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impostoradult · 4 years ago

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Media Market Research (and why its undermining all the things you love)

Trying to understand what is dysfunctional about Hollywood is an epic task, and the answers are like the stars – arguably infinite. Hollywood is dysfunctional for literally more reasons than I could count.

But market research plays a fairly heavy role in its dysfunction (IMO) and the time has finally come for me to add my professional two cents about this issue. (This rant of mine has been building for a while, FYI. Hence why it is so...comprehensive. There is a tl;dr section towards the bottom, if you want the high level summary)

*** For the last 4+ years I’ve worked in the field of market research, almost exclusively with major media makers like Warner Bros., NBCU, AMC/BBCA, Viacom, FOX (before Disney acquired them), A+E, etc. (this past year I quit the job where I was doing this work for a variety of reasons, many of which will become clear as you keep reading, but I am still listed as a consultant on the company website): https://www.kresnickaresearch.com/who/ (Rachel)

And just for comparison, here is a Halloween selfie I took 4 years ago and posted on my blog, so you can see I am who I say I am.

I know a fair amount about how market research on major media franchises is conducted and how it influences production, and a lot of these choices can also be at least somewhat tied back to the massive flaws in the market research industry and its impact. *** First, at the highest level, you need to understand market research in general is not well-conducted much of the time. Even the people doing a reasonably good job at it are VERY limited in doing it well because of financial constraints (clients don’t want to spend more than they have to), time constraints (clients want everything done as fast as humanely possible) and just the inherent problems within the industry that are decades old and difficult to fix. For example, all market research ‘screens’ participants to make sure they qualify to participate (whether it is a mass survey, a focus group, a one-on-one interview, etc.). So, we screen people based on demographics like race, gender, age, household income, to get representative samples. But people are also screened based on their consumption habits. You don’t want to bring someone into a focus group about reality TV if they don’t watch reality TV. They aren’t going to have anything useful to say.

However, a lot of the people who participate in market research have made a ‘side-gig’ out of it and they know how to finesse the process. Basically, they’ve learned how to lie to get into studies that they aren’t a good match for because most market research is paid, and they want the money. So, a lot of TV and film market research is being done on people who don’t actually (or at least don’t regularly) watch those shows or movies or whatever but have learned how to lie well enough in these screening processes to make it through. And because of the aforementioned time and money issue, clients don’t want to spend the time or money to actually find GOOD participants. They just accept that as an inevitable part of the market research process and decide not to let it bother them too much. So, a fair number of the people representing YOU as a media consumer are people who may not be watching Supernatural (for example) at all or who watch a rerun occasionally on TNT but haven’t been watching consistently or with ANY amount of investment whatsoever. You can see why that creates very skewed data. But that’s just the tip of the skewed iceberg. *** Second, media market research is conducted in line with the norms of market research more broadly, and this is a huge problem because media is a very atypical product. How people engage with media is far more complex and in depth than how they engage with a pair of jeans, a car, or a coffee maker. There are only so many things that matter to people when it comes to liking or not liking a coffee maker, for example. Is it easy/intuitive to use? How much space does it take it on my counter? How expensive is it? Does it brew the coffee well? Maybe does it match my décor/kitchen aesthetic? Can I make my preferred brand of coffee in it? The things you as a consumer are going to care about when it comes to a coffee maker are limited, fairly easy to anticipate in advance, and also easy to interpret (usually). How people mentally and emotionally approach MEDIA? Whole other universe of thing. Infinitely more complex. And yet it is studied (more or less) as if it is also a coffee maker. This is one of the many reasons I decided to leave the media market research field despite my desire to have some ability to positively influence the process. As so often seems to be the case, I fought the law and the law won. I could never make the other people I worked with in the industry understand that the questions they were asking were not all that useful a lot of the time and they weren’t getting to the heart of the matter. They were just following industry standards because they didn’t know any better and none of them want to admit they don’t REALLY know what they’re doing. Which leads me to point 3. *** Most of the people doing this research don’t have any expertise in media or storytelling specifically. They are typically trained as social scientists in the fields of psychology, anthropology, sociology, or math/statistics. And many of them do not have any kind of specialization or education in media/storytelling beyond the English classes they took in high school and the one Media Studies course they took as an elective in college. Most of them have a very unsophisticated understanding of narrative structure, thematics, tropes, subtext, etc. They mainly think in terms of genres at the VERY broadest level. Also, not infrequently, they don’t watch or have much knowledge of the shows they are supposed to be doing research on, beyond what they’ve read on IMDb or Wikipedia or what is generally common knowledge. Unless they by chance happen to watch the shows themselves (which often they don’t) they often know very little about the shows they are crafting these questions about. Again, partly because they think it is like the coffee maker, and you don’t need to understand it in any depth to research it. (I know this must sound insane to you as avid media consumers, but that is the general attitude among those who do market research) There is such a lack of sophistication in how people in the business side of the industry understand media and storytelling. Most of them are either MBAs or social scientists and their training has not prepared them to examine fictional works with the kind of depth that people in the Humanities (who are specifically trained to study texts) have. Somehow, despite the fact that the Humanities is all about understanding texts, that is the one discipline they make almost no use of in the business side of Hollywood. And boy howdy does it show. *** Point 4 – average consumers CANNOT ARTICULATE WHY THEY LIKE THINGS. Particularly media things. I know this sounds condescending, but it is my honest observation. It is unbelievably hard to get people to have enough self-awareness to explain why they actually like things, especially things as mentally and emotionally complex as media. What typically happens when you ask people why they like a TV show or movie, for example? They will tell you what they most NOTICE about the TV show or movie, or what is distinctive to them about it (which may or may not have anything to do with what they actually LIKE about it). They will say things like “I like the genre”, “I think it’s funny”, “The car chases are exciting”, “I want to see the detective solve the puzzle.” Sometimes you can get them to talk about what they find relatable about it, if you push them a little. But often they leave it at either the level of literal identity (young black woman), basic personality traits (she’s a social butterfly and so am I) or situations they’ve personally experienced (I relate to this story of a man losing his father to cancer because I lost a close family member to cancer). But the vast, vast, vast majority of them can’t go to the deeper level of: a) Why X representation of a young black woman feels accurate/authentic/relatable and Y representation doesn’t b) Why it matters to me that X,Y,Z aspects of my personality, identity, experience get reflected in media whereas I don’t really care about seeing A,B,C aspects of my personality, identity, or experience reflected in media c) How and why they are relating to characters when they can’t see the literal connection between their identity/experience and the character’s identity/experience. (For example, many people have argued that women often relate to Dean Winchester because a lot of his struggles and past negative experiences are more stereotypical of women – being forced to raise a younger sibling on behalf of an actual parent, being seen and treated as beautiful/sexually desirable but vacuous/unintelligent, his body being treated as an instrument for a more powerful group to quite literally possess, etc. Part of the reason Supernatural has always been such a mystery/problem for the CW and Warner Bros is they could never crack the code at this level. Never.) Part of the reason they can’t crack these codes is average people CANNOT give you that kind of feedback in a survey or a focus group, or even an in-depth interview (much of the time). They just don’t have the self-awareness or the vocabulary to get it at that level. Let alone asking them to articulate why Game of Thrones is compelling to them in an era where wealth disparity is creating a ruling class that is fundamentally incompetent at maintaining a just/functional society, which is especially concerning at this particular moment, given the existential threat we face due to climate change. And the truth is, that IS part of what people – even average people – are responding to in Game of Thrones. But what they’ll tell you when you do market research on it is: they like the dragons, they like the violence, they relate to Tyrion Lannister being a smart mouth, maybe they’ll say they like the moral ambiguity of many of the conflicts (if they are more sophisticated than average). But the ‘Dean Winchester is heavily female coded despite his veneer of ultra-masculinity’ or the ‘Game of Thrones is a prescient metaphor for the current political dynamics and fissures of modern western society’ is the level you ACTUALLY need to get to. And most market research can’t get you that because the people ASKING the questions don’t know what to ask to get to this level, and most of the respondents couldn’t give you the answers even IF you were asking them the right questions (which usually you are not) And I’m not saying average people are dumb because they can’t do this. But it requires practice, it requires giving the matter a great deal of in-depth thought, and most people just don’t care enough about it to do that while taking a market research survey. (I know this is going to feel counter-intuitive to people on Tumblr. But you have to remember, you are NOT average media consumers. You are highly atypical media consumers who have far more self-awareness and a much more sophisticated engagement with media than the average person watching TV. If you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be here talking about it in the first place) Point 4.1 – People also lie/misrepresent their own experiences to market researchers because they want to maintain certain self-narratives. You have no idea how many people would get disqualified from our surveys for saying they watched less than 5 hours of TV a week. And sure, that might actually be true for a few of them. But if you watch TV with any regularity at all (which most people in modern America do) you probably watch more than 5 hours a week. The problem is, people think it makes them sound lazy to say they watch 15-20 hours a week, even though that’s about 2-3 hours a day (which actually isn’t THAT high). People lie and misrepresent their behaviors, thoughts and feelings because it can be socially uncomfortable to admit you do what you actually do or feel how you actually feel, even in the context of an anonymous survey, let alone a focus group or a one-on-one interview. People want to make themselves look good to THEMSELVES and to the researchers asking them questions. But that makes the market research data on media (and lots of other things) very questionable. For example, one finding we saw more than once in the surveys I was involved in conducting was people would radically downplay how much the romance elements of a story mattered to them, even large portions of female respondents. When we would ask people in surveys what parts of the story they were most invested in, romances ALWAYS came out among the lowest ranked elements. And yet, any passing familiarity with fandom would tell you that finding is just WRONG. It’s wrong. People are just flat out lying about how much that matters to them because of the negative connotations we have around being invested in romance. And never mind the issue of erotic/sexual content. (I don’t mean sexual identity here, I mean sexy content). The only people who will occasionally cop to wanting the erotic fan service is young men (and even they are hesitant to do so in market research) and women frequently REFUSE to admit that stuff in market research, or they radically downplay how much it matters to them and in what ways. There is still so much stigma towards women expressing sexuality in that way. Not to mention, you have to fight tooth and nail to even include question about erotic/sexual content because oftentimes the clients don’t even want to go there at all, partly because it is awkward for everyone involved to sit around crafting market research questions to interrogate what makes people hot and bothered. That’s socially awkward for the researchers doing the research and the businesspeople who have to sit in rooms and listen to presentations about why more women find Spock sexier than Kirk. (Which was a real thing that happened with the original Star Trek, and the network couldn’t figure out why) Aside from people not have enough deeper level self-awareness to get at what they really like about media content, they also will lie or misrepresent certain things to you because they are trying to maintain certain self-narratives and are socially performing that version of themselves to researchers. *** Point 5 – Qualitative data is way more useful for understanding people’s relationships to media. However, quantitative data is way more valued and relied upon both due to larger market research industry standards and because quantitative data is just seen as harder/more factual than qualitative data. A lot of media market research involves gathering both qualitative and quantitative data and reporting jointly on both. (Sometimes you only do one or the other, depending on your objectives, but doing both is considered ‘standard’ and higher quality). However, quantitative data is heavily prioritized in reporting and when there is a conflict between what they see in qualitative versus quantitative data, the quant data is usually relied upon to be the more accurate of the two. This is understandable to an extent, because quantitative surveys usually involve responses from a couple thousand participants, whereas qualitative data involves typically a few dozen participants at most, depending on whether you did focus groups, individual interviews, or ‘diaries’/ethnography. The larger sample is considered more reliable and more reflective of ‘the audience’ as a whole. However, quantitative surveys usually have the flattest, least nuanced data, and they can only ever reflect what questions and choices people in the survey were given. In something like focus groups or individual interviews or ethnographies, you still structure what you ask people, but they can go “off script.” They can say things you never anticipated (as a researcher) and can explain themselves and their answers with more depth. In a survey, participants can only “say” what they survey lets them say based on the questions and question responses that are pre-baked for them. And as I’ve already explained, a lot of times these quantitative surveys are written by people with no expertise in media, fiction, or textual analysis, and so they often are asking very basic, not very useful questions. In sum, the data that is the most relied upon is the least informative, least nuanced data. It is also the MOST likely to reflect the responses of people who don’t actually qualify for the research but have become good at scamming the system to make extra money. With qualitative research, they are usually a little more careful screening people (poorly qualified participants still make it through, but not as often as with mass surveys, where I suspect a good 35% of participants, at least, probably do not actually qualify for the research and are just working the system).

