#This whole drama is performance art at its finest

[gundamthey17]

Not that I need a hill to die on, but I kinda want to defend the girl on the clock app who is apparently getting dragged by the art world. (Note: I'm not on the clock app. I'm getting all this second-hand.) And like, I'm not saying the art is bad. (I am saying it's pretentious. Which is a matter of opinion.) Apparently she then went and painted a piece of notebook paper blue, to prove her point. And an art historian was dragging her for that, being like, "why choose notebook paper? And it better not be because that was the cheapest, easiest thing to find. Why leave the brush strokes visible? The point of these artworks is that they're saying something, they're meant to get a reaction." And I'm like, lady…. You just proved your point. She chose notebook paper because that reflects how cheaply she views these artworks. She painted it this way to get a reaction. Which is what she's getting.

It's almost like all art is made up and pretentiousness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

[akkivee]

stage dh……………….. them………………:

*inhales*

*exhales* aramaki-san was such a legendary sasara lmao

i remember reading some interview with hirono-san where he mentioned aramaki-san has a princely appeal and he does lol and it bleeds into his sasara

but the way it bled into his sasara made him the most intimidating version of sasara no cap lmao

aramaki-san’s sasara in the early stage was formed primarily bc of a lack of material for nagosaka at the time, so all he really had was the first dh drama track, where sasara’s two faced personality was his introduction, and the tdd manga, where he rolled with samatoki so i understand how it happened lol

LOL AND YOU KNOW WHERE I THINK THAT CHANGED

his and iwasaki-san’s cross talk i firmly believe rewired how he functioned as sasara’s actor LMAO

iwasaki-san is him lol he is very much so sasara and joked his entire way thru that cross talk and while aramaki-san won the competition part of the cross talk, he said he felt like he lost by being serious LOL

his sasara is still a bit scary but it definitely lightened up by dh vs bb lmao and sometimes that starts by coming into every rehearsal session and roping your character’s partner into freestyling manzai to set the mood lol

that dedication is insane lmao

i find it absolutely hilarious aramaki-san claims to have fallen asleep listening to recordings of satonaka-san’s voice to perfect his osaka accent LOL

it’s gotta be like a requirement for sasara actors to be down bad for rosho this man really out here describing sasara’s solo as courtly love 😭😭😭

the stage is so fun lmao rosho and sasara’s confrontation in canon was plenty dramatic but holy FCK did the stage ramp it up they were both crying and screaming throughout that fallout and subsequent reconciliation and that’s Theatre lmao

fills me with so much rage having palpable proof these actors were still exploring and finding new ways to portray the characters bro like during one of the dh rep live shows, aramaki-san wound up missing his cue and laughed his way thru his apology and catching up with the song

except he clearly recognised he kinda cooked actually so come bop2023 he started rapping with that laughing quality THATS SO SICK ITS COOL TO LISTEN TO LOL

still crying over that bop2023 manzai dh did together lol the references to classic sasara manzai and past stage hijinks and the nods to the oridivi and ddb 🥺🥺🥺

ohhhhh speaking of bob2023 i loooove the sasasama duet performance he and alan-san did

like nvm aramaki-san proving exactly why that song should have been a real performance this entire time lol the stage direction between the nb and mcd duets directly contrasted each other 😩👌

throughout the nb duet kuukou was tactile with ichiro; he playfully kicked him, ruffled his hair, shared a coke etc. but not once did sasara or samatoki meet in theirs; they kept circling each other on that stage and it was symbolic of what was real (ichiro’s memories of kuukou) vs what wasn’t (samatoki dreaming of sasara) AND ITS GREAT MAN

is satonaka-san not a ridiculously handsome rosho lmao

it’s so neat he’s such a cool rosho to play off of the cool sasara

shoutout to the stage for making rosho really intolerant towards sasara’s bullshit in dh vs bb lol it had been a nitpick of mine that rosho was a little too passive in track 3 but they heard my pleas (they did not lol) and said rosho isn’t some bum to be walked over

god that whole thing where sasara manipulates ichiro into fighting rosho and rosho!!!!!!!! let’s ichiro know he’s his own person and not a stepping stone towards sasara!!!!!!! AND THEN!!!!!!! blows up on sasara for orchestrating it and being a massive heel towards them both

FINE ART MAN THE FINEST I LOVE STAGE ROSHO LOL

i also live for sasara and the ddb crew bullying him for sasara’s tv show in that play lol i’m sorry rosho was created to suffer by the hands of sasara and anyone who knows rosho is easy to prank LOL

i like both our rei actors!!!!! what i miss about higashiyama-san’s rei is his singing (his rei was intense lol) and the way he started moving with a quasi body roll and moved hips first LOL

i felt a little bad watching him tho lol like sometimes he looked a little lost and i wouldn’t be surprised if the man just couldn’t see with those shades lmao

gomoto-san sure flipped the script with his rei lol!!!!!

from the beginning, he said higashiyama-san’s rei leaned heavily into the mystery aspect of rei and aimed to incorporate more of his comedic value and he did exactly that lol!!!!!

shoutout to dh’s rep live skit specifically LOL

i always think about him deciding to call his fans ‘nezumi-chan’ and the way he really didn’t expect it to take off so when the crowd lost their shit he told was like ‘oh y’all are really weird okay’ LOL

[bestereiseziele-blog]

Top 10 Cheapest Travel Destinations in the World

In this tough economy, most people think that it is next to impossible to travel unless they spend a lot of money for it. If you are one of those who prefer to experience a little adventure without breaking the bank, you may want to check out these top 10 cheapest travel destinations for you and the whole family. Discover new sites and fascinating culture as you embark on an exciting journey to these must-see places - even when you are on a tight budget.

10. Northeastern USA

Top 3 cities in the northeastern part of the US including Washington DC, Boston and New York are great places to visit for penny pinchers out there. The best way to save money on your trip is by taking advantage of several budget bus companies that can connect you to various destinations such as Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Toronto. For as low as $5 on a one-way trip to these destinations, traveling is indeed as cheap as it can get. Aside from the relaxing ride in these buses, you can enjoy surfing on the web during a long trip because of the free wi-fi. So, forget about renting a car, and just ride these low-cost buses as you visit other parts of the US. more info here Traveling

9. Japan

As compared with other famous destinations that are loaded with almost similar types of attractions (amusement parks, botanical gardens, shopping centers), Japan is a much cheaper option for thrifty travelers. If what you look for is excitement such as theme parks and ski runs, then you can find the perfect place to visit in Tokyo. What's more, there are budget accommodations that will suit your budget just fine. In Tokyo, you can find charming guesthouses that will only cost you about $37 for an overnight stay.

8. Portugal

Now is the best time to visit Portugal, particularly the enchanting town of Porto. This cozy town boasts of its village-like plazas, beaches, and old-fashioned buildings decked in stunning azuelo tiles. For about $37 per night, you can find a decent accommodation such as inns furnished with charming antiques. To get around town, you can take a comfortable ride on a tram for less than $2, or hop on a ferry on your way to the beach - also at a cheap price of $2 for a ride. You can also explore nearby areas in a flat-bottomed boat for only $29, and that should be enough to let you have a glimpse of every beautiful places in this town.

7. Macedonia

Looking for a budget-friendly trip for you and your family? Macedonia is one of the finest places to explore because of its serene lakes, picturesque vineyards, and historic Byzantine churches. What's more, Macedonia is a great stopover on your exciting Balkan trip. Private rooms at Macedonia ate quite cheap, and you can find a nice B&B for about $72. In addition, there are bus services available, and these can take you to must-visit spots such as the Galičica National Park where you find places to hike, go on a boating trip or swim.

6. Vietnam

Explore several enigmatic sites in Vietnam that are worth your time and money. In fact, getting by these fabulous areas in the country is very simple, and you may either ride a bus or experience the convenience of hiring moto-taxis. Popular attractions include Chau Doc, Vinh Long floating markets, and Ben Tre. If you are not fond of highly-populated places, then the Tra Vinh and Ha Tien are excellent options. As for boat trips, you can find the best deals at $5 to $10, and guesthouses cost about $10 up to $25.

5. Peru

Typically, a 5-day cruise around Amazon may cost you about $3500 excluding air fare. However, you can cut down this amazingly high price by dealing with locals in Iquitos, which is also the biggest city in the world that cannot be reached by land. These locals can tailor a trip of your choice at cheap prices whether you are up for a tour at piranha fishing spots, go dolphin watching at the Allpahuayo Mishana National Reserve, or visit the Otorongo Lodge located on the Colombian border.

4. Mexico

If you want to experience how it's like to tour around the culture-rich Mexico, then you should do so by visiting some of the country's historic places. For instance, you may rent historical homes that are converted into inns, and the cost is much cheaper than those at Cancun's top resorts. You will also be amazed by the Plaza Grande, which features remarkable 16th century cathedrals and art museums. If you happen to stop by the plaza on weekends, then you can get caught up in the excitement as the place becomes the center of street parties and dance performances. There are also exciting day trips to five historic Mayan sites that cost for only $40 when you opt for the Ruta Puuc public bus.

3. Northern Ireland

Get a load of Northern Ireland's literature, drama and music as you embark on this fascinating travel destination. In fact, Northern Ireland has invested more than $25 million into its local tourism, and foreign tourists can greatly benefit from this. Since the last quarter of 2012, there are more available flights coming from Belfast and London, and fares are much cheaper, as well. With more flights offered by several companies, you can take advantage of lower airfares for budget-conscious travelers.

2. Turkey

The impressive Turkish Riviera is a charming European destination that fits your budget perfectly. In the past year, hotel rates went down by 25 percent, which makes this place a must-visit location for economical travelers. One of the best places to begin your tour is in Antalya, a charming city in the southwestern coast of Turkey. It offers fantastic sights and placid ambience that will soothe your sense. What's more, for about $100 per night, you can find lovely accommodation from waterfront resorts in the country.

1. Greece

Greece has experienced financial difficulties in the past years, which coincidentally makes it a budget-friendly destination for every traveler. In fact, you can find a cheap package that include plane fare and flight for two for only $2,800 - and that already includes taxes. This is indeed a great deal, as compared to the skyrocketing prices years back. Once you are in Greece, you can start exploring breathtaking beaches, historic ruins, and have a taste of authentic Greek dishes that will make your mouth water.

Have a blast in these top 10 budget destinations even when you are low on cash. By booking a trip to these exciting places in the world, you can boost your savings while giving yourself a relaxing time during your vacation.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

The Kitchen

Oh guys. Ohhhhh you guys. It’s been awhile, you know? It’s been awhile since I’ve knowingly seen a film with less than, say, 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, but sometimes I can be convinced! Gimme a great cast and as long as the movie’s not trying to be a comedy I’m willing to give it the good ol’ college try because at least I can usually find something to laugh at. So I went into The Kitchen fully expecting a less-than-stellar but no doubt perfectly adequate time at the cinema. You’ve got Oscar nominee Melissa McCarthy, prestige TV darling Elizabeth Moss, and breakout charisma machine Tiffany Haddish as three women taking charge of their husbands’ mob empire in 70s Hell’s Kitchen? What could go wrong??? Well...

Imagine watching a montage of every 70s era mob movie you can think of. Got it? Got it firmly in your head? You have now had the experience of watching this movie. It’s like it’s 1993 again and you’re fighting with your sister over the remote and one of you hits the fast forward button while the smell of Bagel Bites drifts through the rec room and as you’re struggling to get the remote back, the movie is unspooling in front of you, incoherent images and sudden jerky movements, and your mom yells at you to stop fighting or she was gonna take the movie back to Blockbuster and NO ONE was gonna get to watch it. It’s like that, but unfortunately someone DID watch the movie, and that someone was me. 

Some thoughts:

So first of all, I’d like to say that I enjoy Tiffany Haddish as a person. She seems like a real delight, and I think she’s working her ass off to get hers in Hollywood, which is fantastic and I wish her all the success in the comedy world. That being said. There’s uh...there’s a lot of eyebrow acting going on here. Just. So many eyebrows doing so many things. And a lot of nodding. People don’t nod this much in real life. She’s acting in scenes across from Oscar nominee Melissa McCarthy and usually that would tend to elevate a performance but for some reason, it’s all nods and eyebrows and I just think maybe gritty dramatic acting is not going to be her next successful career move. 

It’s not just her though. All the bit parts and character actors they hired to fill out the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood feel like they’re rejects from the first 10 minutes of a Law & Order episode. At one point, an old married woman says “Ain’t that right, Sal?” to her husband and he shushes her by swatting the air in front of him and grumbling “AAAAH.” THIS HAPPENS TWICE IN THE SCENE. I’ve seen termites that chew through scenery less. 

The overacting? Forgivable. The weak script? I could handle it. But the pacing of this movie is so relentlessly awful that it almost feels like performance art. There are - I counted - 3 scenes that last longer than approximately 90 seconds. Just imagine it. You’re watching a movie. You like the actors. The story’s ok. But something seems off. You don’t know what. The costumes are good. The performances are ok. The music is great. But something is wrong. It’s definitely wrong. Do you feel it? Is it bothering you? Have you had enough yet? Are you yearning for a descriptive sentence, an appositive phrase, anything with even one fucking comma in it to indicate a complex thought? Congratulations, now you know what it’s like to watch a 102-minute film that feels like it took 3 hours. 

Let it never be said that I can’t find the silver lining amongst this pile of dreck! Domnhall Gleeson is a goddamn delight as a slightly unhinged, sleepy eyed mob assassin who came back to Brooklyn cause he heard Elizabeth Moss’s husband was in jail. In between making googly eyes at her, there is what is by far the funniest, weirdest scene in the movie in which he methodically explains how to dismember the dead body of an attempted rapist currently residing in Elizabeth Moss’s bathtub. This scene may be my favorite black comedy short film of the year. 

Related: it’s fucked up but Gleeson is upsettingly attractive in this movie. These feelings are made even more complicated, because when he first shows up, I thought he was Elizabeth Moss’s estranged brother. But then they started making out and for a second I was having some VERY confusing feelings.

One thing the movie has in its favor - the soundtrack, while obvious, is banging. It’s 1978, if you don’t have a killer soundtrack it’s like you’re not even making an effort.

There are a few other shining spots. Melissa McCarthy does a fine job with the material she’s given. Elizabeth Moss at least seems to be having fun. It’s really not the actors’ fault that first-time director Andrea Berloff simply had no idea what to do with them. 

On a related tangent, I would just like to point out that a criticism that is always levied towards works of art created by women and POC and queer folks and any other minority is that people only think it’s good just because the person belongs to that particular group. Well, I’m going to point to this film every single time someone tries to pull that bullshit ever again - I’m sure Andrea Berloff was trying her best, and there may have been unseen drama going on with the studio or during the production that led to this frenetic pile of polyester, but the end result is not at all better just because she’s a woman. I wanted to like this, I really did, but a poorly made film is a poorly made film no matter who’s behind the camera.

Case in point - my favorite scenes in the movie have nothing to do with the main characters, but instead focus on a group of rival mobsters in Brooklyn, led by an oily and perfect Bill Camp. His tete a tete with our main ladies is one of the three scenes allowed to be long enough to be, you know, interesting. Plus, he has an entourage of other Brooklyn mobsters with him, including the Jersey Shore-lite guy that Ann Perkins makes out with during the Harvest Festival in Parks and Rec, who has my favorite line in the whole movie. When he’s explaining to Melissa McCarthy that there’s a hit out on her and the gals, he explains how he knew - “I was in a bar......lookin at some titties...when he asked me.” “Asked you what?” “To kill you.” It’s his wide-eyed good cheer and sheepishly boyish grin that really sells it. I’ve been laughing about it for days. 

