#Colin Farrell was also floating around in there

[fairytaleandfanart]

...Yeah, I’ll go ahead and absorb that straight into my imaginary movie.

if i were to cast a Poison Study (by Maria V Snyder) Movie, i would want jared leto (but specifically the one from morbius) to play valek.

i feel like he’s the right build, and the hair?????? perfect

[letterboxd]

Siren Song.

Undine writer-director Christian Petzold talks to Reyzando Nawara about modern-day mermaids, Tinder culture and finding the magic in life.

“Love stories always change. A kiss in Berlin 1933, for example, is not gonna be the same kiss in Berlin today, right?” —Christian Petzold

“If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you.” Undine’s threat to her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Johannes, after he has told her that he has met someone else, seems at first like an over-the-top reaction to the breakup. But it is a curse that Undine must fulfill, for she will become human only when she falls in love with a man who is doomed to die if he is unfaithful to her.

From Splash to Ponyo to The Lure to Song of the Sea, mythical water spirits, usually female, sometimes horse, have powered many film plots. The sixteenth-century European myth of Undine, in particular, lies behind many screen adaptations of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, though the Danish writer was not the first to popularize the fairytale in his century. Decades earlier, around 1811, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué of Germany had produced his romantic novella, Undine.

And it is to Germany—specifically modern-day Berlin—that writer-director (and fellow German) Christian Petzold transports Undine in his contemporary magical-realist take on the myth. There, she does not take the form of a mermaid or siren, but a beautiful young woman (played by Paula Beer), who works as a historian at a museum, where she guides tours of Berlin’s architecture and its reconstruction. The breathtaking cinematography, by regular Petzold collaborator Hans Fromm, crystallizes both the romance and the beauty of Berlin, while Petzold’s leads root every scene in reality, even as aquariums explode and giant catfish drift past.

Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski fire up the streets of Berlin in ‘Undine’.

Water may be the dominant element in Undine, but Beer and her co-star Franz Rogowski bring fire to their scenes together. Where Beer brings charisma and intensity to the titular role, Rogowski, as Undine’s new love interest, an industrial diver named Christoph, offers charm and sweetness.

In the frenzy of Parasite’s world domination, it is easy to forget that Petzold’s previous feature, Transit, appeared in two of our 2019 Year in Review lists—the 50 highest-rated films and the highest-rated international films—and was one of the top romance films of the 2010s. His riveting Phoenix is still his highest-rated film on the platform—one of many to center a complex female character in search of love at a time of personal and/or political crisis. In Undine, Petzold does it again, a welcome departure from other adaptations, including the Colin Farrell-starring Irish romantic drama Ondine (2009), that have mostly told the myth from the perspective of its male characters. Petzold also revises the fairytale, by giving Undine a chance to try to emancipate herself from her curse.

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Petzold about his fascination with water, the magic of Berlin history, modern dating and of course, his ongoing collaboration with Beer and Rogowski.

Spoiler warning: this conversation contains plot details regarding the ending of Petzold’s film ‘Transit’ (2018).

Your movie is inspired by the myth of Undine, but you reinvent it by giving it some modern twists. How did the main narrative for the film come about? Christian Petzold: I think the idea of the story first came to me around twenty years ago when I had a project in Germany. It was together with Claire Denis and also Kathryn Bigelow, and everybody had to make a ten-minute short film for a project based on the museum near the Rhine River. I had written a little dialogue—oh, by the way, Steve McQueen was also part of the project—and it was the scene that we can see in the movie in the first few minutes where Undine’s boyfriend, Johannes, said that he doesn’t love her anymore and that he wants to leave her and she said to him, “If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you.” Then she goes back to work, and later when she comes back to try to find him again, he isn’t there—so she knows that she has to kill him now.

Then when I made Transit with Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski, I told them after a very lucky and happy time of shooting, that I had written a short story and wanted to make a 90-minute feature movie out of it together with them. I wanted to keep working and making movies with them because we’ve had an amazing experience together in Transit. This was basically the start of how the movie and my collaboration with these two actors came about.

Paula and Franz are actors who didn’t come from the basic German acting school; their backgrounds are dance and theater. But they both have so much curiosity about cinema—when I met Paula for the first time, for example, she told me that she had bought 50 movies by Alfred Hitchcock and wanted to see all of them, and to me, this is the best kind of school to learn about cinema.

So to some extent, Undine is a spiritual sequel to Transit? Yes, you’re right. It has so many things to do with Transit. Marie, Paula’s character in Transit, finds her own death in the sea—she’s drowned. And Franz’s character, he’s waiting at the land, hoping that she may come back from the land of the dead. So I said to them, “Okay, the next movie is gonna be about a woman coming out of the sea and going to the land to search for love and also about this young man who is a diver, who is going underwater, to find love as well.” So to some degree, it’s a sequel, you’re right.

Beer and Ragowski in ‘Transit’ (2018).

You mentioned earlier that you had a great experience working with Paula and Franz in Transit. Can you tell us what it was about these two actors that you thought would capture the story you wanted to tell in Undine? Paula is a very young actor—she was 23 when we started Transit, and she was around 24 when we made Undine—but when you’re filming her, she has this ability to make her characters much more mature beyond her real age. In one second, she’s 45 years old, with a whole experience of someone who’s had a hard life and has gone through so many bad things, then one second later, she’s thirteen and innocent. And to have that kind of ability—to go from one point to another—is just really fascinating to me. I’ve never seen other actors do this before in my life.

Franz was a dancer, and if I remember correctly, I think he was also in a clown school for a circus, so he can do everything with his body. It’s unbelievable what he can do. He has this amazing physicality that I admire and haven’t seen before in other German actors. When they’re together sharing a scene, they dance with each other. And this is the thing that I like so much about them and the thing I need in Undine, because I need actors who can float from one scene to another as if they’re dancing underwater.

In literature and pop culture, the myth of Undine has been mostly told from the male perspective. You reframe the narrative, to give Undine the opportunity to maybe emancipate herself from both the male figure in her life and the curse. Tell me more about that choice. Two or three years ago, I had a retrospective in New York, and I had the chance to see some of my previous movies again—[laughing] I’ve actually never done it before, revisiting my own movies. And at that time, I realized that I’ve always tried to rewrite the stories centering on women, which were made by men in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, from another perspective: the perspective of the women.

When I was in Venice for the first time, Claude Chabrol [was] in the same hotel as me, and he had a Q&A. I wanted to say hi and tell him how great he was but I couldn’t do it because I was very young and too shy for those things. I heard what he said when asked why in his movies, the women are always the main characters. His answer was, “Men are living, women are surviving. And cinema is about surviving.” It was such a fantastic answer.

All the movies I [have] made, including Undine, are about surviving. Undine wanted to survive her curse—she tries to, every time, since centuries ago. In so many iterations of the myth, Undine always has to go back into the lake and to the life the curse has set for her. I really wanted to zoom in on that, to liberate the character of Undine from the myth and the curse.

In the movie, Undine works as an historian at a museum, and in her tours, she talks about Berlin’s architecture and its reconstruction throughout the years. How is this related to the romantic aspect of the movie? Everybody says you can take a love story and put it in the sixteenth century or the nineteenth century, and it’s always gonna be the same kind of love story. But I think that’s not entirely right. Love stories always change. A kiss in Berlin 1933, for example, is not gonna be the same kiss in Berlin today, right? Therefore I want to take the historical aspect of Berlin architecture and its reconstruction to tell the story of two young people in Berlin nowadays, to see the evolution of both this love story and the myth of Undine itself.

What’s the significance of all the buildings Undine mentions in the movie? The buildings serve a very important role in the movie because Berlin is between two rivers on an island, and the city is built on dried-out swamps, so the element that Undine is coming from, which is the water, is destroyed in Berlin. It doesn’t exist anymore. And therefore Undine doesn’t have any habitats, so she has no choice but to adapt and to live on the land.

In some way, I always think that the modernization in Berlin erases history, and when there’s no history, there’s no magic, which means magical creatures like Undine won’t exist. That was the main idea of the architectural elements in the movie.

Is that also the reason why there are two locations in the movie: Berlin, and the small town where Franz’s character, Christoph, works and lives, which is still full of swamps? To show that in this small town, magic still exists? That’s a good question. The romance and the myth of Undine is a part of German and European history. It’s a unique enchantment. But in Berlin, where modernization and civilization keep growing and changing, there’s no enchantment anymore. So I want to show how in this small town where everything is still kept as closely natural as possible, the enchantment and the charm of Germany are still there.

