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victimhood · 4 years ago

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The one in which the Euros 3rd place playoff is abolished after Italia 1980, and then restored at short notice for Italia 2028, making it the historic occasion in which a whole country cockblocked their captain Nicolò di Genova.

It is June 1980. The European Championship is taking place in Italy. It is the first edition of the tournament with eight teams, divided into two groups. The winners of each group move on to play in the final, and the runners up of each group move on to battle for third place.

It is the final edition of the Euros to have the third place playoff. With dwindling attendances and television viewers, UEFA deems the fixture unnecessary for future editions of the tournament. Italy hold Czechoslovakia to a 1-1 draw, and the match is decided on penalties. The final outcome? 9-8 to Czechoslovakia.

For as long as it has existed, there has been vocal opposition to the third place match. There are those who question its purpose, who see it as a meaningless extension of the tournament for advertisement money. A kinder commentary on offer is from those who see it as cruel to make losers play yet another competitive fixture, for little to no reward. Just think of the fourth-placed team—they played better than the rest of the competition except three—yet they must go home with the bitter memory of having lost twice.

On the other camp, there are those who recall with great fondness the third place match of the 2002 World Cup between host nation South Korea and Turkey. If that doesn’t work for you, what about the consolation it offered to the host nation in the 1990 World Cup, a breakout tournament for Italy’s Roberto Baggio?

Now we skip to June 2028. The European Championship is once more taking place in Italy. There are twenty four teams divided into groups, followed by a knockout stage. There is no third place fixture on the schedule. The much-beloved Italian captain takes his team on a blistering dream run, in front of an adoring home crowd, beating a well-regarded Portugal and incumbent holders Belgium along the way. He has declared his intention to retire for good, once this tournament is over.

Picture this: you are Italy. You play England in the semifinal in Napoli, at the Stadio San Paolo, also known as the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona. You arrive in the stadium, or you watch from home, full of hope, with faith in your captain and your squad. Your team scores one at the 20th minute. Perfect opening. England try but they can’t get past the deadbolt across goal, past your much vaunted defensive line. At the 63rd minute, Foden puts one past your goalie, but VAR rules it offside. At the 89th minute, the scoreline is still 1-0 and you’re nearly through, and some egregious fans are already cheering, and then Foden gets it in for real in a stroke of sheer luck. The ball hits the crossbar but somehow bounces downward into goal. The game goes into extra time, and then to penalties. The final result? England wins 4-3 on penalties. This is a brutal game. At the end of your match, your captain sheds tears and apologizes for not being able to do more to push the team through to the finals. No! You want to scream. Caro Nicolò, il nostro capitano, it’s not your fault. You have done so much for us. You begin to blame yourself: it’s us, it’s our fault. We dared to dream too early. You were so busy dreaming of your beloved captain raising the trophy that you forgot the game wasn’t over. In fact, even before this semifinal you were already dreaming of the trophy. This is how fate punishes you. You hate to see him end his career this way. He didn’t let you down, you let your captain down! Can we do this one over? You’ll do right by your captain this time.

Picture this: you’re the president of UEFA, and the tournament is hosted in your home country. It would have been the honor of honors, to award the winner’s medals to your compatriots. The papers are raging over the match outcome: England squeaked through on a razor’s blade, and Italy were the more inspired team. The fans are out in the streets. The people have spoken! Let us bring back the third place match! Let us see our captain off with dignity and honor! Your colleagues say: this is preposterous. We got rid of it years ago, because of Italia 1980. But does anyone really remember why? The advertisers tell you they’re willing to pay. One extra match means extra revenues. Worse things have happened in the pursuit for money. What’s the harm in a consolation match? An emergency meeting is called. Who’s playing in the second semifinal? France and the Netherlands. Both their feds agree to the third place match. From the next tournament onwards, there’ll even be a sweet cherry of a coefficient bonus—all the feds agree to this, but it would not be fair to the rest to apply it this ongoing tournament (and you hear minor grumbles from the FIGC, FFF and KNVB, who think they should be compensated for the inconvenience). No matter; the people have been given what they want! Another football match in the grand machine of things! The meeting takes so long that France beats the Netherlands 3-2 in the meantime, and now someone has to do the unpleasant job of telling the players. Were any of them consulted in this affair? What a preposterous concept. That’s not how UEFA works. UEFA says jump and they say how high.

Picture this: you are Nicolò Di Genova, and you’ve played the final match of your professional career. It did not end in the way you wanted, but such is life. You are ready to put your former self in the grave. You say goodbye to your treasured teammates, and the very next morning you check out of the training center to make your way to Turin, to see your fidanzato in the semifinals. Well, he crashes out too, his downfall orchestrated by that paraculo of your club teammate, Sébastien of the number 23. And so it is England vs France in the final, to be played in Italy. The thought of it turns even the strongest stomach of any citizen of this noble country. The only silver lining to this cursed final lineup is getting to whisk the love of your life off into the secluded countryside, and maybe with a few rounds of passionate lovemaking you can even forget the pain of loss.

You’re in the car. You just picked up your inamorato from his team hotel. You want to push him into the backseat and blow the brains out of him but you have better self control than that.

“How does retirement feel like?” he cracks a joke at you.

“You know full well my plans,” you return cheekily.

You’re driving off into the E70 when your phone rings. It doesn’t stop ringing so you pull over to take the call.

It’s your national team coach. “They just restored the third place match. Can you come back to the training ground?”

Who agreed to this? Your mind is reeling from the preposterousness of it all.

“They love you, Nichi. The people want you back.”

You exchange a look with your lover. Now his phone is ringing too. It’s his coach.

Due to this unfortunate turn of events you end up having an argument with your lover. You are principled, and having principles means not giving in to this total farce of a circus show, the third place match. Your lover is an incurable romantic, and pleads on behalf of your people. They did this all for you—show them some love in return. And what was the meaning of the past 31 years of your life again? You have already given them everything.

If only the people of Italy knew how much they had to thank Yusuf Al Kaysani. It’s because of him—it’s because of his beautiful deep brown eyes that glisten with all the stars of this universe that you cave and you agree.

“Get out, let’s switch. I’ll drive, and you call your mom and tell her the news.”

How do you begin to articulate how much this man knows the answers in your heart before your brain catches up to the same conclusions?

And so, like Lazarus, on the fourth day of your death you come back to life.

ITA vs NED

Picture this: you’re the cameraman, in the tunnel. The teams are lining up. The two captains emerge from the dressing room and compliment each other on their good looks with wry smiles. Some good natured ribbing, you think. They’re old friends. They played together for eight years at the same club. The Italian captain puts his hands on the Dutch captain, and then, like magnets, his hands seem incapable of leaving the Dutch captain’s back. You start to feel uncomfortable, like you’re seeing something that you shouldn’t be seeing. You look around. Everyone else in the double file of blue and orange is just chatting away, acting normal. Maybe...it’s just your imagination? You train your camera on the chatting crowd, giving the captains space. The match officials appear, taking the lead in front of both teams. You get in position for the money shot, following the two teams out of the tunnel and into the adoring crowd.

Picture this: you have never missed a single football match your grandson plays in. So when there’s a surprise third place match announced, you have to bail on karaoke night with the girls to watch the match on tv. Your friends don’t watch football, but if they do, they watch for the “hot guys on the Italian team”. Oh yeah, he’s playing Italy, you tell them. Feel free to come over to my place, if they don’t mind your oldest son and your rowdy grandchildren. Karaoke night swiftly becomes football night. There is an argument between Hamza and his dad over the pointlessness of the third place playoff. So...your family has been behaving in an unusual manner for several months now, and you suspect it’s because your grandson said he is gay. The papers here don’t report it, because they still want to claim him to some extent, but you have noted that the coverage is more conditional than before. You don’t live under a rock, and you’ve seen the news on YouTube even if no one around you is prepared to talk about it. As the two teams walk out of the tunnel and onto the pitch, you notice the Italian captain letting his hand slip from your grandson’s back, and Hamza suddenly jumps in front of the TV screen to adjust the volume.

