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starlene · 11 months ago

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Så som i himmelen proshot thoughts

Just some quick-ish notes on the cast and direction to sorta process watching the proshot for the first time!

Philip Jalmelid as Daniel: I've gone on record saying that acting-wise, he's not my favourite Daniel, but he really has a voice like no one else, and I really do appreciate him for that. He was also the first Daniel I saw, and he made me cry literally every time he opened his mouth to sing. You don't forget an experience like that. He's still no number one favourite of mine, but I have grown very fond of his portrayal of the character, and I especially enjoyed his first act on the proshot. I love Daniel Daréus so, so much!

Tuva B. Larsen as Lena: I enjoyed seeing all the closeups of her – there is really a lot going on under the surface in her Lena, more than I think I saw/understood live in theatre. With that said, I think the creative team has done the character of Lena a big disservice by not giving her a proper introspective/I want solo (like. How come Stig gets two but the female lead gets none?), so she always remains a bit of a mystery, no matter how talented the actor is. But I do like Tuva's portrayal. I just wish there was a bit more substantial stuff for her to perform!

Malena Ernman as Gabriella: potentially an unpopular opinion, but she's my absolute #1 musical Gabriella and I adore her. You can see that there's a tremendous capacity for joy inside this Gabriella, a bright spark that she has to suppress because of Conny. I can 100% see where the actors who make Gabriella meeker and more shy are coming from, but for me, Malena's Gabriella is where it's at.

Björn Kjellman as Arne: I mean, he's fine. It's just that Morgan Alling was so, so, so much better in the role.

Anders Ekborg as Stig: the only actor I've seen that I feel really gets this insane character... as much as you can get him, anyway. I have no idea why the musical spends so much time on Stig's marital troubles, nor why the thought of marital sex makes this Lutheran priest turn into an ultra-repressed Catholic monk, but Anders almost sells it to me. He has a voice like no one else, too. The red shirt in Stig's final scene is a piece of costume design I really, really like.

Sofia Pekkari as Inger: she's good, I don't really have further notes.

Rikard Björk as Tore: he's really good and has clearly done his research, but I gotta say, I think this is a role that truly benefits from having an actually disabled actor do it. I suppose it might not have been viable in the original production where they have to do a lot of cognitively very taxing workshopping and last-minute changes – but I'm so glad they cast the brilliant Jaakko Lahtinen as Tore in Helsinki. Jaakko's portrayal was so refreshingly honest and genuine, I don't really think any non-disabled actor can give the role that. That being said, Rikard also did a great job editing the proshot, he's clearly something of a renaissance man with all his talents!

Linus Eklund Adolphson as Holmfrid: love love love. Brilliant. Best Holmfrid I've ever seen by a mile. The bit in the beginning of the 2nd act where he mimes getting a kiss from the audience and putting it in his pocket? One of my favourite details in this entire show.

Christopher Wollter as Conny: hands down the best Conny I've seen, with the perfect mix of scary and incredibly insecure. Way too many actors just lean into the scary vibes. (Also the best Daniel in the original cast, but that's besides the point of this post.)

Annica Edstam as Florence: babygirl. The other half of my Gabriella/Florence otp that I know will come true one day. Love.

I know there are more named characters but these are the ones I feel the most strongly about!

Direction by Markus Virta: I've seen other productions do certain scenes better, but as a whole, I really do appreciate the simplicity and straightforwardness of Virta's direction. He lets the songs and the characters stand on their own, which I think is a good way to go – elaborate choreography/blocking and extra whatever can and has been nice, but this is not the sort of musical where you really need that. On the proshot, Virta's direction loses me during the last ten minutes, like it always has (we absolutely do not need to see Daniel's soul embracing his child self, not when absolutely nothing in the previous two hours has indicated we're dealing with a world where tangible afterlife visions like that are a thing) – but other than that, fantastic work, no notes.

