#Mary Jo Hoffman

[fuzzkaizer]

Mary Jo Hoffman

cred: newscientist

[veyot]

My local newspaper led me to a blog of daily flower pictures. It has inspired me to try it for a week. Do you think I will keep it up for a week? My first mistake was using too many flowers today. I happily gathered these on my two mile walk. But now, how can I make tomorrow's picture different? Here is the blog link for you to enjoy. It's by Mary Jo Hoffman, and she actually lives nearby.

[brokehorrorfan]

Twister will be released on 4K Ultra HD (with Digital) in Steelbook and standard packaging on July 9 via Warner Bros. The 1996 disaster thriller's sequel, Twisters, hist theaters on July 19.

Jan de Bont (Speed) directs from a script by Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) and Anne-Marie Martin. Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Cary Elwes, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alan Ruck, Todd Field, and Jeremy Davies star.

Twisters has been restored in 4K with HDR and Dolby Atmos audio. Special features are listed below, where you can also see the full Steelbook layout.

Special features:

Audio commentary by director Jan de Bont and visual effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier

Interview with director Jan de Bont (new)

Chasing the Storm: Twister Revisited

Anatomy of a Twister

HBO's The Making of Twister

"Human Beings" music video by Van Halen

An estranged couple, Dr. Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) and Bill Harding (Bill Paxton), reunites to deploy "Dorothy," a cutting-edge tornado research device, in a race against nature. This high-stakes adventure blends breathtaking visuals with a tale of reunion and resilience to create a cinematic experience not to be missed.

Pre-order Twister.

[undeath1245]

Headcanon full names for the TD contestants

I figured that I should share my list of headcanon full names of each of the characters of Total Drama, with a couple of exceptions here and there (i.e. Chris McLean, Blainely O'Halloran, Alejandro Burromuerto, Cody Anderson, Harold McGrady, Devon "DJ" Joseph, Dakota Milton, Lightning Jackson, Cameron Wilkins, Nichelle LaDonna, Valentina MacArthur). Results may possibly vary.

Original Total Drama contestants

Gwendolyn York (sharing the same name as the York Region)

Trent McAllister

Duncan van Jensen

Courtney Ferrera

Heather Yang

Lindsay Berglund

Tyler Greenwood

Bethany Collins

Geoff Baskerville

Brigette Heinemann

Justin Carroway

LeShawna Martin

Isabella Crampton

Eva Alexandrova

Sierra McAnthony

Katie Bisonette

Sadie Jeong

Ezekiel Brimstone

Revenge of the Island contestants

Michael Holmvik

Zoey Abendroth

Brick Hopkins

Scott Bronson

Josephine "Jo" Arnold

Samuel Braxton

Anna Marie Lombardi

Dawn Nicholson

Beverly "B" Norwood

Staci Murray

Pahkitew Island contestants

Shawn Romero

Jasmine Abbott

Sky Rouleau

David Corduroy

Sugar van Hoffman

Amanda Dufresne

Samantha Dufresne

Topher Fellows

Ella Grimm

Maxwell Hunter

Scarlett McGrady

Rodney Fieldston

Leonard Hammersmith

Winslow Beardman

The Ridonculous Race contestants

Devin Letterman

Carrie Brennan

Thomas Wesley

Jennifer Walcott

Brody Simpson

Stephanie Fairchild

Ryan Carmichael

Rosalind Sanders

Josée Guillaume

Jacques Beaumont

Emma Zhong

Katherine Zhong

Stuart Rockford

Theodore Spudman

Dwayne Broker Sr.

Dwayne Broker Jr.

Kelly Greenwood

Taylor Greenwood

Jay Henderson

Mickey Henderson

Ennui Craven

Marie Crimson

Tammy Lundgren

Laurie Delcroix

Kristoffersen Miles

Ellody Newton

Marie Poindexter

Chet Levett

Lorenzo Antonelli

Gerry Drummond

Peter McLean

Total Drama Revival contestants

Caleb Edwards

Priya Rouhani

Millie Baldridge

Hezekias "Zee" Wanchai

Julie Martinson

Mary Kate "MK" Chung

Wayne Rupert

Raj Samaroo

Bowie Davison (based on the late English pop star)

Emma Wahlgren

Damien Laurence

Ripper Alderman

Axel Emerson

Chase Rodgers

Lauren "Scary Girl" Metcalf (sharing the same name as the actress)

Why don't you share me your fan name ideas?

