#How to Install Fallout London | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rebeccalouisaferguson · 1 year ago

Text

This interview was conducted in July 2023.

After a five-year hiatus, prolonged due to the pandemic, Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt and team are back for the seventh instalment Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. Shrouded in secrecy, the plot and character details are very much being kept under wraps with little being known about it beyond the crazy action sequences shown off in the trailer. From Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff in Norway to drifting a bright yellow Fiat 500 around the streets of Rome whilst Cruise and franchise newcomer Hayley Atwell are handcuffed to each other, Dead Reckoning Part One has somehow managed to step up from the heights of Fallout to provide yet another impossible mission. This time, Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens the whole world if it falls into the wrong hands.

Thankfully, Ethan’s not alone. Alongside him for the ride is the return of Simon Pegg’s Benji, Ving Rhames’ Luther, Rebecca Ferguson’s Ilsa, Vanessa Kirby’s mysterious White Widow and Henry Czerny’s former head of the IMF Eugene Kittridge who hasn’t been seen since the first Mission film. Joining the cast are Esai Morales as the film’s main villain, Cary Elwes, Mark Gatiss, Rob Delaney, Pom Klementieff and Hayley Atwell. The cast for the new film is certainly a force to be reckoned with.

Hayley Atwell’s character Grace is set to feature prominently alongside Cruise and is a character that Atwell described as “consistently inconsistent and unpredictable.” Christopher McQuarrie, director of Missions 5,6,7 and next year’s 8, has known for some time that he’s wanted to work with Atwell. After seeing her on stage in London 10 years ago he told her “That thing that you can do on stage, I want it. I don’t know where to put it, I don’t know what the character is yet, but I want to work with you.” But the process of writing Hayley Atwell into a Mission film hasn’t been that straightforward.

When it comes to writing a Mission film, the bare bones are there, and the key action sequences are confirmed but there isn’t a full script for the cast and crew to work with. McQuarrie allows the actors to shape their characters. “Apart from essential plot points of her, it was up for grabs really about things I could offer them, things I could suggest, and ideas I could throw out,” described Atwell. It was a liberating process for Atwell because of the safe space created by McQuarrie and Cruise. “There was no such thing as wrong, or bad, or judgement, or mistakes. There was just making choices and trying new things,” Atwell added. “What they’re doing is exceptional, and their ambition for the piece means they’re only ever going to use things that really elevate the story.”

Working without a script might be challenging for some actors, but it’s certainly not an impossible mission for those involved in the franchise. Getting to have that collaborative effort to create characters — particularly characters that are new to the franchise — is a really exciting opportunity for the cast. Hot off the heels of playing Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Pom Klementieff is already joining another franchise and Klementieff describes working on Mission as like a dance due to the way in which everyone on set, from the actors to the costume department, to hair and makeup, are all bringing ideas and working together to help shape the characters and to help shape the story of the film. Klementieff would come to set each day with no idea what they were shooting, and she’d ask McQuarrie “Who do I kill today?” and the two of them would work together to come up with how her character would go about achieving her mission and working with the props department to ensure that everything worked for the character and for the story.

It’s a testament to the creative minds of McQuarrie and Cruise and everyone involved to be able to create something so immense, without having it all entirely locked down in the first place. For Rebecca Ferguson, that’s what’s so exciting about the Mission Impossible franchise. “We just don’t work with scripts,” said Ferguson. Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie have this incredible story in their head and things develop from that. Ferguson spoke of the differences between doing Mission Impossible and Dune as with the latter there’s a strict shooting schedule and mapping out the film, but the opposite is true for Mission and “It leaves you on your tippy toes ready to constantly jump”. For Mission, they’ll shoot multiple versions of things and see what works best. Ferguson admitted that even she doesn’t know what’s made the final cut of the film. “All that I’m prepared for is the action. I know my character. And the rest is revealed when I see the film.”

It’s essential that of the few things that are locked down, the action scenes are among them. Dead Reckoning Part One takes the action scenes to a completely new level. From scaling the tallest building in the world to hanging onto the side of a plane as it takes off, Tom Cruise has risked his life for the Mission Impossible franchise — multiple times. In Dead Reckoning Part One fans can expect to see Cruise and co-running and jumping around atop a runaway train in what promises to be one of the film’s best action set pieces. And there’s minimal CGI involved either as Cruise is insistent on doing all his stunts practically.

The stunts all being real is what makes the Mission Impossible franchise stand out from the crowd of action films. Hayley Atwell described it as “Unlike anything else that exists,” but adds that it’s part of the fun of doing a Mission film. “That was one of the reasons why I wanted to do it. You don’t come into theMission Impossible franchise with the possibility of building a very serious role next to Tom without wanting the opportunity and the challenge to physically do things that are truly extraordinary and exceptional.”

It’s not just Atwell who was drawn to the adrenaline and the thrills of the franchise with Pom Klementieff saying getting to work with Cruise and his stunt team was an incredible experience. “It opened up a new world of possibilities which changed me completely in an amazing way.” Having been a fan of the franchise since the beginning there was not a world where Klementieff would not accept this mission of being part of the franchise. “I have so many memories on this movie of things that were pinch-me moments. Sometimes I was just shooting and you kind of forget that you’re part of Mission Impossible, but sometimes I would just start singing doo doo, doo doo doo doo…” Klementieff told us that years ago when she was training and learning martial arts, she would schedule her fight training in her phone and call it “Mission Impossible” in her calendar because she was trying to manifest this role that has now come her way.

As for details on the new characters, Klementieff was able to share that her villain doesn’t speak much so she took inspiration from animals, in particular the shoebill stork. Klementieff would watch videos of the bird and channel that into her character. “I kept looking at videos of this bird and when it’s staring at you it’s just so f*cking scary…It’s like a dinosaur bird.” Getting to play a quiet character, particularly in an action movie where there’s often lots of exposition was a nice change of pace for Klementieff. She was able to focus on the strength and stillness that comes through the mystery of not talking. Klementieff teased that we can expect something a bit more mystical in Dead Reckoning Part One and something that hasn’t been seen before in a Mission Impossible film. “It’s such a rich movie and it’s so incredible…the characters are so fucking cool and the story is very special.”

As for Hayley Atwell, she loved Tom Cruise’s enthusiasm for film and the symbiotic relationship between him and Christopher McQuarrie. Getting to work closely with the two to mould and build her character as they went along meant that Grace couldn’t be boxed into one particular archetype. Atwell spent five months training for the role learning mixed martial arts, training with knives and guns, and learning how to drift in a race car, but one of the biggest challenges was preparing to run alongside Cruise and having to reach the bar of his iconic sprint where he runs with every cell in his body. “Pickpocketing and sleight of hand tricks seem to come quite naturally to me, as did drifting,” said Atwell, “because of all that training, by the time we got on set I was ready to inject physical and emotional behaviour into it and offer them a range of performances.”

The physical training all the cast underwent was a difficult experience but that’s not to say that the excitement of it all never got to them. Atwell spoke of one moment on set in Rome where all of a sudden, she turned to Cruise and said, “Oh my God, I’m in a Tom Cruise movie!” to which he responded, “No no no, I’m in a Hayley Atwell movie, you’re Hayley Atwell!” Atwell said, “It was so endearing of him and so generous of him.” Klementieff had a similar story of Cruise’s generosity as she had wanted to skydive with him but didn’t have her licence and so when the film wrapped, Cruise put her in touch with his trainer and taught her how to skydive. “I’m blown away by his generosity and how hardworking he is, and how inspiring he is,” remarked Klementieff.

Among all the excitement of the death-defying stunts performed by Cruise and co, everything in Mission Impossible is driven by character and the story. Even when things are subtle and not always immediately clear to the audience. After Fallout subtly dropped that Vanessa Kirby’s White Widow was the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave’s Max from the first film, Kirby has since been building on these family ties in her character. “I just went back and I watched [Vanessa Redgrave] a thousand times and I thought ‘Oh my goodness, this is one of the great theatre actresses of our time’ and she’s always been a huge hero of mine.” Kirby added “To play her daughter and to try and embody that within an action movie is awesome. I think there’s been a long lineage of really cool women in this series.” Vanessa Kirby was excited by the fact that Dead Reckoning allowed her to explore more, push more, ask more questions and try different things with the character. And whilst Kirby was keeping details on the White Widow’s progression in Dead Reckoning close to her chest, she did tell us that she’s grown up even more except now the pressures are getting to her, and more is on the line and there are way more challenges for the White Widow.

Rebecca Ferguson echoed this sentiment too adding that “people know what they’re going to see when they see a Mission Impossible film, but I think this is going to be ten times better than they think.” Ferguson added, “This is going to be darker and more gruesome and it’s going to engulf you more than you would ever have expected…there are bad-ass scenes, fantastic stuns and wonderful locations.” Making a Mission film is more than just a job for Ferguson who’s been a part of the franchise for almost ten years now. With the immense training and travel required, making a Mission Impossible film is a journey, especially given the fact they were shooting the film during the pandemic and production had to be shut down across COVID lockdowns. “You don’t film Mission, you live Mission…it becomes your life,” said Ferguson. But as a result, Rebecca Ferguson and her character Ilsa Faust have blended together. “She became me, and I her. Somehow, we moulded into each other.” Because of the similarities between Ferguson and Ilsa Faust, she could make decisions about the character in a split second without having to analyse things or check with McQuarrie.

At the end of the day for director Christopher McQuarrie, for Tom Cruise, and for the entire cast, it’s the characters that matter the most and make Mission Impossible what it is. Whether new or old, it’s the characters that drive the Mission Impossible films. The whole franchise, but in particular Dead Reckoning Part One is full of great female characters too. Vanessa Kirby told us, “There’s a lot of great women in this…the women in this series are amazing.” The women in this film are all equals to Ethan Hunt and make this entry into the franchise stand out so much. “So much of the Mission franchise is about the team,” said Atwell. “It’s about Luther and it’s about Benji, and it’s about Ethan and what they have sacrificed to become part of the IMF.”

With Dead Reckoning being a two-parter there are rumours that this is the start of a big send-off for Hunt and his IMF team but nothing is set in stone. Ferguson was quick to say that she doesn’t believe the franchise will end until she hears Tom Cruise himself utter the words “I am done,” three words that she’s yet to hear from his mouth. “I think Tom is going to keep on going with anything until he can’t bloody walk.” Agreeing with Ferguson, Vanessa Kirby remarked that with Cruise anything is possible. “That’s why it’s called Mission Impossible because he always does it,” added Kirby stating that she’s not heard anything about Cruise being ready to deliver his final mission just yet.

#rebecca ferguson #hayley atwell #pom klementieff #vanessa kirby #mission impossible dead reckoning part one #mi7 #mission impossible 7 #interview #mi7 interview

23 notes · View notes

storyblog22 · 3 years ago

Text

Mods For Fallout 4 On Ps4

Fallout London - Dardick Tround. This is a standalone weapon mod is that will also be featured in the upcoming Fallout: London mod.It contains a Dardick Tround with various workbench attachments to make different versions to better suit the users need as well as a Dardek, a custom fun unique to Fallout: London. Weapons; By Fallout4London.

How To Install Mods For Fallout 4

Mods For Fallout 4 On Ps4

Fallout 4’s post-apocalyptic Wasteland is far too vast a place to explore on your own.

Loneliness creeps in slowly as the silence becomes deafening, and the banging of a far-away raider’s rifle is as much a warning of danger as it is a respite from the maddening isolation.

Best Fallout 4 Mods PS4. In this category, we’ve provided some of the Best PS4 Fallout 4 Mods that you can download from bethsaida store. Fallout 4 Settlement Mods PS4. The mod allows you to increase your productivity levels in the game. Scrape more items and build a house that you’ve ever dreamt off. USO Base Game Mod. Best Fallout 4 mods for Xbox One and PS4 1. KeyNuker passes the test of Best Fallout 4 Mods among a long list of all the Fallout 4 Mods. Armorsmith Extended. In the mod, you will be equipped with the Armour system, which looks absolutely awesome.

The vanilla game offers plenty of options to keep you company during your travels.

One option is to take Dogmeat along, hoping it’ll warn you of incoming threats and become a food supply were things to get hairy.

Another possibility is to recruit synths, humans and even a super mutant you can talk to while roaming the Commonwealth.

But after so many years of playing the same game, talking to the same people and traveling with the same nutjobs that seemed so interesting in the past… everything starts becoming faded and the ranting of irradiated minds goes from hilariously bizarre to boring and dull.

How To Install Mods For Fallout 4

To improve your experience making friends and influencing people in the Commonwealth, I’ve gathered a list of my favorite companion-related mods available for Fallout 4, making sure there’s something for players on every platform.

12. Companion Infinite Ammo

Available For: PS4/PC

Conserving ammunition is an art.

A discipline requiring good aim and control of your emotions.

You don’t empty a whole mag into a deathclaw’s foot because you’re scared of it, do you?

The thing is, companions rarely have the luxury of a thinking mind that’ll correctly assess the situation. So what do they do?

They spray and pray, every time.

With this mod by Olofstrom, this liability can become an asset as your companions make lead rain upon your enemies without spending a single bullet.

11. Everyone’s Best Friend

Available For: PC/XBOX ONE

There’s plenty of evidence in Fallout 4 suggesting that, originally, Dogmeat was meant to accompany you all the time.

This meant not counting as a companion and therefore leaving the spot open for someone else.

Dogmeat does very little damage, companion perks don’t apply to it, and you can even have the Lone Wanderer perks active while traveling together! There was clearly a last-minute change.

This mod by creator Valdacil simply rights that wrong, letting you keep your canine friend with you without sacrificing the aid of someone who can operate a gun and, well, talk.

10. Visible Companion Affinity

Available For: PC/XBOX ONE

I’ve never been a fan of how many games with companion approval rating systems give you no way of checking your progress at all.

Now thanks to this mod by Cdante, that should no longer be an issue in Fallout 4.

Not only will you get some extra information each time something affects affinity, such as your current standing, but you’ll be able to check it at any time through an item in your inventory.

Simple, clever, and seamless.

9. MAID – Motorized Artificial Intelligent Doll

Available For: PC

Despite this list being aimed at finding great companion mods that are multiplatform, there are a couple that are too cool to leave out despite being only on PC.

The Motorized Artificial Intelligent Doll is one such item.

It replaces the Assaultron with a dangerously “kawaii” and very customizable anime-inspired robot, complete with THICC legs and adjustable breast size.

Although at first glance seems un-immersive, I wouldn’t put it past some Institute tinkerer to make this in their private time.

8. Dogmetal (Dog Robot Companions)

Available For: PC/XBOX ONE

One of my favorite parts about Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was the fact that Raiden had a badass robot dog to help him tear his enemies to shreds.

And thanks to modder Darklynxxx, your Sole Survivor can have their very own robot mutt – a Dogbot, replacing the game’s classic Dogmeat.

It has unique armors, a much higher defense, and the strength to rip your enemies apart.

If you’d rather keep the lovely German Shepherd around then you can also add up to three automatron dogbot companions instead of replacing it.

7. Companion Appearance Overhaul

Available For: PS4/PC/XBOX ONE

Speaking of spicing up your companions, consider the Companion Appearance Overhaul by Elianora, which promises to make Piper, Curie and some others much more appealing.

This mod is special because, unlike most of what you’ll find in the Nexus or elsewhere, it’s actually available for the PS4 version of the game.

Which isn’t true for every mod due to some coding challenges for the console.

That said, the PC and Xbox One version also swap the companion’s armors for better-looking ones that work with the CBBE body type – which the PS4 has no access to.

6. Companions Go Home

Mods For Fallout 4 On Ps4

Available For: PC

Another mod that’s only on PC but too good to leave out is Companions Go Home, which lets your followers go back to their daily lives when not adventuring with you.

Few things are as immersion-breaking as watching Piper farm turnips in Sanctuary while complaining that she’s worried sick about her loved ones back home.

What’s Publick Occurrences without Piper, or the Valentine Detective Agency without Nick?

5. Heather Casdin

Available For: PC/XBOX ONE

If you’ve been modding Bethesda games for a while, you may be familiar with LlamaRCA. Or at least their famous companion mod for Fallout NV – Willow.

