#REMEMBER WHEN BIG FILMS AIMED AT TEENS USED TO BE GOOD. REMEMBER BEFORE ALL WE HAVE WAS MARVEL SHIT.

[cliveguy]

rewatching hunger games. they literally don't make films like this anymore

[nyrandrea]

Setting The Stage

My hyperfixation is set back on fnaf again in anticipation for Security Breach, so I’ve decided to write my own interpretation on how the game might begin! 

Summary: Gregory had always dreamed of going to Freddy Faxbear’s Mega Pizza Plex and meeting his heroes. But he somehow ends up getting more than he bargained for, and dreams start to turn into nightmares.

Originally planned as a oneshot but had to split it into two parts.Link to next chapter is down below! Also available to read on AO3 here!

Enjoy!

Walking into Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizza Plex for the first time was something that every kid in the world should experience, at least according to Gregory’s logic. 

And it was that logic – and a lot of puppy dog looks – that just about managed to work on his mom. Because here he was, finally standing in front of the colorful neon sign with his favorite animal mascots welcoming him in.  

It had taken a lot of begging and guilt-tripping but he wasn’t ashamed one bit, though his mother might have disagreed, especially when it came to the snivelling part. But hey, it wasn’t his fault she had worked late on his birthday, so she owed him. Big time. 

He vaguely recalled her grumbling about having to dip into her savings for this trip. 

So that meant that he only had today, and he had to make every second count. 

“So...” a voice spoke up from behind him. “Am I finally forgiven?” 

Gregory looked up to see his mom giving him ‘the look’, and to that he nodded profusely.  

“Good. After today you can finally leave me in peace,” she said, giving his hair a playful ruffle as they walked through the large sliding doors and into the mall. 

He decided to push it just a little bit further. 

“Can I get a Freddy plushie?” 

The little boy swore he could hear a vein pop. 

“I already bought tickets for the meet and greet. Do you know how much those cost me?” 

He shrugged. 

“A lot, and it’s coming out of your college fund.” 

“What if I don’t wanna go to college?” 

“Maybe you won’t get to after today,” she replied, rubbing at her temples. “Fine. I’ll give you ten dollars and you can buy yourself something at the store when we’re done, alright?” 

That was enough to cover a pencil, maybe an eraser as well if he haggled. But he didn’t argue.  

Both Gregory and his mom were suddenly blinded when they entered into the main part of the building as bright neon lights bounced off of the high glass ceiling and right into their retinas. Only once they were able to adjust their eyes could they really absorb the true grandeur of the place. 

Everywhere you looked there were people: from tired-eyed parents trying to find the next thing to distract their kids to enthusiastic parents who wanted to get involved in everything their kids were doing while filming it on their phone for their blogs. Then there were the snot-nosed teens who were bunking off school and several professional shopping guides with forced smiles wider than Moondrop and Sunrise’s combined. Everyone seemed to move in unison as the hall was filled with the sound of shoes squeaking against the polished checkered floors. 

Topping it all off was a massive gleaming golden statue of Glamrock Freddy proudly posed right in the center, singing silently into the microphone as soft music and wacky adverts played in the background. 

Suddenly Gregory felt very small. 

“It sure is...big, isn’t it?” His mother said, not sounding so confident herself. 

He merely nodded in agreement. 

Her son-o-meter seemed to be finely tuned as ever as she gently grasped Gregory’s shoulder and gave him a light but reassuring shake. 

“C’mon now,” she tenderly prodded. “We’ve got all day to enjoy the place so let’s make the most of it, huh? It’s not every day we get to go to Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizza Plex.” 

This was true. Coming here had once been only but a dream. Now he was here, staring up at a brilliantly shining statue of Glamrock Freddy. And pretty soon he was going to be meeting the bear himself. 

His hand absently went to towards his back-pocket before he made a fist as determination washed over him. Looking up at his mom, he nodded. 

“And if I’m remembering right, I think I know the first thing on your to-do list.”  

The boy had already grabbed her hand as he made a beeline for their first activity. 

“To Fazer Blast!” 

 xxx

Trying to imitate the pose of the Roxanne cut-out that was behind the reception desk, Gregory pointed his laser blaster at his mom as she attempted to fit on his vest. 

“Could you stop fidgeting?” 

“But I’m practicing-” 

“Stop. Fidgeting.” 

He pouted before she struck him with that look again, which he pretended not to notice as he gazed up towards the lady at the reception desk. She looked about in her twenties and was using one hand to push back her long sleek black locks away from her face every five seconds while her other hand typed lazily on a screen. 

“So...do I just join a team or...?” 

It took her a moment to even register that he was talking to her before she flicked her hair back again just to glare down at him. 

“Sure, like, do what you want. It’s your game, you make the rules.” 

She seemed to pause for a moment. 

“You do, like, know the rules, right?” 

Gregory wasn’t sure how to respond to that.  

“Uh...sure?” 

“Fantastic,” she drawled as she focused her attention back to her tablet. “Your session ends in fifteen minutes.” 

His mother rolled her eyes and muttered something about, “kids these days”, but soon smiled and took Gregory’s shoulder as she walked him in. 

“Just remember to have fun, alright? Screw the rules.” 

“Really?” Gregory asked, his toothy grin twisting into something sinister as he got into the Roxanne pose again.  

“Just...don’t run and remember to stay within the walls,” she added on quickly. “Can’t have my little space man getting lost now, can I?” 

Gregory made a sound of disgust as he was pulled in for a kiss before she finally let him loose into the brightly colored arena. He couldn’t help but take a moment to stare up in awe as spotlights of purple, green and red shone upon the various props and fixtures that decorated the place. 

 In the center was a giant space rocket that was surrounded by planets with neon rings glowing around them. The cut-outs from reception were scattered about too, though now they were humongous. Gregory almost couldn’t help but salute the towering Freddy as he walked past. 

He also noticed a room near the back walls. It was raised up to overlook the whole arena and was surrounded by green-lit pillars. It fit in with the theme of the room but also...jarringly stood out. Maybe it was a place for parents to watch their kids play, or perhaps the employees? 

“Hey Grogery!”  

That voice. That name struck fear into his chest as he swirled around to face a group of boys that had aimed their blasters right at him. 

“Never thought we’d see you here,” the biggest one said with a smirk. “You sneak in through the gutters or something?” 

“Hey... Bob,” Gregory casually greeted. Though it was hard to act so suave when he was trembling. 

“It’s Rob.” 

“Rob! Yeah...cool to see you too.” 

Learning the names of his bullies from class had never been at the top of Gregory’s to-do list, but then again it hadn’t been at the top of theirs either, clearly. But God, why did they have to be here of all places? Of all days, even? 

“Nah, his mom probably got him in here with all that hooker money she earns!” The skinny one snorted, making them all burst out into laughter. 

“She works at the hospital,” Gregory weakly argued. 

“Not what my dad said!” Rob hollered, still rubbing tears from his eyes. 

“So, what, is your dad cheating on your mom?” He sniped back with a sneer of his own. 

His grin soon disappeared though when they all suddenly stopped laughing and a beat of silence followed, save for the distant laser blasts sounding off around them. 

“The hell did you just say to me?” Rob asked, his voice dangerously quiet. If his brows knitted together any tighter then those pimples on the bridge of his nose might pop at any given moment. Gregory grimaced at the very thought. 

“N-nothing! Um...I mean- it's technically not cheating if your parents are divorced, right?” 

Rob positioned the blaster in his hand not so much as to aim it, but rather throw it. 

“Like I said, my mom wouldn’t even do that!” 

The pimples popped. 

With that, Gregory legged it before the gun could smack him in the face. He dashed between the walls as the angry voices behind him grew distant, he almost felt bad as he climbed through the holes and bumped past people, but hey it was like his mom said, screw the rules, right? 

However, it looked like the rules were starting to screw him when he smacked into a dead end. The black wall was too high for him to jump over and the only way out would be to re-trace his steps, which meant... 

“C’mon Grogery!” Rob’s voice taunted through the luminous hall. “Let’s see how many knocks to the head you can take before you bleed.”  

The boy swallowed a hard lump down his throat as he backed himself up against the wall and looked up at the Roxanne cut-out that towered above him, aiming her blaster with such confidence and attitude. With a deep breath and a firm nod, he did the same with the hope that getting them disqualified might save him. 

If not, at least his mom was a first-aider. 

“Hey...” A soft, almost girlie voice laced with a mechanical tone called out. “In here.”  

Gregory’s head snapped to the right as a hand – or was it a paw? – beckoned him into a dark corner. 

“Hurry up...!” The voice urged, and before Gregory could question anything, he saw four shadows creep around as the sound of footsteps thundered towards him, forcing him to make a snap decision and dive into the darkness, getting caught by a pair of skinny, furred arms. 

“Shit, where did he go?” Rob shouted as the group gathered where Gregory had been standing just seconds before.  

“Looks like he dropped his blaster,” one of them said as he picked it up. “Maybe he climbed the wall?” 

There was a sudden yelp as Rob smacked him upside the head. 

“Don’t be so fucking stupid, he’s tiny. No way in hell he’d be able to scale that.” 

Gregory stiffened as Rob suddenly turned in his direction, but he felt the stranger put a hand on his head, and strangely enough, it calmed him down. 

“...C’mon, he’s gotta be around here somewhere,” Rob finally said, pulling the group away. “He can’t hide forever.” 

After a few moments of waiting, Gregory let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. 

“Bullies are just the worst, huh?” 

Almost jumping out of his skin at the sudden chipper voice cutting through the tense atmosphere like a knife, he glanced up with wide eyes as the figure gave him a little pat on the head.  

This was obviously a girl but with the shadows enveloping her it was hard to tell exactly...what she was.  

He could make out a pair of tall ears so...a rabbit? Gregory couldn’t remember any animatronics other than Freddy, Chica, Monty and Roxanne, as well as Moondrop and Sunrise. Was this a new character? 

But what kind of bunny would have such piercing red eyes? 

“My name’s Vanny,” she greeted. “What’s yours?” 

Feeling slightly relieved that she had finally let him go, he cautiously stepped out and looked around to make sure he was in the clear before turning to face her.  

“...Gregory,” the boy timidly answered, still feeling a bit unnerved.  

“What a swell name! It’s nice to meet’cha,” she said with a small bow, which unveiled a few more features like a bright blue bow tied around her neck, and an unnaturally wide toothy grin plastered on her patched face.  

What’s more, she didn’t exactly move like a robot, despite sounding like one. 

“Are you new?” Gregory asked, causing Vanny to tilt her head. 

“Huh?” 

“I’ve never seen you in the show before and...” he paused, knowing his words had already gotten him in trouble today. 

“And what?” she prodded. 

“Well...you don’t really look like an animatronic.” 

“That’s because I’m not!”  

Gregory flinched at her overly cheerful tone and stepped back as she kneeled down to his level. 

“Can I let ya in on a little secret?” Vanny asked, cupping her hand to her mouth in a poorly disguised whisper. 

“Sure...?” 

“I wanna be in the show. Like, I really really wanna be in the show. That’s why I made this,” the rabbit gestured to herself in an overly dramatic way; caressing her ears and cupping her face. “But I gotta prove myself first.” 

“Prove yourself?” 

“Yup!” 

Gregory raised an eyebrow when she didn’t elaborate further, but decided to put it to rest as he really wanted to get out before Rob and his goons came back. 

“I know a shortcut outta here,” Vanny offered with a tilt of the head, as if reading his mind. “Just take a couple of rights and a left and you’ll be as right as rain! Want me to show you?”  

“T-that’s okay, I should be good,” Gregory replied with a smile, though it slowly turned into a frown when she didn’t answer back, choosing instead to just...stare at him, her head still tilted, almost as if she were deep in thought. 

“But...thanks anyway...?” he weakly offered. 

This seemed to snap her out of her trance as she nodded vigorously. 

“No problem! And don’t worry, if those bullies come back, I’ll give ‘em a dose of Moondrop’s sleepy candy. That oughta slow ‘em down!”  

He had heard of that stuff, but couldn’t for the life of him understand why kids would want candy that would put them to sleep. Nevertheless, he nodded and thanked her again before turning, and hurrying away, a soft giggle echoing behind him. 

 xxx

“Where on earth have you been? It’s been thirty minutes!” 

Gregory was still a little shaken up by the time he had reached the exit, so much so that he had forgotten that he had been on a time limit. 

“Sorry, mom...” Gregory muttered sheepishly as she looked him over. 

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

Glancing back towards the arena, he tried to see if he could spot Rob’s gang still wandering about in there. 

“Did you see a group of guys come out by any chance? Older than me. Kinda ugly...” 

“Now you’re answering my question with a question,” his mother said with a sigh. “But no. Why? Did something happen?” 

“No!” he blurted out, making her give him that look again. “We were just...having so much fun but then I uh...I lost them. Just wondering if they left without me or something.” 

Her expression softened a little. He hated when she did that. 

“No, sweetie...but I’m sure they won’t be far, should we go look for them?” 

Gregory grabbed her hand and started pulling her away. “It’s fine! The show’ll be starting soon, right? We can’t miss it!” 

“Okay, okay...!” she chuckled as he dragged her. “But first we need to hand your blaster in.” 

He stopped then, inwardly cursing at himself before smiling sheepishly up at his mom as she narrowed her eyes at him. 

“You lost it, didn’t you.”  

Her tone suggested that it wasn’t a question. 

“Yep.” 

He yelped when she was suddenly the one dragging him away. 

“Well, we best make ourselves scarce then, besides we can’t miss your big show, right?” 

Gregory grinned. “Screw the rules?” 

She smiled back. “Screw the rules.” 

 xxx

They had made it to the main stage before the show began, but there were already big crowds congregating near the front to get the best view, and Gregory was having none of it. 

His mom kept apologizing to the angry faces and pointed looks as he towed her through the mass of people to get to the front, ignoring her when she grumbled about having to teach him some social skills. 

Gregory drowned everything else in the auditorium out as his wide brown eyes focused on the stage, even trying to balance up on the tips of his toes to get any kind of glimpse of brown, green, pink or purple. He had waited so long for this moment, and nothing more mattered than the next hour. 

Gregory wasn’t ashamed to admit that he squealed a little when the lights died down, it was just as well that every other kid in the auditorium screamed too, resulting in the kind of high-pitched noise that would make a banshee cringe. 

“Hello ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!” A mechanical voice greeted over the speakers. “Welcome to Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizza Plex! Are you all having a fantabulous time?”  

The crowds erupted once more. 

“Rockin’!” Gregory gasped as a rough female voice took over. "Y’all ready to get your glam on?!”  

“Oh Roxanne...” a more feminine tone scolded. “Now you’ve given us away. Again.”  

Gregory’s smile grew wider, he knew this whole skit, next up would be- 

"I think we’ve kept ‘em waiting long enough, gals,” a graveled voice boomed out from the speakers. "Whaddya say, Freddy? Should we give the kids what they want?”  

The little boy almost couldn’t contain himself at this point. 

“I say let’s rock out!”  

The curtains suddenly swung open to reveal the animatronics in all their shiny, glittering glory.  

They were all 80’s themed, of course, to fit in with the aesthetic of the mall. Glamrock Chica had the typical pink leotard with green leopard print leg warmers; very popular with the girls. Roxanne Wolf was more unconventional with a striking red outfit, piercings and the mascot for the mall’s race course; she appealed to quite a wide range of people. Montgomery Gator was more for the chads as he had a rough and tough attitude with a love of golf, but Gregory did admire his red mohawk and star-shaped shades. 

Then there was Glamrock Freddy. The mascot of the Pizza Plex. He didn’t really have a gimmick as such but was incredibly popular just for how great he was with the children. The other animatronics were good with kids but Freddy was the one who seemed to pay the most attention to them, whether it be sitting down and listening to a kid’s story, accepting gifts from them to even giving them gifts of his own free will – mostly a plushie of himself. 

Management were irked by this odd behavior at first but when they saw how much cash he was raking in from meet and greets alone, they decided to leave it. Why fix it if it ain’t broke, right? 

As they burst into their first song, with Freddy singing into his mic stand and the other three playing keytars, Gregory didn’t even notice when his mother shook his shoulder and told him that she would have to take a phone call but would be back as soon as she could. There were some instructions on where to meet if she didn’t make it back by the time the show was finished but the words fell on deaf ears as he bounced and sang along to the lyrics he had spent so painstakingly long to learn. 

By the fourth or fifth song, the crowds had started to dissipate as parents took their children away to browse some more shops or to go to the food court for lunch, but Gregory stayed until the very end, cheering and whooping when the animatronics did their final encore and bowed as the curtains were drawn to a close. 

Fearing his chest might explode from excitement, the boy took a few moments to breathe as he tried to calm down from the buzz of electricity that was jolting through his body. The past hour had gone and went so fast that he could hardly process any of it, all he knew was that it had been the happiest moment of his life.  

With a huge grin, he watched as the robots were escorted off stage by staff and taken to their individual show rooms for their meet and greet sessions. Lines were already starting to grow long. 

It was only then that Gregory realized that his mother was gone. He looked around with a frown, she had said something about a phone call but...that had been half an hour ago now. 

‘She must be waiting at the show room for me,’ Gregory concluded, beaming at the thought of finally meeting his hero in the flesh. Or...plastic. 

Shaking his head, he made a beeline past Chica’s room, where mostly little kids were sitting on the floor watching the animatronic as she played them a song while others had started a food fight with the leftover pizza and soda cans that had been lying around the room, making the parents and staff grimace as they tried to break it up. 

Monty’s room was a little more organized and catered more towards older children as the gator showed them how to get a hole in one with a little golf stand while others played on the arcade machine. This reminded Gregory that the golf course was next on his list. 

Roxanne’s room was very high energy as the wolf raced around with the other kids with driving wheels in their hands while making engine noises. Though when one tripped up, she immediately halted and gently picked the child up, reassuring him that “Even the most rockin’ superstars get hurt sometimes!” and carried him into the back area to where the medical staff resided with a worried mother in tow. 

Stopping to catch his breath, Gregory finally made it to Freddy’s room, gaping slightly when he saw the queue nearly reaching the end of the walkway. He couldn’t even see inside due to the mass of people gathered at the curtains, forcing him to back up a bit and climb up on a bench just to be able to get a look in. 

The room was painted red and blue to fit in with Freddy’s color scheme and decorated with bright lightning bolts and portraits of the bear himself. It was also the least cluttered as there were only a few bowling bowls, party hats and – of course – plenty of plushies to give away. But what caught Gregory’s eyes were the assortment of colorful drawings that had been halfhazardly pinned to the wall next to the make-up mirror. 

It was true then; he really did collect kids' drawings! 

Reaching into his own back-pocket, Gregory pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and opened it up, smiling a little when he looked upon his own masterpiece. All the animatronics were singing on a stage on top of the whole world, with Freddy towering over them wearing a crown and rainbow cape because why not?  

It had taken him hours and an absurd number of crayons that he had ‘taken’ from his classroom, so a selfish part of him hoped that Freddy would pin it above the rest. 

A flurry of movement in the crowd suddenly caught Gregory’s attention as the stewards moved them aside to let the animatronic move in. He felt himself get giddy when the bear greeted everyone and gave them a sign of the horns with his clawed hand, to which all the kids mimicked, including Gregory from all the way in the back. 

As the queue started to move along, Gregory couldn’t help but start to feel impatient. Where was his mom? He thought she knew how important this was to him. 

Forgiveness was suddenly starting to come in very short supply. 

With a cross of the arms and a small pout, he watched as Glamrock Freddy took photographs, played with kids and even recognized a regular and accepted a drawing from her, praising her for becoming more talented every day. 

Gregory’s chest tightened up a little at that. 

Frowning down at his own scribbles, he didn’t even notice the tall figure hiding behind the golden statue of Roxanne that was trying to get his attention. 

“Hey...! Hey Gregory!” A familiar voice hissed. 

Startled, he turned to see that tall rabbit lady from earlier waving and beckoning him over. Blinking, he took a moment to look around to see if anybody else had seen her, half-wondering if she was some kind of hallucination at this point. When she beckoned again, he tentatively walked over. 

Once again, she was hidden in the shadows, but the overhead lights made it a little easier to see more details of the suit, like the stitches that barely held the mismatched creams and beiges together along with a few patches of crosshatched red. It was like the whole thing had just been thrown together. 

“Uh...hey...”  

It took him a moment. 

“Vanny?” 

She gasped and gleefully put her hands up to her grinning mouth. 

“You remembered!”  

He forced a grin, trying to ignore the bristling hairs on the back of his neck. 

“Sure.” 

She paused and knelt down. 

“What’s wrong? You look a bit down.” 

This caught him by surprise. 

“Huh? No, I’m fine. Just...waiting.” 

Glancing back, he could see the crowds starting to dwindle as time went on, but still no sign of his mother. 

“Ooh! What’s that?” 

He looked down to where she was pointing and held up the piece of paper that he had been clutching a little too hard. 

“It’s...um...just a drawing I made...for...Freddy,” he meekly replied, his cheeks heating up. 

“Oh wow! Can I see?” 

The very question he was afraid of. But she was already holding out her hand, so he couldn’t just say no. 

She seemed to study it very closely when Gregory handed it over. He started to wonder if she was having to squint through the costume’s red eyes just to be able to see it. 

“This is so good, Gregory!” She gushed, holding it up as if to show it off to everybody else in the mall. “You’re super talented! Are you gonna be an artist when you grow up?” 

He looked down in embarrassment but couldn’t help but smile at the compliment. Despite how weird this lady was, she actually seemed pretty nice.  

“Um...I dunno. I like drawing so...maybe.” 

“You should definitely show it to Freddy, I bet he’d love it!” 

Gregory perked up at that, but frowned again as he looked back over to the show room. 

“I want to but I can’t yet.” 

“Why not?” Vanny asked. “Ya nervous?” 

That was true but he wasn’t about to admit it.  

“My mom has the ticket for the meet and greet but...she had to take some kinda phone call and hasn’t come back yet.” 

“Hasn’t...come back,” she repeated. 

As Gregory watched kids and parents come and go, he hadn’t noticed that Vanny was staring right at him until the silence between them grew uncomfortably long. But as he turned back to look at her, she stood up and offered her hand. 

“I know a way you can give it to him.” 

A little perturbed by her sudden shift in tone; he looked at her hand but didn’t take it. 

“Uh...how?” 

“The VIP room, silly!” She said, her chirpy voice returning once more. “You know that one up at Fazer Tag? I saw you looking at it earlier.” 

The one that was high up, he remembered. But... had she been watching him that whole time? 

“That’s where Freddy and the others go for the secret meet and greets, where they give you their undivided attention.” 

Gregory raised an eyebrow. 

“I... didn’t even know that was a thing.” 

“That’s cuz it’s secret!” 

Okay, well that made sense. 

“Usually only the rich kids get to go there but I think you’re much more deserving, Gregory,” she said, holding out her hand once again. “You only get today, right?” 

The boy looked over once more. Freddy was waving goodbye to the last of the children as the stewards drew the curtains. He had missed his chance. 

He looked back up at Vanny. 

“What about my mom?” 

The rabbit tilted her head. “I’ll notify the staff so they can let her know, then she’ll come pick you up when you’re ready, okay?” 

There was a moment of hesitation but he knew she was right. He only had today and nothing was going to stop him from getting what he wanted. 

Screw the rules.  

With a nod, Gregory took her hand and let her lead him away to the Fazer Tag arena, not noticing that his drawing had slipped from her grip and she had let it fall into a crumpled ball as they walked away. 

xxx

So let me know what y’all think! Would you like to see a part 2? :D

Edit: Part 2 is now available here!

[aion-rsa]

Boy Meets World’s Slasher Episode Was Scarier Than it Had Any Right To Be

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Blood-curdling screams. Taunting phone calls from a psycho killer. Creepy, ominous music with lyrics like “Here’s a knife. Here’s a gun. There’ll be fun for everyone. Death is on the menu tonight!” Elements of a forgotten ‘90s slasher classic? Nope. Just some highlights from the most memorable episode of ABC’s family sitcom Boy Meets World.

