#And I think that’s why it all had to end in The Bourne Identity right?

[pretty-vizitor]

putting Used To Be My Girl right after Sweet Dreams Tn on eycte was such a,,, fascinating move to me.

Sweet Dreams, the big sweeping, almost too earnest love song, with larger than life declarations that you wouldn’t buy into if Alex wasn’t selling it to you with everything he has (boy was giving the vocal performance of a lifetime), melts right into Used To Be My Girl. From the way one track ends to the drums on the next, they sound like they’re meant to go in succession- musically it almost feels like a continuation of a story, a natural progression to the darker, sinister underbelly of that earnest lover that Alex was playing a moment before. But this time you have no trouble believing what he’s saying. The vocals are pulled back, and the lyrics are all ‘I’m a liar, I’m a fake, I will tell you anything to get what I want, don’t trust me don’t trust me don’t trust me’ and, it makes that previous love song,,, not so lovely.

To b clear I love Sweet Dreams and it’s grand romantic strings as much as the next guy- while it’s playing. But I always doubt it’s sincerity when it’s over, and I think Alex did too.

[mcflymemes]

PROMPTS FROM THE BOURNE TRILOGY *  assorted dialogue from identity, supremacy, and ultimatum

who has a safety deposit box full of money and six passports and a gun?

nobody does the right thing.

you haven't slept for a long time.

why don't you sit down.

perhaps we can arrange a meet.

we've been through this.

you really don't remember, do you?

that sounds ominous. let me check my schedule.

what were my words? what did i say?

you move, you die.

thanks for the ride.

welcome to the program.

nothing in those files makes their sacrifice worthwhile.

i don't want to do this anymore.

they found a body.

i'm sitting in my office.

my argument is not with you.

we got a bump coming up.

what happened?

look, what's going on? why are these people after me?

i hear you're still looking for me.

everything i found out, i wanna forget.

i told you to come alone.

someone started all this, and i'm going to find them.

why would you doubt that?

who's your source?

tell me who i am.

i want to know what's going on.

i was hoping you had some time for me.

if there's something you're not telling me, i want it now.

i don't think that's a decision you can make.

you're u.s. government property.

i said leave me alone.

do you have any idea who you're dealing with?

what basis are you continuing this operation on?

i told them i believed you.

why are you helping me?

have you locked down the area?

you don't know the circumstances.

i wanted to thank you.

we got what we needed.

please don't hurt me.

we clear on that?

you start down this path, where does it end?

i can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

i see the exit sign, too.

i remember. i remember everything.

backup will be arriving in approximately one hour.

did something go wrong?

what is this, a joke? some kind of scam?

you're the only person i know.

do you have ID?

if we stay here, we die.

i know how you're feeling.

off the record. you know how it is.

no more red tape.

i don't suppose it would do me much good to cry for help?

i send you because you don't exist.

you know i can't tell you that.

we're professionals. when an operation goes bad, we tie it off.

where are you gonna go?

you just asked for it?

this is where it started for me. this is where it ends.

everything you need is in there.

actually, i don't think they give a shit.

get some rest. you look tired.

these people will kill you if they have to.

good thinking.

so now you're going to kill me?

do you copy?

all right, we have to move.

you would probably just forget about me if i stayed here.

you can come up.

why don't you come in with me?

do you even know why you're supposed to kill me?

now why would i know that?

i'm sorry to hear that.

why didn't you take the shot?

it was a kill squad.

you know how real the danger is.

we can do that any time we want.

i come in here, and the first thing i'm doing is i'm catching the sightlines and looking for an exit.

how did that happen?

do something about it.

i send you to be invisible.

you're in a big puddle of shit, and you don't have the shoes for it.

i'm not worried.

who am i?

you couldn't make this stuff up.

you're a total goddamned catastrophe.

i can go check it out.

i'm not sorry.

i mean, you were shot.

i don't send you to kill.

how could i forget about you?

this isn't what i signed up for.

you talk about this stuff like you read it in a book.

i'm on my own side now.

i have the files.

it's not a mistake.

i'm just trying to do the right thing.

what are you after?

why did you pick me?

they knew you were there.

what the hell are you talking about?

we don't have a choice.

it gets easier.

it'll be better if we do this together.

they'll kill you for giving me this.

by god, if it kills me, you're going to tell me how this happened.

look at this. look at what they make you give.

people do all kinds of weird and amazing stuff when they're scared.

[cakeofthepan]

Turns out there’s a reason everyone is sus of Matt. Plus, bonus teen talk audio of that one time Matt murdered Freddie in resistance.

[Audio Transcript:

[The Bourne Identity Theme plays]

Will: I said this in the live listen but, when Matt’s the spy it’s devastating ‘cuz he’s very good. Then when Matt is not the spy he’s so intense and aggro, like when he’s not the monster you wind up thinking like man, maybe- maybe man is the real monster. Maybe we’re all-

Freddie: [laughter]

Will: It’s like you end up in a Twilight Zone episode, like a parable about like the nature of paranoia and like what it does to us, it’s very funny

Link: Just do me a favor and just- I’m gonna look each of you in the eye and just tell me if you’re an incursion person. Taylor?

Taylor: I am not. I am me. I am Taylor.

Link: Okay

Matt: Now, Matthew here, Freddie?

Freddie: Yeah

[laughter]

Matt: Are you the incursion?

Freddie: No, I’ve-

Matt: Are you the incursion?

Freddie: I haven't gotten shit.

Matt: Okay.

Freddie: I have not gotten shit.

Link: All right. Normally, right?

Normal: Yeah!

Link: I just wanna make sure I’m calling you—

Normal: It is Normally!

Link: Okay.

Normal: Yeah!

Link: Are you the incursion person?

Normal: I am not the incursion person.

Matt: Okay.

Will: Now Matt.

Matt: Matt, here.

Will: Fuck you, you paranoid piece of shit.

[group laughter]

Will: I'm not playing your fucking game! I'm not dancing for you, I'm not being your little puppet! MATT.

Matt: Really aggressive.

[pause]

Matt: Beth?

Anthony: [laughs]

Scary: You know what? I wish I was the Doodler. ‘Cause then I would be like a cool badass person and not this person's sitting here being fucking interrogated.

Link: Hey, Hermie! I forgot to ask you.

Hermie: Oh, did you now?

Link: Hey, look at me. Eye to eye.

Anthony: I don't- I don’t like making eye contact people while recording this podcast, this is hard for me.

[laughs]

Link: Is it you, Hermie?

Hermie: No.

[music fades out]

Matt: Anthony, is it you?

Anthony: No.

[pause]

Will: It’s fucking Anthony—

Beth: [wheeze-laugh] Why was it sexy?

[music fades in]

Will: Goddammit.

[group laughter]

Anthony: Was it?

Matt: It was sexy. It was sexy.

Beth: It was a sexy look!

Will: That’s why he never makes eye contact!

Anthony: Yeah! I don't want to get you so horny you forget to do the podcast!

Will: It's for sure, Matt. Literally every time I play, it's Matt.

Beth: Every time I play, it was Will!

[Music fades out]

Freddie: The most devastating moment I’ve ever had playing this, social deduction games was with Matt. Matt was not on the team. I was a spy with another friend of ours. We gave each other a look and we were like, Okay. Imma throw you under the bus as the first move to take heat off of me.

Matt: Oh I remember this.

Freddie: So the first round, I voted her off.  I-

Anthony: I love that

Freddie: basically said like oh-

Matt: It’s a good move as a spy to do.

Freddie: Yeah

Will: It’s like you’re trying to infiltrate the Nazis and they make you shoot one other resistance person or something like that.

Freddie: Yes, so I did this-

Matt: If you have two spies that’s always a good move to do

Freddie: So I did this, we got to the very last round and went for the very last vote, we were putting in a team that would lose. And then, Matt goes ‘WAIT’ and then proceeds to-

Matt: [giggling]

Freddie: tell the story of the whole game, he’s like ‘If Freddie threw the other spy under the bus at the beg’-

Anthony: Oh wow

Freddie: And then would, like literally like, it was like watching fucking Poirot

[laughter]

Freddie: Like I knew- I literally know what it’s like in a fucking uh- in a fucking

Will: Surely you jest Matt! That’s preposterous, I’ve heard enough

Anthony: To be the villain of  an Agatha Christie novel?

Freddie: Yeah. Because he then just then went through the whole game step by step.

Will: [laughter]

Matt: [still giggling]

Freddie: And, ALSO, like not only did he remember all five rounds, also to the point where he was like ‘that makes sense because in this round he does this and thi-’ and like he just went through the whole thing. And by the end like I literally couldn’t s- I was like ‘wh- d- buuu- that’s not- wha-’ he’s like, and Matt’s like ‘therefore he’s the spy.’ Convinced everybody through that

Anthony: That’s amazing

Freddie: And we lost. I was like ‘Fucking REALLY?’

Matt: I remember that, I’m an asshole. I wasn’t even playing and I did that? I’m sorry

Will: Wait, Matt wasn’t playing and he just interrupted the game?

Freddie: No, no, no, no, no. He was playing.

Matt: Oh I was playing oh okay, I thought that I wasn’t. Okay okay.

Anthony: Matt just doesn’t consider it playing unless he’s lying to people.

Will: [laughs]

Freddie: Yeah

Matt: That’s the only real game

End Transcript]

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 3, Episode 2, The Reunion Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Jonathan Frakes: Hello everyone I'm Johnathan Frakes.

Michael Colton: Michael Colton.

John Aboud: John Aboud.

Aldis Hodge: This is Al Hodge.

Chris Downey: Chris Downey.

John Rogers: Am I sexual chocolate if you’re Al Hodge?

[Laughter]

John Rogers: It's John Rogers.

Aldis Hodge: Sexual chocolate is coming up.

John Rogers: Executive Producer of this particular episode, along with Chris Downey. And those other gentlemen are the writers and director down at the end. Welcome to The Reunion Job. Boys, which we always ask in the opening sequence, where'd this episode come about?

Michael Colton: The- initially you guys told us you wanted to do a high school reunion episode. And I think all you had was ‘they go undercover at a high school reunion’ and I think you had the end beat of the dancing.

John Rogers: Yes.

Michael Colton: At the dance. 

John Rogers: Right, yeah.

Michael Colton: And so from that we started thinking, you know, who would be a good villain for this episode? Someone who high school meant a lot to.

Jonathan Frakes: You talked over my Bourne Identity opening!

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Sorry. Frakes why don't you tell us about the-

Jonathan Frakes: No, I got my-

John Rogers: Where'd that particular opening come from?

John Aboud: Bourne Supremacy.

Jonathan Frakes: I'm kidding. Bourne Supremacy.

John Rogers: Bourne Supremacy.

Jonathan Frakes: Carry on.

John Rogers: That was a very aggressive style.

Jonathan Frakes: Where’d you get the rest of this story?

John Aboud: Well as nerds, we were able to channel the rage of a software magnate. Why would a software magnate be bad in the Leverage universe? Well maybe he's supplying his software to some very bad people overseas.

Michael Colton: Well right at the time we were writing this, there was the Irianian- the aftermath of the Iranian elections, so it was actually in the news that this kind of thing could be happening.

John Aboud: And this episode aired on the one year anniversary of that election. And around- and the protests.

Michael Colton: There was enough propaganda.

John Rogers: It was actually funny, we did get one phone call that's like ‘are we gonna get in trouble for like- can we be open to litigation?’ I went ‘if one of the most evil regimes on earth wants to sue us, I don't really see that as a problem.’

Michael Colton: That would be good press for the show. Iran sues-

Jonathan Frakes: Any publicity is good publicity.

John Rogers: Exactly. Now who's playing our victim here? Did a great job.

Jonathan Frakes: That's Ricki Bhullar.

John Rogers: Yep, fantastic job. And now Frakes, why don't you tell us about that opening? What- cause it was a very different opening than what we usually do.

Jonathan Frakes: Well I think what we try to do with each of our cold opens is to either pay an homage or, in other words, steal stylistically from a show. 

Chris Downey: Yes.

Jonathan Frakes: From a Hitchcock show, or from you know-

John Rogers: It lets you know what the rest of the shows gonna be like.

Jonathan Frakes: Well- hopefully. Or that you just feel like the story of this show is in this particular style. That was a Bourne Supremacy rip off. 

John Rogers: Yes.

Jonathan Frakes: How many shots can we get? How fast can we cut it? How fast can this action happen? And it has that vibe of international espionage.

John Rogers: Yep. Also that room was great, it was built totally on set. That was actually just a two wall set, wasn’t it?

Jonathan Frakes: That was a three-wall set, but we shot the shit out of it.

John Rogers: Yeah.

Chris Downey: And then so you put your energy into that and the rest of the episode you sort of coasted? Is that- you sorta let it…?

Jonathan Frakes: Yeah it's an approach I've found very useful.

[Laughter]

Jonathan Frakes: Now.

John Rogers: Now.

Jonathan Frakes: Who do you think that- oh!

Everyone: Woahhh!!! 

Michael Colton: There we go.

Chris Downey: And reveal.

John Aboud: Didn't see that coming.

Michael Colton: That worked really well.

John Rogers: It did; it did. Johnathan Frakes knows what he’s doing. Yeah and this was also part of the mandate for the opening of the third season, where we wanted to start opening it up into international stories. Kind of open up the Leverage universe in a way that, you know, this is a fictional universe wherein certain rules apply. And it’s close to ours but you know we wanted to start seeing the ramifications of crime world and politics.

Jonathan Frakes: It also suggests the backstory of a lot of these characters has been, in fact, international.

John Rogers: Yeah.

Jonathan Frakes: So that they have experience with all these things. It makes them look, or appear to have more experience than-

Michael Colton: Right.

John Rogers: And sometimes people ask where we get the cases, and we’re kinda establishing here there's a lot of-

Jonathan Frakes: ‘I'm inside your head!’

John Rogers: ‘I'm living rent free.’

Aldis Hodge: Yeah, haha.

John Rogers: You know, kind of establish there's a community of people out there who take freedom of software, the internet's role in being free of government regulations and rules and internationalism very seriously, and Hardison is part of that group. That's part of the hacker group he fell in with.

Aldis Hodge: Yes indeed.

John Rogers: And that's how he knows this guy. That's his background.

Jonathan Frakes: ‘Yeah that's right, we are here to inspect your restaurant.’

John Rogers: Also based on a real spy safehouse that came up in research. But with better locks I think that one had. Ah this is crazy. How'd we get the roach?

Chris Downey: That’s a digital roach.

John Aboud: Digitally inserted.

Michael Colton: It's a real roach, but that plate was not there, it's like the whole thing.

Jonathan Frakes: More discussion about this cockroach than there was about the script!

[Laughter]

John Rogers: We tried to be a little robotic cockroach that went poorly. It went actually too well because it killed.

Jonathan Frakes: What about the real cockroach that we had that nobody liked? Cause it didn’t-

Chris Downey: Oh look at that! Boy that's great.

John Rogers: I think the close up was the real one, that one digital. 

Chris Downey: Is that one digital?

John Rogers: I love this, and the little.

Jonathan Frakes: Yeah, this tees up later. 

John Rogers: Yep.

Jonathan Frakes: They don't get much to do together, it's nice to see those two have a little beat.

Michael Colton: I feel like there's a lot of improv in this scene with you guys.

John Aboud: Absolutely.

Aldis Hodge: Yeah this- you know, anytime you get me and Christian in a room together it's over.

[Laughter]

Aldis Hodge: It's like ‘script, what?’ We just talk. 

John Rogers: Yeah, we’re just pretty much superfluous. Maybe next year without writers.

[Laughter]

Jonathan Frakes: That was how-

John Rogers: And that was a great way of using Jessie by the way.

Jonathan Frakes: How to make an entrance.

Chris Downey: We’re running out of ways for her to get out of a duct. I mean I feel like is there-

John Rogers: You know what? I just I may be speaking for-

Jonathan Frakes: Cirque du Soleil in town next year.

Chris Downey: We need to watch and take notes, cause there needs to be something new.

John Rogers: I may be speaking for a certain percentage of the audience, but anytime we have her in black jeans and that leather jacket coming out of a duct it's a good day. Really, the dismounts- really now you're really.

Aldis Hodge: I'm glad you said it, cause I was about to.

Jonathan Frakes: How about this shawarma?

John Rogers: I love the shawarma, by the way.

Jonathan Frakes: Who doesn’t?

Aldis Hodge: That shawarma was disgusting though, it was cold and greasy.

John Rogers: You can't shoot around hot shawarma.

Chris Downey: Prop shawarma was not?

John Aboud: Prop shawarma.

Aldis Hodge: Prop shawarma.

John Rogers: Don't eat the prop shawarma.

John Aboud: Don't recommend.

Jonathan Frakes: Not much room to move in this location as I recall, remember this place?

John Aboud: It was very narrow.

Jonathan Frakes: It feels as narrow as it was.

John Aboud: Hard to maneuver.

John Rogers: What was it? Was it a real restaurant we redressed?

John Aboud: It was a Hawaiian barbeque restaurant.

Jonathan Frakes: Real restaurant, Hawaiian barbeque.

Michael Colton: That's right.

John Aboud: And the production had to buy them out for the day, so there was a lot of the-

Jonathan Frakes: Are we happy with the yellow choice on the inside of the van?

[Laughter]

Michael Colton: It's a little late to be asking that.

John Rogers: Yeah, I think we might want to change that. Could you fix that in post? Could you just go and… And yes it's the first time- when do we air this? Episode two or three?

Chris Downey: This is second- this is first night.

Michael Colton: First night.

John Rogers: That's right even though we shot it- did not shoot it second, it aired second. And that was re-establishing- that was establishing the new Lucille.

John Aboud: That's right. Near and dear to Hardison's heart.

John Rogers: This is also fun is that- it always amazes me the amount of international espionage that is actually kept in notebooks. 

Jonathan Frakes: Yeah.

John Rogers: No, the people-

Jonathan Frakes: Old school.

John Rogers: Old school. Yeah, but people- 

Aldis Hodge: It keeps them off the radar.

John Rogers: Yeah. You can, you can burn it. You know it can't be hacked, it can't be stolen.

John Aboud: Now that dishwasher, I believe he was also in the prison- in the Jail Break Job?

John Rogers: Oh so this is the jail- it's the job.

John Aboud: In my mind the backstory is: he's on a work release.

John Rogers: Oh that's right.

Chris Downey: Already fell into the wrong element.

John Aboud: Yeah, right away.

John Rogers: Well he doesn't know, they don't tell him.