[squeakowl]

Photography by Mary Jo Hoffman (source)

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review Double Feature: Twister (1996) and Twisters (2024)

Making this another double feature. This weekend, I went back and rewatched the original Twister, an old nostalgic favorite of mine, just in time for the release of its years-later nostalgic sequel Twisters. Does the original hold up, and does the sequel live up to it?

Twister (1996)

Rated PG-13 for intense depiction of very bad weather

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2024/07/review-twister-1996.html>

Score: 4 out of 5

One of the films that, together with Independence Day a couple of months later, helped revive the disaster movie genre after it had seemingly died with disco at the end of the '70s, Twister is as wild a movie as the namesake weather phenomena it's named for and which serve as the centerpieces of its action. It's a movie that, while not science fiction, has the thumbprints of Michael Crichton, the sci-fi writer who co-wrote it with his wife Anne-Marie Martin and produced it, all over it in its depiction of scientists as heroic working men and women in a way that I, somebody who's had his fair share of experience with what scientific and medical work are actually like, readily appreciated. (Even if Crichton, over the course of his career, had a fairly mixed track record when it came to how his novels and screenplays presented scientific subjects, but that's another matter entirely.) It may have had problems when it came to telling a coherent story, especially when it came to Cary Elwes' character, but it was easy enough to place those problems in the back of my mind when the movie was busy thrilling me with intense, well-shot action and an interesting cast of characters that together dropped me right into the thick of it with them. There's a reason why, even long after the second wave of disaster movies in the Y2K era burned out, people of my generation still fondly remember Twister as a gem of that time.

The film revolves around a group of stormchasers in Oklahoma, led by Jo Harding, a scientist who entered meteorology after watching her father die during a tornado when she was a little girl. They do exactly what their name sounds like, chasing tornadoes in order to track and research them for scientific purposes, specifically with the intention of designing more effective early warning systems that might give people more of a chance to survive when these wicked storms touch down. Our viewpoint characters are Jo's estranged husband Bill Harding, a former stormchaser turned TV weatherman who's come back in order to get her signature on their divorce papers and formally end their marriage, and his new fiancé Melissa Reeves, a therapist from the city who's completely out of her depth in the wild world of stormchasers.

Right away, I fell in love with most of this cast, filled with a who's who of talented actors like Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, and Philip Seymour Hoffman giving it their all. It's a highly glamorized depiction of meteorology that makes it look like a career that combines the advanced scientific work of crunching data with the gritty, hands-on work of actually collecting that data, depicting Jo and her team of scientists as operating highly advanced equipment, at least some of which (most notably the "Dorothy" units they're trying to send into the storms to measure them up close) they designed themselves, out of the backs of trucks, vans, and station wagons covered in dirt and mud. It makes for a very funny contrast with Melissa, the film's comic relief character and audience stand-in who's trying to take calls from her patients even as she's being dragged head-first into the path of a tornado. They may not have been the deepest characters, with Jo's history with tornadoes and her, Bill, and Melissa's rom-com love triangle being just about the only development they get, but I loved them anyway. If I had to pick favorites, they'd probably be Hoffman as Dusty Davies, the very hammy and excitable dude on Jo's team who explains a lot of weather-related concepts, and Lois Smith as Jo's aunt Meg, a little old lady who seemingly can't be put down even after a tornado trashes her house and leaves her injured. Above all else, this is a movie that knows how to make scientists look good, and I'm not surprised that there were a lot of people in the late '90s who got very interested in meteorology after this came out.