Margo Martindale might be one of this generation’s finest character actresses, but she can’t do a New York Irish mob accent for shit.

Did I Cry? Oh god no. I should have - there’s major character death all OVER the place. But nah. I was still laughing about the titties. 

I hate that I know how good this could have been. These women deserved better, and there are tiny seeds of interesting ideas going on, but ultimately everything falls flat. 

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[lilflowerpot]

What are the Galra’s favorite method of entertainment? Do they make and enjoy music? If so, what does that music sound like? In the same vein, do they enjoy dancing? If they do dance, is it only in special circumstances or is it more casual? Sorry for the bombardment of questions lol, your world building is just so good I can’t get enough of it!!!!!!!

Surprising absolutely nobody, the Empire’s most popular pastime is going to one of the many amphitheaters to watch various Galra and other alien species rip each other to pieces! Gladiatorial combat is popular, of course, but aside from revelling in the mortality of various sentient beings from across the universe, Imperial amphitheaters are used for:

Hoverbike Races

Not only must you be the first rider to lap the arena 100 times, but you must do so while avoiding melee attacks from your fellow competitors! Guns / other ranged weapons are not allowed. Decapitation and other forms of deliberate dismemberment are strongly discouraged. No tampering with other participants vehicles. Do not, under any circumstances, tell Keith that this is a thing, because he would absolutely want to participate.

Venationes

This is a type of public spectacle that features an animal hunt, usually in tandem with a Gladiator fight. Traditionally, the aim would be for the participant to slay the beast, however more recently it’s become popular to see if one can subdue the animal without killing it, as this is arguably more difficult and therefore more impressive. Upon perfecting her first robeast, Haggar pitted it against a rising Champion to test its strength. Though the creature tore off one of the challenger’s limbs, and gouged out his eye, he was ultimately victorious, and this impressed Zarkon so much that he had Haggar heal the challenger, provide him with the finest military-grade prosthetics available, and then promoted him to the rank of Commander. This was Sendak.

Executions

I think this is self-explanatory. Usually, those sentenced to death are simply cast into the arena and forced to fight until they’re killed, but if the individual in question was of rank within the Empire, and found to be a traitor, their execution is long, painful, and very deliberate. This is the fate that would have ultimately befallen Thace, once discovered as a Blade of Marmroa.

Theatre

On a far lighter note, historical dramas are exceedingly popular. Great conquests, comedies, tragedies… even romances! Do most of them have a meticulously choreographed battle sequence in the final third? Yes. Do the performers occasionally get a little lost in the moment and spill blood? Absolutely. But that’s all part of the art form.

Sports

Various forms of non-lethal combat (shooting, archery, swordplay) as well as physical strategy games, and assault courses for teams and individuals alike.

Festivals!

Imperial amphitheaters are vast open spaces designed to host thousands of people. They’re ideal for large social gatherings and celebrations: the whole place can be decorated and filled with market stalls, an abundance of food and sweetwine, competitive games (both for the adults and children), traditional dances flawlessly performed by professionals, traditional dances stumbled through by tipsy amateurs, shadow puppetry, live music, bonfires, and everything else you could imagine!

Which leads me on to your last couple of questions - yes they do have music, and yes they love to dance! Galra music tends to have a strong underlying beat, and the most popular songs are lively and empowering with a deep bass. Their ears are sensitive, so they’re not terribly fond of high-pitched, whistling noises (wind instruments such as the flute are used sparingly, but when well-done can greatly enhance the experience and those who can play such things are considered very talented), but percussion and string instruments are common. Dance, being another form of physical expression, plays well into the general Galra disposition as a people who would rather be doing things than sitting around. Traditional Imperial dances tend to be comprised of swift, sharp movements and strong poses, and when performed well they almost seem as much a battle as they do an art. Dances can be casually performed, but it’s certainly more common - if not expected - to see them at some sort of social event (if only because many of them require a partner, and sometimes a series of partners).

[nekkyousagi]

Tea and Whispers

Drabble by Nekkyo Usagi  - Matsunaga Hisahide and Lady Soma

"Oh no, this will not do at all." Lady Soma huffed to herself, as she sorted through her collection of tea ceremony implements. "It has to be just right!" The occasion fast approaching required nothing but the finest Soma clan had to offer. Of course, to the outside eye the plan was merely a small and private meeting, a simple tea ceremony between close associates. But to Lady Soma, it was more than that. Even the most subtle of meetings brought with it many areas of expertise one could communicate. Such was the way of strategy in these times. But unlike the not so hidden drama and subterfuge of the court scene, this meeting was different.

Of course, it would not be the first time she had kept company with Matsunaga Hisahide. They had often come together in discussions over tea ceremony, herbal remedies, tonics and antiquities from across the sea, political intrigue, stories from the shogun's court, and exchanging almost competitive remarks over their two respective sons.  

Lady Soma fussed and picked through her sets of chado, striving to select the perfect pieces for seasonality and appropriateness, in hopes to impress this man so versed in the arts. There was a level of caution to be aware of along the selection process. She did not wish to appear as if she were trying too hard to impress. That would be embarrassing. As the day waned, and late afternoon approached, Lady Soma was finally finished with the needed preparations and awaited the arrival of the Lord of Yamato province.

"My my, Lady Soma, you have really outdone yourself. These implements are exquisite. You flatter an old hermit."

Lady Soma smiled gently, breaking from her poise for a moment, as she mixed the fragrant tea power into a gentle froth. "Mere trinkets compared to your splendid collection, Lord Hisahide." Lady Soma replied, handing him the tea bowl. "I am honored by your compliments."

Matsunaga paused, examining the colors and unique glazing of the tea bowl, a sharp eyebrow raised slightly in interest. Though simple in its design and shape, the color of the vessel intrigued him, a soft cool green, so like the storm frothed seas of Soma's coastlines. It brought a sense of calm and reflection to the senses. "Unique," Matsunaga mused, as he sipped with reverence. "An unusual pattern. I am curious to know it's origin."

Lady Soma straightened, glowing with pride. "If I may be so bold, my lord, you will not find this style of chado anywhere but within Soma clan. It was made with the soils of our land and sculpted with the hands of our own artisans."

"Is that so?" The lord of Yamato glanced at the vessel once more with curiosity, before sipping the last of its contents. "A fine cup it makes, my lady. Though I must say, it is quite a bold move for your small clan to invest in such a craft."

"You underestimate Soma clan, my lord. It is true that we are well known for our fine horses. But we must keep with the changing times. Perhaps there are days ahead when men will make war with tea and words instead of spears and swords?"

Matsunaga chuckled at that. "The war of tea has been raging for a thousand years. You are wise to invest in it. Perhaps these vessels will serve as messengers to those after us, the beauty and struggles of this era captured for all time." Matsunaga admired the tea bowl once more before placing it down before Lady Soma. He smiled knowingly. "Though not born of the Soma, I do admire your pride in it."

"Of course, my dear son Yoshitane is my greatest pride. I wish for nothing more than his success as clan leader."

"No doubt."

The tea ritual having been completed, Lady Soma relaxed her shoulders, easing the slight tension put there by her concentration while performing the ceremony. Though she had done it many times, being under the heavy, dark gaze of Matsunaga Hisahide, a man who could rival Sen no Rikyu in his knowledge of tea ceremony, felt intimidating. She could feel his hawk gold eyes counting every move, every turn of the hand, but she was determined to impress. Assuming she had performed admirably, judging by his relaxed tone, Lady Soma eased into the more casual conversing she'd been hoping for. Though their relationship had been distant and professional for the most part, she truly did admire him and, when not under scrutiny over etiquette, found his company...familiar.

"I must say, your generously instructing my dear Yoshitane in the way of tea has been indispensable." Lady Soma's eyes softened at the thought of her son. "He has gained much respect because of it, and for this I am grateful to you, Lord Hisahide."

"He has proven to be a...dedicated pupil. Both of our sons still have much to learn." Matsunaga replied, a tired expression crossing his countenance for a moment.

"So it would seem," Lady Soma gently put the tea implements to the side, and slid across the floor closing the distance between them slightly, though they were already in close proximity within the walls of a modest tea room. Soma clan did not have the opulence of the courts nor of Matsunaga's own house, but it was beautiful in its simplicity, and suitable for private meetings. "You know, dear Hisamichi did come to visit with my son Yoshitane, the other day. They rode horses together, practiced calligraphy and engaged in some sparring. It was so refreshing to see them getting along so well!" "Indeed?" Matsunaga replied. "I am pleased as well that Hisamichi has found such an admirable companion as the Lord of Soma."

Lady Soma coyly hid her smile behind her sleeve as she spoke. "You should have seen them, the way they kept company! Why, you would almost think they were brothers! Oho! Should we not be good parents and...get along better, as well?"

Keeping her eyes low, Lady Soma spoke softly, a sweetness in her voice, as she eyed the Lord of Yamato closely, her flirtatious nature suddenly getting the better of her. Lady Soma's dark eyes followed the lines and folds of his dark silk kimono, the way the sleeves lay over the curve of his strong arms and broad shoulders, how the collar hugged greedily against his the back of his neck, the sheen in his black oiled hair. Lord Matsunaga was a sight to behold, she had to admit. And in this close setting, she could feel the heat rise up the back of her neck, and her heart fluttered. But no, this was merely a meeting. It could lead to closer ties with the Matsunaga clan, who were in good favor with the Shogun's court. Ties to the shogun could provide benevolence for the Soma. She had to think of her clan's future...her son's future...not her own.

Her wandering eyes had not gone unnoticed and she suddenly found herself captured within his gaze. Eyes like molten gold, Matsunaga Hisahide regarded her with amusement. Her heart fluttered in her chest at the color of them burning in the dark, not unlike beast or a dragon. But behind that glow, she could see the sadness of a man who had loved and lost in the past, who suffered in silence, hiding his sorrows behind gold and jewels, fire and smoke.

“Ho...“ He smiled, the flames in his eyes dancing. "...an interesting proposal, Lady Soma."

A hard thump in her chest shook her whole body at that word, and Lady Soma fumbled to compose herself. "O-oh! Yes, well, ah...I-It is pleasant to be in the company of one who understands the arts and civility as well as you do. So many these days are more concerned with waving a sword around, they forget the importance of tradition and good character. We must ensure that our children inherit these qualities...it is our duty as parents, don't you agree?"

"Why yes. Desirable qualities honed over a lifetime." Matsunaga noticed her trying to evade his gaze now that she had caught it. A fine game to play. He leaned closer, admiring the intricate patterns of her kimono and its intricate seasonal patterns, the smoothness of her soft coral hair draping over small shoulders. The scent of incense permeated from him, cedarwood and pine, and her heart thundered in her chest as his frame neared, almost touching shoulders, his shadow casting over her. "Dignity...astuteness...benevolence....such attractive virtues are rare and precious commodities. Their value is without measure."

"You are now a collector of virtues as well as tangible treasures, Lord Hisahide?"

Matsunaga grinned. "One can gather all the treasure in the world, and still possess no virtue. They are the most sought after riches of all."

"Noble words. You have changed for the better, Lord Hisahide."

"Ho...have I changed, Lady Soma?"

"You were once called a villain. Surely a man, now chasing after virtues rather than gold, has no need for such a title?"

Matsunaga leaned closer, bringing his hand up to her face, tucking the loose strands behind her ear. Lady Soma's heart leaped into her throat at the sudden closeness, and her fingers trembled. He looked into her eyes with a warmth she had never seen before, but the fire still lingered, smoldering like a candle in the dim light.

"Perhaps you should still be wary of this...villain. Who knows whether or not he may try to steal away your heart?"

Lady Soma fought for breath, and forced herself to shyly look away from the fire in his eyes. "M-my heart...?"

This was becoming absurd. A woman of her age and status should not even be having such a private meeting with the lord of another province. They were colleagues, simply acquaintances. Had her flirtatious words given him the wrong impression? "Oh no! What desire would there be for that? I am merely an old widow..."

"My dear Lady Soma," Matsunaga Hisahide chuckled low and sultry, a playful smokiness in his tone as he gently took her hand. "You already know how much I treasure...antiquity."

A flustered huff gave away Lady Soma's sudden loss of composure. Her face felt hot, flushed redder than winter Camilla flower, as she glanced toward the open windows and moved herself away from under his shadow.

"O-oh my, h-how late in the day it had become! Lord Hisahide, I dare say I have kept you in my company for far too long! Do forgive me." She busied herself with stacking the cups and tea utensils, trying to hide her nervousness with laughter.

Matsunaga smiled at her jittery voice as she fought to regain her poise. "Do not be so concerned, my lady. Only an empty castle full of trinkets await me."

"Have you forgotten dear Hisamichi? Surely, after all this time, would you not wish to take every opportunity to spend time with your dear son!"

"Oh, I have made much time for him. But if you insist, I shall take my leave" Matsunaga rose to his knees and gracefully bowed. "I thank you for your gracious hospitality."

Lady Soma bowed low in grateful reverence to the Lord of Yamato as he slid on his knees, crouched through the small tea house door, and exited the room. A wave of relief crashed over her, as she sat back onto her heels. Her heart still pounded loudly in her chest, and she smacked it with a hand to try and still it's thunder. The still fresh memory of those molten gold eyes permeated her thoughts. Not even her late lord husband had ever looked at her with such fire. Her breath fluttered like a young maiden. Unbelievable! Her habit of flirtatious and flattering speech had won her many strategic battles of words and wit but this time...How greatly she had miscalculated...

"Oh, Lady Soma...I seem to have forgotten one thing." Her body jolted as Matsunaga's voice echoed back into the tea house, though he remained outside. "That cosmetic serum you so graciously bequeathed to me, is simply marvelous. Your tonic, I dare say, it feels like a spark of youth has been returned to me. The bottle is quite close to becoming empty, I am afraid. Would you be so kind...?" "Oh, of course, Lord Hisahide. It would be my pleasure. I shall have another sent to you forthwith." "Most gracious. Though, I was hoping that you might deliver in person, Lady Soma. I do so enjoy our little talks." Another deep wash of red clothed her cheeks as Lady Soma bowed low within the secluded teahouse, her heart still thundering wildly, as Matsunaga Hisahide slowly walked away down the stone path.

A great yet...wonderful, miscalculation, indeed.

[myhahnestopinion]

THE AARONS 2018 - Best TV Show

I stated last year that 2017 was the year Peak TV broke me, with too many shows spread across too many services, with many more on their way. 2018 was the year I learned to let go of the fact that I will never be able to watch every show, and to just be content with all the great shows I was able to catch. Here are the Aarons for Best TV Show:

#10. Barry (Season 1) – HBO

A simple premise that could initially be dismissed as prestige TV’s over-fascination with anti-heroes mixed with Hollywood’s over-fascination with itself, Bill Hader’s dark-comedy about a hitman who moves to LA to pursue an acting career quickly develops into a complex examination of post-war PTSD, a deconstruction of television tropes, and, simultaneously, just one of the funniest shows of the year. With veteran comedic talent like Henry Winkler and surprising break-outs like Anthony Carrigan to bolster a firing-on-all-cylinders Bill Hader as the titular character, Barry says “Yes, and…” to every opportunity to mix its hilarity with harrowing content to pitch-perfect results. While the premise, which feels dangerously close to slipping into Dexter territory by season’s end, may end up unsustainable at this level of quality, for now, Barry is a sure-fire hit, man.

