#also I know we’re allowed to engage with movies as a viewers but the strike has me kinda sour on new stuff

[cloama]

I want to talk about Barbie (2023) but not really in conversation with anyone so I think it’ll be a trickle of thoughts about my theatre experience.

For instance, while the theatre was packed with mothers and daughters, I was seated next to a tween boy who was not excited for the movie. He damn near passed out laughing during several scenes. He didn’t finish any of his snacks. He didn’t go to the bathroom.

None of the children in the theater went to the bathroom, which you’ll know if the true testament of a a movie’s success. Nobody moved, honey.

The monologue has been critiqued as baby’s first feminism but I don’t know what y’all wanted from a megacorp. I’m still surprised it even got in there. One of the moms in the theater stood the up and clapped bc apparently she needed some of that second wave feminism. Everyone’s politics isn’t where yours is. It always starts somewhere. Again do not know why people are complaining. This is nothing compared to Marvel’s not infamous girl power moment where they all just stood there. Also the speech while very Plan but heartfelt, coming from America Ferrara just carries a couple extra layers for me personally as she was one of the first actresses of my generation who was a chubby teen girl who was allowed to be a real person.

Also it’s not just the monologue. It’s wishing it was as easy as pulling your fellow people into the back of the van and reprogramming them with facts. In a world where facts literally don’t matter anymore, it felt like science fiction. I don’t know y’all, I just got a lot out of that script. Like if your gonna do a giant advertisement movie, this is about as good as it gets. And it didn’t feel icky like a dove ad. Similar to the mist recent Dungeons and Dragons, it felt like playing.

The Ken stuff was fun but we have to discuss the MASTERFUL use of Matchbox 20’s Push, which is about the rare disempowered man who wishes to get a leg up on his female partner who appears to be emotionally hurting him in their relationship. I need time. Bc Greta? Noah? They were crazy for that one. Absolutely mad. Ken comparing his struggle with Barbie’s boundaries to a man whose actually being hurt bc Ken is a doll and that’s about as far as his understanding goes [see: horses]. Reader, I died laughing. I think I was the only one in the theater that this bit really worked for. It was a stroke of genius and seems to be going unnoticed.

The acafans have been surprisingly quiet about this movie, all the merch and the orchestrated resurgence of Barbie. Make no mistake, this is fandom. Star Wars fans were allowed to buy their books, dolls, and bumper stickers in peace but the idea that a movie will make some people want to buy a 20 dollar doll or some pink pants is stressing people out. Would love everyone to step back and breathe. They’re always going to try to sell us something. They’re selling us something most of y’all have been buying.

I think I am less bothered by the capitalistic effects because for once I didn’t totally hate the experience of being sold something. Probably because I’m not buying anything and while I live a pink life, I’m not actually a Barbie girl. What I am is an early educator and dolls, dramatic play are a huge part of development.

What I also am, apparently, is a Barbie movie script defender because above all else, that script was tight as fresh box braids. A hilarious straight forward comedy. It should be a celebration of putting money behind talent but it’s a reminder of why writers need to be fairly compensated. This movie marks the end of summer, representing so many things. It’s complicated. Pink and complicated.

[rantshemlock]

It: Chapter 2

It: Chapter 2 is an almost three hour movie in which just about nothing of value happens

this review contains implied spoilers for the movie! if that bothers you, don’t read ahead.

It (2017) had some incredible setpieces with brilliant monster designs and fantastic practical effects, bolstered by a couple of excellent performances from the show-stealing Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer, along with an outstanding performance by Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise. this, and the simplicity of the plot, make up for the fact that the character writing was often shallow and the dialogue laden with exposition.

It: Chapter 2 has almost all of those qualities, but also one major flaw: it's a bad movie.

there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to why exactly It 2 is such an extreme drop in quality to the first movie; the biggest is the story, which is a mish-mash of new footage of the child actors and the characters as adults, and is probably the biggest pisstake in film history in terms how much of an extreme waste of time it is. for a film to so thoroughly enforce the idea that the characters’ actions are pointless and serve nothing is unbelievable. as a movie that should be a triumphant ending to the saga, we’re given what is explicitly told to us to be pointless.

It 2′s sin is that it doesn’t build up to anything. not storybeats, not relationships, often not even scares. things are laughably obviously telegraphed, even more so than It 2017′s often heavy-handed exposition. the movie wants us to care about the characters because of their past together, but rather than building off the first film’s two hours of story it instead patches in new settings and scenes that no viewer has any attachment to.

“remember the club house? you love the club house!” the film says, showing us to a set we’ve never seen before and have no reason to care about other than it dictates we have to now care about it. the first movie was incredibly well received and is now beloved, it has more than enough emotional moments to build off of, but the film rejects all that in favour of bringing up new ideas, new concepts that hardly get built upon. it demands you care, but doesn’t earn that compassion or attention.

unresolved issues is the name of the game in this movie; characters are constantly shown to have problems, huge, serious problems. Beverly is being abused by her husband, something we’re shown in overly graphic detail. Mike is suffering from untold trauma from standing vigil over Derry for years. Bill is fucking up his movie and his relationship with his wife. Richie is living a lie, deep within the closet. what’s most egregious is not just that these issues don’t get resolved, but that they never get addressed.

we are meant to believe that these characters care about each other, care deeply, have a connection that would drive them to die for each other, but no one notices that Bev is covered with bruises and is desperately avoiding home. no one questions Mike’s erratic, terrified behaviour. Bill forgets his wife exists. as i watched the movie i found myself asking, if Ben loves Beverly so much, why can’t he see her pain?

in the first movie, the characters’ issues were deeply entrenched in their psyche, were part of what Pennywise used to manipulate and attack them. in this movie, they haven’t moved on from their childhood issues and their adult issues are merely tacked on, lip service to the idea that they have grown up but a refusal to actually spend time examining what their issues as adults are. all the characters are suffering in some way, but they never share these things. for all their love and trust, they never developed past their childhood and they never learned how to be adults. their arcs from the first movie are reset completely; their development in that film never happened. for how little that film ties into this one and how much this one wants to retell history with new content, it might as well not have existed at all.

if It: Chapter 2 lacks anything, it’s tact. it’s carelessly violent and shallow, throwing around horrifying concepts and spending no time to flesh them out. while the idea in the book that Pennywise’s presence leads to more violence, abuse and bigotry deserves criticism, this film manages to do an even worse job. what in the book might be questionable and in need of updating becomes uncomfortable and thoughtless in the movie. the gay hate crime at the film is one of the most prominent examples; always a horrifying thing to read in the movie it serves even less purpose, exposes even less about the town, adds nothing, means nothing. goes nowhere.

let’s talk about being gay. let’s talk about Richie.

here’s a fun fact; discounting Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (as painful as it is for me to say this, as someone who fucking adores that movie) It: Chapter 2 is the first horror movie in a big franchise to have a gay hero, unless there’s some information i really badly need to be updated on. making Richie gay was a good move, and i think Richie was the perfect character to pick for it. he’s by far one of the two most likeable characters in the film, the most memorable, gets the best moments and the best lines.

but the conclusion the film gives him, combined with the hate crime earlier in the movie, after he spends the entire film in the closet letting no one know he is suffering, is that he will never be happy. he can’t open up to anyone about what he’s feeling; he never tells any of the others, even Eddie, the character strongly implied to be the love of his life. while Ben and Beverly are given one of the best and most visually striking setpieces of the film to reunite in, there is no such moment for Eddie and Richie. there is no catharsis for either of them.

while making Richie gay was an excellent idea, to try and throw a bone to us starving gays to have someone to cling to, but the ending of the movie left me feeling completely hollow. i did not want my takeaway from his character to be that he is traumatised beyond the point of any healing.

the politics of gay representation in this movie are bad, and so is race.

Stephen King is a writer with a dirty reputation for his habit of using “native americans” as shorthand for something magic and not understandable, and this film manages to not only dig up the few traces of this from the book but also make it worse, turning the ritual of chud (something that the book implied only worked because the characters believed in it and had no tie to native americans) into the act of ignorant, misinformed indigenous people who get not a single line to explain or defend themselves but are only allowed to be set dressing to later be ridiculed and demonised.

Mike, the sole black character of the movie, is served horribly in this film. while in  the novel he was one of the most important characters, a thoughtful librarian and historian carefully gathering the history of Derry to research the truth of It’s influence, he was given no screen time in the first movie and in this one is the detested outsider of the group. he is pushed into the position of mentor and guide, rather than friend, and comes across almost like the old stereotype of the magical black character, someone who is only there to provide guidance to the white leads through insight he mysteriously and magically possesses. the film stripped away his position as historian and researcher from the first movie and now scrambles to make up for that, leaving him without the history and characterisation to allow us to understand who and why he is.

on top of this, despite the enormity of his sacrifice to stay in Derry and the clear mental strain it’s put him through -- Isaiah Mustafa gives Mike more depth and thought than anyone else did and brings in his performance layers of subtlety this film doesn’t deserve -- the other characters are mocking and derisive of his attempts, don’t trust him and accuse him repeatedly of lying to and betraying them. these moments go nowhere, also. he is always immediately ‘forgiven’ without any thought as to his own suffering or the continual selflessness of his actions. he’s the thoughtless punchbag to a film in which the character continually martyrs himself for the comfort of others.

he isn’t even given the dignity of being called the leader of the group, despite doing everything for them and coming up with every idea. for some reason, the leader is nominated as Bill, despite James McAvoy’s performance being lackluster to the point of fading into the background entirely and the character of Bill doing next to nothing in the film at all.

but again -- the characters in It are not allowed to care about each other’s pain and suffering outside of a few moments. they come with their mental turmoil and they are either completely cured of it or allowed to remain in it, unmentioned again.

there’s not a bad actor in this -- James Ransone is astonishingly good, pitch-perfectly recreating Jack Dylan Grazer’s every mannerism, Bill Hader is both funny and heart-rendering when needed, Isaiah Mustafa moves mountains to make the script give him some depth, and Bill Skarsgard is again incredible as Pennywise -- but there’s also not an actor who isn’t horribly, horribly maligned by the script. Jessica Chastain, an actress of tremendous power and presence, is given next to nothing to do or say. more thought and care is given to Stephen King’s cameo as a shop owner than the role of Henry Bowers.

the film has its moments. Richie and Eddie are a delight, and the monster design and practical effects are again top of the line. it’s just a painful shame that so much talent and craft, the skills of the incredible artists and designers, the hard work of the enthusiastic and engaged cast and the intricacy of the sets are wasted on a movie that has no direction, no idea where it’s going and no point to make about anything.

also, it’s pretty fucking galling for a movie to continually make jokes about how despised a writer’s endings are only for it to take the far better ending of the book and discard it for something so ridiculous it was a strain not to laugh in the theatre.