With the launch of Disney+ and ample time to get nostalgic and revisit old movies and TV shows due to the pandemic, many older millennials are diving back into Boy Meets World, which ran for seven seasons from 1993 through 2000 as a staple of ABC’s TGIF lineup. The show centered on Philadelphia teenager Cory Matthews (Ben Savage) navigating life with his best friend Shawn Hunter (Rider Strong), his love interest Topanga Lawrence (Danielle Fishel), and brother Eric (Will Friedle), while perpetually receiving life lessons from longtime teacher and eventual principal Mr. Feeny (William Daniels). 

Boy Meets World had no shortage of standout moments and episodes, like WWE wrestler Vader appearing as the father of a misunderstood school bully, a young Linda Cardellini being the girl who almost destroyed the Cory and Topanga love story for good, and Peter Tork (who briefly played Topanga’s father), Micky Dolenz, and Davy Jones staging an impromptu Monkees reunion. And who could forget when Ben Savage’s famous brother Fred guest starred as a creepy college professor and was shoved through a glass door? 

But perhaps no other Boy Meets World episode made a bigger impact to impressionable young minds than the fifth season highlight “And Then There Was Shawn,” a format-breaking homage to the popular slasher films of the moment, like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer (the latter of which hit theaters just four months earlier). Serving as a metaphor for the fear and uncertainty Shawn feels over the recent breakup of Cory and Topanga, the episode is a mini-horror movie that operates in dream logic and features shocking cast deaths, zeitgeisty jokes, and a big ‘90s teen idol cameo. Many young fans were genuinely frightened by the scares conjured up in the episode, while older fans loved the campy, winking references and the change of pace storytelling.

“And Then There Was Shawn” writer Jeff Menell was typically happy to do what was asked of him on the series, but he jumped at the chance to write a horror-influenced episode. “I’m a diehard movie fan. I have been my entire life. But as a writer on set, I just did whatever I was told,” Menell said in a phone interview with Den of Geek. “I never went after anything. But I begged to write this one because I just knew I could do it.”

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By Alana Joli Abbott

The episode finds the high school-aged cast members serving detention with Mr. Feeny after a fight, springing from Cory and Topanga’s recent breakup, disrupts the class. Things quickly take a turn when the kids see a message in blood written on the chalkboard that reads “No One Gets Out Alive!” and hear a discomforting jingle with menacing lyrics playing over the high school’s PA system. Initially, the kids believe that Mr. Feeny is playing a prank on them, but things take a turn for the serious — and scary – when classmate Kenny is murdered in the dark by the masked killer wielding a pencil (prompting a very timely “You Killed Kenny!” reference). None other than Mr. Feeny himself bites the dust shortly thereafter via scissors to the back.

“You know, usually you go off for two weeks and you go write this draft and you bring it back, and then the room rewrites it. That always was the process. I wrote this one like in two days, and I had to pretend that it took longer because if you’ve written the script in two days, they assume it sucks, or that you didn’t really care or make an effort,” Menell says.

When Menell brought the initial draft to the writer’s room, however, there were minimal changes to his script. The episode’s director, Jeff McCracken, was impressed. 

“Jeff (Menell) went out and wrote his episode and when it came in it was perfect. It was an absolutely perfect flow of the script. He just nailed it.”

Emulating classic slasher film elements, McCracken had to approach the filming of “And Then There Was Shawn” differently than a typical episode. 

“It was so much fun,” McCracken says. “Because it had all these special sequences, we really had to shoot it like a film. We rehearsed for two days, then shot it for three, and then we showed it before a live audience. The film style is generally single style or two cameras, but I shot a lot of it with three to four cameras so that we wouldn’t have to do multiple retakes. You couldn’t have done the whole thing in front of a live audience because it would have taken too much time to set everything up and run through a show with an audience sitting there.”

The pencil kill is the most memorable moment from the episode, but McCracken nor Menell can take credit for it. “I remember the one gag that was not in the script, the one gag that Michael Jacobs (creator/executive producer) came up with, which was genius, was the pencil dynamic,” McCracken recalls. After classmate Kenny is shown impaled through the head with a pencil, his body slumps down the wall, leaving a lead pencil mark behind him. Cory quips, “We’ll always remember he was this tall.”

Kenny and Feeny’s deaths are bloodless, but they leave a mighty impression for a network family-friendly series. Both writer and director knew that they’d have to tread lightly if they were going to be faithful to the slasher genre (“I’m surprised they let us have Feeny with (scissors) in his back, to tell you the truth,” Menell says) but they both made a concerted effort to surround the kills with humor. 

“We had to make it funny,” McCracken says.” I mean, you put (scissors) in someone’s back, it can be very disturbing for a young audience. You can’t traumatize them. We did it with some sense of humor and it wasn’t so graphic.”

Part of the humor was derived from the very specific references made in the episode. Like Scream standout character Randy, Shawn makes meta references to the rules of the horror genre, telling his friends that virgins are the only ones who are safe. Eric says, “I’m dead,” Jack says, “I’m dead,” and Shawn says, “I’ll get as sick as you can without dying.” 

This slightly scandalous joke wasn’t anything new for the series, but the violent nature of the episode led to “And Then There Was Shawn” receiving the show’s first TV-PG-V rating. According to Menell, Michael Jacobs had a way of pushing the boundaries with network executives. “He got away with a lot more stuff than most people because he could really browbeat some network executives at times to get what he wanted.”

One major addition to the cast for “And Then There Was Shawn” probably helped Jacobs catch the network in the right mood. Jennifer Love Hewitt, coming off Party of Five and at the height of her scream queen powers, guest stars as new John Adams High student Jennifer Love Fefferman. Hewitt at the time was dating Will Friedle and it’s believed their relationship inspired her cameo. 

“We maybe asked him to ask her, because obviously she was in I Know What You Did Last Summer, so having her there just adds horror film credibility to it,” Menell says. “She was great. She was such a great sport, and it was fun having her on.”

McCracken concurs: “It was such a pleasure. It was one of those things that you don’t know how a major star walking in on your set, how they’re going to be, what their demands are going to be, what their personality is going to be like, what their disposition for the script’s going to be like, and she just came in full guns blazing and just had a blast and that made everything just wonderful. She was game for anything.”

One thing that Hewitt was game for was a big makeout scene with Friedle’s Eric, that may or may not have been improvised. “I don’t think we wrote that in, I think they just wanted to do it and we let it,” Menell laughs.

Amongst all of the horror homage fun, the episode ends with Shawn removing the killer’s mask to find himself starring back, having gone through this whole slasher bit just to get his friends back together. It’s quite the philosophical ending for a show primarily aimed at tweens and teens. 

“When it did get serious with Shawn at the end, it was more poignant than it was scary and it was also a great reveal that it was him,” McCracken says. “It was metaphorical in the sense that that component of Shawn is in us all and it’s always lurking and it’s always out there. And so, be vigilant.”

The Jeffs knew that they had a special episode on their hands with “And Then There Was Shawn,” but who could have guessed the episode would have this sort of longevity 22 years later?

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“We got a few letters from people that were so scared, couldn’t believe we would kill Feeny. And we got some people that were upset,” Menell says. “But we had no idea until years later when the internet came on how popular that episode became. We did some crossovers, some time flashbacks, and some other really cool episodes, but this was a show that was nothing like any other episode we had aired or would air. It was probably the most fun … it’s certainly the most scary.”

The post Boy Meets World’s Slasher Episode Was Scarier Than it Had Any Right To Be appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[mulanxiaojie]

We were all thinking it, and finally someone had to ask: Why on earth would Disney cut Mushu? “Well, we made it 10 minutes in,” joked Mulan producer Jason Reed.

In case you missed the trailer, the headlines, and the tweets — so many tweets — the live-action Mulan will cut Mushu, leaving it bereft of the comedic energy from a dragon sidekick. The world has changed since 1998, and Disney has made a serious, more violent Mulan that’s truer to the Chinese folklore.

“Obviously Mushu is a beloved character, and one of the most memorable elements of the animated film,” Reed explained to a group of journalists huddled inside a tent on Mulan’s mountainous New Zealand set in October 2018.

“It turns out that the traditional, Chinese audience did not particularly think that that was the best interpretation of the dragon in their culture. The dragon is a sign of respect and it's a sign of strength and power, and that using it as a silly sidekick didn't play very well with a traditional Chinese audience.”

It's one of many indications that unlike with The Lion King, Disney is not going for a by-the-numbers Mulan remake.

While a classic to kids of a certain generation in the West, 1998’s Mulan flopped in China, released a year late after Disney was effectively banned for releasing the film Kundun, a film sympathetic to the Dalai Lama. On screens in Mulan’s birthplace, Hunan, the film only made $30,000 at the box office after three weeks.

You could blame the film’s late release in China, which caused some audiences to watch pirated versions months before its eventual arrival in theaters. But it's also likely that local audiences didn’t warm to the idea of Americans taking on a Chinese legend, especially one which already had multiple adaptations on film, TV, and stage.

“This is not a Chinese dragon," one Chinese moviegoer told The Baltimore Sun in 1999. "I can tell the people who designed the dragon are from America."

In that light, Disney’s resistance toward a comedic dragon sidekick in the new Mulan makes financial sense. Once chump change for Hollywood, China’s film market is set to overtake the U.S. this year. For Disney, its three biggest 2019 releases in China — Captain Marvel, The Lion King and Aladdin — accounted for more than $320 million in takings.

Despite the omission of Mushu, Reed promises the film will be funny. Just admittedly not Eddie Murphy funny.

"We have some scenes that, although they're played very real, are gonna get some very big, big laughs.”

“Take one of the greatest comedians of all time, make them a dragon, have him prance around, and give him like, two years refine the jokes — we're not gonna beat that, in terms of raw slapstick comedy,” he said.

“But we have added a couple of elements to this movie which I think really do the same thing of grounding it, bringing you into it, we have some scenes [that], although they're played very real, are gonna get some very big, big laughs.”

Other big changes are afoot as well. There aren’t any of those singalong theatrical musical numbers like “I’ll Make a Man Out of You,” “Reflection,” or “A Girl Worth Fighting For”, although Reed promises there will be “songs that you recognize and remember” in the movie.

Also gone is the cathartic scene in which Mulan cuts her hair in preparation for battle, which Reed admits he gets mocked for during meetings in China. “[It’s] actually a Western anachronism,” Reed explained. Chinese male warriors wore their hair long, and to cut Mulan’s hair would make her look more of a woman.

Nor will you see Mulan’s smart-mouth grandmother, Fa, or Li Shang in the live-action film. The latter decision has been particularly controversial, given Li Shang’s status as a bisexual icon. Reed was surprised by the backlash, but the decision was made in the light of the #MeToo movement.

“I think particularly in the time of the #MeToo movement, having a commanding officer, that is also the sexual love interest, was very uncomfortable. We didn't think it was appropriate and we thought that in a lot of ways, that it was sort of justifying behavior that we're doing everything we can to get out of our industry,” Reed explained.

Instead, the character of Li Shang will be split into two characters: Commander Tung, played by Ip Man star Donnie Yen, will serve as Mulan’s surrogate father and mentor in the film, while Chen Honghui, a role filled by New Zealander Yoson An, will be an equal to Mulan in the army and her eventual love interest.

It still leaves questions about how the queer element of the relationship between Mulan and Honghui will play out, or whether it will even be present. While homosexuality was decriminalized by China in 1997, Chinese censors are infamous for cutting out LGBTQ TV and movie scenes.

Chinese moviegoers saw no reference to Freddie Mercury’s sexuality in Bohemian Rhapsody, while Call Me By Your Name was pulled from official screenings (although it soon gathered a cult following). Disney doesn’t believe censorship will be a problem for Mulan, with Reed explaining it worked “very closely” with censors and its releasing partners in China.

“We feel that we are secure in the censorship issue, that we have our permits approved and I believe that we will continue to have a good relationship with the releasing entities in our various partners in China,” Reed claimed.

While the storyline will largely remain similar, new characters are joining the fray. A powerful shapeshifting witch, portrayed by Gong Li, will feature alongside the main antagonist Bori Khan, played by Jason Scott Lee. The story will begin with Mulan as a child, and she will have a younger sister in the film, something present in other adaptations of the folklore.

“It makes it more than just her having to take care of her father and mother, who are sort of in the role of taking care of her,” Reed said. “By adding a younger sister we thought that it added sort of a broader emotional context, and added more motivation for her, particularly for the end.”

On the monitor inside our tent, actor Yifei Liu is effortless in her swordplay. It’s no surprise she’s landed the titular role; she is Mulan. Liu battled through a tough physical audition for the role, admitting to us she couldn’t walk properly after.

“I wanted to thoroughly explore this girl,” Mulan’s director Niki Caro told Empire in February 2020.

“Because I needed a warrior, and I needed a partner. So she did this grueling audition and then we sent her straight to the physical trainer to do an equally grueling physical assessment. Weights, push-ups, pull-ups, everything. She was brilliant in the dramatic part of the audition, and in the physical part she never stopped, never faulted. I knew at the end of that day that I’d found my warrior.”

Liu has plenty of experience acting in wuxia films, a genre of martial arts films in China. Besotted, Mulan's filmmakers even pushed back production five months for Liu.

“She was doing a television show and so she wouldn't be available to a certain point, and the point when she was available was terrible weather for us,” Reed said.

Liu, who exudes confidence onscreen and is praised by her co-stars for her professionalism, is more reserved in conversation. She said she doesn’t try and think too much about how Chinese audiences will perceive her as Mulan. Nor would she be drawn on a question comparing the character of Mulan in the animated and the live action version.

“I would not really compare, because I think each creation was its own form, and I really respect that,” Liu explains. “I’m also open to Mulan’s possibilities. We tried not to fix too many things.”

For Honghui actor Yoson An, who only has a handful of credits — mostly in his home country of New Zealand and in Australia — the whole international fame thing hasn’t quite set in.

“I don't think it’s hit me yet, I don't know where it's gonna go until this movie’s released, I guess. I'm still kind of rolling with things, just one day at a time,” An said.

Admitting that he would’ve been looked over if the live-action Mulan had been a musical, An said he only picked up acting in his late teens, disillusioned with his university studies.

“When I heard that Niki [Caro] was set to direct this movie back in 2014, I was like, ‘Oh, so cool. A New Zealander is set to direct Mulan,’ and I was just walking back to get my car and I was like, ‘Wouldn't it be cool if I played the love interest?’, just like a little thought in my head, and I'm thought, ‘No, that's never gonna happen.’ And then, four years later, here I am,” he said.

"It really dispels all the classic Asian stereotypes from all the other films."

The world of Mulan is inspired by the Tang dynasty, a golden age of imperial China during which it experienced flourishing trade with foreign nations and cultural advancement. In An’s eyes, Mulan could be a major moment for Asian diaspora worldwide — although Liu’s praise for police during the Hong Kong protests last year has prompted calls for a boycott of the film.

“In this film, the cast, you see people from different kinds of cultures interacting with each other and every single character has a multi-dimensional layer for them. So it really dispels all the classic Asian stereotypes from all the other films,” he explains.

“And with what Black Panther has done for its community, and I really feel that Mulan is gonna do the same for the Asian community as a whole, taking on what Crazy Rich Asians has already done for Asian community, with the momentum it created.”

Like Crazy Rich Asians, Mulan looked far and wide for Asian actors. There’s a mixture of Asian New Zealanders, Asian Australians, Asian Americans, and of course, Chinese actors. Mulan is mostly in English, to the joy of the subtitle-averse out there, and thus all actors are aiming towards a Chinese-influenced American dialect — a goal which Reed admits has been “complicated.”

It’s no problem for An, who said he’s performed Chinese accents on screen before. Reminding us how young he is, An mentions he practiced as a kid to YouTube videos of Canadian stand-up comedian Russell Peters, who went viral a decade ago for his “Be a man! Do the right thing!” bit.

“You guys know Russell Peters? Right? As a kid, I’d watch his stuff and do exactly as he did. But that's a very comical version of the accent, it’s very different to what we’re doing,” An said.

In research for its live-action reboot, Reed and the production team went back to the original ballad and the “many, many variations” which told in China since, including several modern film and television adaptations made in China — before watching the Disney animated version again, thinking how Mulan would appeal to multiple audiences.

With the coronavirus shutting down all 70,000 of the country's theaters since Jan. 24, it's unclear — and more unlikely every day — that multiplexes will reopen in time for its planned release.

"It certainly has worldwide and global appeal, but there's no denying that this is a very important film for the Chinese market," Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian told The Hollywood Reporter. "It's a huge blow for Disney if it doesn't release in China." Disney president of production Sean Bailey told the publication he's "looking at it day by day."

Whenever and wherever it arrives, the hope is that Mulan will appeal to four audiences: the Asian diaspora community worldwide; women; Disney movie fans; and of course, a Chinese audience. But why would a Chinese audience watch another adaptation of Mulan? The answer lies in the hope that Disney can create something exceptional this time around.

“One of the things that was made clear to us from the very beginning was, make a Disney movie. Don't try to make the Chinese version of Mulan, because they've already made it several times, and they've already seen it,” Reed explained.

“So if you wanna make something that's going to play to the Chinese audience and be interesting to them, make the Disney version. And what that meant to us, was that we had to bring the highest level of execution, production, design, costume, hair and makeup, the cinematography.

“The people that we hire, they were hired with the expectation that we wanted awards-caliber work, and they weren't meant to think about this as a kids movie or an animated remake, or any of those things.

“Our references are David Lean and [Akira] Kurosawa — we're not looking at 101 Dalmatians.”

[skunky2]

Top 11 Worst Cartoons of the 2010′s!!

We had so many great cartoons introduced in this decade and while I haven't seen every last one I can say this decade was one of the best for animation in general! Sadly for every good animated show produced in this era there are also some bad apples in the bunch the following cartoons are some of the worst I have seen but please remember this is only my opinion if you like any of these shows then that's great continue to enjoy them don't let me stop you!!! 

        Now let's get this list started!!!

11. Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs the series         (2017-2018) 

Ok before we talk about the show I want to make one thing clear I don't hate the films in fact I actually find them enjoyable even going as far as calling them guilty pleasures the show on the other hand is a huge flop compared to the movies were the films had creativity and fun humor the show lacks that in fact this is by far the most boring show to be based on a freaking film about an invention that makes it rain food!! The other problem I have with this show is it's set before the events of the films so Flint hasn't even become an inventor yet but instead it's about him in high school and apparently him and Sam knew each other already did they even watch their first film!? Also the mayor is the principle because why not seriously this has got to be the worst show based on a hit animated film it's so painfully unfunny that I question how kids found it entertaining to begin with!!!! Not every movie needs a tv series and this one proves it!

10.  Total Dramarama (2018-ongoing) 

Oh the pain to see the Total Drama series downgraded to this especially since the original Total Drama Island took a ton of risk for a show aimed at kids also how did we go from a series that spoofed reality  shows to a bad Muppet Babies rip-off!! What's really sad is that creators have no desire to produce a new Total Drama series they just want to work on this. On the plus side it's still not as bad as other shows your going to see later on the list. 

9. Super Noobs (2015-ongoing) 

Other then the "how do you do fellow kids" title I wasn't expecting this show to wow me considering it was brought to you by the same dude that brought us Johnny Test aka the original most hated cartoon of all time I got the DA pics to back me up! The worst part is this show has a very interesting concept but it's ruined due to the bad humor and characters. The show is about a group of outcast middle schoolers who receive super powers in the form of power balls from aliens who then become their mentors and how they must save the world from an evil virus that threatens the world sounds like an awesome plot too bad it's not pushed further. 

8. Almost Naked Animals (2011-2013)

Yes this is a children's cartoon not a title for an X rated film. All I can say about this show is why? Why would anyone greenlight a show about an animal nudist hotel not only is it disgusting but those character designs yikes!!!! They look so ugly looking no one wants to see something that looks this hideous!!  Not to mention the humor is just as terrible as the art design. 

7. Breadwinners (2014-2016) 

You know when you feature twerking in your show you automatically fail. The best way I can describe this cartoon is it's just awful first off the two idiot main characters who I'm not going to refer by name since they are some of the most stupidest names for characters seriously  SwaySway and Buhdeuce!? Anyway the show is about these two "ducks" I say ducks like that since they look nothing like ducks they look like frogs or aliens or something. Try to make your character if they are an animal try to look as close as possible as the species they're supposed to be so it will make it easier for you audience to identify them. Well they fly around in a rocket car or something I really don't care and deliver bread to stock-image ducks which brings me to another problem they can't even draw background characters they just go on Google find a duck photo and photoshop cartoon eyes and whatever on it how lazy a can you be!! Also I found out a long time ago your actually not supposed to give ducks bread yeah it can use malnutrition and illness to them so this cartoon is spreading the wrong message to kids. 

6. Brickleberry (2012-2015)

You know why I despise most adult cartoons because most of them are either trying way to hard to be quote on quote "adult" with overuse of swearing, gore, shock humor, and sex jokes and guess what this show is full of this!! Not only is the animation similar to that to Family Guy it's just as disgusting and offensive!!! The show revolves around these park rangers and their everyday lives at their jobs and the characters aren't very good either they are pretty much all assholes, stereotypes of usual characters you see in adult animation, and your typical characters that are just there to offend you! In fact the little bear cub character is pretty much the shows answer to Brain from Family Guy with the personality  of Cartman from South Park. Now I haven't seen this show in a long time but I just remember it wasn't a pleasant experience if you want to check it out just be warned it's not for the faint of heart.  Also the creators of this show produced another show for Netflix that is just a carbon copy with cops instead of rangers and I though that Seth McFarlane was lazy when it came to plots!! It's called Paradise P.D. btw 

5. Teen Titians Go!  (2013-Ongoing) 

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah you've heard it all before this show is garbage, a disgrace to DC comics, stupid etc. The animation community has tore this show apart so there really isn't much to say that already hasn't been said but I will say this I never intended to hate this show as much as I do in fact I was fine with it when it fist came out I mean the original Teen Titians cartoon from 2003 will always be better then this show in every possible way but I wasn't one of the fans to jump on the hate wagon when this was announced I mean I had nothing wrong with it just focusing on comedy if you remember correctly the original had eps that were just as silly and bizarre. The main reasons why this show is so high up on this list is for the following reasons the first is I've never seen a show like this disrespect a fan base this much  it's like the creators have it out for the original fans and they get joy out of mocking them with all these pathetic critic call out eps they do it also shows that they can't take criticism at all!!!! Second is how the creators view their show and animation in general they literally came out in an interview and said the reason why they made the show so stupid is because it's for children you do know kids aren't stupid right guys they deserve shows that don't try to talk down to them!!!! But the main reason for my anger towards this show is how they made an episode awhile were the moral literally was that cartoons are only for kids and told the original fans to grow up!! Mainly the creators themselves have this warped mindset that I honestly wish would just die out that only children should be allowed to watch cartoons and that their show should be immune to all the hate since it's for kids so they use the "just for kids" excuse for their show being like it is. It's hard to believe they would even have a mindset like that when they are adults themselves making an animated cartoon show. I didn't mean to rant this long but I mainly hate everything this show stands for and sadly it's going onto to get 300+ eps. Personality I really think it's time for this show to officially Go not because I don't like it's mainly because it's showing signs it's on it's last legs and with that Sixth Titian thing they pulled this summer and repeating episode plots is starting to show that the writers are becoming burned out this show was never good but I think it's time it ended. There are tons of other reasons this show is bad but I rather not go into them this has gone on long enough already. 