Random notes:

I like how subtle Lena's "grandpa must go paint another angel on the wall" thing is here. I've written in length before how much I dislike the instant pregnancy thing – but I dislike it less here, where it's not a huge joyful declaration of pregnancy like in some other productions but a little unsure line that's left to the audience's interpretation. It's unclear if Daniel really gets what she means, and I'm also free to imagine she's really having her ex's child or whatever.

Am I losing it, or was there a short reprise bit of Den tid jag har in the last scene early in the run that wasn't included in the proshot anymore? I thought the last scene felt a little less overwrought and cringy than before, somehow.

Did anyone else watch the proshot yet? What did you think?

#Så som i himmelen #spending my New Year's Eve writing about musicals... as you do!

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svenskjavel · 1 year ago

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Björn Kjellman

Ytterligare någon på gränsen mellan DILF och GILF

#frågelådan #castielmoriarty

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alexbkrieger13 · 1 year ago

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Can you please translate this and include the photos?

https://www.aftonbladet.se/sportbladet/fotboll/a/wAzLgP/fotboll-mot-soft-hooligans-damlandslagets-storsta-supporters

"Call us lame if you want"

Meet the Soft Hooligans: "Not us who are stupid in the head"

GOTHENBURG. They want to support the national team with joy and love.

So when they received hate for their support, the Soft Hooligans were surprised but not surprised.

It's Friday afternoon, it's past 2 p.m. and there are a few hours left until kick-off. The rain hangs in the air and Sweden will host Switzerland in the Olympic qualifiers, as well as the Nations League, at Gamla Ullevi.

All around Gothenburg, supporters put on their yellow shirts and get ready. One of them is Emma Holmquist. She was in Brussels to watch the men's national team when two supporters were murdered by a terrorist.

- A national team is always valuable, but since that happened, it is priceless, she says.

Alba and Emma met in Sheffield last summer and have been friends ever since. They meet in stands around Sweden and the world. Sometimes they cheer for the same team, sometimes for different ones.

- To share this love for the national team with others. It's priceless that you can do that and that everyone is 27 regardless of the year they were born, says Emma and continues:

- I love my fellow supporters in Soft Hooligans. Even though I really wish that their team would lose when I meet them in the women's league, but that is also what is the key, that you can differentiate on that part.

But it all really started four years earlier, when a frustrated Estrid Kjellman was at the European Championships in the Netherlands with her mother, sister, cousin and cousin's friend.

- It was so very quiet in the arenas. When you shouted and cheered, you really stood out, she says.

The five women wanted to change that.

- I still had an image of what it might be like to go to football. How much it can sound, how powerful it can be. So then I felt that this is how I want it when I go and watch my favorite team, the Swedish women's national team, too.

Some inspiration was taken from what they had experienced in the stands around Sweden and at men's national matches while growing up and some from the Dutch fans during the EC.

- Even then they had such orange marches to the matches and it really felt organized while we Swedes sat scattered in different places in the arena. We didn't get any pressure and I want it to be more fun to go and watch football. So if no one else has taken this, we probably have to do it, says Kjellman.

It was also then and there that the supporters club's name was born: Soft Hooligans.

- People looked at us like we were hooligans and then it became an inside joke that we are not like other hooligans. We are soft hooligans.

Since then, the supporters' club has grown and now they have over 4,000 members on Facebook.

- I mean it really was a void, a hole. There was nothing. People wanted this and it wasn't there. And it was kind of only positive until the last month.

What Estrid is referring to is the hatred that came after the match in Gothenburg last time. A clip of the Soft Hooligans marching with a megaphone, drum and chant was mocked in the comments section. They were told it was lame and the name was ridiculed.

- I was a little shocked. There are still men who kind of really look down on women's football and the supporter culture that exists around it, she says and continues:

She is supported by Emma Holmquist, who herself is active in Linköping's supporters club Lejonflocken in the women's league. For over ten years, she has stood in the stands and she too has received both hate and threats for the way in which she supports.

