#Grahame Leslie

[dickinson-devotee]

Last chance to get tickets for the Whisky a Go Go on 7th October! Grab them now at BritishLionUk.com/tour

#BritishLion #Tour #Whiskyagogo

——

September 15, 2024

[livelovecaliforniadreams]

Parks & Rec 6x20 | A Man On The Inside 1x7

[cantsayidont]

A pretty good movie:

CRUSH (2022): Unmemorable title for a delightful gay teen romcom about nerdy artist Paige Evans (Rowan Blanchard), who ends up on the track team and finds herself in an awkward romantic triangle with hot teammate Gabriela Campos (Isabella Ferreira) and Gabby's sister AJ (Auli'i Cravalho), who is frustrated at always living in her sister's shadow. The actual plot isn't much, in particular a rather contrived subplot about Paige trying to unmask a mysterious graffiti artist called KingPun (whose unauthorized murals on school property Paige has been accused of creating), but a winning cast and a very witty script make it great fun, and it's heartening to see LGBT characters integrated seamlessly into this kind of comedy rather than being treated as tokens or punchlines. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Yes! VERDICT: One of the more endearing teen comedies in recent memory, particularly recommended if you liked BOOKSMART, but wished it were gayer.

A movie that sounded good and wasn't:

GRAY MATTERS (2006): The '00s saw a minor boom in lesbian coming-out movies featuring nonthreatening closeted and/or sexually repressed lipstick femmes, often played by straight actresses. This mediocre entry stars Heather Graham as Manhattan ad exec Gray Baldwin, who has never even considered the possibility that she might be gay until her brother Sam (Tom Cavanagh) gets engaged to hot zoologist Charlie (Bridget Moynahan), whom Gray promptly falls for. Lots of talent, including Alan Cumming, Sissy Spacek, Molly Shannon, and a guest appearance by Gloria Gaynor as herself, but not much energy, and Gray is one of those bland romcom heroines with a handful of harmless quirks instead of a personality. The lackluster script also makes some very questionable creative choices, including trying to convey Gray and Sam's closeness by having them constantly mistaken for a couple (eww!) and having Sam rush to marry Charlie, who then bows out almost completely in the extremely lethargic second half. The third act is further marred by some transmisogynistic nonsense with Cumming sneaking into a lesbian bar in drag, and culminates in Gray managing to find a worse romantic alternative than snogging her sister-in-law. If it sounds perverse, it really isn't, at least not on purpose — the whole movie is so sexually timid that you could probably watch it with your grandma without having to hide your face, and the final scene's contrived faux-uplift feels like a yogurt commercial. CONTAINS LESBIANS: So it says. VERDICT: A lesbian movie for people who have never knowingly met a wlw in real life.

A movie that started off okay, but turned out badly:

THE OTHER WOMAN (2014): Initially silly but ultimately distasteful comedy, directed by Nick Cassavetes, about slick corporate lawyer Carly (Cameron Diaz) discovering that her hunky new boyfriend Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is actually married, and then bonding with Mark's distraught wife Kate (Leslie Mann) — who soon realizes that Mark is also cheating on her with the imposingly stacked Amber (Kate Upton). Kind of fun for the first hour, with a nice rapport between Diaz, Mann, and eventually Upson; Diaz inevitably seems stiffer than she obviously wants to be in comedies like this, but Mann is frequently hilarious, and Upson does well with her amusing if unchallenging dumb-blond role. Unfortunately, Melissa K. Stack's uneven script then takes some repugnant turns, including Kate deciding the best way to hurt Mark is to put feminizing hormones in his smoothies; an offensive transmisogynistic gag involving Amber trying to persuade Mark to have a threesome with a girlfriend who turns out to be a heavily stubbled man in a dress; and Amber then lying to Mark about having chlamydia so he'll be forced to take antibiotics for an STI he doesn't have. The second half is a weird mishmash of juvenile farce and "Y'know, even middle-class white ladies go to prison for that" wire- and bank-fraud-related escalation, seasoned with splashes of racism. Don Johnson and Nicki Minaj have small roles as Carly's Don Juanish father and sassy secretary, respectively. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Even scenes like Carly and Kate goggling at Amber's bikini-clad pulchritude are painfully straight. VERDICT: Gross transphobia, a very clumsy ending, and too many uncalled-for lapses in taste sour what otherwise would have been a moderately entertaining #girlpower comedy.