It: Chapter 2 has no reason to be as bad as it is, but all the goodwill in the world can’t save a story this fragile, this pointless, and that refuses to engage with any of the subject it brings up to this degree. It wants us to take it very seriously indeed, but there’s nothing here to latch onto; this movie is someone screaming ‘oh the horror’ in a beautiful room filled with set dressings that crumble to ash.

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

NTWRK strikes into dwell IRL occasions – TechCrunch

http://tinyurl.com/yxac967d NTWRK, is an enchanting experiment in dwell video purchasing for the iPhone set. It’s been described as a mix of QVC and Twitter and Twitch they usually simply received a brand new slice of cash from traders like Drake and Stay Nation to increase into bodily occasions. There’s been a bunch of makes an attempt at this sort of hybrid occasion buying expertise, however none of them have fairly hit a house run but. NTWRK was a fairly compelling expertise even at launch final yr. The core expertise is a dwell present introduced solely in NTWRK’s app, the place company can speak about merchandise which turn out to be out there within the app because the present airs. There was a inbuilt alternative to supply restricted availability streetwear and sneakers, and an viewers that founder Aaron Levant knew very effectively from his time operating ComplexCon and Agenda, two massive streetwear and advertising exhibits. One of many first exhibits starred Ben Baller and Jeff Staple, and featured a drop of a brand new colorway of Staple’s iconic Pigeon Dunk from Nike . I tuned in and located the expertise to be compelling in its personal method. The dwell present supplied context for the product and the interface allow you to buy in a pair faucets of a button (the sneakers bought out instantly and the app inevitably crashed from the push of hype beasts). The stream and app have gotten extra steady since then. For the reason that launch, NTWRK has experimented with varied product areas and promotions. The newest funding is enabling growth again into bodily occasions and a few new angles on the NTWRK mannequin. After getting kicked out of highschool in 10th grade, Levant (who had a ardour for graffiti) went on to work in graphic design, gross sales and advertising for an LA streetwear model. That led to commerce present attending and finally to Levant founding his personal present, Agenda in 2003. Agenda received larger over the following 10 years, changing into one of many greatest motion sports activities, streetwear and life-style tradeshows on the planet. He bought a majority of Agenda to ReeedPOP, which owns Comedian Con and stayed on in a improvement position. Finally, he developed different exhibits together with ComplexCon, a smash hit tradition and sneaker present in partnership with Complicated. Final yr, Levant left to discovered NTWRK. “That transition actually occurred by means of a dialog that I had with Jimmy Iovine in September of 2017,” Levant informed me in an interview final yr. “I received launched to him by a pal. He expressed his curiosity in a brand new firm for him and his son, and we had comparable pursuits and concepts round that. That evening that I met him, I went dwelling, stayed up all evening to 4:00 within the morning and wrote your complete marketing strategy for NTWRK.” Iovine ended up as an investor by way of the MSA Enterprises car, together with Warner Bros. Digital Networks, LeBron James, Maverick Carter and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Jimmy’s son Jamie is a co-founder and Head of Fandom at NTWRK. Considered one of Levant’s massive takeaways from his time with ComplexCon and Agenda was that the bodily audiences have been worthwhile however a digital viewers is constructed to foster by means of earned media and user-generated content material round these life-style occasions. “There’s 50,00zero individuals within the room however I believe there’s in all probability 1,000,000 individuals on-line who need to interact with these merchandise and that content material,” mentioned Levant. “Possibly I felt somewhat bit like I used to be utilizing my ability set and I wasn’t extracting the total worth out of it as a result of I wasn’t within the e-com or digital media enterprise previously. I believe that was a key unlock for me, how do I do this higher with a part two of my profession?” The previous few months have seen a collection of excessive profile launches and collaborations with sneaker and streetwear individuals. And now, the Stay Nation and Drake tie up will result in artist-driven collections bought on NTWRK’s app, distinctive ticket entry, promo bundles developed by NTWKR and, sure, a brand new dwell occasion known as NTWRK Presents that can launch in This autumn. In current months, Drake bought a few of his tour merch solely on NTWRK. They’ve additionally been operating auctions for uncommon resell market objects like Supreme guitars and sneakers. The idea of buying as leisure is much from new. There’s a cause that the straightforward buzzphrase individuals connect to NTWRK is ‘QVC for millennials’. However there has but to be a platform that has managed to pin collectively the precise tradition with the precise supply mechanism on the proper time. NTWRK has an opportunity to do that I imagine as a result of Levant has the style for it, but additionally as a result of he’s backing into this from a spot of understanding in relation to tradition. Too many instances we see the expertise of the platform take middle stage — a intelligent supply mechanism or good design. However, essentially, most tech firms are completely crap at tradition. They’re too homogenic — they don’t enable for and encourage the affect of the areas that they’re catering to. Black Twitter made Twitter. Creators of colour made Vine. Asian and Indian customers dominate Whatsapp. However when there’s an try to interact even area of interest cultures in commerce or monetization the shortage of inclusivity and understanding causes them to simply screw up time and again. Having began with dwell occasions that existed primarily as a framework for tradition to create its personal moments, Levant and NTWRK are in a greater place to determine this out. For those who’ve ever been to an Agenda or ComplexCon what I imply. There’s this pungent melange of tradition, music, cash, uncommon items and ephemeral second creation taking place. The problem is to make that work in a digital context, after all, after which to kind of ‘re-export’ that again into occasion codecs. “I believe that, as I’ve mentioned numerous instances, bodily occasions have an enormous natural digital ripple, however we would have liked the digital platform to already be established and scalable earlier than we carried out the bodily occasions, to impact the bigger digital platform,” Levant says about transferring NTWRK into an IRL context. “In my earlier roles, I spent 15 years actually specializing in the bodily experiential occasions and in direction of the tip of my profession doing that I got here to the belief I used to be doing it backwards.” I don’t essentially suppose that this mannequin’s going to work for everyone. I believe Levant and co have a novel ability of bringing individuals collectively and I believe the movie star factor is a robust total angle – proper right down to the traders. “Clearly Drake is an icon that has huge affect over all of popular culture and I believe there are few individuals in that class of him that may seize client’s creativeness,” says Levant. “I couldn’t consider somebody higher than him to be concerned with our firm.” There are different angles too, although, that also have the identical factor on the core. NTWRK is creating this engaged viewers they usually’re giving them worth after which providing them a really on-the-face, trustworthy transaction: “Look, right here’s this factor. For those who purchase it, we profit. Thanks, peace.” That type of interplay mannequin is overseas to media due to this concept that promoting is the one acquire and the one strategy to construct that financial relationship. I believe persons are going to begin to get smart to that however they nonetheless are very resistant. “We have been on the market, speaking to each model and each company on the planet and it’s actually fascinating to observe who will get it and who’s completely confused,” mentioned Levant after we spoke concerning the launch. “It’s actually enjoyable to have these conversations as a result of persons are identical to, ‘Wait, what are you doing?’ They’ve a extremely exhausting time greedy it they usually don’t know who we should always discuss to. Ought to we be speaking to the media shopping for group? Ought to we be speaking to the wholesale group? Ought to we discuss to the PR group? I’m like, ‘No, we’re speaking to everyone.”” “Firms are likely to divide their enterprise up into these silos, these enterprise models and these inner classes they usually normally don’t collaborate and play effectively collectively and while you get these massive, international organizations, their head’s spinning as a result of they don’t know who we should always discuss to as a result of nobody’s performed this one-to-one but.” Proper now as I write this I’m watching Bobby Lots of discuss dwell about his memoir That is Not A T-Shirt — whereas promoting a bundle that features the e-book and, sure, a t-shirt. Lots of (Bobby Kim), built a streetwear brand when it was positively not a factor to construct a streetwear model. The bundle runs $50. I’m serious about shopping for it. Source link

[theconservativebrief]

Since Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws first ushered in the era of the summer blockbuster 41 years ago, sharks have been among summer cinema’s favorite perennial villains. They rank right up there with the alien from Alien and Sadako from The Ring in terms of habitually recurring evil forces with a single-minded purpose: to destroy everything in their path.

There’s something so elemental and irresistible about the shark movie that over the course of the past few decades, it has become one of Hollywood’s most well-trodden paths to terror. The genre now spans a wide range of films, from classics like Jaws and Deep Blue Sea (yes, Deep Blue Sea is a classic) to serious indie projects like The Reef to sillier D-movie affairs like the Sharknado, Mega Shark, and Shark Attack franchises. And if you’re among its many fans, you know that the only thing that can cure shark movie fever is more shark movies.

A friendly shark chomp from The Last Shark (1981).

Lucky for you, there’s always another shark movie on the way. The genre’s newest man-eating — or in this case, Jason Statham-eating — entry swims into movie theaters this weekend, with the opening of the tongue-in-cheek mega-shark movie The Meg — just days before the sixth and final installment in the Sharknado franchise arrives with Sharknado 6: It’s About Time.

The poster for Shark Exorcist (2015), in which a Satan-worshiping nun summons a demon to inhabit the body of a great white.

But why sharks? Ordinarily, the prospect of watching Statham try to survive an oceanic disaster scenario would be only a so-so draw for moviegoers. But if you throw in a battle to the death against a giant megalodon — the huge prehistoric shark which has, in recent years, outsized the great white shark in terms of appeal — then obviously, we’re hooked.

In real life, sharks are mainly non-aggressive creatures who barely resemble the evil killing machines they morph into onscreen. They’re anything but an unstoppable force — humans kill a staggering 100 million sharks each year, or 11,000 sharks every single hour, a jaw-dropping statistic that mainly results from the high demand for shark fin soup in some parts of the world. You’re statistically more likely to die from a lightning strike or a toppling vending machine than from a shark attack.

So why are we so fascinated by shark movies, even though they barely represent reality and their plots tend to be incredibly repetitive?

Oh, there are so many reasons.

This scene from Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002) has become an internet-meme mainstay.

You may believe sharks are limited to the sea, but you are wrong.