And if the cast and the writing did the work in crafting a great cast of characters for me to root for, then Jan de Bont's direction did the work in throwing them into peril and dragging me right along with them. The film takes the opposite tack of Independence Day when it comes to showing large-scale destruction on screen, focusing less on the grand spectacle of seeing cities and monuments get blown up and more on the people running for cover as the houses, farms, tractor-trailers, and drive-in theaters around them get shredded by wicked winds. It's a very ground-level perspective on a disaster flick that still makes it stand out today, when epic-scale scenes of destruction have become the norm for Hollywood blockbusters, much like how Cloverfield used a similar perspective to make a giant monster movie scary. A few shots may not hold up so well today (especially that early shot of a weather satellite that looks like a prerendered cutscene from an early '00s video game), but on the whole, its mix of practical effects work and CGI still looks amazing when it comes time to showing buildings getting torn apart and cars getting tossed around.

Watching and, more importantly, hearing the storms on screen also made me realize how underappreciated sound design is in so many modern movies. All too often, we've seen a trend in action movies especially that I like to call "Nolanization" after one of the filmmakers who helped popularize it, an emphasis on making sound mixing more "realistic" for the sake of realism that, in effect, winds up causing it to turn into a wash where you can barely understand what the characters are saying or where the explosions and gunfire are coming from. If you've ever wondered why you have to turn on the subtitles to make out the dialogue in a lot of movies made in the last ten years, especially movies that were made for streaming, this is why. I had no such complaints here, with the sound of the twisters, often compared in real life to freight trains and jet engines, embellished for effect here but very much drilling into me exactly the mix of awe and terror that the film wanted me to experience. It's repeated throughout the film that tornadoes are not to be trifled with, and as I watched, I very much felt that in my bones. The score by Mark Mancina also injected a ton of energy into the film, especially with its guitars blending almost seamlessly with the rock and country songs on the soundtrack, livening up the film's downtime when the characters are planning or heading out but then falling back during the action scenes and letting the roaring winds take center stage.

The plot of the movie is pretty paper-thin, more or less following a couple of very exciting days in the lives of a team of stormchasers. I liked these characters more because they were played by great actors and had a lot of very cool, funny, and entertaining chemistry and dialogue together, not because they really had any depth. Had the film just been about them, I probably wouldn't have minded. The problem came with Cary Elwes' character Jonah Miller, a guy leading a rival team of stormchasers who we're told are the bad guys because they have corporate backing and are only in it for the money, not the science. When it came to fleshing out its human villain, the film's thin writing and plotting hurt it, not least of all because, despite Elwes doing everything he can to make Jonah into a despicable jackass, the writing never really gives me a sense that he's a bad guy as opposed to just a foil to Jo and Bill. There are ways this movie could've gone about to make me hate Jonah as a proper villain, such as having him not just rip off the design of Jo's Dorothy units but actively sabotage her career for his own gain, having him be the reason Bill left stormchasing and wound up estranged from Jo, or fleshing out the other members of his own team (especially Jake Busey as his sidekick) and having him put them in harm's way because he's a dumbass and a glory hound. The film leans in those directions, but it never really fleshes them out, instead just having Jonah recur throughout the film as a guy who annoys the protagonists only to vanish again. It really needed more Cary Elwes, is what I'm saying.

The Bottom Line

Twister isn't exactly known as a movie with a great story, but there's a reason why a key part of its enduring legacy was an attraction at Universal Studios Orlando that lasted until 2015. This is a two-hour thrill ride that still holds up watching it again nearly thirty years later, and one I'd firmly recommend to anyone who wants to watch a pure, straightforward disaster movie.

----------

And now, for the sequel...

Twisters (2024)

Rated PG-13 for intense action and peril, some language and injury images

Score: 4 out of 5

While Twisters has been billed as a sequel to Twister, what it really feels like is more of a remake in all but name, which is what they were by all accounts originally planning to make. It features no returning characters and only a few minor continuity nods to remind you that the two films are set in the same universe, otherwise following a brand new cast that loosely fits into the archetypes of the first movie but does its own thing with them. More than that, however, it's a movie that recognizes how and why the original still works as well as it does. Like its predecessor, it's a more up-close-and-personal take on the disaster movie that demonstrates how to make this genre work in 2024, in a world where scenes of epic, spectacle-filled destruction enabled with the latest and greatest in special effects have become routine: focus on the people, be they those caught in harm's way or the ones running into it for either science or glory. It's a movie whose real heart and soul underneath the awe-inspiring action set pieces is its cast of characters, played by a host of rising stars who I can see riding this movie to much greater heights of fame and fortune, enough to make up for the fact that it doesn't quite fix the biggest problem I had with the original. There really isn't much to say here other than that it's about as good as the original and the kind of film that's made to be seen on a big screen, one that I'd firmly recommend.

