#Das Boot movie review
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himluv · 8 months ago
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DA Review Series: Dawn of the Seeker
<<<Previous Review: The Calling
I'm continuing on down the list in my journey to read/watch/play ALL Dragon Age content before Veilguard launches in the fall. Which means my next review is the anime Dawn of the Seeker!
Title: Dawn of the Seeker Director: Fumihiko Sori Release Year: 2012 In-World Year: 9:22 Dragon Verdict: Skip. Just read the DA wiki entry and call it good. Although, the Seether song at the end does slap.
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Dawn of the Seeker tells the story of young Cassandra Pentaghast and how she came to be the Right Hand of the Divine.
So, this movie is not good. The animation style is very flat and, at least to me, visually unappealing. Everything looks bland and feels generic. The only reason I know this is part of DA is because they've told me so. 
Very few characters have actual names - most are referred to by their title. High Seeker (which in later content is switched to Lord Seeker), Knight-Commander, Grand Cleric, and even The Divine herself. None of these people are given names, which makes this movie pretty useless from a lore standpoint. 
Sure, we have a Knight-Commander, but of what Circle? It's never mentioned, as if there is only one Knight-Commander in all of Thedas. 
The only real tidbit of lore is in an absolute throw-away line that is never elaborated on. At one point the Knight-Commander says, "an event like Kirkwall will never happen again." I had to pause the movie because this threw me for an absolute loop. I thought he meant the destruction of the Chantry and the attempted annulment at the end of DA2. I had to use the wiki to discover what he was actually referring to.
A bit of codex lore explains that, in 9:21 Dragon, Divine Beatrix III (the Divine in this film) pressured Kirkwall's Templars to attempt to overthrow the Viscount. In response, the Viscount tried to give the Templars the boot, which culminated in the assassination of Kirkwall's Knight-Commander. This event directly led to the promotion of Meredith Stannard to Knight-Commander.
That's what the Knight-Commander in Dawn of the Seeker is referring to. Which is a pretty effing big event in Theodosian history, and it just never gets explained in this movie. 
Beyond that, there isn't really much here. The mages seem to be overpowered compared to what we've seen in game, and there are an AWFUL lot of Blood Mages just roaming around the Orlesian countryside. The magic we do see isn't visually recognizable as any spells from in-game and is really underwhelming. 
Cassandra as a character is pretty boring in this one. We learn about the circumstances of her brother Anthony's death, which is touching, but otherwise... Eh. She is voice acted by the same person who voiced Riza Hawkeye in the English dub of Fullmetal Alchemist though, so that's neat, I guess?
The best character is Galyan (short for Regalyan d'Marcall), a Circle Mage who barely uses any magic but it handsome and snarky. He felt like a true DA character to me, even if he served very little purpose through the whole movie. SPOILERS: sadly, Galyan died at the Conclave in 9:40 Dragon :( .
So, yeah. I've seen this film twice now, and I am utterly underwhelmed by it. Especially after having Absolution to compare it to...
No one will blame you if you just skip it, I promise.
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soviet-sin-corner · 1 year ago
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All the light we cannot see (Movie review)
quick note: when I say 'genre' I mean WW2 movies, this is wholly just my very much fallible opinion, I literally just watched the movie this is in no way wholly comprehensive and thought through AND I have not read the book. Oh and spoilers
I just finished 'All The Light We cannot Sea' not that anyone asked for my opinion, but it was a really cute story! I love the connection between Marie and Werner through the Professor though in terms of the romance aspect... I feel like they sort of threw away Marie's character for the sake of it. Werner being head over heels fully make sense even if it is not logical seeing as for him she is the embodiment of 13.10 and therefore all the hope, care and love that it represents. That aside, love the fact that reference was made to the elite schools. Since it's been something I'd been itching to see depicted more often in second world war era movies ever since I watched 'Napola; Before The Fall', though it is validly and naturally not referred to/depicted that often seeing as there are more interesting/important stories to tell.
Either way I do wish that the season was a bit longer there was a lot of potential in terms of building tension and suspense with Werner and the curly haired liar and there would have been more time to potentially flesh out Marie and Werner's dynamic, but then again this is probably just due to the fact that I'm comparing this to the pacing of other war series (e.g Das Boot 2018) which really take their time lathering on suspense and have a much longer run time. So, the shorter run time of this series taken into account, the pacing was simply fine. Though I liked the series over all it was in a sense (for me) truly mediocre.
The story line with Marie and her father, Etienne Leblanc's whole shebang and Werner's back story were all very interesting, but (and again this is purely and wholly my own opinion, I literally just finished the season and decided to write this no deeper thought or analysis has been put into this) the individual aspects merge, however cohesively, only to still outshine the overarching plot or rather perhaps more correctly, the present of the story. It is much more about characters going through a plotline set in a war than a war movie... If that makes any sense? The focus is very much on the past and the characters individually, much more than the current events and actions and though they are in no way unimportant or underplayed, they definitely play second fiddle in my opinion. This is more prominent in the 2nd episode onwards.
This isn't a bad thing by any means, but if you're going into this with your focus on the war aspect of the film then you won't be disappointed and not really underwhelmed but simply... well, whelmed, I suppose. I wouldn't say to go into this expecting a love story either, because it is... at least to me, not. Rather this movie is more a 'connection two people (unknowingly) share and their development and life up until they meet, oh and also its set in a war' type movie. There's a lot of focus on the softer human aspect (which we love to see) and the before/leading up to aspect, but without building a lot suspense which one may expect from a war movie (not that there wasn't suspense just not that much again in comparison to other war series like Das Boot 2018).
Somethings I really loved about this movie though was Etienne and his whole deal (simply because it's something I know and enjoy encountering in this genre), Marie and her father, like fr fr that whole storyline was actually perfect beginning to end and lastly Marie's blindness was perhaps the best most new and most refreshing and truly and addition to this genre on a whole. I'm not saying that the experience of being blind was well portrayed, seeing as I myself am not and have never been blind, but in a genre that is allergic to diversity it's always nice to see the portrayal of experiences that deviate from the 'norm'. ESPECIALLY, representation of people with disabilities and not just a oh look at this poor soldier who just got shot will never walk again we're just going to push him off screen, pretend he doesn't exist and get back to the boy with guns. I'd love to see more representation of disabled people being people and not just something to be pitied in this genre.
My biggest problem with this film is it all being in English. I love it when the respective characters speak their respective languages. But also it made some part a little unclear as to who could understand what and what language was actually currently being spoken. But that's really just me being nitpicky its fine as is just not what I prefer, lol.
Anyways all in all the series was a solid 7.5/10 and again I was beyond stoked to see more Elite school depiction and the story truly was very cute (Also if you really liked the suspense and war aspect of this series then watch Das Boot 2018 you'll love it, season 1 was prime television)
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watching-pictures-move · 1 year ago
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Movie Review | House of the Dead (Boll, 2003)
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Of the three Uwe Boll movies I’ve seen so far, I feel confident calling this his most enjoyable, and more importantly, the only one that consistently offers the bozo nu metal energy I want from crap from this era. The psychedelic opening credits, followed by the rave in the woods, are promising signs. Why the characters insist on going to a secluded island for their raving needs instead of a location near civilization, I do not know. I am not a raver. I have never raved. 
Anyway, the movie enters the realm of quality by the half hour mark when we get Jurgen Prochnow, who like in Das Boot plays a man of the sea, chomping on a Cuban cigar while blasting away at zombies trying to crawl onto his boat. While I have not played the original game, I understand it’s a light gun shooter, and this sequence captures that essence perfectly. And the movie pretty much stays at this level for the remainder of its runtime, following this up almost immediately with an even more extravagant scene where all the characters walk alongside each other blasting zombies left and right. Listen, you might wonder why they never move in different directions or why the zombies seem to always leap out in similar patterns. You might wonder why we arbitrarily cut to Hero Mode 360 degree pans of the characters doing their special moves which somehow have no impact on the rest of the scene. You might wonder why the movie keeps cutting to footage from the actual game. And you’d be asking a lot of questions. Ever heard of the Kuleshov effect, dumbass?
It’s not enough that the scene is already assembled like a montage, it throws in an even more aggressively edited montage at the end, like some sort of puzzle box, all while some combination of techno and nu metal blares on the soundtrack. And Boll’s blocking is no better here than in his other movies, as the heroes are too often in the foreground and move along only a narrow plane of action, but if anything, it adds to the thrill ride nature of the movie. The only real knock I have against this is that aside from Prochnow, Clint Howard (acting as if in a completely different movie than Prochnow but no less enjoyable) and Ellie Cornell, the protagonists are all anonymous dipshits with few distinguishing qualities. The only one I could tell apart was the girl in the stars and stripes, by virtue of her unique outfit. 
None of this is what you’d call conventionally exciting, tense or maybe even competent, but the constant incident and motion, of zombies popping up and getting blown away, meant that my synapses were firing pretty actively during this. I had a good enough time.
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thealmightyemprex · 2 years ago
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The movies for the epic challenge!
Basket case
Doctor who the movie
Amadeus 1984
The hunchback of notre dame
The three musketeers
Das Boot
Alien
The full monty
Nuns on the run
A Bond with Connery
Doctor Who The Movie was made for TV ,it wasnt released theatrically in the US
I'm assuming you mean the 1993 Three Muskateers ?
Siskel and EBert never reviewed a Connery bond ,but they did a Bond special ,so I can include that
I havent seen the Full Monty,Nuns on the Run or Das Boot so cant judge their hot takes ,but here are their reviews so you can see what they thought
youtube
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nobigsecrets · 1 month ago
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2024 Review
It's probably a bit late now for year-in-review posts but I cleared out my drafts yesterday and found all these reviews I made and never posted. These are not exactly extensive lists and they're definitely incomplete but they do include the media I liked and/or found noteworthy.
TV Shows
Young Royals S3 (Netflix)
The Gentlemen (Netflix)
Reacher S2 (Amazon)
Charité S4 (ARD)
9-1-1 S7, S8 / 9-1-1 rewatch (Amazon)
IWTV S1, S2 (Amazon)
Kleo S2 (Netflix)
Achtsam Morden (Netflix, mit Tom Schilling)
Heartstopper S3 (Netflix)
How to get away with murder (Netflix)
Movies
Tatort Saarbrücken: Der Fluch des Geldes
Der Vorname (mit Florian David Fitz)
Das perfekte Geheimnis (mit Florian David Fitz)
Große Freiheit (über §175)
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Swan Song (with Udo Kier)
Me Him Her
Books
Garrett Leigh: Christmas Mountain
Marc-Uwe Kling: QualityLand
Marc-Uwe Kling: Views
Sebastian Fitzek: Elternabend
Years 2021-2023 under the cut.
2023
TV Shows
Die Neue Zeit (Das Bauhaus in Weimar; Arte)
Bonn: Alte Freunde, neue Feinde (ARD, mit Max Riemelt)
Luden (Amazon)
Ted Lasso S3 (Apple TV)
Schlafende Hunde (Netflix, mit Max Riemelt)
Almania (Die Ferien sind vorbei) (ARD)
SEAL Team (started)
Heartstopper S2 (Netflix)
Sex Education S4 (Netflix)
Lupin S3 (Netflix)
Capital B (Berlin Doku; Arte)
Movies
Glass Onion
Tatort Saarbrücken: Das Herz der Schlange
Polizeiruf 110: Der Gott des Bankrotts
Vorwärts Immer (Der doppelte Honecker)
Die Mitte der Welt
Extraction 2
Eldorado (Doku; Netflix)
Fanfic (Polish Coming-of-age drama about a young trans guy; best moment when he's called Tosiek instead of Tosia for the first time; Netflix)
Tom of Finland (ARD One)
Red White and Royal Blue
Polizeiruf 110: Cottbus Kopflos
The Birdcage
Lotte am Bauhaus
Fight Club
Books
Garrett Leigh: Between Ghosts (m|m military romance)
Casey McQuiston: Red White and Royal Blue (re-read)
John Brownlow: Agent Seventeen
James Kestrel: Fünf Winter (og title: Five Decembers)
Ralf Langroth: Die Akte Adenauer
2022
TV Shows
Reacher (Amazon)
Oktoberfest 1900 (Netflix)
All You Need S2 (ARD)
Heartstopper (Netflix)
9-1-1 S5 (Amazon)
The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo (YT)
A League Of Their Own (Amazon)
Kleo (Netflix)
Young Royals S2 (Netflix)
Smiley (Netflix)
Ted Lasso (Apple TV)
Movies
Tatort Saarbrücken: Der Herr des Waldes
Tatort Saarbrücken: Das fleißige Lieschen
Polizeiruf 110: Hildes Erbe
She’s the Man
Top Gun: Maverick
Bullet Train
The Gray Man
Pride
Polizeiruf 110: Abgrund
My Beautiful Launderette
Books
Garrett Leight: Only Love (mlm romance, lots of hurt/comfort)
Tomasz Jedrowski: Im Wasser sind wir schwerelos
Pene Henson: North Shore
Hansjörg Nessensohn: Mut. Machen. Liebe.