Most commonly, when market research gets reported to business decision-makers, it highlights the quantitative data, and uses the qualitative data to simply ‘color in’ the quantitative data. Give it a face, so to speak. Qualitative data is usually supplemental to quant data and used more to make the reports ‘fun’ and ‘warm’ because graphs and charts and stats by themselves are boring to look at in a meeting. (I’m not making this up, I can’t tell you how many times I was told to make adjustments on how things were reported on because they didn’t want to bore people in the meeting). (Sub-point – it is also worth noting that you can’t report on anything that doesn’t fit easily on a power point slide and isn’t easily digestible to any random person who might pick it up and read it. The amount of times I was told to simplify points and dumb things down so it could be made ‘digestible’ for a business audience, I can’t even tell you. It was soul crushing and another reason I stopped doing this job full time. I had to make things VERY dumb for these business audiences, which often meant losing a lot of the point I was actually trying to make) Point 5.1 – Because of the way that representative sampling works, quantitative data can be very misleading, particularly in understanding audience/fandom sentiments about media. As I’m sure most of you know, sampling is typically designed to be representative of the population, broadly speaking. So, unless a media company is specifically out to understand LGBTQ consumers or Hispanic/Latinx consumers, it will typically sample using census data as a template and represent populations that way. Roughly 50/50 male/female. Roughly even numbers in different age brackets, roughly representative samplings of the racial make-up of the country, etc. (FYI, they do often include a non-binary option in the gender category these days, but it usually ends up being like 5 people out of 2000, which is not enough of a sample to get statistical significance for them as a distinct group) There is a good reason to do this, even when a show or movie has a disproportionately female audience, or young audience. Because they need enough sample in all of the “breaks” (gender, race, age, household income, etc.) to be able to make statistically sound statements about each subgroup. If you only have 35 African American people in your sample of 1000, you can’t make any statistically sound statements about that African American cohort. The sample is just too small. So, they force minimums/quotas in a lot of the samples, to ensure they can make statistically sound statements about all the subgroups they care about. They use ratings data to understand what their audience make up actually is. (Which also has major failings, but I’ll leave that alone for the minute) With market research, they are not usually looking to proportionately represent their audience, or their fandom; they are looking to have data they can break in the ways they want to break it and still have statistically significant subgroups represented. But that means that when you report on the data as a whole sample – which you often do – it can be very skewed towards groups who don’t make up as large a portion of the show’s actual audience, or even if they do, they don’t tend to be the most invested, loyal, active fans. Men get weighted equally to women, even when women make up 65% of the audience, and 80% of the active fandom. Granted, they DO break the data by gender, and race, and age, etc. and if there are major differences in how women versus men respond, or younger people versus older people, they want to know that...sometimes. But here’s where things get complex. So, if you are doing a sample of Supernatural viewers. And you do the standard (US census-based) sampling on a group of 2000 respondents (a pretty normal sample size in market research). ~1000 are going to be female. But with something they call “interlocking quotas” the female sample is going to be representative of the other groupings to a degree. So, the female sample will have roughly equal numbers of all the age brackets (13-17, 18-24, 25-34, etc.). And it will have roughly 10% non-heterosexual respondents, and so on. They do this to ensure that these breaks aren’t too conflated with each other. (For example, if your female sample is mostly younger and your male sample is mostly older, how do you know whether it is the gender or the age that is creating differences in their responses? You don’t. So, you have to make sure that all the individual breaks (gender, race, age) have a good mix of the other breaks within them, so groups aren’t getting conflated) But what that means is, Supernatural, whose core fandom is (at a conservative guess) 65% younger, queer, women, gets represented in a lot of statistical market research sampling as maybe 50-100 people, in a 2000-person survey. 50-100 people can barely move the needle on anything in a 2000-person survey. Furthermore, usually in the analysis of data like this, you don’t go beyond looking at 2 breaks simultaneously. So you may look at young female respondents as a group, or high income male respondents, or older white respondents, but you rarely do more than 2 breaks combined. And the reason for that is, by the time you get down to 3 breaks or more (young, Hispanic, women) you usually don’t have enough sample to make statistically significant claims. (It also just takes longer to do those analyses and as I explained in the beginning, they are always rushing this stuff). To do several breaks at a time you’d have to get MUCH larger samples, and that’s too expensive for them. And again, I want to stress, this type of sampling isn’t intended to sinisterly erase anyone. Kind of the opposite. It is intended to make sure most groups have enough representation in the data that you can make sound claims about them on the subgroup level. The problem is that it can create a very skewed sense of their overall audience sentiment when they take the data at ‘face value’ so to speak, and don’t weight segments based on viewership proportion, or fandom engagement, etc. Point 5.2 – Which leads me to my next point, which is that fandom activity that doesn’t have a dollar amount attached to it doesn’t make you a ‘valuable’ segment in their minds. One of the breaks they ALWAYS ask for in data like this is high income people, and people who spend a lot of MONEY on their media consumption. And they do prioritize those people’s responses and data quite a bit. And guess what – young women aren’t usually high-income earners, and although some of them are high spenders on media, high spending on media and media related merch skews toward higher income people just because they HAVE more disposable income. Older white men are usually the highest income earners (absolutely no surprise) and they are more likely in a lot of cases to report spending a lot on the media they care about. Having expendable income makes you more important in the eyes of people doing market research than if you’ve spent every day for the last 10 years blogging excessively about Supernatural. They don’t (really) care about how much you care. They care about how much money you can generate for them. And given that young audiences don’t watch TV live anymore, and they give all their (minimal) expendable income to Netflix and Hulu, you with your Supernatural blog and your 101 essays about Destiel is all but meaningless to many of them (from a business standpoint) Now, some of them kind of understand that online fandom matters to the degree that fandom spreads. Fandom creates fandom. But if the fandom you are helping to create is other young, queer women with minimal income who only watch Supernatural via Netflix, well, that’s of very limited value to them as well. I don’t want to suggest they don’t care about you at ALL. Nor do I want to suggest that the “they” we are talking about is even a cohesive “they.” Different people in the industry have different approaches to thinking about fandom, consumer engagement and strategy, market research and how it ought to be understood/used, and so on. They aren’t a monolith. BUT, they are, at the end of the day, a business trying to make money. And they are never going to place the value of your blogging ahead of the concrete income you can generate for them. (Also, highly related to my point about people lying, men are more likely to SAY they have higher incomes than they do, because it’s an ego thing for them. And women are more likely to downplay how much money they spend on ‘frivolous’ things like fandom because of the social judgement involved. Some of the money gender disparity you see in media market research is real, but some of it is being generated by the gender norms people are falsely enacting in market research– men being breadwinners, women wanting to avoid the stereotype of being frivolous with money) *** In sum/tl;dr: Point 1 – Market research in general is not well conducted because of a variety of constraints including time, money, and the historical norms of how the industry operates (e.g., there being a large subsection of almost professionalized respondents who know how to game the system for the financial incentives) Point 2 – Media is a highly atypical kind of product being studied more or less as if it were equivalent to a coffeemaker or a pair of jeans. Point 3 – Most of the people studying media consumption in the market research field have no expertise or background in media, film, narrative, storytelling, etc. They are primarily people who were trained as social scientists and statisticians, and they aren’t well equipped to research media properties and people’s deeper emotional attachment and meaning-making processes related to media properties. Point 4(etc.) – Average consumers typically don’t have enough self-awareness or the vocabulary to explain the deep, underlying reasons they like pieces of media. Furthermore, when participating in market research, people lie and misrepresent their thoughts, behaviors, and emotional responses for a variety of reasons including social awkwardness and preserving certain self-narratives like “I’m above caring about dumb, low-brow things like romance.” Point 5 (etc.) – Quantitative data is treated as way more meaningful, valuable, and ‘accurate’ than qualitative data, and this is a particular problem with media market research because of how varied and complex people’s reactions to media can be. Also, the nature of statistical sampling, and how it is done, can massively misrepresent audience sentiments toward media and fail to apprehend deeper fandom sentiments and dynamics. There is also a strong bias towards the responses of high income/high spending segments, which tend to be older and male and white. Side but important point – Research reports are written to be as entertaining and digestible as possible, which sounds nice in theory, but in practice it often means you lose much of the substance you are trying to communicate for the sake of not boring people or making them feel stupid/out of their depth. (Because god forbid you make some high-level corporate suit feel stupid) *** What can be done about this? Well, the most primary thing I would recommend is for you to participate in market research, particularly if you are American (there’s a lot of American bias in researching these properties, even when they have large international fanbases). However, some international market research is done and I recommend looking into local resources for participation, where ever you are. If you are American, there are now several market research apps you can download to your smart phone and participate in paid market research through (typically paid via PayPal). Things like dscout and Surveys On the Go. And I know there are more. You should also look into becoming panelists for focus groups, particularly if you live near a large metropolitan area (another bias in market research). Just Google it and you should be able to figure it out fairly easily. Again, it is PAID, and your perspective will carry a lot more weight when it is communicated via a focus group or a dscout project, versus when it is shouted on Twitter. However, that’s merely a Band-Aid on the bigger issue, which I consider to be the fact that businesspeople think the Humanities is garbage, even when they make their living off it. There is virtually no respect for the expertise of fictional textual analysis, or how it could help Hollywood make better content. And I don’t know what the fix is for that. I spent 4 years of my life trying to get these people to understand what the Humanities has to offer them, and I got shouted down and dismissed so many times I stopped banging my head against that wall. I gave up. They don’t listen, mostly because conceding to the value of deep-reading textual analysis as a way to make better content would threaten the whole system of how they do business. And I mean that literally. So many people’s jobs, from the market researchers to the corporate strategists to the marketing departments to the writers/creatives to the C-level executives, would have to radically shift both their thinking and their modes of business operation and the inertia of ‘that’s the way it’s always been done’ is JUST SO POWERFUL. I have no earthly idea how to stop that train, let alone shift it to an entirely different track. BTW, if you want the deeper level of analysis of why I can’t stop rewatching Moneyball now that it’s been added to Netflix, the above paragraph should give you a good hint

#market research #Hollywood #media studies

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Anonymous asked: Have you watched Lupin? What did you think? (And are you a fan of the books or other adaptations of the character?)

The short answer is yes, I have seen Lupin on Netflix. Overall I enjoyed it so long as I suspended my disbelief at certain things.

Unfortunately it took being struck down by Covid and being bedridden for me to actually to binge watch the whole series. So I was behind the curve when my friends, French and those outside of France, started to talk about it around me. I had to beg them not to give away spoilers until I had seen it all.

It did surprise me that it won rave widespread reviews outside France because usually French drama series don’t travel very well outside of France. I’m sure even Netflix had no idea how successful it would be for them. I’m sure being in Covid lockdown had something to do with it. In any case I don’t begrudge its success as it’s well earned.

However I wasn’t too surprised that within France itself the French reviews were decidely mixed and divisive. The critic at Le Point painfully hit the nail on the head when he wrote, “Le plus gros défaut de l'ensemble reste la pauvreté des personnages, tous unidimensionnels, caricaturaux et aussi épais que du papier à cigarette.“ - loosely translated as, ‘the biggest flaw of the whole thing remains the poverty of the characters, all one-dimensional, cartoonish and as thick as cigarette paper’.

There’s a growing amount of good French stuff on TV and streaming services but a non-French audience will not have had the chance to have seen all of it yet. I can think of any number of French television drama/dramedy/cmedy series that are much better than Lupin with better plots, characters, and even a truer perspective of French society and even modern day France (Dix pour cent (Call My Agent!), Le Bureau des Légendes, Engrenages, Baron Noir, and Paris Police 1900). But you would be hard pressed to find anything that comes close to Lupin just for the sake of something fun to watch during the Covid lockdown.

What makes the current generation of home made French television series so interesting is how much of it is a reflection of France’s own anxieities about itself and its role in a increasingly English speaking dominating world. In a funny way it sees itself as defiant plucky Asterix fighting off the Roman American cultural hordes from totally invading their Francophone culture.

For sure, it has societal and racial issues stemming from its colonial legacy and issues of immigration and integration (France has the largest Muslim population in Europe). However it seems to want to ‘resolve’ these issues through the almost sacramental adherence to French secularist ideals rather than American inspired ideas of social justice and equity. There’s always been something very admirable about the French - from the time of General de Gaulle and perhaps before - always swinging from snooty ambivalence to outright antipathy towards the influence of American culture ‘americanising’ French culture (no to Walmarts or fast food chains for example).

Is it any wonder then that Netflix’s ill-conceived American series ‘Emily in Paris’ was widely hated and mocked within France for just perpetuating those lazy American tropes of Paris and French culture?

Personally I know Francophile Americans, long resident in Paris, who were frankly embarrassed and spent a lot of time apologising to their French friends. I have one American friend who has told me that she was so mad that she would have blind folded Emily and shoved her hard in the car boot and drive her all the way to the poorest of the banlieues in the grimey crime saturated suburbs of Paris - Seine-Saint-Denis came to mind - and dump her preening arse there. She would slap her and tell the spoilt entitied brat to make her own way back home - you know, to her spacious apartment in one of the most expensive arrondissements of Paris that of course(!) any American intern working for French marketing firms can afford.

I digress. My apologies. Watching this God awful show gives me PTSD.

Onto Lupin.

Thankfully Lupin doesn’t try to play to non-French tropes of what Paris is or isn’t. It does skim the surface of current discontents within French culture and society (race, class, power, and money) but ever so lightly so as to not get in the way of just spinning a good crowd pleasing yarn. It invites you to have fun and not to think too much. I have to be honest and say I enjoyed it as long as I suspended my disbelief here and there.

Lupin refers of course to the character Arsène Lupin, the French gentleman thief who stole jewellery from Parisian haute bourgeois and aristocracy at the turn of the century. Lupin, as written in the novels and short stories by Maurice Leblanc between 1905 and his death in 1941, was the archetypical anti-hero, a Robin Hood who stole from those who deserved it but kept the loot himself. He was often portrayed often a force for good, while operating on the wrong side of the law.

Lupin never really made much of an impact outside of France as he had within France where is revered with many French film and television adaptations. In England, we already had a Lupin type character in the form of A.J. Raffles, a cricket playing gentleman thief with his aristocratic side kick, Bunny. E.W. Horning’s stories of Raffles’ daring heists proved to be quite popular with the British public when Raffles first appeared on the scene in 1898. And even later Leslie Charteris’ The Saint took over the mantle from Raffles as the gentleman thief/adventuring Robin Hood.

I think Hollywood tried to introduce him to an English speaking audience (legendary actor John Barrymore even played him) but he didn’t really take off and eventually they found their gentleman thief archetype in Sir Charles Lytton aka The Phantom (played by David Niven and Christopher Plummer) in the Pink Panther movies. So Lupin never got the English audience he deserved.

I first got wind of who Arsène Lupin was when I was growing up in Japan as a child. As strange as it sounds Lupin was big in Japan especially after World War Two. The Japanese did their own take on the Lupin character using Japanese actors and plot lines but it was Lupin.

I don’t know how exactly but I remember watching these scratchy DVDs of these Lupin inspired films. I think it was one of my parents’ Japanese friends who was mad for all things Lupin and he had studied French literature in France. Jogging my memory I now recall these black & white films were done in the 1950s. One starred Keiji Sada and the other version I remember was with Eija Okada (he was in Resnais’ classic film, Hiroshima Mon Amour) as Arsene Lupin called (I think) Kao-no Nai Otoko. I didn’t understand most of it at the time because it was all in Japanese and my Japanese (at the time) was pitiful, but it looked fun.

There was even a Japanese manga version of Lupin which was called Lupin III, - so named because he was the grandson of the real Arsène Lupin.

The 1960s manga series spawned generations of TV series which I do remember watching and finding it terribly exciting if somewhat confusing.

It was French expatriate friends whom my family knew that introduced me to the real Arsène Lupin. They had a few of the books authored by Maurice Leblanc. It was in French so I read them to improve my French but enjoyed the story along the way.

I also remember them showing me scratchy episodes of the 1970s Franco-German TV series ‘Arsène Lupin’ with the monocle wearing Georges Descrières in the lead role. It was a classical re-telling of the adventures of the aristocratic gentleman-burglar and very family friendly viewing. I don’t really remember much of it to be honest.

It was some years before I actually started to read more of the Maurice Leblanc’s novels and short stories collection. I have them all now. I was a teen and I remember being stuck in a snowed in a Swiss Alpine chalet and with nothing else to do but pull out a few dog eared books from the bookshelves belonging to our French host and read to pass the time.

I read Les Dents du tigre, Arsène Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes, and Les Huit Coups de l'horloge and thoroughly enjoyed them in the original French. I was already reading classic detective and mystery novels (Sherlock Holmes, Poirot etc) so it was natural to read the adventures of Arsène Lupin.

I haven’t got around to reading all the novels and short stories but I have read most of them and I enjoyed them all immensely. In the same way Conan Doyle, through Holmes and Watson, manages to conjure a convincing picture of late Victorian and early Edwardian England, so Leblanc manages to give us a taste of Belle Epoque France through the eyes of his suave gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin.

Indeed it's a lot like reading Sherlock Holmes in that you're always trying to figure out how he did it, but the difference is that you are rooting for the bad guy. You can’t help but be drawn to this gentleman thief who is charming, comic, playful, and romantic and generous. Lupin is not an intellectual puzzle-solver but first a master criminal, later a detective helper, who maintains his curious ethics throughout his adventures. In this regard he is very much the anti-Sherlock Holmes; and I wasn’t disappointed when I actually read the story where Lupin faces off with Holmes himself. Brilliant!

I’ve also seen the 2004 French movie with Romain Duris in the Lupin lead role and it also starred the majestic Kristin Scott Thomas and the sexy Eva Green.

It was a decent adventure flick and it was a clear confluence of different Lupin novels (The Queen's Necklace (introducing Lupin's childhood), The Hollow Needle (where the treasure is the macguffin of the story), The Arrest of Arsène Lupin (the gala on the ship as a backdrop) and Josephine Balsamo, (one of Lupin’s most memorable opponents in the The Countess Of Cagliostro).

Romaine Duris, a fine classical actor, was I felt miscast because he didn’t have Lupin’s levity of wit and be at ease within himself. I love Duris in his other films but in Arsène Lupin and even in his other film, Moliere, he seemed ill at ease with the role. Perhaps that’s just me.

The latest Netflix adaptation (or reimagining to be more precise) is a welcome addition to the world of Arsène Lupin.If you don’t over-think it, it’s bags of fun.

Omar Sy is immensely likeable. Sy is a deservedly a big star in France - he won the best actor César for “The Intouchables,” an international hit - and has played forgettable secondary characters in big-budget American special effects movies (he was Chris Pratt’s assistant in “Jurassic World” and a minor mutant in “X-Men: Days of Future Past”). It was reportedly his desire to play Arsène Lupin, whom he’s compared to James Bond (“fun, funny, elegant”), that led to the series, created by British writer George Kay. And it is on his charm that the series largely, though not entirely, rests.