Just like last time, we're back in Oklahoma following two rival teams of stormchasers. Our protagonist Kate Carter, who had been chasing storms when she was a college student, left that way of life behind five years ago and took a job with NOAA in New York City (where a little EF1 tornado that hit Brooklyn recently was considered big news) after a bad judgment call she made got most of her team killed. Her friend Javier "Javi" Rivera, the one other surviving member of her team, convinces her to come back to Oklahoma and work with his new team Storm-Par, a corporate outfit that's employing advanced radar technology that Javi worked with in his time in the military to track storms more accurately than before. While they're down there, Kate and Javi cross paths with Tyler Owens, a stormchaser and YouTuber who's become a minor celebrity as the "Tornado Wrangler" filming himself and his team performing death-defying stunts in and around tornadoes. While Tyler's initially presented as a fame-seeking gloryhound with more followers than sense, Kate eventually warms up to him as they cross paths and she realizes he's not the dumbass he comes off as at first glance, while she and Javi start to question Storm-Par's mission as they do some more digging on Marshall Riggs, the local real estate tycoon who's funding them.

Just as the first movie had a who's who of '90s stars at the top of their game, so too is this one filled with a bunch of modern-day rising stars who, if their performances here are any indication, are probably going places after this. Daisy Edgar-Jones does her best Helen Hunt impression as Kate and does it well, making for a likable heroine with her own tornado-related tragedy in her past for her to overcome, while Anthony Ramos' Javi made for a nice twist on Jonah from the first movie, a version of him who seems to realize what a jackass he's becoming and the kind of person he's working for but also knows that he needs Riggs' money to keep doing his work at the level he's doing it at. The real breakout star here, however, is undoubtedly going to be Glen Powell as Tyler Owens. A guy with a name like a country singer and a truck and wardrobe to match, Tyler is something like a cowboy MrBeast, a YouTuber who makes no bones about the fact that fame and fortune are perks of the job but also, as we see later in the film, seeks to use his platform to do good for the people whose lives are destroyed by the tornadoes he chases. He's initially presented in a fashion similar to Jonah from the first film, quite ironically given how the aesthetics of his team more resemble those of that film's scrappy protagonists, but the more we learn about him, the more Powell gets to lay on his rugged-yet-funny charm and get me to root for him. This is the kind of role that they would've cast Chris Pratt in ten years ago, and Powell brings a very similar energy to this part. Movie nerds have been waiting for Powell to get his big break after years of well-received roles in smaller movies and TV shows, and if this is any indication, he's almost certainly a star in the making.

The basic meat and potatoes of this movie isn't that different from the first. What made that movie work is still in play here, this being a film where, while the scenes of tornadoes ripping apart a highway, wind turbines, a rodeo ground, a motel, an oil refinery, and a small town Main Street are exciting, well-shot, and brought to life with outstanding special effects, they aren't the most intense scenes in it. I've seen other reviews, both positive and negative, call this a movie shot in close-up, with the focus placed less on the action and more on the characters running for their lives and hanging on for dear life as tornadoes roar around them. I've always felt that this is the way to do a disaster movie right nowadays, in a time when most viewers will look at even the biggest action spectacle and quote one of the musicians featured on this movie country-heavy soundtrack ("that don't impress me much!), and director Lee Isaac Chung proved my point by making the action feel about as intimate as you can get when there are tornadoes roaring right behind the main characters. The result was that, even when the camera wasn't focused squarely on the mayhem, it felt more impactful than a lot of comparable effects-driven blockbusters.

