#Tom Fletcher One Shot
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firstlightfanfics · 5 months ago
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Friday.
New post. New/old fic.
Alos there are just loads of stories on there for your enjoyment.
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longwuzhere · 1 year ago
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Some cool Easter eggs I caught watching My Adventures with Superman that I want to show to people so they can be in on it with comic book readers: For the first episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the second episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the third episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the fourth episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the sixth episode's Easter eggs it's here
For the seventh episode's Easter eggs it's here and here
For the eighth episode's Easter eggs post it's here
For the ninth episode's Easter eggs post it's here
For the tenth episode's Easter eggs post it's here
My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 1 post is here
My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 2 post is here
My Easter eggs and references for My Adventures with Superman comic issue 3 post is here
SPOILERS if you haven't seen this week's episode obviously
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We start off the episode with this shot of Superman with the drawn on glasses. A good homage to what Lois did in the 1980 Superman II movie...
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where she not only drew the glasses but also a full suit and hat on a picture of Superman.
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Next we see Jimmy waking up and seeing someone debunking his conspiracy theories on Sub-Diego.
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Sub Diego was an actual place in the DC universe before the New 52 reboot. In Aquaman #15 and #16 (2003) , shown here (W: Will Pfeifer, P: Patrick Gleason, I: Christian Alamy, C: Nathan Eyring, L: Jared K. Fletcher for issue 15, Nick Napolitano for issue 16). The underwater city is actually San Diego, but is buried underwater thanks to a tidal wave and makes its first appearance in Aquaman #15 (2003). There was a lot of casualties from this.
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When we get to our title its "You Will Believe A Man Can Lie" a reference to the tagline for the 1978 Superman movie.
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As seen here on the poster, it says "You'll believe a man can fly".
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Next we see our villain, well one of the villains, for the episode, Heatwave.
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In the comics Heatwave makes his first appearance in Flash 140 (1963) (cover art by Carmine Infantino, Murphy Anderson, and Ira Schnapp). Heatwave aka Mick Rory is a Flash rogue usually acting as a rival to Captain Cold aka Leonard Snart. In MAwS, their Heatwave shares the same last name and powers, but MAwS Heatwave is gender flipped. You might have seen Heatwave in the CW DC comics shows where he is played by Dominic Purcell in The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.
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Lois, later in the episode, name drops Heatwave's name. Gotta be honest when Heatwave showed up I was like is that Rampage? Cuz the MAwS design looks vaguely like Rampage.
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If she does show up in MAwS, I'll talk more about her in another post, but for now, Rampage aka Karen Lou "Kitty" Faulkner, makes her first appearance in Superman #7 (1987) (full page here: W&P: John Byrne, I: Karl Kesel, C: Tom Ziuko, L: John Costanza).
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Steve drags Jimmy to film his debunking Flamebird videos and references Starro who I talked about here.
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Lois, later runs around with the Daily Planet police scanner trying to catch Superman and the dispatcher reports that a robbery is in progress at McGuinness Luxe Garage.
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This is a nice reference to Ed McGuinness who was the artist for Superman, Action Comics, and Superman/Batman in the early 2000s. If you've seen Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, then you'll know the movie takes inspiration from his character designs in the first arc of the Superman/Batman comic series. The Superman/Batman #1 (2003) cover here is done by Ed McGuinness, Dexter Vines, and Dave Stewart. I like Ed McGuinness's pencils, very stylized.
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Heatwave name drops Livewire and the Gazzo mod family. Both of whom I've talked about here and here respectively
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Heatwave has been running away from Deathstroke here who has been taking our her crew. Notice that Slade Wilson doesn't have the half black half orange helmet yet that almost every Deathstroke depiction always has.
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He, Amanda Waller, and the General who I totally think is General Sam Lane, Lois's dad, are fans of DBZ cuz of the scouters they're wearing.
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Later in the scene we see the General again he's totally General Sam Lane. I'll talk more about him when we get a double confirmation through a name drop/reveal in a later post calling Amanda Waller, Mandy. What a fucking bold thing to say to Waller! Like damn! power move right there!
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Superman and Deathstroke are fighting under a highway and we see the traffic is heading to Bludhaven!
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Very good reference to my favorite character in all of pop culture, Dick Grayson aka Nightwing. Nightwing makes Bludhaven his city to protect. The city makes its first appearance in Nightwing #1 (1996) (the panel here - W: Chuck Dixon, P: Scott McDaniel, I: Karl Story, C: Roberta Tewes, L: John Costanza). Fun Bludhaven fact, its crime rate is WORST than Gotham! Also HIGHLY recommend reading the new Nightwing run cuz its fucking amazing! Won a few Eisner Awards (think the Oscars but for comic books) recently and I am not just saying that because I am a Dick Grayson fan.
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Near the end of the episode, we see Lois willing to jump off a building to prove that Clark is Superman. A lot of discourse was happening online over this, but I do want to say this is pretty on brand for her to do.
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In Superman II, Lois does something similar and Clark saves her. its just in MAwS, Clark flies to save her thus ruining the secret identity, while in Superman II, Clark does save her but he is still able to get away with it thanks to him playing it more subtly.
Don't know why people we're in such a fucking fit over something that Lois has done before.
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In the after credits scene, Jimmy, who planned a sasquatch finding adventure with Lois and Clark, but they were dealing with their shit and Jimmy was by himself, decides to do the finding on his own and meets a giant gorilla. In the first episode Jimmy mentions an intelligent gorilla in France and my guess is this is Monsieur Mallah. You can read more about him here. If you made it this far down, I appreciate you taking the time to check this post out and if you want to see my other MAwS Easter Eggs posts - Episode 1 is here
Episode 2 is here
Episode 3 is here
Episode 4 is here
Episode 6 is here
Episode 7 is here and here
Episode 8 is here
Episode 9 is here
Episode 10 is here
My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 1 post is here
My Easter eggs and references in My Adventures with Superman comic issue 2 post is here
My Easter eggs and references for My Adventures with Superman comic issue 3 post is here
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sithwitch13 · 3 months ago
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AEW Dynamite 8/28/24
Got my neck nerves re-burned today and I'm not allowed to have thc to help the pain until tomorrow, so wrestling will just have tk do
MOX
@weareallkosh is in a meeting so I can barely hear the TV right now bug they are apparently the using his NJPW theme and I approve
Going back to watching alone after having friends over for All In feels kind of lonely
Mox desires Darby (for a talk but also what if...)
Is Mox talking to the Bucks or Schiavone?
Aww the Conglomeration supports Hook
Aww they are so proud of Willow
CHICAGO STREET FIGHT FOR WILLOW AMD KRIS AT ALL OUT, THANK YOU FOR THIS PRECIOUS GIFT
Hook and Orange just kinda hanging out, love yhay for them
HANGMAN VS BIG TOM
SWERVE
They are going to kill each other and then kiss each other and do it all over again forever
HANGER WANTS SWERVE ON HIS KNEES
STEEL CAGE MATCH
JAMIE RETURNS AND GOD I HAVE MISSED THAT THEME
Vs Harley, I'm so happy
Toxic Ex Roddy, leave Kyle and his new friends alone
Lol I may have gotten my neck burned but at least I haven't taken a Tiger Driver 91.
Have there ever been any SovCit wrestlers? Like, gimmick, not for real.
Dang, did Garcia bulk up?
WAIT DID HE JUST SAY RUINING MJF'S LIFE IS HIS FETISH?!
GET GLOMMED LEARNING TREE (AND RODDY)
Oh that reminds me, I should sleep in my neck brace tonight
God, I love the picture in picture commentary.
Big Bill's legs go up to, like, the upper half of Orange's ribs, goddamn
Height difference kink folks, this one is for you
Aww, Kyle and Mark celebrating with Orange, who was actually smiling
Roddy no put that down it isn't yours
Aww Mercedes party and Private Party is there!
Lol Zay shooting his shot
OKADA BACKING UP MERCEDES
Okada doing her dance!
MARIAH. In a robe? hmmmm
She's like "I wouldn't date any of you bitches."
Oh... my...
GYV TIME
Matt's bitchy little faces are perfect
TAKESHITA MY BOY
RICOCHET VS FLETCHER RIGHT INTO MY VEINS
Aww, Ospreay showing up for Kyle
...Pac? Oh right, the International belt
GIVE ME PAC VS RICOCHET
"This one belongs to me." Excuse me
MARINA!!!!!!
Danielson time!
STOP SCARING US YOU DICK
Danielson vs Jack?!?!
Theory: Jack has learned to teleport
And now for painkillers and more sleep
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shadowcatcher66 · 1 year ago
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Way Down the Hill
Part two
It had been two days. Two days to reach the top of that hill where a small town stood. A hill so tall and long that the sand turned to stone. And it would take another if they were going to reach that town by foot. Despite the hardships, Mr. Tom Fletcher along with Ms. Sofia Beckett, were determined to reach their destination. A small desert town called Wrenpoint. The place that Tom once called home. 
That mystery of a town that claimed to have little to no quota with the other parts of the west. A place built and raised on lies. There were only three to ever know the truth behind the veil of deceptions. Tom happened to be one of them. The other two were dead. Tom could remember every detail of the day he left. Of the day they died. Tom remembered his younger brother John. He remembered the way they used to play and get in trouble. The way they were always on the run. And the way John’s face looked as he laid dead on the ground. He also remembered his adoptive mother. The same woman that he had visited two days prior. Mary Moore. He could remember the way she smiled. He remembered the way her cooking would light up the face’s of him and his brother. But overall, Tom remembered when his adoptive father shot her for knowing the ugly truth. Indeed a cold face to remember. The face of the man who ran Tom out of his home. The face that murdered the only people that had ever loved him. Leaving him cold, and alone. Yes Tom well remembered the face of Mr. Arthur Moore, and how well he kept his secrets. 
Yes, secrets that Tom had paid for. The payment on his skin being a constant reminder of the devil from his past. He could look at the scar on his shoulder from the time Mr. Moore ran a steak knife through it. He could feel the scar on his forehead from the time that Mr. Moore had beaten him and his brother on the forehead with rocks. But most of all, Tom could look in the mirror, and see the way he had only aged twelve years when it had been forty since he ran away. He remembered the white sand that Arthur Moore had poured down his throat, making him wherever he was now. Tom knew that he wasn’t the only one who had gone through this torture. His traveling partner Sofia. She went through worse pain than he could ever imagine. She had lost her son to these monsters, so she killed these monsters in his place. He knew that tomorrow they hunted a different kind of prey. This one was cunning, smart. He knew that there was only one thing Mr. Moore had ever cared about. And Thomas Fletcher knew how to burn his life to the ground.
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ncisfranchise-source · 8 months ago
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CBS NCIS on Monday night delivered the franchise’s 1,000th total episode, including any and all spinoffs. What Easter eggs did writer Christopher J. Waild scatter throughout the hour, for longtime fans to find?
The milestone episode, “A Thousand Yards,” took its wink-wink title from Kasie’s finding that the sniper who shot Vance at his late wife’s grave site in the cold open was that far a distance away.
The first callback to the first NCIS episode, that I noticed at least, was McGee geeking out over the specs for a new Air Force One jet, seeing as “Yankee White” revolved around a Marine’s mysterious death aboard POTUS’ plane. Then, a series of explosions that came not long after Vance’s shooting were found to have targeted the Morrow family crypt (as in former NCIS Director Tom Morrow)…. Dr. Rachel Cranston, sister of the late Caitlin Todd… and former FBI agent Tobias Fornell. Morrow, Kate and Tobias all appeared in “Yankee White,” and recurring player Joe Spano’s Fornell was also on hand for “A Thousand Yards.”
This 1,000th franchise episode took a moment to fold in two spinoff characters — NCIS: LA‘s Kensi Blye-Deeks and NCIS: Hawai’i‘s Jane Tennant, both of whom teased Torres during an MTAC call. We got a mention of at least one Gibbs rule (“There is no such thing as coincidence”). And it was revealed that the young woman whom Vance’s son Jared had met online, had been groomed by Bandium founder Fletcher Voss (Bones vet T.J. Thyne) to shoot Vance, and who’d planted a virus on Voss’ phone, was in fact the daughter of the “patriot” who attempted to assassinate President George W. Bush in “Yankee White.” And here, she, too, aimed to use Air Force One as part of her plan.
Any number of you may have spotted a tinier callback, and I’ll be most curious to read your comments, but the stealthiest one that I spotted was the name of the Secret Service agent that Kasie reached out to during the antepenultimate scene, urging him to ground Air Force One’s imminent flight. That was Agent William Baer, Jr. — as in the son of Caitlin Todd’s boss in “Yankee White.”
