#I feel like the West is just constantly delaying the inevitable

[silverfox66]

The West is still cowardly weak. Still refusing to give Ukraine all the weapons they need, out of fear of "escalation." What is russia going to do what they haven't done already? Use nukes? russia knows that that will be suicide for them, and they won't use them if they want to live. Besides, russia has "warned" multiple times that if the West did A, there would be "consequences for the West." Every single "warning" by russia was a bluff. No "consequences."

We need to give Ukraine all the weapons they need. The longer we wait, only more and more innocent people will die. russia must be stopped. Europe isn't safe as long as russia stands.

And we need to ramp up our own weapon manufacturing. That way, the West can keep on supporting Ukraine and keep enough weapons for our own arsenal.

[bloodkingdomrp]

♚EMMETT.ROOK

“War is hell “

✚ AGE & DOB: Thirty-Two & July 5th , 1988 ✚ OCCUPATION: Construction Foreman ✚ AFFILIATION: Kovali & Capo

♛THE HISTORY♛

Emmett Rook was born in the Crazy Mountains, a remote, rugged, beautiful piece of Montana where he could ride for days without seeing another person, only the cattle his family raised.  As a kid, he felt like he lived at the top of the world—and even as he grew older, the feeling was hard to shake.

He’d never dreamed of anything except following in his father’s boot tracks.  Ranching was in his blood, in his bones—for six generations, following the Homestead Act that gave them their first 160 acres, the Rook family had been carving a living from a hostile environment, but the reward was plain.  There was pride in staying put where others had failed; love in the family that filled the ranch house; wonder in seeing each spring’s calves and colts discover the world.

And to show their gratitude for being given a chance like that, the Rook men all volunteered for the military.  And Emmett was no different.  He’d had no thought of college after high school graduation—he’d learned all he needed to know right there on the ranch.  But first, while his father was still in good health and his brother and sisters were young enough to stay home but old enough to help out, Emmett would put in his due service.  It was an exchange he wholeheartedly believed in.

Emmett’s father and grandfather hadn’t seen active combat, stationed in relatively safe areas and between major conflicts; his great-grandfather, a WWII veteran, hadn’t talked about his time in the Army.  So when Emmett enlisted as a MOS 12B Combat Engineer, he knew there was a chance of danger—but that was only a chance, right?  Nobody in his family had been killed in the service since his great-great-uncle in WWI.  He knew how to wrestle a living for his family and their livestock from the Montana wilderness; he was sure he could learn to tame foreign territory.

So, he and his best friend, Jimmy O’Carroll, set out for Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.  It was the first time these two Montana boys had been on a plane (Jimmy loved it; Emmett not so much), their first time out of the West, and their first time away from their families.  But they had each other, and they had all the grit developed by life in the wilderness, and over the next fourteen weeks of training, they went from cowboys to combat engineers.  They already had construction experience from maintaining and improving their ranches, but now they learned to build bridges and clear roads on a much larger scale, place and clear explosives, build defenses and obstacles, and use all the equipment needed to accomplish these missions.  They learned how to march and take orders, got used to being in crowds of strangers—that was maybe the weirdest thing, having gone to a high school where hardly anyone actually lived in town but had known each other’s families for decades—and prepared for a deployment they knew was inevitable.

But when it came, they still weren’t worried, too naïve to guess what could happen.  And, honestly, things went pretty well.

War wasn’t all glory, they learned that awfully fast, but they made it through.  They did their jobs, everything worked out okay, and although the enemy came too close for comfort, nothing was brutal enough to make them reconsider.  And so, at the end of four years, with cattle prices low and enough help that their families could spare them, they reenlisted.

This time they signed up for the Sapper Leader Course, a month of intensive training that built leadership and tactical skills.  Sapper Tabs in place, they shipped out for their second deployment to Iraq, confident that now, more than ever, they could conquer the desert.

Thinking back on it now, Emmett can’t believe they were ever so stupid.

From the beginning, their second deployment was worse: more frequent fights with the enemy, most of it hit-and-run but leaving more men dead than before; more difficult terrain to secure; lower morale among their comrades.  But then they were assigned what was supposed to be an easy project, a breather from high-stakes, high risk assignments.

It was just a connecting road between an airfield and a small, friendly village, and they’d checked for explosives and started to widen the path, things they’d done multiple times before—but they’d either missed a mine, or someone had snuck in an IED overnight.  Jimmy was in the truck just ahead of Emmett’s, heading through the village to the place they’d start the day’s construction—and then all of a sudden, the truck was gone, everything was in flames, they were getting shot at and shooting back and the villagers were caught in the crossfire.

When the shooting finally stopped, they couldn’t find Jimmy’s body—there was hardly anything left of the cab of the truck, it was so destroyed.  But there were plenty of other bodies—children, women, old men, Emmett’s friends.  He can’t forget it.  He’ll never forget it.  And although six years have passed, he still sees their faces in his dreams.

After his discharge, he returned to Montana, but the Crazies were named for a woman who lost her mind after seeing her family killed.  For the first time, Emmett thought he could understand.  And for the first time, he was worried the mountains might gain yet another namesake.  Before, he’d embraced the isolation; now it was too big, too empty, too lonely.  He missed the crowded barracks and being surrounded by buddies who understood—in the mountains there was nothing to stop the nightmares and intrusive thoughts from catching up with him, and sleeplessness and stress made him turn on the people he loved.  The ranch had made them tough, but they were too innocent, too good, and he couldn’t explain why he was so jumpy and angry all the time.  He couldn’t tell them what he’d seen and done.  And so, for the first time, he told them he wasn’t sure he wanted to take over the ranch.

He drifted south for a while, taking a job with an outfit in Wyoming and hoping the change of scenery and life with some wilder hands might be enough to snap him out of it.  But it wasn’t.  And he’d started drinking in an effort to block out the memories, but it didn’t work.  All it did was cloud his judgement, and when a brawl with the foreman cost him his job, Emmett got in his pickup, got on I-80, and just started driving—until he started seeing signs for Chicago, and curiosity made him turn north.

It was the biggest city he’d ever seen, full of traffic and trash and concrete, and he hated it.  And yet, it was the first place he could truly get lost.  He had to think constantly, figuring out streets and transportation and slang he’d never heard…and thinking about things like that made it a lot harder to think about Iraq.

So he stayed.  He got a tiny apartment and a job with a construction company, frequented hole-in-the-wall bars, went to Lake Michigan when he missed the open space of Montana, and for the first time in a long time, started feeling a little at peace.

Then the construction company won a bid for a guest house at what the guys called the “Kovali Compound,” and Emmett got to know a few members of what he thought was just a wealthy family.  (Maybe he had a little Western naiveite left in him after all.)  By the time he started picking up on rumors of what they were actually involved in, it was too late—they’d offered him camaraderie, and he’d seen enough death that he felt numb to it.  He told himself he didn’t care.

It didn’t take long for him to realize that wasn’t quite true, but he’s a Capo now, specializing in raids and in securing, defending, and building Kovali properties.  His family has no idea he’s involved in anything illegal—as far as they know, he’ll probably spend a few years seeing the world before returning to Montana.  But with his sisters at the helm, he knows the ranch is in good hands, and his brother’s graduation from high school this spring only confirmed the need to keep them out of everything.  He’s trying to convince his brother to go to college; to delay if not stop his desire to enlist.  He doesn’t want his brother to end up like he did, and besides, at some point the Rook boys need to quit following in each other’s footsteps.

But now Emmett has to decide: is he going to follow his father’s path?  The gang’s?  Or is it possible to blaze his own trail?

♜ THE DETAILS♜

(+): Resourceful + Protective + Social

(-): Restless - Stubborn - Uneasy

Face claim: Scott Eastwood

written by K | CST

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

Standing Still

Not My Gif

Vasquez x Reader x Faraday, Female Reader, Polyandrous Relationship

AO3 Link/ Support Me on Ko-fi

Requested by Anonymous:  Maybe “Just go away” and “Why didn’t you tell me?” With Josh and Vas?

A/N: This is my first time writing a poly relationship, so I apologize in advance.

Word Count: 2.7 K

           A woman being in a relationship with two men was not something one would consider normal, and yet, that was how your life had decided to go. 

          You weren’t going to complain, but there was no shaking just how odd it all was. Faraday was always quick to point out Mormons had been doing it in reverse for years, and considering the scarcity of women west of the Mississippi, it would be downright selfish of him and Vasquez to take one each for themselves.

           The three of you met when Mrs. Emma Cullen went out in search of gunmen to protect the small town of Rose Creek.  You and Vasquez hit it off right away with Faraday not far behind as the week went on.  After the battle, Sam, Goodnight, Billy, Jack, and Red all went their separate ways, but you, Vasquez and Faraday all ended up going in the same direction and hadn’t split up since.

           It took time, but your feelings grew stronger and stronger every day for one another, until finally it exploded in a mix of booze, shouting, and sex. Once you sobered up, you were finally able to talk it out like reasonable adults, and confronted the simple truth they you all loved each other and there was no sense in trying to hide it.

           It wasn’t always easy.  Faraday had the uncanny ability to drive Vasquez to the point of insanity. Vasquez’s temper at times got the better of him and your own stubborn streak could lead to not talking to either of them for days on end until one of you cracked. But you still managed to balance each other out, and none of you could truly be whole without the other.  

           You loved them, and you knew they loved you right back, but there was no avoiding who they were.  Faraday was a drinker, a gambler, and overall scoundrel.  Vasquez as a wanted man, constantly looking over his shoulder. Neither was the type to settle down. You tried to never let that fact bother you.  You didn’t mind the idea of being on the move forever, but you knew, eventually you would have to stop.  

           Faraday and you took the lead as you rode into town, scouting out the area, or more specifically, the sheriff’s office.  You started making a habit of watching the wanted posters whenever you came into an unfamiliar place.  Luckily, none of the posters mentioned Vasquez by picture or name. Faraday offered to give Vasquez the all clear while you checked in with the local doctor.  

           You hadn’t been feeling well as of late.  Most of your mornings were spent bent over a rock puking.  You waved it off as nothing more than hard riding combined with something you ate, but both men insisted you see a doctor.  You reluctantly agreed, but for your own reasons.

          You had a sinking feeling you had something much more permanent than an ailment of the stomach.

           You found the doctor easily enough and allowed him to run as many tests as he could.  You bobbed your knee anxiously as he took your temperature and checked your pulse.

           “How long have you been feeling this way?” the doctor asked.

           “About a week,” you said.

           “And it always happens in the morning.”

           “More or less.”

           The doctor nodded his head, as he took his hand away from your wrist.

           “Ma’am, this is going to sound rather crude, but rest assured it is purely in medical interest.  When was the last time you bled?”

           You didn’t answer right away, trying to remember.  You hadn’t exactly been keeping track considering your life style, but the more you thought about it, the longer ago it seemed.

           “I’m not sure,” you admitted.

           “Well, it seems to be you don’t have a stomach flu at all,” he said with a smile. “You’re pregnant.”

           Your breath stopped in your throat as you felt the color drain from your face. You thought it might be possible, but the reality was something entirely different.

           “I’d say you’re about a month along,” he continued, oblivious to your thoughts. “I’m sure your husband will be thrilled at the news.”

           You nodded, unable to form a coherent thought.  

           The doctor continued to rattle off instructions to which you were only half conscious of.  You smiled and thanked him in a daze as you walked out the door.

          You were pregnant.  You were going to be a mother.  Vasquez or Faraday was the father.  