4. PPG 2016 (2016-Ongoing) 

Well TTG isn't the worst reboot/spinoff Cartoon Network produced in this decade the honor has to go to this piece of trash Powerpuff Girls 2016!! Why was this made simple CN wanted more money so they made this show to sell toys yes that was the only purpose of this reboot to sell merchandise too bad the show sucked so hard that the target demo along with the fans of the original Powerpuff Girls hated it! There are tons of problems with this reboot that have already been explained such as god awful animation errors, bad writing, and let's not forget the memes those outdated memes. Not to mention they removed the character Ms. Bellum since the creator thought that having a beautiful, warm-hearted, motherly, intelligent and strong-willed woman on the show was offensive to the new generation! Not to mention they got rid of breast but they did allow the girls to twerk tho!!! Yes because having an intelligent good-looking woman with boobs is bad but kindergarteners doing a sexually explicate dance is fine!! Seriously I feel so bad for Craig McCracken it was bad enough he was screwed over by Disney but to have his show turned into this!! 

3. The Problem Solverz (2011-2013) 

If you want to know my opinion for the worst animated show Cartoon Network has ever made it would be this one! Not only is the show ugly to look at but it uses enough bright colors to make your eyes bleed. The show is about these detectives who solve problems in their home town too bad they cause 90% of the problems they need to solve. These characters are so nasty to look out we got this ugly fish-like man, some robot, and a big nosed hideous lipped Domo wannabe. It was cancelled from tv but ran it's final season on Netflix. I still feel pain for any child that had to sit though this. 

2. Pickle and Peanut (2015-2018) 

Ugh this show!!!! If you've never seen it you may guess this would be something on Adult Swims line up since they're more known for wired shows like this but no it's not from Adult Swim in fact you'll never believe who made this Disney!!! Yes Disney Television Animation produced this the very same company that bought us shows like Gravity Falls, Phineas and Ferb, Star Vs. and so on made this garbage. There are several problems with this show first off the animation remember when I said that Breadwinners was lazy for using stock-images as background characters well this is the same damn thing but in reverse they couldn't even animate a pickle and a gosh darn peanut this is a peeve I have with most modern cartoons if it's not for a joke then why use stock-images it just makes your show look lazy! Second the humor it sucks it's mainly is "trying" to be Regular Show since both characters are slackers and get into bizarre adventures. Also this show loves to show gross-out shots like the ones in Spongebob for example but unlike Spongebob these are not funny and just plain disgusting like how is this show fun for kids to watch I mean I can understand why kids love cartoons like TTG but I can't see any child liking a show like this!!! Finally we have to talk about the god awful theme song it's not even a theme song but a random robot voice listing off things adults think that children are into so pretty much they're trying way too hard to appeal to kids just like with PPG 2016. There really isn't much more to say about this show it's just awful and it's still hard to believe Disney had a part in making this.

Now it's time for the cartoon from the 2010's that I believe disserves the crown as the worst show from this decade. Out of all the shows I've seen this year none of them of completely  disgusted me more then this one it pretty much has everything  I despise in modern adult animation it makes Brickleberry look tame in comparison!!! It comes to us from our friends at Adult Swim may I present to you the cartoon that I consider the worst!

1. Mr. Pickles (2013-Ungoing) 

I honestly don't know where to start on this one it's just god awful!! First it's got all the things I despise in adult animation shock humor, sex jokes, violence for the sake of it, and ugly character designs!! The show is about a family who owns a dog who is either the devil himself or one of his loyal followers and the dog does extremely messed up things to people stuff I rather not try to remember let's just say this show is MA for reason. If you have a faint heart please stay away from this show at all cost!!!

So there it is my opinions for the worst shows from this decade I hope you all enjoy it since I worked really hard on it.

I didn’t include Big Mouth or Paradise P.D. because I’ve never seen them but yeah I know they’re bad. 

[seriouslycromulent]

MCU’s Captain Marvel - Thoughts, review & more

I’m off to see DC’s latest superhero reincarnation Shazam later today, but I wanted to make sure I captured my thoughts on the MCU’s last superhero outing, Captain Marvel, so I don’t get my feedback crossed. 

I know I’ve said in the past that I’ve been a bit burned out when it comes to comic book movie (CBM) adaptations, but there are a few here and there that still catch my eye, and essentially I’ve boiled it down to: “Does this genuinely pique my interest?” 

Now, I wasn’t too interested in Captain Marvel based on the trailers and didn’t plan to see it, but I struck a deal with my Mom. (Backstory: She and my stepfather go to see all the superhero movies because, hello!, they’re the nerds that nurtured this Big Nerd. Seriously, I started reading comic books because of them, and my geekery just grew and grew. I rely on them often to fact check the fandom details most comic book nerds on Tumblr claim to be authorities on. And yes, their 40+ years of comic book knowledge and expertise puts most of you to shame.)

With that said, she wasn’t very interested in Shazam. She said it looks like they’re aiming for a kids-only audience, and that made it kind of m’eh to her. But I said I would go see it because I’m a Zachary Levi fan. Billy Batson’s OK, but for me, it’s the casting of Zach that piqued my interest. So the deal was that she would see Captain Marvel and tell me if she thought I’d like it. And I’d see Shazam and do the same for her. Based on her commentary, I went to see CM, and now I’m returning the favor.

That was the intro. 

Now, here’s the set-up.

If you’ve read anything related to the CBM-world here on my Tumblr, you know that I am a supporter of the DCEU, X-Men and the MCU, but I go hardest for the DC universe. You’ll also know if you stop by often that my point-of-view rarely matches up with the popular perspective within the fandom world, in general, or in the fandom communities, specifically.

But unlike some (dare I say, many), I never want to harsh anyone’s squee! If you loved something that I didn’t. Bless you. Live in that love, and pay me no mind. I have no desire to rain on anyone’s parade simply because I don’t land on the same conclusion regarding comic book characters or their feature film adaptations. I don’t think less of you, hate you, or even care if you don’t agree with me. If you do, that’s cool. If not, that’s cool too. 

But before I jump into my mini-review of Captain Marvel, allow me to prepare you for how I roll. Here are some examples of where I landed after watching many, but not all, of the films from the MCU, DCEU, X-Men, Deadpool, and Spiderman franchises. I repeat, I rarely share the popular perspective or take on a CBM as the masses. You have been warned.

I enjoyed Ant Man and the sequel. If they made a third film, I’d see it.

Logan is a brilliant masterpiece, and I would change absolutely nothing about it.

Although I’ve never been a big fan of origin stories because they’re typically written like the audience is simple and can’t appreciate anything beyond the most cookie-cutter of plots and a paint-by-numbers of good and evil characters, I enjoyed Sam Raimi’s first film of the Spiderman franchise the most when it comes to comic book adaptation origin stories. So far, he’s still the person to beat in this category.

I enjoy most of the X-Men films, but often find the changes they make to the characters unnecessary and poorly executed. I also want Bryan Singer to leave the Summers boys alone. 

I found the Wonder Woman film completely underwhelming. Why? See my #3 regarding origin stories.

I enjoyed Black Panther, but was not really wowed by it.

I enjoyed both Deadpool films, but I still think his character is highly overrated by male fans. I like the movies for what they are. They don’t really say anything. You’re just meant to “Ooh!” and “Aah!” and LOL! Then go home. I can respect that.

I thought Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was brilliant, and easily one of the best comic book-based films of the last 20 years. That film is a work of art, and I’m saddened that Zach Snyder’s vision wasn’t appreciated and respected by the studio. Even if the mainstream public thinks that comic book movies should be light and fluffy with virtually no connection to any messages of substance or strong characterization, the studio should have respected his vision and let him complete it with Justice League.

I liked The Avengers and I thought Age of Ultron was pretty decent, but I felt that Civil War was a mess of poor characterization, weak execution, absurd conclusions, unresolved tension, and a dispensable villain unworthy of the audience’s time. Literally everything the mainstream public and MCU fanboys (and fangirls) complained about Batman v Superman applies to Civil War, not to BvS. Civil War was the film that was rushed, and it shows.

I have virtually no interest at all in the main storyline of the MCU anymore. I don’t care about Thanos. I didn’t see Infinity War, and I don’t really plan to see Endgame. Yes, I’m aware of certain events happening regarding specific characters. Still don’t care. The run-up to this final showdown with Thanos was so poorly done and underwhelming that I have no emotional investment in this fight anymore. 

Now, if you’re still reading, I want to say thank you for sticking around and ... welcome to my brain. Since this post is already long, let’s dive into Captain Marvel.

I saw the film twice. So that right there should tell you I enjoyed it. Yet, the weekend it came out, apparently, a bunch of fanboys and a handful of critics took to their keyboards and YouTube channels to review it and cry disappointment. Ultimately, I didn’t care too much because, again, it didn’t really pique my interest. 

Then my Mom told me what she thought about the film and how it was the antithesis of what the fanboys and reviewers were claiming, and this ... is what actually piqued my interest. I love a good mystery, and I felt as if I needed to see the film for myself to not only see what the hubbub was about, but to also determine who was wrong/right. 

So I saw it the following Tuesday after its opening weekend. And I walked out feeling as if the MCU had finally grown up.

What I liked

The 1990s nostalgia without the 1990s “nostalgia.” That is, the language, the clothes, the tech, the venues, etc. were all great throwbacks to this oddly romanticized decade without any of the romanticizing. As someone who was a teen throughout the ‘90s, and remembers it somewhat differently than others, I appreciate that. Respect.

Maria Rambeau. She is a best friend who gets to shine and enjoy the spotlight in her own way. She also has dark skin and short hair. (Yes, it matters.) But more importantly, Maria Rambeau isn’t a sidekick. Instead, she is the best friend everyone dreams of. Not only is she smart, fearless, and a badass behind the controls of a space-worthy fighter jet, but she’s also not judgmental. I don’t know many people who wouldn’t have some residual anger over being made to believe their ace boon was dead for 6 years, then one day just knocks on your door and say “What’s up? I’m not sure who I am.”

The villain-turned-not-so-bad-after-all Talos, played to perfection by Ben Mendelssohn, has the best one-liners and reaction shots in the film. Also, we get aliens with a variety of accents, character depth, and families. 

Despite the fact that the passengers on the light rail/subway car saw the “old lady” could handle herself in a fight, the surrounding passengers did get involved to try and pull Danvers off of the old lady because, from a common sense perspective, this young woman should not have been trying to beat the hell out of an old woman. Kudos to them for trying to do the right thing.

I’m scared of Ms. Monica and her guilting her Mom to fly with Danvers, Fury and Talos on a life-endangering mission. When she said, “Just think about what kind of example you are setting for your daughter if you don’t go?” I was like, “No, she did not!”

The perfect subversion of the “prove to me you can beat me without weapons” gag at the end. Not only because it means that Yon-Rogg (Jude Law’s character) might show up in later films, but because that trope is sooooooo annoying. Plus, we all know she’s stronger, so why bother?

There’s some subtle commentary about the treatment of refugees as terrorists or enemies of the people by the same people who made them refugees in the first place. I would like to think that commentary is intentional, but that may be asking for too much.

What I didn’t care for

The CGI on Phil Coulson’s face. Um, yeah. That was not good. It would seem they spent more time on getting Samuel L. Jackson’s face just right so he could look believably younger, but then they ran out of time to do the same for Clark Gregg.

The CGI they used on Annette Bening’s face is ... not great in some scenes. Not all. Just some.

Why does Danvers sitting down with Fury in the bar for a Q&A about their past provide proof that they’re not Skrull? If the Skrull can’t adsorb distant memories, then this Q&A would only fill you with confidence to trust the other person if you actually know the other person. Danvers didn’t know Fury before that day, and he didn’t know her. Sitting there and answering questions only lays the groundwork to determine if they’re not Skrull later, but it shouldn’t provide proof that they can trust that the other isn’t a Skrull at that very moment. Also, how does Fury know that the Skrull can��t shoot blasts from their hands? He’s just going to take her word for it? Although given he was told by his “boss” to stay close to her and find out what she knows, I could see this as him simply playing along for the sake of his mission.

I’m not really buying this imaginary world where a black woman in the military is taking the time to keep her hair straightened while flying jets and working on special aircraft missions. However, I will suspend disbelief this time due to the fact that Rambeau was working on a top secret project and therefore was not necessarily hindered by the typical schedule of the average fighter pilot. ... This time.

I wished we could have seen more of Gemma Chan. Yeah, Minn-Erva’s a bad guy, but ... it’s Gemma Chan. I already had fanfiction theories playing in my head about her relationship with Yon-Rogg before I left the theater.

What I loved

We go on a journey with this character. We learn about her as she learns about herself, which is what keeps us invested beyond the “she’s going to be Captain Marvel by the end of the movie, obvs.” idea. This is an origin story done in a far more interesting and captivating way than anything presented in the Marvel cinematic universe since Iron Man. We get flashbacks to the most unassuming events of her life that later turn out to be the most important ones. Where others complained about this approach to an origin story, I wholeheartedly applaud it. Nothing in CA: The First Avenger, Thor or Ant Man was as clever or interesting as this angle when it comes to introducing a superhero’s origin.

I don’t want a flurkin. But at the same time, I want a flurkin.

Having a villain who turns out not to be a villain, and a mentor who turns out to be our actual villain, was to me another sign that the MCU has finally realized that complexity isn’t a bad thing and not every story must have a one-note single-purpose villain. Yes, we get a little bit of that in Ronan (Lee Pace’s character), but to lead the audience down this road where not all the information you receive can be immediately trusted suits me just fine. It’s realistic and engaging. Danvers’ confusion mimics our confusion, but not so much that we can’t enjoy the story. We don’t have it all figured out and determined who has the moral high-ground until she does. I love that. And as a writer myself, I respect that. 

I love, love, loved the 1990s songs in this movie. Not only because the songs reminded me of my adolescence and you can never go wrong with Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains,” but because No Doubt’s “I’m Just A Girl” is THE perfect song for the big showdown between Danvers and her former Kree brethren. I almost jumped out of my seat in excitement when I heard that music intro. Kudos to whomever made this soundtrack! 

There is no love story. Unless you count the love between 2 best friends/family being reunited, there’s no love story. Thank you.

When I first started watching the film, I had to scratch my head. I thought, “Since when are the Kree good guys?” After watching every season of Agents of Shield and knowing how it’s the Kree who leave mankind dangling on by a thread, manipulating them, torturing them, and turning them into their own little ant farm, my brain had to pause and question this version of the Marvel universe where Danvers is a Kree. But as the story continues, of course, we’re led on this journey where we learn 1) I was right not to trust the Kree as good guys, 2) there are some Kree who are good and Dr. Mar-vell is one of them, and 3) the MCU is capable of writing stories where character development isn’t sacrificed just for laughs and boss fights. See what I mean about growing up?

I think that’s it for now. This review is already long enough, and I’m sure I could discuss more details about the film if I had more time. Yes, I am aware of the mainstream critic and fandom backlash against the film. I’ve heard some of the complaints, and frankly, I struggle to find the justification for them anywhere in the film.

I read one critic complained saying that because the audience doesn’t know who Danvers is from the beginning, she’s hard to root for or identify with. I disagree. The audience learns as Danvers learns. And by the end of the film, it’s clear that what matters most about her is not her name or where she’s from, but what she does with her power. Personally, that’s a great message to everyone when you think about it. 

I’m also aware that a lot of the fandom backlash has been ... how do you say ... male-driven. I think that’s unfortunate given that Captain Marvel is the MCU’s first female-led superhero movie and it’s long overdue. I don’t know if CM is flawless (I doubt it), but I know I enjoyed it as much as (and in a lot cases, more than) the other superhero origin MCU films. The message was great and the character relatable. 

No, I’m not saying everyone can relate to a human-turned-all-powerful-superhero by a blast that should have killed her, but we can all relate to understanding that it doesn’t matter how many times we are knocked down, what matters is how many times we stand back up. 

I’m not usually one for the hokey, after-school special messaging that a lot of MCU films (and DCtv shows) push, but that message about what makes her a hero (the standing up after getting knocked down) seems just as powerful as the message behind what makes Steve Rogers a hero (it’s not the special serum, but the fact he was willing to die for his countrymen in battle). I’m not sure how Danvers’ story is less worthwhile than Rogers’ story.

As for fanboys saying the studio should have just made a film about Natasha/Black Widow, it’s statements like that that make others wonder if your dissatisfaction with Captain Marvel isn’t rooted in misogyny. You would rather watch an origin film about a female team member on an already predominantly-male team where she plays a role, but is in no way as strong or as powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with most of the team members. Hmmm? 

Hear how that sounds? There’s nothing wrong with liking Natasha. She’s the bomb. But again, making a film about Black Widow instead of Danvers, leaves the Avengers with one less female character, and one less character who can kick ass and take names with the big boys. The fanboys -- whether intentional or not -- have painted themselves as afraid of Captain Marvel’s strength and the power she has to be actually considered an equal to the other members of the team.

Perhaps if they said the MCU should’ve made a standalone or origin film about the Scarlet Witch, the misogyny wouldn’t be as glaring.

I don’t know. I’ll leave that argument for others for now. I’m heading out to movies now. Shazam here I come!

[yesterdanereviews]

Power Rangers (2017)

Film review #347

SYNOPSIS: 65 million years ago, Rita Repulsa attempted to take the powerful Zeo crystal from Earth and destroy all life on the planet. She was sealed away by Zordon, leader of the Power Rangers, who are the guardians of life. In the present day, Rita is released from her prison, and the powers of the the rangers find their way into five new teenagers. They learn that Rita will destroy their hometown of Angel Grove in search of the Zeo crystal, and must find a way to overcome their personal troubles and learn to work as a team and unlock the full might of the Power Rangers.

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Power Rangers is a 2017 sci-fi film that is a re-imagining or reboot of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise. The film starts off 65 million years ago, with the Power Rangers defeated and their leader, Zordon, deciding to seal away their powers along with Rita Repulsa to stop her getting her hands on the Zeo crystal and destroying all life on Earth. In the present day, we see high school student Jason and his friends pulling a prank that goes wrong, leading to Jason crashing his car (also, the opening joke with the cow just feels completely out of place). Cut to a few weeks later and Jason is now tagged after being arrested, his car is ruined, and his dreams of getting a scholarship are over. He starts going to detention where he meets Billy and Kimberley, who are also stuck there. After Jason stops a bully from picking on Billy, he offers to hack his tag so he can stay out after curfew. Billy then makes him an offer for him to drive him to a local mine in return for using his van, to which Jason agrees. They arrive at the mine and Jason leaves Billy to go and do whatever he came to do. Jason also runs into Kimberley and some other teenagers who are hanging around the mine, as Billy uses some explosives to blast some strange rocks out of a wall. Each of them takes one of the stones and escape the mine with security in pursuit. The opening of the film really focuses on exploring the different origins and personalities of the five teenagers, and how they start off from not knowing each other to developing a common bond. It’s a little slow to start off with, and you don’t see much of the typical Power Rangers action, but there’s enough to keep things interesting, with each of the characters making a unique mark on the film. There’s also a decent amount of effort taken to provide more of a backstory and make it more clear, such as the Zords forms being taken from the dominant lifeforms on the planet 65 million years ago, and Zordon being the previous red ranger and their leader, with Rita also being a power ranger that betrayed them.

The original premise of the Power Rangers was that they were five “teenagers with attitude”, but given that it was a children’s show, that “attitude” was rather muted and ineffectual. This film changes that, by allowing the teens to act like teens, and to have the sorts of issues and difficulties that teenagers have. Each of them has a unique problem in their life, and everyone can probably relate to at least one of them. Their characters are based on the original series, but there’s enough difference to make it feel fresh and different. When the group finds Zordon and Alpha 5, they learn they must learn to work together to unlock their full potential as Power Rangers, and try to figure out what they are missing. In the camp fire scene, which is probably one of the highlights of the film, they all share their secrets and despite they are all messed up in their own individual ways, they can still support each other and work together to protect what is important to them. Again, this is something you don’t expect from a film based off a kid’s TV series: the film takes nothing and turns into something, and that is an accomplishment. Perhaps the direction it goes in turning it into a teen drama would not appeal to some people, but it had to do something different to hold the film together and justify its existence. The rest of the characters, such as  Zordon, Alpha 5 and Rita Repulsa all have a familiar look and feel to them, but also are different enough to offer a fresh take on their characters, with Zordon previously being the red ranger and getting his team killed, he displays regret, but also has his own motives, which makes him a much more dynamic character rather than just the benevolent overlord of the original. Alpha 5, who was arguably the most annoying character in the series, is toned down, and feels more like an exasperated administrator rather than the squealing worrier he was. Rita’s character too is toned down, and is a lot more menacing, while still having enough of the dramatic deliveries that made her so iconic. Sadly, the characters of Bulk and Skull, the school bullies aren’t present in this film, probably because they were so slapstick and silly that it would have been out of place, and bullies really don’t go around wearing leather jackets and pulling pranks anymore (although the bully that goes after Billy does wear a leather jacket, probably as an homage to the two).

Eventually, the power rangers are able to morph into their iconic suits, and it certainly takes a long time to get to it. As a consequence, there isn’t much time to showcase them fighting, but at this point you’ll be too invested in the characters to be concerned about it. It is a shame we don’t get to see more of the suits and Zords fighting, but one of the mistakes the previous films did was prolonging the fights to the point that made them boring to sit through, and drew attention to the fact that there was little substance underneath it all. This is quite a long film, coming in at just over two hours, and overall I think it does justify that screen-time through the way it develops its characters and backstory. The build-up to the final battle and the fight itself goes through all the stages you’d expect, so there’s no big surprises, but it keeps to the power rangers formula and gives you what you would want to see. In particular, the scene with the Zords rushing into battle and the original TV theme accompanying it exactly what you would want to see.

So who is this film aimed at? The focus on teenage drama obviously points to an older audience than the TV series, and that is further supported by the language and some of the jokes being a little more adult-oriented. For people who grew up watching the TV series as a kid this would be a decent nostalgia trip, while also being fairly entertaining. Kids who are also on the cusp of getting too old for the TV series might find this film would appeal to them, but I’m not sure if someone who had never seen anything power rangers related before would appreciate it as much. Again, the characters are very well developed, and stand on their own so you can invest in their stories no matter how much you know about the power rangers, but fans of the franchise will definitely appreciate some of the details thrown in. One such detail is how Rita seems to use a green power stone, which presumably means she was once the green ranger, a character which was a big part of the original series as it went on, and the mid-credits sequence hints that Tommy Oliver, the green ranger will show up in a sequel. I certainly hope that a sequel would get made: there’s a lot of investment in setting up these characters, and I would be interested in where they could be taken. The issue is Power Rangers is being released into the cinematic medium where superhero films are prevalent and all-consuming, and there’s really no room for something like the power rangers anymore, and so is going to struggle to offer anything exceptional in the genre.

Overall, I enjoyed Power Rangers more than I thought I would. I’m not a huge fan of the franchise, but I do remember watching the original series as a kid, and there’s enough nostalgia in here to make things familiar and also to overlook some of the nonsensical story elements in keeping with it. Giving the main characters a lot more depth and their own individual problems and dilemmas is the film’s main strong point, and creates some surprisingly emotional moments. I wouldn’t say they were groundbreaking, but they were very good. Even though it takes a large portion of the film to get to the power rangers morphing, the film fills its runtime with plenty of drama and story that means it’s never really boring. Some of the jokes are a bit out-of-place or just fall flat, and the effects are not overly special (although fairly decent), but I think the film overall retains enough entertainment, fun and drama to make it worthwhile to watch. It’s never going to compare to the vast library of superhero films it has to compete with nowadays, but it’s a fun nostalgia trip and one that gives the source material much more of an edge than one might expect.

[mytherapistthinksiamfunny]

Remember The Titans and Black Lives Matter

I learned American History from Hollywood films and pop culture during the Bush Administration. 