2021
TV Shows
Charité S1-S3 (ARD)
Das Boot (2018) (ZDF)
Sex Education (Netflix)
Young Royals (Netflix)
Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (Amazon)
All you need is love (ARD)
Love, Simon
Hollywood (Netflix)
Eldorado KaDeWe (ARD)
Der Palast (ZDF)
Books
Linus Giese: Ich bin Linus
Marnie Schäfers: A New Season
Becky Albertalli: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
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moviereviews101web · 11 months ago
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The Last Rifleman (2023) Movie Review
The Last Rifleman – ABC Film Challenge – Favourites – L – The Last Rifleman – Movie Review Director: Terry Loane Writer: Kevin Fitzpatrick (Screenplay) Cast Pierce Brosnan (GoldenEye) Clemence Poesy (In Bruges) John Amos (Die Hard 2) Jurgen Prochnow (Das Boot) Ian McElhinney (City of Ember) Plot: A WWII veteran escapes his care home in Northern Ireland and embarks on an arduous but…
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mwsa-member · 2 years ago
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MWSA Interview with John Winn Miller
Interview date: 31 May 2023
John Winn Miller is an award-winning investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, newspaper editor and publisher, screenwriter, movie producer, and novelist.
As a reporter at the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader, Miller was part of a team of reporters that wrote a series that helped trigger educational reform in Kentucky. It was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Society of Professional Journalists’1990 public service award, top honors from Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the first $25,000 Selden Ring award.
He also was a reporter at the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal/Europe; executive editor of the Centre Daily Times in State College, PA, and the Tallahassee (FL) Democrat as well as the publisher at The Olympian in Olympia, WA, and the Concord (NH) Monitor.
In 2012, he was elected to The Associated Press board of directors and selected as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize for the second year in a row.
Miller, a Lexington, KY native, has also produced four films, including Band of Robbers, written and directed by Adam and Aaron Nee (who recently wrote and directed The Lost City). He and his wife, Margo, live in Lexington. Their daughter Allison Miller is an actress-screenwriter-director currently starring in the ABC series A Million Little Things.
MWSA: How long have you been associated with MWSA?
Since April 2023
MWSA: Why did you choose to write a World War II maritime thriller?
Strangely, the inspiration for the novel was a dream. When my daughter Allison was young, we watched a really bad action-adventure film together–I don’t remember which one–and I kept telling myself I could write a better screenplay. That night I had a dream and when I woke up, I knew the first scene and the last scene and the name of the ship Peggy C. That was all. So, like Michelangelo used to say, I knew there was a figure in that block of stone – in my case, a story -- and all I had to do was spend years trying to chisel it free.
MWSA: Do you have any experience on ships?
I’ve never been on a tramp steamer or a U-boat, and I have no naval background. That meant I had to do a lot more research. But I also love classic naval novels like "Sea Wolf" and "Lord Jim" (but not "Moby Dick") because they combine adventure, exotic locations and fascinating characters.
MWSA: Since you had no naval experience, what was your research process like?
Books, books, books, documentaries, and endless web searches on such sites as www.uboat.net. Thank goodness for e-books that allowed me to take lots of notes quickly. I watched "Das Boot" years ago but didn’t review it recently because I wanted to avoid copying scenes from it. One research problem was finding myself going down rabbit holes for hours in pursuit of one more interesting fact, leading to yet more searches. I also use footnotes to go back and verify everything. My book involves a lot of nautical and technical details as well as obscure historical facts, so I had to be extra careful.
For example, in my relentless pursuit for accuracy, I found a website that had the daily logs of all U-boats that let me accurately report the phases of the moon on each day of the Peggy C’s journey. I had the novel fact-checked by a Ph.D. student at The Department of War Studies at King’s College London, and a novelist who was a former U.S. Navy petty officer who served on a submarine.
MWSA: Are the characters in your novel based on real historical figures?
The commander of the U-boat, Oberleutnant Viktor Brauer, is an amalgamation of several real U-boat captains. I cherry-picked the worst characteristics and actions of those captains, of course, but also tried to make Brauer more human and not a cliché Nazi. Captain Jake Rogers, our hero, is largely my creation, but some of his backstory comes from the lives of James Fenimore Cooper and my father. The other characters are my creations.
MWSA: Who is your favorite character?
Miriam, the eldest daughter of the Jewish family being rescued, is my favorite character. She’s much more than just a love interest. She’s smart, tough, and compassionate, and constantly challenges Captain Jake Rogers to change his mercenary ways. Her strength turns out to be the key to everyone’s survival, giving the lie to the myth that Jews never fought back.I'd like to add another question & answer
MWSA: You've had lots of experience as a journalist. Did that play a role in your writing?
The funny thing is that I became a journalist because I wanted to be a novelist. But I realized at the time I didn’t know how to write. Plus, I had no exciting experiences to write about. Journalism seemed like the best way to remedy those deficiencies. I loved that career but the newspaper industry collapsed. When I retired for the first time, I decided that I was going to learn how to write screenplays because I still didn’t feel confident that I could write a novel. The Peggy C was my first screenplay. I actually had some luck getting it into big production companies in Hollywood to pitch it. It won an award and accolades on such sites as The Black List, but nobody bought it. When I was stuck at home during the pandemic, I decided it was time to try my hand at turning it into a novel.I'd like to add another question & answer
MWSA: Did you hide any surprises in it for true history buffs?
It is loaded with historical details that truly surprised me – and I have read a ton of World War II histories and biographies. Here's just one that plays a key role in my plot. BAM-100 was a big surprise. Turns out that one of the reasons the English won the Battle of Britain, besides the bravery of the crews and the quality of the planes, was the fuel known as British Air Ministry 100 octane. It was developed by Standard Oil after Dunkirk and allowed British planes to fly faster and climb quicker than German planes. It took a while for the surprised Nazis to figure out what had changed, but there was nothing they could do about it. Their planes ran on fuel from coal gasification, which could only reach 80 octane.
MWSA: You adapted the novel from a screenplay. What challenges did that present?
A screenplay is more like a haiku. It only contains what the viewer can see and hear. There is no interior monologue, no insight into behaviors, and no background information. That meant I had to flesh out the characters and their backstories. I also had to go into great detail about the operations of the ship and the U-boat and the duties of their crews. Each location had to be described not just by sight and sound but by smell and feelings, and history.
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movieloversposts · 2 years ago
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My Film Reviews!
*Genres are listed below with the movies corresponding to said genre! The films will be categorized into the most straightforward genre, to make it simple
*Will be updated as needed!
Action Comedy
The Other Guys (2010)
21 Jump Street (2012)
Desperado (1995)
Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank (2022)
Spy (2015)
22 Jump Street (2014)
White Chicks (2004)
Comedy
Dark Shadows (2012)
Once Upon A Time In....Hollywood (2019)
Pretty Woman (1990)
Rio 2 (2014)
Home Alone (1990)
Crybaby (1990)
Violent Night (2022)
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
22 Jump Street (2014)
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
White Chicks (2004)
Always Be My Maybe (2019)
Fantasy
47 Ronin (2013)
Adventure
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Uncharted (2022)
Spiderman: No Way Home (2021)
Paws Of Fury: The Legend Of Hank (2022)
Mulan (1998)
Rio 2 (2014)
Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (2022)
Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022)
The Amazing Spider Man (2012)
The Mask Of Zorro (1998)
Musical
Encanto (2021)
Mulan (1998)
Crybaby (1990)
Drama
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Boyz N The Hood (1991)
Uncharted (2022)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Home Alone (1990)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
St. Elmo's Fire (1985)
Luckiest Girl Alive (2022)
All My Life (2020)
Horror
Halloween Kills (2021)
Hush (2016)
Halloween Ends (2022)
Smile (2022)
M3GAN (2022)
Scream (2022)
Scream (1996)
Mystery
Murder On The Orient Express (2017)
Luckiest Girl Alive (2022)
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Historical Drama
47 Ronin (2013)
Once Upon A Time In....Hollywood (2019)
Action
Public Enemies (2009)
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Uncharted (2022)
Spiderman: No Way Home (2021)
Violent Night (2022)
Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022)
Snakes On A Plane (2006)
The Amazing Spider Man (2012)
The Mask Of Zorro (1998)
Romance
Desperado (1995)
Dark Shadows (2012)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Pretty Woman (1990)
St. Elmo's Fire (1985)
10 Things I Hate About You (1999)
All My Life (2020)
Always Be My Maybe (2019)
LGBTQ+
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Thriller
Fall (2022)
Snakes On A Plane (2006)
Scream (2022)
Scream (1996)
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Others
BTS: Yet To Come In Cinemas (2023)
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adamwatchesmovies · 5 years ago
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Das Boot (1981)
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It sounds like a niche category but there are a number of submarine film and Das Boot is the best. The film puts you right into the middle of a battlefield you know little about and have never experienced before, not like this.
During World War II, the German submarine U-96 and its crew of veterans and newcomers set out to patrol the North Atlantic waters, sinking Ally ships while attempting to survive the counterattacks.
What I found most striking about the film - besides its Nazi protagonists - is the claustrophobia felt during it. The U-96 has no windows and the crew largely toll away in these tiny spaces which feel completely separated from the rest of mankind. Their entire world has been stripped of color, of light, of space, and danger is all around them. It doesn't get much more frightening or intense than in the scenes when the crew has to stand perfectly still - as any sound they make is amplified by the water around them and will give away their position. Blindly, the destroyers above drop bombs. The radar operator tries to piece together where all of the rumblings outside are coming from. It's so tense and so genuine you become afraid to break the silence when you see the crew holding their breath.
Before Das Boot, important details of this film would've never dawned on me. When the voyage begins everyone is served fresh fruit, fresh bread and the cooks produce feasts. As time passes, the prime stuff is gone and they have to worry about mold growing on what’s left - the stuff they weren't too eager to have in the first place. Meanwhile, the crew is operating the sub non-stop. While one crew member sleeps in the bed, his “night time” replacement is working and when his shift is over, he takes his turn on the cot. These constant, monotonous shifts are only interrupted by life-threatening danger. The longer it lasts, the more everyone's sanity is put to the test.
We should talk about the film's perspective. We are talking about Nazis here, the bad guys of WWII. Das Boot presents them simply as people, men doing their job who are capable of compassion and who had normal lives before the war. When they see people dying - even on the battlefield - it shakes them. In the middle of battle, they're frightened. War is not glorified. If anything, it's presented as generally boring, very technical and then suddenly overwhelmingly terrifying. In a scene, the crew - tired, dirty, and exhausted - are hailed as heroes by an optimistic Axis officer who regales them with an empty speech about how glorious it must be to serve the Führer. After seeing what the crew has been through, you understand exactly how foolish it is to think there's any virtue in combat.
The cinematography greatly helps the experience. You're so entrenched in the visuals and the characters you'll find yourself hunched over as if it's you being squeezed by the screen's edges. My only real criticism is the running time. This film lasts 149 minutes, and certain scenes are deliberately slow to make you understand what the crew's situation is really like. This means you have to plan out when you're going to sit down with it - 10:00 at night after a long day? probably not the right time. Don't worry, the picture's worth planning your evening around.
Das Boot is a great film, It's fully immersive, exciting, thought-provoking, expertly crafted and unafraid to make the right choices instead of the easy ones. Aside from all of the technical and story-telling elements, it's admirable for the way it makes you feel. Director and screenplay writer Wolfgang Petersen has crafted a unique work and you'll want to experience it the right way, so clear your afternoon of any plans, turn off your cellphone, grab yourself a large soda, a bucket of popcorn and check out Das Boot. (Original German with English subtitles, on DVD, October 10, 2014)
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clambustercinema · 6 years ago
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Das Boot (1981)... a masterpiece in filmmaking, and a staggering achievement in how to create tension onscreen. wolfgang petersens world war 2 submarine thriller literally puts the viewer in the belly of the beast and subjects them to the horrors of frontline naval warfare. to be honest i can’t really fault it. i’d even go as far as to say that the film is ‘special’. not only is it in the top echelons of war cinema, it’s also one of the best films ever made. ps. these thoughts are based on the 149 minute theatrical cut, not the extended 300 minute television cut
10 out of 10
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quite-actually-a-nacho · 3 years ago
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I tried redesigning Lagoona Blue from the 2022 Monster High live action movie
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(they couldn’t even make the quirky blurb sound right. “the bestie with a bite” sounds better 🙄)
so. when I first saw the trailer for Monster High: The Movie (2022), I had trouble trying to find Lagoona. then I searched out promos and YouTube reviews, and was horrified to discover her movie design. compared to other characters—where they at least tried to make them look like their original counterparts—she looked so unlike herself I wouldn’t even begin to think it was her if you told me.
a human skin tone instead of greenish blue, barely noticeable fins—a general lack of obvious sea monster features, and the features that are there are immediately toned down by the fact she looks too human, which is completely not the point of being a sea monster. the outfit they chose for her also makes her look like an Instagram influencer? I can tell what they were going for, but they failed because they seemed to be too scared of accessorizing her more fittingly and made her sorta “normie-fied”. they probably thought going all out would be outdated and cringe or something.