Chris Downey: His parole officer is not doing a very good job.

John Aboud: Right away, right away.

Jonathan Frakes: The victim. Now we get the villain Arye Gross. Very reliable character actor, been doing it for years. 

Michael Colton: You worked with him…?

Jonathan Frakes: I worked with him on Castle. Recommend him to the gang and he nailed it.

Aldis Hodge: Nice.

John Rogers: Your career is banterific. Eliot, of course, learned to make amazing tea, and that is English Breakfast from his samurai master when he studied for 18 months. [pause] Wait no that was Wolverine.

[Laughter]

Jonathan Frakes: Now whose idea was this to add this whole sequence?

Michael Colton: Well this is all based on NLP which means neuro linguistic programming. And all this is actually based on a guy named Derren Brown, who is British. And what would you- what would you call him? A magician slash-

John Rogers: He calls himself a mentalist, but he uses like a quotation marks around it because he duplicates the effects of charlatans by using psychological techniques.

Michael Colton: You can look him up on YouTube. Look up Derren Brown and NLP and there's stuff he does that is, we sort of basically ripped off for this episode.

John Rogers: Yeah ‘D-e-r-r-e-n’. Yeah, the primary one being he hires two advertising guys to come to his office and give him a campaign- a possible campaign for a children's zoo. They do the sketches and then he reveals his own sketches he did hours earlier and they're almost exactly the same. And then he reveals the visual cues he planted along the way into their head. And that really was the crux of this whole thing.

Michael Colton: And the one where Simon Pegg from Shaun of the Dead has- sits him down and asks him what he wants for his birthday, and he says he wants a bike.

John Aboud: BMX bike.

Michael Colton: But earlier he had written down he had wanted something completely different.

Chris Downey: A leather jacket, I think.

Michael Colton: A leather jacket! And throughout this whole discussion he was just doing cues to get him to say bike. It's kind of amazing.

Aldis Hodge: Wow.

John Rogers: It was also fun to kind of get into the mechanics of- it's easy with a grifter character to say they're just natural at it. To get into the intellectual work that Sophie does in her job.

Chris Downey: And also the idea of hacking into someone's head. I think that's what made this-

John Aboud: Wanted to establish that up front.

Jonathan Frakes: How infuriating it was that it was this character who [unintelligible].

John Rogers: Yeah, and also the fact that once you guys came up with the whole hacker/villain- the whole hacker theme, that really led us to the other material. 

Jonathan Frakes: And here we are, Dubertech.

Chris Downey: And this a great location too, this is very-

Jonathan Frakes: On the campus of-

John Aboud: The community college.

Jonathan Frakes: The community college in Portland.

John Aboud: It’s a great building.

John Rogers: The digital overlay on the sign.

John Aboud: It's a theater, actually.

John Rogers: A lot of digital signage.

Jonathan Frakes: It's the theater department, ironically.

John Rogers: It looks evil. 

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Got an evil vibe to it. This was a lot of fun and this was one of the- one of the times that we took something we could do in a beat, and turned it into almost the entire act. We have broken into someone's office in like half a scene.

Jonathan Frakes: Yeah.

John Rogers: But sometimes you just.

Jonathan Frakes: What we go through to get the fingerprint.

John Rogers: And it's great. And sometimes you find ways to do- you find stuff you want to do, you want to explore and kind of revel in, and that's the fun of this show. You know there's no real template to this show. So if you have an act where you have a bunch of cool stuff you wanna showcase, you can. Yes, tons of fun.

Jonathan Frakes: Boom.

John Aboud: We wanted this to be a real showcase for Hardison. 

John Rogers: Yes.

John Aboud: Because obviously we're dealing with his world. We are in the world that he knows well, and we really liked the idea of him confronting this 1980s technology. I think that was one of our initial pitches to you guys-

John Rogers: Yes.

John Aboud: For an episode.

John Rogers: I think that- you pitched that as a freelancer.

Michael Colton: Our pitch was Hardison hacks an ENIAC.

John Rogers: Yes.

John Aboud: In a museum.

Michael Colton: And that became a TRS-80.

Chris Downey: An abacus really.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Yeah a giant, giant vacuum tube. Yeah and that blended right into this. No, that was- and by the way, if you're gonna pitch a Leverage, pitch a high concept, don't come in with a procedural. You know, ‘he has to hack a 60 year old computer’, I love it, you know. That was an easy one.

Chris Downey: And this is great, I mean how great did they dress this set?

Jonathan Frakes: I love that we [unintelligible].

John Aboud: The music was-

John Rogers: It's the music.

Michael Colton: The set’s great but it’s the music that put us over the edge and sold it.

John Rogers: Yeah Joe LoDuca again giving us that 80s synth pop vibe. It was fantastic. And Aldis you’re great here just the total shock and horror.

John Aboud: This take is wonderful.

Aldis Hodge: This took me back a couple years. I mean, this stuff was older than me but still.

John Rogers: Thank you, thanks for reminding us of that.

Chris Downey: We love to confront Hardison with old technology. Audio tapes things like that.

Jonathan Frakes: He’s appalled here.

John Aboud: His horror.

Aldis Hodge: He's offended, he's insulted.

Jonathan Frakes: And there it is!

[Laughter]

Aldis Hodge: This takes me back to when-

Chris Downey: Look at that.

John Rogers: Five and a quarter right there, baby.

Aldis Hodge: I used to run off of floppys though, I still remember those.

John Rogers: You were a baby though.

Aldis Hodge: It took like 10 hours to upload a page.

John Rogers: Yep.

Michael Colton: We used to use the war games. The phone doesn’t-

John Aboud: War dialer.

Chris Downey: They used to be on cassettes too.

John Rogers: Yeah they used to be on cassettes.

Jonathan Frakes: What was this computer called?

Michael Colton: TRS-80. Although I don't think we could say that.

John Aboud: We weren't allowed to.

Michael Colton: Yeah, it's just generic 1980s computer.

John Aboud: For clearance reasons.

Jonathan Frakes: I remember part of our prep was the ebay version of the TRS-80 that we shopped for, for two weeks trying to find the one that was actually going to be programmable.

John Rogers: Yeah. Yeah apparently Tandy Corporation has a problem with us saying that freedom is oppressed in Iran through the use of their product. Oh we’re the bad guy? That’s some sort of brand infringement I guess.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: I love the caricature- oh the caricature kills me!

Chris Downey: I didn't even notice that! The caricature of him winning the chess trophy.

John Rogers: He was twelve!

Michael Colton: Well they had photos all around of Arye Gross from that era.

John Aboud: From his personal archive.

Jonathan Frakes: With the hair. When he had that big John Hughes hair.

Michael Colton: The pre-Soul Man. Old stuff.

Chris Downey: That is pre-Soul Man]. He's great in Soul Man, by the way. Soul Man is-

John Rogers: That's a great little shot, by the way. That's kind of an iconic shot of Hardison being distracted and annoyed while Parker quietly freaks out next to him. It's just a nice vibe.

Jonathan Frakes: ‘How much time are you really gonna spend in here after I told you that the bad guys are on the way?’

John Rogers: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: But they saw the bad guy in the sweater vest on the way in. I mean, they're not that intimidating.

John Aboud: They knew they could take him. They knew they could take him.

John Rogers: What do you think the origin for the- oh that's great.

Chris Downey: Oh that’s great!

[Laughter]

John Rogers: A locked off comedy frame people!

Chris Downey: It's a locked off comedy frame.

John Aboud: Yep.

Jonathan Frakes: The third in three shows!

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Can't go wrong. This was fun, by the way, the- this one when he says ‘it's adorable you still think there's privacy’.

Jonathan Frakes: Isn't this where some of our regulars drink when we do the 360?

John Rogers: Yes, yeah, we drink and we shoot it, too. But you guys had found out- who- was it Albert cause he was a journalist he knew that you could buy people's yearbooks?

John Aboud: Well he did that all the time at People.

Michael Colton: That’s what it was, yeah.

John Aboud: As a celebrity journalist he would go buy people's yearbooks. And it was the easiest thing in the world.

John Rogers: And there's actual services out there that will help you buy the yearbooks of different high schools. There's an enormous amount of creepy shit in this episode.

Aldis Hodge: Your embarrassment is on sale.

[Laughter]

Michael Colton: Here's where we bring up the Roman Room, which a lot of people thought we made up but is just another-

John Aboud: By a lot of people you mean Tim Hutton.

Michael Colton: Yes.

John Aboud: Thought we made it up.

Michael Colton: Just another curious thing from the mind of John Rogers.

Chris Downey: It's just one of your many hobbies.

John Rogers: One of my many hobbies.

Michael Colton: Memorizing everything.

John Aboud: Memorizing disconnected pieces of information.

Chris Downey: What was last season, whaling?

John Rogers: It was whaling. I remember I made you that scrimshaw-

Michael Colton: What, you memorized famous whalers?

John Aboud: Wow.

John Rogers: No. I am- a hobby of mine is memory techniques, and I use the Roman Room, and we wound up using it here. And it was just a great way- if we're gonna hack- the big problem was why do we need to go to this high school? We can go to this high school without this guy. Well no, we need context. Well what's the context? Well… It was interesting how this episode kind of organically came up. It was the flashback, it was the 80s thing. And that was that he was using, like I do, he was using his Roman Room for his passwords. And the- actually yes they did not believe this. I was up visiting them and I wound up doing the complete works of Shakespeare based on my high school gym in order to convince Tim that I was- that this was a real thing. 

Aldis Hodge: Right.

John Rogers: Aldis you were in the limo that night, that's right. The- we didn’t take Colton or Aboud with us.

John Aboud: Well it coincided with Comic Con.

John Rogers: There you go that's right. Yeah this is, by the way, a really easy memory technique, you can learn it really quickly and with a little bit of practice and imagination. The key is making everything as filthy as possible.

Jonathan Frakes: Seriously?

John Rogers: Has to be obscene.

John Aboud: Ahh, there you go.

John Rogers: Actually Chris Downey made me not use him in my Roman Room techniques because he was distrubed by the fact that I was having him have sex with people and things.

Chris Downey: Yeah.

John Aboud: Well he knows what goes on in that room.

John Rogers: He knows that the Roman Room is a horrible place.

Chris Downey: And John you'll be at the Allentown Marriott this week doing the Roman Room technique, won’t you? Doing it on your tour.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: If you'd like to advance yourself in business or socially. If you’d like to amaze salesmen and other people in your company.

[Laughter]

John Aboud: Whenever you see those signs on a light posts that say ‘make money from home’ the number rings at John Rogers home.

John Rogers: I'm not just running a TV show. I'm running a lot of small businesses out of my garage. Oh was- was that the Psych yellout?

Michael Colton: Oh that was- it in this scene where we talked about what's on his Netflix queue. 

John Aboud: That show Psych.

Michael Colton: I wanted Turk 182 to be on his Netflix queue but that was rejected.

Chris Downey: It’s a little too meta.

Jonathan Frakes: I thought it was Rockford?

Chris Downey: It is Rockford.

John Rogers: Well it is Rockford, we went with Rockford and Psych- we added Psych in the end cause Psych had given us a nice little shoutout in their show.

Michael Colton: I think Sex and the City was thrown out there.

John Rogers: Why Sex and the City?

Michael Colton: I think it was an improv, wasn't it?

John Aboud: Humor?

Aldis Hodge: It was an improv.

John Aboud: Humor. Cause it was funny.

John Rogers: Nothing funny about Sex and the City.

[Laughter]

Aldis Hodge: Very serious show.

Jonathan Frakes: Not that Gina likes to do accents.

John Rogers: This was a lot of fun.

Chris Downey: This was the tour de force.

John Rogers: And the difference- and what's great is watching this with the sound off is watching her physicality change and the smile, yeah, that character smiles and the other one is angry, yeah. It's lovely. And this is also one of those ones where it originally started much more complicated and turned into ‘let’s just have Gina talk, she can do the accents’.

Jonathan Frakes: We cut it all together, let her do the two characters.

Chris Downey: In, sort of, the Facebook era, one of the things I think helped this episode was that you are kind of confronted by people from your high school all the time that you have no recollection of.

John Aboud: Right, right.

Chris Downey: So it really sort of helped the idea that they could actually bomb into somebody's high school reunion as other people and they would just be accepted.

Michael Colton: Yeah this is kind of The Social Network of Leverage episodes, I think it's fair to say.

John Rogers: But before The Social Network- they stole this from you right? The Social Network is stolen from you.

John Aboud: And Facebook, the idea for Facebook.

[Laughter]

Michael Colton: We came up with Facematch.

John Rogers: This is the skype of evil.

Chris Downey: We got the finger pyramid of evil going too.

John Rogers: He's got the finger pyramid of evil.

Aldis Hodge: That was scripted right? Finger pyramid.

John Rogers: The finger pyramid of malfeasance I believe, this is the Skype of evil. 

Jonathan Frakes: Wait heavies right, there's heavies in dark clothes behind him.

John Rogers: Yes exactly I like to think he prepped it ‘alright let's Skype this- wait turn off the lights!’ I can't.

Chris Downey: Oh I love this.

Michael Colton: This turn here is fantastic. After he hangs up with them.

Jonathan Frakes: Unafraid to milk.

John Rogers: And also one of the things I like about- that you guys did in the script just wanted the general attitude you want to give the villains - ahh there you go - is nobody’s a villain in their own head.

Michael Colton: ‘Larry Duberman?’

John Aboud: ‘Larry Duberman?’

[Laughter]

Michael Colton: It took so long, but it worked.

Jonathan Frakes: And we stayed on it! We kept it all in. 

John Aboud: You did.

Jonathan Frakes: Confidant actor.

John Rogers: Yeah somebody said if schadenfreude is the pleasure of other people doing worse than you, what is the German word for delight in doing better than everyone else but not being able to come out and say it? The Germans should have a word for it. Yeah it's pretty impressive- that's a great match for Tim by the way, was that an actor or did we pick an-?

John Aboud: Stock. It was stock.

John Rogers: It was stock, wow.

Aldis Hodge: Now whose stock photos because there were some fugly people in there.

John Rogers: We went to fugly.com.

Aldis Hodge: All right. 

John Rogers: That’s where we got that stock.

Aldis Hodge: I'm just saying there’s a select few you didn't know exactly.

John Rogers: Well it's also 80s hair.

Aldis Hodge: There’s that.

John Rogers: 80’s hair was just a nation making a bad choice.

[Laughter]

Michael Colton: Evil speech of evil.

Chris Downey: Oh here it is. It's the slow push in on the evil speech of evil.

Aldis Hodge: You gotta get in his nostrils, nice and tight right up there.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Well it's a 40 ft screen; it's a different look when they're on TV.

Chris Downey: And now here we go!

John Rogers: Now where was this?

Chris Downey: And now we're off!

John Aboud: Actual high school.

Michael Colton: This was an actual high school.

John Rogers: They let us redress, and yeah fantastic.

Jonathan Frakes: This is the gym of- what's the high school called? Hall? James T Hall High School?

Chris Downey: Now how many days were you here at the school?

Michael Colton: We were there-

John Aboud: Three days.

Michael Colton: Three, I think.

John Rogers: You managed to get all this done in three days?

Jonathan Frakes: Well the exterior was stock, and not our greatest effort.

John Rogers: Still pretty good.

Jonathan Frakes: This is- here we go!

John Aboud: Here we go.

Michael Colton: Now this was unused-

John Rogers: This was unused footage.

Aldis Hodge: Unused footage from the first season.

John Aboud: Season one.

Chris Downey: Using every part of the animal.

Aldis Hodge: Yes indeed. It’s probably one of my favorite scenes I've shot.

John Rogers: By the way, that is fearless of you. Not a lot of actors would go in the braces and throw on the-

Jonathan Frakes: Aldis is fearless.

Aldis Hodge: Very much so.

John Rogers: Throw on the hat. You really did manage to spot-weld Will Smith and the other guys from Fresh Prince into one character there.

[Laughter]

Chris Downey: Alfonso Ribeiro, you mean?

John Rogers: Alfonso Ribeiro. That's the Fresh Prince of Alfonso Ribeiro right there. And this is great that we-

Jonathan Frakes: Eliot pre-hair.

John Rogers: Eliot pre-hair.

Jonathan Frakes: Like wait a minute.

John Aboud: Still the same guy, he looks to camera.

John Rogers: Well it's a flashback.

John Aboud: He looks to flashback camera.

John Rogers: As one does.

Chris Downey: That's good man, that's a good match.

John Rogers: I also like the dialogue fix. Cause it was originally the dialogue-

John Aboud: Brutal punch.

John Rogers: Where we actually lay in that he learned about the knives in context not from a murderous Guatemalan, but from a sexy Home Ec teacher.

Chris Downey: Sexy home ec teacher.

Jonathan Frakes: He's the one who doesn't get to go to the high school.

John Rogers: Ooh yeah that was fun.

Jonathan Frakes: It was easy to take that guy out with one shot.

John Aboud: Little minion did not deserve the brutality of that one punch.

Chris Downey: But it's also nice like-

John Rogers: You know what he knows he's screwing the Iranian kids. He's an accessory after the fact.

John Aboud: It's true, he's complicit.

John Rogers: Absolutely more than complicit, he's an accessory. And therefore worthy of scorn. Ah this was again the Joe LoDuca score. Amazing.

Aldis Hodge: This the song that's playing in this scene right now is the band that Dean Devlin was in.

Chris Downey: Oh that's right. What’s the name of Dean’s band?

John Aboud: What was the name of that band?

John Rogers: Nervous Service.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: This was Dean’s band from the 80s. 

Aldis Hodge: Sure it wasn't Dean and the Devlins? 

John Rogers: No, no, that was his 50s band. And that's Beth in the badger suit right?

Aldis Hodge: Yeah.

John Aboud: Yes.

John Rogers: Yeah that is Beth.

John Aboud: Yes, spoiler warning.

Chris Downey: Well they've seen it already.

John Aboud: No, they haven’t.

Michael Colton: This is like their sixth viewing.

John Aboud: I only watch Leverage with the commentaries on.

John Rogers: Really? Interesting.

John Aboud: Yes.

Michael Colton: You don't know what happens in this one?

John Aboud: Nope. No clue.

John Rogers: That would explain why your pitches were so weird first year.

John Aboud: Well then Rogers drinks, right? And we do a zoom to see he pours the alcohol into the glass. 

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Oh yeah this was a lovely bit of scripting, by the way, on the NLP on this, guys. Very subtle.