#9. Dear White People (Season 2) – Netflix

More than weathering the backlash to its misnomer title, as well as the political climate that feeds into that backlash, Dear White People channels all that rage, frustration, misunderstanding, and fear into an oft-livid, oft-cathartic, and always witty season of television. Funny while never losing its firm focus, the most amusing aspect of Dear White People is perhaps the absolute joke it makes of the idea “diversity of thought” is mutually exclusive from “diversity of people” through the deft writing of its exceptional ensemble cast, who take turns shining in episodes that range from a groovy neo-noir mystery to an emotionally-eruptive bottle episode, culminating in an intriguing cliffhanger that suggests Dear White People has plenty left to address.

#8. Daredevil (Season 3) – Netflix

Just as Wilson Fisk clawed his way back up to being the King of Crime throughout the third season of the superhero drama, Daredevil clawed its way back up to the King of the Marvel-Netflix collaborations (and back onto this list following its nod all the way back in the 2015 Aarons) with a storyline based on the acclaimed “Born Again” comic-book run. While the show continues to have significant failings (including, most egregiously, the literal fridging of a female character in this latest batch of episodes), it’s easy for viewers to become blinded to them thanks to the chemistry of its main trio of friends, its renewed fixation on weighty thematic content, and, of course, its impressive fight sequences, including most notably the now-requisite one-take fight sequence that takes the form of an expansive prison riot this go-round. While the series has now been cancelled, solace can at least be found in the fact the show underwent such a creative rebirth before its untimely demise.

#7. American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (Season 2) – FX

Ryan Murphy’s anthology series may have been working with less well-known true-crime material in its second outing, but the resulting exploration of the sinister systemic forces that influence such shocking stories is no less resonant. True-crime has several difficult hurdles to clear to not feel like cheap exploitation, and American Crime Story strikes the right balance to its appropriately disturbing portrayal of the heinous acts by framing them through the devastating impact they have, not only on the direct victims, but on the whole of a society more concerned with reinforcing homophobic power structures than with the pain and horror such structures produce. The season’s reverse-chronological structure not only makes for compelling storytelling, but seems perfectly suited for the way in which the series traces the sins of America’s modern day to the crimes of its past, creating impactful television.

#6. Supergirl (Season 3b-4a) – CW

Supergirl’s continually-increasing confidence and complexity has sent the series soaring to new heights with its pointed fourth season, which distills its obvious real-world political influences into an effectively universal rumination on the insidious nature of bigotry, the trials of public perceptions, and the necessity of hope. It remains to be seen whether Supergirl can stick the landing with its lofty ambitions, which deserve appreciation regardless, but grounding its dynamic superhero storytelling in the inspirational performance of lead Melissa Benoist, as well as a further push for inclusivity with the introduction of television’s first transgender superhero Dreamer, makes for television that is quite super, girl.

Hey, it’s my awards show. Let me pun.

#5. Better Call Saul (Season 4) – AMC

Better Call Saul’s fourth season appeared to reach a breaking point in regard to its overlap in cast, stories, and timeline with its parent show, it’s an aspect that could be read as a significant flaw or as the greatest strength of a great season. It’s easy to lament the loss of the quirky lawyer comedy the show was in its earlier episodes, but this mourning is perhaps reflective of the soul-wrenching moral descent of Jimmy McGill, spiraling harder and faster in wake of last season’s tragic ending. It’s painful in all the right ways watching the excellent cast lead their characters to fates both known and unknown, making for a momentous (and still endearingly offbeat) season of television that recalls the finest moments of Breaking Bad, but just might be arguably better.

#4. BoJack Horseman (Season 5) – Netflix

In a series renowned for its gut-punches, the underlying message of BoJack Horseman’s fifth season might be the most difficult to grapple with: No amount of regret, good intentions, or tragic backstories excuses BoJack or entitles him to a happy ending. But that’s no reason not to continue to seek healing. Netflix’s animated adventures of anthropomorphic animals continues to be one of the most important and affecting examinations of toxic relationships, mental illness, and the cycles of abuse in art. The fifth season’s added meta-narrative allows the show to deconstruct the uncomfortability of its own representations, and the toxicity in its own fanbase. At a time when questions of abuse and reconciliation not just in Hollywood, but everywhere, rage in our cultural consciousness, BoJack Horseman provides a powerful way to grapple with these issues… and make them digestible through its quick-witted wordplay, visual gags, and general horsing around, as always. 

#3. Legends of Tomorrow (Season 3b-4a) – CW

If you were to travel back in time to just a few years ago, it would feel unbelievable how big the CW’s interconnected superhero universe has become... and that DC’s Legends of Tomorrow would lead the pack in quality. However, the once middling show really went the extra mile in spicing things up. Sending a talking, telepathic gorilla back in time to kidnap a young Barrack Obama? Combining elemental energies to form an enlarged Tickle-Me-Elmo rip-off named Beebo to take down a Time Demon? Having your Time Demon played by classical actor John Noble, and then having an episode in which the characters travel back in time to the set of the Lord of the Rings movies to record the voice of John Noble, playing Denathor, playing himself in order to trick a character into believing that John Noble’s John Noble voice is in fact the voice of John Noble’s Time Demon character?? It’s hard to believe that these episodes exist in any show, let alone all of them (and so much more) in one. This zany energy, accentuated by a game cast and an embrace of its misfit nature, reflected in the character’s diversity in both backgrounds and powers, have allowed the show to finally rightfully claim the title of legendary. 

#2. Atlanta (Season 2) – FX

Much like the last entry on this list, it’s impossible to know what to expect when one sits down to watch the latest episode of Donald Glover’s uncanny comedy Atlanta, which, when it first appeared on this list two years ago, was aptly described as like a never-ending Christmas. Whether banding together its group of rising comedic talent (including Zazie Beetz, Brian Tyree Henry, and Lakeith Stanfield) or spinning them off into their own madcap adventures, Atlanta continued to surprise and stupefy in style in its sophomore outing. Once again weaving insightful socio-economic commentary into sitcom premises cranked up to ten and funneled through an idiosyncratic vision, Atlanta’s quality remained as lush and bold as evergreen lantana.

That one’s not really a pun, but, again, this is my awards show, so no one can stop me.

AND THE BEST TV SHOW OF 2018 IS...

#1. The Good Place (Season 3) – NBC

When The Good Place began, it was met with a caution concerning its long term sustainability, but in its now third season, the show’s penchant for blowing up its own premise at every opportunity can be clearly seen as the confident strokes of a long-gestating story. Even within its absurd afterlife of bizarre predilections and oddball characters, the show never loses sight of its stirring humanistic core, which found new resonance in an inspirational third season premise that provides hope and happiness in the seemingly most dire of circumstances. While, as of this writing, it remains to be seen in what ways the show might again radically alter its make-up heading into the confirmed fourth season, but, based on the bonzer quality of the entire show thus far, it might be time to start considering that we’ve all been in the Good Place this whole time.

NEXT UP: THE 2018 AARONS FOR BEST TV EPISODE!

[lifejustgotawkward]

365 Day Movie Challenge (2018) - #212: A Star Is Born (1954) [176-min restoration] - dir. George Cukor

At some point in the near future I’ll get around to seeing the Bradley Cooper/Lady Gaga incarnation of A Star Is Born, so in the interim, I thought it would be a good idea to see the two musical versions of the story. (I am already familiar with the original drama from 1937, a tape of which was in my parents’ VHS collection when I was growing up.) Diving into the nearly three-hour-long musical adaptation from 1954 was as engaging as I expected, although its effectiveness was somewhat undercut by the fact that it seemed to follow its predecessor’s plot - or at least what I recalled of it - beat for beat, albeit with the added element of songs.

I am split as to how to judge the two lead acting performances. As a lifelong fan of Judy Garland, I appreciated how the film gave her a rare dramatic showcase as singer turned Hollywood idol Esther Blodgett (later “Vicki Lester”); on the other hand, director George Cukor seems to have pushed Garland to go so far over the top in her character’s most conventionally serious moments that the scenes don’t work as well as they ought to have. (Or at least not as well as I thought they did in The Clock a decade earlier.) In a way, even though the film is obviously a vehicle specifically tailored to Judy Garland’s unique abilities, James Mason’s performance is ultimately the better one. I’m a longstanding fan of Mason’s as well, though, so I’m equally biased in wanting to see the good in his achievements as washed-up former star Norman Maine. Mason skillfully presents both charm and despicableness in his portrayal of an alcoholic, and his final few scenes demonstrate why he deserved the Best Actor Oscar nomination he received. As Slant magazine describes James Mason’s finest scene: “Lying in bed at the end, when Mason has to give in to despair, he throws his whole head back and his jaw clenches; this kind of choking back of tears is common in life, but you rarely see actors do it, maybe because it’s so visually ugly. Mason has no such qualms; he’s signed up for the full-throttle Garland/Cukor experience, and he goes all-out for them, giving up nearly every bit of his own personal stock of sadness.”

Nowhere is A Star Is Born’s overinflated grandeur more prominently on display than in the “Born in a Trunk” sequence, a musical number so layered that viewers could be forgiven for losing track of what’s happening. It’s the Warner Bros. musical equivalent of a Russian nesting doll: Esther/Vicki goes to a movie theater to see her first starring role, during which her character in the film within the film sings “Trunk” but also remembers a montage of flashbacks from that character’s life into the scene, including renditions of tunes like “I'll Get By (As Long as I Have You)” and “My Melancholy Baby.” From an artistic standpoint, Garland’s star power is on full display, but it’s such a strange choice to cut the song “Born in a Trunk” into pieces, especially since it doesn’t have a terribly strong melody in the first place. I would instead lavish praise on the film’s greatest song, “The Man That Got Away,” but frankly, that performance also suffers by comparison since I am so enamored of Garland’s breathtaking rendition from her 1961 comeback concert at Carnegie Hall, a five-minute show-stopper that just might have been the single greatest live music event of the 20th century.

From time to time during Cukor’s film, I found myself recalling the novel and later cinematic adaptation of one of the most haunting condemnations of Hollywood, The Day of the Locust. I don’t know if writer Nathanael West saw the first A Star Is Born (he died in 1940), but I wonder what he would have thought of the Garland/Mason spectacle. Like the scenes that bookend the 1954 Star, in which frenzied crowds swarm around beloved movie stars (although in markedly different contexts), The Day of the Locust culminates in a horrifyingly violent riot on the red carpet at a movie premiere. Tinseltown was called that for a reason back in the day; it glittered and shone, but frequently those reflections bounced off of phony surfaces. Artifice was crucial to the concept of the “dream factory,” a machine that churned out disposable products more often than it made true art. Cukor’s A Star Is Born functions fairly well as entertainment, but it rings hollow more often than it feels genuine.

[secretradiobrooklyn]

New York State Tax Edition | 3.20 & 3.27.21

Secret Radio | 3.20 & 3.27.21 | Hear it here.

Liner notes by Evan (except * for Paige), Art by Paige

1. Antoine Dougbé - “Towe Nin” 

There was a while during which I tried to listen to every single T.P. Orchestre song that could be heard via discogs.com. They’ve released dozens of albums, probably close to a hundred if you count all of the albums attributed to various members, so that was a very daunting task… though really what it highlighted was the sheer volume of songs that just are not available to be heard in digital form. Those songs take on a sort of mythic quality as we listen to the huge variety of styles and periods that this band passed through in their prolific and very obscure career. But the ones that loom in the imagination the largest, for Paige and me, are the songs attributed to Antoine Dougbé. He writes for the band but doesn’t record with them, and in most cases Melomé Clement arranges the songs — and these are some of Melomé’s finest arrangements, in my opinion. “Towe Nin” isn’t a propulsive powerhouse like the Dougbé tracks on “Legends of Benin,” but it does have tons of style, and the band sounds extremely confident. My favorite detail of many — like, listen to the shaker solo in the middle! — on this track is the final passage, where three voices suddenly meld into an extremely Western, Beatle-y harmonic finale (with an unresolved final chord). Where did that come from?! It blows my mind to think about how these guys were hearing music and writing music in Benin in the ’70s…

2. Hürel - “Ve Ölüm” - “Tip Top” soundtrack

The other night we watched a DVD that was part of our Non-Classic French Cinema Program that Paige has been drafting for us, featuring movies she figures French people would know but that didn’t get exposed to American audiences. This one was… baffling — the problems were French cultural ones that we really didn’t grok at all. Which was kind of cool. An odd detail was that this song featured prominently throughout the trailer and the film, though we couldn’t figure out, like, why. But we knew immediately that it was awesome.

And… this track sent us down the rabbit hole of Anatolian rock, which turns out to be Turkish psych music from the ’60s & ’70s. We’ve played Erkin Koray’s “Cemalim” and thought that was cool, but had no idea it was a burgeoning scene with tons of creative writers and amazing songs. We’ve spent a lot of time checking out Anatolian music since, and I can tell we’re just getting started. So: thank you to a giant French crowdpleaser movie for the Anatolian clue-in!

3. They Might Be Giants - “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes” 

I was not expecting to experience a They Might Be Giants renaissance at this point in my life, but this is just further proof that time has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. This song tells me a lot about what I like now by re-presenting what I liked then, showing off completely new facets I hadn’t yet appreciated. This song is lousy with insights… including that super Slanted Malkmus-y scream at the very end!)

4. Jacqueline Taïeb - “La fac de lettres”

Jacqueline Taïeb is probably my single favorite French pop artist, even though her body of work is way smaller than most of the runners-up. (I would say the closest contender is Jacque Dutronc.) She’s so full of irrepressible character, it just bubbles up out of the vocal performances. Her biggest hit was “7 heures du matin,” in the character of a bored, rock-obsessed teenager trying to figure out what to wear to school that morning, and “La fac du lettres” kind of picks up the thread: now she’s in the auditorium at school, learning about British history — the invasion of Normandy, the Hundred Years’ War — and pining to get back to the recording studio. 

5. La Card - “Jedno zbogom za tebe”

I didn’t know what circumstance would call for Yugoslavian synth pop warped by endless cassette plays, but it turns out that driving a thousand miles west in one fell swoop requires a certain amount of ’80s vibes. Turns out Yugoslavia had a pretty rich punk/new wave scene in the ’80s, and even though the songs were often critical of the Communist government, they were not only allowed to be played but, to a certain extent, supported by the government, and there were also several magazines covering punk, new wave, ska (!), and rock music in Yugoslavia.

6. Suicide - “Shadazz” 

Maybe it’s the band name, but I was never able to find a place for myself in the music of Suicide, despite how many bands I dig who cite them. But Paige pulled this track, and now I’m starting to get it. I also really like how the kick drum fits against the cymbal-ish sound loop that leads the percussion. 

7. Girma Beyene - “Ene Negn Bay Manesh”

Man, Ethiopia was swingin so hard in the ’60s and ’70s! This track combines the organ-driven band dynamic with a smooth Western vocal croon that I’ve never quite heard before. 

8. Os Mutantes - “Trem Fantasma” 

I still can’t believe that I haven’t been listening to this album my whole life — it’s so freaking amazing from beginning to end. Every song feels like its own complete cinematic experience, with narrative twists and turns, a high-drama dynamic, and each voice taking on a host of characters, independently and together. “Trem Fantasma” is an entire album contained in a single song — and that’s what it’s like with every song on their debut album. PLUS it’s got the coolest possible cover. Truly, I’m still in awe at this album. It makes me wonder: what did the Beatles think of this record?! 

9. The Beatles - “Think for Yourself” 

This is one of those songs that I feel like established whole new harmony relationships in Western pop… and this likely isn’t even one of their top 50 songs for most Beatles fans. Apparently, they had the main tracks recorded already — this is one of George’s first songs, it’s just 1965 — and they threw the harmonies on in “a light-hearted session” between two other things they were in the middle of, because they were under pressure to get this album finished. That’s amazing! Also, this song is the first one to use a fuzzbox on a bass: Paul played one (excellent) part on clean bass, and another one one all fuzzed out, which became the lead guitar — in fact, John had a guitar part but scrapped it to play an organ instead. What a righteous song to kick off the concept of lead bass guitar! That was Harvey Danger’s big compositional secret: Aaron wrote and played most of the lead guitar parts on bass, and had a fantastic sense of what he could do with the tone of his instrument. 