[shewhotellsstories]

My least favorite thing about fandom racism bingo is how conveniently stans have just “never seen” the bile that gets spewed against characters of color and the actors who play them. And if/when you show them the screenshots or links it’s all, “they’re just trolls” or “those aren’t real fans.” Spare me.

[nerds-yearbook]

The science fiction movie Alien Nation premiered on October 7, 1988. According to the story, Earth made contact with aliens, known as the Newcomers, in 1988. The events of the movie took place in 1991. James Caan played police detective Matthew Sykes and was partnered with Mandy Patinkin's Newcomer Sam Francisco. The film was written by Farscape creator Rockne S. O'bannon. It went on to span a TV series and several TV movies. Brian Thompson was the only actor to appear in both the movie and the TV version. ("Alien Nation", Movie Event)

[tonymarias]

grahame pratt and leslie uggams on their wedding day, 1965

[movie-titlecards]

Men with Brooms (2002)

My rating: 6/10

Pretty solid, but man, did I not care about the romantic subplot.

[jam-packed]

call me sebastian vettel the way i can list every motogp champion by year

[mariocki]

The Saint: The Fiction Makers - Part 1 (6.11, ITC, 1968)

"Mr. Klein, do you remember what SWORD did to the police sergeant in Sunburst Five?"

"Oh no..."

"The equipment is fully operational in the cellar, it can be filled with acid in one minute."

"Oh, you wouldn't!"

[hqtoussaint]

Leslie Uggams and Grahame Pratt, 2023, married 58 years

Leslie Uggams (b 1943), American actress and singer -Wikipedia

Uggams has been married to her longtime manager Grahame Pratt since 1965, at the time a rare high-profile interracial marriage. “It was not as hard as I expected it to be,” Uggams says. “I think the reason is that Grahame was not an American white man. But of course we did get mail.” Uggams met her husband at the Professional Children's School of New York, where they were both students. The couple met again while she was performing in Sydney during one of Uggams's celebrity tours in Australia and he became her manager afterward. After their wedding, the couple decided to reside in New York, which was then more tolerant of interracial relationships. Uggams has been married to her longtime manager Grahame Pratt since 1965.

[letterboxd-loggd]

The Night of the Party (The Murder Party) (1934) Michael Powell

May 26th 2024

[dance-world]

Richard Villaverde and Leslie Andrea Williams - Martha Graham Dance - photo by Steven Vandervelden

[agentnico]

Fallout - season 1 (2024) review

The evolution of the phrase “okey dokey” throughout this show says so much for the good old fashioned writing of this season.

Plot: Over 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse devastates America, a violent raid by bandits on an underground fallout shelter forces one of its residents to set out into a barren wasteland filled with radiation, mutated monsters, and a lawless society of those who remained on the surface.

For a very long while in the cinephile and gaming community there has been this shared agreement over the video game adaptation curse. Video games have been plagued with adaptations that end up being met with terrible reception due to a combination of bad writing and poor visuals that don’t live up to the original game. To this day this fact arguably still continues with the likes of Resident Evil and Uncharted. And look, I love Hiroyuki Sanada as much as the next person, but that Mortal Kombat flick from a few years back was not great either. That being said, in recent years there has also been a trend of genuinely successful attempts that have translated surprisingly well. Detective Pikachu banked a lot on Ryan Reynolds sarcastic persona and the Pokémon creatures were utilised well; Netflix’s The Witcher has done pretty well for itself, well until now when they’ve swapped their lead actor for one of the cheaper Hemsworth brothers; Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Sonic flicks I’m not a fan of myself, but evidently from the box office numbers and audience reactions they seemed to have hit the right spot in the fans’ hearts. Then there’s The Last of Us. The original game won people over for its heart-wrenching human drama against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, and the TV show has done a perfect job of capturing that. Every episode has recreated the game down to the last detail, and even when things are changed, the spirit of the source material is still kept alive. All of that makes it a rare adaptation that succeeds in giving people a new version of the original game and then some, giving it plenty to offer for old and new fans alike.