So the basic story revolves around a jewellery heist. Sy plays Assane Diop, a first-generation French-Senegalese man in contemporary Paris. A collection of Lupin stories, a gift from his father - whose undeserved fate Assane set himself to avenge in long-delayed, Count of Monte Cristo style upon a criminal tycoon - has made the actual Lupin books a foundation of his life and profitably illicit career. This fan-ship goes as far as borrowing practical ideas from the stories and constructing aliases out of anagrams of “Arsene Lupin,” a habit that will attract the interest of a low-level police detective (Soufiane Guerrab as Youssef Guedira) who shares Assane’s love of the books. (That the detective also shares an initial with Lupin’s own adversary, Inspector Ganimard, is possibly not a coincidence.)

Among the many comic delights of Lupin, is an unspoken one. Time and again, the show’s hero, master thief Assane Diop is able to slip into a place unnoticed, or by assuming a minor disguise that prevents witnesses from providing an accurate description of him to law enforcement.

Why is this funny?

Because Omar Sy is six feet three (and, since most actors are short, seems even taller), is roughly as wide as soccer pitch, and is memorable even before he flashes his infectious million-Euro smile. This is not a man for whom anonymity should be possible - even allowing for racial bias in a majority-white country, Assane would be memorable and distinctive - and Lupin seems cheekily aware of this. Like the various incredible sleights of hand Assane deploys to pull off his thefts and escapes, his ability to be anyone, anywhere, is treated more as a superpower than as something even the world’s greatest criminal would be able to pull off.

At one point, when he’s slated for a cable news appearance as a much older man, we learn that Assane is also a master of disguise. The revelation of this skill arrives with a wink in the show, and it feels pointless to ask where he learned it, or how he affords movie-quality latex and makeup. Or rather, asking the question feels wrong.

We know this is impossible, the show seems to be asking its viewers again and again, but isn’t it so much fun?

The performances and the production - it has that particularly European filmic quality of feeling natural even when it gets stylish - keep the series warm even as the plot is made up of incredulous contraptions that require everything to go right at just the right time and for human psychology to be 100% predictable. Its physics are classical rather than quantum, one might say, and like the world itself, which becomes more curious the deeper you peer into things, it is best handled along the surface. You do not want to take too much time working out the likelihood of any of this happening. Just go along for the ride.

Somehow, though, it all works because Sy is so magnetic and charming that questioning plot logic feels wildly besides the point. Though he never looks appreciably different in his various aliases (including one ill-conceived live-TV appearance done under old-man makeup and a thick beard), he changes his posture and voice ( if you watch it in French that is) enough to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief, in the same way that any lead actor as Superman has to do when playing Clark Kent. But Sy and the show are at their strongest when Assane is just being his own Superman self, utterly relaxed and confident in his own skin, and so captivating that his ex-partner, Claire, can’t really resist him despite ample reason to.

If Assane seems practically perfect in every way, he is not perfectly perfect. His most obvious failing is that his criminal shenanigans and revenging make him less than reliable in his daily life, affecting his relationships with ex-partner Claire (Ludivine Sagnier, whom non-French audiences might recognise from “The Young Pope” and “The New Pope”), who despairs of his inability to show up on time to see his son Raoul (Etan Simon). Like Sy, Sagnier brings a lot of soul to her part - though onscreen far less, she’s as important as Sy to the series’ success - and the two actors have great chemistry. Also impressive and key to creating sympathy are the actors who play their flashback teenage selves, Mamadou Haidara and Ludmilla Makowski. Really, you could do away with action elements and build a series around them.

This is a pity because Lupin often fumbles its emotional reveals in other parts - the story of Diop being torn between his job and his family feels like wheel-spinning, rather than genuine emotional intrigue.

Soufiane Guerrab is wasted in the Young Detective Consumed by the Case role and spends most of this season pinning colour printouts of book covers to cork boards and getting waved off by his colleagues, who are all blinded or otherwise hampered by careerism.

But to my mind the weakest link is the villain himself and his daughter. Veteran actor Hervé Pierre hams it up as Hubert Pellegrini, a business tycoon who is the patriarch of the Pellegrini family. He just comes across as animated cartoon villain with no character depth (think moustache twirling Russian villain, Boris Badenov, in the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon shows). He just emotes anger a lot without any nuance or hint of complexity.

Even Clotilde Hesme who plays the daughter who is unaware of her father’s criminal tendencies is miscast. For the record I adore Clotilde Hesme as she one of France’s most talented classical actresses (that non-French outsiders will not have heard of). She is a classically theatre trained actress and is one of the best stage actresses of her generation that I have ever seen. I’ve seen her in plays where she is just mesmerising. She has said before that she’s more comfortable on the stage than she is on the screen. And when she has been on screen she still has been a powerful presence. She’s actually won a César too. Here in Lupin, she seems to have no agency and looks bored with nothing really to do.I really hope they give her more scenes in the next part of Lupin.

The series is at its best when following Diop enacting his plans, and when revealing each one from a different vantage, making us privy to every moving part like a magician revealing his secrets. The show captures the momentum of a clockwork heist, the tension of sudden obstacles and the ingenuity of improvised responses, with thrilling precision (especially in “Chapter 1 - Le Collier de la reine,” directed by Now You See Me’s Louis Leterrier).

Lupin is also politically incisive when it wants to be; it brings to mind Ladj Ly’s Oscar-nominated 2019 film Les Misérables, which adapted the broad strokes of Victor Hugo’s novel about the 1832 Paris Rebellion, and modernised the story by focusing on the police brutality faced by non-white Parisians.

Lupin opens with Diop disguised as cleaning staff and entering the Louvre after-hours, alongside dozens of forgotten, anonymous non-white workers as they pass by “La Liberté guidant le people,” Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting of the July Revolution of 1830 which replaced France’s hereditary rule with popular sovereignty.

Before any semblance of plot or character, Lupin centres broken ideals and promises unkept (without giving too much away, the show’s primary villain has much more nationalistic view of French culture and history which merely adds to a cartoonish caricature than a complex character). The rest of the episode is about valuable jewels once owned by Marie Antionette - one of the most recognisable symbols of wealth and extravagance in times of extreme poverty - which are put up for auction by the Pelligrini family, and bid on by other wealthy collectors with bottomless purses and no sense of irony.

Granted, beyond this auction subplot, explorations of race and class are largely limited to individual interactions, but the show continues to refer back to (and implicitly comment on) its source material in ways that wink at the audience. An elderly, unassuming target of Diop’s schemes seems like an unlikely victim at first - Diop, though he acts in his own self-interest, usually displays a moral compass - until this victim reveals the colonial origins of her wealth, immediately re-contextualising the ethics of the situation, in a manner that Leblanc’s stories did not. (The show is yet to apply this lens to Arsène Lupin himself, who Diop treats with reverence, but that’s a secondary concern since Lupin is entirely fictional in-world).

Barring some nagging structural problems - like cutting to flashbacks when things are getting exciting, or epilogues that feel ten minutes too long - Lupin mostly works. It plants a few personal seeds early on, which it keeps hinting at without fully addressing, but by the time its scattered elements come into focus, the show finally figures out how to weave them together, and delivers a mid-season cliffhanger that renders many of these flaws irrelevant.

Lupin manages to have fun even with an antiquated premise - the story of a suave con-man who charms his way through high-profile robberies - while adding just enough new spin on the concept to feel refreshing. Omar Sy may not have much to work with, but his alluring presence makes Assane Diop feel like a worthy successor to Arsène Lupin.

Lupin isn’t going to win César, BAFTA, or Emmy awards, or even turn heads for its ability to develop tertiary or even secondary plots or characters - that doesn’t really matter. You’re there to see a difficult hero be difficult and heroic - everyone else is there to be charmed, vexed, or eluded by them. Sy’s performance bounds off the screen, and is almost musical. He floats through scenes like he glides over the roofs and through the back alleys of Paris; he outmanoeuvres his foes with superior literary references and sheer athleticism. He is irresistible and also good at everything he tries, even kidnapping.

I would encourage anyone to watch Lupin for a fun care free ride. But the only caveat I would make is watch it in the original French.

If you don’t know French then put on the subtitles to understand (that’s what they are there for). The real crime is to watch this (or any film or television series) dubbed in a foreign language. It’s disrespectful to the actors and film makers and it’s silly because it’s comical to watch something dubbed over.

Please watch it in the original French.

Then go and read the books. You won’t regret it.

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #lupin #omar sy #netflix #tv show #culture #personal #arsene lupin #japan #maurice leblanc #france #french #society #arts

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morgana-ren · 4 years ago

Note

I noticed youd said that you get more shiggy requests. So, if you'll indulge me for a sec.

We've had gatos input on how strade would be if the roles were reversed. Mc somehow had him under their control with the shock collar on.

I want your input because your writing is so detailed i know id enjoy reading what a submissive little bitch he'd become.

Please and thank you Morgana.

ily :3

Oh OH You know me so well! This is one of my favorite things to daydream about when I get angry or annoyed because since Strade is such a garbage human being, it tickles me so much to think about how cathartic it would be to turn the tables.

So as well all know, Strade, while very experienced, is not the brightest bulb in the box. He’s got years of know-how behind his expertise in kidnapping and torture, but there’s some shit that just kind of evades him sometimes. Double checking your ropes after he gets a little too excited and wants a dirty basement floor romp, for example. Thanks to his overexcitement and shit-idiot brain fungus he’s got going on, it’s entirely possible for you to slip your bonds. This mistake, in canon, costs him his life.

But what if MC wasn’t so kind?

With a level head, you might be able to scrounge around his torture room for a little bit. Maybe he has a needle with some knockout liquid hanging around for “difficult” catches. Maybe you just wait around behind the door until he walks in and smash him on the head as hard as you can and knock his ass out. Either way, he’s got plenty of restraints, and now he’s the one cuffed to a rusty pole. The look on his dumb face when he comes to is priceless.

You’re not making the same mistakes he did. He’s triple tied to that thing. You know he’s strong, and you’re playing on his home field. You’ve got to be prepared for everything. At least long enough to get upstairs and find help or call the police. Right? Right?

But what if you don’t?

What if, after he comes to and is sputtering and howling and hissing things at you in German that would make Lindemann blush, you decide not to go for help? He’s mad. He’s oh so very mad. He does not like this, not one bit. But he’s panicking beyond what you’d expect, even for a serial killer who’s been two-timed by his own victim. There’s something else in those dilated eyes. Something you’ve become very acutely familiar with over the last few days. You can still smell it lingering on you the same way it’s staining his shirt now.

Fear. He’s afraid. And not of death or capture.

I mean, he very well might be terrified of those things, but whatever it is he’s feeling right now is far overshadowing that. His face is red, and you can practically see the veins in his neck popping in rhythm with his thrumming heartbeat. He’s sweating extensively, and while that’s not uncommon for him, there’s not that macabre jolly smile plastered across his face. He’s baring his teeth and snapping at you like a feral hound, swearing to end your miserable life in a manner that would make the ghosts of his past shudder in horror for you.

You don’t put it past him to snap these ropes any second and wrap his hands so tightly around your neck that your eyes pop like overinflated balloons. Even if the cops show up and try to escort you to safety, there’s an unspoken darkness in his glare, something that promises pain in your future even if they manage to subdue him. A promise that you can’t guarantee yourself that he can’t keep.

It strikes you that you know nothing about this man.

Surely someone out there knows about this. Someone knows about him and his little hobby. Monsters run in packs and even if you can’t see them, you know they must be there. Best case scenario, they can’t have him spilling their secrets so they find a way to end his life before the police can. Worst case scenario? Worst case, they come for you.

You’ve seen enough Hollywood horror movies to know just how wrong it can go if justice is left to the authorities. You haven’t seen much of it, but this looks like a pretty nice house. If he has money, he can just buy his way out. Who is to say that he doesn’t already have a deal with the cops? Kidnapping people is risky business, especially when folks begin to notice that you’re gone. Surely he has some safety net?

What if he’s part of a network of psychopaths? There’s been enough late-night conspiracy youtube binges in your existence to know that shit like that is perfectly plausible. What if he’s just one of many? What if they have the pull to see him set free even after you’ve gone through the proper avenues to get him locked away? What if, one night, when you think he’s rotting in a 6 x 6 cement cell miles away from you, you wake up back here in this basement with even more Strades with different names and faces but each one shares the desire to see you ripped apart at the seams and devoured?

No. HELL no. You’re not going to be the cliche victim. He can bark and screech at you until his throat is sore and his gums bleed, but the plain and simple fact of the matter is that you have this monster on a leash, and you’re not about to hand that leash over to someone else.

How many people has he killed? How many have met their end in this godless basement? How many unsuspecting people has he dragged here only to take them apart piece by piece until their eyes glaze and their final breath moistens his cheek as he watches the light in their eyes extinguish? Do you even want to know? Would it make you feel better or worse to know that, at least for now, you’ve narrowly escaped such a fate?

You have to know.

His screaming turns fearful as you ascend the stairs. Again, not for fear of being caught, but because he already has been. It’s so odd to hear the phrase “Don’t leave me here!” from his quivering chest when he’s apparently in the place he values most, and there’s a sick sense of catharsis that settles in your gut as you listen to him begin to whimper and whine. You don’t let yourself dwell on it but you do slam the door behind you loudly enough that he will be forced to acknowledge that his pathetic pleas mean nothing to you.

His house is painfully average, at least for someone like him. He’s even got portraits up with what must be friends or family or someone that cares enough to pose for a cheesy photo with him. If you didn’t know better, you’d say an upstanding, if a little tacky, upper-middle class man lives here. The furniture is unremarkable and well cared for but lived in enough to not raise suspicion. His kitchen is filled with expensive appliances that might as well be fresh out of the box. His fridge, as expected, is filled with beer and various quick meals. Not much of a cook, you guess.

The car sitting in the garage costs in the six digit range and looks like it’s the most beloved thing in the entire area. It reeks of Armor All and disinfectant, and you’re willing to bet that if he was so inclined, he could put it on a showroom floor right now. He’s got tools and cables of all sorts thrown about, but not the kind you’ve gotten so used to. Maybe he actually does use them for their intended purpose sometimes.

As you walk the length of his home, you notice a distinct lack of screaming. You can’t hear anything, not even a peep from the basement, and you are very certain he’s crying up a storm down there. Interesting. He’s go this place sound proofed. You’re not sure what you’d expected, but it��s good information to have regardless.

After you’ve sated your curiosity by observing the dragon’s den, you make your way to the upper level. He’s probably not foolish enough to leave any sort of evidence behind where friends and neighbors can see it, so whatever it is you’re looking for is going to be somewhere a little bit more personal. Perhaps like a bedroom?

Bingo.

His bedroom, much like the rest of his house, looks about what you’d expect. King sized bed, wooden dresser with a TV and player on top, and a desk beneath the window. Sliding closet doors with all manner of free range dad apparel inside, and honestly, it’s the closest you’ve been to laughing since you got here. He would wear cargo shorts and plaid, wouldn’t he? A scrounge through the drawers of his dresser and closet reveal nothing remarkable, but you’re willing to bet your injured thigh that there’s something special in the desk.

Just like you’d expect, the desk is locked, but you’d noticed a pair of keys sitting willy-nilly out in the living room and you’d picked them up. About 7 key changes later and the desk pops open for you like a cheap whore. He really isn’t too bright, is he? Or maybe he just wasn’t expecting this to ever be a problem. Either way, you’re grateful he’s a moron.

Inside the drawer seems to be loads of DVDs, unmarked except for dates. It feels like you’re the unprepared cop in a serial killer movie as you look down at them. You don’t need to watch them to know what they are, but you’re going to anyway. You have to know. You need to know just who you’re dealing with here.

You pick one at random and pop it into the DVD player and the scene that greets you seems all too familiar. A hunched figure, bloodied and tied to the pole you’d become so intimate with over the last week. This person was in much worse shape than you, however. You could see shadows moving off screen and the camera fuzzes and refocuses repeatedly as what you assume is Strade messes with the controls. Not long after, he emerges, practically skipping into frame. Even though most of his face is concealed behind a hideous bandana, you can tell he’s smiling. It reaches his eyes.