Thanks to the magic of cinema and the relative ease with which a shark fin can be CGI’d to pop out of something and move ominously toward the viewer, we don’t just have sea sharks. We also have sand sharks. Avalanche sharks. Sharks in a sharknado! Sharks in a sharkcano. (That one really happened.) Sharks in a blizzardnado! Sharks on land! Sharks in shark lake. Sharks in swamps. Sharks in the bayou. Sharks in apartments! Sharks at Sea World! Sharks on the Jersey Shore. Sharks at the Golden Gate Bridge! Sharks at the supermarket! Sharks in Japan. Sharks in bathtubs and puddles. Even sharks in the sky.

Just your routine apartment shark, as seen in My Super-Ex Girlfriend (2006).

Megalodon takes out the Golden Gate Bridge in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009). A shark takes to the skies in Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.

Much like the 2006 Samuel L. Jackson film Snakes on a Plane relied on the surprise factor of slithering reptiles wreaking havoc at 30,000 feet, a crucial component of shark movies is sharks’ seemingly inherent knack for appearing where and when you least expect them: Just where are the sharks going to be lurking today?

Spoiler alert: They are everywhere.

If you don’t think your average shark is a super genius hell-bent on avenging the atrocities perpetuated against its species by the human race, you’ve never watched Jaws 3-D (mama shark seeks revenge against SeaWorld for killing her baby), Jaws 4: The Revenge (shark seeks revenge against Lorraine Gary’s character Ellen Brody, ostensibly for killing its shark family but more broadly for the sad and rapid demise of the entire Jaws franchise), Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus (shark seeks revenge on Jaleel White for Jaleel White’s entire acting career), or Deep Blue Sea (shark seeks revenge against scientists for experimenting on it).

To wit: Please enjoy the following GIF from Deep Blue Sea, in which a shark holds a stretcher-bound Stellan Skarsgård captive underwater so that it can throw him against an underwater window in order to spite his grieving girlfriend:

Deep Blue Sea (1999). Yep. That happened.

I mean, come on, who among us hasn’t wanted to throw Stellan Skarsgård against a window? Bring on the shark uprising!

The shark can do what no other villainous horror movie creature really can: In addition to engaging in epic bite-offs against other creatures, it can combine with those other creatures to create animalia supervillains. Sure, Hollywood will invent a demonic vampire here and there, but you can’t really give a demonic vampire tentacles. That’s simply not the case with a shark. In the world of shark movies, if you create an undead demon sharktopus, that’s just the first act.

Would you like your shark with one head or two? How about three? Would you like an actual prehistoric mega shark? How about a giant robot shark?

Spidey-shark concept illustration by Calene Luczo

Few, if any, animals have enjoyed such creative big-screen depictions as the noble shark. There are demonic sharks! Sharks with tentacles! Zombie sharks! This shark-horse! Ghost sharks! A shark that walks on land! And coming later in 2017, there will be flying sharks controlled by Nazi zombies!

In other words, if part of the fun of any shark movie is rooted in the nervous anticipation of where and when a dangerous shark might appear, a significant number of shark movies up the ante by combining their shark threats with other things. Not only does this approach allow the sharks to travel farther and kill harder, it ensures an endless supply of shark movies, because Hollywood will never run out of shark-based combination hazards. Killer koala shark from Down Under? Done.

Shark movies can be as minimalist or as full-scale as you want or need them to be.

As Blake Lively illustrated in 2016’s The Shallows, shark movies can be a one-woman-versus-one-shark show where the shark is a threatening but largely implied presence. They can involve just two people facing off against a small but deadly herd of sharks (47 Meters Down, Open Water), a tiny ensemble of stranded swimmers trying to avoid getting picked off one by one (The Reef), or a full-scale cast with big-budget shark action like Shark Night 3-D or Dark Tide.

The giant shark from last year’s The Shallows wasn’t even huge by shark movie comparisons. Javier Zarracina

And one of the best things about shark films, regardless of their scope, is that shark size has no correlation to shark excellence — as anyone who actually saw Shark Night 3-D or Dark Tide can attest. The bigger shark doesn’t always have the better bite. In fact, films like Open Water and The Reef can succeed without showing any sharks at all. Believing they’re there is all that matters.

On the other end of the spectrum, the first appearance of a shark — it’s always bigger than you were expecting, no matter the film — never gets old:

Jaws (1975).

This is a pretty obvious reason, but it remains the most compelling of all. Stories pitting man against the terrors of the deep have always been a mainstay of human folklore, from the biblical fable of Jonah and the whale to nautical tales of the great kraken, from Moby Dick to The Old Man and the Sea to Lovecraft’s tentacle monster Cthulhu to Disney’s Pinocchio.

Super Shark (2011).

Each of these narratives involves great sea creatures that provide opportunities for heroes to face their fears, come to terms with their humanity, and, you know, be manly men who fish and hunt and conquer the wilderness.

But as formidable opponents, many of these sea creatures lack a significant, shall we say, bite. Giant squid generally stay too far below the surface to really pose a viable threat to humans. Even a big swordfish is no match for a skilled modern fisherman — and the swordfish wouldn’t want to eat you anyway. As for whales, the bigger they are, the more peaceful and harmless they seem to be. Even the ones with teeth are passive and don’t really want to hurt you (unless they’ve been subjected to lifelong animal cruelty).

Sharks, by contrast, are big. They have teeth — sometimes really big, really sharp teeth! They come into the shallow parts of the ocean where humans like to swim and play. Because they are drawn to loud noises and activity in the water, it’s possible, if not probable, that they could be lurking in the water where your loved ones are splashing around. They’re durable and intimidating, and even though in real life sharks are almost never aggressive toward humans, the biggest ones have the power and the potential to chomp you in two.

The Last Shark.

In sum: Like all man-versus-nature tropes, man-versus-shark movies — and man-versus-sharks-versus-other-creatures movies — can reveal important truths about human nature and serve as fascinating, in-depth character studies. Unlike most other man-versus-nature tropes, they do it with a side of terrifying, razor-sharp teeth.

Sharks combine mankind’s desire to conquer nature with its fear of and fascination with the mysteries of the ocean. Even in this modern age, when we’ve been able to plumb the depths of the seas, we still know surprisingly little about sharks. Jaws’ famous description of a shark’s “cold, dead eyes, like a doll’s eyes” in the film’s USS Indianapolis monologue (which was based on the real sinking of a US World War II Navy ship and subsequent shark attacks on its sailors) is still a testament to how unknowable they are.

In essence, in fiction if not in real life, sharks are the perfect scary force of nature: an ever-present threat waiting to happen, in a deep blue setting that humans are still learning to navigate.

But when all is said and done? As with all great horror movie villains, ultimately we’re always rooting for the shark.

Original Source -> Why we love shark movies

via The Conservative Brief

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Articles & Images

Title: Laugh

3 long articles (approx. 300-word max each) (Improv Comedy)

Articles: 

(History of Improv) While improvised theatre and comedy go back a long way, it was in Chicago that the art form was perfected and gained notoriety through clubs such as The Second City and the iO. For over 60 years, Chicago has been a breeding ground for some of America’s greatest comedy talent, rightfully earning its title as the home of improv. What is often referred to as modern improv began in 1955 at the University of Chicago when Paul Sills and David Shepherd formed the Compass Players. When the troupe ended, several members took the name with them to St. Louis, including Mike Nichols and Elaine May, who would both go on to have successful careers as Hollywood directors. In 1959, Sills, Howard Alk and Bernie Sahlins of the Compass Players formed a new troupe and named it The Second City, a self-deprecating joke based on a 1952 New Yorker article about Chicago. The Second City began as a small cabaret theater in Old Town, where people could hear edgy, improvised satire that railed against the conformist comedy of the time. Another key figure in the success of the Chicago improv scene was Del Close, who had previously been part of the Compass Players during its run in St. Louis. He joined The Second City in 1961 and spent 30 years as a resident guru to its many stars, but he also founded the ImprovOlympic (now known as the iO) with Compass Players founder David Shepherd and a student of The Players Workshop, Charna Halpern. The iO concentrates on “long-form” improvisational structures, though it began with the premise of teams of comics competing in front of an audience. It also has an L.A. location, iO West, and notable alumni include Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, and Vince Vaughn.  

Quote: "...people could hear edgy, improvised satire that railed against the conformist comedy of the time.”

Source: Marklew, Tim. “How Chicago Became the Home of Improv Comedy.” Culture Trip, 15 May 2017, theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/illinois/articles/how-chicago-became-the-home-of-improv-comedy/

(Improv Comedians on Improv) But what exactly is improv comedy? We asked the world's funniest people those very questions and found that — much like takes on a Judd Apatow movie — no two responses were alike.Mike Myers offered a definition: "What you can't fix, you feature, and mistakes are great happy accidents. That's the essence of improv, and movies are so chaotic, they're like a runaway train. You have to have that mentality or the train leaves without you."Eddie Murphy said he has relied on improv his whole career. "Improvising has always been a big part of the creative process for me," he said. "I have to be allowed to improvise whenever I'm making a movie. I have to be able to say or try something that's not on the page, so I've always done it. Coming from 'Saturday Night Live,' and coming from stand-up comedy, your act starts out improvising when you get on the stage for the first time.""It's probably Will Ferrell," grinned ... Will Ferrell. "But I don't know. I'm just an objective individual.""There's a science. You're supposed to say, 'Yes, and ...,' " explained Ben Garant, a founding member of the comedy group the State and star of "Reno 911!" "No matter what anybody says to you — 'We live in an ice-cream shop!' — you agree with them and then add something. 'Yes, an ice-cream shop in outer space!'"But on 'Reno 911!' we say, 'No, shut up, f--- you, we're not in an ice-cream shop, sir,' " Garant added, explaining how they've flipped the formula to create conflict on his cop show. "We kind of ignore what you're supposed to do."

Quote: “You're supposed to say, 'Yes, and ...,' "

Source:  Carroll, Larry. “Steve Carell, Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Others Reveal Magic Behind Improv Comedy.” MTV News, 14 Aug. 2007, www.mtv.com/news/1567098/steve-carell-will-ferrell-seth-rogen-others-reveal-magic-behind-improv-comedy/.

