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teluguflashnews · 1 year ago

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Hot and Sexy Sreemukhi Black Saree Stills 11-07-2023 https://teluguflashnews.com/hot-and-sexy-sreemukhi-black-saree-stills-11-07-2023/

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lavelled · 7 months ago

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lightstruck liars.

Your response to people suffering was to glitch a website, manipulate recorded audio, and underplay significant matters. This isn’t My Rejected Boyfriend Diary.

I caught you as the 911 jailer; caught you in law guy suit mode, scamming fans and news reporters; living alone in the UK; and rapey soul-baring through stitcher thread.

How was Colombia?

Between staged projects, oh god, did your wife lecture in bogus platitudes her experience with systemic racism? The dollar-signed, stork-wed couple embraced children who at fifteen will learn my story and how they got double rat hugged and will need talking down from a cliff.

You use a surname that, in print, sends a violent message to a man who didn’t want me cut off or shut away for decades. In return, for her team, you generate personal and lifestyle reinvention for status-seeking profit. Umm. No. A televised Californian of mature years, ex-husband with my birthdate, knows my dinosaur-inked story, what a family did to me, and what would unfold with a plagued wedding. I’m in decades-old, unconsenting, rapey pedo limbo, reading obituaries of youngsters, Moms and Dads, go through with hurting themselves.

No one recovers from reading child deaths. But her ornamental coupling is special. I’m sure loved ones, in emotional shambles, will appreciate that it was all to zing a movie star on opposite day. I was in Twitter glass when I observed the trending of a chat between social activist, Gloria Steinem and your disingenuous spouse. Her wedding had a mattress tag and a first dibs toast.

And heirs. Confirming the exclusionary, not to mention seedy, coupling. As you put it, in neon, on your sentimentally romantic and visual account: The Matrix has you. An ode to Hollywood, apparently, and the lack of autonomy given to a tiny girl. Your partnership drives people to fatality. Peter Alexander Beckett from Carmarthenshire, Wales, just hours before going on stage, hung himself. One month prior to your wedding.

We lifted scratchy leashing for Archillect, Murat Pak, you know the rest. On Twitter, Harry is actress, Kat Dennings. In 2022, he posted: “I am unwell. Oh no, I think I love WWE.” Might look innocuous. Harry Wales is declaring himself a ringmaster. Because a youth-obsessed married nomadic masterful rapey pedophile textually going after athletes who could shut down his blood flow, oxygen supply, and cause serious physical harm is smart. That’s why it’s deleted.

YouTube video on the Prince’s Trust channel—Prince William, Prince Harry & The Prince of Wales Interview with Ant and Dec. A 2006 interview with the serpent trio on supporting unknown artists with grants and self-esteem, not kidnapping and trouncing on them, which is my royal experience. At 4:37, Prince Greenwell (a repetitive colour scheme) says his favorite show. “FRIENDS is always a safe bet.” Six words. Eliciting a chuckle. Palms touching.

Not her: The lifelong refrain.

Keeping me at bay, as royals, was a perilous idea.

My lovely friends disapproving, to an extreme degree, the actions of princes.

Kushal Punjabi—dancer-choreographer, from the musical, Andaaz, he won the reality game show, Zor Ka Jhatka, India’s Wipeout, the physical obstacle course, edging out 28 contestants. He hung himself at home in Bandra West, Mumbai. December 2019. He has a son, Kian.

Sejal Sharma—known for her role of Simmy Khosla in the show Dil Toh Happy Hai Ji, about a free-spirited girl named Happy Mehra. She was auditioning for lead roles when she hung herself in her flat at Royal Nest in Mira Road East, Mumbai. January 24, 2020. She was 27.

Vaishali Takkar—tv actress, best known for the popular Hindi series, Super Sisters, a show about close siblings and their super powers. The show is available on YouTube and has millions of views. Her Insta page has over 500K followers. She took her life on October 15, 2022.

Former air hostess of Qatar Airways turned Bollywood actor, Noor Malabika—hung herself in her Lokhandwala, Mumbai flat a few months ago. June 10, 2024. Her body was decomposed. Friends identified her by the crown tattoo on her wrist and her name underneath.

#reading #books

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themovieblogonline · 2 years ago

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Red Chillies Entertainment Presents “Jawan (2023)”: The Adrenalin-Fueled Tale Of A Savior

When corruption crosses all limits and the poor are denied justice, he rises to save the day. He is the Robin Hood for the poor, the “soldier” who fights for their rights, and the one whom you will address as “Jawan”! The King of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, makes his grand entry again to the big screens, this time in a violent action-thriller opposite South India’s superstar Vijay Sethupathi. Produced by Gauri Khan, and written and directed by Atlee, the PAN-India action-thriller “Jawan” made its theatrical release on September 7, 2023. Introducing The Baadshah Of Bollywood As "Jawan"! https://youtu.be/fPX0C-g5xpU?si=kTTEXKDNBE4HdMD0 Ex-Indian Commando, Vikran Rathore’s (Shah Rukh Khan) son, Azad Rathore (also played by Shah Rukh Khan) is a jailer at a woman’s prison. Azad and his gang of female prisoners become “Robin Hoods” to help the poor by taking money from the rich. But what will happen when he comes face-to-face with the dreadful global arms dealer and gangster, Kaliee Gaikwad (Vijay Sethupathi)? He has some past scores to settle with Kaliee. Watch “Jawan” to experience the ultra-thrilling confrontation of “Bollywood's Baadshah” Shah Rukh Khan and South India's superstar Vijay Sethupathi first time ever on the big screens! Jawan (2023) Official Trailer: https://youtu.be/COv52Qyctws?si=pcvndTc0pjbmxabR The Good: The story and screenplay of this out-and-out action-thriller are absolutely mind-boggling! This is an extraordinary story that can appeal to the masses and all age groups. The action scenes in Jawan are absolutely fantastic and will instill a thrill to the brim. This is a kind of Bollywood action movie which moves at par with the intense action movies of Hollywood. This is the story of the “common man”, the hardships faced by the common man, and how the common man seeks vengeance to obtain justice. The best part about the screenplay is that it is so enthralling that it will engage the audience in it. As the story unfolds, you won’t be able to control your excitement about, “What’s next?” And the dialogues! They are so stupendous that if you watch this movie in a cinema hall, you would barely be able to hear anything due to the immense cheering and applause from the audience. https://youtu.be/ohS06vkHjLE?si=EZ0ruetPAPJy1Wul Check out this heart-thumping dialogue delivered by Sah Rukh Khan in Jawan, “Hum Jawan hai. Desh ke liye jaan de sakte hain, lekin desh bechne walo ke liye nahi”, which means, “I am a soldier. I can sacrifice my life for my country, but not for the ones who sell my country (indicating corrupt politicians and rich businessmen)”. What an applaudable dialogue, if you would agree! What’s more, the undercurrent patriotic emotions in the dialogues will make your heart beat with love for your country, if you happen to be a true Indian citizen. And talking about King Khan, he is always the King! His performance cannot be compared with anyone in Bollywood. Shah Rukh Khan plays the dual role of a father and his son in this movie. His aura, charisma, personality, dialogue delivery, physique (at this age), action stunts, everything is top-class! And I have to say, South’s superstar Vijay Sethupathi did prove to be an apt antagonist opposite him. There are numerous actresses being cast in this movie as Shah Rukh Khan can be seen becoming the “Robin Hood”, taking money from the rich and donating it to the poor, with the help of his huge gang of ladies who are always with him. Every actress in this movie along with Nayanthara, performed brilliantly. Jawan had special appearances of Deepika Padukone and Sanjay Dutt which made the audience cheer even louder. The visuals and VFX in Jawan are superb and captivating! The rich visuals coupled with high-quality VFX in the action scenes did give a tempting viewing experience. The editing has been well done and even if this action-packed story fluctuates from the present to the past and then again to the present, you will be able to grasp every bit as the screenplay proceeds. The tracks in Jawan are pretty entertaining and their choreography is awesome. https://youtu.be/VAdGW7QDJiU?si=yW2HxrFgHFF6NJgy The Bad: What “bad” can I possibly say about this new box-office blockbuster? The only thing “bad” about this movie is that you won’t be able to watch it in peace if you visit the theater hall, even if you want to! After hearing the master-blaster dialogues, after watching the high-octane action sequences in this movie, and after experiencing the King of Bollywood’s grand entry on the big screens, you would probably jump on your seats and start applauding. You simply won’t be able to remain quiet, trust me! The Verdict: Overall, Jawan is a hair-raising high-voltage action-thriller. The best part about Jawan is that it highlights the actual situation prevalent in India. India is a country where the rich rule and the poor are becoming poorer day by day, owing to corruption within the government which supports rich people only. I pray that one day, a true savior like Jawan will arise to save my country from its economic downfall. https://youtu.be/OEKNl5qKdDA?si=QKboY7_ZfyP6Z_zX Read the full article

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jaggedwolf · 2 years ago

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airplane watch log

Ticket To Paradise

lasted till the daughter is talking to the seaweed farmer about balance in nature and then switched it off

The Mummy

watched till she's bribing the jailer to release the main guy from getting hanged and then switched it off

One Perfect Shot

watched all six episodes the plane had, did not expect to given that I don't watch that many movies. have a random smattering of opinions

really wide variance in how good the episode's director was at just plain talking lol. I could have listened to Lemmons or Sorkin forever, despite not having seen either of their films, whereas both Jenkins and Chu seemed to often stumble into awkward repetition

unfortunate bc Jenkin's episode had actual stuff I found interesting - that her foundation of WW is not just from the show but also from watching the Superman film with the dead dad x2 right after her own father passed

okay so when the directors go into their perfect shot, I thought it would be them marking up a screencap/video. No, it is them literally stepping into a 3D recreation of the scene

unfortunately all humans look like slightly melted dolls in those renditions. Sorkin's episode on the Chicago 7 did the best job of avoiding this problem, because they stayed in the 3D recreation for the longer distance shots of the cops and the protestors but flashed to the actual movie scenes for any closeups

Lemmon's episode was probably my favorite, despite having no plans to see Harriet (my instinctive attitude towards biopics is: what if I just read a biography someday instead of watching drama lol).