My 6th grade teacher was horrified to see my potential wasting away on the frivolity of Based on True Event sport blockbusters and Remakes of Dystopian Nightmares, Sarcastic Teeny Bop Melodramas. 

Or, worse, the Hippy Dippy Nonsense genres that encouraged the youth to remain ignorant Sheeple With A Death Wish like Jackass or Gossip Girl

Despite how that sounds, he wasn’t a condescending prick. He was a good man with very high standards for media that he came off as a snob. Because he was. A snob. With so much nerd rage. That’s what made us bond.

You see, I’m a snob too. I had to be. I am the daughter of immigrants. And I grew up during the Bush Administration. 

I grew up during a time of Prop 187, El Nino, El Morro, Thalia Y Tomy Motola y el secuestro, Pasale Paisano, anti-Cuba sentiment, Fake News, Columbine, Hanging Chads, 9/11/01, Pseudo-Fascism, WMDs, Jingoism, Patriot Acts, They’re Gonna Follow Us Home, Shakira, Katrina, George W Bush Hates White People Kanye Scandal, Militia, NRA Guantanamo, Dixie Chicks, A Day Without A Mexican, Selena the Movie, El CHupacabra, End of the American Dream, Once In A Lifetime Breaking News TRL Britney Once In A Lifetime Civil Unrest Breaking News Breaking News Narco Corridos Breaking News Miramax Breaking News Anthrax Breaking News Marylin Manson, Las Hijas De Juarez, Eugenio Derbez, La Escuelita,  Los Tigeres Del Norte, Los Tucanes De Tijuana, Napster, Metallica Some Kind of Monster, Bono, Apple, Pixar, MySpace, AIM, new tech every 6 months, cell phones, Reggeaton, Walter Mercado Primer Impacto, American Idol,

To boot, I am the daughter of immigrants. Who were hyper-Catholic. And narcissists. And abusive. And alcoholics. Who were allergic to stability, progress, open-mindedness, or anything conducive to raising children in a global crisis. 

So I had to be selective about the media that I consumed. Because my mother was a Batman Villain, my paternal-figure was a reluctant father unwilling to abandon his fuckboi ways for his family, and my brother and I were left to our own devices to figure out how to raise ourselves and our parents. We sucked at it. And years later we are paying for trying.

So, while navigating the highs and lows of our own puberty-induced hormonal roller coaster, we had to think quick and raise our 2nd-adolescence shit show of a parental unit.

We were parentalized. I didn’t know it at the time, but that is what happened to us.

What I did know at the time is that I needed to figure out how to live. Come up with a division of labor within the family unit and ensure that everyone played their role. You know, like the mother typically does.

And in order to play my role, I had to be studious of this different culture. Not just American culture. Not just teen culture. Not just Mexican culture. But all of them. Somehow, I had to find a way to navigate life. Since the age of 9 years old.

It’s exhausting having to be the adult of the house. I did not have a chance to be a child. Or matter to anyone. So I learned to matter to myself.

I learned not to trust anyone to be part of my support system because the people who were supposed to show me what that looked like were emotionally unavailable. And they stubbornly refused to divorce because that would mean they had failed their culture and religion and would be ostracized from the communities made of individuals they hated but stubbornly worked to impress and fit into.

And that meant that I befriended a strange array of really awesome people who made me feel seen and heard and understood. Like this Santa Clause-looking white dude with a motorcycle fetish and a kind touch with prepubescent girls with culture shock and daddy issues. Best of all, he was genuine. And sweet. And not at all inappropriate with children. That’s not sarcasm. He was not inappropriate with me or anyone else that I knew of. He truly was a great teacher.

Which is why I tried to keep in touch with him long after 6th grade. He was a computer nerd and introduced me to the wonder of the internet. And internet humor. And being opinionated. He was my Big Guy Bow Tie.

His opinion meant so much to me and I wanted to please him so badly.

And not once did he cross a line that would make it harder for me to thrive and move past the other trauma I was being exposed to. 

How sad that I feel compelled to reiterated that he never diddled me. Sad for his reputation and sad that I have come to terms with how vulnerable I was to predators. 

He was a real one.

I knew that my feelings were not normal in the broader sense of the word. But I understood that it was all I had to work with  and make magic with it. So I figured out that I would have to be very guarded and selective with my time, effort, and social circle. Which often meant I was the smart young adult in a group of what I thought were sophisticated adults but were really ghost of my future if I did not get past my daddy issues in a healthy way.

By the time I got to high school, I was the weird kid

I had no idea how I got there. But I had to figure out how to follow my passion without wasting my potential.

My passion is art. Specifically, music. But in general? Art. Books, Poetry. Knowledge.

And because that wasn’t complicated enough: I was discovering my own sexuality. 

And the first born first generation Mexican American with hyper Catholic parents.

I may as well have come out as a supporter of the Axis of Evil

They would never understand that I was ACTUALLY part of the Axis of Awesome

They would not understand. It would be lost in translation

So I had to learn to be silent with my truth. Forever hiding in the shadows and wondering when my life might begin

It began when I learned that the library was my escape. That I could learn about anything I wanted with very basic tools and that my ingenuity would get me far

But what does any of this have to do with Remember The Titans? Or Black Lives Matter?

Well... everything.

Because in addition to my parents being old fashioned and abusive, they were also closet racists. I had to teach myself not to ingrain their prejudices as I trusted them to keep me alive. I had to walk a very fine line between Daddy’s Girl and Daddy Issues. A fine line between Mommy’s Little Princess and Mother Knows Best and No The Fuck You Don’t.

And I managed to do that with the renaissance of black content creators in the early 2000s. Remember the Titans was a favorite of mine. 

Little did I know

I was teaching myself to experience different cultures without appropriating them. I found what I was into and I immersed myself in it.

But I hid it. I silenced my opinions and tried to keep the peace. For the sake of my family.

That did not work. Shocking.

But I was left with the realization that even though my effort was wasted with my nuclear war of a family, I learned valuable lessons that I taught myself. Including that Black Lives Matter, anyone who has trouble acknowledging that needs to grow the fuck up and learn something cause we’re running out of time and ain’t nobody got time for ignorance an fear with a mad man in the white house.

And I don’t want to miss out on my life simply because I come from dysfunction and am constantly playing catch-up to understand what normal is and how to achieve it

I am not alone in this. I come from a generation of American children who learned to cope with complex issues of race, politics, satire, drugs, over-medication. self-medication, financial irresponsibility, weaponized faith and ignorance. It was the dawn of the age of the Basket of Deplorables. And Millenials were caught in the crossfire. I was caught. And I learned. Black. Lives. Matter. Women have voices and opinions that matter and a feminine point of view is crucial to the success of any business endeavor. I taught myself feminism and  committed to its intersectionality before I knew it may be a word the dictionary I owned was missing. I learned that words matter because language has power. I tasted the crispness of that juicy apple from the tree of knowledge. And I wanted to marinate in its juices until i was good and goddamn ready to be tasted and known myself.

Oh yeah, I learned my Daddy Issues manifest themselves in a need to sexually please emotionally unavailable men.

So I chose as wisely as I could. You know, what with the inmates running the asylum 

But my god am I into drummers! And linebackers! And Cheating Ass Marine  Motherfuckers With Secret Families in Portland who Ghost a Bitch Just When She’s About to Fall!!!

My picker is off. I learned that phrase from Loveline. Another resource in my quest to exist in my natural state

Having to twist myself into a pretzel to please the un-pleasable was unsuccessful. 

So I stopped and focused on my real family. My chosen family. Those who care if I live, die, have food and rent money, and ask me to text them when I get home so they know I am safe. Those people. My people. I go hard for them. And they are various heights, weight-classes, political affiliations, complexions. because I learned that black lives matter. As well as Asian American Lives. And Migrant Lives. And Femme Lives. And LGBTQIA+ Lives. In essence, ALL LIVES MATTER INCLUDING BLACK LIVES. Because life is too hard in it’s natural state to be excluding people from We The People. Because the America I Still Believe in does not allow for any of this maga shit to stand

Because we need to be allies for each other against the real danger to this country. 

Internalized Systemic Racism and how it has been exploited to separate the working classes in a strict divide down socio-economic boundaries that are not easily crossable. This phenomenon is often called a glass ceiling. Minorities are particularly affected. But that doesn’t mean that all white people are to blame or responsible or immune. You see, I’ve read the Handmaid’s Tale. 

And while everyone is looking at the Scarlet Robe of the Handmaids and the Serene Teal of the Wives, no one looks at the EconoWives. Wife Trash, I suppose.

Much like the Titans’ football season. High school seniors in a recently-desegregated town. Sounds like the plot of a Disney movie or a Based On True Events TV movie

Gee... I can’t imagine why I related to this...

But I did and I learned from it. I learned that it takes effort to make a champion. And it is not accomplished alone. And while the odds may be ever against you

You have to decide what matters to you. And if that is football, you listen to your brothers on the team and keep your circle small.

And if that is closet-cases that fear for their safety when outed

And if that is a mother at 9 years old because that is how old you were when you realized you were more emotionally intelligent than your own pathetic excuse for a mother who is really a batman villain who you will later turn into if you don’t watch out for the stalker tendencies now and your fuckboi father who still cheats on your mother because this is a pity marriage that neither of them are ready to end even though everyone would be better off, especially your brother who is a precious little squish but being psychologically handicapped by the Stephen King Novel raising him and who is so much like you but you won’t know that for several years because you’re just a child and what do you know what normal is or is not supposed to feel like...

Then that’s just what the fuck it means.

My therapist asked me how I’m doing in 2020 with my depression and the isolation and what I think about the protests.

Like if the logic behind the protests was up for debate. Or if it was a political statement rather than a statement of human compassion and empathy to say that 

Black

Lives

Matter.

I guess she hasn’t seen Remember the Titans

[nickgerlich]

Never Going Back

We’re only two months into the US version of the coronavirus era, but it is only in the last week that things started to get serious. For those who understand simple math and exponents, it was obvious long ago that the growth rate for new cases would stumble along for weeks, until one day the exponents kicked in and growth took off. With that growth and the passage of time came deaths.

As of Tuesday morning 24th March, there have been 46,158 cases and 583 deaths in the US alone, a drop in the bucket compared to 395,744 cases and 17,234 deaths worldwide. But since the graph of US cases is still pointed straight up, it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. Our mortality rate is 1.26%, which is still 12.6X the mortality rate for the common flu. Globally, the mortality rate is 4.35%, no doubt bolstered by nations like Italy and Spain, where death has become a disproportionate reality.

Those who believed the dire predictions are saying “I told you so.” The disbelievers have become noticeably silent, aside from a few who still cling to their conspiracy theories and wishful religious thinking. Thankfully, those people are shrinking in number.

And just one week into what I will call peak pandemic, it is already safe to make this one general assessment: We are never going back. So much has changed in so little time, and all because of an enemy we cannot see, much less even begin to understand. We are isolated in place, frozen aside from the need to go to market or druggist. Travel is restricted in a growing number of states. Sixteen have complete statewide shelter-in-place mandates, while four others have similar such rules but only at the level of specific cities and counties.

Panic buying and shortages are so last week. Now we are stuck at home. Were it not for the internet and Netflix, we might just go crazy. Even my dogs are wondering why the humans are hanging out at home so much. We had all grown a little lax, a little too casual, a little too let’s-take-everything-for-granted. After all, it felt good, and we are social animals. Damn the bacteria and viruses, full steam ahead. Except now it is all painfully apparent that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all. So now we sit in quiet repose, watching the clock tick and the sun arc across the sky in slow motion.

It’s the end of the world as we knew it.

Presently Rethinking The Future

Once this is all over, whenever that is, I’m sure that many people will be more than happy to hop back on the Same Old, Same Old train. But then again, my hope is that everyone will at least give pause to consider that our response to the current crisis may in fact be the new world order—not that insidious plot some people think of, but a better, safer way of doing old things.

And I know that we cannot all become germophobes, trying to live inside bubbles of our own manufacture, because that would only decrease our immune systems’ abilities in the future to ward off infections. We still need to get out and soak up some bacteria and viruses, if only to increase our chances of living a bit longer. We don’t want our civilization to be wiped out like when Europeans came to the new world.

But there’s no reason we can’t add some order at the same time.

I find myself doing things very differently, starting first about two weeks ago, but ramping up in the last few days. It’s not that I am paranoid. It’s just that I have realized how careless I had become. For example, I now keep gloves in my vehicle so that I can pump my gas and make my payment without any viral or bacterial contact. Of course, I am hoping that the very air I breathe while doing so is not infested with nasty little buggers waiting to take up residence in my airways. I’m doing the best I can, and I cannot find any N95 respirators these days.

The gas pump nozzle is one of the dirtiest things we touch, and we do it at least once a week without thinking. Adding germs to injury is the fact we push all the buttons on the little keyboard as if an attendant had just been by with disinfectant, when we know in fact those things haven’t seen moisture since the last time it rained.

No more! I’m keeping my gloves handy from now on.

Now let’s carry this a little farther. Most of us pay with debit or credit at the store. Once again, buttons to push. Or the ATM. Or the Ziosk tabletop payment system at Chili’s or Red Robin. Heck, what about the menus at those place? All teeming with germs. If…and I mean if…I return to restaurants, I’m using their online menu. At least I keep my phone clean. As for the rest, I can see a lot of gloves in my future.

Which brings me to another thing: self-check at the grocery, DIY store, or wherever. Sure, I know a lot of people have complained in recent months about these things taking jobs away from people, but all of a sudden they are looking pretty good. If you wear gloves, you can do your entire shopping trip without human interaction, assuming you can safely navigate between other shoppers and hold your breath for 30 minutes.

Sure, it’s still quaint to engage in a little chit chat with the cashier from time to time, and self-check does require a human to push a button if you are buying alcohol, but I’m thinking there’s a lot more self-check in my future.

And what about cash? For many years I have hardly used any cash at all, but I can honestly say I have not touched a dollar bill now in at least 10 days. I don’t want the germs that come along for the ride on a fiver or sawbuck, and the same goes for coins, all token carriers of the deadly things hanging out inside of us. I will use plastic wherever I can, and even if I act like a teen, I will use it to pay for a measly $2 cup of coffee. Take that, you creepy little killers! Stay in your cash drawer.

I have started toting a spray container of Spic-and-Span with me, along with those durable blue shop paper towels. I’m spraying and scrubbing everything along my way. I am the father in next year’s My Big Fat Chinese-American Wedding when daughter Becca and Corey get married, making sure everything is safe. When it’s OK to travel again, you can bet I will be disinfecting my hotel room before I ever sit down.

Remember when family vacations included picnics at roadside rest areas? If you are old like me, you have faint memories, but if you are young, you probably have no idea what a picnic is or the ants who came running as soon as you set out everything. Recently on a day in which I had occasion to be behind the wheel, I had to come to grips with the new reality. I did what is now practically unheard of: I packed a cooler with beverages, snacks, and sandwich makings. Not only does this save me money, it’s also a lot healthier. I can control portion sizes, and once again, make no human contact.

This thinking translates into our broader lives. I for one have long loved going out to eat. It’s something my parents instilled in me when I was a child. While we were not rich by any means, Mom set down her foot and declared the kitchen closed on weekends. So we ate out. Many times we would drive up to 80 miles just to go to a favorite of my Mom and Dad’s. Skip forward to the present, and I was easily spending $125 per week on dining, usually at Asian and Progressive American restaurants with spendy and trendy items on their menus. Do the math. If I do not resume those ways, I have effectively given myself a $6000 a year raise.

By buying groceries and eating at home, I have given myself the opportunity to add to my modest cooking repertoire, eat exactly what I want and in which amounts, and save money. 

I call that a win. The economy might not think so, as would restaurant owners and waitstaff. But this is a new world, and we have to find a new way to order things. Meanwhile, I have enough non-perishables to get us through a month, if necessary, and as per guidelines for someone in the—ahem—over-60 category.

Speaking of ordering, now that most non-essential shops are closed, how else are we to buy things? Easy. E-commerce is the solution. I am ready to buy an indoor bicycle trainer so I can maintain fitness at home; it will be delivered to my door. I’ve been shopping online for more than 20 years, and I am pretty sure that coronavirus is only going to reinforce those habits. I’m betting you’re in the same boat as me.

Just don’t get too close, you know.

To know me is to know I am a concert junkie. I love music regardless, but live performances are sonic ecstasy to me. I quit counting at 100 how many concerts I have been to. Of course, today there are no concerts to look forward to, at least not on the horizon. I had hoped to go see Bob Dylan in Amarillo this summer, along with Styx in September, but I have my doubts the former will happen, and who knows if we’ll be out of this mess come autumn.

Think about all the humanity at concerts. Even if we are all seated, like so many concerts aimed squarely at Baby Boomers like me, we’re still in proximal relation to dozens of people, if not hundreds and thousands if the air is circulating. Now factor in concerts with no seating, like some Blackberry Smoke shows I have seen in honky tonks, or the Stryper show I took in at the now-defunct Midnight Rodeo in Amarillo. Good grief, I was three feet from the stage, packed in like so many human sardines wasting away the last vestiges of our hearing. Yeah, those were good times, but I wonder how many hitchhiking germs I brought home, and how many I shared.

The same goes for movie theaters and sports arenas. I may never go to a theatre again, although I absolutely love visiting restored vintage venues like the Mulkey in Clarendon Texas. I am certain that no theatre in America takes the time to do more than just sweep up the popcorn and trash. Disinfect the seats? Are you kidding me? Just shut up, sit down, and try to enjoy the show while knowing you are living dangerously. Suddenly everything from concerts to films and sports are sounding a lot better on my 65” TV.

Let’s go a bit farther. While the lure of Las Vegas long ago wore off for me, I still have occasion now and then to be in Sin City only to find myself racing through the casino to reach clean outside air. I don’t gamble, so that’s not a problem, but what about the people who—gasp—touch those machines, deal those cards, and roll those dice? Knock yourselves out, folks. If I find myself in a casino again, I will also be doing my best sprint to get to the other side.

There’s one other thing that won’t change for me, and that’s the likelihood of my going on a cruise. More than 30 years ago, the ex and I had occasion to do a one-day mini cruise in the Gulf of Mexico with my parents, my brother, and his wife. I hate not being in control of my destiny, and knowing that someone else was steering that thing bothered me. Even more, I could see that the purpose of a cruise was really just to stand in line at decadent feeding troughs, then recline on the deck like beached whales. No thanks. Ain’t got time for that.

But in the coronavirus era, we now must consider the plight of a couple of cruise ships recently stuck at sea because suddenly people have realized them for what they really are: giant floating Petri dishes on which thousands of people mingle in tight quarters. Hey, what a great idea. Concerts and sporting events are one thing since they last only a few hours; now imagine spending a week or more with the same sneezing, coughing, dirty-handed fools.

Nope, nope, nope. You can keep your big boats.

And what about the religious and civil ceremonies we all attend at one time or another? Although there are still a small number of churches defying the Rule of 10 for public gatherings, a growing number has decided to perform their masses and services to empty pews, instead relying on technology to make them available to everyone. What an excellent idea! I realize this goes against the grain of many world religions. “Communion” is something to be celebrated together, hence the prefix. But the dirty chalice and shared loaves of bread are throwing caution to the wind. We can commune even if we are not commingling.

A friend I know who is a pastor recently conducted a wedding in the Phoenix area, and the only people in the church were the bride, groom, him, and a couple of witnesses. I even heard of a live-streamed funeral. Yeah. We can do this, and maybe going forward, churches and other places of worship should consider just doing everything online for those who no longer wish to take their chances in public, yet still allow people to congregate as per their choice when the pandemic is over.

I could certainly go on, especially with regard to online courses, but I would be beating the same drum I have for the last 23 years. Suffice it to say that today I feel very justified in all that I have done and promoted in this area, and will double down on my efforts going forward. While there is still a future for courses held in classrooms, we all need to prepare each and every class so that it could be online if we had to. It’s a lot like the emergency preparedness those in hurricane-affected areas already know: police can reverse the flow of traffic on freeways at a moment’s notice to handle people trying to evacuate. We educators need to be able to turn on a dime as well.

There’s more to rethink, of course, and for the vast majority of us who have turned on a dime in the last week, we may very well never return to other things we once did. Think about how suddenly major companies have turned into thousands of people who are working remotely, who connect via Zoom Video and Microsoft Teams when meetings are needed. Do we really need elaborate corporate campuses anymore, paeans to the profits they have enjoyed through the years? And do we really need more meetings, and meetings to schedule more meetings? I think not.

Other professions are finally figuring out that we can leverage technology not just for convenience, but for public safety. Telemedicine is suddenly OK and in fact desirable, but it hasn’t always been this way. Counseling can and should be done electronically as needed or desired, and not face-to-face because that’s how we’ve always done it.

To The Future And Beyond

Where it all goes from here is anybody’s guess. There are many voices in the woods, from Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick suggesting that grandparents should take one for the team and be willing to die for the sake of the economy, to Governor Cuomo of New York saying this could go on for another nine months. President Trump is hinting he would like to see us get back up on our feet and be rarin’ to go by Easter, while medical experts say not so fast.

As for me, I know I am never going back. I’m never going back to the way things were. Too much water has gone under this bridge, and even though it has only been a week or so since we all got serious, I have had a lot of time to think.

Maybe Michael Jackson was right all along. Being the gloved one was rather prescient, don’t you think?

Dr “But No Sequins For Me“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

[oneweekoneband]

Why Did It Take Me So Long To Notice That The Word Is “Fury” Not “Furry”?

Hello again. While I must admit to mild surprise at Dinosaur Jr.’s absence from the constantly growing roster of artists covered on OWOB, I should also state my attempted approach to writing about a band with no lack of wordage already available on its behalf. Though potentially futile, I will be trying to write something that benefits a cross-section of readers, from the unfamiliar but curious to the currently dismissive therefore purposely detached to the self-appointed superfan. All of this being stated, please understand that “attempted” carries one hell of an implied emphasis.

As covered in the previous post, I’m an active writer with many years in the trenches, though at least a half-decade in between my first toe-dips into this endeavor and the formative teenage moment when exposure to two Dinosaur Jr. albums (1987’s You’re Living All Over Me and 1991’s Green Mind, their second and fourth, respectively) combined to transform a fervent interest in underground music into a terminal, all-consuming obsession that almost seems to have dictated, in some way, shape or form, each lifting of a finger since. 

I’ve had a fair amount of writing published on the subject of this band, but most of it appeared during the first half of my now 18 years in this racket, barring the entries about several Dinosaur Jr. albums did make it into my second (and most recent) book, which carried the subtitle of 500 Essential American Underground Rock Albums 1981 - 1996 and a title that I absolutely hate so it shall not be revisited. On that note, attacks of full-body cringe have become as reliable as Christmas upon revisiting older writings, therefore I did not in order to guarantee no points or angles reiterated. But for what it’s worth, at some point in the early-00s, I did a long and embarrassing tribute to You’re Living All Over Me for the Perfect Sound Forever website as my first piece of writing on the band. Then once the spotlight was aimed backwards and topically in 2004-2006 for that period’s two-tiered reissue and reunion activity, I wrote a bunch of features about the Homestead and SST years (plus the early run of reunion shows) for several outlets. I interviewed both Mascis and Barlow, twice each if I remember correctly, and essentially felt like I said everything there was to possibly say about this band whose music more or less put me on a personal and professional course that continues to this day. I don’t feel like that anymore.

Two things to take into account before we move on: First, none of the subsequent entries will be this long, or at least that’s the plan. Secondly, this week will feature very little writing on the four albums of new material Dinosaur Jr. has released since the original lineup of J. Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Emmett Jefferson Murphy III (almost exclusively known as “Murph” but I find his full given name to be amusing) reunited in 2005…will be of the unflattering comparative variety. However popular it might be to jump to black-and-white, definitive conclusions, do not take this to mean I consider these albums to be bad or boring or anything of the sort. But do know that they are, despite what the rest of the world seemingly believes, inferior when placed against what I will be trying to push into your ears and lives going forward. And understand that Dinosaur Jr.’s major-label era (1991 - 1997) will be explored in a nooks-and-crannies fashion (meaning, we’re going to get into Mike Johnson’s discography), as I feel there’s a nice chunk of amazing music hidden in there that has been largely overlooked or misunderstood.