I was devastated. so I took matters into my own hands—I decided I wanted to fix Lagoona Blue’s movie design. she’s one of my favorites, if not my top favorite nowadays because I really love sea monsters. there are so many different ways to design sea monsters, and they did this? lackluster, to say the least!
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ta daaaa! before I break it down I feel like I need to pardon myself for being shamefully unaware of many modern fashion trends, but I tried to style her best I could to what’s sorta trendy with da kids these days.
now, if I allowed myself free range, I would’ve designed Lagoona a completely different way. but I decided to challenge myself a little—I wanted to redesign her based on the specific aesthetic the movie wanted, and tried to make it somewhat reasonable enough for a Nickelodeon musical budget.
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(above: mood board of collected references, below: breakdown of how I wanted to portray Lagoona)
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I’ll start with her outfit. instead of the sporty but stylish beach vibe Lagoona usually has, the movie seemed to gear towards a shiny rainbow appearance, still with a bit of sportiness. I think they want her design to evoke whimsical bubbles and pearls, which they almost achieved, but they simply did not have enough to get that across. I’ve seen several people say how she looks like she’d be the daughter of the unicorn, not a sea monster. in my redesign, I stuck to the pearly pastel mermaid aesthetic but added more things that would make the vibe a little clearer: holographic tank top, pearls and pearlescent jewelry, holo platform sandals, holo hair tie, iridescent lip gloss, pearly rhinestones on iridescent makeup, and pastel “mermaid hair”. I probably could’ve eased up on the holo, but you can tell they wanted her to be colorful. these things at least all evoke whimsical pearliness, when all she used to have were a rainbow mesh shirt, drop earrings, silvery scale short tights, metal octopus bracelet, some other kinda chunky bracelet, and see-through iridescent boots. I love a metal octopus bracelet as much as the next guy but it feels like they threw things together.
the next thing to tackle was adding back more sea monster features. I’m not entirely sure why they didn’t want to paint her skin like other characters. even Frankie got to be greenish blue. maybe they were afraid it wouldn’t fit their new aesthetic for Lagoona? they did give her some features, I’ll give them that. she has purple nails made to look like claws, back leg fins, ear fins (though I didn’t actually notice these for the longest time), and at one point in the trailer she got to show off some CGI monster teeth. but the fins are small and blended into her human skin tone, making them hard to see and honestly kind of ill-fitting. of course, I remedied much of the issues here by giving her back her bluish green color and arm fins. I don’t know if she has sea monster teeth for the whole movie or just the CGI scenes, but if she doesn’t I made sure to show off my version. I also gave her webbed fingers, but honestly I’d let those slip—I can imagine giving someone special FX webbed fingers is probably frustrating and limiting, especially on a lower budget. as a final touch, I added little patches of scales. I figure they could maybe pull this off with just makeup like this:
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anyway, I guess that’s it then! I’m no fashion designer nor a costume designer, I just wished they were a little more inspired with Lagoona’s appearance (and everybody really, but I had to do my girl Lagoona a little justice). I understand if some things are unreasonable, things can be mixed and matched—like, if you don’t wanna paint her skin then maybe just the faint scales on certain areas. anything to still show that she is a sea monster, at a monster high school.
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ava-candide · 4 years ago
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Poldark’s Aidan Turner on playing Leonardo da Vinci
The newly married heart-throb actor learnt to paint left-handed for his new role, and he’s still daubing now, he tells Ed Potton
Aidan Turner takes on the role of Renaissance polymath Leonardo
I’m trying to work out where Aidan Turner is Zooming from. Is it London, where he moved to in 2017 after his Ross Poldark became the drooled-over king of Sunday-night television? Dublin, where he grew up, trained as an actor and returned to spend the first lockdown with his parents? Or Rome, where he shot his new series, Leonardo, in which he plays a young Leonardo da Vinci?
“None of the above!” Turner says. “I’m in Toronto.” The enigmatic charm, feline eyes and gleaming locks that he deployed so mercilessly in Poldark, The Hobbit films and Being Human are all there. “My missus is working here,” he explains, and so is he. That’s the American actress Caitlin FitzGerald, his partner of three years, whom he met when they starred in the 2018 film The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. At first I assume the “missus” is laddish affectation but it turns out that it’s official: Turner and FitzGerald, both 37, got married in secret in Italy in August after filming finished on Leonardo. You can almost hear the sighs of disappointment ripple around the world.
Turner won’t say any more — he is famously guarded about his personal life — but he looks insanely happy in the couple’s rented apartment. FitzGerald — whose grandfather Desmond was a CIA agent and organised several plots to assassinate Fidel Castro — is shooting a series, Station Eleven, in Toronto while her husband works on another project that he’s not allowed to talk about. In their downtime they’ve been watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, an HBO documentary series about the Golden State Killer, and, on a lighter note, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles. They share the apartment with Charlie, an ebullient Norfolk terrier that Turner has to eject from the room halfway through our interview when he starts yapping. “I’m surprised he behaved for so long,” he says
Eight-part series Leonardo has been criticised for warping history
Like many of his fellow thesps, Turner has been doing a great deal of lockdown painting. “We have a roof garden here and the light has been really good,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this because I don’t know if the landlord knows. It’s not messy work anyway!” Unlike some of his peers — I’m looking at you, Pierce Brosnan — he has yet to unleash his daubings on the world. How would he describe his style? “I struggle to say abstract, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.” Did it help with playing Leonardo? “I don’t know. If you saw my paintings, you’d assume very much not,” Turner says. He has a studied line in self-effacement, honed after years of “sexiest man on TV” questions.
Leonardo premiered in Italy last month and was watched by seven million, many of them doubtless keen to see Turner brooding in a succession of smocks. The eight-part series has been criticised for warping history, having the artist accused of murder and featuring an apparently fictional muse, Caterina da Cremona, played by Matilda De Angelis from The Undoing. Luca Bernabei, the chief executive of Lux Vide who produced the series, defended it stoutly. “Matilda De Angelis’s character did exist. She was a model Leonardo asked to paint,” he said. “We have been really careful in our research. But this is not a documentary, we are not historians and this is not a university history lecture.”
And if the history pedants are spluttering, the art pedants should be happier — the series goes to considerable lengths to make the painting look authentic. Each episode is themed around a different masterpiece, from the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci to The Last Supper to the Mona Lisa, and the candlelit cinematography is often sumptuous. Turner’s research included a private view of a Leonardo exhibition. “I spent some time alone with the actual paintings, which was brilliant,” he says. “They’re just like high-definition photographs. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that a human had done this.”
Aidan Turner attended an artist’s boot camp before filming started
The series opens in Florence in the 1460s, with Leonardo a pupil of Verrocchio, played by the veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini. Before the shoot Turner and his co-stars went on an artists’ boot camp (brush camp?) supervised by professionals. He says the hardest part was learning to paint, as Leonardo did, with his left hand. He compares it to learning to ride a horse for Poldark, which he pretended he knew how to do before going on a crash course when he got the part.
Brushwork was the same, he says. “I realised I had to get good quite quickly and look like I knew what I was doing with my left hand, which is more difficult than you would think. It’s keeping it steady — you find it just moves around a lot. Leonardo was very slow and precise — I think I got it down. After a few weeks you start picking up the brush with your left hand, it becomes natural.”
Leonardo was a vegetarian, Turner tells me, “and apparently later in life opened some sort of vegetarian restaurant”. He was also gay, something that, despite reports, the series does not shy away from. Was this Turner’s first time kissing a man on screen? He laughs. “Of all the things I was expecting you to ask next, that wasn’t one of them! In a lot of ways it was just another love scene. The fact that the gender was different — that was never a thing. No, it felt right. It didn’t feel any different at all. But yeah, to answer your question, that was the first time, which I’d never really thought of until now.”
What did feel weird, he says, were the Covid protocols. “Suddenly people are wearing masks and shields and hazmat suits. We had a big sanitisation machine as we walked in that would spray us. You take off the mask when you shoot the scene and it’s a bit strange for a second. Then you realise it’s the first time you’ve seen your co-star’s face that day. It’s not conducive to a very creative environment, for sure. But we made it work and nobody got sick.”
Turner spends a chunk of the first episode painting De Angelis, and both actors know what it’s like to be ogled. She has been asked endlessly about her naked locker-room sequence in The Undoing, just as he has been reminded of his shirtless scything scene in Poldark. Before that there was his lusted-after vampire in Being Human and his sexy dwarf in The Hobbit — branded a “dwilf” in some quarters — although that “definitely wasn’t the intention”, he says. “I think I just had less prosthetics on my face. My make-up call was 20 minutes and everyone else was sitting in the chair in the morning for three and a half hours. It wasn’t good to be around the other dwarfs in the mornings, that’s for sure.
“I get why people are interested,” he says of the ogling. “It’s just when it keeps coming up.”
We move on. According to a recent survey Cornwall has overtaken London as the most desirable place to live in Britain. Does he think Poldark played a part in that? He laughs. “Maybe we nudged a few people in the right direction. I think people forgot how beautiful that side of the world is. One of the first reviews of Poldark we read was like: ‘We can’t believe that this is our country, it looks like the south of France.’”
Could Poldark return, and would Turner be in it? If they stuck to the chronology of Winston Graham’s books they would have to leap ahead a few years. Maybe he could play an aged-up Ross Poldark in latex and fake paunch? “I don’t know if I’d be keen on the ageing-up thing,” he says. “It never really works. I don’t know whether they need to be too strict with that gap anyway. There’s the possibility someday, maybe. I enjoyed working with everybody on Poldark, from the writers right down to all the cast and crew. It really is like a family. So I’d be open to chat about it. But not for a while.”
Before that he will appear as the apostle Andrew in The Last Planet, the forthcoming biblical epic from Terrence Malick, revered creator of The Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Well, he doesn’t know for sure if he will appear. Actors of the calibre of Rachel Weisz, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Chastain have seen their performances in Malick films vanish during editing.
“You want what’s best for the film. And if you don’t fit into it, you don’t fit into it,” Turner says in the tone of hair-shirt devotion that actors tend to use when talking about Malick. With a cast including Ben Kingsley and Mark Rylance as Satan, the movie is meant to tell the story of Jesus through a series of parables. Turner doesn’t really have a clue, though.
“You don’t necessarily know what you’re signing up to. You’re signing up to Terrence Malick,” he says. The director has “a great way of working. Everything is around ‘where is the sun’ at this particular time. That’s our natural light and it’s all we use. So things happen fast. There’s no trailers, hair, make-up, we’re just all together. You don’t know from day to day what you’ll be doing. It’s quite renegade stuff. That’s the way I always wanted to work.”
It’s closer to the immediacy of the theatre, which is where Turner started out. The son of an electrician, Pearse, and an accountant, Eileen, he represented Ireland at ballroom dancing before falling into acting. After studying at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin he acted in plays for five years and in 2018 he returned to the stage to rave reviews in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in the West End. Rave being the operative word — his performance was bracingly unhinged. “I can’t wait to get back to the theatre,” he says. “That’s what we’re looking at probably next.”
Turner’s character in The Lieutenant of Inishmore was an Irish freedom fighter, but he is reluctant to talk about the prospect of Irish reunification (“So I don’t get shot when I get home,” he told one interviewer). Culture is safer ground, and his native country is going through a purple patch with Sally Rooney in literature, Fontaines DC in music and the likes of McDonagh, Jessie Buckley and Denise Gough in drama. “It tends to happen in waves,” Turner says. “Coming out of drama school, Colin Farrell was such a big thing. When these actors really make it you can feel some of their light begin to shine on the industry back home.”
Like Farrell, Turner is an international star, although it has mainly been in period roles: Poldark, Leonardo, Andrew and his breakout turn as the 19th-century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 2009 series Desperate Romantics. It must be something about the hair.
That could be about to change, though. Toronto often stands in for New York, which suggests that his current mystery project has a contemporary setting. Does he yearn to act in jeans? “Yeah, you’re right,” he says with a laugh. “After Leonardo, I think tights and knee-length boots are out for a while.” Many would beg him to reconsider.
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watching-pictures-move · 2 years ago
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Movie Review | Vigilante (Lustig, 1982)
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This review contains spoilers.
Given the premise, this obviously invites comparisons to the Death Wish series, and plays in some respects like a supercharged amalgamation of the first two. You get the hero's family being attacked by a multicultural gang with cute matching outfits, his wife being brutalized and his son being killed. This is a gruesome and horrific scene, but perhaps easier to watch than in those other movies because it seems less eager to revel in sexual assault. You get the hero, who was previously against vigilantism, eventually warming up to it after the law lets him down. We already know he's in for a bad trip when the DA, who's supposed to be prosecuting the case, basically admits defeat against the violent crime problem by citing a bunch of bullshit statistics. (To paraphrase a very wise man, you can come up with statistics to prove anything. Forty percent of all people know that.)
