#and like. at a time when so many stories are basically spoon-feeding their audiences it's so nice to have a story that trusts you to

[bitchthefuck1]

Tom's line about Shiv being selfish and "find[ing] it very hard to think about me" is actually so telling because while it's absolutely true that she rarely takes his position into consideration, Tom never once thinks about what he can do to help Shiv unless it also benefits him.

Every single time he makes a move or sacrifice that might help her, it's always something that he thinks will give him a leg up. He volunteers to take the fall for cruises, not for Shiv, who is in no way implicated, or even for Waystar, but because he thinks it'll ingratiate him to Logan, and the second it seems like he might have to actually follow through on that, he immediately tries to get out of it and even throws Shiv under the bus. Meanwhile, for all that Shiv disregards his interests, there are a number of things she does that only help him, and she's the one who actually sacrifices something and undermines her position with Logan to beg him not to let Tom go to jail.

It just makes it so clear that no matter how much he might love her (and I think he does, in his own compromised way), for him their relationship was always built on the underlying assumption that it's her job to prop him up, but it's not his job to help her.

[theharpermovieblog]

#HARPERSMOVIECOLLECTION

2024 MOVIE LIST

www.tumblr.com/theharpermovieblog

I watched Geostorm (2017)

With great stupidity comes no responsibility to your audience.

Something is wrong with a system of global satellites designed to stop extreme weather events. When the inventor of the system goes into space to fix the problem, he stumbles onto an disastrous conspiracy.

The director of this film, Dean Devlin, has often worked with the king of dumb disaster films, Roland Emmerich. I don't like Roland Emmirich movies (Independence Day, The 1998 Godzilla), but while watching "Geostorm" I found myself thinking how I'd rather watch every Emmerich film, if it meant I never had to watch another Devlin film.

If you left out the dumb plot with it's many holes and the complete lack of interest in actual science or logic...you'd still have a bad film. Now, of course, some films thrive on their stupid plot-hole driven energy, and ride it to success. "Geostorm" can't manage the same feat. This $120Million movie almost looks like a competent Hollywood blockbuster, but beneath its shiny veneer is a boring slog of a film.

First off, the writing is awful. Tragically awful. Within it's under two hour runtime, writer/director Devlin never manages to tell a streamlined story that builds or engages. He can't even handle time and place, as we are unsure if days or weeks or months have passed between scenes. You could argue that it all seems to take place in 24 to 48 hours, when it clearly is supposed to take place over a longer period of time....I think, but I don't really care. Beyond this, the characters are an uncharismatic lot who have no weight to them. They can't make quips and they can't convince us that they are anything more than basic stereotypes. Stereotypes put in place so that, when the music swells, we can pretend like they've connected to us in some way. It's sloppy, soulless writing. It's what a movie becomes when it's stripped of all personality, in an attempt to appeal to a mass audience that are presumed to be dull hillbillys.

I spent the majority of this film feeling bad for the actors. Especially excellent veteran actors like Ed Harris and Andy Garcia. And, despite what you might think, I like Gerard Butler. I'm on board for a movie where he's the kick-ass hero. I'm not sure if I buy him as a scientist, but I'll suspend my disbelief if the movie is fun. However, "Geostorm" isn't fun. The saving grace should be the action, but it's a bunch of cartoony looking CGI and it comes few and far between.

The biggest problem here is that directors like Dean Devlin have zero respect for their audience. They believe they can spoon feed the populace hot wet shit if it's gold-plated and shiny. He made a movie so full of pure stupidity that we should be able to at least laugh at it.......sadly that stupidity is surrounded by unbearably boring writing and green screen nonsense.

There's so much more I could complain about here, but it's not worth my time or yours.

[nona-gay-simus-main]

How to Show Instead of Tell

One of the most commonly given advice is “show, don’t tell”, yet this is still one of the biggest problems in manuscripts I see by novice writers, and I think it’s because many people don’t understand what this means in practice. 

So, in this post, I will try to break down the most common ways people tell and how to fix it.

1. Telling Relationships and Personalities

A lot of fanfics start the way of My Immortal, with something along the lines 

“My name is so and so, I’m a senior in high school, these are my five personality traits and a three-paragraph description of my outfit. This is my best friend/love interest and here’s all the same information about them.”

I feel like everyone above the age of... fourteen understands that this is bad writing, but I still see a slightly more advanced version of this pop up in many people’s manuscripts. (Especially manuscripts told in first person for some reason?)

When you spoon-feed your audience this information, it feels like you’re breaking the fourth wall and you’ve paused to give us some backstory as the author. Because your character has no reason to be thinking about all this. 

And nobody believes you, because you're just telling us something, but haven’t portrayed that within the story.

For example: Let’s say you want to illustrate that your main character’s best friend is a flighty party girl, who is a little too nosy and is constantly trying to mess with the main character’s love life. 

Well, instead of saying, “This is my best friend Chris, she’s always coming from some party and trying to set me up on dates”, what you can do is have the best friend burst into the MC’s apartment with her spare key in yesterday’s cocktail dress and heels, and start rambling about how she lost her wallet in someone’s apartment last night, and she couldn’t get an Uber or take the subway, so thank god the MC lives in a walking distance from the party. Then after the MC lets the BFF use her shower, the BFF tells her about how she met this cool guy who would be perfect for the MC.

What you are showing in that scene: they are close because she has a key to the house and the MC shares her clothes with the BFF, she’s a flighty party girl because she goes to parties loses her stuff in other people’s houses, and she is constantly trying to set up the MC on dates. 

Or, let’s say you want to portray that a character has a tense relationship with her father, but is close to her mother. 

So maybe have a scene where she shares something personal with her mother and they laugh, but when her father enters the room, she gets tense, doesn’t want to tell him the story, and pretends it's nothing.

Think of it as, instead of giving the reader the information, you “put it in a scene.” The readers get all the same information, but it’s no longer spoon-fed to them, and instead, it’s illustrated. So this time, they actually believe you. 

2. Naming Emotions.

This one is pretty straight-forward. People tend to name emotions in the narrative. “He looked confused.” “His face showed anger.” “He eyes regarded her with admiration.”

Just... don’t do that.

Instead, try to show the emotion by describing the character’s body language. Or through their inner thoughts and sensation. Or through their dialog.

For example: Instead of “He was confused. What did she mean by that?” Try: “He frowned. What?”

Instead of “He was angry at whoever would hurt his sister like that.” Try, “His face darkened. “I will smash his head in, just say the word!”

3. Telling Through Dialog

Expositional dialog finds its way most of often in fantasy and sci-fi, but also pops up in contemporary and historical, especially if you have some kind of professional field or time period you need to set up. The “as you know, Bob” structure for conveying to the audience things that the characters would know, but the audience doesn’t. 

The best advice is to insert this only when it’s relevant to the plot, and talk about it in a way that feels natural, like two people in that situation would actually speak to each other about. 

Also, don’t go overboard with world-building. It’s pretty cool that you went through all this work to build your world, but the audience doesn’t need every little detail, especially not right away.

4. That Extra Step

The other thing I also see writers do is essentially the “show and tell” sandwich. You show something, but you can’t help yourself push it that extra step into telling.

For this I will use an example of my own writing (not because I’m the end-all-be-all of writers, just because I think it’s weird to use other people’s):

He’s lucky he gets a choice. We both live in the Burrows, but Nox is the only child of two abled parents. He can work for his own bread, he doesn’t have a brother in a wheelchair, or a single mother barely managing to make ends meet, and mountains of medical debt along with all his other debt.

Now, this paragraph SHOWS the main character bitterness and jealousy that her best friend is doing better than her financially and it's perfectly fine as is (it also has some telling, but I’ll go into why that’s okay into the next section).

But I could’ve written it as:

He’s lucky he gets a choice. We both live in the Burrows, but Nox is the only child of two abled parents. He can work for his own bread, he doesn’t have a brother in a wheelchair, or a single mother barely managing to make ends meet, and mountains of medical debt along with all his other debt. And I hated that he had it so easily, it made me jealous.

That last sentence? Going way overboard! 

Just trust your readers. Occasionally you’ll see readers who don’t get it, but they are usually outliers. Or just poor readers. That happens too.

5. When is it okay to tell?

Some details are okay to just... say. There’s no need to beat around the bush about every little thing. 

Unless you are writing fantasy or complex sci-fi, it’s fine to just say the character’s ethnicity, for instance. Don’t go overboard on the description - you can just use the word, that’s fine.

You can also just say your character is tall or short instead of having them constantly bump into door frames or reach for things.

You can also give background details of characters that don’t really affect the plot or story that much. Like in the previous example, I use telling to show Nox’s situation, because his parents' background doesn’t really affect much and my main goal with that paragraph was to show how Jules feels about it, rather than spend a lot of words on his family. 

Basically, all kinds of information that you don’t need or want to hit the character hard emotionally and is just for background, can be told. That said, don’t go overboard and describe every detail either, just summarize stuff for us.