I am about as obsessed with music as I am the non-fiction ghetto in which I operate.  Therefore it might or might not behoove me to do something no one outside of this little world should waste their time with, and that would be lot of overthinking about a couple of crucial elements of artistic criticism and appreciation that appear to be under constant attack these days: context and nuance. There is no such thing as good-to-great creative nonfiction or journalism that lacks or misuses either, and the most difficult to translate of the two is, of course, context. 

These days it seems every talking head (or every record-store loiterer or live show barnacle) of similar vintage to myself should be wearing a t-shirt or rocking a bumper-sticker that says, “Ask Me What It Was Like Before The Internet!”. This is something for which I harbor a visceral and distinct distaste if not great embarrassment. Any historically-precise party line of assumed profundity is going to fail at transmitting the intended impact for two reasons. First is the obvious neutering of any meaning or relevance when beating a cultural audience over the head with something, year after year, generation after generation. The second is more problematic, as I’m not certain that being present during its heyday or for a following period of linear influence is necessitated so as to provide fundamental context needed to understand how or why a band was groundbreaking or brain-rearranging or whatnot. 

For example, Dinosaur Jr. was four albums and seven years active once its music entered my life in earnest. Still, when it comes to blanket mantras of the reality-removed like, “This Was Before The Internet!” or “We Didn’t Have Cell Phones” battle stories, usually issued as some delusional badge of struggle or evidence of authenticity, we’re talking something that means far less than is assumed to a recipient without the same experiential history. I usually cringe when I witness someone else trying to get this across to a younger generation, though I have yet to figure out myself how to do it effectively. 

Conversely, there are examples of past underground rock prescience (well beyond the legendary trio of albums released by Dinosaur Jr. between 1985 and 1988) such as Mission of Burma, Black Flag, NEU!, Brian Eno’s “Third Uncle”, The Feelies, The Embarrassment, Can, This Heat, The Fall, mid-period Sonic Youth, Husker Du’s SST years, Black Sabbath, Slayer, mid-80s Swans, and Miles Davis’ 1970 - 1975 output, to name but a few, that occurred long before I developed anything close to refined taste or the ability to let music have an impact on a deep emotional and intellectual level. Or, for that matter, the ability to breath air outside of the womb in some of those cases. 

Still, once properly blown away, I could easily wrap my head around how each example was way ahead of the curve, or scared the shit out of most listeners who came in contact with it in real time. Of course, it helps if the music in question resides in the exclusive canon reserved for that which is genuinely timeless. If it falls short of timeless it sure as hell better be a high quality, well-aged specimen of music that’s nonetheless easily identifiable as being from a certain era of yore. Much of material released by Dinosaur Jr.’s during the band’s first two phases of activity, which together span 1985 until 1997, fits into one of those two categories.

My first meaningful introduction to Dinosaur Jr. essentially played out in similar a similar fashion to formative life-altering moments spun by many writers, musicians, and fans of my generation or older. I suppose a warning should now be issued that you’re about to read yet another account of someone taping episodes of MTV’s 120 Minutes. I had a habit of setting the recording time to the shittiest quality of six hours and fitting three episodes of said show onto my parents’ VHS copies of HBO and Cinemax films like The Cotton Club and Bill Cosby’s Himself. Some time after its parent album (You’re Living All Over Me) was released, on a Christmas night when I was in my early teens, the video for “Little Fury Things” ran between a Michelle Shocked number and The Cure’s infuriatingly awful “Let’s Go To Bed” (that goes for the video and the song). At first I focused on other future life-alterers like the clip for The Fall’s “New Big Prinz” and Sonic Youth’s iconic “Teenage Riot” video, as Dinosaur Jr.’s idea of a video and that song were just too fucking dark and ominous for my young teenage mind. 

But because I had to fast forward or rewind through multiple Christmas-special live-in-the-studio tomfoolery from hosts They Might Be Giants along with crap that was somehow already “not for me” like Fishbone, Camouflage, Translator, and the not-that-bad-but-long-as-hell video for Love And Rockets’ “Dog End Of A Day Gone By”, I eventually came around to the three minutes and change that was the “Little Fury Things” video….like a moth to flame. I still have the very VHS tape I used to play and rewind repeatedly while my parents were at work during the day, blasting it through the shitty speakers of our 27” Sony Trinitron and running all over the floorplans of the three houses (well, one house and two apartments, if we’re to split hairs) I lived in during my high school years. The beginning of the video goes blank for a few seconds because I accidentally hit “record” on the remote amidst some furious bouncing all over the couches and chairs.

I seriously doubt there’s a song I’ve listened to, on my own accord, more times than this one and it still delivers a palpable, albeit much different due to time passed, charge as it plays at this very moment. The sonic dichotomy that makes this track exciting- powerful noise/distortion married to a huge, highly emotive pop hook-happens to be another dragon I chase to this day and in general has been one of the crucial elements of forward movement undertaken by post-hardcore, proto and first-gen indie-rock, punk rock, shoegaze and underground metal over the last 30 years. Because I still run into music obsessives, mostly younger, who are unaware of Dinosaur Jr.’s legacy and historical place as a paramount force of innovation, influence and well-aged listening excitement, I’ll close this entry with the aforementioned video despite it visually communicating far less than it does musically. 

Much has been written (years ago by myself and more recently in Nick Atfield’s 33 ⅓ book on the album it opens) about attempting to decipher or assign one’s own meaning and words to what is probably a bunch of lyrical nonsense. I think that’s organically symptomatic of anything that hits with this kind of power and non-cheesy melancholic punch. A personal fave, however, would have to go to the one-off “Hallelujah, the sunlight brings the red out in your eyes” line that opens the gate for an instrumental mid-section of riffs (where a guitar solo might normally be).

“Little Fury Things” official video from 1987′s You’re Living All Over Me

And here’s a couple of clips that hopefully illustrate how insanely loud and air-moving Dinosaur Jr. Mach I must have been as a live band, especially considering the average age of the members was 20 to 22.

1986 at UMass…

Germany, 1988, full set. Pretty good sound given the age/era.

[halethestilinskis]

Lacrosse - Dylan O’Brien blurb

"Heads up!" you shrieked, seeing a couple of guys the ball you threw was heading towards. All three of them turn around and try to find the source of the noise, then looking up to see the ball coming at them. The taller one ran forward a few feet and caught the ball before it landed on the ground.

"I got it!" he screamed, so you were able to hear it across the field. You rose your eye brows and made a face of a mix of apology and nervousness, all while still smiling to show it wasn't intentional. They obviously couldn’t see it, which you guess was kind of lucky, because it wasn't the most flattering.

"Sorry!" you screamed, jogging over to get the ball from him.

"Thank you" you said breathlessly, catching up to the boy who caught the ball.

"No problem" he smiled, and now that you were right in front of him, you could see he had an amazing smile, and big brown eyes, "you play lacrosse?" 

"I'm practicing" you shrugged, heat going straight to your cheeks, obviously you weren't that good.

"Well, you can throw pretty far" he chuckled, "what were you even aiming for?"

"I wasn't" you half smiled with a small laugh, "I didn't make it in the goal, so I just threw it out of frustration"

"It made it pretty far" he reiterated, handing the ball back to you, "have you ever played before?"

"No, this is my first year" you shrugged. And it was true, even though you were 19, almost 20, this was your first time ever trying out for lacrosse. Your high school never had it to offer, and you were at a different school your freshman year of college. You wouldn't even try to make the team if it was an actual team, but this was more like a sports club, and lacrosse was one of the sports you always wanted to play, just never had the chance to.

"Do you know how to?" he asked, his eyebrow cocked, like it was something you probably should've looked up before you even tried.

"I don't know all the rules, no" you admitted, "but I wanted to get a feel for holding the stick"

"I can give you a few pointers if you want" he suggested.

"You play?" you asked.

"No exactly" he shrugged, "but I used to watch a good friend of mine play, so I know some things"

"Of course then, yeah, I mean, if you don’t mind, I see you're with friends" you stuttered out.

"They'll be fine" he waved off, walking back to the field with you, "Dylan, by the way" 

"(Y/N)" you responded.

You lead him back to the bench where you had an extra stick and a couple extra balls that a friend had given you. 

"Here" you said, giving him the extra stick and then throwing him a ball.

"Alright, first lesson, do you know how to cradle?" he asked, getting his grip on the stick.

"Yeah, I know how to do that, it's just moving the stick with your wrists so it's in constant motion, right?"

"You got it" he winked, "always cradle"

You smiled at him, showing him how you cradled, him telling you that you were doing a great job.

"Alright, what about passes?" he asked.

"You just throw it, right?" you asked, confused.

"Well yeah" he chuckled, "but there's techniques to do it" 

He jogged down the field, cradling the ball like it was natural to him, maybe he never played, but he definitely practiced cradling at some point in his life.

"Ready?" he yelled.

"Go" you screamed back. He threw an over head pass to you. You watched the ball rise with precision, and followed it with your eyes, when you figured out it wouldn't land directly at your feet, but more to the left and in front of you, you moved quickly to where it would be and caught it without a problem. 

"Nice catch!" he yelled with a smile, "throw it back"

You lined yourself up with his body and threw it as best as you could. It went way to high and definitely too hard of a throw, it flew over his head, and landed somewhere behind him. He tried hard, jumping up and even back pedaling to actually try to catch it, but it didn't work. Dylan grabbed the ball from the ground with his stick, and jogged back to you.

"I see how that landed by me the first time" he laughed, "It's your stance" 

He spent a couple of minutes show you four basic throws and the stances that are best for throwing, moving your arms, legs and hips in front of the goal until it looked like you were in the correct form.

"Alright, now try" he told you, as you flung the ball out of your net and for once made it in the goal. You jumped for joy, throwing your stick and hugging Dylan, thanking him a million times, until you realized you were hugging a stranger than didn't ask to be hugged, no matter how cute.

"Sorry" you said lowly, backing away from him.

"Are you kidding?" he asked, still excited, "you made the goal, c'mere" 

He pulled you back into a hug for just a second before telling you how great you did.

You just dorkily smiled at him when he pulled away, only to notice his friends were closing in on you guys.

"Yo" one of them yelled, causing Dylan to turn around, "we're going to grab something to eat, you wanna come?"

"Uhhh" he stumbled, "give me a sec" he said to you going over to his friends to talk. Obviously you weren't invited, and you didn't really want to watch them talk about you, so you turned away and went to go grab the ball that you got into the goal.

"Hey" he said a little out of breath from the jog over that you didn't notice, "they're going to grab something to eat, did you want to come, I imagine you're hungry, looks like you've been here for a while"

"Uhh" now you stumbled, "I mean, yeah, but I didn't want to intrude on you guys" 

"Nah, it's fine" he motioned, grabbing your stuff off the bench for you and motioning you to follow him. 

You were a bit sweaty and gross, had the bare minimum of make up on and weren't wearing the best of clothes, so you felt a little weird going out with a really cute guy and his friends, but he didn't seem to mind, so you brushed it off and hoped you looked a little better than you thought you did.

"So you play lacrosse? " his friend asked, pointing at the stick in your hand.

"Uh, yeah" you stuttered, "well kind of, I'm practicing to make a club team"

"And you were taking advice from this idiot" another one chuckled.

"Well, I made a goal because of him" you shrugged.

"Nice" he said to you, then turned to Dylan, "you learn that on Teen Wolf"

"They showed us some pointers" he shrugged off, probably hoping you didn't hear the Teen Wolf part.

"What's Teen Wolf" you finally asked as you sat down at the diner. The entire ride over, you were trying to think of why that sounded so familiar, and you came to the conclusion that your parents used to talk about a movie with that name, but there was no way he had anything to do with that movie, he probably wasn't even born before it came out.

"You didn't tell her?" his friend mused, shoving a roll in his mouth.

"Uh, it's a show" he mentioned, his cheeks getting a little rosy.

"A show taught you how to play?" you asked.

"Yeah, uh, I was on it, the final season is about to air" he fumbled a bit with the straw in his hand.

"Oh" you remembered, slamming your hand on the table, "the one on MTV?"

"That's it" he smiled, although the smile didn't reach his eyes, obviously, he didn't want you to know.

"Wow you look different.." you started, looking at him, "I mean, not in a bad way, I haven't watched that show since the second season"

"Didn't like it?" he asked his cheek pulling up on one side.

"I did for the first couple of seasons and then characters started leaving and the plot lines started to not make sense" you shrugged, not sure if you offended him.

"Yeah, some of it was a little weird" he chuckled.

"But you did a really good job with it" you tried, "Is saw some videos with void Stiles and it was really great"

"Thanks" he chuckled, still not looking at you, "I'll be right back"

He got up from the table in a hurry, and made his way to what you could only assume was the bathroom. You were quiet for a while, you didn’t know any of these people, and you just met Dylan in the first place, so you weren't quite sure what to do with yourself now that he wasn't there, but at the same time, you felt like something just went horribly wrong.

"I messed it up didn't I?" you asked his friends, eyeing their reactions.

"Nah" one said putting down his glass of soda, "he's shy, he never likes to tell people about shows or movies he's been in, he's a real low key dude" "Movies?" you questioned, astonished.

"Yeah, The Maze Runner, the entire series actually, The Internship, a couple of independent films, and there's a new one coming out in September" he informed.

"Wow, I had no idea" you said a little under your breath, but loud enough for them to hear.

"Hey" his friend motioned as Dylan sat down. 

You all had lunch with minimal talking from you, Dylan talked to his friends non stop, making jokes and occasionally turning to you and watching you laugh at what was going on. It was an odd situation to be in, you were eating dinner with a movie star, and his friends after the movie star showed you how to play lacrosse. A lot of the time eating you spent wondering just how this happened to you.

We all made our way out of the diner and back to car. Dylan still hasn't said much that was directed straight towards you, it was an awkward silence, and you weren't really sure what to make of it. His friend pulled into the parking lot and you jumped out muttering a thanks, taking the bag Dylan put in the trunk out and walking back towards the field.

"Hey" he jumped out behind you, "sorry"

"About what?" you asked, a smile on your face since he was actually talking to you.

"I don’t really like to talk about the fame or whatever I have" he shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"It's okay" you shrugged back, not really sure what else to say.

"Well, you were really cool about it, thank you" he mustered up.

"Hey no problem, least I could do for the guy that helped me figure out lacrosse" you giggled, hitting his arm.

He chuckled back at you, "Uh well, we should hang out again sometime, without my friends making it way more awkward than it should've been"

"Absolutely, I'm usually always free, unless I get on the lacrosse team, but then you can always come to the games" you winked at him.

"I wouldn't miss it" he smiled, "here" he said handing you his phone.

You put your number in and texted yourself so you had his number as well. "So you'll text me right?" you asked, starting to walk away.

He looked up from his phone, back pedaling from you, "Just did" he said loudly, so you could hear it from the distance you were at. You looked down at your phone to see a 'hey' on you screen, a stupid smile appearing on your face as you messaged him back, turning around to see him getting into his car, waving at you.

[aion-rsa]

It Chapter Two Review

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Pennywise and the Losers Club return for a rematch in the ambitious but deeply flawed It Chapter Two.

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We are in an new age of Stephen King adaptations, with dozens of novels and stories from the legendary author being developed for the screen as either movies, limited series or ongoing TV shows. One of the best to come out of the gate so far was director/co-writer Andy Muschietti’s 2017 adaptation of King’s mammoth It -- or rather, half of King’s 1,100-page doorstop. The book deals with a group of misfit friends who confront an ancient, evil creature in the town of Derry, Maine, both as 12-year-old children and then, 27 years later, as adults, with King’s book relating the two stories parallel to each other.

Like the first half of the well-regarded two-part 1990 miniseries, the movie focused exclusively on the so-called Losers Club as kids, instead of flashing back and forth in time like King’s narrative. The result was not just an atmospheric and eerie horror movie, but a wonderful coming-of-age story, as a fantastic cast of teen actors brought all the heart, empathy, humor of King’s characters together with a genuine sense of adolescence on the cusp of adulthood -- with Pennywise representing the end of innocence.

Read More: What Makes a Successful Stephen King Movie Adaptation

It Chapter One (which we’ll call Chapter One from this point on) was not just a magnificent King adaptation, but one of the best horror movies of that year. Which is why it pains me to report that It Chapter Two, in which the Losers Club return to Derry as adults to confront the malevolent monster one more time, is a disappointment on several levels. There are a number of individually effective sequences, and the movie is (mostly) well-acted by its new team of adult Losers, but even as Muschietti and co-writer Gary Dauberman aim for the kind of ambitious, “epic” horror that the first movie succeeded at, they get caught in a trap that may not be of their own making.

The source storyline remains, at its core, simple and direct: 27 years after the Losers badly injured It and sent the weakened entity prematurely to sleep, the thing awakens and begins feeding off the fear it generates from killing, with children almost always the victims (although the movie opens with a faithful but still-timely hate crime against an adult). The one Loser who remained in town, Mike Hanlon (Isaiah Mustafa) -- now Derry’s librarian and unofficial historian -- is the only one who remembers what their little band of friends did all those years ago. But a promise was made back then, and he contacts the other six members of the club to ask that they fulfill that promise -- to come home and destroy It once and for all.

When we meet the Losers as adults, all have achieved a certain amount of success in their lives: Bill Denbrough (James McAvoy), whose little brother Georgie was one of It’s first victims 27 years earlier, is now a best-selling horror novelist and screenwriter; Ben Hanscom (Jay Ryan) is a successful architect; Beverly Marsh (Jessica Chastain) is a renowned fashion designer; Richie Tozier (Bill Hader) is a famous radio personality and comic. Meanwhile, Eddie Kaspbrak (James Ransone) runs a limo business and Stan Uris (Andy Bean) is a partner in a large accounting firm.

Read More: Every Stephen King Movie and TV Show in Development

The Losers are scattered across the country, and when they each get the call from Mike, they react in different ways. The one thing they have in common is that none of them quite remember what happened 27 years earlier, although all but Stan promise to return to Derry immediately. Beverly has to escape from her abusive husband Tom Rogan (Will Beinbrink), while Bill leaves behind his troubled marriage to Audra (Jess Weixler). Stan, who lives perhaps the quietest life of them all, takes a more drastic and horrifying step rather than come back.

When the six remaining Losers first assemble back in Derry -- in a famous dinner scene at the Jade Of The Orient restaurant -- their memories begin to slowly come back, and this is where It Chapter Two also turns into a far less effective movie than its predecessor.

Unlike Chapter One, which spent time with the Losers as kids and gave the audience a chance to fully get to know and embrace them, Chapter Two doesn’t invest nearly as much effort in letting us know who they are as adults. Surprisingly, the new movie diverts a hell of a lot of time and energy into new scenes with the Losers as kids (all the young actors return), as the adults flash back to previously unseen confrontations with Pennywise (once again portrayed by Bill Skarsgard with cackling, corrupted glee). But these unearthed memories do little to move the plot forward and feel more like outtakes from the first movie than genuine new developments.

The flashbacks then set up new meetings with Pennywise -- or other manifestations of It -- for the adults, with the whole enterprise soon taking on a sensation of rinse-repeat-rinse-repeat. These interlocking sequences, one after the other, do little to drive the story and form the long middle section of a film that sadly feels like every second of its 160-minute running time. It takes a while to get to the extended climax, which involves a revamped version of King’s Ritual of Chud that is less metaphysical than the final battle portrayed in the book.

Even more disconcerting is that several of the scenes involving Pennywise are so blatantly telegraphed and staged that at the screening I attended, they elicited more chuckles than anything else. While both films deploy humor (this one perhaps a little more than necessary), scenes involving the hideous Dancing Clown are probably not where the filmmakers intended it to surface.

Read More: Why It Chapter Two's Runtime Might Be Good for Horror Movies

Despite these problems, both casts -- young and adult -- are still almost uniformly likable and watchable. The standout is Bill Hader as Richie, who channels the younger version’s tendency to mask his fears and vulnerabilities with an endless string of quips and jokes. Hader -- who’s having a banner stretch right now with this and his acclaimed show Barry -- subtly brings out the real pain behind Richie’s sarcastic demeanor and the true poignancy in the secret he still hides. This is Oscar-level work.

Chastain is dependable as Beverly, although one wishes that the parallels between her abuse at the hands of her father and at the hands of her husband were given a little more development. One mistake the film makes is excising both Bev’s vicious husband Tom and Bill’s wife Audra -- who also end up in Derry in the book -- while playing up the return of one-time school bully Henry Bowers (Teach Grant) only to have his storyline peter out rather pointlessly. Instead of Bill fighting to rescue Audra, the film rehashes his guilt over the death of Georgie -- an arc that was resolved satisfactorily in the first film.

The adult actors and their younger counterparts all sync up pretty nicely, with the possible exception of Jay Ryan’s Ben, who is just too far removed from his younger self (Jeremy Ray Taylor) to connect the two. As for Skarsgard, he vanishes into the role of Pennywise as thoroughly as he did the first time, but we’ve seen so much of him by this point that he’s not quite as dread-inducing this time out.

Checco Varese takes over for Chung-hoon Chung behind the camera, but manages with Muschietti to create a seamless look for both films, capturing the seemingly bucolic small-town milieu of Derry and the festering rot that waits in its forgotten corners and under its streets. Benjamin Wallfisch returns to compose the music for Chapter Two, unfortunately overscoring this one even more than he did Chapter One (one of the first film’s few missteps). Some of It’s new manifestations are quite well-conceived, although a few shout-outs to both other King stories and even other horror classics are more distracting than amusing (a surprise cameo, however, was fun to watch).

Even while running through the ways in which It Chapter Two proves to be a letdown, I can’t help but give credit to Muschietti, Dauberman and everyone involved in the movie. The trap I mentioned earlier may have been the decision by Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema to wait and see how Chapter One performed at the box office before greenlighting Chapter Two; had the two halves of the story been shot at the same time or back-to-back, the filmmakers might have been able to get a better perspective on how to structure them the most effectively.

Still, I always admire artists who take big swings, and the combined It represents the kind of ambitious storytelling and moviemaking that I would like to see more of in the horror genre, especially if based on the high quality literature that has been published in the field for decades (and which is going through its own sort of revival right now). It’s a genuine shame that It Chapter Two doesn’t quite connect in the same way Chapter One did, but perhaps half a masterpiece is better than none at all.

It Chapter Two is out in theaters this Friday (September 6).

Don Kaye is a Los Angeles-based entertainment journalist and associate editor of Den of Geek. Other current and past outlets include Syfy, United Stations Radio Networks, Fandango, MSN, RollingStone.com and many more. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @donkaye

Books

2.5/5

Stephen King

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Andy Muschietti

Stephen King

Jessica Chastain

Bill Hader

It: Chapter Two

Review Don Kaye

Sep 3, 2019

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[cameron-ashurst22]

Media Roles In Industries Weekly Summaries

Media Roles in Industry Weekly Summaries

Week 21

Day 2- Media industries: Roles and practices lecture

Project overview

6 weeks project researching media roles and practices giving a 10 minute group presentation on your work. Working in groups , you will research areas within the animation industry and the potential jobs available to you.

Research blog needed in the area I want to look into . Also including contacting a practitioner in the industry about research area. My early thoughts are to contact Ben Su a Pixar animator who I had made contact with earlier on in the year.

Project deliverables:

10 minute group presentation using video clips and supporting text.

Everyone in group must contribute and speak during the presentation

Research portfolio 

Blog has to contain what the degree can go into. Further study , independent filmmaker or working for a company.