He says what appears to be a rehearsed greeting and you’re left wondering just how crazy is he? Is he talking to his future self? You can see him making these videos to relive his sick, sadistic fantasies but talking to himself like an absolute lunatic is just a little disconcerting. However, you also acknowledge that the only reason you’ve even thinking about this is to distract yourself from the fact that you’re watching a homemade snuff film that you almost starred in yourself.

And then he begins.

Despite the visceral horror on display before you, the urge to vomit never comes. You watch, blank faced, as this poor soul is faced with every horror a human mind can conceive. It goes on for long. Too long. And Strade never stops talking.

The realization sets in that’s because he’s not the only one watching.

He’s not talking to himself. He’s responding. This wasn’t for him. This was for them.

If you had any emotional energy to give, surely you’d be absolutely horrified, but you don’t and you can’t. You’re not even surprised. Someone like Strade, that bubbly personality and 1,000 watt smile, of course he’d find a way to utilize his talents. He’d found a market. He had a hobby and he made money from it. ‘Love your job and you’ll never work a day in your life.’ and you are just so willing to bet he loves his fucking job.

You let the video keep playing as you sit up from his bed and leave the room. You make your way down the stairs, back to the living room, and then back to the basement door. You open it and immediately are bombarded with the sounds of his screaming and hateful vitriol. It doesn’t phase you. You’re not sure anything will ever again.

Calmly, you walk into the room and stare at him. He doesn’t cease his incessant threats until he realizes you’re waiting for him to finish so that you can speak. He finally silences himself, though he continues to rip and tear at the ropes holding him hostage as you tell him you found his little home video collection.

“Let me out.” He demands, and you realize he doesn’t quite understand that he’s not the one in control anymore. Of course a dog without a tangible leash will continue to run wild. You needed to drive the point home.

You turn your back to him and begin to ruffle through his various cabinets, searching around the nooks and crannies for something that will help him understand just what position he’s found himself in. You make a very interesting discovery next to his med kit. A collar. A literal collar.

Poetic justice.

It’s thick and burdensome and more than a little hideous. It’s definitely homemade, because not even the most fucked of BDSM sites are going to offer something like this. It’s accompanied by a small remote with a large red button and not much else. You push the button and yelp in pain, the collar clattering to the floor as it slips from your fingers. It shocked you. It was so very painful, but you’re smiling.

You retrieve it from where it fell and pop it open, observing it curiously. Strade watches you through wide eyes and sniveling, trembling lips. The look on his face is a dead giveaway that you’ve found something you really shouldn’t have. The toothy grin you flash him shows him that you understand that.

Without a word, you approach him, holding the open collar in your sweating palm. His struggles begin anew and before long he’s practically yanking his arms out at the sockets trying to get away from you and your newfound toy. He’s throwing his weight around and doing whatever he can with his limited movements to make damn sure you can’t get that terrible thing around his neck, but it’s all in vain because energy is finite and he’s been expending a lot of it over the last hour.

He’s breathing heavy and you could swear he’s begging between heaves as you clap the collar around his thick neck. His flesh bulges from the side and you’re fairly certain it was made for someone much less burly than himself in mind. You get the odd urge to adjust it on him like a necklace but he’s still dangerous, even caged. You feel weirdly... proud.

“Stop-! you don’t know what you’re doing!” He hiccups, and as he pulls his head upward, you can see he is indeed crying. “Please! Don’t!”

You’ve never thought of yourself as particularly sadistic, at least in that sense, but some ghostly force pushes your thumb down on that big red button. Watching his eyes go wide and his body convulse and seize fills you with a sense of sheer euphoria that can’t properly be conveyed. The utterly satisfying clang of his head hitting the pole at mach 5 as he shakes and bumbles almost humorously while the collar sends x amount of volts through his body makes you giggle.

When you finally pull your thumb off the button, he’s still shaking from the residual shock, drool and mucus bubbling from his mouth and nose and sloping down onto his chin. He looks defeated; utterly pathetic. Is this how you looked to him all those times he stood over you grinning as he gifted you pain the likes of which had been unthinkable to you before you met him? The desire to push down again is overwhelming but you’re determined for him to understand there’s a point to this misery.

There’s a thousand thoughts going through your mind right now faster than you can comprehend them all, but they all have the same general principal. This man is a murderer. This man is a rapist. This man is contained. This man is afraid. This man is at your mercy.

And unfortunately for him, you just ran out.

‘How many’ you ask, despite already knowing. If the videos upstairs are any indication, there’s more than he can probably count. More names and faces than he can practically remember and they’re dead because of him. He looks up at you through wet lashes with a trembling lip, already caught on to the fact that there is no correct answer. Your thumb hovers over that seductive red button and he’s quick to spit out whatever he can regardless.

“I don’t know! I don’t!”

You don’t doubt that he’s being honest, but it sickens you none he less. You press that button for half a second and he jolts up off the floor as much as his restraints will allow. When he comes to, his eyes can barely focus in on you and when his slumps over, you can see the burns from the collar already settling in on his tan skin. You’re not sure how to turn down the voltage or how lethal it is, but you don’t really care at the moment. If he dies, he dies. You’ll deal with the complications of that later.

You could sit here all day and grill him, literally and figuratively, about his track record of atrocities, but it won’t bring you any peace. You’re not sure that peace is something that you’ll ever feel again, all things considered. Meeting the monsters that dwell in the dark is drastically different than simply acknowledging that they exist, and through some twist of fate, you’ve been given the opportunity to show this particular monster that he’s no longer at the top of the food chain. There’s so much you could do, so many things you want to do, and it’s at that moment you realize you’ve spent too long staring into the abyss to try and claw your way out.

You’re being offered the chance they never were. You’re holding the controls now. He’s already crying and you’ve barely touched him, barely done anything besides shock him a little. You remember that feeling well. If you recall, you were already crying before he put that knife to your thigh on your first day with him.

Truth is, you decided the second he fell unconscious what you were going to do.

Maybe a revenge like this isn’t yours to take, but you’re taking it regardless. For yourself, and for every sorry sap that’s met their end in his cement hellhole. They died for you to have this opportunity, and you’d like to think that maybe they’re there with you in this moment. Even if you never knew them, you feel a strange kinship with them. After all, it was almost you.

He continues to babble underneath his breath, various pleas for mercy or sympathy or any form of compassion you can muster from your still aching body, and though you desperately wish you did, you can’t find any. You’re certain when you look in the mirror next, it won’t be your own eyes looking back at you anymore, but something closer to his. Maybe you did die in this basement, because whoever you were before you met him is long gone and has been replaced with something so much more empty.

You explain to him, as gently as you can, that it’s your turn now, and his resistance will only make this harder. You don’t delight in seeing him in pain (whether or not that’s a lie has yet to be determined) but it’s a necessary evil for all he’s done. You don’t believe his life is yours to take, but you’d be as terrible as him if you let him loose on the world again. You can’t trust anyone but yourself, and since this situation is so delicate, you need a bit more time to think on it.

He doesn’t seem to understand, at least until you’re binding his legs and securing his head snuggly to the pole. Maybe it’s overkill considering the man looks like he belongs in a shibari magazine right now, but there’s no precautions you can’t take. You can’t have him escaping. It’s far too soon, and you have such wonderful things planned.

Were you a kinder soul, maybe you would put him to sleep because it’s so apparent he’s terrified. Being bound like this has really brought out his inner little bitch, and the way he’s looking, he’s going to piss himself. But its a price it’s only fair that he pay, all things considered. You don’t know what time it is or even where you are, but you know you’ll return to him when you’ve been rejuvenated, eager and ready to begin on him. You’re only a few steps toward the door when he begins shouting, words barely discernible between his emphatic weeping and sobbing hiccups.

“D-don’t leave me here in the dark! Let me go, let me out! You can’t! You can’t leave me here like this!” You grin softly, turning slowly to face him, and tell him that you can and you will. You ask what he’s so afraid of, but you don’t wait to hear the answer as you step through the frame and shut the door behind you, leaving him to rot in his personal dungeon. It’s only been an hour and he’s already so pliable. You wonder what you can make him do when you really make it hurt. Psychology says it takes 7 years to brainwash someone and coerce them into absolute compliance, but you’re willing to bet you can have it done in a few months.

You already know one of his fears, and are very clearly not ashamed to exploit it. How many else does he have, you might wonder, already planning tomorrow’s festivities. Maybe you were sicker in the head than you thought. Maybe Strade just brought out the worst in you, stripped away all that made you human and left you with raw hurt and despair.

It’s tempting. To give in. To sit and massage your aching body while listening to his screams as they echo through the soundproofed basement. But you’re tired, and you haven’t slept in a bed in over a week. His looked awfully nice. Maybe after that, you’d wash the dried blood from your battered body, order some food, and appreciate the niceties that civilized life had to offer. Niceties you took for granted.

After that? Well, after that you had a new pet to train.

#snaspants #Strade #BTD #NSFT #tw torture mention #im mean just mean lmao #IM LOVE YOU GIRL!!

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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The Many Saints of Newark Is a Trashy Gangster B-Movie, There’s Nothing Wrong with That

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When I first walked out of The Many Saints of Newark, my initial reaction was to call it a B-movie. What I didn’t say at the time, however, was how much I love B-movies. While I saw the flaws in the film and couldn’t wholly endorse it to cinemagoers spoiled by the perfection of The Godfather, Goodfellas, and New Jack City, I can wholeheartedly recommend it to people like me. Those who appreciate the low-budget gangster movies sometimes because of their warts. A majority of fans of The Sopranos will have the same reaction: Meh, The Many Saints of Newark could have been better. So when’s it playing next? I plan to see it again, more than once, on the big screen.

In one of the film’s quieter moments, the Soprano family is gathered around a TV set, watching the classic Key Largo (1948). The specific scene on the screen begins when Humphrey Bogart’s cynical combat veteran Frank McCloud defuses a tense situation with the gangster Johnny Rocco. Played by Edward G. Robinson, Rocco is very loosely based on Charles “Lucky” Luciano, the godfather of organized crime, who had been deported and barred from American soil. He is suffering the same doubts Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) worries about in the pilot episode of The Sopranos: Are the best days of this “thing” over?

All gangsters want, as the black and white film explains, is more. Will they ever get enough? They never have. I don’t suppose they will. It is the same for gangster genre fans. We want more. And it doesn’t have to be great. “I don’t want it good. I want it Tuesday,” Jack Warner famously said about the gangster films his studio excelled in. Warner Bros. invented the gangster genre, and I felt a thrill when their name came first on the screen during The Many Saints of Newark. WB’s Key Largo is a prestige film. It’s got John Huston directing, he’d go on to make amazing mob movies, culminating with his magnificent Prizzi’s Honor. Key Largo boasts an A-list offering with top stars like Lauren Bacall, Claire Trevor, and Lionel Barrymore. And it’s a pairing of two legends who take their performances seriously, and believe in the art of acting: Bogart and Robinson.

But Bogart and Robinson made four B-movie gangster classics before they made the prestigious Key Largo: Bullets or Ballots, Kid Galahad, Brother Orchid, and The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, which was so badly scripted that the two leads took to calling it “The Amazing Dr. Clitoris.” I’ve seen it eight times. Are there holes in the story? Of course. And they don’t get any better after the third viewing. What does get better is watching the performances of two professional actors in films they are on record as saying they did not like. Twice, as it turns out, because it was revived as a radio play a few years later, according to the book Bogart, by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax.

Robinson played a psychiatrist, studying Bogart’s gangster, and the two characters bond while keeping a wary distance. This is very similar to the dynamic between Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) on The Sopranos. She even worried the mob boss was using their therapeutic sessions in the furtherance of crime, something Bogart’s character did in the B-movie gangster film, King of the Underworld, which is awful and I never miss. I love that movie, not in spite of Bogie’s misunderstanding of the meaning of “the moronic type,” but because of it. He doesn’t do that in other movies, even in the masterful B-movie gangster comedies, It All Came True and All Through the Night.

But Bogart also made Dead End (1937), a quality piece, which happens to be my favorite film, ever. Based on the play by Sidney Kingsley, it spends a lot of its time in the same way The Many Saints of Newark does: teaching the young generation how to be gangsters. This is seen even more blatantly in the film Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), which paired James Cagney with the Dead End Kids. But threads of this even reach the juvenile delinquent movie Blackboard Jungle, also not a big-budget film, but realistic enough to show the teenagers were actually moving swag for bigger names.

It happens in real life, the mob looks to street gangs for promising young movers. Future dons make their bones wearing colors. Gangster films capture this. From Nino Brown (Wesley Snipes) in Mario Van Peebles’ New Jack City to Spike Lee’s Clockers, original gangstas groom carbon copies. Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola) sees potential in young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini) during The Many Saints of Newark. Great potential.

When Tony and his young gang hijack the Mr. Softee truck and give out ice cream to kids for free, it feels like The Sopranos creator and The Many Saints of Newark co-screenwriter, David Chase, was chasing the feel of the East Side Kids. Old Bowery Boys movies were aired weekly in the New York/New Jersey area when Tony was growing up, and all those movies were made by the icon of B-Movie studios, Monogram Pictures.

Monogram Pictures sat on Hollywood’s “poverty row,” and churned out pictures as fast as Detroit made cars. The Bowery Boys comedy troupe made almost a picture a month alone. But just like the Warner Brothers assembly line occasionally manufactured transcendent art, some of the cheapies are magnificently crafted. Sopranos fans should watch Angels in Disguise, one of the lesser-known gangster comedies, directed by Jean Yarbrough in 1949. It is, if not the first, one of the first mock-documentaries, and it is a good bet David Chase saw it, more than once. Leo Gorcey is even more of a master of the malaprop than Carmine Lupertazzi Jr. (Ray Abruzzo) on The Sopranos.

Monogram Pictures also caught the attention of French directors François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who structured films based on their model, according to the book The Films of Jean-Luc Godard by Wheeler W. Dixon. It is no wonder, the studio’s almost-no-budget 1947 quickie Dillinger turned RKO contract player Lawrence Tierney into an icon of film noir. The Fall Guy, from the same year, dared to coke up the star Leonard Penn, and we’re not talking soda pop.

Also in 1947, 20th Century Fox’s low budget Kiss of Death introduced the screen audiences to the sadistic Tommy Udo. The role earned Richard Widmark an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and the admiration of “Crazy” Joe Gallo, whose insurrection against the Five Families of New York crime was the basis for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

Low budget studio production paved the way for the independent film movement in America, which The Many Saints of Newark proudly emulates. Director Alan Taylor recently admitted to Den of Geek that he’s “drunk deep at the well of Scorsese,” and we can see Mean Streets all over the Sopranos prequel. Also in evidence is Barry Shear’s Across 110th Street (1972), which pitted the Italian mob against Black gangsters; John Cassavetes’s 1976 indie classic, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie; The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), directed by Stuart Rosenberg; and Abel Ferraro’s King of New York (1990).

The Many Saints of Newark is also too closely related to Wim Wenders’ 1977 gangster film, The American Friend, which cut corners on plot points as much as it did on budget. Logic is replaced by street smarts, and continuity is a game of three card monte in B-movie gangster films. The Many Saints of Newark is not exempt. There is a scene where one mobster’s mistress is sleeping with the rival for his turf. Except for one rude stare, the audience doesn’t see it coming. But how it turns out, with the convenient surf and turf to cover the evidence, is telegraphed from a mile away.

Movies

Once Upon a Time in America Is Every Bit as Great a Gangster Movie as The Godfather

By Tony Sokol

Culture

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Real-Life and Pop Culture

By Tony Sokol

Arthur Penn’s genre-redefining Bonnie and Clyde came out in 1967, the same year as The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Roger Corman spared every expense for his B-movie mobsterpiece. There are scenes where it is visibly apparent that a fleet of vintage background cars are just the same few automobiles driven in circles around the set. I’ve seen both movies multiple times, and enjoy them equally each time.