“What the heck are you doing?” Mehdi, Hamza’s father and your eldest son, yells.

“The audio was...wonky,” Hamza replies sheepishly. “But I think it’s okay now.”

The match begins. At a corner kick, the Italian captain practically plasters himself all over your grandson, and it’s Hamza messing with the TV remote again, this time accidentally switching channels. Mehdi slaps him in the back of the head. You think that maybe it’s time you called Ibrahim. Someone needs to tell you the truth they’ve been so bad at hiding. Your grandson is not just gay, he seems to have a lover, and it’s that evil-eyed captain, the man who curses all who cross him.

Picture this: you’re a fan from the friendly town of Muggenbeet, watching from the San Siro. You came all this way to support the Oranje and they had to concede that final goal to France in front of your face. Sore and in denial about your loss, you start to make jokes about Waterloo to cope, handing the French off to the English. And then—out of nowhere, UEFA announces that they’ll restore the third place match. You think it’s the most shameless attempt for the host country to award themselves something ever. But, you know, does anyone really want to watch an England-France final? No. Never. For forever. We hate them both. It’s not football. It’s a circus of clowns. The viewership for this third place match is through the roof, higher than for your semifinal vs France. Let’s just treat this as the real final. What a galaxy-brained idea. Your country could steal it from the hosts—no hard feelings to Italy. You’ve enjoyed the pizza and the pasta, maybe it would be fun to crush their team like little peppercorns to sprinkle on your food. Based. Now you want a cacio e pepe after the match. Wait, you’re not in Rome, where the real (fake news!) final is. Boo. There is a corner, right at the end where you are sitting. Poepjes is taking it. Dekmijn and Blootgat are running up. Your captain is being felt up by the Italian captain. (No literally, that guy isn’t even looking at the goal? He’s just...pressing himself against your captain? Why are his hands encircled around Al Kaysani’s waist like so?) Anyway, the ball pings between the Italian keeper and Blootgat, and then it flies into Di Genova’s rather shapely calves...and bounces into the goal.

Uhhhhhh, THANK YOU? Grazie mille Nicolò Di Genova!!!! You gave us one goal!!!

The Italian fans must be flabbergasted. Isn’t this the dude’s retirement match? Or whatever. Who knows. Italy is a place of the greatest contradictions, so you’ve been told. But you’ll take what you can get. You kinda feel bad for the guy, who has buried his face in his hands. Maybe...you should cheer for him. And so...the lot of you, the orange lot, sitting in the Curva Sud, you start singing for the Italian captain. Nicolò Di Genova! There’s only one Di Genova!

The third place match is the most lawless ninety minutes in the historical timeline.

Picture this: you’re an Interista and season ticket holder. And of course you support your national team. You were heartbroken when the England keeper denied Marcuzzi to progress to the finals. You cried when your captain cried. And then, out of nowhere, they said, let’s bring back the third place match. The finals are in the Stadio Olimpico, so...maybe let’s have the third place match in the San Siro? You score a ticket at your usual seat. You get to see your captain one more time before he rides off into the sunset? What more can you ask for? This is romance of the highest order. The San Siro loves Nichi, of course all the staff and volunteers come together to make the event happen in a matter of days. You can’t believe this is happening. And then...your captain opens the scoring with an own goal. The Dutch fans are singing for him. What do you do? Well, if you can’t beat them, join them—you can sing louder for your captain! He’s your captain! And you know, their captain, he’s kinda your guy too, because Sempre Inter. Revenge is served, sweet and cold like a scoop of gelato, when your captain heads in the equalizer. The crowd goes wild. He’s taking this match seriously, but you knew he always would—that’s why you love him. He could ask for your firstborn and you would gladly give it up. You can always trust your capitano. There is a penalty call in the second half of the match and his teammates give it to him—a little unorthodox—but like a deadly sniper your captain sneaks a cool and calculated one past the Dutch keeper. You cheer. Does it count as a hat trick when you’ve scored at both ends? What a scoreline to retire to!

Picture this: you’re Yusuf Al Kaysani. You just lost in the third place match, a match widely panned as the least necessary match in a tournament by those who don’t know better. And yet, the third place match is the purest expression of love for the beautiful game. All other matches are clouded by the temptations of fame and fortune. The third place match you play for love and honor. You watch from the sidelines as your boyfriend leads his team to collect the medals, from none other than Paolo Maldini. Maldini, who’s doing an admirable job as UEFA President. Who knows where and how they got these medals at short notice—sometimes this country pulls miracles like a rabbit out from the magician’s hat of chaos. Everyone in the stadium is acting like this is the final. It’s not—it’s something a little better, a match born of love, played for love, with nothing to win and nothing to lose.

There is no trophy to lift, so Nico’s teammates lift him. They’re yelling for you. You’ve played with and against at least 90% of that team. Come join us, the men in blue say, and everyone forms a circle, arm linking arm, bouncing to the music. There are no losers here—your whole team is invited to the celebrations. The Dutch fans are singing: Second place! Second place! Let’s pretend we’re second place!

Let’s be real, for this one night, in this exact stadium, there’s only one captain, and the ones in the know push you towards him. Here’s your man, the unspoken acknowledgement. But you know your place—this is not your night. This night is for him. It’s for the country that loves him, and for him to say one last goodbye. Daniele Pirozzi jumps on the captain’s back, and the captain carries him for a while, laughing away. Pirozzi, whom you spent countless hours training how to read the field, in a fashion after yours. And then there’s Boselli, Marcuzzi, Poepjes and more. From one generation to another, the baton is passed. Nico, look around, these are our boys, as good as any. They’ll be better than us, and we are happy to see it, for the love of the game. Pirozzi jumps off the captain’s back and jumps onto you, asking you if you want to lift the captain together. You laugh and agree. On the count of three, uno, due—

Picture this: you’re Nicolò Di Genova, and you’re sitting on the shoulders of your protegé and your lover. Here we can mark the passing of the guard—tonight you are unburdened and the only thing that’s left, you realize, is love. Yusuf was right. Look, look how much they love you. Even San Paolo did this for you. Could you ever have denied all of them this? You almost screwed it up at the beginning, but perhaps God was just reminding you to take your responsibilities seriously. You are but a servant of the game and this ground is your ground, your hallowed ground, the church of your sins and glory.

It’s the final competitive match of your career, and you get to walk off the field, arm in arm with the love of your life, cheered on by a country you gave everything to.

Now, for the rest of your life to begin.

(chapter 106: nel blu, dipinto di blu, of The Beautiful Game)

#the old guard #joe x nicky #kaysanova #immortal husbands #nicolo di genova #yusuf al kaysani #this is fanfic!!#football!AU #soccer!AU #this chapter cracks me up each time #tog: the beautiful game #tog fc

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talabib · 3 years ago

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Things Mentally Strong People Do

Picture this scenario: you’ve been to the gym for a Herculean bout on the treadmill. While driving home, you think to yourself, “I really worked hard today, so I deserve a little treat.” You stop at a donut shop on the way and before you know it, you’ve already gobbled up a dozen delicious donuts.

This may seem innocuous enough, but many of us are guilty of the same kind of behavior: we work hard to achieve lasting change in our life, but don’t pay attention to the bad behaviors that are undermining our efforts.