- There are those who anonymously threaten us that when there is a derby, then you don't bring your flags and you shouldn't support in your way because it's lame. So I just ask who is saying this? Well, it's up to you to figure it out. But why shouldn't we support with our flags? We've been supporting this way since 2016. Yes, but it's for your own safety and they don't even want to tell you who they're from.

For both Emma and Estrid, being a supporter is about lifting your own players, cheering for your team and not shouting excuses.

- I want to be able to stand straight and know that the way I support doesn't hurt anyone. On the other hand, I can have all kinds of emotions at the match, but it is my responsibility how I express it, says Emma.

She feels that some people see the stands as a sanctuary where you can behave however you want, where you can let out more emotions than usual.

- And so it is. We release more than usual. You get that. I can't go into town and behave like I do in the stands. There must be reasonable limits and frameworks for that as well.

And there will be a lot of emotions today too. Not only because it is an important Olympic qualifying match, but also with everything that happened in Brussels in the bag. When Emma tells about the mourning ribbons at the collection and what the money will go to, it is immediately a man who, with the beer in his right fist, stretches out his left and says:

There is no one here who has hesitated to put on the yellow jersey. It is more important than ever to show the love for one's country, for one's team and for one's fellow supporters.

When Emma Holmquist talks about the community she has found thanks to the supportership and how she has seen the supporter group grow, it is with pride in her voice.

- Because we are part of it. We are part of that growth. The way we behave in the stands, the way we bring in supporters who are there for the first time. We take them under our wings. Just sit down at a table. Everyone here will take care of you.

Most recently, there was almost a fight over who would get to take care of the girl who showed up to attend her first soccer game.

- We won, we had her all night then, says Emma and smiles at the memory.

Despite the comments last time, they are marching to the arena this time as well. However, they do so in silence. Not because of what happened to them last time but out of respect for the victims in Brussels.

Kajsa Aronsson, Estrid's mother and one of the co-founders of Soft Hooligans, thinks it's obvious to go quietly to the arena. But when they enter, they should cheer as usual.

- That's why we're here, because we love them and we want to get to the Olympics together.

Unlike six years ago, the Swedish supporters are now united behind the one goal. The drum is included, as is the megaphone.

If you look out over the supporters, there are both young and old, men and women.

- This is not some small exclusive club, but this is for everyone who loves our women's national team who wants to be in the stands, and we also want most of all for you to want to be in the crowd, but you can sit on the long side too, that is okay.

The reason why the women's national team attracts such a diverse audience, both Emma and Alba believe, is due to the players and how they have built their profiles by standing up for what they believe in, for daring to take a stand. They are role models.

- Yes, I think that is super important, says Alba and Emma adds:

- I think it is also very brave to do that. When you come from clubs that are sometimes criticized for being funded by nations or people who have values that are less similar to our values and the players' values. Nevertheless, they dare to stand up. Some say it's a double standard. I say it's courage.

She raises Magdalena Erikssson as an example, another is Kosovare Asllani, who before the World Cup was asked about her time in PSG and Manchester City after she herself thought that the men's players should be better at taking a stand.

However, Emma understands that the men do not do it to the same extent.

- So it is difficult to be the first to break that pattern.

She points out that it has always been standard for the ladies to stand up for their values and use their platform while men's football exploded at a time when sport and politics were supposed to be kept separate.

- Do your job, play ball. But don't speak on matters you know nothing about. It's a challenge so I'm impressed as soon as someone does it.

In the stands this evening, it is Emma who takes care of the drum.

- Can we run something with smaller drums, I have to rest my arms a bit, she says to Caroline Gunnarsson, who is holding the megaphone.

But there are more who stand out, such as Per-Arne Svensson. He's standing there with a big yellow inflatable banana, like he's been doing for the past year.

- Opposite was a Butterick store and there they had a banana. I inflated it and drove it the whole trip to England. Wait a minute, it will be finished soon.

But it won't be. Sweden misses and after a disappointed "oooh" he continues to tell.

- Then it became an image and then we have run it at the WC this year. I bought a big banana, but today it died.