But it isn't just that the courts fail to sufficiently punish the gang member accused of the crimes against his family. Thanks to the smug liberal judge assigned to the case and the DA revealing her talent for being the world's worst negotiator, not only does the gang member get carted back to the streets after his murder charge is dropped and his assault charge gets a suspended sentence, but the hero gets thirty days for objecting to this gross miscarriage of justice. The depiction is so over the top that if you squint enough, you can read the movie as a satire of the vigilante thriller genre. Early on, the hero questions what would separate him from the bad guys if he started taking the law into his own hands and at one point he would go too far, and the movie practically answers that at the end by having him blow up the judge who bungled his case. It's almost as if the movie wants to demonstrate in the most extreme terms what it would look like if you took the vigilante ethos to its logical end point. To say the ending left me uneasy is to put it lightly, but it's undeniably forceful.
This is a better movie than Death Wish and its sequels (full disclosure: I haven't seen the fifth) because William Lustig is a much better director than Michael Winner, and for whatever questionable ideas the movie pushes or interrogates about its subject matter, it treats the proceedings with a dramatic sensitivity mostly absent from the other series after the original. It helps that Lustig is working with a tremendous cast, with an effortlessly sympathetic and wounded Robert Forster in the lead, and supporting players like Fred Williamson and Woody Strode lending charismatic voices to the movie's ideas. But most fun is Joe Spinell as a sleazy lawyer, who is known for playing deranged, sweaty maniacs but is also entertaining when playing slimy fast talkers, and who steals the movie in his couple of scenes as he maneuvers to get his defendant off lightly while threatening him with "Legal Aid" when the gang tries to stiff him on his fee.
And the gulf is wide on a technical level too. Winner is the furthest thing from a polished craftsman, although the crudeness of Death Wish 3 does give it a nicely unhinged quality, the action contained within playing as a series of pure violent reflexes, one goon killed after another in the cinematic equivalent of a nervous twitch. But while Lustig sets his movie in a crumbling pre-cleanup New York, he gives it a palpable sense of mood as she shoots it in chilly blue widescreen cinematography and scores it with grimy synths to boot. And the grim, two-fisted violence is lent an added charge by the surprisingly elegant cutting, closeups of a cracked family photo frame after the attack on Forster's family, and closeups to Forster's scowling face as he metes out his revenge.
I'd been itching for a rewatch since I missed the chance to see it in theatres a few months ago (a combination of dreadful winter weather and having fallen ill at an inopportune time), and was very pleased to revisit it and find that it rocks even harder than I remembered.
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captain-ross-poldark · 4 years ago
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Poldark’s Aidan Turner on playing Leonardo da Vinci
Ed Potton
Friday 2 April 2021
Aidan Turner takes on the role of Renaissance polymath LeonardoJUSTIN SUTCLIFFE/EYEVIN
I’m trying to work out where Aidan Turner is Zooming from. Is it London, where he moved to in 2017 after his Ross Poldark became the drooled-over king of Sunday-night television? Dublin, where he grew up, trained as an actor and returned to spend the first lockdown with his parents? Or Rome, where he shot his new series, Leonardo, in which he plays a young Leonardo da Vinci?
“None of the above!” Turner says. “I’m in Toronto.” The enigmatic charm, feline eyes and gleaming locks that he deployed so mercilessly in Poldark, The Hobbit films and Being Human are all there. “My missus is working here,” he explains, and so is he. That’s the American actress Caitlin FitzGerald, his partner of three years, whom he met when they starred in the 2018 film The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot. At first I assume the “missus” is laddish affectation but it turns out that it’s official: Turner and FitzGerald, both 37, got married in secret in Italy in August after filming finished on Leonardo. You can almost hear the sighs of disappointment ripple around the world.
Turner won’t say any more — he is famously guarded about his personal life — but he looks insanely happy in the couple’s rented apartment. FitzGerald — whose grandfather Desmond was a CIA agent and organised several plots to assassinate Fidel Castro — is shooting a series, Station Eleven, in Toronto while her husband works on another project that he’s not allowed to talk about. In their downtime they’ve been watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, an HBO documentary series about the Golden State Killer, and, on a lighter note, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles. They share the apartment with Charlie, an ebullient Norfolk terrier that Turner has to eject from the room halfway through our interview when he starts yapping. “I’m surprised he behaved for so long,” he says.
Eight-part series Leonardo has been criticised for warping historyPA
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Like many of his fellow thesps, Turner has been doing a great deal of lockdown painting. “We have a roof garden here and the light has been really good,” he says. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this because I don’t know if the landlord knows. It’s not messy work anyway!” Unlike some of his peers — I’m looking at you, Pierce Brosnan — he has yet to unleash his daubings on the world. How would he describe his style? “I struggle to say abstract, but I haven’t quite figured out what it is yet.” Did it help with playing Leonardo? “I don’t know. If you saw my paintings, you’d assume very much not,” Turner says. He has a studied line in self-effacement, honed after years of “sexiest man on TV” questions.
Leonardo premiered in Italy last month and was watched by seven million, many of them doubtless keen to see Turner brooding in a succession of smocks. The eight-part series has been criticised for warping history, having the artist accused of murder and featuring an apparently fictional muse, Caterina da Cremona, played by Matilda De Angelis from The Undoing. Luca Bernabei, the chief executive of Lux Vide who produced the series, defended it stoutly. “Matilda De Angelis’s character did exist. She was a model Leonardo asked to paint,” he said. “We have been really careful in our research. But this is not a documentary, we are not historians and this is not a university history lecture.”
And if the history pedants are spluttering, the art pedants should be happier — the series goes to considerable lengths to make the painting look authentic. Each episode is themed around a different masterpiece, from the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci to The Last Supper to the Mona Lisa, and the candlelit cinematography is often sumptuous. Turner’s research included a private view of a Leonardo exhibition. “I spent some time alone with the actual paintings, which was brilliant,” he says. “They’re just like high-definition photographs. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that a human had done this.”
Aidan Turner attended an artist’s boot camp before filming startedVITTORIA FENATI MORACE
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The series opens in Florence in the 1460s, with Leonardo a pupil of Verrocchio, played by the veteran Italian actor Giancarlo Giannini. Before the shoot Turner and his co-stars went on an artists’ boot camp (brush camp?) supervised by professionals. He says the hardest part was learning to paint, as Leonardo did, with his left hand. He compares it to learning to ride a horse for Poldark, which he pretended he knew how to do before going on a crash course when he got the part.
Brushwork was the same, he says. “I realised I had to get good quite quickly and look like I knew what I was doing with my left hand, which is more difficult than you would think. It’s keeping it steady — you find it just moves around a lot. Leonardo was very slow and precise — I think I got it down. After a few weeks you start picking up the brush with your left hand, it becomes natural.”
Leonardo was a vegetarian, Turner tells me, “and apparently later in life opened some sort of vegetarian restaurant”. He was also gay, something that, despite reports, the series does not shy away from. Was this Turner’s first time kissing a man on screen? He laughs. “Of all the things I was expecting you to ask next, that wasn’t one of them! In a lot of ways it was just another love scene. The fact that the gender was different — that was never a thing. No, it felt right. It didn’t feel any different at all. But yeah, to answer your question, that was the first time, which I’d never really thought of until now.”
What did feel weird, he says, were the Covid protocols. “Suddenly people are wearing masks and shields and hazmat suits. We had a big sanitisation machine as we walked in that would spray us. You take off the mask when you shoot the scene and it’s a bit strange for a second. Then you realise it’s the first time you’ve seen your co-star’s face that day. It’s not conducive to a very creative environment, for sure. But we made it work and nobody got sick.”
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With his wife, the American actress Caitlin FitzGeraldREX FEATURES
Turner spends a chunk of the first episode painting De Angelis, and both actors know what it’s like to be ogled. She has been asked endlessly about her naked locker-room sequence in The Undoing, just as he has been reminded of his shirtless scything scene in Poldark. Before that there was his lusted-after vampire in Being Human and his sexy dwarf in The Hobbit — branded a “dwilf” in some quarters — although that “definitely wasn’t the intention”, he says. “I think I just had less prosthetics on my face. My make-up call was 20 minutes and everyone else was sitting in the chair in the morning for three and a half hours. It wasn’t good to be around the other dwarfs in the mornings, that’s for sure.
“I get why people are interested,” he says of the ogling. “It’s just when it keeps coming up.”
We move on. According to a recent survey Cornwall has overtaken London as the most desirable place to live in Britain. Does he think Poldark played a part in that? He laughs. “Maybe we nudged a few people in the right direction. I think people forgot how beautiful that side of the world is. One of the first reviews of Poldark we read was like: ‘We can’t believe that this is our country, it looks like the south of France.’”
Could Poldark return, and would Turner be in it? If they stuck to the chronology of Winston Graham’s books they would have to leap ahead a few years. Maybe he could play an aged-up Ross Poldark in latex and fake paunch? “I don’t know if I’d be keen on the ageing-up thing,” he says. “It never really works. I don’t know whether they need to be too strict with that gap anyway. There’s the possibility someday, maybe. I enjoyed working with everybody on Poldark, from the writers right down to all the cast and crew. It really is like a family. So I’d be open to chat about it. But not for a while.”
Turner with Eleanor Tomlinson in PoldarkMIKE HOGAN
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Before that he will appear as the apostle Andrew in The Last Planet, the forthcoming biblical epic from Terrence Malick, revered creator ofThe Thin Red Line and The Tree of Life. Well, he doesn’t know for sure if he will appear. Actors of the calibre of Rachel Weisz, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Chastain have seen their performances in Malick films vanish during editing.
“You want what’s best for the film. And if you don’t fit into it, you don’t fit into it,” Turner says in the tone of hair-shirt devotion that actors tend to use when talking about Malick. With a cast including Ben Kingsley and Mark Rylance as Satan, the movie is meant to tell the story of Jesus through a series of parables. Turner doesn’t really have a clue, though.
“You don’t necessarily know what you’re signing up to. You’re signing up to Terrence Malick,” he says. The director has “a great way of working. Everything is around ‘where is the sun’ at this particular time. That’s our natural light and it’s all we use. So things happen fast. There’s no trailers, hair, make-up, we’re just all together. You don’t know from day to day what you’ll be doing. It’s quite renegade stuff. That’s the way I always wanted to work.”
It’s closer to the immediacy of the theatre, which is where Turner started out. The son of an electrician, Pearse, and an accountant, Eileen, he represented Ireland at ballroom dancing before falling into acting. After studying at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin he acted in plays for five years and in 2018 he returned to the stage to rave reviews in Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore in the West End. Rave being the operative word — his performance was bracingly unhinged. “I can’t wait to get back to the theatre,” he says. “That’s what we’re looking at probably next.”
Turner’s character in The Lieutenant of Inishmore was an Irish freedom fighter, but he is reluctant to talk about the prospect of Irish reunification (“So I don’t get shot when I get home,” he told one interviewer). Culture is safer ground, and his native country is going through a purple patch with Sally Rooney in literature, Fontaines DC in music and the likes of McDonagh, Jessie Buckley and Denise Gough in drama. “It tends to happen in waves,” Turner says. “Coming out of drama school, Colin Farrell was such a big thing. When these actors really make it you can feel some of their light begin to shine on the industry back home.”
Like Farrell, Turner is an international star, although it has mainly been in period roles: Poldark, Leonardo, Andrew and his breakout turn as the 19th-century poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 2009 series Desperate Romantics. It must be something about the hair.
That could be about to change, though. Toronto often stands in for New York, which suggests that his current mystery project has a contemporary setting. Does he yearn to act in jeans? “Yeah, you’re right,” he says with a laugh. “After Leonardo, I think tights and knee-length boots are out for a while.” Many would beg him to reconsider.
All episodes of Leonardo will be on Amazon from April 16
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/poldarks-aidan-turner-on-playing-leonardo-da-vinci-wnmqhxqxr
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alwaysachorusgirl · 4 years ago
Text
We’ve Got Tonight
Pairing: Rafael Barba x Reader
Word Count: 3,540
Square: Free Space, using “We’ve Got Tonight” by Bob Seger from the song list (song lyrics in bold type)
TW: Includes a brief re-cap of “Sightless in a Savage Land”, so a brief mention of rape murder; angst, hurt/comfort, implied smut
Tags: @thatesqcrush, @madamsnape921
A/N: This is a follow up to “An Exile of Our Own Making”. Sorry for the delay in getting this out. Everything was going fine until I hit a patch of writer’s block and bad mental health days. This starts prior to “Sightless in a Savage Land” and then jumps to immediately afterward. This also ended up being on the longer side. I feel like I threw everything at it, except the kitchen sink.