There’s a beautiful and romantic poem by Joseph Eichendorff that says, “You must find the right world, so everything can sync again.” To me, that line encourages us to find the magic of the world back. We live in this world surrounded by retro buildings and retro behavior and retro music, but it’s all actually just an illusion of magic. The real magic, that’s something that we have to find—either by movies or camera positions or poems or even by preserving the naturality of a city. And the Undine myth actually has a lot to do with this.

Another thing that fascinates me about the movie is how the dynamic between Undine and Johannes, in some way, reflects the state of modern dating. Is this something that you also wanted to capture when you wrote the script? [Laughing] Funny story, when Paula read the script for the first time, she told me that she liked it so much because the story reminded her of Tinder and modern dating. And on some level, it’s true; part of Undine is about modern dating. I always think that in the era of dating apps, everything gets much simpler—you meet someone, you have sex (or perhaps not), and if you feel like this someone is not handsome or beautiful enough for you, you can keep scrolling until you find someone new. So, dating right now is like going to the supermarket.

Johannes leaving Undine to be with another woman, who for him is better-looking than Undine, reflects the culture of Tinder. And the line I mentioned earlier, “If you leave me, then I’ll have to kill you,” is the opposite of that kind of dating life. And Paula, who hates Tinder, loves that line a lot. Some of the actors are on Tinder, I’m sure, and that’s understandable. Actors are sometimes very lonely because for six to eight weeks, they are deep inside of a character, and when they’re on break, they’re in some sort of “black hole of loneliness”.

Writer-director Christian Petzold.

Undine being a water nymph, of course, makes the water element very important in this movie. But water has actually been heavily featured in some of your previous features as well, like in Yella, Barbara and Transit. Can you tell us why you find water fascinating? I’ve seen a documentary by Agnès Varda, and in [it] she said, “The place where one element is touching one another is the place where cinema builds its stories.” That’s why she loved the beach, because on the beach, there’s water and there’s the earth and there’s also wind, and they’re touching each other. So to her, the beach is the perfect place where you can tell a story.

For me, however, the reason I like featuring water or the other elements in most of my movies is because it has something to do with seeing my characters coming from one element then going to the other elements; to see them act and react in a new and sometimes uncomfortable place. Also, when you see pictures or paintings, so many of them are about people looking deep into the sea. I always feel like that kind of painting is actually about a desire. And most of my movies, at [their] core, are about desire. That’s why water is so important to me. Deep under the water, there’s the place of desire.

What’s the first movie that made you want to become a filmmaker? The first movie I loved very much as a kid was The Jungle Book, but the first movie that made me want to become a filmmaker was by Alfred Hitchcock, The 39 Steps. I was fourteen or fifteen years old when I saw the movie for the first time, and I loved it from the first moment. The movie is about a man and a woman who are bound by handcuffs, and they don’t like each other, but because they’re on the run, they have to communicate and come to an understanding. And the love story starts because of that communication, not because of looks, and I love the movie so much for that reason.

If you could program a double feature with Undine, what movie would you pick? Good question. I would say The Night of the Hunter. Also maybe Creature from the Black Lagoon or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or The Son’s Room by Nanni Moretti. These are the movies that I would recommend for a double feature with Undine.

Related content

More ‘Little Mermaid’ adaptations: a list by Katherine

Paula Beer strolling around towns cinematic universe

Diogo’s mega-list of Mermaids in Film

Horror’s History with Scary Mermaids: a Bloody Disgusting list

Follow Reyzando on Letterboxd

‘Undine’ is in theaters and available on VOD in the US now.

[msfbgraves]

Scandals on social media

Strange. Two actors who have been in things I adore and, by their own admission, are into things that are, in the eyes of the mainstream, a little eccentric, suddenly have incredibly bizarre things leaked on the internet. As in full out, cartoonishly weird. The fact that they aren't absolutely vanilla may lend credibility to the clips or DM's, but...

Everybody is always coming out with a number of weird things at once, which leads me to ask -

If true, why wasn't this news before? Why now? Why was this condoned or hushed before? What changed?

If someone is fabricating stuff, or pulling things out of context:

What did happen? Why drop this now? What changed?

Who has been sitting on this that couldn't get a platform two weeks ago? Because it is hardly ever instant. This never comes out ten minutes after an incident. (Unless you're Trump. He just tweets whatever.)

And for all I know, it could be true! The actors in question would have had to be incredibly stupid, but that happens.

But why do these things always build up for months or years and then 'suddenly' leak, if they're true and so shocking? Why are the clips blurry and extremely short?

I absolutely believe that sex tape of Colin Farrell is real. It's long and awkward and it fits with how he used to live - he was the type of bloke to french kiss a reporter he'd never met before. I believe that there is something to the Michael Jackson rumours because they have been around repeatedly, for a long time, and the things that he was proven in court to have done fit with patterns of grooming. Ezra Miller choking someone drunkingly in a bar? Very possibly happened, and an insanely dumb move even in jest, but with six seconds of blurry footage and no context also a bit too dumb to be a random spur of the moment decision. They're actors. They manipulate the media all day every day as part of their job. Would they be stupid enough to not realise how this looks? I mean maybe! How high do you get, right? But this is their profession, and they were in full view - that lapse of judgment and experience is at least surprising. It's like an air traffic controler ignoring all safety measures while flying their private plane. Especially without the context to explain what would cause them to forget everything they know and do. Probably a lot else happened too we're not being shown, or so I think.

Armie Hammer a cannibal? Ok, again - he'd have to have forgotten he is famous, the internet never forgets, his image is a little risqué, DM's like that are worth something to gossip blogs and that admitting to cannibalism is something that might not Sit Well With People even if he weren't famous.

It is perfectly possible this happened but it is surprising. And convenient to have it all happen at once.

In Johhny Depp's case there is so much manipulated data floating around I find it impossible to form any opinion whatsoever. I really don't know. But with Miller and Hammer - two actors suddenly going completely insane out of seemingly nowhere (but in a way that conveniently exploits their otherness?) I'm not convinced.

It may be true - and then whatever were they on, and how delusional can you get, and that's out of line and don't bother strangers with your choking and blood drinking inclinations, tf.

It may be false or heavily pulled out of context. And then: who benefits? These leaks don't just happen, whether what is being leaked is true or not. It's always orchestrated. By whom? Why? Images can be so heavily manipulated nowadays that I hardly believe anything without context anymore.

And why not like, tax fraud? Why cannibalism?

And if you are a cannibal, why DM strangers about it? Don't they have darkweb for that stuff? And dungeons where you can choke people with their enthusiastic consent? It's all so odd...!

[ploppythespaceship]

So I watched the Artemis Fowl movie...

Usually I make a list of good things and bad things in my reviews, but in this I literally do not have one good thing to say. Artemis Fowl fails as an adaptation, and it fails as a movie. It’s almost incomprehensible how terrible this film is -- Percy Jackson looks competent by comparison. So instead of my list, I’m gonna just talk about why it sucked.

The Plot

The movie combines the plots of the first two books in the series, with a few elements from later books tossed in for good measure. In the first book, Artemis learns of the existence of fairies and takes one hostage -- Captain Holly Short -- in order to extort them. In the second book, Artemis’s father has been captured, prompting Artemis to team up with Holly to rescue him.

The problem with combining these two is that they are fundamentally different stories. The latter relies greatly on the former to be well set up. Additionally, both are rather busy stories that need time and focus to do them well. The tension of Artemis holding Holly captive works because it lasts for a significant portion of the book. The development of Artemis teaming up with Holly works because they have hated each other for over a book now. This does not happen in the film. Everything is rushed, leading to a jumbled mess that barely makes any sense.

Artemis’s father is captured by Opal Koboi (a villain from the later books who does little to nothing in this film), who demands that Artemis give her something called the Aculos (a mcguffin that the movie made up). Artemis then captures Holly, and demands the Aculos as ransom. But when the fairies have no interest in giving him this ransom, Artemis teams up with Holly. Because it turns out her father, Beechwood, stole the Aculos years ago, and Artemis’s father knew Beechwood. The fairies send in a dwarf named Mulch to break in, and he locates the Aculos in the Fowl Manor. Mulch then teams up with Artemis, and there’s a long sequence where everyone fights a troll. Once that’s done, Holly uses the Aculos to rescue Artemis’s father. The end.

