty for a chat, which we all know is not the best thing to do if you’ve already got a rose. But it’s ok guys, chill; Elora doesn’t even know how this show works.

Matty says he loves the date, and Elora says she did too. This. Is. Ground-breaking. Television.

Jennifer says that it’s time to take Elora down a notch, and says Matty is her boyfriend. Looks like Elora isn’t the only one who doesn’t understand this show. Just a reminder that Jen is saying Elora is the one who think she’s the only one in this competition. Yep. Uh huh.

Look, the producers have done well here. She’s a total bitch to Elora and Simone, clearly trying to tear their friendship apart. Elora comes out and says she doesn’t think Jennifer is very nice. Jennifer says, “That’s interesting”, which is as much an admission of guilt as we’re going to get. She says she’s not sure why she’s getting targeted. Quote: “I haven’t said a bad word about either of you”, which is total high school bullying where you can’t actually tell a teacher because nothing has technically been said but the subtext and body language and giggling behind your back says everything but it can’t be commented on and I SWEAR I’M NOT PROJECTING.

Elora says she thinks there is a dark side to Jennifer and Jennifer takes a predictable amount of offence with this. Not sure if she’s an actual narcissist or just playing one for the sake of the show. Look, I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt: she’s a great actress.

Simone (standing up for Elora again) says she doesn’t like Leah. Elora says the mean girls are trying to tear them apart “because they’re bitches”. Look, if I’m picking sides, I’m on whatever side Simone’s on, but FFS this is ridiculous. 

We come back from the ad break straight to the rose ceremony. SEAMLESS. TRANSITIONS. (At this point I’m not sure if it’s the show that’s pissing me off, or if I’ve just become a cranky old woman).

Just one going home tonight, thanks Osher, and we pan over Natalie and SEE! SHE’S JUST GEORGIA IN A WIG. THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BIG PENULTIMATE EPISODE REVEAL, GUYS!

COBIE GETS PICKED. SIMONE GETS PICKED. MICHELLE GETS PICKED. LISA HAS ALREADY BEEN PICKED. Right, we’re good.  

Jennifer gets picked because the producers have her on a thirteen episode contract or something, and everyone knows to get good ratings you need strong villains and lots of manufactured dramahhh. (Side note: What I would KILL to know how many are his picks, and how many are the producers’). 

We’re down to Villain Number 1, Leah, and Laura-Ann (who my notes say was another montage girl).

Predictable fake concern from Leah as she says she’s worried she got “carried away” on the group date. Yes, Leah, it was definitely you getting “carried away” on the group date which made him think he couldn’t have a future with you, not your ridiculous behaviour (which, to be fair, he didn’t get to see. Unless they have secret cameras? TELL ME THE SECRETS!)

We’re not fooled, and Laura-Ann goes. She seems nice. She also seems like she deserves a hell of a lot better than to be called Montage Girl.  

God these episodes are long.

 Next Episode: Another boat ride. Jesus. Is this what guys think girls like? Some sort of medieval festival for… reasons. And it looks like Leah’s openly admitted to emotionally manipulating Matty, because what is a good dating show without some emotional manipulation.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: A World Unto Himself: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers

Hercules Segers, “Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg from the South” (ca. 1625-30), print, line etching printed with tone and highlights in yellow-white, on a dark brown ground, 7 7/8 x 12 9/16 inches, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin

There is nothing all that unusual about the subjects of Hercules Segers’ prints — landscapes, mostly — but you can’t say the same about his technique or his vision. Segers (1589-1633) was from the newly formed Dutch Republic, where the popularity of landscape was growing. The emphasis of his contemporaries was on extracting plainspoken beauty from familiar Dutch topography, such as damp riverine scenes or clusters of cottages. Segers’ landscapes, by contrast, are experimental, idiosyncratic, mountainous fantasias that, at their weirdest, evoke comparison to coral, ocean sponges, and toad spawn.