Unfortunately, it also has a very similar problem to the first movie: the script, and most notably the villains. Marshall Riggs is given a lot of attention as a background villain who's running Storm-Par as part of his scheme to buy up ruined homes in tornado country and then flip them for profit at the expense of the often desperate people who live in them, a scheme that drives a wedge between Kate and Javi and forces the latter to think about why he's doing this job. The problem is, as despicable as this guy's actions are, he's only in the movie for one scene early on and then completely vanishes, with Javi's co-worker Scott, himself a fairly minor character, serving as the main representative of his villainy. Once again, the film tries to shoehorn in a human villain, in this case a timely representative of gentrification and corporate greed, without really doing anything with him and giving him a real presence in the film. Like with the first movie, I would've either dropped this subplot entirely or made things personal between him and the protagonists. Maybe have Kate's mom, played in one scene by Maura Tierney, know some people who've lost their homes and farms to Riggs and may very well lose hers? Or have him cut costs on Storm-Par's equipment and training, putting them in harm's way? Or have him find out about Kate and Javi's plan to disrupt tornadoes and try to sabotage it because it would mean fewer distressed properties for him to buy up and redevelop? The least this movie could've done is give him a satisfying death, preferably one involving a tornado eating a rich douchebag's mansion or him trying to get the hell out of Dodge in a rhinestone-encrusted Cadillac only to get one of his own billboards dropped on his head. As it stands, it's the same pitfall that ensnared the first movie from a writing perspective, playing out a bit differently in the details but otherwise having more or less the same effect.

The Bottom Line

Twisters is a very well-made throwback to '90s disaster movies that, while suffering from many of the same problems as the original, is also blessed with many of the same things that made it so much fun to watch, especially in a crowded IMAX theater. If you're just looking for a good-time, empty-calorie popcorn blockbuster that hits the spot, this is your ticket.

[emmaklee]

bracket fungi

ph Mary Jo Hoffman

[cumuluslife]

dried water lily leaves © mary jo hoffman

STILL Photography

[marianastrench-alltimelow]

dude 41 books is crazy!!! nice one. what are they?

Hello friend! I've been trying to get through what's on my bookshelf (and my 500+ long reading list lol), and it just so happened to coincide with me not working for a couple of months. For anyone who wants to know what I've read so far, I'll put the title under the "keep reading"! I'll also bold my top 10 so far because there are definitely some books that I would not recommend lmao

Also, I'm always down to talk about books or receive reading recommendations! I just recently started listening to audio books and am super excited about it

The Librarianist - Patrick deWitt

Elektra - Jennifer Saint

1984 - George Orwell

Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer

An Abundance of Katherines- John Green

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman

A Court of Mist and Fury - Sarah J. Maas

The Heir - Kiera Cass

A Court of Wings and Ruin - Sarah J. Maas

The Crown - Kiera Cass

Identical - Ellen Hopkins

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman

A Court of Frost and Starlight - Sarah J. Maas

Shattering Culture - Mary-Jo DelVecchio Goode and others

The Magic Circle - Katherine Neville

A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas

What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape - Sohaila Abdulali

One Last Stop - Casey McQuiston

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Toxic Schools - Bowen Paulle

Queer (In)Justice - Joey L. Mogul

The Dark Between the Trees - Fiona Barnett

Crier's War - Nina Varela

How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate - Andrew J. Hoffman

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories - Franz Kafka

Freya - Matthew Laurence

Mistaken Identity - Asad Haider

The Body is Not an Apology - Sonya Renee Taylor

Illuminae - Jay Kristoff & Annie Kaufman

The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King

Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

The Crucible - Arthur Miller

If I Stay - Gayle Forman

Even If We Break - Marieke Nijkamp

Poison - Ben Hubbard

Girl in Pieces - Kathleen Glasgow

The Future - Neil Hilborn

The Guest List - Lucy Foley

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

Flatland - Edwin A. Abbot

Transgender Marxism - Elle O'Rourke & Jules Joanne Gleeson

Currently reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Sexual Citizens by Jennifer S. Hirsch & Shamus Khan, and listening to Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo!

[k00298287a]

Still Blog

Still Blog is a website run by artist Mary Jo Hoffman. It was started in 2012 and is a blog that uploads one picture of found objects every day. Most of the found objects are natural objects and many are leaves.