If you’re thinking that this plot makes no sense, that’s because it doesn’t. Information is presented at the strangest times, making things impossible to follow. Not to mention that character allegiances are constantly shifting for no discernible reason. There is no reason for Holly to trust Artemis, or vice versa -- yet they declare themselves “forever friends” before the end of the film. I can’t even tell you why Mulch sticks around, he just does.

The movie is also terribly paced. Despite only being ninety minutes long, it feels like it drags on for an eternity. Alternating between Artemis and Holly in the opening creates a distinct lack of tension, making it impossible to stay invested in any one thing for too long. Topping the whole thing off is the movie’s framing device -- the story is narrated by Mulch, as part of an interrogation that’s never properly explained. This setup feels so unnecessary, and it’s actually jarring every time we cut back to Mulch growling his exposition at the camera.

The Characters & Actors

I cannot think of one character that has not been butchered by the writing, the acting, or both. All of them are terrible. And across the board, the acting isn’t terribly good.

Artemis Fowl

The titular character gets it the worst of everyone. In the book, he’s a criminal mastermind. He’s cold, calculating, and eerie. He behaves so much like an adult that it unsettles people. He isn’t at all interested in typical child things, instead focusing on his own lofty goals. He’s an utter genius, learning the existence of fairies all on his own and coming up with the plan to capture one himself. Though he’s sympathetic in his own way, he’s also not presented as a terribly good person. As a protagonist, he’s almost unlikable -- it’s not until later books that he learns to have friends and become a better person.

But in the movie, Artemis is about as generic a fantasy film protagonist as you can get. He’s a more or less happy child who adores his father. He likes surfing and skateboarding. He doesn’t learn about fairies on his own -- his father tells him about them. And while he’s shown to be intelligent, it’s nowhere near the genius level he should be at. He’s so watered down and uninteresting that he’s unrecognizable as the same character. Even accepting that this isn’t the book character, he’s just boring to watch. There’s nothing interesting or compelling about this random kid. Ferdia Shaw’s performance doesn’t help -- while I’ve certainly seen worse child actors, I’ve also seen far, far better.

It’s worth mentioning that some of the best moments in the books are when something rattles Artemis so badly that the walls come down and he acts like a scared little kid. These moments work because they’re rare. This movie tosses them at you left and right. I don’t know who this kid is, but it ain’t Artemis Fowl.

Holly Short

In the books, Holly is an adult woman working an adult job -- she’s a police officer. She’s also described as having medium dark skin, with the phrases “olive” and “nut brown” being used most often. So the decision to cast a fourteen year old white actress... it boggles the mind. In fairness, Lara McDonnell did a decently good job in the role. But there wasn’t much role to do a good job with. Holly is a very bland character, with all of her drive and fire from the book simply gone. There’s also a backstory tossed in about her father, Beechwood Short, which is implemented in the strangest way and only comes up when it’s strictly relevant.

Domovoi Butler

Oh, Butler. Artemis’s bodyguard slash best friend slash pseudo father figure. A tremendously important character in the books who is barely in the movie at all. His role is so cut down that it’s absurd. I guess Nonso Anonzie was doing a fine job, but he was hardly there enough for me to tell. All indication that this man is a tremendously important figure in Artemis’s life is simply gone.

Edited to add: I didn’t initially think of anything wrong with Butler being a black man for the movie, but after seeing some complaints from others... yeah I think making a character from a family that’s been servants to a rich white family for generations now into a black man is uhhhhhhhhhh. It’s questionable.

Juliet Butler

Butler’s niece, Juliet, is in the movie so little that I kept forgetting she was there. Which is a damn shame, because I actually really liked Tamara Smart from The Worst Witch already and thought she was an excellent choice for Juliet. In the book, Juliet is the only other child around, and about the only kid that Artemis will remotely consider an equal. She’s great to balance him out and keep him more grounded. In the movie? Eh. She has a handful of lines.

Mulch Diggums

As far as being accurate to the book, Mulch is probably the closest. Though the decision to make a dwarf character not actually short boggles the mind... my main complaint is that Josh Gad likes to improvise his way through scenes, and his style of comedy is pretty grating. It gets old, fast. Throw in the fact that he’s also growling all of his lines to sound different, and you have a character that’s nearly unwatchable.

Julius Root

Speaking of growling all your lines! Commander Root is played by Dame Judi Dench in this movie, changing the character’s gender. I really don’t mind that, and the characterization is largely unchanged. What I do mind is Dench’s delivery. All of her lines are growled in such a low rumble that it sounds like she’s been smoking for eighty years. It becomes impossible to take anything she says or does seriously when she’s speaking like that. Josh Gad even pokes fun at it in a scene with the two of them, saying that they sound like “hippos with a throat infection” -- the only line to get a chuckle out of me.

Artemis Fowl, Sr.

To round it off, we have Colin Farrell as Artemis’s father. And... he’s here, I guess. Farrell mostly sounds bored in all of his scenes and it’s incredibly easy to forget about him.

Angeline Fowl

But wait! A fan of the book may ask. What about Artemis’s mother? How did the movie do her? Surely they didn’t forget Artemis’s mother! And my friends, I regret to inform you that the movie did, in fact, forget Artemis’s mother. She isn’t present, nor is she even mentioned. A major part of the books, a major force to drive Artemis’s character, just... gone. Lovely.

The Production Design

The best word I can think of is uninspired. Most things are serviceable, but unimpressive, leading to the film looking very generic. I was especially disappointed with the look of the fairy underground. A combination of magic and technology has a lot of potential to look visually interesting. Instead, the fairy police just look like the E.L.F.S. from The Santa Clause. And once you’ve seen it, you’ll never unsee it. So you’re welcome.

Additionally, the action scenes tend to be poorly shot and edited. Everything is extremely fast paced with a freely floating camera -- this makes things nearly impossible to follow. Several times I said out loud “what just happened?” because I legitimately could not tell where things were in relation to each other, and who was attacking, who was being attacked, etc. Thankfully there aren’t a lot of action scenes, but the few that do exist are pretty bad.

There are also several sequences of Mulch unhinging his jaw to burrow through the ground. In the book, it’s mildly amusing, but it doesn’t at all translate to film. It’s horrifying in every sense. The CG looks rubbery and fake, and Josh Gad’s performance doesn’t at all sell it. If there were any change from the books I would actually welcome, it’s this one. There are plenty of other ways he could dig. But nope. They stuck to that one. For some reason.

In Conclusion

This is easily the worst book to film adaptation I have ever seen. Please don’t watch it unless you’re a fan of the book and want a laugh.

[miserelysia]

“I Watched the Artemis Fowl Movie and It Made Me Very Upset” Liveblog!

So I decided I had to subject myself to this movie despite being Extremely Aware that it’s a massive pile of firey garbage. It was about as painful as expected, so I liveblogged to keep my sanity. Here’s basically what happened in my head while I was watching:

Josh Diggums: I feel so bad for Josh Gad's voice because it's painfully obvious they just didn't want Olaf showing up so they forced him into some terrible Bale-Batman voice that keeps cracking

why is this movie taking itself so seriously

Book Artemis: eternally unathletic dweeb

Movie Artemis: SURFING MASTER

the fuck, Branagh

THIS VOICE IS SO DAMN BAD, JOSH PLEASE STOP TALKING

okay Artemis is appropriately a little shit for EXACTLY ONE SCENE

FUCK OFF WITH FRIDGING THE MOM, BRANAGH

"ur mom's dead and ur dad's gone so ur a little shit" WHAT A GREAT COUNSELOR

fuck's sake

Book Artemis: immediately falls off whatever this hover thing is

COLIN FARRELL. SEXY MAN.