It also had the best trio conversation, with her talking to the music guy and the main actress about the shot that all three of them worked on

The two episodes where one of the trio is the film's producer made those conversations a little less interesting. Not that I didn't like hearing the producers talk about logistics, because honestly I love hearing about the logistics behind random shit, just that as a conversation between three people it never quite gels

Amused that Chu said the intention behind the flora in the CRA wedding scene was to feel like nature was breaking through the church and not to feel like a commercialized version of nature. because I definitely thought it was the latter and I thought it was on purpose?? sorry my dude, it was just peak SG-deliberately cultivated nature vibes. gardens by the bay-type shit.

Girls Trip sounds like a movie that a bunch of people who are not me would enjoy, and good for them. meanwhile I cringed my way through the zip line scene. (me, 5 seconds before the scene when the costume designer talked about how it's impossible to wear underwear with the dress in question: why would anyone pick such a dress. me, watching that moment on the zipline: i....no)

big fan of Chu's mom: "when did you become such a snob?" lmao sometimes one needs to get a little bit roasted by their mom y'know

wouldn't it suck to be a director with a really shitty signature and then have to end your episode by writing said shitty signature over the best shot you ever did. wouldn't that make you so mad.

i guess they probably do it like the disney channel drawing and so your signature can look like whatever you want but still. it's the principle of the thing

how do they do it

bruh there are planes that transport million dollar horses around the country, 21 to a plane at a time. what a smelly plane that must be. did enjoy watching a grown man address a horse as "baby boy" multiple times because said horse had never flown on a plane before

sometimes I forget how much stuff is still out there being made via individual, precise effort. people carefully carving into wood the mane of a knight chess piece, gluing weights to the bottom and covering it with felt. people placing six different wheel flies in a safe lock and adjusting each one

but also machines I did not even know existed, like the one in the stainless steel factory that removes excess carbon from melted scrap metal. (after they send a guy out in a fireproof suit to stick a probe into the melted metal to measure said carbon content)

TIL that jaggery is called jaggery

#jaggedwolf rambles #i wish the plane had the films from the one perfect shot show though #missed opportunity #i was like hey i kind wanna watch heat now #plane: no

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17meltedcandles · 10 months ago

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Ty for the tag!💗

Fav colour: brown, beige, pink, and light purple

Fav show: Adventure Time, The Boondocks, Over the Garden Wall, Kamisama Kiss

Fav movies: Dangerous Liasions, Little Women, Chiquarotes, 50 First dates, Twilight, The Virgin Suicides, Kiki’s Delivery Service

Fav actor/actresses: Robert Pattinson, Keanu Reeves, Pedro Pascal, Winona Rider, Kirsten Dunst, Kristen Stewart, Maria Felix, Hans Christianson

Fav Musicians: LDR, May Jailer, The Cardigans, Heavenly, The Sundays, Fleetwood Mac, anything folk

Fav books: The Chronicles of Prydain series, Twilight, Things Fall Apart, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. The House on Mango street, The Alchemist, The Little Prince

Currently reading: The Black Cauldron, Portrait of A Lady

I tag @c0ldh34rts @sweetl4mb and @greengirllover

girlblogger questions!

get to know your mutuals more <3

favourite colour: pink

favourite show: i love lucy

favourite movie: gentlemen prefer blondes

favourite actor/actress: marilyn monroe

favourite band/singer(s): hole, lana del rey

favourite book: 1984 by george orwell

currently reading: the fall by albert camus

tbr list: pride and prejudice, the last grand duchess, girl in pieces

tagging: @honeymoonswan @knowitsforthebetterr @lanadelreystan101 @maxxxthewpoet @mimiicritter @crucified-cam @cryingporcelaindoll @aurora-doll-333 @notyourfavlolita @neptun4ngel @lak3cityqui3tpills @lilblondedarling @stellablahh @georgiannesblog @gossipgirlblogger101 @dollsleeping @dangeroustaintedflawed @d011ette @diizzzie @dreamysnowangel444 + anyone else who wants to join xoxo

#girlblogging #couqette #lana del rey #girlblog aesthetic #this is what makes us girls #girlblogger #girl blogging #girlblogger questions #girlcore #woc coquette #coquette community

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brunettemermaid · 3 years ago

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I think it’s obvious that Taylor loves the first half of the twentieth century and I personally think that her favourite decades are probably the 50′s and 60′s. She gives that vibe, specially in the red era, and somehow in the 1989 era too with the preppy style. Taylor has an obvious interest in high society and in the new rich of the 20th century, for example, she did buy the rhode island house that once belonged to Rebekah Harkness. Taylor also likes old hollywood, as we can see in her videoclip of wildest dreams where she imitates the actress Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. That video also reminds me of the movie the queen of africa (1951). She also likes the Great Gatsby (1926), there’s plenty examples of her love for this book in her discography, and moroever she’s interested in american history and culture.

And of course, we can found a lot of references to these years in her music as we can see with the following examples:

- the lucky one: So overnight, you look like a '60s queen

- starlight: I met Bobby on the boardwalk summer of '45 (this song is about the Kennedy family so...)

- the last great american dynasty: "There goes the last great American dynasty" and everything about this song.

- style: you got that James Dean daydream look in your eye

- ready for ir?: And he can be my jailer, Burton to this Taylor

- happiness: all you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness

Taylor did an interview for teen vogue back in 2011 where she talked about fashion and said and quoted : “ I’m fascinated by is fahion throughout history, you know, I like to play around with vintage throwback looks and retro styles, and you know, kind of like one day you’ll do a red lip and wear sort of a dress that looks like it might be from the sixties” She also says that her fashion icons are Jackie O and Grace Kelly, both famous women of the 50′s and the 60′s.

#taylor swift #swiftie #red taylor’s version #folklore #1989 #reputation #evermore #just wanted to say this because I thought about it and since I'm also interested in these years it was funn #I'll think more about this and see if I add something

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chiseler · 4 years ago

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The Mysterious Death of a Hollywood Director

This is the tale of a very famous Hollywood mogul and a not-so-famous movie director. In May of 1933 they embarked together on a hunting trip to Canada, but only one of them came back alive. It’s an unusual tale with an uncertain ending, and to the best of my knowledge it’s never been told before.

I. The Mogul

When we consider the factors that enabled the Hollywood studio system to work as well as it did during its peak years, circa 1920 to 1950, we begin with the moguls, those larger-than-life studio chieftains who were the true stars on their respective lots. They were tough, shrewd, vital, and hard working men. Most were Jewish, first- or second-generation immigrants from Europe or Russia; physically on the small side but nonetheless formidable and – no small thing – adaptable. Despite constant evolution in popular culture, technology, and political and economic conditions in their industry and the outside world, most of the moguls who made their way to the top during the silent era held onto their power and wielded it for decades. Their names are still familiar: Zukor, Goldwyn, Mayer, Jack Warner and his brothers, and a few more. And of course, Darryl F. Zanuck. In many ways Zanuck personified the common image of the Hollywood mogul. He was an energetic, cigar-chewing, polo mallet-swinging bantam of a man, largely self-educated, with a keen aptitude for screen storytelling and a well-honed sense of what the public wanted to see. Like Charlie Chaplin he was widely assumed to be Jewish, and also like Chaplin he was not, but in every other respect Zanuck was the very embodiment of the dynamic, supremely confident Hollywood showman.

In the mid-1920s he got a job as a screenwriter at Warner Brothers, at a time when that studio was still something of a podunk operation. The young man succeeded on a grand scale, and was head of production before he was 30 years old. Ironically, the classic Warners house style, i.e. clipped, topical, and earthy, often dark and sometimes grimly funny, as in such iconic films as The Public Enemy, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, and 42nd Street, was established not by Jack, Harry, Sam, or Albert Warner, but by Darryl Zanuck, who was the driving force behind those hits and many others from the crucial early talkie period. He played a key role in launching the gangster cycle and a new wave of sassy show biz musicals. At some point during 1932-33, however, Zanuck realized he would never rise above his status as Jack Warner’s right-hand man and run the studio, no matter how successful his projects proved to be, because of two insurmountable obstacles: 1) his name was not Warner, and 2) he was a Gentile. Therefore, in order to achieve complete autonomy, Zanuck concluded that he would have to start his own company.

In mid-April of 1933 he picked a public fight with Jack Warner over a staff salary issue, then abruptly resigned. Next, he turned his attention to setting up a company in partnership with veteran producer Joseph Schenck, who was able to raise sufficient funds to launch the new concern. And then, Zanuck invited several associates from Warner Brothers to accompany him on an extended hunting trip in Canada.

Going into the wilderness and killing wild game, a pastime many Americans still regard as a routine, unremarkable form of recreation, is also of course a conspicuous show of machismo. But in this realm, as with his legendary libido, Zanuck was in a class by himself. He had been an enthusiastic hunter most of his life, dating back to his boyhood in Nebraska. Once he became a big wheel at Warners in the late ’20s he took to organizing high-style duck-hunting expeditions: the young executive and his fellow sportsmen would travel to the appointed location in private railroad cars, staffed by uniformed servants. Heavy drinking on these occasions was not uncommon. (Inevitably, film buffs will recall The Ale & Quail Club from Preston Sturges’ classic comedy The Palm Beach Story, but DFZ and his pals were not cute old character actors, and their bullets were quite real.) Members of Zanuck’s studio entourage were given to understand that participation in these outings was de rigueur if they valued their positions, and expected desirable assignments in the future. Director Michael Curtiz, who had no fondness for hunting, remembered the trips with distaste, and recalled that on one occasion he was nearly shot by a casting director who had no idea how to properly handle a gun.