This amazing creator is back in the scene, offering their take on what an immersive companion in Fallout 4 should be like.

Meet Heather Casdin, a synth-phobic girl living in a run-down world and hating every second of it, which she’ll let you know through over 1200 lines of custom voiced dialogue.

4. Ellen – The Cartographer

Available For: PC/XBOX ONE

In the same vein as the previous mod comes Ellen The Cartographer, a lore-friendly companion born and raised in New Vegas who couldn’t pass up the chance to come and check out the almost-intact Commonwealth area.

She’s romanceable, has custom quests related to her, and she’s fully-voiced by none other than PotasticPanda, known as the voice for the Recorder companion in Skyrim & girlfriend to a legend in the modding community – MxR.

3. Unlimited Companion Framework

Available For:PS4/PC/XBOX ONE

A very simple and useful mod that’s luckily available on every platform is the Unlimited Companion Framework.

As the name implies, this mod by Expired6978 allows you to keep up to 15 companions at once with full functionality, and even more if you’re willing to give up companion dialogue.

Running a small army has never been so easy.

2. Nora Spouse Companion

Available For: PC/XBOX ONE

Fallout 4’s protagonist is a tragic hero that truly embodies the name “Sole Survivor”.

Not only do they wake up alone in an unknown place, but they’ve also lost their son, and their spouse is too dead to help them find him in any way.

With the addition of the Nora Spouse Companion mod, Fallout 4 can become a game about family and the lengths a loving couple is willing to go to stay together and take back their son.

Or, you know… if you decided to play a female Sole Survivor it can be about a girl and her clone going around shooting stuff.

1. The Machine and Her

Available For: PC/XBOX ONE

Without the shadow of a doubt, the most sophisticated and expansive companion mod available for Fallout 4 is The Machine and Her, introducing the mysterious Kit.

Modder NikaCola designed a companion with a complex AI capable of judging you based on both trust and your moral compass.

And she’ll let you know her opinions through her myriad of voiced dialogue lines.

With an amazing soundtrack and a long well-written quest to uncover her mysteries, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better companion than Kit.

Browse:FalloutVideo Games

Stay Connected

3 notes · View notes

disappearinginq · 4 years ago

Note

If you're still doing these: Top 5 fictional characters? Top 5 books?

I like avoiding chores, so yes - definitely still answering asks:

Top 5 Fictional Characters:

1. Sherlock Holmes - I will admit, the more recent versions of this character with Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey Jr. are probably my favorite versions of Holmes, but I will read or watch pretty much anything about this man. I have even Young Sherlock and Moriarty sitting on my shelves, and even House of Silk (when I get the time). I just...I like characters that are the smartest in the room, and while I appreciate the surprise of a humble smart character, I am much closer to Sherlock and his “you can’t really be this dumb...oh. Shit. You are.”

2. Robin Hood - again, I will read or watch pretty much anything about this character, though I will always love Kevin Costner’s Prince of Thieves - and I actually did like Taron Edgerton’s portrayal in the most recent one, even though both versions were absolutely panned by critics. Probably because I wholeheartedly subscribe to taxation is theft, but also because I like any character who rips off people who have it coming to them.

3. Merlin - I should say the mythology of King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table and anyone associated with it. But anyone who knows me likes a bit of subtle magic and either snarky secret wizards or cantankerous old wizards, and to this day, Sword in the Stone is my favorite iteration of this storyline.

4. Tony Stark - Probably for the same reason I like Sherlock Holmes, I like Tony Stark, especially in the MCU. It’s one of the few times that someone is shown with a relatively not pretty version of CPTSD, and how it can alter your brain chemistry to the point of making wildly poor decisions because in your mind, it seems perfectly rational. (Do I like how Steve and everyone else just compacts the problem by complaining that Tony tries to control everything but also that everything is Tony’s fault? No - but that, in a way, is also accurate). Tony is also one of the few characters that witnesses fallout to his decisions, and learns from them. Again, not always the right lesson, but his character does learn.

5. Aliena of Shiring from Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett - I will admit, I added her after wondering why I had no women fictional characters, but I realized most of it has to do with the terrible way that women characters are written. Aliena manages to be what I would call unconquerable. The amount of crap that woman puts up with for 1000 pages and still manages to not break, keep strong, think and out maneuver life is truly awe inspiring. I love her character so much.

Top 5 Books.

Hmm. Well, we already said I would read anything about Sherlock, Robin and Merlin, so...let’s branch out.

1. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Follett primarily wrote spy and action novels, so this historical epic about cathedral building in a small town in England in the 12th century. It has epic everything. The characters are fantastic - True Good and True Evil, there’s a nun who places a curse on the bad guys and becomes a witch who lives in the woods. It has everything that is good about the church and everything that is bad about the church. It deals with the every day peoples’ dealings with the constant change between rulers (Empress Matilda and Stephen of Blois were going at it in a civil war after the death of Henry’s only legit son). It has a literally epic love story between Jack and Aliena, to whom every love story will forever pale in comparison, and Aliena legit walked across all of Christendom to find her True Love. Movie counterparts are Eddie Redmayne and Hayley Atwell. Everyone who is good gets a Happy Ending. Everyone who is evil gets their goddamn comeuppance in the most horrible of ways and they fucking deserve that shit.

2. Okay, so on the heels of “the most epic story of all time”, I present to you a “It’s not the greatest but I love it anyway” - Rise of Renegade X, by Chelsea Campbell, which is in fact a series, and I love the second and third installment the most, but it’s about a made up city where there are superheroes and supervillains and that’s just how life goes. Heroes are marked with an H on their thumb when they turn 16, villains with a V (it’s a plot point to explain why, but it’s a genetic thing, like a finger print), and on the main character’s 16th birthday, he expects a V and instead gets an X. He eventually tracks down his super hero dad who didn’t know that he existed, and convinces the kid to come live with his family - where he has three other children, and a wife who was permanently crippled by a supervillain. As it goes along, the series deals more and more with prejudice, racism, classism, Good versus Evil compared to Right versus Wrong, and the MC, Damien is the first person narrative, so you get all of his snarky sarcasm first hand.

3. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. 100% because of the world building, the fact that it is a fantasy version of Ocean’s Eleven, but also because I truly and deeply adore Kaz Brekker. One of the few characters with no particular power, he’s perfectly human, and absolutely terrifying. And while he has a character arc that I adore, it does not fundamentally hinge on him changing who he is. At the end, Kaz is still a fucking cold hearted, brilliant and scheming bastard, but the audience has an insight to him that maybe Kaz doesn’t even have himself. His issues don’t magically go away. He doesn’t have a Scrooge moment. He has his own set of principles and he stays by them, and what is so lovely is that the love interest accepts that.

4. Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. Murder horses based on Irish/Scottish Mythology, and a horse race with said murder ponies. Need I say more?

5. Book of Lost Things by John Connolly. This is going to sound weird as a recommendation, but this book is the book of fucking nightmares. I read it for a class on Ireland because we had to pick either a story about Ireland, takes place in Ireland, or was written by an Irish person. I read this in I think an afternoon and I didn’t sleep that night. Despite the main character being like 11 years old, I would never let a kid read it. It’s a dark, true-to-Grimms’-source fairy tale that is like the twisted version of the Chronicles of Narnia, and a psychological trip and a half. I loved it. It is a true fairy tale - the kid, David, mom dies in the first chapter, and David feels like he failed her because he’d developed this SEVERE OCD ritual that he believed would keep his mother alive (it obviously doesn’t), and his dad, months later, remarries and has a second child, whom David hates. The baby cries all the time, the young mother is preoccupied with a baby and no husband (he’s off fighting in WWII), and David is left to occupy himself most of the time. They move out of London because of the Blitz, to David’s mother’s family estate. It’s old, and creepy, and the garden seems like something is calling to him, that sets a dread in the pit of his stomach when he goes near it. Enter the Crooked Man, a man who offers to give David everything he wants if David tells him his brother’s name. David refuses, and that night, a German plane crashes in the garden, and it turns out, that’s the portal/wardrobe to another world, and David gets dragged into it. And it just goes from there.

Thanks for the asks! They’re always fun!

10 notes · View notes

vanessakirbyfans · 4 years ago

Link

When Vanessa Kirby was 21, she did a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton, outside Manchester, England. She played Helena, in love with Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia instead. “All these schools used to come in, loads of kids,” she says. “They were always super bored or fidgeting.”

During her monologue at one performance, speaking desperately of a love that has been thwarted, someone dropped a box of candy down the stairs, and they rolled all over the stage in front of her. “And I was like, ‘Oh, God, fucking hell. What am I doing wrong? And then I saw this girl, off to the left. And she was, I don’t know, 13 or something, and she was listening to every word,” Kirby recalls.

“And there was something in that little girl that wanted to hear what Shakespeare was saying, via me … perhaps she was feeling something,” she says. “So I just did it to her.”

Kirby, 32, is magnetic, even on Zoom—there is a way the texture of the screen shifts, gets more lively, when she comes on any screen—and watching her recount this story felt like a glimpse into how she is able to channel discomfort into performance.

She is on the verge: both of breaking out into that coveted carries-the-movie, Oscar-nominated category of actor and of figuring out the kind of actor she wants to be. She’s tried out action franchises—she’s currently filming the next two installments of Mission: Impossible, continuing the role of the White Widow that she originated in 2018’s Mission: Impossible—Fallout, and starred in the latest Fast & Furious film—and is best known for her devastating performance as Princess Margaret in the first two seasons of The Crown. It’s her latest role, though, in Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó’s first English-language film, Pieces of a Woman, which premieres on Netflix in January, that promises to propel Kirby to that next tier. Her portrayal of Martha is being touted as a breakthrough; the term “Oscar-worthy” has been uttered countless times.

We met over Zoom on a Saturday: She was in London; I was in New York. It was my morning, her early afternoon. We both wore turtlenecks. I planned to take notes as we talked, but instead I leaned forward, rapt. Both of us gestured a lot. Pieces of a Woman is about motherhood and grief. The film, with a screenplay by Kata Wéber, stars Kirby and Shia LaBeouf as a couple whose child dies during a home birth; it assiduously, unflinchingly chronicles their struggle to come to terms with the loss.

The opening scene of Pieces of a Woman is a nearly 30-minute-long take of a labor that ends in the baby’s death. The scene is painful, gorgeous, terrifying—moments of it feel like horror. Kirby says that each time they finished filming, she and her fellow actors felt a sort of ecstasy, running out into the snow—they hugged and screamed; Kirby sobbed after the first time through. “It was completely surreal because we were there,” she says. “We were just there. We were witness to something.”

Kirby, who doesn’t have children, prepared for this scene for months. “I started watching everything I could find,” she says. “Endless documentaries, home birth videos, but everything was so sanitized; everything was so edited.” She ultimately got in touch with an obstetrician, Claire Mellon, who agreed to let Kirby shadow her. Kirby had to go to shoot another movie and had only two weeks on the labor ward, at Whittington Hospital in Islington. Pregnant women she’d met agreed to let her watch them give birth, but none of them ended up going into labor over the period she was there. On the last day, “I had my suitcase, and I was flying to Romania that night [to film The World to Come], and a woman came in nine centimeters dilated. Claire said, ‘I’m going to ask her.’ ” Much to Kirby’s surprise—“Why would anyone want some stranger there? An actress? During this most sacred moment?”—the woman agreed. “I watched her for six hours go through a really difficult labor, no painkillers, forceps. It got really, really difficult … . I watched her go on a completely lone journey, like an odyssey, through the most primal, almost divine … . And I saw the power and the fear in all of it.”

“I came away far more of a woman in appreciating the sacredness of the feminine in a way that I don’t think I had fully realized,” Kirby tells me. “I feel like I had lived something in human experience I hadn’t lived before.”

For parts of the scene, as my husband and I watched, I looked over at him, and he was, just as he had for some of the 40 hours I was in a very complicated labor, staring at his phone to avoid having to look at it. “I’m not sure I can finish this,” he said.

At one point during the scene, Kirby’s character, Martha, starts burping. The third burp, I tell Kirby, was the moment when my husband had to look away. It helps us not just see but smell the various dimensions of the female body, how close it is to animal, how at its mercy Martha is.

And yet Kirby manages to inhabit the power in that moment. She says of watching the labor that day: “It brought everything that I sort of had known intellectually into being, which is, this is like the magnificence of being a woman, and its creation essentially …. It almost gave birth to the film inside my heart.”

Kirby speaks too about discomfort as an opportunity to force people to look at things and think about things they might not otherwise. “I think getting in touch with something that makes someone deeply uncomfortable, and deeply feeling … ,” she says. “I think you search beyond, you look outside places that you usually look, for resolution, or for understanding, or for connection.”

The idea that there is no space for women to talk, to be heard when it comes to the traumas our bodies have experienced, feels so entrenched in what it is to live inside a female body, it feels necessary to say out loud how important this film feels. And when it comes to infant loss and miscarriage, in particular, these silences feel that much more pointed, since so often women—and Kirby’s Martha is no exception—misperceive these experiences as their fault. But if the outpouring of feeling that arose in the aftermath of Chrissy Teigen’s posting about her pregnancy loss is any indication, Pieces of a Woman could function too as a catalyst for more of these conversations, another opportunity for women who have endured these traumas and these losses to find spaces to feel seen and understood. I ask Kirby what she learned in these observations prior to filming: “To know pain,” she tells me, “is power.”

The birth scene in the film gives us discomfort; it initiates a descent into an almost unimaginable grief, but then Kirby performs for the rest of the film another way of being, harder and more complicated, maybe, to inhabit as an actor, which is to say an almost stultifying way of locking one’s self up. Martha doesn’t yell or scream; she hardly speaks through many of the scenes. Instead the film seems to get at something truer, deeper, about the singular experience of female trauma—the way that so often the expectation is just to be quiet and to carry on.

In The Crown, Kirby as Margaret cries and yells; she instigates. Her eyes are almost always wet. She performs her grief if only because performance is perhaps the only way she knows to get people to look. There’s a sophistication, but also a surrender and a resignation in knowing the limits of this type of performance. Kirby has taken on a harder role with Martha, who stays pinned up and stoic almost the entire time. “I was worried,” says Kirby. She gestures to show me the length of a piano. “Martha is functioning on a more limited scale.”

Speaking of Kirby’s ability to perform this subtle agony, the film’s director, Mundruczó, says, “She has this nervousness inside her.” He compares her magnetism to Catherine Deneuve. “You have to find someone who is rich inside. The icon, which I believe she is, you can see yourself inside her. She is always facing you somehow.”

I’m not sure I have ever, as a mother, as a woman, been so wholly moved by a performance; to my mind, great art is a process of forcing people to look, and there is something extraordinary about what Kirby forces us to see. She says she wanted to “serve the women who had been through this,” but also “grief generally.” “I almost want the movie to hold people’s hands somehow,” Kirby tells me. “To feel less alone because of the shared experience that it is.”

The second of three children, Kirby was born and raised in Wimbledon, with a magazine editor mother and a urologist father. “I always felt really different at school when I was little, and really lonely,” she tells me. She studied English at the University of Exeter and turned down a place at the prestigious London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art (LAMDA) to do Arthur Miller, Henrik Ibsen, and Shakespeare with David Thacker at the Octagon Theatre. She always wanted to be an actor: “I found that space of drama and theater was the least judgmental,” she says. “I felt my calmest, most connected, most accepted spaces were always those.”

If there is a through line in her disparate performances, it’s “subversion,” says Kirby. Finding roles where the characters are “nonconformist … the marginal, or the outsider, or the one that lives on the outskirts.” I would add that there’s an openness, a confidence and a willingness to press into spaces that feel uncomfortable and hard. During the filming of Mission Impossible—Fallout, Kirby went barefoot throughout the shoot as a way of living that subversion. “I wanted to be something different than another femme fatale.”