I ALMOST FORGIVE THEM FOR BRINGING HIM BACK EARLY

AND..... KNOWING ABOUT MAGIC

SDJFKSDF

WHATEVER

I WAS PREPARED FOR THIS

this voice is still terrible, Josh. I'm sorry

this kid is a pretty good actor

"all i really want is to believe in you" that was actually well-delivered

"Arty"

<sobbing>

OKAY IT'S NOT ACCORDING TO THE BOOK BUT FUCK ME THEIR RELATIONSHIP IS WELL DONE

i desperately need Butler to show up soon tho

I SPOKE TOO SOON

"DOMOVOI" ??!!?? YOU FUCKS

why

are his eyes

fucking ELECTRIC BLUE

HIS LITERAL FUKDFSUCING NAME IN THE BOOKS IS 'BUTLER' IT'S PART OF BEING AN INSANELY GOOD SECRET AGENT GUARDIAN HE'S NOT AN ACTUFL FUCKING BUTLER AND LITERALLY NO ONE EVER CALLS HIM "THE BUTLER" BUT HIS NAME IS BUTLER BECAUSE HIS REAL NAME IS SECRET HE'S FUCKING SECURITY FUCKING DID YOU READ THIS FUCKING BOOK SERIES AT ALL BRANAGH OR DID YOU JUSTDSJFKLDSHFSD:LFSEFAGH

i'm sorry

Butler is my absolute favorite character of the entire damn series and they fucking

can't even get OOOONNNNNEEEEEEEEE CHARACTER CORRECT

SCREAMS

did they think calling him "Butler" would be weird because they cast a black guy?????

AGAIN WHY WITH THE FUCKING ELECTRIC BLUE CONTACTS THEY'RE SO OBVIOUSLY FAKE IT LOOKS SO BAD. IF YOU MAKE THE DECISION TO CAST AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN JUST FUCKING OWN THAT HE HAS DARK EYES DON'T DO THIS

THE "OWL STAR"???? REALLY???? WHY NOT FOWL STAR

WHY

NOT

IT'S JUST SUCH AN ARBITRARY DUMBASS CHANGE IT MAKES NO SENSE

PLEASE DID I JUST MISUNDERSTAND THE REPORTER MAN

DID THE CAPTIONS JUST MISUNDERSTAND HIM?????

NOPE IT'S LITERALLY THE  O W L  S T A R

fuck off

i'm sorry

stuff like that just bothers me a lot

it makes ABSOLUTELY no sense to change it

Fowl Star made sense bECAUSE IT'S OWNED BY ARTEMIS FOWL

artemis has a lot more emotions than i remember him having

i will not forgive them for destroying the Butler/Artemis relationship in favor of a Dad they fucking fridge in the first half hour of the movie

oh boy nursery rhymes as codes

GROUNDBREAKING

i think the fairies would have something to say about you hiding their own shit from them, MISTER SENIOR

it's still a bad voice, Josh, I'm so sorry

okay Haven is pretty nice

"Haven" not "Haven City"

pretty sure

holly being a 13 year old girl is disconcerting

that was mentioned in a review

they're supposed to be Child-Sized not ACTUAL CHILDREN

also "small person = higher pitched voice" is such a stupid trope please stop

i like the Being diversity around the city

like lots of different types of humanoids

josh desperately wants to do the Olaf voice

i'm so sorry Josh

okay aside from the shit voice Diggums is pretty good

lol Cudgeon's already in jail

i

okay then

i know this is Opal Koboi

meh

i hate her in the books so they can fuck her up all they want

judi dench is batman too i guess

how many cigs you smoke judi root

OH BOY HOLLY HAS MISSING DADDY ISSUES TOO

fucking shit

"you're 84" and you look like a fUCKING THIRTEEN YEAR OLD

such bad choices

every time they say "Domovoi" i--

HISDFHSDHFH

JULIET

SHE'S

HIS

FUCKING

NIECE?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!??????????

SDFJLS:DKF FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK YYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

FUCK YOU

FUCK

FUCK

FUCK YOU KENNETH BRANAGH

NO

NO

NO

NO

SHE'S

HIS

FUCKING

SISTER

HIS BABY SISTER HE LOVES AND CARES FOR EVEN MORE THAN ARTEMIS AND THAT'S A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIP THAN UNCLE AND NIECE

HOW COULD YOU LITERALLY DESTROY EVERYTHING ABOUT BUTLER AND STILL SLEEP AT NIGHT

<vomits into the sun>

eoin colfer i hope you made so much money off of this SHITSTACK

(genuinely tho that's literally the only consolation; now he can write more Good Books)

Juliet is cute but i know about all she does is make sandwiches

so fuck this

judi dench is Good

foaly is Okay

why's he wearing clothes tho

the chutes are a lot more... open than expected

BEECHWOOD SHORT THE TRAITOR

FUCK OFF

WHY IS HOLLY’S CHARACTER DEFINED BY HER FUCKING FATHER

THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE AN OUTCOME THAN I EVEN EXPECTED GIVEN THEY EVISCERATED HER CHARACTER'S DRIVE BY MAKING THE L.E.P. ALREADY HAVE FEMALE OFFICERS AND COMMANDERS

"get out cudgeon before i throw you out" okay they got Root completely right at least

aside from making him a her

but that's okay

because it's Judi Dench

awwwww happy flying scene bUT HOLLY YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE SHIELDED GOt DAMN

“any update?” "yes. i'm freezing" amazing, Butler

i mean dOmOvOi

HOLLY YOU'RE STILL NOT SHIELDED

CGI isn't too bad in this but honestly that's not impressive anymore

awwwww cute wedding scene

troll is about as ugly as possible

LOL JUST FUCKING THROW TIME FREEZE UP LIKE IT'S NOTHING

OKAY

LOL HOLLY GO DEAL WITH THE TROLL DON'T FOCUS ON ONE SMALL CHILD

THAT'S NOT HOW A TIME FREEZE WORKS

I

i mean it's COOL

i love the little Men in Green zipping around

but it doesn't make ANY sense

LOL SO WHY DO THE PEOPLE THINK THE PLACE IS TRASHED

lol gently floating troll

Hollyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Judi Root continues to be amazing

ok tbf Opal Koboi would be after the Aculos if it existed

OP MacGuffin plots are so tired tho like really Branagh

i love the wings on her suit

ARTEMIS WHEN DID YOU GET TO THE TREE

holly ur a bad 84-year-old officer

LOL CUDGEON IS RIGHT ON

AND JUDI ROOT CONTINUES TO BE

"Not Happy!" lol wat

who wrote that bit of dialogue and said "yes this a perfectly good thing to have her say when she wakes up in a cage"

"mesmerism"

boy i love these exposition dump convos between Mr. Sr. and Arty

LOL "most human beings are afraid of gluten, how do you think they'd handle goblins" is a great line

out of touch, but still funny

...why does the time freeze take forever to generate now when you did it in TWO SECONDS BEFORE

calm down holly damn

foaly's very pretty

sO DID THEY FREEZE THE *ENTIRE WORLD*????????

I THOUGHT THE POINT WAS TO FREEZE THINGS INSIDE SO YOU HAVE MOONLIGHT LONGER

AND

AND

whatever

i love this fucking ARMY coming out of literally everywhere

"TOP OF THE MORNIN'" OH MY FUCKING GOODNESS

whole movie is worth it

for that line

i love that they're entirely in green

and no one ever Shields

ever

they mentioned Shields once but NO ONE IS SHIELDED

BUTLER WOULD NEVER LET ARTEMIS INTO A FIGHT

SCREAMS

"TAKE THE SHOT"

WHY IS THE TIME FREEZE SO EASILY DESTABILIZED

FOALY

ARE YOU TELLING ME NO ONE HAS EVER SHOT YOUR FUCKING ENORMOUS DEVICE

omg no U GAVE OPAL KOBOI LEGITIMATE REASONS FOR DOING WHAT SHE'S DOING

YOU GAVE HER A SAD FRUSTRATING BACKSTORY

SHE'S SUPPOSED TO BE AN ARROGANT SELF-SERVING BITCH AND NOTHING ELSE

TWENTY SEVEN MINUTES??????

hOW DID ARTEMIS KNOW ABOUT MULCH DIGGUMS SPECIFICALLY

lol that is 100% a completely inhumane prison what the fuck, fairies

why does Holly have human music

well i'm glad we didn't have to watch mulch almost eat a dude's head

"My father was kidnapped."

"My father is dead."

"Can I trust you?"

"You'll have to."

BUT WHY

WHAT IS THIS DIALOGUE

WHAT IS THIS CHARACTER PROGRESSION

THERE's NO REASON TO TRUST HER

OR TO NEED TO TRUST HER

THIS IS COMPLETELY UNEARNED AND STUPID

glad holly's entire character REVOLVES AROUND A MAN NOW, BRANAGH

LOL THEY JUST DIDN'T GIVE ROOT A FIRST NAME???