          You didn’t bother to get back on your horse.  You just unhitched him and walked down the street trying your best to delay the inevitable.  

          The sun was starting the set by the time you reached the inn.  You took your time leading your horse to the small stable alongside it before making your way inside.

          You made you way up the stairs, and stopped in front of the door, listening closely. You hoped Vasquez and Faraday had already found their way to the gambling hall, but no such luck.  You heard both their voices through the door, talking about something you couldn’t make out. Steeling yourself, you walked in.

          Vasquez was standing by the mirror, washing his hands and face while Faraday sat on the bed, buttoning up his only clean shirt.  Both looked to you as you entered, each with their own looks of concern.

          “Hey darlin’,” Faraday said.  “What’d the doc say?”

          You pushed aside your dark thoughts giving the best easy smile you could.

          “Ain’t nothing bad,” you said.  “Just told me I should rest up a couple of days.”

          Vasquez walked over to you, taking a gentle hold of you and pressed his lips to your forehead.  

          “How are you feeling now?” he asked.

          “Honestly, a bit tired,” you said, sighing for effect. “I think I might just stay in bed tonight.  You don’t mind, do you?”

          “I think I can manage without my good luck charm for at least one night,” Faraday said.

          “You sure about that guerro,” Vasquez countered.

          “Hey, have some faith.  I made it long enough to meet you two didn’t I?”

          “A miracle on its own.”

          Faraday only smirked as he stood from the bed and walked over to you.  He pressed a quick peck on Vasquez’ lips before turning you and kissing your cheek.

          “Take care of yourself sweetheart, alright?”

          You gave a small nod.  

          He smiled in return and walked out the door.

          “He’s going to be impossible tonight, isn’t he,” you said, just as the door closed.

          Vasquez chuckled lightly.

          “Probably,” he said. “Do you want me to keep you company instead?”

          You shook your head giving him a reassuring smile.

          “No, you have fun tonight. You haven’t had a chance to loosen up in a while.”

          “You sure?”

          “Yeah.”

          Vasquez looked you over carefully, checking for the lie, but he couldn’t find it. He placed a soft kiss on your lips before pulling away.

          “Beunas noches cariña.”

          “Beunas noches.”

          He gave you a soft smile, and walked out the door leaving you completely alone.

          You walked over to the bed and sat down. You knew the lie wouldn’t last you long. Eventually they would start to notice your stomach growing and how you wouldn’t be able to drink with them and a number of other facts leading to the truth. You couldn’t face it though.  You knew what the truth meant.  You didn’t even consider the option of giving the child up.  It was made from the truest love you’d ever felt.  You couldn’t bare letting go of something made up of each of you.  But a simple fact remained.  They would leave.  They would have to, at some point or another, they would leave you.

          You felt the tears starting to form in your eyes.  You knew this day was coming, you just didn’t expect it to come so soon.

          Holding you head in your hands, you allowed your emotions to run rampant as the tears started burning down your cheeks.  You knew what you had to do.

          As quietly as you could, you started packing your bags.  There wasn’t much to pack.  Faraday has learned from experience you didn’t like other people touching your stuff and so only unpacked the things that got in the way of his own clothes and essentials.

          You worked slower than you normally would have, stopping every so often to cry or look around the room, or listen to the stairs almost hoping they would come back up, just in time to stop you, but no one came.

          Sooner than you would had liked, you were packed.  You paused a moment to look around the room.

          You should leave them a note, something to explain your actions, but you couldn’t think of what to say.  You didn’t want to lie to them with some made up excuse, but you knew the truth would lead them to follow you.

          You shook your head, grabbed your bags, and made your way down the stairs and towards the stables.  You didn’t stop until you reached your horse.  

          “We’ve got to go boy,” you said walking over to your saddle.

          Suddenly a loud bang came from the pin beside him.

          You jerked your head to see Jack pacing the stall, kicking and neighing as loudly as you ever heard him.

          “Jack,” you scolded, walking over to him.  “Jack, quiet, will you?”

          He didn’t let up, shaking his head and jerking away from you as you tried to calm him down.

          “C’mon boy, it’s alright. It’s just me.”

          “Y/N!”

          You turned around, your stomach dropping to see Faraday standing in the doorway in the stables panting.

          He didn’t even get you time to respond, as he turned his head over his shoulder.

          “Vas, I found her,” he yelled just before walking further into the stable.

          “Sweetheart, what are you doing,” he asked.

          “Just go away.”

          He didn’t stop, reaching out to you.

          “Y/N…”

          “Don’t touch me!” you snapped.

          He stopped in his tracks, retracting his hand immediately.  It was then he noticed your bags on the ground, and your saddle sitting just beside your horse.  He then looked back to you, as realization took over his features.  

          You felt the emotions starting to build back up pressure to your eyes and throat as you tried desperately to keep the tears at bay, but to no avail.

          It was then Vasquez entered looking between you and Faraday in utter confusion.

          “What happened?”

          You couldn’t answer.  You weren’t even sure how you were still breathing as you choked on the air.

          “I think she was planning on leaving,” Faraday answered for you, not bothering to look as Vasquez.

          The other man stood stalk still.  Disbelief, confusion, hurt, anger and all the rest played across his face as he finally settled his eyes on you.

          “Why?”

          You shook your head, wiping away your tears as best you could.

          “Don’t ask me that,” you said hoarsely.  

          “No, I think we outta,” Faraday said.  He made no effort to hide his bitterness.  You couldn’t blame him.  

          “I can’t.”

          “Can’t what?”

          “Please!” you begged, finally turning your eyes to look at him. “Please, just let me go.”

          “Not until you tell us what’s going on!”

          You shook your head.  You couldn’t say the words.  You looked away from them as another sob wracked through your body.

          Faraday let out a groan of frustration, turning his back and walking away from you.

          Vasquez didn’t say anything.  He looked to Faraday, meeting his eyes.  There was a small series of looks back and forth in a silent conversation ending with Faraday giving a tired shrug.

          Vasquez then turned to you. With all the caution of one approaching a spooked horse, he stepped towards you.

          “Y/N,” he said softly.  

          You didn’t look at him, but you didn’t pull away either.

          He took a chance, reaching out to place and gentle hand on your arm.

          “Look at me.”

          You did as you were told, regretting it instantly.  

          Faraday was a poker player in every sense.  His face barely gave away anything when he didn’t want it to.  Vasquez was completely different.  For all his practiced machismo, his eyes always gave away what he was really thinking.  

          Guilt tore through you as you saw the pain you had caused him.  The pain you caused both of them.  You hadn’t meant to, but it was obvious your methods had been in vain. They needed to know.  You owed them that.

          “I’m pregnant,” you said weakly.

          Vasquez froze, his eyes going wide as he stared at you in complete shock.

          “What?”

          Faraday turned back to you then, looking at you with the same expression.

          “I’m pregnant,” you repeated, a little louder, leaving no room for doubt.

          Vasquez glanced back to Faraday as if to make sure he had just heard the same thing.

          Faraday didn’t look at him.  His eyes stayed right on you.  You almost wanted to laugh.  It took a lot to take the words right out of Joshua Faraday’s mouth.

          Vasquez turned back to you, looking down your body to your stomach.  He reached his hand out to touch it, but retracted it at the last second before meeting your eyes once more.

          “Are you alright?” he asked limply.

          “Yeah,” you said, smiling slightly.  “I mean, I do have a person inside me, but yeah.”

          “But you sure?” Faraday asked, regaining his voice. “You’re absolutely sure.”

          You gave a small nod.

          “The doc said I was probably about a month or so along.”

          Vasquez cursed something in Spanish under his breath while Faraday ran a hand over his face.  Both of them seemed at a loss as to what to do as they processed the information.

          “Why didn’t you tell us?” Vasquez finally asked.

          You looked down at you boots.  A part of you was ashamed, but another part knew you were right, or at least, thought you were.  

          “I didn’t think you would want it,” you confessed. “I thought it would just be easier on all of us.”

          “Why would you think that?”

          “Do you want this baby?” you asked him plainly. “Either of you?”

          Neither of them said anything.  They each looked at each other, as guilt and uncertainly spread across their faces. It was all the answer you needed.

          “I know you two,” you said simply. “You’re good men, but you’re not fathers.”

          “Is that what you really think of us?” Faraday asked.

          “When was the last time we stayed anywhere more than a few weeks?” you asked. “How long is it until someone runs us out of town or the sheriff starts to get suspicious?  Me, I don’t mind it, but I can’t do that to them.”

          You looked down at your stomach, placing a hand over it tenderly.  For a moment, you could see them.  A red haired little girl, a dark-haired boy, brown eyes, green eyes, all playing in front of you.  A child you could call your own with the perfect mix of all of you.

          “I have to stand still,” you said softly, “and I can’t ask you to do the same.”

          “We could try,” Vasquez said.

          You shook your head, feeling the tears come back into your eyes.

          “For how long?” you asked.

          “As long as you want us,” Faraday said.

          You looked up at him in surprise.

          Faraday stepped back towards you taking a place besides Vasquez.  You had never seen him so serious before. You waited for a crack, a smirk, something, but it never came.  

          “We won’t leave you Y/N,” he said. “You or the baby.”

          You looked between the two of them, feeling a small bit of hope beginning to swell inside you.

          “I want to believe you…”

         “Then believe us,” Vasquez said. “We’ll make it work.  We’ll prove it to you.  Just give us a chance.”

          You could feel the determination behind his words.  Both him and Faraday.  

          You felt yourself nodding, giving in to the love you had for them.

          Faraday quickly took you into his arms, hugging you tightly.  You returned it tenfold wrapping your arms around him like a life line.  You felt Vasquez come up behind you holding you close effectively enveloping you in the warmth of the two men you loved.

          Maybe it was a bad idea.  Maybe it would end in heart break.  But for the moment, you had them, and they had you.  Your child would be loved and that was enough.

[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior October 2, 2020 – ON THE ROCKS, MANGROVE, SCARE ME, POSSESOR, BOYS IN THE BAND, THE GLORIAS, SAVE YOURSELVES! and More

It’s October, which means we’re finally getting Patty Jenkins’ long-awaited Wonder Woman 1984 after a number of delays from its original June release. Now that it’s finally coming out, maybe we can finally see movie theaters rebound with such an anticipated superhero blockbuster ready to fill those theaters right back up to 100% capacity. What’s that? It’s been moved to Christmas Day? Movie theaters in New York and L.A. are still closed and other movie theaters are only at 25-40% capacity? So we’re not getting Wonder Woman 1984 this week? So what are we working with here… Something like 30 other movies that few people have been chomping on the bit to see? Great… well, then never mind.  We’ll see how far I get through the insane amount of movies being released this week, but I can tell you right now, that it might not be very far.

Possibly the highest profile release this week is the new film from Sofia Coppola, ON THE ROCKS, which is being released theatrically by A24 (where movie theaters are open) before its inevitable Apple TV+ streaming premiere on October 23. I had the opportunity of seeing Coppola’s film as part of my New York Film Festival coverage, where it got a sneak preview last week.

It’s a fantastic film starring Rashida Jones as Laura, a woman who has been married to her husband Dean (Marlon Wayans) for long enough that they have two young daughters, although she’s started to suspect that he’s losing interest in her and maybe sleeping with his assistant. As she gets more paranoid, her lethario art-dealing father (Bill Murray) shows up and tries to help Laura find out the truth about her husband’s fidelity.