But ducks were just the beginning. In 1927 Zanuck took his wife Virginia on an African safari. In Kenya Darryl bagged a rhinoceros and posed for a photo with his wife, crouched beside the rhino’s carcass. Virginia, an erstwhile Mack Sennett bathing beauty and former leading lady to Buster Keaton, appears shaken. Her husband looks exhilarated. During this safari Zanuck also killed an elephant. He kept the animal’s four feet in his office on the Warners lot, and used them as ashtrays. If any animal lover dared to express dismay, the Hollywood sportsman would retort: “It was him or me, wasn’t it?” Zanuck made several forays to Canada with his coterie in this period, gunning for grizzly bears. Director William “Wild Bill” Wellman, who was more of an outdoorsman than Curtiz, once went along, but soon became irritated with Zanuck’s bullying. The two men got into a drunken fistfight the night before the hunting had even begun. In the course of the ensuing trip the hunting party was snowbound for three days; Zanuck sprained his ankle while trailing a grizzly; the horse carrying medical supplies vanished; and Wellman got food poisoning. “It was the damnedest trip I’ve ever seen,” the director said later, “but Zanuck loved it.”

Now that Zanuck had severed his ties with the Warner clan and was on the verge of a new professional adventure, a trip to Canada with a few trusted associates would be just the ticket. This time the destination would be a hunting ground on the banks of the Canoe River, a tributary of the Columbia River, 102 miles north of Revelstoke, British Columbia, a city about 400 miles east of Vancouver. There, in a remote scenic area far from any paved roads, telephones, or other niceties of modern life, the men could discuss Zanuck’s new production company and, presumably, their own potential roles in it. Present on the expedition were screenwriter Sam Engel, director Ray Enright, 42nd Street director Lloyd Bacon, producer (and former silent film comedian) Raymond Griffith, and director John G. Adolfi, best known at the time for his work with English actor George Arliss. Adolfi, who was around 50 years old and seemingly in good health, would not return.

II. The Director

Even dedicated film buffs may draw a blank when the name John Adolfi is mentioned. Although he directed more than eighty films over a twenty-year period beginning in 1913, most of those films are now lost. He worked in every genre, with top stars, and made a successful transition from silent cinema to talkies. He seems to have been a well-respected but self-effacing man, seldom profiled in the press.

According to his tombstone Adolfi was born in New York City in 1881, but the exact date of his birth is one of several mysteries about his life. His father, Gustav Adolfi, was a popular stage comedian and singer who emigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1879. Gustav performed primarily in New York and Philadelphia, and was known for such roles as Frosch the Jailer in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus. But he was a troubled man, said to be a compulsive gambler, and after his wife Jennie died (possibly of scarlet fever) it appears his life fell apart. Gustav’s singing voice gave out, and then he died suddenly in Philadelphia in October 1890, leaving John and his siblings orphaned. (An obituary in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent reported that Gustav suffered a stroke, but family legend suggests he may have committed suicide.) After a difficult period John followed in his father’s footsteps and launched a stage career, and was soon working opposite such luminaries of the day as Ethel Barrymore and Dustin Farnum. Early in the new century the young actor wed Pennsylvania native Florence Crawford; the marriage would last until his death.

When the cinema was still in its infancy stage performers tended to regard movie work as slumming, but for whatever reason John Adolfi took the plunge. He made his debut before the cameras around 1907, probably at the Vitagraph Studio in Brooklyn. There he appeared as Tybalt in J. Stuart Blackton’s 1908 Romeo and Juliet , with Paul Panzer and Florence Lawrence in the title roles. He worked at the Edison Studio for director Edwin S. Porter, and at Biograph in a 1908 short called The Kentuckian which also featured two other stage veterans, D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett. Most of Adolfi’s work as a screen actor was for the Éclair Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the first film capital. The bulk of this company’s output was destroyed in a vault fire, but a 1912 adaptation of Robin Hood in which Adolfi appeared survives. That same year he also appeared in a famous docu-drama, as we would call it, Saved from the Titanic. This ten-minute short premiered less than a month after the Titanic disaster, and featured actress Dorothy Gibson, who actually survived the voyage, re-enacting her experience while wearing the same clothes she wore in the lifeboat. (This film, unfortunately, is among the missing.) After appearing in dozens of movies Adolfi moved behind the camera.

Much of his early work as a director was for a Los Angeles-based studio called Majestic, where he made crime dramas, Westerns, and comedies, films with titles like Texas Bill’s Last Ride and The Stolen Radium. In 1914 the company had a new supervisor: D. W. Griffith, now the top director in the business, who had just departed Biograph. Adolfi was one of the few Majestic staff directors who kept his job under the new regime. A profile in the February 1915 issue of Photoplay describes him as “a tallish, good-looking man, well-knit and vigorous, dark-haired and determined; his mouth and chin suggest that their owner expects (and intends) to have his own way unless he is convinced that the other fellow’s is better.” It was also reported that Adolfi had developed something of a following as an actor, but that he dropped out of the public eye when he became a director. Presumably, that’s what he wanted.

Adolfi left Majestic after three years, worked at Fox Films for a time as a staff director, then freelanced. During the remainder of the silent era he guided some of the screen’s legendary leading ladies: Annette Kellerman (Queen of the Sea, 1918), Marion Davies (The Burden of Proof, 1918), Mae Marsh (The Little ‘Fraid Lady, 1920), Betty Blythe (The Darling of the Rich, 1922), and Clara Bow (The Scarlet West, 1925). Not one of these films survives. A profile published in the New York World-Telegram during his stint at Fox reported that Adolfi was well-liked by his employees. He was “reticent when the conversation turned toward himself, but frank and outspoken when it concerned his work. Mr. Adolfi is not only a director who is skilled in the technique of his craft; he is also a deep student of human nature.” Asked how he felt about the cinema’s potential, he replied, with unconscious irony, “it is bound to live forever.”

III. The Talkies

In spring of 1927 Adolfi was offered a job at Warner Brothers. His debut feature for the studio What Happened to Father? (now lost) was a success, or enough of one anyway to secure him a professional foothold, and he worked primarily at WB thereafter. Thus he was fortuitously well-positioned for the talkie revolution, for although talking pictures were not invented at the studio it was Sam Warner and his brothers, more than anyone else, who sold an initially skeptical public on the new medium. After Adolfi had proven himself with three talkie features Darryl Zanuck handed him an expensive, prestige assignment, a lavish all-star revue entitled The Show of Shows which featured every Warners star from John Barrymore to Rin-Tin-Tin.

Other important assignments followed. In March of 1930 a crime melodrama called Penny Arcade opened on Broadway. It was not a success, but when Al Jolson saw it he sensed that the story had screen potential. He purchased the film rights at a bargain rate and then re-sold the property to his home studio, Warner Brothers. Adolfi was chosen to direct, but was doubtless surprised to learn that Jolson had insisted that two of the actors from the Broadway production repeat their performances before the cameras. One of the pair, Joan Blondell, had already appeared in three Vitaphone shorts to good effect, but the other, James Cagney, had never acted in a movie. Any doubts about Jolson’s instincts were quickly dispelled. Rushes of the first scenes featuring the newcomers so impressed studio brass that both were signed to five-year contracts. While Adolfi can’t be credited with discovering the duo, the film itself, re-christened Sinners’ Holiday,remains his strongest surviving claim to fame: he guided Jimmy Cagney’s screen debut.

At this point the director formed a professional relationship that would shape the rest of his career. George Arliss was a veteran stage actor who went into the movies and unexpectedly became a top box office draw. He was, frankly, an unlikely candidate for screen stardom. Already past sixty when talkies arrived, Arliss was a short, dignified man who resembled a benevolent gargoyle. But he was also a journeyman actor, a seasoned professional who knew how to command attention with a sudden sharp word or a raised eyebrow. Like Helen Hayes he was valued in Hollywood as a performer of unblemished reputation who lent the raffish film industry a touch of Class, in every sense of the word.

In 1929 Arliss appeared in a talkie version of Disraeli, a role he had played many times on stage, and became the first Englishman to take home an Academy Award for Best Actor. Thereafter he was known for stately portrayals of History’s Great Men, such as Voltaire and Alexander Hamilton, as well as fictional kings, cardinals, and other official personages. The old gentleman formed a close alliance with Darryl Zanuck, whom he admired, and was in turn granted privileges highly unusual for any actor at the time. Arliss had final approval of his scripts and authority over casting. He was also granted the right to rehearse his selected actors for two weeks before filming began. All that was left for the film’s director to do, it would seem, would be to faithfully record what his star wanted. Not many directors would accept this arrangement, but John Adolfi, who according to Photoplay “was determined to have his own way unless he is convinced that the other fellow’s is better,” clearly had no problem with it. His first film with Arliss was The Millionaire, released in May 1931; and in the two years that followed Adolfi directed eight more features, six of which were Arliss vehicles. He had found his niche in Hollywood.

One of Adolfi’s last jobs sans Arliss was a B-picture called Central Park, which reunited the director with Joan Blondell. It’s a snappy, topical, crazy quilt of a movie that packs a lot of incident into a 58-minute running time. Central Park was something of a sleeper that earned its director positive critical notices, and must have afforded him a lively holiday from those polite period pieces for the exacting Mr. Arliss.

In spring of 1933, after completing work on the Arliss vehicle Voltaire, Adolfi accompanied Darryl Zanuck and his entourage to British Columbia to hunt bears. Arliss intended to follow Zanuck to his new company, while Adolfi in turn surely expected to follow the star and continue their collaboration. Things didn’t work out that way.

IV. The Hunting Trip

It’s unclear how long the men were hunting before tragedy struck. On Sunday, May 14th, newspapers reported that film director John G. Adolfi had died the previous week – either on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on which paper one consults – at a hunting camp near the Canoe River. All accounts give the cause of death as a cerebral hemorrhage. According to the New York Herald-Tribune the news was conveyed in a long-distance phone call from Darryl Zanuck to screenwriter Lucien Hubbard in Los Angeles. Hubbard subsequently informed the press. The N.Y. Times reported that the entire hunting party (Zanuck, Engel, Enright, Bacon, and Griffith) accompanied Adolfi’s remains in a motorboat down the Columbia River to Revelstoke. From there the body was sent to Vancouver, B.C., where it was cremated. Write-ups of Adolfi’s career were brief, and tended to emphasize his work with George Arliss, though his recent success Central Park was widely noted. John’s widow Florence was mentioned in the Philadelphia City News obituary but otherwise seems to have been ignored; the couple had no children.