JUDI ROOT CONFIRMED

"listen to us, grunting at each other like a pair of hippos with a throat infection" LMAO

i hope that was Josh Gad improv

LOL HE JUST FUCKING DESTROYS EVERYTHING IN HIS WAY WHILE TUNNELING

YOU DIDN'T EVEN REALLY TUNNEL IN, MULCH

HOW DID YOU COME OUT OF A PAINTING

DO THEY HAVE PAINTINGS IN A BASEMENT???

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SHEETROCK OR WHATEVER

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY TO JUST

UGH

FOLLOW THE BOOK

COME ON

MULCH YOU ARE THE WORST BURGLAR

"what would your parents be" THEY'D BE CENTAURS MULCH

is... is Mulch on the second floor

HE TUNNELED THROUGH THE WALL ONTO THE SECOND FLOOR

artemis... just.. lets holly out

ok cool

LOL HIS NOSE HAIRS GROW AND MOVE LIKE TENTACLES

stupid and... funny? i guess

at least Cudgeon is the piece of shit he is in the book lol

oh boy troll time

BUTER WOULD NEVER LET MULCH DIGGUMS PICKPOCKET HIM

"jam all magic" OMFG THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE

BUTLER WOULD NEVER LET ARTEMIS FACE DOWN A FUCKING TROLL

LOL THEY JUST FIRE THE TROLL LIKE A BULLET

A TROLL-ET

DOMOVOI YOU ARE COMPLETELY USELESS WHAT THE FUCK

i wonder if kids even like this movie

omg butler couldn't even jump

i

i don't understand

he literally DOESN'T HELP AT ALL

IT'S HIS WHOLE THING

IS BEING ABLE TO KICK ASS

FUCKING COME ON BRANAGH

yeah fuck you branagh

are... are the fairies just DYING TO THE TIME FREEZE COLLAPSE???

"goodbye my friend. i'm sorry i was FUCKING USELESS"

branagh you're trying to activate my feelings with this Sad Death Scene(TM) but i am IMPERVIOUS because artemis has had NO RELATIONSHIP WHATSOEVER WITH THIS """DOMOVOI"""

COOL HE'S BACK NOW I’M SO GLAD ACTUAL FULL ON DEATH HAS ZERO CONSEQUENCES NOW THANKS TO OP FAIRY MAGIC

WHAT GREAT WRITING THIS IS

"i didn't cry did i" FUCK OFF

WHY IS IT SO DANGEROUS WHEN THE TIME FREEZE ENDS

WHY IS YOUR TECH SO SHITTY, FOALY

TIME FREEZES AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE DANGEROUS TO THE OCCUPANTS

THAT GOES AGAINST ALL OF FAIRY RULES

...okay and then it just ends..........?

Domovoi: "you have to try!"

Artemis: "i can't, tho"

Domovoi: "it's too dangerous!"

WHAT IS THIS DIALOGUE

WHO WROTE THIS ABSOLUTE DRIVEL

"the aculos for my father"

THE L.E.P. DOESN'T EVEN HAVE YOUR FATHER YOU ABSOLUTE DOOF

holly how do u know how to do this

the... the aculos is just the fucking Book?

i feel slapped in the face

she just recites the words and. and.

whatever

whatever

i'm done

GO FIND YOUR DAD WHO'S MAGICALLY BACK

WHY WOULD HE BE IN THE BED ARTEMIS

YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE A GENIUS

this girl who plays Holly cannot act

i'm sorry girl

MAGICALLY BACK DAD

HOORAY HOLLY'S CHARACTER CONTINUES TO BE DEFINED BY HER FATHER

FUCK

YOU

WRITERS

AND BRANAGH

BUTLER WOULD NEVER CRY, DOMOVOI

i like the cool earpiece they gave Judi Root to maybe? disguise her hearing aid?

Haven does look pretty cool

too much water above tho it’s not Atlantis guys come on

"i'm a criminal mastermind" LITERALLY WHEN DID YOU SHOW ANY SORT OF MASTERMIND BEHAVIOR OR CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR

BESIDES BRIEFLY KIDNAPPING HOLLY AND THEN IMMEDIATELY LETTING HER OUT

LMAO THAT LAST SHOT OF JULIET JUST LOOKING EXCITEDLY OUT OF THE WINDOW AT THE HELICOPTER WHILE EVERYONE LEAVES HER BEHIND

WHAT'S THE POINT OF THAT EVEN

THIS POOR GIRL YOU’RE JUST LEAVING HER ALONE

WOW THIS PRISON/INTERROGATION PLACE HAS LIKE

NO SECURITY

HI HOLLY WHY ARE YOU HERE??????

THIS WHOLE ENDING IS JUST THE STUPID CAP ON TOP OF A STUPID SUNDAE

i need to go listen to the books again now

[iam2003oo-blog]

Forest Whitaker Actor, Director, And Producer

Forest Whitaker- Actor, Director, and Producer

Unless of course you've been residing less than a rock to the earlier couple of decades, chances are much better than fantastic that you have observed a number of flicks or tv performances by actor, producer, and director, Forest Whitaker. He is properly-recognized for his performances in films for instance Oliver Stone's "Platoon" and "The final King of Scotland." Whitaker has created a system of labor that is a drive to be reckoned with, and his listing of costars over the years reads just like a who's who of Hollywood A-listers.

Despite the fact that he grew up in California, Whitaker was born in Longview, Texas, to an insurance plan salesman and Particular education and learning Instructor. Like most of modern stars, he received his initial start off in performing by starring in a high school Perform, during which he performed the lead. He graduated high school in 1979 and been given a soccer scholarship to Perform for Cal Poly Pomona. A again injuries pressured him to vary his major to tunes, and he toured abroad with The college's singing team. Whilst studying, he also turned much more interested in drama and changed his important all over again. He was acknowledged into both the Drama Conservatory and Audio Conservatory on the University of Southern California. He graduated in 1982 from USC. Generally the frequent college student, Whitaker is still pursuing his education and learning by Functioning toward a diploma in Studies in Peace and Reconciliation at New York University.

Whitaker's initial major break arrived when he was Forged to Engage in the role of the significant-school football participant in "Quick Situations at Ridgemont Higher" in 1982 alongside Phoebe Cates, Choose Reinhold, and Sean Penn. His other early films incorporate "The colour of Money" with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman, and "Fantastic Early morning, Vietnam" with Robin Williams. He also starred together with Jean-Claude Van Damme in 1988's "Bloodsport." That very same yr, he was picked to star as musician Charlie Parker in "Chook," a movie directed by Clint Eastwood that won Whitaker a Golden Globe nod as well as a Most effective Actor award on the 1988 Cannes Movie Pageant.

Throughout the Nineties, Whitaker worked with several perfectly-recognised administrators on various films, such as "Downtown" in 1990 with Penelope Ann Miller and Anthony Edwards. "The Crying Activity" in 1992 was a collaborative work with Neil Jordan that cast Whitaker like a captive soldier; a performance that won accolades for its psychological wartime portrayal.

Although it certainly wasn't a occupation-ending move, Whitaker appeared in "Battlefield Earth" in 2000-a movie dependant on the L. Ron Hubbard e book of the identical name, as well as a Film that may be extensively considered to be among the list of worst ever designed. Whitaker was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor at that year's Razzie Awards, only being beaten out by a costar.

Whitaker recovered promptly within the debacle which was "Battlefield Earth"-increasing for the situation and Placing alongside one another many of the ideal performances of his occupation, including 2002's "Cellphone Booth" with Colin Farrell and Kiefer Sutherland. The exact same 12 months, he costarred with large display maven, Jodie Foster, in the edge-of-your-seat thriller, "Worry Space."

It had been Whitaker's stunningly real-to-lifetime portrayal of Idi Amin in 2006 that led to his greatest acclaim in "The Last King of Scotland." Whitaker immersed himself during the job on the famed dictator, learning to Enjoy the accordion and attaining fifty lbs in the procedure. His initiatives paid out off huge time when he won the 2007 Academy Award for Finest Actor, a feat that place him in a similar course with other African-American actors to take action before, together with Jamie Foxx, Denzel Washington, and Sidney Poitier. He went on to incorporate far more notches on his belt with 2007's "The good Debaters"-a Film that gained him a nomination for a picture Award.