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synergy-screams · 10 months ago
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Albany, NY - 1859
(This a scene from Monsters of the North set in 1859, in which Tom Brewer wrestles with his romantic feelings towards his friend and roommate, Ethan Hubbard.)
After he had finished secondary school, Tom Brewer had been slow to decide how exactly he wanted to move forward with his career. He spent five years working as a secretary at his father’s legal practice in Kingston, during which time Horace Brewer took every opportunity to tell his son he needed to stop dragging his feet and go to law school. In 1858, at twenty-two years old, Tom at last gave in to the pressure and enrolled at Albany University Law School. His first few months in Albany were lonely ones. Tom had never had problems finding friends in Kingston, where there was no shortage of familiar faces. He was well known and well liked in the community; the sort of kid that was polite and respectful in front of adults, using his natural charm to distract them from whatever mischief he and his friends were planning behind their backs. Charming as he was, it couldn’t be denied that his surname did him some favors. His father, Horace Godfrey Brewer, had served three terms on the Kingston town council and gone on to represent their district in the New York State Assembly.
When Tom arrived in Albany, he was in for a rude awakening, no longer surrounded by people who had watched him grow up and known the last three generations of his family. It took him a while to adapt, but with time he did, slowly starting to create a small circle of friends among his classmates at Albany Law. There was one classmate in particular, a young man by the name of Ethan Hubbard, that Tom formed a close bond with. He was one of the more senior members of the debate team and had taken Tom under his wing when he first joined. By the end of Tom’s first year, he and Ethan had grown quite close, and decided to room together when they returned to school the next fall. To save some money, they rented a room a few blocks away from campus rather than stay in the dormitory. 
Ethan was a good student and a smart young man, but he wasn’t going to let law school stop him from enjoying his youth. He would spend every Friday night out on the town, always accompanied by his longtime friend Nathaniel Caldwell and an ever-changing crowd of rowdy college students. He would bring Tom along most Fridays, but more often than not Tom would have just one or two drinks, then spend the night babysitting Ethan and make sure he made it home in one piece. 
It was after one of these outings, as they staggered back to their room in the early hours of a frigid Saturday morning, that an interesting new dimension was added to their friendship. They had just made it back to the boarding house and were stumbling up the stairs to their room when Ethan began to laugh much louder than intended at some remark Tom had made. That night had been one of the rare occasions Tom had indulged himself and had more than his usual two beers. He wasn’t nearly as far gone as Ethan, one of them had to stay sober enough to remember the way back to their room, but he was certainly feeling the effects of the shot of absinthe he’d had before they left the bar.
“Shut your damn mouth Ethan,” he fussed, smiling all the while. “If you wake Mrs. Fletcher up one more time she’ll have us thrown out of here for good.”
In his drunken haze Ethan could only respond to that with more laughter, leaving Tom no choice but to physically restrain him. He swung his arm around and got Ethan in a headlock, clasping a hand over his mouth as he dragged him down the hall to their room. 
Only when they’d made it inside and shut the door behind them did Tom set him free, at which point Ethan erupted into another fit of laughter. “You bastard!” he laughed. “Who do you think you are man-handling me like that? You’ve got some real nerve Tom Brewer! I didn’t know you had it in you, what with you being such a goddamn nancy all the time. Maybe that’s why you did it though, huh? You just want any excuse to get your hands on me.”
Tom rolled his eyes, turning away as he avoided responding to Ethan’s joke. This wasn’t the first time he’d made a comment like that. Each time he did it awakened thoughts and feelings Tom had spent years trying to repress. He was only joking, Tom assumed, and that was what made it so hard. He would have given anything to know that he wasn’t the only person that felt this way, but he had yet to meet any respectable man that shared his interest. He had heard talk of the things that happened in back alleys of the rougher parts of the city, stories of young men who sold themself to anonymous husbands trapped in loveless marriages. Tom had no interest in anything like that, but he could not deny the way he felt about his fellow man. There had been a few women over the years that had caught his attention, but none that could captivate him the way Ethan Hubbard did when he made these drunken jokes and started looking at him with those devilish blue eyes.
“You wish!” Tom retorted, still turned so that Ethan couldn’t get a good look at his face. It was getting difficult to keep up the appearance that this was all some joke. “I’m sure you’d just love to get your hands on me. I’d say I’m flattered, but I know it don’t mean nothing coming from you. The way you get when you’re drunk, you’d fuck a pig if the room was dark and it sounded something like a pretty lady.”
“Why, you—” Ethan struggled to come up with a good insult, too flustered and drunk to think clearly. His face, already flushed from the alcohol and the laughter, was as red as a tomato as he stumbled lightheaded towards Tom.
Tom knew as soon as he saw Ethan headed in his direction he wasn’t going to last much longer on his feet, and quickly tried to angle himself so that he would fall onto the bed when Ethan inevitably knocked him over. This plan worked, and moments later he found himself pinned beneath Ethan on the unmade double bed they shared. Tom laughed nervously, worried by the look in his eyes Ethan might be starting to get angry, as he sometimes did when he was drunk. His laughter was met with silence, and as he looked closer, Tom began to recognize the expression on Ethan’s face. His suspicions were confirmed when Ethan plunged forward for a long, deep kiss. Surprised and still quite drunk himself, Tom had all the gracelessness of an adolescent boy as he tried to return the kiss. It didn’t help that he had very little experience to work from, having only once kissed a girl, and never so passionately as this. After a moment he began to get a sense of what he was doing, and was disappointed when Ethan pulled away. Just as quickly as it had started, whatever was happening between them came to an abrupt end when Ethan sat up, muttering something about needing a drink of water. He went to retrieve the pitcher on the window ledge and drank directly from it, then collapsed into bed and fell asleep fully clothed. Tom sat awake for a long time after that, watching Ethan sleep as he replayed the moment they’d kissed a thousand times in his head. There was a pit in stomach that grew with every minute he spent thinking about it. He was ashamed and confused by what had happened, but what upset him more than anything was that the moment had ended so soon.
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Little One - Tom Fletcher
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Pairing: Tom Fletcher x Reader
Characters: Tom Fletcher, Danny Jones, Dougie Poynter
Warnings: N/A
Request: Anon: “Oooo saw your Christmas prompt list and was wondering if you could do a Tom Fletcher one about spending Christmas with his friends or singing Christmas songs with him x”
Word Count: 514
Author: Hannah
Christmas in the Fletcher household was a little bit crazy to say the least, with a family of musicians how could it not be.
You loved going for Christmas at Tom’s parents’ house, there was something so welcoming about being there with the rest of his family.
It was going to be your first Christmas there with your little one, who had arrived over the summer, and you knew most parents would want that first Christmas to themselves, but you and Tom wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by family for the day.
And so, Christmas morning, you and Tom bundled all the presents for your little one from Santa into the car and your little one of course, in their Christmas pyjamas, before heading off to the Fletcher house.
What you weren’t expecting when you got there though was to see Danny, Dougie and Harry all stood outside the front door in Santa hats.
Tom got out of the car and hugged them, but still looked at them all in confusion. “What’re you all doing here?”
As soon as you got out of the car Dougie made a beeline for your little one, making sure to kiss you on the cheek first and wish you a merry Christmas but then your little one was babbling with Uncle Dougie.
“It was your Mum’s idea really,” Harry explained as he helped Tom carry all the presents and bags into the house. “She thought for little one’s first Christmas we could have a big family Christmas, so here we are.”
Your heart practically melted at the idea of a big family Christmas, sure the Fletcher family Christmas was a great day but to add in Tom’s best friends too, what more could you want.
And so, the rest of the day went as Christmas normally did, presents were opened, and songs were sung, the Christmas dinner was amazing as usual.
You caught Tom in a lull of the festivities, he was in the kitchen looking out to the living room where his sister and her boyfriend were playing with your little one.
“Hey, you,” Tom greeted as you came up to hug his side, he pressed a kiss to the top of your head and then rested his head against yours.
You cuddled into him, smiling at the familiar feeling. “Have you had a good day?”
He chuckled. “The best day,” he stated as he saw Carrie tickling your little one. “I know little one won’t remember it, sure we’ll show them pictures, but they won’t really remember their first Christmas,” you could tell there was more to what he wanted to say so you stayed quiet, and just prepared to listen. “But I know that we can remember their first Christmas as a bloody amazing one.”
You smiled up at him, loving the look in his eyes, the look of love and wonder at your first child and his family being so in awe of little one too.
“As Christmases go, this one is my favourite,” Tom mused, leaning down to kiss you gently.
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agarariddle-andhernachos · 4 years ago
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INCORPORATED SERIES
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PART I // PART II // PART III
PART IV : HOW NOT TO GET YOURSELF DEMOTED
Tom’s arm was almost hurting from holding the gun towards Mundungus Fletcher’s face for about thirty minutes now. The underground parking lot was empty, badly lit and only the regular sound of a drop of water hitting the ground reached Tom’s ears. Mundungus had stopped crying by now, he almost looked bored. Even though he had both of his hands and feet tied, his face was relaxed.
Tom was leaning against an old car, one ankle crossing the other. When was she going to show up ?
“Are you going to kill me or what ?” Mundungus huffed. Tom cocked an eyebrow at the audacity. Was he asking for it ?
“Of course I’m gonna kill you,” Tom groaned, “I’m just waiting for something. Shush now.”
Mundungus shrugged the best he could. Tom briefly wondered if she was even going to show up at all. The thing was that he knew he would eventually kill Mundungus, so why wasn’t she here already ?
Tom was about to shoot the first bullet into Mundungus’ leg when he heard the sound of heels resonating in the empty parking lot.
“Well, well, well, guess who shows up,” Tom snorted. He knew from the sound she was coming closer yet he couldn’t see her yet.
“Do you know what time of the year it is ?” She shouted.
“Christmas ?”
“Yes Christmas,” she mocked, “do you know what it means ?”
Tom finally caught sight of her, and couldn’t help but giggle. Agent 713 was fiercely walking towards him. Instead of her usual black suit and heels, she was wearing an embarrassing Santa's elf costume. Tom knew the situation was kind of grave, as he was about to pull the trigger and shoot Mundungus in the next half hour, yet here he was, laughing out loud at her absurd outfit.
“You’re late for the gingerbread house-making contest ?” Tom snorted.
“Shut the fuck up,” she barked. “You just fucked up my office Christmas party. One night ! I’m just asking for one night, but no, Mister Riddle has to kill during my office Christmas party ! Don’t you,” Agent 713 looked him up and down before continuing, “mafia guys ? have a Christmas party ?”
Tom looked at her in the most patronising way he could manage before answering. “Oh of course we do, after all the killing, we meet up in a small cabin in the mountains to gossip around a fire and a cup of eggnog. Of course, we don’t have a Christmas party !”
Agent 713 crossed her arms upon her chest. The funny thing was that at every move she made, the small bells on her outfit jingled. Tom tried to hide his smile, but by the look the agent had on her face, he knew he was not doing a good job.
Their little altercation stopped the moment a small groan escaped Mundungus’ lips. To be honest, Tom had almost forgotten the presence of the other man.
“Oh yeah right,” Agent 713 said as she noticed the man. Apparently, she had forgotten about him too. At this instant, Tom saw her slowly stepping back into the businesswoman she was. Her back straightened and it appeared as she felt even more embarrassed by her outfit (if it was possible). Agent 713 turned back her head towards Tom, took a deep breath, and began talking. “Killing is bad.”
Agent 713 kept looking straight into his eyes as if her last sentence meant something to him. Tom didn’t know what to make of this, was she making fun of him ?
“Yeah… that’s it ?” Tom asked.
“I don’t have time for this, Mister Riddle.”
“Well, you’ll have to make some time for me, because I was actually waiting for you.”
Agent 713 rolled her eyes and huffed.
“You cannot appear one day, tell me all of this bullshit and then just go away you know,” Tom kept going. “I have some questions.”
She looked at her watch, then behind her from where she had appeared, before looking back at him. “You have seven minutes,” she said. “I have a secret Santa thingy after.”
Tom had so many things to say to this, but he opted not baiting her more. He counted to five in his head to get rid of all the banter he had before continuing.
“I need to know more,” he finally said, “you came one day, telling me I’ve killed too many people as if this was a thing, but I keep killing. Nothing’s happening. What’s the point ?”
“Well, nothing’s gonna happen until you’ve reached the quota.”
“Haven’t I already reached it already ? The 77.5 people ?”
Agent 713 laughed at that and settled right next to him on the hood of the car.
“This was the first quota,” she explained. “You don’t want to reach the second one.”
“What the second one ?”
“The almighty 100.”