Michael Colton: Yeah it's subtle it’s incredibly tight knit it’s-

John Rogers: And great dress. Is this Aboud or Colton on this scene?

Michael Colton: It's mostly Colton.

Jonathan Frakes: It's Grace Peltz! Look at Peltz in the middle of that shot.

John Rogers: That was a nice frame up on that shot.

Chris Downey: Look at that right there.

John Aboud: That's an actual Arye Gross high school photo in the row below.

John Rogers: Are you really?

John Aboud: Yup Lawrence Duberman, first one on the second row.

Aldis Hodge: Yup.

Jonathan Frakes: And here’s how it happened.

John Rogers: All you have to do is insert one page. Who doubts the evidence before their eyes? Where’s Arye Gross?

John Aboud: He's cross eyed. First one on the second row.

Aldis Hodge: That's really him?

John Aboud: That's really him.

Michael Colton: Now what kind of alphabetical order is this? Grace Peltz above Larry Duberman.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Oh, the honor society had their own photos.

Michael Colton: Oh there you go. That’s computer club.

John Rogers: One of these days you gotta learn to just lie quick.

Chris Downey: You know how to retcon.

Michael Colton: Most of those names are from my high school. Jack Lebowski. I used my-

John Rogers: Don't say that, people have to sign forms for that.

Michael Colton: My high school girlfriend is in there.

Jonathan Frakes: Boom.

Chris Downey: Here we go.

Jonathan Frakes: Don't always get a ninja zoom into the socks and sandals.

John Rogers: He's enjoying that way too much.

Chris Downey: He is. Cleaning pools. I love that- I love that about him. Former quarterback now cleaning pools.

Jonathan Frakes: Tim owned Drake.

John Rogers: Yes.

Jonathan Frakes: He totally owned Drake Macintyre.

John Rogers: He really was enjoying that. There really was a moment you saw Tim kind of like ‘I wouldn’t mind cleaning pools. It’s nice and quiet’.

Michael Colton: Mandy Babson. 

John Rogers: Yep.

Michael Colton: What do his pins say?

John Rogers: I don't remember.

John Aboud: One of them said ‘I'll wash first’.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Wha- why? Why would you have a pin that said that?

Chris Downey: Not blondie or something?

John Aboud: That's the kind of guy you are. They were all slogans. Oh my voice is really giving out.

Michael Colton: Maybe you should stop talking.

John Aboud: Apologies to the home viewer.

John Rogers: Just let Colton- he’ll be honest about who did what.

Michael Colton: Yeah.

John Rogers: There's no way he’ll-

John Aboud: How can that go wrong?

John Rogers: Yeah. And it was also fun coming up with the idea that: of course there's a villain. Everyone has a narrative in their head, everyone had the villain in high school. You know the person who made their life hell. Unless you were the villain.

Jonathan Frakes: There he is! ‘Oh Doucherman!’

John Rogers: I'm glad we got that past Standards and Practices, cause Doucherman really was-

Michael Colton: The whole episode was built around Doucherman.

Jonathan Frakes: Whole episode.

John Aboud: It really would’ve fallen apart.

Michael Colton: It's the first thing we started with.

Aldis Hodge: All you thought about at first, and then you built the story around it.

John Aboud: It came later.

Aldis Hodge: ‘Doucherman, hmm we need to write a show’.

John Rogers: And she anchors it with a touch every time, nice acting, nice use of space.

Chris Downey: Who's that guy?

John Aboud: That guy was wearing a kilt! That guy was wearing a kilt.

John Rogers: I know, I saw him in the opening shot.

John Aboud: In the opening shot you can see he was wearing a kilt.

Chris Downey: Good variety of alumni characters.

Michael Colton: You know when I was on Twitter when this was airing to watch it, and Tim was- I thought it was very flattered he was just repeated ‘Douchermans got lady parts’.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Yes over and over again. He loved that. This was also fun showing Hardison scrambling. There's just some stuff you can’t prep for.

Aldis Hodge: Well Frakes, that was the first scene we shot for this episode, but it was also in the middle of shooting another episode the same day.

Jonathan Frakes: Same day in the van, here’s what’s gonna happen.

Aldis Hodge: I remember all that banter.

Chris Downey: That was the violin stuff.

Jonathan Frakes: Well this was the double up day.

Aldis Hodge: Double up day. All that banter was- I'm not even gonna lie I learned that right then and there in like ten minutes. Because I was on the other episode-

John Aboud: It worked.

John Rogers: You were on the other episode.

Michael Colton: Well you were on the violin.

John Rogers: Other episode was a giant part.

Aldis Hodge: Really shoot five pages just straight out? ‘Ok guys!’

John Aboud: Who’s this guy?

John Rogers: And there's our line producer!

Jonathan Frakes: There's our producer Paul Bernard as Schmitty!

Michael Colton: Star of the show.

Jonathan Frakes: I will tell you, he did have the 80s hair, that's not a haircut.

John Rogers: That's just what Paul Bernard looks like.

Jonathan Frakes: He works in that hair.

John Rogers: He works, he plays in that hair. That’s not stunt hair people.

Michael Colton: Is it true TBS is interested in a Schmitty spin off? Is that happening?

John Rogers: Yeah I think we might do ‘Here’s Schmitty.’

[Laughter]

John Rogers: ‘We’re up to our necks in Schmitty.’ We haven’t decided yet.

Chris Downey: I think there was a reality show in which somebody- they had hidden cameras and people led-

Michael Colton: Someone made like a 2020 special about someone who- some woman who didn't want to go to her thing so she hired a- I think it was a stripper.

Chris Downey: I think it was a stripper.

Michael Colton: To play herself.

Jonathan Frakes: At her high school reunion?

Michael Colton: At her high school reunion.

John Aboud: She coached the stripper through an earpiece-

Chris Downey: Yes.

John Aboud: As she was watching on a video feed.

Michael Colton: While she was watching Hardison-style in a hotel room.

Aldis Hodge: Doesn't it seem like it takes a lot more effort than just showing up?

John Aboud: Just go to your reunion.

Jonathan Frakes: Here's the Roman Room!

John Rogers: Turns out not. See you're young, you still remember what these people look like. You have to remember after 20 years everyone's kind of- what's the great line from Grosse Pointe Blank? Swollen? Everyone just doesn't quite look like what they used to.

Aldis Hodge: I'm young, but I'm an actor, but I don't remember a damn thing past 5 minutes ago.

John Rogers: ‘I don't remember other people, I'm an actor’.

Aldis Hodge: Hey.

Chris Downey: It's fun, too, seeing Eliot typing stuff.

Michael Colton: Ten go to twenty stuff.

John Rogers: It was- and this was actually fun too, we were originally developing this trying to figure out what the hell Eliot was doing and then we realized just put him over there. For once he's gotta- yeah. Also allowed us to do the fight in an interesting way. This- god all high schools do look alike.

Jonathan Frakes: Yeah this high school is perfect. The shiny floors, the lockers. We said, ‘We’re looking for a broom closet.’ They said, ‘Well what about the broom closet?’ We said ‘Good, that'll be fine.’

[Laughter]

John Rogers: ‘That'll absolutely work!; And by the way Gina seems to really enjoy when her character doesn't like Tims character. She seems to be digging in a little bit more, I'm just saying. Yeah the utter scorn of the good looking asshole is fantastic. Oh we're past that. That was the-

Michael Colton: This is fun also ‘cause so much- I mean just ‘cause the nature of the show often Tim’s or Nate’s character is playing the shady businessman and this is totally opposite.

John Rogers: Yeah this is a low status character.

Chris Downey: He doesn't do a lot of low status.

John Aboud: He's not worn a hat like this on previous jobs.

Aldis Hodge: I just saw one of the other buttons said ‘I’m a handyman’.

Chris Downey: Is that what it said?

Aldis Hodge: One of them yeah. The yellow one.

Chris Downey: ‘I’m a handyman’.

John Rogers: The bright green one says ‘if you can't be handsome be handy’.

Michael Colton: There's very few of his characters where he can wear that necklace.

Jonathan Frakes: ‘I should give you my card’.

Aldis Hodge: The necklace is questionable.

John Rogers: Questionably- is it a surfer? Or what is that?

Aldis Hodge: It's a surfer, man.

Chris Downey: Oh is that what that is?

John Rogers: He's still a Boston guy, so I don't know what he's wearing that for.

John Aboud: Well he's around water all the time.

John Rogers: That’s true.

John Aboud: Pools.

Chris Downey: That's right.

Aldis Hodge: He's a great surfer in his mind.

John Rogers: The great surf pools of Route 9.

Aldis Hodge: Surfer in his mind.

John Aboud: Uh-oh what is this?

Chris Downey: Someone is coming down the stairs.

John Aboud: What’s this what’s this?

John Rogers: Oh yeah, the lovely Kari Wuhrer.

Chris Downey: Now uh MTV? I mean best known-

John Aboud: Oh absolutely.

John Rogers: The sliders, the-

Michael Colton: What’s it called?

John Aboud: Class of ‘96.

Michael Colton: Remote Control. 

Chris Downey: Remote Control, that’s right.

Michael Colton: That was a formative influence on me. So I was very happy when I got to work with her.

John Rogers: Yeah, she's fantastic, by the way. She’s really sweet, worked her butt off and just-

Jonathan Frakes: Also happens to be married to our UPM [Editor’s Note: Unit Production Manager]. 

Chris Downey: But certainly we’re not giving away parts to people connected to the show!

John Aboud: No no.

Jonathan Frakes: Otherwise Jeanie Francis would be on the show by now.

[Laughter]

Michael Colton: I did not know-

John Rogers: She didn't want to work with you, that's the problem. We called here and-

Michael Colton: I did not know she was married to the Leverage team until after she was cast. Her audition was great.

Chris Downey: She was.

John Rogers: Well that's the- Jim Scoura, her husband, the UPM, plays of course the assassin in the finale, in the summer finale.

Michael Colton: It's a double assassin household.

John Rogers: In our heads actually they are married in the Leverage verse; they’re like the bad Mr and Ms Smith.

John Aboud: Neither one of them can actually complete a kill.

John Rogers: They just- but they work hard, they get a lot of-

Jonathan Frakes: Watch them roll down these lockers.

Chris Downey: Was Jim here for this sequence?

Jonathan Frakes: He avoided this scene.

John Rogers: Interesting.

John Aboud: Stayed in the office.

Michael Colton: Stayed with the kids this day.

John Rogers: Having your improbably hot wife all over a good looking actor is just-

John Aboud: Why improbable? Why improbably hot?

Jonathan Frakes: Watch this, watch Tim with these- is this where he does the-

Michael Colton: That’s coming up.

Chris Downey: Oh man.

Jonathan Frakes: The stuff with the-

Aldis Hodge: Did this in one take right? Just one take.

Chris Downey: Jeez she's devouring him. This is like an episode of V!

[Laughter]

John Rogers: She’s gonna unhinge her jaw any second now.

John Aboud: And here we go.

Jonathan Frakes: Oof what a surprise that she'd have it there.

John Rogers: It's a warm key.

Jonathan Frakes: Look at Tim! Look at Tim working those props!

John Aboud: Battling the brooms.

Chris Downey: Nothing like-

John Aboud: And then he stands back up.

John Rogers: Come on the doors right there. 

Jonathan Frakes: Come on, come on. Tried and true.

John Rogers: ‘And now I'm gonna go kill a dude.’

Jonathan Frakes: Lucky for us, Beth is in the building.

John Rogers: Yep. This is a real broom closet, that's great. How did you have room to shoot in there?

Jonathan Frakes: Went for the big broom closet.

John Rogers: Ah there you go, as opposed to the little one. Also this is a recurring bit: how Parker will just dump food everywhere. It actually turns out to a plot point in the Rashomon episode.

Chris Downey: Apparently we can have food.

Michael Colton: We can if it's chicken wings. They had like three giant trays of chicken wings.

John Rogers: Ahh good spark welding effect. Thank you, thank you props and special effects, appreciate it.

Jonathan Frakes: This works great, actually.

John Rogers: Yes that was better than the lightsaber through the door in the Star Wars prequel.

[Laughter]

John Aboud: That’s a low bar sir.

John Rogers: Well it's still- it's a feature bar I'll take it.

John Aboud: Feature bar.

Michael Colton: ‘I’m for clean fun’. That's another button,

Chris Downey: Is that what it says?

John Aboud: That’s another one, another button.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: The one on the left is haunting me, I can't quite make out the one on the left.

Aldis Hodge: It says- wait.

Michael Colton: Can we enhance?

John Rogers: Stop and enhance, enhance, push in. 

Michael Colton: Push in.

John Rogers: And yeah,this was a lot of fun just zooming in on- cause lets face it, not a lot of women can edge Gina Bellman out of that situation.

Jonathan Frakes: I know, and throw wine on her!

John Rogers: Yep.

Chris Downey: And the fun of this was having them revert to their high school personas and being offended by the cheerleader muscling in on her. I mean right? I mean this is- that's what-

Michael Colton: It's called subtext.

John Aboud: Seeing Sophie confront a mean girl.

Chris Downey: Yes.

John Rogers: Yes. It's great everyone had- everyone had their thematic little hook in this. One of the reasons we originally were attracted to the idea, even a year earlier, was because high school is that period where just the shell isn't on yet.

Chris Downey: And a high school reunion-

Jonathan Frakes: Had you done this before where the con men get conned in the middle of their con?

John Rogers: We play around with it, but rarely in this particular thing. Rarely this particular style.

Chris Downey: You mean an assassin showing up late in the episode?

Jonathan Frakes: No, no, no, I mean two con- our con and another con trying to duke it.

Chris Downey: Oh right.

John Rogers: Intersecting? Two Live Crew kinda.

Chris Downey: Well Order 23 we had a guy pretending to be a Marshall and he was an assassin.

John Rogers: Yeah but not a- those are the crucial- the crucials of surveillance photos.

Jonathan Frakes: Oh, she's on Interpol!

John Rogers: You need a half turn, you need a glasses-

Chris Downey: By the way you never see somebody eating spaghetti in surveillance photos.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Well what are the odds that when you see that person they'll be eating spaghetti? You really don't want that on the wanted photo. That you can't recognize a killer without the spaghetti. You want a spaghetti free context.

John Aboud: ‘Here, eat this.’

John Rogers: ‘Oh, you're that person!’

John Aboud: ‘We've got our man!’

Jonathan Frakes: Mission Impossible.

John Rogers: Yeah great little three way walk, nice.

Jonathan Frakes: Boom. ‘You go this way I'll take this way’. Taking a long time to get through that door.

Chris Downey: Really is. It's a really thick door.

John Aboud: Very secure door.

Michael Colton: They stopped for a break.

Jonathan Frakes: Thick door they established that early.

John Rogers: This, by the way- this is great. Not a lot of guys could land this joke. ‘The health inspector?’

Michael Colton: Was that in the script or was that?

Jonathan Frakes: That was on the day.

John Rogers: That was on the day, that was an improv, right?

Michael Colton: Yeah, Chris did a lot of improv in this scene. Entire fight was improvised.

John Rogers: And that was fun, too, is coming up with the- I remember ‘ok what’s- what’s from the 80s you can hit people with?’

Chris Downey: Oh that's great.

John Rogers: This is a great fight.

John Aboud: First take on that smash.

Chris Downey: Oh that's great.

Michael Colton: Oh I know, ‘they give trophies for chess’ was Christian’s.

John Rogers: That's right.

Chris Downey: Yeah.

[Silence]

John Rogers: Sorry mouthful of Irish whiskey.

[Laughter]

Chris Downey: Yeah this is a great fight oh and the bowling trophy.

John Rogers: The bowling for chess. 

Jonathan Frakes: There’s no prop he doesn't flip!

[Laughter]

Aldis Hodge: He flips everything.

Jonathan Frakes: Am I right?

Chris Downey: Or twirl.

Aldis Hodge: He’ll flip a table.

Jonathan Frakes: Never found a prop he couldn't twirl.

John Rogers: And that's interesting, because on the big screen, you cut from the dude sort of cracking his neck behind Christian, and it's a slam cut into two people kissing. For a second I'm like ‘what the hell? Wait what the hell is going on here? Oh alright.’

Jonathan Frakes: Here's something we've all looked forward to. The fox fight in the girls dressing room.

Michael Colton: Well that- when we were writing the high school show and we came up with this character we knew we had to have a girl fight in the locker room.

John Aboud: And where was that silencer?

Jonathan Frakes: Gina resisted, and then ended up saying, ‘When can I do this again?’

John Rogers: She loves fighting, you see.

Chris Downey: She does.

John Rogers: You're always worried you're going to get hurt fighting, but the stunt people know what the hell they're doing, everyone’s super safe and you wind up just having fun. And also that was a big thing, you know Sophie’s character is not a killer, she has to cheat.

Chris Downey: Oh and the shoes!

John Rogers: The shoes come off.

Jonathan Frakes: Now it's real. Boom.

[Laughter]

Chris Downey: And there's another locked off comedy frame!

John Rogers: And then the cross.

Jonathan Frakes: Locked off comedy!

John Rogers: The cross cutting between the two fights was a lot of fun. And yeah, she could probably take her if she didn't have the fire extinguisher. It- Kari’s frustration in ‘what the hell are you talking about’ here is hilarious, actually.

Jonathan Frakes: These stunt doubles are quite good, this is intercut nicely.

John Rogers: Yup it is. And- 

Chris Downey: Oh and she uses a gun, look at that.

Jonathan Frakes: Yeah, look at that.

Michael Colton: Yeah, but she missed.

John Rogers: Yeah that's the problem, silencers are really useless anywhere over 10 feet. She should've unscrewed it but by then she'd be gone. 

Jonathan Frakes: Woah, woah, woah. 

John Rogers: And this is a great- actually of the early episodes this season this was one of my sort of favorite sort of character twists is that Drake actually has an arc. 

John Aboud: Right.

John Rogers: You know no person is without redemption, including Drake. Oh yeah.

Aldis Hodge: And the taser!

John Rogers: And the taser. Again, crucial for the finale for us to plant it that soon.

John Aboud: Her weapon of choice for the season.

John Rogers: Yeah catering. We originally had her lowering from the ceiling, and then that was just crazy. Used the taser. Oh the hug, that's nice.

Jonathan Frakes: Oof.

John Rogers: Oh the- and then the double turn this, is this is dense. This one’s actually got a lot going on in this act.

Michael Colton: I have no idea what's happening now.

[Laughter]

John Aboud: Truly lost.