Like many, I was a huge fan of Coppola’s earlier films, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation – in fact, interviewing Coppola for the latter was one of my first roundtable experiences ever – and though I liked Marie Antoinette just fine, some of Coppola’s other films in recent years just haven’t connected with me. Maybe it took for her to do a full-on New York City film, as On the Rocks is, for me to return to the film but there’s so much other stuff to like about it.

First of all, it seems like a much more personal film than something like The Beguiling but she also has a fantastically vibrant lead in Jones, who doesn’t often get roles that really shows off her abilities. It’s hard not to think about some of Noah Baumbach’s movies, particularly last year’s Marriage Story, while watching On the Rocks because Coppola uses a similar segmental storytelling format. What sets it apart from just about every other film is Coppola’s ability to acknowledge that the best way to use Bill Murray in your movie is to just let him be Bill Murray and do what he’s going to do. That immediately lends itself to some great moments where father and daughter can go out on the town (and eventually to Mexico!) where Jones essentially acts as the audience for her father’s shenanigans.

But this is very much Jones’ movie even as she’s surrounded by the likes of Jenny Slate as a single mother kvetching about her dating life and Wayans, possibly playing his most serious and dramatic role since Requiem for a Dream.

I really enjoyed On the Rocks more than any of Coppola’s movies maybe going back to Lost in Translation. I think that she does have something to say as a filmmaker in terms of something as personal as this vs. a genre film like The Beguiled, and she does a particularly good job capturing New York City in a way that I really miss right now.

You can also read my more technically-minded review of Coppola’s latest over at Below the Line.

While I haven’t had the time to see as much of the 58th New York Film Festival as I like, I did get to see MANGROVE, the next chapter of Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe Anthology” which also played at the NYFF this past week. In fact, it’s the first chapter of the group of five movies about England’s West Indian community, both chronologically and when it will air on Amazon (November 20). 

This one takes place in 1970, focusing on the Mangrove, a Notting Hill restaurant where the West Indian and black communities regularly congregate, but also, a target for the racist local police who are constantly raiding it and causing misery both for the customers and for the shop owner Frank Crichlow, played by Shaun Parkes. Some of the people who frequent the tiny shop are Black Panther’s Laetitia Wright as (what else?) Black Panther activist Althea Jones, but after a number of police disruptions, the people have had enough and decide to march to protest, which inevitably leads to a conflict with the same police.

Unlike Lovers Rock, which is just over an hour long, Mangrove feels like a real movie with a beginning, middle and end i.e. a simpler three-act structure, but it also runs for over two hours. Honestly, this could have been shown in theaters on its own, and I would have been satisfied, although I’m more than curious how that ties into the other movies.

The first act of the movie is similar to Lovers Rock as you’re allowed to look into this community and how they try to enjoy their lives together but having difficulty doing so due to the violent police raids, much of this part focusing more on Crichlow than the others. The actual protest march is the film’s biggest set piece where a lot of the players come together including the PC Frank Pulley, as played by Sam Spruell. This leads to the third act, which is basically a court trial of about a dozen of the people who frequent the Mangrove, including Crichlow, many of them defending themselves. If there was racism in the way the black people of London are treated by the police, it’s exacerbated when they’re put to trial in a courtroom where the jury only has 2 black members. The judge is so clearly on the side of alleviating the police of any responsibility for what happened that you just get madder and madder as it goes along.

As much as the film is very much Parkes as the lead, the strong support from Wright and the likes of Malachi Kirby as Darcus Howe, who has some amazing courtroom scenes, and Jack Lowden as Ian MacDonald, another one of the barristers. Almost every scene gives McQueen and his crew a chance to show off how well they were able to recreate every aspect of the times, whether it’s the neighborhood or recreating the Old Bailey where the trial takes place. I was just really impressed with everything about the movie from the screenplay, cowritten by McQueen with Alastair Siddons, to the cast and every single performance. All of it comes together so well while telling the very true story of the Mangrove 9 in a way that feels like McQueen doesn’t need to exaggerate anything for the viewer to really feel the injustices in play during that era.

This is an epic film that reminds me a bit of Mike Leigh’s underrated Peterloo last year. Not only did I think Mangrove was better than Lovers Rock, but I also think it’s better than McQueen’s Oscar-winning Best Picture, 12 Years a Slave, so it’s kind of odd that this wasn’t chosen to open the NYFF vs. the far shorter film.

Since it’s October, we might as well start with some scary or semi-scary genre movies, three of which premiered at Sundance earlier this year, at least two in the Midnight Section.

I’ve said before how impressed by the movies that horror streamer Shudder was sharing with its audience and Josh Ruben’s SCARE ME (Shudder), which debuts on Thursday, is no exception. I generally love horror comedies, but this one is more of a comedy horror, mainly being a two-hander as two horror writers hang out in a remote cabin in the middle of winter, trying to scare each other by telling stories. Ruben himself plays Fred Banks, a typical writer/actor/director from Hollywood who really hasn’t written or directed much, but when he meets extremely cynical bestselling horror writer Fanny Addie, as played by Aya Cash (from The Boys), there’s a certain amount of competitive flirtation that you know will lead to a fun movie.

So yeah, I’m not going to say too much about the stories they tell each other or what makes them so riveting and hilarious, but Ruben is not afraid to make things very heightened, whether it’s the performances by the two actors or the use of music or sound FX to really emphasize the horror aspect of the film. It’s hard not to think of something like The Shining or Misery due to the house out in the middle of nowhere, but Ruben also tends to show his horror influences in his script. The movie is working so well as a two-hander before Chris Redd from SNL shows up as the pizza delivery guy Carlo, drugs come out and things start to get even more outrageous and hilarious.

I have to say that I haven’t seen a horror movie this year that I enjoyed quite as much as Scare Me, since it’s so fun even when it starts to get exceedingly more dark in the last act. This is a great deconstruction of the horror genre that manages to create a truly original premise out of a mash-up of horror tropes.

In theaters and drive-ins this Friday and then available digitally next Tuesday, October 6, is Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson’s SAVE YOURSELVES! (Bleecker Street), a genre comedy starring John Reynolds and Sunita Mani (GLOW) as a squabbling couple who decided to take a retreat to a cabin in upstate New York to work on their relationship sans any electronics… only to miss the alien invasion that is progressively destroying the rest of the country.

It’s kind of funny seeing this back-to-back with the above Scare Me, because they’re both very funny two-handers, although this one was not quite as funny as I was hoping for, maybe because the main couple are cute, but they’re also quite deliberately clueless. They seem very much like a lot of younger people these days who want to try to better themselves but they’re so addicted to their smartphones, they don’t always realize how bad their behavior looks.

I did like what the filmmakers managed to do with mostly just the two actors and the semi-adorable gas-guzzling furball aliens who show up and terrorize the duo for the second half of the movie. Like with Scare Me, I don’t want to say too much about what happens to them, because that’s more than half the fun of watching the ordeal they end up going through, but it’s a different directorial debut and a great showcase for the talents of Mani (who I’ve seen a few things) and Reynolds (whose work I really didn’t know at all.

Basically, the four of them take a fun concept and do a lot with what is also essentially a two-hander that gets stranger and stranger but never is as outright funny as I was hoping it might be with such a great premise.

Brandon Cronenberg (yes, that Cronenberg) drops his second movie, POSSESSOR UNCUT (NEON), which debuted in the midnight section of Sundance earlier this year. Unfortunately, like the two movies above, it is one where knowing too much might detract from actually enjoying what happens. Essentially, Andrea Riseborough plays Tasya, an assassin who is transplanted into another body via her handler (Jennifer Jason Leigh) but one particular hit, which puts her into the body of Christopher Abbott’s Colin Tate goes horribly wrong.

I think that’s enough of a set-up for a movie that you will probably know immediately whether it will be for you as you watch, particularly after an intensely gory murder which you’ll watch with very little context of what is happening. In fact, you might spend quite a bit of Possessor Uncut unsure of what is going on, and that’s both a plus and a minus towards my overall enjoyment of the movie. Again, I don’t want to give too much away but much of the movie deals with what happens when Tasya is transplanted into the body of a man dealing with his own inner demons (Abbott), leading up to her having to conduct the hit on her target, Tate’s future father-in-law, as played by Sean Bean.

There’s something quite futuristic and other-worldly about all aspects of Possessor Uncut, but Cronenberg handles all the sci-fi elements in the film in such a matter-of-fact way that we never assume this is too far into the future but just watching another version of our own reality. I love Riseborough so much, as she’s easily one of my favorite actors, although I’m a little mixed on Abbott, so mainly seeing him acting like what she might be like controlling his body, it’s a little off-putting to be honest.

What really helps Cronenberg’s bizarre vision more than anything is his second collaboration with his DP Karim Hussain who has grown so much as a cinematographer in the 8 years since Antiviral. Every aspect of the movie’s otherworldliness is enhanced by Hussain’s use of colored filters to keep the viewer off-balance and unsure of what exactly one is watching. But those who are onboard for the type of violence and gore we get early on might be disappointed in how long we have before we get to more of it. In that way, Possessorreminds me of the recent

There’s no denying that Brandon is his father’s son with the type of storytelling he wants to explore, and he brings the same type of auteurish angle to his gore-filled genre filmmaking that is likely to be similarly divisive on who loves and appreciates it vs. those who just won’t get it at all. Either way, Possessor is as daring as it is weird and freaky and your mileage will vary depending on what you’re expecting.

I had never heard of Aaron Starmer’s book SPONTANEOUS (Paramount Pictures), but Brian Duffield, writer of “The Babysitter” movies on Netflix, makes his directorial debut with quite a dark romantic comedy that seems like a great companion to Words on Bathroom Walls from earlier in the year. Katherine Langford from Cursed and Knives Out plays Mara Carlyle, a senior at Covington High School, who is sitting in class one day when one of her classmates explodes, and as others also start exploding, she ends up bonding with Charlie Plummer’s Dylan, as the two young lovers stand together to try to survive.

I generally like coming-of-age and high school movies and I definitely have some favorites, both classics and more recent ones. Let me say right now that this one is VERY dark but also very funny and enjoyable, so it immediately reminds me more of something like Heathers in the fact you’ll just be enjoying some part of the story and then some kid explodes in fully gory glory.  Yeah, it’s something that might be tough for some, because it doesn’t take the typical boy meets girl, lovey-dovey kissy-face movie, although the relationship between Mara and Dylan plays a large part in the movie.

I’ve already been a fan of Plummer’s from some of his previous work, but Langford is really fantastic in this, and this allowed me to see her in a whole new light as much as I thought she played a fine part in Knives Out. It was also great to see unlikely candidates like Rob Huebel and Piper Perabo playing her parents, and I also dug Haley Law as Mara’s best friend Tess.

The movie starts out as one thing but by the second half, it’s turning into something more akin to George Romero’s 1973 The Crazies where all of Covington’s seniors are locked up in a facility being tested with drugs that hopefully will keep them from exploding.  The only real problem is that it does get very dark including one plot point that might lose a lot of those that have enjoyed watching the Senior Class of Whenever spontaneously exploding.

In a week where we have a truly dreadful high school movie about heroin addiction (see below), who would have imagined that a far better movie would be the one where high school kids are randomly blowing up as they frequently do in Spontaneous? This is a pretty fantastic directorial debut by Duffield, a devilishly funny take on an overused genre but one that also stands up with the best of them. Here’s hoping Duffield gets to direct another movie because from this and “The Babysitter” movies, it’s clear he has very distinct voice and style ala Election-era Alexander Payne that would could lead to some great stuff in the future.