(Amy Poehler on Improv) Getting onstage was a big deal. You could spend week after week in classes doing scenes and studying improv forms, but a half-hour performance brought out the best and worst in you. For those of you who know nothing about improvisation, I suggest you read The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual. I will wait. . . . Okay, great! So now you know that to be a good improviser you have to listen and say yes and support your partner and be specific and honest and find a game within the scene you can both play. Long-form improvisation (as you already know because you just read our great book) comes from a one-word suggestion that turns into a whole show filled with scenes and other various forms. Improvisation was about not being cool. It was about being in the moment and listening and not being afraid. I had let my partner down and I was being told to “sell it!” This was a way to shame young improvisers. When Dave Koechner told you to “sell it, ” it meant you had to do the monkey dance. The monkey dance was really embarrassing. The UCB4 started to write and perform our own shows, most of which included audience plants and fake gunplay. This included Thunderball, a sketch show conceived during the baseball strike. We dragged our audience to the entrance of Wrigley Field and declared baseball officially dead. We had the crowd light candles and chant “Baseball is dead, long live Thunderball.” James Grace played a plant in the audience who supported baseball and we shot him. Horatio played the ghost of Babe Ruth, and he wept over James and shouted “No!!” up to the heavens. It started to rain and then cops made us disperse. James committed to lying in the rain for hours. 

Quote: “For those of you who know nothing about improvisation, I suggest you read The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual.”

 Source: Poehler, Amy. Yes Please. Dey St., an Imprint of William Morrow Publishers, 2014.

4 short articles (approx. 200-word max each) (Stand Up/Screen Comedy) 

Articles:

(History on Stand Up Comedy) In the fall of 1975, NBC launched Saturday Night Live. The show ushered in an edgier comedic esthetic. In late 1976, HBO inaugurated what turned out to be a hugely influential standup program called Freddie Prinze and Friends. At the LA Improv, Prinze presented five undiscovered comics. The program remains influential, not just for content, but for the format: an evening of “young” comedians introduced by a more established act. That motif that has been duplicated on television ever since. HBO produced numerous standup specials using the Freddie Prinze and Friends model as well as two long-running series: The Young Comedian’s Special and Def Comedy Jam. Perhaps HBO’s and standup’s cultural coming-of-age moment occurred on March 29, 1986, when Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, and Robin Williams co-hosted a special/telethon benefiting the homeless called Comic Relief. HBO, for the first time, unblocked and shared its feed, allowing millions of basic cable viewers to watch four hours of uncensored standups. Although Home Box Office produced two seminal television comedies, The Larry Sanders Show and Curb Your Enthusiasm, it was their specials that plowed down the final walls of censorship and allowed comedians total creative freedom. 

Quote: “NBC launched Saturday Night Live. The show ushered in an edgier comedic esthetic.”

Source: Federman, Wayne. “From Sullivan to CK: a History of Modern American Standup Comedy in 10 Steps.” Splitsider, 30 Sept. 2015, splitsider.com/2015/09/from-sullivan-to-ck-a-history-of-modern-american-standup-comedy-in-10-steps/.

(Kevin Hart on Stand Up) Of course, that’s (physicality) a part of my act (stand up) that defines me. I love to engage, be physical, be authentic, be real, but also be passionate. If you display that, your audience in just right there with you because they can feel how much you are involved with your performance. I’m not a guy who just coasts. I don’t like to coast. I give it 110% every night. Finding the right material is hard work, but Kevin is willing to put in the time in order to make sure he's at the top of his game. He told Howard he'll go to New York for a week with the goal of doing 45 sets total, or five or six sets each night. He doesn't get up on stage early in the evening, either. He finds it best to go up around 1 a.m. since that's when the crowd is most honest. "Bombing's the best feeling in the world at this position because you know that you're not being cheated," he replied. "You need that. You need to be able to check yourself and go, 'Oh, wait, this may not be good.'"

Quote: “I love to engage, be physical, be authentic, be real, but also be passionate. “

 Source: Carone, Patrick. “Kevin Hart Wants to Be His Generation's Eddie Murphy.” Maxim, 5 Oct. 2016, www.maxim.com/entertainment/kevin-hart-next-eddie-murphy-2016-10. // “Kevin Hart's Stand-Up Stories: From His Respect for Dave Chappelle to How Colin Quinn Helped Him Become a Better Comic.” Howard Stern, www.howardstern.com/show/2017/6/5/kevin-harts-stand-stories-his-respect-dave-chappelle-how-colin-quinn-helped-him-become-better-comic/.

(Seth Rogen on Comedy Movies) With each passing decade, Hollywood shuffles its deck. Now it's the likes of Jason Segal, Martin Starr, Jonah Hill and, the ace in the hole, Seth Rogen, who look set for a profitable stint at the table. Knocked Up, a film that broke Rogen to an international audience. All Apatow's movies are shrewdly crafted, taking people and gags that play to young audiences and blending them with situations and more poignant humour that temper them for older viewers. "I don't know the secret to comedy, but one thing that Judd has taught me is that you should always start with an emotional story that isn't necessarily funny but is believable, interesting and which you like a lot," says Rogen. "Take Knocked Up – that doesn't have to be a funny movie; there's another, a more serious movie in there, very dramatic and not funny at all. So that's where we start, with a simple, emotional premise, and then as far as the actual jokes go, we think that if we make ourselves laugh, hopefully, other people will laugh." 

Quote: “We think that if we make ourselves laugh, hopefully, other people will laugh."

Source: Lawrence, Will. “Seth Rogen: the New Hero of Comedy.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 16 Apr. 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/5165671/Seth-Rogen-the-new-hero-of-comedy.html.

(Ellen DeGeneres on TV Comedy) Noted for her ability to blend humor with sensitive issues, DeGeneres’s clean comedy and emotional intelligence cater to a wide audience while alienating no one. When I’m doing games or interviews, I always think about what I would enjoy watching and do that. I approached it with a lot of honesty, and I think my guests respond to that. And then I scare the bejeezus out of them. “Before the show was picked up, I think a lot of station managers thought I would have an agenda to try to somehow turn the world gay. Our only agenda is to make people feel good.” "I love Jerry (Seinfeld), I've always been compared to Jerry, we're not very much alike at all." DeGeneres depends on more on subtlety and misdirection in her act, with elaborate set pieces. "There's a brilliance to finding a simple thing. Like people writing 'over' at the bottom of a letter." Pause. "Like I'm that much of a moron. I'm not going to look over. 'Gee I wonder what happened to her. She stopped right in the middle here.' 

Quote: “I approached it with a lot of honesty, and I think my guests respond to that. And then I scare the bejeezus out of them.”

Sources: Carter, Bill. “AT LUNCH WITH: Ellen DeGeneres; Dialed God (Pause). He Laughed.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Apr. 1994, www.nytimes.com/1994/04/13/garden/at-lunch-with-ellen-degeneres-dialed-god-pause-he-laughed.html?pagewanted=all%2Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Ffrancesbridges%2F2016%2F10%2F29%2Fcelebrity-substance-ellen-degeneres%2F.  //  “Ellen Degeneres.” SPEAKING.com Speakers Bureau, speaking.com/speakers/ellen-degeneres/.  //  Ifeanyi, KC. “Ellen DeGeneres Is One Step Closer To ‘World Domination’ With Her New YouTube Series.” Fast Company, Fast Company, 19 Sept. 2017, www.fastcompany.com/40469222/ellen-degeneres-is-one-step-closer-to-world-domination-with-her-new-youtube-series. // Bridges, Frances. “Celebrity Substance: Ellen DeGeneres.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 31 Oct. 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/francesbridges/2016/10/29/celebrity-substance-ellen-degeneres/. 

3 small articles (approx. 100-word max each) (Novelty bands) 

Articles:

(History of Novelty Music) Novelty songs first goal was to make the listener laugh rather than entertain him or her musically. Some comedy rock artists, such as Frank Zappa, and more recently Tenacious D, 15 Minutes of Fame and Flight of the Conchords create songs with amusing, witty, and/or over-the-top lyrics. It’s a clever way to get their voice across and differentiate them from other stand-up comics, or a way to make fun of a song’s form a la Lonely Island. 

Quote: “Novelty songs first goal was to make the listener laugh rather than entertain him or her musically.” 

Source: Fontenot, Robert. “What Is Novelty Music?” ThoughtCo, www.thoughtco.com/guide-to-classic-novelty-music-2523166. // “Parody & Comedy Music Guide.” Parody & Comedy Music Guide, www.xlrg.net/. // “20 Great Musical Comedians.” Pastemagazine.com, www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/20-musical-comedians.html.

(Flight of the Conchords on Novelty Bands) Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement started off as New Zealanders with a cult following for their "a cappella-rap-funk-comedy folk" music outfit, Flight of the Conchords. They wove witty, self-deprecating songs about seeking constructive feedback on their preposterous raps and fighting xenophobia among local fruit stand vendors as they bumbled through New York City trying to make it big. "There are some songs you could do in different styles, and they'd still be funny, and there are some that wouldn't. You've got to try and do your best, and the failure is what's funny." 

Quote: “They wove witty, self-deprecating songs about seeking constructive feedback on their preposterous raps.”

Source: “The 11 Best Comedian-Musicians.” Rolling Stone, 5 Apr. 2011, www.rollingstone.com/culture/pictures/the-11-best-comedian-musicians-20110405/flight-of-the-conchords-0729356. // Adams, Sam. “Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement of Flight Of The Conchords.” TV Club, Tv.avclub.com, 13 Jan. 2009, tv.avclub.com/bret-mckenzie-and-jemaine-clement-of-flight-of-the-conc-1798215481.

(The Lonely Island on Novelty Music) 

Unlike most bands, the Lonely Island are faced with the task of making songs that are both catchy and operate as good songs, but also with being funny.  They wouldn’t be nearly as successful or funny if they didn’t also happen to be catchy as hell. “A lot of our songs are making fun of being macho and for some reason, the thing that macho guys are most afraid of is homosexuality,” Schaffer said about the song. 

Quote: “A lot of our songs are making fun of being macho and for some reason, the thing that macho guys are most afraid of is homosexuality,”

 Source: T. Cole Rachel. “Progress Report: The Lonely Island.” Stereogum, 9 May 2011, www.stereogum.com/702332/progress-report-the-lonely-island/franchises/progress-report/.

Images Sources

Improv:

Source: Unsplash. “Microphone on a Karaoke Night Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen (@Kanereinholdtsen) on Unsplash.” Beautiful Free Images, unsplash.com/photos/LETdkk7wHQk. 

Source: “Twenty20 Stock - Authentic Stock Photos & Royalty-Free Images.” twenty20.Com, www.twenty20.com/photos/7423e8c9-0a1d-4d67-90a6-9fe3cb867bfc.