“Oh because now this quota is a round number.”
She looked at him and took a deep breath to calm herself. “Once again, this is out of my scope. If you want to know more, send an email.”
“Oh because now it’s an email ?”
She was about to snap back when Mundungus let out a loud whine. Tom was about to say something when he saw her leaning toward the man on the floor. “Buddy,” she said in a childish voice, “I’m with you, alright ? But if you keep making those noises I’ll be the one pulling the trigger.” She stopped herself abruptly and cursed. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Tom laughed at that. It was so out of character. She always seemed so professional, but on this night, dressed the way she was, it was another side of herself Tom could see.
“And what happens if I reach this new quota ?”
“Let me be quite clear Mister Riddle,” she pointed her finger at him and slightly leaned towards him, “you’re not gonna reach the quota. I won’t let this happen, I can’t.”
“Why not ?” He frowned.
“Because if you too reach this quota, I’ll be demoted, and we don’t want that to happen, right ?” Tom almost answered the question before she continued, “and, well this is kind of my job, too. I’m here to stop you.”
Tom’s mind was rushing with what she had first told him. “Wait, me too ?”
Agent 713 appeared distressed at that. She put a strand of her hair behind her ear and the bells, once more, jingled across the large space. “Well,” she started, visibly embarrassed, “I’m quite new at this job. It’s hard to get it right the first time.”
“Times ?” Tom emphasised the “s” at the end of the word.
“Well, you’re not my first case. And it appears as if I have a quota, too.” She pursed her lips, apparently trying to find the right words. “As a stopper, we have a number of…”
“Stoppee ?” Tom cut her off.
“Killer,” she cut short. “You’re a killer, Mister Riddle.”
“Yeah right. Please continue,” he mumbled.
“So, we have a number of failed killers, if I may say, 10 to be precise. Killers we didn’t stop from reaching the almighty 100. You’re my tenth, Mister Riddle.”
Tom opened his mouth to answer back but quickly closed it. He repeated the motion a number of times before finally saying something. “Aren’t you supposed to be new at this job ?”
“To be clear, I didn’t want that job. I was aiming for the communication department at first. Okay ?”
“Communication ? Who are you even communicating to ?” Tom didn't entirely understand the conversation. She shot him a mean glare.
“Our investors, maybe ? Where do you think we get the financing from ? You know we still need investments even though we are not the typical company”
Tom knew he could ask more questions about that, but he opted not to go down that path. He simply looked at her for a couple of seconds, in her ridiculous outfit.
“Ok, so if I reach the quota you get demoted, but what happens to me ?” He asked her.
“Eternal damnation, duh.”
“That’s it ?”
“Isn’t it enough ?”
Tom shrugged.
“Can you please not kill him ?” She almost begged.
Tom looked into her eyes. They were almost pleading. He let himself smirk at the sight then turned his head back towards Mundungus, still sitting on the floor.
“Well, it’s Christmas after all,” he smiled.
From the corner of his eyes, he could see her smile. He liked that sight.
She abruptly stood up, smoothed her elf outfit, and handed her right hand towards him. “Well, Mister Riddle, merry Christmas.”
Tom rose too, stood in front of her, and took her hand in his. “Tom,” he said, “call me Tom.”
Agent 713 smiled at that, “Hermione,” she replied.
Mundungus groaned and Tom shot him a mean glare. He turned his head back towards her but she had already vanished.
Tom pointed his gun back towards the man on the floor and shot him.
Jingles resonated furiously in the parking lot.
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phantombandit-films · 4 years ago
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Why ‘War of the Worlds’ (2005) is a underrated masterpiece.
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‘War of the Worlds’ was released in 2005, it is directed by the film god that is Steven Spielberg (Jaws, E.T.) and written by Josh Friedman (Terminator: Dark Fate, Avatar 2) and David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible) 
Cast:  - Tom Cruise as Ray Farrier. - Justin Chatwin as Robbie Farrier. - Dakota Fanning as Rachel Farrier. - Miranda Otto as Mary Ann. -Tim Robbins as Harlan Ogilvy. - Ann Robinson as Grandmother.  - Gene Barry as Grandfather. 
First lets start with some history of ‘The War of the Worlds’ - The 2005 film is based off the novel of the same name which was written by H.G. Wells between 1895 and 1897, it then was then made into a series by Pearson’s Magazine in 1897 in the UK, Cosmopolitan in the US. Then becoming a hardback novel in 1898, it is one of the earliest written pieces to tell a story of conflict between Martians and man and so its one of the most commented on pieces of science fiction. 
It has been adapted and developed several times over many decades in many medias, the ones that come to mind are the famous 1938 dramatic radio reading that was directed and starred Orson Welles that actually caused public panic to those who listened in and didn’t know that the Martian invasion was fiction, its said that up to a million people ran out of their homes in terror.  (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama) )
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The 1953 ‘The War of the Worlds’ film adaptation, which was produced by George Pal and directed by Byron Haskin. It also starred Gene Barry (who played Dr. Clayton Forrester) and Ann Robinson (who played Sylvia Van Buren) who can also been seen at the end of the 2005 film, they play the grandparents of Robbie and Rachel which I think is a sweet little cameo to see for those who loved the 1953 film.  Ann Robinson also revived her role as Sylvia Van Buren in two other films and three episodes of ‘The War of the Worlds’ tv series in 1988. 
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In 1978 the most well known musical album by Jeff Wayne was produced and based off the story of ‘War of the Worlds’ this album included the voices of Richard Burton and David Essex.
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This was then turned into a concert musical which tours annually through out the UK and Europe, the concert includes live performers such as Carrie Hope Fletcher but also a 3D hologram of Liam Neeson. It also includes a mix of computer animation, pyrotechnics and a big mechanical tripod that comes out on stage and lights up and can fire its heat-ray. 
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(Source: Birmingham Mail.)
There have also been several Tv series, the two newest being the 2019 BBC version staring Poldark’s Eleanor Tomlinson and Full Monty’s Robert Carlyle, that has a Edwardian setting and follows closely to the novel. 
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The other being the FOX 2019 adaptation that is set in present day Europe but I found this version didn’t really go off the novel, and was frustrated with the lack of the famous Tripods.  (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds) 
As a kid I would watch the 1953 film with my mum all the time as its one of her favourites and I do really like it, but then 2005 rolled around and in comes Steven Spielberg’s version. To be fair it was probably 2006 when I finally saw it, I was nine years old at the time and I remember my dad bringing home the DVD that someone at work had lent him. I don’t remember watching it but I do remember having nightmares for a month after, only for a month though.  Many years later when I was half way through high school and getting more and more into film my dad then bought the DVD from Woolworth's before it shut down, the DVD didn’t have a case only a see through CD case so I think it only cost him something like 50p. So I re-watched and again I don’t really remember this but all of a sudden I was hooked, and it climbed to the second spot on my favourite movies list where it still sits today. Honestly if you asked anyone I was friends with at that time they will tell you just how obsessed I was with it.  
I have many scenes that I love in this film the first being the rise of the first tripod, but there are two that I geek out over every time. 
The first scene being the one in the basement at Robbie and Rachel’s house, the scene starts off with Ray asleep in a chair. He starts to stir when when a blue flash of light on his face, but then jolts up right at a load whooshing noise followed by closely by Robbie shooting up from just below the camera. I love the way that Robbie appears sort of fits with the sound that’s heard, also the whole mood of the scene which is pitch black with this blue flashing light every now and then. The fact that you’re just as clueless as the characters as well, you find out what’s happening when they find out.  Also the way that Rachel appears behind the basement stairs, which will appear again near the end of the movie in a much more damaged basement which shows just how much their world has changed in just a short few days.  The sound design in this movie as well is something that I love, I love when the sound in a film alone can creep you out. The tripod sound is one of my favourite sounds to exist, like if I heard that from outside I would be so creeped out and scared.  At this moment in time Robbie and Rachel have no idea what is hunting them or what Ray has seen, Imagine running from something and seeing something completely destroy the whole of your neighbourhood yet not knowing what it looks like. This is what runs through my mind when I heart Rachel cry “Is it them, Is it them?!”  Then the next morning when Ray goes upstairs and see’s that the house is just completely destroyed by an aeroplane that has crashed down in the middle of the the housing estate. This Boeing 747 was a out of use plane and the production crew bought it for $60,000 which then cost them $200,000 to transport, it was then broken into pieces and houses were built around it. Which just shows how far some movie productions will go to make a film look more legit. (We love practical effects in this house.) This scene is still set up at Universal Studios Hollywood and can be seen on the Studio tour. 
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(Basement and Plane crash scene.)
My second favourite scene, which is one of my all time top favourite scene ever with no surprise is the dock scene.  The speeding train that’s on fire is absolute stunning in every sense but for me the scene starts when the music starts.  ‘If I ruled the world, everyday would be the first day of spring.’ But i’m really glued to the screen when Rachel starts to follow the birds coming in from the river to in land, she follows them up to the hill where she notices the tree’s on the top are moving weirdly. “The tree’s are funny.” She then reaches out and grabs onto Rays hand who was talking to a friend.  Robbie turns to the hill as the camera slowly comes back and shows Robbie also turning to look at where Ray is looking. (Just remembering that this is the first time Robbie and Rachel ever see the tripods.) 
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The camera then shows us what the family is looking at to reveal a tripod stood on the top of the hill, it then moves one of its legs which crushes a tree and makes everyone else look back. Obviously chaos ensues from this point on, everyone running trying to get onto the ferry to get away from the impending doom, unfortunately we learn that no where, not even on the water is safe. As a tripod comes up from out of the water and attacks the ferry, the family manage to escape and get to land on the other side of the ferry. They stop for a moment to catch their breath as people are being picked out of the water below them, they turn as a old air raid alarm is heard on the other side of the hill and we see tripods coming over another hill that was filled with people and using their head rays to wipe them all out, we also see in the distance a lighting storm indicating more Martions are still coming to earth. The scene is like a depiction of all the stages of the attack.  (Dock attack scene.)
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I mean all the action scenes in this movie are just so beautiful and amazing, but did we expect any less from Spielberg? And the CGI and practical are all done extremely well and fitted together to make a scene look as real as possible. One of the art directors that worked on this film, Doug J. Meerdink who has also worked on Jurassic Park: III, Cloverfield and Jurassic World. 
I was looking up some trivia on IMDB for this movie and found that there was a deleted scene that is called the ‘Camelot’ scene. This scene is supposed to take place between the attack on the ferry and the battle on the hill, it involves Ray, Rachel and Robbie walking through an abandoned housing estate that’s named Camelot, when a pack of tripods start walking near by.  One of the tripods breaks off and the family has to take cover behind a SUV, they watch helplessly from behind as the tripod reaches into the house and grabs people from the houses. This scene has never been released but apparently it was fully finished, VFX and all but then taken out a few weeks before post production was wrapped up.  There is only one official video from this scene that was in the actual trailer for the film, and it’s only a shot of the family hiding behind the SUV. 
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The only other shot from the scene is this landscape shot of a CGI tripod. 
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There are also photos of the set designers setting up the miniature of the housing estate to shoot this scene, the rest are fan arts of how the scene maybe looked/ played out.  (Source)
I really hope that one day Steven releases this scene, or for some anniversary adds it into an extended version of the film like we’ve seen for other films. Because I would love that so much! It seems like such an incredible scene, and to see the tripods up this close again would be so cool! 
One of the trailers that was released for this film doesn’t have any of the film shots it in, It takes place in a normal neighbourhood where people are just going about their normal nightly routine when suddenly over the hill there are all these brilliant flashing lights, everyone's just coming out of their houses in their pj’s and standing in the street marvelling at this sight in front of them. Then we see explosions and suddenly heat rays are blowing up the tress on the street which then goes into the title.  I just love this, a trailer that doesn’t give anything away from the movie but creeps you out enough to be invested.  (Trailer.)
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All in all it’s just an very visually pleasing film, it feels real enough to give you a sense of fear for the characters and for yourself. I also love that Steven stayed true to the source material,more truer than some of the other adaptations and also added in his own little Easter eggs.  The sounds, the aesthetic, the colours just everything comes together so beautifully. I think its a very underrated movie that deserves so much more love.