10. Erkin Koray - “Öksürük” 

Anatolian rock! It has its own note scale, that gives it this Eastern tonality while working in Western rock shapes and with what feels like a very relatably wry sense of humor. Erkin Koray is right up there in the firmament for us — the whole genre is full of welcome discoveries, but Koray is a really unique guitarist and composer beyond any particular genre. This track plays up his lead guitar passages while maintaining a pretty undeniable disco downbeat, and his vocal delivery strikes me as more French than anything. And yet the whole thing is so deeply and fully Turkish.

11. Vaudou Game - “Pas Contente”

We’ve been so head-over-heels for Beninese funk and rock from the ’60s and ’70s that our fantasies about that music are completely separated from any music happening today. But Vaudou Game is led by Peter Solo, a Togolese musician who grew up on the sound of T.P. Orchestre and decided to work with it himself. His band is handpicked and mostly I think French — the sound is I think a really impressive take on classic Beninese style but with very modern feel. This track is from 2014. I’m looking forward to digging in some more, because it’s a thrill to find a live wire in this music style. 

12. Cut Off Your Hands - “Higher Lows and Lower Highs”

This is one of my favorite tracks from the last 5 years. I get so absorbed in the way the bass part relates to all of the other pieces. The bass is absolutely the reason this song works — just tune into it and check out how the whole world of the song bends to accommodate it.

The Gang of Roesli - “Don’t Talk about Freedom”

Years ago, when I took over Eleven magazine, there was a giant stack of mailed-in CDs in the editor’s office. I didn’t hang onto many of them, but there was a set from Now-Again Records that just looked like something we should spend more time with. Turns out that one of them was “Those Shocking Shaking Days,” a collection of trippy, heavy Indonesian rock. I didn’t get it at the time, but lately I’ve certainly been picking up what they were laying down. The baroque keys, the vocal la’s, the hitched-up bass and guitar, that little bass lick, the harmonica… I would love to have been around for the session this came from. 

13. Warm Gun - “Broken Windows” - “PAINK”

More paink from France, in the mode of Richard Hell, short sweet and rowdy.

14. Duo Kribo - “Uang” - “Those Shocking Shaking Days”

This is another amazing Indonesian track — amazing for a completely different reason than The Gang of Roesli. Such a note-perfect rendition of chart-topping American (and German — what’s up, Scorps?) rock, but their own song nonetheless! This song attracts me, repels me, attracts me, repels me, on and on in equal measure. To me the kicker is the outro section, which sounds like something Eko Roosevelt came up with… thousands of miles and many genres away from Duo Kribo.

15. The Real Kids - “All Kindsa Girls”

Even as the theoretical pleasures of Facebook overall continue to recede, I find myself glad of a FB group somebody let me in on: Now Playing. The only stipulation about posts is that you have to include a photo of the actual record that you are actually playing — beyond that, it could be any genre, any period, whatever. People post interesting albums all the time, and will often write up their thoughts or memories about the band when they do. Boston’s The Real Kids just sounded like something I should know about, so I hunted it down and man, they were not wrong. Not everything on the album was for us, but right from the African-sounding guitar intro, “All Kindsa Girls” certainly was. Lead guitar/vocal guy John Felice was an early member of the Modern Lovers and a fellow VU devotee with his neighbor Jonathan Richman — he also spent time as a Ramones roadie. I’m tickled by how much the penultimate guitar riff sounds like something off the first Vampire Weekend album, and the final riff was destined to become a punk classic.

16. De Frank Professionals - “Afe Ato Yen Bio” 

We broadcast the first part of this episode from the cockpit of the van rocketing between New York and Illinois. Not long after we got here to the woods, a package showed up from Analog Africa with our new “Afro-Beat Airways” reissue, as well as their first indispensable T.P. Orchestre collection, “The Skeletal Essences of Afro-Funk 1969-1980.” We’re celebrating that record with this absolutely killer song by De Frank Professionals, a band about whom very little is known. I am in love with every part of this song, from the sixth-beat hi-hat accent to those tandem vocal parts and that beautiful guitar tone. This track has quickly risen to being one of our all-time faves. Bless Samy Ben Redjeb and everyone at AA for doing the work to find these amazing recordings, track down the musicians, pay them for rights to release, and making these miraculous finds available!

17. Ros Serey Sothea - “Shave Your Beard” 

Concurrent to our African fascination has been the gorgeous and thoroughly tragic revelation of Cambodia’s richly talented and expressive rock scene that was utterly destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. There were so many amazing musicians in the scene, but certainly the most flat-out amazing voice was Ros Serey Sothea’s, as this track makes clear. I also love just how sophsticated and innovative these Cambodian song arrangements are — they really take Western ’60s pop into a new world, with intricate guitar parts and really solidly satisfying instrumental structures.

18. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - “O.N.E.”

This is a hard band to keep up with, for a variety of reasons — they can be so intense, and their guitar-rock prog virtuosity can get a bit off-putting if you’re not ready for it. This track, though, reminds me of a host of favorite reference points from the last twenty years of rock. This recording makes me wish that they could have played with Bailiff in Chicago in 2012 — I think everyone would have gained a lot from that connection.

Also, the video is so beautiful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkZd2lBQb2c

19. Ettika - “Ettika” - “Chebran: French Boogie Vol. 2”

French culture is shot through with African references. Ettika was an early ’80s hit with musicians besotted by synths and American rap styles. This band was produced by a noted French composer who was married to a Cameroonian and very much into African groove. This “French Boogie” collection is full of African-style gems heavily refracted through the decade’s new technology.

20. Spice Girls - “Wannabe”

I yield the floor.

*As I mention in the “broadcast” it just felt right. That confident opening line. What are guilty pleasures? How do you feel listening to this song? And y’all already have our phone numbers, so that’s no surprise!

- The Gang of Roesli - “Don’t Talk about Freedom”

21. Steely Dan - “Reelin’ in the Years”

Gut reaction: do you actually love this song? Do you actually hate this song? Do you find that your reaction changes moment by moment within the experience of listening to the song, where your personal experience clashes with your cultural memory associations? Me too.

22. Zia - “Kofriom” - “Helel Yos”

I don’t remember how I got to this track, but holy smokes am I glad we did! It’s pretty freakin hard to find out anything about Zia. The cover of this album portrays an older man with dyed hair and a white blazer over a black collar… but I did actually find a video of Zia performing this song on Iranian public television, and he looks considerably younger and less flash than that. In fact, he’s sporting a tan three-piece suit with a wide tie, all alone on a heavily mirrored stage, and he kind of looks like he might be running for a senate seat in his spare time. It’s a very weird effect. But meanwhile: this whole album is super cool, very expressive of an emotional state I definitely don’t understand. The handclaps are absolutely top notch in the rhythm — they remind me of Ayalew Mesfin’s awesome “Gedawo.”

23. Jo LeMaire & Flouze - “Je Suis Venue te Dire Que je M’en Vais”

Doesn’t this sound like something you could have had intense adolescent feelings to? 

*I first heard this song in the trailer for Boy Meets Girl  and then later in the film. (Not my personal favorite Carax but definitely great, and the music and sound design is top notch.) Then my French teacher suggested I check out a song, and it was this song. So that’s neat!

24. Rung Petchburi - “Pai Joi” - “Thai? Dai!: The Heavier Side of the Lukthung Underground”

We’re still just getting to know Lukthung music, but for the last couple weeks we’ve been getting deeper and deeper into Thai rock, psych, surf and funk. It’s a rich vein, and it shares some really interesting characteristics with seemingly unrelated regions, like Turkey and Ethiopia.

Black Brothers - “Saman Doye”

I’m telling you, “Those Shocking Shaking Days” will improve your life immediately.

25. Nahid Akhtar - “Dil de Guitar” - from “Good Listener Vol 1,” 

This collection just came out this month, which was a surprise because we just stumbled across this track by reading about Nahid Akhtar elsewhere. What an AMAZING track! This was recorded and released in Pakistan in 1977, and I can’t even imagine how they wrote it, much less recorded it. The drum loops seem like they hadn’t been invented yet… but there they are, cranked up to their highest speed. It’s a collage of ideas and hooks, all just crammed together into a single song. the main hook reminds me a bit of “Jogi Jogi,” our favorite Pakistani song on WBFF thus far. I feel like I could listen to this song a hundred times and hear something new each time. Akhtar’s voice is so expressive and confident in those long held notes — and who is that ogre doing call and response with her? So weird. So cool.

[classicfilmfreak]

New Post has been published on http://www.classicfilmfreak.com/2018/05/31/the-keys-of-the-kingdom-1947-starring-gregory-peck-and-thomas-mitchell/

The Keys of the Kingdom (1947) starring Gregory Peck and Thomas Mitchell

“All atheists are not godless men.  I knew one who I hope may now be in heaven.” — Father Chisholm

With its resources as one of Hollywood’s three most prestigious studios of the 1940s, 20th Century-Fox would occasionally, often successfully, go all-out on certain productions, utilizing its very best directors, cinematographers, screenwriters and composers—among composers, there was only one.  These films were usually long, lavish and expensive, with large casts, and on a monumental, sometimes portentous subject, based on famous, certainly popular novels.

These extravaganzas were spread out over the 1940s.  The Grapes of Wrath and Brigham Young were released in that first year.  In ’41 another John Ford film, How Green Was My Valley, then The Song of Bernadette in ’43.  After a brief respite, The Razor’s Edge in ’46.

With the advent of television, with theater receipts rapidly decreasing, in ’47 Captain from Castile lost about a million dollars on its initial release.  This marked something of an end to the traditional Fox prestige picture—temporarily anyway until the next decade, beginning with The Robe (1953).

The four directors represented in these six films were top echelon—at the pinnacle, of course, John Ford in two of the films; Henry King, Tyrone Power’s perennial director, in another two; Henry Hathaway, ideally suited for “outdoor” stories, in one; and Edmund Goulding, the director of five Bette Davis films, in the last.  No runts of the litter here.

And among the cinematographers?  Arthur Miller in all but Valley, which was shot by Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, 1941, and The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946), and Castile, partly shot by an uncredited Joseph LaShelle.

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The list of screenwriters in these movies, again, includes some of the finest in the business: Nunnally Johnson, Philip Dunne, George Seaton and Lamar Trotti in two of the films.

The one artist these six films have in common?  They were all scored by the studio’s resident composer, the creator of the 20th Century-Fox fanfare, Alfred Newman.  He was Oscar-nominated for three of these, and won for Bernadette.

Fox respected and guarded its famous trademark—that towering art deco company name and the gleaming searchlights thrust forward by the fanfare—and The Keys of the Kingdom is one of only a few of the studio’s films which begins without the fanfare, though the logo is shown.

With this kind of talent and resources, The Keys of the Kingdom began production in February of 1944.  Strongest ingredients first.  From the already excellent source material, A. J. Cronin’s best-selling 1941 novel, screenwriters Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Nunnally Johnson crafted natural, yet aesthetic dialogue.  The key asset of the pair was Mankiewicz, who had a sensitivity for words—witness his scripts for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950).

The cinematographer was, again, Arthur Miller and the composer of the score one Alfred Newman, of some repute.

Although the film was nominated for four Oscars, including best score and black and white cinematography, director John M. Stahl was something of an odd man out, and unheralded—and not without reason.  His biggest flop, Parnell (1937), and M-G-M’s biggest up to that time, turned its star, Clark Gable, against costume dramas, a main reason for his reluctance to tackle Gone With the Wind (1939).  Stahl, in this case however, marshaled all the various aspects of the film—religion, humor, tragedy and war—into one cohesive whole.

In only his second film—following the war-set Days of Glory (1944)—the young Gregory Peck proves himself as the dedicated and humble missionary-priest to China.  In the two-hour plus film, in which he is on screen most of the time, he renders a sincere, believable performance, ranging from soft-spoken compassion to almost retaliatory loathing.

As the film begins, Monsignor Sleeth (Cedric Hardwicke) has come to the Scottish village of Tweedside to visit elderly Father Francis Chisholm (Peck), who has, only a year before, returned from a lifetime in China.  Having already shaken a disapproving head when Francis appears from a fishing excursion with rods and reels, Sleeth later informs him that he should retire, that the “peculiar” managing of his parish has raised concerns.

When the monsignor retires that night, he finds Father Chisholm’s diary, which initiates a flashback. . . .

Young Francis (Roddy McDowell) is orphaned when both his parents (Ruth Nelson and Dennis Hoey) are swept away in a raging river.  Francis lives with distant cousins, whose little daughter Nora (Peggy Ann Garner) he later loves as an adult (Jane Ball).

When, as a young man, he leaves for the Holywell seminary, two old friends, carefree Willie (Thomas Mitchell) and proud Rev. Angus Mealey (Vincent Price), see him off at the train station.  Willie is dismayed when Francis throws back the bottle of whiskey he threw to him.

At Holywell, another old friend, kindly Rev. Hamish MacNabb (Edmund Gwenn), counsels Francis’ doubts about becoming a priest.  They go fishing together.  “It was fine of the Lord,” MacNabb says, “to put all the little fishes in the brooks and to send me here to catch them.”

Soon, news arrives—something is wrong concerning Nora, and Francis rushes home to find she has died.  Back at Holywell, when MacNabb suggests Francis would make an ideal missionary to China, he accepts.

Arriving in Paitan, the naive priest believes the waving crowds and cheers are for him, only to discover they are for the town’s mandarin.  Francis finds the church has been destroyed by a flood and left unrebuilt by the so-called converted Christians.  His weakened faith is restored when a young traveler, Joseph (Benson Fong), offers to help.

The mandarin, Mr. Chai (Leonard Strong), sends an envoy that his son is seriously ill, the Chinese medicines having proven ineffectual.  Francis’ operation on the boy’s infected arm cures him.  When Francis goes unthanked, he ends a brief personal prayer with “ . . . but they are ungrateful and You know it!”

When Mr. Chai eventually arrives to thank him and offers, favor for favor, to become a Christian, Francis rejects him, saying Christianity is not a “habit” one puts on without belief.  Later, Mr. Chai offers, free and clear, land on the Hill of the Brilliant Green Jade and the workmen and material to build a Christian school.

Later arrive an arrogant reverent mother, Maria-Veronica (Rose Stradner), and Willie with medical supplies.  During a battle between the Republic and Imperial forces he is wounded and dies, thanking Francis for not trying to convert him.

With the mission nearly destroyed, Francis joins a local army general (Richard Loo) in destroying the enemy’s cannon.

Soon arrives Angus, now a monsignor and grown arrogant with his new position.  He announces that the church cannot pay for a new mission, that Francis’ conversion rate is the lowest on church records.  Maria-Veronica apologies to Francis for her “shameful” behavior and says, compared with Angus’ condescending regard for the Chinese, his is the true faith.

As time passes, the mission flourishes, only now Francis has competition—a Methodist church comes to Paitan.  He sets out to meet the minister (James Gleason) and his wife (Anne Revere) and finds them friendly and agreeable.  At last, the time comes for Father Francis to leave.  In a grand farewell, this time the crowd’s waves and cheers are for him. . . .

The flashback over, the next day Monsignor Sleeth tells Francis that he has spent the night reading his diary, and that he will relay to the bishop nothing that could in any way affect his hopes for his parish.