V. The Aftermath

Darryl F. Zanuck went on to found Twentieth Century Pictures, a name suggested by his hunting companion Sam Engel. One of the company’s biggest hits in its first year of operation was The House of Rothschild, starring George Arliss and directed by Alfred Werker. The venerable actor returned to England not long afterwards and retired from filmmaking in 1937. In his second book of memoirs, published three years later, Arliss devotes several pages of warm praise to Zanuck, but refers only fleetingly to the man who directed seven of his films, John Adolfi, and misspells his name.

In 1935 Zanuck merged his Twentieth Century Pictures with Fox Films, and created one of the most successful companies in Hollywood history. He would go on to produce many award-winning classics, including The Grapes of Wrath, Laura, and All About Eve. Zanuck’s trusted associates at Twentieth-Century Fox in the company’s best years included Sam Engel, Raymond Griffith, and Lloyd Bacon, all survivors of the Revelstoke trip. Personal difficulties and vast changes in the film industry began to affect Zanuck’s career in the 1950s. He left the U.S. for Europe but continued to make films, and sporadically managed to exercise control over the company he founded. He died in 1979.

In 1984 a onetime screenwriter and film critic named Leonard Mosley, who had known Zanuck slightly, published a biography entitled Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Last Tycoon. Aside from his movie reviews most of Mosley’s published work concerned military matters, specifically pertaining to the Second War World. His Zanuck bio reveals a grasp of film history that is shaky at times, for the book has a number of obvious errors. Nevertheless, it was written with the cooperation of Darryl’s son Richard, his widow Virginia, and many of the mogul’s close associates, so whatever its errors in chronology or studio data the anecdotes concerning Zanuck’s personal and professional activities are unquestionably well-sourced.

When Mosley’s narrative reaches May 1933, the point when Zanuck is on the verge of founding his new company, we’re told that he and several associates decided to go on a hunting trip to Alaska. The location is not correct, but chronologically – and in one other, unmistakable respect – there can be no doubt that this refers to the Revelstoke trip. From Mosley’s book:

“There is a mystery about this trip, and no perusal of Zanuck’s papers or those of his former associates seems to elucidate it,” he writes. “Something happened that changed his whole attitude towards hunting. All that can be gathered from the thin stories that are still gossiped around was that the hunting party went on the track of a polar bear somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness [sic], and when the vital moment came it was Zanuck who stepped out to shoot down the charging, furious animal. His bullet, it is said, found its mark all right, but it did not kill. The polar bear came on, and Zanuck stood his ground, pumping away with his rifle. Only this time it was not ‘him or me,’ but ‘him’ and someone else. The wounded and enraged bear, still alive and still charging, swerved around Zanuck and swiped with his great paw at one of the men standing behind him – and only after it had killed this other man did it fall at last into the snow, and die itself. That’s the story, and no one seems to be able to confirm it nor remember the name of the man who died. The only certain thing is that when Zanuck came back, he announced to Virginia that he had given up hunting. And he never went out and shot a wild animal again, not even a jackrabbit for his supper.”

VI. The Coda

Was John Adolfi killed by a bear? It certainly seems possible, but if so, why didn’t the men in the hunting party simply report the truth? Even if their boss was indirectly responsible, having fired the shots that caused the bear to charge, he couldn’t be blamed for the actions of a dying animal. But it’s also possible the event unfolded like a recent tragedy on the Montana-Idaho border. There, in September 2011, two men named Ty Bell and Steve Stevenson were on a hunting trip. Bell shot what he believed was a black bear. When the bear, a grizzly, attacked Stevenson, Bell fired again – and killed both the bear and his friend.

That seems to be the more likely scenario. If Zanuck fired at the wounded bear, in an attempt to save Adolfi, and killed both bear and man instead, it would perhaps explain a hastily contrived false story. It would most definitely explain the prompt cremation of Adolfi’s body in Vancouver. Back in Hollywood Joe Schenck was busy raising money, and lots of it, to launch Zanuck’s new company. Any unpleasant information about the new company’s chief – certainly anything suggestive of manslaughter – could jeopardize the deal. A man hit with a cerebral hemorrhage in the prime of life is a tragedy of natural causes, but a man sprayed with bullets in a shooting, accidental or not, is something else again. That goes double if alcohol was involved, as it reportedly was on Zanuck’s earlier hunting trips.

Of course, it’s also possible that Adolfi did indeed suffer a cerebral hemorrhage. Like his father.

John G. Adolfi is a Hollywood ghost. Most of his works are lost, and his name is forgotten. (Even George Arliss couldn’t be bothered to spell it correctly.) Every now and then TCM will program one of the Arliss vehicles, or Sinners’ Holiday. Not long ago they showed Adolfi’s fascinating B-picture Central Park, that slam-bang souvenir of the early Depression years in which several plot strands are deftly inter-twined. One of the subplots involves a mentally ill man, a former zoo-keeper who escapes from an asylum and returns to the place where he used to work, the Central Park Zoo. He has a score to settle with an old nemesis, an ex-colleague who tends the big cats. As the story approaches its climax, the escaped lunatic deliberately drags his enemy into the cage of a dangerous lion and leaves him there. In the subsequent, harrowing scene, difficult to watch, the lion attacks and practically kills the poor bastard.

by William Charles Morrow

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My sources for this article, in addition to the Mosley biography cited in the text, include Stephen M. Silverman’s The Fox That Got Away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth-Century Fox (1988), and Marlys J. Harris’s The Zanucks of Hollywood: The Dark Legacy of an American Dynasty (1989). For material on John Adolfi I made extensive use of the files of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Special thanks to James Bigwood for his prodigious research on the Adolfi family genealogy, and to Mary Maler, John Adolfi’s great-niece, for information she provided on her family.

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

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THE MARINES FLY HIGH

March 7, 1940

Directed by George Nichols, Jr. and Benjamin Stoloff

Produced by Robert Sisk for RKO Radio Pictures

Screenplay by Jerry Cady and A.J. Boulton, story by A.C. Edington

Filmed October 1939

World Premiere on March 4, 1940

Wide Release on March 7, 1940

CAST

Lucille Ball (Joan Grant) marks her 48th feature film since coming to Hollywood in 1933. It opened exactly a year after she collaborated with Richard Dix and Robert Sisk on Twelve Crowded Hours.

Richard Dix (Lt. Dan Darrick) was nominated for an Oscar in 1931 for Cimarron. He also appeared with Lucille Ball in Twelve Crowded Hours (1939).

Chester Morris (Lt. Jimmy Malone) was nominated for an Oscar in 1929 for Alibi. He also appeared with Lucille Ball in Five Came Back (1939). In December 1960, Morris was a guest on “The Tonight Show with Jack Paar” which also featured Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, and little Lucie.

Steffi Duna (Teresa) was a Hungarian-born actress who also appeared with Lucille Ball in Panama Lady (1939).

John Eldredge (John Henderson) appeared on “I Love Lucy” in “Lucy’s Night In Town” (ILL S6;E22) in 1957. He was a theatre-goer sitting behind the Ricardos and the Mertzes in the box seats watching The Most Happy Fella.

Paul Harvey (Col. Hill) did seven films with Lucille Ball between 1934 and 1943. In 1953 he played the art critic from the New York Times in “Lucy the Sculptress” (ILL S2;E15).

Dick Hogan (Cpl. Haines) also appeared with Lucille Ball and Chester Morris in Five Came Back (1939).

Ann Shoemaker (Mrs. Hill) makes her only appearance with Lucille Ball.

Nestor Paiva (Pedro Fernandez) appeared on the very first episode of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” in 1957 - “Lucy Takes a Cruise To Havana” as the jailer. In 1964 he played Mr. Perkins, boss of the Handy Dandy Vaccum Cleaner Company in “Lucy and the Missing Stamp” (TLS S3;E14).

UNCREDITED CAST

Abner Biberman (Gomez) appeared with Lucille Ball and Steffi Duna in Panama Lady (1939).

Ethan Laidlaw (Barnes) appeared in seven films with Lucille Ball between 1933 and 1947.

Pedro de Cordoba (Grant Farm Worker) also appeared with Lucille Ball and Chester Morris in Five Came Back (1939).

Kirby Grant (Lt. Hobbs) appeared with Lucille Ball in I Dream Too Much (1935).

Selmar Jackson (Doctor) appeared in seven films with Lucille Ball between 1933 and 1949.

Paul McVey (Pilot) appeared with Lucille Ball in Bottoms Up (1934).

Horace McMahon (Monk O'Hara) was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1958. He appeared with Lucille Ball in That’s Right - You’re Wrong (1939).

John Sheehan (Airplane Seller) makes his only appearance with Lucille Ball.

THE STORY

Set somewhere in the Central American jungles, Joan Grant (Lucille Ball) runs a cocoa plantation. She also allows a platoon of US Marines to stay there. Two of the Marines, Malone (Chester Morris) and Darrick (Richard Dix), tussle over her affections. When she is kidnapped the two unite to save her. Henderson (John Eldredge), the plantation foreman, is really El Vengador, the kidnapper. He sets a trap for the Marines he knows will try to rescue her. The two rivals eventually realize that to defeat the enemy, they will have to work together. When Malone is heading for an ambush, Derrick flies to his aid and rescues Joan.

TRIVIA

Benjamin Stoloff took over direction of the film when George Nichols Jr. was killed in an automobile accident during production.

Lucille Ball and husband Desi Arnaz would later purchase the RKO 40-Acres backlot as part of her Desilu Studios holdings.