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grigori77 · 4 years ago
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2020 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 2)
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20.  ONWARD – Disney and Pixar’s best digitally animated family feature of 2020 (beating the admittedly impressive Soul to the punch) clearly has a love of fantasy roleplay games like Dungeons & Dragons, its quirky modern-day AU take populated by fantastical races and creatures seemingly tailor-made for the geek crowd … needless to say, me and many of my friends absolutely loved it.  That doesn’t mean that the classic Disney ideals of love, family and believing in yourself have been side-lined in favour of fan-service – this is as heartfelt, affecting and tearful as their previous standouts, albeit with plenty of literal magic added to the metaphorical kind.  The central premise is a clever one – once upon a time, magic was commonplace, but over the years technology came along to make life easier, so that in the present day the various races (elves, centaurs, fauns, pixies, goblins and trolls among others) get along fine without it. Then timid elf Ian Lightfoot (Tom Holland) receives a wizard’s staff for his sixteenth birthday, a bequeathed gift from his father, who died before he was born, with instructions for a spell that could bring him back to life for one whole day.  Encouraged by his brash, over-confident wannabe adventurer elder brother Barley (Chris Pratt), Ian tries it out, only for the spell to backfire, leaving them with the animated bottom half of their father and just 24 hours to find a means to restore the rest of him before time runs out.  Cue an “epic quest” … needless to say, this is another top-notch offering from the original masters of the craft, a fun, affecting and thoroughly infectious family-friendly romp with a winning sense of humour and inspired, flawless world-building.  Holland and Pratt are both fantastic, their instantly believable, ill-at-ease little/big brother chemistry effortlessly driving the story through its ingenious paces, and the ensuing emotional fireworks are hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure, while there’s typically excellent support from Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine from Seinfeld) as Ian and Barley’s put-upon but supportive mum, Laurel, Octavia Spencer as once-mighty adventurer-turned-restaurateur “Corey” the Manticore and Mel Rodriguez (Getting On, The Last Man On Earth) as overbearing centaur cop (and Laurel’s new boyfriend) Colt Bronco.  The film marks the sophomore feature gig for Dan Scanlon, who debuted with 2013’s sequel Monsters University, and while that was enjoyable enough I ultimately found it non-essential – no such verdict can be levelled against THIS film, the writer-director delivering magnificently in all categories, while the animation team have outdone themselves in every scene, from the exquisite environments and character/creature designs to some fantastic (and frequently delightfully bonkers) set-pieces, while there’s a veritable riot of brilliant RPG in-jokes to delight geekier viewers (gelatinous cube! XD).  Massive, unadulterated fun, frequently hilarious and absolutely BURSTING with Disney’s trademark heart, this was ALMOST my animated feature of the year.  More on that later …
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19.  THE GENTLEMEN – Guy Ritchie’s been having a rough time with his last few movies (The Man From UNCLE didn’t do too bad but it wasn’t exactly a hit and was largely overlooked or simply ignored, while intended franchise-starter King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was largely derided and suffered badly on release, dying a quick death financially – it’s a shame on both counts, because I really liked them), so it’s nice to see him having some proper success with his latest, even if he has basically reverted to type to do it.  Still, when his newest London gangster flick is THIS GOOD it seems churlish to quibble – this really is what he does best, bringing together a collection of colourful geezers and shaking up their status quo, then standing back and letting us enjoy the bloody, expletive-riddled results. This particularly motley crew is another winning selection, led by Matthew McConaughey as ruthlessly successful cannabis baron Mickey Pearson, who’s looking to retire from the game by selling off his massive and highly lucrative enterprise for a most tidy sum (some $400,000,000 to be precise) to up-and-coming fellow American ex-pat Matthew Berger (Succession’s Jeremy Strong, oozing sleazy charm), only for local Chinese triad Dry Eye (Crazy Rich Asians’ Henry Golding, chewing the scenery with enthusiasm) to start throwing spanners into the works with the intention of nabbing the deal for himself for a significant discount.  Needless to say Mickey’s not about to let that happen … McConaughey is ON FIRE here, the best he’s been since Dallas Buyers Club in my opinion, clearly having great fun sinking his teeth into this rich character and Ritchie’s typically sparkling, razor-witted dialogue, and he’s ably supported by a quality ensemble cast, particularly co-star Charlie Hunnam as Mickey’s ice-cold, steel-nerved right-hand-man Raymond Smith, Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery as his classy, strong-willed wife Rosalind, Colin Farrell as a wise-cracking, quietly exasperated MMA trainer and small-time hood simply known as the Coach (who gets many of the film’s best lines), and, most notably, Hugh Grant as the film’s nominal narrator, thoroughly morally bankrupt private investigator Fletcher, who consistently steals the film.  This is Guy Ritchie at his very best – a twisty rug-puller of a plot that constantly leaves you guessing, brilliantly observed and richly drawn characters you can’t help loving in spite of the fact there’s not a single hero among them, a deliciously unapologetic, politically incorrect sense of humour and a killer soundtrack.  Getting the cinematic year off to a phenomenal start, it’s EASILY Ritchie’s best film since Sherlock Holmes, and a strong call-back to the heady days of Snatch (STILL my favourite) and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels.  Here’s hoping he’s on a roll again, eh?
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18.  SPONTANEOUS – one of the year’s biggest under-the-radar surprise hits for me was one which I actually might not have caught if things had been a little more normal and ordered.  Thankfully with all the lockdown and cinematic shutdown bollocks going on, this fantastically subversive and deeply satirical indie teen comedy horror came along at the perfect time, and I completely flipped out over it.  Now those who know me know I don’t tend to gravitate towards teen cinema, but like all those other exceptions I’ve loved over the years, this one had a brilliantly compulsive hook I just couldn’t turn down – small-town high-schooler Mara (Knives Out and Netflix’ Cursed’s Katherine Langford) is your typical cool outsider kid, smart, snarky and just putting up with the scene until she can graduate and get as far away as possible … until one day in her senior year one of her classmates just inexplicably explodes. Like her peers, she’s shocked and she mourns, then starts to move on … until it happens again.  As the death toll among the senior class begins to mount, it becomes clear something weird is going on, but Mara has other things on her mind because the crisis has, for her, had an unexpected benefit – without it she wouldn’t have fallen in love with like-minded oddball new kid Dylan (Lean On Pete and Words On Bathroom Walls’ Charlie Plummer). The future’s looking bright, but only if they can both live to see it … this is a wickedly intelligent film, powered by a skilfully executed script and a wonderfully likeable young cast who consistently steer their characters around the potential cliched pitfalls of this kind of cinema, while debuting writer-director Brian Duffield (already a rising star thanks to scripts for Underwater, The Babysitter and blacklist darling Jane Got a Gun among others) show he’s got as much talent and flair for crafting truly inspired cinema as he has for thinking it up in the first place, delivering some impressively offbeat set-pieces and several neat twists you frequently don’t see coming ahead of time.  Langford and Plummer as a sassy, spicy pair who are easy to root for without ever getting cloying or sweet, while there’s glowing support from the likes of Hayley Law (Rioverdale, Altered Carbon, The New Romantic) as Mara’s best friend Tess, Piper Perabo and Transparent’s Rob Huebel as her increasingly concerned parents, and Insecure’s Yvonne Orji as Agent Rosetti, the beleaguered government employee sent to spearhead the investigation into exactly what’s happening to these kids.  Quirky, offbeat and endlessly inventive, this is one of those interesting instances where I’m glad they pushed the horror elements into the background so we could concentrate on the comedy, but more importantly these wonderfully well-realised and vital characters – there are some skilfully executed shocks, but far more deep belly laughs, and there’s bucketloads of heart to eclipse the gore.  Another winning debut from a talent I intend to watch with great interest in the future.
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17.  HAMILTON – arriving just as Black Lives Matter reached fever-pitch levels, this feature presentation of the runaway Broadway musical smash-hit could not have been better timed. Shot over three nights during the show’s 2016 run with the original cast and cut together with specially created “setup shots”, it’s an immersive experience that at once puts you right in amongst the audience (at times almost a character themselves, never seen but DEFINITELY heard) but also lets you experience the action up close.  And what action – it’s an incredible show, a thoroughly fascinating piece of work that reads like something very staid and proper on paper (an all-encompassing biographical account of the life and times of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton) but, in execution, becomes something very different and EXTREMELY vital.  The execution certainly couldn’t be further from the usual period biopic fare this kind of historical subject matter usually gets (although in the face of recent high quality revisionist takes like Marie Antoinette, The Great and Tesla it’s not SO surprising), while the cast is not at all what you’d expect – with very few notable exceptions the cast is almost entirely people of colour, despite the fact that the real life individuals they’re playing were all very white indeed.  Every single one of them is also an absolute revelation – the show’s writer-composer Lin-Manuel Miranda (already riding high on the success of In the Heights) carries the central role of Hamilton with effortless charm and raw star power, Leslie Odom Jr. (Smash, Murder On the Orient Express) is duplicitously complex as his constant nemesis Aaron Burr, Christopher Jackson (In the Heights, Moana, Bull) oozes integrity and nobility as his mentor and friend George Washington, Phillipa Soo is sweet and classy as his wife Eliza while Renée Elise Goldsberry (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Jacks, Altered Carbon) is fiery and statuesque as her sister Angelica Schuyler (the one who got away), and Jonathan Groff (Mindhunter) consistently steals every scene he’s in as fiendish yet childish fan favourite King George III, but the show (and the film) ultimately belongs to veritable powerhouse Daveed Diggs (Blindspotting, The Good Lord Bird) in a spectacular duel role, starting subtly but gaining scene-stealing momentum as French Revolutionary Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, before EXPLODING onto the stage in the second half as indomitable third American President Thomas Jefferson.  Not having seen the stage show, I was taken completely by surprise by this, revelling in its revisionist genius and offbeat, quirky hip-hop charm, spellbound by the skilful ease with which is takes the sometimes quite dull historical fact and skews it into something consistently entertaining and absorbing, transported by the catchy earworm musical numbers and thoroughly tickled by the delightfully cheeky sense of humour strung throughout (at least when I wasn’t having my heart broken by moments of raw dramatic power). Altogether it’s a pretty unique cinematic experience I wish I could have actually gotten to see on the big screen, and one I’ve consistently recommended to all my friends, even the ones who don’t usually like musicals.  As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t need a proper Les Misérables style screen adaptation – this is about as perfect a presentation as the show could possibly hope for.
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16.  SPUTNIK – summer’s horror highlight (despite SERIOUSLY tough competition) was a guaranteed sleeper hit that I almost missed entirely, stumbling across the trailer one day on YouTube and getting bowled over by its potential, prompting me to hunt it down by any means necessary.  The feature debut of Russian director Egor Abramenko, this first contact sci-fi chiller is about as far from E.T. as it’s possible to get, sharing some of the same DNA as Carpenter’s The Thing but proudly carving its own path with consummate skill and definitely signalling great things to come from its brand new helmer and relative unknown screenwriters Oleg Malovichko and Andrei Zolotarev.  Oksana Akinshina (probably best known in the West for her powerful climactic cameo in The Bourne Supremacy) is the beating heart of the film as neurophysiologist Tatyana Yuryevna Klimova, brought in to aid in the investigation in the Russian wilderness circa 1983 after an orbital research mission goes horribly wrong.  One of the cosmonauts dies horribly, while the other, Konstantin (The Duelist’s Pyotr Fyodorov) seems unharmed, but it quickly becomes clear that he’s now the host for something decidedly extraterrestrial and potentially terrifying, and as Tatyana becomes more deeply embroiled in her assignment she comes to realise that her superiors, particularly mysterious Red Army project leader Colonel Semiradov (The PyraMMMid’s Fyodor Bondarchuk), have far more insidious plans for Konstantin and his new “friend” than she could ever imagine. This is about as dark, intense and nightmarish as this particular sub-genre gets, a magnificently icky body horror that slowly builds its tension as we’re gradually exposed to the various truths and the awful gravity of the situation slowly reveals itself, punctuated by skilfully executed shocks and some particularly horrifying moments when the evils inflicted by the humans in charge prove far worse than anything the alien can do, while the ridiculously talented writers have a field day pulling the rug out from under us again and again, never going for the obvious twist and keeping us guessing right to the devastating ending, while the beautifully crafted digital creature effects are nothing short of astonishing and thoroughly creepy.  Akinshina dominates the film with her unbridled grace, vulnerability and integrity, the relationship that develops between Tatyana and Konstantin (Fyodorov delivering a beautifully understated turn belying deep inner turmoil) feeling realistically earned as it goes from tentatively wary to tragically bittersweet, while Bondarchuk invests the Colonel with a nuanced air of tarnished authority and restrained brutality that made him one of my top screen villains for the year.  One of 2020’s great sleeper hits, I can’t speak of this film highly enough – it’s a genuine revelation, an instant classic for whom I’ll sing its praises for years to come, and I wish enormous future success to all the creative talents involved.