500 word statement that summarises research findings.

Must include bibliography for the presentation.

Project aims

-Employability 

-By researching into the industry it familiarises yourself with the job roles and studios that I can apply to after my degree.

-using areas of interest as a starting point. Begin to locate creative practice with a wider range of knowledge

Group 1

Rachel Selby 

August Abrahamsson

Tan Sriwongwaew

Zayrick Villar

Sam Abbot

Myself

Weekly Breakdowns

Week 22

Working in your groups, discuss and chose an area of interest on which to focus your presentation research.

Group task for the following week

-Prepare a 5-minute, 3 slide presentation profiling your chosen area Job role you are profiling 

Week 23

Career presentation from Daisy Morgan 

Week  24

Career presentation Helen Schroeder 

Week 25 

Internship presentation by Oyku Baskin

Career presentation by Indigo Illusions

Animation industries 2d, Cg, Motion graphics , stopmotion

Content producers 

Studios( Laika ,Pixar ,Aardman)

-Hire creative talent 

-create the content

Production companies(aspect film/not scale)

-Manage logistics and finances

-Distribute the film 

Examples

Animated features (stop motion)

Kubo 

Fantastic mr fox 

Shaun the sheep

Animated feature (2d)

Ethel and Ernest 

The illusionist

Animated features 

Toy story

Paddington 

Pre school/ children 

Twirlywoos

Peppa pig 

Gumball

Tv series: Adults/ teens

Adventure time

Rick and Morty

Tv specials 

Shaun the sheep 

Watership down 

Motion graphics 

Advertising

Title sequences

Idents

Artistic 

Education

Good books example for motion graphics

Blink productions and blink studios- Stopmotion

Week 22

Day 2 - Media roles in industry lecture 

Career presentation from Daisy Morgan 

Take aways from the lecture :

Influence - Her influences are many anime cartoons , nature with national geographic and children’s programmes. She is also influenced by the games played when she was younger. Instagram also plays a part in inspiring her pages like pun animation and Manta Gr, Gaston Pacheco.

University - She chose NUA due to the sound design and narrative aspect of the course. The course was based on the fundamentals and offers the understanding with other creators. Convinced on doing 2D hand drawn initially. 

Through experimentation it is the best way of bettering yourself instead of trying to be perfect at each aspect. Take as many risks as possible through experimentation.  This allows you to find your own style and way of creating.

Internship scheme- Go to as many networking events as possible as this will allow career opportunities and internships.

Presentations

-   Title slide

-   present information in concise paragraphs and bullet points

use visuals and present information clearly

Use key quotes source directly from research

Include short films clips

Conclusion what have you learned 

Include a bibliography 

Make a contact- A checklist 

Thoroughly research the organisation and the individual before writing.

Remember to maintain a certain level of formality

Address correspondence to a named person

Be enthusiastic 

Three questions max and that they are easy to understand 

Can contact other people as well

Group one presentation review-

I feel like the first presentation went well as we each shared how we were going to research and structure the projects with the group. As I am slightly uncomfortable with public speaking I was anxious when first speaking. However I quickly grew to enjoy it and explain the processes of some of the artists and the work they had created. I feel like the presentation will progress as each person adds their own personal style and slides on their chosen artist. This explains the pipeline and the way characters are developed. As the presentation was only three slides long it was a small sample into what the main presentation will be about. I felt like more input could be made by my peers as it was me and Rachel mainly speaking to the audience. This is something we can work on in the future giving everyone an allotted time to speak.

Week 23

l

Day 2 - Media in industries 

Helen Schroeder Lecture/Talk on careers- Pre-production work 

Introduction 

Has tried multiple disciplines. Helen explained how competitive character animation is and that if that is what you want to do you have to be completely driven and focused on that goal. This is instead of jumping between roles and jobs. She also explained that jumping and changing job roles can also help establish a career as it helps find what you want to specialise in. 

Developing career

At the start of her studies she focused heavily on stop motion animation. So in her work at university she focused heavily in the stop motion genre. She then through her final third year film got an internship in model making. She then became an animation intern on Dragon in 2007.This helped her become recommissioned  as a freelance animator and model maker. As she was working for the same company she decided to focus heavily on the animation aspect instead of becoming a model maker splitting and letting go of the opportunities that this created to pursue stop motion animation.

Aardman storyboarding course 

This was a professional course and a foot in the door to a major studio. This allowed her to work on the storyboards for Arthur Christmas. This helped her get the job in animating Arthur in cg but she took a stocktake and because of her family did not pursue a future in La where she could work on the larger films.

Teaching and freelance 

Helen then decided to teach at NUA and worked freelance doing storyboarding for Tv and freelance.Helen worked for Hurst animation and was paid per scene.She also storyboarded for a Flora campaign. She then got back to  storyboarding for Aardman on early man but was cut from the project because of travelling and working remotely. She then worked on Watership Down and worked remotely and continues to do that to this day.

Key skills and take ways from talk:

Be adaptable 

Be profesional

Don’t be arrogant limits further opportunities

Keep to deadlines and promises

Be reliable

Have a collaborative attitude

Be positive

If able select jobs carefully and value yourself 

Helen also mentioned Annecy animation festival in France which allows opportunities forms he major studios for work.

Week 24 

Day 2- Media Roles in industry lecture

2nd year lecture - Oyku Baskin

Gobelins animation - A week intensive course on animation in Paris.  Consists of conferences, a big assignment , new friends and people. They bring industry professionals that are currently working on projects which help guide new perspectives and ideas. 

The 2 week assignment. A small exercise where you can choose the mediums of traditional 2D, Digital 2D or 3D. Receiving feedback from peers and tutors. The content changes every year.

What do you gain from this ?- Gain connections from all over the world.

Main tips for this course is to kill you ego. Removing your ego allows adaptation and a better realisation of what work you can produce.

Indigo Illusions lecture

1 Year after graduation 

Tips for the university course

Go to everything the uni puts on 

Separate your work and home space : come to uni to do work

Ask for help constantly

Get as experienced with software as possible. Use Lynda as much as possible

Draw everyday

Keep up to date with weekly summaries and blogs.

Collaboration tasks tips

-   Meet up every week, know what everyone is doing. Set goals for each other 

-   Work together 

Constantly ask for feedback

Indigo illusions -Set up in the ideas factory 

Their vision- contribute to the creative community of norwich swell as become a personal company. Getting new films and commissions on a regular basis

Easter Break week 27

Day 6 - Media roles in industry 

Today I finalised the slides for the presentation that I will send to the group. These slides contain bullet points for the research I have completed for the project. Furthermore, I have printed a longer more detailed variation of this to be used as a script for the presentation itself. In addition I was able to complete the 500 word report on the project and took the angle of what the research had shown me about the industry. This included the different job roles I had found how companies develop characters and what are their fundamental values in crating characters. I focused heavily around the process of Pixar in this project as I was drawn directly to their way of storytelling and character design process. I am going to add how the presentation went to the later section of the evaluation as the presentation is on Tuesday next week.

Week 28 

Day 2 - Media roles in industries presentation

Today I had the group presentation for our chosen subject of character design. I found it quite easy to talk infant of the group and deliver my part of the presentation well. This is due to previous practice through my college years. I tried to speak slowly and confidently in order to ensure that my point was iterated about Animatics, Alonso Martinez and the characters like spot and Arlo. I found that as a whole the presentation flowed and we we able to fully explore the subject matter due to the extensive research we had completed. On feedback from Helen, Peter and John this feeling was reciprocated. 

On reflection I found that the presentation could have included slides on interactions with the animators and character designers we had contacted. However, this was chosen against due to the layout of the presentation being cluttered and we opted to say who we spoke to instead. I was able to contact Ben Su and not Alonso Martinez , however they have similar job roles within Pixar and I expected the same sort of response. I felt this observation of to keep drawing and be open to influence and inspiration would have helped hit home the message of the presentation. This is due to the presentation being about the extensive research and development that is used in the character design pipeline to ensure that the characters are culturally and morally appropriate.

[chloeintheoffice-blog]

April TBR: #OWLsReadathon2019

So it’s been a while! I wanted to make this post as I will be taking part in the OWLs Readathon during April, hosted by G from BookRoast!

She has put so much effort into this readathon. Her announcement video is linked here.

I have decided that I am going to be a Charms Professor at Hogwarts! There are seven exams that must be completed for this career, but I have set a book for each subject! I have from 1st - 30th April to read all 12 books, so I should be able to do it.... I can hope!

So to be a charms professor you have to complete the following criteria:

Charms (or any subject you want to teach)

Defence Against the Dark Arts

5 additional subjects of your choice.

My first choice is for charns, where the prompt is to read an adult work. I have chosen: Falling Through Clouds by Anna Chilvers. 

I got this book a while ago, in a mega-unboxing of around 80 adult books. I sorted through them and decided to hang onto this one, and now there’s a perfect place for it in this readathon!

This book is about Kat, a 22 year-old who meets a man called Gavin on the train. They spend the summer in Cornwall but she can tell that something isn’t quite right with him. It turns out that Gavin is suffering from intense nightmares after being held hostage in Iraq. He then goes missing and Kat has to decide whether she wants to chase this mystery man.

This is definitely not the usual style of book I would read, but I am excited to give it a go.

Next, for defence against the dark arts, the prompt is to read a book starting with the letter “R”. I have chosen Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer.

This was the only book starting with a “R” that I own.. which I do find really hard to believe, but it’s true! This is another book that I got in the mega-unboxing, so I’m excited to get to it to finally unhaul it from the massive pile remaining in my reading room.

This book is about a medical student, called Patrick, who has Asperger’s. The body he is examining in anatomy class starts to speak to him, and then he is faced with solving a possible murder.

Again, this is definitely not something I would usually pick up, but it was the only book in my possession and I tried my hardest to not purchase any books for this readathon!

The first subject I have chosen is ancient runes, which means I have to read a re-telling. I’m not a huge fan of re-tellings, but I’ve decided to pick up The Surface Breaks by Louise O’Neill.

The cover of this book is just gorgeous. This is obviously a Little Mermaid re-telling, and I was going to include a short summary here but I actually don’t want to read the blurb for it. I feel like I know enough about the Little Mermaid (doesn’t everyone?) so I don’t want to find out any potential twists and turns before I get started. But this book is just gorgeous and I can’t wait!

The next subject I have chosen is astronomy, for which I have to read a book with “Star” in the title.This felt very specific to me, and I thought it would be difficult, but luckily Brittany sent me a copy of Starry Eyed by Jenn Bennett a couple of weeks ago! 

She sent me this book as she doesnt typically read contemporaries but loved this one, so I have very high expectations for it! It is about ex-friends Zorie and Lennon who have made a habit of trying to avoid each other. Their families are described as the modern-day Californian version of the Montagues and Capulets. But, then they all go camping and it goes horribly wrong, and Zorie and Lennon are abandoned alone.

This does sound very intriguing, and I cannot wait to get to it!

Next, I chose to read a book set in the future for divination. I went with Allegiant by Veronica Roth, which is the third and final book in the Divergent series.

I have wanted to get this series finished off for a while now because I have the UGLIEST copy on my shelf. I’ve watched the film and cannot remember what happens, so I wanted to get into it to finally find out how this series ends. I have heard very bad things about this book, but cannot leave a series unfinished... so I’m popping it into this readathon so I can read and un-haul it for good!

Next I am going to be reading a contemporary for Muggle Studies and the one I have gone for is The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. This is one of those books I’ve been wanting to get to for years but I never ever got round to it.

This is about a girl called Isabel, who spends every summer at her family friends’ house, with two boys, Conrad and Jeremiah. Isabel has been in love with Conrad forever, and Jeremiah has been friendly to her forever, 

I think we can all see what’s going to happen here... but it just sounds like a cheesy cute romance that I can power through for the readathon. Also, it’s only 276 pages, so it’s definitely a short one I can pop in if I start feeling a bit slumpy.

The final exam I am set on taking is Potions, which is to read a book that is not the first in a series, or a sequel. I have gone for Goblet of Fire by J.K Rowling. Firstly because you can’t have a Harry Potter readathon without reading a Harry Potter book, and secondly I am commited to reading this book in April, for a lovely group of friends I’ve made.

I’m not going to tell you what this book is about; if you don;t know you should! But the only bad thing is that it is 636 pages long... in a readathon... oh well! I can give it a shot!

So then there are 5 more exams, that I don’t HAVE to take, but let’s face it, I’m going to give it a go. The first being arithmancy, for which I’d have to read a book with two authors. I have gone for Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan.

I knew nothing about this book before searching it on Goodreads, and I can now provide you with this information:

“One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two strangers cross paths. Two teens with the same name, running in two very different circles, suddenly find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, culminating in heroic turns-of-heart and the most epic musical ever to grace the high-school stage.”

So yeah, it sort of sounds like my cup of tea, but not something I’m jumping for joy waiting to read. But, it is my only book with two authors on my shelves, and this readathon does not give me liberties to buy new books!

Next is care of magical creatures, where the aim is to read a book with a land animal on the cover. I have gone for Going Bovine by Libba Bray, as there’s a big cow carrying a gnome on the cover.

This book is about 16 year-old Cameron who doesn’t want to put any effort into shcool, or life in general. But then he gets the horrible news that he’s sick, and he’s going to die. Help comes for him in the form of a punk angel/halloucination called Dulcie, who tells Cameron there’s a cure, he just has to search for it. Cameron sets off on a road-trip across America, to live.

Wow okay, this sounds mildly depressing, but hey ho let’s give it a go shall we?!

Now we have herbology, to read a book with a plant on the cover. This was easier than I thought because as well as Starry Eyed, Brittany also sent me Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson. 

This is a YA mystery, set in an elite boarding school called Ellingham Academy. The backsotry is that when the school opened, the founder’s wife and daughter were kidnapped, and the only clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed by Truly Devious. Stevie is starting her first year at the academy, and she decides she’s going to solve the mystery.

Now this sounds interesting! I had it on my Wishlist for a while so it was something on my radar, but I hadn’t really got a full idea what it was about. Now I’m even more interested!

Last but not leasy we have history of magic, to read a book published more than 10 years ago. I’ve gone for Dead Girl’s Dance by Rachel Caine. This is the 2nd book in the 15 Morganville Vampires books.

We seem to have a tiny photo here, but it’ll do! I can’t say too much about this book without ruining the first, but this is about a girl called Claire who goes off to college at 16 (she’s a genuis). Once there she has to move out of her dorm due to mean girls tormening here, and she moves in with some 18 year-old locals. She then discovers that the whole town in run and owned by vampires. 

It’s a very good book, a classic for me. And I want to get all of these books re-read before 2020.

And FINALLY we have transfiguration, where I need to read a book with sprayed edges. I’ve gone for One of Us is Lying by Karen M.McManus.

I assume all copies have this, but mine has red sprayed edges to match the font on the front. It actually looks pretty cool, especially with the white cover. I’ve been told this is a breakfast club plus murder style book, which sounds right up my alley! I don’t want to look any more into it so that I don’t spoil myself, but I am excited to finally get my hands on this one.

So there you have it - that’s the 12 books I would love to get finished in April. I do have a dissertation to write, 3 exams to study for, and a 3rd *cough* driving test to take... so I’m trying not to stress myself out but I have a lot to do, and fitting all these books in will be quite an accomplishment.

Stay tuned for my OWLs wrap-up after April!

[curdinway-blog]

Top 102 Movies of the 2010’s, According to a Crackpot

I’ve decided to try the impossible.

The seed for this idea came from Polygon.  The site ran an article by which various staff members ranked their top ten movies for the decade.  Naturally, that got me thinking about MY top ten films for the decade.  Then I realized I hadn’t seen most Oscar winners, let alone enough movies to qualify to make a list.  Then I realized I would have much, MUCH more than ten movies in my list.

Thus, I embarked on a madman’s dream.  It involved crunching movie after movie after movie, then trying to hopelessly rank it on my list if I thought it was good enough.  I missed my own deadline of New Year’s.  Now, I am releasing this on my next deadline: The Oscars.  Literally now, when they are already underway.

I hope you will read this list with some forgiveness in your hearts.  Biting off more than you can chew doesn’t describe it.  There are a whole host of movies I wanted to see before I made this list I haven’t gotten to and probably never will.   There are many movies on this list I saw close to a decade ago and am trying to place in a ranking against pieces I just saw a few days ago.  Oh, and I’m comparing across genres and types.  What I’m trying to say is, this list is probably going to suck in a lot of ways.

With that being said, I really did try to rank the following to the very best of my ability.  I racked my brains, racked them, and racked them again. Ultimately, I made my decisions from a whole host of criteria, ranging from everything from pacing, to various aspects of entertainment value, to complexity/themes, to cinematography.  I tried to be objective as much as possible, but I also think that how much you like a movie should be considered a piece of criteria as well. After all, that’s primarily why we go to the movies; we want to have a good time.  As such, expect to see a lot of science-fiction and animation of this list. In my defense, it was a great decade for each.

And now…without further ado…let me introduce…The Top 102 Films of the 2010’s, According to a Crackpot!

  102. Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow

Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day, Live Die Repeat is a well-executed mecha-battle movie with a wrinkle of time-travel tossed in for good measure.

 101. Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph Breaks the Internet

It may not be as good as the original, but Wreck-It Ralph 2 makes the grade with some cunning swipes at internet culture, the world’s best worst Disney Princess song, and bittersweet revelations about what it means to be a true friend.

 100. Mirai

Few films truly approach their story from a child’s perspective; but in tone, structuring, and imagination, Mirai lets us see again through young eyes.  Director Mamoru Hosoda uses time travel as a vehicle for exploration of deeply personal familial relationships, and how they shape us into the people we become.

 99. The Last Gold

The Last Gold is an unheralded little gem about a quartet of female US Olympic swimmers who found themselves competing in an impossibly frustrating and unfair situation; the 1976 Olympics.  As East German swimmers swept podium after podium (with the aid of a systematic doping program), the US Women’s team faced intense public criticism, especially phenom Shirley Babashoff, who could have been the female Mark Spitz if not for the rampant cheating going on.  Largely forgotten and regarded as a disappointment by the American public, The Last Gold illustrates the team as one worth remembering and dignifying; in particular, for their final, desperate effort at gold in the 4 x 100 m freestyle relay.

 98. Mad Max: Fury Road

Pretty much nonstop surreal nutty action, Mad Max surely has some of the most creative and tricky stunts done in the past decade.

 97. The Amazing Spiderman

Utterly forgotten in the wake of its more successful follow-ups (and predecessors, for that matter), The Amazing Spiderman is nonetheless a solid reboot of some well-worn material. The concept behind Spidey’s origin is well-thought out and original, and ties directly to an interesting villain who is more the victim of his own genius than the archetype evil megalomaniac.

 96. Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange marks itself as unique among the various Marvel offerings by pondering nothing less than the meaning of life… and overloading us with psychedelic, Inception-esque imagery.

 95. Concussion

Featuring a terrific and vocally unrecognizable Will Smith, Concussion asks not only some difficult questions about the country’s (and my own) favorite sport, but also some difficult questions about what it means to be an American.

 94. The Big Sick

I’m not a big rom-com guy, but The Big Sick won me over by creating romantic tensions from realistic scenarios; in particular, the difficulties that arise from differences in race and religion.  The film’s awkward sense of humor is well-incorporated, making this a funny movie as well as an intelligent one.

 93. Bridesmaids

A funny movie about friendships and change (anchored by an excellently tragicomic Kristen Wiig), Bridesmaids showed the Judd Apatow formula could work on equal terms for the female sex.

 92. 50/50

50/50 tackled the cancer movie with an unusual slant of good humor, and chased it down with heartfelt drama and good performances.

 91. Hanna

In which a supergirl Saoirse Ronan (pre-fame and accolades) is honed into an assassin by her father so that she can kill a wicked, hammy CIA operative Cate Blanchett before the agency gets to her first.  If you ever wanted to see a small girl beating thugs to death with her bare fists in the style of Jason Bourne, this one’s for you.  Loads of fun, totally bananas, and dripping with cool.

 90. Hunger Games

More or less a faithful adaptation of a literary bestseller, Hunger Games nonetheless deserves credit for doing the job right.  The cinematics and ideas here are very nice for a teen blockbuster, and Jennifer Lawrence rightfully turned into a star for BEING Katniss Everdeen.

 89. What We Do in the Shadows

Quirky, subversive, hilarious, and utterly “New Zealand”, What We Do in the Shadows made vampires and werewolves funny again…in a good way.

 88. Icarus

An accidental documentary seemingly spurred on by fate, Icarus is about the creep of misinformation and deception into every aspect of our lives, even sports, by the unscrupulous and powerful.

 87. Prometheus

A film I absolutely adored the first time around, but toned down my enthusiasm for with a more critical eye to detail.  Nevertheless, Prometheus should be appreciated for its immense scale of ambition and huge open-ended philosophical questions; it should also be appreciated for throwing a veritable kitchen sink of full of campy horrors at its viewers, including a crazy autosurgery scene.

 86. 10 Cloverfield Lane

10 Cloverfield Lane flies high on its simplicity.  Three main actors, one small doomsday shelter, and loads of palm-sweating, stomach-clenching, double-guessing suspense.  John Goodman, you so craaaaazy.

 85. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Give J.K. Rowling credit for not making this a cynical cash grab; the writing in Fantastic Beasts is actually delightful.  There is a strong balance here between the sweet magical whimsy going on and some dark, brooding commentaries on American society.  A strong cast of endearing characters rounds out a very robust entry in the Harry Potter series.

 84. How to Train Your Dragon II

A very good sequel to a classic, HTTYD II still provides the acrobatic, dragon-flying goods, even as it steers us into a troubling, thought-provoking battle between might and right, fixed circumstances and free will.

 83. The Big Short

While Inside Job will always remain the definitive work on the maddening 2008 financial collapse, The Big Short is a strong effort featuring intimate inside perspectives of the actual people who did the dynamiting.  A slick sense of humor and a celebrity all-star team intent on ripping Wall Street a new one makes this film a winner.

 82. Captain America: Civil War

Cap: Civil War is noteworthy in that it makes civilian collateral damage the primary fulcrum and conflict of a superhero movie.  It is also a bit of a “mini-Avengers” that successfully incorporates some slam dunk additions to the team; then pits them against each other.

 81. Get Out

One of the decade’s cleverest and most ambitious horror flicks, Get Out shows how the sum of a million little microaggressions equates to something very ugly indeed.

 80. The Hateful Eight

A slow-burner as far as Tarantino films go, The Hateful Eight is an interesting social play interspersed with exaggerated violence and profanity; a commentary on how our nation was forged in the fires of overcoming racial and societal differences.

 79. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Catching Fire does what all good sequels aim to do; take the appealing constructs of the original film and pump them up on steroids.  Everything the Hunger Games did, Catching Fire does bigger, badder, and better.

 78. Big Hero 6

A weeaboo’s dream, a great superhero flick, and a gentle meditation upon loss and healthy grieving, Big Hero 6 is a very entertaining film with a big heart and a wonderfully plush-looking buddy robot.

 77. Mary and the Witch’s Flower

Mary and the Witch’s Flower is a Studio Ghibli flick, helmed by Studio Ghibli animators…under a non- Ghibli studio.  Here are all the familiar beats we love as viewers; the weird, wonderful setting (a school of sorcery for talented children), abuses on the natural world wrought by technology and ambition, and a delightfully ordinary red-headed girl who must think on her feet and grow if she is to survive.  Harry Potter crossed with Miyazaki…who could ever resist that?

 76. Avengers: Infinity War

The key to Infinity War’s successes is Thanos.  The Mad Titan had been waiting in the shadows for most of MCU’s run during the past decade; in Infinity War, we finally see him in the formidable flesh.  At once terrifying and tragic, Thanos is the most iconic villain of the 2010’s; a villain finally worth pitting an entire squad of heroes against, and perhaps, more than a match for all of them.  The film’s shocking ending and willingness to go to darker places makes this movie MCU’s The Empire Strikes Back.