Next up, we have one for the boys and one for the girls…sorry. Ladies.

The Ryan Murphy-produced based on Matt Crowley’s 1968 stageplay THE BOYS IN THE BAND hits Netflix on Wednesday. Directed by Joe Mantello, who also directed the recent Broadway revival, it’s an ensemble piece featuring  Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer as three of seven gay friends who congregate the Upper East Side apartment of Michael (Parsons) to celebrate the birthday of Harold (Quinto), his birthday party including a number of surprise guests including Michael’s married college friend Alan (Brian Hutchison) and a stripper known as “Cowboy.”

I’ve never seen the stageplay on which this is based, although I know a lot about it, including the fact that it takes place on a single night all on one set. Mantello’s movie includes the entire cast from the recent 2018 Broadway revival which he also directed, so you just know everyone will be bringing their A-game. While there are some big names from the screen in the cast, there are just as many amazing moments from some of the other characters, including Robin De Jesus’ Emory, Larry (Andrew Rannels), Bernard (Michael Benjamin Washington), Hank (Tuc Watkins), as well as Bomer playing Michael’s good-looking boyfriend Donald.

That obviously well-rehearsed cast brought a lot to my first experience with  Crowley’s beloved play, their hilarious patter and interaction making the first part of the movie so light and entertaining, particularly a campy dance number to the song “Heawave.” But the film also gets quite serious by the second half, and that’s despite taking place over a decade before AIDS reared its ugly head.

Much of that drama arrives at the same time as Michael’s homophobic college friend Alan shows up without ever saying why he needed to talk to Michael so urgently – we definitely can put two and two together but it’s never confirmed out loud. When Harold finally shows up, he acts like a complete asshole to everyone, but it’s quite an amazing and standout performance by Quinto, although he becomes more of a spectator as the night goes on.

But the entire cast is amazing and they’re all given moments to shine. Parsons really blew me away with his performance, and De Jesus is absolutely at first but handles the drama just as well, and I can go on and on about what a tight ensemble producer Murphy brought from stage to screen.

Boys in the Band doesn’t just deal with homophobia in the late ’60s, as it also allows these very different gay men to come to terms with their sexuality, talking about how they first realized they were gay, as well as talking about monogamy and fidelity. It would certainly be interesting to see an updated version of this set in present day, but the 1968 text and context still works just fine.

If you’ve never seen any other iteration of this play, Mantello and his cast have done a pretty fantastic job turning a one-location play into something that’s far more cinematic. I think we can expect Boys in the Band to be included in a number of Emmy categories next year.

If Boys in the Band is too much of a sausage factory for you, then there’s THE GLORIAS (LD Entertainment, Roadside Attractions), hitting digital and Amazon Prime on Wednesday i.e. today. I can’t think of any filmmaker better than Julie Taymor to tell the story of Gloria Steinem, because this is in fact a biopic about the feminist activist, as played by Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander and two talented young actresses during the earlier scenes.

I have to be honest that I never really knew much about Steinem except for her role in the Women’s Movement and trying to get the Equal Rights Act passed in the ‘70s and her involvement in so many important women’s movements in recent years, including #MeToo. As with much of her work, Taymor takes a very different approach to the classic biopic, switching between as a little girl in the past, her time spent in India seeing women there struggling with equality, to her fierce fight for women’s rights to have autonomy over their own bodies, which includes getting abortions.

I feel like I need to go back to her childhood where her eccentric father Leo (played by a barely recognizable Timothy Hutton) is always taking her family from one place to another to Steinem as a young woman (as played by Vikander) in India. There’s no question that when Moore enters the picture of the older Steinem where it starts to get interesting. She’s also far better than the generally good Vikander, whose accent doesn’t match up with any of the other actors playing Steinem.

I was a little disappointed that we really didn’t get to see very much of Steinem’s relationship with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, as played by Janelle Monae, who basically appears for two scenes and is gone. Fortunately, it gets more into her affinity for Native Americans, particularly Kimberly Guerrero’s Wilma Mankiller.  Other supporting roles of note include Bette Midler as Bella Abzug and Lorraine Toussaint as Flo Kennedy.

It takes a little time to adjust to the jumps in time and not everyone is going to like the rather pretentious decision to have Steinems from different time periods having conversations on a bus together. On the other hand, Taymor’s recreation of the 1977 Womens Conference is quite impressive, and the movie includes a fun fantasy sequence. The movie essentially does what it’s meant to do, which is to instruct and educate about why Steinem’s place in history is so important, and Taymor does a good job shaking off most of the usual biopic tropes, sometimes to success and other times not so much.

Darren Lynn Bousman, director of a bunch of the “Saw” movies including next year’s Spiral, helms DEATH OF ME (Saban Films), a psychological thriller starring Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth as married couple, Christine and Neil Oliver, who find themselves stranded on a remote island near Thailand where the couple are trapped when a typhoon hits. The couple wake up confused about what happened over the previous 12 hours until they find a video of Neil killing and burying Christine. Hilarity ensues. (No, not really. This is in fact a deadly serious psychological thriller.)

Listen, I love Maggie Q, and I’m so happy to see her in a third movie this year, even if it’s a little strange that this one is set in a similar island paradise as the generally superior Blumhouse’s Fantasy Island from earlier in the year. This one is also similarly high concept, even borrowing a bit from The Hangover (still, not a comedy), except that the premise gets so diluted by vague and esoteric nightmarish scenes used to keep Christine (and the viewer) in a constant state of confusion.

This feels like such a different type of movie for Bousman, maybe because of the environment or the lush look created by that location which informs the film. In some ways, it reminded me of Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow, and I usually like this type of mind-fuck type movie, but Death of Me just goes too far down that rabbit hole, and the only answer it gives in terms of what is happening is a fairly lame twist near the end. There’s no question this might have been worse in the hands of a less adept filmmaker, because the movie does look good, but I had a hard time connecting with any of it. You’ll notice that I didn’t have much to say about Luke Hemsworth’s character and that’s because he has so little personality when he mysteriously vanishes midway through the movie, you just don’t miss him at all.

At times, Death of Me comes across like a Southeast Asian Midsommar, and Maggie Q generally gives a terrific performance to help sell the terror her character must endure. Unfortunately, that effort and her talent is wasted, because the movie frequently goes so far overboard it’s impossible to get back once it begins to go too far off the rails.

Going from psychological thriller right into futuristic sci-fi with Seth Lamey’s 2067 (RLJEFilms), starring Kodi Smith-McPhee as Ethan Whyte, a young man living during a time when the earth has been disabled by the lack of oxygen. Ethan works in the mines with his older brother (Ryan Kwanten) but he’s suddenly called upon as the potential savior of earth, as he’s sent 400 years into the future to bring back a cure for earth’s woes.

Where do I even begin with a movie that generally should be something I like, but it takes so long to get even remotely interesting? This one had me vacillating between enjoying what was going on and generally being annoyed by everything. I’m not even sure where to begin except for the central premise of all plant life being dead meaning there’s no oxygen for humans. It’s a decent idea for sure but one that’s quickly lost when you realize that this is going to be another well-intentioned movie that isn’t executed very well.

The entire set-up for the movie doesn’t particularly work, but when Ethan is shot 400 years into the future via something called “The Chronicle,” he’s suddenly on an earth full of lush vegetation and no way of getting back. The movie does get slightly better at that point, because it doesn’t rely on people walking around in gas masks – cause there’s no oxygen, get it? – but Smit-McPhee really struggles to carry this section, frequently leaning on Kwanten once Ethan’s older brother shows up. I just don’t think Smit-McPhee has aged well nor has he improved much as an actor, so making him the lead is already questionable, especially when you put Kwanten into more of a supporting role, and that’s really just the tip of the iceberg for the movie’s problems.

Unfortunately, 2067 is harder to follow than most time travel movies but mainly because it chooses to jump back and forth in time, frequently stealing liberally from Blade Runner’s futuristic noir and other movies.  The writing is pretty bad, and the weak cast does little to elevate it with way too much over-emoting in almost every scene.

Even the score, which would have been great if used to embellish a better movie, tends to overpower everything, essentially used as a crutch to instill emotion for characters that are hard to care about. On top of that, the storytelling is all over the place to the point where few will be focused enough to care.

Sure, there’s some nice production design at work despite substandard VFX, and otherwise, 2067 is mostly bland and highly derivative sci-fi that comes off like a bad low-budget episode of Doctor Who with little of that show’s entertainment value.

Where do I even begin with SNO BABIES (Better Noise Films), a heavy-handed PSA about drug addiction written by Michael Walsh and directed by Bridget Smith that’s available via VOD right now. It stars Katie Kelly as Kristen McCusker, a Princeton-bound high school senior who has turned her first taste of oxy into a full-blown heroin addiction as we see her dragged down a rabbit hole of absolutely every possibly awful thing that could happen to her over the course of two hours, just so that…  well, I won’t spoil what happens.

There are times while watching a movie when you’re not too far into it, and you quickly realize that you’re watching a very bad movie. I certainly didn’t have to go that far into Sno Babies before seeing Kelly’s character being put through so much awfulness that it made my skin crawl more than any sort of torture porn. Whether it’s watching her or her awful friend Hannah (Paula Andino) sticking a hypodermic full of heroin into her tongue or seeing her getting raped at a party because she’s in a heroin-fueled stupor. And that’s just the first 15 minutes of the movie!

Instead of staying focused on Kristen’s journey, which is like a cross between Mean Girls and Requiem for a dream, the filmmakers also introduce a young couple, Matt and Anna (Michael Lombardi, Jane Stiles), who are trying to have a baby, Matt’s sister Mary, Kristen’s mother Clare and her real estate business, as well as a problematic coyote that takes up much of Matt’s time. Yes, this coyote ends up playing as larger and larger role in the plot and how it comes together that even if you think you know where things are going (and are probably partially right), you will be left incredulous by everything that happens over the course of the movie until it’s absolutely ludicrous last act.

So yeah, the writing is not good, the actors are very bad and every aspect of the film is so poorly made and directed, it’s impossible to even appreciate it as what it’s intended – to make a PSA for teenagers to try to keep them off of … heroin.  (Yes, there are lots of other drugs that are far easier to get in the suburbs, but for whatever reason, they decided to go with heroin.) Except that the movie is so bad few teenagers will be able to get past the first 15 minutes, which means it’s a failed effort from jump.

Kelly is certainly put through a lot, including a lot of bad FX make-up, but in many ways, Andino plays a far more interesting character with a better arc, but there’s no way of realizing that until the very end, which just makes the whole thing even more bonkers.

The filmmakers behind Sno Babies must have some sort of sadistic streak to make viewers endure everything various characters are put through, but especially Kristen and Hannah. Listen, I’m never been one to get so mad at a movie that I ever actually yelled at my laptop… until Sno Babies.  Let me just say that it’s a good thing I don’t have direct neighbors because they would start thinking they live next door to a psycho who keeps yelling odd things out of the blue. 

Sno Babies is like an Afterschool Special on heroin, in other words, it’s unwatchable trash. Your brain would have to be on drugs to stick with it through the end. As the worst movie I’ve seen this year, it would be an understatement if I were to say that the people who made this movie should never be allowed to make another movie again.

And then we get to all the movies I wish I could get to but just didn’t have time due to my insanely busy schedule right now. I hope to get to watch some of them later but didn’t want to hold up this week’s column too much.