Words are precious after all, and the more words you spend on something, the more important it seems.

[toddandersvn]

wuh oh i’m being a nerd on main again!

it’s well known that besse is a master of his art and sana’s trailer showed to be no different. I was left baffled and fascinated by it, so i analyzed the skamit season 4 trailer almost frame by frame and here is what i came up with (also i guess this is my entry for @skamitaliafandomevents week two day one: predictions a very late entry please forgive me i rly wanted to do this before the season started) 

also i just enjoy doing these i’m not a film student so i might be completely wrong so if you want to correct me or add anything please do:))

everything is under the cut... enter at your own risk;)

In this scene we can see a green backlit Sana on a phone call saying that she is italian as well. Green can be used to symbolize envy and/or jealousy, which in this case could be interpreted as Sana’s wish to be considered italian, and her “jealousy” of whoever is on the other side of that phone call for fitting in. Jealousy is in quotes because the backlighting can also suggest that it’s in the back of her head, not really apparent to others and even maybe to her. Green also has a history of being used to represent evil in Disney villains (evil step-mother’s eyes in Cinderella, Scar’s cove in Lion King, Dr. Facilier’s spirits in The Princess and The Frog and many more). If we take this scene from the point of view of the other person of the phone call, Sana could be seen as a villain due to stereotypes against muslims and the anger in Sana’s voice.

In the trailer, this scene was cut in two (well three, but one doesn’t really matter here), but if we watch the trailer in .25x speed like a maniac you can see that they probably fit together. In the first shot we see a blue backlit Sana hiding in a bathroom praying. Blue is usually used to show sadness and pensiveness, and as i said above, the backlit can represent the back of her mind, or her neglecting it, hiding how she truly feels. Knowing the background/back story for this clip, which i can only imagine is the clip at the end of the first episode, she is hiding from everyone at the party to prey, and this physical hiding can be used to emphasize emotional hiding.

The next moment in that clip is the camera panning from the blue backlit scene to an orange frontlit scene, which emphasizes contrast as orange and blue are two complementary colours. Orange is used to show interest and optimism, which can be how she feels towards Malik, which leads me to think the shadow we see could be him. However, it can also symbolize vigilance, which can also be her feelings towards the couple making out and bursting in, if besse follows the original storyline.

Sana is looking longingly at Malik surrounded by grass, which is a lighter, warm green that can represent admiration, trust and acceptance. She is staring at him from a distance, which is a very passive way of acting, staying in the shadows, in her black outfit which is a symbol for modesty in islam, basically she is keeping her feelings for herself. Another colour important in islam and relevant to his scene as well is green. Green in islam symbolizes paradise, which Malik just so happens to be surrounded by…. i see you Sana, i do, you can’t fool me

Le matte are by the canal trying to cheer Sana up, in a very cool toned scene. Cool tones can represent sadness and or detachment, which Sana is probably feeling at this point towards the girl squad or herself, given that they are trying to cheer Sana up. Them comforting with a rather cool toned scene can indicate this scene is either pre-falling out or a reconciliation scene.

What stood up for me in the trailer is the drastic contrast between when Sana is alone or with Malik with very warm and loving tones, and when she is with the girl squad with rather cool tones. This reinforces and supports Sana’s feelings of feeling like she doesn’t belong, or has to tone down who she is in order to be friends with them.

This scene is airy and light, which represents pure and heartfelt feelings and peace. Both characters are smiling at each other, which only emphasizes these assumptions. The next shot is in the kitchen that can imply domesticity and comfort, as well as the blue tones from the hijab and walls that represent pensiveness and shyness. It passes the vibe check.

In this scene Sana is wearing a warm yellow hijab that can represent serenity and joy. This particularly stands out from the black one we are used to see her wear and have seen her wear around Malik earlier. She is in a greenhouse surrounded by nature, the green of admiration and growth but also the green of paradise. She is also surrounded by windows that can indicate she has moved to an active way of acting, instead of staring from a distance. This assumption is supported by her waving at Malik through the window. She is letting herself go through the mortifying ordeal of being known, which is a huge change from her usual secretive self and first few dark shots of the trailer.

Here Besse used a wide angle lens most likely to show the surroundings, or lackthereof, of the two characters. Both of them are alone and isolated together. At this moment in time, there are no outside factors matter, it is just them and their thoughts. i imagine this is the scene when malik tells Sana about the nico x mikael kiss, which is a very pivotal chapter point in the season and it is important to show them alone and Sana having to “reset” her thoughts.

Again, they are surrounded by green/lime: trust and acceptance, which links to the talk they are having with malik choosing accpetance> religion and stopping believing in Allah.

When her and her friends are sitting on the couch, they are mostly dressed in blue, all looking awkward/embarrassed. It is possible that it is sadness/grief from them having to share the house in Mykonos, as the audio over that scene suggests, but then again it could also just be from the two characters we can see on the mirror kissing. I’m obsessed and i watched and rewatched and i’m almost 100% sure the girl is Covitti, which by elimination process lets me think the guy is Canecoso, which justifies the awkwardness on Eva and Silvia’s face.

When Sana is on her bed calling Ele, she is leaning against her green wall, but looking towards a warm orange light. This can be seen as many things related to her finally accepting her feelings for malik. She can move from the shadows to the light (from staring longingly to actually talking to him), moving from a passive to an active way of acting (like going to see him with her yellow hijab) and lastly moving from green jealousy to orange happiness. All of these clues lead me to think this clip happens before the greenhouse house clip. POETIC F*CKING CINEMA I COULD COLLAPSE

I’m assuming this is the karaoke equivalent party, because of the way it is lit. If it is, it would be the party where both of Sana’s worlds (her brother & friends and her school friends) meet. We can see some scenes of clashing in the trailer, however having the scene lit up with red and green, two complementary (opposite on the colour wheel) colours, it prepares the audience  for a contrast. It can be a contrast of feelings, but in this case i’m lead to think it’s of background, and probably ideas as well, if it follows the OG. A justification of the use of green and red could be the feelings associated with each colour, like red with anger/annoyance and red with surprise. I won’t spoon feed you and tell you why but you get it.

In this scene, we see Sana and Malik in a street with a lit up red cross in the background. It can be seen as reference to Romeo + Juliet by Baz Luhrmann, but also as a reference to the OG with the OHN. In the OG, isak is running away from a blue cross, running away from the sadness he’d been feeling for the past days and weeks, which is a contrast both in colour, direction and pace to Sana walking with Malik towards a red cross, walking towards romance.  It is for that reason i think this will be their date scene towards the end of the season. Also, they are walking and not running which can symbolize them taking it slow, and deciding to be friends again before anything else. It looks like the cross is also moving towards them as well, which can symbolize a middle ground/finding a balance between her religion and her country’s religion. Besse you magnificent bastard i love you, vibe check passed.

Sana is submerging herself in a pool, with oddly very blue water. This oddly blue water matching her burking makes the colour stand out and can highlight its importance in the scene. Blue can symbolize shyness, it can symbolize peace, stability, and tranquility, depending on the shade and hue, but in this case this turquoise signifies the latter. She is letting herself float in it, bathing and soaking it in, and her face is at peace, which only strengthens my assumptions that this clip happens towards the end once everything is almost resolved.

And that’s all i came up with. I also think that the beach clips will be the last episode and they will all be from different povs, but that’s just wishful thinking at this point i’m sure. These are all obviously theories, however i think it is fascinating how Besse chose so many different colours as well as different way of lighting the scene to convey Sana’s emotions and feelings at different moments of the seasons. I am probably a clown about most of it but that’s just part of the skam experience, but either way i am very hyped to see the master at it again!

i’m repeating it here again, but if you have things to add or further questions please let me know i’d be more than happy to read what you have to say!🌻 that’s all have a great day:))

[the-desolated-quill]

The Witch’s Familiar - Doctor Who blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Now that we’ve gotten past the pointless and mindless prologue that was The Magician’s Apprentice, I was hoping that The Witch’s Familiar would be where the meat of the story would be. Sadly there’s barely any meat on this thing.

Yes, while The Witch’s Familiar has more narrative coherence than the previous episode did, sticking to one time and location for the most part, it’s in fact just as bad as The Magician’s Apprentice, if not worse.

Let’s start with the biggest problem. Davros. Specifically how he’s utilised. Seeing boy Davros on the Skaro battlefield was quite an exciting development and could have opened up some interesting directions for the character to go down. Unfortunately that’s not the case. Turns out the story is not about Davros at all. It’s, once again, all about the Doctor. What? You thought Moffat had finally stopped the introspective bullshit in Death In Heaven? You thought the Doctor’s speech about being just a guy in a box was the end of the matter? Well you’d be wrong, wouldn’t you? It looks like brooding angst is going to be a staple of the Twelfth Doctor’s tenure, so you’d better get used to it.