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15.  THE INVISIBLE MAN – looks like third time’s a charm for Leigh Whannell, writer-director of my ALMOST horror movie of the year (more on that later) – while he’s had immense success as a horror writer over the years (co-creator of both the Saw and Insidious franchises), as a director his first two features haven’t exactly set the world alight, with debut Insidious: Chapter III garnering similar takes to the rest of the series but ultimately turning out to be a bit of a damp squib quality-wise, while his second feature Upgrade was a stone-cold masterpiece that was (rightly) EXTREMELY well received critically, but ultimately snuck in under the radar and has remained a stubbornly hidden gem since. No such problems with his third feature, though – his latest collaboration with producer Jason Blum and the insanely lucrative Blumhouse Pictures has proven a massive hit both financially AND with reviewers, and deservedly so.  Having given up on trying to create a shared cinematic universe inhabited by their classic monsters, Universal resolved to concentrate on standalones to showcase their elite properties, and their first try is a rousing success, Whannell bringing HG Wells’ dark and devious human monster smack into the 21st Century as only he can.  The result is a surprisingly subtle piece of work, much more a lethally precise exercise in cinematic sleight of hand and extraordinary acting than flashy visual effects, strictly adhering to the Blumhouse credo of maximum returns for minimum bucks as the story is stripped down to its bare essentials and allowed to play out without any unnecessary weight.  The Handmaid’s Tale’s Elizabeth Moss once again confirms what a masterful actress she is as she brings all her performing weapons to bear in the role of Cecelia “Cee” Kass, the cloistered wife of affluent but monstrously abusive optics pioneer Aidan Griffin (Netflix’ The Haunting of Hill House’s Oliver Jackson-Cohen), who escapes his clutches in the furiously tense opening sequence and goes to ground with the help of her closest childhood friend, San Francisco cop James Lanier (Leverage’s Aldis Hodge) and his teenage daughter Sydney (A Wrinkle in Time’s Storm Reid).  Two weeks later, Aidan commits suicide, leaving Cee with a fortune to start her life over (with the proviso that she’s never ruled mentally incompetent), but as she tries to find her way in the world again little things start going wrong for her, and she begins to question if there might be something insidious going on.  As her nerves start to unravel, she begins to suspect that Aidan is still alive, still very much in her life, fiendishly toying with her and her friends, but no-one can see him.  Whannell plays her paranoia up for all it’s worth, skilfully teasing out the scares so that, just like her friends, we begin to wonder if it might all be in her head after all, before a spectacular mid-movie reveal throws the switch into high gear and the true threat becomes clear.  The lion’s share of the film’s immense success must of course go to Moss – her performance is BEYOND a revelation, a blistering career best that totally powers the whole enterprise, and it goes without saying that she’s the best thing in this.  Even so, she has sterling support from Hodge and Reid, as well as Love Child’s Harriet Dyer as Cee’s estranged big sister Emily and Wonderland’s Michael Dorman as Adrian’s slimy, spineless lawyer brother Tom, and, while he doesn’t have much actual (ahem) “screen time”, Jackson-Cohen delivers a fantastically icy, subtly malevolent turn which casts a large “shadow” over the film.  This is one of my very favourite Blumhouse films, a pitch-perfect psychological chiller that keeps the tension cranked up unbearably tight and never lets go, Whannell once again displaying uncanny skill with expert jump-scares, knuckle-whitening chills and a truly astounding standout set-piece that easily goes down as one of the top action sequences of 2020. Undoubtedly the best version of Wells’ story to date, this goes a long way in repairing the damage of Universal’s abortive “Dark Universe” efforts, as well as showcasing a filmmaking master at the very height of his talents.
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14.  EXTRACTION – the Coronavirus certainly has threw a massive spanner in the works of the year’s cinematic calendar – among many other casualties to the blockbuster shunt, the latest (and most long-awaited) MCU movie, Black Widow, should have opened to further record-breaking box office success at the end of spring, but instead the theatres were all closed and virtually all the heavyweights were pushed back or shelved indefinitely.  Thank God, then, for the streaming services, particularly Hulu, Amazon and Netflix, the latter of which provided a perfect movie for us to see through the key transition into the summer blockbuster season, an explosively flashy big budget action thriller ushered in by MCU alumni the Russo Brothers (who produced and co-wrote this adaptation of Ciudad, a graphic novel that Joe Russo co-created with Ande Parks and Fernando Leon Gonzalez) and barely able to contain the sheer star-power wattage of its lead, Thor himself.  Chris Hemsworth plays Tyler Rake, a former Australian SAS operative who hires out his services to an extraction operation under the command of mercenary Nik Khan (The Patience Stone’s Golshifteh Farahani), brought in to liberate Ovi Mahajan (Rudhraksh Jaiswal in his first major role), the pre-teen son of incarcerated Indian crime lord Ovi Sr. (Pankaj Tripathi), who has been abducted by Bangladeshi rival Amir Asif (Priyanshu Painyuli).  The rescue itself goes perfectly, but when the time comes for the hand-off the team is double-crossed and Tyler is left stranded in the middle of Dhaka with no choice but to keep Ovi alive as every corrupt cop and street gang in the city closes in around them.  This is the feature debut of Sam Hargrave, the latest stuntman to try his hand at directing, so he certainly knows his way around an action set-piece, and the result is a thoroughly breathless adrenaline rush of a film, bursting at the seams with spectacular fights, gun battles and car chases, dominated by a stunning sustained sequence that plays out in one long shot, guaranteed to leave jaws lying on the floor.  Not that there should be any surprise – Hargrave cut his teeth as a stunt coordinator for the Russos on Captain America: Civil War and their Avengers films.  That said, he displays strong talent for the quieter disciplines of filmmaking too, delivering quality character development and drawing out consistently noteworthy performances from his cast.  Of course, Hemsworth can do the action stuff in his sleep, but there’s a lot more to Tyler than just his muscle, the MCU veteran investing him with real wounded vulnerability and a tragic fatalism which colours every scene, while Jaiswal is exceptional throughout, showing plenty of promise for the future, and there’s strong support from Farahani and Painyuli, as well as Stranger Things’ David Harbour as world-weary retired merc Gaspard, and a particularly impressive, muscular turn from Randeep Hooda (Once Upon a Time in Mumbai) as Saju, a former Para and Ovi’s bodyguard, who’s determined to take possession of the boy himself, even if he has to go through Tyler to get him.  This is action cinema that really deserves to be seen on the big screen – I watched it twice in a week and would happily have paid for two trips to the cinema for it if I could have.  As we looked down the barrel of a summer season largely devoid of blockbuster fare, I couldn’t recommend this enough.  Thank the gods for Netflix …
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13.  THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7 – although it’s definitely a film that really benefitted enormously from releasing on Netflix during the various lockdowns, this was one of the blessed few I actually got to see during one of the UK’s frustratingly rare lulls when cinemas were actually OPEN.  Rather perversely it therefore became one of my favourite cinematic experiences of 2020, but then I’m just as much a fan of well-made cerebral films as I am of the big, immersive blockbuster EXPERIENCES, so this probably still would have been a standout in a normal year. Certainly if this was a purely CRITICAL list for the year this probably would have placed high in the Top Ten … Aaron Sorkin is a writer whose work I have ardently admired ever since he went from esteemed playwright to in-demand talent for both the big screen AND the small with A Few Good Men, and TTOTC7 is just another in a long line of consistently impressive, flawlessly written works rife with addictive quickfire dialogue, beautifully observed characters and rewardingly propulsive narrative storytelling (therefore resting comfortably amongst the well-respected likes of The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War, Moneyball and The Social Network).  It also marks his second feature as a director (after fascinating and incendiary debut Molly’s Game), and once again he’s gone for true story over fiction, tackling the still controversial subject of the infamous 1968 trial of the “ringleaders” of the infamous riots which marred Chicago’s Diplomatic National Convention five months earlier, in which thousands of hippies and college students protesting the Vietnam War clashed with police.  Spurred on by the newly-instated Presidential Administration of Richard Nixon to make some examples, hungry up-and-coming prosecutor Richard Schultz (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is confident in his case, while the Seven – who include respected and astute student activist Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne) and confrontational counterculture firebrands Abbie Hoffman (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Jerry Rubin (Succession’s Jeremy Strong) – are the clear underdogs.  They’re a divided bunch (particularly Hayden and Hoffman, who never mince their words about what little regard they hold for each other), and they’re up against the combined might of the U.S. Government, while all they have on their side is pro-bono lawyer and civil rights activist William Kunstler (Mark Rylance), who’s sharp, driven and thoroughly committed to the cause but clearly massively outmatched … not to mention the fact that the judge presiding over the case is Julius Hoffman (Frank Langella), a fierce and uncompromising conservative who’s clearly 100% on the Administration’s side, and who might in fact be stark raving mad (he also frequently goes to great lengths to make it clear to all concerned that he is NOT related to Abbie).  Much as we’ve come to expect from Sorkin, this is cinema of grand ideals and strong characters, not big spectacle and hard action, and all the better for it – he’s proved time and again that he’s one of the very best creative minds in Hollywood when it comes to intelligent, thought-provoking and engrossing thinking-man’s entertainment, and this is pure par for the course, keeping us glued to the screen from the skilfully-executed whirlwind introductory montage to the powerfully cathartic climax, and every varied and brilliant scene in-between.  This is heady stuff, focusing on what’s still an extremely thorny issue made all the more urgently relevant and timely given what was (and still is) going on in American politics at the time, and everyone involved here was clearly fully committed to making the film as palpable, powerful and resonant as possible for the viewer, no matter their nationality or political inclination.  Also typical for a Sorkin film, the cast are exceptional, everyone clearly having the wildest time getting their teeth into their finely-drawn characters and that magnificent dialogue – Redmayne and Baron Cohen are compellingly complimentary intellectual antagonists given their radically different approaches and their roles’ polar opposite energies, while Rylance delivers another pitch-perfect, simply ASTOUNDING performance that once again marks him as one of the very best actors of his generation, and there are particularly meaty turns from Strong, Langella, Aquaman’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (as besieged Black Panther Bobby Seale) and a potent late appearance from Michael Keaton that sear themselves into the memory long after viewing. Altogether then, this is a phenomenal film which deserves to be seen no matter the format, a thought-provoking and undeniably IMPORTANT masterwork from a master cinematic storyteller that says as much about the world we live in now as the decidedly turbulent times it portrays …
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12.  GREYHOUND – when the cinemas closed back in March, the fate of many of the major summer blockbusters we’d been looking forward to was thrown into terrible doubt. Some were pushed back to more amenable dates in the autumn or winter (which even then ultimately proved frustratingly ambitious), others knocked back a whole year to fill summer slots for 2021, but more than a few simply dropped off the radar entirely with the terrible words “postponed until further notice” stamped on them, and I lamented them all, this one in particular.  It hung in there longer than some, stubbornly holding onto its June release slot for as long as possible, but eventually it gave up the ghost too … but thanks to Apple TV+, not for long, ultimately releasing less than a month later than intended.  Thankfully the film itself was worth the fuss, a taut World War II suspense thriller that’s all killer, no filler – set during the infamous Battle of the Atlantic, it portrays the constant life-or-death struggle faced by the Allied warships assigned to escort the transport convoys as they crossed the ocean, defending their charges from German U-boats.  Adapted from C.S. Forester’s famous 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by Tom Hanks and directed by Aaron Schneider (Get Low), the narrative focuses on the crew of the escort leader, American destroyer USS Fletcher, codenamed “Greyhound”, and in particular its captain, Commander Ernest Krause (Hanks), a career sailor serving his first command.  As they cross “the Pit”, the most dangerous middle stretch of the journey where they spend days without air-cover, they find themselves shadowed by “the Wolf Pack”, a particularly cunning group of German submarines that begin to pick away at the convoy’s stragglers.  Faced with daunting odds, a dwindling supply of vital depth-charges and a ruthless, persistent enemy, Krause must make hard choices to bring his ships home safe … jumping into the thick of the action within the first ten minutes and maintaining its tension for the remainder of the trim 90-minute run, this is screen suspense par excellence, a sleek textbook example of how to craft a compelling big screen knuckle-whitener with zero fat and maximum reward, delivering a series of desperate naval scraps packed with hide-and-seek intensity, heart-in-mouth near-misses and fist-in-air cathartic payoffs by the bucket-load.  Hanks is subtly magnificent, the calm centre of the narrative storm as a supposed newcomer to this battle arena who could have been BORN for it, bringing to mind his similarly unflappable in Captain Phillips and certainly not suffering by comparison; by and large he’s the focus point, but other crew members make strong (if sometimes quite brief) impressions, particularly Stephen Graham as Krause’s reliably seasoned XO, Lt. Commander Charlie Cole, The Magnificent Seven’s Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Just Mercy’s Rob Morgan, while Elisabeth Shue does a lot with a very small part in brief flashbacks as Krause’s fiancée Evelyn. Relentless, exhilarating and thoroughly unforgettable, this was one of the true action highlights of the summer, and one hell of a war flick.  I’m so glad it made the cut for the summer …
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11.  PROJECT POWER – with Marvel and DC pushing their tent-pole titles back in the face of COVID, the usual superhero antics we’ve come to expect for the summer were pretty thin on the ground in 2020, leading us to find our geeky fan thrills elsewhere. Unfortunately, pickings were frustratingly slim – Korean comic book actioner Gundala was entertaining but workmanlike, while Thor AU Mortal was underwhelming despite strong direction from Troll Hunter’s André Øvredal, and The New Mutants just got shat on by the studio and its distributors and no mistake – thank the Gods, then, for Netflix, once again riding to the rescue with this enjoyably offbeat super-thriller, which takes an intriguing central premise and really runs with it.  New designer drug Power has hit the streets of New Orleans, able to give anyone who takes it a superpower for five minutes … the only problem is, until you try it, you don’t know what your own unique talent is – for some, it could mean five minutes of invisibility, or insane levels of super-strength, but other powers can be potentially lethal, the really unlucky buggers just blowing up on the spot.  Robin (The Hate U Give’s Dominique Fishback) is a teenage Power-pusher with dreams of becoming a rap star, dealing the pills so she can help her diabetic mum; Frank Shaver (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of her customers, a police detective who uses his power of near invulnerability to even the playing field when supercharged crims cause a disturbance.  Their lives are turned upside down when Art (Jamie Foxx) arrives in town – he’s a seriously badass ex-soldier determined to hunt down the source of Power by any means necessary, and he’s not above tearing the Big Easy apart to do it. This is a fun, gleefully infectious rollercoaster that doesn’t take itself too seriously, revelling in the anarchic potential of its premise and crafting some suitably OTT effects-driven chaos brought to pleasingly visceral fruition by its skilfully inventive director, Ariel Schulman (Catfish, Nerve, Viral), while Mattson Tomlin (the screenwriter of the DCEU’s oft-delayed, incendiary headline act The Batman) takes the story in some very interesting directions and poses fascinating questions about what Power’s TRULY capable of.  Gordon-Levitt and Fishback are both brilliant, the latter particularly impressing in what’s sure to be a major breakthrough role for her, and the friendship their characters share is pretty adorable, while Foxx really is a force to be reckoned with, pretty chill even when he’s in deep shit but fully capable of turning into a bona fide killing machine at the flip of a switch, and there’s strong support from Westworld’s Rodrigo Santoro as Biggie, Power’s delightfully oily kingpin, Courtney B. Vance as Frank’s by-the-book superior, Captain Crane, Amy Landecker as Gardner, the morally bankrupt CIA spook responsible for the drug’s production, and Machine Gun Kelly as Newt, a Power dealer whose pyrotechnic “gift” really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Exciting, inventive, frequently amusing and infectiously likeable, this was some of the most uncomplicated cinematic fun I had all summer.  Not bad for something which I’m sure was originally destined to become one of the season’s B-list features …
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firstlightfanfics · 6 months ago
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Another new/old fic by the OG Michelle!