Lydia Dean Pilcher’s A CALL TO SPY (IFC Films) seems like my kind of movie I might like, a WWII drama about how Churchill started recruiting and training women as spies for his Special Operations Executive (SOE) in order to conduct sabotage and rebuild the resistance. Stana Katic plays Vera Atkins, who recruits two such candidates, Sarah Megan Thomas’ Virginia Hall, an American with a wooden leg, and Radhika Atpe’s Noor Inayat Khan, a Muslim pacifist, as the three women infiltrate Nazi-occupied France. The film is based on true stories, and hopefully I’ll get a chance to see it.

Streaming on Netflix this Friday is Kristen (Cameraperson) Johnson’s new doc DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance earlier this year. This one is about her 86-year-old stuntman father and how she deals with the fact that he’s eventually going to die, but literally staging all sorts of cinematic ways of killing him. This one I actually did get a chance to watch before finishing the column, and it was pretty tough to watch, mainly since I’m dealing with my own coming to terms that my slightly older mother may not be around for much longer. This is such a strange and only mildly entertaining movie, because it is so personal for Johnson, but I’m kind of shocked by how many people in her life would go along with making such a morbid and macabre film.  This definitely won’t be for everyone, and I’m not quite sure how I’d feel about it if my mother died – my father’s been dead for 11 years, incidentally – but I’m not quite sure to whom this movie would appeal. Either way, it’s on Netflix so you can throw it on if you have nothing else to watch.

Other stuff streaming on Netflix this week includes the kid-friendly horror film Vampires vs the Bronx and the streamer’s latest true crime docuseries American Murder: The Family Next Door.

Another music doc that I’ll have to check out is Herb Alpert Is… (Abramorama), the latest from John Scheinfeld (Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary), and it will get a live world premiere on Thursday night at 5PM PST/8PM PST featuring a Q&A with Alpert himself via Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter and www.herbalpertis.com.  On Friday, it will be available via Amazon, iTunes and other platforms as well as via DVD… and lots of other formats, including “LP format featuring a coffee table book and a five-piece 180 gram vinyl set.” Wow. I’ve always been interested in Alpert from his amazing career as a musician to his equally fantastic career running A&M Records, which discovered some of the biggest artists over the decades that followed. I can guarantee that I’ll be watching this movie very soon.

Also, Daniel Traub’s Ursula Von Ryingvard: Into her Own from Icarus Films, an innocuous title about a woman of whom I’ve never heard, will open via Virtual Cinema. Apparently, she’s a sculptor, and that doesn’t do much to pique my interest, although the fact it’s only an hour long might mean I watch it soon, as well.

Also wasn’t able to get to Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s The Keeper (Menemsha Films), which will stream on Kino Lorber’s Virtual Cinema.It’s a biopic about Bert Traumann, as played by David Kross, about a German soldier and prisoner of war who becomes Manchester City’s goalkeeper, much to the consternation of the soccer team’s thousands of Jewish fans. It leads up to the team’s victory at the 1956 FA Cup Final that finally gets him fans. I’m also kind of interested in the historic epic The Legend of Tomiris (Well GO USA), which seems to be getting a digital only release, but I honestly haven’t heard peep about the movie’s release other than the fact it’s opening. That’s not good.

Another movie I was hoping to catch but there were JUST TOO MANY DAMN MOVIES! was Brea Grant’s 12 Hour Shift (Magnet Releasing), which stars Angela Bettis, and it’s a 1998 thriller set in an Arkansas hospital where a junkie nurse, her scheming cousin and a group of black market organ-trading criminals get caught up in heist that goes wrong.

To be honest, I really just didn’t have much interest in Adriana Trigiani’s Then Came You (Vertical), which actually received Fathom Events screenings before it’s On Demand/Digital release on Friday. It stars daytime talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford (who wrote the screenplay!) with Craig Ferguson, Gifford playing a widow who is travelling the world with her husband’s ashes before meeting Ferguson’s innkeeper.  Gee, why on earth would Ed be dubious of a movie starring a daytime talk show host and a former late night television host? Gee, I wonder. I didn’t see it. Maybe it’s great, but nothing less than being paid to watch this movie would get me to watch it, so there we are.

Other movies out this week in some form or another include Rising Hawk (Shout! Studios), The Antenna (Dark Star Pictures), Eternal Beauty (Samuel Goldwyn Films), Tar (1091), Do Not Reply (Gravitas Ventures), The Great American Lie (Vertical), Honey Lauren’s Wives of the Skies (Hewes Pictures) on Amazon Prime on Tuesday, The Call (Cinedigm), Chasing the Present (1091), Haroula Rose’s adaptation of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River, The Devil to Pay (Dark Star Pictures/Uncork’D Entertainment), and something called Alien Addiction (Gravitas Ventures). I’m sure there’s some good stuff in there, and congrats to the filmmaker for finishing a movie and getting it released but… and you may have heard this before… THERE ARE TOO MANY FUCKING MOVIES!!!!

A couple festivals starting this week includes the 43rd Asian American International Film Festival, which runs from October 1 through 11, and it seems to include a pretty impressive line-up of features and shorts, and though I haven’t seen many, the one I’m highly recommending again (as I have when it played other festivals) is the doc Far East Deep South.

Also, American Cinematique’s Beyond Fest starts this Friday at the Mission Tiki Drive-In in Montclair, California, running from October 2 though October 8. It begins with a double feature of the upcoming The Wolf of Snow Hollow (out next week!) paired with The ‘Burbs, then goes into a David Lynch triple feature of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway on Saturday and Saint Maud (a chronically delayed theatrical release) with the classic Misery on Sunday. Monday gets a double feature of new movies in Synchronic and Bad Hair.

Also, the Woodstock Film Festival begins this week, running from Weds. through Sunday, with screenings at the Greenville Drive-In, Overlook Drive-In and Woodstock Drive-In as well as an online component. Highlights include The Father (Opening Night on Thursday, October 1) and the Closing Night film is Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand on Sunday night. You can get tickets and more information on Eventive.

What it comes down to is that there are just too many fucking movies. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. This shit has gotta stop, because there’s no way any single movie can get any attention when so many are being dumped to digital/streaming/VOD/virtual cinema each week.

Next week, more movies not in New York City theaters, which will probably never reopen the way things are going.

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have bothered to read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or drop me a note or tweet on Twitter. I love hearing from readers … honest!

[jodieshazel]

Get Ready Now for the California Cannabis Licensing Logjam

A California cannabis licensing backlog is imminent.

A backlog of cannabis license applications has no doubt happened in almost all of the other states that have medical and adult use licensing. You wouldn’t normally think this is such a big or concerning development, but in cannabis licensing delays can mean angry investors, a complete 180 for your business plans and even insolvency.

In California, a licensing logjam was bound to catch up with regulators, especially as cities and counties start to embrace the democratic experiment of legalization. And now we know that at least one state agency, California Department of Food and Agriculture (“CDFA”), which oversees cultivators, is feeling the pinch of hundreds and hundreds of license applicants.

On Friday, October 26, CDFA sent the following email to its stakeholder list serve:

ATTENTION, PLEASE!

FOR NEW TEMPORARY LICENSES ISSUED PRIOR TO DECEMBER 31, 2018

Due to the large number of applications being submitted for temporary cannabis cultivation licenses, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) hereby notifies prospective applicants that any application for a temporary license received after December 1, 2018, may NOT be processed in time for us to issue a temporary license before January 1, 2019. After December 31, 2018, the authority for CDFA to issue temporary licenses expires. To provide sufficient processing time, please submit your temporary application to CDFA’s CalCannabis Cultivation Licensing Division by December 1, 2018.

Even though MAUCRSA makes clear that temporary licenses will no longer be around (or renewed) after December 31 of this year, CDFA is moving that timeline forward based on the sheer volume of applications for just temporary licenses its received. The kicker here is that you will NOT receive a provisional license (to continue to operate while you wait for your annual license) unless you’ve already had or have a temporary license for the same license type at your same location. And, in case you were living under a rock, provisional licenses are the new form of temporary licenses that the legislature okay’ed at the end of last month. Oddly enough, CDFA is the only agency so far that’s given its roadmap for how to get a provisional, but we imagine (based on statute) it will be pretty much the same protocol for the Bureau of Cannabis Control (“BCC��) and the California Department of Public Health (“CDPH”).

Why is all of this important? To date, temporary licenses (which are good for 120 days) represent the only means by which an operator can open and run its businesses before receiving its annual cannabis license. To get a temporary license, the licensee first has to secure local approval from its local government, which can be easy, somewhat challenging or extremely difficult, depending on the local jurisdiction. Importantly, temporary licenses can be renewed for 90-day increments so long as the license applicant is in pursuit of its annual license with the state. As a start-up business, it’s usually lucrative to be able to get operational very quickly because, in cannabis: 1) you likely already have an operational lease that you’re paying on; 2) you’ve completed a costly build out; and 3) you have to answer to your financiers or at least break even on your own contributions to keep going. If you can’t operate while you wait on your license, your fate is likely to just try to hang on while you bleed cash, and licensing can take months to get depending on the state.

The biggest wrinkle here in California is that many cities and counties are not really paying attention to, or cannot adequately address, this future gap in licensing–namely, if you can’t get your temporary license by the end of the year (which requires prior local approval from your city or county), you’re not operating at all in 2019 unless and until you receive your annual license, which is taking months to secure. (I have clients who applied for their annual license in April of this year and they still have no annual license.) A great example is West Hollywood, which for new license applicants for retail–by the City’s own admission–won’t even be done with its retailer selection process until the end of November. This affords successful applicants very little time, if any, to try and get temporary licenses from the BCC to be able to lock down their provisional licenses thereafter. And if you’re looking at Phase 3 general public licensing in the City of Los Angeles, you may not even get the chance to apply for local approval until 2019. This means you will miss the state temporary licensing deadline, and therefore the ability to get a provisional license altogether.

Indeed, many stakeholders will find that if they cannot get their city or county to give them some form of local approval by or before December 31 (or by December 1 if you’re applying to CDFA) so they can go get their temporary and eventually provisional license(s), they will be sitting on unusable businesses, likely paying rent, until they get their annual license from regulators. To us, this is nothing new as regulators constantly pump the brakes on licensing logistics across the board in order to make the situation more manageable for them. To that end, we’ll also likely see in the future prohibitions on being able to relocate your business while in the annual licensing process, prohibitions on changes of ownership while you’re in the annual licensing process, and prohibitions on changing your business plan or operational lay out in any way until you receive your annual license.

The foregoing all goes to show that regulators can and do shuffle the deck on licensing timelines all the time. Stakeholders have to have their heads on a swivel to survive, and failing to take into account how these licensing deadlines and expectations shift is a massive mistake that will inevitably foreclose the ability to participate for lots of would-be licensees. So, prepare accordingly!

from Canna Law Blog™ https://www.cannalawblog.com/get-ready-now-for-the-california-cannabis-licensing-logjam/

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/this-is-how-wars-start/

This Is How Wars Start

by Rostislav Ishchenko for Actual Comment

Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard

http://www.stalkerzone.org/rostislav-ishchenko-this-is-how-wars-start/

Russia keeps its most powerful grouping of troops in the western direction. Just according to official figures the equivalent of ten divisions under the control of three army HQs – not counting the grouping in Crimea, airborne divisions and forces of special operations, and also two (Baltic and Black Sea) fleets, the Caspian flotilla, the revived Mediterranean squadron, and the grouping in Syria – is concentrated in the space from the Caucasus to the Baltics. I think that I wouldn’t be mistaken if I said that over half of the fighting capacity of Russia is concentrated in the Western strategic direction. And the Ministry of Defence continues at a fast pace to increase forces in this direction. At the same time it is necessary to take into account that in recent years the Russian army gained the highest mobility, i.e., the grouping can be quickly additionally strengthened by transferring forces and means from other regions.