One of the most compelling moments in Pieces of a Woman turns out to be an unscripted choice, pushed by Kirby. Martha’s mother, played by a stolid, stunning Ellen Burstyn, yells at her daughter to convince her to testify in court against the midwife accused of causing her baby’s death. Burstyn’s character is unrelenting. Her face turns red. Right before they shot the scene, Burstyn says Kirby approached her: “Make me go to court,” Kirby told her. Burstyn says she went through the lines she’d been given, every bit she’d practiced, but she knew she had not yet convinced Martha to go to court. “So I kept going,” says Burstyn. “I have no recollection of what I said after that.” She laughs.

I ask Burstyn to explain how Kirby was able to get her to open up like that (and did not ask but thought, “What chutzpah!,” to press on an icon like Burstyn that way). “You can’t explain magic,” she says.

Mundruczó describes this process as necessary for making the film feel life-like. “You have to wait for things like this to be born in front of you,” he says. “It takes an immeasurable amount of trust.” You wait, he adds, and make the space for, “[w]hat they create that is way more than what you have on the page.”

I ask Burstyn, no stranger to portraying complicated women, what she thinks Kirby has accomplished in this movie, and she thinks for a minute before answering. “Rawness,” she says. “Vanessa is helping to reveal the depth of womanness in a way that’s true.”

“Raw”—it’s the same word that Crown creator Peter Morgan used to describe Kirby’s acting. That kind of performance derived from an ineffable internal force. He recalls her audition for Princess Margaret as “catastrophic in every way.” She had “fake tan smeared all on her shins, but even more of it on the palms of her hands, which were a darker shade than any of the rest of her. She was sweating,” he continues. “It was so terrible.” He laughs. And yet, as Morgan tells it, even “the whirlwind of energy and chaos” that she entered with couldn’t distract from “her honesty, electricity, and magnetism. The fearlessness and raw exposing of herself” she showed in everything she did. “This woman is going to be magic,” he recalls thinking. “And that’s borne out.”

Kirby’s father is a well-known prostate surgeon who treated cancer patients. “I saw him save people’s lives, and here I was, going on stage,” she tells me, “putting on these silly costumes. I never thought it was any more important than what anyone else does.” And yet, as I talk to Kirby, as I’ve thought over the past year about what matters to me, how art might function in times of crisis, the idea of making space for other people to feel deeply and complexly feels more urgent than it ever has. “I know that in my experience,” says Kirby, “whenever I’ve had the most difficult times, I think you want to transcend it, so you search more. So when people say to me, ‘God, this must have been so hard,’ I say actually, ‘It was truly the most profound experience.’ Because I got to go to a place that I hadn’t been before, and that changed me, you know?”

“I feel that the faith,” she adds, “that creativity and art—and that includes the audience as being an essential part of that relationship—that in the darkest of times, creativity, I think, has this impulse to flourish somehow, to speak about experience. I have faith that there will be a lot of spaces where people find a need to speak.”

#Vanessa Kirby #Pieces of a Woman #Interview #Articles

5 notes · View notes

heli0s-writes · 5 years ago

Text

II. Head Like A Hole*

Summary: A series of flashbacks of Seraph and the Soldier Pairing: Bucky/Winter Soldier x Reader/OFC A/N: 6.2k word count. Graphic depictions of violence, explicit sexual content, psychological trauma, swearing, sacrilegious themes. Overall dark! stuff. Written for @moonstruckbucky‘s Halloween Haunts Challenge! There will be 1 more installment.

Prompt: Sometimes the world of the living gets mixed up with the world of the dead. - The Others (2001)

Heart Like a Grave Masterpost

Seven. Father. Tidal. Relic. Marrow. Four. Nineteen. Seraph. Ghost.

Bucky is taken back to Steve’s apartment and quarantined to the confines of his room while Steve and Natasha figure out a way to fix his brain again. They sweep the findings of the mission under the rug, hide it in the basement and pray his tell-tale heart doesn’t give them all away.

It’s not like those corpses will be missed— not like they gave anything to the world but evil.

Steve hisses, how did this fucking happen?

The week before it started, Bucky was in California. Karpov’s body—when Steve burst through the door, the wire was in Bucky’s hand. But that was number seven and how the hell did Bucky kill five in between without Steve realizing it?

Natasha digs up the old skeletons, pulls her resources, and spins her webs, dragging out dead information and they spend the better part of the afternoon gleaning any kind of clue they can find.

It’s 2003 and ten years before she blows her brains out. They run together over the Minsk rooftops at midnight, jump the train cars, and he holds her elbow while she pitches over the side and snipes a hole into the cabin. Red splatters onto the glass window of the section door and they’re gone before anyone can scream.

In the alleyway, he pushes her up into the brick wall and shoves his hand under her thighs, gripping until his knuckles crack. “Now.” He commands, “Here.”

An annoyed exhale comes from her mouth before it’s replaced by the silence of her surrender. She always pretends to not want him; she likes that old game. “You want to fuck in an alleyway? Look a rat—you’re just a little romantic, aren’t you?”

“You want romance?” He asks, and her mouth curls into half a smile before she pushes it down. The faint streetlamp catches just a sliver. He loves that mouth. Wants to pry it open and crawl inside. It’s love. It’s something. “What kind of romance?”

She shrugs because she doesn’t know either— but all their time watching others, they know it has something to do with flowers and opening doors, tender gazes, holding hands, slipping away to kiss heatedly against a wall.

He can do only one. Happily, he presses her skull into the cinderblocks and bruises her with the force of him, teeth crushed against his lips.

“That’s it.” She laughs as she rolls her hips and licks his chin, “Have we done this before? Feels familiar.”

He growls, savors the shadow cast over their bodies bending in the alleyway.

“Feels good.”

It’s 2005 and eight years before she blows her brains out. London in the summer is rocked by three bombs and fifty-two deaths. In the destruction and fallout, they pick off two more and none are wiser to it.

2006. Seven years, and they stop to stare at each other in the middle of padding through the rainforest.

Their handlers have caught on to the strange affinity their weapons feel for one another. Whispers have travelled about unclean wipes; the soldiers are returning from war and keeping their ghosts. Before, he would be given his triggers, manually reminded of her. Now, they wipe it all and nothing should surface.

But it does.

It does every time.

“Seraph.” He calls, watching a bead of sweat trickle down the side of her cheek. A smile grows on his face. She begins to match him, too.

Under the dappled light of the thick canopy, they fuck in the damp earth and listen to the wild chorus of rainforest birds. He thrusts into her desperately, each breath matching the snapping of his hips. His head is empty like a vacuum, all the blood and thought rushing into his dick.

“Is—this romantic—enough?”

She laughs, groans when he hits just right, and her eyelids flutter.

“You’re getting close.”

2010. Three years.

She’s bleeding out on the floor of the facility. He pretends like he can’t feel rage or pain or fear, but he feels them all and he forces himself to look away when his handler throws him into the chair.

Behind the frantically blurring room when the machine electrocutes his brain, he holds on to the image of her carried out and into surgery, branded with the faint pulse of her heartbeat growing smaller.

2013.

He is supposed to assassinate some fucking president or another but instead he marches into Bangui to find her among rebel forces throwing back alcohol by a campfire, rifle attached to her back, strapped in a vest made from bullets. Upon seeing him, she smiles something real—teeth, eyes flashing brighter than the flames.

That night, they fuck on a straw mat inside a mud room, thatched roof above them rustling in the wind.

“Thought you were fucking dead.” He grunts.

“Nope.” She’s amused at his concern, still smiling. “Can’t die.”

“You remember me.” He says it like a statement because he can’t bring himself to ask for fear of hearing an answer he doesn’t want to know.

After each revival they task him something new and while he thaws into a stranger world, he holds on to the secret comfort of her memory, thawing too until she is alive again inside him. So, when he asks— says, demands— if she remembers, he is hoping-- goddamn it-- praying, screaming for her to say yes.

She does. She kisses his eyes and mouth and comes hard on his cock.

It’s bliss. The big round O shape that burrows into her guts when she gasps. The frayed black strands of her fanned lashes, catching on the sweat of her lids. That squelch, both deep and hollow, echoing.

He plays it in his head the whole way back, secretly thrilled to have felt her again. Until the elation is ripped away at the sight of the facility. Gray and speckled green with mold. Her on her knees. This time, her gasps are croaking—O shaped mouth like a fish and not a lover.

A metal collar clasps the entirety of her neck and she can only look up because of its width.

She’s stripped naked. Before he can make any moves, his legs are kicked out and he falls in a crash and his kneecaps feel completely shattered. Or maybe that’s his heart because her face looks a little more than a bruise but the white of her teeth still shine through that rotten grape color.

“Th-they found out—I-guess--- hah.”

A well-polished oxford splits the grape open and blood spurts from her … everything. The Soldier howls but five are by him and one has a trained pistol at her head.

“The two of you want to remember each other so fucking badly—shoot her and you can keep her memory.” His handler throws a pistol at his feet. It’s an offer, a threat, and a promise packaged up into one tiny chamber and a bullet.

She’s laughing because it’s too much for both their broken heads to comprehend.

Three pistols rotate and aim themselves at her head, one trained on his. Even if he could kill one, the other three would be immediate. Seven feet away, there’s a sardonic little smirk tilted on her face— the one he’s always enjoyed seeing.

Let’s kill ourselves. She would say on the edge of some skyscraper, I jump, and you jump, and let’s be done. The smirk would be playful, until it wouldn’t be. And then she would think about the statement and let the silence speak what he already knew. But then I wouldn’t see you again.

The whistle of a blade cuts through the air and the first slash gouges into her back. She cries out in agony, pitching forward until they yank her by the neck and she’s up again, snarling. He can hear the blade tear through. The sound drops into his brain like insect wings rubbing over his eardrum.

“Shoot her.” His handler commands, cruel mouth in an impassive line. “Shoot her or I’ll do it again.”

It’s not even him doing it, that miserable son of a bitch. He never gets his hands dirty— always using the fucking mercenary team.

“D-don’t be a coward, Soldat.” She gurgles, “Give them what they want.” When he doesn’t move because he can’t -- he won’t-- they make good on the threat and the wings vibrate with the next cut. It’s sharp. It’s so sharp and her back eats the edge like soft butter.

She shrieks hoarsely, limp now, only suspended by the shackle on her neck and her arms, splayed out to the side. She looks like the way those statues of Jesus might if he was nailed to the cross on his knees.

“Don’t be cute.” The one wielding the knife pokes it back into her and the Soldier can think nothing. He hears nothing but that nightmare rubbing and skittering inside.

“S-stop.” He knows how helpless he sounds. “D-don’t.”

A flash of sympathy crosses his handler’s face and for a second it looks genuine until he takes a step back, grabs the knife himself and sinks it back in. “You’re weak.” He checks his watch, the alligator skin band slipping out from under his suit jacket, the silver rim of the face gleaming, like he’s being inconvenienced.

She hacks a wad of dark brown, shudders all over. “P-pickit-u-up.”

“Listen to her, Soldier. She’s got a good idea there. Always been pretty smart until … this.”

He scoffs an annoyed sputter and digs the point back into her just because he can. “Pick it up, Soldier.”

There are four cuts, four ways for her to bleed out. Her eyes are fluttering now, and she’s hanging forward, chest dipping low, arms stretched tight to her side. Any longer and her shoulder will dislocate. He’s frozen stuck. Welded into the concrete on his knees because no matter how many times he runs the simulation through— she dies.

The fifth and sixth cuts don’t seem to register, and she only gasps weakly when they let her drop on her front. The wounds have ripped her back open, diagonal and jagged cuts starting from her spine and striking outward, touching her shoulders, her hips, one straight. She is wearing red like a shirt.

“Like her wings?” That fucking merc. Standing behind her with his rifle against his shoulder, other hand on his pistol. “I get why you like her, Asset. She’s hot. Tight cunt.”

“How about this?” The handler claps, “Love… love is a beautiful thing. Fine. You’re in love. Great. Well, what else is beautiful, Rumlow?”

The pistol on her head loosens before a smile stretches over both their faces.

“Death. Fear. Betrayal, sir.”

“Right.”

His handler walks forward, places the bottom of his shiny oxford now a little decorated with red dollops like poppies in the night, and slides the gun between their bodies.

“I don’t care who shoots who. Whoever does it first obviously gets to live. I’ve got five minutes before my press meeting.”

The gun is already in her hands and The Soldier looks up, shocked. “You fucking coward, Soldat.”

Years pass between eyes. Twenty of them, regardless of how convoluted, how broken, how stunted. Glimpses. Flashes. Smoke vapors through their fingers in the vague fantastical shape of happiness. Stolen moments, always bringing them closer to this one.

It’s arrived. The pale rider, heralding the end times for them.

He scrambles to stand, to rush forward and knock it out of her hand because damn her. Damn her and how he loves her, but that bullet cracks and echoes, and silences him.

The hole through his flank weeps red and cries out for her from both sides like a single eye with the weight of all eight of their tear ducts.

“Isn’t this a romantic way to go?”

And he can’t believe those are the last words he’ll ever hear from her before she sends him one final grin and he’s a fucking coward because he can’t even look at her when she does it.

One.

More.

Bang.

And he feels like it’s ripped through his skull, too.

They drag him screaming into the chair and they’re already covering her body with a crinkled hospital gown. After that, there is nothing left but the bone-searing burn of the metal halo ripping it all away.

A knock echoes through Bucky’s room. In the darkness, he sits limbs crushed against his chest.

“Buck? Hey, we gotta talk.”

The door slips open, a sliver of light peeking inside to search for him. He squeezes his body smaller, sinks further into the mattress until he’s sure he’s inside the padding so that Steve can’t find him. But Steve does. He always does.

Steve reaches into the fabric and cotton and yanks him out by his chin. Fibers spew from Bucky’s mouth. There is a blue hand reaching into his throat and he chokes on the knuckles.

“Buck? Hey, we gotta talk.”

The door slips open and Steve’s head ducks inside.

Bucky watches in silent terror as she hovers over his bed, peering at Steve with her hand full of thread.

“Her real name, Buck. You remember it?”

Bucky is suddenly in the kitchen with Natasha to his side, calculating eyes piercing him like stiletto daggers. Seraph stands behind and fawns over the flaming red hair, leaning forward to smell Natasha’s scalp.

“What?”

“What’s the next one?”

He’s back in the shower, holding Andrey, who is crying black tears that roll down into the stump of his neck.

“The word, Bucky.”

Who the hell is Bucky?

She fists a handful of the plastic shower curtain, yanks it with all her might and the metal hooks shriek their way across the dowel where they clatter irately against the wall.

Bucky’s head is falling apart, just like Andrey.

“Barnes.” Natasha’s mouth is opening, but Seraph’s voice is coming from it. “Barnes.”

The mildewed tile background of the motel’s tiny bathroom blurs and vibrates until Natasha’s face is hardly more than a mess of streaks, like shampoo smeared over the backsplash tile.

He’s smeared there, too. Guts clear across and rearranged like some ritualistic sacrifice. He wants to die and be buried inside that hospital gown with her. He wants to cradle her face, kiss the wounds of her back shut, wrap the both of them up like joined embryos in the womb. He’d give his life for her, let her grow stronger and eat him, flatten his jelly-corpse against the amniotic sac.

He already feels consumed by her anyway.

“Rumlow.” Bucky chokes at the memory, “Pierce.”

The surgeon who took her too soon. The anesthesiologist who numbed him into forgetting.

“Alexander Pierce?” Steve frowns. They’re both dead. Went down with Insight the same time Steve and Bucky did and how the hell did he miss this, too?

To his side, Natasha places her hand on his shoulder. “Pierce is dead.” She mutters. “Rumlow is not. Let’s go before I end up eating those words.”

The car ride is thrumming with unasked questions. Steve says nothing when Natasha kicks her feet up on the dashboard—there seems to be bigger problems on hand than a few scuffmarks on Tony’s car.

He’s not sure what they’re hoping to find. At least, a trace. At most, answers. He fucking prays that there won’t be a body, mutilated or not.

The Strike team was always a part of Pierce’s henchmen. Most of them are locked away, the rest dead. The dread had settled inside Steve when he realized that sure, he might have never been good with math, but he can count that there were eight bodies and Bucky has ten trigger words.