Just because The Many Saints of Newark isn’t a perfect film does not make it less of a classic. It certainly doesn’t make it less appealing for repeated viewings. The film follows a grand tradition of gangster filmmaking: street legal over mainstream currency, it could have fallen off the back of a truck. I would love to see whatever scenes were cut to make it fit into a two-hour viewing, because the film felt rushed. But I will watch it again.

The Many Saints of Newark premieres in theaters and on HBO Max on Friday, Oct. 1.

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welcome-to-green-hills · 3 years ago

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How did you know that you wanted to be an archaeologist? Sounds like it could be exciting and scary at the same time

I think that this is an excellent question, but I just need to clarify my understanding here. Do you mean in terms of “childhood,” or when you do a field school?

In terms of childhood, I always knew that I wanted to be a scientist in some shape and form. I remember as kid I would try to make my own “science lab” in my bedroom closet and buy science kits at the arts-and-crafts store to make elements for the periodic table, or study human biology (Bless you, mom. You’re a trooper for raising me all by yourself. Heck, thank you and my younger brother for being the only ones who were supportive of me becoming a scientist). And of course, I grew up watching all of the movies with archaeologists and anthropologists as the protagonists of the series. Like, Indiana Jones: Raider of the Lost Tomb, the Mummy, Disney’s the Lost City of Atlantis, Bones.

Anthropology and Archaeology always were to loves of my life, I just didn’t know that I could actually become one.

In terms of career, it’s a highly recommended necessity to take a field school for both anthropology and archaeology when you get the degree. Now, I do blame Hollywood a lot when it comes to displaying the life of an archaeologist and anthropologist in movies/TV shows. The things that you see in Indiana Jones, the Mummy, and the Lost City of Atlantis are not what we do. They are, what we call in the field, “antiquarians.” An antiquarian is a person who does, in fact, steal from sites and use it for a personal expense, such as a personal museum. (This is what Twitter user have in mind when they whine about a profession that they’ve got no experience with). It takes months to get permits, permission from local and state governments, and always have people breathing down our necks.

I knew that I 100% wanted to do this when I fell and hurt myself. The first time that I’ve done fieldwork was in a dangerous terrain. The place that I was excavating hadn’t been touch in years and vegetation grew out of control. We had to carefully remove vegetation that wouldn’t harm the environment. If we weren’t careful, then we were fined by the state. There was also the fear of tripping over tree roots and falling into the high-tide river with razor sharp oyster beds on the floor. As I’m carefully removing some of the vegetation to insert our nails into the ground, I trip over a root of a tree. (I fell in a way that prevented me from falling into the river, but I bruised my back and hip doing so. I think that’s better than needing a hospital to get stitches).

The way that I landed into the tree allowed me to see some very early 18th century pottery tucked away in the root. What my team theorized was that when the tree grew over the years, the tree uprooted the potter and preserved it well within the surface roots presently. The pottery piece was archived and put into a museum to be studied further after that, for those who are wondering. Finding that piece of ceramic the sign that I needed. Nothing else was found for first few days that were there, but finding that first artefact on my first day of field school the sign that I needed. Finding prehistoric ceramic art, Native American art, was what really sold me into the field that I specialize in archaeology as well. If not for my studies in art history, then many would have mistaken the art as a rock.

You never really know what you want to do in life until you try it. And I’m very grateful that I did. I hope that this answers your question, my friend!

#Mystery anon #off topic #I remember the first weekend coming home I sobbed the whole time over the cool thing that I found in the tree #Absolutely try everything!#Never forget who is there for you... never forget the ones that stay by your side and help you through everything #It's worth it #I am an anthropologist #i am an archaeologist #I specialize in Indigenous archaeology and cultural anthropology

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rwby-redux · 3 years ago

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Transcribed from a video uploaded by Talks at Google, of a presentation given by David J. Peterson on his book, “The Art of Language Invention.”

The following transcription is from part of the Q&A segment, where David Peterson addresses an audience member’s question of whether or not TV shows should use endangered minority languages in place of constructed languages. Because of how this issue pertains to both RWBY’s canon and the Redux, I chose to reference his answer in Worldbuilding: Languages, and provide readers with a written version of their exchange for ease-of-access.

Audience Member: So, every year, you know, we lose dozens, maybe hundreds, of human languages to extinction, and we lose the cultural payload with them. How do you feel about the ethics of conlangs going into—people running around, geeking out on Klingon, when we’re losing real human languages that they could be learning. And why do you not consider using obscure human languages for some of these shows? Bring them back a little bit. Give them a new life. Make people aware of them, rather than artificial languages.

David Peterson: Let me ask you this—how do you feel about people getting really, really excited about novels like The Hunger Games, which are stories about fake people, when we’re losing the stories of real people every day that are dying?

Audience Member: Honestly, I think that’s sort of false analogy. We have—and I admit I come from a very specific basis on this. But I guess I would say, how do you feel about ISIS destroying antiquities when we could make new stuff?

David Peterson: I’m sorry, say the last part?

Audience Member: How do you feel about ISIS destroying antiquities when we could make new stuff? That’s equivalent to yours. Is it—and I’m not saying what you’re doing is wrong—

David Peterson: [laughing] You’re saying that I’m destroying natural languages in order to produce—

Audience Member: I’m not saying you’re destroying natural languages. I’m saying, could we not use some of the energies that people go into learning conlanguages, geeking out about conlanguages, going to Klingon conventions. I’ll tell you, I got very annoyed when I see—I saw even here at Google recently, people talking about looking for Klingon resources to do something in Klingon, and it’s like great, but let’s put that effort to saving a real language because when we lose those languages—when the last speaker dies—it’s never coming back as a living language.

David Peterson: Yeah, so, of course—and in fact, if they weren’t going to be doing Klingon they would be doing the other thing, right?

Audience Member: That’s how it ends.

David Peterson: So let’s stop—

Audience Member: You could use real human languages for some of these—

David Peterson: You certainly could. Yeah. We could have found a—for example, we could have found some very rarely spoken language and given it to the barbaric Dothraki, who are ripping people’s tongues out. How would that have been?

Audience Member: I wasn’t necessarily saying Dothraki.

David Peterson: Okay. Okay, but that’s actually the issue that comes up. For example, there are a lot of languages that are dying out right now. Not the majority of them, but certainly a minority of them, that are dying because the speakers don’t want other people to use their language. They don’t want people to write it down. They don’t want foreigners speaking them. Do we respect that? Do we just kind of sigh and let the language die out and respect the wishes of these people who don’t want contact with the outside world? It’s a different kind of ethical question. But personally, there are two ways of looking at it. One, artistically, if you’re talking about a totally fictional reality, it breaks the reality to use a language that actually is spoken by other people on Earth. It’s kind of an odd thing. I always find it odd when people are speaking English when they oughtn’t to be, like Amadeus. I mean, it was a fantastic movie. It was a fantastic movie, but honestly why were they speaking English? Especially like, I don’t know. Well, it’s actually kind of a bizarre thing of movies that we think British English would have been better than American English.

[Audience laughs.]

David Peterson: I mean it wouldn’t, it’s the same thing, but I don’t know. So artistically, it simply breaks [the immersion], and honestly, there’s no alternative here. The alternative to using creative language in Defiance was English. They were never, ever going to consider using any other natural language, or the expense involved in finding somebody to translate into those languages. And then furthermore if you think about, especially some very—some minority languages that aren’t spoken very well—by very many people—and you start to translate some of the dialogue in Defiance. For example, this sentence that I showed you about the chlorine gas [from earlier during the presentation]. Odds are that Pirahã doesn’t have a word for chlorine. So then it’s a question of what you do. It seems doubtful that you could get a speaker up there [to a studio] who would have to learn and understand English well enough and perform on a deadline to be able to translate into it, so you need somebody else. And undoubtedly they would have to create words. They would have to create words either by working with native roots, or have a whole load of English borrowings in there, or worse, create words—they kind of look like the real language—and use them in those scripts. Which to me seems really offensive. Essentially you’re creating words to plunk down into somebody’s actually-existing language. You’re not a part of the culture, and you’re saying, “Well, we’re going to represent this as a word in your language for the purposes of this television show.” I just can’t see that being a good idea.

[Pause.]

David Peterson: On a separate note, if you just kind of remove the created language aspect entirely—the fact, of course, that there are dying languages is terrible. It’s a question of what can you do as an outsider in order to either prevent it, or to preserve those languages. I’m not sure how a lot of speakers of minority languages would feel if there were, say, a bunch of teenagers from southern California who started to learn their language just because they thought it was cool, and funky, and it was for these quirky people in this show. That, at least for me, would make me feel a little uncomfortable. So I think that the sentiment is well-founded. I don’t think that the solution you presented is a good one, or feasible, or necessarily respectful. I also think that for standard preservation of languages there are people that are trained to do that. It’s not an easy thing. And of course I know them, and in fact have studied under them coming through linguistics. It’s not just something that anybody can do. And it takes a lot of work with the culture, and having worked with Hollywood a bunch, it’s a lot of work that I know that nobody would be interested in doing. They wouldn’t be interested in paying for it, they wouldn’t be interested in taking the time with it, because they have deadlines and they’re doing what they’re going to do. I’m not sure if that answered every single aspect of your question, but if not, I’m happy to talk about it further because this is an issue that comes up every single time created languages are discussed. So thanks.

Talks at Google. “The Art of Language Invention | David Peterson | Talks at Google.” YouTube video. August 24, 2015. 47:59 - 54:32. [https://youtu.be/Z50T-tslrgs?t=2869]

#languages #conlang #racism #cultural appropriation #transcription #david peterson

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magnctic · 4 years ago

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introducing . . . 𝐉𝐀𝐒𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐑𝐀𝐌𝐎𝐒 !!!

an acting and performing major . the first trans woman in the opal society ( and therefore , the first trans ruby ) . a chameleon . 2 - time oscar award winner , and 5 - times nominated . a 3 - time emmy award nominee . an icon . an activist . a lgbtqia + legend . the first of many . a paver of paths .

notable filmography includes: disclosure , diary entries , the queens throne , where she stood , the jasmine ramos story .

𝙹𝙰𝚂𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙴 𝚁𝙰𝙼𝙾𝚂 was raised by two self proclaimed ‘ psychics ‘ . mr marcus and antonio ramos . the pair were performers from birth , and met whilst in the travelling circus together . they were elaborate and loud , and fun at any party . card tricks . tarot readings . ‘ magic ‘ and illusions . the pair knew how to put on a show better than anyone . they knew how to trick a crowd and enchant people of any nature . they were boisterous and ridiculous , but they were also enigmatic and beloved . when they adopted jasmine . . they knew they’d love her larger than they even loved each other .

𝙹𝙰𝚂𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙴 𝚆𝙰𝚂 𝙰 𝙵𝙸𝚁𝙴𝙲𝚁𝙰𝙲𝙺𝙴𝚁 . just like her fathers , she was raised with a sneaky grin that even the cheshire cat would be jealous of . she was loud and unashamed . she was the girl that people walked over and cooed at , pinching her cheeks because jasmine just had that something . that pull . that energy . she could win over even the coldest of hearts - charm was synonymous with the ramos name , after all .

𝙱𝚈 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚃𝙸𝙼�� 𝚂𝙷𝙴 𝚆𝙰𝚂 𝙰 𝚃𝙴𝙴��𝙰𝙶𝙴𝚁 , her father’s had opened up their very own ‘ mystic ‘ shop . they held tarot readings in the backroom , over crystal balls . they wore expensive silks draped over their heads , and deepened their voices dramatically as they told people just what they claimed to see for their futures . marcus and antonio drew people in . although some claimed their tarot readings to be 100% accurate and correct , most people simply came just to see the magic of the ramos family : warm , familiar , inviting . everybody was a friend to them . they were alluring . sensational . captivating . above all : loving .

𝚃𝙰𝚁𝙾𝚃 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙳𝙸𝙽𝙶 was fun for jasmine . her father’s were impressed by how easily she picked it up . ( ‘ ah yes , it appears the hanged man has chosen you . a card from the major arcana . . this is very important . the major arcana are some of the most spiritually evolutional cards that can choose a person . could it be that you sacrifice too much ? that you don’t give enough time to yourself ? this card could indicate you need to spend more time on yourself . caring , trusting and loving . . ‘ ) jasmine was a natural with the theatrics . she learned from the best after all . she enjoyed the feeling of the tarot cards in her hands , shuffling them and laying them out for people to touch and choose . she enjoyed the way people’s eyes lit up at certain things she said - the way they approved and hummed along , deep in thought . that was her first taste of performing , and it was a rush like nothing else .

𝙵𝙾𝙻𝙻𝙾𝚆𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝙸𝙽 𝙷𝙴𝚁 𝙵𝙰𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚁𝚂’ 𝙵𝙾𝙾𝚃𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙿𝚂 jasmine was extroverted and excellent . she owned every room she stepped into , effortlessly . jasmine realised she had a passion for performing , and being somebody else . she wanted it to be her life . and when she set her eyes on something . . nothing was going to get in her way . no other subject at school quite held her attention like drama did . she was pulled in , and sunk her teeth , drinking every textbook and class dry . soaking it up like a sponge . when it came to the stage ( and then later , the screen ) , she was able to draw in even the most lacklustre unenthused audiences . not a lot of people have ‘ it ‘ , but jasmine had ‘ it ‘ without even trying . she made it look effortless . akin to how normal people simply breathe in and out . acting became jasmine’s life - and she was phenomenal at it .

𝙰 𝙿𝚁𝙾𝙳𝚄𝙲𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽 𝙾𝙵 𝙼𝙰𝙲𝙱𝙴𝚃𝙷 was what shot jasmine into being seen by strathmore university ( and the opal society ) . jasmine’s lady macbeth was spoken about for weeks after the final play ended . it was scribbled in the local news , and then reached national papers . who was this girl who held such talent ? where had she come from ? age 17 and jasmine was gaining more experience with acting then some actors got before they were 40 . she was in production after production , agents buzzing in her ear , asking to represent her . then it was small commercials and advertisements . jasmine was already a small c - lister star by the time she began her studies at strathmore university . the prestigious school has an elaborate acting and performing program that jasmine found herself falling in love with . it was another stepping stone for her , but more than that . . she learnt invaluable things . she was good , but strathmore made her great .

𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙾𝙿𝙰𝙻 𝚂𝙾𝙲𝙸𝙴𝚃𝚈 surprised her . she was used to being sought after , by that point , but being approached to join a secret underground society ? jasmine wasn’t sure if she needed them , or they needed her . but she couldn’t ( and wouldn’t ) say no . the people she met there became her second family . they were her home away from home . she fell in love with every single one of them ( and even ended up marrying one of them ) . she trusted them with everything she had inside of her . they remained in her life long after strathmore , and right into seeing her shoot to stardom .

𝙸𝙲𝙾𝙽 . 𝙲𝙴𝙻𝙴𝙱𝚁𝙸𝚃𝚈 . 𝙹𝙰𝚆𝙳𝚁𝙾𝙿𝙿𝙸𝙽𝙶 . ‘ 𝙰 𝙼𝚄𝚂𝚃 𝚂𝙴𝙴 ‘. after graduating from strathmore , jasmine only went higher and higher . she was single-minded and determined , and she paved the way like nobody else did . she never took no for an answer . she demanded things that nobody dared demand before . she was confident . she was special . she was unique . she was talented . people raved over her , and for good reason . she went into every audition with the belief she’d get the part - and more than often , she did . she owned red carpets , and delivered thank - you speech after thank - you speech . her name became synonymous with hollywood . she was suddenly a household name to everyone , and inescapable from the television or movie theatres . she worked hard , and consistently . she hardly let herself rest or take time off . she thrived under the pressure , and with the attention . this was her world , and everyone else was simply guests invited in .