It has started to leak and for the next collection he has to buy a new one. He doesn't have much to spare for that criticism about the women's national team's supporters being lame.

Alexandra Carmblad has not been around for as long. This is the second football game she is watching live. The first was against Spain just over a month ago.

- It's fantastic, you can't help but be excited by the environment, by the energy, says Alexandra Carmblad.

She also prefers to go to women's football. At the same time as "Forward, forward, forward Sweden. We're going to the Olympics this year" chanted in the heels, Carmblad explains why.

- I think they put too much effort into the field and I think that supporters and cheerleaders are usually too aggressive. It's not really what I'm looking for when I watch football.

Sweden misses a goal chance. It is Stina Blackstenius who misses, but what follows is not a shout, but they run steadily: "Stina, Stina, Stina".

It is no wonder that the Swedish players love their fans. After the game, they go out to say thanks. Caroline Seger takes an extra lap past, Magdalena Eriksson likewise.

- I don't think they need to thank you like that, but it's absolutely incredible, and it means so much to a great many in the heel, and like everyone, they do this for some love of the sport and love of the team. So that they show that it means something to them and is really huge, says Estrid.

But they do and the players are happy to pay tribute to the fans who stand there through thick and thin. The ones who travel all over the world to support their team and who are always there at the home games.

And before the supporters leave Gamla Ullevi, they make sure to clean up after themselves. Candy bags and popcorn boxes are picked up before they wander further into the Gothenburg evening with a Swedish victory behind them.

- The Olympic dream is alive, but it is scarce, states a woman with walking sticks before she disappears into the darkness.

#swewnt #swewnt article

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everygame · 6 days ago

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Star Wars: Jedi Arena (Atari 2600)

Developed/Published by: Parker Brothers Released: 01/1983 Completed: 15/10/2024 Completion: Well, I definitely played it!

The second Star Wars game following The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars: Jedi Arena is, honestly, a very bizarre follow-up. I don’t think anyone, particularly, if asked “what would be a cool bit from the Star Wars films to play as a video game?” would say “uh, that bit where Luke is doing his jedi training with that wee floating ball thing.”

It isn’t even as if Jedi Arena directly replicates that bit, anyway. Thankfully. I mean that bit is just Luke blindfolded and getting electric shocks. It’s funny how absurd the original Star Wars can feel when you try and consider it fully in the context of all the other lore that’s been piled upon it; I mean Luke meets Obi Wan and within a couple of hours he’d blindfolded swinging a weapon that can cut through a hull around on a spaceship with what appears to be no instruction at all.

(And isn’t it funny how when you write anything about Star Wars at all you immediately think “oh god, someone else has probably written this exact sentence. Or said it in a Youtube video. I must seem so mundane! Ah well, I might as well lampshade it, maybe I’ll get away with it.”)

In Jedi Arena you’re instead in battle with another Jedi that… well, it’s got a very strange ruleset if you imagine it as an actual Jedi practice. Both Jedi stand on a platform that they can’t move from. They both have a active “force shield”. As they swing their lightsabers about, they can use the force (I guess?) to make the wee floating ball thing [“A Marksman-H Combat Remote”--Star Wars Ed.] shoot lightning at their opponent, with the direction the opposite angle from where their lightsaber is pointing, with the goal of breaking through the force shield to strike their opponent. Of course, they can use their lightsabers to block the lightning, and every once in a while the combat remote will go bonkers and shoot lightning all over the place, forcing both players to concentrate on blocking.

That’s pretty much it. If it sounds very… underwhelming, well, that’s because it absolutely is, and visually it has all the excitement of setting up two metronomes and putting a marble in a bowl. It just doesn’t make any sense.