Whitaker is additionally gifted about the modest screen. He has lots of tv work on his resume, such as areas on "The Shield" and "ER." He narrated dozens of episodes of Cinema "The Twilight Zone," and he constructed up a pursuing when starring as against the law-combating very good dude on the spinoff of the mega-strike CBS series, "Felony Minds"-"Criminal Minds: Suspect Conduct."

Guiding the digicam, Whitaker can also be achieved in his possess appropriate. He coproduced and starred in 1991's "A Rage in Harlem." He directed "Waiting around to Exhale" starring Whitney Houston in 1995 along with "Hope Floats" with Harry Connick Jr. and Sandra Bullock in 1998.

Whitaker is married to actress Keisha Nash. The couple has 4 children, like Young ones from previous marriages. He can be an Energetic supporter of folks for the Moral Procedure of Animals (PETA).

[chronicolicity]

Spoilers for Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald

Subject: Dumbledore’s motivations

About that blood pact.

I don’t get why I’ve been seeing posts that the filmmakers screwed up by including the blood pact as the reason why Dumbledore can’t go after Grindelwald. At first glance, I see how the people unhappy with it got there, but if you think about it, the blood pact and Dumbledore still having Feelings are not mutually exclusive. The film has faults, sure, but this isn’t the worse sin it’s committed, IMO.

This is my two cents, and based off only one viewing of the film. So if you’re not interested, like, you can not read this.

1. Filmmakers want you to buy the film and where it’s taking you

From what I understand of movies and storytelling, the people doing the films generally try to make the story at least somewhat convincing - yes, I know FBCOG fell short in a few respects here - but I don’t think the blood pact was one of those areas.

Like, sure, they could’ve just said that Dumbledore’s still in love with Grindelwald, which is why he can’t fight the dude. I would’ve bought that...if Grindelwald was still being played by Colin Farrell.

I mean. I’m shallow.

But Grindelwald isn’t being played by Colin Farrell.

Grindelwald, circa 1890s.

Grindelwald, circa 1927.

The dude did not age well. Let’s just put it like that.

But sure, appearances are a matter of personal preference, and that certainly shouldn’t stop the film-makers from sticking with ‘Dumbledore still has feelings’ as the sole reason why he can’t make a move against his ex. Which leads me to the second (related) reason -

2. They HAVE to stretch things out until the final Dumbledore/Grindelwald duel in 1945

Not that Dumbledore’s a saint (*cough why is Newt cleaning up your mess*), but like, if he sits on his ass teaching Transfiguration/DADA from 1927 onward while Grindelwald’s swanning around Europe being an open fascist, recruiting followers, murdering humans (general evil stuff, you get the idea) UNTIL NINETEEN FORTY-FIVE -

Dumbledore doesn’t just look like a dude pining for his ex. He’s an asshole who’s letting innocent people die.

To me, the blood pact adds a complication, given how evil we’ve seen Grindelwald be, that’s stopping Dumbledore from going after him, as much as he might (or might not, deep down) want to. No one knows Grindelwald better than Albus Dumbledore. No one else knows what he’s capable of.

Put that together with the fan theories that in their first duel involving Arianna and Aberforth, i.e. that a curse fired off by one of them rebounded because of the blood pact and killed Dumbledore’s teenage sister, Dumbledore knows what happens if he tries to hurt Grindelwald with the blood pact still in force.

Dumbledore’s a lot of things, past and present, but he’s also not a moron. To me, the blood pact works. Could the film-makers have done a better job of setting it up? Yes. Maybe some scenes explaining this were cut for time constraints or were never filmed at all, but without the exposition on the blood pact, it fits with Dumbledore’s nature to, like, play the cards so close to his chest that, oh, I don’t know, a seventeen-year-old kid finds out he’s supposed to die literally five minutes before it happens. Again, FBCOG is not a perfect movie, but the depiction of the blood pact sits consistently with what we know about Dumbledore’s way of handling things.

Plus, they might be saving a longer explanation of the blood pact and its significance to Dumbledore until movie number 3. Heartbreaking flashback to the duel that killed Arianna, anybody?

So back to the blood pact -

3. How is the blood pact unromantic?

This is where I’m like “????” when I see posts hating on the blood pact for covering up/glossing over Dumbledore’s romance with Grindelwald.

I’m sorry, but do you gaze deeply into your very platonic friend’s smoldering eyes in a barn - just the two of you - with your hands cut in the exact same place and pressed up together so your blood and his blood bleed together all passionately and symbolically - while the both of you basically make O-faces doing it - all so you can have a pretty silver amulet thing with two drops of your blood floating around together in it, suspended, for like, an eternity, emblematic of your mutual promise never, ever, ever, to fight each other?

I clearly don’t get how platonic stuff works if the majority answer is yes, we platonic best mates make blood pacts all the time exactly like that.

My point being, they were in love (*cough we were more than brothers*). And to me, the movie didn’t say it, but they showed it.

You don’t make a magical, super-binding promise you can’t break, and by that I mean the substance of the promise, and the way they made the promise (see: hands clasped, gazing into each other’s eyes, etc) unless you’re bonkers in love.

(The real scene’s longer, but it was so not platonic in the movie)

Conclusion

The blood pact doesn’t mean Dumbledore wasn’t in love with Grindelwald, and IMHO, if they just stuck with “oh, he’s conflicted about the ex he used to love or maybe still loves a little” as Dumbledore’s reason for not going after Grindelwald, in the context of Grindelwald being shown as an internationally wanted fugitive, and like, EVIL, it makes zero sense that Dumbledore sits on his ass to wait and duel Grindelwald until 1945.

So, can we get back to talking about that Aurelius Dumbledore thing? Because THAT makes no sense.

[ao3feed-gravebone]

A Man For All Seasons

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2jf0zr9

by ebenflo

A series of drabbles between Credence Barebone/Percival Graves and Colin Farrell/Ezra Miller. Canon-compliant, canon-divergent, AU and everything inbetween. AKA all those ideas floating around in my head that wouldn't go away (but also didn't fit into anything else I was writing either).

Words: 51, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies) RPF, Actor RPF, Harry Potter - Fandom

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Credence Barebone, Percival Graves, Colin Farrell, Ezra Miller

Relationships: Colin Farrell/Ezra Miller, Credence Barebone/Original Percival Graves

Additional Tags: Drabbles, Freeform, Romance, Fluff, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Apocalypse, Religion, Art, Homelessness, Blasphemy, Vampires, Alternate Universe

read it on the AO3 at http://ift.tt/2jf0zr9

[mastcomm]

Sooner or Later, Zoë Kravitz Was Going to Be a Star

One afternoon in January, Zoë Kravitz was sitting in a sushi restaurant on the second floor of a Los Angeles strip mall, but her thoughts were 3,000 miles and 10 or so years away.

Specifically she was thinking about her weed guy.

He’d come around with product concealed in a guitar case. “He would only talk in code,” Kravitz remembered. “Like, ‘Do you want a guitar lesson today?’ But then sometimes he would screw it up, and be like, ‘Do you want guitar?’ I’m like, This isn’t code anymore.”

She was in her early 20s then, working only on and off, just another smart, young Brooklynite with time on her hands and a propensity for overthinking. She couldn’t have known it, but she was also doing research for her first headlining role, in the Hulu series “High Fidelity,” based on the 1995 lad-lit novel by Nick Hornby. Kravitz plays a Brooklyn record store owner whose life — and love life — is going nowhere particular, a part for which all those guitar lessons were inadvertent research.

“I did a lot of dumb stuff,” she said, but used a more pungent noun than “stuff.”

“Fun stuff,” she said, “but dumb stuff. And was probably a really difficult person to be in a relationship with. But I think maybe any 21, 22, 23-year-old is.”

Back in Los Angeles, the lunch crowd had mostly cleared out while Kravitz talked about living in New York, young and unfettered.

She wrapped her hands around a mug of green tea. She has the names of her younger siblings, LOLA and WOLF, inked across her middle fingers. Certain creepily comprehensive Internet sites suggest that she has at least 55 tattoos in total, many as small as punctuation. She wore a white cardigan. Her hair was cut short and pressed to her scalp in dark waves. Her characters often tend to say less than they know, forever side-eyeing the world around them, but in person she’s sharp, emphatic, easily moved to passionate outbursts by a piece of omakase (“Like butter. Like butter!”) or the two-decade-old “Seinfeld” where George builds a bed under his desk. (“It’s just so funny. Oh, man.”)