I like how simple her shots can be and how her background and setup are always the same. The variation comes from her design and layout of her objects. I like how she explores the changes in leaves and other objects through the world around her. Her discoveries and experiments come from her own world which I find very interesting. She inspires me to use the world around me in my own work

[whimsical-nostalgia]

first impressions' palm branches, Beziers, Languedoc, France Mary Jo Hoffman

Capture the essence of your first impressions with the beautiful palm branches in Beziers, Languedoc, France.

[flurryheaven]

2024 Costume Designers Guild Awards Excellence in Period Film - Nominations

Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple) Costume Designer: Jacqueline West Assistant Costume Designers: Amelia McKinney, Christy Cham, Kristi Marie Hoffman, and Timothy Wonsik

Maestro (Netflix) Costume Designer: Mark Bridges Assistant Costume Designers: Gali Noy and Kristen Kopp 

Napoleon (Apple) Costume Designers: Janty Yates and Dave Crossman

Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures) Costume Designer: Ellen Mirojnick Assistant Costume Designer: Jo Kissack and Joshua Quinn

Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) Costume Designer: Holly Waddington

[xheadabovewaterx]

first impressions' palm branches, Beziers, Languedoc, France Mary Jo Hoffman

Let the palm branches in Beziers, Languedoc, France transport you to a world of beauty and wonder. See it through Mary Jo Hoffman's eyes.

[glamblessings]

first impressions' palm branches, Beziers, Languedoc, France Mary Jo Hoffman

Experience the allure of Beziers, Languedoc, France through the lens of Mary Jo Hoffman's first impressions captured with palm branches.

[squeakowl]

Photography by Mary Jo Hoffman (source)

[gathersroses]

MUSES.

MUSICAL THEATER.

sweeney todd: the demon barber of fleet street:

— johanna barker (main muse; as found on @cannotfly)

— lucy barker (request)

— nellie lovett (secondary)

— annie bamford (secondary)

les miserables:

— cosette fauchelevent (strictly plotting only)

west side story:

— graziella bianchi (as found on @aintdumb)

— sorella ricci (primary)

— tat agapov (primary)

— karen hansen (secondary)

— rhonda thompson (primary)

— tessie johnson (primary)

— mamie o'reilly (secondary)

— mack masotti (secondary)

— maxie kilmartin (secondary)

— natalie marcinek (secondary)

— gussie reiter (secondary)

— dot schmit (primary)

— sweden larson (secondary)

— maria nunez (secondary)

— maria gonzalez (secondary)

a tale of two cities:

— lucie manette (request/testing)

the great gatsby

— daisy buchanan (request/testing)

FILM.

corpse bride:

—victoria everglot (strictly plotting only)

cyrano (2021):

— roxanne (secondary)

TELEVISION.

schmigadoon/schmicago:

— jenny banks (secondary)

stranger things:

— chrissy cunningham (request/testing)

ORIGINAL.

the haunted mansion:

— eleanora beaufort (request)

pirates of the caribbean:

— catherine sherwood (request)

phantom of the opera:

— clarise battencourt (request)

sweeney todd: the demon barber of fleet street:

— clara hope (secondary)

— amy jo hope (primary)

— ellie hope (primary)

— laura hope (primary)

stranger things:

— pamela howard (secondary)

a haunting in venice:

— alicia drake (testing)

fandomless:

— briar desrosiers (secondary)

— ellen marie truman (primary)

— rose of vobuvoria (primary; affiliated with gilbertine fabron *see below)

— gilbertine fabron (primary; affiliated with rose *see above)

— elsie day (primary)

— mary o'clergh (primary)

OTHER.

the highwayman (poem):

— bess towneley (secondary)

sense and sensibility:

— eliza williams (request/testing)

MILF CLUB.

— helene lautmann (request; affilated with @soldwrecked)

— mary o'hara (request; affliated with @whatsbehindthefacade)

— marta hoffman (request; affiliated with @whatsbehindthefacade)

— sophie mcclellan (request; affiliated with @heygutlcss)