While supported by a perfect cast, Gregory Peck makes the film his own.  His Oscar nomination for Best Actor was the third for the film.  Not an especially strong year for actors, Ray Milland won—it could be said easily—for The Lost Weekend, with the Academy’s proven penchant for alcoholics and dying people.  What chance, then, could a saintly, unglamorous priest, however well acted, have against the histrionic, hallucinating role of a drunk?

After three more nominations, Peck would finally win, in 1962, for playing another compassionate man, another kind of “father,” that of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.

It should be remembered, 20th Century-Fox’s gamble on Peck, with a single previous film credit, was no greater than Warner Bros.’ on Errol Flynn in their big production of Captain Blood (1935).  The newcomer had had only five previous roles, two uncredited, in five insignificant movies.

Against the current trend for quite different films, The Keys of the Kingdom is all things today’s films aren’t—slow-moving, patient, expository, with long scenes of dialogue and character building.  The soft-hued scene, for example, between the elderly Francis and Maria-Veronica as they sit at a table and discuss his accomplishments and forthcoming departure lasts over six minutes, with little cutting and no moving about to “enliven things” with various camera set-ups.  Some viewers may think the film sentimental, which maybe it is, but this scene is most moving, and it’s only one of many like it in an inspiring film.

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My Top Ten Favorite Movies of 2017 (So Far)

[Please note: I have not yet seen “I, Tonya” or “The Post,” both of which I am excited to see.]

This is my absolute favorite time of the year for movies! Such powerful stories, beautiful characters, and fascinating worlds to be heard, met, and explored.

10. Wonder

A delightful story about mistakes, reconciliation, and empathy. Split up and told from the point of view of four different protagonists, it largely centers around a child with a facial ‘deformity,’ but very quickly turns into a gentle reflection on common life struggles. 

9. The Divine Order

A small rural town’s struggle to embrace the women’s suffrage movement in 1970s Switzerland where women are treated as objects, servants, punching bags, and mere reproductive conduits. A lot of heart, however, beats on. 

8. The Square

A quirky light comedy about modern art, hypocrisy, interpersonal alienation that takes a dark provocative turn mid-way, asking you to question your own humanity.

7. A Ghost Story

An odd existential rumination on life’s meaning, or perhaps it’s ultimate meaninglessness, with almost no dialogue and a lead character that is forever hidden behind a cartoonish ghost sheet. Yet, personal feelings of love and loss abound in this ridiculous scenario. 

6. The Breadwinner

Storytelling at its finest. This animated movie centers around a girl immediately before the US invasion of Afghanistan. Her learned, kind father is arrested, and so is forced to dress like a boy in order to work and support her family in the Taliban-ruled Kabul. I wanted virtually all male characters to be castrated, as it doesn’t shy away from rape threats, beatings of women, police brutality, violence, and outright murder. Her dreams are met harshly with reality, and you root for her despite knowing her likely future.

5. It

So underrated by the awards shows! I would classify it more as a comedy/drama than a horror film. Every single adult character was irredeemable. The religious authorities, the civil authorities, the school authorities, the elders, the parents--all detached and abusive. I would say more, but I’m sure everyone here as already seen it.

4. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

This (heavily Catholic) movie overwhelmingly touched on all my favorite themes of justice, reconciliation, structural sin, redemption, (literally) life itself. It’s a lot to tackle but the directing is beyond competent to deliver. It’s about a woman who lost her daughter to a tragic murder and her actions to try to find the murderer through unconventional means. Frances McDormand at her height. Highly recommend!

3. Lady Bird

Beautiful! (Also heavily Catholic.) This movie does not hold back with the memorable dialogue that feels at once loving and soul-piercingly biting. A coming-of-age tale about figuring herself out, the concomitant confusion and disorientation, and the sometimes neglected love along the way. Every character is well developed and deeply flawed, but shown in a way to make you feel like you know them and want them to succeed. Superb performances, best acting of the year, imo.

2. Call Me by Your Name

(Before I say anything else, I would like to point out the extreme discomfort I have with this movie’s possible normalization of a gay relationship between a 17-year-old and a 30-something-year-old.) The vulnerability, the curiosity, the exploration, the Sufjan Stevens original, the timeless truths. This movie does not sugarcoat in any way and the result is a heartbreaking story of first love and first loss. The ending monologue by the father to his devastated son is one of the most touching I’ve heard. (It felt like he could’ve been talking directly to me.) This film’s story will stick with me the rest of my life. (Needless to say, I cried a couple times throughout.)

1. The Florida Project

Unlike anything I have ever before seen. By far my favorite movie of the year. The storytelling is raw, the characters real, the situations heartbreaking, the unmitigated reality provocative. Told almost entirely from the point of view of brilliant child actors out of a live-in motel in Florida, its striking contrast between stubborn humanity amid such abject poverty and all its abuses warms your heart as much as it breaks it. The whole time I felt like stepping in and helping in any way I could, but alas the viewer’s feelings of helplessness are only matched with the crippling helplessness portrayed on screen. One of the best movies I have ever seen. (Again, I cried a handful of times throughout.)

If any one of you sees a movie and wants to talk about it, feel free to message me! 

[uomo-accattivante]

A long time ago, a grade-schooler got his hands on a spaceship. He followed the assembly instructions as best he could, snapping on the cannons, the landing gear, the tiny interstellar-chess table. Soon enough, Rian Johnson was holding his very own Millennium Falcon. “The first thing I did,” he recalls, “was throw it across the room, to see how it would look flying.” He grins. “And it broke.”

Johnson grew up, went to film school, made some good stuff, including the entertainingly twisted 2012 sci-fi drama Looper. He’s nearly 44 now, though his cherub cheeks and gentle manner make it easy to picture the kid he was (too easy, maybe – he’s trying to grow back a goatee he shaved); even his neatly pressed short-sleeve button-down has a picture-day feel. In late October, he’s sitting in an office suite inside Disney’s Burbank studios that he’s called home for many months, where a whiteboard declares, “We’re working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in case you forgot).” Johnson is the film’s writer-director, which means he ended up with the world’s finest collection of replacement toys, including a life-size Falcon set that nearly brought him to tears when he stepped onto it. He treated it all with what sounds like an intriguing mix of reverence and mischief – cast members keep saying nothing was quite what they expected. “I shook up the box a little bit,” he says, with that same grin.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everything is broken. In the months since the franchise stirred back to life in 2015’s The Force Awakens, it has felt rather like some incautious child grabbed civilization itself and threw it across the room – and, midflight, many of us realized we were the evil Empire all along, complete with a new ruler that even latter-day George Lucas at his most CGI-addled would reject as too grotesque and implausible a character.

Weirdly, the saga saw it all coming – or maybe it’s not so weird when you consider the Vietnam War commentary embedded in Lucas’ original trilogy, or the warnings about democracy’s fragility in his prequels. In the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, a revanchist movement calling itself the First Order assembles in Triumph of the Will-style marches, showing the shocking strength of an ideology that was supposed to have been thoroughly defeated long ago. What’s left of the government is collapsing and feckless, so the only hope in sight is a band of good guys known as the Resistance. Familiar, this all sounds.

“It’s somewhat a reflection of society,” acknowledges the saga’s new star, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, and who has gone from unknown London actress to full-blown movie star nearly as fast as her character went from desert scavenger to budding Jedi. “But also it is escapism, because there are creatures and there are people running around with fucking lasers and shit. So, I think, a wonderful mix of both.”

And the worse the world gets, the more we need that far-off galaxy, says Gwendoline Christie, who plays stormtrooper honcho Captain Phasma (as well as Game of Thrones’ Brienne of Tarth): “During testing times, there’s nothing wrong with being transported by art. I think we all need it. Many of us are united in our love for this one thing.”

The Last Jedi, due December 15th, is the second episode of the current trilogy, and advance word has suggested that, as in the original middle film, The Empire Strikes Back, things get darker this time. But Johnson pushes back on that, though he does admit some influence from the morally ambiguous 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which is funny, because Lucas considered the Seventies TV show a rip-off and urged a lawsuit – long since settled – against it). “That’s one thing I hope people will be surprised about with the movie,” Johnson says. “I think it’s very funny. The trailers have been kind of dark – the movie has that, but I also made a real conscious effort for it to be a riot. I want it to have all the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, which is not just the Wagner of it. It’s also the Flash Gordon.”

As of late October, almost no one has seen it yet, but Johnson seems eerily free of apprehension about its prospects. He exuded a similar calm on set, according to Adam Driver, who plays Han and Leia’s Darth Vader-worshipping prodigal son, Kylo Ren. “If I had that job, I would be stressed out,” he says. “To pick up where someone left off and carry it forward, but also introduce a vocabulary that hasn’t been seen in a Star Wars movie before, is a tall order and really hard to get right. He’s incredibly smart and doesn’t feel the need to let everyone know it.” (“It felt like we were playing the whole time,” says Kelly Marie Tran, cast as the biggest new character, Rose Tico.) A few weeks after we talk, Lucasfilm announces that Johnson signed on to make three more Star Wars films in the coming decade, the first that step outside of the prevailing Skywalker saga, indicating that Disney and Lucasfilm matriarch Kathleen Kennedy are more than delighted with Last Jedi. And Kennedy’s not easily delighted, having recently replaced the directors of a Han Solo spinoff midshoot and removed original Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow in favor of Abrams’ return.

The Force Awakens’ biggest triumph was the introduction of new characters worth caring about, led by Rey and Kylo Ren, plus the likes of John Boyega’s stormtrooper-defector Finn, Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron and more. Kylo Ren (born Ben Solo) lightsaber-shanked Harrison Ford’s Han, depriving Johnson of one coveted action figure – but the film left us with Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, now the general who leads the Resistance, and the climactic reveal of Mark Hamill’s now-grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The Last Jedi will be Fisher’s last Star Wars movie. In the waning days of the cruel year of 2016, she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane, dying four days later. Less than a month afterward, 500,000 or so people assembled in Washington, D.C., for that city’s Women’s March, and Leia was everywhere, in posters bearing her doughnut-haired image circa 1977, with accompanying slogans (“A Woman’s Place Is in the Resistance” was, perhaps, the best).

Johnson had grown close with Fisher, and is glad to hear that I visited her psychedelically decorated Beverly Hills house a couple of years back, where she did almost an entire hilarious interview prone in bed. Afterward, she cheerily cracked jokes about drugs and mental illness in front of a visiting Disney publicist. “You got to experience a little bit of that magical sphere that she created,” says Johnson, who went over the script with her in that same bedroom. “I’m happy I got to poke my head into that, briefly, and know her even a little bit.”

He left her part in the film untouched. “We didn’t end up changing a thing,” says Johnson. “Luckily, we had a totally complete performance from her.” So it is now Abrams who has to figure out how to grapple with Fisher and Leia’s sudden absence. (He is characteristically gnomic on the matter: “It’s a sad reality,” he says. “In terms of going forward … time will tell what ends up getting done.”)

Overall, Johnson enjoyed what seems like an almost unfathomable level of autonomy in shaping The Last Jedi’s story. He says no one dictated a single plot point, that he simply decided what happens next. And he’s baffled by fans who are concerned by the idea that they’re “making it up as we go along”: “The truth is, stories are made up! Whether somebody made this whole thing up 10 years ago and put it on a whiteboard and we all have to stick to that, or whether we’re organically finding it as we move forward, it doesn’t mean that any less thought is being put into it.”

Mark Hamill’s single scene in The Force Awakens lasts all of one minute, and he doesn’t say a thing. But it’s an indelible piece of screen acting with real gravitas, from an underrated performer who had become better known for Broadway and voice-over work – he’s been the definitive animated Joker since the early Nineties. (“With voice-over,” Hamill says, “I thought, ‘This is great! I can let myself go to hell physically! I don’t have to memorize lines!’”) As Rey approaches him on the lonely mountaintop where’s he’s presumably spent years studying the Jedi equivalent of the Talmud, Luke Skywalker’s bearded face cycles through grief, terror and longing.

“I didn’t look at that as ‘Oh, this is going to be my big chance,’” says Hamill, who has just shown up at Johnson’s offices and plopped down next to him, carrying a large thermos of coffee in the right hand that Darth Vader once chopped off. He has a trimmed-down version of his elder-Jedi beard, which he’s grown to appreciate: “I shaved, and I thought, ‘You know what, the beard does cover up the jowl.’”

Hamill is a charming, jittery chatterbox – turns out that even at his youngest and prettiest, he was a geek trapped in the body of a golden boy. He is excitable and wild-eyed enough to give the vague sense that, like Luke, he actually might have spent a few solitary years on a distant planet, and is still readjusting to Earth life, or at least movie stardom.

He admits to having had “frustrations over being over-associated” with Star Wars over the years – his Skywalking cost him a chance at even auditioning to reprise his stage role as Mozart in the film of Amadeus – “but nothing that caused me any deep anguish.” He still spent the decades since Return of the Jedi acting and raising a family with Marilou, his wife of 39 years. And as for his current return to the role of Luke? “It’s a culmination of my career,” he says. “If I focused on how enormous it really is, I don’t think I could function. I told Rian that. I said, as absurd as it sounds, ‘I’m going to have to pretend this is an art-house film that no one is going to see.’ ”

For his Force Awakens scene, he says, “I didn’t know – and I don’t think J.J. really knew – specifically what had happened in those 30 years. Honestly, what I did was try and give J.J. a range of options. Neutral, suspicion, doubt … taking advantage of the fact that it’s all thoughts. I love watching silent films. Think of how effective they could be without dialogue.”

Abrams had some trepidation over the idea of handing Hamill a script with such a tiny role. “The last thing I wanted to do was insult a childhood hero,” he says, “but I also knew it was potentially one of the great drumrolls of all time.” In fact, Hamill’s first reaction was, “What a rip-off, I don’t get to run around the Death Star bumping heads with Carrie and Harrison anymore!”

But he came to agree with Abrams, especially after he counted the number of times Luke was mentioned in the screenplay – he thinks it was more than 50: “I don’t want to say, ‘That’s the greatest entrance in cinematic history’ … but certainly the greatest entrance of my career.”

Johnson turns to Hamill. “Did I ever tell you that early on when I was trying to figure out the story for this,” he says, “I had a brief idea I was chasing where I was like, ‘What if Luke is blind? What if he’s, like, the blind samurai?’ But we didn’t do it. You’re welcome. Didn’t stick.” (He adds that this was before a blind Force-using character showed up in 2016’s side film Rogue One.)

Hamill laughs, briefly contemplating how tough that twist would’ve been: “Luke, not too close to the cliff!”

He had a hard enough time with the storyline Johnson actually created for Luke, who is now what the actor calls a “disillusioned” Jedi. “This is not a joyful story to tell,” Hamill says, “my portion of it.” Johnson confirms that Hamill flat-out told him at the start that he disagreed with the direction Luke’s character was taking. “We then started a conversation,” says Johnson. “We went back and forth, and after having to explain my version, I adjusted it. And I had to justify it to myself, and that ended up being incredibly useful. I felt very close to Mark by the end. Those early days of butting heads and then coming together, that process always brings you closer.”

Hamill pushed himself to imagine how Luke could’ve gotten to his place of alienation. A rock fan who’s buddies with the Kinks’ Dave Davies, Hamill started thinking about shattered hippie dreams as he watched a Beatles documentary. “I was hearing Ringo talk about ‘Well, in those days, it was peace and love.’ And how it was a movement that largely didn’t work. I thought about that. Back in the day, I thought, by the time we get into power, there will be no more wars. Pot will be legal.” He smiles at that part. “I believed all that. I had to use that feeling of failure to relate to it.” (We do already know that Luke was training a bunch of Jedi, and Kylo Ren turned on him.)