Good God, I’m so fucking tired of this crap. Not only has the Doctor’s constant, guilt driven introspection been serving as a detriment to numerous plots, it also doesn’t make a pixel of sense, especially when you consider who he spends most of his time talking to in this story. Remember in the episode Journey’s End back in the RTD era where Davros started flinging moral judgements at the Doctor? Remember how bloody stupid that was? Well The Witch’s Familiar is like that, but somehow even stupider (and I didn’t even think that was possible). Once again the Doctor’s good guy credentials are being criticised with no justification whatsoever, and it’s hard to take it seriously because it’s fucking Davros. Davros is the one waggling his finger disapprovingly at the Doctor. Davros. Forgive me if I don’t consider Space Hitler fit enough to judge the Doctor’s moral standing.

It’s such a shame because both Peter Capaldi and Julian Bleach really give it their all and you can tell they’re really trying for something hard-hitting and emotional, but it just doesn’t work because the whole thing is utterly ridiculous. At one point Davros asks the Doctor if he’s a good man and whether he did the right thing trapping his own race inside pepper pots, which is clearly supposed to mirror the Doctor’s question to Clara in Into The Dalek, but it’s so fucking daft because... IT’S FUCKING DAVROS! He’s a racist, genocidal maniac who performed brutal experiments on his own people and was responsible for the deaths of billions. Let’s just say Santa Claus won’t be paying him a visit anytime soon. That got quite possibly the biggest laugh out of me this whole episode. And it just gets even weirder when you consider the Doctor’s response. I could buy the Doctor visiting his deathbed, taking pity on him and even sharing a laugh with him (they’ve had a long history after all). But giving him some of his regeneration energy?

IT’S FUCKING DAVROS!!!

I know I must sound like a heartless bastard, but I honestly wasn’t moved by the Doctor and Davros’ interactions. Not even slightly. It’s just too stupid and too unlikely for words. And it just gets worse when you find out that the two have been lying to each other through their back bloody teeth this all time. Were you moved by Davros’ emotional pleas to the Doctor? Turns out he was lying the whole time! He just wanted the Doctor’s regeneration energy for his Daleks (they never explain why or how this would benefit the Daleks. Moffat was too busy trying to be clever rather than filling in that little detail for us) and didn’t mean a single fucking thing he said. But it’s okay because the Doctor was lying too! Yeah, he knew all along that Davros was lying and so played him at his own game, so not only does this have no emotional weight whatsoever, there’s also nothing even remotely at stake! Isn’t Moffat a genius?

I really wish the story had stuck with the Doctor and boy Davros because that was interesting. I even liked the idea of the Doctor giving up his sonic screwdriver due to his own guilt (although that’s later ruined thanks to the sonic sunglasses. Seriously?! Sonic fucking sunglasses?!?! Give me strength!), and had they left it with the Doctor abandoning boy Davros to his fate, it would have been fine. Instead Moffat had to take it one step further.

This whole scenario is clearly taking inspiration from the classic Who story Genesis Of The Daleks. Specifically a line uttered by Tom Baker’s Doctor during a pivotal moment of the story:

"If someone who knew the future pointed out a child to you and told you that that child would grow up totally evil, to be a ruthless dictator who would destroy millions of lives, could you then kill that child?"

Now if you haven’t already, I strongly urge you to watch Genesis Of The Daleks. It’s one of the best stories in the whole of Doctor Who (some even consider it to be the best) and every Whovian needs to watch it at least once. One of the many reasons why Genesis is so fondly remembered is because of the morally complex question at the centre. Terry Nation smartly chooses not to answer it, instead allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions. Steven Moffat, on the other hand, chooses to tackle the question head on. The Doctor is given the opportunity to exterminate boy Davros, but instead ends up saving him. But you see, by doing so, Moffat completely misses the point of Genesis Of The Daleks. It’s not about what the Doctor would or wouldn’t do. It’s about the question itself. Rather than expanding on the legacy of Genesis, Moffat ends up tarnishing it, sweeping all the moral complexity under the carpet and spoon-feeding us a neat and tidy answer. No of course the Doctor wouldn’t kill a child! Are you crazy? And all the millions of lives destroyed are very quickly brushed aside with some bullshit about mercy. Not only is it too simplistic, it also makes the Doctor come across like a complete hypocrite. While he’s busy trying to decide whether killing Davros is the right thing to do, he’s setting up the Daleks so that they can kill each other. Obviously this kind of manipulation is very much in character for the Doctor, but it’s ironic how he shows a lot of guilt and angst over a humanoid child, but doesn’t even so much as bat an eyelid at killing all the non-humanoid Daleks.

Let’s quickly talk about the Daleks. They always tend to suffer in Davros stories, and this is a perfect example of that. Yes we do get a lot of new info about the Daleks (most of which doesn’t make sense. Why dump old, decaying Daleks in the sewers? Why not just kill them? Isn’t that their usual MO? Obsession with purity and all that. And while the Dalek machine altering your speech sounds like a good idea and adds to the trapped and claustrophobic nature of the Daleks, it also completely contradicts what we already know about them. How did Ian Chesterton manage to have a conversation with the First Doctor, Barbara and Susan when he was in the Dalek machine?), but they’re also not in the slightest bit threatening, and that’s because nobody takes them seriously. You’ve got the Doctor whizzing around in Davros’ chair asking them if they want to play dodgems, you’ve got the Master back to her annoying, goofy self (the bitch is back? Moffat, may I remind you this is a kid’s show) undermining the Daleks’ authority at every turn. Add to that apparently it’s easy as fuck to cheat death thanks to the Master’s teleport and the TARDIS’ newfound superpowers, and the Daleks don’t really have a leg to stand on. If the show isn’t going to take them seriously, why the fuck should I?

Speaking of the Master, what are she and Clara even doing here? They contribute precisely nothing to the story at all. You could just cut them out of the story entirely and it wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference. And why does the Master try and trick the Doctor into killing Clara? What’s the point? Didn’t she bring the Doctor and Clara together in the first place? And why did she even do that? That’s never been explained. I wasn’t kidding when I said Missy was basically Moriarty in a dress back in my review of Death In Heaven because they both share the exact same problems. With both Moriarty and the Master, Moffat is trying desperately to emulate this kind of Joker style madness, but there’s more to the Joker than just being insane. He actually has consistent motives and morals, with his insanity serving that. With the Master and Moriaty, Moffat seems to be using insanity as a way to excuse his own shitty writing. There’s no need to create a consistent character with clear goals or proper reasoning behind their actions because they’re insane. It’s just incredibly fucking lazy and it’s an utter waste of the Master. Neither she nor Clara have any kind of agenda of their own, hence why they feel so superfluous.

Finally there’s the series arc. Usually bad arcs from Moffat are to be expected, but this is the first time I’ve ever been truly worried by the direction he’s going in. It seems that Moffat is going back into Listen territory and trying to redefine the important building blocks of the show. So there’s a prophecy about something called the Hybrid and apparently that’s why the Doctor ran away from Gallifrey in the first place. Like with Listen, it seems Moffat is once again trampling over one of the most integral parts of the Doctor’s character. His mystery. We don’t really know who he is, where he comes from or precisely why he left Gallifrey all those years ago, and we shouldn’t know either. It’s like dissecting a frog. Yes you could cut it open and find out how the insides work, but then you’d just be left with a bloody mess on the table. I have no idea where Moffat is going with this Hybrid stuff, but it seems like we’re going down a very dangerous path indeed and after all the damage he’s already caused over the years, I’m deeply concerned about him potentially lifting up the bonnet and messing with the vital components of the show.

Overall The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar is a pretty rubbish start to Series 9. Nonsensical plots, pointless padding, non-threatening villains, recycling of tired ideas and an attempt to expand on a classic Doctor Who story that ultimately misses the point by several galaxies.

[fussingoverfassbender]

An old interview from around 2010 about Fish Tank

BY EDWARD DOUGLAS ON JANUARY 12, 2010

Most movie fans will probably know actor Michael Fassbender from his role as Stelios in Zack Snyder’s 300 or as Lt. Archie Hicox from Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, but in 2008, he started to get more attention for his amazing performance as IRA leader Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger, a role for which Fassbender starved himself for two months in order to replicate the deterioration to Sands’ body during his fatal hunger strike. That unforgettable performance has kept Fassbender heavily in demand and quite busy ever since.

First up this year for the Irish actor is Fish Tank, the dramatic follow-up to Red Road from filmmaker Andrea Arnold. It features a remarkable performance by newcomer Katie Jarvis as Mia, a feisty 15-year-old whose troubles at home are escalated when Fassbender shows up as Connor, her mother’s new boyfriend who moves into the house with the family. While Connor does bring a positive influence to Mia’s life, helping to boost her self-esteem, it’s not long before his presence starts to create other problems. Fish Tank is a distinctive coming-of-age tale utilizing the same stark realism Arnold brought to Red Road with a unique set of characters representing the film’s environment. While it’s clearly Katie Jarvis’ movie, following Mia’s journey, there’s no denying that it’s great seeing Fassbender doing something more contemporary that allows us to see more of his own personality.