Despite the oddity of his prints, Segers seems to have made a reasonable business for himself; records mined from archives show him owning houses and taking wives. The reports of his prints being reduced to soap wrappers was invented by a later biographer, who perhaps could not wrap his mind around how Segers sold any art at all. Though he had no students, Segers in part earned his current standing by inspiring Rembrandt’s improvisational printmaking techniques.

Intaglio printmaking as a medium was a couple hundred years old by the time Segers took it up. It had evolved from engraving — in which lines are made by carving directly into a copper plate with a tool called a burin — to include etching, where lines are made by drawing on wax-coated plates that were then bathed in acid. Where the copper is exposed, the acid does the work of the burin. In either technique, ink is rubbed into the lines of the plate and then transferred to a piece of damp paper under the pressure of a printing press.

Within the etching process, there are any number of variables to manipulate: degree of time in the acid bath; how much ink is left on the surface of the plate before printing; color of the ink, and so on. While Rembrandt worked and reworked his plates through numerous states, he opted for manipulating only a few variables in his etching technique — the inking of the plate and the time in the acid bath, and occasionally the kind of paper he printed on.

Hercules Segers, “Landscape with a Plateau, a River in the Distance” (ca. 1622-25), print, line etching printed in black and pale yellow from two plates, on dark blue prepared paper; unique impression of the second state of three, 5 11/16 x 4 3/16 inches

For Segers, by contrast, all of these variables and then some were in play. He printed on linen and cotton; in colored ink on a light ground; in light, opaque ink on a dark ground. He introduced several colors into a single image through the use of multiple plates, innovated an early form of aquatint, and finished some prints with watercolor. In the current exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers, several of the works on view are counterproofs, essentially monoprints made by running freshly printed sheets through the press to transfer the image onto a clean piece of paper. Like so many aspects of Segers’ works, it is unclear whether the counterproofs were a byproduct or an end goal of his efforts.

The results of Segers’ assays are always interesting, if not always conventionally beautiful. Even in his early work, where his subjects are more ordinary, there is a sense of perversity, not with the Modernist goal to épater la bourgeoisie, but in a kind of damn-it-all, Mr. Toad behind-the-wheel sort of way, boop-booping and careering down the road for the sheer pleasure of it. There is no evidence that he cultivated a particularly unusual persona; his unique energy seems to have been all forced through the fine point of his art, which focused it into an intense beam.

Take the “Ruins of Brederode Castle” (1615-1630). Brederode Castle is a medieval structure that had been damaged by Spanish troops during the Dutch Republic’s battle for independence. Purchased by the Dutch government, it was a popular subject for artists, for its dramatic ruins as much as its nationalist overtones.

Segers’ depiction of the scene uneasily combines a manic zeal for depicting every brick with a remarkable indifference to demarcating intersecting planes or making lines plumb. While distant bricks are minutely rendered, flowers in the foreground are depicted as an even row of little black blots that look as if I, a non-artist, drew them, in seventh grade, with a felt tip pen. The branches of the bushes growing out of the ruins are adorned with specks for leaves, which, unstemmed, evoke clouds of moths.

And this is without mentioning his etching technique, which veers away from the pristine professionalism practiced by his contemporaries. Etched lines on the left side waver and blot — the result of what is called, in printmakers’ patois, “foul biting,” the effect of acid leaching through the wax resist on the plate.

The sky is blotchy: are these random smudges or an intentional intimation of typically filthy Dutch weather? Hard to tell, and it doesn’t help that at the upper left there are also light tracings of loops, as if he were trying to coax ink out of a ball point pen, and a patch of crosshatching that looks like a doodle I drew at a meeting, last week, when I was bored.