It feels like Kravitz, 31, has always been famous — an indelible screen presence and iconic parents will do that — but for years she’s been on the fringes of the action, playing haunted supporting characters in epics like “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the “Divergent” series. But that’s about to change. In a day or two she was leaving for London to start shooting her biggest movie role to date, playing Selina Kyle — better known as Catwoman — in the director Matt Reeves’s “The Batman.” Robert Pattinson plays the Caped Crusader, Colin Farrell is the Penguin, and in true star-of-a-comic-book-adaptation fashion, Kravitz said she couldn’t say much else, except that she never imagined finding herself central to a movie like this one.

“I really thought I was going to do theater and indie films,” she said. “That was what I liked growing up. And also, that was what I thought I was suited for. I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me in big movies.”

Just a few years ago, Kravitz — whose parents, the actress Lisa Bonet and the rocker/scarf influencer Lenny Kravitz, are both African-American and Jewish — had been discouraged from auditioning for a part in one of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. Not by Nolan personally, she said. It wasn’t a Catwoman-size part.

“It wasn’t like we were talking to the top of the top in terms of who was casting the thing,” she said, “But they said they weren’t ‘going urban.’ I thought that was really funny.”

A lot has changed since — for Kravitz personally, and in the business as a whole. From Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie in Marvel’s cinematic universe to Halle Bailey’s Ariel in the forthcoming live-action “Little Mermaid” reboot, it’s become less unusual for actors of color to book roles not originally conceived with an actor of color in mind, particularly in comic-book and fantasy material, where parallel universes collide and anything is possible. (It’s worth noting that women of color have played Catwoman twice before, including Halle Berry in a somewhat infamous 2004 film.)

Sometimes, though, inclusive casting highlights just how much work Hollywood — newly woke but still groggy — has left to do, when it comes to actually telling diverse stories. For two seasons, on HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” Kravitz has played Bonnie Carlson, the yoga-instructor wife of Reese Witherspoon’s character’s hunky ex. Amid a stacked cast of A-listers going for broke — trashing one another verbally, sometimes trashing rooms literally — she’s been an island of wary reserve, her eyes suggesting painful depths.

But in the first season Bonnie seemed to float at the periphery of a story that prioritized the tribulations of its well-to-do white characters instead. In the second season, Bonnie got a real story line — which required her to sit by her comatose mother in a hospital room few of the other characters ever visited. Critics and viewers noticed; the show was roundly criticized for its apparent lack of interest in Bonnie’s inner life.

Kravitz said she’d been drawn to the role of Bonnie — who’s white in the Liane Moriarty novel that inspired the series — because it was a chance to work with the director, Jean-Marc Valleé, and with “this dream cast” of Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley, who she’d made three “Divergent” movies with and who she’d practically grown up alongside. When she first read the script, Kravitz said, “it felt really fresh and necessary, and like it was filling some kind of creative void I didn’t know I’d really had.”

It didn’t bother her, she said, that the show never acknowledged that Bonnie was the only prominent person of color in the series’ otherwise monochromatic Northern California milieu.

“In the first season, there was something really refreshing about not making that a story line,” she said. “It’s frustrating when people of color can only play a character that’s written as a minority,” she added. “So it’s refreshing when it’s not about that. But it’s complicated, because you don’t want to ignore that fact. Part of our responsibility as storytellers is to tell the truth.”

She said she’d brought up ideas for Bonnie, ways to explore her position in the world of the show that felt truthful. “I pitched things, and it didn’t resonate with everybody and that’s OK,” she said, “It’s not like I didn’t have anything to do. Bonnie has a lot going on besides the fact that she’s a minority, you know? But that detail and that depth would have been delightful.”

Kravitz was born in 1988, when her mother was best known as the Hillman College undergrad Denise Huxtable on the “Cosby Show” spinoff “A Different World” and her father was a struggling musician who still went by Romeo Blue. They split in 1993, when Kravitz was 4; the following year, Bonet and her daughter settled in relative seclusion, on five acres in Topanga Canyon.

Bonet rocketed to fame as Cliff and Clair Huxtable’s second daughter, and then lost that job — she had creative differences with Bill Cosby, beginning when he refused to write Bonet’s pregnancy with Zoë into the series. In an interview, Bonet said the move to the mountains was, at least in part, “a retreat from a world that I was probably unprepared for, at the age I was out there playing in it.”

She also wanted to give her daughter a connection with nature and nurture her imagination. She was a limited-screen-time parent before “screen time” became a topic of widespread parental concern. They had a VCR and a collection of tapes — mostly stuff from Bonet’s childhood. “The Little Rascals.” The original “Freaky Friday,” with Jodie Foster. “Bugsy Malone,” a Prohibition-era gangster musical starring a cast of children. (“That was a big one for me,” Kravitz said.)

Kravitz was always a performer, Bonet said. She remembered the night of her mother’s funeral, when Kravitz favored family members gathered at the Topanga house with a song — “The Boy Is Mine,” by Brandy and Monica.

“Zoë put a suit on — I think she had a mustache and glasses — and came out and brought so much joy to the whole room,” Bonet said. “No one told her what to do — it was just pure, from her imagination, with the intention to lift the spirits in the room.”

Kravitz would have been around 9 when this happened. At 11, she relocated to Miami to live with her father, who’d long since shed the Romeo Blue moniker and become one of the biggest rock stars of the age. There are different stories about how Zoë Kravitz’s move to Miami happened, depending on whom you ask.

“There was a whole seduction,” Bonet said, “to a life outside of living in the mountains, with just a monitor and a VCR, compared to screens in every room and private chefs and a big house. There was no real conversation, not between her father and I. But it was necessary. She needed to find out who her father was, and that was the way.”

Lenny Kravitz recalled the situation somewhat differently.

“She wanted to live with me,” he said, “and I wanted to have her. It was time. And as a family, we made the decision together.”

“It really helped me to focus my life,” he said. “I was running around the world touring, man … I had to make some lifestyle changes.”

Still, life with Lenny Kravitz came with no shortage of rock-star perks. He shared a label with the Spice Girls at the time; one year Zoë sat with them at the Grammy Awards. “I don’t remember if it was Scary or Victoria,” Lenny said, “but she was sitting on one of their laps, and she was in heaven.”

But according to Zoë Kravitz, there were more prosaic reasons that life with her father appealed. Lenny Kravitz’s house had Pop-Tarts. Lenny Kravitz had cable. “I just wanted to feel normal,” she said, “and the way my mother was raising me felt very abnormal, even though looking back, it was the coolest.”

Some time after moving to Miami, Zoë Kravitz told her father that she wanted to act. “My mom wanted me to wait until I was an adult to start working,” she said, but her dad felt differently.

“I’m a person who left home at 15,” Lenny Kravitz said. “I would do nothing but support my child in what she wanted to do, absolutely. And it was her decision.”

What everyone seems to be able to agree on is that this would have happened no matter what — that sooner or later Zoë Kravitz would be doing what she’s doing right now.

“I mean, look, she’s a mad artist,” Shailene Woodley said in a phone interview. “Zoë’s constantly looking at the world around her, thinking, ‘How can I leave this place better than it was when I got here? How can I continue to use my talents and gifts as a singer, as a writer, as an actor in a way that’s meaningful and impactful for future generations and have fun doing it?’”

Woodley was calling from London, while preparing for a dinner party. Even as the sound of arriving guests became audible over the phone, she kept on singing her friend’s praises.

“I think — not ‘I think’ — I know one of Zoë’s major superpowers is that she’s funny as hell,” Woodley said, using a different four-letter word. “People don’t realize how funny Zoë Kravitz is. They see her and they see this super-hip, cool girl. But her superpower is humor and comedy and understanding the complexities of life and somehow morphing them in a way that polarizes drama and humor. As a creator I think that’s what gets her ticking.”

Zoë Kravitz is an executive producer of “High Fidelity” as well as its star, and the show — funny and poignant and surprisingly personal — feels like a product of the sensibility that Woodley described. Kravitz, who attended high school in New York and has fond memories of loitering after school in grubby record shops like Kim’s Video and Music, the bygone East Village institution, said she’d long been a fan of the book and particularly of Stephen Frears’ film version from 2000, which starred John Cusack as Rob and Lisa Bonet as a singer with whom he rebounds.