John Rogers: Is this the fourth act? This is the fourth act

John Aboud: I think we're in act nine.

John Rogers: Yeah this is the fourth action act, and there's an awful lot of story going on here.

Chris Downey: Oh here we go. 

John Rogers: And what I kinda like here is where Arye Gross is playing not just angry, but hurt.

Michael Colton: Yeah.

John Rogers: It's like ‘I thought all my high school dreams had come true and now you're lying to me.’

Michael Colton: He's great in this. 

John Rogers: Genuinely never- can't go wrong with a shot down the gun.

Jonathan Frakes: Nope. Reliable.

John Rogers: Gonna react to it? Nope, just go to the reverse.

Jonathan Frakes: Go out number one.

Michael Colton: Bang.

Aldis Hodge: Commercial, people.

John Rogers: Remember, a guy pulling a gun for the act break is always better than a guy leaving with a gun. And now we do- what's sad is this was the plan. That's- when you think about it this is the most convoluted possible way to get this information in this guy’s head. I don't mean sad in a bad way, I mean this guy really just has no chance whatsoever. And yeah the mixture of like ‘I’m a villain’ and- this may be the saddest villain we’ve ever had.

Michael Colton: Well I was watching this with my sister, who said- this scene happened, she's like ‘oh I feel bad for him’ then he has a line about ‘cause you brutally beat the Iranian’ then she's like ‘oh now I don’t feel bad for him.’ It was the perfect-

Chris Downey: You're like, ‘Ooh I'm glad I put that in there.’

John Rogers: It's a little- it is sometimes a little funny that you know you realize television very much leads you through the emotions of the show. So it’s- you sorta feel like an idiot resetting the emotions as a writer but it’s important. You know you're in a contract with the viewer.

Jonathan Frakes: Well we’ve been in the school for two acts. 

John Rogers: Yeah.

Jonathan Frakes: Absolutely true. And the hacker getting hacked we've forgotten about that.

John Rogers: Yeah 42 minutes is- what is it, average American attention span is like 10 minutes? Which is why act length is probably just about right.

John Aboud: ‘Nice try fake Drake’.

Chris Downey: Fake Drake.

John Aboud: And he pointed out that that sounded a little like a Batman villain.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Fake Drake.

John Aboud: ‘Very well Fake Drake.’

John Rogers: The- and again, these are people- these are professional spies. These are people who are hired to take care of people like Eliot.

Aldis Hodge: So it's okay for them to get hurt.

John Rogers: So it's okay for them to get beat up.

John Aboud: For his arm to bend that way.

Aldis Hodge: Yeah we don't feel bad for him, no.

John Rogers: I love the ASCII art there. 

John Aboud: Yep, yep.

John Rogers: I love that he would go to the effort of making an ASCII manticore. Cause that's not easy. And you can't have an intern do that cause it's your secret logo.

Chris Downey: Yeah.

John Aboud: I think that probably took Derek all of five seconds. And then it even animates! It even animates when it dies.

John Rogers: x o x o x o yeah. Again, he would've had to do that. So at some point Arye Gross' character had to have gone, ‘What if somebody hacks this? I should put a death animation in just in case.’

Chris Downey: Yeah well you want to know that it's gone.

John Rogers: Yeah exactly. Made unaware.

Jonathan Frakes: This is the fifth Beatle, played strong in this show.

John Rogers: Yeah Derek Frederickson. And of course manticore based on various intercept methods that you can use. And that's kinda tricky is social media is both a tool of insurrection and makes you vulnerable. As soon as you network with other people it's a weakness.

John Aboud: We talked about Carnivore I think wasn’t that the-

John Rogers: Yes, that was the FBI one.

John Aboud: Was the decryption.

Chris Downey: Now how long did it take to ‘Badger 85’? ‘Cause you had to find ways to implant it.

Michael Colton: That- actually that was kind of fun because we had to figure out ways to use the word ‘badger’ or ‘85’.

John Aboud: For this.

Michael Colton: Yeah.

John Aboud: For this sequence.

Chris Downey: For the flashes.

Jonathan Frakes: There was a wonderful alliteration in this.

Chris Downey: ‘Five years’.

John Aboud: ‘Wasn't all bad-ger brain hold onto every detail’.

John Rogers: And there's the badger. You gotta remember that badger.

Aldis Hodge: AKA Beth.

Michael Colton: ‘I already ate, five months’.

John Rogers: I've had this dream so many times.

[Laughter]

Michael Colton: ‘You hacked me?’

John Rogers: And now the meltdown. We don't really give them a gloat here, we don't really give them a gloat.

John Aboud: He pre-gloats.

Aldis Hodge: With the Fred Flinstone run out.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: That’s a chess club run.

Chris Downey: He was in the chess club.

John Aboud: Schmitty.

Jonathan Frakes: Can’t believe we’re out of beer.

Chris Downey: ‘Out of beer!’

Jonathan Frakes: Never happened to Paul.

John Rogers: I don’t think that was a line, I think we just ran out of beer on set.

[Laughter]

John Rogers: Oh Larry Duberman, millionaire, the stress has gotten to him, he's melting down. I'll take him away.

Jonathan Frakes: Here's where we toyed with having our favorite FBI guys in this.

Chris Downey: We almost did but the scheduling didn't work. But we tried to have-

Michael Colton: Yep.

John Rogers: Again always the pain but real humans are attached to these roles. They don't wait around for us.

Chris Downey: Taggert and McSweeten.

John Aboud: Doucherman!

Aldis Hodge: Doucherman.

John Aboud: So disappointed.

Chris Downey: Gave him a nice shot there.

John Aboud: So disappointed.

Jonathan Frakes: He's a friend, he gets a good close up.

John Rogers: That's good.

Jonathan Frakes: And this- I love this end. I love this.

Michael Colton: This is what the show started with.

John Rogers: We held onto this end for two years.

Michael Colton: This was all we had.

John Aboud: This is the image from which the episode sprung.

Michael Colton: From whence it sprang.

John Aboud: Yep.

John Rogers: Like the head of Zeus.

Aldis Hodge: It's a red party cup.

[Laughter]

John Aboud: I love that shirt. I love that shirt. I do love that shirt.

Chris Downey: Is that what that is?

Aldis Hodge: Yup yup.

John Aboud: Red party cup.

Michael Colton: Which is a line-

Chris Downey: Oh I want that.

Jonathan Frakes: And he gives it up to. This actor gives it up again.

John Rogers: Yeah, well didn't we put cayenne pepper in his eyes?

Jonathan Frakes: No we did not.

John Rogers: Oh we don't do that anymore? Alright. No he was-

Aldis Hodge: It's how we motivate our actors. They go hard.

John Rogers: Absolutely fantastic work. 

John Aboud: I made him cry.

Aldis Hodge: It’s cause you called him fat right before you shot it.

John Rogers: That's a big part of the show by the way, the victim isn't just pathetic.

John Aboud: It was the insults that did it.

John Rogers: That was a spinoff, too, we talked about - Mandy and Schmitty.

John Aboud: Mandy/Schmitty.

John Rogers: Unwittingly getting involved in cons.

Michael Colton: Schmitheads.

Jonathan Frakes: Mandy was thrilled to get to play a girl with big boobs cause she had just had a baby, so she never had boobs like this before. So she was thrilled to be asked-

Chris Downey: I'm sure she can enjoy hearing that on this.

[Laughter]

Jonathan Frakes: Lana[?] told me this for sure.

Michael Colton: They look wonderful.

John Rogers: The- and this was fun. The whole idea that they were so convincing at the con and so charming-

Jonathan Frakes: Yeah that they become-

John Rogers: You could've done an entire subplot like that. 

Chris Downey: Oh look at that.

John Rogers: I think that's you  know that's a good day for Schmitty, he really lost track of his friends, and he's just happy to know Drake’s doing okay.

Jonathan Frakes: And you can't miss the beer bowl, John Hughes. Thank you very much.

John Rogers: No he- and this is Joe LoDuca giving us- and we originally wanted words and then he gave us the melody as a sample before he put the words on and realized we don't want words.

Chris Downey: No, yeah, that's perfect.

John Rogers: This is perfect. This sounds exactly like an 80s tune.

Aldis Hodge: Now which one of your guys' high school dreams is this, here?

John Rogers: Dancing with Gina Bellman?

Michael Colton: Dancing with Tim Hutton?

[Laughter]

Aldis Hodge: Becoming prom king after like 85 years.

Jonathan Frakes: I love the callback to these two characters, in these costumes, in this place. I think this is lovely, actually.

Michael Colton: Magical.

John Rogers: This is fantastic. This is one of my favorite endings. It really is.

Aldis Hodge: Bit of redemption for what they’ve gone through.

Jonathan Frakes: No, but it’s in front of all these people. Their pasts-

John Rogers: Yeah, and she's not gonna tell him the name, but she's-

Chris Downey: And high school reunions like we said are full of, like, emotion. I mean it's just that’s what's- it kinda takes you back so it’s-

John Aboud: Well and of course what we liked was that Parker never experienced this stuff. So to her it's an alien world and by the end-

Chris Downey: And here's the shot.

John Aboud: This is it.

Jonathan Frakes: Well the metaphor of her feet being off the ground. Here we go bring it on.

Aldis Hodge: Yup.

Michael Colton: Oh yeah.

John Rogers: Yeah, just never actually touching the ground.

Aldis Hodge: I'm just that strong, I'm holding her up.

[Laughter]

Chris Downey: That is great.

Aldis Hodge: Oh yeah.

Chris Downey: And of course look! The one who- the one guy who didn't get to have any fun.

Jonathan Frakes: ‘I don't get to go.’

John Rogers: ‘Did anybody ask if Eliot's okay? Is Eliot alive?’

Jonathan Frakes: Sorry buddy.

John Rogers: Pissed off Christian is a funny Christian. And then pan up and then find both of them. Oh I love this shot.

Jonathan Frakes: Excellent use of the crane.

John Rogers: This is kind of the whole reason to do- yeah. And-

John Aboud: Fan favorite, gonna call it.

John Rogers: Fan favorite, yep.

Chris Downey: Yeah.

John Aboud: Calling it yeah.

Chris Downey: Both of your episodes guys have endings of real-

Michael Colton: The rest of them are shit, but the endings really land.

Chris Downey: But I'm saying-

Michael Colton: Stick the landing.

John Rogers: Gotta hold on for the ending of Colton and Aboud episode.

Chris Downey: I’m trying to pay you a compliment!

Jonathan Frakes: Makes you wanna put in another DVD doesn't it?

John Rogers: Yes, yes, you should go-

Jonathan Frakes: Let’s watch another episode!

John Rogers: You should go watch another episode right now.

Jonathan Frakes: Go run to the fridge, get some stuff, put another one in.

John Rogers: Get some stuff. If you're pantless that's cool we’re pantless.

Michael Colton: You’re saying for douchbags to go hard.

Aldis Hodge: If Hardison-

Michael Colton: We wrote two endings-

John Aboud: Fake it- we fake it well.

Michael Colton: That are actually heartwarming.

Chris Downey: Very heartwarming.

John Rogers: Well you were given one of them.

[Laughter]

Jonathan Frakes: Thanks for watching.

Aldis Hodge: Peace people.

[honeyvettel]

nico — a playlist made by me

listen, every time I listen to any of these songs I keep thinking of nico and his relationship with lewis so bear with me and let me explain why👇🏻

1. Unfucktheworld, Angela Olsen

The whole situation with lewis tired nico relentlessly so he needed a break to take care of himself.

It’s not just me for you I have to look out too

I have to save my life

I need some peace of mind

2. We own the sky, M83

nico dreamed all his life to race in f1 with lewis, and as a child everything seemed possible.

Each shade of blue

Is kept in our eyes

Keep blowing and lightning

Because we own the sky

But then things started to fall apart between them and there was no chance to go backwards.

Can’t we change our minds?

We kill what we build

3. The wolves (act i and ii), Bon Iver

(God this song fits both of them so well. it goes better with lewis’ perspective but humour me for this time.)

nico felt betrayed by lewis’ attitude and he was resentful. He hopesone day lewis will understand how much he hurt him.

Someday my pain will mark you

And when he will, nicowill take comfort in that, so he suggests lewis to just go ahead and finish him.

Solace my game

It stars you

Swing wide your crane, swing wide your crane

And run me through

nico reflects in hindsight how many moments they could have had but now it’s all vanished and Lewis won’t hear from him anymore.

What might have been lost (don’t bother me)

4. The great escape, Patrick Watson

The situation exhausted nico to his limits so he needed to escape, even if he loves racing so much.

Puts on a smile and breathes it in

And breathes it out, he says

Bye bye, bye to all of the noise

5. Many ways, Bombat Bicycle Club

nico doesn’t know if he is doing the right choice and can’t sleep because of it.

She said you’re stirring

Tossing, turning

But Vivian reassures him and says he is doing the right thing.

I’m sure your choice is right

Nonetheless, nico thinks he is a coward from running away and thinks there are other possibilities to make up for it.

I’ve always been a coward

Been a coward this day

There are many ways this way

6. See you soon, Coldplay

Nico has lost trust in himself and he scolds himself because he shouldn’t have fallen in love in the first place.

So you lost your trust

And you never should have

He tries to go on. He protects himself (with the bulletproof vest) from hurting again.

In a bulletproof vest

With the windows all closed

I’ll be doing my best

he watches Lewis from afar “in a telescope lens” and hopes they'll be friends again very soon.

And when all you want is friends

I’ll see you soon

7. Old friend, Mitski

Nico understands how childish was to make an insignificant thing like racing divide them.

We nearly drowned

For such a silly thing

And now that they have both someone better to take care of them they can go back being what they were, even if it means only friendship.

I’ll take coffee and talk about nothing baby

At blue diner I’ll take anything you want to give me, baby

8. Ran away, Coldplay

Another song about nico avoiding the situation with lewis.

I ran away from you

That’s all I ever do

People said to him not to mess up things, not to leave, that is stupid and won’t solve anything and yet he did it.

Everyone I know

Says I’m a fools to mess with you

And everyone I know

Says it’s such a stupid thing to do

9. Atmosphere, Joy Division

They try to talk but it’s impossible to rebuild what they lost.

Endless talking

Life rebuilding

Don’t walk away

Nico pleads lewis to stay even if he knows it’s hopeless

Don’t turn away in silence

Your confusion

My illusion

Worn like a mask of self hate

10. The Bourne identity, The Last Shadow Puppets

(okay this is the most Nico song ever written so bear with me for just a little longer)

Nico understands that his insecurities are ruining his relationship with lewis. He always feels smaller compared to lewis’ grandness and he masks his doubts with confidence, like he usually does when he answers journalists question. He creates another new person, but now this facade is cracking and it’s revealing his true self and he hates it.

He’s kind of my enemy

Whenever I’m on to something good you see

He always wanted in to spoil it for me

That’s because the relationship with lewis makes him do this. He doesn’t need to hide with him, so he keeps cracking and cracking.

Glass bottomed ego

Still afloat but can’t you see the cracking appearing in the base?

He always scolds himself for this and for the mistakes he makes. He beats himself up so much that nothing will be left in the end.

Let’s just have a buzz because by the time I’m done fucking beating myself up there will nothing left love

So he leaves. He doesn’t want Lewis to see him like this.

Yeah I’ll be leaving now, I’m making tracks

And I doubt that I’ll be coming back.

If you made it this far thank you for your attention. Hope you enjoyed the songs and the explanations as much as I did🤍

[trainsinanime]

No Time To Die

Alright, now for the long post. This was a good movie. It was not a great movie, but I had fun. It was a competent action thriller, it did nothing to really annoy me, and it had lots of fun little moments. Let’s discuss, with some very intense spoilers.

First of all, I gotta give props to this movie for knowing its aesthetics, something that the first two Craig Bonds really struggled with. This one perfectly commits to its own brand of dirty and gritty that still feels like a heightened reality. There’s exotic locales but they’re generally shot from street level; there’s almost no luxury here. That might not be very Bond-like in any classic sense, but it works perfectly for this movie.

Beyond the aesthetics, the movie is big on themes and meaning to stuff, and it generally works well. As the last movie of its era (and wow do they make sure you know that), it’s full of callbacks to older Bonds, weirdly enough Lazenby and Dalton specifically, and it deals heavily with the concept of legacy. Bond gets a successor as 007, and a daughter, of all things. The question of “what’s life after Bond” is explored in a lot of detail. Seeing him in M’s office with a visitor badge is just delightful.

(And yes, giving him a five year old daughter sounds corny, and indeed it is. But it is the kind of corny that works in the heightened reality of this movie. I wouldn’t say they handled this sub-plot super well or interestingly, but it was perfectly okay, unlike all the weird “family” stuff in Spectre.)

That said, there are definitely limits to how far the themes and meaning really go. Yes, he does get his successors, but we don’t really explore what impact he has had on them. His daughter gets no character at all, and the new 007 grows warmer towards him, but she doesn’t seem to have been influenced by him in any meaningful way. I feel like that’s okay in the finished product, but this is also something that could have been even more interesting if they had been willing to go there and maybe flip fewer Land Rovers. Everybody likes a Land Rover being thrown on its roof, but after the fifth one (count them!), it gets a bit old.

This movie produces a very human Bond, which has been a core theme of the Craig era of course, but I would argue that this and Skyfall are the only ones that actually succeed. Bond is still not a particularly interesting character with a lot of depth, but this movie knows that, and instead pairs him constantly with colourful more interesting supporting characters that really make him shine. His relationships with Felix, Paloma, Q, Moneypenny, M, 007 and so on are all a lot of fun, and all very distinct and interesting.

In return, this is easily the weakest Bond villain ever by far, and I’m okay with that. This is a rare Bond movie that is really nota bout the villain or even about set pieces, but about character development, and it makes sense for the villain to take a step back here. That means the movie does have the classic Marvel problem of charismatic heroes (or here support characters) and utterly forgettable villains, but it’s a trade-off that the MCU keeps making for a reason.

If there is one part of the movie that really drags it down - a bit, it’s still perfectly okay - then it’s Madeleine.

At its core, this movie isn’t Bond, it’s Madeleine’s. The villain, in particular, does not actually have a relationship with Bond, despite a particularly weak attempt at a “we’re not so different you and I” thing at the last moment. The two men are only connected via Madeleine. Her relationship with the villain is meaningful and is the literal start of the movie; it’s what drives the plot. At the same time, her relationship with Bond is the emotional core of the movie, even if he does get quite a bit of subplots of his own.