Source: “Improv Comedy Photos.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/search/ improv comedy/.

Stand Up:

Source: “Black and Gray Corded Microphone.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-gray-corded-microphone-33970/.

Source: Unsplash. “Brick, Wall, Brick Wall and Texture HD Photo by Michael Weibel (@Smeyke) on Unsplash.” Beautiful Free Images, unsplash.com/photos/vKAJB9KnB64.

Screen:

Source:  “Free Stock Photo of Action, Adult, Aperture.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/photo/action-adult-aperture-blur-320617/.

Source: “Free Stock Photo of Board, Cinema, Cinematography.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/photo/board-cinema-cinematography-clapper-board-274937/.

Source:  “Black Camera Recorder.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/photo/camera-event-live-settings-66134/.

Novelty Music:

Source: “Man Wearing Red Crew Neck Shirt and Black Goggles.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/photo/man-wearing-red-crew-neck-shirt-and-black-goggles-33623/

Source:  “Close Up of Piano.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-piano-258291/.

Source: “Free Stock Photo of Apple, Artwork, Business.” Free Stock Photos, www.pexels.com/photo/apple-artwork-business-color-459719/.

[robedisimo]

“It Rhymes”: Cascading Character Roles Across the Star Wars Trilogies [PART II]

[Disclaimer: PART III of this post chain contains speculation and theories about the upcoming Star Wars – The Last Jedi that, if correct, would count as SPOILERS. While it’s unlikely that my musings are 100% accurate, keep that in mind if your intention is to go into the film completely blind.]

[ PREVIOUS – Narrative roles in the Star Wars monomyth ]

4. Thematic classes and pairings

Just because the plot of a Star Wars trilogy – or any piece of fiction, really – hinges on story roles which need to be filled by characters in order for the narrative to advance, it doesn’t mean that the characters themselves are merely functions of the plot with no life of their own.

Star Wars isn’t the deepest or most nuanced of stories, but its core themes are demonstrably resonant. And just as the plot is carried through by the cast, so are the thematic arcs upon which the plot is built: in parallel to their narrative roles, the characters also inhabit certain “thematic classes”, for lack of a better label.

To illustrate a couple:

the Youngster – Like the “Hero” role, a fairly self-explanatory category. Young and inexperienced, they act as the primary audience vehicle: the viewer learns about the world and story just as this character does.

the Older Man – Or, if you prefer, the Mature Man, the Experienced Man, or the Role Model. The Youngster’s counterpart and deuteragonist, on his own character arc but on an arguably secondary plane.

The existence of the Youngster class is the reason why the Hero role isn’t necessarily the protagonist of the trilogy he inhabits. Original-Trilogy (OT) Luke and Prequel-Trilogy (PT) Anakin are respectively a Hero and a Rogue, but they’re both tier-one protagonists because they’re both the Youngster. Star Wars is a franchise primarily aimed at a young audience, and the Youngster is invariably the “face character” of their trilogy, the one most likely to get the central spot on a promotional poster.

It’s important to notice that the Youngster relates to other characters in different way. They act as the Rebellious Youngster towards the Older Man, with whom they have a relationship built on a mix of jovial camaraderie and confrontational rivalry – see Anakin’s strained apprenticeship under Obi-Wan, and Luke and Han’s initial competition for Leia’s attentions. Conversely, they act the Naïve Youngster towards the characters inhabiting the Mentor and Princess narrative roles (more on this later).

This sort of interdependence and interrelationship between thematic classes allows us to introduce yet another concept: thematic pairs. These pairings are formed between complementary thematic classes, with the Youngster/Older Man pair being the first to arise.

Other pairings include:

the Good Father / Dark Father – Both come to the main character with a call to destiny: see Obi-Wan’s support of the “Chosen One” narrative for Anakin, and Vader’s offer of father-son Imperial rule to Luke. The protagonist turns to these characters to find aid in his search for identity, to understand his place in the universe, and for emotional validation. Taking the Youngster under their wing, they often appear to be genuinely invested in his well-being.

the Good Master / Dark Master – Both come to the main character with an offer of power. These are the characters to whom the protagonist turns to find the means to achieve his goals, to acquire the strength required to accomplish his destiny. They are often duplicitous and manipulative – see Yoda’s trickster act, and his omission to Luke of both Vader’s and Leia’s true nature – treating the protagonist as an unfeeling instrument to be bent towards a higher purpose.

If you go back to the difficulties we had pegging PT Palpatine as either the Dark Knight or the Dark Lord, you’ll find that the same duality is mirrored in his split role as both the Dark Father and the Dark Master: his Senator Palpatine persona treacherously poses as a supportive paternal figure to Anakin – in direct and intentional contrast to Obi-Wan’s more stern and demanding tutelage – while his Sidious persona is blatantly interested in nothing more than using the kid as a blunt instrument to attain his goal of galactic domination.

An additional and rather peculiar point of interest: the Good Father – that is to say Obi-Wan, in both the Original and Prequel Trilogy – is consistently shown as a surrogate paternal figure, whereas the Dark Father is either the protagonist’s actual biological parent or – if you follow the Prequel Trilogy’s implications in this regard – acts as such, by having had a direct role in influencing his conception.

5. Character arcs and moral alignment

Now here’s where things get interesting. As we’ve seen, narrative roles define a character’s function in the plot, while thematic classes define their relationships with other cast members. Considered in conjunction, these two aspects come together to determine their overall character arc.

I’ve stated before how the Rogue is a role defined by change; the same is true of the Youngster class. The Hero’s morals are a constant, while the Rogue’s shift; the Youngster is in search of an identity while the Older Man’s is mostly already defined by the time he’s introduced to the viewer.

Thus Luke (Youngster/Hero) is a consistent force for good throughout the Original Trilogy, but his identity goes from rebellious – culminating in his disobeying Yoda’s instructions in The Empire Strikes Back – to disciplined. Borrowing terms from Dungeons & Dragons parlance, he’s consistently good but his alignment undergoes a gradual shift from chaotic to neutral.

Conversely, Han’s (Older Man/Rogue) personality remains consistently authority-defying and individualistic (chaotic), but his morals evolve from bad – he’s a pirate, a thief, and a cold-blooded murderer (who most definitely shot first) – to decidedly good by the time he sacrifices himself for the Rebellion, again near the end of Empire; clearly a good spot for culminating arcs.

For a couple more examples of different combinations of narrative roles and character classes:

PT Obi-Wan (Older Man/Hero) is consistently and dependably rule-abiding and noble (lawful good)

PT Anakin (Youngster/Rogue) goes from obedient disciple to rebellious traitor (lawful → chaotic) and from fated saviour to ultimate villain (good → evil)

Again, I’m not claiming I’ve cracked some sort of magic formula here... but it does seem to work fairly well in explaining the character dynamics in Star Wars past and present. With all these ingredients, it’s actually fairly easy to apply our recipe and reverse-engineer a hypothetical “prequel’s prequel” trilogy, with Qui-Gon as the Youngster/Hero, Count Dooku – his once-tutor, destined to gravitate towards Dark Knight territory as he cascades into the following trilogy – as the Older Man/Rogue, a young Palpatine as the Dark Knight and Darth Plagueis as the Dark Lord.

Now that (almost) all the elements are in place, we can finally get closer to engaging in some fairly well-informed speculation as to the saga’s future.

6. The Star Wars sequels: an ongoing puzzle

Drawing a coherent map of the new trilogy’s character roles is a bit hard for a number of reasons. First and foremost, well, we only have one movie to go on so far, and unlike A New Hope it wasn’t one designed to convincingly pass for a self-contained story in case its success wan’t enough to warrant a sequel.

The Force Awakens very much feels like a “chapter one” deal, so much so that it concludes with an actual “to be continued” cliffhanger, something the franchise had never done before – the end of Empire doesn’t count, Return of the Jedi didn’t pick up directly where the previous chapter had left off; as a matter of fact, it actually started with a time skip, which is pretty much the opposite of a cliffhanger.

Another issue arises from the fact that this is the first Star Wars trilogy not to have one cohesive story architect, instead being kicked off by one set of director and screenwriter and then brought forward by another. I’m sure there was a vague, general plan for where the story was going to head since day one, but I also think it’s safe to assume that a number of choices are being made on the fly.

The third and perhaps most tricky speed bump resides in the fact that the Sequel Trilogy is a more modern affair, built by more modern authors, for a more modern audience. Its character archetypes are deviated towards more contemporary sensibilities, and drawing a direct connection between them and the cast from the saga’s previous two chapters is definitely a less-immediate exercise than it was between the Original and Prequel trilogies.

Still, we can certainly try. Our first anchor point is the Mentor role, which is as cut and dry as they come: in accordance with our “cascading roles” model, Han falls into this spot like a pear from a tree. Within the context of The Force Awakens, this also clearly paints Ben Solo/Kylo Ren as the Dark Knight, though his enduring tenure in the role is debatable, as we’ll see in greater detail.

Rey is a little harder to categorise for the simple reason that she’s a bit of a mystery: since we don’t know all there is to know about her true parentage, and therefore about where her actual story arc might be headed in future instalments, we’re pretty much in the dark about her character’s actual nature. Still, if we just put aside all the theories and speculation, on its face her role is pretty blatant: she’s a true-blooded Hero, and a Youngster to boot.

Finn is a bit trickier still, but I think the clues are there. He comes to the Resistance from the bad guys’ side; he initially sides with the heroes out of personal interest, only to complete a definitive face-turn by the end of the film; and – this may be a minor thing, but it helps – he’s definitely the funniest character in the entire movie. Granted, he’s no Han Solo... but could Finn really be the Sequel Trilogy’s Rogue? That’s where what little we know for certain about The Last Jedi starts coming in handy.

Amidst a lot of potential misdirection, one thing we know for sure from trailers and other promotional material is that Finn will go back to the First Order as part of an undercover infiltration mission of sorts; here he will again come face-to-face with Captain Phasma, who I think we can all agree is the badass-on-paper, underwhelming-on-screen Sequel Trilogy reincarnation of Boba Fett.

Amusingly, this also seems to be a recurring traits for Rogues in the Star Wars monomyth. Each Rogue ends up revisiting his shady original environment in order to confront his past, embodied by one or more figures representing the character’s dark reflection: Han confronts Boba and literally buries his residual darkness; Anakin confronts the Sand People and instead succumbs to it. Now Finn has to stop running and face his past, too.