Lucy Carmichael is mistakenly drafted into the Marines in “Lucy Gets Caught Up in the Draft” (TLS S5;E9) in 1966. One of television’s most popular depictions of Marines was “Gomer Pyle USMC” [United States Marine Corps] a series filmed at Desilu Studios. Its star, Jim Nabors, did a cameo as Pyle in this episode.

“The Marine’s Hymn” is heard at the beginning and end of the film. In “Lucy is a Sax Symbol” (LWL S1;E5) in 1986, Lucy Barker manages to squeak out a rusty rendition of “The Marine’s Hymn” on her old saxophone for her granddaughter.

A clip from this film is included in “Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie” (1993).

#The Marines Fly High #1940 #Lucille Ball #RKO #Richard Dix #Chester Morris #paul harvey #John Eldredge #Life With Lucy #US Marines #Marine's Hymn #The Lucy Show #Gomer Pyle USMC

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jupitermelichios · 5 years ago

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So I decided to rewatch Suicide Squad and I have some thoughts...

This isn’t really a review so much as it’s just a series of thoughts and impressions. I will say that while it’s still one of the worst made films I’ve ever seen, it’s never boring, which is by far the biggest sin a film can commit. It’s bullshit but it’s consistently interesting bullshit which makes it better than something like Fant4stic, which is as bad and incoherant but also just incredibly dull. I don’t think this could ever have been a good film, there was too much massively wrong with it before shooting even started to have been salvagable, but I do think it could have been a lot more coherant if it hadn’t been for the reshoots, re-edits, re-edits of re-edits and all the the other stuff that happened to it post production. Unlike something like BvS, I get why some people liked this one.

On that note, while I am going to end on a few possitives this basically a roast so if you don’t want to read about a film getting picked apart, this probably won’t be your jam. But if like me you find critiques of bad movies cathartic, read on. I’m not the first person to do this, but I’ve spotted some stuff I haven’t seen anyone else talk about so hopefully there’ll be something new for you.

All the dialogue is just slightly off in a way that’s hard to pin down, in the way that a lot of comprehensible stuff written by computers and neural networks is just slightly off. It’s got that phishing email or pornbot quality to it. Literally the fourth or fifth line in the film is Griggs saying about the prison rations, “...Everything a growing young man needs like you”, which isn’t nonsense, but is clearly wrong, and a lot of the lines have that quality to them.

In a similar vein, Deadshot’s daughter is written like she’s five or six, but the actress looks about twelve. I actually went and checked how old she was when this released, because I know white people are often wildly bad at judging the ages of black kids and I’m bad at judging ages in general, but no, she was 12 or 13 when this was shot, so why’s she written like a toddler? She doesn’t give a good performance (which is not the actresses fault, Will Smith barely gives a good performance in this and he can do this shit in his sleep, there’s no way a kid could have risen above the terrible script and direction) which makes it even worse, because you’ve got this pre-teen delivering dialogue written for a kindergardener in a way that feel like it’s maybe the first time she’s ever seen the script, and it makes what is otherwise one of the most competant scenes in the movie feel just as off as everything else.

The Joker. A lot of people have written a lot about Leto’s Joker but I want to add two things to the discussion I haven’t seen talked about much before. Firstly, before the electro-shock torture and acid bath, he and Harley have no romance. Like, explicitly, there is no romance, or even cammeraderie there. He’s her patient. She’s his jailer. He didn’t seduce her, he just tortured her until she gave in. That’s literally shown in the film. Even after the torture when she’s now on side he still really doesn’t like her, and not in a Paul Dini BTAS he doesn’t like her but he also wants her around kind of way. He doesn’t want her in his life. He orders her to leave him alone and she fucking stalks him. That’s not even subtext, she is specifically his stalker, because apparently the solution to the relationship being abusive was to retconn Harley into also being a creep as though that somehow solves something.

Secondly, Joker isn’t smart. Not only is he no longer emotionally intelligent (and comics Joker is many terrible things but he’s probably the most emotionally intelligent character in DC, that’s a lot of what makes him so dangerous because it’s how he manipulates people) he’s not intelligent full stop. His great plan for breaking out of Arkham? Some of his goons from the outside literally just shoot their way in to get to him. Even leaving aside the fact that Arkham apparently isn’t set up to deal with that kind of violence in this world despite Batman having been opperating for a decade, that’s not a clever plan, and it’s not Joker’s plan. 'Hope some of my dudes are loyal enough to come get me’ isn’t any kind of escape plan, and nothing we see after that point suggests that this was a moment of weakness. Joker just straight up isn’t very bright in this, which is weird because that’s one of the few genuinely consistent character traits he has. He’s no Riddler, sure, but he’s really smart and that makes him hard to contain.

Ayer made Harley functionally a sex worker in this, and it doesn’t actually matter that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with sex work or that sex work is real work, because David Ayer definitely thinks there is, and also really really hates women. David Ayer hates women so goddamn much. The only thing Slipknot does in the entire film apart from die is hit a woman just for being a woman.

When Waller arrives at Belle Reve, Croc is doing push ups. And that’s fine, it’s a classic movie shorthand for ‘bored prisoner is also fit and strong’, but the actor isn’t actually doing pushups. He’s got one knee tucked under his body to support his weight, and is clearly actually just sort of bobbing his head. What I suspect happened is that the prosthetics on his arms and chest were too heavy to allow that kind of movement, which would tie up with the stiff way he holds his arms throughout the film, but he’s not even bothering to pretend very hard and it adds to this pervading sense of off-kilter wrongness the film has.

Rick Flagg is supposed to be ‘the best special forces opperative this country has’, but he’s... really bad? He’s no use in any of the fights, he’s incapable of working with a team and has zero interpersonal skills, and when he’s assigned to be a bodyguard, he immediately starts fucking his client which is like, bodyguarding rule 1. He’s really bad at his job. (Which would be fine if the explanation was that he’s a fucking psychopath who’s 100% willing to just murder a civilian in the line of duty, but he’s meant to be Hannibal Smith more than Dirty Harry, and also if he is here because he’s a psychopath, why did Amanda Waller assume June Moon would be into that?!) He even has to be blackmailed into joining the opperation, so he’s incompetent, unprofessional, causes unecessary conflict, and isn’t even loyal to the project, so why him and not, I don’t know, literally any other character?

On the subject of June Moon, she goes (alone) on an archeological dig in a rainforest somewhere, finds a cave full of human remains and ancient artefacts, and literally her first action is to deliberately smash one of the artefacts, presumably just to see what would happen? IDK! We never get any explanation for that, but it’s definitely meant to be deliberate and not accidental when she smashes it! Why are archeologists in movies all so terrible?!

People have joked a lot about the fact that the movie changes the purpose of the squad from ‘plausibly deniable black ops, especially on American soil’, to ‘punching Superman’ but kept Captain Boomerang on the team, but there is actually an explanation given. A really really stupid explanation. Amanda Waller says that he’s there because ‘he faced down a metahuman and survived’, referring to him surviving being arrested. By the Flash. Who is famously non violent, and in fact in the next film in the series specifically says he’s never fought someone. So Boomer is on the team because he didn’t die when Flash picked him up and carried him to a police station, and Amanda Waller thinks that’s some kind of achievement. Like that isn’t the case for literally everyone the Flash has ever caught. And Flash is a street level hero, so that’s a whole lot of muggers and purse snatchers who are apparently capable of fist fighting Superman by Waller’s logic.

(On the same note as the Joker, Waller is also now incredibly stupid, but she’s mostly stupid for plot related reasons, so it sort of gets a pass? It gets more of a pass than the Joker at least, because making him comics-smart wouldn’t have necessatitated changing anything else about the film)

Re: Waller’s stupidity, her whole plan for recruiting El Diablo to the squad is... show him a video of him setting fire to some dudes. That’s it. She doesn’t even speak to him, she literally just holds up the video to the little window in his tank and seems surprised when that by itself isn’t enough.

And then when Flagg is like ‘hey let me try persuading him with actual arguments instead of just a weird video’, Diablo’s response is “You think you’re the first person to ask? I won’t do it. I’m a man not a weapon”, which gives us the amazing insight that in Ayer’s version of the DCU, there are apparently just... other Taskforce Xs running around. Other government agencies recruiting metahuman soldiers. So what exactly was the point of the half an hour or so of footage of her persuading the brass to go along with it? Because apparently they’re fine with this if every agency is doing it!

Tone? What even is tone. Griggs both has an antagonist but banter-y relationship with and brings cookies to the prisoners, but also he tortures them and is implied to be sexually abusing Harley, and like... you can’t have it both ways, Ayer. This is a one or the other situation. They can’t have a fun and jokey relationship with a man who is explicitly torturing and abusing them. Tone. You need to pick a fucking tone!

The decision to add a subplot about Deadshot being involved in a custody battle with his ex-wife was a fascinatingly terrible choice, and honestly tells you a lot about Ayer’s relationship to MRA talking points. Like, we know nothing about Deadshot’s wife except that she raised a cute well adjusted kid, so probably a pretty good parent, and that she doesn’t want her daughter to be spending time with a MASS MURDERER! So definitely a good parent! The comics just kind of handwave away Zoe’s mom most of the time, which was the right choice, because Ayer wants us to be on Deadshot’s side here, but it’s literally a choice between "a serial killer but you take credit cards” and a normal loving parent and somehow he thinks serial killer is the right answer? WTF happened in Ayer’s life that he thinks this is a choice where we side with Deadshot?! And it’s not even visitation rights or anything, Deadshot wants full custody. And the film thinks he’s in the right!

Not once, at any job I have ever had, one of which was a tourist attraction that required all visitors to wear a pass, have I ever seen someone wear a visitors pass on their sleeve. Not once. And it’s honestly such a good summary of the pervading wrongness of this film. This doesn’t feel like it was made by people. It feels like it was made by middlingly intelligent algorithms trying to pass as human.