It is clear that this happens not because Sergey Shoigu decided to play with toy soldiers and not because Dmitry Medvedev has to spend budget money, and especially not because Vladimir Putin, showing external peacefulness, secretly plans bad things. The deployment of such a grouping of troops that is especially fully completed during war-time, as well as supplying them with the latest weapons systems and constructing modern military camps and training grounds from scratch, is an extremely expensive luxury for a country that is under sanctions and its economy showed only the first signs of growth and can be easily brought down back — to stagnation. Respectively, if such expensive actions are made, then it means that from this side Russia feels real military danger.

But what is this danger?

Our “dear partners” don’t strongly exaggerate when they claim that neither any European NATO army taken by itself, nor all of them taken together are able to resist the Armed Forces of Russia. It is also not a problem to prevent, with the help of the Air Force and the fleet, the transfer of troops from the US by closing, during a special period, access for convoys to European Atlantic ports. The US isn’t able to deploy in Europe a contingent much bigger than the existing one. And this isn’t even because it is expensive – some countries are ready to pay extra for the deployment of the American troops on their territory, but because of the difficulties in supplying a large group (and without a supply of everything necessary, the army is non-operational).

In general, the existing fighting potential concentrated by Russia in the western direction is enough in order to reach not just Kiev and Lvov, and even not just Warsaw, but even the Atlantic. Even if it isn’t in a week but in 2-3 months, and not without problems and losses.

So why is its further strengthening and improvement happening? After all, by 2025-2030, having not increased in number much, the Russian group in the West must increase its potential two-fold (and perhaps even more) only due to the completion of rearmament and the mastering of new control systems and the principles of conducting combat operations. And here we aren’t even taking into account the nuclear arsenal, which makes any attack on Russia suicidal.

Let’s start with smaller things that are closer to home. Recently Mikhail Denisenko – calling himself the Patriarch of Kiev and all Rus-Ukraine – stated that the expected reception from Constantinople of Tomos of Autocephaly will allow the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate not just to sharply increase its numbers at the expense of parishioners of Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, but will make it “the only lawful Ukrainian church”. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, in his opinion, will be forcibly renamed into the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The most symbolic temples and monasteries – in particular, the Kiev-Pecherskand Pochaevskaya Lavras – will have to be expropriated from it.

It is clear that Denisenko won’t be able to solve this problem without violence. But violence means the start in Ukraine of a religious civil war. Groups of militants that will have to put the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate into a new framework now train themselves using Romanis, but are already ready to expand the area of terror to other ethnic minorities and to the Russian national majority, and also to use their acquired skills in the race for power among the Ukrainian clans.

I want to highlight that Denisenko himself, like most acting Ukrainian politicians and especially radical nationalist militants, can’t refuse terror, which provides the monopoly on power. They committed too many crimes in order to simply find themselves in opposition due to a loss of power. They risk going to prison, but taking into account that the international tribunals for war crimes more often than not use punishments that aren’t provided by national codes, so then it is possible that it can be the death penalty.

It must be kept in mind that Denisenko, irrespective of receiving Tomos, will realise his program of capturing absolute power in Ukrainian Orthodoxy. The legalisation of his public organisation [the unrecognised Kiev Patriarchate – ed] by the Constantinople patriarchy, the recognition of it as the canonical church would give him additional benefits, but time is limited — Denisenko, and especially his militants, can’t wait infinitely. It is necessary to solve this issue before the termination of the next electoral cycle in Ukraine, which, by the way, most likely can end ahead of schedule and without elections in general. While the conflicting political camps (Poroshenko, on the one hand, and his political opponents who formed an oligarchical anti-Poroshenko consensus on the other hand) are busy fighting each other and need support, the window of opportunity for a forceful solution to the question with church buildings and status starts to open. If there is a delay, politicians, having solved their problems, can be much less inclined to look through their fingers at the forceful actions of Denisenko’s “patriarchate”.

As the question concerning power in Ukraine can be solved without waiting for elections, in the summer-winter of the current year Denisenko should also hurry and meet this deadline.

I.e., a multilayered conflict can appear in Ukraine, when the intra-Kiev civil conflict will be superimposed on civil war between Kiev and Donbass, and also religious war will start to flare up on top of all of this.

In this situation neither Russia, nor the western neighbors of Kiev from the EU can remain on the sidelines. However, the European Union is already going through a rough patch – contradictions between the poor South and the rich North constantly amplify, the contradictions between the pro-American East and the pro-European West of Europe are superimposed on this. In every individual state of the EU the conflict between nationalists, who demand an urgent restoration of relations with Russia, and globalists, who want to continue the confrontational policy of sanctions, smoulders and gradually inflames. The intervention of some EU members in the Ukrainian crisis can lead to an aggravation of all these contradictions to the limit and raise the question already not about the unity of the West, which was buried by Trump during the last G7 summit, but about the unity of the European Union itself and about the stability of separate national regimes of European countries.

Having become, willingly or unwillingly, the initiator and the catalyst of the disintegration of Ukraine, Europe risks repeating its fate during the next cycle of history, having caught an incurable infection from the corpse of Ukrainian statehood. Both Russia and the US have interests in Europe that are too serious in order to let matters drift, therefore intervention and the collision of interests will also be inevitable.

At the same time it should be kept in mind that not only in Ukraine, but also in the majority of European countries the acting political elites in a similar kind of crisis situation can’t refuse power without having exposed their lives and freedom to the most serious risk. And here we absolutely don’t even take into account the factor of foreign culture (Afro-Asian) migration, which will certainly significantly contribute to the destabilisation of both certain states and the European system in general.

We are in a situation when the world that is habitual to us can fall like a house of cards across all the space from the Atlantic to the Narva and Don. Any attempt to stabilise the situation at an early stage of the crisis before the EU has finally turned into Somalia, Afghanistan, or Ukraine will demand from Russia to immediately extend a hand to Germany as the economic and political center of Europe, and without involving Germany’s potential the fight against the European crisis will unambiguously turn into a Sisyphean task.

Germany is a weak country militarily, and its importance in controlling Europe is understood not only in Russia, but also in the US, which, should the European crisis start, will become an objective opponent of Moscow in the fight for the right to define the future of the continent. I.e., it is necessary for Russia to breakthrough and provide a corridor to Germany from the flanks. At this time there must be enough reserves should there be a need to support intermediary efforts aimed at preserving Germano-French unity. There will be a need to act quickly, anticipating the geopolitical opponent in three strategic directions at once (the main one: the Western direction and the accompanying Southwestern and Northwestern flanks). The number and qualitative predominance of the grouping must ensure, first of all, the suppression of any resistance of illegal and semi-legal formations. Secondly, it must nip in the bud any thoughts about possible official resistance inside all state structures. And, lastly, is mustn’t allow the US to involve in the conflict the troops that are already placed in Europe, because of the senselessness of such an action.

In this case it is not about aggression, but about ensuring the radical interests of both Russia and the European Union, preventing Europe from slipping into a long bloody crisis that destroys the economy and the population in the huge once prospering territories. Moreover, the existence and increasing weight of this grouping serves as a good argument forcing any provokers to think three times before realising their criminal plans.

And nevertheless we can’t but take into account that a considerable part of the European elite dirtied itself by committing crimes (both war crimes and crimes against humanity). Being people who easily go back on their word, they are capable of not believing any security guarantees and making an attempt to resist up to the end. That’s why the grouping must not only look menacing, but it must be really capable of achieving objectives in the shortest possible time. The effectiveness and also low resource intensity of any operation directly depends on its brevity. The shorter the blitzkrieg is, the more effective it is, and the lower the losses and expenses are. The best blitzkrieg is the one that didn’t take place, when everything was decided only by the projection of force.

The demonstration of force and the quiet readiness to use it acts in our case as the best diplomatic argument. But it is necessary to understand that if in Germany or the US this argument is clear to all and was properly evaluated long ago, then for example, in Ukraine, owing to the progressing marginalisation of both society and the political class, there isn’t even anyone to evaluate it. Owing to the general geopolitical situation that developed around this country, which the West, by its actions, artificially attached key importance to, it is precisely Kiev where the launch button for an all-European conflict is, and, by all accounts, within the framework of existing political and diplomatic possibilities it is unlikely that it will be possible to peacefully deactivate this charge.

[oscar-randle-bct]

Context and Challenges (creative audio formative submission)

Over the past few weeks, the challenge I have been faced with regarding the moonshine EP is the implementation of the multi theme concept (western/sci-fi). Reflexively, the the types of sounds that come to mind regarding sci-fi themes are slow pads and synths falling in line with many popular portrayals of the aesthetic. However, while I feel like I pretty much have the western theme sorted on the guitar, I have been puzzled by how to compliment my recordings with the types of sci-fi sounds I mentioned. While i’m confident that I can get them to work eventually, they often contradict each other and its quite tedious to have to constantly record samples separately to my DAW and then import/engineer them in order to accomplish basic conceptual testing. Having said this, working with synthesizers is definitely my weak spot when it comes to producing and so I have been looking into other ways to accomplish my goal.

During our in class critique session, Clint mentioned to me that the original theme behind Star Wars was essentially the wild west in space. However much of the musical theme of star wars is the famous John Williams orchestral score rather than being dominated by slow sci-fi pads etc. This played on a suspicion that I have had throughout the development of my Idea for Moonshine that traditional portrayals of sci-fi themes don’t necessarily have to be included in my music in order to make it work aesthetically. In fact, as iv’e mentioned in the past on Tumblr, i’m quite a believer in this methodology. Another quick example is a famous anime cartoon called Cowboy Bebop which has a similar wild west-space theme but has used an amazing Jazz based score for its musical expression.

It’s crossed my mind to just play my guitar for my project and exclude the idea for sci-fi synths, however then the space theme and therefore the basis of the EP becomes irrelevant because it could be just a plain western theme at that point. Because Iv’e already said that this is what I was doing, I don’t want to be perceived as a lazy reneger - But at the same time, I really dont want to be tied down to a pre-established theme. From a passion perspective, all I want to do is have the freedom to go with the flow in this (I don’t think this is an issue, Clint’s pretty cool like that). But that doesn’t mean I cant make it creative...

This led me to experimentation. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I am using Guitar Rig 5 for my recordings which comes with a multitude of cool and interesting effects and amplifiers. I started to play around and found that using preset builds designed for heavy solo’s, I can create interesting noises by tapping on the side of the guitar while barring the strings to adjust pitch. I also played around with some soft recordings and neck slides.

https://soundcloud.com/randlessounds/sets/experimental-recordings

Taking on board the methodology of Star Wars and Cowboy Bebop, completely contrary to my early conceptualization I have created the basis for a Drum and Bass track (as iv’e been listening to a lot of it lately) for experimental purposes. My intention is to experiment with guitar samplings in this track in the future and see where that goes. Production-wise, I sampled and sped up an old beat by James Brown (common practice in DnB production) to 170 bmp, worked through a variety kicks snares, shakers and high hats and selected one each. Created a basic place-holder white noise riser on an oscillator and added reverb and delay to a cowbell sample. Just as examples, I have exported two versions one with some basic piano chords and sub bass I made, and the other with a syth bass  to display some ideas of the songs future development. 