So that leaves us with Poe. Now what the hell am I supposed to do with him?

7. The Princess’s new clothes

In the context of our little matching game, Oscar Isaac’s dashing X-Wing pilot remains a bit of a square peg. That’s not at all surprising, considering how he came to be: Poe was originally supposed to be a total non-character, killed after his very first scene. He was only saved because Isaac is just too good to die, which is great for my ever-deepening man-crush on him but frankly throws a wrench into our whole experiment... or so I initially thought.

Indeed, Poe’s existence throughout The Force Awakens remains largely extraneous to a lot of the story, more an occasionally-there plot device than an actual character. In that respect, you would be excused for thinking he’s best explained as the Lando of the Sequel Trilogy. His role will no doubt be expanded in The Last Jedi, but I believe it can already be figured out by talking about the one thematic class I purposely left out of my analysis back in section 4.

I call this class “the Veteran”.

When I explained my idea of narrative roles in the Star Wars canon, I made intentional use of fantasy-like terminology to connect each role to a classic mythological archetype. Lucas makes no mystery of this: the Jedi are a monastic order of knights, and both the Original and Prequel trilogies open with our heroes rescuing the heir to royal house. Still, when you come down to it, the “Warrior Princess” doesn’t have to be a princess at all. Their role does, however, seem to require that they be rescued, and so they definitely are a Warrior Damsel.

The other side of that coin is that, in order to start their story arc as a captive, the Damsel has to be neck-deep in the plot right from the start. When their trilogy begins they’re already occupying a position of power and authority within the good guys’ camp, and they have something – be it information or physical assets – which the bad guys require, leading to their imprisonment. Furthermore, the position they occupy is tied to past history: Padmé embodies Naboo’s tradition and has dealt with the Federation in the past, while Leia is both a long-standing asset to the Rebellion and the adoptive heir to a family sharing a similar history of anti-Imperial activity. The Veteran, so to speak, is the protagonist with a pedigree.

The direct consequence of this is that the Damsel/Veteran sits at the opposite end of the exposition spectrum when compared to the young protagonist. Remember what I said about the “Naïve Youngster”? Where our main character is lost and confused about what’s going on, the Veteran is worldly and in-the-know, often explaining plot beats, political connections, and hidden agendas to other characters and, by extension, the audience.

Does Poe fit this category? He certainly does in the first case: his role in The Force Awakens starts with him getting captured – after hiding vital data inside a droid, in a blatant replay of Leia’s first appearance – and then rescued by Finn. So he definitely fits the Damsel’s description; but is he the Veteran? That’s where the additional material found in novels and comic books once again comes to our aid: both of Poe’s parents were members of the Rebellion and heroes of the Battle of Endor, and so his standing as Resistance aristocracy is all but confirmed.

As an odd bonus coincidence, in both previous trilogy it’s always the Rogue who “gets the girl” by forging a romantic involvement with the Damsel... which is honestly a pretty humorous set of circumstances when you consider the fandom’s fondness for the Finn/Poe pairing. Not that their undeniable on-screen chemistry couldn’t be explained by the already-mentioned Youngster/Older Man camaraderie, which is most definitely at play there.

So here’s how our general picture of the Sequel Trilogy shapes up so far:

But wait, I hear you say: why is that spot there blank? Isn’t it obvious that Luke is going to be the Sage? And what of Leia? Also, isn’t it weird that the new protagonist trio is so unusually disconnected, with Poe and Rey sharing no interaction whatsoever throughout The Force Awakens aside from BB-8 acting as an obvious trait d’union between them? And how can Rey and Finn both be the Youngster, or Poe be both the Veteran and the Older Man at the same time?

For that we need to start speculating, I’m afraid: it’s not as if we have the complete picture yet, after all. So speculate is exactly what we’re going to do.

[ NEXT – Cracking the sequels’ future: an exercise in duality? ]

[cryptoga-blog]

7 Tokens Investors Are Talking About

http://www.cryptoga.com/news/7-tokens-investors-are-talking-about/

7 Tokens Investors Are Talking About

Disclaimer: This post need to not be taken as, and is not meant to present, financial commitment tips.

What separates a true-offer token from a rip-off?

A new wave of tech lovers is asking that query as tokens rack up massive gains and consider in excess of current market discussions. And it’s undoubtedly not just one with an simple reply – even for extended-time current market observers.

That mentioned, massive-title traders are trying to make feeling of the current market, wanting to separate the wheat from the chaff to discover assignments they can fund that can supply true-world worth.

Amidst this sea adjust in the crypto place, CoinDesk spoke to Raise VC, Compound VC and Pantera Capital to get a sense for what tokens they’re investing in, or at least, organizing to.

To get started, for several traders in the place, like Compound’s Joshua Nussbaum, decentralizing traditionally centralized devices has big charm.

Nussbaum told CoinDesk:

“Offered the nascency of blockchain technology right now, I am most enthusiastic about assignments resolving open complications impeding self-sovereign decentralized purposes.”

In truth, just one detail that separates “serious” assignments is their aim of performing as fundamental infrastructure that other apps will be built on (what Union Sq. Ventures has referred to as “unwanted fat protocols”).

But though all of the assignments below have piqued the curiosity of large-profile traders, it’s vital to take note the fruits of their labor and the cash raised in ICOs could nonetheless be a extended way off.

Brayton Williams of Raise VC mentioned:

“Decentralizing the web will deliver a significant increase in decentralized apps, but we are yrs and yrs away from the fundamental infrastructure remaining completely ready.”

The subsequent assignments ended up each individual introduced up various times in conversations (outlined in rough order of ICO launch):

Quantstamp – “The protocol for securing smart contracts”

For all cryptocurrency’s guarantee, traders have observed thousands and thousands of pounds shed and jeopardized by coding problems.

As these, the business has named for reform, and it would seem some of that may arrive in the sort of an additional cryptocurrency token, Quantstamp, using on a protocol for enabling the automation of protection audits on smart contracts.

In shorter, the crew is making a established of code that can verify smart contracts (the number of smart contracts on ethereum went into the thousands and thousands this year), and that makes it possible for builders to farm out auditing to a crew of hackers and verifiers on the network who will be rewarded for getting bugs.

Quantstamp CEO Richard Mar told CoinDesk:

“I was a really early trader in ethereum, since I am a programmer, and the thought of a programmable forex really appealed to me, and I actually invested all my ether into the DAO in 2016. For a interval, I actually shed all my ether though they ended up debating what to do about it, so that was really the beginning of Quantstamp.”

Mar ongoing, indicating with the venture “we are really supporting other assignments.”

Quantstamp’s token sale launched Nov. 17 and will operate by way of Dec. 16, until it hits its $30 million cap on investments faster.

Bloom – “Say hi there to inclusive credit score” 

The past couple yrs of knowledge breaches have illustrated how dangerous centralizing people’s personal knowledge can be, culminating substantially with the Equifax breach.

The crew at Bloom made a decision the ideal way to hold very similar losses from happening once again was to build a decentralized credit score rating method, which incorporates identity, threat evaluation and credit score scoring.

“What we’re in a position to set up is this option to make improvements to the way this knowledge is aggregated,” Daniel Maren, from Bloom’s crew, told CoinDesk.

According to Bloom’s white paper, decentralization and the company’s privateness model will place personal loan recipients at the center of all transactions, in an effort to reduce the threat of publicity. This need to not only deliver some substantially-essential opposition to the monopolistic credit score company business, but also aid additional consumer lending across borders and into communities that have a complicated time setting up credit score.

Bloom’s token – which will provide as a staking mechanism, a payment method and as a governance resource – is previously accessible to traders as a element of the presale. The public sale opened on Nov. 30 and will previous for a month, until its $50 million challenging cap is strike previously.

Fold – “A privateness layer for ethereum” 

Fold’s ICO arrived out of the company’s curiosity in getting a way to store personal facts (specially, gift card knowledge) on a public blockchain.

But then, “we realized that the privateness remedy we ended up making was additional important than the trade we ended up making,” Matt Luongo, founder of Fold, told CoinDesk.

That privateness remedy, named Preserve, is a privateness layer for ethereum that uses secure multiparty computation to keep knowledge in several locations in these a way that smart contracts can nonetheless use it. None of the locations know exactly where the other pieces are, and nonetheless they nonetheless have the skill to operate the necessary computations with the parts they have.

Luongo stated:

“What zero-understanding proofs do for customers, secure multiparty computation does that for contracts.”

Whilst the people who operate nodes will want to stake them with the Preserve tokens, payments to use the network and to the nodes themselves will all be accomplished in ether.

“I am sort of philosophically opposed to payments in utility tokens,” Luongo mentioned.

Across its presale and public sale, Fold has a $20 million challenging cap. At the stop of the public sale, which will get started in January and will probable operate for only two months, the enterprise will debut its staking customer, with the initial merchandise remaining an auditable random number generator.

NuCypher – “KMS is HTTP for dapps”

A different protection-centered token to open its public sale shortly (probable in early 2018) is NuCypher.

The company has previously commercialized proxy re-encryption whereby a user can encrypt their keys but then delegate access to people keys to other people in additional common verticals. Now, it desires to adapt that merchandise to smart contracts.

For illustration, a user on a support would proceed to be granted access to a pool of knowledge so extended as particular conditions ended up satisfied, and the smart contract could rescind access if a user failed to satisfy particular conditions.

“The vital piece is you can do that delegate re-encryption with no owning to decrypt in the middle,” said MacLane Wilkison, co-founder and CEO of NuCypher.

It is a way of controlling big swimming pools of knowledge as it moves on and off-web site.

Whilst broader specifics of NuCypher’s blockchain rollout have not been announced, in order to operate its decentralized providers, it will want to set up a network of nodes to operate encryptions. The token will allow for people nodes to stake themselves as element of NuCypher’s network.

“By staking our token, we have a mechanism exactly where if you’re misbehaving as a node you can be challenged and forfeit your stake,” Wilkison concluded.

Stream – “An economic spine for decentralizing streaming”

Morningstar estimates that YouTube earned $12 billion in 2016, nonetheless stress between the web site and the content creators who created it a multi-billion greenback enterprise have gotten heated currently.

Ben Yo, CEO of Stream, mentioned:

“Material creators and platforms are at fundamental economic war with each individual other, since each individual of them are functioning to consider as substantially cash as probable.”

And in flip, Stream desires to basically change the incentive structure for user-created online video, decentralizing the course of action from get started to stop by way of the use of blockchain.