Someone please tell me what the fuck any of this set is supposed to mean. The pose feels deliberate, but it’s not invoking anything I can see except the hanged man from the Ryder-Waite tarot deck, the halo of knives almost looks like it’s pseudo-religious imagery except that it’s not a full halo, the circle is incomplete on one side because of a broken piano, does the piano mean something? What about the babygrows, do they mean something? Does the Joker... want kids? Kill kids? Think Harley’s pregant? What the hell is any of this supposed to mean, and if, as I suspect, it was never supposed to mean anything why the fuck did they go to the trouble of making it?! What exactly does the hours this took to put together add to the movie?

David Ayer has a really weird relationship with both gang culture and latino gang culture specifically. He always feels the need to shoehorn them in somehow, and it’s this weird love-hate relationship where he apparently thinks latino gangs are so cool they have to be in everything, but is also so fucking racist he’s incapable of having a latino character who isn’t in a gang. Also in order to shoehorn them in here, he basically removed all of Joker’s henchmen (except for one scene which serves no narrative purpose) and replaced when with generic racist-stereotype LA gangs.

The fact that Griggs just hands Harley the phone in front of all the other guards and soliders was A Choice. Made even more so by the fact that Griggs never actually pay off. He gives Harley the phone, she tells him he’s “so screwed now”, and then... nothing. He’s just gone for the rest of the movie. He’s not even in the epilogue back in prison scenes.

I fucking love that the first thing Waller does is tell the world’s best assassin her real name. That is just... *chefs kiss* Everyone in this film is so fucking stupid.

I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming and I remembered the line perfectly, and I still had to stop the film because I was laughing too hard for “Ah would advise naht gettin’ killed by her, her sword traps the souls of its victims”. It’s the ‘that wizard came from the moon’ of film dialogue, and no one could have made it work, but the southern accent is really what makes that line delivery. I don’t know why, there’s just something about it in that drawl that it just endlessly hilarious.

It really is impressive how every character in this manages to be an offensive stereotype, sometimes multiple offensive stereotypes at once.

I love how Flagg’s right-hand woman is a samurai with a magical possessed sword that traps the souls of the damned who also isn’t military and refuses to speak English most of the time, but the squad are too weird for him. “You won’t believe it, this guy Boomerage, he’s got these bent stick things, and when he throws them they come back! I am freaking out, I can’t deal with this. Oh hi Katana, trap any damned souls lately?”

Harley is explicitly malicious in this in a way no other version of Harley has ever been, which is a Freudian nightmare when you combine it with her also being more sexualised than ever, and more infantalised than any version outside the Arkham games. Someone get Ayer a goddamn therapist. (Also in the vein of everyone being dumb in this, Harley is now an absolutely terrible psychiatrist and all her diagnoses are explicitly wrong, so that’s fun.)

The fucking pink unicorn-bundle of money switcheroo. There’s nothing to say on it that hasn’t already been said but holy shit. How do you fuck something up that bad? How? It’s like looking into Chekov’s nightmares and finding a pink stuffed unicorn staring back.

I love the way the soliders just come and go in this. Are they dead, are they alive, have they abandonned the cause? Why the fuck knows? Certainly not the editors!

I love how we’re supposed to be really sad about El Diablo being dead, but not care that Croc is seemingly directly underneath the explosion and definitely about to die, that’s fun.

I need to know if it was Ayer or Cara Delavigne’s choice to make Enchantress be just.. doing a little dance. Duing all the ‘tense’ moments. Because there are probably things which undercut tension more than the bad guy having a bit of boogy, but not many.

Enchantress gets so many costume changes, and I want to believe that they’re all from different versions of the film but I honestly think it was deliberate and I need someone on in the design department for this movie to tell me why because it add nothing.

I think the best thing about the stupidly on the nose liscenced soundtrack is that it just disappears once they arrive in Midway city. After spirit in the sky it’s original music all the way until the final scene. The great soundtrack DC stans insist this film has is literally only in the first 50 minutes and the last 2 of a 2hr+ movie.

The glorification of abuse in this is... seriously fucking something else. Twilight doesn’t have a patch on this. 50 Shades of Grey doesn’t have a patch on this. This shit is disgusting, and the fact that they pushed so hard to get it a child friendly rating is just morally bankrupt.

Possitive note to end on:

The dialogue is way too on the nose and exposition dump-y but the scene in the bar works pretty well. It fulfils its role in the story, and gives us a decent dose of team bonding.

Deadshot and Harley have great chemistry, and Boomer is perfectly cast, in a way that makes me really hopeful for James Gunn’s take on the team. A writer who knows how to write friendships could do a lot with the three of them, and they’ve been the core squad since 2011 so they’re the ones who matter. It probably helps that whatever Will Smith’s faults as an actor, you could cast him opposite a housebrick and they’d somehow have great chemistry.

#suicide squad #roasting suicide squad #bad movies #you could build whole academic careers just talking about all the things that went wrong in the production of this film #and some of it was studio interferance for sure #but a lot of it was ayer being incompetant #and trailerpark being incompetant #and kate hawley somehow being incompetant despite being fine on other movies #likewise john gilroy the creditted editor #lindsay graham and Mary Vernieu doing the worst jobs of their respective careers #i'm glad this movie didn't tank the careers of the creatives #and so upset it didn't tank the career of david ayer #how can you write this and fucking Bright and still have a job as a writer #how

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acontributor · 5 years ago

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The Origins of Dating

The word “date�� was coined — inadvertently, it seems — by George Ade, a columnist for the Chicago Record, in 1896. In a column about “working class lives,” he told of a clerk named Artie whose girlfriend was losing interest in him and beginning to see other men socially. When Artie confronts his fading love, he says, “I s’pose the other boy’s fillin’ all my dates?”

But when these single women, stripped from their dependency on fathers and husbands, began to be courted in public, police, politicians, and civic leaders were alarmed.

“In the eyes of the authorities,” Weigel writes, “women who let men buy them food and drinks or gifts and entrance tickets looked like whores, and making a date seemed the same as turning a trick.”

After centuries of women’s fortunes being dictated by the men around them, the notion of women on their own gave much of society pause. In Chicago, single women were known as “women adrift.”

The charity girl

These circumstances gave birth to dating rituals and other unfortunate traditions that still remain — or, at least, still cause confusion as mores change — today.

When women first hit the workforce, writes Weigel, “the belief remained widespread they were working not to support themselves but only to supplement the earnings of fathers or husbands.”

As such, “employers used this misconception as an excuse to pay women far less than they paid men. In 1900, the average female worker earned less than half of what a man would earn in the same position.”

If you’ve ever wondered how it developed that men were expected to treat their dates, that’s how.

“‘If I had to buy all my meals I’d never get along,’ a young woman living in a boardinghouse in Hell’s Kitchen told a social worker in 1915.”

But as these women were courted in public, efforts were undertaken to curb what authorities viewed as a potential public menace.

“In the early 1900s, vice commissions across the country sent police and undercover investigators to check out spots where people went to make dates,” Weigel writes. “As early as 1905, private investigators hired by a group of Progressive do-gooders in New York City were taking notes on what we can now recognize as the dating avant-garde.”

She recalls the report of one such special agent, staked out at the Strand Hotel in Midtown, who noted that the women he was spying on did not seem like prostitutes, per se, but were concerning nonetheless.

Of the “store employees, telephone girls, stenographers, etc.,” he noted that “their morals are loose, and there is no question that they are on terms of sexual intimacy with their male companions.”

So heavy was the concern that these loose, immoral women might harm society that, “in the 1910s, John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of the Standard Oil founder, funded investigations into the commercialized vice industries of more than a dozen American cities.”

By the mid-1910s, women on dates came to be known as “Charity Girls” — as in, since they took no money for their “favors,” they were perceived to be giving it away as charity — and by the 1920s, “the prostitutes at New York’s Strand Hotel complained that Charity Girls were putting them out of business.”

It sounds like a joke, until you learn that some women were thrown in jail for this horrible crime.

“At Bedford Reformatory, an institution founded to rehabilitate female delinquents in upstate New York, an Irish woman told her jailers again and again that she had ‘never taken money from men,’ ” Weigel writes. “Instead, men took her ‘to Coney Island to dances and Picture Shows.’ ”

In time, the authorities gave up, overtaken by reality.

“As the years passed, the vice squad had to accept it,” she writes. “Daters did not see these exchanges as tawdry. They saw them as romantic.”

The shopgirl

While dating finally became acceptable, it wasn’t exactly liberating for women. If the American Dream for men was to work hard and become a success, the equivalent for women was to get a good job and marry your rich boss.

“Frances Donovan, a University of Chicago–trained sociologist who taught at Calumet High School on the city’s South Side in the 1920s, interviewed senior girls about their plans after graduation,” Weigel writes.

“‘I would like to be a stenographer,’ one announced. ‘I’m going to be an executive secretary and marry the boss.’ ”

The other alternative was for women to take jobs in high-class department stores where rich men were likely to shop. These women became known as “Shopgirls.”

Donovan spent two summers working at a department store to research a book, and later reported she knew of “several marriages and heard of a great many more where the husband was far above the wife as measured by the economic scale.”

Magazines began running articles such as, “How Shopgirls win Rich Husbands.” An in-house newsletter for Macy’s employees in New York even included a gossip column that tracked these courtships.

“Have you noticed a gentleman wearing spats stopping at Miss Holahan’s counter every day, leaving a spray of lily of the valley?” read one such entry. “Best of luck, Ide!”

In order to attract rich men, these Shopgirls were caught by the irony of needing to buy the expensive items they sold.

In an odd way, this consumerism marked a form of progress.

“In an earlier era, a girl from humble origins could not hope to look like the wife or daughter of a millionaire,” Weigel writes. “But a job in a department store or a laundry gave anyone opportunities to become well versed in the signs of wealth.”

To that end Shopgirls studied their well-to-do female customers seeking to imitate their look, which led the business world to pounce on this new type of consumer who sought little but to impress.

“The cosmetics industry exploded in the 1920s,” Weigel writes. “Previously, only prostitutes and actresses ‘painted.’ Victorians had viewed ‘natural’ outer beauty as a sign of clean living. But around 1900, more and more women were starting to apply cosmetics. By 1912, the Baltimore Sun reported that even respectable society women ‘are seen on our streets and fashionable promenade with painted faces.’ ”

To counter society’s negative association with painted faces, “the cosmetics industry invented a new term: makeup.