Piano - https://soundcloud.com/randlessounds/dnb-concept

Bass - https://soundcloud.com/randlessounds/dnb-concept-2

The other alternative is the original idea to expand on these recordings I made for the critique. They look a while to create and I had a lot of fun playing them so It might be a shame not to use them. 

https://soundcloud.com/randlessounds/sets/creative-audio-critique-recordings

I realize that aside from all of this, the amount of actual musical composition I have made isn’t huge. This is partly due to the fact that I’m confident I can assemble what I need in a fairly short time frame once I know what I’m doing -  I’m doing an audio based project for studio this semester and so am constantly engaging musically in conceptualization and experimentation. Although I am extremely wary of “double dipping” work across papers, inevitably some of my thoughts and ideas cross streams. However, being overconfident often leads to disaster and so I without distractions from other things during the mid semester break, I plan on putting in some solid hours for creative audio and start actually assembling my EP.

Going forward my priorities are...

- Make a decision on concept

- Record samples

- Assemble/experiment in DAW

- Work on some art and branding for the EP.

I plan to touch on all of these during the break and leave plenty of room for polishing as the paper draws to an end.

[theticokid-blog]

I'm theorzing the likelyhood of being connected with my family this month and I'm sitting at a solid 0%, except for my sister and my step sister. I'm sorry to rant and bitch and it's not like I want to be divisive towards any positive vibes out there, nor am I ranting to gain some kind of sympathy above other people's pain, but it's pretty frustrating feeling like you're this entity no one wants to associate with and yet there's been no real communication about why everyone is 'embarassed of me', other than essentially being straight up told I'm not intelligent enough and I'm a failure and one relative literally told me at the last family 'dinner' I went to, that said, quote " You should never have come out of homelessness"( this was something I had a hard time coming to terms with and it was a big thing to get past that)...to think that I was somehow better off being literally nowhere, is a bit disruptive to my drive in life, which is already like a rusted tercel upon no tires - it's been a very difficult year, but I've at least invested time in trying to learn new things about myself, explore some education expansion with my own forked out money, etc even if I'm not where I want to be..and I know i'm not and I'm self respecting enough to understand a lot of this is my fault This has been a year..where... I've tried my best to get out of some unfortunate incidents and tried new things, etc Being adopted opened me up to many opportunities in my life, but it's also proven to be a struggle at times with trying to identify my place. I've had some job struggles line up, have lost one nephew to cancer, with another one in pscyh who I'm on the phone hook for and I'm really worried about...( this is because those that know me, know I've tried to leave earth before )...I've had to watch my mom become controlled by a mysogynistic man to the point where she's been cut out of talks with her own brothers and barely has a repore going with me...which hurts, but she see's no wrong in this man and it's like i just want to end him-- I've lost money and sold things dear to me to get to the next day in the summer because I was wrongfully fired when I tried to bring up a coworker who was being racist to me ....medically I'm upset, I dont like who I see in the mirror between stretch marks, egg shaped face and the sunken eye sockets that harass my soul...I'm trying to find the means to exercise when possible , but I've allowed myself to fall a victim to my urges for poor dietary choices ( namely pop/caffeine products ) because at this point it's the only thing agitating my seratonin ➡All of this has prevented me from continuing my work with my sifu, whom I wanted to earn another belt under. Meanwhile,on the horizon, I have a surgery that I need that's being delayed, it was supposed to transpire in October, but due to an extense of risks wanting to be checked over by my specialist before hand ( & in conflict with more tests being haphazardly misplaced ), I'm instead left to play hook bait with my own General Practitoner, who is constantly on vacation in Mexico. I've been on medications for depression and been off - which considering I was almost on every known pill for my adhd as a kid, I think has kind of negatively altered me... so the whole 'carry this cyst like growth every day' is just the cherry on a pile of shit. I've been really proud of the more holistic approaches I've taken to my hyperactivity and I identify my personality trying to shine through more..But it's difficult at times to be at peace with my issues. I'm still recovering from having a steel L- Shore ( a type of concrete masonry building support beam ) fall on me and now I need more physio for this injury that's permamently affected my right arm. At the beginning of summer, I gave up on wrestling with work safe BC over renewal claims for this incident that's been plaguing my mental patience since 2016- I'm certified for pre-dem tech , carpentry and Vertical Dem Tech and can never do any of that again, with the irony being that construction trades and even landscaping over a period of 5 years has warped my body. I can't do animation anymore, nor do I want to..but at least I'm ( sort of ) doing art now and then.. I miss love/being able to share that with someone. I'm a sensual kind of person, very physical and I hope I can have that again one day. However, I hate how I thought I recovered from being abused, cheated on and used in the past, yet I still play my own internal mental tape over and over...I tell myself if it was me now, back to my old self...I would have turned the other way...but some days I cry at 3:00 am thinking it was my own doing... I'm trying to camoflage my aggravtion with humor, music and memes...Does it work? Idk.. I miss my dog dearly, but love my cat and sorta just wish I was one at this point..I'm proud to at least have raised more than 3,100$ for Canine West Neurological Research for dogs suffering from rare and debilitave conditions. *ANYWAY*...with all this being said, I have met some new people, had some fun experiences and learned to love the prospect of where I could be soon if I don't give up. I have a job and a roof over my head and my cat..I have shoes and a wallet and some health, just not perfect health...I know I need to make stronger efforts at being open with people who've been there for me. So for those that have, it's been relieving....I have tried to accept other parts of myself Inevitably, I'll likely always have this itching sensation that something inside is trying to settle for the darkness welling in my heart, but I will do what I can to become stronger and follow the light. I know one thing that I've been doing is trying to help others through their pain and it's been really thought provoking for me. I've been doing some writing and try to get out every day if I'm not working, so anyways...I've exhausted my self on this rant sorry about this I'm just sick of dealing with this and i've been battling myself since highschool, it's pathetic and I know I can be so much more I guess I'm just exhausted...really quite tired

[zaraehedderman-blog]

State’s Videos of the Week #15

Frank Ocean generated a lot of headlines and conversation surrounding the details of the inevitable release of his second album. The release date was pushed back at least fifteen times, he announced a date for fans to expect Boys Don’t Cry, which was then renamed Blonde, and nothing arrived. Fans were devastated and furious with the rapping flaneur’s silence. Eventually, Ocean shared two albums: one to listen to and one to watch. Blonde has been met with positive feedback and it is as though the process of waiting for new material wasn’t actually that bad. Admittedly, I was not one of the people refreshing news updates of the album’s release but I’m a person and like everyone else in the world I’ve experienced the smoking and bubbling cauldron that is waiting, time and delays. We have become so eager to measure time and constantly point out the timeframes on almost everything we and those around us do. It’s paralysing, and by focusing on how long it will take to get from A to B instead of doing it there is a delay and then time slips away and suddenly days and weeks pass.

Timing is one of the most frustrating and confusing concepts to humans, particularly now when everything is so immediate and can be tracked and timed so accurately. Which is why people were getting so aggravated by Frank Ocean. Looking at it with an outlier perspective it could be said that Ocean’s delaying gratification demonstrated how shockingly impatient and easily agitated we have become. In the end his fans were awarded with two full length albums so the wait was not entirely in vain. The moral of the story this week is the timeless (if you’ll excuse the expression) saying, if something is really worthwhile the wait will always pay off.

Frank Ocean – ‘Nikes’

“I’ve got two versions.” This was the most cryptic message to be decoded by Reddit users, journalists and Frank Ocean fans across the world this week as patience was rewarded with not one, but two new musical projects by the prolifically unorthodox rapper. Ocean garnered a level of attention and anticipation for Blonde, the follow up album to Channel Orange, as well as a visual album entitled Endless, culminating in a hysteria that surpassed the hype surrounding Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo. Being in the unique position to have such a magnified focus on his music and image, what is Frank Ocean saying with his words and video? The video for ‘Nikes’, the opening song to Blonde, has a little bit of everything for everyone. There’s nudity, a rapping Chihuahua, a dancing devil, a lot of glitter, party scenes and a lady of a certain age in a metallic bikini being caressed by her younger man. In all, I think it’s safe to say that Frank Ocean is All In with artfully maturing his aesthetic and being more adventurous with how we experience and long for music.

Will Butler – ‘Friday Night’ (Merge Records)

It’s safe to say that we can all relate to the irrational angsty actions of Will Butler’s fictitious teenage son in his vide for ‘Friday Night’, from the live album of the same title. It’s a little disorientating to watch a music video with a storyline that is out of context for a song from a live album which was, obviously, recorded in a venue in front of an audience, an audience whose participation and presence you can hear. However, actress and comedienne, Jo Firestone has given this already lively track a new lease of life and meaning by following a sullen teenager on an afternoon of reigned in rebellion which involves stuffing his face with chewing gum, throwing his ice cream cone on the footpath and not walking on the pedestrianised road markings just because he can choose to. He doesn’t want to be just any old chicken crossing the road.

Lisa Hannigan – ‘Ora’ (Play It Again Sam)

Lisa Hannigan settled us nicely into a week of new music by unveiling her Bob Gallagher directed video for ‘Ora’, the latest single from her newly released third solo album, At Swim. The intricate simplicity of the animated video mirrors the unassuming complexity of Hannigan’s music. Ora translates as ‘beautiful seacoast’ a landscape that has provided a structure to the songs on At Swim. This single captures Hannigan at her finest, the sounds and videos born from the songs present a wonderful reinvigoration of her style as a songwriter using music to tell stories. Naturally, with Bob Gallagher at the helm of conceiving an idea for the video we are treated to a really enchanting scene of Lisa’s shadowed profile singing as her song guides a paper made version of herself finding her way along the beautiful seacoast.

YG, Macklemore, G-Eazy – ‘FDT (Fuck Donald Trump) Pt. 2’ (Def Jam Records)

2016 has been a really unpredictable year for several reasons. David Bowie and Terry Wogan passed away, terrorism impinges upon the freedom feel at ease in our daily routines, Brexit actually happened and America is facing a terrifyingly tumultuous future with the scary reality that Trump could become the forty-fifth President of the United States. Strange things and even stranger times. The reality of these social fractions makes for fertile soil to encourage the seed of creativity, especially for songwriters. YG is about to embark on a tour this autumn entitled Fuck Donald Trump, so it is fitting that he released a video for ‘FDT (Fuck Donald Trump) Part 2’, directed by Matt Hobbs. We’ve become accustomed to videos made up of snippets of events happening on the streets this year and this offering is no different with scenes of anti-Trump campaigners at rallies and riots across America. Macklemore and G-Eazy collaborated with YG on the song that serves as a reminder of how awful it would be if the golden haired dragon was to take up residency in the White House and hopefully it resonates with the young voters and fans of these  artists.

Mndsgn – ‘Cosmic Perspective’ (Stones Throw)

Invariably when I am researching and watching new music videos there’s one that will, for no reason at all, make me laugh and not necessarily because the concept of the video is actually funny. West Coast Hip Hop producer, Mndsgn is responsible for said baffled giggles with his video for ‘Cosmic Perspective’, a song you can imagine being played at both a boutique hotel bar on a Friday after work and blasting from speakers on a street to soundtrack the antics of youthful summer evenings. The visual of this video reminded me of (again inexplicably) The Mighty Boosh for the very consciously curated outfits of glitter and lamé that desperately want to exude nonchalance and a “this oversized sequin bodysuit was just waiting for me on my chaise longue,” attitude. Also, there is a feeling that this is possibly what most of George Clinton’s Parliament party nights may have looked like.

http://state.ie/features/frank-ocean-lisa-hannigan-will-butler-more

Originally Published on State.ie, August 2016.