I think that’s a great choice in theory. Compare this to Days of Future Past, an X-Men movie where technically Wolverine is the main character, but he’s really only here as a tour guide through other people’s arcs. This is the perfect way to make a Bond movie actually about something. Other Bond movies have tried similar things, of course, but this one takes it to a new level.

The problem is that Madeleine’s relationships with these two men don’t actually work that well. Her relationship with Bond was set up in Spectre, and even though I watched that movie, I cannot remember anything about it. What little I see here doesn’t really work for me. Yes, she’s pretty, he’s Bond, they’re in an Aston Martin on Italy, you know the rest, that’s good enough for an opening. But it doesn’t go beyond that. I don’t get the impression that there’s any actual intimacy here. They don’t seem to have anything in common, and they don’t seem interesting on screen together.

This is especially notable towards the end of the cold open, where Bond flies into a full-Connery style rage mode and goes essentially, “what did you do, you silly untrustworthy little girl”. Not gonna lie, I found that very uncomfortable. If that’s how close they are, then I fully support them breaking up. Their break-up definitely did not feel like the movie’s defining tragedy.

A good comparison might be Franka Potente in Bourne Identity 2. There’s a very similar setup in that movie’s opening, but it actually works, and I actually buy their relationship. This is not the case.

A related issue is that Madeleine’s main agency in this movie is choosing to lie to Bond. She does not tell him about her tragic backstory, or how that could have led to people shooting at him, or her daughter, or that she’s being blackmailed. Now, I think it’s perfectly valid for her to do so. If she doesn’t trust Bond enough to tell him this, that would be interesting and I’d definitely believe it. If she’s too traumatised, yeah, I get it (that seems to be what the movie is going for but it doesn’t really commit to this). But the movie doesn’t establish anything like that. She lies to him, well, just because, I guess.

Her relationship with the villain (yes, I do not remember his name, well spotted) is a similar waste of potential. The two don’t really talk. He is fascinated with her because… he didn’t kill her that one time, I guess. But this isn’t explored in any way. Meanwhile, her relationship with him is that he threatens her and her daughter, and she’d like for that to stop. For all the weight this relationship has been given at the start of the movie, it doesn’t actually end up going anywhere once they meet. And that’s particularly notable because she is a psychoanalyst; the opportunity for her to explore what makes him tick was right there.

I’m making this sound worse than it is. It’s still perfectly enjoyable. But I feel like there’s a hypothetical extended cut of this movie that’s three times better, where Maddy gets five minutes of screen time to just talk with the men, and where she actually makes choices about what she tells them and why.

The final issue is that the theming, already not super strong, breaks down at the end. The movie actually seems to think that there is a sort of meaningful parallel or connection between the villain and Bond, and even goes for a particular deep and meaningful plot point where Bond can’t be with his family because he’ll literally kill them if he touches them. You know, he’s a killer, he brings death to the ones he loves, it’s what passes for a metaphor in these parts. Except textually speaking, that’s just not the case. Felix was killed by someone who Felix dragged along, and the villain here was after Madeleine, not Bond. He is 100% a force for good here.

Is that a huge problem? Nah, but again, it’s something that could have been better.

The real main problem with the movie is something else: Throughout the film, it is clearly established that explosions don’t harm James Bond, they just disorient him. It starts at Vesper’s grave, then Felix’s ship gets sunk, then there’s the hand grenades in the video game section in the final bunker, and it’s always absolutely clear: Explosions may stun Bond, but they don’t actually hurt him. Only bullets can do that.

And then they go and kill him in a huge explosion. That’s just sloppy foreshadowing.

[senlinyu]

University students AU Dramione

Possibly worth noting: I went to a weird college and this ficlet is based on a thing that happened there. So if you’re reading this thinking, wtf kind of university experience is this? I hard agree. 🤣

“Granger, I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

A cold, unwelcome voice interrupted Hermione while she was in the middle of typing in a citation link that was three lines long. She pointedly refused to turn until she finished typing in the string of numbers and hit enter.

A paywall filled the screen.

She sighed and with an inward curse of exasperation, shifted in her chair to deal with the unwelcome distraction on her hands.

Draco Malfoy was standing behind her, scowling.

“What do you want, Malfoy?”

He raised his right hand to show a thick stack of papers gripped in his hand. “The study guide you wrote. The answer to twenty is wrong.”

Hermione’s shoulders stiffened, but she kept her expression impassive as she tried to remember what question twenty even was.

Professor Snape had emailed the class a study guide with well-over three hundred broadly-phrased questions that “might” appear on the final exam. Hermione had spent a night filling out the study guide questions with exhaustively detailed answers, quotes, and references. She’d emailed a copy to the private study group she participated in, hoping to encourage the other members to share theirs as well so everyone could compare notes and develop even more comprehensive answers.

Instead, no one else in the study group bothered to write any answers for the study guide at all; and, to add insult to injury, someone whom Hermione intended to murder once she discovered their identity, had forwarded it to the entire class. Everywhere she went, she’d hear her fellow freshman classmates quizzing each other and reciting her answers verbatim.

She stared up at Draco Malfoy, who was notably not a member of said study group, standing with her painstakingly compiled study-guide gripped in his unworthy hands.

“What’s wrong with the answer?” she asked.

Malfoy glanced derisively down at the papers in his hand and turned his wrist to show her an extensively annotated and highlighted copy of her answer. There was a large section that had been slashed through with a red pen. “This whole section here, it completely leaves out Bourne’s commentary. Are you trying to sabotage the entire class by sending everyone shit answers?”

Hermione’s chest tightened and heat rose on her cheeks.

Malfoy stepped closer, and he leaned over her, smirking.

“Is that your plan then?” He quirked a pale eyebrow. “Think you’ll be the one to get Snape’s coveted A+ on your essay if you get the rest of the class to fail the final?”

Hermione’s hand itched to slap him across the face or possibly deck him right there in the library.

Snape’s required freshman class was renown at their school for its tendency to destroy GPA. Everything hung on the final exam and paper. There were more than a few stories of students losing their merit scholarships and having to leave the school because of it. Snape never gave more than one perfect grade on final papers per year, and rumor had that it had been more than four years since anyone had achieved it.

Malfoy had announced during orientation week that he was going to be the one to earn it and it seemed that everyone believed he would.

Draco Malfoy was one of those people that everyone seemed to know about. It was impossible to go anywhere without hearing stories about him. According to the aggressive rumor-mill at the school, he’d gotten a perfect SAT score and been inundated with acceptance letters and full-ride scholarships from prestigious universities across the country, but had decided to attend a “less known” school because his mother was close friends with the president and agreed with school’s academic philosophy.

He’d been dubbed, practically from arrival, as the class “genius” and had an entire flock of freshman and non-freshman girls angling to get their Mrs degree in Malfoy.

Hermione thought he was a pretentious asshole.

She was most definitely going to kill whomever it was who had allowed him to get his hands on her study-guide.

She gave a cold smile. “Gosh. You caught me, Malfoy. I put wrong answers on the study-guide and hoped nobody in our entire class would notice.” She folded her arms. “The reason I didn’t include anything from Bourne is because Snape said he’s wrong and the only reason his textbook was required reading was to highlight what an idiot some people are. If you want to add Bourne’s commentary to your answer, be my guest. In fact,” she leaned forward, extending her hand, “I have a better idea, why don’t you give me my study-guide back, and write your own answers.”

He smirked and straightened, sliding her study guide back into his satchel. “Everyone knows I’m going to be the one whose paper gets a perfect grade from Snape. I have to say though, it’s fun to see you trying.”

Hermione refused to rise to his baiting. “Anything else? By all means, feel free to spread a rumor that my study-guide’s rigged. Maybe then people will do their own homework.”

He cocked his head. “So you admit you’re angling for the A+.”

She rolled her eyes and sat back. “I’m a pretty sure everyone is trying to get it. This isn’t exactly a school with a class culture of only aspiring for passing grades.”

Malfoy moved slightly closer, edging into her personal space and looming over her in a way that made her want to kick him in the shins or, ideally, a bit higher.

“But you actually think you can do it, don’t you?” He flashed another smirk. “Care to bet on that?”

“Care to leave me alone and bother someone else?” Hermione said in a deadpan tone.

His smirk widened into a grin and he glanced across the library where a group of his friends were all watching them. “Well, I should clarify, there are already bets that I’ll get it, but I’ll make a personal wager with you. Think you can beat me? Tell me what you want. I’m open to anything.”

His eyes slid down, away from her face.

Hermione folded her arms again and glared at him. “I don’t want anything from you, Malfoy, and you’re not getting a thing from me. Fuck off, I’m working on a paper.”

She turned back to her computer and watched his silhouette linger in the reflection of her laptop screen for several seconds.

Finally he laughed. “Thanks for the notes, Granger. I look forward to beating you.”

He turned and sauntered off.

———————

Snape’s approach to finals was unconventional even for the school. The week before the final exam, each student had a private, twenty-minute meeting with him in which they had to defend their paper. At the end of the meeting, he would tell the student what grade they’d receive on the paper, and then, before the final exam, he’d announce to the class if any students had earned an A+.

To Hermione’s irritation, Malfoy’s scheduled meeting with Snape was forty minutes before hers. The hallway outside his office door was lined with students sitting silently and reviewing their papers and notes.

The office door swung open and Malfoy emerged, his face aglow with smug triumph.

The hallway broke out in whispers.

“You got it?” Nott asked right out.

Malfoy grinned. “Perfect grade. First one in five years he said.”

Hermione stiffened where she was sitting as whispers of admiration and congratulations swept down the hallway.

Padma Patil was sitting next to Hermione and rested a hand briefly on her shoulder.

Malfoy’s attention zeroed in and he walked over, stopping in front of Hermione.

“Tough luck, Granger. Maybe in another life. I’m sure you’ll at least get an A.” He started to turn and then paused as though he were just remembering something. “A lot of us are going to be celebrating tonight, you should come, unless you want people to think you’re a sore loser.”

Hermione stared up at him with a flat expression until he finally turned with a shrug and walked away.

When she emerged from her meeting, she didn’t say a word to the other students waiting in the hallway. She went to her dorm and started studying for the rest of her finals.

—————

The final exam for Snape’s class started at an ungodly hour in the morning and the room was blessedly silent as students trickled in and took their seats. Hermione sat reviewing her notes in a corner where no one was likely to jostle her.

The silence was broken when Malfoy entered the room noisily with his friends at his heels and they settled into seats towards the front of the room.

Five minutes before the exam was scheduled to begin, Snape strode into the room and up to the whiteboard. He snatched up a marker and started writing grading percentage brackets. When he finished he added a colon beside each bracket and began adding numbers: number of papers that had failed, the number that had barely passed, moving up towards the 100% that sat at the top of the board.

His hand hovered next to it, and then he suddenly turned and stared at the room, his expression unreadable.

“This semester has a notable distinction,” he said after a moment’s silence. “For the first time in the years I’ve been teaching at this college, I have had two students who merited a perfect grade on the semester’s final paper.”

Hushed gasps swept across the room and students turned to look at Malfoy, whose smirking grin had frozen on his face.

“Next semester, anyone who hasn’t failed my class will be assigned to read Mr Malfoy and Miss Granger’s papers, and perhaps then the rest of you will begin to understand what I mean when I say I expect and will accept nothing less than excellence in this class.”

Malfoy’s platinum head slowly swiveled to so he could stare across the room where Hermione was sitting, an impassive expression on her face.

She didn’t look in his direction.

He kept staring at her until someone shoved a copy of the exam at him.

Two hours later, after turning in her copy of the final exam, Hermione packed her bag, bobbing her head at a few whispered congratulations, and hurried out of the classroom, heading for the library.

“Granger!”

She froze and turned, rolling her eyes.

Malfoy was jogging after her, notably without his usual posse around him.

She stood waiting until he caught up with her.

He stopped a foot away from her and looked her up and down from head to toe as though he were reconsidering something. “Well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Hermione folded her arms. “Not really.”

He looked up and met her eyes, flashing a grin. He cocked his head slightly to the side. “I guess this means we should study together.”

Hermione gave a thin, false smile. “I already have a study group, we’re not accepting new members.”

His grin turned roguish and his voice dropped suggestively as he shifted closer. “It could just be the two of us. You’re heading to the library now, aren’t you?”

Her expression turned cold and she stepped quickly back. ”I’m going to study alone.”

She turned on her heel and started walking away.

“You can’t avoid me forever, Granger!”

“You’ll be surprised,” she said, glaring over her shoulder at him.

He was still standing where she’d left him, staring after her, that irritating, over-confident grin still on his face.

He raised an eyebrow. “Care to bet on that?”

[ultrahpfan5blog]

Rewatching the Bourne series

Just recently rewatched this series. In my opinion, one of the best action-thriller franchises around. I caught onto the Bourne movies fairly late. In fact I think Ultimatum was the first movie I saw in theaters. But I caught up with Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy before watching Ultimatum. The initial trilogy in particular is pretty superb trilogy of movies. While I know there are people who don’t like The Bourne Legacy and Jason Bourne, I still find them enjoyable to varying degrees. 

The Bourne Identity is my second favorite film in the franchise behind Ultimatum. In context of the series, you can tell this one is made by a different director since the action scenes look different. The film is a bit more of a mystery because we are basically finding out about what is going on as Bourne does, which can be tricky because, if not executed correctly, without knowing who the character is, you can find it hard to feel attached to the character. That’s where I think Liman did a great job in making Bourne seem like an underdog but still making him a complete badass. The relationship with Marie is key here. Unlike in many spy films where romance seems extraneous to the story, here it works to ground Bourne to some sort of normalcy which he craves and which is why he doesn’t want to continue being a killer. The CIA stuff is also compelling because actors like Cooper and Cox are able to deliver exposition in a compelling way. The pacing is key, which is key to the entire franchise. All 4 movies with Damon clock in under two hours and not a minute of the movie is wasted. The action is excellent but the highlight action piece is definitely the car chase, which is superbly coordinated. Also surprisingly affecting in a very short role is Clive Owen. His death scene is exceptionally well executed and his performance in that scene is really well done. What he says in that scenes comes back later in Ultimatum. Matt Damon was all fresh faced around the time this movie came out and it really was a casting against what he had done prior to this and that works big time. He has a casual, unassuming presence but he just turns on the badass in an epic way. The role suits him perfectly and he’s excellent in it. Franka Potente is also great as Marie. A 8.5/10

The Bourne Supremacy is my third favorite film of the series, just a smidge behind Identity. Its still excellent. Its the shortest film of the series and it does feel it at times. It just hurtles along. I was initially a little annoyed at how they killed off Marie to give Bourne a motivation, but I also understand that practically, its impossible for Marie to keep up with Bourne as he shuttles all the way across the world. The scope of this movie is significantly increased. Whereas the first movie was set in interconnected Europe, largely in Paris, this film goes from India, to Naples, to Berlin, to Moscow. The film also gradually expands Bourne’s past as we gradually start learning about the things he’s done. The film acts as part revenge thriller and part mystery as Bourne tries to figure out his memories. There is a bit of narrative convenience here, that Bourne is remembering details of that assassination just as the CIA is digging into the Neski files. But the film flows so well that you can forgive minor narrative conveniences like that. The film introduces Pam Landy and the CIA side of things is given a bit more of a stronger narrative. Whereas in Identity, the CIA guys were the clear antagonists to Bourne, here Pam Landy is also posed as a figure who is trying to do the right thing. Cox and Stiles are back as Abbott and Pasrons respectively. Julia Stiles didn’t have much to do in Identity other than follow orders but you start to see her role get expanded. Cox takes the role of the primary CIA antagonist. Karl Urban as the Russian assassin was a welcome presence, but in the end the film is carried by Damon. He’s a bit angrier and bit more emotional and he’s excellent throughout. The film introduces Greengrass’ now infamous shaky cam action. For me, while I normally don’t like it, Greengrass is one of the few directors who knows how to do it well. Admittedly, the fight scene between Bourne and Jarda is not the best filmed one, so his technique was still a work in progress, but the rest of the action is top class. Again, the car chase sequence in the finale is top notch and thrilling. Also, it has probably the coolest ending of the series. A 8/10

The Bourne Ultimatum was the first Bourne film I watched in theaters and its my favorite. I think the film is near perfect across the board. I think this film makes the best use of all the cast and Greengrass gives us some terrific action sequences throughout the movie. And because this Bourne tracing back his origin, its perhaps the most compelling mystery of the series as he tries to find out how he became who he is. Firstly, the action is the best it is in the series. The Bourne vs Desh fight is the highwater mark when it comes to individual fight scenes in the series. Its compelling, brutal, and you feel every punch. All the chase sequences, be it foot chases or car chases are incredibly intense. I think the CIA part of the movie is the most compelling it has ever been with David Strathairn is excellent as Vosen, who plays the new CIA antagonist, and Joan Allen continues to be terrific as Pam Landy. Them playing counterparts to each other makes it fascinating to watch even the non Bourne scenes. Then Julia Stiles get an even more expanded role as Nicky Parsons. The Bourne and Nicky dynamic is interestingly played with a touch history and one sided romantic tension which is never directly addressed. But it does make it compelling. Albert Finney shows up as the Dr. Frankenstein of the Treadstone/Blackbriar operation and he’s enigmatic as hell. The climax between Bourne and Hirsch is terrifically acted by both parties. We also see a mirror of the scene from Identity where Bourne repeats the same dialogue to Edgar Ramirez’s assassin that Owen’s character had said to him. Damon is superb as always. Completely natural in the action and perfectly balancing stoicism with vulnerability when required. The film ends on a note that would have been perfect if they had chosen to end the series here. A 9/10.