Hercules Segers, “Mountain Valley with Dead Pine Trees” (ca. 1622-1625), print, line etching printed on light brown ground, varnished; unique impression, 11 x 16 3/16 inches, British Museum, London

It is unimaginable that Segers could have made much of his career if he continued to pursue these errors and experiments in his prints, and his later works do reduce the number if not the force of the peculiarities. In a scene such as “Mountain Valley with Broken Pine Trees,” (1622-25) for instance, the horror vacui that gave us every brick of the ruined Brederode Castle translates into a carpet of stubbly marks, creating the image of a valley with a road winding into it. There is a walled city deep within the space that looks peaceful enough, but the entry to the image is partially barred by a fallen dead pine, which is joined by two more, blasted and leaning. The effect is post-apocalyptic. Tiny figures move about the landscape, barely formed, like larvae.

By manipulating color, Segers can relent a little on the mood of his vision. Two impressions of “Landscape with a Plateau with a River in the Distance” (1622-25) show this. One, printed in dark ink on white paper, feels in places uncomfortably clotted with spongiform lines. The other, using blue-toned paper and two plates — one inked with dark pigment, the other with a pale yellow — transforms the scene into a nighttime valley glimmering with specks of reflected moonlight.

The transformation is like that of a city view between day and night: the former a chaotic accretion of traces of human endeavor; the latter, lifted by the lighting into a state of grace. (You can compare the two, and other similar compositions, in this effortless tool on the Met website.)

In “The Ruins of the Abbey of Rijnsburg,” (1625-30), he’s back to billions of bricks, now draped with luxurious vegetation and set in a sea of deep grass, rendered in short, calligraphic strokes. Nearly invisible within the foliage are two sheep, a dog, and a well-dressed man. Printed in light opaque ink on a dark background, it evokes the lush ornamental language and sense of pictorial flatness of engraved metal. Part of Segers’ process here and in other works involved inscribing fine lines on the plate before he etched it, some of which are still visible, looming like a gridded mist above the building.

In this print, Segers seems to be alluding to the origins of intaglio printmaking in decorative metalwork, which also deployed etching and engraving for its ornament. Yet, as the curators note, the aspirations and affinities of these prints are most of all to painting. That Segers was also an accomplished painter (several fine examples of his oils are on view) suggests that his goal was not to make mock-paintings, but rather to hybridize his graphic and painterly endeavors.

“The Mossy Tree” (1625-30) exemplifies this. A unique impression, it is printed in green ink on colored paper and hand-painted. Mossy lines drizzle from the frame of the tree, obtaining a kind of succulent mark-making uncommon in prints of this period. At the base of the tree, however, where in a painting the roots would sink into soil and the solidity of paint, the marks dissipate into an assortment of squiggles and dots, the tools of suggestion of the graphic artist.

Hercules Segers, “The Mossy Tree” (ca. 1625-30), lift-ground etching printed in green, on a light pink ground, colored with brush; unique impression, 6 5/8 x 3 7/8 inches, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; on loan from the City of Amsterdam, collection Michiel Hinloopen (1619–1708), 1885

The paintings and prints are thoughtfully installed in the Met’s dedicated rooms for works on paper. While one wishes for a magnifying glass, a helpful display case explains some of the intricacies of Segers’ technique, and a video at the entrance explains the artist’s significance. Do not miss this. It sets Segers’ prints in motion in the manner of Terry Gilliam’s cut-out animations for Monty Python, with a voiceover by that guy in a grad seminar who is capable of making even banal utterances sound like they are rolled in gold leaf. (He turns out to be John Malkovich.)

The underlying thrill of this show is the extent to which Segers’ idiosyncrasy challenges our expectations of his time of history. From our postmodern perspective, it is easy to silently root for his eccentric explorations. After all, even Rembrandt, who acquired one of Segers’ plates, succumbed to the urge to “fix” it, adjusting the scale of two figures in it to his liking and subduing some of the more coral-like texture in the trees.

Yet as much as Segers’ work confirms our understanding of the norm, it opens up the possibility of deviance from — even defiance of — the norm, not only in Segers, but those who collected him. Historical accounts by nature have to normalize in order fill in gaps, but Segers reminds us that the most simple explanation is not always the right one.

The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers continues  at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through May 21.

The post A World Unto Himself: The Mysterious Landscapes of Hercules Segers appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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