This post presents 13 habits you should learn to avoid if you want to develop greater mental strength and achieve more success and happiness in life.

Mentally strong people replace self-pity with gratitude.

No one is immune to hard times. Whether it comes in the form of illness or some other personal tragedy, sooner or later, life’s going to throw you some curveballs. How you react to these situations says a lot about you.

One of the hallmarks of mentally strong people – those who aren’t knocked down when things get tough – is that they don’t spend precious time pitying themselves when facing difficulties. So what do they do instead? They replace self-pity with gratitude – and you can too.

If you want an inspiring example of mental strength and the importance of gratitude, take American long-distance runner Marla Runyan. Not only has she run the New York Marathon in a little over two hours, she also has a master’s degree in education and has written a book.

But perhaps most impressively, she’s accomplished all of this while being legally blind.

At the age of nine, Runyan was diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease, a degenerative disease that affects the eyes. Despite her quickly worsening eyesight, Runyan developed a passion for running and went on to win several medals, setting world records at the 1992 and 1996 Paralympics.

The key to her success lies in her refusal to indulge in self-pity. She’s always refused to see her illness as a disability; instead, she sees it as an opportunity, a gift that has enabled her to become a world-class athlete. Rather than dwelling on what her illness took away from her, she’s actually grateful for what it gave her.

And there’s good reason to take a page out of Runyan’s book. Research shows that developing your capacity for gratitude can make you stronger on many levels.

To begin with, increased gratitude can improve your physical health. A 2003 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, for example, found that people who are grateful have healthier immune systems and suffer less often from aches and pains. What’s more, they also exercise more frequently, sleep better and enjoy a better general standard of health than their less grateful peers.

Mentally strong people hold onto their power and forgive others.

In 1956, Andy Warhol offered one of his paintings to the New York Museum of Modern Art. The museum refused, seeing no potential in the young painter’s work. Fast forward a few decades and Warhol had become so successful that he had his own museum.

Shortly before recording an album that would go on sell over 10 million copies, Madonna received a rejection letter from a major record label. Dismissively, the note suggested that “the only thing missing from this project is the material.”

Most successful people have faced similar moments of rejection in their lives, moments where the negative opinions of others could have nipped their careers in the bud.

What distinguishes mentally strong people, like Madonna and Warhol, is that they don’t let the opinions of others determine how they think and act in life. In other words, they refuse to delegate the power over their lives to others.

Oprah Winfrey is another great example of someone with this aspect of mental strength. She was raised in poverty and experienced repeated instances of sexual abuse. At the age of 14, she became pregnant, only for the child to die shortly after birth. Throughout this difficult period, she was frequently mocked and taunted by others for being poor.

But Oprah didn’t waste her time worrying about what others were saying about her; instead, she worked and studied hard and got a job as a TV news anchor. However, she was subsequently fired because she wasn’t considered “suitable” to be on air.

Again, she didn’t let the opinions of others take away her power. She worked harder than ever and, eventually, developed what would become her mega-successful talk show.

Not so bad for someone who had once been teased for being so poor she had to wear potato sacks for clothes.

As Oprah’s experience shows, holding on to your power is crucial to success. But how do you do it?

It might seem counterintuitive, but forgiving others for their transgressions against you is an important part of reclaiming your power. If you hold a grudge, emotions of anger and resentment will not have an impact on the person you are angry with; they will, however, limit your own ability. In fact, all you’re doing is giving more power to that person to disrupt your life.

Forgiving others enables you to reclaim your power by placing your focus back on you. And the psychological and physical benefits are notable, with many studies confirming that forgiveness reduces stress. For example, when people engage in forgiveness, their blood pressure decreases and their hearts beat more calmly.

A 2012 study, published in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, also showed that forgiveness is a predictor of longevity – but only if it’s unconditional forgiveness.

People who were only prepared to forgive others if they fulfilled certain conditions – for example, if they had apologized for what they did – had lower life expectancy than a control group. Unconditional forgiveness, on the other hand, ensured a longer life span. So don’t give up your power and learn to forgive!

Mentally strong people are always ready to embrace change.

Judge Greg Mathis is a great example of a mentally strong person. Arrested several times as a teenager, he promised his dying mother that he would change. After being released from jail on probation, he started working at McDonald’s and eventually got accepted to Eastern Michigan University, and later, law school. However, because of his record as a criminal, he was barred from working as a lawyer.

It would have been easy to let this obstacle from the past stand in his way. But Mathis was always ready for change, even when it seemed improbable; he quickly found other ways to serve the city of Detroit.

After a period as the manager for Detroit Neighborhood City Halls, he and his wife founded a nonprofit organization that helped young people find work. A few years later, despite his opponents never missing a chance to bring up his criminal past, he was elected a judge by the people of Detroit.

Mathis’s success is testament to another characteristic of mentally strong people: embracing change in your life. So how can you adopt the right attitude toward change?

The first step is to ask yourself which change you’d like to make in your life, thinking very carefully about how this change would make you feel. Pay special attention to negative feelings and thoughts, like “I’ll never be able to do this” or “There’s no use in trying because I’ve always failed in the past.”

Once you have these pesky thoughts and feelings at the center of your mind, you can decide whether you should listen to them or not. It’s highly likely that you’ll discover that such thoughts are unfounded and not worth listening to.

Once you’ve learned to ignore these types of thoughts, you can create a plan for successful change. It consists of five steps:

Set yourself a 30-day goal. Let’s say you’re trying to learn French. A good 30-day goal could be to learn the 300 most common words in the language.

Decide on concrete, daily changes in your behavior that will help you reach that goal. To reach your 30-day goal of learning 300 French words, you could decide on a time each day where you learn ten new words.

Create a list of anticipated hurdles along the way. For instance, you might anticipate that there will be days when drilling words will feel like a boring, repetitive chore. When this happens, you could decide to picture yourself mentally in France, comfortably chatting away with someone in French. That will give you renewed motivation.

Create accountability. Ask a friend if he or she would be willing to test you on all the 300 words once the 30 days are up. That way, you’ll be more likely to reach your goal.

Measure progress. Make sure to keep a journal of how many words you’ve learned. Seeing it fill up with all your daily achievements will motivate you to keep going.

By being more mindful about your feelings around change and by using the five steps for preparing for change, you’ll be on your way toward your goals.

Mentally strong people don’t get distracted by things they can’t control.

If you’ve ever been caught in bad traffic on your way to an important appointment, you probably know how frustrating it can be. You hiss and froth, cursing the cars in front of you. Although it can feel good to hurl invectives at the world, you should remember that it’s a total waste, not just of time but of precious energy.

You’ll never catch a mentally strong person doing this – they never waste energy fretting over things they can’t control.

Take Terry Fox, who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a severe type of bone cancer, when he was just 18. As a result of the disease, one of his legs had to be amputated and doctors told him he had only a 15-percent chance of surviving the illness.

The day before his surgery, Fox read about a person with a prosthetic leg who ran the New York marathon and was immediately inspired. Following his operation, he began running and soon completed his first marathon.

But this was just the beginning. Fox decided to raise money for cancer research by finding sponsors for a race across all of Canada. To complete this epic trek, he planned to run the equivalent of one marathon every day.

Half-way through his journey across Canada, Fox broke down and had to be hospitalized; his cancer had returned. Though he couldn’t complete his trek, the sponsorship money kept pouring in, as people were inspired by his courage and ambition. He died months later, but only after raising $23 million for cancer research.

What can we learn from Fox’s story?

Don’t waste effort on what you can’t control; concentrate on doing what you can. Fox couldn’t control his health, so he didn’t focus on that. Instead, he concentrated on where he could make a difference: raising millions for charity.