ComingSoon.net had a chance to sit down with the actor to talk about the movie when he came to New York City last week:

ComingSoon.net: What was the timeframe for making this movie? I think people see how thin you are in the movie and assume you made it right after “Hunger.” Michael Fassbender: How long was the gap there now? “Hunger” was… yeah, I guess I finished up “Hunger” in February of that year and then did “Fish Tank” in August 2008, because I started “Hunger” in September of 2007 and then I took the 10 weeks off to lose the weight, came back in the New Year. They were editing everything that we filmed before Christmas and then just had the last bits to do then when we finished in February.

CS: I was just trying to figure that out, because we’ve see you in so many movies that came out over the last year, but some of them must have been filmed years ago. Fassbender: Yeah, they were all kind of back-to-back, you know? It was pretty busy. Like I did “Fish Tank” and then straight on to “Inglourious Basterds” so they were back to back, and that’s why they both ended up premiering at Cannes.

CS: How did Andrea approach you for this? I assume you’d already seen “Red Road” already and knew her work… Fassbender: Yeah.

CS: Did you just find out through your agent that she had another movie or did she contact them? Fassbender: Yeah, I was in South Africa doing something for Channel 4, “Devil’s Whore,” it’s a four-part mini-series, and Andrea got in contact with my agent in London and she said she’d be interested in me to play this part in her new film. She had a script but she didn’t want to reveal it to the actors as such, and she wanted to give it scene-by-scene as we went, and that she would be willing to fly to Capetown and see me for the day. Well, I thought that’s just ridiculous. “Just tell her to give me a phone call and we’ll have a chat.” I loved “Red Road” and I loved the way she paints her characters and the ambiguity in her work. She doesn’t spoon-feed her audience like, “This is the good guy and this is the bad guy.” They’re all sort of meshed in to one another.

CS: Just like life… Fassbender: Yeah, exactly, and I was just very keen to work with her. I knew I was going to learn stuff from her, and that it would be a real proper experience.

CS: Did she tell you anything about Connor beyond the fact that he’s the boyfriend of her mother? Fassbender: Well, basically she said it’s a film that follows this 15-year-old girl and my character ends up having a fling with her single mother, and I end up moving into their council flat, and the effect that a male influence has on these three women… er… two girls and one woman. And that was pretty much the brief I got.

CS: You didn’t know any of the stuff that happens in the last act or what happened later. You might have had some idea? Fassbender: Yeah, I kind of had a feeling what was going to happen. In terms of Connor’s own history, I didn’t know that. That started to reveal itself to me as we were filming it, and it was a funny thing that this guy was always sort of upbeat, and on the surface, he’s always a very positive character, but I thought to myself, “He seems to be very eager to jump into this family immediately,” and I thought he must be running away from something or there is some sort of secret there that he’s hiding. But as to exactly what it was, I wasn’t sure.

CS: How excited were you to do a modern-day film? You’ve been doing so many period pieces and been all over history. Fassbender: I know, know, yeah. It’s nice, yeah, absolutely. It’s always nice to do something contemporary, and it’s nice to have a fresh contemporary piece, a new writer, a fresh topic and something that’s taking place in the hear and now for sure. That’s always nice. It’s nice to mix it up.

CS: I know some actors who just love doing period pieces. Fassbender: Yeah, I do like dressing up. (laughs)

CS: That might have to be the quote for the piece: “I like dressing up.” Fassbender: (laughs) Yeah, exactly! Well, it’s like a friend says to me, she’s like, “You play dress-up for a living,” and I think that’s a really good way of putting it. So there is something quite cool about period pieces, because when you do put on all the little bits and pieces, it does give you the feel of a different era, and it gives you a little spring in your step as your character, gives you that little extra layer.

CS: Did you feel like you brought more of yourself to Connor than you’ve been able to bring to some of the other characters? Fassbender: Yeah, and also I didn’t have a script to work with, so I just kept it as free and easy as possible and tried to just allow it just to happen, and not to impose too many other things on it.

CS: I read that Andrea wanted to have a non-actor in your role. I think she just likes to work with non-actors in general. Fassbender: ‘Cause actors are a pain in the ass. (laughs)

CS: Do you have any idea why she wanted to have you play Connor since you obviously are very experienced and have been out there in recent years? Fassbender: She told me she saw me in this thing called “Wedding Belles” which I did, which was an Irving Welsh piece and I play this Scottish character actually who gets out of prison and he has a love interest with one of the lead actresses. It’s basically about four friends, these women, and she saw that character and basically, she said, “Okay, that’s Connor.”

CS: I remember her telling me that she doesn’t like rehearsal either. Fassbender: No.

CS: So how does that work? You don’t have a script? You’re not rehearsing anything… do you have any sort of time to workshop or time to talk about what’s going to happen? Fassbender: Not really, no. I think she just likes to work in that sort of form of chaos in some respects. It’s not like chaos, manic crazy, but working from a place of instability maybe and seeing what occurs in that sort of atmosphere. She creates a very safe and intimate environment to work in and allows one to really throw your trust in her, but I think she does like to see what takes place, the accidents that might happen or interesting moments. She’s very good at capturing the moment to moment in a scene. We would do the scene as scripted and then we would improvise it. She’d say, “Okay, go and do whatever you want now” and then we would do the scene without saying anything. While you’re filming, it’s very free and easy and explorative but no, no rehearsal.

CS: So you just give Andrea all these different versions and just leave it in her hands to decide what is going to work for the film? Fassbender: Well, yeah, and I’m like, “Well I don’t have to do any homework.” She told me not to, the schoolteacher said it was alright. I guess it is quite frightening, yeah, but I do like to do things that scare me.

CS: Did you have a feeling that Katie might have known a little bit more what was going on in the story than you did? Fassbender: Nope, no.

CS: Everyone was on the same page? Fassbender: Definitely, yeah.

CS: Maybe not so much for your character, but I would think the other actors would have at least spent some time together to help create the bond of being a family. Most directors would have them do workshops or rehearsals to help get that together. Andrea didn’t do any of that? Fassbender: Yeah, we’d sort of get together and go for lunch and things like that. When you’re on set as well, it’s a very small crew. We were in that council flat which was a small space for a lot of it, and we all got to know each other pretty quickly. She worked a lot with Katie in terms of hanging out with Katie and talking to her on the phone and just sort of being there for Katie whenever she needed her, just so Katie would really put her trust in her. She was very good with Katie, I have to say.

CS: Did Katie have any acting experience before making this movie? Fassbender: Nope…

CS: So this was her first thing ever… Fassbender: Absolutely.

CS: How was that as a trained actor being in that situation where you don’t have other experienced actors to work off of? Fassbender: I think plenty of cases have proved that you don’t need to go to drama school and sort of get trained. I mean, Katie’s got a wonderful intuition. I’ve said it before that she’s got a real gift for finding the truth in everything. There’s no frills with her acting. She’s just coming from a very raw, guttural place, so she was wonderful to work with, and you just had to try to keep up with her really.

CS: As someone who has been trained, how do you feel when you work with someone who is such a natural without any schooling and can just jump into such dramatic scenes? Fassbender: It’s great. The thing is that I don’t think you need to do training, but I’m glad I did training, because sometimes you’re intuition does fail you or you get nervous before a scene and then I have a structure that’s in place that gets me back in focus and get my head straight. That is the one good thing about training. There might be that one time, it’s like writer’s block or whatever. You get caught in a funk and you have tools that enable you to do your work.

CS: I don’t… I probably should have some, though. Fassbender: (laughs)

CS: Besides knowing that Connor lives with them and is in a relationship with the mother, at what point did Andrea tell you that something was going to happen between you and Katie’s character? Fassbender: I always knew that. From the conversation that I had with her, I actually thought I was going to sleep with the entire family. (laughs) There’s that… now I can’t remember the name of it but I haven’t seen it, but I remember seeing a documentary on Terrence Stamp and there’s that film where he ends up sleeping with the father, the son, the maid, the mother…

CS: Oh, I don’t know that one. Fassbender: That film just popped into my head for some reason when she gave me this breakdown, so I had a very good idea what was going to happen with the character Mia in the script.

CS: It’s interesting because he certainly seems to be a good influence on the family, because it’s pretty chaotic before he gets there between Mia and her mother. Fassbender: Sure. Yeah, I think he’s a very positive influence in her life. He’s the only one that really tells her that gives her some self-believe and tells her that she has got a talent and she should follow her dreams with the dancing and just gives her a sense of self-worth. I think that’s what Andrea does really well. I think when you display a character like that and what I was trying to do, and I think why Andrea didn’t want to give the script was that I wouldn’t sort of preload it and be this… that he’s sort of this predator and this is all premeditated. I don’t think that was the case at all. What she shows is that we all have this capability inside of us to do these things, and it’s more interesting then, rather than giving an audience an easy option or “Oh, God, here’s the bad guy… he’s trying to do bad here.” No, we leave them scratching their heads when they leave the theater because these are ordinary people that do good and bad towards each other. Positive things towards each other and then destructive things.