“Not only was ‘making yourself up’ permissible; advertisers were soon claiming it was positively virtuous,” Weigel writes. “By making herself up, a woman showed that she valued her femininity and was willing to spend time and money on her appearance.”

The ‘It’ Girl

Two other now-familiar concepts also sprung up around this time. Previously, people sought to be known by traits that emphasized morality, such as “character” and “virtue.”

The concept of “personality” — which places emphasis on surface traits — had been regarded in the negative, referenced in terms of “personality disorders.”

“Starting around 1920, however,” Weigel writes, “experts began to grant that healthy individuals had personalities, too.”

The concept began popping up in romance literature and articles about dating, in the sense that, “personality was like ‘painting’ — a way a woman could make herself up in order to appeal to men.”

“In the context of dating, to have a ‘good personality’ or to simply ‘have personality’ meant to have charisma,” Weigel writes. “This was an asset whether you were selling handkerchiefs or selling yourself.”

Elinor Glyn, writing for Cosmopolitan in 1926, referred to personality simply as “It,” which was, according to Weigel, “a mysterious kind of animal magnetism.”

“With ‘It,’ ” Glyn wrote, “you win all men if you are a woman — and all women if you are a man.”

Glyn’s article was adapted for a movie starring Clara Bow as “a shopgirl who has ‘it,’ ” and the concept of the It Girl was born. Bow’s It Girl, of course, sought to marry the boss — in this case, the son of the store’s owner.

The notion that “it” can be developed led to the origin of another phenomena — the dating-advice book.

Weigel tells of a 1915 New York Times article on a lecture by author Susanna Cocroft, who seized on the trend by writing books like “What to Eat and When,” and this now-remarkable title, “Beauty a Duty.”

“‘Beauty is no longer vanity; it is use,” Cocroft said. “A waitress or a shopgirl could be fired at any time simply because someone her boss found prettier showed up and asked for her position.”

As dating rituals changed, moral authorities panicked at every turn. After “petting” came into vogue in the 1920s, for example, Weigel cites a Times article from 1922 with the title, “Mothers Complain That Modern Girls ‘Vamp’ Their Sons at Petting Parties.”

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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Ernest Lee Thomas

Ernest Lee Thomas (born March 26, 1949) is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Roger "Raj" Thomas on the 1970s ABC sitcom What's Happening!!, and its 1980s syndicated sequel, What's Happening Now!!, and for his recurring role as Mr. Omar on Everybody Hates Chris.

Early career and What's Happening!!

Thomas was born in Gary, Indiana and began his professional acting career as a Broadway actor, appearing in the 1974 revival production of Love for Love and in the 1975 revival of The Member of the Wedding. Both shows starred actress Glenn Close. Shortly after he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a TV/film actor. In the fall of 1975 he received a role on an episode of The Jeffersons. It was during the taping of the show that he learned of an audition for the upcoming comedy sitcom What's Happening!!, loosely based on the 1975 film Cooley High. He eventually went on to win the role of Roger "Raj" Thomas on the show, which aired from 1976 to 1979.

During the show's run, Thomas was involved in other acting film and TV projects including Baretta, Roots, The Brady Bunch Hour and the film A Piece of the Action starring Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby. Though the series rated well, What's Happening!! was cancelled after its third season in the early spring of 1979.

What's Happening Now!! and later career

After a six-year hiatus from TV and film acting, Ernest resumed his role as Roger "Raj" Thomas in the sequel What's Happening Now!! The show aired in first-run syndication from 1985 to 1988.

Ernest Thomas is also one of the stars of rocker/horror movie director Rob Zombie's 2012 film The Lords of Salem in which he plays a local town's radio DJ.

Since the show's cancellation Thomas has guest starred on a number of popular TV dramas and sitcoms including In the Heat of the Night, (which co-starred his TV wife Anne-Marie Johnson, from What's Happening Now!!), The Parent 'Hood, Martin (which starred his What's Happening Now!! co-star Martin Lawrence), Soul Food, The Steve Harvey Show, All About the Andersons and more recently Just Jordan. He has also appeared in a number of films, including a supporting role in Malcolm X and a cameo in Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. He later had a recurring role as funeral director, Mr. Omar, on the TV sitcom Everybody Hates Chris. He had an uncredited guest spot as Ernest T "Bass" on the TV Show Are We There Yet? It was titled, "The Satchel Paige Episode" and had him playing a Flavor Flav type personality.

He has an eye condition called amblyopia.

Filmography

1976-1979: What's Happening!! (TV Series) - Roger 'Raj' Thomas

1977: A Piece of the Action - John

1985-1988: What's Happening Now!! (TV Series) - Roger 'Raj' Thomas

1991: Kiss and Be Killed - Det. Ross

1992: Malcolm X - Sidney

2003: The Watermelon Heist - Jailer

2003: Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star - Ernest Thomas

2005-2009: Everybody Hates Chris (TV Series) - Mr. Omar / Funeral Director / Radical Man

2007: Paroled - Royce Henderson

2009: Funny People - Yo Teach Principal

2012: The Lords of Salem - Chip McDonald (Frankenstein and the Witchhunter) (uncredited)

2013: The Pastor and Mrs. Jones - Pastor

2014: Basketball Girlfriend - Lenny

2014: Revenge - Neville

2014: The Slimbones - Uncle AB

2015: Mega Shark vs. Kolossus - Admiral Titus Jackson

2015: Chocolate City - Diner Manager

2016: '79 Parts - Priore

2016: Stop Bullying Now: Live from the Big House - Himself

2016 - Earworm (short)

2017: Chocolate City: Vegas Strip - Mr. Williams

2017: The Gods - Olympus

2017: Two Wolves - Olivier

#03/26

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my-little-safe-corner · 5 years ago

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Castle Rock - The Kid is Back!!!

So I’ve not yet recovered from the new BTS content for the IT movies, and here came this big surprise!!! The Kid has been there since Castle Rock’s beginning, and he was worshiped as an angel by the first settlers in the area! So who / what actually is he??? I thought he might be Randall Flagg, but the writers said last season that he’s an original character, so maybe someone similar. Anyway, what is his plan for the souls of the settlers in their new bodies? What will happen to the hypnotized citizens? Why wasn’t Pop Merrill affected? While I don’t plan watching the episodes I’ve missed, I will no doubt follow the rest of the season from now on!

And while the background story of The Kid as he told Molly in S1E9 may be one big lie (still not sure about that, see below), that episode still contained important foreshadowing to the current season. Look at this:

Yep, that’s the prophet, the same girl who met The Kid in the recent episode! And just to verify, if you check the credits, you’ll see it’s the same actress, and her character’s name is indeed Amity (which, by the way, means “truthful”)! Also, earlier in the episode, when The Kid listens to Matthew’s cassettes, the French settlers are mentioned as a possibility for the cause of the curse on Castle Rock.

So why am I still not sure The Kid has made up the whole alternate universe story, even after what we know now? Remember that so far in the current season, we’ve only seen him in the past period, in 1619. He’s yet to make an appearance in the present! We have no idea if he actually remembers who he is and what he planned to do with the people all those years ago. Something could have happened that made him lose his memory, and he may actually believe he’s Henry Deaver! All we know is that he somehow left the cage, but we don’t know what he’s about to do!

(And that of course, raises the question of what happened to his jailer, aka the original Henry Deaver, and also causes an inconsistency, since in the end of the 1st season, we saw that a year had passed since the main events, which sets it in 2019, and Henry told The Kid it’s christmas, i.e December 2019, but the 2nd season takes place now, and The Kid is already free...)

Another foreshadowing, regarding the dead settlers, can be seen in S1E7, when Wendell explains Ruth about one of the games he plays on his smartphone. In that game the dead always return, and can take the shape of people who look like allies, very similar to what’s going on now! The bad news is that only a timewalker can kill them permanently, and Ruth is already dead...

Oh, and does the story of these settlers before they died remind anyone of something that happened in another Stephen King town? The story of the founders of Derry, of course!!!

#castle rock #castle rock analysis

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lovetaylorswift29 · 5 years ago

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LOVE is a Ruthless GAME

🎲 ♥️ 🎲 ♠️ 🎲

Better Than Revenge:

Soon she's gonna find / Stealing other people's TOYS on the playground / Won’t make you many friends

State of Grace:

This is a state of grace / This is the worthwhile fight / LOVE IS A RUTHLESS GAME/ Unless you play it good and right

The Lucky One:

New to town with a MADE UP NAME / In the Angel city, chasing fortune and fame / And the camera flashes MAKE IT LOOK like a dream / You had it figured out since you’re in school Everybody loves PRETTY, Everybody loves COOL / So overnight you look like a sixties' queen

Now it's big black cars and Riviera views / And your LOVER in the foyer doesn’t even know you / And your secrets end up splashed on the news front page / And they tell you that you're LUCKY, but you're so confused / 'Cause you don’t feel pretty, you just feel used / And all the young things line up to take your place / Another name goes up in lights / You wonder if you'll MAKE IT OUT ALIVE

They say you bought a bunch of land somewhere / Chose the Rose Garden over Madison Square / And it took some time, but I understand it now

Blank Space:

NICE TO MEET YOU, where you been? / I could show you incredible things / magic, madness, heaven, sin / Saw you there and I thought / Oh my God, look at that face / You look like my next mistake / LOVE’S A GAME, WANNA PLAY? / New money, suit and tie / I can read you like a magazine / Ain't it funny, RUMORS FLY / And I know you heard about me

SO HEY, LET’S BE FRIENDS / I'm dying to see how this one ends / Grab your passport and my hand / I can make the bad guys good for a weekend / So it's gonna be forever, or it's gonna go down in flames / You can tell me when it's over, if the high was worth the pain / Got a long list of ex-lovers / They'll tell you I'm insane 'Cause you know I love the PLAYERS / And you love the GAME