           After your fateful meeting with Rafael you had gone home and cried yourself to sleep. The next day you went into work and everyone seemed to automatically know that something was wrong. Amanda and Kat eventually got it out of you. As expected, Amanda wasn’t thrilled that you’d gone to see your ex without her to back you up. Kat, ever the good partner, said she’d there to listen if you wanted to talk about it. You didn’t but thanked her anyway. Lucia Barba called three times, begging you to come to Christmas dinner and talk to her son. As much as you wanted one of Lucia’s home-cooked meals, you politely declined. You were working the Christmas shift. You did reassure her that you would speak to Rafael again, but only when you were ready to, and on your own terms.
           You also scheduled an emergency session with your therapist. She also wasn’t thrilled that you had gone to see Rafael, but she listened while you cried and dumped out the contents of your heart. It eventually led to a discussion about forgiveness, more specifically, whether or not you could forgive Rafael. You had told her that you thought you could, but you still needed more time to process your current emotions. You needed to sit down and have an actual conversation with him, you had barely given him an opportunity to speak when you’d last met. You figured that you should at least give him a chance to explain himself, even if it hurt to hear it.
******************
           Thankfully Christmas Day was uneventful. You caught up on all your paperwork, reviewed open casefiles, updated some profiles and case notes, and cleaned and reorganized your desk. Liv called a couple hours before your shift was over to check in and tell you to go home early and enjoy the rest of the day. You thanked her, and then called in your usual order to your favorite Thai takeout place as you were walking out the door.
********************
           When you arrived back at your apartment, takeout dinner in hand, you were met at the door by a talkative orange ball of fluff.
           “Mrow! Mrow! Mrow!”
           “Yes, baby, I know! Your dinner is late,” You said to your cat. You made sure your door was locked, then put down your food and work bag and shrugged off your coat and boots. “Just give me a sec- hey! Inigo! That food is not for you!”
           Inigo stopped sniffing the takeout bag and looked at you like he was insulted. You sighed and picked up the food, taking into your kitchen and placing it on the counter. You then grabbed Inigo’s food and water bowls. You refilled the water bowl and put it back down, hoping it would distract him while you opened the cat food can and used a fork to deposit the wet, squishy substance into his food dish. Because it was Christmas, you garnished it with few cat treats. You put the dish down next to his water bowl and he hungrily dug in.
           “Merry Christmas, Inigo,” you said with a smile.
           After changing into your pajamas, you settled on the couch with your dinner and a glass of wine and began your annual Christmas movie marathon. You weren’t sure how long you’d be able to stay awake, so you started off with Gremlins. You had just gotten to the part where Billy is starting to bond with Gizmo when you phone rang. You grabbed it off the coffee table and saw it was Lucia Barba wanting to facetime. You swiped to answer and were shocked to see Rafael’s face looking back at you.
           “Hi, I know that I’m probably the last person that you want to talk to, but I just wanted to say, Merry Christmas, Y/N.”
           “It’s okay, I’m glad you called, but next time, use your own phone, okay? Merry Christmas Rafael. How are you?”
           “I’m about as well as I can be. You?”
           “Yeah, I’m good,” you replied. A loud sound from your TV got both your attention.
           “Is that the sound of a Mogwai in distress?” Rafael inquired. “You’re watching Gremlins, aren’t you?”
           “Of course, I am, it’s my favorite Christmas movie.”
           At that moment, Inigo decided to jump into your lap and demand his nightly cuddles.
           “Wait, you have a cat now?”
           At the sound of Rafael’s voice, Inigo turned and looked at your phone, cocking his head to the side in confusion.
           “Mrow?”
           “Yes, I do. Rafael, meet Inigo. Inigo, can you say ‘Hi’ to Rafael?”
           Inigo gave a disinterested “Mrow”, and then curled up in your lap and started to purr. You massaged his head with your free hand.
           “Wow,” said Rafael, “I was not expecting that. Is he named after who I think he’s named after?”
           “Yes, he is,” you chuckled. “I adopted him about six months after you left. My therapist thought it might be good if I had an animal to take care of, and I’ve always been a cat person. He was an injured kitten when I found him at the shelter. I took one look at him, and I just knew. He’s been my fluffy baby ever since.”
           You were surprised how easily the conversation flowed between the two of you. Neither of you brought up the elephant in the room, but that was okay. You weren’t ready to have that conversation yet, and when you did, you wanted it to be face to face. Right now, it just felt good to talk to him again. He told you about the legal work he’d been doing, you told him stories about your cat, and how Sonny was doing working in the DA’s office. And by the time you signed off the call, you felt a spark of hope growing in your heart.
********************
The time between Christmas and New Year’s came and went. You spoke to Rafael a few more times via facetime. You had time to think, and the more you thought about it, the more you wondered if a second chance was staring you right in the face. Life wasn’t a movie and most people didn’t get second chances, but every day that went by made you a little more sure that reconciliation was possible.
Rafael was on your mind so much that you were almost grateful when you were awoken in the wee hours of New Year’s morning by the Amber Alert on your phone. SVU was being called in to find a missing teenage girl, and it was just the distraction you needed. If only you had known the twists and turns that case would take, evolving into a rape, and then murder case, when’s the girl’s father, Mickey Davis, shot and killed her rapist.
Rafael stepped in and defended Davis. It was both heart-wrenching and exhilarating to watch him go up against Sonny in the courtroom. Sonny was your friend and former partner, and you knew he wasn’t happy about the situation. But watching Rafael strut around the courtroom, making his arguments, cross-examining witnesses, making objections, you couldn’t help but be completely in awe of him. He was wholly in his element, like he’d never been gone.
**********************
When all was said and done, Sonny walked away victorious with a guilty verdict. He should have been thrilled, but instead he was sitting in Forlini’s with you, Rafael, and the rest of the team, sulking into his beer. You stood off to the side, nursing your Jack and Coke, unsure of what to say or do to make him feel better. You and Rafael had behaved like complete professionals when you had to interact during the case, but that hadn’t stopped a stressed-out Sonny from snapping at you and calling your friendship and loyalty into question.
So, you kept your mouth shut and stared longingly at Rafael, hanging onto his every word. At some point he received a text from his mother and headed out, saying something about Lucia insisting on going to Miami to visit the rest of the family. You saw Amanda stand up and you thought she was headed back to the bar, but you then felt her elbow you in the side. You gave her a look of confusion.
“What are you waiting for? Go after him,” she told you.
You nodded in response, put the rest of your drink down, and grabbed your coat and purse.
“Thanks Coach, good pep talk.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” she replied. “Now go get your man.”
You exited Forlini’s and looked up and down the sidewalk for Rafael, but he wasn’t there. You decided to check around the corner, and if you still didn’t catch sight of him, you would go back to bar and call him. You dashed down the street and around the corner. You stopped in your tracks when you saw him, his back to you, deep in conversation with Liv. Liv saw you, gave you a nod and smiled.
“Happy New Year, Rafael, “she told him, “Oh, and I think someone else wants a word with you.”
Rafael turned and smiled when he saw you, and you smiled back. Liv patted you on the shoulder she walked by, leaving you and Rafael alone together. You took a deep breath and walked toward him.
“Hi,” you said, when you got close enough.
“Hi,” he replied.
“You did really well today, Rafael, I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, Y/N, that means a lot.”
“Look, “you started, “I know your plans don’t include me right now, but I was thinking that maybe, if you have time later, I’m ready to sit down and actually talk. I never gave you a chance to explain yourself, and I’m sorry. I didn’t handle that well.”
“Y/N, you have nothing to be sorry about. I didn’t handle it well, either. Everything you said, I needed to hear.”
“All the same, please, Rafael?” You gazed up into his green eyes. You felt your resolve cracking again as a tear rolled down your face. Rafael gently touched your cheek, brushing it away with his thumb, and this time, you didn’t pull away from his touch.
“It’s okay, Cariño, if you want to talk, then we’ll talk.”
You let out a breath that you hadn’t realized you’d been holding. And then you did want you wanted to do the first moment you saw him sitting there in Forlini’s: You wrapped your arms around his sturdy torso and buried your face in the crook of his neck, holding on for dear life. You felt his arms circle around you, pulling you as close as he could. You breathed in his scent, a mixture of his cologne, coffee, whiskey, and something that was uniquely him. You felt him run his fingers through your hair and kiss your forehead.
“It’s okay, Cariño,” he murmured softly. “I’ve got you, you’re okay, you’re okay. I’m right here.”
“Then why am I scared that you’ll disappear if I let go?”
“I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
You weren’t sure how long the two of you stood there holding onto each other. It was obvious that neither one of you wanted to let go. Rafael massaged small circles into your back, whispering words of comfort and reassurance into your ear. You melted into him, just like you had so many times before. Any remaining doubts you had flew out of your mind. You loved him. You belonged with him. You forgave him. You wanted him back.
“Cariño? I’ll tell you what, why don’t you come have dinner with me and my mother tonight?”
“I wouldn’t want to impose,” your replied, shaking yourself out of your thoughts.
“You’re not imposing. My mother would love to see you, and you know how she cooks; there will be more than enough food.”
“I’d be late, I have run back home first. I have a hungry cat waiting for me, remember?”
“Then we will take a detour to Brooklyn on the way to the Bronx,” Rafael said with a chuckle.
“You do know that’s an out-of-the-way detour, right?”
“Cariño, as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth it. I’ll just text my mother and let her know that I’m running late.”
********************
Thankfully traffic wasn’t as heavy as it usually was, and you got back to your apartment relatively quickly. Rafael waited in the car while you ran in, fed Inigo, changed out of your work clothes, and ran back out. Then it was off to Lucia’s apartment in the Bronx. As promised, Lucia welcomed you with open arms.
“Hermosa!” She cried, enveloping you in a hug. “I’m so happy to see you! I missed you at Christmas! Come in! Come in! Dinner is almost ready. Rafi! Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing Y/N?”
“I wanted to surprise you, Mamí,” he said, embracing his mother.
“Well, consider me surprised then. I’ll go set an extra place at the table.”
She headed for the kitchen and Rafael took your coat, hanging it up on the hook by the door. He placed a tentative hand on your lower back, but once again, you didn’t pull away. You gazed into his emerald eyes, allowing yourself to get lost for a moment. Before you could stop yourself, your hand was caressing his cheek. You shuddered when he placed his hand over yours and kissed your palm. Your heart pounded like a jackhammer in your chest, and you started wonder what would happen if you just-
“Dinner’s ready!” Lucia called.
You took a step back and tried to pull your hand away, but Rafael held on and placed a soft kiss on your knuckles.
“Shall we?”
You nodded and let him lead you to the kitchen, where you were met with a variety of delicious smells and a veritable feast.
“Oh, Lucia, you have outdone yourself again!”
“Just a little something to celebrate my son being back in court and doing what he does best,” she said with a grin.
“Mamí, I didn’t win today.”
“Rafael, that doesn’t matter,” you said, giving him a look. “You walked into that courtroom with your head held high and fought like hell for your client. Watching you, it was awe inspiring, it was brilliant, it was astounding. You have nothing to be ashamed of.” You stopped, realizing that both Rafael and Lucia were staring at you. “Maybe we should sit down and eat?”
“Yes, I think we should,” said Lucia, giving you a smirk and a knowing look.
Grace was said, dishes were passed, and between the conversation and shoveling forkfuls of food into your mouth, the time flew by. It had been so long since the last time the three of you had been together like this, but it felt like the years hadn’t passed at all. You had missed this, wanted it to be your normal again. Every time your eyes caught Rafael’s he would reach for your hand and give it a gentle squeeze, and you wondered if he felt the same way.
Before you and Rafael left, Rafael double-checked his mother’s flight information. She was flying out the next morning, and Rafael promised he’d be there bright and early to take her to the airport.
“Rafi, I am more than capable of getting myself to the airport.”      
“I know, Mamí, but I insist. I just want to make sure that you get there and don’t have any issues with checking in.”
“Fine, but don’t forget to bring in my mail every day and check the fridge occasionally. If something looks or smells like it’s going bad, throw it out.”
‘I will, Mamí, I promise.”
Lucia gave him a hug and kissed his cheek, then did the same to you. She made sure to hand you both large Tupperware containers with the all the leftovers.
“This is to make sure you don’t starve. And Hermosa, take care of my son? Make sure he eats something other than take-out?”
“I will, Lucia, I promise.”
**********************
You unlocked your apartment door, but before opening it, you turned to Rafael.
“You’re sure that you’re ready for this?”
“Yes, Cariño, I’m ready to meet your cat,” he reassured you for the umpteenth time.
“Okay…”
You opened the door and you and Rafael entered the apartment. You were promptly headbutted in the leg before you could even get your coat off.
“Mrow! Mrow! Mrow! Mrow!”
“Yes, baby, I’m sorry I went out and left you here all alone.” You picked up Inigo and cuddled him in your arms. “It’s okay, baby, Mommy’s home now.” You turned towards Rafael. “Rafael, this is Inigo. Inigo, this is Rafael.”