CS: As someone without a script, in your head you must have been trying to think ahead about what might happen or where it might go… Fassbender: Yeah, but I just let that go, and that was the sort of thing. Once I signed up to it, then I really just had to go with it, and then give up… as I say, just put my trust in Andrea.

CS: You’ve been very busy with all the movies out last year and you have a bunch coming up, so do you have any idea what might be next? Fassbender: I’m not sure when “Jonah Hex” is coming out. I think that’s going to be sometime in the summer, and then I’m going to start filming with Soderbergh beginning of February.

CS: Is that the movie with the mixed martial arts fighter? Fassbender: Yeah, yeah. I play this MI6 operative that meets up with the lead character, so it should be interesting. I’m very excited to work with him. He’s a legend.

CS: You have a great resume of all the directors you’ve worked with, between Francois Ozon and Tarantino… Fassbender: I know, I know… I’ve been lucky. (Knocks on wooden table) I say my “Hail Marys” at night. I’m in a very privileged place and even the job itself, it’s just a ridiculous job to have really, and I just thank my lucky stars every day.

CS: Do you know when you’ll start the “Jane Eyre” movie? Fassbender: “Jane Eyre” is going to be after Soderbergh, and that’s going to be with Cary Fukunaga who did “Sin Nombre”… brilliant. Really nice guy, and then David Cronenberg, “The Talking Cure,” and that will sort of hook me up with Christoph. We never actually had a scene together, so I’m looking forward to that.

CS: When you’re playing a real person like you will in that movie and when you played Bobby Sands, do you have a different process going into that as you do with other roles? Do you have to be a little bit more careful with how you play them? Fassbender: No, the thing is that something like Bobby Sands, you’ve got a lot of reference points, a lot of books to read. There were people who actually knew him that you could talk to and try to get some sort of essence of the real person, but I don’t try to do a spitting image of the character, just try to grab an essence of it and then essentially, the story is in the script, so it’s almost like you gather all this information and then kind of throw it away once you’ve taken it all on-board and let it seep in, and then you’ve got to do your own thing in the end, I think.

CS: Before we wrap up, I’d like to go back before you even appeared in “Band of Brothers.” I assume you went to dramatic school in Ireland but how did you first get interested in acting? Fassbender: I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was 17 and this guy Donny Courtney, who was a local lad from Killarney, had gone off to the Gaiety School of Drama in Dublin, and he came back to Killarney and started doing some workshops in our secondary school, high school, and I just did a couple of those workshops and that was it. I really thought this was something I could do. It felt right.

CS: Now that you’ve been doing some Hollywood movies, do you feel you could go back and forth and try to do smaller movies like “Fish Tank” when you can? Fassbender: Yeah, that’s the ideal thing, to be able to bounce back and forth between the two. As much as anyone, I like to sit down with a big box of popcorn and go and watch something that’s just an entertaining ride, and then it’s nice to do little films or independent films that have more of a social comment, but that’s the ideal, to sort of dance between the two.

CS: Do you think it would be harder to take a role like this one in a movie where you don’t have a script now than when you decided to do this two years ago? Fassbender: No, it’s all down to the director again. If I’ve got faith in the director, then I’d definitely do it again like that.

Fish Tank opens at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and then in L.A., Boston and San Francisco on Friday, January 29.

[nixonsmoviereviews]

"Akira"- Oft-considered a masterpiece of animation and storytelling, Katsuhiro Otomo's sci-fi classic continues to thrill and enthrall thirty years later.

Not only a definitive cult hit, but also one of the earliest films to bring mainstream popularity to Japanese anime in Western markets, writer/director Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" is a classic by any stretch of the imagination. Quickly approaching the thirtieth anniversary of its original release while still maintaining a strong degree of freshness and a unique flair, the film has aged remarkably well and manages to hit home with the same great gusto it did all those years ago. "Akira" is a film I've almost been afraid to discuss, with it's influence and following still felt in the world of entertainment. But upon revisiting it once again just recently after having actively decided to take a break from it for several years... I'm just shocked by much in continues to surprise and captivate. The film is set in a alternative history, in which Japan was nearly destroyed following a third World War. In the future of 2019, the streets are filled with protests and violence as gangs and corrupt cops rule the night, while corporate and government big-wigs run the world from their skyscrapers during the day. The film follows a group of hoodlum gang-members, including Kaneda and Tetsuo- childhood best friends whom are always at odds despite their past together. When an accident appears to awaken latent psychic abilities within Tetsuo, a web of treachery and deceit begins to unfold, forcing Kaneda to team-up with a group of anti-government activists to try and save him... Little does he know, however, that it might be too late... as Tetsuo is overcome by his newfound powers and decides to strike back at the world he feels has betrayed him. All the while, Tetsuo begins a search for a mysterious figure known as "Akira", whom he is haunted by recurring visions of... The really fascinating thing about "Akira" is how it manages to tell a rather heady and multi-layered story in a fairly accessible way- by wrapping it all up in a classic, almost borderline cliché, action- thriller based around warring street gangs. While my first few viewings of the film as a young teen did leave many questions unanswered, revisiting the film as a mature adult... it's actually all there, and the information is quite cleverly doled out. The film deals with some really complex ideas and touches on some fascinating themes including existentialism and religious fanaticism, but it's always in a subtle and artful way that doesn't spoon-feed the audience nor withhold too much. It's a smart film that in turn allows the audience to feel smart by giving them the pieces, and allowing them to put it all together on their own- something many mainstream sci-fi stories in recent memory struggle with. Visually, the film is a powerhouse. Stunning in detail and fluid in motion... it's awe-inspiring to behold, and remains one of the most aesthetically compelling hand-drawn works in recent memory. "Akira" is filled to burst with minute details that flesh-out the story and build-up the world while also having a vast and staggering scope like few others of its time. Character design is also keen and concise, with each member of the cast being given a simplistic look that tells you exactly what you need to know before they even speak a word of dialog. Otomo's works have always been spellbinding in terms of look- just check out the incredible "Steamboy" for further examples. But "Akira" might just be his finest in terms of direction and design. Within the situational writing and structure, however, is where the film's few flaws begin to gradually emerge. Now don't get me wrong- the plot of the film is quite fascinating and the characters are enjoyable and entertaining. And on the whole, yes, the film is very well put-together. I think the fundamental issue is that a lot of the subtext, a lot of the story, and indeed a lot of the character development had to be lost for the sake of run-time. It feels like a shortened digest of a much grander tale. Which is basically exactly what "Akira" is. My most recent viewing of the film did leave me feeling a bit of a tonal whiplash from scene to scene, as the movie rockets past pivotal plot-points and set-pieces with an urgent rush that can sometimes feel haphazard. But even then, what's there is keenly thought out and well assembled. It just could have used a bit more time to play out. "Akira" is an outstanding film. There's no doubt about that. And just as it has captivated audiences for near three decades now, it will continue to do so for years to come. While it might not quite be a perfect film due to some minor issues with the pace and structure, the phenomenal art, good use of subtle storytelling and enjoyable cast of characters make it a journey well worth taking and worth revisiting again and again. And so, I give "Akira" a near-flawless 9 out of 10. It's a classic... just not a "perfect" classic.

[higlosss]

HARRIET (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

OVERALL SCORE ★★★☆☆

     GENERAL ENJOYMENT ★★★☆☆

     EMOTIONAL ★★★☆☆

     MUSIC ★★★★☆

     CINEMATOGRAPHY ★★★☆☆

     SET PIECES/STYLING ★★★★☆

  Today I travelled 32 minutes by bus to see the movie Harriet in theatres, by myself because it was a Friday night and all of my friends and roommates were either going home or busy. I had to travel so far because only one theatre in my general area was showing it. Still, I really wanted to watch it, so I made the journey. I’m not even sure why - I really like watching movies in theatres and was in the mood for one, since I haven’t seen one in so long, but I hadn’t even heard about the movie until maybe last week when I saw it show up on listings. But something drew me to it. I never learned much about Harriet Tubman other than she was a runaway slave who was part of the Underground railroad. I learned a lot about slavery and how it was wrong, of course - but it was still very dry, very quick, and not very sympathetic. I wanted to know more (and enjoy a movie) so I went.

  Now, onto the actual movie. Harriet is directed by Kasi Lemmons and stars Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman, or Araminta Ross. It begins first with her life as a slave, but almost immediately she escapes after the death of her slave owner. She manages to make it to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and we see how she is integrated into this new life. She’s struggling, mainly with the guilt and loneliness of leaving her friends, family, and the only life she’s ever known, so she goes back to her plantation and ends up helping more slaves escape. She realises she not only is quite gifted at rescuing these people, but begins to understand that it’s something she wants - was almost born - to do. But as we know, especially with this topic, free is never truly free, because it always comes with a price.