Research shows that this attitude toward things that aren’t under your control can work wonders for your well-being. A 2012 study by K. April showed that being less controlling increases happiness and leads to better relationships.

In fact, the greatest levels of happiness are achieved by people who take a lot of steps to steer their life in the direction they want, while at the same time accepting that there are many things that are out of their control.

Always wanting to please others doesn’t work, and being ready to sometimes displease makes you stronger.

You’ve probably noticed that some people are mortally afraid of showing their true emotions, like anger or sadness, for fear of hurting other people’s feelings. Perhaps someone close to you is like that.

Although being sensitive to other people’s feelings may seem like an unquestionable virtue, it often backfires. If you want to develop your own mental strength, you should learn not to fear hurting other people’s feelings.

For example, Angela always strived to please the men she dated. If the men told her they liked humor in a woman, she would try to crack a few jokes. If they said they liked spontaneity, she would tell them about her travels to France, embellishing details to make them seem spontaneous even though they were carefully planned.

She was trying to make herself more attractive, but her efforts had the opposite effect. After all, no one wants to date a fake and shallow person who allows themselves to become a screen onto which you can project different fantasies.

Angela always agreed with everything her dates said because she thought that if she presented her own opinion, it would hurt their feelings and make them run away. In the end, she cared more about their feelings than her own.

This is no way to lead your life; in fact, being prepared to displease other people actually makes you stronger.

Take the example of Mose Gingerich. Raised in an Amish village, as a young adult Mose began to doubt whether he shared Amish values and belief systems. Leaving the community, however, would be a tough choice, as this would sever all contact to the community, including to his mother and sister, forever.

He experimented with temporarily leaving the community and travelling to other Amish cultures to see the world in between.

In the end, he was strong enough to walk away from everything that was known to him. He moved to Missouri, founded a construction company and married happily. This newfound security also allowed him to accept the disapproval of his entire childhood community. In short, listening to yourself, and not to the concerns of others, will make your confidence and happiness soar.

Mentally strong people are not afraid of taking calculated risks.

If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that you’ll never get very far if you don’t take any risks in life.

However, taking big risks can lead to demotivating failures. Quitting your day job to turn your hobby into a business, even though you have no prior business experience, might seem like a great idea – but it most likely involves greater risks than you think. If you fail, you’ll not only be left without a job and income, you might never want to take any risks again.

That’s why mentally strong people always seek to minimize the risks they take, and when they need to take a risk, they are clever about which ones they take.

Mitigating risk starts by carefully analyzing the nature of the risk itself. Once the elements of risk are clear, you can take the right steps to minimize them.

When Amy, for example, was asked to deliver a valedictorian address at her school’s graduation ceremony, she was more terrified than excited about the opportunity. So, she tried to figure out what exactly it was that scared her so much and determine what the risk actually was.

She discovered that what really worried her was that the audience would reject her. So, she made a plan with her best friends to circumvent this fear: they decided that, once she was done with her speech, her friends would give her a standing ovation.

She gave the speech with a great deal of nervous fumbling – but as soon as she was done, her friends got on their feet and started cheering as if she was their greatest idol. And, remarkably, the other people followed suit. By preparing just a bit, she was able to take the risk of public speaking without really risking the humiliation she dreaded.

Or take the example of the famous psychologist Albert Ellis. As a young man, Ellis was terrified of talking to women because of the corresponding risk of rejection. However, after giving it some rational thought, he concluded that possible rejection was not as bad as he imagined. So he gave talking to women a try.

He went to the local botanical garden every day and sat down next to women sitting alone. After engaging them in conversation, he would ask them if they’d like to go for a drink. In total, he talked to 130 women, 30 of whom left as soon as he sat down.

Of the remaining 100 that he invited on a date, only one accepted – and even then she didn’t show up for the date. But for Ellis this didn’t matter. The important thing was the realization that his irrational fear of rejection was unjustified. He had unnecessarily let it hinder him from talking to members of the opposite sex for too long.

So, if you want to develop your mental strength, start looking at the risks that hold you back. Maybe they aren’t as dangerous and scary as you've always imagined.

Coming to terms with the past makes you stronger, but it takes concrete steps to do so.

Many people feel like they are haunted by their past and by the legacy of their parents and families. But it’s possible to find constructive ways to move forward despite one’s origins.

Take activist and social worker Wynona Ward. Born in a small village in Vermont, she grew up with a sexually and physically abusive father. Ward didn’t tell anyone about this abuse, but worked hard to get ahead in school and escape her hometown.

She got married as a 17-year-old and began working as a truck driver with her husband. But while she’d worked hard to free herself, others in her family struggled to do so. For example, Ward discovered that one of her brothers was now abusing his own children.

She decided that something had to change. She went back to university in Vermont and studied in every moment of her free time. After a lot of hard work, Ward managed to get a degree in law. With some financial aid, she founded Have Justice Will Travel, a traveling legal service for families in the countryside who were dealing with domestic abuse problems.

Ward’s actions show us an important mind-set of mentally strong people. Coming to terms with the past doesn’t mean acting as if certain things never happened; you must accept and forgive the past so that you can build on it in the present. For instance, Wynona Ward didn’t run from her past, or wipe it from her memory. Instead, she used her experience as the basis for making the world a better place.

Coming to grips with your past can be tough, though, and moving forward doesn’t just happen. To be successful, you need to start by taking concrete steps. First of all, you have to give yourself permission to enjoy your life, despite what might have happened in the past.

Then, you have to be wary of attitudes that keep you from experiencing change. For example, if you notice you are avoiding meeting up with new people because your last crush hurt you, think about changing that attitude. Your heartbreak in the past is no reason not to keep looking for true love.

Mentally strong people avoid repeating the same mistakes, and this requires self-discipline.

If you learn to apply the lessons you’ve learned in this post so far, you’ll be on your way to greater mental strength. But even if you succeed in making some changes, it’s easy to fall back into old habits.

This is another characteristic of mentally strong people; they study and learn from their mistakes so they don’t repeat them in the future.

When Rowland Macy, for example, launched a dry goods store in a small-town in Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century, he made the mistake of choosing a quiet location in the town, and struggled to attract customers a result.

To drum up interest in his fledgling store, Macy organized a large parade through his town. Unfortunately, on the day of the parade, it rained so hard that nobody turned up. As a result, he had to give up his business.

But Macy learned from this experience and vowed not to make the same mistake again. The next time he opened a “Macy Dry Goods” store he chose a prime location in downtown New York. It was a massive hit. Macy’s became one of the biggest chain stores in the world and still holds a parade every year – just in the fall, when the risk of sudden storms is smaller.

But how can you use this strength in your own life?

To learn from your mistakes the next time something goes wrong, you should take some time to ask yourself the following questions: What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? And what can I do differently next time around?

Try to set negative feelings and self-doubt aside and simply answer the questions honestly. By doing this consistently, you’ll have a clear idea of how to act next time.

Of course, knowing what you need to do differently and actually doing it aren't the same thing. This is why, if you want to put a stop to the bad habits once and for all, you need to practice self-discipline. Here’s a few simple methods to become a more disciplined person.

Keep your eyes on your goal. By picturing how great it will feel once you reach a goal, like how amazing it will feel once you’ve put the finishing touches on your novel, it will be easier to sit down to write on evenings when you feel like just dropping down in front of the TV.

Make a list of the reasons you don’t want to repeat the mistakes you’ve made in the past. Let’s say you’re trying to lose weight, but you’ve always struggled to keep up your gym visits in the past. Make a list of all the reasons you don’t want to repeat the same mistake. Carry this list with you at all times, and when you feel the urge to just stay at home, take it out and read it to yourself. Before you know it, you’ll be on your way to the gym.