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watusichris · 4 years ago
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You Oughta “Get Carter”
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Another old Night Flight piece, tied to a Turner Classic Movies airing, about a movie I never tire of watching. (Unfortunately, the Krays film “Legend” turned out to be not so good.) ********** The English gangster movie has proven an enduring genre to this day. The 1971 picture that jumpstarted the long-lived cycle, Get Carter, Mike Hodges’ bracing, brutal tale of a mobster’s revenge, screens late Thursday on TCM as part of a day-long tribute to Michael Caine, who stars as the film’s titular anti-hero.
We won’t have to wait long for the next high-profile Brit-mob saga: October will see the premiere of Brian Helgeland’s Legend, a new feature starring Tom Hardy (Mad Max: Fury Road, The Dark Knight Rises, Locke) in a tour de force dual role as Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the legendarily murderous identical twin gangleaders who terrorized London in the ‘60s. The violent exploits of the Krays mesmerized Fleet Street’s journalists and the British populace until the brothers and most of the top members of their “firm” were arrested in 1968.
The siblings both died in prison after receiving life sentences. They’ve been the subjects of several English TV documentaries and a 1990 feature starring Martin and Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet. However, the Krays and their seamy milieu may have had their greatest impact in fictional form, via the durable figure of Jack Carter, the creation of a shy, alcoholic graphic artist, animator, and fiction writer named Ted Lewis, the man now recognized by many as “the father of British noir.”
Born in 1940 in a Manchester suburb, Lewis was raised in the small town of Barton-upon-Humber in the dank English midlands. A sickly child, he became engrossed with art, the movies, and writing. The product of an English art school in nearby Hull, he wrote his first, unsuccessful novel, a semi-autobiographical piece of “kitchen sink” realism called All the Way Home and All the Night Through, in 1965.
He soon moved sideways into movie animation, serving as clean-up supervisor on George Dunning’s Beatles feature Yellow Submarine (1968). However, now married with a couple of children, he decided to return to writing with an eye to crafting a commercial hit, and in 1970 he published a startling, ultra-hardboiled novel titled Jack’s Return Home.
British fiction had never produced anything quite like the book’s protagonist Jack Carter. He is the enforcer for a pair of London gangsters, Gerald and Les Fletcher, who bear more than a passing resemblance to the Krays. At the outset of the book, recounted in the first person, Carter travels by train to an unnamed city in the British midlands (modeled after the city of Scunthorpe near Lewis’ hometown) to bury his brother Frank, who has died in an alleged drunk driving accident.
Carter instantly susses that his brother was murdered, and he sets about sorting out a hierarchy of low-end midlands criminals (all of whom he knew in his early days as a budding hoodlum) responsible for the crime, investigating the act with a gun in his hand and a heart filled with hate. He’s no Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe bound by a moral code – in fact, he once bedded Frank’s wife, and is now sleeping with his boss Gerald’s spouse. He’s a sociopathic career criminal and professional killer – a “villain,” in the English term -- who will use any means at his disposal to secure his revenge.
Carter’s pursuit of rough justice for his brother, and for a despoiled niece, attracts the attention of the Fletchers, whose business relationships with the Northern mob are being disrupted by their lieutenant’s campaign of vengeance. As Carter leaves behind a trail of corpses and homes in on the last of his quarry, the hunter has become the hunted, and Jack’s Return Home climaxes with scenes of bloodletting worthy of a Jacobean tragedy, or of Grand Guignol.
Before its publication, Lewis’ grimy, violent book attracted the attention of Michael Klinger, who had produced Roman Polanski’s stunning ‘60s features Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac. Klinger acquired film rights to the novel before its publication in 1970, and sent a galley copy to Mike Hodges, then a U.K. TV director with no feature credits.
Hodges, who immediately signed on as director and screenwriter of Klinger’s feature – which was retitled Get Carter -- was not only drawn to the taut, fierce action, but also by the opportunity to peel away the veneer of propriety that still lingered in British society and culture. As he noted in his 2000 commentary for the U.S. DVD release of the film, “You cannot deny that [in England], like anywhere else, corruption is endemic.”
Casting was key to the potential box office prospects of the feature, and Klinger and Hodges’ masterstroke was securing Michael Caine to play Jack Carter. By 1970, Caine had become an international star, portraying spy novelist Len Deighton’s agent Harry Palmer in three pictures and garnering raves as the eponymous philanderer in Alfie.
Caine had himself known some hard cases in his London neighborhood; in his own DVD commentary, he says that his dead-eyed, terrifyingly reserved Carter was “an amalgam of people I grew up with – I’d known them all my life.” Hodges notes of Caine’s Carter, “There’s a ruthlessness about him, and I would have been foolish not to use it to the advantage of the film.”
Playing what he knew, Caine gave the performance of a lifetime – a study in steely cool, punctuated by sudden outbursts of unfettered fury. The actor summarizes his character on the DVD: “Here was a dastardly man coming as the savior of a lady’s honor. It’s the knight saving the damsel in distress, except this knight is not a very noble or gallant one. It’s the villain as hero.”
The supporting players were cast with equal skill. Ian Hendry, who was originally considered for the role of Carter, ultimately portrayed the hit man’s principal nemesis and target Eric Paice. Caine and Hendry’s first faceoff in the film, an economical conversation at a local racetrack, seethes with unfeigned tension and unease – Caine was wary of Hendry, whose deep alcoholism made the production a difficult one, while Hendry was jealous of the leading man’s greater success.
For Northern mob kingpin Cyril Kinnear, Hodges recruited John Osborne, then best known in Great Britain as the writer of the hugely successfully 1956 play Look Back in Anger, Laurence Olivier’s screen and stage triumph The Entertainer, and Tony Richardson’s period comedy Tom Jones, for which he won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Osborne, a skilled actor before he found fame as a writer, brings subdued, purring menace to the part.
Though her part was far smaller than those of such other supporting actresses as Geraldine Moffat, Rosemarie Dunham, and Dorothy White, Brit sex bomb Britt Ekland received third billing as Anna, Gerald Fletcher’s wife and Carter’s mistress. Her marquee prominence is somewhat justified by an eye-popping sequence in which she engages in a few minutes of steamy phone sex with Caine.
Some small roles were populated by real British villains. George Sewell, who plays the Fletchers’ minion Con McCarty, was a familiar of the Krays’ older brother Charlie, and introduced the elder mobster to Carry On comedy series actress Barbara Windsor, who subsequently married another member of the Kray firm. John Bindon, who appears briefly as the younger Fletcher sibling, was a hood and racketeer who later stood trial for murder; a notorious womanizer, he romanced Princess Margaret, whose clandestine relationship with Bindon later became a key plot turn in the 2008 Jason Strathan gangster vehicle The Bank Job.
Verisimilitude was everything for Hodges, who shot nearly all of the film on grimly realistic locations in Newcastle, the down-at-the-heel coal-mining town on England’s northeastern coast. The director vibrantly employs interiors of the city’s seedy pubs, rooming houses, nightclubs and betting parlors. In one inspired bit of local color, he uses an appearance by a local girl’s marching band, the Pelaw Hussars, to drolly enliven a scene in which a nude, shotgun-toting Carter backs down the Fletchers’ gunmen.
The film’s relentless action was perfectly framed by director of photography Wolfgang Suchitzky, whose experience as a cameraman for documentarian Paul Rotha is put to excellent use. Some sequences are masterfully shot with available light; the movie’s most brutal murder plays out at night by a car’s headlights. The breathtakingly staged final showdown between Carter and Paice is shot under lowering skies against the grey backdrop of a North Sea coal slag dump.
Tough, uncompromising, and utterly unprecedented in English cinema, Get Carter was a hit in the U.K. It fared poorly in the U.S., where its distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer dumped it on the market as the lower half of a double bill with the Frank Sinatra Western spoof Dirty Dingus Magee. In his DVD commentary, Caine notes that it was only after Ted Turner acquired MGM’s catalog and broadcast the film on his cable networks that the movie developed a cult audience in the States.
Get Carter has received two American remakes. The first, George Armitage’s oft-risible 1972 blaxploitation adaptation Hit Man, starred Bernie Casey as Carter’s African-American counterpart Tyrone Tackett. It is notable for a spectacularly undraped appearance by Pam Grier, whose character meets a hilarious demise that is somewhat spoiled by the picture’s amusing trailer. (Casey and Keenan Ivory Wayans later lampooned the film in the 1988 blaxploitation parody I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.)
Hodges’ film was drearily Americanized and relocated to Seattle in Stephen Kay’s like-titled 2000 Sylvester Stallone vehicle. It’s a sluggish, misbegotten venture, about which the less that is said the better. Michael Caine’s presence in the cast as villain Cliff Brumby (played in the original by Brian Mosley) only serves to remind viewers that they are watching a vastly inferior rendering of a classic.
Ted Lewis wrote seven more novels after Jack’s Return Home, and returned to Jack Carter for two prequels. The first of them, Jack Carter’s Law (1970), an almost equally intense installment in which Carter ferrets out a “grass” – an informer – in the Fletchers’ organization, is a deep passage through the London underworld of the ‘60s, full of warring gangsters and venal, dishonest coppers.
The final episode in the trilogy, Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon (1977), was a sad swan song for British noir’s most memorable bad man. In it, Carter travels to the Mediterranean island of Majorca on a Fletchers-funded “holiday,” only to discover that he has actually been dispatched to guard a jittery American mobster hiding out at the gang’s villa. It’s a flabby, obvious, and needlessly discursive book; Lewis’ exhaustion is apparent in his desperate re-use of a plot point central to the action of the first Carter novel.