In the middle of Rumlow’s living room floor are two bodies. One is burned to a crisp, extinguished and charred over— indistinguishable as Rumlow other than the tags hanging from his neck. The smell of burnt skin stains the entire house, charred acrid flesh from the cadaver, a human shaped black scab.

Steve steps in a circle around the other lying face down.

He tries to take it in like a crime scene, detached and professional, because the body belongs to a girl and Steve can jump through all sorts of hoops to lie to himself about who it is—but he already knows. She’s dressed plainly in ripped jeans and a black t-shirt. There is nothing striking about her other than the fact that she’s limp in a pool of blood.

Her hair covers her face and fans over the hardwood floor. The slow pounding in his chest is signaling a darkening storm he can feel from decades away. There is no crackling in the sky to presage the downpour. No clap of thunder to warn those beneath. He feels caught in the moment where a tiny ray of light might slip through heavy and swollen clouds, allowing a small reprieve from gray before the flood. He knows there won’t be, though.

She is flooded. Rumlow Red. Like a paint swatch, rolled over her body and spilling from her hand. Seraph. The ninth word has dried on the ground.

Her skull is intact. Not like Bucky had said. A finger twitches and Steve thanks God he didn’t have to turn her over and check her pulse or perform CPR because whether or not he wants to admit it, Steve Rogers is afraid.

A groan whines out of her before her toes flex.

She rolls on her back, gingerly places a hand over her face and pulls the wet hair from her mouth.

“Seraph.” Steve whispers, “Is that you?”

She takes a quiet breath, blinks at her surroundings and the cherry syrup coating her head to toe. There is no fear, or surprise. No registering of the body beside her as she peers up into Steve’s eyes.

“Who the hell is Seraph?”

Leaves crunch beneath their feet as they make their way across the yard and into the building. Natasha is in front, leading. Steve lingers behind, watching. It seems like a terrible idea, bringing her here. She’s a bit nervous, watching both of them warily as she crosses the yard.

The car ride had been silent. Natasha had helped her wipe most of the blood off as Steve buried the body. They used rough paper towels and sink water, smearing the red away until her skin became flushed with the afterglow of pink. Then, Natasha asked her to change and burned her clothes.

“Where are we going?” A wince, quietly, as if she’s stepped on a splinter and then she’s back to normal. Whatever crossed her mind is gone. Steve is adding up the numbers but the equation is making absolutely no sense.

“How much do you remember about what happened?”

She shrugs and continues along, holding her arms close to her body in the November chill. “I don’t.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sarah…” Then a pause as she searches Steve’s pale face and slowly says it again, inflection changing just a little. He hears it too, the puzzle piece sliding together as she says it the way it should be spelled, “Sera…?”

Her eyes are big and wondering, and she peeks at Natasha like a little fawn caught in the woods away from her mother. It’s curious to them that she’s been so compliant. Ever since the house with the burnt body and the smoky silence of the room where they were found, she’s dutifully followed along like a newly imprinted duckling.

Is this what Bucky was like?

Steve’s mouth twists into a fractured line, imagining the loss. He trots forward and yanks the door open inelegantly. His thoughts are fixed on the stagnant shadow of Bucky, sinking further into the gaping hole of his own mind.

None of the questions he has are being answered. There are cavities to be filled if he’s to find some peace of mind for any of them. Who the hell are you? Where have you been? Why aren’t you dead? Have you been killing? What do you remember? Why aren’t you afraid? Why aren’t you... anything?

He starts somewhere a little more concrete.

“Why were you there?”

“I’ve always lived there.”

Natasha whips around, eyes alert and searching. Steve can practically see the gears turning in her head as she flicks her gaze from Seraph to him.

“Wha-” He pauses, unsure how to word his next question. Natasha picks it up for him, deft and cool, letting the insinuation pass through her lips like an offhanded gesture.

“What was it like?”

She pauses slightly, trying to find a place to begin, but frowning each time. There is nothing there for her to compare it to, and Natasha gives Steve another quiet look. If all she could recall was Rumlow, then the world was Rumlow. Rumlow rules. Rumlow regulations. Rumlow punishments and Rumlow existence. It would have been normal for her, whatever it was.

Steve’s key slides into the lock. The tumblers clatter and they steel themselves to step into the living room.

Natasha points to a seat on the couch and leads the girl to sit. She settles in awkwardly before slowly looking up at them.

“What is it?” There’s an edge in Natasha’s voice, like she can already read the answer on her lips. Steve can, too. The dreadful knowledge of the kind of cruelty a man can inflict onto a woman-- it makes his guts warp and knot inside.

Seraph tucks deeper into herself, pulling her legs up and holding her knees to her chest. Slowly, her hands find the edge of her shirt, raising it up over her chest. Natasha wasn’t there when she changed. She didn’t see it, then.

Her sternum is littered with pockmarks. Some have healed and look like old freckles the size of dimes. Others are still raised and puckered. Others, still, pink, red, bruising at their entrances. Their eyes trace the scattered injuries down to her abdomen where similar patterns leer back at them as if goading them to count. She looks like the moon, littered with silver lunar craters—shadows of a million impacts.

Seraph turns her head, pulls her hair away from her neck and shows them three more wounds. Old, hidden by patches of uneven hair.

“He liked to shoot me.”

In 1997 he finds her on the edge of the frozen lake. They’ve been holed up in an underground safehouse for the better part of the last week. The taiga stretches from the shores of the ice, running for hundreds of miles covered in thin snow. Blessedly, they haven’t been caught in any blizzards, but that doesn’t mean the cold gives them any pardon.

This morning is a balmy negative 5 degrees. Perfect for warming up outside, he thinks bitterly.

His boots crunch over the snow, making heavy indents in the layer of fluffed crystals and down into the petrified ground beneath. She doesn’t look at him, choosing instead to stare out into the ice, eyes following the crevasses of thick lines crisscrossing like tangled veins.

Her fingertips are bright pink as they play with a melting puddle inside her palm. The past week has been spent in silence with nothing but the whipping outside to keep them both from going completely insane in the metal cage.

They have both taken turns taking stock of the accompaniments of the hideout consisting of two laid-in and flattened cots and one single canteen to share between them that he needs to refill constantly. A million scratch marks on the wall, crumbly metal scattered about the floor and the inexplicable smell of something sour. There had been some powdered mix to sustain them for a couple of weeks; it tasted like sawdust and stale breadcrumbs.

Luxurious.

“Why are you out here?”

Twenty-three and clinging onto the last thread of her childishness. Her mouth turns upward into a sneer that could be cutting if it wasn’t hiding a smile-- proud of herself for the quip.

It’s been an entire week of this, and he closes his eyes at the thought of an unknown amount of days ahead. It’s silence. Then an insult. Then silence. Her dead eyes with a flicker. Her teeth plucking out another nail to spit on the floor next to his cot.

“Zola is gone. You know what we’re doing here, don’t you?”

She’s twenty-three and the bulletproof bell jar is shattering, its cracks matching the splintering inside the ice. Thick lines held together by some fortunate tension. He can watch it crumble and cut her entirely open, or he can pray that his hands will give her some mercy.

Yes, he knows what he’s doing here. He knows why they’ve been sent out into the middle of the frozen Siberian forest with no timeline.

He was told to take her into the hideout and take her. Teach her. Make her learn how to wield herself like he’s always done as her instructor. Sear the practice so deep into her bones that she’ll recall it in any timeline. But he can’t yet.

He wordlessly marches back into the bunker, leaves the latch unbolted.

He can hear her heartbeat in the room.

Their bodies, infused with the serum, burn like furnaces. The outside wind may whisk it away, but in the tiny cage with just barely enough space for two, it is sweltering. He’s blown out the candle hours ago, resigning himself to lie in the dark and wait for sleep.

Her rustling limbs make his ears perk up. A soft landing of something hits his side. Then another.

He sits up, feels around blindly, soothes the beating in his chest. Her clothes are still hot from where her skin had been, and he moves them away, giving her the path to follow over to him. It has to begin now, before she loses her resolve and they’ll both be withering away for another week.

A shaky hand lands on his shoulder, unsteadily gripping him. Her breath comes out in shuddering waves.

Imagine that, Hydra’s number two, nothing more than a shy virgin inside a tin can.

His arm reaches forward and searches for her jaw. When he finds it, he holds her in place, sits up on his knees and leans forward until his mouth is flush over hers. She jerks away slightly against his grip before she gives in, letting him lead.

It’s clumsy and awkward, and her hands remain limp, one to her side and one still on his shoulder, like she’s still deciding what to do. He pulls it away, lets her believe in some comfort by placing them both in her lap. She doesn’t have to do anything yet and he needs to be delicate about the entire thing.

A small part of him remembers the fluttering feeling of her apprehension—way back when. An alleyway. His fingers. A dreamy shape of a face and fire-engine red lipstick. He remembers the fear mingled with the excitement. He remembers taking the lead even when he wasn’t sure and was scared stiff. A fleeting moment of sympathy strikes inside him.

“Open your mouth,” he commands, thumb brushing over the back of her head. “Just a little. Do what I do.”

It takes a moment, but she does, and he finds where she hides her venom— those words she sinks into him like blades— tucked inside a quivering and sweet cavern.

She mimics him clumsily, licking back in shy strokes of her tongue, sometimes too repressed, other times too eager. He presses forward in those moments, takes them where he can and grips the back of her neck firmly. “Stay here.” He moves backwards, feeling around before he lights the lamp by their cot. He grows more emboldened seeing her like this, eyes downcast at the sight of his searing gaze.

“You need to look. Learn, Seraph.”

He calls to her, placing both his hands over her own. “You hate this. But you need to find the good in it— either you do this, or you die.” She sneers and scoffs, twists her face into a puckered expression and the light casts large, jagged shadows over her cheeks.

“This, or torture. This, or they electrocute you so hard you piss yourself and they do it again. That’s before your organs explode and your blood gushes out of your ears and nose. Your brain, too. You won’t be proving a point to anybody and when the very marrow of your bones feels like hellfire. You’ll wish you had done this.”

She clenches her fists, wraps her arm around her bare chest and glares into his face. “But I hate you.”

It makes him erupt in a genuine laugh. His student, his fragile doll turned into a serrated saw blade, still petulant like a little child. He reaches forward and tucks her hair behind her ear.

“You won’t always hate me.”

He wakes up before she does, that natural pull of his body’s internal clock not letting him ever sleep more than three or four hours at a time. She’s tucked into the fetal position by his side, curled underneath the blanket and nude, spine pressing up against his arm.

Upon his rousing, she comes alive as well and looks over, a strange softness rising inside her tired eyes. Slowly, her hand moves backwards and finds his knee in a silent offer. It’s all he needs. A smile before they return to last night’s events.

He promised to start slow, to ease her into it, but it can’t be all patience and kindness. He tells her men aren’t kind to them—not when they’ll be bought and sold like cattle. Men want to hurt, and they want her to be hurt. It’s about power; she can kill them, but they want to live with the fantasy that she’s nothing more than their plaything.

“Turn over. Lie on your belly.”

Still new and marveling at the novel idea of being touched, regardless of the situation and context—of being in a frozen wasteland and not in love, as she should be, he thinks—her body still keens for it.

He takes advantage of her reflexive yearning, caressing softly, feather light fingertips on the side of her neck, contours of her breasts, over the soft skin of her inner thighs. He traces silvery and stretched ridges of her skin— telltale signs of her body‘s changes. The marvels of a woman.

She’s soaked, leaking onto the flattened padding of the makeshift bed.

Last night was as tender as it could be, her tummy fluttering with nerves as he pressed his mouth down her hip and against the soft place between her legs. Silk rose petals blooming on his lips, sweet in the warm orange glow. There was gasping and a moan, noises she’d never made before.

S-Soldat—s-stop, it f-feels--

It feels good, doesn‘t it? Let it feel good.

Pride swelled in him as he pulled pleasure from her—that tender silhouette he once molded into what she is now. He’ll unmake her this time— unravel her until she is heat and fire, melt her entirely until she becomes his. She’ll know without a doubt that she is his.

“You’re hurting me.” She grunts into the pillow, quaking as he ruts inside. The softness has been replaced by hunger and power in one swift thrust.

“I have to, malishka. So you know what it’s like.”

“Fuck!” Her little fists clench, what’s left of her nails ripping holes into the stained fabric beneath her cheek, “Ah! A-ah... Oh!” He can tell when she feels the coil tightening again, squeezing his cock like a tourniquet. His hands slap the flesh of her ass. He grips her tightly and spreads her apart to watch the way he slides in and out, coated with slick and cream. She’s so fucking wet for it.

He pulls her up, opens her legs and thrusts back in, exposing her front to the air, holding her knees apart when she reflexively closes them. “Take it.” He commands into her ear, “Keep your legs open. Take all of it.” Then, he stills and lets himself settle inside to teach her a different lesson.

“Wh-what are you doing?” She squirms against his hips, grinding down to find some relief from the pressure mounting.

The Soldier presses his mouth to her neck and inhales that scent of crushed rose and sweat. “Beg for me. I want to hear you. Beg for me and I’ll let you have it.”

She’s delirious with pleasure and whimpers when he pinches and twists her nipples, spilling waterfalls of run-together pleads, “S-Stop it, Soldat. Stop!” Kitten whines when his fingertips rub the soreness he is stretching.

“Do you still hate me?” He allows her a slow drag and wraps his arms around her chest, “Do you?”

“No... I didn’t mean it.”

He smiles, because he already knew. Last night had changed her into something shattered and pliable only to his hands. Seven years and he’s come back to claim her as his own. There is sickness inside of him, burned into his cells that springs alive when she shudders and whines. There is tenderness, too. He wants to protect her, to crawl inside of her, to wring her dry of every sensation except for the one that keens for him. Make her hunger for him, too.

Find the good, he advised, but really, he should have said find the smallest thing that you can half-want and take it, because you’ll never get what you really want. Find the gilded needle in the blood-soaked haystack and bury it deep inside the cavity of your dirt-filled chest where no one will be able to dig it out.

He’s never had anything he wanted until now, and he’s waited so long and good for it.

His heart is like a grave, but it still beats.

The Soldier tugs on her hair and grips her throat. They’re bonded now, entwined as one single entity, hitched together by his throbbing cock inside her cunt.

“Seraph,” he whispers to the beat of a harsh up thrust, “Have they ever told you that you were made for me?”

I have built cathedrals inside of you. Planted my knees on a bed of nails in supplication. I have worshipped every sinew and fiber of your being through both death and resurrection. There is a price to pay for returning, but I’ve paid it. I’ve paid it.

Seven. Father. Tidal. Relic. Marrow. Four. Nineteen. Ghost. Seraph.

There’s one left and the room is collapsing. Bucky stands like a statue by the hallway, in disbelief at the body before him.

The last word. He knows it in his soul. His head might be empty and full of spiders, gaping wide open like a black hole, but he knows it. The pull of her being drags him into the deafening silence of the abyss. The hand in the night. The claw on his ankle with its exacerbated fingertips is now fisting his hair, thrusting its raw ends into his mouth, painting memories onto his tongue.

Seven years I waited for you. The father who left you—the Father who left us both. Blood rushing over us both like tidal waves. The memory of youth—a relic out of reach. You and I inside the marrow of each other’s bones. Four hands clasped, squeezing to test each other’s strength. Nineteen ninety-seven when I slipped inside your body and made you mine. You are my ghost and I am yours.

Seraph, Seraph, Seraph.

That blank face sinks into a sullen look, wide eyes closing for a moment of contemplation. The girl places her forehead into her fingers and rubs her temples. “My head hurts. Why does my head hurt?” She shakes something loose. “I know you. Who are you?”

She glares at him and his chest expands at the sight of her bratty features—eyebrows scrunched, flesh of her cheeks lightly gripped between her back teeth as she sticks her jaw out. Steve and Natasha are shocked into paralysis when their voices harmonize like choirboys during a canticle. There is a tempest swirling behind his eyes, all his blood rushing in whirlpool spirals in his ears.

They offer up her words, each one louder than the last.

Seven. Father. Tidal. Relic. Marrow. Four. Nineteen.

“Buck!” Steve calls, but the storm is too overwhelming, and he can no longer recognize that name. “Bucky!” Steve is torn away into the background along with the building and everything else behind it.