Restrict yourself and make it harder to make mistakes. Let’s say your goal is to save money for a dream trip, but you always end up spending too much money when you’re out with your friends. Before you leave home for an outing, take a small amount of cash out and leave your credit card at home. That way, you’re less likely to go on a spending spree.

Mentally strong people don’t envy other people’s success but rather seek to collaborate with them.

Do you feel bad when someone you know becomes successful? If so, you’re not alone. This kind of envy is common.

A 2013 study by psychologist Mina Cikara found that people not only resent other people’s success, they also take particular pleasure if a person suffering bad luck is a particularly successful person.

Participants in the study were shown photographs of four different types of people – a student, an elderly person, a drug addict and a wealthy professional – in various situations. Incredibly, they experienced greater pleasure from scenarios where the wealthy professional suffered in some way, like getting soaked by the water from a passing car driving through a puddle, than when any of the four types of people received some good fortune.

Resentment and envy of success are common human traits, but this doesn't make them healthy. If you want to be more successful, you must learn to overcome your initial envy of other people’s success and harness their power instead. The best way to do this is through collaboration.

Take the example of chocolatier Milton Hershey. One of his employees, H. B. Reese, started building up a rival candy company in the same city while he was still working in Hershey’s chocolate factory.

Instead of becoming angry or resentful, Hershey surprisingly gave Reese his full support. Reese created his own special candy, the peanut butter cup, and Hershey’s factory provided the milk chocolate for his experiments. The two men continued to collaborate throughout their lives, and after their deaths, the two companies merged.

If both men had viewed each other’s success with envy, they'd have needlessly fought against each other. Yet, by supporting each other's strengths and ideas, they both built strong and profitable businesses.

In short, people who enjoy and celebrate other people’s success end up attracting successful people with whom they can collaborate. Ultimately, these competitive partners motivate and inspire each other, leading to great success for all involved.

Mentally strong people don’t give up easily, and they are self-compassionate about failure.

We tend to think that success falls from the sky, like Cinderella’s fairy godmother turning her into a princess with the wave of a magic wand. But in the real world, things are rarely like in the fairy tales. Success often comes only after a long road of failure, and that’s why mentally strong people know how to persevere and treat their failures as stepping stones to something greater.

There is no better example of this than Thomas Edison. He was one of the greatest inventors in history, perhaps most famous for inventing the light bulb, a discovery that completely changed the world. Just imagine, for a second, a world without light bulbs!

But Edison also invented the electric pen, as well as a ghost machine. If you’ve never heard of these don’t worry – both were complete failures. And they were far from being Edison’s only flops.

Even so, Edison didn’t consider these attempts to be failures. Instead, he saw them as learning opportunities, chances to experiment with what worked and what didn’t. Each time he failed, he considered himself to be one step closer to succeeding.

The power of this way of thinking has been demonstrated by research. Studies have shown that work is probably more important than talent when it comes to success.

For example, people who practice consistently for ten years, never giving up despite constant failures along the way, often end up being better at a given skill than those who at first seemed naturally talented.

This applied to chess players, athletes, musicians and visual artists. And after 20 years of determined work, even individuals who at first seemed untalented could achieve world-class standards.

So failure is a part and parcel of success. But, still, no one likes to fail, and most of us still hold onto the notion that failure is almost shameful. The key to overcoming the fear of failure lies in self-compassion and changing the way you think about failure.

Take a 2012 study, in which students who had failed on a test were given the chance to take it again to improve their scores. Results showed that those students who took a more self-compassionate view of their initial failure, and thus didn’t take it as a massive blow to their self-esteem, studied 25 percent more for the second test and got higher scores than those who were disheartened by their initial failure.

Thus, it’s important that you learn to be self-compassionate about your failures and mistakes.

Mentally strong people are comfortable being alone and use meditation to become more resilient.

When you find yourself alone, with time on your hands, do you immediately switch on the TV or seek some outside activity for distraction?

Most of us are accustomed to being surrounded by noise all day. What’s more, many of us actively try to maintain these noise levels throughout the day to drown out our internal thoughts and worries. This is not a wise habit.

Mentally strong people are not afraid of spending time alone. They know that those quiet times when you are attentive to yourself can be a great source of rejuvenation, inspiration and reflection.

Here’s how to do it yourself.

Take a quiet moment to think about your life goals and whether you are on track to fulfilling them. It’s also a great time to listen to your feelings and notice if there is stress or negative emotions that need addressing. Finally, use this opportunity to think about new goals and new dreams, and to visualize the life you want to have. To stop yourself from forgetting these important musings, collect them all in a journal.

Another secret weapon in the mentally strong’s arsenal is meditation. When you’ve become comfortable sitting down alone to confront whatever is spinning around in your head, meditation can help you become more resilient.

The effects of meditation have been the subject of much research in the last decades, and studies have found that meditation can actually alter the structure of the brain, with positive effects on cognition and emotional regulation.

Meditation has also been shown to have positive effects on physical ailments, such as breathing difficulties, tumors, insomnia, chronic pain and cardiological problems.

If you are still in doubt about the powers of meditation over the body, just look at the Dutchman Wim Hof. Also known as the Iceman, Hof has trained his body through meditation to withstand extreme cold. He regularly spends more than an hour bathing in ice and has been halfway up Mount Everest wearing nothing but shorts!

Luckily, today, meditation is generally recognized as a powerful tool for professionals of all kinds, so you don’t have to worry about being considered odd if you take a break to meditate at work.

Many people have an entitlement mentality, but strong people concentrate on giving rather than taking.

Many children grow up with their parents telling them they are brilliant, talented and destined for great things. It’s a natural impulse to want to tell your children nice things – but you’re not doing them any favors by doing so.

Take the example of Ethan Couch. In 2013, this Texan teenager killed four people while driving under the influence. His lawyers in court actually argued that Couch could not be held accountable for his actions, because he was too privileged and suffered from what they called “affluenza.”

According to his lawyers, the wealthy, coddling environment Couch grew up in meant that he was not able to take responsibility for his actions. Amazingly, this line of argument worked, and Couch received a probation and rehabilitation sentence, rather than prison time.

But it isn’t just the wealthy who suffer from a sense of entitlement. It’s increasingly common to hear people tell their failing friends things like “Don’t worry, something better will come your way,” or “You deserve something good to happen to you after all this.”

The problem with this growing sense of entitlement is that it prevents people from earning things based on actual merit. If you’re constantly focused on what you think you’re owed, why would you work hard to get anything?

Mentally strong people are different. Instead of expecting the world to shower success and good fortune on them, they concentrate on giving.

Take the example of the activist Sarah Robinson. Sarah found out that she had a brain tumor when she was in her early twenties. She battled for a year and a half before she eventually succumbed to the disease.

But during that year and a half, she refused to believe that the world owed her something because she was unlucky enough to have cancer. Instead, she focused on what she could do for others.

For example, as she spoke with other cancer patients in Maine, she realized that many lived far from the treatment centers and had to drive back and forth for hours every day in order to receive treatment.

So she founded an overnight house near the medical facilities and funded it with the help of the Rotary Club. Today, although she has passed away, the overnight house is maintained by her family and friends. They undertake a lot of voluntary work to raise the necessary funds and keep “Sarah’s house” running.

Mentally strong people recognize that achievements take time and that progress isn’t always immediately apparent.

Do you keep your New Year’s resolutions? Probably not. A 1972 study that looked at whether people succeeded with their New Year’s resolutions or not found that 25 percent of participants had abandoned their resolutions after 15 weeks. In a similar 1989 study, that number had gone down to only one week!