Curiously, the locale and setup of Mafia Pigeon appear to be derived from Pulp, the 1975 film that reunited director Hodges and actor Caine. In it, the actor plays a writer of sleazy paperback thrillers who travels to the Mediterranean isle of Malta to pen the memoirs of Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a Hollywood actor with gangland connections. Hilarity and mayhem ensue.
All of Lewis’ characters consume enough alcohol to put down an elephant, and Lewis himself succumbed to alcoholism in 1982, at the age of 42. Virtually unemployable, he had moved back home to Barton-upon-Humber, where lived with his parents.
He went out with a bang, however: In 1980, he published his final and finest book, the truly explosive mob thriller GBH (the British abbreviation for “grievous bodily harm”). The novel focuses on the last days of vice lord George Fowler, a sadist in the grand Krays manner, whose empire is being toppled by internal treachery. Using a unique time-shifting structure that darts back and forth between “the smoke” (London) and “the sea” (Fowler’s oceanside hideout), it reaches a finale of infernal, hallucinatory intensity.
After Lewis’ death, his work fell into obscurity, and his novels were unavailable in America for decades. Happily, Soho Press reissued the Carter trilogy in paperback in 2014 and republished GBH in hardback earlier this year. Now U.S. readers have the opportunity to read the books that influenced an entire school of English noir writers, including such Lewis disciples and venerators as Derek Raymond, David Peace, and Jake Arnott.
Echoes of GBH can be heard in The Long Good Friday, another esteemed English gangster film starring Bob Hoskins as the arrogant and impetuous chief of a collapsing London firm. Released the same year as Lewis’ last novel, the John Mackenzie-directed feature is only one of a succession of outstanding movies – The Limey, The Hit, Layer Cake, Sexy Beast, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels among them – that owe a debt to Get Carter, the daddy of them all.
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lyselkatzfandomluvs · 5 years ago
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My edits - Masterpost
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Making a MASTERLIST for my edits because I’m losing track of what’s done and what’s in my to-do folders.
EDIT: looks like the links aren’t working on mobile anymore. They point to results on the whole tumblr instead of just on my blog. I don’t kow how to fix this so I’m afraid the only solution is to seach for the film title on my blog. 
Band of Brothers cast
They are under the tag #My BoB cast edits (outsourced content and reblogs from other content creators, mostly for those with wider fan-base, are tagged #BoB cast) and with the actor’s name or the serie/movie title.
Feel free to send me an ask if there’s anything you’d like to see from BoB and its cast
Ensemble
Band of Brothers (obviously 😝)
Ron Livingston's bootcamp video diary
Wales Comic Con 2020 twitch panel
We happy few 506 zoom panels
Doug Allen
Sherlock (BBC)
Jamie Bamber
A Christmas in New York
Hornblower
Eion Bailey
Center stage
Covert affairs
Dawson's creek
Deliver by Christmas
FBI
Fight Club
Life of the party
Mindhunters
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
Stalker
Switched for Christmas
Philip Barantini
Ned Kelly
Ben Caplan
Leap year
New blood
The coroner
The lost honour of Christopher Jefferies
Whitechapel
Michael Cudlitz
21 Jump street
A river runs through it
Dark tourist
Dragon : The Bruce Lee story
Kings of con
SouthLAnd
Standoff
Dale Dye
44 minutes: The North Hollywood Shoot-Out
Michael Fassbender
Gunpowder, treason & plot
Dexter Fletcher
Below
Bugsy Malone
Caravaggio
Dramarama
Gentlemen in squalor
Hotel Babylon
Lock, stock and two smoking barrels
The Rachel papers
Music video - Kylie Minogue "Some kind of bliss"
Stephen Graham
Boardwalk empire
Ezra Godden
Dagon
Quarantine "Isolation" videos
Rick Gomez
Applebox
Daily Rick’s tips
Hawaii five-0
Law and order
Leave
The adventures of Pete & Pete
The millionaire Tour
The week
Three to tango
Interview - Your story interview with Christine Schneider
Scott Grimes
Critters
Colin Hanks
Parkland
Tom Hardy
Colditz
Nolan Hemmings
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********
MISC EDITS
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editingmodulations · 4 years ago
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Film editor Chris Dickens expands his work of art from collaborating with directors Danny Boyle, Edgar Wright, Dexter Fletcher, and Tom Hooper
With several awards for Best Editing for the film Slumdog Millionaire
Dickens has a particular style to cut his movies and develop a rhythmic look praised by fellow editors.
One of my favorite works of him is the film Hot Fuzz. In this scene, the great transition from Nicolas departing from the police force office in London to an extreme close up of a camera flash to a medium shot of the same camera. With a combination of cuts and effects on set, help makes this transition seamless.
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theliberaltony · 4 years ago
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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight
In 2018, Democrats took back the House thanks to a blue wave that ran right through America’s suburbs. Now the question is, can they hold onto that majority?
The answer is probably yes, as Democrats are clear favorites, according to the final version of FiveThirtyEight’s House forecast, which gives them a 97 in 100 chance of winning control of the House.1
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Overall, the House contest appears to have significantly less drama than either the race for the presidency or the Senate, both of which are far more competitive. Democrats currently control 233 seats to the GOP’s 201 seats,2 with retiring Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash the lone third-party member in the chamber. So to win back the House, Republicans need a net gain of 17 seats to achieve a majority of 218, which is one reason why their odds of taking back the chamber are so low (3 in 100). That’s a lot of House seats in a presidential cycle, as a party has only gained that many twice in the past 10 presidential elections.
But perhaps the even bigger reason why Democrats are favored to keep control of the House — as well as maybe win the White House and even the Senate — is that the electoral environment looks quite good for their party. If we look at the polling average from our congressional generic ballot tracker, which includes all polls that ask respondents whether they plan to vote for the Democrat or Republican in their local congressional race, Democrats lead by 7.3 percentage points. That margin speaks to a strong national environment for Democrats and isn’t that far off from the 8.7-point edge Democrats had heading into the 2018 midterm elections. And as the chart below shows, this lead hasn’t fluctuated much over the past year.
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What this has meant practically is that the overall electoral environment has boosted the chances of House Democrats, but most notably it’s given a leg up to those who captured Republican seats in 2018 and are now seeking reelection. Of the 41 Democrats who flipped seats in 2018 — not counting one who resigned and another who switched parties — 30 have at least a 3 in 4 shot of holding onto their seat. This despite the fact that President Trump carried 20 of those 41 seats when he won in 2016. These conditions, along with strong Democratic fundraising and mediocre Republican candidate recruitment in many key races, have left a pretty short list of Democratic incumbents who are in serious danger of defeat, as the table below shows.
Most House Democrats in competitive races have good odds
Democratic House incumbents who are seeking reelection and have less than a 95 percent chance of winning, according to the final numbers from the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s forecast
District Incumbent Flipped GOP seat in 2018 Chance of winning Rating MN-07 Collin Peterson 19% Likely R OK-05 Kendra Horn ✓ 51 Toss-up NM-02 Xochitl Torres Small ✓ 55 Toss-up UT-04 Ben McAdams ✓ 56 Toss-up CA-21 TJ Cox ✓ 58 Toss-up NY-11 Max Rose ✓ 58 Toss-up SC-01 Joe Cunningham ✓ 64 Lean D CA-48 Harley Rouda ✓ 68 Lean D NV-04 Steven Horsford 72 Lean D NY-22 Anthony Brindisi ✓ 73 Lean D CA-39 Gil Cisneros ✓ 74 Lean D GA-06 Lucy McBath ✓ 74 Lean D TX-07 Lizzie Pannill Fletcher ✓ 75 Lean D NJ-07 Tom Malinowki ✓ 76 Likely D OR-04 Peter DeFazio 78 Likely D VA-07 Abigail Spanberger ✓ 79 Likely D FL-27 Donna Shalala ✓ 81 Likely D FL-26 Debbie Mucarsel-Powell ✓ 82 Likely D NV-03 Susie Lee 83 Likely D NH-01 Chris Pappas 84 Likely D TX-32 Colin Allred ✓ 84 Likely D WI-03 Ron Kind 84 Likely D IA-03 Cindy Axne ✓ 84 Likely D IL-06 Sean Casten ✓ 87 Likely D VA-02 Elaine Luria ✓ 87 Likely D IL-14 Lauren Underwood ✓ 87 Likely D IA-01 Abby Finkenauer ✓ 87 Likely D AZ-01 Tom O’Halleran 88 Likely D PA-17 Conor Lamb ✓ 89 Likely D CA-10 Josh Harder ✓ 92 Likely D PA-08 Matt Cartwright 92 Likely D MI-11 Haley Stevens ✓ 93 Likely D NJ-03 Andy Kim ✓ 93 Likely D MN-02 Angie Craig ✓ 93 Likely D CA-45 Katie Porter ✓ 94 Likely D NC-01 G.K. Butterfield 94 Likely D MI-08 Elissa Slotkin ✓ 94 Likely D NY-19 Antonio Delgado ✓ 94 Likely D
In other words, these seemingly more competitive seats are, for the most part, not necessarily that close, which limits the GOP’s path back to a majority. Nevertheless, a handful of Democratic incumbents are in jeopardy of losing. In fact, the most vulnerable incumbent from either party is Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, who has about a 1 in 5 chance of winning reelection in a seat that Trump won by 31 points four years ago, according to Daily Kos Elections. Beyond Peterson, five other Democrats fall into the “toss-up” range in our forecast: Reps. Kendra Horn of Oklahoma, TJ Cox of California, Max Rose of New York, Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico and Ben McAdams of Utah. Of that quintet, Cox is the outlier because he’s the only one running in a seat that is pretty Democratic-leaning at the presidential level — Trump lost it by 16 points in 2016 — whereas the others all hold seats Trump won by at least 7 points. But Cox’s seat is probably one of the better candidate recruitment situations for the GOP, as ex-Rep. David Valadao, who Cox defeated by less than 1 point in 2018, is back for a rematch.
Aside from the strength of their incumbents, Democrats have also benefited from the sheer number of Republican retirements this year. Not to mention, some GOP primary challenges that resulted in some incumbents losing renomination. Although the incumbency advantage is not nearly as strong as it once was, open seats tend to be harder for the incumbent party to retain, and the disproportionate number of Republican exits from the House has left some vulnerable turf for them to defend. As the table below shows, this means Republicans are defending almost all of the 17 open seats where neither party is a safe bet.
Republicans are defending more competitive open seats
Democratic chances of victory in open House seats where the incumbent party has less than a 95 percent chance of winning, according to the final numbers from the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s forecast
District Incumbent Party Dem. chances Rating NC-02 R 100% Safe D NC-06 R 100 Safe D IA-02 D 88 Likely D TX-23 R 74 Lean D NY-02 R 57 Toss-up IN-05 R 50 Toss-up VA-05 R 49 Toss-up TX-24 R 48 Toss-up MI-03 L 44 Toss-up GA-07 R 43 Toss-up CO-03 R 39 Lean R TX-22 R 32 Lean R NC-11 R 27 Lean R MT-AL R 23 Likely R FL-15 R 19 Likely R KS-02 R 9 Likely R CA-50 R 5 Likely R
While Democrats are only outright favorites in three GOP-held seats, that trio account for half of the six seats that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016 that Republicans still control (GOP incumbents are running in the other three). Two are near-certain Democratic pickups thanks to North Carolina’s court-ordered redistricting, which made those seats much more Democratic-leaning and precipitated the retirements of two Republican incumbents. And Republican Rep. Will Hurd’s retirement in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, which Trump lost by 3 points in 2016, has given Democratic nominee Gina Ortiz Jones a clear edge there. Additionally, Democrats are roughly even bets to win a number of other open Republican-held districts, including suburban seats like Indiana’s 5th Congressional District around Indianapolis and New York’s 2nd Congressional District on Long Island, both left open by retirements. They also have a shot at winning GOP-controlled seats where the incumbent lost renomination, such as Virginia’s 5th Congressional District and Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. What’s more, only one Democratic-held open seat — Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District — is at all in play, and the Democrats have nearly a 9 in 10 chance of keeping it.
Lastly, Democrats are also in an enviable position because they stand to defeat some Republican incumbents in competitive contests, too. Whereas only 13 Democratic incumbents seeking reelection have less than a 3 in 4 chance of winning reelection, slightly more Republicans — 14 — are in the same position. Still, the one silver lining for Republicans is that none of their incumbents is a clear underdog, as the table below shows. So most of these races might be a bit of a reach for Democrats hoping to pad their margins.