When he calls Ghost, she shrieks joyfully, mouth wide open in an eager smile so large it could split her entire face. Seraph.

She cries out. She is waiting. That last word is on the tip of his tongue, holding on by the finest of threads and his breath is stifled only for a second before he rips it all apart.

Bucky grins, a wet laugh bounding forth. His legs feel like jelly. His heart could burst. She’s back. She’s coming back and all he has to do is make it happen. She was made for him.

Steve is jumping over the couch to get to him but he’s too slow. The final word tumbles out, huffed, puffed, blowing her walls down.

Soldier.

The Soldier.

She was made for him.

#marvel #mcu #fanfiction #bucky barnes #winter soldier #bucky barnes x reader #winter soldier x reader #james buchanan barnes #reader insert #halloweenhauntsauchallenge

254 notes · View notes

chelsfic · 5 years ago

Text

Trustfall Part 2 - August Walker/Reader - Mission: Impossible Fallout fanfic

Image: Stock image of multiple locks on a door beside an image of Henry Cavill with scruff and mustache and a curly lock of hair falling over his forehead. The Henry pic came up in a Google image search, but I think it should be credited to: @kinghenryviii-i-am

A/N: You’ll notice from some details (references to dollars, stores, elementary school) that this fic is set in the U.S., not in London. I felt it would be more authentic for me to write within my own frame of reference rather than try to manhandle English colloquialisms and such. You can think of it as AU. Or, I can just admit that I’m a bit lazy. Either way I really hope it doesn’t take you out of the plot.

P.S. I’ve never had a plan in my entire life. Somehow, this is the Home Depot episode of Trustfall. Enjoy!

Part One

***

You make up the guest room because that’s what you do when you have a guest. Never mind that the guest is a (former?) terrorist...a double agent and a traitor. Never mind that you don’t strictly want him here and he’s less of a guest and more of a...passive captor. Never mind all that. Making the bed with fresh sheets and putting out clean towels is what you do when you have...a guest.

“So...,” you gesture to the open doorway. The same doorway where you stood frozen, three weeks ago, while he pointed a gun at you. The memory rises like an unwanted specter before your eyes and you need to take a steadying breath before you can go on. “This will be your room. Th-there’s a bathroom attached. The linen closet is just across from you if you need more towels or blankets. I had an extra toothbrush so I put that on the sink for you….a-and the kitchen is downstairs just across from the living room if you g-get hungry…”

You’re rambling and this really is absurd. The bastard may be paying you but there is no reason you have to be nice to him. It’s like your brain is short-circuiting. You hate him for what he did to you and for making you feel scared in your own home. But you’ve never had it in you to seek out conflict when you find it so much simpler to take the high road and be able to live with yourself as a “nice person.” It’s a dysfunction. You should probably see a therapist about it. Or hit him. Maybe you should hit him.

In an effort to assert yourself you add, “And keep out of my room. And my office downstairs. I’m not agreeing to you having access to every inch of my personal space.”

The effort is somewhat diminished when you spy the unreadable, hard expression on his face and tack on a “please” to the end of your demand. Damn it.

“Of course,” Walker smiles and how can it be allowed for him to look so boyish and charming? He’s a criminal! “This is still your home, Y/N.”

You don’t know what to say to that. It sure doesn’t feel that way.

***

It’s amazing how quickly you can become accustomed to the most bizarre changes. Before you know it a week has passed. Walker...August...keeps to himself in his room. He’s gone out a few times, always at odd hours. Sometimes he’s not back yet when you wake up in the morning. But for the most part he’s just...there. All the time.

You’ve spent every night since he came here laying in bed with your hands fisted in the blankets and your eyes locked on your door. His room is just on the other side of your bedroom wall and you can sometimes hear the muffled noises of him moving around at night. So far he’s respected your request that he not invade your space more than necessary but that can’t last, can it? You find yourself mentally reliving those terrible moments. The cold apathy in his eyes as he stood over you. The false concern in his words before he pulled the trigger. Why would he say he was sorry? If he was sorry...if he’d cared he wouldn’t have done what he did.

In the mornings, you feel tired, wrung out. This can’t go on. You’re due back at work on Monday and you can’t teach a class of second graders on no sleep. Friday afternoon you drive to the hardware store and purchase a sliding lock kit for your bedroom door. August is in the kitchen when you get home. He watches you set your bag on the kitchen table and remove the contents.

You look up at him feeling absurdly guilty. You force yourself to square your jaw and look him in the eyes, “It’s for my bedroom...I can’t...I can’t sleep at night.”

August’s eyes flash with emotion before he carefully schools his features. He’s been trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible. For all he manipulated you into this situation he isn’t a sadist--he doesn’t want you to feel afraid. He just doesn’t know what he can possibly do to reassure you.

He nods sensibly and comes over to inspect your purchase. It’s a simple sliding lock like the kind you’d see on a public restroom stall. He picks up the package turning it over in his hands. He’s standing right next to you, looming, and you’re aware again of his massive presence. You can feel the heat of his body and you can smell the scent of him. He smells like fresh soap and gun oil. You’re suddenly aware that he’s wearing casual clothes, a t-shirt and jeans and thick, white socks. The outfit makes him seem so normal, so human. Without your permission you feel your body sway toward him like a mosquito flying toward an electrified lamp. Why are you attracted to something that can hurt you?

“Smart,” he remarks, setting down the package, “but this type of lock won’t do much to keep out someone who’s determined.”

“What?” you ask sharply with a look of suspicion. Surely he must realize the lock is meant to keep out *him.* From the apologetic look he flashes you, you can tell that he does know. So why is he telling you this?

“Why don’t we head back to the store and find something more heavy duty?” he suggests.

***

Walking through Home Depot with August Walker at your side pushing a big, orange shopping cart is surreal. There’s no way you can forget who you’re with either because he draws attention. He’s tall, muscled and striking; people’s eyes are drawn to him like magnets. You wonder how he ever got by working under cover.

He swings down aisle after aisle with a purposeful stride that leaves you nearly tripping over your crutches to keep up. When you reach the aisle with locks, doorknobs and other odds and ends he selects a heavy metal deadbolt from the wall display and tosses it into the cart.

He turns to you, looking doubtful, “Do you have a power drill at home?”

“Err...no,” you reply sheepishly.

He moves on: screws, drill, drill bits, a hole saw. Then he’s leading you to the back of the store and down an aisle lined with different style doors. You hook your hand into the crook of his elbow to slow him down.

“August!” you exclaim, practically out of breath trying to keep up with him. “I don’t need a new door.”

“Yes, you do,” he says simply and turns back to display. He selects a heavy steel door that looks more suitable for a jail cell than your bedroom.

“That’s hideous!” you snort, forgetting your anxiety and nerves.

August huffs out a laugh and shakes his head, “It’s secure.”

When the cashier rings everything up the total comes to over six hundred dollars. You widen your eyes and reach into your pocketbook with trepidation. You just don’t have that kind of extra money. August pulls out his wallet and hands over a stack of hundreds without batting an eye. You stare at him in shock and he just shakes his head as if it’s nothing. You are going to have a talk about household expenses.

***

You watch him hang the new door, greasing the hinges and testing the swing of it opening and closing. You’re perched on the end of your bed and he’s standing in the doorway wearing a tool belt and changing out the bit in his drill to start making the hole for the deadbolt. You let yourself enjoy this bizarre, peaceful moment. Watching him do home repair is so...oddly calming. August could be your handyman or...your husband.

But...he’s not, you remind yourself. No, this man is the reason you need a steel door installed in your bedroom in the first place. The reason you can’t sleep at night, the reason you have nightmares that cause you to wake up with tears in your eyes and a sob in your throat. You can’t--you cannot forget that.

August finishes up installing the lock and the doorknobs. He takes his time tightening the final screws and checking that the lock slides effortlessly into position. As he fiddles with these adjustments he watches you from the corner of his eyes. You’re seated on the bed with your good leg tucked underneath you, chin resting on your palm and paying attention to everything he’s doing. Your posture is looser than he’s seen it since his arrival and he feels a rush of warmth in his chest that he can’t identify.

All he knows is he hates seeing the flash of fear in your eyes every time he catches you unaware. He hates seeing how tired you are in the mornings. And he really, really hates the muffled sounds of sobs that come from your bedroom late at night. He wants you to feel safe again. He knows he robbed you of that feeling. When he came here a week ago it was with the calculating intention of taking advantage of the damage he’d done and forcing you into a position of being at his mercy. But since he’s been living with you and witnessing the consequences of everything he’s done all he feels is an unfamiliar guilt eating away at his stomach and making him feel like worse than vermin.

He swings the door closed and twists the lock into place with a satisfying click. He turns to you with a smile and a feeling of accomplishment that he hasn’t felt in a long time.

“There,” he says, twisting the lock again and opening the door so that you don’t feel trapped with him in your bedroom. “Now you’re safe.”

Tag List:

@thorins-queen-of-erebor @viking-raider @onceuponathreetwoone @angelic-kisses13 @afangirldaydreams

#august walker x reader #august walker imagine #henry cavill imagine #mission: impossible fanfic #chelsfic #henry cavill

91 notes · View notes

newstfionline · 4 years ago

Text

Monday, January 11, 2021

The workers hit hardest during Covid-19’s first wave are getting pummeled again (Yahoo Finance) Since the beginning of the pandemic, one group of workers has been hurt far more than others: those working in the service industries, specifically in leisure and hospitality jobs. And in December after some progress, that industry lost jobs once again. “The most recent surge in coronavirus cases is once again battering the US labor market,” Indeed’s economic research director Nick Bunker wrote in a note. “The economic fallout from this wave of cases is hitting the industries and workers pummeled hardest by the initial damage before they fully bounced back from that first hit.” The latest hit isn’t as bad as the spring, as vaccines are rolling out and certain measures are in place, but restaurants, bars, and other jobs that depend on people interacting still cannot do business in a pandemic environment.

Squelched by Twitter, Trump seeks new online megaphone (AP) One Twitter wag joked about lights flickering on and off at the White House being Donald Trump signaling to his followers in Morse code after Twitter and Facebook squelched the president for inciting rebellion. Though deprived of his big online megaphones, Trump does have alternative options of much smaller reach. The far right-friendly Parler may be the leading candidate, though Google and Apple have both removed it from their app stores and Amazon decided to boot it off its web hosting service. Trump may launch his own platform. But that won’t happen overnight, and free speech experts anticipate growing pressure on all social media platforms to curb incendiary speech as Americans take stock of Wednesday’s violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol. Facebook and Instagram have suspended Trump at least until Inauguration Day. Twitch and Snapchat also have disabled Trump’s accounts, while Shopify took down online stores affiliated with the president and Reddit removed a Trump subgroup. Twitter also banned Trump loyalists including former national security advisor Michael Flynn in a sweeping purge of accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol insurrection. Some had hundreds of thousands of followers.

Navy’s Priciest Carrier Ever Struggles to Get Jets On, Off Deck (Bloomberg) Aircraft takeoff and landing systems on the USS Gerald R. Ford remain unreliable and break down too often more than three years after the $13.2 billion carrier was delivered, according to the Pentagon’s top tester. The latest assessment of the costliest warship ever built “remains consistent” with previous years, director of testing Robert Behler said in his new summary of the program obtained by Bloomberg News before its release in an annual report. The Ford’s new systems—which propel planes off the deck and into the sky and then snag them on landing—are crucial to justifying the expense of what’s now a four-vessel, $57 billion program intended to replace the current Nimitz class of aircraft carriers. The continuing reliability woes with the carrier systems built by General Atomics of San Diego are separate from another continuing challenge: the installation and certification of elevators needed to lift munitions from below deck. As of November, six of 11 “advanced weapons elevators” that should have been installed when the ship was delivered in May 2017 are now operational.

In Central America, tensions rise as soldiers aim to stop migrants (Reuters) Guatemalan and Honduran soldiers will be deployed to prevent new U.S.-bound migrant caravans from advancing, military officials said, amid growing desperation among those seeking to cross and signs that some groups will depart later this month. Two devastating hurricanes late last year along with severe economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic have pushed millions of people in the already-poor region closer to hunger, leading to a steady rise in U.S.-bound migration through Mexico. In online forums, many Honduras have indicated they plan to leave next weekend in a new caravan, which has caught the attention of U.S. officials who have called on the region’s governments to stop them. Many migrants in recent years have chosen to travel by caravan because being part of a large group offers protection from criminals who might prey on them, even though traveling alone is often faster.

Johnson under fire as UK again faces onslaught of COVID-19 (AP) The crisis facing Britain this winter is depressingly familiar: Stay-at-home orders and empty streets. Hospitals overflowing. A daily toll of many hundreds of coronavirus deaths. The U.K. is the epicenter of Europe’s COVID-19 outbreak once more, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government is facing questions, and anger, as people demand to know how the country has ended up here—again. Many countries are enduring new waves of the virus, but Britain’s is among the worst, and it comes after a horrendous 2020. More than 3 million people in the U.K. have tested positive for the coronavirus and 81,000 have died—30,000 in just the last 30 days. The economy has shrunk by 8%, more than 800,000 jobs have been lost and hundreds of thousands more furloughed workers are in limbo. Even with the new lockdown, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said Friday that the situation in the capital was “critical,” with one in every 30 people infected. “The stark reality is that we will run out of beds for patients in the next couple of weeks unless the spread of the virus slows down drastically,” he said.

In the Cold and Rain, India’s Farmers Press Their Stand Against Modi (NYT) Under a rain-slick tarpaulin, half a dozen elderly women bake roti on a wood-fired griddle—flattening dough, flipping browned bread from dawn until the sun retreats into Delhi’s evening smoke. Anyone who walks in gets served rice and cooked vegetables and, to wash it down, a cumin-flavored yogurt drink. Across the road, Jagjeet Singh, a burly man with a large fanny pack and a light purple turban, churns a hefty pot of milk coffee from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. The scenes stretching for miles around the Indian capital don’t come from a fair. They make up one of the largest sustained protests the country has seen in decades, persisting through steady rains and dozens of deaths that farmers and the Indian media have attributed to the weather, illness or suicide. For six weeks now, tens of thousands of farmers have choked the city’s four main entry points. They are challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has crushed all other opposition and stands as the country’s dominant political force, over his effort to reshape how farming in India has been done for decades. “They sold everything else. Only the farmers are left,” said 18-year old Ajay Veer Singh, who has been at the protest with his 67-year-old grandfather since it began in November. “Now they want to sell the farmers to their corporate friends too.”

China sees growing outbreak south of Beijing (AP) More than 360 people have tested positive in a growing coronavirus outbreak south of Beijing in neighboring Hebei province. The outbreak has raised particular concern because of Hebei’s proximity to the nation’s capital. Travel between the two has been restricted, with workers from Hebei having to show proof of employment in Beijing to enter the city. Almost all of the cases are in Shijuazhuang, the provincial capital, which is about 260 kilometers (160 miles) southwest of Beijing. A handful have also been found in Xingtai city, 110 kilometers (68 miles) farther south. Both cities have conducted mass testing of millions of residents, suspended public transportation and restricted residents to their communities or villages for one week.

Pompeo voids restrictions on diplomatic contacts with Taiwan (AP) Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Saturday that the State Department is voiding longstanding restrictions on how U.S. diplomats and others have contact with their counterparts in Taiwan, another move that is expected to upset China as the Trump administration winds to an end. The Trump administration has sought to strengthen bilateral relations with Taiwan. It announced Thursday that U.N Ambassador Kelly Craft would go to Taiwan, a move that sparked sharp criticism from Beijing and a warning that the U.S. would pay a heavy price. In August, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar became the first Cabinet member to visit Taiwan since 2014. Pompeo said that the State Department has created complex restrictions when it comes to contacts between the two parties. He said those actions were taken to appease the Communist regime in Beijing. “No more,” Pompeo declared in a statement. “Today I am announcing that I am lifting all of these self-imposed restrictions.” The Chinese government maintains that mainland China and Taiwan are parts of “one China.” China has been stepping up its threats to bring the self-governing island under its control by military force with frequent war games and aerial patrols. It has been using its diplomatic clout to stop Taiwan from joining any organizations that require statehood for membership.