The Bourne Legacy is kind of the step child of this series. The only movie which doesn’t have Damon/Bourne in the series. Intended to start a spinoff series but didn’t quite have the commercial success to do so. I admit that when I first saw the film in theaters, I didn’t like it. Over time, I have grown to appreciate it more although its still well below the original trilogy of films for me. Firstly, what’s good. Jeremy Renner is an excellent protagonist. Being compared to Damon is a thankless job but he managed to forge a different character in Aaron Cross. Rachel Weisz also does a strong job as Dr. Shearing and Renner and Wesiz have decent chemistry. The film doesn’t try and ape the previous Bourne films and it goes for a different angle. Its more a survival film for the protagonists than a mystery. The characters aren’t trying to bring down the program, not trying to find out something, just trying to escape the clutches of the Defense Department. The action scenes are good. However, the film is the longest of the series and it feels like it. The film also royally wastes an actor of the caliber of Edward Norton. He does fine with what he has but he’s literally just there barking orders in front of monitors. He shares one short flashback scene with Renner, but otherwise is disconnected from the other two leads, Whereas in the previous Bourne films and even in Jason Bourne, there were always at least two main characters who had interactions with each in the rooms of the CIA, allowing for some interplay, this time Norton is all on his own which makes the search for Cross and Marta a lot less interesting. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the idea of chems, but I have grown to accept it. The film also doesn’t have any major hand to hand fighting sequences. They hype up the Larx assassin but he ends up dying because Marta pushes hum while he was riding a bike. Pretty underwhelming after all the build up. What I especially didn’t like is how the film tries to undo Ultimatum’s ending. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea but it pissed me off. In the end, its a decently entertaining movie but its disappointing within the context of the franchise. A 5.5-6/10

Jason Bourne is a bit of a polarizing movie. Everyone was really excited when this movie was coming out and a bunch of them were disappointed. While I do think this is not as good as the initial trilogy of movies, I still do enjoy it. My issue with the movie lies on two fronts. The film is essentially divided into 3 sections. The main part is Jason Bourne continuing to track into his past as he finds out that there might be more to his recruitments than he thought. That part works perfectly and its very compelling. There is the CIA backroom drama between Dewey and Lee and the Asset, which is also solid. What doesn’t work is the third angle about the new blackops program connected with Deep Dream. It feels like the writers and the director stretching to try and be very timely and addressing issues of privacy without making it fit very organically to the story. I mean, Bourne isn’t even really connected to that part of the story and whenever that portion of the movie takes focus, its less interesting. In addition, the film doesn’t make it clear exactly how Dewey is connected to Bourne’s past. The film indicates that Bourne knows Dewey but the how isn’t explained. But everything directly connected to Bourne works well and I did like that the Asset is given a more direct personal connection to Bourne, which makes their individual fight be more personal. I think Matt Damon is excellent in this movie. He plays Bourne more broken and on the edge than he’s ever been in this movie. There are several scenes, such as his climactic scene with TLJ, where you feel him teetering. Julia Stiles shows back up as Nicky who starts Bourne on her journey. Like with Marie, I was disappointed she was killed off but I also get that Bourne needs to be alone in order to be able to move as fast he does from one place to another. TLJ is an old pro at roles like these and it shows. He does it with ease. Alicia Vikander is good as Heather Lee but I feel as the role needed someone a little bit older to be believable as someone as high up as her in the agency. But I suppose her being a young ambitious upstart is part of the point. When it comes to the action, I think its all top notch. I know not everyone likes shaky cam but Greengrass uses it well. The Greece sequence, the car chase in the climax, and the hand to hand fight sequence in the end, is all well done. I am also glad thiat it does seem to indicate that not everything that Bourne exposed in Ultimatum was covered up and Blackbriar was exposed, unlike what Legacy indicated. The film doesn’t address Legacy at all apart from listing Outcome and Larx in the list of Blackops programs. Overall still a good movie. A 7/10 for me.

I do think the series should be ended. There is a feeling of the films becoming formulaic setting in at this point and Bourne has taken down everyone who had to do with him becoming who he was and has no figured how he became who he was. So I don’t think there is anything more to explore. I don’t see The Cross series continuing since it underperformed at the BO and its been a long time since that movie came out now.

[ramblesofadreamerofthestars]

I WANT TO SEE MY LITTLE BOY - The 100 7.05

He’s back bitches! The King Bellamy Blake has returned for two whole minutes this episode!

Spoilers for the above episode of the 100 and guess what bitches I’m finally doing this on my computer so no long ass post warning!

      The writers are sticking with their trend of giving me a character for like five minutes of screen time and making me fall in love with them huh! Amazing, sure hope nothing bad happens to Levitt because that would suck :)))). Seriously though he was so adorable, just binge watching the 100 (I’m so sorry sweetie) and falling in love with Octavia Blake and the rest of the disaster children and immediately switching sides love that for him. His little smile when he was using the skaikru words I love him, did y’all see that knee slide to get to Octavia? I want him in every episode from now on thanks, I’m sure they wouldn’t kill him for emotional damage to the audience :)))

     Ahhhh, I see, they gave Hope different haircuts to make the timeline easier to follow. Thank gods for the timeline stamps because we were jumping all over the place this episode. I thought there was going to be way more Sanctum storyline this episode and was pleasantly surprised by the balance because the anomaly storyline is just So Much Better. 

    I will say, I didn’t hate the Sanctum story this episode?? Like I didn’t enjoy it but Murphy and Emori are always a plus and Indra getting more screen time as well as being a driving force (maybe?) for the plot going forward is an Excellent decision, this bitch gets shit Done and you love to see it. The last scene had me wondering though, did he (Shaiheda) already take out the mind drive and hide it somewhere? Or do Something with it because it was a weird cut to not show the mind drive being taken out...Either way, JR Bourne really be out here doing the Most with this character huh like he really said what if I just went Off in absolutely every scene I’m in.

    That transition between Murphy getting doused in oil and his early cockroach days “I’ll survive” was So Good y’all, they knew exactly what they were doing with that. I love this stupid asshole so much, his growth? Unparalleled. His complete indifference to the faithful dying, very sexy of him despite the way everyone in the room looked at him. He’s seen the cult shit before, been there done that, and Uncle Murphy going Kill Bill Sirens when he saw the kid getting prepared to be sacrificed was incredible. Also, fuck the faithful for that?? What the actual fuck, first of all burning your people in a suicide protest is stupid but whatever that’s your issue. But children??? what the actual Fuck, I’m so sick of the faithful and Trey and everyone else fuck. Also, it took me a hot second to remember Daniel’s boyfriend whoops but ya, fuck the faithful and also??? They took over Delilah’s parents taverns and fuck them for that specifically that’s so rude

“That just tickles’ and “Had to find the right dress” “You did” who’s doing it like them, no one. They’re just such a delight to watch on screen.

       Poor Gabriel he’s really just like “Could you two not murder...for TWO MINUTES”. Hope makes sense, with her losing Dev because she hesitated to kil and her desire to find her mother and save her family. Also her line “It’s called love you son of a bitch” absolutely iconic, fuck whoever Anders is I’m so sick of all these cults trying to kill each other to become the supreme cult. Who Cares! Echo killing that man who had nothing to do with Bellamy dying and the...unstableness?? Of her expression? They have definitely made a choice with the path she’s going down which...I Guess. Sucks that after like eleven years of peace she is Still making the same choices she would have in the earlier seasons, but childhood conditioning is hard to overcome. I’ve seen people talk about her being Finn 2.0 and while I can see the similarities (the writers fucking love parallels in this show), I don’t think they’re going to have Bellamy kill her? It might be that she’s following the same downward spiral Finn did, but it wouldn’t add anything to Bellamy’s character like it did Clarke, and I think (hope) the writers have a different end in mind for Echo.

Speaking of Bardo, HOW FUCKING INTERESTING IS THAT PLANET WHAT THE FUCK! THE TECHNOLOGY IS FROM THE ORIGINAL INHABITANTS?? WHO ARE NOW CRYSTAL GIANTS FUCKING E X C U S E  M E?!?!? Shout out to Anders for that exposition but Why the Fuck are we even bothering with Sanctum when we could be exploring this planet are you fucking kidding me. What the fuck is M9 can we Please just get an episode of Bardo lore. Also, who the fuck do the new Bardoeans come from, because I think they would have had to have come from before the first apocalypse right? And why are they so fucking interested in Clarke, saying she’s the key. Like when is she not the key, but still, I have this horrible suspicion that because Every Godsdamn Thing In This Series Comes Back To The Fucking Flame, I bet you they want her because the last memory they got from Octavia, Clarke had the flame (I think?). Can you tell how sick I am of the fucking flame? 

And our king is back! They really gave us crumbs this episode, his immediate reaction to Clarke’s name, taking out four of the disciples by himself, I stan one man. Seriously, I have missed Bellamy so much these episodes (this is in no way a wahh why did Bob Morley have to leave blah blah blah, I just genuinely missed the character Bellamy Blake) and I am So Excited to finally get the gang all back together. No I don’t think for a second he’s dead lol, the anomaly was Right There and he’s not stupid. Whether he’s now on the ice planet (can you imagine if we got a Bellarke reunion next episode, I’d lose my mind) or he’s on that last planet with an active anomaly stone (likely, given how much the writers love to SEPARATE BELLAMY AND CLARKE), he’s alive and is doing whatever he can to get back to his family.

(Bob Morley said The Ring Stays On and I think that’s very valid of him)

 I do think that with all the anomaly stones and it having been like,,, 130 something years since they left, I think they’re going to turn the Earth stone back online, and the original delinquents who are left are going to come full circle and return to the place they claimed as home. 

I genuinely really enjoyed this episode, I think it was one of the best of the season so far. Next episode! We going on an Arctic Exploration featuring snow! caves! and cave spiders?? Exciting times all around and we return to our queen Clarke Griffin and her team of badasses. Also, maybe Gaia? And the identity of that man who was turning off the anomaly stone, please and thank you. Also, where the fuck is Madi? Who’s watching this kid ljdfsjfsl. Very excited to see what happens to them, less excited to see the cave spiders, but here we fucking Go!

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Alex Recommends: February Books

With the combined forces of Valentine’s Day and Thrillerathon, I’ve had a very mixed reading month! I’ve been enjoying a perfectly balanced diet of both light and dark and I think this may be why I literally can’t stop reading right now. In February, my total books read for 2020 reached 29, which is definitely a personal best for me, this early on in the year. I hope you’re all also smashing your reading goals so far! Without further pre-amble, here are five books I’ve read this month that you should definitely check out too. -Love, Alex x

SHOULD HAVE READ IT YEARS AGO: Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

As a huge horror freak, Roman Polanski’s 1968 film adaptation of Rosemary’s Baby has been on my radar for years but of course, I wanted to read the book first. I finally read it for Thrillerathon and was completely hooked from the very first chapter. Struggling actor Guy Woodhouse and his wife Rosemary move into a new apartment in a building with a cursed past. Their elderly eccentric neighbours take a special interest in them, which only increases when Rosemary discovers she is pregnant. It’s a very quick read (my copy is only 256 pages) but it’s unbelievably intense. I felt so deeply unsettled for the entire narrative, which made the supernatural climax and incredibly strange ending even more creepy. An absolute must read for spooksters!

FICTION: Searching For Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok

Some of my US bookish friends have been talking about this book for a little while, as it was released over there last year. It has finally been published in the UK and I’m happy to say I devoured it this month. When Amy Lee’s older sister Sylvie goes missing while visiting their Dutch relatives, she vows to retrace Sylvie’s steps and find out what happened. It’s both a mystery and a very moving exploration of identity issues and complex entangled familial relationships. With themes of jealousy, secrecy and a heart-wrenching glimpse into the Chinese-American experience, Searching For Sylvie Lee is the tragic domestic drama you’ve been waiting for.

MIDDLE-GRADE: The Girl Who Stole An Elephant by Nizrana Farook

There has been quite a bit of buzz around this charming middle-grade adventure recently. It follows Chaya, who steals riches to help out the poor and needy in her village but when she steals some jewels (and an elephant) from right under the palace’s nose, how will she get away with it? This fun-filled, heart-warming tale of friendship, bravery and doing what’s right is the perfect antidote to these long cold winter nights.

YA: Diary Of A Confused Feminist by Kate Weston

There’s something about the teenage diary format that I’m a total magpie for. I think it’s because on the whole, teens are often hilarious, loveable and obviously very relatable. Kat and her friends are certainly all of those things. I genuinely produced tears while following Kat’s mortifying journey to nailing her coursework, figuring out menstrual cups and mental health while trying to pin down Hot Josh for a date... all with the over-arching goal of doing good feminism! Fans of Georgia Nicholson and Holly Bourne’s Spinster Club books won’t be able to put this down.

GRAPHIC NOVEL: Mooncakes by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker 

There’s nothing like a cutesy bit of witchy escapism packed full of inclusivity and crazy demonic goings-on and Mooncakes definitely ticks all of those boxes. In a small New England town, Nova Huang helps out at her grandmothers’ whimsical bookshop and in the investigations of supernatural happenings. When her childhood crush, vagrant werewolf Tam Lang returns to town, an evil force is hot on their heels. I got major fuzzy feels from watching a beautiful romance unfold amidst such mortal peril! Accompanied by Wendy Xu’s charming artwork, this gorgeous tale of love, family and magic is a delicious treat that you definitely deserve.

[hollybourneauthor]

“How Teen Fiction Can Change The World”

The Patrick Hardy Lecture has been running annually since 1989. Guest speakers from the world of children’s books, including the likes of Jacqueline Wilson, Meg Rosoff, Juno Dawson, and Michael Morpurgo, have taken to the lectern, and this year I had the overwhelming privilege of speaking to those who work in the industry.

“How Teen Fiction Can Change The World” Holly Bourne, Patrick Hardy speech, 2020

 Before I get going, at the risk of sounding like a yoga teacher, I want to ground us all in this room. Right here. In this moment. It’s a Wednesday night in winter, you’re sitting in a library, and you’re about to listen to me give a lecture about stories. So, high chances are...you really like books. At some point in your life, you stumbled across a story that won you over. You became consumed by the magic of fiction, and could never go back. There are probably a few key books that you’ve read that you honestly believe changed you. Improved you. And reading those books may have led to you making a number of small decisions throughout your life that paved the way for bigger decisions, that, all collected together, led to this very point in your life. Right now. This room. The people sitting around you. Your passion. Maybe even your career. Reading is likely the part of your identity that you feel the proudest of, and the most nourished by. I know that’s true for me.

 So, I just want you to take a few moments to think about the books that led you here today. Directly, or indirectly. The books that you’ve no-doubt read and reread countless times. The books that you feel are etched onto your soul. That made you who you are. That helped you through life and steered you towards becoming someone you’re proud of… And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, I’m guessing that those books – those life-changing books – are books that you read as a teenager.

 This is the topic of my speech today. How I believe teen fiction doesn’t only have the power to change a young person’s life. But how that magical transformation can start ripples that can actually change the world for the better. I truly believe that YA books – writing them, publishing them and distributing them – is an act of activism that can start huge, positive, social change.

 But how?

 Before I talk about teenagers, I want to explore the powerful nature of stories themselves. Our brains are wired for stories – they are how we learn to survive in the world. Human survival needs two things – the basics of how to keep yourself out of danger, and how to keep in favour with the social group around you. We are pack animals. We need the surrounding community to survive. And we constantly tell each other stories about how to live. Information is more palatable if it’s in the form of a story. Rather than saying to someone “Don’t eat those red berries”, we’re much more likely to engage with that life-saving information if someone says, “Did you hear about Ig, the caveman from next door? Oh my God, it was AWFUL. He ate those red berries on the bush outside, and his stomach exploded ALL OVER THE CAVE. It was so gnarly. They’re still cleaning it up…”

 The same is true with instructions on how to be socially accepted by others. Linguistic experts have found humans spend most of their conversation time gossiping about people who aren’t there. Telling stories on each other. Gossip is actually narrative that instructs humans on what is and isn’t acceptable in their social group. Again, we’d get bored of an information manual. But if someone comes over to you, wide-eyed, saying, “Have you heard that John left his wife for his twenty-two year old secretary? And now everyone has turned on him and he isn’t welcome at the Safari Supper any more,” you’d be lapping it up. But you’d also be learning important lessons about how to behave. Instructions are boring, but stories are riveting. Our brain rejects one, and embraces the other. And, through narrative, we learn how to survive – both emotionally and physically – in this world.

 I find the work of Sigmund Freud hugely influences how I write stories, and how to ensure they connect with my readers. Some of you in this room will, no doubt, have done English degrees and will be familiar with how Freud’s theories relate to narrative. So apologies if this is a recap, but it’s something I try to remind myself of whenever I’m writing.

 Freud believed all humans lived in a state of constant conflict between three parts of our psyche – our Id, our Superego and our Ego.

 Our Id is the totally subconscious, primitive and instinctual part of us. It’s our selfish desires. Our animal selves. And it’s always there.

I’m hungry.

I want that.

I want to have sex with that person. NOW.

A newborn baby is completely Id-driven – at the mercy of its desires. And that part of us never goes away. The Id is always with us, steering us to survive. Utterly reactive and animalistic.

 Whereas the Superego is there to tame the Id. The Superego is the cocktail of messages we marinate in throughout our lives, telling us what a person should or shouldn't do. The Superego is about consequences. It’s your values. Your moral compass. Don’t steal. Don’t snatch. Don’t dry-hump that person on the Tube even if you really fancy them. Essentially the Superego socializes us. The most powerful influence on your Superego comes from your parents and your early childhood experiences. But society has a part of play. Laws are part of the Superego – telling us what is and isn’t legally acceptable. And culture plays a huge part in shaping it too. What should a man be? What should a woman be? What is right, or wrong? And the Superego isn’t always a good thing. It provokes a lot of guilt in us, and, if taken too far, feelings of shame can make us unhappy.

 And, finally, the Ego is the navigator of these two conflicts. It’s the “weigher-upper” – listening to the Id and the Superego and making the best judgement it can. I like to believe that the Ego is essentially who we are as a person, based on the decisions we make as a result of this eternal internal conflict. Rather than beating ourselves up for having “bad thoughts”, we should judge one another, and ourselves, on our actions. It’s our actions that make us who we are. We are what we do, not what we think.

 We learn about Freud in creative writing because, to some degree, every successful story represents the struggle between the Id, the Superego and the Ego. We are drawn to these stories because they reflect the battle we fight in our heads every day. If you consider the huge, ongoing success of comic book films, you can see how Freud’s theory explains their popularity. Baddies in these stories are often very Id-driven – selfish, compulsive and uncaring of how their actions impact those around them. Whereas superheroes are disguised “Superegos” – representing goodness and morality.

 But what excites me most about Freud isn’t how I can use his work to shape my books, but the belief I have that reading powerful stories can actually contribute to a person’s Superego. How the act of reading a work of fiction can actually cause a psychological change in us that makes us better people in our non-fiction lives. And the nature of the adolescent brain makes the opportunities for this even richer.