House Republicans whose seats aren’t “safe”
Republican House incumbents who are seeking reelection and have less than a 95 percent chance of winning, according to the final numbers from the Deluxe version of FiveThirtyEight’s forecast
District Incumbent Chance of winning Rating CA-25 Mike Garcia 45% Toss-up NJ-02 Jeff Van Drew 50 Toss-up PA-10 Scott Perry 52 Toss-up AZ-06 David Schweikert 57 Toss-up OH-01 Steve Chabot 58 Toss-up MN-01 Jim Hagedorn 60 Lean R NE-02 Don Bacon 60 Lean R IL-13 Rodney Davis 63 Lean R NY-24 John Katko 64 Lean R NC-08 Richard Hudson 66 Lean R AR-02 French Hill 66 Lean R MO-02 Ann Wagner 69 Lean R TX-21 Chip Roy 71 Lean R MI-06 Fred Upton 71 Lean R AK-AL Don Young 79 Likely R WA-03 Jaime Herrera Beutler 82 Likely R PA-01 Brian Fitzpatrick 84 Likely R KY-06 Andy Barr 85 Likely R NY-01 Lee Zeldin 86 Likely R TX-25 Roger Williams 89 Likely R NC-09 Dan Bishop 90 Likely R MI-07 Tim Walberg 90 Likely R FL-16 Vern Buchanan 90 Likely R TX-03 Van Tayor 90 Likely R OH-10 Mike Turner 91 Likely R TX-10 Michael McCaul 92 Likely R TX-06 Ron Wright 92 Likely R FL-18 Brian Mast 93 Likely R VA-01 Rob Wittman 93 Likely R CA-42 Ken Calvert 93 Likely R TX-31 John Carter 94 Likely R OH-12 Troy Balderson 94 Likely R MN-08 Pete Stauber 95 Likely R
GOP Rep. Mike Garcia, who won a special election earlier this year to fill a vacancy in California’s 25th Congressional District, heads into the election as the most at-risk Republican incumbent. But along with Garcia are four others in toss-up contests: Reps. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, David Schweikert of Arizona and Don Bacon of Nebraska. Van Drew won as a Democrat in 2018 but switched parties after voting against impeaching Trump, probably thinking he’d have an easier time as a Republican in a district that backed Trump by about 5 points in 2016, but the race is super close and he’s been outraised by Democrat Amy Kennedy — yes, part of that Kennedy family. Bacon, meanwhile, is defending a seat that could also matter a great deal in the presidential race because Nebraska apportions one electoral vote to each of its congressional districts, and its 2nd Congressional District is somewhat more likely to vote for Biden than Trump.
Bottom line: Democrats have benefited from an overall Democratic-leaning national environment, in addition to a number of strong Democratic incumbents, a sizable number of competitive Republican-held open seats and some vulnerable GOP officeholders. There’s no fuzziness here in what our forecast says: Democrats are in a very strong position to maintain control of the House. We’ll see how it plays out once the votes are counted, but a Democratic hold would be one of the more unsurprising outcomes in this election.
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aion-rsa · 4 years ago
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Revisiting The 1994 Miniseries of Stephen King’s The Stand
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This article contains spoilers for the 1994 miniseries The Stand and likely the 2020 series by extension.
The Stand is considered by many, to this day, to be one of Stephen King’s three or four finest novels. It is certainly among his most beloved by longtime readers, because of its sheer size (more than 800 pages when originally published in 1978, more than 1,000 in the unexpurgated version released in 1990) and the scope and breadth of its storytelling. A hybrid of horror, apocalyptic sci-fi and epic fantasy (King has said he explicitly wanted to create a sort of modern day The Lord of the Rings), it’s an eerie, surreal tale of the fall of civilization and the battle for the souls of those left alive in the aftermath.
A motion picture adaptation was first announced on the back cover of the paperback version of the book (with George A. Romero directing), but to many, a miniseries seemed like the only way to adapt The Stand due to its sheer size. King was against the idea for a long time, famously saying, “You can’t have the end of the world brought to you by Charmin toilet tissue.” But King’s thinking eventually changed, and in 1992 ABC — which had scored a tremendous hit with a two-part, four-hour adaptation of King’s It two years earlier — gave The Stand the green light.
King, an executive producer on the project, wanted Mick Garris to direct it after the two had hit it off on the set of Sleepwalkers, a movie based on an original King screenplay. Unlike It and a second ABC/King miniseries, 1993’s The Tommyknockers — both of which had been four hours — The Stand was developed as a four-night, eight-hour event, containing a little over six hours of content after commercials. Budgeted at $26 million, featuring more than 125 speaking parts, and shot over six months in Utah, Las Vegas and other locations, The Stand premiered on ABC from May 8 – 11, 1994.
The Stand begins with the spread of a military-created bioweapon that becomes known as the superflu or Captain Trips after it escapes from a high-security lab. The flu’s 99% mortality rate ensures that human civilization is all but wiped out, although the remaining 1% is completely immune for reasons unexplained.
As the survivors in the U.S. struggle to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with tens of millions of rotting corpses, they are plagued by mysterious dreams that draw them to one of two places. Some head for Boulder, Colorado, where it seems as if decent, “good” people are gathering around an elderly Black woman named Mother Abigail who claims to speak for God, while others of a less kind bent congregate in Las Vegas under the rule of Randall Flagg, a “dark man” with supernatural powers who is a powerful demon in human form.
As the two groups assemble, it becomes clear that a confrontation is shaping up, with four of the Boulder Free Zone’s leaders — and four of our main characters — eventually heading to Las Vegas where they will make their “stand” against Flagg.
Even with six hours to fill, King and Garris had to do quite a bit of condensing to fit The Stand into its format. Nevertheless, just about all the major plot points and characters from the book make it into the miniseries, even if some don’t quite get the development they deserve. Yet the show moves along at a decent if unhurried pace, giving one time to invest in the story and the characters enough to care about what happens and who survives (many don’t).
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The cast is a grab-bag of faces from both the big and small screen. Gary Sinise — months away from his breakout role in Forrest Gump — is absolutely perfect as Stu Redman, the Texas blue collar everyman who is among the first to make contact with the superflu and walk away unscathed. Also quite effective are Rob Lowe as the saintly deaf mute Nick Andros, who becomes one of the leaders of the Free Zone, Ray Walston as the sarcastic sociology professor Glen Bateman, and Bill Fagerbakke as the sweet, intellectually disabled Tom Cullen.
Less impressive but improving over the course of the six hours is Adam Storke as the self-centered rock musician Larry Underwood. Larry is a crucial character in The Stand: it’s his ability to evolve from a selfish narcissist to a leader willing to sacrifice himself that is key to the triumph of good over evil. Storke has his moments and Larry does blossom in the latter stages of the story, but he doesn’t pull off the character’s transformation as effectively as one might have hoped.
More compelling are Laura San Giacomo as Nadine Cross (a character who, in the show, is a hybrid of the book’s Nadine and Larry’s doomed traveling companion Rita Blakemoor) and Corin Nemec as Harold Lauder. The former has promised herself to Flagg, while the latter is an incel on steroids; together they plot a terrorist attack to kill the Free Zone’s leaders before skipping town for Vegas. They too are doomed, but their collision course with each other and their fate is decidedly repulsive.
Of the major “good” characters, it’s sad to say that Molly Ringwald just doesn’t pull her weight as Frannie Goldsmith, the pregnant young woman who is the object of Harold’s desire but whom ultimately falls in love with Stu. Ringwald comes across as naïve and whiny, and her acting here is a pale shadow of her glory years in movies like Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. More effective, excellent in fact, is Miguel Ferrer as Lloyd Henreid, the small-time crook and killer who becomes the take-charge right hand man to  Flagg in Las Vegas, and an over-the-top Matt Frewer as the Trashcan Man, a pyromaniac who Flagg entrusts with finding weapons left out in the Nevada desert by the government.
Which brings us to Flagg and his opposite, Mother Abigail. Flagg, a recurring embodiment of evil and treachery in many King novels and stories, was reportedly the hardest role to cast. Although King and Garris initially wanted a Hollywood star, they went with the lesser known Jamey Sheridan, who brings a kind of manic glee to the role even if his heavy metal wig is questionable. Ruby Dee was practically born to play Mother Abigail (she even told Fangoria magazine that “her whole life had been research” for the part), and while the character as originally written suffers from King’s tendency to create “magical Negros” for his stories, Dee still brings poignancy and dignity to the role.
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If we’ve spent a lot of time on the casting, that’s because The Stand really does live or die — and in this case it’s the former — on the strength of the characters and their relationships. Even if some of the acting is more on a typical TV level (or even below), Garris and King and their cast succeed in making you care about what happens to these people as they first survive the plague and then summon the fortitude to not just restart civilization but face an ultimate evil before they can barely catch a breath.
But Garris brings plenty of other effective touches to the show, starting with the panoramic vistas that he shoots to emphasize just how empty the world has become. The show does have an epic sweep to a lot of it, even with the restrictions of TV back in 1994, and W.G. Snuffy Walden’s (who is best known for scoring The West Wing) spare, evocative score goes a long way toward setting the melancholic yet ominous tone that Garris evokes through most of The Stand’s six hours.
There are also some truly memorable setpieces, starting with the opening tracking shot of corpses strewn all over the underground military lab to the tune of Blue Oyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” Stu’s harrowing escape from the lab in which he is kept is pretty terrifying stuff for 1990s television, and while we wish Larry’s walk through a Lincoln Tunnel stuffed with dead cars and bodies lasted a bit longer, it still packs somewhat of a punch. Although Mother Abigail’s home is clearly a set on a soundstage, the moment in which she looks back at it as she leaves for Boulder, knowing she’ll never see it again, is quietly moving, as is the moment when Larry, Glen and Ralph Brentner (Peter Van Norden) have to leave an injured Stu behind on their long walk to Vegas.
The climax, the “stand” of the title, is problematic, but that’s possibly because it’s always been a hotly debated moment in the novel as well. Stu, Larry, Glen and Ralph are instructed by a dying Mother Abigail to walk to Vegas and confront Flagg. As we mentioned, only Larry, Glen and Ralph make it; Glen is shot to death by Lloyd Henreid in his cell, while Larry and Ralph are to be publicly executed by dismemberment, in front of the entire population of Vegas, on Flagg’s orders.
Just as the execution is getting underway, a radiation-sick Trashcan Man returns from the desert with a nuclear weapon in tow. With the men of the Free Zone having shown their worth to God by facing Flagg with courage and offering to give their lives to defeat him, the Almighty takes over from there. He turns a little ball of electricity that Flagg used to fry a traitor in the crowd into a manifestation of “the hand of God,” detonating the bomb and wiping out Flagg, his minions, and our selfless heroes.
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While many have criticized this scene in both the book and miniseries as a “deus ex machina” climax, it actually makes sense: the Free Zone heroes can only do much themselves against an immortal, powerful being like Flagg. They can weaken him, but they can’t quite destroy him. Once they’ve proven themselves, however, by standing up to Flagg and his unknowable evil with faith and courage, God finishes the job. The problem is that in the book, Larry and Ralph interpret the thing in the sky as the “hand of God.” In the miniseries, Garris made it look like an actual hand.
That adds a layer of cheesiness to what is otherwise a strong climax, as does having Mother Abigail’s disembodied, cooing head float above the crib of Frannie’s baby in the hospital during the closing moments, looking like a cutout picture of Ruby Dee’s face slapped on the glass window of the nursery. It’s effective and emotional to have the show close on a shot of the baby, sleeping peacefully and virus-free and metaphorically carrying the future on her tiny back, but the Abigail phantom almost ruins it.
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For all its faults — its dated view of the American populace (even with 99% percent of the world wiped out, there are far too few people of color among the survivors), its creaky fashions, its occasionally cut-rate visual effects and its uneven acting — The Stand still holds up pretty decently. Sinise and the stronger actors do much of the heavy lifting, the story and stakes are clearly laid out, and the viewer becomes involved in the characters and their struggle.  Now more than 25 years later, The Stand is being adapted again by Josh Boone (The New Mutants) and Benjamin Cavell (King’s son Owen is also a producer and writer on the project). The 10-part miniseries will debut Thursday (December 17) on CBS All Access, and in addition to a different structure for the story, the series will feature a brand new ending written by Stephen King himself. In the meantime, the original 1994 version still has heart, plenty of it, and for King and Mick Garris, it was evidently a labor of love. It may be far from perfect, but one could say it stands on its own two feet.
The post Revisiting The 1994 Miniseries of Stephen King’s The Stand appeared first on Den of Geek.
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