“Hi there, Inigo, it’s nice to finally meet you in person.”
Inigo looked at Rafael, then looked up at you incredulously.
“Mrow?”
“Inigo be nice…I have an idea! Rafael, his treats are in the corner cabinet, 1st shelf.” You pointed towards the kitchen. Rafael ran to your kitchen and came back with the cat treats. He shook a few into his hand and held them out to Inigo. The cat took a tentative sniff, and then gobbled down the treats, even licking the crumbs off Rafael’s fingers. “There, you happy now?” Inigo gave an affirmative “Mrow”, and you put him down.
“Sorry about that,” you said, standing back up and finally taking your coat off. “He can be a little grumpy around new people. Drink?”
“It’s okay, I get it,” said Rafael, removing his coat and suit jacket and draping them over a kitchen chair. “Yes, please, a drink would be great.”
You put your leftovers in the fridge and opened a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.  You expertly poured and handed a glass to Rafael. He thanked you, and you took the other glass and motioned towards the living room. “Shall we?” Rafael nodded and followed you to the couch. You both glanced at each other awkwardly, not sure how to begin.
“I guess I should start by apologizing again,” Rafael finally spoke, “and I am truly sorry, Cariño, for everything. I never should have left the way that I did. After the trial, I really believed it was all over. I saw my future and all of my hopes fading away. I couldn’t go back to the DA’s office, couldn’t face the scrutiny, couldn’t face you, couldn’t even face myself. So, I took the coward’s way out, and I ran. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. I convinced myself that I needed time and distance to figure things out, but I wasn’t thinking straight, I know that now. I felt like I was suffocating. Everything was falling apart, and I didn’t know how to fix it…”
“You could have come to me. We could have figured it out together…” You reached for his hand and held it between both of yours. “I never would have turned my back on you.”
“I know that, dear god, do I know that,” Rafael hung his head, tears starting to leak out of his eyes. “I thought I’d be sparing you so much unnecessary pain and humiliation. Knowing that I only caused you more…I’ll never forgive myself. I never should have pushed you away. I’ve spent every moment regretting it.” He turned his head and looked you right in the eye.” I never meant to hurt you; I swear I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” you said, feeling your own fresh round of tears coming on. “Come here.”
You wrapped your arms around him and held him close. He embraced you in return, placing his head on your shoulder. It was so rare for you to see him like this, opening up, letting his guard down, being vulnerable. He was hurting just as much as you were, longing for shelter, longing for an end to all the years of heartache. You gently cupped his face in your hands to that he was looking you in the eye again.
“I forgive you, Rafael, I forgive everything. Deep in my soul, I’ve been so lonely, and I don’t want to live like that anymore, and I don’t think you do either. Still here we are, both of us lonely. Let’s make it last, let’s find a way.”
“Are you saying- “
“Yes, I love you, Rafael, come back to me.”
Your lips found his. The kiss started out soft and gentle, but soon became deeper and more intense. You let go of his face and draped your arms around his neck. Rafael pulled you into his lap, one arm around your back, his other hand in your hair. You both desperately tried to communicate three years of pent up longing and desire without words. Nothing else mattered, just the two of you, in your apartment, and nothing was going to tear you apart again.
“I love you, Y/N,” said Rafael when you finally broke apart to catch your breaths.
“I love you, too, Rafael.”
“Look, I know it’s late, I know you’re weary, but I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to spend another night away from you.”
You kissed him again.
“Then don’t. We’ve got tonight, babe, why don’t you stay?”
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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago
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Goof Week: Goof Troop: Forever Goof Review (Everything’s Coming Up Goofy, Good Neighbor Goof, Gotta Be Gettin Goofy) (Commission for WeirdKev27)
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Yahhahhooooeeeey all you happy people!  WELCOME TO GOOF WEEK! Now normally when a character who got their start in theatrical shorts has a birthday, I do a marathon of them. I have since last year with Donald and it’s one of my favorite things: it allows me to explore Disney’s rich history of them I was largely unaware of till Disney+, and allows me to revisit the shorts I grew up with in the case of The Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry while discovering new favorites. SO naturally with Goofy’s birthday in two days I intended to do the same for him, especially since I’d covered Donald and Mickey the same way.
But fate had other ideas. Not thinking about this tradition, Kev, my patreon, friend and the guy who commissions a LOT of reviews from me ($5 an episode if your curious and I WILL make room on the schedule so your commission gets done as soon as possible), suggested reviewing the Goof Troop pilot movie Forever Goofy, later split into the episode Everything’s Coming Up Goofy and Good Neighbor. I loved the idea since I genuinely loved Goof Troop, and decided to do both that week.
It’s then I got a great idea.. why limit myself to JUST doing two things? I hit my 15 dollar patreon stretch goal, so a review of the Goofy Movie was on the Horizon anyway, and for it’s anniversary year Kev has been commissioning House of Mouse Episodes, so it wouldn’t be THAT much of an ask (and it wasn’t) to simply randomly select from a pool of Goofy-Centric episodes instead of all the episodes. 
Thus GOOF WEEK was born, and Kev once again proved vital to all this by suggesting the special Sports Goof from the 80′s. I’d like to give him special thanks as outside of the Shorts Special, which as a patreon he still got to pick one and if you’d like to pick one for Donald’s special, sign on up even one dollar patreons get the honor. , this week is either entirely paid for by him or in the case of A Goofy Movie, is partly thanks to him. I wouldn’t be able to do NEARLY as many reviews nor make money off this without you bud, so thank you. 
So naturally given the idea to do this two parter gave me the idea for this week and that Goofy Movie makes a logical finale for said week, it only made sense to start the week with Goof Troop. Bop-dop-da-da-do-bop, YEAH. 
Goof Troop is the first Disney Afternoon show I ever watched and the only one I watched when I was younger, as Disney Channel used to play it ocasinally when I was younger and Toon Disney would do the same and I even got to Marthoon it when Disney XD did a weekend marathon. Given it starred my faviorite Disney Character, Donald hadn’t worked his way up to tying with him quite yet, I loved what I could grab of it. And as an adult.. it still holds up. It has problems i’ll get into, but it is a real good time so I was exastic to get an excuse to watch some of it and much like with Darkwing wish I had sooner. 
Before I can h-h-h-hit it though, I have to talk about the series history. I ALMOST didn’t find anything: much like the other Disney Afternoon shows there really wasn’t much on the Disney wiki nor wikipedia, google turned up nothing... it wasn’t till I went to the Tv Tropes Trivia Page for the series, where i’d remembered reading about some early versions of the show, that I hit gold: A two part behind the scenes blog post by series co-creator Michael Peraza. You can find part one HERE and part two HERE. It’s a short but fascinating read. 
Speaking of fascenating Peraza himself is someone i’d never heard of till reading this article but damn if he isn’t a legend. Seriously the guy’s career is as an unsung hero, starting work under the Legendary Nine Old Men, and working on some of disney’s greatest films: The Great Mouse Detective, Aladdin, The LIttle Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, along with live action cult classics Tron and Return to Oz via concept art. And concept art is where he’d hit his stride: he did conceptual work for all the big Disney Afternoon shows apart from Gargoyles, being one of the key guys in the early days of Disney Television animation. He didn’t stop at just designing things either as he worked as Art Director for Ducktales, The Proud Family and of course given how vital he was to it’s creation, Goof Troop, and to this days gives lectures with his wife to aspiring animators. He even did some guest work for the 2017 Ducktales Episode “Treasure of the Found Lamp!”. So yeah dude’s awesome
So how did he come to be a key part of this show’s creation? Well he’d just finished up some concept work on some other Disney Afternoon shows, and being a company man was glad to report to the Goof Troop..ers to help as the show was having trouble getting off the ground. The reason for this was the creative exec, who Peraza didn’t name out of kindness as the guy wasn’t a BAD person.. just a clueless one, this being his first job in film and tv.  As such rather than work hard to develop around goofy or focus on his strengths the kid threw out one concept after another: The series got it’s name from a pitch that had Goofy as a scoutmaster, something I was glad to finally know. To quote Peraza
“ Although while I was doodling versions of the show that were destined to never see the light of the TV screen,  the pitch date remained etched in stone and kept creeping closer. Various versions would find their way to the surface only to sink again into the wasteland known as the roundfile (trashcan). One moment Goofy was the Captain of the Fire Department, the next day a detective out of the Maltese Falcon mold, or a swash buckling hero fighting The Flying Dutchman. 
The supporting cast he came up with really wasn't very supportive when you consider they sometimes included alien dragon babies with wings along with a large gorilla. Somebody at Walt Disney Television Animation must have really had a thing for giant gorillas around this time as they were plugged into almost every concept we  assembled.”
It was clear that while Goofy COULD fit into just about anything, this exec was just throwing everything at the wall, nothing was sticking, and rather than try to refine his supporting cast, they kept having to throw them out and start over. And dont’ get me wrong, cartoons go through a lot of development and changes as they go.. but it’s usually born from a concept and usually by this point, they at least have what the show will be ABOUT in stone. While i’ve had the same creative changes and what not when coming up with projects that ultimately never saw the light of day, and currentlly some I hope to but might not, I’m not being paid by a studio to do this nor had a hard deadline. I was just spitballing trying to get something anything off the ground before reviewing gave me a steady outlet for my creativity and thus ballanced me to take my time with stuff. Peraza WAS turning out amazing art, like this concept art for the fireman pitch that honeslty makes me want to see it as a series. Who DOSEN’T want to see 9-11 with Goofy as the main character? Throw in Donald and grown up versions of Max, PJ and PIstol (And even not THAT much for the former two, as they did go off to college and all), don’t forget Roxanne this time out and you have a worthy goofy movie sequel. 
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So yeah this wasn’t working and the latest pitch was not great: Putting Goofy in ToonTown as a cabbie driving the Cab from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As Peraza TRIED to point out to the exec, putting Goofy in a naturally goofy setting didn’t really play to the characters strength, his whole shtick being a goofus in a normal world. Enough of an every man to root for but also a slapstick joly weirdo. 
The executive’s INCREDIBLY douchey response, especially since Peraza was a Disney Vetran at this point and had spent quite a lot of time on Ducktales, so he knew what he was talking about was “Do it anyway and leave the “Visionary” part to me”
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As you can tell by MR. OOC there, this might be one of the most punchable sentences i’ve ever read. 
So Peraza wasn’t in a great place and was naturally terrified when he got a call from Gary Krisel, president of Disney TVA, asking about the show and to see him about it. 
Turns out though Krisel was a nice guy who already had a great working relatinship with Peraza, and genuinely wanted to know what was going on there and wanted his honest opinion. It’s why i’m not AGAINST executives in animation as sometimes they can come in when somethings clearly not working or allow a smooth transition of power if a propelmatic creator has to be booted off their own show so the show and i’ts crew don’t suffer as a result. It’s just more often than not they cause headaches or cancel shows for entirley stupid or self motivated reasons. But I will give credit where it’s do and point out times where there NOT stupid or homophobic or what have you and this is indeed one of those times. 
Peraza was indeed straight with him: pointing out all the concepts they’d gone through, and like with the other guy honestly gave his opinon the ToonTown Pitch wasn’t working.. and he not only agreed but asked Peraza himself, actually respecting his experince instead of yelling at him that he has a vision that wouldn’t last the end of the day probably. 
Peraza was HOPING this was where this was going and gladly gave him a far less high concept pitch and one truer to the character, quoted in full bellow:
“ My spiel went as follows, "Goofy is a recognized star of Disney animation, so why re-invent the wheel? His son is an average kid dealing with many of the usual issues they face: peer pressure, young love, grades, school bullies, and so on. On top of all that, he has the zaniest, wackiest GOOFIEST dad to live down. No matter how insane the situations get though, they will always love each other. They're a family." Gary asked how I would pitch it and I replied, "It's ONE day in  the life of Goofy and son. From getting up in the morning to fixing breakfast, we see their difference side by side as his son tries to distance himself. No matter what though he knows deep inside that his father will always be there for him, whether he likes it or not."
If your wondering if Peraza noticed that that original pitch line is basically the peremise and emotioinal core of The Goofy Movie down pat.. your extremley correct and he notes that the film was based on said pitch even if he had no involvment with it that I could tell. The series would still use this but the whole embarasment aspect was toned down, and honestly fit a teenager better than an 11 year old.. 
So the exec loved it and Peraza shaped the core of the series: the idea of having Pete as his nemisis, pete having a nuclear family including a gorgeous wife, and the show being more slice of life and what not. He made some great sketches, got roaring approval and then pitched it to rousing success and the rest is history. Goof Troop was a moderate success and The Goofy Movie after it is a classic beloved by all. We have this wonderful man to thank for all that and I also thank him , on the offchance he ever sees this, for bringing Goofy into modern times in a way that did the man-dog justice.  It’s thank to you we got this fun series, two great movies, and a goofy the way he is today: the best of everything about him rolled into one. Thanks man, free review.. not htat you NEED It since you’ve worked on things i’ve covered and what not, but I feel like I should offer.  Outside of Peraza, I found one last bit of making of stuff before I get to the premiere proper. These two early concept shots:
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The first has Max who both looks older and has red hair like he did in the shorts. Honestly I see a lot of his Goofy Movie self in thiis design, the only diffrence obviously being the red hair which was wisely changed to make the boy look more like goofy, something kept for the movie. 