  This movie is not amazing, or the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it had quite a lot to offer in inspiration and helping to show a part of history that, at least in my experience of a white American who was taught in majority white schools, is regarded as acknowledged but never really understood. Within the movie, I never felt truly in the moment or incredibly engaged with what was going on - but this is an autobiography covering a very large portion of Harriet Tubman’s life. I was still invested in the characters, their fates and their actions, and there was always a good amount of suspension and drama, but there was a lot that was left up to the audience to decide - time gaps, character’s emotions, developing relationships. It’s not a movie that will spoon feed you, which is good, but there is once or twice where something happens that makes you feel weird and removed you from the story- why is she saying that, what’s so important about this? As stated, I knew almost nothing about Harriet before watching the movie, so I was quite surprised about a couple of things as well. The movie was quite religion-focused, which I had not been expecting, but it is true to Harriet Tubman’s life, as she was very religious and it impacted her life as an abolitionist.

  Something I didn’t like, however, was that there was a strange focus on her relationship with Gideon, the son of her original slave owner. He acted as the antagonist of the movie - the bad guy who was trying to capture her, but also a sort of one sided (on his part) love interest? I felt like he and his role in general was very unnecessary. It was what made the movie good, not great. It made it seem as though they were trying to push drama and intrigue, that it couldn’t be only about Harriet vs Slavery (which I think is a mistake, as doing so would have led it down a very interesting path) but there had to be a villain, they had to make this guy be interested in her and chase her down specifically. It devalued it, and made it seem formulaic and hallmark rather than truly arthouse or thought-provoking.

  These flaws were all mostly overshadowed by what I did like about the movie, which boils down to my own personal connection and take away from it. It Impacted me, made me read the Wikipedia article about Harriet Tubman and reevaluate my life. There were a lot of great and emotional scenes that made you truly understand the struggle the slaves went through, opened your eyes to the injustice and cruelty and this absolute horrible scourge in American history. It made you think about the true meaning of freedom, what it means to be human and a woman and an African American (and for those things that you are not, you sympathized with their struggle and understood their thoughts and actions though of course you could never truly know what it was like). For me personally, it was very inspiring. It didn’t drag on and on about how amazing Harriet was (although it’s a movie about someone quite amazing, so of course there’s going to be a bit of that) but seeing her struggle and determination, you couldn’t help but be in awe. It pushed a message of pushing boundaries and not letting anyone stop you - and while some of it was attributed to the idea of “God showed me the way”, it wasn’t shoved down your throat or pushed as the only reason Harriet Tubman could do the things she did.

  Over all, I thought this movie was generally entertaining and a good watch. I would definitely recommend this movie because of its importance in spreading understanding about this topic and Harriet Tubman specifically. If you want to learn more about this topic, it’s a good starting point, and if you want to watch something inspiring or that will change the way you think, I would recommend it even if you don’t care about history or the topic. I think this movie was just that- a good introduction, but I think Harriet Tubman and other African-American men and women deserve better for the incredible weight of their accomplishments.

SPOILERS AHEAD!! ------------------------------------------------------------------------

  As I stated, I knew nothing about Harriet Tubman before watching this other than the basics. So, at first, I was really put off by the whole “premonition” aspect, especially later on in the movie where it becomes specific enough that she would be “told” to go left instead of straight. I thought it was kind of outrageous, that they thought audiences couldn’t possibly enjoy a movie about history without there being some “science fiction”, “magical abilities” aspect. After reading about Harriet Tubman, I realize that this is actually something she did or that happened to her in life, so it doesn’t bother me as much as it did as I was watching.It seemed very over the top because it was also marked by this cadence of piano and magical like jingle, but I did enjoy the way it sounded in a weird way. It also was vague enough that when you saw these flashes, you as the audience didn’t immediately know “x was going to happen”, and you only really started to understand as it was happening. It did well to keep the tension up for the watcher.

  We are introduced to Harriet’s life very abruptly, dropped into the world to figure out for ourselves what is going on, and I think that approach was best for a movie where so many of its audience already know the basics. Of course, it did come with a few flaws - I didn’t realize who her family actually was except for her mother and the sister who was sold further down south until the end of the movie/I read more about her. I wasn’t sure, at first, how to feel about her wanting to run away so suddenly - I think it might have been more impactful to have shown what escaping meant both for her, personally, as well as the repercussions. It seemed so easy for her to just up and leave - and while I realize the movie wasn’t focused so much on that aspect, I think it missed a big chance in really giving this idea of slaves escaping more weight. Slaves running away was a very big thing, a very dangerous thing to do, and a lot of slaves, sadly, did not make it. It seemed such an easy thing when what Harriet Tubman and all fugitive slaves did was extraordinary.

  Gideon’s involvement in the whole movie is, as far as I know (which, as stated, is not much) very dramatized for Hollywood’s benefit, I think. This idea that he’s obsessed with her, almost in love with her as he says later in the movie, is so absolutely cringey. It could have just been left as her former owner attempting to get her back for not only running away but taking so many of his slaves with her, but it was made to be some sort of love dynamic? I just thought it could have easily been left out. Slavery, and the ignorance and hatred that came with it, was so prevalent in this time that it almost diminishes it’s importance to have this one person be the “worst of it all”, and especially for him to have a special interest and reason to be chasing after Harriet. Almost everyone, at this time, was out to get them, everyone was against them; but in the movie it seemed only like this one specific group.

  I was actually very surprised to see Janelle Monae in this film, although it was a welcome sight. I think the dichotomy and relationship between them worked very well - Marie, born free, and Harriet, only recently become free. Scenes like Marie seeing Harriet’s scars, and Harriet questioning Marie about what it’s like to be free and how she can’t know what Harriet’s been through, really resonated with me. How it must feel for Harriet to know there are people like Marie that are free, when her and her family are treated so horribly. How, then, could Harriet sit idly by? How could she see that freedom and happiness is possible, and not follow the urge to help those she cares about most?

  Harriet going back for her husband, only to find he had married another woman, actually came as quite a shock to me. Cynthia Ervo’s acting in this scene, and throughout the movie, was incredible. In the lack of the story’s own indication as to what Harriet was feeling, Cynthia Ervo was still somehow able to show between the lines, express such subtle emotions and thoughts that you knew how Harriet felt and sympathized with her. It was a joy to watch, as well as to hear when she sang. The subtle weaving of music into the movie, from the historically-accurate idea that slaves sang to communicate messages as well as the way it was used to connect scenes and heighten emotional moments, was used quite well.

  Another thing I wish to mention was that the styling for this movie was amazing. I don’t know how historically accurate it was or anything like that, but the outfits that Harriet and others (Marie, Gideon, Still) had were so beautiful. I think it added a small but memorable touch to the movie - she was usually dressed in darks and neutrals, but in the final scenes, where she faces Gideon, she is dressed in an emboldened red.

  I think this movie could have been a lot more, and I had been hoping for it to be a lot more, but it wasn’t bad. It was rather bland, melodramatic at times, and very “Hollywood”, but I think it is an important movie for representation and educating people on these topics. It changes the way you think, and I think it was worth the watch.

[animationstudifromindia]

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E-mail: info@citrusinkstudios.com Address: Citrus Ink Studios Pvt. Ltd. D-59 Defence Colony, 2nd Floor New Delhi, India Phone: +91-99584-14747 / 95602-07000 Website: http://www.citrusinkstudios.com/

[abnahaya]

It’s That Bad That Now I Talk Politics: A Rant

That was a clickbait, guys, I’m not going to preach about political things as I am not in a proper capability to do that. I’m sorry (not sorry) but I do still think that we all can and need to educate ourselves with the current social issues instead of hoping that someone “better” would spoon-feed it to us. However, I will provide a few reliable news link by the end of the post to give you insights about what happened.

Things are getting worse that people like me, who prefers to look up about how JLo learned how to pole dance from the internet rather than what my own President is doing, actually got off my comfort bubble screaming “HOLY SHIT!” then changing my profile pictures into some plain black hashtags in solidarity of my peers and fellow Indonesians. Yup, it’s that bad. If you hate politics as much as I do, understand this: I get it that you just wanna get everything over with, and you’re tired of all the negativity and you don’t know who to trust, but sadly, we’re not 10 years old anymore, we can’t afford to stay at the same level of ignorant as when we were a kid just because it’s not our cup of tea. I mean, look at Greta Thurnberg, that kid is screaming for her future, and so should we. I mean, in 30 years we are most probably still alive, though not in our prime age anymore. So yes, for people with big egos like us, think about our own futures! 

In this post, I will only stating my opinions and concerns towards a massive student demonstration that took place is various cities in indonesia yeterday. This is another complex and urgent issue, that has been spread out in many misleading ways by the western medias: the demonstration against the revision of the criminal code, anti-corruption bill, urging government to execute the anti-sexual violence bill, and of course, the environment issues.