There isn’t that much information on Jedi Arena to be dug up, but one of the reasons it might not be so successful is that the original partnership that made The Empire Strikes Back, Sam Kjellman and Rex Bradford, didn’t work together on this. Rex Bradford explains in an interview with Atari Compendium that Kjellman was a board game designer at Parker Brothers, and it can be inferred that he returned to that role after The Empire Strikes Back leaving Bradford on his own to make Jedi Arena. More is the pity, because as I noted in my review, The Empire Strikes Back has a surprising amount of depth (more than Attack Of The Mutant Camels, I note) and this is definitely a mess. Bradford says:

“It was never really a giant success, and I can probably take responsibility for that. The original idea for that game was to have that ball out there floating around between the two Jedi Knights, but you would be using magnetic forces off of the saber to control the ball and try to make it go careening into your opponent. That was the fundamental, original concept. I played around with that for a couple of months and was never able to get the feel of that working properly. I couldn't figure out a way to make two players with sabers trying to magnetically control the ball work. Finally (and this was actually a big 'to-do' at Parker Brothers), I made the decision that this was not going to work. I wanted to turn this into a game where instead you try to shoot laser sparks off of that and sort of have a Breakout effect - have walls of protection around each player, and just try to break through and get the other player. There were some serious issues where some of the people in management said, ‘Who on Earth is this kid that we got programming this game that is going to decide that we are not going to do what we thought we were going to do and he wants to do something else?’ Fundamentally, Rich Sterns came down and talked to me and I explained to him what I thought about it and he said, ‘Ok, then that's what we are going to do.’ For better or worse, it worked out. I think the game was not working at all the way it was and the way it ended up... well, it's probably not the most exciting VCS game in the world, but it was playable and at least some people enjoyed it.”

To be honest, I still can’t completely work out from his description how the original game was supposed to work (which might be the problem) but something I find interesting is that he doesn’t mention Atari’s Warlords at all.

Released in 1980, Warlords is a fondly remembered multiplayer twist on Pong and Breakout where four players have a castle made of Breakout blocks and use their paddle to protect it while attacking the other players by bouncing the ball at their castle. It’s a really elegant and fun multiplayer title, and with Jedi Arena’s “force shields” and paddle controls, I can’t help but feel that even if it wasn’t originally designed to be a version of Warlords, at least at some point Bradford tried to hack the game he had into it.

The problem is, ultimately, that it doesn’t work. The system by which you use your lightsaber’s angle to direct the lightning, while also needing to position your lightsaber to block lighting makes the game unbelievably unsatisfying, as the angles you have to be at to fire mean you’re leaving yourself wide open and vice versa.

There may be some intention here that the game is supposed to engender a slow, “yomi” battle between two players, as they largely don’t attack at all, simply moving their lightsabers around trying to find an opening. Unfortunately, playing against the CPU doesn’t engender that, and neither does the movement of the combat remote, which makes the whole thing feel random enough that all you really want to do is hit the fire button all the time in the hope that it’ll just magically work out for you. I despair, actually, for any Star Wars obsessed kids trying to get a parent or grandparent to play this with them, because I know how to play this and it’s still so visually abstract I couldn’t make sense of it.

I go into every game I play hoping it’s a wee gem, and here I really did hope this would be a rediscovery, something not worthy of its terrible reputation. Well, it is.

Will I ever play it again? It’s not even fun with another player, sorry. So no.

Final Thought: This would be Rex Bradford’s last Star Wars game, but he’d go on to have a pretty incredible career. He’d limit his design roles to golf games, Mean 18 and British Open Championship Golf, but he’d work otherwise on titles including both System Shock(!) and Red Dead Redemption(!)

Far more interestingly, though, he’s an “avid historian of the Cold War” and runs his own website entirely about assassination conspiracies of the 1960s! You know what? It’s cool to have hobbies!

Every Game I’ve Finished 14>24 is OUT NOW! You can pick it up in paperback, kindle, or epub/pdf. You can also support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi! You can pick up digital copies of exp., a zine featuring all-exclusive writing at my shop, or join as a supporter at just $1 a month and get articles like this a week early.

#gaming #video games #games #txt #text #review #star wars #star wars: jedi arena #atari #atari 2600 #rex bradford #1983 #essay

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