Hamill’s grief over the loss of Fisher is still fresh, especially since the two of them got to renew their bond, and their space-sibling squabbling, after fallow decades that had given them far fewer reasons to get together. “There was now a comfort level that she had with me,” he says, “that I wasn’t out to get anything or trying to hustle her in any way. I was the same person that I was when she knew me. … I was sort of the square, stick-in-the-mud brother, and she was the wild, madcap Auntie Mame.” Promoting the movie is bringing it all back for him. “I just can’t stand it,” he says. “She’s wonderful in the movie. But it adds a layer of melancholy we don’t deserve. I’d love the emotions to come from the story, not from real life.”

I mention how hard Luke seems to have had it: never meeting his mom; finding the burnt corpses of the aunt and uncle who raised him; those well-known daddy issues; the later years of isolation. “It’s the life of a hero, man,” says Johnson. “That’s what you’ve gotta do to be a hero. You’ve gotta watch people that you love burn to death!”

Hamill notes that reality is not so great either. “Sometimes,” he says, softer than usual, “you think, ‘I’d rather have Luke’s life than mine.’”

Adam Driver has a question for me. “What,” he asks, “is emo?”

Between training for the Marines and training at Juilliard to become one of his generation’s most extraordinary actors, Driver missed some stuff, including entire music genres. But the rest of the world (including an amusing parody Twitter account) decided there’s something distinctly emo about his character, with his luxuriant hair, black outfits and periodic temper tantrums. “You have someone who’s being told that he’s special his whole life,” Driver says of his character, “and he can feel it. And he feels everything probably more intensely than the people around him, you know?”

As anyone who’s seen Driver in practically anything, even Girls, could tell you, the actor himself seems to feel things more strongly than most. “I don’t think of myself as a particularly intense person,” he says, possibly not unaware that he is making intense eye contact, and that his right knee is bouncing up and down with excess energy. “I get obsessive about certain things and, like, enjoy the process of working on something.” He’s in a Brooklyn cafe, on a tree-lined street, that seems to be his go-to spot for interviews. He arrived early, fresh from shooting the new Spike Lee movie, wearing a dark-blue sweater over black jeans and high-top Adidas. Driver has a certainty to him, a steel core, that’s a little intimidating, despite his obvious affability and big, near-constant laugh. It’s not unlike talking to Harrison Ford, who played his dad. Until Driver’s character murdered him.

Driver, raised by his mom and preacher stepdad after his parents divorced when he was seven, doesn’t flinch when I suggest his own father issues might be at work. “I don’t know that it’s always that literal,” he says. He mentions that Kylo Ren also murders Max Van Sydow’s character, who was sort of a “distant uncle” to him. “No one asks me, ‘So you have a distant-uncle problem?’ ”

John Boyega told me in 2015 that Driver stayed in character on set, but that seems to be not quite true. Driver just tries to keep focused on his character’s emotions in the face of an environment he can’t help but find ridiculous. “Watching Star Wars, it’s an action-adventure,” he says. “But shooting it, it’s a straight comedy. Stormtroopers trying to find a bathroom. People dressed as trolls, like, running into doorways. It’s hilarious.” And when he wears his helmet, he can’t see very well. “You’re supposed to be very stealth, and a tree root takes you down.”

He refuses to see his character as bratty. “There is a little bit of an elitist, royalty thing going on,” he says, reminding us that the character’s estranged mom is “the princess. I think he’s aware of maybe the privilege.” He does acknowledge playing Kylo Ren younger than his own age of 34: “I don’t want to say how much younger, 'cause people will read into it… .” He flushes, and later says he regrets mentioning it at all. If it’s a plot spoiler, it’s unclear exactly how, unless it’s related to his unexplained connection to Rey. The two apparently spend serious time together in this film. “The relationship between Kylo and Rey is awesome,” says Ridley, whom Driver calls a “great scene partner,” apparently one of his highest compliments.

At first, Driver wasn’t totally sure he wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. I’m always skeptical of Hollywood movies because they’re mostly just too broad,“ he says. But Abrams’ pitch, emphasizing the uniqueness of Kylo Ren’s character as a conflicted villain, made the sale. “Everything about him from the outside is designed to project the image that he’s assured,” he says. Only in private can he acknowledge “how un-figured-out he is … how weak.”

Driver can make a passionate case for why Kylo Ren isn’t actually a villain at all.

“It’s not like people weren’t living on the Death Star,” he says, his brown eyes shifting from puppyish to fierce without warning. He seems almost in character now. “Isn’t that also an act of terrorism against the hundreds of thousands of people who died there? Did they not have families? I see how people can point to examples that make themselves feel they’re right. And when you feel in your bones that you’re supported by a higher power on top of that, and you’re morally right, there’s no limit to what you’ll do to make sure that you win. Both sides feel this way.”

You’re starting to talk me into joining the Empire, I say. He laughs and shifts his delivery one degree over the top. “So, the rebels are bad,” he says, connecting his fist with the table. “I strongly believe this!”

On an extravagantly rainy Thursday evening in Montreal, I’m sitting at crowded, noisy Le Vin Papillon, a wine bar ranked as Canada’s fourth-best restaurant, holding a seat for a Jedi. Ridley arrives right on time, in a fuzzy faux-fur coat and a jumper dress – “the dregs of my wardrobe,” she says. Her shortish hair is in a Rey-ish topknot that makes her way too recognizable, but she doesn’t care. “This is how I have always had my hair,” says Ridley. “I am not going to change it.” She’s been in Montreal for three months, shooting a Doug Liman-directed sci-fi movie called Chaos Walking – which “is a little bit chaotic, in that we’re writing as we go and everything,” she says. “I’ve realized I don’t work well with that.”

She’s on the second of two unexpected days off thanks to co-star Tom Holland (a.k.a the latest Spider-Man) suffering an impacted wisdom tooth, but she’s still deeply exhausted. 

“I need a [vitamin] B shot in my ass,” she muses, in the kind of upscale British accent that makes curses sound elegant. It seems already clear that typecasting won’t pose the kind of problem for her that it did for the likes of Hamill and Fisher. Instead, she’s just busy in a way that only a freshly minted 25-year-old movie star could be – and she still managed to fulfill a pre-fame plan to go back to college for a semester last year. “I have no control in my life at all,” she says. She has four movies on the way, not even counting the Liman one. “So there is a lot going on, and I have never had to deal with that before. I don’t think my brain can really keep up with what is going on.” She has full-blown night terrors: “I wake up and scream.”

Rey had an epochal moment in the last movie, claiming her lightsaber from the snowy ground, and with it, her power, her destiny, her place at the center of the narrative. Her turn. Ridley is still absorbing what that moment, and that character, mean to women and little girls. But she definitely felt more pressure this time around, especially because last time, “it was all so insane, it felt like a dream,” she says. “I remember saying to Rian, 'I am so fucking neurotic on this one.’ I was like, 'I am going to fuck this up. All these people think this thing. How do I do that thing?’ ”

Part of the problem may have been Ridley’s tendency to downplay what she pulled off in the first movie. Her heart-tugging solo scenes in the first act, especially the moment where she eats her sad little “one half portion” of green space bread, created enormous goodwill, in seconds, for a character no one had seen before. She mentions Harrison Ford’s effusive praise for that eating scene, to the point where he was “getting emotional.” “I don’t know,” she says with a shrug, ultimately giving credit for the impact to Abrams and the movie’s cinematographer, Dan Mindel. “I was just eating!”

But in other ways, Rey has given her confidence. On her current film, she says, she was offered a stunt double for a scene where a door would swing open and knock her back. She took Liman aside and said, “'Doug, I don’t need a stunt double to do that.’ And I thought, 'I don’t know if this would’ve happened if it was Tom Holland.’”

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey’s parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: “I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is.” Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. “I wasn’t given any directive as to what that had to be,” he says. “I was never given the information that she is this or she is that.” 

The idea that Johnson and Abrams somehow landed on the same answer does seem to suggest that Rey’s parents aren’t some random, never-before-seen characters. All that said, Abrams cryptically hints there may have been more coordination between him and Johnson than the latter director has let on, so who knows what’s going on here – they may be messing with us to preserve one of Abrams’ precious mystery boxes. In any case, Ridley loves the speculation: Her favorite fan theories involve immaculate conception and time travel. It seems more likely that she’s either Luke’s daughter or his niece, but again, who knows.

Back in 2015, Ridley told me she was fine with the idea of being seen as Rey forever, the way Fisher was always Leia. Now she’s changed her mind. “There are literally no similarities with Carrie’s story and mine,” she says, adding that while Fisher ultimately embraced writing over acting, she plans on continuing to “inhabit” as many characters as possible. On the other hand, “a lot of Rey is me,” she says, “but that is not me being Rey. That is parts of me being a character as Rey, because how could it not? So in that sense, I understand it, because so much of Leia is Carrie.”

This trilogy will end with Abrams’ Last Jedi sequel, and after that, it sounds like the main thrust of the franchise will move into Johnson’s mysterious new movies, which look to be unconnected to the previous saga. As far as Abrams is concerned, that will be the end of the Skywalker story. “I do see it that way,” he says. “But the future is in flux.”

As far as Ridley is concerned, the future of Rey is pretty much set. She doesn’t want to play the character after the next movie. “No,” she says flatly. “For me, I didn’t really know what I was signing on to. I hadn’t read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, 'Awesome.’ Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now.”

But, um, doesn’t that sort of sound like a yes? “No,” she says again, smiling a little. “No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it’s three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out.”

And how about coming back in 30 years, as her predecessors did? She considers this soberly, between bites of Brussels sprouts roasted on the stalk. (We split the dish, which means she got … one half portion.) “Who knows? I honestly feel like the world may end in the next 30 years, so, if in 30 years we are not living underground in a series of interconnected cells … then sure. Maybe. But again, it’s like, who knows. Because the thing I thought was so amazing, was people really wanted it. And it was done by people who really love it.”

She thinks even harder about it, this new Star Wars trilogy that we’ve made up on the spot. “How old will I be?” she asks, before doing the math. “55.” She looks very young for a moment, as she tries to picture herself as a middle-aged Jedi. Then she gives up. It’s time to go, anyway; she has a 5:25 a.m. pickup tomorrow for her new movie. “Fuck,” Ridley says. “I can’t think that far ahead.”  

###

[aion-rsa]

Riverdale Season 5 Episode 1 Review – Chapter 77: Climax

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This RIVERDALE review contains spoilers.

Riverdale Season 5 Episode 1

“Clearly our last two weeks of high school are going to be fraught…”

Friends, on this day we find this country starting a new chapter, one that is full of hope and excitement for the future.

I am of course referring to the airing of Riverdale‘s season premiere, a somewhat wheel-spinning, melodramatic affair that feels more like the closing pages of a book than the start of another story.

And that’s because it is precisely that. This episode was a leftover from last year, filmed but not completed production until the pandemic lockdown was over. As such it thrusts us into the start of the endgame of last season’s storylines — namely the fallout of the Betty and Archie kiss, Mr. Lodge’s illness and how he is using vigilantism to cope with it, the mysterious (and suitably anachronistic videotapes) arriving at the doorsteps of Riverdale residents, and the gang prepping for their imminent post-high school lives.

There’s a lot to be told here until the show finishes telling this specific story. Writers Ace Hasan and Greg Murray handle this arguably thankless task with aplomb, squeezing out the necessary exposition needed to push the plot points towards their approaching conclusion while shoehorning in a (now unfortunate) Katy Keene tie-in. To be fair, it’s a solid episode. Just one that, through no fault of its own, doesn’t really work as a season premiere.

That minor gripe aside, there’s a lot to enjoy here. First and foremost are Archie’s struggles. It was wise for the showrunners to make the character realize that he is a bit of a rudderless dolt. Addressing this most obvious of character flaws makes our oft-shirtless protagonist that much more of a likable guy. He’s discovered that while he has some options — running the gym is his best bet — he also needs to clear his head, and getting out of Riverdale would help with that greatly.

Now that the Navy isn’t an option, and he’s questioning his whole life. This results in his destroying his relationship with Veronica by telling her about his illicit kiss with Betty. One, it should be mentioned, that made Betty feel super uncomfortable…although that could’ve just been the terrible song Archie wrote for her.

The deception is enough to blow apart the pair’s “endgame” status…at least until after the upcoming time jump and their old flame is inevitably rekindled. (Even though we know that Veronica will be married to the jerky Chad Gekko, another Katy Keene character climbing aboard the Riverdale express). Much drama will ensue, but in the show’s now, they are done. What’s the over/under until we see Veronica performing “Bittersweet Symphony” at La Bonne Nuit?

Elsewhere, the Choni ship (I am in my forties and just wrote those words!) is threaten by the ghost of the greatest thing to ever happen on Riverdale: The Blossom family’s Maple Syrup Blood Feud. It’s not that Toni’s Nana has an issue with her granddaughter’s sexuality — although she kinda does — but more that Toni is dating a sworn enemy of the Lopez family. As much as I love me some Shakespeareian motifs, these characters regularly deal with serial killers and cult members. So the family drama here isn’t really very compelling, you know?

The most interesting thing happening on Riverdale right now is also its most frustrating, the saga of The Auteur. Betty didn’t tell Jughead about Archie’s shitty song or the kiss because in her mind, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Just a sort of awkward thing that happened in the moment that isn’t worth blowing up her life over. Adult decision making at its finest! Whether or not this choice impacts her relationship with Jughead, and I bet it does, will be revealed soon. Right now though they are doing what they love the most, investigating a mystery. One that really needs to ramp up the excitement and fast.

David seems to be too obvious of a choice to be the identity of the Auteur. It also goes against the show’s habit of making the protagonist someone we already know. Episodes from last season have shown us Charles and Chip plotting together for a yet to be revealed reason. To a lesser degree, Evelyn Evernever is a possibility too. But this episode raises the most intriguing potential suspect yet.

Jellybean Jones.

Think about it. She is a cipher of a character, one who would have had access to Jughead’s stories and knows about almost every aspect of his life. Perhaps she is making these videos because she is scared about him going away to school. Maybe they are some sort of bizarre revenge plot cooked up by Jellybean and Gladys Jones against Jughead and FP? By making Jellybean the auteur this creates more drama for the ever-complicated Jughead and gives him a personal tragedy that mirrors what Betty experienced with her father. I truly feel that Jellybean being at David’s film fest/rave by herself (we never see her friends she is supposedly with) is much more than a red herring. Time will tell. But we need to see some clarity on what the motives behind these tapes are, ASAP.

And so Riverdale is back. While we are watching the blending of the programs fourth and fifth seasons unfold due to real-life production concerns, it remains the most welcome of escapes.

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Riverdale Rundown

• This episode was filmed before production on the series was shut down due to Covid-19. As such, the next few installments will cover the gang’s final weeks at Riverdale High before jumping ahead seven years — which will occur in what was originally intended to be last year’s season finale. And you thought Doctor Who was timey wimey.

• The above explanation also explains why a character from a cancelled CW series — K.O. Kelly from Katy Keene — plays such a crucial role in tonight’s proceedings.

• Speaking of Katy Keene, that show took place during the time period that Riverdale is about to jump ahead to — one in which Hiram Lodge has completely recovered from his mystery disease.

• Did anyone else find Archie’s constant referring to K.O. as bro endearing? And OF COURSE these two characters were given a shirtless workout montage/steam room scene. Besides, what’s an episode of Riverdale without plenty of gratuitous objectification?

• Archie really did himself no favors by neglecting to mention to Veronica how Betty shut him down after his attempt to woo her. Communication is the key to a solid, healthy relationship, fam!