The underlying issue is that our goals and expectations are unrealistic. As we never get anywhere near them, we get fed up and give up.

So how can you ensure you set more realistic expectations? Here are a few simple rules:

First of all, don’t think that change is easy. Accept from the start that reaching your goal will be tough. This is especially important if your goal involves giving up bad habits, like giving up smoking. These habits are often far deeper ingrained in our behavior than we think; you’ll have a greater chance of succeeding if you simply accept that it’s going to be hard.

Secondly, don’t create a fixed deadline to reach your goal. It’s good to have an approximate idea of when you would like to get your result, but don’t make it an all-or-nothing situation. Some programs advocate losing a bad habit in 21 days, but if it takes you 101 days, that’s also fine. All that matters is picking a rough time scale that you feel comfortable with.

Finally, don’t think achieving your goal will make your life suddenly wonderful. Losing ten pounds, often amounts to just that – some weight loss. Don’t expect to also get a promotion and a new lover.

By following these steps, it will be easier for you to stick to your plan in the long haul without being disappointed.

This brings us to another feature of the mentally strong, namely that they recognize that progress is not always immediately recognizable. Sometimes improvements are well-hidden, and sometimes they even look like steps backward.

For example, Amy once worked with parents of young children, teaching them how to manage temper tantrums. The standard advice was to studiously ignore the kids when they threw themselves on the ground and started howling and kicking.

Many parents initially complained. They said the tantrums were getting worse, as the children were screaming louder, making more of a fuss. Of course, the children were simply upping the ante. Angry at being ignored, they were trying their best to get their parents to cave in to their will. But if the parents persisted in ignoring them, the tantrums inevitably improved.

What this example shows is that it’s important to be patient, stick to your goal and keep working at it, even when you’re not seeing any progress at a given moment.

To increase your mental strength and get more out of life, you should: Refrain from feeling sorry for yourself, Never give your power away to others, Embrace change, Avoid fretting about things you can’t control, Stop worrying about pleasing everyone, Never be afraid of taking risks, but be clever about which risks you take, Resist the urge to dwell on the past, Make sure to never make the same mistake twice, Never be resentful of other people’s success, Keep at it and never give up after an initial failure, Face your fears of being alone and overcome them, Be on your guard for feelings of entitlement and Never expect immediate results and be patient.

#Things Mentally Strong People Do

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bestmovies0 · 7 years ago

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20 Oscar-Nominated Movies You Can Stream Right Now

From baby motorists to libidinous mermen, 2017 was a very good–and somewhat strange–year at the movies. And yet not even the pulse-pounding excitement of watching Daniel Day-Lewis consume yet another mushroom omelette could match the collective jaw-dropping that came in the final moments of last year’s Oscars ceremony, when the makers of La La Land handed their Best Video statuette over to the makers of Moonlight–the award’s actual winner–in what will likely go down as the weirdest instants and worst mix-ups in Academy Awards history. Could it happen again during this Sunday’s ceremony? Doubtful, but never say never.

Even still( or in cases where) you shouldn’t miss out on any of this year’s nominated films. For those of you planning to invest this week( and weekend) engaged in a non-stop Oscar marathon, here are 20 of this year’s nominated movies you can stream right now.

The Shape of Water

If you thought the merman sex was the most compelling thing about Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical fairy tale, you weren’t attaches great importance. The Shape of Water is much more brilliant than all the talk about its aquatic lovemaking let on. With its mingle of real-life and fantasy, it’s likewise pure del Toro. Sally Hawkins suns as Elisa Esposito, a mute cleaning woman at a top-secret government research center who one day stumbles upon an amphibious creature, falls in love, and smuggles him into her bathtub where their affair goes to the next degree.( It’s much more heartfelt and passionate than it sounds .) The film, which is nominated for 13 Oscars, might be most notable for its cast–most of whom, including Hawkins, Richard Jenkins( as Elisa’s BFF and neighbor ), and Octavia Spencer( as her coworker ), earned nominations for the performance of their duties.( Though Michael Shannon, amazingly, did not .) Folks “was talkin about a” Shape because of its more prurient aspects, but strip those away and it’s a narrative about adoration and otherness with a wonderfully humanist, if not entirely human, soul.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Though writer-director Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was met with a joyful standing ovation following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September, it had now been gained as much backlash as it has accolades( largely because Sam Rockwell’s racist cop character is redeemed in the end ). Still, there’s no denying that it’s a film full of powerful performances–Rockwell, Frances McDormand, and Woody Harrelson are all vying for gold–and a story worth instruct: a young lady is raped and murdered in small-town Missouri. When it seems as if the local police have given up on ever observing the perpetrator, the young girl’s mom takes justice into her own hands, largely by shaming the local authorities. Though it would be easy to paint this kind of tale in broad-spectrum brush strokes–an angry woman gets even–playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh doesn’t go for easy.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Lady Bird

Like most teens, Christine “Lady Bird” MacPherson( Saoirse Ronan) doesn’t ever feel like she quite fits in with her fellow classmates. Hankering for something more than what she has, the movie follows Lady Bird through her senior time of high school, where even the smallest aggravations( like, say, one’s mother) feeling immense. While with hour and distance, it’s easy to see that the interesting thing don’t matter so much, it doesn’t feel that style when they’re pas, which is part of what stimulates Lady Bird so unique. Writer-director Greta Gerwig, who is now one of a small handful of women to be nominated for Best Director, manages to capture the reality of the transition into adulthood with all the pain and humor that comes with it.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Call Me by Your Name

Though set in 1983, there’s something totally modern about Call Me By Your Name, director Luca Guadagnino’s dreamy modification of Andre Aciman’s acclaimed coming-of-age novel. A precocious teen( Timothee Chalamet) observes himself both embracing and fight with the universal awkwardness that comes with giving oneself over to a first love, which is stimulated even more difficult by the fact that it’s with a 24 -year-old grad student( Armie Hammer) who is living with his family and interning for his father. The film’s dreamy sensuality will stick with you long after the end credits roll, and you’ll never look at a pitted peach the same route again.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Darkest Hour

Though director Joe Wright may be best knows we attaining lush interval dramas starring Keira Knightley, his unwavering attention to detail and the past induce him a perfect fit to recount Winston Churchill’s earliest days as Prime Minister, and the history-altering decisions he was faced with inducing when it came to dealing with Adolf Hitler. As far as biopics or historical movies go, Darkest Hour is rather straightforward–which isn’t a knock on the movie. Yet where it truly stands out is in the acting. Though Gary Oldman is far from the only actor to ever play Winston Churchill( he’s not even the only person to play Churchill in the past time ), the quirky gravitas that has celebrated the actor’s job seems perfectly suited to the part.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Get Out

Having reached the “meet the parents” stage in its relations, Chris Washington( Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose Armitage( Allison Williams) head off to an upper-class suburbium to expend the weekend with her folks( Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener ). But from the get-go, Chris senses that something’s not OK with the situation. He’s right. With Get Out, Jordan Peele managed to simultaneously redefine the modern horror movie, while making a statement on race in America–and the timing could not have been better.