Japanese pray for end to pandemic in annual ice bath ritual at Tokyo shrine (Reuters) Men wearing traditional loin clothes and women dressed in white robes clapped and chanted before going into an ice water bath during a Shinto ritual at a Tokyo shrine on Sunday to purify the soul and pray for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only a dozen people took part in the annual event at Teppou-zu Inari Shrine, scaled down this year due to the health crisis, compared to over a hundred in early 2020. After doing warming-up exercises and chanting under a clear sky with outside temperatures at 5.1 degree Celsius (41.18 Fahrenheit), the nine male and three female participants went into a bath filled with cold water and large ice blocks. Fewer participants at the Shinto ritual made the water extra cold, participant Naoaki Yamaguchi told Reuters. “Normally we have more participants and it makes the water temperature a little bit warmer. But this year, there were just twelve people, so it (the cold) was crazy,” the 47-year-old said.

Indonesian divers find parts of plane wreckage in Java Sea (AP) Indonesian divers on Sunday located parts of the wreckage of a Boeing 737-500 at a depth of 23 meters (75 feet) in the Java Sea, a day after the aircraft with 62 people onboard crashed shortly after takeoff from Jakarta. Earlier, rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of clothing and scraps of metal from the surface. It’s still unclear what caused the crash. There was no sign of survivors. Fishermen in the area between Lancang and Laki islands, part of an archipelago around Thousand Islands north of Jakarta’s coast, reported hearing an explosion around 2:30 p.m. Saturday.

At a Yemen hospital wracked by U.S. funding cuts, children are dying of hunger (Washington Post) Her infant son, weakened by hunger, needed a better-equipped hospital in the capital, Sanaa, roughly 30 miles away. But Hanan Saleh could no longer afford even the $30 taxi fare. Before, she depended on a Western aid organization, Save the Children, for funds, drawn from money donated by the United States, to cover the travel costs, said employees of the organization and hospital officials. But last year, the United States slashed its funding to United Nations groups and others such as Save the Children. So Saleh had to raise money to treat her son, Mohammed, in Sanaa until those funds ran out, too. Her last option was a small hospital in this northern Yemen market town, a 15-minute walk from their home. The staff tried to build up his skeletal, malnourished 9-month-old body. “He died two months ago,” Saleh recalled in November, breaking down in tears. Aid cuts by the Trump administration and other Western countries, intended to prevent Yemen’s Houthi rebels from diverting or blocking funds, are worsening the country’s humanitarian crisis, already considered the most severe in the world. Last year’s pledges totaling $1.61 billion were less than half of 2019’s funding, and hundreds of millions of dollars committed by donors have not yet been paid, according to the U.N.’s humanitarian office for Yemen. At least 15 of the U.N.’s 41 major programs have been scaled back or closed, and additional programs could shutter in the months to come, if more funds are not received, U.N. officials say.

The Tiny Satellites That Will Connect Cows, Cars and Shipping Containers to the Internet (WSJ) Scientists who track the health of Adélie penguins on the ice-covered wastes of Antarctica are managing their cameras from thousands of miles away—via tiny satellites orbiting above our heads. Energy companies are exploring using the same technology for monitoring hard-to-reach wind farms; logistics companies for tracking shipping containers; and agribusiness companies for minding cattle. It even helped National Geographic track a discarded plastic bottle from Bangladesh to the Indian Ocean. In the near future, it isn’t unreasonable to imagine this evolving satellite technology could put a distress beacon in every automobile, allow remote monitoring of wildlife in any environment on earth, and track your Amazon shipment—not just when it’s on a truck, but backward, all the way to the factory that produced it. And it could be done at a fraction of the cost of earlier satellite tracking systems. These novel networks of nanosats—aka cubesats—are a result of a number of factors. First, the satellites themselves are smaller, cheaper and more capable than ever. Just as important, there’s the rollout and adoption of new long-distance, low-power wireless communication standards that can work just as well in outer space as they do on the ground. In the next year, hundreds of satellites from more than a dozen companies are set to launch.

#headlines #news

2 notes · View notes

vacantbloodbones · 6 years ago

Text

The Disappointing Crimes of JKR

so it’s 2 am and I have a fight to finally get home (i’ve been MIA for a while because I needed a vacation tbh) THIS IS A LOOOONG ONE, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED! but on one of my flights I finally got to watch FB2 and it’s taken me a while to gather my thoughts. Like, I knew the disappointing confusion I was signing up for... I had seen SO many YT reviews on the film and from HP fans to just FB1 fans had gathered their opinions... and it was all negative... So I had my apprehension going into watching this (thank fuck it was free) and I’ve got a lot of my own opinions to say... So if you are aware of myself, you know that I actually loved FB1 and how the flow and characters went. Genuinely, I think as a stand alone film it was actually a good, comprehensive piece of story and film; you had exposition, build up, character development, tension, climax and fallout/outro/conclusion... So, what went OH SO WRONG in FB2, in my humble-ass opinion? Well, lets get into this adventure with me, pals... stick with me as I rant my good ol’ heart out, grab some snacks, a drink, maybe some liquor of choice (in my case). In the beginning, there was... well, absolute confusion??? For an entrance into a film, especially a franchise that has a previous film, I firmly believe there needs to be SOMETHING that explains and ties the previous entry to the latest one... Especially since this series hinges on a handful of characters (Newt, Tina, Credence, Grindelwald, and Queenie + Jacob) and to just throw us into Gellert’s VERY confusing transfer to Europe’s Ministry to answer for his crimes... The intro threw me off; there’s a time jump and there’s an extreme LACK of having our previously established characters development and fallout from the first film being EXPLAINED so we (audience) can make a connection to this next entry. Like, Credence’s survival (yes, I’m well aware of the deleted scenes that were actually supposed to be shown at the end of FB1 according to Yates...) because we don’t get to connect the dots on screen of HOW and WHY Credence and his Obscurus survived with the additional information of his Obscurus being HANDLED (like, wasn’t the premise of the previous film the urgency of how this THING was going to KILL him and EVERYONE in NYC?), him finding his adoption paper, getting to Paris and into a travelling circus (which, also... makes no sense??)... We’ll put a pin on that for a bit here... Also, Tina and Newt’s relationship; we really are left wondering how and why they are even romantically involved as the first film established them as strangers to mutual friends at the end... Something that should’ve been shown on screen could’ve been Newt choosing to continue his Beasts studies and books over staying and risking himself being in America for his love interest, Tina. Again, put a pin on that for now... But instead, I just felt the into to the film was as vapid as JKR’s writing when she simply just doesn’t care for CONTINUITY and actually making sense of ANYTHING. But nnnooooo, we just get an hour and a half of meaningless exposition and threads that aren’t even expanded or given closure to... Gellert putting Abernathy as his doppelganger really pissed me off, because we never are shown an inkling as to WHY Abernathy chose or perhaps had always been on Gellert’s side (could’ve even expanded on the idea of Abernathy playing a role in Percival’s capture/implied death in the first film)... Even Seraphina doesn’t mention or show ANYTHING about their most powerful wandless wizard being GONE... he was SOMEONE alive and WORKING in MACUSA for a substantial amount of time... that had connections, powers above anyone, and obvious trust and influence to Seraphina... which also begs the question, why is there such a heavy emphasis on Gellert using his wand magic, when he had been using wandless while impersonating Mr. Graves? Now, to get into another huge issue; character development continuity: How did the time jump from the intro give us very DIFFERENT characters than the one’s we had been introduced, learned to love/hate be turned into vacant shells of all their development? Like, I’m sorry but what in the actual FUCK did JKR do with Queenie’s character? She seemed like a genuinely sweet and subtly powerful witch that used her gifts to her advantage... to this, desperate, powerless, and lost character? The Queenie we were shown had a sparkle for adventure and curiosity that gradually came to admire Jacob and truly was heart broken when his memory was erased--to kidnapping him, putting a love charm against his will, and forcing him to go to London with her? She acted the very opposite of who she is and she seemed to have strong morals to stand by her sister’s side, help no-maj’s out, and using her powers for what she felt was right.... To being hapless in Paris, because she wouldn’t own up to her kidnapping and using magic on Jacob against his will, and then DECIDING to JOIN Gellert’s very VAGUE AND STRANGE CULT. Newt seemed more like a confused boy the entire installment with flashes of him and his abilities with connecting to beasts, thrown into this second installment as a reminder that “fantastic beasts” is in the title of the movie... Also the broken up dialogue; I DIDNT GET A SINGLE STRAIGHT ANSWER IN ANY GODDAMN CONVERSATION HELD BY ANY CHARACTER! like WOW for a two hour+ movie I got ZERO dialogue that made me go ‘ahhh i get it now!’ no, everyone was running away from each other like a grade-school gym dance. Jacob was still, sort of, Jacob... but he and Newt’s friendship didn’t feel authentic in this film as it did in the previous. The banter (or lack thereof) was kind of just a callback to me of saying ‘ahahaha, dont you remember Jacob being funny in the last movie????? well look at this funny moment thats totally not needed!’ EVERYONE AVOIDING EACH OTHER FROM MISCOMMUNICATION LIKE THEYRE TEENAGERS REALLY MADE THE ADULT TONE OF THE LAST FILM JUST FALL FLAT... I had screamed internally every time some interaction happened and then someone RUNS AWAY! like, aren’t they adults??? even HP films has young TEENS being more accountable and willing to talk than every adult in this MOVIE. Lets get into Gellert’s confusing vague cult of reasoning; Gellert’s wishes and aspirations and him killing people and children to comparing his reasoning that he will stop WW2 with his hookah skull... just didn’t make sense, I’ll also add that Gellert’s LACK of character really just pissed me off, like, Voldemort wasn’t revealed until waaaay later and even when he was a face on the back of someone’s bald ass head; made a more CONVINCING and REASONED character with his motives. Gellert just seemed like a casual shit disturber and running a murderous vague cult because Albus won’t do shit and he knows it... He’s like an angsty teenager that never got had someone sit and hug it out type deal. Also, the way he treats his followers and the lack of showing HOW he got so many followers; like, I’m sorry but how did this angsty man-baby get followers???? Oh, right, he used his words that... AGAIN, fall goddamn short even when we FINALLY got to see his “gathering” and “speech” that was so hyped for almost 2 hours... It didn’t make sense to his reasoning or why he was acting out IMHO. Alright, now let’s get to the character introduction... or really, half-assed intro to the many people I COULDNT CARE FOR... Expect my personal surprise with Theseus, we’re introduced to a man that seems more compelling and complex than Gellert (seriously tbh). Somehow we’re led to believe a guy who constantly (as we’re shown) to reach out to Newt that HES the one making their relationship complicated? When it becomes apparent that Leta and Newt are the two with complicated history and Theseus loves them both deeply????? Enough that he just stands back knowing damn well Newt and Leta have a past but he’s secure in his relationship between all both people he just wants them all to get along. Now, I get that Theseus wants Newt to be an Aura, but we’re also shown he has his reasons to help Newt (ultimately); Theseus showed more character development than ANYONE in this ENTIRE MOVIE (well Albus is second in this) but him CHASING HIS BROTHER TO GET ANSWERS is somehow ‘BAD TEMPER’ according to Tina... like really, almost all the female characters were lacking level-headed sanity purposely written by JKR so I would resent the characters I had grown to actually like???? Nagini is just thrown into the plot as a mother-like figure for Credence but Credence is displayed as some selfish man-child, he can’t reason with Nagini and it leads to their strange relationship ending with Nagini feeling betrayed. And then there’s Leta and her over-played storyline to be cut short by her sacrifice that literally didn’t do anything for the plot but make me want to punch a wall because Theseus is left with a broken heart and a brother who will ditch him in a minute to talk to Albus... There were other characters that were so lacking in development that if any or all of them died, I felt like I could still sleep like a baby knowing that JKR had made such shitty vapid characters and lack of development, I felt NOTHING for practically everyone. Albus, Theseus, and Queenie had the most emotional complexity but even then, I’m giving them kudos because everything else was lacking so much I clung onto whoever threw an emotional fit first. The whole dynamic between Albus, Gellert, and Credence really just angered me. Red herring the entire premise of Credence wanting to know his identity so DESPERATELY he was willing to join Gellert’s vague emo posse of a cult, only to be revealed as not a Lestrange (which we had been hyped tf up to know) as, instead, THE BRO ALBUS AND NOBODY IN THE HP UNIVERSE APPARENTLY KNEW OR WAS EVER EXPLAINED JUST WHY ALBUS’ BABY BROTHER IS ON A BOAT TO AMERICA (i’M GUESSING THIS EXPOSITION WILL BE EXCRUCIATINGLY TOLD ONLY TO BE SOME OTHER LIE AND BAM CREE IS DEAD)???? But YES lets not elaborate on the queer baiting of Credence, Albus, and Gellert... JKR just wanted to hype us up for nothing and all of Credence’s development and complexity is summed up to ‘lol ur a dumbledore, cree’ really is a slap to the face. Albus being trapped a majority at the school was a half-ass way for us to not have Albus confront Credence to get him to fin d his answers at Hogwarts... Lets be real. But basically, everyone wasn’t themselves, people we were introduced to were flatlined or placed in stereotypical tropes, and every exposition turn was a red herring thats never elaborated on or concluded... the lack of goddamn comprehensive dialogue, and we got queer baited by the ever infamous JKR.... and my final take: WHERE THE FUCK IS PERCIVAL GRAVES????? So, this was my long-ass ranting about this movie and why I probably watched it for the criminal reasoning to hurt myself and be disappointed in the end... Was i surprised? NO. Am I going to watch the next installment... maybe... just for closure to this epic failure of a second installment. Thanks for making it to the end, I hope this was less painful than the actual film.

#crimes of grindelwald #fantastic beasts #FB2 #spoilers #rant #thanks for tuning in #cog spoilers

19 notes · View notes

protectors-of-shim · 5 years ago

Text

Fuck off

I don’t give half a shit who was in the right or wrong on Sunday, but Xhaka shouldn’t have been there, with that job wearing an Arsenal shirt. At every stage of his career and in every nation he’s been a foul machine who gets carded every third game and is the active leader at Arsenal in conceding penalties. At any other club that leader is a defender or a keeper--last line of defense getting suckered by attackers allergic to scoring in open play (ie the center forward for United at any given moment).

But for a midfielder to have that badge of honor suggests the image of a panicked player scrambling back and launching himself studs first in the general vicinity of the attacker. This image also suggests a player who’s either incapable of keeping up with the play or player badly out of position. However, the man is 26 years old and plays right in the middle of the field, neither of which are a fullback trying to cover for a missing winger, or an ancient Toure brother still trying to hack it. His passing is far from shit, which is probably why he has a job, but honestly he’d be better off in some country with some other club where smooth passers who can’t defend are idols, and quit stinking up North London with his second-rate Paul Scholes routine, especially since Emery lacks Fergie’s connection to scary Glaswegians with knives that kept United at the top of the penalty table. Arsenal have been so fucked this year, they might as well start off in a 1-0 hole every game.

However, the problem has been greater than Xhaka, and it’s been a spirals of “fuck offs” for the last few years. Working backwards it’s been a failure to properly tell Ozil and Mustafi to fuck off, and because Ozil makes a million pounds every time he gives a shit, the club doesn’t want to Ramsey what’s he worth, abruptly breaking off negotiations with him and letting him fuck off to Juventus. Honest, if Juve wants someone that generally means that player is worth the money and clubs should just pay their players. This clusterfuck followed the club’s CEO fucking off to AC Milan right after installing Emery as manager. I’ve seen this move in real life and it’s always when a boss is desperate to hire someone of authority but knows the choice is shit and doesn’t want to deal with the fallout. Thankfully he also sucks in Milan too, so it’s not like some massive tragedy, just none of the remaining powers that be have shown much gumption to show that they’re not shit. They only seem interested in giving Emery just enough rope, so the Arsenal coach job becomes a carousel for nostalgia acts, like at every other club, and not the envy of the league. Maybe we should be more like Chelsea supporters and just tell all these shits to fuck off, after all we are letting youngsters fuck off to become stars elsewhere, so we might as well go full heel.