For now, Stream sits beneath YouTube and Facebook, enabling videomakers to receive resources both from advertisements or direct viewer assistance, the latter a new earnings resource for most videomakers. Later, the enterprise will offer a Chrome extension that sits beneath movies and permits direct donations to videomakers who’ve joined the Stream network.

But for all this to function, Stream wants a cryptocurrency token to monetize its platform. And it will be controlling the deflation of that token in an effort to much better push engagement on the platform.

For instance, as Stream’s current market capitalization rises, it will emit new tokens and split them up between present token holders and creators.

“We are in a position to capture the worth that is accrued as the current market worth grows in excess of time, and distribute that in the emission of a new token,” Yu mentioned.

Stream’s presale is working now, but it has not disclosed its public sale dates, whilst Yu mentioned it was probable to kick off in January. The token sale is capped at $33 million.

Origin – “The sharing economic system with no intermediaries”

The “sharing economic system” is a lot less about sharing and additional about lease-seeking by market middlemen having a significant lower, or at least which is how the crew at origin sees it.

Origin desires to adjust that, hoping to decentralize the sharing economic system with ethereum by developing a peer-to-peer network for transacting directly for just about just about anything.

In order to show it is effective, the crew anticipates it will probably have to develop just one of people verticals by itself, but it hopes in performing so it will entice other business owners to develop additional.

In reality, co-founder Matthew Liu acknowledges ethereum is probably not completely ready to deal with a large-transaction current market, like sharing properties or bikes. The crew is at present contemplating about making a merchandise all-around providing qualified function, these as style and design or coding.

“I assume the additional intricate situations like an Uber are not going to be the kinds that arise at the beginning,” Liu mentioned. “We’ll probably be stunned.”

In fact, he anticipates substantially scaled-down scale sharing assignments (these as neighborhood tool sharing) will shake out, kinds that would be too expensive to develop with no the money return need to business owners have to develop people marketplaces from scratch.

The enterprise has not finalized its token giving designs, but it’s token, which serves as a staking and incentive mechanism, will probable be accessible in 2018, just after it has finished a fundamental, useful merchandise.

In certain, Liu is optimistic about employing tokens to reward early adopters, perhaps in the sort of a money-again plan, exactly where early customers would get some tokens again just after productively completing a transaction.

He told CoinDesk:

“We believe that in the much better-than-free of charge business enterprise model.”

Orchid – “Welcome to a world exactly where customers very own the online” 

And previous, but not least, specially for crypto lovers who care deeply about decreasing surveillance and censorship, Orchid claims to be an enabler of surveillance-free of charge online.

It’s merchandise, the crew thinks, will allow web customers to route all-around spying and censorship with a additional strong network of nodes than The Tor Undertaking network, since it will pay people for sharing unused bandwidth. By giving people a explanation to place their computer systems on the network when they aren’t in use, the theory is it can get so several nodes on its network that surveillance would develop into all but extremely hard.

“I assume just one of the most important issues that other people who have tried using to decentralize the online is they’ve failed to have incentives to do it,” Brian Fox, just one of the venture co-founders, told CoinDesk.

Orchid has previously raised $4.7 million in enterprise funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Blockchain Funds, Compound VC, Crunchfund and Danhua, along with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, MetaStable, Polychain Funds, Sequoia and Struck Funds.

And though ICO tokens have been principally employed as a fundraising mechanism, Fox mentioned Orchid’s token is a “utility token,” that means that it will present owners of the token with a use on the platform.

“When our protocol is 100 per cent completely ready for intake, so will our token. And we anticipate to see that happening someday in the subsequent six months,” Fox mentioned.

Lightbulbs graphic by way of Shutterstock.

The leader in blockchain information, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the best journalistic requirements and abides by a demanding established of editorial insurance policies. Fascinated in giving your experience or insights to our reporting? Contact us at information@coindesk.com.

Disclaimer: This post need to not be taken as, and is not meant to present, financial commitment tips. Please conduct your very own extensive analysis ahead of investing in any cryptocurrency.

[ethanalter]

Steven Soderbergh talks 'Logan Lucky,' John Denver, and adventures in self-distribution

Steven Soderbergh and Daniel Craig on the set of Logan Lucky. (Photo: Claudette Barius/Fingerprint Releasing/Bleecker Street/Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection)

How do you solve a problem like making a star-powered heist movie and retaining complete creative and economic control over the entire process? For Steven Soderbergh, the answer was simple: Release the darn thing yourself. When Logan Lucky — the director’s first feature in four years — premiered in theaters this past August, Soderbergh himself oversaw its marketing campaign and release strategy via an ambitious distribution plan that navigated around all of Hollywood’s major studios. It was the latest experiment for a filmmaker who has always sought ways to tinker with cinematic conventions both in front of and behind the camera, whether it’s making an entire film with nonactors (2005’s Bubble) or releasing a branching TV series via an app (this year’s Mosaic).

As it turns out, this particular experiment produced mixed results. While Logan Lucky scored critical raves, it only earned $27 million at the box office, $2 million less than it cost to make. Still, thanks to its breezy story and a stellar ensemble that includes Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, and Soderbergh’s frequent collaborator Channing Tatum, the film seems poised to enjoy a healthy afterlife on Blu-ray as well as streaming services. And Soderbergh tells Yahoo Entertainment that he plans to repeat the self-distribution experiment, albeit with a few tweaks, for his next movie, Unsane, which will open in theaters in March. We chatted with the director about movie marketing strategies, the legacy of Magic Mike XXL, and whether he’ll ever reveal the identity of Logan Lucky‘s mysterious screenwriter, Rebecca Blunt.

Yahoo Entertainment: Logan Lucky was one of several movies from this past year to use John Denver music in key sequences. Were you surprised to be part of that wave? Steven Soderbergh: It’s so strange! The first draft of the script was written in 2014 and that song, “Country Roads,” obviously plays a big part in the narrative. Then I saw that Alien: Covenant was using it, and somebody told me that Kingsman: The Golden Circle was using it. It’s really odd that this artist, who normally doesn’t get that much attention, is suddenly showing up in three films within months of each other. The song is so specific to that state, and it had such a crucial role in the script that we didn’t really have any choice [but to use it].

The film was also an experiment in self-distribution for you. Looking back on the experience now, are you happy with the way things went? It worked the way it was supposed to work. I think all of us wanted more people to see the film, but the model worked, and so what I’m trying to do now as we prepare Unsane for release is recalibrate in terms of the marketing. In retrospect, the approach that we took on Logan probably didn’t reach the people that we were trying to reach, which was the audience in the South and the Midwest. I know they saw the materials — that just didn’t translate into them turning up at the theater in the numbers that we wanted. We had a campaign that was tilted very, very heavily towards social media, and I think we should have tilted that toward television. The audience we wanted for the film pays more attention to television than it does to stuff that shows up on social media.

That’s interesting, because we hear a lot about the internet being important to movie marketing. Well, every movie is different, but what I pulled out of this experience was that people who engage with social media do so as a discrete activity that has nothing to do with whether or not they’re gonna buy a movie ticket. It’s an activity in and of itself that they find pleasurable, and there is no Part 2. We created all this stuff [for the internet] and put it out there, and tons of eyeballs got on it, but it just didn’t translate into anybody buying a ticket. My sense is that, psychologically, if people don’t see ads for your movie on TV, it’s not real to them. As they say in Logan Lucky, I’ve done a total 360 on my views towards television, because I was very down on buying TV while putting together the marketing plan and now I think that was a mistake. Now, Unsane is a very different film and we’re going after a very different audience, so I want to be as careful as possible not to completely invert the marketing plan we had only to find out that people that see these kinds of films do hang out on social media and do buy tickets.

Has getting involved in marketing influenced the way you make creative decisions on your films? No, it’s a different thing. Your process for creating the piece itself is separate from, “OK, now how do we sell this thing that we made?” But I enjoy it; I like learning new stuff, and part of the fun of doing Logan Lucky the way we did it was the ability to try some things and to learn some things. Coming out the other end of it, I’m very anxious now to recalibrate and try some new ideas, or some old ideas.

Adam Driver and Channing Tatum in Logan Lucky. (Photo: Claudette Barius/Fingerprint Releasing/Bleecker Street/Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection)

How do you approach your own social media presence? You have a really entertaining Twitter feed, for example. It’s tricky because I don’t want it to turn into something typical and I don’t want it to turn into a tool of self-promotion. I want it to be a refuse bag of thoughts or facts that have some relevance to me. But I don’t have any real plan for it; I’ll go weeks without posting anything, and then sometimes it will be a couple things in a day or two.

Did you consider doing a day-and-date release where Logan Lucky premiered in theaters and VOD? You were part of the first wave of that distribution approach with Bubble back in 2005. You just can’t get the screens from the larger chains. We were only able to do Bubble and The Girlfriend Experience the way we did it because Magnolia and HDNet and 2929 owned Landmark Theaters. Even though we offered to cut the chains in on some of the downstream revenue by allowing us to screen day-and-date, they wouldn’t do it. I think it’s what Netflix is discovering: You can only get a couple of screens when you go day-and-date. Also, the purpose of us going day-and-date was really just to not have to sell the film twice and to enable people who live in a town that doesn’t necessarily have a specialty screen to see the movie. Again, for the scale of that experiment, it worked — those movies were profitable. We just never got to test it the way I really wanted to test it, which was to go out in that case on 400 or 500 screens.

Directors like Christopher Nolan have been very vocal about their dislike for the Netflix model of curation. Do you have any particular feelings about the way they release films? No, I’m not really an ideologue when it comes to that kind of stuff. I don’t think moviegoing is every gonna disappear. It’s still the No. 1 date destination. When I was growing up, TV was s***ty looking, so there was a big difference between watching something on your TV at home and going to a movie theater. Now you get the 4K HDR of Logan Lucky and watch it on your 4K screen at home, and it looks pretty great. There’s not as big of a gap anymore between what you see at home and what you see in the theater.

In order to give Logan Lucky a sense of a second life, did you consider providing a whole different experience for Blu-ray viewers? Like, “You’ve seen it one way — now see it again a whole new way.” Again that would depend on the movie. Because Logan Lucky is a heist movie, it wouldn’t lend itself to another approach editorially. Going forward, it’s something I’ve thought about. At some point what I want to do — because you can do it now — is have a movie open on Friday and let people know that next Friday there’s gonna be a different version of the movie in this theater. If you want to see this version, go this week. If you want to see another version, wait until next week. There was a movie I produced called Keane that was written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan, who ended up doing The Girlfriend Experience TV show. When Lodge was almost done, I said, “Can I send you back a version of your movie that is cut completely differently?” And he said, “Yeah, sure.” So I sent it back to him, he goes, “That’s interesting, let’s put it on the DVD.” So on the Keane DVD there is Lodge’s cut and then there’s my completely different imagining of the same movie.