𝙲𝚄𝚁𝚁𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙻𝚈, at 40 years of age , jasmine resides in atherton , california . she lives in a mansion by the seaside with her husband , and two dogs . she’s working on the tv adaptation of a little life ( which is already getting emmy buzz ) , and is trying her hand at script - writing and directing . she owns ‘ ramos productions’ company which is dedicated to casting and hiring 60% gender diverse people . she signs every scrunched up napkin , every sweaty arm , and always stops for photographs with her fans . she hosts elaborate dinner parties at her place , sometimes with her fellow opals , or with other a- listers . she spends her free time lounging in ruby red lingerie , sipping red wine , and eating red grapes . she thanks strathmore university , her parents , and the lgbtqia + community in every speech she has . she always wears a piece of jewellery that has a ruby inserted in it . she owns over 30 kinds of tarot cards , and still brings them out to read people’s supposed ‘ futures ‘ after drinking approximately 3 glasses of wine . she talks grandly and gesticulates with her whole body . she will always greet guests at the top of her staircase so they can watch her descend down them . jasmine’s never stopped performing for even one second since .

𝘴𝘩𝘦’𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘦’𝘴 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘺 . 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥 .

#opalslineage #opalstask #did i proof read this ? no !#also big big BIG thank u to madame anna who made this sexy as FUCK graphic . . icb i exist at the same time as her wow #whilst we're here . . .#yesterday was trans remembrance day in aus #the average age for a trans woc to live to is 35 #jasmine is 40 !!!#we love her !#if u havent watched disclosure on netflix pls do !!!!#i am but an ally ( or try to be ) but lets all remember to try and do our part when we can !!!#ok end of my psa mwah love u all #i hope this makes sense tbh im gonna reread it later and Cringe

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gayregis · 4 years ago

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Do you like Regis' design in tw3 ? Have any actor headcanons who could play him in twn ?

omg no i hate him 😭😭 im so glad you asked though

here’s a quick rundown of the specific things i hate about regis’s design by cdpr:

the biggest issues to me are the following: ( and @ everyone reading... don’t try and excuse any of these with “but he was recovering from regeneration / healing / he was tired / stressed / upset” because cdpr could have just written a better plotline then):

he doesn’t smile very much in b&w. like... very much at all. and in the books, every time he is mentioned, he smiles with pursed lips, as is his custom. he kind of has this air of being amused by geralt in bof, smiling with pursed lips and then proceeds to be a true friend to him in tos and lotl, smiling with teeth on occassion. i consider this to be part of his character design because for characters like dandelion and regis, their smile is just an essential part of their visual description as a character.

the hairline..... i hate this count olaf pennywise motherfucker. cdpr tries to make their main characters look insanely different from every npc and that, to me, is not good character design. they should design for how the character is described and how the character feels, what visual elements do they think embodies the character.

regis should not stand out. the entire point of him is that he looks just like a regular normal human guy. for this reason, the claws and teeth annoy me (not to mention regis is described as having just regular fangs and not all pointed teeth, not to even breach the topic of his having all pointed teeth the same shape/length would be difficult for animals to live with, look at the skulls of mammalian apex predators and you will find variation in their teeth).

where is his apron. it’s almost akin to twn removing jaskier’s plum bonnet with an egret/heron feather. it not only symbolizes his profession as a surgeon, but also his domestic qualities and general approachableness. it makes him look kinder, imo. he may heal you or he may bake you bread... either works

where is his cloak. a nice black cape i think is ESSENTIAL for a powerful vampire to have.

he wears some fancy and expensive-looking items. doctors in medieval times were not treated like they are today, regis is not living on a $150,000K+ annual salary, and nor do i think he wants to... he is a humble and sincere man, he spends 1/3 of his year living in the wildnerness. he wouldn’t care so much about fancy clothes unless the occassion called for it, like in beauclair, and then he would wear a nice fancy black velvet jacket that makes him look like a vampire. i think just giving him a simple black coat would suffice, maybe a linen shirt instead of a highly embroidered and decorated one. one key element about regis is that even though he tends to lecture, he never intends to make others feel inferior to him, i feel his outfit in b&w represents someone who is formal and would use their status to demean others...

fingerless gloves. i like the fingerless gloves but they are incredibly impractical for a medic to wear... i think just no gloves would suffice (in bof, regis asks geralt to hurriedly pour a solution over his hands so he can perform surgery immediately, i feel that having to take off your gloves would waste valuable time.

regis should look kind, humble, run-of-the-mill skinny guy chilling in a cemetery at midnight, approachable, yet also a little ... off? it’s in the way he smiles maybe, hiding something...

also (god im so negative, anon i sincerely apologize because you came here just asking questions and im like NO >:( I HAVE HATE IN MY HEART, i want to reiterate that i really appreciate this question because i love talking about the subject of character designs, the books vs the games, and regis as well) but also, i do hate twn, and i hope they skip him entirely or bastardize him so hard that there will be no resemblance and that no one in the fandom will ever care about him, because his character in the books has so much nuance and twn could never.

i don’t really... have fancasts... because i don’t watch very many movies or tv shows... (also because i don’t think live action is the way to adapt the witcher!! we need a 2D animated series in a very beautiful unique style that becomes a cult classic!!!!) but as a joke one time i proposed jeff goldblum bc of the way he speaks and acts and also since he’s tall, skinny, and salt-n-pepper-y, and i had a good laugh, and then i started to consider and was like hm ok actually yeah sure why not. but i don’t really know him as an individual, and i think he did some shit, or was involved in a scandal, as all actors in hollywood do...

tbh im not horribly picky when it comes to casting because i feel like acting and writing is more important than casting. but they should you know also fit the description of the character. im still kinda bitter about jaskier and yennefer’s hair in twn, and twn also requiring cavill to beef up for the role of geralt even though geralt in the books literally starves nightly... ok lol... but yeah as long as the actor is some middle aged skinny (tall, thats my headcanon) guy with salt and pepper/greying hair, preferably a long haircut, no beard but maybe stubbly, and has dark eyes and kind of a pretty face, a little bit angular but not sharp features, and sincere kindness in the eyes, then i’m good i don’t really care much about casts... just act good please....

#regis #tw3 #the witcher netflix #anon #ask

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lokiondisneyplus · 4 years ago

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Over five popular seasons, the story lines of “Better Call Saul” have unfolded across nail salons, fried-chicken joints and other strip-mall staples of American life.

When new episodes begin premiering next year, though, the locations that give the “Breaking Bad” spinoff its texture could be reined in or done away with altogether. The culprit? The novel coronavirus, which is limiting where the New Mexico-set AMC show can film, potentially altering both its style and substance.

“Like a lot of other people, we’re going to have to be very creative in where and how we shoot,” said Mark Johnson, the veteran producer who oversees the Vince Gilligan hit, whose writers just began collaborating on the series’s sixth season. “A lot of places just won’t let you in.”

Across the entertainment industry, casts and crew are beginning to return to work after a five-month hiatus. In states with loosened restrictions, such as Georgia and New York, production is starting to crank up under tight controls that alter how sets operate. Instead of crew members freely mingling, they’re being divided into “pods" that limit how production departments such as wardrobe or lighting can associate. Covid-19 officers monitor the health of the cast and crew to determine who is allowed on set. “Zones” dictate where those cast and crew can go.

These changes might seem technical, but they hint at the far-reaching effects the virus will have on final screen products. Interviews with 12 executives, writers, agents and producers across the Hollywood spectrum suggest a dramatically transformed world of entertainment. Until a vaccine comes along, they say, covid-19 will change what Americans watch as dramatically as it has where they work, shop and learn. Forget the new normal — movies and TV are about to encounter the new austerity.

Crowd scenes are a no-go. Real-world locations will be limited. On-screen romance will be less common, sometimes restricted to actors who have off-screen relationships. And independent films — that tantalizing side dish in the U.S. entertainment meal — could be heavily scaled back.

“A lot of people believe this is just about getting back to work,” said Mark Gill, a producer and former head of Warner Independent Pictures, the studio unit responsible for independent hits such as “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.” “They don’t realize the massive cultural impact we’re about to face.”

For most of its history, Hollywood created entertainment based on a simple premise: Shuttle in large numbers of people and move them around at will. That’s certainly true of crews. But it especially applies to extras, the low-paid day laborers who pack sets and off-camera holding areas in order to create dense crowd scenes — and, in turn, lend the work real-world atmosphere.

Such scenes have of course been part of some of the most memorable moments in Hollywood history. From “Ben-Hur” to “Braveheart,” on-screen entertainment has become indelible thanks to hundreds of people you’ve never heard of packing tiny spaces, then moving as one when the cameras roll.

Yet the virus has essentially made these hires impossible. Many don’t want to risk their health for a $100 paycheck and remote shot at background glory, and producers don’t want to take on the liability even if they did. “Braveheart" used about 1,600 extras, many from the Irish Army reserves. Experts say the movie couldn’t come close to being shot today.

“Those of us in the entertainment business are not used to being told ‘no’‚” said Lucas Foster, a longtime Hollywood producer who counts the 2005 romantic-action hit “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and last year’s Oscar-decorated blockbuster “Ford v Ferrari” among his credits. “And when it comes to things like crowds, there’s going to be a lot of no.”

Foster understands the challenges personally — he’s one of the first producers to have made a movie in the age of covid-19.

In March, the Los Angeles resident was in Australia, several weeks into preproduction on a new version of “Children of the Corn” when the pandemic began to spread. Millions of dollars had already been committed to the movie, adapted from the same Stephen King story that yielded the 1984 cult hit. So rather than shut down, he decided to proceed — cautiously. Foster created a production bubble, consulted doctors regularly, procured large amounts of tests, and engaged in elaborate workarounds in realms like crowd scenes.

He said it worked, but with major accommodations.

“I had to figure out how to do a crowd with no more than a few people at the same time. And with very specific camera angles. And by taking actors who would normally be close together and making them not close together,” Foster said. “In the end, I’d get the scene I needed but it looked different than it would have before the pandemic.” (Computer-generated crowds, he and other producers say, only work for more distant shots; anything requiring close-ups needs the real thing.)

It helped, he noted, that many of his actors were children, who are believed less susceptible to the effects of the virus, and that much of the movie was shot in cornfields and other vast outdoor spaces, a luxury not all films have.

Producers say the added cost required to implement all the safeguards could also result in a lower-end finished product. Films and TV shows achieve their level of shine through an endless period of refinement, with actors and directors often attempt 10 or more takes of a scene. With everything now going longer — and thus costing more — they may not have the luxury.

One producer of multiple studio hits said he expects the number of takes to drop significantly as the virus balloons budgets. He also expected a diminution in night scenes, which tend to be more involved and expensive than day scenes. He said some productions will be able to make the switch, but not all will be as lucky.

Also unlucky, say Hollywood veterans: movies where characters seek to get lucky. Many insiders say romantic scenes will be a major challenge in movies. Two agents separately reported they had high-profile clients who told them they wouldn’t shoot love scenes during the pandemic.

“I think every agency right now is looking down their client list to see which actors have spouses who are also actors, because then we could try to get them cast, too,” said one of the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized by their company to speak to the news media. “I’m joking. Sort of.”

The added wrinkle is even if the actors trust each other in real life, many of their characters would still have to take precautions on screen.

“How do you send two characters on a first dinner date when people aren’t really going on first dinner dates?” said a creator of romantic comedies who asked not to be identified because they did not want to be seen as criticizing colleagues who are attempting new projects. “You can send them on a socially distant walk, I guess.”

Writers say that leads to a broader dilemma: how much to incorporate the pandemic into their stories. On one hand, they say they don’t want to pretend the virus doesn’t exist. But acknowledging it poses its own challenges.

“Do you really want your stars wearing masks because that’s what characters would do? Do you want to have people engaging with each other in groups no larger than six? Do you want to write stories where everyone is at a safe distance?” said Mark Heyman, the co-writer of “Black Swan” and “The Skeleton Twins” and creator of the CBS All-Access historical drama “Strange Angel.” “Because a lot of those things won’t be very much fun to watch.”

Yet if creators aren’t willing to do that, he said, it could lead to those shows or movies getting shelved out of a fear that audiences will judge them inauthentic.

Heyman was working on a series set in a high school for Netflix when the lockdowns began. That project has now been put on pause. “It’s not easy to make a show about high school,” he said, “when there is no high school.”

To avoid reminding viewers of the pandemic, creators may take an approach that will lead to an unusual trend.

“I think over the next few years you’re going to see a lot more movies set in the past,” Foster said. “Even movies written for the present will be changed. They’ll make it the ’90s because then you don’t have to deal with these questions. And then you can just put in some cool ’90s music, so everybody wins.”

A few creators have gone the other way, leaning in to the pandemic.

Writers on Apple TV Plus’s “The Morning Show,” set at a news program, have torn up existing scripts to make the pandemic a part of the story line, according to a person familiar with the show who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. But with a lag time of months between shooting and airing, experts say that creators also risk looking out of date by the time episodes release to the public.

Sensing an opportunity, horror filmmakers have also tried to embrace current events.

“The horror genre is very suited to the pandemic and lockdowns — we’re always trying to create a feeling of being trapped anyway,” said the horror filmmaker Nathan Crooker.

When quarantines hit this spring, Crooker gathered nine noted horror filmmakers and had them shoot an anthology film — short fictional movies connected by the larger virus theme — and titled it “Isolation.” He required filmmakers to use only the materials and people they were in lockdown with, even prohibiting Zoom and other technologies.

“I think we’re going to get a very cool effect that mirrors what people are going through,” Crooker said of his work. “But I don’t know that every movie that gets made would want to look like that.”

One consequence of the virus could turn out to be the movies that don’t get made at all.

Some of the most beloved films of the past two decades, from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” to “Whiplash,” “Little Miss Sunshine” to “Fruitvale Station,” were independently financed. But before rolling cameras, independent productions require insurance policies to protect them from workplace lawsuits, along with completion bonds, in which a guarantor assures they will step in with funds to finish the movie if production is halted.

Experts say no company will cover covid-19 with either policy, effectively preventing production.

“Covid is an absolute disaster for the independent-film industry,” said Sky Moore, a partner in the corporate entertainment department of the Los Angeles law firm Greenberg Glusker who has spent several decades putting together film financing deals. “The lifeblood of independent-film financing is loans, and loans need insurance. Now you have this massive hole in the middle of all of it.”

Moore believes the toll will be vast.

“I think 50 percent of the independent industry goes away,” he said.

(Movies financed by large studios do not buy these policies; Netflix or Disney would just absorb a shutdown or lawsuit as the cost of doing business.)

Even if they can work around the insurance issues, many independent films won’t get made because they simply won’t have the money. “It’s already hard to get funding for a lot of these movies,” said Shaun MacGillivray, a producer who makes large-scale independent documentaries. “And now you’re telling investors the budget is going to be 30 percent higher?”

The independent-film world is trying to push ahead, slowly. The Sundance Film Festival, the epicenter of the indie-film business, where companies like Hulu and Netflix sometimes pay more than $10 million for an independently financed movie, will hold a partially physical, partially virtual edition in January, albeit at just about half the length.

“We are reminded daily of the power of what is made newly visible to us, the importance of what we look at,” Tabitha Jackson, the director of the festival, said in a letter to staff this summer explaining why the festival needed to go on. “My hope for this edition of the Sundance Film Festival is that through a multiplicity of perspectives held by artists and audiences in their various communities we will also come to feel the power of where we look from.” Left unspoken: What happens in 2022, when the well runs dry because new movies can’t be insured and produced?

Whatever entertainment can get made, experts say, will have a more hermetic look. Even television shows, once shot heavily on sets, now often rely on the authenticity of locations; a police procedural feels like it does because detectives are popping into pizza places and apartment buildings.