But really i need to fuck off too. Not from the sport or Arsenal or even this idiot blog but for trying to pull this dumb game apart and figuring out how it works and seeing how (maybe)I could make it work even better. This I was trying to come up with some sort of formula involving goal difference that would predict points so I could with all the certainty of SCIENCE how many points Xhaka’s howlers have cost us, and I could not. This game certainly has its trend and teams that score a lot of goals and don’t concede nearly as many tend to win a lot of games, but there are years where a dominant team on both ends fails to finish first because they demolished bad teams but couldn’t squeak past good ones. Then there are clubs that have years that 75% of league would envy but it ends with everyone getting fired because they barely averaged a goal per game. Since there’s no real way of counting for it, Xhaka’s snafu-brain (maybe) didn’t really cost the team anything, except the patience waiting for something to make sense.

#part of supporting my club is hating all the other clubs #i really miss ramsey #i think i'm back

1 note · View note

ljones41 · 6 years ago

Text

"MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT" (2018) Review

"MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT" (2018) Review Ever since I was a kid, I have always been a fan of the "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE" franchise . . . with one exception. I was a fan of the 1966-1973 television series, which I had viewed faithfully as a kid. I saw one episode of the 1989-1990 television sequel, but I failed to become a fan. But my enjoyment of the franchise kick started once more with the release of the 1996 film of the same title and I have never looked back.

As many know, the 1996 film, which starred Tom Cruise as IMF Agent Ethan Hunt led to five more films. The latest, "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT", was released in theaters during the summer of 2018. Written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, this sixth entry in the movie franchise focused on Ethan and his team's hunt for stolen plutonium. The material had been stolen by a group of terrorists called the Apostles, the remnants from terrorist Solomon Lane's organization called the Syndicate, from "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION". When Ethan and his team - Luther Stickell and Benji Dunn - failed to get their hands on plutonium early in the film, CIA Director Erica Sloane instructs Special Activities Division operative August Walker to shadow and observe Hunt and the others as they attempt to retrieve the plutonium. Thanks to a nuclear weapons expert they had captured named Nils Delbruuk, the team learns that an extremist named John Lark might be behind the Apostles. And in order to get to Lark and the plutonium, Ethan's team might have to kidnap an imprisoned Solomon Lane and deliver him to London without MI-6 agent Ilsa Faust interfering with their plans. Many film critics raved over "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT" after it first hit the theaters. In fact, some are regarding it as the best installment in the franchise and one of the greatest action films of all time. Do I agree? I honestly do not know. The movie had a few flaws that makes me hesitate to regard it in this manner. One, it featured the return of Solomon Lane. Seeing him in this film, led me to believe there was one too many villains in this film. I honestly wish that Ethan Hunt had scragged Lane at the end of "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT". And to make matters worse, he was still alive by the end of the film. I also had a problem with Vanessa Kirby's character, an arms dealer named Alanna Mitsopolis aka the White Witch. Apparently, Lark wanted to purchase from her the cores for the plutonium. When Ethan impersonated Lark, she was the one who had demanded that Lane be snatched from a French intelligence convoy that was conveying him to another prison. After this scenario played out, Ms. Mitsopolis had disappeared from the narrative, until it was revealed in the end that she had made a deal with MI-6 to arrange for them to get their hands on Lane. And you know what? This whole scenario involving both Ms. Mitsopolis and Lane seemed a bit convoluted and unnecessary. In fact, I could have done without the presence of either of them. And how on earth did Lane end up in France, when he was arrested in London? Surely as a former MI-6But who knows? Perhaps a re-watch of the film will lead me to change my mind. However, the above complaints are not signs that I did not enjoy the film. Trust me, I still managed to enjoy "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT". Very much. I agree with many of those critics who praised the film for just about every aspect of it. Yes, I had some squabbles with McQuarrie's plot. But I must admit that I enjoyed other aspects of it. For a minute, I had assumed that once again, Ethan would find himself disavowed by the agency and the C.I.A. Instead, McQuarrie added an interesting element in which the C.I.A. assigned an operative to keep an eye on the activities of Hunt and his team. And the character of August Walker proved to be a breath of fresh air as his arrogant and aggressive persona provided an extra conflict for Hunt to deal with, as they pursue the Syndicate and the missing plutonium. Another addition that spiced up the plot and included a touch of pathos was Ethan's reunion with his ex-wife Julia Meade in Kashmir, where Lane planned to detonate two nuclear weapons and where she and her new husband were representing Doctors Without Borders. Naturally, I cannot discuss a film like "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT" without pointing out the action sequences. Yes, the movie had plenty of action scenes. But there were a few that stood out for me. One of them featured Ethan and Walker's arrival in Paris via a parachute jump. Okay, that kind of entry struck me as unnecessary and rather clichéd. But I also found it rather entertaining and a perfect way to convey Walker's arrogance and Ethan's impatience with the former. Other exciting action sequences that I found particularly memorable were a brutal fight between a thug mistaken as John Lark and Ethan and Walker inside the bathroom of a Parisian nightclub; and a high-speed chase through the streets of Paris. But for me, the best action scene proved to be the last one which found the IMF team (and surprisingly Julia) racing against time to save Benji from Lane and stop Lark's team from setting off two nuclear weapons over the Siachen Glacier. Needless to say, this action sequence involved Luthor and Julia trying to disable one weapon; Ilsa engaged in a brutal fight against Lane, while attempting to save Benji and disable the second weapon; and Ethan engaged in a wild helicopter chase in order to get his hands on the weapons' detonators, which ends near the edge of a cliff. For me, this entire action sequence was the movie's pièce de résistance.

"MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT" marked the sixth time that Tom Cruise portrayed IMF Agent Ethan Hunt. My first instinct is to wonder when Cruise will stop portraying the character, especially as a man of action. But while watching the film, I had completely forgotten about my doubts and simply enjoyed the film . . . and his performance. Watching Cruise portray Hunt over a period of twenty-two years is like witnessing the aging of fine wine. Thanks to the actor's superb performance, his Ethan Hunt has grown less cocky over the years (to a certain extent), more subtle and definitely more mature. This was especially apparent with Ethan's interactions with the aggressive August Walker.

A fine cast supported Cruise in this film. Like Cruise, Ving Rhames as IMF computer tech/hacker Luther Stickell has been with the franchise since the beginning. And he was marvelous as usual as the pragmatic Luther Sticknell. I especially enjoyed the poignant performance he gave in one scene that featured Luther's own reunion with Julia Meade. Simon Pegg was funny as ever as the slightly skittish Benji Dunn, whose skills as a field agent seemed to grow with each movie. Michelle Monaghan returned to portray Ethan's ex-wife, Julia. I enjoyed her role a lot better in this film. The actress finally had a chance to portray Julia as a breathing individual, instead of some feminine ideal. Three actors from "ROGUE NATION" returned to appear in this film. Rebecca Ferguson gave an excellent performance in her second outing as former MI6 agent Ilsa Faust, who is determined to return Solomon Lane back in the hands of her agency. Sean Harris reprised his role as former MI6 agent-turned-terrorist, Solomon Lane. I admit that I wanted the franchise to focus on a new Big Bad, but I cannot deny that Harris' performance was as creepy as it was in the fifth film. I enjoyed Alec Baldwin's portrayal of Alan Hunley, the former CIA Director who later became the new IMF Secretary, in this film than I did in "ROGUE NATION". Once his character ceased to be Ethan's antagonist, Baldwin was able to skillfully portray him as intelligent and practical man, instead of a buffoon. And yes . . . "FALLOUT" featured some new kids on the block. Many critics were very impressed by Vanessa Kirby's portrayal of black market arms dealer, Alanna Mitsopolis. I found her performance very entertaining, but I was not that dazzled. Wes Bentley gave a solid performance as Julia's new husband, Erik. I only wish that the screenplay had explored his character a bit more. I was impressed by Angela Bassett's performance as the pragmatic and ruthless Erika Sloane, the C.I.A. Director who had replaced Hunley. I especially enjoyed her scenes with both Baldwin and Henry Cavill that allowed her to convey the extent of Sloane's paranoia. But the real surprise turned out to be Cavill, who gave a superb performance as August Walker, the C.I.A. assassin, who had been assigned by Sloane to monitor Ethan's team, following their loss of the plutonium cores. What I admired about Cavill's performance is how he managed to skillfully convey not only Walker's penchant for aggressiveness, but also the character's cool manner and rampant arrogance. His Walker was a real prick and it was no wonder that he drove Ethan up the wall. Despite a few problems I had with the movie, I really enjoyed it. In fact, I can honestly say that "MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT" is my second favorite film in the franchise. No wonder the critics loved it. And I can thank a superb cast led by Tom Cruise, and Christopher McQuarrie for his first-rate screenplay and excellent direction.

#mission impossible #mission impossible fallout #christopher mcquarrie #tom cruise #ethan hunt #ving rhames #luther stickell #simon pegg #rebecca ferguson #henry cavill #angela bassett #alec baldwin #michelle monaghan #sean harris #west bentley #vanessa kirby #wolf blitzer

8 notes · View notes

baked-potatoes · 6 years ago

Text

Review - Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018)

January 4, 2019

*spoilers included*

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson

Distributing Studio(s): Paramount Pictures (USA)

Runtime: 148 minutes

Rating: PG-13

US Release Date: July 27, 2018

Synopsis: Ethan Hunt and the IMF team join forces with CIA assassin August Walker to prevent a disaster of epic proportions. Arms dealer John Lark and a group of terrorists known as the Apostles plan to use three plutonium cores for a simultaneous nuclear attack on the Vatican, Jerusalem and Mecca, Saudi Arabia. When the weapons go missing, Ethan and his crew find themselves in a desperate race against time to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

I feel like last summer had an amazing and well-received queue of film releases (that was a weird sentence), and this seventh Mission Impossible installment does pretty well. Action movies usually are what they claim-- action porn-- but McQuarrie gives us a more unconventional take on the genre. Characters are believably flawed (Hunt makes a great deal of mistakes throughout the movie), and motivations are cloudy, as one might expect in the world of espionage and terrorism.

As a side note, the Golden Globes are this Sunday at 8PM EST/5PM PST, so I’ll be reviewing the Best Picture (Drama AND Comedy/Musical) winners after then! Which movie do you think will win? I’m excited to see who wins the Best Actor and Actress categories, since the race this year is intense.

Acting

What a great ride and medley of (mostly) rounded and realistic characters. Tom Cruise plays Hunt to a T in this film, spilling his heart on his sleeve and giving Ethan Hunt a fresh vulnerability. And Hunt is all too realistic, making mistakes and swearing profusely, just as any person would in his messy situation in this film. I think I saw him cry when he mourned Alec Baldwin’s Alan Hunley’s death, and it was the sort of ugly crying that shows off a well-developed acting ability and depth. Hunt’s character is massively rounded in this film, and coupled with cast chemistry and impressive stunt work, it works out really well.

Speaking of Hunley’s death, we get to see Henry Cavill as the main antagonist-- the man revealed to be the mysterious John Lark. It’s a complete far cry from Clark Kent as he plays the duplicitous CIA assassin August Walker (such a cool name), complete with a porno mustache and angry bicep reloading. Cavill captures this character’s essence extraordinarily well as a bitter, somewhat-insane man who complements Ethan Hunt-- for better or for worse. From the co-op bathroom (smartly-edited) fight against Liang Yang’s character to the final standoff on a collapsing cliff, Cavill’s turn as Walker shines in every mannerism and action.

Rebecca Ferguson comes back as MI6 agent Ilsa Faust from MI: Rogue Nation and plays her conflicted character to a similar T; a scene between her and Hunt in a wooded canopy park is one of the quietest yet vulnerable moments in the film. Perhaps the character arc is a bit exhausted after two films, but her character nicely fits into the IMF as it does in Rogue Nation. Like I mentioned, I didn’t really see how her character would develop over the course of this film, but I can see a real humanity within her as she tearfully reunites with Hunt and learns of the existence of his ex-wife, Julia: a compassionate and capable (if slightly boring) returning character who parallels Ilsa’s life and choices, played by Michelle Monaghan.

Other stand out performances include that of Sean Harris, who reprises as Solomon Lane. I have mixed feelings about his character because it just looks like his role in Rogue Nation but pushed to a side antagonist role. Harris plays it beautifully though, and it really looks like the deranged terrorist I remember from Rogue Nation.

Some other standout roles: Angela Bassett as CIA director Erika Sloane is powerful, capable, and as nice as you’d expect from a CIA director (meaning, not very). Her character is shrewd and cynical throughout the entire film and radiates careful danger. The ending speech to Hunt about saving one person over millions seems a bit clichéd, but it’s a well-played concession to Hunt’s humanity. Alec Baldwin does quite well as a final arc for CIA-turned-IMF secretary Alan Hunley, and his death genuinely moves Hunt enough to chase Walker around the city. Overall, his character and Simon Pegg’s Benji Dunn are played for laughs (I laughed at some of the running gags throughout the franchise, such as Benji messing up gloriously as a sidekick), but they and the rest of the IMF deliver brilliantly in the near-hopeless finale, when the nuclear bombs seem slated to go off and render their efforts meaningless. Ving Rhames is, of course, stalwart, and it’s just a well-rounded, chemistry-filled cast of characters that I’m excited to see in the next MI.

Directing, Screenplay, Cinematography, Soundtrack

Christopher McQuarrie comes back from Rogue Nation to direct but aimed to create a different tone than the fifth film (as all of them do), and it pays off really well. Fallout mixes thrilling action, sympathetic arcs, and well-crafted plot twists to deliver a unique film for the IMF. His choice to do a long take for the HALO jump keeps the pace of that scene suspenseful and exciting, and that bathroom fight is smartly filmed without shaky cam or fast jump cuts, showing us how Hunt is a scalpel while Walker is a hammer (as noted by Sloane) in their fighting styles. And the two characters were beaten by Liang Yang’s John Lark decoy, showing us a great motif McQuarrie wants to show us in his script and direction: that these seemingly perfect people make mistakes. Hunt’s mistakes are continually mocked by other characters and often lead to genuinely terrifying consequences (although I laughed when Hunt tries to drop a helicopter payload onto Walker’s helicopter and fails, swearing). And even as Tom Cruise does these mind-bendingly amazing stunts, McQuarrie brings him a real vulnerability and does so for the entire cast. Well, Walker didn’t really have too many redeeming qualities (and his villain reveal seemed kind of clumsy in his dialogue), but I found him incredibly complex either way. He’s painted as a villain and assassin, but he’s loyal and ruthless for the CIA, which is really exciting to see. It’s not often that you see a unflinching and brave villain because those are qualities you’d expect in the hero, not the villain. The rest of the characters make mistakes too, as Benji fumbles with his navigation tablet and Ilsa misses shots from her motorcycle.

McQuarrie also made the decision to bring Lorne Balfe as the composer for this film’s soundtrack, and I have to say, bravo. Balfe’s soundtrack complements McQuarrie’s sympathetic and vulnerable script with a suspenseful yet moving score. There are elements of Lalo Schifrin's Mission Impossible theme mixed in with a softer, quieter tone overall. Some critics complained about the “Nolan-esque” style, saying it sounded too much like Hans Zimmer, but I disagree. It has its own style that fits in with McQuarrie’s direction and complements well with many beautifully shot scenes (side-scrolling London sprinting, anyone?), and honestly, I’d be thrilled if I were compared to Hans Zimmer.

Speaking of the cinematography, I enjoyed it a lot. Most of the film is shot in 35mm film (the ubiquitous film format). Cinematographer Rob Hardy collaborated with McQuarrie to create a closeup, gritty visual style, and it creates a strangely intimate yet pulse-pounding effect. Going back to that bathroom fight, Hardy used fluorescent lighting to contrast against the Palais party’s rave lighting and the brutality of the close-up and well-edited brawl. That infamous HALO jump is shot in digital IMAX over Abu Dhabi (recreated in post-production into Paris) and apparently could only be shot as one take per day (shortly after sunset).

Summary and Rating

Mission Impossible: Fallout brings an excellent take on the franchise as it delves into a combination of thrilling action and complex emotions.