 75. Alien: Covenant

Man, did Covenant get a bad rap.  Audience members branded its characters stupid, its monsters unscary, and its premise a letdown from Prometheus.  They were wrong on every count.  The characters of Covenant act as normal explorers should; not as we, in all of our omniscient wisdom, should advise them to.  The monsters are absolutely bloodcurdling; truly nasty, unrelenting creatures which are content to flay their victims alive if they cannot kill them outright.  And the story did not answer many of Prometheus’s big questions because it was simply better and more interesting than that.  I posit the reason Covenant was such a flop is not any failure on its part, but rather a failure of audiences’ openmindedness and tolerance for the macabre.  Alien: Covenant is the best Alien movie since at least Aliens; a pitch-black, bordering on nihilistic tale of bad things happening to good people.  It is also a successful conglomeration of the various qualities of Alien, Aliens, and Prometheus, and a fascinating cross-examination of an android who is too human for his own (or anybody’s) good.

 74. The Shape of Water

Amélie meets The Swamp Thing, The Shape of Water is an odd, intriguing romantic Cold War thriller that celebrates those members of society who are ostracized, marginalized, or cast aside.

 73. ParaNorman

Funny, scary, and important, Paranorman is a spooky, kid-friendly take on tolerance and the price of ignorance.

 72. Gasland

By all practical accounts, Gasland is horrifying.  This is a film that shows the surreal consequences of free-for-all fracking; water that can be set on fire, air pollution that exceeds 100x the safe limit for some toxins around fracking wells, and literal poisoning of wildlife and residents via breathing, drinking, and skin absorption.  While all of this content would make for a great documentary, it is banjo-pickin’, easy-going filmmaker Josh Fox who makes this film even better. His heartfelt personal accounts and willingness to stand aside and let the victims speak for themselves gives this documentary a warmth and decency usually missing from such explosive exposés.

 71. Wreck-It Ralph

A hilarious mash-up of video games and memorable arcade characters, Wreck-It Ralph manages to stay clever, hip, and inventive the whole way, even as it plays expertly off audience nostalgia.

 70. Green Book

Thanks in large part to its pair of terrific leads, Green Book manages to be an uproariously entertaining road trip buddy movie; even as it brings to light the racial problems which existed (and continue to exist) in America.

 69. Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Possibly the most Millennial film ever made, Scott Pilgrim is a busy, delicious barrage of video games, garage bands, pop culture references, and comics.  Intricately detailed and gut-bustingly funny, Scott Pilgrim’s supply of visual gags and uber-referential one-liners is practically (turns 8 sideways on fridge) infinite.

 68. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Winter Soldier is high-tier MCU.  The electric superhero proceedings benefit from a deliciously twisty plot, and a surprising injection of sharp political commentary.

 67. Dunkirk

One of the most viscerally intense PG-13 movies ever, Christopher Nolan’s war epic is a nightmarish tour-de-force that places viewers directly in enemy crosshairs.  In typical Nolanian fashion, however, this is also high-brow, intellectually stimulating fare.  There is not only the logistical puzzle at play of how to successfully evacuate 300,000 plus English soldiers from the French coast; Dunkirk understands warfare as a product of two extreme and opposite polarities of human nature. War cannot be waged without nasty, selfish streaks of human survival, as there will simply be no one left to fight it; neither can it be won without remarkable acts of courage and willing sacrifice.

 66. Blackfish

Deeply troubling and disturbing, Blackfish shows what happens when you take the most intelligent and sensitive animals in the world besides us and confine them in a bathtub for their entire lives.  A stirring call for respect for nature, and a long-running tally of SeaWorld’s sins, Blackfish is a must-see documentary.

 65. Contagion

Contagion is one of the decade’s scariest films.  After all, murdering mask-wearing lunatics and supernatural bumps in the night can be discounted as a trick behind the camera; but the boogeyman in Contagion almost assuredly exists, a nuke buried somewhere in the bosom of Mother Nature.  If we blunder into it, God help us all.  The film’s chilly, distant demeanor and scientific accuracy (Contagion gets bonus points for being the most scientifically accurate movie of all time) makes its depiction of a modern plague frighteningly plausible; its fixations on points of transfer are enough to convince anyone to wash their hands twice.  

 64. How to Train Your Dragon

One of the best movies to ever exit out the Dreamworks pipeline, HTTYD is an excellent parable about hate and jingoism, wrapped up in an exhilarating thrill ride that made us all want a Toothless of our own.

 63. Restrepo

Restrepo is such a hard film to gauge.  It doesn’t take aim at politics, or delve too deeply into the lives of its subjects; American soldiers in the Korangal Valley, Afghanistan.  Restrepo is content to simply put us in their boots.  Never has combat been so realistically brought to the American doorstep.  In Restrepo, one can see the terror of death, the adrenaline hit of downing an enemy, the tomfoolery of kids messing around with one another in between bouts of fighting for their lives.  This is the pure essence of modern war; in its DNA, one can see what so many directors of fiction have been trying to recapture in their work.  Restrepo is a remarkable and dangerous accomplishment; an accomplishment that would eventually cost co-director Tim Hetherington his life while shooting a subsequent film in Libya.

 62. Abominable

Dreamworks has been a rather lackluster studio in comparison to the rest of the industry.  With that being said, it is more than capable of making great movies; and Abominable is right up there with the best the studio has ever made.  This gorgeously made Asian-flavored film explores China as a meeting grounds of various philosophies; wealth and privilege versus working class, urban versus agrarian, East versus West, and how exploitation and cultural diffusion have reshaped life there.  It is also simply a wonderful tale of an introverted girl who must travel to the Himalayas to deliver a magical yeti back to nature; and how that journey unlocks her ability to grieve and connect with others.

 61. Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone is the movie that announced to the world that this Jennifer Lawrence person could act, I tell you h’what.  This menacing coming-of-age journey through the Ozark drugscape shows the importance of family in such poor, isolated communities as something more than a cliché of hillbilly pride; it is actually a means to survival and redemption.

 60. The Boy and the Beast

The Boy and the Beast can certainly be appreciated simply as a fantastical, colorful training/battle movie about an orphaned human boy and his cantankerous bear master.  But it is as it dives deep into the complexity of the male mind that the film fascinates thematically and generates stirring emotional resonance.  In particular, the film has something to say about the anger that can spur young men to violence, and the stabilizing force a mature male presence can have (but does not always have) on that anger.  The benefits of fatherhood extend to father-figures as well, who become more emotionally aware and sensitive, and gain deeper meaning and fulfillment in their lives. Hosoda is truly one of the best directors working in animation today, and The Boy in the Beast is typically intelligent, thematically dense work from him.

 59. The King’s Speech

A feel-good film done with classical style, The King’s Speech is an elegant, touching tale of friendship that will surely play well among lovers of The Royal Family.

 58. The Artist

Thanks to rich visual storytelling and fantastic performances, this pre-talkie throwback hardly needs words to delight.

 57. The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Isao Takahata’s final film The Tale of Princess Kaguya feels like a beautiful pastel picture book brought to life.  At once a fable of ruinous greed, classism, and sexism, it is also a haunting soliloquy of love, nature, freedom, beauty, and death…all that makes life precious.

 56. Kubo and the Two Strings

Kubo and the Two Strings makes me mad.  Not because it is a bad film; far from it.  I am angry because Kubo had everything going for it.  It had big-name actors, it had effects which pushed stop-motion to its limits, it had a big marketing push in theaters to push viewership, it had great critical reviews.  It was supposed to be Studio Laika’s crown jewel; the film that would win big at the box office and thrust the studio of perennial indie hits like Coraline and Paranorman into well-deserved limelight.  And it was good.  Like, really good!

Unfortunately, Kubo and the Two Strings flopped at the box office, for reasons I cannot imagine nor articulate in polite company.  But it will get its due here; Kubo is a stop-motion masterpiece with rich, resonant themes and ground-breaking visual effects.  It also has a rendition of “My Guitar Gently Weeps” on a Japanese samisen. So go see the damn thing.

 55. The Wind Rises

We might be getting another Miyazaki film after all, but The Wind Rises was a fantastic send-off piece for anime’s most legendary director.  This is a truly complex, mature film about the relation of beauty and art to woe and suffering, and a critical examination of the tunnel vision that often grips great artists.

 54. Knives Out

A classic whodunit tweaked for the modern era, Knives Out balances its twisty mystery proceedings with some well-timed black humor and more than a few pokes at the wealthy elite.

 53. Inside Job

A carefully researched and scathingly delivered incrimination of the greed that ruined a nation, Inside Job is one of the best documentaries of the era.

 52. Hugo

A wondrous, Dickensian-tale of an orphan who lives in a Paris train station and discovers the secret of a mysterious automaton, Hugo is an intelligent, sensitive family picture and a touching love letter to early cinema.

 51. Moonlight

Being different is hard, as I can say from firsthand experience.  While I can hardly imagine what it is to be African-American or gay, let alone both at once, Moonlight offers some glimpse into that difficult reality.  The film’s touching love story is a journey of self-acceptance and courage that is well worth seeing.  

 50. Tangled

Tangled was Disney’s announcement to the rest of the field that it was back, baby.  After a period of shaky and poorly thought-out 3-D projects in the early 2000’s, Disney took a long, hard look at itself and identified what it did best, then brought out the best of those qualities in its witty, triumphant take on Rapunzel.  Here are the songs, guffaws, villains, and magic we all love as fans, delivered perfectly into the next dimension.

 49. Source Code

Groundhog Day via sci-fi thriller, Source Code is a clever, action-packed take on time travel, but also an emotionally investing take on what it means to live each day-and life-to the fullest.

 48. Toy Story 4

Rarely has a sequel piece ever seemed as risky as Toy Story 4.  The studio had its closing piece in Toy Story 3; a film I thought was respectable but not particularly interesting.  But rather than let sleeping dogs lie, Pixar opted to throw that ending in the garbage…and pulled something far more bizarre and wonderful from the trash.  Toy Story 4 is a wacky, existential riff that acknowledges the importance of family and responsibility in our lives, while simultaneously declaring that it is okay to value ourselves outside those traditional parameters.

 47. Arrival

Arrival is hard science-fiction done exceedingly right.  Depicting an extraterrestrial visitation across the globe, Arrival seems truly tangible in a way most alien films do not, down to the very form of its decidedly non-humanoid creatures.  In vein of Contact or Interstellar, Arrival picks the brain and heartstrings with equal acumen, making it a lasting and valuable commodity to anyone’s sci-fi library.

 46. Spiderman: Homecoming

Spiderman: Homecoming is the geekiest of Spiderpieces.  This is the Spiderman where Spiderman is Go-Pro-ing himself before a big battle, or joining a quiz bowl team, or building a Lego Death Star with his nerdy confidante, complete with miniature Lego Palpatine.  Light, refreshing, and utterly hilarious, Homecoming gets a lot of mileage out of Tom Holland’s awesome portrayal, and tells a simple, uncomplicated story that doesn’t impede the shenanigans.

 45. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2

Audiences were expecting a fireworks show for Deathly Hallows: Part II, and boy did they get one. A terrifically exciting heist sequence and a grand final battle made this the most epic and exciting entry in the Harry Potter canon.  The culmination of carefully laid character arcs and sentimental links back to the series’ early days had fans smiling through their tears and punching their tickets to Platform 9 ¾ again and again.  A splendidly satisfying sendoff.

 44. Skyfall

Apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks.  Skyfall brought Bond into the new decade in style, modernizing and sharpening all its facets while remaining, yes, Bond.  James Bond.

 43. Argo

Argo is a rock-solid retelling of a tense CIA extraction op, hitched to the allure and wonder of good old-fashioned movie making.  

 42. Free Solo

Free Solo is a marvelous documentary, and I mean that quite literally.  Marvel at the jaw-dropping heights depicted, marvel at the logistical challenges of filming a free climber without killing or distracting them (which would mean the same thing).  But most of all, marvel at the huge cojones of subject Alex Honnold, as he attempts to climb the world’s largest rock wall; without the life-saving grace of a rope. As a thrill act, Free Solo is visceral and terrifying.  But as a character study, it is equally fascinating.  The same things which make Honnold such a one in a billion talent are the same things which cripple him emotionally and socially.  Watching Honnold slowly start to conquer these own personal obstacles-even as he prepares for the physical obstacle of his life-is a truly satisfying experience.

 41. The Lego Movie

Endlessly imaginative and hilariously subversive, The Lego Movie is not only a worthy standard-bearer of its iconic toy brand, but also a glorious celebration of creativity and free expression.

 40. Snowpiercer

I’m gonna describe Snowpiercer using single word describers.  Okay?  Hilarious. Bloody.  Ambitious.  Tragic. Exhilarating.  Revolutionary.  F***ing insane.  Okay, that last one was two words.  How about amazing?  Yeah. Amazing works.  This dystopian satirical piece is a mad thrill ride on a runaway train through an environmentally wrecked world, and it is one of the craziest things I’ve ever loved in my life.

 39. Moneyball

This movie is a sports genre gamechanger about a sports genre gamechanger; that is, the “Moneyball” strategy that forever changed the world of baseball evaluation.  Watched purely on the terms of its baseball X’s and O’s, Moneyball succeeds.  However, it is the tale of lovable loser Billy Beane, and the film’s assertion that winning comes second to loving yourself, that really turns this hit into a home run.

 38. The Social Network

As eccentric and brilliant as its central genius, The Social Network depicts the synthesis of Facebook as an unflattering mirror for the site itself; that it is often driven by negative emotions of inadequacy, jealousy, and loneliness, and serves as a proxy for the real social interactions we require for fulfillment and happiness.  Slickly edited, funny, and smart, this is one of the most iconic and generational films of the decade.

 37. Gravity

The opening few minutes of Gravity is one of the most intense movie scenes not only of this decade, but of all time.  From there, the tension just barely relents.  Suspenseful and tightly-spun as a space survival story, Gravity is also a technical marvel which redefined zero-G cinema forever; and made us eternally thankful we are safely on the ground.

 36. Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild is a ground-level view of poverty and climate change in the Mississippi River Delta region, seen through the eyes of a child.  Quvenzhané Wallis brings her role to life with an incredible child performance, and lends this work a sense of deep intimacy and emotional resonance, even as it grasps at themes which are national to global in scale.

 35. Incredibles 2

Incredibles 2 is one of Pixar’s best ever sequels.  Here are the same witty, relatable family dynamics we fell in love with in Incredibles 1; but the superhero shenanigans have been one-upped and then some.  In fact, Incredibles 2 has the best action sequences I have ever seen in a 3-D animated film.  Add in a smart ideological battle between the current age’s (perhaps correct) cold cynicism and yesterday’s quixotic beliefs, and you have one of the best superhero movies ever, as well as a film that arguably beats out its OG.

 34. Guardians of the Galaxy

I admit that from the film’s opening credits, where Chris Pratt canters across an alien planet to “Come and Get Your Love” and utilizes a scurrying lizard creature as his own personal microphone, that I was sold on Guardians of the Galaxy.  This is one of those rare works like Shrek or Princess Bride that simultaneously skewers and elevates its genre; in this case, the old-timey B-movie science-fiction flick.  A riotously funny movie that just doesn’t give a (expletive), Guardians of the Galaxy is also surprisingly poignant when it chooses to draw its eclectic bunch of outlaws into an impromptu family.  This is absolutely one of the best films in the MCU.

 33. Coco

A gorgeous, vibrant love letter to Mexico full of zesty music, Coco has some big things to say about art and its link to memory, and how exploitation can tarnish its beauty. Pixar has once again illustrated a remarkable ability to craft a world utterly original and believable in its own rich details and machinations; a world which sets a grand stage for its intimate story.  It has also once again illustrated an ability to make us all cry our eyes out.  Curse you, Pixar!

 32. Her

The film that made a romance between an artificial intelligence and Joaquin Phoenix work somehow, Her is a thoughtful and sensitive film that expands our definition of love to encompass all levels of intimacy and circumstance.  It is also, to my knowledge, the most gentle and hopeful AI movie ever made, and it deserves commendation for that.

 31. Spotlight

Spotlight is a black hole. This film about the Boston Globe’s reporting on the Catholic Church’s coverup of child molestations by priests starts off slowly, then sucks you in more and more, gathering its mass until you are crushed under all the weight of deception, apathy, pain, and despair.  I suppose this is also a strong allegory for the value of reporting or something like that, but frankly, I was too upset for most of the film’s duration to notice.  As a lifelong Catholic, Spotlight made me feel utterly betrayed and angry; not only at the Church, but also at myself for sleeping at the wheel. This simply cannot happen again.

 30. Citizenfour

Citizenfour qualifies as arguably the most important film of the decade.  Laura Poitras’s documentary on government informant Edward Snowden is an intellectual horror flick; full of deserved paranoia, stunning overreaches of executive power, and spooky mirrors to the Orwellian nightmare of 1984. Citizenfour reveals how the alluring promise of the internet has betrayed us, and provided a means to the exponential surveillance of everyone in our supposedly free Western society.

 29. Marvel’s The Avengers

Avengers seemed like a fantasy project when it was announced.  How could anybody hope to make a movie about not one superhero, not two superheroes, but a whole team of them, without sacrificing narrative coherence, without losing sight of the big personalities at play?  Joss Whedon proved such an all-star game could be possible, and somehow, work synergistically.  This is one of the biggest popcorn movies ever, and it changed the expectations for superhero flicks towards bigger, grander, better. The success of Avengers also established MCU as the defining franchise of the 2010’s; and perhaps, beyond.

 28. Inception

Inception’s script took Christopher Nolan 10 years to tweak, and watching the film you can believe it. This is a 3-D maze of a caper/heist movie, in which dreams form the substance of worlds stacked atop one another. It is a devilishly tricky exercise, but one that is done with the greatest precision and execution. Featuring impressive and trippy set-pieces, one of the generation’s best femme fatales, massively cerebral ideas, eerie atmosphere, and an insidious sense of ambiguity, Inception kept me awake for quite some time after I watched it at two in the morning.

 27. Room

Focusing on a kidnapped mother and her young son Jack, who has only known captivity, Room could have been a very dark movie.  Instead, it chooses to tack a different route; how do we survive trauma, both its initial effects and its aftermath, and triumph over it?  

The film is sold by Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay.  Larson deservingly won an Oscar for her role;  Tremblay’s performance is the best child performance I have ever seen.  Together, they create a mother-son relationship that is utterly real and compelling.  The film is also noteworthy for its camerawork, which is used very effectively to suggest changes in Jack’s worldview as he grows older.

 26. Django Unchained

Brash, bold, and unapologetic, Django Unchained is a gloriously socially-conscious revenge fantasy. Featuring buckets of blood and Wild West shoot ‘em up gunfights against Klansmen and slave-holders, the film charts the course of a former slave on his way to rescue his sweetheart from the clutches of a diabolical slave owner.  

 25. Lincoln

Thanks to yet another star turn from acting legend Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln is a witty and warm biopic of one of our greatest presidents.  It is also a glimmer of encouragement during the political gridlock and dysfunction of the early 2010’s.  Rather than proving democracy does not work, Lincoln seems to argue, such issues are actually a sign of a functioning and healthy democracy.  Our ability to disagree strongly with one another and come to imperfect compromises in order to solve our problems is our country’s greatest legacy.  It was also the means to the passing of our noblest and most overdue piece of legislation: The 13th Amendment.

24. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Won’t You Be My Neighbor is, for me, the best documentary of the decade.  Focusing on the extraordinary Mr. Fred Rogers, the film does a great job of humanizing Mr. Rogers; revealing his insecurities, relentless drive, and sly sense of humor (often through dream-like Daniel Tiger animated sequences) while demonstrating that yes, he really was that good of a person.  As it progresses, the film grows increasingly melancholic and encompassing.  The qualities Mr. Rogers stood for-namely, understanding, love, honesty, and respect-seem sorely lacking in today’s society.  Even more distressingly, it would seem the saintly Rogers was beginning to have his own doubts about his life’s work as the cruelty and hate of the 21st century emerged in full on 9/11.  Won’t You Be My Neighbor expresses human goodness as something fragile which must be fostered and prioritized by all of us if Mr. Rogers’ message is to mean something in our modern world.

 23. Moana

Moana’s audiovisuals are off the charts amazing.  The lush tropical landscapes and utterly lifelike oceans make this the most graphically impressive 3-D animated work I’ve ever seen.  The soundtrack, partially composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, stands as one of Disney’s best all time.  But it is Moana herself, the titular princess, who stands as the film’s greatest game-changer.  Realistically proportional, of Pacific Islander descent, and strong enough to carry a story without a love interest, Moana is a refreshingly modern character utterly in command of her own destiny.  Add in a rich story steeped in Polynesian culture and veined with environmental undertones, and you get the new high bar for the Disney Princess Movie.

 22. The Breadwinner

The Breadwinner is a testament that must be heard.  Adapted by Cartoon Saloon from Deborah Ellis’s excellent book of the same name, the movie is a street-level account of Parvana, a young girl who goes undercover as a boy to feed her family in Taliban-era Afghanistan.  The conditions portrayed are nearly unimaginable; imagine being a prisoner in your own home, only let out for reprieve under the supervision of a male guardian.  Such was the reality of thousands of women and girls in Kabul as late as 2001.  Cartoon Saloon drenches this film in a constant, lingering fear; at the same time, normalcy is depicted and triumphed. Siblings still squabble.  Clothes are still washed, meals are still cooked and eaten, water is still fetched.  Stories are still told.  The Breadwinner is not just Parvana’s tale; it is the voice of the thousands who live in war-torn or oppressive societies worldwide, and yet still make their own brand of normalcy, still form expression and find joy.  Their daily survival is an inspiration to us all; their story is to glimpse the resiliency and spark of the human spirit.

 21. A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place is one of the most auspicious debuts I can remember.  First time director John Krasinki makes his creature feature a masterwork of tension and clever sound editing, and crafts an indelible world where so much as a pin dropping puts everyone on pins and needles.

 20. Inside Out

Pixar’s peek inside a child’s mind is a work of the utmost intelligence and sensitivity.  Intuitive enough for even the youngest viewers to understand, yet nuanced enough to describe the transition of a human consciousness from child to adult with painful clarity, Inside Out is one of the studio’s very best features, and a strong defense of mental health and self-expression.

 19. Your Name

For so long, director Makoto Shinkai was an exercise in frustration.  5 Centimeters Per Second was gorgeous.  Garden of Words was the most visually stunning 2-D animation I had ever seen.  And yet the writing was pedantic.  The plot was tepid, the characters flat.  I would watch these films, eye candy at its most pure and non-nutritional, and seethe that they were not better, that all that glorious potential was yet unrealized. And yet, I never stopped believing in the potential of Makoto Shinkai.  One day, I reasoned, this guy was going to piece a story together with some semblance of care as he did his illustrations, and on that day something special would be born.

I saw Your Name just a short time ago.  Of course it’s jaw-droppingly beautiful, that goes without saying.  But here’s what else it is, folks: it’s funny.  It’s heartwrenching.  It’s suspenseful.  It’s got plot twists.  It’s got a story.  And not just a good story, but a GREAT one.  

I imagine watching this movie must be like watching your kid graduate high school.  You forget all the mouthing off and dirty socks left all over the place and that fender bender with your new car, and just soak in the glow of that special moment you always believed would come.  You couldn’t be happier.  You couldn’t be prouder.  And you know this is the beginning of something truly wonderful.

Congratulations, Mr. Shinkai.  You did it, man.