“For some reason,” she said, “‘High Fidelity’ was one of the few pieces of art that my parents had been a part of that I was really able to separate from them. It’s a weird thing, because it can be really uncomfortable and strange watching your mom kiss John Cusack or whatever, but it became a film that I loved and watched and could quote.”

Sarah Kucserka, who developed the Hulu series with Veronica West, said when they brainstormed leads, “the top of the list — pie in the sky, it’s never going to happen — was Zoë.” Kucserka noted, “She has a lot of depth, and that was what this character needed. You couldn’t come at it with someone who only brought one thing to the party.”

Hornby was only dimly aware that a TV version of “High Fidelity” was in the works. But last year, Kravitz asked if they could meet. “She seemed to have a lot invested in it,” Hornby said, “and was restless in her urge to get it as close to what she wanted as she could.” She asked for, and received, his blessing.

“One of the things I’m most proud of about the book,” Hornby said, “is that — I’ve realized this more and more over the years — it’s not just about me. It’s not just about people like me. It’s about way more people than I thought.”

In the initial script, the main character lived in Los Angeles and would have worked at a radio station. Kravitz proposed moving it to New York, and into a dusty basement record shop. Those choices, she said, helped determine other aspects of the show, like setting the story in Crown Heights, a part of Brooklyn where a dusty basement record shop and its owner could realistically survive. (Kravitz, who married the actor Karl Glusman last June, has lived in Williamsburg for more than 10 years, long enough to watch gentrification transform it; her favorite bagel shop is now an Apple Store.)

The staff of the record store now consists of two women of color (Kravitz’s Rob and Da’Vine Joy Randolph of “Dolemite Is My Name”) and a shy, gay man (David Holmes). When Rob runs down her top five heartbreaks in flashback, the list includes women as well as men.

None of this, Kravitz said, was about clearing some imaginary bar for wokeness. They just wanted a cast that looked real.

“I was trying to recreate a world that I know,” Kravitz said, “and that’s what it looks like. It doesn’t look like a bunch of white girls, like the show ‘Girls,’” whose portrayal of New York-area hipsterdom struck many viewers — Kravitz included — as demographically specious.

“If that show was in Iowa or something, fine, but you’re living in Brooklyn,” she said. “There’s people of color everywhere. It’s unavoidable. Same thing with Woody Allen — like, how do you not have black people in your movies? It’s impossible. They’re everywhere. We’re everywhere. I’m sorry, but we’re everywhere.”

Kravitz acknowledged that there might be reflexive resistance to the idea of a gender-flipped “High Fidelity,” as there is to gender-flipped anything, among a certain class of consumers. “I think a lot of white men who identified with the book think it’s theirs,” Kravitz said, “and are ready for us to screw it up, and are going to have trouble seeing it in a different light. But I think if they get past that thing, they’ll see that we actually really did honor the property, I think.”

This kind of conversation is good practice — Kravitz is about to fly to London and shoot a movie in which she plays an iconic comic-book character, and she’s aware that any attachment “High Fidelity” fans may have to an idea of Rob Gordon pales in comparison to the proprietary feelings contemporary nerddom harbors regarding Batman.

“As long as I don’t allow it to get in the way of what I need to do to find this character and make her my own, so that it can be as authentic as possible, I welcome all the fans and their opinions and their love for this world,” she said, with a diplomatic smile.

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[rememberthattime]

Chapter 17. Belgium

Add one more to the list. Europe, you did it again. Just another trip that delivered far more than expected… Two years ago it was Budapest. Last year it was Milan. Two weeks ago it was Lake Bled. Now, just this weekend, it was Belgium.

I was so impressed by this weekend that I’m writing this post immediately. It’s a Sunday evening and Chelsay and I are on the Eurostar back to London, just an easy two hour train from Brussels. It’s crazy to think that it was less than 36 hours ago that we were heading the other direction.

At that time, we’d envisioned a nice weekend in Brussels. We’d get our fix of Belgian waffles, and chocolates, and beer… It was just a food visit actually, but not necessarily a trip that would really stick (except in our arteries). We’d booked the Eurostar to and from Brussels, so we anticipated just taking it easy in Europe’s capitol city. 

And that’s the way it started too. We arrived in Brussels after the short train ride, and set out for our brief list of must-sees. We started with the Grand Place, a 17th century square, marked by its gothic townhall but surrounded by opulent Baroque buildings gilded in gold paint. 

Next… well there was no next. That was the list of must-sees. Sure, we wandered the small Brussels streets, which are an appealing juxtaposition of styles: some five point intersections that reminded me of Montmartre in Paris, some brutally simplistic designs that could have been straight out of East Berlin. Beyond the architecture though, the majority of our memories from Brussels are of food. 

It started with waffles at Maison Dandoy, where we tried both the Belgian-style waffle (light and airy) and the Liege-style waffle (thicker and chewier). They both came coated in powdered sugar with a side of vanilla bean whipped cream (the Liege also came with warm melted chocolate). It didn’t matter which one you ate though. They were equally unbelievable and have ruined Eggos for the rest of my life. 

We toured the city streets a bit, but we couldn’t sightsee empty handed. We each grabbed our own frites (fries) cone, mine covered with curry ketchup and Chelsay’s with mayonnaise. 

We walked around until our feet got tired, then we briefly retreated back to the hotel… with a snack of course. We picked up eclairs and toffee-filled chocolate eggs from Belgium’s best chocolatier, Pierre Marcolini. 

Before heading out for the evening, we needed a bit of caffeine… Coffee? Yes. Another waffle? No, ugh fine! Mokafe in the Galeries Royales did the job. 

A strange thing happened while we were at Mokafe though. Maybe I was hallucinating from all the sugar, but while Chelsay and I were enjoying our coffee and waffles, a band of several hundred men marched through the Galleries… all in black face and cartoonish outfits! Not cool Belgium… (Later, we found the parade is a centuries-old fundraiser where participants remain anonymous by painting themselves in black).

After the excitement, we ended our day of gluttony with another gut buster: spaghetti amatriciana from Bocca d’Ora. We’d actually stopped by two other restaurants that we thought we’d prefer, but both were completely booked (shocker given how few people we’d seen on the streets that day). We settled for our third choice, but were pleasantly surprised and thoroughly impressed. From our corner table where we could each look out on the restaurant, we enjoyed smooth red wine and a delicious onion & prosciutto-packed amatriciana that rivaled our favorites in Lake Como and Rome.

By this point, we’d pretty much done Brussels. It’s got some stuff (Chris O'Dowd Bridesmaids reference), but we’d walked the whole city three times already and our bellies simply couldn’t take another waffle. So, for Day 2, we instead audibled to nearby Bruges.

Bruges is an old city… I mean, it’s surrounded by a moat. It’s an hour north of Brussels and is best known for its small medieval streets and concert-giving bell tower. I’d wanted to visit since we moved to Europe (we were considering it for an upcoming May bank holiday), but this open day was a perfect opportunity.

After a short train ride from Brussels, we quickly realized why Bruges had gained such a charming reputation. We leisurely walked down winding cobbled alleys and through classically European public squares. Each building is styled differently, though all are tightly pressed together against the canal. 

We really didn’t have an agenda while in Bruges… We went on a boat ride down the canal, and visited the tower that Brendan Gleeson jumped off in In Bruges (it’s a comedy with Colin Farrell). 

Although I’ll remember moseying through the quiet medieval alleys and slowly floating down the canal, what will stay with me the most is relaxing in Markt Square to wrap up the day. Chelsay and I laid out, basking in the first warmth and sunshine we’d felt in months. The square was peaceful compared to metropolitan London (no cars, no busses, no Essex lads yelling), yet it was still pleasantly buzzing with life: the bell tower’s orchestra, children playing, the click-clacking of horse-drawn carriages against cobbled streets. 

It was a perfect ending to this weekend: sipping tea and eating Belgian chocolate-covered strawberries (why not a few extra calories…). We bathed in the sunshine, people-watched in the lively square, and simply let time slip away. With busy London miles away from our minds, we soaked in this classically European atmosphere and were reminded just how far a two hour train ride could take us.