State’s Videos of the Week was a column I wrote for State.ie from May 2016 - May 2017. It provided a summarised insight into music videos released each week.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Scenario ONE: Imagine that you are on board a ship, which is slowly sinking. There is no land in sight, and your radio transmitter is not functioning properly. There are several people on board and you care for them, deeply. You don’t want this to be the end of ‘everything’. What do you do? * A) You fix for yourself a nice portion of fried rice with prawns * B) You turn on the TV set, which is still somehow miraculously working, and watch the news about the future Scottish referendum or on BREXIT * C) You jump into the water immediately, try to identify the damage, and then attempt to do something unthinkable with your simple tools and capabilities: to save the ship Imagine another scenario: SCENARIO TWO: By mistake, your wife eats two full tubes of sleeping pills, supposedly confusing them with a new line of candies. As you find her on the floor, she appears to be unconscious and her face looks rather bluish. What would your course of action be? * A) After you realize that her high heels do not match the color of her pantyhose, you run to the closet in search of a much better pair of shoes to achieve the balance * B) You carry her without delay to the bathroom, pump out her stomach, and try to resuscitate her while calling the ambulance using the speakerphone function * C) You recall how you first met, get nostalgic, and rush to your living room library in order to find a book of love sonnets by Pablo Neruda, which you then recite to her kneeling on the carpet Now brace yourself for a great surprise. Unless you choose C) for scenario one, and B) for scenario two, you can actually consider yourself absolutely “normal” by most North American and European standards. However, if you opt for C) or B) respectively, you could easily pass off for an extremist, a radical and ideological left-wing fanatic. ***** The West has brought the world to the brink of total collapse, but its citizens, even its intellectuals, are stubbornly refusing to grasp the urgency. Like ostriches, many are hiding their heads in the sand. Others are behaving like a surgeon who opts for treating a small cut on a finger of his patient who is actually dying from a terrible gunshot wound. There seems to be an acute lack of rational thinking, and especially of people’s ability to grasp the proportions of global occurrences and events. For years I have been arguing that destroying the ability to compare and to see things from the universal perspective has been one of the most successful endeavors of the Western indoctrination drive (dispersed through education, media/disinformation and ‘culture’). It has effectively influenced and pacified both, the people in the West itself, and those living in its present and former colonies (particularly the local ‘elites’ and their offspring). There seems to be no capacity to compare and consistently analyze, for instance, those certainly unsavory but mainly defensive actions taken by the revolutionary governments and countries, with the most horrid and appalling crimes committed by the colonialist regimes of the West all over Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, which took place in approximately the same historical era. It is not only history that is seen in the West through totally crooked and ‘out of focus’ lenses.  It is also the present, which has been perceived and ‘analyzed’ in an out of context way and without applying hardly any rational comparisons. Rebellious and independent-minded countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East (most of them have been actually forced to defend themselves against the extremely brutal attacks and subversion campaigns administered by the West) have been slammed, even in the so-called ‘progressive’ circles of the West, with much tougher standards than those that are being applied towards both Europe and North America, two parts of the world that have been continuously spreading terror, destruction and unimaginable suffering among the people inhabiting all corners of the globe. Most crimes committed by the left-wing revolutions were in direct response to invasions, subversions, provocations and other attacks coming from the West. Almost all the most terrible crimes committed by the West were committed abroad, and were directed against enslaved, exploited, thoroughly plundered and defenseless people in almost all parts of the world. Laos Plain of Jars – village fence made of American bombs Now, according to many, the endgame is approaching. Rising oceans are swallowing entire countries, as I witnessed in several parts of Oceania. It is a horrid, indescribable sight! People in numerous countries governed by pro-Western regimes are shedding millions of their inhabitants, while some nations are basically ceasing to exist, like Papua or Kashmir, to give just two obvious examples. The environment is thoroughly ruined where the ‘lungs’ of the world used to work hard, just a few decades ago, making our planet healthy. Tens of millions of people are now on the move, their countries thoroughly ruined by Western geopolitical games. Instead of influencing and helping to guide humanity, such great cultures as those of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are now forced to disgorge millions of desperate refugees. They are barely surviving, humiliated and hardly relevant. Extremist religious groups (of all faiths, and definitely not only belonging to the Muslim religion) are being groomed by the Western Machiavellian ideologues and strategists, then dispersed to all corners of the globe: South Asia, the Middle East, China, Latin America, Africa, and even Oceania. It is a total disgrace what imperialism has managed to reduce our humanity to. Most of the world is actually trying to function ‘normally’, ‘democratically’, following its natural instincts, which are based on simple humanism. But it is being constantly derailed, attacked and tormented by the brutal, monstrous and merciless hydra – the Western expansionism and its ‘culture’ or nihilism, greed, cynicism and slavery. It is so obvious where we are going as a human race. We want to fly, we want freedom and optimism and beauty to govern our lives. We want to dream and to create something deep, meaningful, happy and kind. But there are those horrible weights hanging from our feet. There are chains restraining our actions. There is constant fear, which is making us betray all our ideals, as well as each other, again and again; fear that makes us, humans, act like shameless cowards and egoists. As a result we are not flying, we are only crawling, and not even forward, but in bizarre, irrational ellipses and circles. Still, I do not believe that the endgame is inevitable! ***** For many years I have been sending warnings, I have been writing and showing and presenting thousands of terrible images of destruction, of the irreversible collapse, of barbarity. I have generally kept nothing to myself. I have recycled my work, my films and books, into new journeys into the darkest abysses of our world. I have received hardly any support from the outside world. But I couldn’t stop: what I have been witnessing, the danger to the planet and total devastation, have forced me to never give up the struggle. If necessary and most of the time, I have done it alone. I spent too much time in Latin America; I could not give up. I learned too much from Cuba and so many other wonderful places; I felt I had no right to surrender. Whenever the horrors from which our planet is suffering would overwhelm me, I’d ‘collapse’, as I did last year. Then I’d bury myself somewhere for a short period of time, collect myself together, get up and continue with my work and my struggle. I have never ceased to trust people. Some would come full of initial enthusiasm, offering much, then betray me, and leave. Still, I have never lost faith in human beings. This year, instead of slowing down, I ‘adopted’ one more place, which is in agony – Afghanistan. My only request, my only demand has been, that the world listens, that it sees, that it tries to comprehend, before it is too late. This request of mine has proven to be, I realize now, too ‘demanding’, and too ‘radical’. Sometimes I ask: have I achieved much? Have I opened many eyes? Have I managed to build many bridges between the different struggling parts of the world? As an internationalist I have to question my own actions, my effectiveness. I have to admit, honestly: I don’t know the answers to my own questions. But I keep working and struggling. ***** The world looks different if observed and analyzed from a pub in Europe or North America, or if you are actually standing on one of those atolls in the middle of the South Pacific (Oceania) that are under the constant assault of tidal waves, dotted with dead stumps of palm trees pointing accusatively towards the sky. These islets are at the forefront of the battle for the survival of our planet, and they are obviously losing. Stumps of palm trees – Kiribati Everything also appears to be much more urgent but also ‘real’, when observed from the black and desolate plains of the hopelessly logged out Indonesian islands of Borneo/Kalimantan and Sumatra. I used to recount in my essays, just for my readers to know, what the villages somewhere like Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), look and feel like, after the murderous assaults by the pro-Rwandese, and therefore pro-Western, militias. It was important for me to explain how things are ‘right in the middle of it’, on the ground. I used to write about mass rapes and mutilations, about the burning flesh, terrible torture… I stopped some time ago. You at least once witness all this or you simply didn’t. If you did, then you know what it all looks like, what it feels like and smells like… or you could never imagine it, no matter how many books and reports you read, no matter how many images you consume. Woman victim in Kibati Camp, Goma, DR Congo I have been trying to speak about all this to the people in the West, at conferences, universities, or even through my films and books. They do listen, mostly respectfully. They do show politely how outraged and ‘horrified’ they are (it is ‘expected’ of them). Some say: ‘I want to do something’. Most of them do absolutely nothing, but even if they decide to take action, it is usually for themselves, just to feel good, to feel better, to convince their own conscience that they have actually ‘done at least something for the humanity’. I used to blame them. I don’t, anymore. This is how the world is arranged. However, I have sharply reduced my work-visits to both North America and Europe. I don’t feel that I click with the people in those places. We don’t think the same way, we don’t feel the same, and even our logic and rationale are diametrically different. My recent three-week stay in Europe clearly revealed to me how little there is in common between the West’s state of mind and the reality in which the great majority of the world has been living. ***** In the past, before the Western empires and the sole “Empire” took most of determination and enthusiasm away from the people, the most talented of human beings used to make no distinction between their personal lives, their creativity and their relentless work and duty towards humanity. In several places including Cuba, it is how many people still live. In the West, everyone and everything is now fragmented and life itself became objectively meaningless: there is distinct time to work (satisfying one’s personal career, guaranteeing survival, advancing ‘prestige’ and ego), there is time to play, and for family life… and there is occasionally time to think about humanity or, very rarely, about the survival of our planet. Needless to say, this selfish approach has failed in helping to advance the world. It has also squarely failed when it comes to stopping at least some of the monstrosities committed by Western imperialism. When I go to the opera house or some great classical music concert, it is in order to get some deep inspiration, to get fired up about my work, to recycle the beauty that I’m expressing in my novels and films, theatre plays and even political reports. I never go to get simply ‘entertained’. It is never for my own needs only. It is also essential for me to work closely with the people that I love, including my own mother who is already 82 years old. It is because I know there is absolutely no time to waste. And also because everything is and should be intertwined in life: love, work, duty, and the struggle for the survival and progress of our world. ***** I may be labeled as a fanatic, but I am decisively choosing those C) and B) options from the ‘dilemmas’ I depicted above. I am choosing rationality, now that the US ‘armada’ packed with the nuclear weapons is sailing towards both China and North Korea, now that the Tomahawk missiles have rained down on Syria, now that the West will be sending thousands more mercenaries to one of the most devastated countries on Earth – Afghanistan. Survival and then the advancement of the world should be our greatest goal. I believe it and I stand by it. In time of absolute crises, which we are experiencing right now, it is irresponsible, almost grotesque, to simply ‘continue to live our daily lives’. Imperialism has to be stopped, once and for all, by all means. At the moment when the survival of humanity is at stake, the end justifies all means. Or as the motto of Chile goes: “By Reason Or By Force”. Of course, if those ‘who know’ do not act, if they are cowardly and opportunistically do nothing, from a universal perspective, nothing much will happen: one small planet in one of the so many galaxies will simply cease to exist. Most likely there are many inhabited planets in the universe, many civilizations. However, I happen to love this world and this particular Planet. I know it well, from the Southernmost tip all the way to the north. I know its deserts and valleys, mountains and oceans, its marvelous and touching creatures, its great cities as well as god-forsaken villages. I know its people. They have many faults; and much that could be condemned in them, and much that should be improved. But I still believe that there is more that could be admired in them than denounced. Now it is time to think, rationally and quickly, and then to act. No small patches will do, no ‘feel good’ actions. Only a total reset, overhaul. Call it the Revolution if you will, or simply C) and B). No matter how you define it, it would have to come rapidly, very rapidly, or there soon will be nothing to love, to defend, and to work for anymore. • Photos by Andre Vltchek http://clubof.info/