Where to stream it: Amazon, HBO Go, iTunes

Dunkirk

Watching Dunkirk on your iPhone isn’t truly the behavior that Christopher Nolan envisaged audiences experiencing his IMAX-ready World War II thriller, which details the hectic evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France as Nazi armies began closing in all around them. So if you can at least watch this one on your TV, that’s preferrable. Like with his previous cinemas, Nolan once again demonstrates himself adept at blending action and nuance. But in the case of Dunkirk, it’s composer Hans Zimmer who is tasked with ratcheting up the nervousnes as the destiny of the film’s seemingly fated soldiers hangs in the balance.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Blade Runner 2049

While it may not have built the financial impact that Warner Bros. was hoping for, much like Mad Max: Fury Road before it, Blade Runner 2049 is only one of the few sequel/ reboot hybrids that isn’t simply cashing in on a cult following for instant brand-name acceptance. Whether you connect with Denis Villeneuve stark, dystopian vision of the future or not, there’s no denying he’s a natural born filmmaker( assure: Hostages, Enemy, Sicario, Arrival ). While it’s technically a sequel, it seems more like a spiritual comrade part. Ryan Gosling is perfectly cast as Agent K, a young blade runner urgently trying to track down Rick Deckard, Harrison Ford’s blade runner from the Ridley Scott original, who has been missing for 30 years. When they do satisfy, watching the two performers try to out-dry each other more than makes up for the two-hour-and-4 5-minute operating time–as does the brilliant camerawork of frequent Coen friends collaborator Roger Deakins who, with 14 Oscar nominations and zero wins, has become the Susan Lucci of cinematography.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

The Florida Project

While growing up mere minutes from Walt Disney World may sound like the dream of every child, for Moonee( Brooklynn Prince )– a profanity-spewing six-year-old who lives in a motel with her mommy( Bria Vinaite )– and her motley group of friends, the Sunshine State is still far from The Happiest Place on Earth. The Florida Project details a summer in the living standards of these children, who are often forced to grow up before their day. In a different time, Sean Baker’s The Florida Project might have been the Oscars’ favorite little indie movie that could, with its brutally honest depiction of life in Donald Trump’s America. For now, we’ll have to be satisfied with Willem Dafoe’s well-earned Best Supporting Actor nomination for playing Bobby, the motel manager who understands Moonee’s plight and does his best to look the other way.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Abacus: Small-scale Enough to Jail

Hoop Dreams director Steve James has dedicated much of his job to shining a light on the underdogs, and his newest documentary is no exception. While, in the wake of the 2008 fiscal meltdown, many of Wall Street’s biggest players were deemed “too big to fail” despite their many intentional misdeeds, person needed to be made an example of. And that someone was Abacus Federal Savings, a family-owned and operated community bank that was indicted for mortgage hoax by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. This engrossing documentary shows the truth of the matter( the bank’s 0.5 percent mortgage default rate was a tenth of the national median) and the personal toll that it takes for David to go up against Goliath.

Where to stream it: Amazon Prime, iTunes

The Big Sick

There’s something to be said about writing what you know, as husband-and-wife writing team Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon proved that with The Big Sick, a semi-autobiographical accounting of the evolution of their relationship. What started as a possible one-night-stand developing into a relationship, then a breakup, then a near-death experience that brought them back together, in part thanks to Emily’s( Zoe Kazan) parents, Beth and Terry( Holly Hunter and Ray Romano ). Just when you thought every romantic-comedy trope had been discovered and done to death( no pun aimed ), The Big Sick manages to avoid them all, yet still have some “aww…” moments.

Where to stream it: Amazon Prime, iTunes

Baby Driver

Somewhere between Drive and La La Land is Baby Driver, Edgar Wright’s car chase-filled heist flick that introduced The Fault in Our Stars star Ansel Elgort to the non-Y-Aloving world. Elgort holds his own and then some against much more seasoned performers, including Jon Hamm( getting as far away from Don Draper as he can) and Jamie Foxx( who channels a bit of his character from Horrible Boss, and then some ). Kevin Spacey also stars, which could explain why the movie didn’t get as much Oscar attention as some predicted.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Beauty and the Beast

When word came down that Disney was killing a live-action version of its beloved Beauty and the Beast, there were essentially two reactions: Yay! and Why? While, in the end, it may have all seemed a bit unnecessary to those who remain devoted to the animated version, there’s no denying the appeal of Emma Watson as Belle, a kind of anti-princess Disney princess. Even if you had no affinity for the original, or desire to watch its live-action offspring, witnessing what the actors–in particular, Dan Stevens as The Beast–had to endure in order to bring it to the screen at the least deserves a few minutes of your attention.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes, Netflix

Icarus

If there was an Oscar for Best Accidental Documentary, Bryan Fogel would be the only challenger. In his effort to make a little cinema about the growing issue of performance-enhancing medications in the sports world, Fogel ended up get in touch with Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of Russia’s national anti-doping laboratory–and together, they slowly realized that their “research” has left them with clear proof that Russia had spent decades conspiring to game the Olympics. While its focus is on doping, the overarching themes speak loudly and clearly to the current state of disenchantment and propagandizing people are reading more and more about every day.

Where to stream it: Netflix

Last Men in Aleppo

At the 2017 Academy Awards, The White Helmets–a 41 -minute documentary about the brave men and women who volunteer as first responders in search and rescue efforts in portions of rebel-controlled Syria and Turkey–won Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara an Oscar for Best Short Documentary. This year, Feras Fayyad and Steen Johannessen’s feature documentary, Last Human in Aleppo, will once again shine a spotlight on the heroic organization, with boots-on-the-ground footage that was shot over two years, and immerses the spectator in what daily life is like for those living in the midst of the Syrian Civil War.

Where to stream it: Netflix, Amazon Video, iTunes

Logan

James Mangold has entered the realm of superhero filmmakers, by sheer morality of represent one of the few who has managed to not only craft a deep nuanced character drama that violates the shackles often associated with the genre–but by being recognized by the Academy( alongside co-writers Scott Frank and Michael Green) for doing just that. It’s a well-deserved tribute for Hugh Jackman’s last outing as a retractable-clawed mutant.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, HBO Go, iTunes

Loving Vincent

CGI is all well and good, but there’s something to be said for pushing the boundaries of centuries-old techniques, which is exactly what Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman have done with Loving Vincent. The movie pays the ultimate tribute to its protagonist, Vincent van Gogh, by recruiting a squad of 125 artist to tell the story of the lord painter’s life … with oil painting. 65,000 frames worth of them.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Mudbound

Netflix continues to show it can play with the the major studios with Dee Rees�� epic, post-WWII drama where class and race collide in rural areas in Mississippi. Accommodated by Rees and Virgil Williams from Hillary Jordan’s book of the same name, the movie depicts the unlikely friendship that develops between two soldiers–one white( Garrett Hedlund ), one black( Jason Mitchell )– as they resume their lives in the Jim Crow South, and are forced to deal with the PTSD that haunts them, and the racism that surrounds them. The film’s Oscar-nominated cinematographer, Rachel Morrison, had now been lent her eye to the year’s biggest movie in so far: Black Panther.

Where to stream it: Netflix

On Body and Soul

Director Ildiko Enyedi won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for this intense, albeit sometimes bizarre, Hungarian movie in which two shy coworkers at a slaughterhouse in Budapest forge a relationship in their daydreams( they keep having the same ones) and attempt to translate that to the waking world. Rating another win for Netflix.

Where to stream it: Netflix

The Disaster Artist

After spending more than a decade as a Hollywood punchline, Tommy Wiseau–the eccentric novelist/ administrator behind the so-bad-it’s-kind-of-amazing cult film The Room–finally got his critical due when James Franco decided to turn the construction of that movie into a movie all of its own, which is equal components funny, bizarre, and curiously moving. Eat your nerve out, Ed Wood.