• Ashleigh Murray’s Josie McCoy was a main character on Katy Keene, yet as of this writing it is unclear if she will return to Riverdale or not this season. (And for the record, Archieverse showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa hasn’t permanently shut the door on some sort of Katy Keene revival either).

• The cancelled fifth season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina would have been a major crossover with Riverdale. Although we were denied that magic, if the above official key art is to be believed, it does seem that we will be getting some major supernatural happenings is season. Afterlife with Archie anyone?

• Archie’s scars from his bear attack really come and go, don’t they?

• Kett Turton returns tonight as David, the owner of the Blue Velvet video store. His perfect recreation of David Lynch’s cadence and mannerisms combined with the costume department seemingly raiding the Twin Peaks mastermind’s wardrobe is a perfect illustration of how Riverdale commits to its goofiness 100%.

• I’m not sure, but I think the Black Hood movie being shown in room 317 is a very subtle reference to the Miss Saigon song that also takes place in that location.

• In a nice callback, some of the tickling videos like the ones Kevin and Fangs made are being shown at the film party/rave. (Along with snippets of exploitation/art flicks clearly inspired by the works of Kenneth Anger and Herschell Gordon Lewis).

• “You had me at snuff film.” Here’s hoping Kevin Keller never changes.

• Cheryl is at her most Cheryl tonight, melodramatically spewing lines like “perhaps your camera will capture the sublime tragedy of my life” with an effortlessness that would make Bette Davis proud.

• Putting Fizzle Rocks in the punchbowl, classic Reggie Mantle.

• Further evidence of how this show is, to quote The Tragically Hip, chronologically fucked up, the songs played at the prom were Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me,” BoDeans’ “Closer to Free” (itself the theme song to another popular teen show, Party of Five), Collective Soul’s “The World I Know,” Mazzy Star’s timeless “Fade Into You,” and Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” Would any of these songs actually be played at a prom taking place in whatever year in the 2010’s this series is set in? Your guess is as good as mine.

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[ethenell]

Best Films of 2017, Part I

10. Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele)

“... Now sink into the floor.”

Making the jump from sketch comedy to the big screen is a transition fraught with creative peril. The list of those who have tried and failed to navigate its intricacies is a list filled with a lot of talented people, and we can rest assured that not a one of them decided to cut their directorial teeth on a project as impossibly ambitious as a pseudo-satirical horror film that takes on racism in American society. But where so many others have failed, Jordan Peele has succeeded brilliantly, kicking off his directorial career with the latest in a growing string of Sundance-premiered, subtext-heavy horror masterpieces.

Blatantly confrontational in all the best ways, that Get Out emerged from the major studio ecosystem is a minor miracle in some senses, but really is a testament to the strength of Peele’s razor-sharp (and now, Oscar-winning) original script. Taking aim at the casual, insidious racism of liberal white America, Peele meticulously picks apart the ways that African American work and creativity is systemically marginalized, colonized, and exploited. The film’s pointed symbolism and fearless direction make it a frequently discomfiting watch, but Get Out is all the more essential for it. Jordan Peele is not here to comfort his white audience, he’s here to wake us the fuck up.

Despite it’s satirical underpinnings, Get Out is a horror film, through-and-through, and its brilliance lies in large part with its keen ability to indulge its more outlandish horror inclinations right up to the tipping point from horror to satire. Peele flirts with that line brilliantly, getting every last bit of mileage out of each genre conceit that he either exploits or subverts, before snapping us back into perspective with one simple reminder: if you think this is a joke, you’re missing the point ...

*Cough* Golden Globes ... *Cough* *Cough*

9. War for the Planet of the Apes (dir. Matt Reeves)

“Apes together strong.”

Looking back on the original Charlton Heston epic, it’s not exactly plain to see where Matt Reeves drew inspiration for his utterly brilliant Planet of the Apes reboot trilogy. Despite its esteemed status in the sci-fi pantheon, the original views now as little more than a campy 70s genre flick with an interesting premise and a great final twist. But from those bones (and conveniently ignoring an ill-advised early 2000’s remake) Reeves has crafted a franchise masterpiece. An unprecedented hybrid of muscular action filmmaking and art-house drama, and deftly borrowing elements of silent film, it’s difficult to overstate just how impressive the entire Planet of the Apes trilogy is. However, it’s final installment, War for the Planet of the Apes, stands as it’s greatest entry – a sweeping epic built with an uncanny feel for grandiose spectacle and an unmatched command of the jaw-dropping technical wizardry that makes its central performance possible.

Andy Serkis’ groundbreaking motion capture performance as Caesar, leader of the titular apes, is the film’s true foundation. You could make a convincing argument that Andy Serkis’ Caesar is the greatest hero of 21st century genre filmmaking, but it’s status as a monumental achievement in the marriage of acting craft and filmmaking technology is frankly unquestionable. That Serkis’ performance has been all but forgotten by major awards bodies throughout this remarkable three-film run will not be remembered kindly in the annals of film history – this performance is the stuff film history is made of. Reeves stages one brilliant, sprawling action set-piece after another, and the uncanny physicality of Serkis’ performance injects them with the dose of emotional resonance that elevates it well above traditional summer blockbuster fare. Honestly, filmmaking of this scale has rarely been better.

8. The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

“When he looks at me, he does not know what I lack, or how I am incomplete … He sees me for what I am, as I am.”

The Shape of Water is everything you could want from a Guillermo del Toro film – fantastical, brutal, and ultimately hopeful; a beautiful modernist fairy tale with a definite moral compass. Del Toro himself has described The Shape of Water as his favorite film that he has ever made, and it’s easy to see why he’s so infatuated. A meditation on the lives of outsiders and the ways that love pushes across boundaries of convention, del Toro’s sincere affection for the characters onscreen is clear throughout, with each new wave of its strangely rapturous romance lending new evidence to the greatness that del Toro has so lovingly crafted.

A testament to his sterling reputation, del Toro assembled one of the year’s best casts to bring his sweeping vision to life. Octavia Spencer, Richard Jenkins, and Michael Shannon are all impressive in their supporting turns, but make no mistake, this film belongs to Sally Hawkins. She turns in career-best work as a mute janitor at a secure government facility who forms a deep connection with an amphibious creature imprisoned there. Hawkins conveys more in a glance than an average performance can do with an entire script’s worth of dialogue. If there’s a better performance that’s been committed to film this year, I’ve yet to see it …

Guillermo del Toro is one of cinema’s most unique voices, and The Shape of Water is the kind of film only he could make. It moves in the span of a breath from bracing violence to endearing whimsy to magical sensuality. In the hands of another, it could easily have been ludicrous, but with del Toro’s otherworldly creativity, it’s simply lovely.

7. I, Tonya (dir. Craig Gillespie)

“There's no such thing as truth. It's bullshit. Everyone has their own truth, and life just does whatever the fuck it wants.”

Tonya Harding is one of the most infamous figures in American sports history, having been implicated in a plot to attack her biggest rival to improve her chances of making the Olympic figure skating team. Hers is a story stranger than fiction, and the electric biopic I, Tonya brings it to the big screen in  all of it’s bizarre glory. Far from a household name, despite having an award-winning indie (the stellar Lars and the Real Girl) and two warmly received major-studio pics under his belt, I, Tonya is director Craig Gillespie’s most dynamic film to date. Leaning into the scripts more out-of-the-box tendencies, Gillespie has made the most batshit biopic since Todd Haynes’ kaleidoscopic Bob Dylan exploration, I’m Not There. He breaks all the rules, and a lot of it has no business working. But work it does - a directorial feat for which Gillespie has not been properly recognized.

But without Margot Robbie’s electrifying lead performance, it all may have been for naught. Robbie is quickly claiming her place as one of her generation’s finest actresses, and her embodiment of Harding as a tragicomic figure undone by her own inability to accept responsibility is nothing short of fantastic. Robbie’s Harding is an internal battle between the fierce competitor and battered victim, and highlights the ways in which those dual realities eventually were inextricably interwoven. It’s impressive work that walks the tough line of bringing a publicly reviled figure a bit of deserved sympathy - but not too much.

The film sets out to contextualize Harding’s public life, grounding everything that leads up to “the incident” in the abusive nature of her home life, but never going so far as to excuse Harding entirely. The film’s brilliant fourth-wall-breaking narration - pulled form real-life interviews with Harding, her ex-husband (Sebastian Stan), and her mother (a brilliantly caustic Allison Janney) -  serves to highlight how frequently their accounts of the Kerrigan attack clash not only with each other’s, but with the plain reality of the situation. It’s a conceit that consistently sticks the landing, one darkly comedic beat after another, and makes for one of the most purely engrossing films of the year.

6. The Florida Project (dir. Sean Baker)

“You know why this is my favorite tree?

Why?

Because it’s tipped over and it’s still growing.”

Sean Baker made serious waves at Sundance with his debut feature Tangerine. Not only did the film feature mostly non-professional actors, but Baker shot the whole thing on his iPhone – no small feat for a film deemed worthy of the biggest indie film festival in the world. Baker shrewdly leveraged that success into a budget that afforded him the use of an actual crew. While adapting his on-the-fly style to the inherent inertia of a larger on-set footprint wasn’t always smooth, the results of his efforts are undeniably superb. His sophomore effort, The Florida Project, is fresh independent filmmaking of the highest order.

Once again employing mostly first-time professional actors – with the notable exception of Willem Dafoe, who effortlessly turns in one of the finest supporting performances of the year – Baker endeavors to tell a story that’s built from bits and fragments of real-life that he’s simply lucky enough to observe.  What he sees pits the desperation of poverty against the buoyant idealism of childhood. The innate optimism of its child characters stands constantly at odds with the increasingly grim realities with which the adults in their orbit try (and often fail) to grapple. Few films can so deftly play as gritty realism and buoyant fantasy at once, but The Florida Project walks the line with tragic grace.

Now two-for-two, Baker is positioning himself alongside the likes of Andrea Arnold as a master of the realist style, with a keen eye for drawing pathos out of the real lives of those living in societies margins. Much of what you see on the screen may seem like little more than a snapshot, but it takes a special artist to paint such a vibrant portrait of a segment of American society that many would prefer to ignore. Very few filmmakers in the world could make a film anything like this one, and it’s entirely possible none of them could have made one this beautifully compassionate.  

[son-of-alderaan]

Jedi Confidential: Inside the Dark New 'Star Wars' Movie

The cast and director of 'The Last Jedi' on the story's secrets, a disaffected Skywalker and a death in the family

A long time ago, a grade-schooler got his hands on a spaceship. He followed the assembly instructions as best he could, snapping on the cannons, the landing gear, the tiny interstellar-chess table. Soon enough, Rian Johnson was holding his very own Millennium Falcon. "The first thing I did," he recalls, "was throw it across the room, to see how it would look flying." He grins. "And it broke." 

Johnson grew up, went to film school, made some good stuff, including the entertainingly twisted 2012 sci-fi drama Looper. He's nearly 44 now, though his cherub cheeks and gentle manner make it easy to picture the kid he was (too easy, maybe – he's trying to grow back a goatee he shaved); even his neatly pressed short-sleeve button-down has a picture-day feel. In late October, he's sitting in an office suite inside Disney's Burbank studios that he's called home for many months, where a whiteboard declares, "We're working on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in case you forgot)." Johnson is the film's writer-director, which means he ended up with the world's finest collection of replacement toys, including a life-size Falcon set that nearly brought him to tears when he stepped onto it. He treated it all with what sounds like an intriguing mix of reverence and mischief – cast members keep saying nothing was quite what they expected. "I shook up the box a little bit," he says, with that same grin. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, everything is broken. In the months since the franchise stirred back to life in 2015's The Force Awakens, it has felt rather like some incautious child grabbed civilization itself and threw it across the room – and, midflight, many of us realized we were the evil Empire all along, complete with a new ruler that even latter-day George Lucas at his most CGI-addled would reject as too grotesque and implausible a character.  Weirdly, the saga saw it all coming – or maybe it's not so weird when you consider the Vietnam War commentary embedded in Lucas' original trilogy, or the warnings about democracy's fragility in his prequels. In the J.J. Abrams-directed The Force Awakens, a revanchist movement calling itself the First Order assembles in Triumph of the Will-style marches, showing the shocking strength of an ideology that was supposed to have been thoroughly defeated long ago. What's left of the government is collapsing and feckless, so the only hope in sight is a band of good guys known as the Resistance. Familiar, this all sounds.

"It's somewhat a reflection of society," acknowledges the saga's new star, Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, and who has gone from unknown London actress to full-blown movie star nearly as fast as her character went from desert scavenger to budding Jedi. "But also it is escapism, because there are creatures and there are people running around with fucking lasers and shit. So, I think, a wonderful mix of both."

And the worse the world gets, the more we need that far-off galaxy, says Gwendoline Christie, who plays stormtrooper honcho Captain Phasma (as well as Game of Thrones' Brienne of Tarth): "During testing times, there's nothing wrong with being transported by art. I think we all need it. Many of us are united in our love for this one thing." The Last Jedi, due December 15th, is the second episode of the current trilogy, and advance word has suggested that, as in the original middle film, The Empire Strikes Back, things get darker this time. But Johnson pushes back on that, though he does admit some influence from the morally ambiguous 2000s reboot of Battlestar Galactica (which is funny, because Lucas considered the Seventies TV show a rip-off and urged a lawsuit – long since settled – against it). "That's one thing I hope people will be surprised about with the movie," Johnson says. "I think it's very funny. The trailers have been kind of dark – the movie has that, but I also made a real conscious effort for it to be a riot. I want it to have all the things tonally that I associate with Star Wars, which is not just the Wagner of it. It's also the Flash Gordon."

As of late October, almost no one has seen it yet, but Johnson seems eerily free of apprehension about its prospects. He exuded a similar calm on set, according to Adam Driver, who plays Han and Leia's Darth Vader-worshipping prodigal son, Kylo Ren. "If I had that job, I would be stressed out," he says. "To pick up where someone left off and carry it forward, but also introduce a vocabulary that hasn't been seen in a Star Wars movie before, is a tall order and really hard to get right. He's incredibly smart and doesn't feel the need to let everyone know it." ("It felt like we were playing the whole time," says Kelly Marie Tran, cast as the biggest new character, Rose Tico.) A few weeks after we talk, Lucasfilm announces that Johnson signed on to make three more Star Warsfilms in the coming decade, the first that step outside of the prevailing Skywalker saga, indicating that Disney and Lucasfilm matriarch Kathleen Kennedy are more than delighted with Last Jedi. And Kennedy's not easily delighted, having recently replaced the directors of a Han Solo spinoff midshoot and removed original Episode 9 director Colin Trevorrow in favor of Abrams' return. 

The Force Awakens' biggest triumph was the introduction of new characters worth caring about, led by Rey and Kylo Ren, plus the likes of John Boyega's stormtrooper-defector Finn, Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron and more. Kylo Ren (born Ben Solo) lightsaber-shanked Harrison Ford's Han, depriving Johnson of one coveted action figure – but the film left us with Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia, now the general who leads the Resistance, and the climactic reveal of Mark Hamill's now-grizzled Luke Skywalker.

The Last Jedi will be Fisher's last Star Wars movie. In the waning days of the cruel year of 2016, she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane, dying four days later. Less than a month afterward, 500,000 or so people assembled in Washington, D.C., for that city's Women's March, and Leia was everywhere, in posters bearing her doughnut-haired image circa 1977, with accompanying slogans ("A Woman's Place Is in the Resistance" was, perhaps, the best).