“We don’t want everything to be a chamber piece,” said Johnson, the “Better Call Saul” executive producer. “But if many shows look different, I think that’s okay, because the world looks different.”

Then, considering the challenge further, he added, “And if that doesn’t work, then at least our show has a lot of deserts and open roads.”

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unabashedbouquetstranger · 4 years ago

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Audeze Penrose X Best wireless headset for xbox

The Audeze Penrose X is the ultimate gaming headset for those of you looking for exceptional performance, functionality and versatility. Of course, the device is priced higher, it costs only $ 200 less than the Xbox Series X headset. Nonetheless, with the Penrose X, you will get an unparalleled traditional experience; deep bass, stunning clarity and great depth, detail and sound that help you immerse yourself in your favorite worlds and give you a better understanding of the behavior that appears around you in many places.A premium, high-end contender for best Xbox Series X headset

When paired with Dolby Atmos and Xbox Series X, you should expect to find a freebie around them that will enhance both your favorite movies and TV shows. The Penrose X never succeeds, whether you include a sporting event or settle for one of the most intense commercials Hollywood has to offer. Penrose X is expensive, but it is also a resource for the future. The gift is unmatched by the Audeze headphones which deliver volume, depth and density and sound few of its peers can match, making it one of the best Xbox Xs you can get.

Turtle Beach Recon 500

If you're after an Xbox Series X headset that's new, fresh, and from one of the best in the business - and doesn't cost an arm and leg - then the Recon 500 set could well be for you.

You won’t find lavish gamer-y design flairs or the most premium construction materials on the Recon 500, then, since Turtle Beach’s latest in the long-running line costs less than $100/£100. What you do find, crucially, is sound so good it takes you aback, and offers an Xbox Series X headset experience that is terrific in quality, and not too hard on the wallet. Savings can also be seen in the headset being a wired variant - which will help to offer flexibility, multi-device compatibility, and a reliable connection, too.

Wood composite injection technology. 60mm drivers. Dedicated woofers and tweeters per earcup. It doesn’t sound like the recipe for crisp, precise sound, and yet it all comes together in a powerful surge of ultra-responsive bass, detailed high end, and a pleasingly flat EQ curve with just a bit of audible kick further down the spectrum.

So that’s yours. Take it to the bank. But what isn’t coming along for the ride is much in the way of added features - this is a simple wired model with just a mic mute, detachable mic arm, and volume scroll wheel in the way of physical controls. Not one for perennial tweeters then, but those who enjoy value, simplicity and fundamentally great audio should scout out this new Recon.

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tabloidtoc · 4 years ago

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National Examiner, March 22

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson -- his journey from thief to superstar

Page 2: These stars wheely like to bike -- Hugh Jackman, Eva Longoria, Matthew McConaughey, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Russell Crowe, Arnold Schwarzenegger

Page 3: Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez, Al Roker, Pierce Brosnan and Keely Shaye Smith, Matt Damon, Justin Theroux, Ethan Hawke

Page 4: Jennifer Aniston's roles and costumes

Page 6: Susan Sarandon is 74 and single now and she admits she likes to date younger men because they have more inquisitive minds than older guys

Page 7: Golden Age of Glamour -- the shocking beauty tips, tricks and secrets of Hollywood's most stunning stars -- Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford

Page 8: Listen to Granny -- older media influencers are getting into the act on social media, with women in their 80s and 90s earning huge followings and lots of money on Instagram -- while some are all about their head-turning styles, others go with decorating or fitness to create their granfulencer brands

Page 9: Go ahead and binge that new TV show because it's good for your mental health -- new research shows the lack of social connection we're all feeling now because of COVID-19 restrictions can be filled, at least to some degree, by watching TV, reading books and listening to music

Page 10: Lucia DeClerck has some advice for living a long life, and she knows what she's talking about because she's 105 years old -- not only did Lucia live through the 1918 Spanish Flu, she's the oldest person in her nursing home and she just beat COVID-19 -- how does she do it? Gin-soaked golden raisins

Page 11: 8 ways to prevent back pain

Page 12: Stars Still Strong and Sexy As They Hit Milestone Notorious 90 -- Marla Gibbs, Gavin MacLeod, Angie Dickinson, Barbara Eden

Page 13: William Shatner, Olympia Dukakis, Dan Rather, Rita Moreno, Willie Mays, James Earl Jones

Page 14: Dear Tony, America's Top Psychic Healer -- all marriages need care and attention to flourish

Page 15: There are nicer, more medically accurate ways to describe it, but "dead butt syndrome" says it all, that feeling of numbness or achiness from sitting too long -- it is no joke to the many people who experience the discomfort of DBS, otherwise known as lower cross syndrome, gluteal amnesia, or gluteus medius tendinosis -- people who sit at their desk all day for work are particularly prone to this syndrome, where muscle tightness in the hip flexors and weakness in the gluteus medius muscles in the buttock combine to create hip and lower-back pain, leading to numbness -- luckily there are simple remedies you can try to alleviate symptoms and even reverse the syndrome

Page 16: Princess Diana: little girl lost -- Diana's brother Charles Spencer reveals truth about heartbreaking childhood

Page 18: There are about 100 prepaid food receipts fluttering on the wall of Ruma's Deli in Missouri and if you're hungry and your pockets are empty, you can grab one, bring it to the counter and get a free meal, no strings attached

Page 19: Pixel the cat is so creepy-looking even a professional exorcist crossed himself and ran -- Alyson Kalhagen's cat has giant googly eyes, a Halloween pumpkin smile and oversized bat ears and he's also fond of making funny faces but the two-year-old has racked up a fan base online, where more than 12,000 followers find Pixel's peculiarities precious

Page 20: Cover Story -- Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is huge in every way -- the muscle-bound ex-wrestler has starred in dozens of blockbuster films, has tons of projects in the works, millions of bucks and a brand new show about his childhood but he hasn't always been on top of the game -- the dynamo has gone through so many tough times and bad decisions they would sink a lesser man but he's an open book about all of them and how he fought to get to the top every step of the way

Page 22: After a long break to raise her children, Michelle Pfeiffer is on the silver screen again and looking better than ever -- the 62-year-old is in a new film called French Exit, in which she plays a tragic widow who packs up and moves to Paris with her son -- the actress says to return and thrive in an industry formerly known as being obsessed with youth is a gift -- although her husband David E. Kelley has been behind dozens of hits like The Undoing and Big Little Lies, Michelle doesn't want to work with him because she's seen a lot of couples where they seem to have a great marriage, and then they work together and next year they're filing for divorce -- next up, Michelle will play Betty Ford in the upcoming series The First Lady

Page 24: A Texas grocery delivery driver got more than just shelter from the storm when her car became stuck in a customer's driveway -- the people who lived there took her in for five days and made her feel like part of the family

Page 26: Deep Focus -- stunning underwater pix from an unseen world

Page 32: Pet Projects -- family portraits get everyone into the picture -- photographer Tasha Hall creates "farmaly" photos, which include each and every one of the household where they've got two feet, four feet, paws, claws, hooves or wings

Page 34: While everyone loves a comfortable, cozy mattress, having a really good becomes more important with age because a bad one may leave you with aches, pains and posture imbalances but the problem is that these specialty mattresses are very expensive -- fortunately, Medicare may cover up to 80 percent of the cost if you go about this purchase the right way and you'll then be responsible for the remaining 20 percent, as well as any deductible

Page 40: Psychic Self-Defense -- many people are born with a psyche that is naturally sensitive -- there has been a modern-day rise in occultism and practicing psychics and the way of the world at this time had made many more people seek help -- this has produced a far greater awareness of the need to protect and defend ourselves when working in a magical or psychic context -- we are all constantly being bombarded with psychic vibrations, not all of them good

Page 42: 20 Things You Never Knew About Tiger Woods

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Jenny McCarthy is in high spirits as she preps to tape a new episode of The Masked Singer in L.A. (picture), Goldie Hawn works out in L.A. (picture), Jane Fonda has given up on getting hitched -- she has three failed marriages and being single means she can watch whatever she wants on TV, Kelly Clarkson admits that since her marriage soured she no longer considers marriage a fairy-tale thing and she can't imagine being married again, Charlize Theron admits she hasn't made the grade when it comes to homeschooling her kids Jackson and August, Patrick Schwarzenegger is looking to follow in the footsteps of his dad Arnold Schwarzenegger but says his dad hasn't offered any pointers when it comes to a career in showbiz, Bindi Irwin is close to welcoming her little wildlife warrior with husband Chandler Powell and her 17-year-old brother Robert Irwin has some opinions about his sister's ever-expanding figure saying she's massive

Page 45: Duchess Kate and Prince William hold video calls with folks shielding at home during the pandemic to discuss the positive impact of the COVID-19 vaccine (picture), Chrissy Teigen goes shopping with daughter Luna (picture), Mary-Kate Olsen finalized her divorce from French banker Olivier Sarkozy and she was spotted in NYC having dinner with businessman John Cooper, Gordon Ramsay is steamed after being diagnosed with arthritis, Jessie J has a new boyfriend with dancer and choreographer Max Pham Nguyen, Alec and Hilaria Baldwin dropped a bombshell -- they've welcomed their sixth child via surrogate

Page 46: We all get a bit snippy at times, but if you tend to fly into a rage, it's not good for your health or friendships -- here are some simple anger-management techniques you can do any time

Page 47: Curious Earthlings have always been hungry for movies about the moon and its mysteries -- Cat-Women of the Moon, A Trip to the Moon, The Right Stuff, First Man, Gravity, Apollo 13, Hidden Figures

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years ago

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“how the hell does a broken heart learn to mend itself?”

Would you ever like to own your own gym? No.

Do you listen to Christina Perri? If so, do you like her music? Jar of Hearts and A Thousand Years are a few of my favorites of hers. Oh, and Human. <<< Yeah, I liked those as well. I think those are the only ones I’m familiar with of hers. I haven’t listened to her music in a long time.

When was the last time you went to Wal-Mart? Back in March before the quarantine/lockdown and shit really hit the fan.

Which is worse: Runny nose or stuffy nose? Both are very annoying, but feeling like you can’t breathe is definitely the worst.

Do you hate how people are quick to judge? i think we all have that tendency, some more than others. It can be an issue when you let that judgment form your whole opinion about a person without even knowing them. Except in extreme cases of course when it a quick judgment could be useful, like if you’re feeling uncomfortable or someone appears to be sketchy.

Has anyone ever made you feel small? Yes.

Would you rather give your food to a homeless shelter or money to charity? Food to a homeless shelter would be more direct and immediate. When you donate money to a charity you don’t really know when or how it gets used, exactly. And it can take time to be sorted out and distributed. That being said, of course donating to charities is good and important and will help in the long run. I’m just saying, donating food to a homeless shelter would be something they could use immediately and benefit them directly. Does any of this make sense?

Can you tell when your best friend is lying? I think I’m typically pretty good at that.

Would you pay extra money for make up just to make you look prettier? Ha, all the makeup in the world didn’t make a difference for me. Still ugly. I stopped even bothering with it.

Do you like to look at license plates to see where people are from? I don’t pay much attention to that.

Are you more hungry or tired right now? I’m both. My sleep schedule continues to be weird. I fell asleep around 230AM until about 4AM and then fell asleep again shortly after that until like 7:45AM. Now it’s 8:46AM and here I am. Like wtf? And lately I’ve been having a bit more of an appetite, so I’ve been feeling hungrier earlier than usual and actually eating more than just dinner and my late bowl of ramen. My body is such a mess.

Do you follow your head or heart more? It’s a battle.

On a scale 1-10 how much do you like my surveys? I’m assuming the same person has made the last few I’ve done with this same kind of format, in which case they’ve been fine.

Do you think you deserve more than what you have? I don’t think I deserve anything.

Would you ever spend $2,000 on a dress? I can’t imagine ever spending that much on a dress. I don’t plan on getting married, but even if I did I’d find something a lot less expensive.

“Reach out to you, touch my hand”

Have you ever made fresh dough? No.

When you were little, did you used to make cookies with your mom? Yeah.

Has anyone ever said "Say it, don't spray it" to you? lol yeah, when I was a kid.

What is your least favorite type of person? Arrogant, cocky, close minded people.

True or False : Superman is your favorite super hero. False.

Have you ever drank Silk milk? Yeah. Well, I don’t drink it directly (or any kind of milk for that matter, ew), but I use soy in coffee drinks, cereal, or to dunk cookies or brownies or something. I tend to use vanilla almond milk more often, though.

What color is your camera? I use the camera on my phone, which is a coral iPhone XR.

When you create a survey, do you usually make the title lyrics? I don’t create surveys.

Do you play Cityville, Farmville or Frontierville on Facebook? Nope. Never got into any of those.

Do you tend to complain when its to hot out? Ugh, yes. I’m miserable when it’s hot and everyone knows it lol.

Flip flops or tennis shoes? Tennis shoes. I never wear flip flops or any kind of sandal or open toed shoe.

Do you like your fingernails long or short? They’re always barely there cause I’ve had this horrible habit all my life. Well, with the exception of the very few times I managed to stop and let them grow a decent length. Never lasted long, though.

Have you made anyone laugh today? I haven’t interacted with anyone yet today.

Would you like to go to South America? Sure.

Have you ever read Time magazine? I think so.

“Tonight we’re going to dance on the edge of the Hollywood sign”

Do you use the gel, spray or powdered deodorant? I think it’s called a solid.

Do you own a pearl necklace? No. I used to, but it broke.

Do you know anyone named Julie? No.

What's your favorite candle scent? I love the autumn scented ones.

Does anyone you know own a motorcycle? Yes.

How many different languages can you say “hello” in? Just a few. I don’t feel like thinking about how many different ones right now.

Do you like Train’s music? Yeah.

Have you ever accidentally clicked on an ad on the side of your screen? Yeah, back in the day when ads were annoying and popped up all the time. I haven’t had that issue in years.

Do you like dark or light pop/soda better? My favorite sodas are Coke and Dr. Pepper, which happen to be dark.

Have you ever been told you were a good dance? No.

Do you own one of those small, battery powered fans? I do.

When you sleep, do you like it complete silence or do you like sound? I need some sound and light, hence why I sleep with the TV on. I have it completely quiet or dark.

Was it cloudy today or clear sky? It’s supposed to be clear skies. Do you like the show Seinfiled or Friends? I never got into either one.

Would you rather have bad breath or body odor? Ew.

“I’m gonna sleep in my Snuggie tonight.”

Have you ever ridden in a hot air balloon? Noooo. I never would.

Do you hate it when people get obsessed with their boyfriend/girlfriend? I had friends who obsessively talked about their significant others and it did get quite annoying, not gonna lie.

Have you ever been to Nevada? Yes.

Are you dating the boy/girl of your dreams? I’m single.

Do you watch Glee? No, I never got into it.

Do you like coffee? I love coffee. Duh.

Do you like applesauce? Yeah. Wow, I don’t recall the last time I had any, though.

When was the last time you had a nightmare? It’s been awhile, thankfully.

Have you ever had a manicure? Once. It was for my 8th grade promotion.

Do you like graphic tees? Ha, my whole wardrobe is graphic tees. And leggings.

Are you the type of person who is always yelling? Not at all.

Do you like Willow or Jaden Smith better? I don’t have any feelings about either one.

Is anything making you mad right now? No.

Name one thing you've NEVER done but want to: Go to Hawaii.

Ever seen the movie Shark Tale? I know of it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.

“No matter what, I’ll never stop loving you”

Do you like Italian food? I love it.

Which would you rather have: drama or no friends? I have no friends now and I’m honestly okay with it.

Do you own a black necklace? No.

Would you rather have white & crooked teeth or straight teeth that are yellow? How ‘bout straight and white teeth.

How many notifications do you have on Facebook right now? Zero.