You're the KING, baby I'm your QUEEN / Find out what you want / Be that girl for a month / Wait the worst is yet to come / Screaming, crying, perfect storm / I can make all the tables turn / Rose gardens filled with thorns / Keep you second guessing like, "Oh my God, who is she?" / I get drunk on jealousy / But you'll come back each time you leave / 'Cause darling I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream

Shake It Off:

I go on too many dates / But I can't make them stay / at least that’s WHAT PEOPLE SAY

I never miss a beat / I'm lightning on my feet / and that’s WHAT THEY DON’T SEE

I'm dancing on my own / I make the moves up as I go / And that's WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW

New Romantics:

We show off our different scarlet letters / Trust me, mine is better / We're so young, but we're on the road to ruin / WE PLAY DUMB, but know exactly what we're doing / We cry tears of mascara in the bathroom / Honey, life is just a classroom

'Cause, baby, I could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me / And every day is like a battle, but every night with us is like a dream

Baby, we're the NEW ROMANTICS / The best people in life are FREE

We're all here, the lights and boys are blinding / We hang back, it’s all in the timing / It's POKER / He can't see it in my face, but I'm about to PLAY my ACE

We need love, but all we want is danger / We team up, then SWITCH SIDES like a record changer / The rumors are terrible and cruel, but honey MOST OF THEM ARE TRUE

Ready For It:

But if he’s a ghost, then I can I can be a phantom / Holdin' him for RANSOM

I see nothing better, I KEEP HIM forever / Like a VENDETTA

I-I-I see how THIS is gonna go / Touch me, and you'll NEVER be alone

In the middle of the night, in my dreams / I know I'm gonna be with you / So I take my time / ARE YOU READY FOR IT?

Knew I was a robber / First time that he saw me / stealing hearts and running off and never saying sorry / But if I'm a thief, then he can join the heist / And we’ll move to an Island / And he can be my jailer / Burton to this Taylor / Every love I've known in comparison is a failure / I forget their names now / I'm so very tame now / Never be the same now

Baby, let the games begin / Let the GAMES begin / LET THE GAMES BEGIN.

End Game:

I wanna be your END GAME / I wanna be your FIRST STRING / I wanna be your A-TEAM / I wanna be your end game / END GAME

Big reputation, BIG REPUTATION / Ooh, you and me, WE GOT BIG REPUTATIONS / Ah, and YOU heard about ME / Ooh, I got some BIG ENEMIES

I don't wanna hurt you, I just wanna be / Drinking on a beach with you all over me / I know what they all say, but I'M NOT TRYING TO PLAY

And I BURY hatchets, but I KEEP maps of where I put them / REPUTATION precedes me, they told you I'M CRAZY/ I swear I don't love the DRAMA, it loves me

You've been CALLING MY BLUFF on all my usual tricks / So here's the TRUTH from my red lips

I Did Something Bad:

I never trust a narcissist, but they love me / So I PLAY them like a violin and I MAKE IT LOOK oh so easy / 'Cause for every lie I tell them, they tell me three / This is how the world works / Now all he thinks about is me

I can feel the flames on my skin / Crimson red paint on my lips / If a man TALKS SHIT, then I owe him nothing / I don't regret it one bit, 'cause he had it coming

I never trust a playboy, but they love me / So I fly him all around the world and I let them think they saved me / They never see it coming, what I do next / This is how the world works / You gotta leave before you get left

I can feel the flames on my skin / He says, "Don't throw away a good thing" / But if he drops my name, then I owe him nothing / And if he spends my change, then he had it coming

Don’t Blame Me:

I've been breakin' hearts a long time / And TOYING with them older guys / Just PLAY THINGS for me to use

Look What You Made Me Do:

I don't like your little GAMES / Don't like your tilted stage / The ROLE you made me PLAY / Of the fool, no I don't like you

But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time / Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time / I've got a list of names and YOURS IS IN RED, underlined / I check it once, then I CHECK IT twice

Ooh, look what you made me do / Look what you made me do / Look what you just made me do / LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO

I don't like YOUR kingdom keys / They once belonged to ME / You ask me for a place to sleep / Locked me out and threw a feast / The world moves on, another day, another DRAMA / But not for me, not for me, all I think about is KARMA / And then the world moves on, but one thing's for sure / Maybe I got mine, but YOU’LL ALL GET YOURS

I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me / I'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams / I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me / I'll be the ACTRESS starring in your bad dreams

"I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now" / "Why?" / "Oh, 'cause she's dead!"

Getaway Car:

It was the best of times, the worst of crimes / I struck a match and blew your mind, but I didn't mean it / And you didn’t see it / The ties were black, the lies were white

“X" marks the spot, where we fell apart / He poisoned the well, I WAS LYING TO MYSELF

We were jet-set, Bonnie and Clyde / Until I switched to the other side / It's no surprise I turned you in / 'Cause us TRAITORS NEVER WIN / I’m in a getaway car / I left you in a motel bar / Put the money in a bag and I stole the keys / That was the last time you ever saw me

Cruel Summer:

Bad, bad boy / SHINY TOY with a PRICE / You know that I BOUGHT IT

Devils ROLL THE DICE / Angels roll their eyes / What doesn't kill me makes me want you more

It's cool, that's what I tell them/ NO RULES in breakable heaven

The Man:

I would be complex / I would be cool / They'd say I played the field before I found someone to commit to / And that would be okay for me to do / Every conquest I had made would make me more of a boss to you / I'd be a FEARLESS leader / I'd be an alpha type / When everyone believes ya / What's that like? I'm so sick of running as fast as I can / Wondering if I'd get THERE quicker if I was a man / And I'm so sick of them coming at me again / 'Cause if I was a man, then I'd be the man

They'd say I hustled / Put in the work / They wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve / What I was wearing, if I was rude / Could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves / And we would toast to me, let the PLAYERS PLAY / I'd be just like Leo, in Saint-Tropez

What's it like to brag about raking in dollars / And getting bitches and MODELS? / And it's all good if you're bad / And it's okay if you're mad / If I was out flashin' my dollas, I'd be a bitch, not a baller / They'd paint me out to be bad, so it's okay that I'm mad

The Archer:

Combat, I'm ready for combat / I say I don't want that, but what if I do? / 'Cause cruelty wins in the movies / I've got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you / Easy they come, easy they go / I jump from the train, I ride off alone / I NEVER GREW UP, it's getting so old / Help me hold onto you

I've been the archer / I've been the prey / Who could ever leave me, darling? / But who could stay?

And I cut off my nose just to spite my face / Then I hate my reflection for years and years

I've been the archer / I've been the prey / SCREAMING, who could ever leave me, darling? But who could stay? / 'Cause they see right through me / They see right through me / CAN YOU SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME?

THEY SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME / I SEE RIGHT THROUGH ME

Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince:

You know I adore you / I'm crazier for you / Then I was at sixteen / Lost in a film scene / Waving homecoming queens / Marching band playing / I'm lost in the lights

Running through rose thorns / I saw the scoreboard and ran for my life / No cameras catch my pageant smile / I counted days, I counted miles / To see you there / It's been a long time coming

The whole school is rolling fake dice / You PLAY stupid GAMES, you WIN stupid prizes / It's you and me / There's nothing like this / Miss Americana and The Heartbreak Prince

MY TEAM IS LOSING / Battered and bruising / I see the high fives / Between the bad guys / Leave with my head hung / You are the only one / Who seems to care

And I don't want you to go / I don't really want to FIGHT / 'Cause nobody's gonna WIN / I think you should come home

I just thought you should know / And I'll never let you go / 'Cause I know this is a FIGHT / That someday we're gonna WIN

Cornelia Street:

Back when we were card sharks, PLAYING GAMES / I thought you were leading me on / I packed my bags, left Cornelia Street / Before you even knew I was gone / But then you called, SHOWED YOUR HAND / I turned around before I hit the tunnel / Sat on the roof, you and I

London Boy:

We can go drivin' in, on my scooter / Uh, you know, just riding in London

I love my hometown as much as Motown / I love SoCal / And you know I love Springsteen, faded blue jeans, Tennessee whiskey / But something happened, I heard him laughing / I saw the dimples first and then I heard the accent / They say home is where the heart is / But that's NOT where mine lives

You know I love a London boy / I enjoy walking Camden Market in the afternoon / He likes my American smile / Like a child when our eyes meet, darling, I fancy you / Took me back to Highgate, met all of his best mates / So I guess all the RUMORS are true / You know I love a London boy / Boy, I fancy you

And now I love high tea, stories from uni, and the West End / You can find me in the pub, we are watching rugby with his school friends / Show me a gray sky, a rainy cab ride / Babe, DON’T THREATEN ME WITH A GOOD TIME / They say home is where the heart is / But God, I love the English

Stick with me, I'M YOUR QUEEN / Like a Tennessee Stella McCartney

Daylight:

My love was as cruel as the cities I lived in / Everyone looked worse in the light / There are so many lines that I've crossed, unforgiven / I'll tell you truth, but never, "Goodbye" / I don't wanna look at anything else now that I saw you / I don't wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you / I've been sleepin' so long in a twenty-year dark night / And now I see daylight, I only see daylight

Luck of the draw only draws the unlucky / And so I became the butt of the joke / I wounded the good and I trusted the wicked / Clearing the air, I breathed in the smoke / Maybe you ran with the wolves and refused to settle down / Maybe I've stormed out of every single room in this town / Threw out our cloaks and our daggers because it's morning now / It's brighter now

And I can still see it all in my mind / All of you, all of me intertwined / I once believed love would be black and white / But it's golden / And I can still see it all in my head / Back and forth from New York sneaking in your bed / I once believed love would be burning red / But it's golden / Like daylight

You gotta step into the DAYLIGHT and let it go / Just let it go / LET IT GO

I wanna be defined by the things that I love / Not the things I hate / Not the things I'm afraid of / The things that haunt me in the middle of the night / I just think that YOU ARE WHAT YOU LOVE

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