 So why books? What makes fiction the most potent vessel for activism compared to, say, films, TV, video games or even an Instagram caption? It’s because the very nature of reading itself is an irreplicable act of immersive empathy. When I go into schools, I always tell teenagers that novels are like really safe, legal, hallucinogenic drugs. I once read a funny tweet that said that reading a book is crazy when you consider what’s actually taking place. Effectively, you are staring at symbols printed onto a dead tree and vividly hallucinating. That’s pretty magical when you truly consider it. Even with all our technological advances, even with virtual-reality goggles, nothing quite recreates reading. How a reader is effectively transplanted into the mind of someone who doesn’t exist – feeling their feelings as they’re feeling them, experiencing their experiences as they experience them. When written well, and used for good, stories can educate readers about all sorts of social issues by provoking an empathetic and emotional response. You can open a reader’s eyes to the truth of what life is like for people who aren’t like them – from being on the receiving end of racism, to experiencing mental illness, trauma or physical disabilities. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus tells his children that, in order to understand a person, you have to try and crawl into their skin and walk around in it. That’s exactly what books do.

 It can also be truly revolutionary and reassuring for a reader to find a book where they see themselves in a main character. Especially if this main character’s hardship or thought processes are something you believed was unique only to you. Being seen, heard, understood – sometimes the first time someone feels like that is through the pages of a novel. Alan Bennett once spoke of the magic of this moment and how it’s like a hand has come out of the pages and is holding yours. And if you’re reading about a main character suffering how you suffer, and yet this character is able to stand up and be brave... Whether that's speaking up, fighting back, or simply just asking for help...well, this connection between writer and reader could well inspire the reader to be brave themselves.

 Now, let’s go back to those books you had in your head. Your favourite books that you read when you were younger. The ones that really lodged in. What’s going on there?

 There’s actually some neuroscience that can explain this. Scientists have found that during puberty, when a child’s brain is rewiring to become an adult brain, a side effect is that we make memories more strongly compared to any other time in our lives. You can recall and connect with your teen years more easily and potently compared to your twenties, thirties and onwards. I certainly know this to be true for myself. Ask me to close my eyes and remember being fifteen and, yeah, I’m there. Hell, I don’t even need to close my eyes. I can already smell the Lynx Africa, remember who kissed who at the school disco. I can remember the full names of all the popular people in my year group. And yet, if you ask me what I was doing at twenty-five, twenty-eight, thirty-one, I’d have to think about it. Trying to recall what job I was doing, struggling to remember certain people’s names... It’s vaguer, and certainly less visceral.

 On top of this they’ve found that teenage brains are hyper-attuned to social stimuli. From an evolutionary perspective, adolescence is when you have to figure out how important you are to your social group and that impacts your chances of survival. This means teenagers are constantly asking themselves: Am I important? Do I matter? Does anyone care about me? Because of this, they’ve found that teenage memories particularly linked to identity and sense of self are even stronger. So if a teenager stumbles across a book that is holding their hand through its pages, just consider the POWER of that memory.

 And let’s not forget just how wonderfully malleable young people are. Teenagers are so much more open to change – both in society, and in themselves. They haven’t calcified yet. They haven’t had as many years of repeating unhealthy patterns and gathering biased evidence to prop up unhelpful theories – about the world and their sense of self. I saw a talk once by a psychologist who said we need to stop dismissing our younger years as being unimportant years of freedom that do not matter. Actually, your youth and what you do with it paves the way to the future, and tiny adjustments, over time, can see you end up in a totally different place. She used the analogy of aeroplanes, and I love to think of teenagers as aeroplanes taking off from Heathrow airport. The planes all soar up in the same direction, but with minor changes in angle, they land in New York or Brazil or the Arctic.

 I’ve started to see evidence of my books causing angle changes in the journeys of my readers’ lives. I’ve now written ten YA novels, and have built my career by being honest with teenagers about the hardship of their reality, as well as encouraging them to fight for a better future and a better world. I educated them about feminism through my Spinster Club series, asked the question Is mental illness preventable? in Are We All Lemmings And Snowflakes? and, most recently, wrote about an emotional and sexually abusive relationship in The Places I’ve Cried In Public. I’ve been touring the book with Women’s Aid and have become an ambassador for their Love Respect campaign that educates young people about healthy relationships. I’ve always believed that my stories were activism, and hoped they’d create positive changes in the Superegos of my readers. And I’ve now been in the game long enough to see my faith wasn’t misguided.

 I met my very first Spinster Club alumni only last week, at a Women’s Aid event I did at Bristol University. After my talk, a young woman came up to me, squealing, and revealed she’d read my Spinster Club books as a teenager and they’d made her a feminist. She then went on to say she’s now studying law, and has got a barrister traineeship and wants to use law to protect vulnerable women. I’m not going to lie – it was probably one of the happiest moments of my life.

 And the ability to tweak a person’s journey has never been more evident than in my latest book, The Places I’ve Cried In Public. Since it’s been published, it’s had more crossover appeal than I thought, and I now get several messages a week from women in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties and even sixties, telling me their own harrowing abuse stories. They tell me about their PTSD, the university degrees they never got because their partner never let them go, their fights through family court, their lost years, lost self-worth, their therapies and their ongoing recoveries. Each tale is just as heart-wrenching as the last. And all of them write to me, I wish I’d read your book when I was younger, or I wish I could go back in time and give this to my 14-year-old self. They wish they’d known the red flags to look out for that could’ve prevented them from going down a path they’re still on.

 And when I talk to teenage readers about the same book…

 “Well, those sorts of relationships sound terrible. I’m never going to let myself get into something like that.”

 “I HATE Reese. I want to kick him in the eyeballs.”

 “The book made me cry so much. I never want that to happen to me.”

 I’m not saying preventing awful things is that simple, but, also, maybe it can be? When you combine everything I’ve spoken about, what’s to say we can’t use fiction to nudge teenagers into making healthier decisions that will benefit them? As well as hopefully entertaining them along the way.

 When we start reflecting on the power of teenage fiction, as people who work in the industry, we need to ask ourselves: how do we utilize this? Maximize this? And, to me, the most important thing is to remove as many barriers as possible between teenagers and the stories that can change their lives. I see the need to address this in three ways.

 Firstly, we need to ensure books are available to all teenagers, regardless of their means. Novels, and their life-changing magic, should never be allowed to become an elitist item. So we need to fight to keep libraries and school libraries open, and to keep trained librarians in position. Librarians are experts at matchmaking teenagers with the best books for them.

 Secondly, we need to fight for all teenagers to be able to see themselves in books by making the publishing industry more diverse, and therefore the stories it produces more diverse. The magic of fiction can only work if there’s an authentic connection between writer and reader, and diverse voices are an essential component for this to occur. If we think back to that reminiscence bump, and how memories about identity leave a particularly strong mark, just imagine how it must feel to be a marginalized teenager who finds a book that finally gets them.

 And thirdly, we can’t let our own maturity and “calcification” accidentally erect barriers by letting literary snobbery shame a teenager for what they are reading. There is no such thing as good or bad reading – there is only reading. We need to celebrate and reward the books that teenagers are connecting with. It’s the connection that changes a life, not the beauty of a sentence. Yes, perhaps ideally, we want them to read the classics, but they’re much more likely to get there if the world of reading seems like an open, non-judgemental, non-elitist place. Let’s also recognize how hard it is to write a book that’s “easy to read” – the craftsmanship that goes into creating a story that pulls a teenager away from the huge list of distractions fighting for their attention. Literary snobbery is an unhelpful stance that will only inform a teen’s Superego in a negative way, leading to shame and exclusion. In trying to crowbar a teenager into reading a certain type of book, you’re potentially putting them off all books for ever.

 I started by grounding us in this room. And now, after geeking out on you for half an hour about brain science and psychology, I want to bring it back to this room. I want us to take a moment to reflect on just how much power sits within these four walls. Collectively we have access to thousands upon thousands of young people, and a passion for the stories we want to give them. Just think of the ripples we can create by the simple, wonderful act of activism which is giving a book to a teenager. I honestly believe that giving the right book to the right teenager at the right time can change and possibly even save their lives. And I also believe that all those teenager aeroplanes, taking off from Heathrow airport, feeling empowered and understood, will go on to achieve remarkable things. Teen fiction really can change the world, and make it a better place.

 A long time ago, someone gave you a book that led to you sitting in this room today. Let’s go out and start that journey for others. Who knows who will be sitting listening to the Patrick Hardy lecture in twenty years’ time, and what they will have achieved. But every time I think of this, I feel nothing but hope.

 Thank you so much for listening.

[slamsams-blog]

Die Another Day - #24WeeksofBond

24 Weeks of Bond hits the low point this week with Pierce Brosnan’s swan song as 007 in “Die Another Day”.  Oh man, there is just so much to say and unpack about this movie, it’s hard to put into summary every which way this film fails to deliver.  This film came at a cross-roads for film goers who still loved Bond, but were starting to grow a little tired of the hokey-ness and sleaze of James Bond and were wanting something a little rougher.  “The Bourne Identity” had come out just a few months prior to high praise for it’s hard hitting, intense, stripped-down style...it was fresh.  A few months later “Die Another Day” comes out with an older Pierce Brosnan, some god awful writing and cartoonish cinematography.  Change needed to happen, and this movie would mark the end of the sex puns, over the top gadgets, and far fetched scenarios.

Listen, I LOVE Bond.  I really have a hard time saying a Bond movie is bad...but this movie. is. bad.  This is a tale of two films. The first half is an action packed drama that is gritty, and dark and the second half is like watching a Joel Schumacher Batman film (the one where Batman has nipples).  The plot is also a rip off of “Diamonds Are Forever” and constantly goes for the cheap pop - bringing out all the old gadgets and familiar looking scenes for the 40th anniversary of Bond.  There is just so much trash talk to shell out here, but let’s start with the good stuff.

Die Another Day actually starts out quite promising and delivers a thrilling pre-title sequence with Bond infiltrating a North Korean Army base where he has stolen the clothing of a man trading African Conflict Diamonds for some weapons with a Colonel of the North Korean military and his stooge Zao.  Bond is eventually found out but manages to escape the firing squad to chase down Colonel Moon on a HOVERCRAFT!  Pretty neat.  Colonel Moon eventually runs out of road and takes a fall appearing to be slain, but Bond is caught again by Moon’s dad and for the next 14 months, Bond will be held prisoner and tortured.

I always liked how they utilized the title sequence to take us through Bond’s captivity (even though we are forced to listen to Madonna’s over produced and just flat out weird song...what’s the deal with the random “Sigmund Freud” lyric?).  Though the song is hard on the ear drums, it does a great job in providing an aura of despair and pain in the torture aspect of the title sequence...maybe because the song is torture?

We come back from Madonna, and Jesus Bond is now being traded for Zao who has diamonds permanently implanted in his face from Bond’s intrusion.  This makes Bond angry and makes him question why MI6 would give Zao up.  M is also pissed about it, it appears that there is someone who is playing MI6 for fools.  M is so mad that she essentially burns Bond and relieves him of his 00 status, but this doesn’t stop Bond from forcing himself into cardiac arrest to escape and find out who is behind all of this.

See?  Starts out great!  If only they can keep this momentum going...(spoiler alert: they can’t)

Another positive about this movie is a great fencing scene with Bond and Gustav Graves (Toby Stephans).  I've just always been tickled by how much this scene escalates from a little game of fencing to an all out sword fight.  It is one of the few highlights of the film, complete with a cameo made by Madonna...something I’m sure she negotiated to sign on for the Bond theme.  Get that payday, Madonna!

Well thats about all the positive I can muster for this film.  It’s time to take the gloves off.  Die Another Day’s wheels start to come loose when Bond is in Cuba looking for Zao...during this time, he meets Jinx (Halle Berry), and the dialogue that will unfold, sounds like the writer brought in his perverted nephew, who is just out of high school, looking to write a scene to get his friends to laugh when they watch it in his parents basement.  Halle Berry is the victim of poor writing, and possibly poor directing, yes, but she also tries WAY too hard to be a cool, witty, and deadly agent.  I’ll give Berry the benefit of the doubt to an extent, but I really think she just over acted here.

On top of that - Brosnan and Berry have absolutely ZERO chemistry.  Brosnan is no spring chicken anymore, so we are supposed to believe a woman like Halle Berry would welcome the advances from a bird watcher in his mid-50′s who says Mojito really weird?  Come on.  And the obvious dick jokes and creepiness from Bond who is foaming at the mouth, desperate for sex after being tortured for over a year makes this scene so uncomfortable to watch.

But we later come to find out that Jinx is more than just a reincarnation of Honey Ryder from Dr. No...she is also a secret agent that seems to never take anything seriously and in the face of death by laser, still has time for jokes.  We find out Zao is trying to do gene-therapy treatment to change his identity to someone else.  Much like Colonel Moon had done, turning himself into the man we will come to know as Gustav Graves.  The adrenaline filled, publicity junky, billionaire with an eye for diamonds.

Speaking of over acting, Toby Stephans puts out a good effort with the Gustav Graves character but he is just so over the top with his “evil” looks that there is no denying that he is indeed the villain.  Some of the best villains in cinema and television are villains that get you to like them.  They play to your emotions, let you in on their dark secrets, give you a smile and a laugh, maybe even make you connect with them in a twisted way...but Graves lets you know by his nostril flares and angry glares, that you couldn’t possibly like him if you tried.

Graves invites Bond to his party in Iceland, (isn’t Greenland the icy one?). This is when the movie goes off the rails completely, the second half of the film that looks like the props, sets, and lighting design were borrowed from the Power Rangers.  This ridiculous ice palace accompanied by the super ridiculous revelation of the “Icarus” - a satellite made out of diamonds (exactly like Diamonds are Forever) is just so off-putting. The Icarus shoots a beam as powerful as the sun and can also be used as a freakin sun beam death laser from the sky.  Yes, you heard that right.  At one point Bond is involved in a chase where he is being tailed by a sun beam death laser from the sky.  This leads to the most cringe worthy scene in all of Bond...Bond escapes by CGI surfing.

I’ve said before, one of the aspects of the Bond films that makes the series so successful is the heavy emphasis on real stunts.  REAL STUNTS.  Director Lee Tamahori thought it would be fun to amp up the CGI because he thought that CGI was the future of the Bond franchise, oh was he sorely mistaken. He also thought it would be a good idea to insert a bunch of slow motion shots throughout the movie, they were going for the ‘Matrix effect’ but it did not play well.  It’s choppy and pixilated and just ruins any momentum they managed to build up - it just ends up being annoying. 

If that wasn’t bad enough, Q Branch comes out to “Jump the Shark” by delivering an invisible car.  Really?  This is just another example of the theme of this film taking everything one step too far.  But maybe you could argue that that is what we needed in order to know what our threshold as a Bond audience is.  You could say that maybe Die Another Day was the most important film in the canon for that reason.  Maybe Die Another Day was the sacrificial lamb to fall on it’s own sword to prevent us from going in that direction again, maybe...this movie SAVED THE BOND FRANCHISE??

Eh, Now I’m just devil’s advocating myself.  This is thee worst Bond movie of all time and anyone who says differently has no idea what they are talking about, or are just trying to be ‘Ironic’, or whatever.  This film ends with Gustav Graves becoming an electrifying super-shredder villain whose design was probably stolen from the Mega-Man video games.  The final battle taking place on a plane that is crashing due to a window being knocked out and is also being destroyed by the Sun Beam death laser from the sky.  In other words...more CGI.

And to top it all off, we end on another uncomfortable scene with Bond and Jinx again, spitting out blatant toilet humor dialogue making us think that they are getting busy, but it turns out Bond is just putting diamonds in her belly button (which she really wants to leave in for some reason).  Traditionally, a Bond movie would end with some witty pun being the last bit of dialogue you would hear before credits, but this...I still can’t figure out how this left the writer’s table. 

Bond: “I'm still not quite sure how good you are.”

Jinx: “I’m sooo good...”

Bond: “Especially when you’re bad.”

huh??  It’s not even a pun, it just doesn’t make sense.

Honestly, you can tell Brosnan is thinking “who the hell wrote this shit?” while he is delivering that final line.  sigh.  The good news is that we can only go up from here!  This would be Brosnan’s final performance as James Bond, even though he publicly announced he was going to do another one.  Didn’t quite work out that way, the film studio eventually phased him out, leaving Brosnan at curbside.  Probably for the best, Brosnan was great for that time, but the pressure was on for change.  And change we would get - with Daniel Craig.

That’s all for me tonight, let me know why you hated this movie!

Reviews from Friends:

Tyler Dahlgren

See I like Toby’s Graves. That guy plays despicable well (Black Sails anyone?). It’s the redeeming part of the movie for me. That and the car. I love the Aston Martins, let’s stick to those.

Andrew Albertsen

I think the whole movie should’ve just been about Bond’s incarceration and torture and eventual escape.

My Mom

Sam you don’t mention Rosemund Pike in your review. I thought she made an outstanding ice queen. This had its moments and I do love Pierce Brosnan as Bond but this film was way too long and too much continuous action. A person tunes out.

Jake Benrud

The end of an era. All the gadgets and the over the top villains complete with "diamond face" and a genetically modified psychopath with daddy issues. I don't understand why he needed to drive his car in the ice palace in the first place. Also, that was an epic dive by Halle Berry.

24 Weeks of Bond will return next Monday with - 

Quantum of Solace

[alexstorm]

It has been mentioned that Alex lacks dignity to put an end to his “insisting on trying to go back to Alexa/going back when she calls” behaviour. But what do we mean with lack of dignity? Here’s my take that no one asked for but I love these theories. He clearly lacks self love. The Bourne Identity explained it all. When a person lacks self love they don’t feel they deserve healthy love. That’s probably why he’s still pining for Alexa because he knows that she will treat him the way that subconsciously he feels he deserves to be treated: rejected. Every time he’s rejected there’s another confirmation of what he believes about himself, that he doesn’t deserve to be well treated because he’s unlovable. If he also has a preference for being more submissive in matters of love, that only intensifies his subconscious decision to put himself in that type of situation. He clearly wants to be loved though, we all do, but he has a hard time being loved for who he is. That’s why in his relationships with other girlfriends he gets the comfort of having a girlfriend and being “loved”. Thing is he knows he’s not loved for who he is, because in his mind that wouldn’t even be possible, that guy is unlovable after all. He doesn’t even seem to show the real him to his other partners. He allows them to see him to the extent he wants them to and maybe even puts on a slight mask and that’s the him he doesn’t have a problem with receiving love.

* * *

Yes, we’ve been kinda through this before. Hence the conclusion for his lack of dignity. Back then I quoted The Perks Of Being A Wallflower - “We accept the love we think we deserve”. There, the discussion was about our confusion on why he would date a woman like Louise who clearly doesn’t match him and uses him. Why would he put himself in that situation?