9/10 : Hot Potato!

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible_%E2%80%93_Fallout

https://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/blog/blog_post/?contentid=4295008965

#bakedpotatoesreview #film #missionimpossiblefallout

1 note · View note

casualarsonist · 6 years ago

Text

Mission: Impossible - Fallout review

I can empathise with Tom Cruise’s plight. At one point in my life, I too found myself over fifty, with half a billion dollars in net worth that I didn’t know what to do with, and having had my religion chase all my girlfriends away. The world can be a lonely place when your wealth-to-height ratio is 323,592,411 to 1. At that time I also wanted to die, and my only regret is that I didn’t attempt to do it via elaborate helicopter stunts - the one aspect in which Tom Cruise and I differ from one another. (I’m lying. You don’t know for a fact that I’m not Tom Cruise, so I thought I’d clarify.) Seriously though, if I had the means to, I’d like to go out in the exact same way as him, and I’m sure he’d feel the same about my preferred method of demise - ‘not while wanking’. But for now, Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise, and I am not, so instead I satisfy myself by watching him try to find the most expensive way to end his life as he films it for our viewing pleasure.

‘Pleasure’ being the operative word here, because Mission: Impossible - Fallout is an ode, a testament to the crazy, gregarious, charming, golden age action films of the late 80s-early 90s, complete with a villain’s death (spoiler, the villain does not win) that makes you suck in your breath and wince. And that’s a great, great thing, because between the first film and this one (the...sixth?) the series has run the gamut of action-film styles, from a tense, spy-thriller, to ridiculous wire-work John Woo insanity, to boring summer fodder, to the most recent run of three superb releases that up the ante every time. I’m not gonna lie, I absolutely hate heights, and the idea of clinging to the outside of a plane as it takes off scares the literal shit out of me as I sit here writing this. But watching Cruise do it is absolutely breathtaking. Apparently he doesn’t have a stunt double. Could it be any more clear that he’s simply trying to reach the great beyond the only way he knows how - in a big-ass summer blockbuster? More power to him I say.

If you’ve watched any of the M:I movies before, you’ll know that plot doesn’t really count for much. Not because there’s not enough plot, mind, but because there’s too much plot. Every time there’s too much plot, full of double-crossings and fake-outs and masks and secret spy dealings. Trying to follow it all isn’t worth the mental effort, and it probably doesn’t really make much sense when you break it down, so there’s little to be found in the plot other than a sense of the large scale machinations of the various entities at work. In the end, the plot moves forward because the right people show up at the right time as if everyone is sharing their location to a Whatsapp group for international agents of espionage, and the details are but a means to an end - an end that lies at the point the next action scene begins. In most other cases this might diminish the efforts of the film, but when your action scenes are this enjoyable, I really couldn’t care less.

Tom Cruise hangs off so many things, guys. He hangs off helicopters in flight. He hangs off a cliff. He hangs off a building. At one point, he even leaps from the roof of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, across thirty metres of open road, and onto the rooftop of another building half a football field away. It’s not something that the average punter will notice, but those familiar with the sheer amount of space between St Paul’s and every other building around it will understand just what an amazing athletic feat this is. My mum, a woman with a heart condition and a proclivity towards anxiety, left the theatre breathless and excited - a state I don’t think I’ve ever seen her enter in a positive capacity. She’s not a thrill-seeker, is what I mean, but this film thrilled the shit out of her. There’s a great sense of continuity and flow to everything, and this meticulous attention to detail, coupled with a lack of bewildering CGI helps keep you invested, even as the stakes are raised further and further. It’s the antithesis of the Bourne Identity shakey-cam technique that dominated action films for far too long - no-longer can directors use it as an excuse to cut corners and create a bamboozling visual mess in which you can’t tell who kicked what and where, while Cruise’s capability and commitment to doing everything for realsies means that they don’t have to cut fifteen times just to film him hopping over a fence. I almost, almost, raved about it when I left the cinema, and that’s a high endorsement from me when it comes to big-budget blockbusters. And that’s probably the strangest thing of all - that this film is a blockbuster sequel in a series that has long crossed the temporal line that usually denotes an irreparable decline in quality, and has somehow not only managed to recover, but get better with successive installments. Say what you will about Tom Cruise, but a Tom Cruise action film inspires a very different anticipatory feeling than a Dwayne Johnson action film. There’s a consistency in the quality that is fed by a tangible sense of ambition - this series has become Cruise’s baby, and with all the money in the world and nothing else to live for, he clearly tries damn hard to make sure that it is worth the price of entry.

As for the rest of the film...it’s okay. It’s not so much an episodic installment as those before it, but a direct sequel to Rogue Nation, and if you haven’t seen Rogue Nation, then you’re gonna be really fuckin’ confused for a good part of the narrative. Old friends and enemies return, and you will have zero connection with any of them for at least two thirds of the production unless you’ve seen them before. Which sucks, because it’s not exactly fair that in a series of six films, they waited until you were five in before smacking you with a the first story that carries over. The performances are fine, serviceable. Simon Pegg’s character actually has some weight to it and serves a greater function than simply being the comic relief. Alec Baldwin is in it and through no fault of his own, simply due to the fact that he’s Alec Baldwin, feels miscast in his redundant, bite-sized role. Henry Cavill is...fine. He plays a charmless thug well enough, and the thing he does with his arms in the trailer and the bathroom fight is legitimately cool for reasons that I can’t explain. He’s the perfect henchman, and in this sense he’s well-cast for the first time in his life, but that’s not so much a compliment to him as it is to the casting director for realising his limitations as an actor. Cruise is the film’s heart and soul, partially because his character is the axis around which all of the other elements turn, and partially because no-one can stop themselves from crowing that Ethan Hunt is the saviour of the world, and the best-est, most amazing spy ever. It reeks of vanity project dialogue, and while it might be, I can forgive it because of the quality and effort that has gone into almost all the aspects of the production.

In short, as mindless fun goes, watching this film is possibly the most mindless fun I’ve had in a long time. It was extremely refreshing to go from The Meg to this in the space of a week, and to be reminded that not all big-budget films are CGI-soaked trash garbage. I wouldn’t thank Tom Cruise for many things, but I’ll thank him for that. In the meantime, I just hope that when he finally does meet his maker, it’s because the navigational instruments on the spaceship he spent six months learning to pilot failed and he was propelled into the Sun during a billion-dollar set piece while filming Mission: Impossible 15 - Space Terrorism.

8.5 digitally-altered Henry Cavill moustaches out of 10

#mission impossible #fallout #tom cruise #henry cavill #ving rhames #simon pegg #alec baldwin #imf #action film #st paul's cathedral #review #film #cinema #movie

4 notes · View notes

artseeneditions · 3 years ago

Photo

🔥We are delighted to invite you to our first solo exhibition ‘Phantom Yarns’ by British/Greek-Cypriot artist Diana Taylor @dianataylorstudio opening on the 15th of Sept 2020 @6-9 @artseen_contemporary Image: Diana Taylor, Looking Forward, 2021 oil, acrylic silk-screen prints and fabric collage on canvas, 170 x 130 cm The show is curated by Maria Stathi @mariastathip and the text is written by Isabel de Vasconcellos @i_de_v with special thanks! “Phantom Yarns develops Taylor’s longstanding interest in how we experience and make sense of time in an era of information overload, where abundance and infinite access compete with the urge for order and elucidation. With all material culture at our fingertips, we are more tightly than ever enmeshed in a visual continuum that cuts through the veils of space and temporality. This availability has the effect of intermittently flattening and deepening perspective, leaving us afloat in a world of images, with all its attendant fallout of wonder and disorientation. Taylor’s practice, encompassing painting, screen-printing, needlework and 3D printing, imbues the analogue pleasures of touch, layering, tearing and weaving, with the fugitive qualities of the digital realm of abstraction, manipulation and ceaseless mutation. The works in Phantom Yarns explore ideas of what the contemporary is at any one moment, by sampling and appropriating the materials of their time. Taylor uses textiles, Photoshopped images and wire mesh readings variously screen-printed, collaged, painted, woven and embroidered onto large scale fabric assemblages and canvases. […] To read the full text follow the link: http://www.artseeneditions.com/en/project-single/diana-taylor-phantom-yarns 💥The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue, featuring full installation photographs and a new text by Isabel de Vasconcellos. ✨Invite designed by @pin_i_am #soloshow #artseen #artseengallery #artseenprojects #art #contemporaryart #artexhibition #contemporarycurator #mariastathi #artseenartists #collectart #instanart #paintings #asseblage #collage #contemporarypainting #artgallery #nicosia #cyprus #london #dianataylor #phantomyarns (at Art Seen - Contemporary Art Projects & Editions) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTXI3qVIkmv/?utm_medium=tumblr

1 note · View note

doctorwhonews · 6 years ago

Text

Torchwood: We Always Get Out Alive (Big Finish)

Latest Review: Writer: Guy Adams Director: Scott Handcock Featuring: Eve Myles, Kai Owen Big Finish Release (United Kingdom) Running Time: 1 hour Released by Big Finish Productions - May 2018 Order from Amazon UK “Not mentioning how raw your wife’s home-cooked lasagne is, I can do; apologizing to the Home Office because you’ve left a dead squid thing in the middle of St Mary’s –“ “You said you loved my lasagne!” In an ever-fluctuating world where political regimes collapse as fast as they emerge, where once-indestructible business behemoths perish like wanton flies and where the fate of any TV show hangs by a knife-edge daily, only one immutable truth is certain – nothing lasts forever. Just ask the original production team behind Torchwood’s TV run; the first proper Doctor Who spin-off show rapidly grew from strength to strength between 2006 and 2009, only for its divisive – to say the least – fourth season Miracle Day to abruptly bring about its on-screen demise. Big Finish’s intervention couldn’t have come soon enough, then, delivering fans with gripping new adventures that reveal both unexplored missions for Torchwood Three and never-before-seen facets of the wider secret agency. However, as with the show’s televised tenure, surely the studio’s luck will run out eventually? After several superb boxsets and almost 20 standalone instalments in the range, not least March’s riotously entertaining The Death of Captain Jack and April’s rib-tickling country getaway The Last Beacon, that question weighed heavily on this reviewer’s mind as he hit Play on the monthly range’s latest instalment, We Always Get Out Alive. It couldn’t have come to the fore at a more opportune time, however, since for all his experimentation with haunting horror-esque setpieces, Guy Adams’ focus lies squarely on the matter of mortality and for how long those bold – or reckless – enough to risk it as part of their profession can hope to outrun the tentacles of fate. Of course, many civil servants do beat the odds every day, returning home to their loved ones and living to fight the next battle, but those of us looking in from the outside can only imagine the intense emotional strain that such an unpredictable, risk-laden lifestyle would place on those relationships as time passes. Indeed, between facing down drug-addled aliens demanding 10% of Earth’s younglings as a gift, cannibalistic guests at their own wedding and at times the very worst of humanity, Gwen Cooper and Rhys Williams have amassed their fair share of emotionally traumatic baggage over the years. While we’ve seen their inevitable resultant tension bubble to the surface in fleeting moments of the show to date, nowhere has the subject been explored in greater detail than with Alive’s psychodrama-driven narrative. Adams manipulates the pair’s growing anxieties with magnificent aplomb; as they deal with the fallout of a recent mission-gone-wrong, his script masterfully reveals how, through Rhys’ fears surrounding his wife’s nonchalant attitude to brushes with death, even arguments over the right turn to take on a near-deserted rural road could pose just as substantial a threat to their challenged marriage as the mysterious forces manifesting in their vicinity. It’s as cunning a metaphor as any for the ongoing struggle surely faced by soldiers, firefighters or the like in relationships, delicately deconstructing this fraught dynamic while seemingly revealing huge admiration on Adams’ part for those couples whose love and loyalty endures regardless. This mounting tension extends far beyond the couple itself, their obligatory alien pursuer sure to unsettle even the most steeled listener on their own travels. As with many of the great antagonists in fiction and especially within the horror genre, it’s to Adams’ credit that he wisely leaves much of the nameless foe’s facets up to our imagination, cunningly keeping it just outside of our heroes’ field of perception while having its influence gradually rise through lost memories, spontaneous outbursts of rage from Rhys and Gwen as well as fleeting thuds from the Cooper car’s boot. The latter element is also aided in no small part by Alive’s brilliantly subtle sound design, which keeps us completely on edge to the extent that moments of silence ratchet up the fear factor just as much as the distant howls, ominous rustling and increasingly audible footsteps somewhere nearby the vehicle. A word of warning: don’t listen in the dead of night unless you’re well-versed enough in the realms of horror to endure Alive’s eerie gothic atmosphere. Suffice to say that this reviewer scarcely regretted his decision to hit Play in the broad daylight of his train journey to London. But as much as it goes without saying at this late stage, beyond its chilling script and technical strengths, by far Alive’s finest assets are the two performers tasked with delivering each and every line on this occasion: Eve Myles and Kai Owen. Gwen and Rhys’ tempestuous yet heartfelt dynamic has long served as the franchise’s emotional core thanks to the pair’s grounded performances and nothing changes here in this respect; Owen recapturing Rhys’ risk-averse approach – from tackling missions to heeding the highway code – perfectly, while Eve’s portrayal recalls Clara Oswald’s arc in Doctor Who Season Nine, her relentless energy as this undaunted yet reckless heroine a simultaneously thrilling and worrying ‘sight’ to behold. Nor does it hurt that Alive offers both thespians the opportunity to display perhaps Torchwood Three’s sole surviving recruits – depending on whereabouts in the show’s timeline Alive is situated after Children of Earth – at their most personally vulnerable, albeit with plenty of well-timed jokes such as the lasagne gag above enabling vital catharsis for the players and audience alike. Usually, you’d expect us to highlight one or two shortcomings holding the latest Torchwood release back from the Hall of Fame around about now, right? Well, think again – such is the scale of Adams and company’s magnificent achievement that almost no noteworthy flaws sprang to mind as the credits rolled. Similar to how Cascade left the door open regarding the eventual fate of Toshiko Sato’s consciousness, so too does Alive refuse to fully acknowledge whether the faceless threats – both extraterrestrial and psychological – besieging our ever-wearying protagonists have truly subsided come the play’s conclusion, particularly given Adams’ insistence upon subverting our sense of reality throughout. That ambiguity only serves to strengthen the play’s societal subtext though, speaking to the ongoing struggles inherent in any marriage and indeed the joint trauma that couples tested to the limit must learn to live with somehow, rather than finding any idyllic quick-fix solution to such woes. In contrast, however, this reviewer can wholeheartedly lay any fears surrounding the longevity of Big Finish’s Torchwood range to rest. Between the outstanding opening half of this fourth monthly run of one-off outings, the long-awaited gratification of the original team's reunion in Believe as well as the exemplary note on which Aliens Among Us concluded in February, far from spreading itself too thinly across myriad strands, the show’s never been on better form than it is today. For those wondering where to start with exploring the franchise in audio form, Alive represents an ideal entry point, its captivating thrills making 45 minutes feel more akin to 15 and its standalone nature – no Committee mentions in sight here – preventing the need to pick up ten prior releases in order to stand any chance of understanding what’s occurring. As for the rest of us who’ve grown alongside Gwen and Rhys over the past 12 years, the harrowing setpieces, multi-layered performances, stunning sound design and stirring societal themes make We Always Get Out Alive nothing short of an essential purchase. Next Time on Torchwood – Let’s do the time warp again as ex-Torchwood agent Norton Folgate invites us – along with Sergeant Andy Davies, doubtless as hopelessly confounded as ever – to 1950s Soho, where raunchy encounters, gun-slinging gangsters and an all manner of seedy dealings apparently lie in wait. What could possibly go wrong, eh? The pair’s initial encounter in Ghost Mission didn’t quite hit the mark for this reviewer back in 2015, but considering how Andy’s subsequent clash with Owen Harper in Corpse Day resulted in one of the range’s strongest hours to date, anything could happen later this month… http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2018/06/torchwood_we_always_get_out_alive_big_finish.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

#TORCHWOOD #BIG FINISH #AUDIO

2 notes · View notes