Where to stream it: Amazon Video, iTunes

Oscars Overdrive

How Mudbound’s Rachel Morrison, the first woman to be nominated for the Academy Award for cinematography, took the world by cyclone with the stunning Black Panther

Dive deep behind the scenes of Blade Runner 2049, as told in our October 2016 cover story

Can a fish-man be emotionally appealing? The Shape of Water dares to find out

Catch up on reviews of Get Out, Logan, and Mudbound

from https://bestmovies.fun/2018/03/01/20-oscar-nominated-movies-you-can-stream-right-now/

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moviecatchup · 8 years ago

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It’s like ‘Jaws,’ but in space: Alien

Alien 1979 Dir: Ridley Scott Rating: 4 / 5 mouths within mouths within mouths

“Many producers have professional ‘readers’ that read and summarize scripts for them. The reader in this case summarized it as ‘It’s like Jaws (1975), but in space.’”

— IMDb trivia, Alien

Another day, another classic movie catchup! I was more intentional about missing Alien, I think — I had heard that it was scary, and given my previously stated fear of horror movies and general disinterest in sci-fi, I never made any effort to see it.

Our viewing came about in a bit of a backwards fashion — D and I wanted to go to the movies last week, and Alien: Covenant had just come out. We debated staying in and watching the original first so I could get some context, but in the end the desire to get out of the house for a date night outweighed the need for chronological franchise viewing. There were some definite plusses and minuses to that decision — plusses included a delicious cheeseburger at our local Alamo Drafthouse and being reassured that these movies actually aren’t that scary; minuses included feeling like I already had seen this cinematic universe when we got around to watching Alien a couple days later — while we were watching the movie that was intended to introduce us to the universe for the first time, I wasn’t able to see it through uninitiated eyes.

For anyone who is in the late-to-the-movie-party boat with me, Alien follows the adventures of the cargo spaceship Nostromo and its crew as it cruises through space, initially back to Earth with ore for whatever we need ore for in 2122. There are seven crew members, awakened from a two-year hypersleep at the opening of the film because their AI captain MUTHUR (pronounced ‘Mother,’ how clever) has detected a communication, and it is their contractual duty to discover the potentially intelligent communicator. They land on an unknown planet, send a team out to find the exact source of the blip, and things go steadily, though not quickly, downhill from there. The pacing of this movie is delightful — there is time for both the crew and the audience to think, weigh the options, and let the enormity of their situation settle in. There is gore, though not as much as you’d expect, and there are certainly scary moments, but you’re mostly just watching the crew grapple with their changing reality.

Like many of the movies I’m watching and writing about for this little project, my reaction to Alien suffered a bit from its now-prominent and -permanent place in the American zeitgeist. Though I had never seen the movie, I had picked up what the alien looked like somewhere along the way, and the plot and visuals were not shocking or especially remarkable, by today’s standards. I hadn’t seen a lot of space movies until the past couple of years, but I’ve been catching up, and the narrative of “ship exploring space, full of astronauts with strong personalities, brings an alien on board, alien kills everyone except that one person / various other calamities ensue until there’s just that one person” is a whole thing. This just didn’t hit me with the same force as I’m sure it hit audiences in 1979 — too spoiled by hyper-realistic CGI graphics and jaded by movies telling and retelling stories.

Le sigh.

All that being said, there’s a reason we tell and retell these stories — they’re really good stories! And they get at a lot of essentially human themes: our desire to explore and discover, our essential reflex to stay alive against all odds, our fascination with and fear of the unknown, and what that emotional combination can force us to do. Also, there really isn’t such a thing as an original story — there wasn’t when Shakespeare was writing and there isn’t now — so getting picky about recurring plot lines is a little high and mighty of me. It’s about how you tell the story, and I think that Ridley Scott and co. told this one very well.

Case in point (IMDb is today’s theme, if you couldn’t tell): “The Xenomorph has 4 minutes of screen time, and doesn’t make its first appearance until about an hour into the film.” How flipping good is that? The Thing, the entity around which the action of the entire movie occurs, is a minor character at BEST. The tension builds and pulses race through storytelling and cinematography, not through neverending “we are developing the plot now” conversations interspersed with jump scares or spooooky things in the corner of your eye. Ridley manages to make the initial introduction of the characters both engaging and a little foreboding — after everyone is roused from hypersleep and is sitting around eating and catching up, you get a sense of camaraderie and a sense of bad things to come all at once. We get to the jump scares eventually, of course, but by the time they happen, it’s a release of built-up tension, rather than an out-of-nowhere reminder to pay attention to the movie.

Apropos of not much, my mother calls Sigourney Weaver a “take-no-prisoners actress.” I lean more towards “badass,” but I think the sentiment is the same either way.

Favorite IMDB trivia pieces (besides the ones cited above):

“The dead facehugger that Ash autopsies was made using fresh shellfish, four oysters, and a sheep kidney to recreate the internal organs” — I thought I saw a damn oyster in there!

“The original title was ‘Star-Beast’…” that would have been far, far shittier.

(This is a long one, but hang with me a second) During early development, Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett ran into a writing impasse while trying to work out how the alien would get aboard the ship. Shussett came up with the idea “the alien f*cks one of them,” which was eventually developed into the facehugger concept. This method of reproduction via implantation was deliberately intended to invoke images of male rape and impregnation, so both writers were adamant that the facehugger victim be a man: firstly because they wanted to avoid the horror cliché of women being depicted as the easy first target; secondly because they felt that making a female the casualty of a symbolic rape felt inappropriate; and thirdly, to make the male viewers feel more uncomfortable with this reversal of genre conventions. — way to turn some of the tired old horror tropes on their gender head a bit!

The literal translations of some of this film’s foreign language titles include Alien: The Eighth Passenger (Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Canada, Denmark, Israel and France) and Alien: The Uncanny Creature from a Strange World (West Germany). — I really, really dig The Eighth Passenger as an alternate title for this movie.

Iconic? I mean, absolutely — I don’t think I need to qualify or explain that

Re-watchable? I’m not sure I would reach for this again for a while — to me, it’s more of a genre-defining experience than a go-to movie night movie. I’m glad I watched it, I feel like I have a better context for a lot of other space movies, but I don’t think I enjoyed the experience of it enough to choose it over something I haven’t seen, or something I’ve seen a million times and love. We are, however, working our way through the Alien universe / franchise — we watched Prometheus a couple days ago, which was also super entertaining, and it has spurred a couple long conversations about the timeline and placement of the overall universe. According to Ridley Scott via trusty IMDb, Alien (and all sequels), Prometheus, Predator (and all sequels) AND Blade Runner are all in the same universe, so there’s a lot to discuss.

Favorite moment? Sigourney Weaver singing “You Are My Lucky Star” as she prepared to finally blow the damn thing into space — it was eerie and unexpected in a way that I got right behind. And the chestbursting scene actually made me laugh out loud — we all knew it was coming, and it was a great moment, but seeing that little thing pop out and scamper away just made me giggle.

Hated? The lone black character being underpaid AND lazy AND yelled at to just shut up and listen (to the white man with authority explaining basic facts condescendingly), and then switching to total compliance when he was threatened with no income at all. That whole scene was just icky with racist tropes. Also, the underwear scene towards the end was so unnecessary — you just couldn’t let a female character get through a movie without showing some leg ( / buttcrack?!), no matter how badass she was, eh? For shame, the year 1979. And 2017, but that’s a different matter.

Bechdel test? Yes! From the IMDb trivia, it sounds like they cut a couple of scenes between Ripley and Lambert that would have been challenging — one with them discussing if either of them had had sex with Ash (the robot, for lack of a better word), and another in which Lambert slaps Ripley after Ripley refuses to let the contaminated group complete with facehugger back on the ship (women are so catty and always slapping each other! right?!) — but those scenes were cut and we’re left with a movie with a strong female protagonist, and scenes with her and the other female character talking about something other than men or romance. Lambert was annoyingly cry-y and panicky, but you can’t have everything in this life.

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talabib · 6 years ago