Would you turn your own movies over to someone else to recut them for DVD or TV? I don’t know that I would ever task somebody with doing that! [Laughs] As somebody who has posted re-edits on my website, I’m assuming that at some point somebody’s gonna do something to one of my films, since I’ve been so cavalier with other people’s work. But I don’t think I would ever tell somebody, “This is your job, you have to go essentially rebuild this thing.” That doesn’t seem fair. I think this whole fan edit culture is really fascinating. I remember being in Rome when we were shooting Ocean’s Twelve and I got a message that Bravo was gonna run Full Frontal, but it needed to be five minutes shorter. I had a drive sent over and I cut five minutes out of it, and I thought, “That’s better, actually.” And the rights to Full Frontal have reverted back to me now, so when I remaster it, I’m going to pull the Bravo version and conform to that. I think that’s what the Coens did with the Blood Simple director’s cut — they made it shorter. I think that’s the way to go. I don’t understand all these movies from the ’70s where the directors went back and added stuff! In every case, I felt, “No, you made the right call then.”

The cast of Magic Mike XXL strikes a pose. (Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection)

I’ve enjoyed the afterlife that Magic Mike XXL has had, for example. That movie has been acknowledged as one of the best contemporary sequels. Was that a movie Channing Tatum pushed to be made? It was built out of the rib of an idea from the first one that we couldn’t include. Channing had told us that story of the road trip that he took with his stripper pals to Myrtle Beach, and as he described it, I went, “OK, well that’s too big. That’s its own movie.” We kind of tabled it, and then when we talked about doing another one, we instantly said, “We gotta do the road trip — that’s a great story.” I was so pleased with what Greg [Jacobs, the director] did with the sequel. To me, if you’re a fan of Magic Mike and you go see that movie, how could you not be happy? There are more jokes, there’s more dancing, it’s just more of all the stuff that you like. I was really, really proud of it.

You served as the movie’s director of photography. Do you wish you had directed it? No, not at all. I loved being Greg’s cinematographer and editor. I think there’s an assumption that I have more influence than I actually do in that situation, because I’m there to serve my director, and that’s Greg’s film. But there was no universe in which I was not gonna be a part of the band — I just didn’t want to play lead guitar.

You’ve had these intense periods of collaboration with specific actors — George Clooney in the past and now Channing Tatum. What is it about him that you see as a kindred spirit in the films you make together? Channing’s got a very genuine everyman quality that I think is difficult to fake. He’s a good guy and, as you would imagine him to be, a lot of fun to hang out with and very loyal. If you’re his friend he’ll do anything for you. George is the same way. If you had 500 of these guys, you could take over a country. I think in this case it just kept evolving; we met on Haywire, obviously, and just started a conversation that continued, and so he just very quickly became one of those people that was a go-to for me.

Are we ever going to learn the identity of Rebecca Blunt? Well, she’s enjoying all of this, and she’s writing something new right now. I’ve learned not to poke a working writer too much because you might get snapped at. What I’m hoping is that when she gets through this other project, that she’ll kind of emerge and tell her story, because I think she should. She’s talented and there’s gonna be more material coming from her, and I think she should be prepared to be out and about a little bit, and enjoy it. She got great notices for this film, but that’s totally her call. I’m hoping that with Logan Lucky, we’ll have a similar situation as we did with XXL, which did OK theatrically but really found its audience on streaming, DVD and television. I’m hoping that with Logan Lucky, people will go, “Look at that cast! How did I not see this when it was out in theaters?”

And learn all about this big new star named Daniel Craig. Yeah, I’ve been telling people to keep an eye on this guy. He’s got some other project he’s working on [laughs].

Logan Lucky is available on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday. Watch the trailer:

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:

Steven Soderbergh reveals backstory to his viral Lucasfilm rejection letter

Steven Soderbergh explains his love for ‘Get Out’: ‘It’s like Halley’s Comet to me’

Here are the 10 greatest movie heist scenes in honor of ‘Logan Lucky’

[abasicglitch-blog]

Stranger Things

Media Type: TV Show (Netflix Original)

Genre: Sci-Fi, Suspense, Horror(ish)

If you haven’t heard of this one, I’m not sure what planet you live on. This show took the world by storm when it came out, in the summer of 2016. Combining a modern societal love of horror with a classic 80s setting gives this show the perfect medium for reaching all types of people. I had heard about this show from both my fellow high school students and adults alike, who all revered it as one of the best shows of the year. So, of course, I spent one long afternoon watching all 8 episodes, and was not disappointed (Season 2 has not been released yet, so this post only covers Season 1).

A word of caution, before I continue. Something I had failed to notice the first time I watched this show (I had been so invested in the plot that I hadn’t paid much attention) is that it gets very, very close to being labeled as “horror.” Personally, I have no problem with horror so this didn’t bother me, but when I attempted to show this to my family, my younger sister was not happy. It did ruin the show for her, and she stopped watching after about 2 episodes. If you tend to avoid horror at all costs, I would be cautious when starting this show. It’s an awesome experience with a great plot, not at all like some of the horror movies we see in theaters today, so if you’re willing to be a little brave then I think you’ll really enjoy it. It’s all up to you.

That aside, this show brings some of the best suspense and mystery that I have ever experienced in a TV show. From the very beginning, it gives off a vibe of danger and terror. The first episode, titled “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”, hold nothing back as it throws you into a world full of “stranger things.” There’s not much unnecessary setting and exposition (backstories are revealed sporadically throughout the show), so if you’re ready for a trial by fire, this is definitely the show for you. It immediately engages you by giving you just enough information to grab your attention, but not enough to give you all the answers. You ask questions, you make theories, and you wonder what the heck is going on almost all the time. I’m being very cautious here, because I’m trying my best to avoid any spoilers (they will entirely ruin the show), so if it sounds as if I’m being overly vague, it’s because I want you to enjoy the full experience, without having me compromise it.

Something that I noticed almost immediately about this show is that it functions a lot less like a TV show than is the norm. I have nothing against long-running television shows, but they tend to get corny and low-budget. There’s just not as much effort being put into each individual episode, unlike a movie, where all the effort and money is placed onto one singular project. Stranger Things, however, feels like a movie. The videography, the acting, the music, and the overall tone just gives off a more “professional”, or more quality, vibe than typical TV shows do. It’s set up similar to Sherlock, where each episode is around 50 minutes long, so, technically, they are like short movies. For those that tend to not enjoy typical TV shows, Stranger Things is a perfect fit.

It also utilizes one of my favorite film/literature techniques ever: following multiple characters and plots at the same time. Very similar to Lord of the Rings, Stranger Things flips back-and-forth between certain characters and sub-plots, that all end up connecting at the end, in the climax. You get to see the experiences of three middle school boys, a teenage girl (and the drama that revolves around her), a grieving mother (and her son), a melancholy police chief, and a young girl in an unusual situation. They all are involved and connected to the main plot, but experience it in very different ways, and because of this they are able to help viewers piece together the mysteries that surround the small town of Hawkins.

To sum up my review, Stranger Things is a much-needed Sci-Fi thriller that keeps viewers insanely interested and invested throughout the season. Following multiple characters with multiple experiences gives viewers a unique and almost addictive way to watch. The random pieces of information and backstory that are given throughout the show allow fans to piece together the truth on their own, rather than have the show explain everything in the first few minutes. It’s exciting, it’s suspenseful, and it’s super well-made. I recommend this show to everyone I know, because it’s well worth a watch.

MY NERD MOMENT (WARNING: SPOILERS)

Ok, so here’s where I want to just rant and theorize and talk about the show, without having to be professional or vague, because THIS SHOW IS FREAKING AMAZING AND I NEED TO TALK TO SOMEONE!

Now, I hope that this show doesn’t just copy the film “Alien”, with the whole “an alien worm-thing gets inside you and lays an egg” deal goin’ on. All the bodies being plastered on the wall with the sticky goo, and the gross pipe that comes out of Will’s mouth, is totally like alien. However, there’s a moment when Hopper/Joyce see this kind-of egg shell thing on the floor, that’s been opened, but they never explain it. That makes me think that maybe the thing doesn’t need to have babies through people’s stomachs (come to think of it, how does that even work in the “Alien” universe?). Also, we see that multiple people have died, including Barbra, with no “babies” in sight. When Eleven finds her, in her mind, a slug-thing crawls out of her mouth (that part is disgusting), the same thing that happens to Will at the very end of the last episode!

This got me thinking. We’re never told what the Demigorgon is, only that it can go back and forth between “The Upside Down” and the real world. What if, somehow, the Demigorgon altered Will? Maybe it did something to him, because for a split second, Will was actually back in the Upside Down! What even is The Upside Down/The Veil of Shadows, and how does it affect humans, like Will and Barbara?

I also have another theory. We see at the very end, when Hopper leaves the Christmas party and puts some food in the random, weird box in the middle of the forest, that he also puts Eggo Waffles in there. Now, I don’t know about you, but THAT SEEMS LIKE AN ELEVEN THING TO ME! Somehow, someway, she’s alive (maybe). But how? Then, I remembered. We never actually saw her die. She used her powers, screamed, and went “Poof”, but does that mean she’s dead? Does that mean the Demigorgon’s dead? WHAT IF she was able to utilize her powers to a point where she could travel to and from The Upside Down? Maybe she’s a “flea”! She’s done it before; she freaking made the portal that caused all these problems in the first place. Maybe she’s able to travel back and forth (how much control does she have, though?), and somehow Hopper is involved in helping/providing for her.

Last thing. WHAT THE HECK DEAL DID HOPPER MAKE WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY PEOPLE? We’re never shown exactly what he agreed to when he was arrested (before they found Will); we’re meant to assume that he gave Eleven’s position away, but we never actually see them strike a deal. When Hopper leaves the hospital, at the end, he gets in a car with some shady-lookin’ dudes, but the next time we see him is a month later. Does his deal have something to do with Eleven’s possible survival? Is he now working for the Department of Energy? Ugh, Season 2 can’t come fast enough!!!