 18. Interstellar

The knock on Christopher Nolan was always that he had the heart of a robot and didn’t have strong female characters.  Debate whether that is true of his other films, if you must; but not this one, because Interstellar is possibly the biggest tear-jerker in sci-fi history, and Jessica Chastain’s Murph is a bitter, brilliant centerpiece to it all. Interstellar stands tall as one of the best science-fiction films of the decade.  It has strong, ambitious science wrapped in glorious visual effects, and is very quietly a solid piece of Americana, lovingly arrayed amidst America’s cornfields and dusty roads in a tribute to The Great Depression.  Most of all, however, Interstellar is a wondrous joining of heart and intellect, a working theoretical thought experiment that demonstrates love is a force greater than gravity, space, time, or any other cosmic entity the universe may foist upon us.

 17. The Force Awakens

While it is not number one on my list, perhaps no film brought me greater joy this decade than watching The Force Awakens during its Thursday night premiere.  It was nothing less than the very Star Wars movie I had hoped and dreamed for as a kid.  As a massively entertaining blockbuster surpassing huge expectations, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is terrific.  As a perfect passing of torch from beloved old to promising new, it is an utter triumph.

 16. Rogue One

Okay, is my bias showing yet?

Perhaps this is a bit steep for some people, but heck, when you are dealing with the second-best movie in one of Hollywood’s most beloved franchises, you have to give props where props are due.  Rogue One is such a gamechanger for Star Wars.  Its gritty, pulpy sense of realism seems peeled straight from a Star Wars comic book; its characters immediately strike as memorable, particularly K-2SO, who is like C-3PO if C-3PO got sent to prison and came back jacked.  Rogue One also is important for its many departures from tradition.  Many of the innovations credited to Episode VIII were done first-and done better-in this film.  Rogue One is not afraid to show the rebellion in terms of moral gray; a shocking act shortly after the film’s opening establishes this and destroys the previous model of basic black and white good vs. evil.  If Luke, Leia, and Han got to play the part of hero in A New Hope, then it was because there were elements in the Rebellion doing the dirty and morally-questionable grunt work shown here; Rogue One shows how the war was won.

Rogue One also introduces a few other themes riffed heavily by Episode VIII, including the idea that the Rebellion/Resistance is not a neat, idealistic counter to oppression but an uneasy conglomerate ravaged by internal conflict, and that force-sensitive people are not necessarily the product of hereditary chains of Jedi and Sith, but often sporadic and independent products of the Force.  It is, on top of what it initiated, simply a well-paced and superbly-crafted piece of space opera.  Rogue One has the best romance (besides Han and Leia) in Star Wars history, has hands-down THE BEST Vader scene ever filmed and another that is a classic in its own right, and has one heck of a villain in Director Krennic. Krennic is one of those mid-level bureaucrats that must have always existed for the Empire but which never received such deserved attention before; his position of weakness, coupled with burning ambition, makes him a hilariously pathetic figure, one you might begin to feel bad for were he not such a nasty piece of work.  Even the soundtrack is great.  Rogue One is a war film, and Michael Giacchino of Medal of Honor fame makes this sound like a war film, even though it also sounds very much like Star Wars. Ultimately, that’s what Rogue One is. It is a Star Wars film that manages to be a war film and everything else it wants to be terrifically well.  To hell with it.  I’m putting it this high.  If you have a problem with Rogue One being the #16 movie on my list, you can go kiss a wampa’s backside.

 15. Roma

Like its protagonist-a nanny to a wealthy family in 1970’s era Mexico-Roma is a film of marvelous patience and understated strength.  Alfonso Cuarón’s otherworldly composition and autobiographical authenticity makes this movie a deeply complex take on class and gender, as well as a heartbreaking meditation on what it means to love and be part of a family.

 14. Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Spiderverse was such a brilliant reimagination of what the superhero genre could be.  Not only did it break convention by featuring an African-Hispanic-American kid as its protagonist; it prismed a classic Marvel character in danger of going stale into a delightful and zany spectrum.  At once funny as hell and a poignant portrait of growing up as a minority in America, Spiderverse isn’t just the great animated Spiderman movie that nobody saw coming; it’s one of the best superhero movies ever made.

 13. Baby Driver

Baby Driver is the coolest movie of the decade.  The film centers around Baby, a gentle young getaway driver locked up in bad deals with bad hombres, motoring through traffic and criminal plots in an attempt to just get out and get his girl; but it is so much more than that.  This is Tarantino, juiced up on Bullitt, playing in time to a nonstop eclectic jukebox.  The dialogue is sharp and hilarious, the characters are all immediately memorable and lovable (even the baddies), and it should go without saying that the car chases are PHENOMENAL.  This is entertainment on nitrous oxide.

 12. Lady Bird

I did not go into Lady Bird expecting great things.  Lady Bird is a family drama.  I, for the record, do not like family dramas.  But I liked this one.  I liked this one a heck of a lot.

Lady Bird is told with so much humor and honesty about the mistakes we make as kids and parents.  Struggles for independence and control, respectively, fuel furious arguments and alienation during the difficult period of adolescence.  It is not until later that we gain the wisdom to understand why we fought and gain a richer understanding and appreciation of one another’s feelings.  In Lady Bird, there is a key revelation regarding the girl and her mother that seems to unfold at the film’s close.  It is a profound and emotionally resonant moment that brings the film around to a highly satisfying conclusion.

This movie is also one of the first “time capsule” pieces on the early 2000’s.  As we grow older, I would expect more of these films to emerge, but as of right now Lady Bird is the only one that comes to mind.  The film absolutely nails the sense of growing up in a troubled time; the Iraq War blares constantly on the news, full-time employment becomes a tenuous prospect no matter how qualified you are, and gay rights are still something very much in infancy.  Lady Bird plays out its teenage struggles against this backdrop, showing how such crises were navigated, albeit painfully sometimes, and overcome.  Few films have been so well-rounded, nuanced, and well-crafted this decade.

 11. Song of the Sea

If you are unaware of the name Tomm Moore, it may be time to become acquainted, as the guy has been killing animation since he first stepped onto the scene with Secret of Kells in 2009. It is no exaggeration to call him the Irish Miyazaki; and Song of the Sea his Spirited Away.  Like that film, there is a deeply human story to be told, but it is all dressed up in fantastical trappings.  In Spirited Away, a girl struggling to grow up found herself working in a spirit bathhouse.  Song of the Sea uses Irish mythology as a gateway to understand the deep and complicated love between siblings, and the necessity of expressing and sharing loss.

This is one of the most beautiful animated pictures this decade.  Were the framed stills not hundreds of dollars on Cartoon Saloon’s website (yes, I’ve looked at them), I would probably own at least a few by now. The animation style is so distinctive and innately appealing, with gentle watercolors that soothe and invite the mind. The Celtic musical arrangements are similarly intricate, wonderful, and soothing.  Together, story, art, and music come together, and work some deep and affecting magic on the soul.  Song of the Sea should be regarded as one of the best animated films this decade.    

 10. Sicario

Sicario is an utterly bleak, magnificent film that truly depicts the drug war as it is; a chaotic maelstrom of murder, torture, and corruption, spinning and spinning with no end in sight.  In such a storm, there is no moral high ground to claim, let alone hold.  There is only power to control which direction the storm is heading next, whom it will chew up and devour in its path.  And as for the powerless, the best they can hope for is to stay out of its way.  Sicario is a sharp critique of American drug policy and a stark glimpse into the grim reality of cartels, packaged perfectly as an ultra-violent thriller.

 9. Looper

It is hard to do a time travel story well.  Managing plot threads makes plots a nightmare; it is a difficult juggling act merely to keep one’s head above water.  That is what makes Looper so special.  It is not only a cool-looking, cyberpunk-flavored noir that manages its logic very well; it also features great characters, and larger overarching themes of fate and redemption it advances via those same logistical acrobatics.  Looper blew my mind the first time I saw it.  It is easily one of the best time travel stories ever, and a sci-fi classic to boot.

 8. Blade Runner 2049

It is going to ruffle some feathers to say this, but I think Blade Runner 2049 is even better than the original Blade Runner.  While Ridley Scott’s dark, smoggy Los Angeles will always be iconic, Blade Runner 2049 had Roger Deakins behind the camera, and he took us to sections of our nightmarish future we had never been before.  Patterns of solar farms set up outside of town to feed swathes of humanity.  A post-apocalyptic landfill outside of town for the city’s forsaken.  Best of all, a neon-orange radioactive Las Vegas.  That seems to be the common theme of 2049.  It has taken all the best features of Ridley’s classic and expanded them while trimming down the less successful elements.  The defining theme of Blade Runner-what makes us human-is here expounded upon and taken to even deeper levels.  And the film’s beautiful ending brings the franchise to a truly satisfying conclusion.

 7. Zootopia

Zootopia feels like Disney’s final evolution.  The cute critters from its primordial past have fully anthropomorphized, to the point that they must contend with some of the same societal ills as us; chief among them prejudice.  Visually gorgeous, full of top-notch tongue-in-cheek gags, and the slickest, most concise cartoon buddy cop riff since at least Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Zootopia counts as one of the most finely crafted animated features I’ve ever seen.  Its timely message, coupled with its fantastic quality and outreach potential to the young, makes it one of those rare movies that can change the world.

 6. Ex Machina

Ex Machina is one of the most finely-tuned and lean films science-fiction has to offer.  In the age of growing research into artificial intelligence, it is also vastly important.  Many films have explored the issues associated with artificial intelligence, but few have so fully delved into the ethical quagmires which might arise.  Creating new minds means accepting responsibility for the lives of welfare of other beings.  Are we prepared to do such a thing?  We, who are constantly waging war and victimizing one another?  Also, if we are so morally limited, how can we avoid passing on negative traits to our digital children, who will be vastly more powerful and intelligent than us?  What if they think differently than us?  The possibility of misunderstandings would be catastrophic for both parties.

Ex Machina explores all of these issues with deep intelligence and building tension.  This film is one of those beautifully ambiguous works I love so much that require you to pay attention and come to your own conclusions.  The primary question in the film asked of the characters is the same one the film asks you: is Ava, the artificial intelligence in question, essentially human?  For me, the question was left unanswered until the final, remarkable, tragic shot.  

 5. The Revenant

Bloody as hell and absolutely gorgeous, The Revenant is a deep plunge into our primal hearts, into the remarkable human invention of identity.  At the most fundamental level, we are all the same species; we share the same roots, the same trunk.  Yet by means of our human experiences, our courses of life and interactions with other humans, we draw deep fundamental lines between one another.  These lines are powerful things.  They are what we see ourselves as.  We draw lines of genetic heritage; lines of cultures born into, or adopted.  Lines brand certain people as friends, while others remain strange or alien.  Sometimes, lines can even define people as something hostile; a new species which may destroy us if it is not destroyed in turn. And there are lines which describe the people we call our families; those whom we love and protect at the most fundamental level of our being.

The Revenant draws attention to the lines we draw as human beings; how they are as deeply ingrained to us as breathing or bleeding, for better, and for worse.  Aided by director Alejandro Iñárritu’s magnificent direction, and anchored by Leonardo DiCaprio, who has never been better in his storied career, The Revenant is a deep, uncompromising gaze into our personal and national Heart of Darkness.

 4. Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty became the unfortunate victim of warring politics.  Right-wingers decried the portrayal of torture in the movie, while leftists criticized the movie’s account of torture supposedly supplying the correct information (Director Kathryn Bigelow acknowledged to Stephen Colbert her lead, being from the CIA, might be untrustworthy on that particular facet but she was operating with accuracy to her source).  That is all a shame, because such criticism misses the point of the movie entirely.  Zero Dark Thirty is made in the spirit of true and utter neutrality.  There is no political axe to grind.  There is no glorification in the act of Bin Laden’s death; in fact, the face of America’s most notorious terrorist is never shown. Zero Dark Thirty is a work of national recollection.  It begins with a deeply painful call to authorities on 9/11, and does not end until Bin Laden’s assassination over 9 years later.  In between, there is torture, bombings, false leads and frustrations, hours upon hours of poring over data and entries, and finally, that fateful, dangerous foray into Pakistan.  We are reintroduced to each of our own actions through the eyes of Maya, the CIA agent who supposedly made the case that it was in fact Bin Laden hiding in Abbottabad.  At the end of Zero Dark Thirty, the movie adds up that long tally of what we sacrificed in order to defeat our greatest enemy and posits a simple question: was it worth it? Each will have their own answer to that difficult and important question.  This is one of those rare films that forces us to review our path as a nation, examine what we did right and what we did wrong, and adjust our trajectory accordingly. Zero Dark Thirty is an essential American masterpiece, crafted by a true and powerful auteur at the top of her game.

 3. The Raid 2: Berandal

The Raid: Redemption was a revelation in what could be attempted in a martial arts movie.  Its creators decided that wasn’t enough and upped the ante. What ensued was the madness of Berandal.

The stuntwork of Berandal has to be seen to be believed.  Some participants were knocked out cold; it is amazing nobody was killed.  It is doubtful something like this will ever (or should ever) be attempted again, so we may as well enjoy it.  There are car chases, assassins affectionately known as “Bat Boy” and “Hammer Girl”, simply loads and loads of fantastic martial arts combat, and more.  But in between all this ruckus, there is a compelling gangster story to be told, populated with fascinating characters.  A son looking to take over and dangerously expand his father’s influence; a creepy rival leader who cheerfully pulls out razors for throat-slitting; a sad, old-timer assassin who confesses to his daughter that killing was the only way to provide for her; an informant, caught in the middle of the maelstrom and sweating out the possibility that he will be discovered and never make it back to his young family; and of course, Hammer Girl.  She’s my favorite.  

In The Raid: Redemption, character Mad Dog talked about the pulse.  Berandal is that pulse, fully transposed into brutal, symbolic symphony, in which the façade of civilization and negotiations between thugs break down into savage, unbridled violence.  This is the best action movie ever, and the Indonesian Godfather, all rolled into one.

 2. Avengers: Endgame

No list of top films of the decade would be complete without Avengers: Endgame.  It’s the biggest blockbuster in history; and for once, that title is deserved.  Nothing like it had ever been attempted before; indeed, it may be hard to do ever again.  Facing 1 in 14 million odds, the Russo brothers pulled off a miracle, wasting not a moment in a three hour movie that never feels long and completing the arcs of over a dozen beloved characters, en route to a final and wholly satisfying conclusion to the most ambitious film project ever attempted.  If that wasn’t enough, there are more than enough in-jokes, clever riffs on past movies, and sensational action pieces to please even the most critical fan.  Avengers: Endgame is the closest to pure catharsis you can feel, and without a doubt the best superhero movie ever made.  I confess that I moved it back and forth between #1 and #2 on my list at least a few times; ultimately I left it at #2, with the compromise that even if it cannot be called the best movie of the decade, it will forever be known as THE film of the decade.  

 1. Wolf Children

Wolf Children is one of those movies you come across that can only be described as magical.  As a simple tale of motherhood, it succeeds. As a complex allegory for race and adolescence, it works equally well.  It can be shown to the young.  It can be shown to the old.  It can be shown to all in between.  It is sublimely beautiful, patient, and paced.  It is excellently scored.  It has some of the most fully-realized characters ever depicted in animation.  It is warm.  It is gentle.  It is funny. It is sad.  It is life; in all its unpredictability, twists and turns, and wonder.

But I think the reason I truly love Wolf Children is because it engages with the two most difficult and important aspects of being a good, healthy, happy human; how do I love others, and how do I love myself?  Wolf Children shows us a truly rapturous example.  For being the most beautiful movie, both inside and out, I have seen this past decade, and for a whole host of other reasons, Wolf Children deserves to top this list.  Truly, it is Alpha Wolf.

[republicstandard]

Gay Pied Pipers of “Polymorphous Perversity” Penetrate Schools

What do gay and transgender activists penetrating Britain’s schools have in common with the Jesuits?

Jesuits were said to take the attitude, “Give me the child for his first seven years, and I’ll give you the man.” Jesuit co-founder St Francis Xavier tweaked the axiom to: “Give me the child until he is seven and I care not who has him thereafter.”

Atheist missionary and pulpit thumper Richard Dawkins plumbs the potential of the Jesuitical proposition and points to “the useful gullibility of the child mind,” in The God Delusion. The Jesuit boast “is no less accurate (or sinister) for being hackneyed,” he agrees.

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Gay activists have discovered the same truth. By fusing this Ignatian truism with the Freudian dogma of “polymorphous perversity,” the Pied Pipers of Stonewall are wreaking revenge on heterosexual conformity and leading our children into the Weser-like waters of sexual and moral morass, where they will drown like the mass of mesmerized rats, as in the dark legend of the Rat-Catcher of Hameln.

The bullying barrage of militant gay and transgender ideological activism would embarrass Soviet propaganda commissars for strategy and residents of Sodom and Gomorrah for shamelessness. Gayducation is now a non-negotiable item of the curriculum in British schools and who in Stonewall gives a fig if half of British children are leaving primary school unable to read and write properly?

The sexualization of our children is now a national pandemic, spreading like swine flu. Drop in at one of the Kama Sutra sessions offered by a local primary school in London and listen to 5-year-old children shouting “penis” and “vagina” like communist slogans and waving around Play-Doh models of lumpy genitalia they’ve made. Talk to Muslim academic Dr. Kate Godfrey-Faussett, a psychologist and Dialectical Behavior Therapist, who receives complaints from parents all over Britain about the pornification of the school curricula.

The pansexual proselytizers want our kids to be sexualized from Kindergarten. Lynnette Smith of Big Talk Education wants lessons to start “in nursery.” Five-year-olds at a London primary school are being taught about pornography, a BBC documentary reveals. Mick Manning and Brita Granström’s textbook How did I Begin? graphically explains procreation to 5+ years kids: “As they cuddled, your dad’s penis moved gently inside your mum’s vagina and the sperms flowed out.”

The eroticizers of education want to quarantine parents from the poison injected into their children. A 2010 Ofsted report found that schools rarely consult parents about sex education, even though the guidance encourages them to do so. Now that Ofsted has stepped up its inquisition against conservative schools, its recent report on sex education doesn’t mention consulting parents at all.

The golden coupling between sex and marriage is never mentioned. Only two commandments of safe sex and consent guide the discourse. “Making love is like skipping. You can’t do it all day long,” says the illustrated text Where did I come from? by Peter Mayle for 7+ years children. The Living and Growing DVD for 5-13-year-olds shows a group of little boys a public toilet where there’s a condom machine. “They have even got different flavors,” says a child in the film. Sex is as amoral and recreational as sit-ups and as multi-flavored as ice cream.

The goal is to brainwash kids into an anti-traditional family and promiscuously pansexual worldview. Seven-year-old children learn that anal intercourse is “sexual intercourse where a man puts his penis into another person’s anus” and oral sex is “using the mouth and tongue to lick, kiss or suck a partner’s genitals.” Subjects for discussion include homosexuality, bisexuality, abortion, rape, incest, sex abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV and Aids.

Heather, who runs her own workshops in schools in East London, helps teens to discover sadomasochism. “Maybe you read a really hot bit of erotica while looking up Dominance and Submission. Maybe you saw some awesome strap-on porn or just found some cool looking sex toys you’d like to use,” she writes on her website, urging the child to share the discovery with their partner.

Apart from pushing its gay agenda pretending it is “creating an inclusive school environment,” Stonewall brainwashes toddlers with transgenderism: “Babies are given a gender when they are born. Trans is a word that describes people who feel the gender they were given as a baby doesn’t match the gender they feel themselves to be,” its literature advocates, thus reframing gender dysphoria as a chic identity badge.

Drag queens are brought into taxpayer-funded nursery schools to read nursery rhymes and sing songs so 2-year-olds can learn about gay and transgender issues. The Drag Queen Story Times website says it aims “to capture the imagination and fun of the gender fluidity of childhood while giving children a glamorous, positive unabashedly queer role model.” Transgender lifestyles and same-sex relationships should be “promoted” to children as young as two to reduce hate crime, says the National Union of Teachers (NUT).

Except for very few Catholic, Jewish and Muslim schools, faith schools are falling like ninepins before Aphrodite’s chariot, with the Church of England going out its way to garland the new cult of gayducation. Anglican bishop Stephen Cottrell tells the House of Lords that the “Church of England works closely with Stonewall,” while Catholic bishop Philip Egan attacks Stonewall for burying Britain’s “Christian patrimony” and proposing “Orwellian changes to our language” and “draconian restrictions on religious expression.”

Egan is right. Gayducation is unrelentingly absolutist. According to Shraga Stern, thousands of Charedi Jews will leave Britain unless ministers back down from forcing faith schools to teach children about gay and transgender relationships after the Education Department forcibly introduced “homosexuality, same-sex relationships and gender reassignment” lessons in classrooms. On Thursday, the head of Ofsted Amanda Spielman said that all children must learn about same-sex couples regardless of their religious background.

Confused parents are asking two questions. First, how did we begin sexualizing our children—not just providing them biological instruction about human reproduction, but eroticizing them into accepting deviant sexualities? Why is this junk touted as scientific?

Remember Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis? He designed the scaffolding for sexualization children. Children are “polymorphously perverse” he said. Before a child is educated in the conventions of civilized society, it will turn to bodily parts for sexual gratification and will not obey adult rules that determine perverse behavior. But traditional education will suppress the polymorphous possibilities for sexual gratification in the child, said Freud.

Sexologist Alfred Kinsey took this further claiming that even the tiniest of infants have the “capacity” for orgasm. Hence, sexual satisfaction is a childhood goal to be pursued. Kinsey’s theory of early childhood sexual development became the standard for sex education in schools. A scandal broke when Kinsey and his associates were accused of masturbating thousands of little children for scientific data to confirm Kinsey’s theory. Kinsey also claimed that 10-47% of Americans are gay. His two “findings” paved the way for gayducation.

Second, parents are asking why Pied Pipers of polymorphous perversity are not tolerant of real diversity. Why the bigotry and totalitarianism? Why are gay and transgender evangelists desperate and determined to convert innocent and impressionable minds to their cult of Eros (even though they hate “conversion therapy”)?

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The gay liberation movement began with a libertarian argument. Leave us to do our thing. Western society then gave LGBTI+ folk freedom to do their thing. That wasn’t enough. The plea for tolerance became a demand for equality (and same-sex marriage). Equality implies that people are equal before the law. It doesn’t go far enough and sanctify certain practices as morally good. To achieve this goal, you’ve got to aggressively and subversively push for normalization—starting with the most malleable minds.

Children are powerless and offer the least resistance. Once you’ve have brainwashed them—you’ve got them for life. This is the goal of the sex education industry—as it milks the government (and taxpayer) for millions of pounds. “I have come to indoctrinate your children into my LGBTQ agenda (and I’m not a bit sorry),” says children’s author and activist S. Bear Bergman.

There will be pockets of resistance opposing your project for normalization and moral canonization. You’ve got to eliminate them by orchestrating a coup d’état and establishing totalitarian control. Even the tiniest resistance poses a threat. Why? Because the struggle between light and darkness is unequal (as the soaring prologue to the gospel of John poetically and philosophically portrays).

For darkness to triumph, it must be complete and total. “The light of a single candle, somewhere in the universe, defeats it; there is now light where formerly there was none,” writes Michael Walsh. “Either there is Light or there is not; there can be no synthesis.” The tiniest flicker of candlelight is sufficient to expose and unsettle the hegemony of darkness.

From September 2020, the state wants to make Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) and teaching LGBT+ concepts compulsory in all primary and secondary schools. StopRSE is resisting the darkness of polymorphous perversity. Parents of all faiths and none are lighting candles to help save our children. The debate on the new RSE will take place on Monday 25 February at 4.30 pm. You can sign the petition to Parliament demanding you choose what your child learns.

Parents of Hamelin! Your taxes are paying for the Pied Pipers of polymorphous perversity to lure your children into Des Teufels Lustschloss (The Devil’s Pleasure Palace). It’s time you sang to the state-funded Piped Pipers: “We don’t need no gayducation. Hey! Stonewall, leave our kids alone.”

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