As I mentioned before, many western media wrote misleading articles about the movement. Most of them only highlight a piece of the first point, that in the criminal code draft, pre-marital sex could be criminalized, including for the foreign tourists. So they simplify it into “sex laws”. like EXCUSE ME? There are so many problematic points in the code yet of course you gotta pick the sex points because Indonesia as the stereotype of taboo-ing the matter and/or because it actually the thing that can affect the western. Like, seriously, I had to lecture my husband when he shared a Facebook status about how Australians should stop taking vacation to Bali because of the “new law” while he had no idea what it was about (and so did the author of the post). White people seriously need to check their privilege and educate themselves regarding the issues that aren’t their story.

Anyway, As per this morning, the hashtag #HidupMahasiswa (Long Live the Students) has been #1 worldwide trend as the demonstrations that took place yesterday in many cities in Indonesia were conducted by hundreds of students from different Universities. Each of them wore their alma mater jackets to show solidarity and status as they didn’t want other civilians with hidden agenda to join. This honestly is the peak of my nationality, it’s like the best historical moment I’ve ever been through all my life. I tear up and sincerely having mixed feelings of worry and proud every time I stumble on the news.

I followed the real-time development of the movement since many of my peers are sharing it through social media. Yeah right, said the baby boomers, why believe social media? Oh maybe because the mainstream media doesn’t talk the truth about big issues due to some private interests. These are real people with real friends and communities, some of them I know personally, and let’s admit, social media is our power in this generation. These people share their genuine experiences and tackle the false issues based on what they see in the field. 

Some points that I noted from people who actually were in the field is that many of the allegations by the parliament on TV were NOT true, such as the claim that the students demonstrated with violence. The thing is the students did not start the chaos, police started shooting them with tear gas and they panicked and started running away. Imagine hundreds of people that can’t see clearly, in pain, panicking and running to so many directions. The students asked the police to stop but they didn’t stop, many students actually warned each others not to get provoked. The chaos mentioned started when it was getting dark by unknown civilians who didn’t wear alma mater jacket. The clarifications were very precise, from many angles, and even civilians who happened to be in locations said the same thing. Not to mention the victim of police violence, many students had to be taken to hospitals for injuries.

It’s very sad to see people with privileges posting on their Facebook page shaming these brave students saying that they were dumb for not calculating other civilians who could use this opportunity to start chaos. I am filled with rage reading how they conveniently type from the comfort of their homes, that demonstrating is stupid and irrelevant and inviting violence. These people watched the news from mainstream TV medias who only interviewed the elites of the governments being in denial of their mistakes, and never show the other side of the story. Some became a delusional fan of the President, only caring about news saying that there were never any request from the students to drag him down.

What was even more upsetting, when I looked at the creative demonstration posters uploaded to Facebook, I found a lot of disgusting comments towards women protesters. People, mostly men, wrote like, “I should start raping then.” And even one of the elite government officer tweeted how the demonstration was “infiltrated by liberals who wants to do adultery sin”. The head of People’s Representative Council of Indonesia called a female journalist, “honey” as he was answering questions in an interview, followed by men’s audience laughter.

These are exactly why we need the anti-sexual harassment bill! Look at our sex education system, it lacks so much because of the “taboo” culture that tends to block information, so that people keep being clueless and missing the real point of the education: how to use contraception, the importance of consent, etc. And instead of educating properly, they suggest to block the entire sex education?  Sex will always be there and people will always find ways to do it, it’s one of human’s basic instincts, The problem is how they can have better, safer sex instead of how they to make them stop having sex at all.

These old geezers should face that values have changed in today’s society, they should’ve realized that the old Indonesian way to block everything “bad” is never the answer. It’s 2019 and we need to catch up with time. As time flows, things change, values shift, and we need an open mind to always be “relatable”. Today, ageism is no longer acceptable, just because you’re older, doesn’t mean you always know better.

The seniors said that students should be at their class studying, when on other times complaining about how much millennial and Gen Z don’t care about the government. They want us to listen to them coz they are the adults, forgetting that we are adults too, just because we haven’t worked as long as you, doesn’t mean we haven’t developed the same (or maybe better) critical thinking that makes an adult, adult. We have the rights to speak up and be listened to, especially because we’re the ones going to suffer all the consequences in the long run.

I believe yesterday’s movement would become one of the turning points of Indonesia, we still haven’t gotten an exact, satisfying answer towards our demands, heck we still haven’t gotten the respect we deserve as the citizen of this nation. However I’m sure, more young people are becoming more aware of what’s happening in the country and hopefully more will join us in the fights for humanity and justice.

Recommended articles:

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-indonesia-politics-rights-bill-explai/explainer-its-not-only-about-sex-indonesias-divisive-criminal-bill-idUKKBN1W91DE

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/indonesia-protests-80-students-hurt-police-clashes-190925044211780.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indonesia-students-rally-against-changes-to-corruption-law/2019/09/24/e860a64a-deb5-11e9-be7f-4cc85017c36f_story.html

https://nasional.tempo.co/read/1252142/gelombang-demonstrasi-mahasiswa-menggulung-dominasi-dpr

[ramblingshit]

The Woman in Black - 1989 - 3/10

looks like the 1980s but with somewhat older-style outfits; exposition mutherfuckerrrrrr;

very slow, fluffy script; oh got the cut is just forward and back as they speak, now we’re close flipping forward and back when its their turn to speak i’m dying. exposition, telling other characters what the audience has already heard; each of these scenes are far too long with so much fluff, Jesus Christ the cuts just throw us into a completely different place with no transition its so abrupt and the jump cuts are infinitely worse fuck half of these are like .5 seconds long, they’re so basic its crazy. some j cuts all of the sudden and some decent direction all of the sudden on this indoors scene wtf lol. then back to awful cuts, apparently just outside and between scenes.

i can’t even focus on the story because there’s so much nonsense filming, writing and acting and jfc.

the 2012 version is only 5 minutes less but this one reaaaaally feels like its length while the 2012 one does not.