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The more intresting one is this shot of the Pete’s. Starting with Pete he’s more athletic and has a perfectly tacky outfit. While changing him to be a bit more slovenly honestly fit this version of the character better, I do wish they’d kept hte outfit as the tacky gold and green jacket, the gold chain, the open ollar.. it all fits this version of pete so well, as well as his illusion of being a big shot when he is in fact a medium one. Peg is both slightly younger looking and far more doting and is so different I swear this picture looks like Pete remarried after the divorce and got some lipo. Pistol has about the same design but with a vastly different, more Isabella-ish outfit. Finally we have PJ who looks the same, but has a diffrent outfit and a far more sour demeanor, probably meant to be a bully. My best guess is sthis stuff comes from the pitch, and was likely made to simply get the basic premise across before fine tuning the characters for series
So with all of that out of the way i’m calling eveyrone to join in the fun under the cut and report to the Goof Troop. 
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Everything’s Coming Up Goofy:
Our first episode opens in a small but cozy trailer, where Goofy’s cooking up lunch as only goofy could: by making osme meatballs then serving them to his son over a game of table tennis, with Max doing the same. It’s really freaking adorable, and a dynamic i’m not used to since i’m more familiar with Teen Max. Seeing Max genuinely get into his dad’s hyjinks and enjoy them.. it just warms the heart and adds weight to The Goofy Movie by knowing there was a time the two really were thick is thieves before the stygian hole that is high school drained all that out of him. 
So the two are like buddies and pals until the Mailman arrives, not even phased at this point. Turns out it’s a Diploma, and with this Goofy can get a job he’s been up for in Spoonerville and plans to move immediately. Max is devisated he’ll loose his friends and runs away to use a magical mystery box to keep them together only to end up in a land full of frogs with an old man who sounds like his dad minus the drawl and two other tinier frogs and ... I may have the wrong show. In fairness you try dislodging a finale where Keith David runs a 13 year old through with laser sword and then talk to me. 
Goofy is sympathetic though: While he seems a tad oblivous to Max’s worries, it’s very clear he’s jumping on this job and this move so far to give his son a better life. Sure he runs through all the cartoon moving away talking points that don’t work in real life or most other cartoons such as there being a nice lake and that max can make new friends, and Max accepts it weirdly fast because this episode is only 22 minutes and they don’t have time for that subplot... but it’s clear the idea of a better paying job, a secure home not in an alleyway, and some stablility for his son is the real reason Goofy’s doing this, and he probably wants to simply give the boy the childhood he had growing up. 
Meanwhile in Spoonerville, we meet Pete. To my shock this is where Jim Cummings took over the roll he was born for and has played since and with good reasons as Cummings is just amazing with Pete no matter the incarnation and excels here  his penchant for playing jerks, hams and gravely voiced guys all coalesicing. Pete is planning on building what modern toxicly masculine weirdos such as himself would call a Man Cave on his lawn, because Pete is a very SPECIAL kind of douchebag. He also plans to stretch it into the neighboring property, tear down the house there and set it up. 
This is news to his wife Peg, played by fellow voice acting Legend whose stillg ot it, April Winchell in her star making role. Peg is Pete’s strong willed wife who dosen’t put up with her husbands crap.. you know that trope that infected sitcoms for kids and adults of the doofy husband whose either a manchild , a skeevy self serving quipy asshole or some horrible combination of the two. The kind that has still been so prevealant the wife from one of said sitcoms helped produce a show about the wife finally doing the logical thing and plotting to kill the bastard. No really.. that’s an actual thing that’s happening. It’s even got a Little Bit of Alexis as Anne Murphy plays the poor, poor wife. 
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And why yes the series is called Kevin Can Fuck Himself. And why yes said former sitcom wife was the same one on a sitcom called Kevin Can Wait who was fired because they wanted to retool the show with the wife from Kevin James other sitcom. That also is very really a thing that happened. Payback is a bitch aint it? Fun too. 
But yeah from minute one Pete is a terrible husband: Peg is a realtor and thus is trying to sell the house because it’s her fucking job instead of letting her husband throw their family deep in debt to very likely illegally demolish a house so he has a giant yard to play in. I mean even if this is all played for jokes i’ts just not funny enough to not make him an utter bastard. The fact his response to her VERY valid criticism and subtextual worry he doesn’t’t take her career seriously is to fake a panic attack, from a very REAL tendency he turns out to have giant breakdowns under stress, to try and guilt her into letting him have his giant public man cave just backs this up.. as does the fact she simply glares at the camera as he’s clearly DONE this before. 
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Since I have to put up with this version of him for the rest of this episode, the next, AND a portion of the movie, i’m proudly introducing the Pete Sucks Counter. This will carry over to any other appearances of the guy from here on out. So that’s one for his insane plan, one for disrespecting his wife’s career and one for faking a panic attack to try and win an argument Pete Sucks Counter: 3
So because this episode ran short Peg caves and compromises: He can have the property if it isn’t sold by 9. So Pete does what ANY husband would do: uses his spy camera and booby traps he’s set up in the other house to try and scare away prospective buyers. 
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Yeah.. while the show TRIES to have Pete not as his old-timey villian self.. they traded in for him being fucking MODOK. I mean he is a grotesque monstrosity who has a nuclear family and spends all his time in a chair thing and can barely function as a Husband or Father. Though at least I can belivie MODOK LOVES his family which not so much with Pete. 
To prove this Pete tries using a fake spider to scare some buyers then CALLS THEM TELLING THEM PEG IS A CON ARITST. I.e. something that if they mention to her bosses could get her FIRED. He respects his wife’s autonomy, what she wants and what she’s asked him for, which is a fair shot to sell the place before he tries to wreck the place, as well as likely what his neighbors want. I mean I can accept breaks from reality for comedy, snakebird is my boy. 
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So I can accept pete has this stuff.. I just can’t find it funny when these shenanignas very transparently show that while he surface level loves his wife he dosen’t respect her or actually listen to her except when she gets angry. He IS the villian so he’s still a slight step among monst sitcom dads but i’ts not great. I can find it funny that his den also functions as a super villian lair though. That shit will never not be great. Also Pete Sucks Counter: 6 For the record: one for the spider itself, one for having traps set up in a property hat both isn’t his and his wife is trying to sell and another for threatening her job and her self esteem as she is baffled at what she possibly did wrong. 
So Goofy and Max get on the road, leaving moving the rest of their stuff to an old coot whose a friend of theres. So it’s goodbye Duckburg, Hello Spoonerville! And yes I headcanon this as Duckburg. Goof Troop is one of two shows that very clearly happened in SOME form, the other being Tailspin, the only difference being the time period (Goof Troop taking place in the 90′s and Tailspin in the 30′s or 40′s) and any adjustments for clashes with the 2017 verse. So going off that, we also know Donald and the boys KNOW goofy and didn’t remotely question his presence, as did the rest of the cast. 
So figuring out the timeline, Goofy likely met Donald in college, even if he never finished college as per an Extremley Goofy Movie, which may not happen the same exact way given Goofy still has his old job and may not loose it in this timeline, though i’d like to think he still meets Sylvia. But point is he drops out, possibly to marry Max’s mom, they end up moving to Duckburg for her work, she sadly dies, and Goofy is left raising Max alone. Donald and Goofy likely bonded as single parents struggling in low paying 9-5 jobs. Goofy left here, likely said goodbye to Donald and the 5 or so year old boys offscreen , and left. As for how anyone else knows him that’s simple: he probably visits whenever he can.  He’s a good friend, genuinely loves Donald like a brother in all continuities, and of course would show up with a progressively more then less grumpy Max every time. As for what I think the rest of the cast would think of him: Scrooge would hate him for his disaster area ways, but at least respect him as a hard worker, he just wouldn’t personally hire him which is.. it’s fair. Beakley would be aggravated by him. Webby would of course like him because she’s essentially him but competent and gay, and Launchpad and him .. god that’d be a joy to see. And drive up Scrooge’s insurance. Della would also like him obviously. I”m really disappointed we didn’t get a season 4 if for nothing else the fact we probably would’ve got another Goofy episode. It also feels weird he’s not in the finale in any way shape or form you know? Why have such a big guest spot for him and then just not bring him or Max back? GIVE ME MORE MAX DISNEY DAMN YOUUUUU So they move right along with Goofy excited to get back to where he once belonged, and to call Pete with the good news on his 90′s cell phone. Pete is utterly TERRIFIED finding out Goofy Comin and tries to send him off course to prevent it. Naturally despite nearly running into a truck, Goofy makes it to Spoonerville by evening anyway and we get a delightful bit that shows off BilL Farmer’s comedy skills as he rapidly lists off all the things in town while driving Max through town. It’s so damn smooth. This also is notable since before this farmer had just played the character in some DTV music videos, which stands for Disney not Denton but god I now want Shock Treatment with the Disney Crew. I mean who wouldn’t want Donald as Brad, Daisy as Janet, and Gladstone as Farley Flavors I ask you. Not sure who every one else would be i’m sorting that out. And if you don’t know what Shock Treatment is, here have this trailer with a nightmarish opening. 
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Dammit now I want to watch Shock Treatment again... so I am. Found it in full on YouTube, and I feel no shame in sharing that as it’s not on VOD, nor any streaming service, the DVD, which I own, is out of print, and the Blu Ray is a UK exclusive. This film both needs to be seen more and needs another proper US release damn it!
So naturally Goofy somehow finds Pete’s house.. I dunno maybe Peg’s been sending him letters. Can’t blame her for having a wondering eye long as she dosen’t act on it. She’s married to a walking lump of ego, selfishness and cholesterol and likely only held on as long as she did for the kids. Which for the record Peg as a child of divorce whose parents got divorced rather than keep up a sham marriage or anything.. it’s not worth it. I was MUCH happier that way in the long term. 
Anyways Peg and Goofy happily reunited while they awkardly try to get the kids to meet, with Goofy and PJ not warming up to each other at first, likely because Max just lost all his friends, and PJ clearly had none going into the series from context we’ll get later in the pilot. We also get a hilarious bit where Peg alternates between warmly greeting the goof’s and hilaroiusly shouting at Pistol to not play with worms.. in what honestly sounds like a protype for Miss Finster’s voice. 
Meanwhile the kids try to hide a small crack in Pete’s boat.. which he notices as he’s just about to steamroll the house despite NOT having asked Peg if she sold it yet and just assuming, possibly opening himself and her to a lawsuit
Pete Sucks Counter: 7
Discovering his boat is trashed, he has a comical panic attack, which I can forgive since this was 1992 and they weren’t as well known as a serious problem. Seriously while pete is a bastard man.. the animation on him is GORGEOUS as it is HILARIOUS, while Jim Cummings brings the hell out of it. He’s kept the roll for three decades as of next year for a reason. Goofy ends up accidently destroying his boat in the process of trying to help him as you’d expect. 
So Pete reluctantly lets the goofs sup with them.... and by reluctantly I mean he don’t wanna but Peg’s forcing him, which is pretty much the other half of their relationship in a nutshell: When pete isn’t lying and betraying her, Peg is forcing him to do stuff. As you can probably guess by how harsh i’ve been this aspect has aged INCREDIBLY poorly for me. This is your standard sitcom setup: asshole or dumbass or both dad, put upon wife who has to keep him in line.. but it’s just not how a GOOD marriage works and got so damn draining over time. Again and again we got things saying marriage is awful, comitting sucks unless your young, again and again. It’s why i’m REALLY happy we’ve been getting far better sitcom dad’s and marraiges lately. Bob’s Burgers is naturally the example, with the wife being the less sane one but both having their quriks and neither being so entirely dysfunctional you ever question the marriage. The Louds are another good example: Lynn Sr. And Rita NEVER right with each other that i’ve seen, have a perfectly happy relationship despite 11 kids, and wholly support each other, with Rita happily giving her husband the go ahead to quit his soul draining desk job so he could pursue his deream as a chef, and later letting him take a massive fincial gamble and open up a restraunt, purely because she belivied in him. Finally we have the Williams from Craig of the Creek who are easily one of the best married couples i’ve seen in western animation and one of them’s played by Terry Crews so that shoudln’t be a shock. I could prabobly find more but my points made: this trope REALLY ages the show poorly, more than any of hte 90′s specific tech or swinging theme song I just realized I forgot to talk about. Eh i’ll save it for the next episode. 