But yeah, now with that new understanding of his relationship with Alexa it makes even more sense. He only looks for the type of love he already knows. He thinks being rejected is part of the deal of a “great” love story. The girlfriends he doesn’t open up to are just fillers to get at least the feeling of being loved. He knows they don’t love him for who he is but for his image and what they project onto him. He thinks the love he had with Alexa was the “right” kind of love and that’s what he’s looking for and since he can’t find it with anyone else he goes back to her again and again, basically cutting himself deeper every time and making it harder to heal from that experience.

So, does anyone know a good therapist in LA?! lol

[queensqewed0722]

The Fiery Priest

So I decided to join the bandwagon and check out what all the hype is about with this drama starring Kim Nam Gil and Lee Ha-nui.  

The story revolves around a Roman Catholic priest named Father Michael Kim Hae-il, who tries to put the demons of his past to rest by taking on the cloth. Father Kim used to be a soldier, and not just an ordinary soldier, but an intelligence operative.  During one of his missions, he ends up killing several children by mistake at the order of his superior and the incident caused him to give up his career in the intelligence bureau.  He tries to live a life as an ordinary citizen, but the trauma of what he has gone through propels him into self-destructive behavior.  He drinks indiscriminately and picks fights with strangers and in one of those encounters, almost loses his life.  An old priest named Father Gabriel Lee Young Joon finds him bleeding on the pavement and takes him home.  Father Lee nurses Hae-il back to health, both physically and spiritually, and inspires him to become a priest himself.  However, the process of healing is not easy, and Hae-il often finds himself losing control of his emotions, despite having taken the vows.  He is sent back to Father Lee but just when he is about to settle down and try to find peace again, Father Lee is murdered.  This sets Hae-il spiraling downward again into anger, and he decides to take matters into his own hands to investigate and bring to justice the people who killed his mentor and father-figure.  

Along the way, he encounters Prosecutor Park Kyeong Sun (played by Lee Ha-nui), Detective Koo Dae Young (played by Kim Sung Kyun) and rookie Detective Seo Seung Ah (played by Keum Sae Rok).  Prosecutor Park is an up-and-coming star prosecutor who somehow strives to be a good Catholic, yet her desire to succeed in her profession often leads her to act in ways that aren’t exactly in consonance with the teachings of her faith.  Detective Koo is an underachieving detective who tries to keep his head down amidst the corruption in his force, even as he strives to honor the memory of a partner who had been killed by the same corrupt people who controls the police.  Detective Seo is an idealistic young detective who courageously tries her best to uphold the positive values of the police, or at least what she believes them to be, despite the odds.

Together with Sister Kim, a religious sister who seems to be batty and scatterbrained, yet hides a past about as shady and mysterious as Father Kim’s, Father Han, a young priest who turns out to be a former child star, Oh Ha Yong, a cashier at the nearby convenience store who faithfully attends the church where Father Lee used to lead, and Song Sak, an immigrant Thai who’s best friends with Ha Yong and turns out to be an excellent fighter, these people form the rag-tag team of “avengers” called Team Tsunami in this drama.

The premise of “The Fiery Priest” is as outrageous as it is far-fetched.  A Roman Catholic priest would be suspended if he were to conduct himself the way Father Kim does, beating up people in broad daylight while in his vestments, complete with his Roman collar.  Regardless of how just or right he may be, the way he acts would totally go against the values of the faith he practices and preaches.  But I guess  in the interests of drama, they needed a fresh take on the anti-hero.  The premise of a former intelligence agent turning his back on his profession and living the life of an ordinary citizen but being forced by circumstances to use his skill again in order to defeat new enemies has been done countless times (think Bourne Identity).  So how does one put a fresh twist into this premise?  Why, turn the anti-hero into a priest.  A priest with anger management issues, PTSD, and killer instincts.

I guess what works for this drama is the fact that everything is done tongue-in-cheek.  Despite the underlying seriousness and gravity of the plot, as well as Father Kim’s emotional and spiritual journey (coupled with those of his teammates), the drama is executed in comedic fashion, sometimes with such hilarity that you end up suspending disbelief over their antics and just taking everything in good fun. It also helps a lot that the actors are so charismatic and effective in their roles.  Kim Nam Gil carries the craziness and volatile temper of Father Kim with such aplomb.  Same with Lee Ha-nui, whose facial expressions as Prosecutor Park are so funny and cartoonish yet without looking odd or overacted.  Same goes for the rest of the cast.  And they have such amazing chemistry together, maybe because they’re having fun doing it.

This may not be a popular opinion but I hope this drama doesn’t jump ship by making Father Kim give up being a priest in the end.  That would be tantamount to a defeat, because the journey from his old life as an intelligence officer who’s trained to kill, to a priest who gives hope and new life to others is a long one.  To my mind, such an end would belittle the sacrifices he made, along with those like Father Lee who believed so much in him and supported him in his journey.  It would be more radical and satisfying if he chooses to remain a priest in spite of everything - yes, in spite of his chemistry and sexual tension with Prosecutor Park and Detective Seung Ah’s crush on him - and for him to end up positively influencing the lives of his teammates in Team Tsunami and inspiring them to become better versions of themselves.  After all, if someone like Father Kim can do it, then they can do it too.    

In any case, he can always put his intelligence officer skills to good use by moving to the Vatican and working for the Pope.  ^_^

[hope-for-olicity]

Crushing the romance stigma once and for all Romance novel sales tally in the billions of dollars every year. (That's right: billions. With a "b".) And still, literary critics and other various bookish snobs continue to malign the genre, loudly and with great disdain. Why is that? If you ask these folks, they'll tell you romance novels are nothing but badly written trash. So, y'all have read a bunch of romance novels before forming that opinion, I assume? ​Oh, no, they'll say, noses tipped heavenward. They don't read romance (with all the contempt in the world placed on the word "romance"). Huh. Now I'm confused. Why would people be so openly hostile to a genre they've never read? I think I can tell you why.​The romance stigma and genre misconceptions are so deeply ingrained in us as a society that we have trouble overlooking them, even with glaring examples to the contrary. Heck, even bestselling romance authors like Nicholas Sparks hesitate to admit they write romance. Mr. Sparks insists that he writes “love stories”. On his website, Sparks lays out the difference between “love stories” and romance as follows: “It’s equivalent to the difference between a "legal thriller" and a "techno-thriller." In that instance, both novels include many of the same elements: suspense, good and bad forces pitted against each other, scenes that build to a major plot point, etc. But aside from the obvious, those novels are in different sub-genres and the sub-genres have different requirements. For instance, legal thrillers generally have a court room scene on center stage, techno-thrillers use the world or a city as their setting. Legal thrillers explore the nuances of law, techno-thrillers explore the nuances of scientific or military conflict. ​ The same situation applies with romance novels and love stories. Though both have romantic elements, the sub-genres have different requirements. Love stories must use universal characters and settings. Romance novels are not bound by this requirement and characters can be rich, famous, or people who lived centuries ago, and the settings can be exotic. Love stories can differ in theme, romance novels have a general theme—‘the taming of a man.’ And finally, romance novels usually have happy endings while love stories are not bound by this requirement. Love stories usually end tragically or, at best, on a bittersweet note.” I’m sorry, no disrespect intended, but if you’ve written a story in which the romantic relationship between two characters is the focus, you’ve written a romance novel, Mr. Sparks. The rest is just splitting hairs and can probably be construed as you protesting a bit too much. Throwing in a depressing ending doesn’t completely excuse you from the genre. Sorry. So, let’s take a look at the most common romance complaints and see if there’s actually anything to them: Romance novels are badly written I don’t know if y’all picked up on the implied “all” in that sentence, but I sure did. I don’t know of any genre outside of romance where people feel comfortable saying “all” of it is badly written. Are there some stinkers in the bunch? Absolutely. But I’ve also read plenty of stinkers in the sci fi, horror and mystery genres. I suppose my response to critics who say romance novels are badly written would be: have you read all romance novels? No? Well…there you go. And further...if they’re so badly written, why are they selling so well? Romance novels are formulaic I suppose this might depend on how broadly you define “formula”. For example: 1 person + 1 person = love and happiness Is that how a formula is defined? Because if that’s the definition, it could be argued that romance novels are formulaic. It is a somewhat unspoken “rule” that romance novels end with a HEA (happily ever after). But in my opinion, there’s A LOT that can happen in the middle of that particular formula, and there’s about a gazillion ways that particular equation can be worked out. I’ve read romance novels about everyday people with typical problems, and I’ve read romance novels about vampires and witches and angels. All the lovely variations in which the “formula” can be worked out and twisted about sure can make for some entertaining reading. Romance novels are predictable Again with the implied “all”. Sigh. I’m pretty hard to surprise. I knew that Darth Vadar was Luke’s father well before Luke did. I knew that one of the dead people Haley Joel Osment was seeing was Bruce Willis way before Bruce Willis knew. I knew what was going on at The Red Wedding well before Talisa took that knife to the gut. But I can honestly say that more than a few romance authors have managed to throw me for a loop with their plot gymnastics. (I’m looking at you, J.A. Redmerski!) So, are there some predictable romances out there? Sure. Can it be argued that the HEA is predictable? Absolutely. But to those still arguing this point, I have to ask: is your enjoyment of a book dependent on your inability to predict the story’s ultimate direction? Even if you know where the story will end up, can you not just enjoy the ebb and flow of the story, the writer’s word choices, the snap of the dialog and crackling chemistry between characters? If not...well, that’s kind of sad! Why bother reading at all if that’s the case?     There’s no plot; it’s all just about sex This is another one of those all-inclusive statements that should just be ignored. Are there some romance novels that are all about sex? Sure. And there are plenty of others that are intricately plotted (author Tarryn Fisher comes immediately to mind here) and meticulously researched. Beyond that, there’s even an entire subcategory of sweet and clean romances (even some Amish romances) that don’t contain any sex at all. Lesson to be learned here: As a rule, “all” and “never” statements are crap. “Real” writers don’t write romance Who gets to define what a “real” writer is? Was there some kind of specially appointed task force for this that I wasn’t aware of? As it turns out, writing is an art. So, just like any other art form, opinions on what is “good” and what is “real” will tend to vary greatly. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and there are no wrong answers. And just for the record, Jane Austen wrote romance novels. Anyone care to tell her—and her legions of rabid fans—that she wasn’t a real writer? No? Didn’t think so. Romance novels are unrealistic The “unrealistic” criticism usually exists in a couple of different forms: 1. The heroes and heroines are all perfect looking It’s true that as a society, we like pretty stuff. For that reason, you will find an abundance of pretty, seemingly perfect people in romance novels (especially on the covers). But, you’ll also find plenty of people who don’t fit into a perfect Barbie-and-Ken mold. I’ve read romances about a paraplegic hero, a heroine with CP, and a heroine so unattractive the hero is uncomfortable around her until he gets to know and love her.   2. HEAs don’t happen in real life You know who doesn’t believe in HEAs? Unhappy people. It’s true that no one is happy all the time, but to assume that no one ever gets a HEA is insane. There’s plenty of happiness out there for those who are willing to reach for it. And on a less philosophical note, I think romance readers generally understand that “HEA” is just a phrase. No one assumes that the main couple in the story continued to live out their lives without ever having another care in the world. The HEA is just where the story ends. Romance novels are just “bodice rippers” This one stems from a trend in the 70s and 80s that had innocent virgins (mostly in historical novels) on book covers being accosted by burly, half-dressed dudes (often Fabio) who were pretty much forcing themselves on them. Much like clothing and hairstyles, romance novel trends have also changed quite a bit since the 70s and 80s. For anyone who believes that all romance novels are “bodice rippers”, I encourage you to change out of your velour leisure suit, shut off your 8-track player and lava lamp, and venture to your local bookstore’s romance section. You’re in for a big surprise.   Romance novels promote abusive relationships I’ll let you in on a little secret, folks. (Come closer…wouldn’t want this one getting out to just anyone) Women sometimes fantasize about being overpowered by a man. It’s a pretty standard fantasy, actually. Some dude (who looks like Thor or Wolverine) overcomes all of her good-girl protests and better judgement with nothing more than the raw animal power of his overwhelming manly hotness. No consequences, no one gets hurt. Does reading about such a fantasy make women prone to asking their husband/partner/lover to abuse and overpower them on a regular basis? No more so than reading To Kill a Mockingbird makes people prone to becoming lawyers, or reading The Bourne Identity makes people prone to amnesia. Typically, readers are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality. Critics who spew drivel about romance novels promoting abuse against women seem to think otherwise, though. And further, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve read a lot of romance novels. A. Lot. The portion of those novels that featured a man overpowering a woman amounts to maybe 2% of the total. It’s hardly fair to assume that all romance novels—or even a majority of romance novels, for that matter--promote that kind of relationship.   It’s just “mommy porn”       Sorry, but it’s just not statistically possible that all of the billions of dollars’ worth of romances sold each year were read by mommies. Women and men (yes, men read romance, too) of all ages enjoy romances. This statement is just a desperate attempt by critics to shame readers into buying the types of books theythink everyone should be reading. It’s like trying to convince people they should be watching PBS all the time. PBS is a great channel, but sometimes, you need a little HBO. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just an egocentric bully trying to promote his/her own agenda. Romance novels are silly fluff     I’m not going to argue that romance novels are doing their part to cure cancer or end world hunger. (And truthfully, neither are any novels) Some romances are about light subject matter, and others cover much deeper topics such as the grief of losing a spouse, kidnapping and child abuse, murder and even survival in a post-apocalyptic world. And those are just a few examples of the not-so-silly-fluffy topics you can find in romance novels today. There’s plenty more where those came from. Long-story-short, it would appear that nothing is wrong with the romance genre that isn’t also a problem for any other genre, other than what ignorant critics think of it. So, what can romance lovers do to help crush the romance stigma once and for all? Well, the first step is to admit, out loud and to anyone who asks, that you love romance novels. No more sheepishness. No more hiding your romance novels in speculative fiction dust jackets. No more refusing to let anyone see your Amazon browsing history or your Kindle’s contents. Be PROUD of what you read. The second step is to promote the books you read that help crush these myths. That’s what we’ll be doing here at Romance Rehab. What about all of you proud romance readers out there? What other romance misconceptions piss you off? Let’s talk.

[phantomchick]

Anime Watchlist 3 part 2

You don't watch Ghost in The Shell: Innocence for the plot, no you watch it for The Vibe™, The Aesthetic, the Distinct MOOD and emotional Flavour the thing brings out of you.

And

For the ANIMATION !

This movie is a gorgeous mix of traditional and digital techniques, some of it doesn’t work too well but that’s because it’s thoroughly experimental, and because of that courage to try new things we get this unique distinctive style unlike anything else I’ve seen, also the soundtrack fits it like a glove so there’s that.

The plot isn’t bad per sé it offers its own interesting points and takes off of one of Masamune Shirow’s original manga arcs, a brand of gynoids aka sex bots are killing their owners and Section 9 brought into investigate where it differs from the manga is Motoko’s absence -- which is really its own character in the movie, and Batou’s aggressive grief for the loss of a friend channeling all of his actions. 

Batou and Togusa find links between the company who makes the gynoids and the Yakuza what the link is they’re not sure yet, Batou finds a picture of a girl at the house of a victim, Batou and Togusa attack the Yakuza and later Batou gets hacked in an attempt to ward off Section 9 involvement with a scandal, they then travel to another city go past a gorgeous festival which is like PEAK EYEGASM art and try to get into this guy call Locus Solus’s house and find evidence linking him to the crime. Later it turns out the reason the gynoids were so lifelike was that they were using real girl’s minds to give them personality.

Buuut it’s at this point that it gets sucked into its own message, Batou gives out to the child trapped in the factory for dubbing malicious ghosts and getting not only innocent humans killed but also hurting the poor dolls they were uploaded into. Which...  Taking into account this kid has been kidnapped and then brainwashed for at least a year and is scared of being permanently brainwashed like her kid Motoko saying ‘the doll didn’t want to become a human’ in response to the kid’s ‘but I didn’t want to become a doll’ was wayyyy out of step with like basic logic. In the manga it’s only the cost of innocent human lives that was emphasised at the end of this story but here the focus is much more on is a doll a human if you fill it with a personality and philosophical questions like that and are we taking advantage of these machines if we don’t treat them ethically. Still by all means beat up Locus Solus but maybe don’t bully the victim for trying to let people know something wasn’t right with the company that was imprisoning them in the only way they could?? That’s just my take though, I realise that maybe the focus should be more on the concepts it’s introduced rather than the plot that acts as a vehicle for them but still that was so out of sync with basic compassion it kind of broke me out of the story a little and I felt like Mamoru Oshii was saying it through Batou and Motoko’s voices rather than him conveying their character’s actual responses.

So after that they sail the factory which by the way is a huge boat/rig to the nearest country where they can arrest everyone involved and then they wrap up the case. 

Lots of interesting ideas in this film as well as great character moments, we see Batou who didn’t used to understand why Motoko felt she had to go explaining to Togusa that Motoko’s body and even most of her memory and mind belonged to the government and not her, it’s a matter of not only identity but also self determination and freedom that keeps her riding the net rather than facing the physical world alongside them. It was also interesting how the character’s kept using quotes to try and reason their own feelings out to each other, as if to say “I am not the only who has felt this way” even when confronted with the fantastical and surreal side effects of their jobs.

We’re left with questions about the human experience and what defines being human in the end anyway as well as a look at the benefits as well as the crimes future technologies might enable us to deal with.

This film wasn’t as solid as the original Ghost in The Shell (1995) movie as it had its flaws but it was definitely an interesting follow up and I was happy to see the directions the characters took as well as the ART. 

Okay so now that I’m done my ramble let’s check in with THE LIST!

Diebuster (6 eps) (Sequel to Gunbuster)

The Place Promised In Our Early Days (movie)

FMA: B s5 (12 eps)

Children Who Chase Lost Voices Down Below (movie)

Otaku No Video (movie)

Princess Tutu s2 (25 eps)

Gits: Innocence (movie)

Stein’s Gate: Load Region of Déjà Vu (movie)

Trigun (26 eps)

Anohana: The Movie (movie)

Making good headway guys! So next up... I don’t know what’s next up, um, either Otaku No Video or Princess Tutu I think, personally I could go for either but considering I just saw the Bourne Swan Lake ballet irl in theatre last week I think I’m in the mood for some of Princess Tutu’s magic. Let’s go with that!

part 1