Johnson had grown close with Fisher, and is glad to hear that I visited her psychedelically decorated Beverly Hills house a couple of years back, where she did almost an entire hilarious interview prone in bed. Afterward, she cheerily cracked jokes about drugs and mental illness in front of a visiting Disney publicist. "You got to experience a little bit of that magical sphere that she created," says Johnson, who went over the script with her in that same bedroom. "I'm happy I got to poke my head into that, briefly, and know her even a little bit."

He left her part in the film untouched. "We didn't end up changing a thing," says Johnson. "Luckily, we had a totally complete performance from her." So it is now Abrams who has to figure out how to grapple with Fisher and Leia's sudden absence. (He is characteristically gnomic on the matter: "It's a sad reality," he says. "In terms of going forward ... time will tell what ends up getting done.")

Overall, Johnson enjoyed what seems like an almost unfathomable level of autonomy in shaping The Last Jedi's story. He says no one dictated a single plot point, that he simply decided what happens next. And he's baffled by fans who are concerned by the idea that they're "making it up as we go along": "The truth is, stories are made up! Whether somebody made this whole thing up 10 years ago and put it on a whiteboard and we all have to stick to that, or whether we're organically finding it as we move forward, it doesn't mean that any less thought is being put into it."

Mark Hamill's single scene in The Force Awakens lasts all of one minute, and he doesn't say a thing. But it's an indelible piece of screen acting with real gravitas, from an underrated performer who had become better known for Broadway and voice-over work – he's been the definitive animated Joker since the early Nineties. ("With voice-over," Hamill says, "I thought, 'This is great! I can let myself go to hell physically! I don't have to memorize lines!'") As Rey approaches him on the lonely mountaintop where's he's presumably spent years studying the Jedi equivalent of the Talmud, Luke Skywalker's bearded face cycles through grief, terror and longing.

"I didn't look at that as 'Oh, this is going to be my big chance,'" says Hamill, who has just shown up at Johnson's offices and plopped down next to him, carrying a large thermos of coffee in the right hand that Darth Vader once chopped off. He has a trimmed-down version of his elder-Jedi beard, which he's grown to appreciate: "I shaved, and I thought, 'You know what, the beard does cover up the jowl.'"

Hamill is a charming, jittery chatterbox – turns out that even at his youngest and prettiest, he was a geek trapped in the body of a golden boy. He is excitable and wild-eyed enough to give the vague sense that, like Luke, he actually might have spent a few solitary years on a distant planet, and is still readjusting to Earth life, or at least movie stardom.

He admits to having had "frustrations over being over-associated" with Star Wars over the years – his Skywalking cost him a chance at even auditioning to reprise his stage role as Mozart in the film of Amadeus – "but nothing that caused me any deep anguish." He still spent the decades since Return of the Jediacting and raising a family with Marilou, his wife of 39 years. And as for his current return to the role of Luke? "It's a culmination of my career," he says. "If I focused on how enormous it really is, I don't think I could function. I told Rian that. I said, as absurd as it sounds, 'I'm going to have to pretend this is an art-house film that no one is going to see.' "

For his Force Awakens scene, he says, "I didn't know – and I don't think J.J. really knew – specifically what had happened in those 30 years. Honestly, what I did was try and give J.J. a range of options. Neutral, suspicion, doubt … taking advantage of the fact that it's all thoughts. I love watching silent films. Think of how effective they could be without dialogue."

Abrams had some trepidation over the idea of handing Hamill a script with such a tiny role. "The last thing I wanted to do was insult a childhood hero," he says, "but I also knew it was potentially one of the great drumrolls of all time." In fact, Hamill's first reaction was, "What a rip-off, I don't get to run around the Death Star bumping heads with Carrie and Harrison anymore!"

But he came to agree with Abrams, especially after he counted the number of times Luke was mentioned in the screenplay – he thinks it was more than 50: "I don't want to say, 'That's the greatest entrance in cinematic history' . . . but certainly the greatest entrance of my career."

Johnson turns to Hamill. "Did I ever tell you that early on when I was trying to figure out the story for this," he says, "I had a brief idea I was chasing where I was like, 'What if Luke is blind? What if he's, like, the blind samurai?' But we didn't do it. You're welcome. Didn't stick." (He adds that this was before a blind Force-using character showed up in 2016's side film Rogue One.)

Hamill laughs, briefly contemplating how tough that twist would've been: "Luke, not too close to the cliff!" He had a hard enough time with the storyline Johnson actually created for Luke, who is now what the actor calls a "disillusioned" Jedi. "This is not a joyful story to tell," Hamill says, "my portion of it." Johnson confirms that Hamill flat-out told him at the start that he disagreed with the direction Luke's character was taking. "We then started a conversation," says Johnson. "We went back and forth, and after having to explain my version, I adjusted it. And I had to justify it to myself, and that ended up being incredibly useful. I felt very close to Mark by the end. Those early days of butting heads and then coming together, that process always brings you closer."

Hamill pushed himself to imagine how Luke could've gotten to his place of alienation. A rock fan who's buddies with the Kinks' Dave Davies, Hamill started thinking about shattered hippie dreams as he watched a Beatles documentary. "I was hearing Ringo talk about 'Well, in those days, it was peace and love.' And how it was a movement that largely didn't work. I thought about that. Back in the day, I thought, by the time we get into power, there will be no more wars. Pot will be legal." He smiles at that part. "I believed all that. I had to use that feeling of failure to relate to it." (We do already know that Luke was training a bunch of Jedi, and Kylo Ren turned on him.) Hamill's grief over the loss of Fisher is still fresh, especially since the two of them got to renew their bond, and their space-sibling squabbling, after fallow decades that had given them far fewer reasons to get together. "There was now a comfort level that she had with me," he says, "that I wasn't out to get anything or trying to hustle her in any way. I was the same person that I was when she knew me. ... I was sort of the square, stick-in-the-mud brother, and she was the wild, madcap Auntie Mame." Promoting the movie is bringing it all back for him. "I just can't stand it," he says. "She's wonderful in the movie. But it adds a layer of melancholy we don't deserve. I'd love the emotions to come from the story, not from real life."

I mention how hard Luke seems to have had it: never meeting his mom; finding the burnt corpses of the aunt and uncle who raised him; those well-known daddy issues; the later years of isolation. "It's the life of a hero, man," says Johnson. "That's what you've gotta do to be a hero. You've gotta watch people that you love burn to death!" Hamill notes that reality is not so great either. "Sometimes," he says, softer than usual, "you think, 'I'd rather have Luke's life than mine.'"

Adam Driver has a question for me. "What," he asks, "is emo?" Between training for the Marines and training at Juilliard to become one of his generation's most extraordinary actors, Driver missed some stuff, including entire music genres. But the rest of the world (including an amusing parody Twitter account) decided there's something distinctly emo about his character, with his luxuriant hair, black outfits and periodic temper tantrums. "You have someone who's being told that he's special his whole life," Driver says of his character, "and he can feel it. And he feels everything probably more intensely than the people around him, you know?"

As anyone who's seen Driver in practically anything, even Girls, could tell you, the actor himself seems to feel things more strongly than most. "I don't think of myself as a particularly intense person," he says, possibly not unaware that he is making intense eye contact, and that his right knee is bouncing up and down with excess energy. "I get obsessive about certain things and, like, enjoy the process of working on something." He's in a Brooklyn cafe, on a tree-lined street, that seems to be his go-to spot for interviews. He arrived early, fresh from shooting the new Spike Lee movie, wearing a dark-blue sweater over black jeans and high-top Adidas. Driver has a certainty to him, a steel core, that's a little intimidating, despite his obvious affability and big, near-constant laugh. It's not unlike talking to Harrison Ford, who played his dad. Until Driver's character murdered him.

Driver, raised by his mom and preacher stepdad after his parents divorced when he was seven, doesn't flinch when I suggest his own father issues might be at work. "I don't know that it's always that literal," he says. He mentions that Kylo Ren also murders Max Van Sydow's character, who was sort of a "distant uncle" to him. "No one asks me, 'So you have a distant-uncle problem?' "

John Boyega told me in 2015 that Driver stayed in character on set, but that seems to be not quite true. Driver just tries to keep focused on his character's emotions in the face of an environment he can't help but find ridiculous. "Watching Star Wars, it's an action-adventure," he says. "But shooting it, it's a straight comedy. Stormtroopers trying to find a bathroom. People dressed as trolls, like, running into doorways. It's hilarious." And when he wears his helmet, he can't see very well. "You're supposed to be very stealth, and a tree root takes you down."

He refuses to see his character as bratty. "There is a little bit of an elitist, royalty thing going on," he says, reminding us that the character's estranged mom is "the princess. I think he's aware of maybe the privilege." He does acknowledge playing Kylo Ren younger than his own age of 34: "I don't want to say how much younger, 'cause people will read into it. . . ." He flushes, and later says he regrets mentioning it at all. If it's a plot spoiler, it's unclear exactly how, unless it's related to his unexplained connection to Rey. The two apparently spend serious time together in this film. "The relationship between Kylo and Rey is awesome," says Ridley, whom Driver calls a "great scene partner," apparently one of his highest compliments.

At first, Driver wasn't totally sure he wanted to be in a Star Wars movie. I'm always skeptical of Hollywood movies because they're mostly just too broad," he says. But Abrams' pitch, emphasizing the uniqueness of Kylo Ren's character as a conflicted villain, made the sale. "Everything about him from the outside is designed to project the image that he's assured," he says. Only in private can he acknowledge "how un-figured-out he is … how weak."

Driver can make a passionate case for why Kylo Ren isn't actually a villain at all.

"It's not like people weren't living on the Death Star," he says, his brown eyes shifting from puppyish to fierce without warning. He seems almost in character now. "Isn't that also an act of terrorism against the hundreds of thousands of people who died there? Did they not have families? I see how people can point to examples that make themselves feel they're right. And when you feel in your bones that you're supported by a higher power on top of that, and you're morally right, there's no limit to what you'll do to make sure that you win. Both sides feel this way."

You're starting to talk me into joining the Empire, I say. He laughs and shifts his delivery one degree over the top. "So, the rebels are bad," he says, connecting his fist with the table. "I strongly believe this!"

On an extravagantly rainy Thursday evening in Montreal, I'm sitting at crowded, noisy Le Vin Papillon, a wine bar ranked as Canada's fourth-best restaurant, holding a seat for a Jedi. Ridley arrives right on time, in a fuzzy faux-fur coat and a jumper dress – "the dregs of my wardrobe," she says. Her shortish hair is in a Rey-ish topknot that makes her way too recognizable, but she doesn't care. "This is how I have always had my hair," says Ridley. "I am not going to change it." She's been in Montreal for three months, shooting a Doug Liman-directed sci-fi movie called Chaos Walking – which "is a little bit chaotic, in that we're writing as we go and everything," she says. "I've realized I don't work well with that."

She's on the second of two unexpected days off thanks to co-star Tom Holland (a.k.a the latest Spider-Man) suffering an impacted wisdom tooth, but she's still deeply exhausted. "I need a [vitamin] B shot in my ass," she muses, in the kind of upscale British accent that makes curses sound elegant. It seems already clear that typecasting won't pose the kind of problem for her that it did for the likes of Hamill and Fisher. Instead, she's just busy in a way that only a freshly minted 25-year-old movie star could be – and she still managed to fulfill a pre-fame plan to go back to college for a semester last year. "I have no control in my life at all," she says. She has four movies on the way, not even counting the Liman one. "So there is a lot going on, and I have never had to deal with that before. I don't think my brain can really keep up with what is going on." She has full-blown night terrors: "I wake up and scream."

Rey had an epochal moment in the last movie, claiming her lightsaber from the snowy ground, and with it, her power, her destiny, her place at the center of the narrative. Her turn. Ridley is still absorbing what that moment, and that character, mean to women and little girls. But she definitely felt more pressure this time around, especially because last time, "it was all so insane, it felt like a dream," she says. "I remember saying to Rian, 'I am so fucking neurotic on this one.' I was like, 'I am going to fuck this up. All these people think this thing. How do I do that thing?' "

Part of the problem may have been Ridley's tendency to downplay what she pulled off in the first movie. Her heart-tugging solo scenes in the first act, especially the moment where she eats her sad little "one half portion" of green space bread, created enormous goodwill, in seconds, for a character no one had seen before. She mentions Harrison Ford's effusive praise for that eating scene, to the point where he was "getting emotional." "I don't know," she says with a shrug, ultimately giving credit for the impact to Abrams and the movie's cinematographer, Dan Mindel. "I was just eating!"

But in other ways, Rey has given her confidence. On her current film, she says, she was offered a stunt double for a scene where a door would swing open and knock her back. She took Liman aside and said, "'Doug, I don't need a stunt double to do that.' And I thought, 'I don't know if this would've happened if it was Tom Holland.'"

Unlike almost everyone else in the world, Ridley has known for years who Rey's parents are, since Abrams told her on the set of The Force Awakens. Ridley believes that nothing ever changed: "I thought what I was told in the beginning is what it is." Which is odd, because Johnson insists he had free rein to come up with any answer he wanted to the question. "I wasn't given any directive as to what that had to be," he says. "I was never given the information that she is this or she is that."

The idea that Johnson and Abrams somehow landed on the same answer does seem to suggest that Rey's parents aren't some random, never-before-seen characters. All that said, Abrams cryptically hints there may have been more coordination between him and Johnson than the latter director has let on, so who knows what's going on here – they may be messing with us to preserve one of Abrams' precious mystery boxes. In any case, Ridley loves the speculation: Her favorite fan theories involve immaculate conception and time travel. It seems more likely that she's either Luke's daughter or his niece, but again, who knows.

Back in 2015, Ridley told me she was fine with the idea of being seen as Rey forever, the way Fisher was always Leia. Now she's changed her mind. "There are literally no similarities with Carrie's story and mine," she says, adding that while Fisher ultimately embraced writing over acting, she plans on continuing to "inhabit" as many characters as possible. On the other hand, "a lot of Rey is me," she says, "but that is not me being Rey. That is parts of me being a character as Rey, because how could it not? So in that sense, I understand it, because so much of Leia is Carrie."

This trilogy will end with Abrams' Last Jedi sequel, and after that, it sounds like the main thrust of the franchise will move into Johnson's mysterious new movies, which look to be unconnected to the previous saga. As far as Abrams is concerned, that will be the end of the Skywalker story. "I do see it that way," he says. "But the future is in flux."

As far as Ridley is concerned, the future of Rey is pretty much set. She doesn't want to play the character after the next movie. "No," she says flatly. "For me, I didn't really know what I was signing on to. I hadn't read the script, but from what I could tell, it was really nice people involved, so I was just like, 'Awesome.' Now I think I am even luckier than I knew then, to be part of something that feels so like coming home now."

But, um, doesn't that sort of sound like a yes? "No," she says again, smiling a little. "No, no, no. I am really, really excited to do the third thing and round it out, because ultimately, what I was signing on to was three films. So in my head, it's three films. I think it will feel like the right time to round it out." And how about coming back in 30 years, as her predecessors did? She considers this soberly, between bites of Brussels sprouts roasted on the stalk. (We split the dish, which means she got ... one half portion.) "Who knows? I honestly feel like the world may end in the next 30 years, so, if in 30 years we are not living underground in a series of interconnected cells ... then sure. Maybe. But again, it's like, who knows. Because the thing I thought was so amazing, was people really wanted it. And it was done by people who really love it." She thinks even harder about it, this new Star Wars trilogy that we've made up on the spot. "How old will I be?" she asks, before doing the math. "55." She looks very young for a moment, as she tries to picture herself as a middle-aged Jedi. Then she gives up. It's time to go, anyway; she has a 5:25 a.m. pickup tomorrow for her new movie. "Fuck," Ridley says. "I can't think that far ahead." (x)

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