I have NEVER liked this trope anyway: only simpsons has really made it work for me and Family Guy did until they just stretched it too far, and with Simpsons at least they freqeuently have episodes pointing out how unehalthy it is. It dosen’t help this trope somehow STILL isn’t dead, as evidenced by the fact Rick and Morty has it in spades and for SOME damn reason got them back together.. I mean they don’t fight anymore but it dose’nt fix the problem. So yeah while I’m not holding against the show TERRRIBLY as this trope wasn’t as widespread at the time, it still dosen’t make it GOOD even at it’s core. 
Things get worse for Pete though as while Goofy praises him (And the Pete Kids rightfly wonder if Goofy is from space given the logic of ANYONE being that fond of pete. ) Pete finds out GOOFY bought the house he was going to demolish and will be staying with them till they move in. I have only one response to his misery....
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Max also futzes with the tv which you THINK would lead to Peg finding out her husband is the antagonist of a Blumhouse movie but instead just does nothing. 
So then we have Dinner where we find out SUPRISINGLY, Pete actually has a somewhat valid reason for resenting Goofy: Goofy cost him the big game in high school as Goofy and Peg were on the cheerleading squad together and Goofy accidently kicked pete in the face at a crucial moment, which Pete got the blame for. Granted I did say SOMEWHAT: Goofy is genuinely apologetic and says Pete shouldn’t of been blamed and Pete’s apparently been hiding the truth from his kids this whole time. I do call bullshit on that as while admittedly i don’t get into local football or any sportsball, Pete works at a dealership. At least one asshole would bring it up to either rile him up or out of genuine rage at something that happened at the very least a decade and a half ago. Pete hasn’t let go of this footbullshit DESPITE owning a successful dealership, having two wonderful children, an even more wonderful wife, and a friggin nice boat.  But really.. it speaks to Pete’s character in any version: His ultimate undoing is his greed, his tendency to keep going and never settle. It’s something he oddly shares with Donald but Pete lacks Donald’s’s heart or redeeming moments. Pete just wants and wants and wants no matter who gets hurt because he’s inehently selfish and will simply TAKE It if he can’t get it. But it’s why he’s miserable, and ultimately ends up divorced: He can’t be satisfised so he often looses what he has. 
So with Pete on the rampage Peg sends the boys upstairs. It’s here we get PJ’s first Woobie Moment: He has a room FULL of cool toys, comics and what not but his dad is such a greedy asshole he refuses to let the kid actually use them. He even knows this isn’t normal but is just resigned to it. Rob Paulsen is phenomenal as PJ, being funny and energetic, snarky and off to the side or depressed and fearful all with grace and ease and all making this all feel like the same sweet kid. 
I mention this because Paulsen’s action is so good it highlights an issue with PJ: the writers lean way too hard into how much a hardass Pete is, to the point the series, likely intentionally, HEAVILY implies he physically abuses pete and the stuff on screen isn’t over the top enough, at least for tehse episodes, to get away with how he emotionally abuses him either. He talks down to him, doesn’t let him play toys and as seen by various episode synopsis and the next episode, uses mind games to keep him in line. THIS is why I can’t stand this version of Pete. He’s an abusive monster to this poor boy and I won’t stands for it, nor it being played off as a joke, especially since they try to ping pong between using it for comedy and using it seriously which just.. doesn’t work. 
So Max earns his future best pals’ friendship by trying to help him.. and succeeding by pointing out that while he said not to use the Tank anywhere on the ground.. he didn’t mention the celling or walls and has the tank going up the walls. And clearly by the fact PJ is seen sleeping with it later, despite Petes’ss anger at this, Peg presumably ripped him a new one once she found out about the toys thing. 
So that night Pete can’t sleep with Goofy tromping around the house and tries to whack him with a Golf Club. I’d give him another sucks count.. 
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But given my brother lives in the basement and I sometimes accidently wake him by tromping overhead without meaning too, I DO get getting a bit fed up with someone clomping around and waking you up, and it is a slapstick cartoon so trying to physically assault someone is less of a crime here and more a setup for a punchline. 
So get an UTTERLY hilarious scene as teh combination fo tripping on golf balls and Goofy singing his family lullabye, camptown races with lyrics
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So Pete proceeds to have another freak out this time RUNNING ALL THE WAY TO DUCKBURG, THROWING THE OLD MAN OUT OF THE CAR AND THEN BRINGING IN THE GOOF’S BEDS AND BOXES BEFORE TOSSING THEM IN THE HOUSE. It is truly an amazing combination of Jim’s utter talent as he babbles hialriously and the animators as they just make it sing. It’s a great climax to part one. So with that the goofs are home and Pete semeingly gets to go to sleep.. until they start working on unpacking. 
Final Thoughts On Good Neighbor Goof:
This is an excellent start to the series. The jokes are really well paced, the characters well introduced and the humor top notch> I had my complaints obviously.. but i’ts more systemic issues with the series, and stuff that honestly it dosen’t hamper my viewing experience for the most part. The PJ stuff does, but it’s not as big a deal this episode as he barely interacts with his Dad, but otherwise it’s stuff that just hasn’t aged well and they can’t be faulted for not seeing a deluge of terrible sitcoms a comin. The cast is top notch: I didn’t get to them in the proper review so Dana HIll deserves praise as Max, giving just the right amount of 90′s TV Kid mixed with real honest emotion and i’ts a tragedy she’s gone. She would’ve been right up there with the rest of this amazing cast in history. Though at least she got a worthy succesor.. but that’s not for now. For now we’re taking an interlude to look at the wonderfully 90′s music video that was aired along with this special:
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Gotta Be Gettin Goofy:
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This was my raw reaction to this video. Now is it bad? No the song has great flow it somehow manages to scratch Bill Farmer’s goofy vocals with the beat, the rapper makes the cheesy lyrics work, and the chorus of “gotta be getting goofy” backs a great bit. It’s not a bad SONG.. but the video is a hilariously insane mess. We have two of the poor dancers forced to wear just.. HORRIFYING looking Goofy costumes that look like the Dog based sequel to cats that thankfully only exists in my nightmares
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I pityt hose poor dancers. Meanwhile the rest of the dancers are wearing Goofy Baseball uniforms and letterman jackets for some reason. is it beause Goofy likes sportsball. I thoguth they just had them lying around but now I see the g’s on the uniform. They CHOOSE to do this. Max also does a shredding guitar solo, not the max up there the animated max. Combine that with LOTS OF random clips from the show and you get this thing.. and i’ts worth a watch> it’s just hilarously what the shit.. not the most hilariously what the shit thing i’ve seen.. not even this week... that would be this thing from the Eurovision Song contest...
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Your welcome. So moving on because this is already badly behind. 
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Good Neighbor Goof:
So our second episode opens with the Goof’s trying to move in and pete being upset their being loud. Now being upset your neighbors are being loud is one thing: Mine set off fireworks all week around fourth of July. Granted Pete would probably be the one doing such nonsense but still, I get it.. but it’s fair to have a lot of noise when your moving in and in Goofy’s case also trying to patch up a massive hole in the place. 
So he does what any reasonable man would do and activates the earthquake machine he hid in the basement. 
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I wasn’t kidding about the MODOK comparisons. Granted the thing uses a belt to somehow do this.. but it’s designed to SIMULATE AN EARTHQUAKE AN DDOES SO WELL. The only reason Goofy’s not dead is that pete uses a low setting that instead ends up unpacking everything. IT’s a neat gag but again... PETE HAS AN EARTHQUAKE MACHINE.
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Which Goofy accidently destroys his boat with. Meanwhile the boys try to talk over tin can phones only for Pete to notice and try to stop it because he’s a dick and doesn’t want his son to be happy because he hates Goofy. So Pete’s idea of a punishment is for PJ to wear the family shoes to go crush cans while wearing a helmet and given Pete mutters to himself about this keeping PJ away from Max i’ts likely something that he made up to torture his son soooo..
Pete Sucks Counter: 8 Max being a good pal agrees to help his friend crush the cans down to recycle for money and comes up with a zany scheme to do so
Meanwhile we get a few scenes of Pete trying to eff with Goofy’s day: Peg is making food for Goofy like a good neighbor/someone planning for their eventual divorce, so Pete makes him some too with tons of hot sauce. By the laws of classic cartoons, naturally Goofy loves it and wonders if Pete has hot sauce, while Pete trying it explodes his head Scanner’s style. 
He then tries giving Goofy a chainsaw loaded with some kind of explosive or something... so yes he’s esclated to MURDER over.. Goofy annoying him a bunch as he’s apparently given up on the whole taking over that lot thing. 
Pete Sucks Counter: 9 But it is hilariously petty and naturally backfires again by cartoon law as Pete ends up starting it for Goofy who can’t get it going. 
Meanwhile PJ and Max inact the plan which is to drop a bolder with a rope on the cans, but end up having to ride the cans down when PJ lets it go too early and it ends up sweeping both boys on top of the box. They have fun though, with PJ actually getting to enjoy life for once and loving having a new friend.
So as his lot in life Pete has to ruin it by yelling at PJ for getting diryt, then for hanging out with max as he can SMELL the goof on him.. which means he’s either exaggerating or he knows what goofy smells like. 
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So he forbids PJ to see him insluting max.. while Max is hanging out the window and ends up crying. Oh and Peg never gets involved in any of this across both parts, likely because she dosen’t know.. which makes it even MORE horrifying as it gives off the implication Pete gets away with his abuse of his son because he hides it, like a real world abuser. But even then some things like trying to break up his and Max’s friendship or the toys thing you’d THINK she’d notice. 
So we get more untetionally telling stuff as PJ says he’ll treasure this day and the only time he was happy.
Pete Sucks Count: 14 2 for the last scene, 3 for ALLL this one implies. But Max won’t give up the ghost no he won’t give it up. They haven’t the strength to hold on for long but if they both hold on together they can make each other strong. So he has a plan: have Goofy throw a Luau and invite the petes.
Peg naturally forces him to attend and Pete is a dick about it at first, but eventually enjoys himself when they do a conga line. The pets, Waffles and Chainsaw get into some antics. I do love Waffles because I love a kitty. Chainsaw is okay even though I love me a good doggo. Especially this one.
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You are a Good Boy, Good Boy. But eventually while playing a party game about passing coconuts, Pete considers the coconut and considers the trees but dosen’t consider Goofy kicking him in the face AGAIN
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So Pete is naturally a dick about this despite it being you know, an accident. But he takes it a step further by insulting Max Pete Sucks Count: 15 So Goofy gets mad. But here’s where a rather sizeable flaw shows up in the episode as Goofy.. acts exactly like Pete does about the insuing feud. He forbids Max to see PJ makes up rules and is generally petty and vindictive. And look Goofy could be in the shorts. He’s endlessly adaptable.. but here nothing about his character has shown he’d sink to this and it feels forced to bring abotu the climax. 
Thankfully said finale salvages thing: That night Max pulls PJ into his room via the cans, and comes up with a plan.. weirdly asking PJ to hit him with a muffin to save their friendship... but it’s not random it turns out. His plan.. is brilliant. While I really don’t like these types of feud between neighbors make our kids suffer by making them not be able to be friends because we’re being petty children plots, this one has a REALLY clever solution to that: Max and PJ FAKE an oversclated fued similar to their parents, starting with insutls and throwing mulch and escalting to taking down each others fences and then throwing food at each other, before injuring their dads with planks and stuff, nothing serious just slapstick stuff, all to get both to settle down and try and get the boys to stop fighting.. it works like a charm, it’s full of great bits like Peg offering the boys pie only for Max to use it as amuination and i’ts just a great way to end one of these episodes. Not that I WANT more of these episodes but if your going to do this stock plot you might as well be creative with it.
So we end on the Petes and Goofs having a BBQ, all friends again, with Pete having his marina and Goofy nearly burning Pete’s house down and us getting a photo to end the episode.
Final Thoughts:
This one was a step down. Pete’s abuse is REALLY highlighted here and the plot is very paint by numbers and forces Goofy to be out of character for the last act for it to work at all. He just strikes me as too genuine and noble to hold onto a grudge this easily. Peg is also reduced from her usual feisty self to being oddly useless, not stepping in at ANY point to stop any of this depsite it being grossly otu of character. There’s a few great gags and a great climax, but the whole product is just okay
Later Today: Goof Week and Goofy’s birthday continue as I complete the trilogy of Shortstaculars with one about my boy! Featuring Goofy’s first apperance, his first short and the first apperance of what would eventually become Max! 
If you liked this review, follow me for more and consider joining my Patreon which you can find RIGHT HERE. Even a buck a month helps me keep doing these and more gets me to my stretch goals, the next one up being the two remaining ducktales mini series, a darkwing duck episode a month and a reivew of the danny phantom film the ultimate enemy. And even a buck a month gets you access to exclusvie reviews, my patreon exclusive discord and to pick a short any time I do one of my shortstaculars. My next one is for Donald’s birthday next montha nd there’s only 6 days left to get on that pay cycle so if that sounds good to you get on in NOW while you still can and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 
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