Now it seems that positive trend continues, furthermore underlining that the video game adaptation curse is now a myth. Well maybe, as that upcoming Borderlands movie is a looking suspiciously clunky but we’ll see how that one turns out. As for presently, Prime Video has shocked us all by giving us a truly fantastic show in Fallout. And I say shocked as the last time Prime Video adapted a famous property was The Rings of Power series and they butchered that one hard! I mean I’m sorry, but making an entire over-bloated season about the mystery of who is Sauron, and at the end the reveal is he’s some teen-Twilight-era dude and we’re supposed to all gasp in awe?? Look, I get that it’s not Prime Video themselves to be blamed, but the show runners and writers, but naturally Prime has left a sour taste in my palette. HOWEVER - Fallout is actually genuinely a good time!

I’ve never really played any of the Fallout games. Never appealed to me, and I have always found it difficult to get into any Bethesda games. My fiancée however tried Fallout 4 half a year ago and apparently gave up as she found it too confusing and she got stuck at a monster boss fight early on. I do hope she wasn’t stuck fighting one of those tiny little bugs, surely not. That would be embarrassing. So I went into this show without being a fan of the games, though I was aware of its post-apocalyptic backdrop. One of the best things about Fallout the TV show is that it’s very accessible whether or not you’ve played the games. Yes, fans of the games will notice a lot of fun stuff from the source material, but even if you’re a total newcomer, you can watch and follow along without any issues.

The story revolves around three main characters 200 years after a nuclear war basically destroyed everything, driving some survivors into underground bunkers called Vaults. Ella Purnell (that’s right, one of Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children!) plays Lucy MacLean, a Vault Dweller who, through unfortunate circumstances, leaves the relative safety of Vault 33 and travels to the surface on a life or death mission. She’s joined by Maximus (Aaron Clifton Moten) a squire in the secretive Brotherhood Of Steel - Power Armor-wearing knights who roam the land looking for lost technology. Maximus is almost as green as Lucy, venturing out on a quest he’s not very well prepared to tackle. Finally, rounding out the main trio, we have Walton Goggins as The Ghoul, a gunslinging bounty hunter and mutant who’s managed to live for well over 200 years. We learn more about his past as celebrity Cooper Howard through a number of flashbacks. Naturally more characters pop up along the way. I just want to urge anyone sitting on the fence to give this series a shot. It’s great fun, with plenty of humour, action and mystery and its creators clearly put a lot of effort into making it true to the game universe, while also being inventive with their storytelling.

It’s also really gory. You get to see a lot of human flesh out on display (heck, there are even zombies in this thing!) and it’s all visually looked really well done. Again with Bezos’ Amazon budget, like The Rings of Power show, Fallout looks like an expensive series. It just so happens that unlike Rings of Power this one happens to also have good writing, characters and narrative. There’s some impressive world-building, with every shot filled with various details that I’m sure will please the game fans. The story is really engaging, and I loved getting into the politics of this world and how companies like Vault Tec have more to them that meets the eye.

The primary element that works for Fallout is that’s its easy. As in it’s really enjoyable and straightforward and makes for a solid binge watch. Walton Goggins is superb as the Ghoul. Johnny Pemberton as Thaddeus, a squire for the Knights, was a great use of using a comedic actor and making them play things straight by simply trying to survive in this world, so that when the funny lines did come up they hit strong. Oh, and did I mention that Agent Dale Cooper himself, my boy Kyle MacLachlan is in this show?? Honestly, Fallout is a great time! Amazon, I still haven’t forgiven you for Lord of the Rings, but this is a good attempt for an apology.

Overall score: 7/10

[diet-cokette]

actually i am so obsessed with how gritty 20th century literature is. especially american 20th century literature.

[gatutor]

Julie Ege-Leslie Phillips "The magnificent seven deadly sins" 1971, de Graham Stark.