Do you smile or laugh more? Uhh I don’t know.

Have you ever tried Nutella? Yes, and I don’t like it. <<< Saaame. I don’t get the hype.

What age did you stop watching Spongebob? I was never really into it, I just caught some episodes because my younger brother loved it as a kid.

Have you ever seen the show Boy Meets World? Yeah, I’ve seen the entire series numerous times. It’ll always be a favorite.

Have you received bad news within the past week? No.

What's your favorite color of highlighter? Yellow or orange is fine.

Do you celebrate the 4th of July? I mean, we go outside to my front yard and watch fireworks lol that’s about it.

Are you better at Math or Social Studies? Social studies. Math and I were always enemies.

Do you like the name Lindsey? Sure.

Do you have a teacher that your close to? Not anymore, but yeah I had a couple.

“We’ll go down just like Titanic”

When you eat, do you always use a napkin? Yes.

On a scale 1-10 how much do you like hot dogs? It’s one of those weird things that I have to be in the mood for, which is very, very rare. It’s not something I ever crave. I haven’t even had one in years. Although, a Costco hotdog is pretty delicious.

Have you ever been on a cruise ship? Nope.

Is your phone a flip, sliding or touch? It’s a touch-screen - most phones are nowadays. <<<

Are you okay right now? I don’t feel well.

Do you own a blue dress? No.

When you look at the person you like, does it seem like its only you two? I don’t currently like anyone in that way.

Do you like pizza crust with cheese in it? It’s good, but it’s not something I tend to get.

Do you like copy paper or lined paper better? Lined paper.

Are you listening to music? Nope.

Have you ever gone swimming in the moonlight? Nope.

Is it AM or PM right now? It’s AM.

Who is your cell phone carrier? Verizon.

Do you hate public speaking? Haaaaaate. So glad I don’t have to do speeches or presentations for school anymore. It never got any easier, it was always super anxiety inducing and dreadful for me.

Have you ever been in a band? No.

“We can go to the alligator sky”

Are you more of a follower or leader? I definitely don’t see myself as a leader.

Would you rather: write a 10 page short story or do public speaking? The 10 page paper.

Did you eat any type of fruit today? No. It’s been awhile since I’ve had any fruit. :X

Do you enjoy bowling? Nah.

Do you like the smell of rain? Yesss.

Have you ever seen or been in quicksand? No.

Do you want to get married in a church or somewhere else? I don’t want to get married.

Have you ever played hard to get? No. I’m just hard to want.

Do you go to the fair during the summer? No.

Are more mean or nice? I’m not a mean person.

Do you go tanning? I don’t ever “go” tanning, but it happens when I go to the beach.

Can you speak Spanish? Not fluently, but yes.

Is it hard for your to compliment people? Only because I’m just shy and awkward.

Are you a goodie goodie or a bad person? I was always the goodie-goodie.

Would you rather visit Chicago or New York City? New York City.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

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lastsonlost · 5 years ago

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Comedian Ricky Gervais is clearly enjoying himself as he rides the outrage wave from his fan-loved and Hollywood-loathed performance as the host of the Golden Globes Sunday night. After gaining hundreds of thousands of followers as a result of his celebrity slamming performance, Gervais took a moment early Wednesday to provide a helpful list of reminders about humor for his “offended” critics — many of whom happen to be journalists, who Gervais also made sure to mock.

In his instantly famous opening remarks at the awards show Sunday (transcript below), Gervais announced that it was his “last time” hosting the show and then promptly proceeded to do what so many viewers have been longing for a host to do: put virtue-signaling Hollywood in its place. “Let’s go out with a bang, let’s have a laugh at your expense,” he said at the start. “Remember, they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon and there’s no sequel, so remember that.” After calling out Hollywood hypocrisy — including on sexual misconduct, corporate corruption and human rights abuses — Gervais ended his blistering opening statement by telling all the winners, “If you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and f*** off, OK?”

His brutal rebuke of Hollywood was met with predictable outrage from many, including media figures and journalists, which Gervais pointed out in one tweet Tuesday.

“I always knew that there were morons in the world that took jokes seriously, but I’m surprised that some journalists do,” he wrote (tweet below). “Surely, understanding stuff is pretty fundamental to their job, isn’t it?” He ended the post by twisting the knife: “Just makes it funnier though, I guess.”

Early Wednesday, Gervais felt compelled to help out some of those particularly suffering from a case of perpetual offense by offering a list of reminders about how humor works and doesn’t work:

1#. Simply pointing out whether someone is left or right wing isn’t winning the argument.

2#. If a joke is good enough, it can be enjoyed by ANYONE!

3#. IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!

4#. Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.

As The Daily Wire reported, Gervais spent Monday after the Globes having fun at his critics’ expense online, ridiculing responses to his performance from The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter and The Independent, along with the very show he hosted.

Among his posts was one in which he slammed those calling him “right wing.” “How the f*** can teasing huge corporations, and the richest, most privileged people in the world be considered right wing?” he tweeted (post below).

He also made a point of thanking his hundred of thousands of new followers. “Welcome to the 300,000 new followers I acquired today. I promise you won’t like everything I say, but here’s a sexy photo,” he wrote.

Gervais continued to hit his critics on Tuesday, including retweeting a defense of his Golden Globes jokes by Second Amendment champion Dana Loesch, who called The Independent’s condemnation of Gervais “garbage.”

“Oh garbage,” Loesch wrote. “[Ricky Gervais] demonstrated that good comedians go after everyone. No one should be safe, but the prevailing thought these past 10+ years is that one group IS exempt. They can lecture from the stage but he can’t mock their inconsistencies? You prove his point.”

<I mean if calling out corrupt corporations and the super rich is right wing then I guess the right wing is better at being liberal than liberals.

Below is the transcript of Gervais’ opening comments at the Golden Globes:

You’ll be pleased to know this is the last time I’m hosting these awards, so I don’t care anymore. I’m joking. I never did. I’m joking, I never did. NBC clearly don’t care either — fifth time. I mean, Kevin Hart was fired from the Oscars for some offensive tweets — hello?

Lucky for me, the Hollywood Foreign Press can barely speak English and they’ve no idea what Twitter is, so I got offered this gig by fax. Let’s go out with a bang, let’s have a laugh at your expense. Remember, they’re just jokes. We’re all gonna die soon and there’s no sequel, so remember that.

But you all look lovely all dolled up. You came here in your limos. I came here in a limo tonight and the license plate was made by Felicity Huffman. No, shush. It’s her daughter I feel sorry for. OK? That must be the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to her. And her dad was in Wild Hogs.

Lots of big celebrities here tonight. Legends. Icons. This table alone — Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro … Baby Yoda. Oh, that’s Joe Pesci, sorry. I love you man. Don’t have me whacked. But tonight isn’t just about the people in front of the camera. In this room are some of the most important TV and film executives in the world. People from every background. They all have one thing in common: They’re all terrified of Ronan Farrow. He’s coming for ya. Talking of all you perverts, it was a big year for pedophile movies. Surviving R. Kelly, Leaving Neverland, Two Popes. Shut up. Shut up. I don’t care. I don’t care.

Many talented people of color were snubbed in major categories. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that. Hollywood Foreign press are all very racist. Fifth time. So. We were going to do an In-Memoriam this year, but when I saw the list of people who died, it wasn’t diverse enough. No, it was mostly white people and I thought, nah, not on my watch. Maybe next year. Let’s see what happens.

No one cares about movies anymore. No one goes to cinema, no one really watches network TV. Everyone is watching Netflix. This show should just be me coming out, going, “Well done Netflix. You win everything. Good night.” But no, we got to drag it out for three hours. You could binge-watch the entire first season of Afterlife instead of watching this show. That’s a show about a man who wants to kill himself cause his wife dies of cancer and it’s still more fun than this. Spoiler alert, season two is on the way so in the end he obviously didn’t kill himself. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. Shut up. I know he’s your friend but I don’t care.

Seriously, most films are awful. Lazy. Remakes, sequels. I’ve heard a rumor there might be a sequel to Sophie’s Choice. I mean, that would just be Meryl just going, “Well, it’s gotta be this one then.” All the best actors have jumped to Netflix, HBO. And the actors who just do Hollywood movies now do fantasy-adventure nonsense. They wear masks and capes and really tight costumes. Their job isn’t acting anymore. It’s going to the gym twice a day and taking steroids, really. Have we got an award for most ripped junky? No point, we’d know who’d win that.

Martin Scorsese made the news for his controversial comments about the Marvel franchise. He said they’re not real cinema and they remind him about theme parks. I agree. Although I don’t know what he’s doing hanging around theme parks. He’s not big enough to go on the rides. He’s tiny. The Irishman was amazing. It was amazing. It was great. Long, but amazing. It wasn’t the only epic movie. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, nearly three hours long. Leonardo DiCaprio attended the premiere and by the end his date was too old for him. Even Prince Andrew was like, “Come on, Leo, mate. You’re nearly 50-something.”

The world got to see James Corden as a fat pussy. He was also in the movie Cats. No one saw that movie. And the reviews, shocking. I saw one that said, “This is the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs.” But Dame Judi Dench defended the film saying it was the film she was born to play because she loves nothing better than plunking herself down on the carpet, lifting her leg and licking her pussy. (Coughs) Hairball. She’s old-school.

It’s the last time, who cares? Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It’s already three hours long. Right, let’s do the first award.

#outrage culture #call out culture #Ricky Gervais #hollywood #media bias

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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The Knick Is An Ugly, Atmospheric Delight

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Most early photographs look haunted. Perhaps it’s because we view these images with the knowledge that the people inside them are already ghosts. In some early photos the subject had actually already expired at the time of their capture. Photography was expensive and the first and best occasion for many families to pay for a portrait was recently after a loved one died.

But some old timey photos are just ineffably creepy beyond any easy explanation. Consider this snapshot of a surgical operating theater in 1890.

Boston City Hospital operating theater, circa 1890 | A. H. Folsom of Roxbury

The experience of seeing primitive surgeons dressed in angelic white, surrounded by seats of mustachioed men wearing their Sunday best and staring down at a lifeless body is so intensely bizarre. Photos like this are dripping with a grim atmosphere that very few documents or art can really capture. One recent entry into the prestige TV canon, however, did a shockingly good job of recreating that eerie sensation and maintaining it over two full seasons.

Both seasons of Cinemax’s The Knick are now available to stream on HBO Max. Cinemax may no longer be in the original content business, but some of its better shows are finally, thankfully making their way to the WarnerMedia streaming venture. In addition to The Knick other recent Cinemax titles arriving to HBO Max include Banshee and Warrior. All three are superb shows and worth checking out, but let us highlight The Knick in particular as one of recent television history’s most underappreciated gems.

The Knick is quite simply one of the most stylish and atmospheric TV shows ever made. Premiering in 2014, it is set in a fictionalized version of the real Knickerbocker Hospital (a.k.a “The Knick”) which was located in Harlem at the turn of the 19th century. The series begins in 1900 and follows Clive Owen’s Dr. John W. “Thack” Thackery, the chief surgeon at The Knick, as he runs the hospital while barely controlling his addiction to injecting cocaine. Other cast members include André Holland as new assistant chief surgeon Dr. Algernon Edwards, Jeremy Bobb as hospital manager Herman Barrow, and Eve Hewson as nurse Lucy Elkins.

The plotting on The Knick from creators and head writers Jack Amiel & Michael Beglerare is tight and effective. The show capably balances multiple story threads at once, from the series- long arc of Thack’s drug abuse and addiction to season-long arcs about infectious diseases spreading throughout New York to episode-long stories presenting patients simply in need of help.

But what sets The Knick apart from fellow medical dramas (and just about everything else) is the imagery involved and the tone it invokes. Watching The Knick is like staring at the uncanny oddness of that old operating theater photo until the people within it start to move around and vacuum blood out of a patient’s open abdomen.

Television has always been seen as a writers’ medium, with the head writer on many shows often serving as de facto “showrunner” and maintaining the visual style. The Knick, however, benefits greatly from the involvement of filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who produces and directs every episode. Soderbergh’s cameras, era-authentic gaslamp lighting, and superb production design all conspire to create one hell of a visual mood. That’s not even to mention Cliff Martinez’s excellent, synth-heavy score, which one would be forgiven for thinking is the work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Just about every scene sounds like a tense mission leading up to a boss battle in an NES game.

Thack and his fellow doctors Bertram “Bertie” Chickering (Michael Angarano) and Everett Gallinger (Eric Johnson) are fond of calling the Knick their “circus.” And like any circus, The Knick is only as good as its performers. Thankfully the doctors, nurses, administrators are all more than up to the task.

Despite being only six years old now, The Knick has proven to be quite an acting talent factory. The series was Hewson’s first TV role and the Irish actress is now on her way to modest stardom thanks to roles in The Luminaries and Behind Her Eyes. Jeremy Bobb has since turned up in everything, including Russian Doll, Jessica Jones, and The Outsider. Chris Sullivan, who plays ambulance operator Tom Cleary now plays Toby on This Is Us. And Juliet Rylance portrays Della Street on Perry Mason.

Meanwhile, Owen is a perfect fit as Thack. The actor seems to relish hiding his handsome movie star features behind sweat, matted hair, and a thin mustache. The effect makes Thack physically resemble some kind of familiar early 1900s pugilist archetype more than a Hollywood leading man. The lifelike performance flows out from there.

Holland as a talented Black surgeon extremely unwelcome in a white hospital is also superb. The actor has racked up award nominations for Selma and Moonlight, but he’s never seemed like a more capable protagonist than he does in The Knick, even if his character isn’t technically the lead.

It does at times feel as though this is really Edwards’ story. Which makes sense, given that the most attention is frequently paid to him as a perceived trespasser in a white world. Also: it probably goes without saying, but one should know before watching that The Knick pulls absolutely no punches in its depiction of early 20th century racism. It’s admirably honest storytelling about the time period but it’s also just brutal to sit through. One season 2 plotline even involves a central character becoming a full-on eugenicist.

Thought that understandably all sounds quite bleak, The Knick isn’t just all crushingly real depictions of racism, gore, and nifty camerawork. The show fills an important prestige TV quotient by frequently bringing something new to the table. In the absurdly crowded TV landscape, oftentimes the best thing any show can do is to present something to the audience that they’ve never seen before. The Knick has many such moments…unless you’ve somehow seen someone inject cocaine into Clive Owen’s penis before. The series also has one of the wildest series finale of all time. The finale of season 2 (which wasn’t necessarily a series finale at the time) features one moment that should take even the most veteran drama watcher by surprise.

The show has some sturdy themes to go along with the stylish flourishes and surprising storytelling. In the series first episode, Thack describes what is simultaneously appealing and devastating about healthcare to him, saying: “God always wins. It’s the longest unbeaten streak in the history of the world.”

There is nothing that any doctor or surgeon can do to stop death. The best they can hope to do is forestall it’s arrival. Thack and the doctors at the Knick have done the best they can in this mission. When Thack proudly announces that life expectancy has gone from 39 to 47 in the past 20 years, it’s a darkly funny moment to the modern viewer. But any small medical advancement or deeper understanding of the human body always feels like a sincere victory throughout The Knick – particularly because we see the very literal blood, swat, and tears it takes to achieve them. These drug-addicted surgeons and frightened, shivering patients are indeed ghosts from an stained old-timey photo of an operating theater. They’re also people. And that’s something that the show is able to capture in addition to capturing all the terrifying gore of 20th century medicine.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Back in September of 2020, Soderbergh revealed that he and producer Barry Jenkins were planning to go through with The Knick season 3, with a pilot script having been written. Given that the Hollywood landscape is particularly turbulent at the moment, who knows if that script will ever find a home. Whether or not The Knick gets a third season, its first two will fit in quite comfortably alongside the greats in its new HBO Max home for years to come.

The post The Knick Is An Ugly, Atmospheric Delight appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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