the house is just a grey house in a simple marsh, unassuming, boring to look at, the birds chirp, there’s a half-sunken cemetery nearby, the woman in blacks just standing there in broad daylight with a lil hat on her head, her skin like yellow tinted with red around her eyes kinda lookin like the wicked witch of the west, just staring casually at him they giving her a mid-shot and a close-shot and all, got some crooked shaped eyebrows, i think she’s angry? I’d be angry too with that ugly ass velvet donut on my head; she slowly sorta makes her way a few steps toward him, he sprints off and locks the door then turns on all the electrical lights in the house and seems alright; the rooms are tiny and clean cause she only just died (woman in black’s sister) - it’s really not scary - all white and beige with floral designs, boring frames with dark protraits; reminds me of the rooms at the thornton’s house and other old bedrooms i stayed in as a kid; fuck he’s really turning every single light on. he’s drinking again. we’re half an hour in and he’s messing around with some sort of recorder whistling into it and shit - omfg i thought that was leading up to a scare but no. telling the clues of the mystery in these weird cylinder recordings instead of the 2012 letters? he’s drinking again. WHOA hey we got an establishing shot and its a red-bricked house three stories tall with a big ass entrance way and pointed roofs and lots of windows am i missing something wait what happened to the grey house. there’s no scary music, its all light, there’s no suspense its like well here we are, now we’re here, now the marsh is water, there’s fog and horses and he’s nervous and there’s horses and women and children screaming yikesss ol mate looks mildly nervous, they must have hired him for his scared running and dramatic turns, NOW THE HOUSE HAS GREEN VINES ALL OVER IT. i mean he seems passionate about his role he’s tryin his hardest thats for sure. half of its filmed like a stage show - where’d the dog go. continuity needs to like actually be a thing. why do these candles have hats they’re on beautiful candelabras and now there’s more alcohol. for epople who have a butler and a maid on stand-by their tablecloth looks like a crumpled sheet and the lampshades look like they were picked up from the tip and they’re fkn crooked for godssake. we’re 46 minutes in and theres been maybe 25 minutes of actual story. he ran because he was afraid and that sits wrong with him so he wants to go back - now he’s ‘brave but not brave enough’. stubborn muthafucker. his rational friend is like lol you’re a moron, take my dog as companion he’s called spider for some reason. jesus fuck the cuts they get me everytime they’re scarier than anything else i’ve seen. unsurprised i could see the shadow of the camera. oh okay the grey house is the generator room out back that makes more sense. locked doors, ring of many keys but no key will turn. completely wasted mirror angles that were making me actually kinda anxious waiting to see something in them like damn son wasted opportunity. thrilling to watch this guy go through wads of paper not really looking at anything just pushing them around the great lawyer he is conveniently only finding and looking at plot-relevant things. kid crying mummy mummy while the lady just screams horribly - OMG NOW HES telling the recording exactly what we just heard and saw fuck sakee i love this movie its so dumb spoon feeding everyone - naw spider in his beeeeddd 10/10 best actor. nothing scary has actually happened other than weird lady staring constipatedly at him. he out here gon break his shoulder - sprint sprint sprint PACE PACE PACE – THE DOOR IS OPENNNNN ooohhwuuuhohhh and now he has an axe. he’s a fuck load more of a scardey cat than my main man harry potter and its the nursery - A BALLLLLLLL fell from the SKYYYYY and he doesn’t seem too fazed lmao. spiders just chillin on a chair like yep you’re in trouble. creepy old dolls. a kid just said 'hello’ and laughed, like friendly. 'hello?’  and put a toy in his hand. this is actually interesting. whoops the lights have gone out - PROBS CAUSE HE TURNS THEM ALL ON. nothing even scary happened, the kid said hi and clearly wanted to play then he sprinted away and now is panicking trying to find a torch where is he going its not even that dark back at the generator. cause god forbid- - OMG HE:S LITERALLY GO TTHE WHOLE HOUSE LIT UP mate why do you think it all went out omg im crying he’s freaking out about spider running off oh nah nevermind he’s fine lololol he was freakingggg outttt and then just chills immediately and goes back inside. i love this guy he’s trying so hard. the 70s lampshades are swinging from the roof. would be more eerie if it were actually dark and nah gonna just move over that back to him telling the recording exactly what we just saw. every fucking light. every FUCKING LIGHT. he’s lucky he doesn’t have to pay for electricity. this is the third time we’ve heard this crash and the kid and the lady screaming and he’s going angry about it cause its very noisy and he’s lost his mate’s dog whoops. lol whoops his mate found his own dog half drowned in the marsh and is just chill with it. wait this has all happened in a day?? this fuckin guy. ol mates got him rugged up and getting him outta there cause he collapsed in fright from finding the nursery trashed. that’s it. like yeah its spooky but come on man. is this the climax of the movie??? we an 1hr12min in. think they’re only breifly and vaguely mentioning that to see her means a kid will die and has died - how the fuck are you supposed to make her fearsome if you declaw her and take away that which threatens people: the fact she’s out there causing kids to die. floral bed covers. are they seriously not even going to show the dead kid. they’re just chatting. and again wa– holy fuck these people shes like neeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrhhh with a hogwarts cloak on and short curly hair with that yellow face and crooked brows, and he’s got his arms over his face, eyes shut just lying on his bed screaming - fuckin close ass shots i can see up their noses. now he’s taken ill poor mate. also he’s in a different bed?? and now he’s awake and talking some whack shit. has anyone called his wife yet lol. an awesome shot of just him sleeping. and another one. who’s this lady? oh its his wife. what’s she doing here i guess they did call her ahahaha. everything is so bright and blue and white where is the deeeeeath how is any of this scary its just so much chilling out and chatting and lol bye hope you get better have fun talking men. what. the house burned down? what. ol mate seems suss. HE’S SUSS. ol mate definitely burned that shit to the ground. who knows why he didn’t really seem sold on the whole thing but ya know. now they’re wearing like any old clothes they can find. and there’s a soldier too. and they’re training off into the sunset. that woman is not old enough to be this guy’s mother. what. we have cake time. pointless pointless scenes. ooooooooooooooooooooooo he got the ptsd from the horse clackity clack. no woman with hair that perfect sleeps without it in rolls or covered, not back then lol. where’s the deatttttthhh. oooohweeerrroooooo. whats in the box in the box whats in the box todayyy. acting is always 10/10 with this guy, especially the angst and strong emotions. he really doesn’t care for actually investigating these many papers he’s got in these boxes. um. he was in his office. and then the next scene was him entering his office and hanging up his jacket in his office????? wot. THE PAPERS AREN’T IN THE FIREPLACE MATE THEY’RE OUTSIDE OF IT. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH OH MY GOD HES MAD HES SETTING THE OFFICE ON FIRE HOLY FUCKKKKKKKKK MATE. dude you are so fired. fireman is like yeah i found this jerry can of parrafin you wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you. omg omg he’s attacking his boss this is so exciting. i think he’s fired lol. can’t believe he’s not been arrested. what do you tell your wife lmao. how do you get references for another job in this career. her hair is so perfect. she wants to talk, he silences her with a kiss, conversation moves on, he silences her with another kiss - typical. now they’re boating. there’s 3 minutes left. are they gonna drown. omg the jumpcuts. SHES STANDING ON WATER. SHES JESUS. ahahhahahahahAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA DEATH BY TREEEEEEEEEE and i think they did drown omg ahahah my guy, wife kid and baby. that’s fuckin dark. last literally 1 minute of the movie just kill everyone off. what a shit fest i love it.

[ladyhindsight]

You are truly doing god's work. Bless you. Bless this blog. Let us end the casserole with facts and grammar. I love it💜💜➰

Aayyy,thank you! That means so much to me that you wouldn’t believe. If only anything people say against her work–no matter how constructively–would reach her conceited ears. Not that it would honestly change anything. Yet I don’t think I can emphasize enough how much it goes beyond me that so many people still find any reasons at all to defend Clare and her writing.

I don’t mean that in a general sense, though. I absolutely reject the idea that stories need to have morality or that authors “condone” anything they write. This is all given. But when you are handling social issues that reflect our own world, people expect decency and consideration. Especially, when you are celebrating yourself as a paragon to this in young adult literature.

Clare’s attempts of any kind of inclusion in representative sense, for instance, fall short because her need to pander a certain audience by writing relatable themes targeted to them lack any actual substance and, more importantly, personal interest to write anything like that at all. You can see she loves writing Clace. Why else would it be like 95% of the series and keeps on living in Lady Midnight even if the spotlight is on other people?

Seriously though. The fundamental problem I have with Clare’s works is that her own implicit bias is evident in the text. Although Lady Midnight by quality has come far since City of Bones, her immaturity and thoughtlessness shine through the pages brighter than my future. Clare’s voice in her writing is so unmistakable that it is difficult to forget that you are supposedly reading a story independent from author’s thoughts and views.

Then there is the whole telling readers what to think and feel about such-and-such scenario instead of allowing them to see and feel it themselves. Clare writes Emma and Tessa’s pain, for example, as if it should invoke deep sympathy for them. What I mean is, she doesn’t let actions speak for themselves, but instead she uses time to convince the readers that yes, this was very tragic moment, and yes, it might be emotionally hard, and yes, it may take time to recover from.

Convincing author doesn’t need to continuously tell the readers what is tragic/traumatic/hard experience, but instead carry it through the story and show its effects. I believe that every reader has a basic understanding of what is tough or a hard experience. You don’t need to lavish with it. The lacking subtlety in narrative and spoon-feeding readers with what they are supposed to think and feel rarely wakes any sympathy for anything.

But sheesh, did I completely derail this ask. Anyway, thank you again, and my goodness, did I need to get that off my chest. :’D

[milehighcolonoscopy]

Film Review: The Fourth Kind (2009)

WELCOME TO MY SPOOPY BLOG!

Since this is my first post, I should probably say something about myself. Hi. I’m me. I like shitty horror movies and books that nobody else likes, and I’m a fan of the UFO culture (subculture? whatever) without actually being a believer. I’m a consumer, nothing more.

I should probably state here that I’m not really a good film critic, and I frequently disagree with audiences on these specific genres. Shitty plotlines are my bread and butter (so long as there are UFOs, aliens or ghosts involved), jump scares make me jump scared, and I can forgive pretty much anything so long as it spoon-feeds me my favourite set of tropes.

Some of these (jump scares et al) have to do with my anxiety disorders. Others have more to do with the fact that I’m a terrible person and probably shouldn’t be listened to. You’ve been warned.

Well, that was nice! Let’s move on.

[SPOILERS BELOW]

The Fourth Kind is unique in that it attempts the found footage genre with a spin, displaying “real footage” along with, and often alongside, “reenactments” by actors.

Actually, some of the talent in this film is impressive. Milla Jovovich (The Fifth Element, basically all the resident evil), Will Patton (Falling Skies, Remember the Titans, the Postman), Elias Koteas (Chicago PD, the Prophecy) and Olatunde Osunsanmi (this). That’s not a bad cast at all, and even though some of these actors multipassed their career peaks a while ago, I still felt enthusiastic about seeing them here.

So the premise is pretty simple. Psych lives in remote town. Psych is a hypnotherapist. Townspeople are being abducted by aliens with no memory. Psych is a hypnotherapist. Hypnotherapy ensues.

One by one, Dr Abbey Tyler (Jovovich) begins to realise that her clients are reporting some pretty identical and unusual circumstances. For a start, they’re all insomniacs, and it’s the year 2000 so nobody has smart phones yet. Also, every one of them reports that the source of their insomnia (I think, bits of the movie are hard to follow) is an owl looking in their window.

This is one of the things this movie does that I enjoyed. The owl (pictured) is a pretty good visual representation of the archetypal grey alien. I could imagine these people looking out their window and seeing a grey, only for their brain to scramble what they saw into something they can actually accept. I was genuinely creeped out by them saying that, for some reason, they feel like the owl was actually inside the house at some point, staring down at them from the foot of their bed.

So, Tyler decides to guide one of her clients through hypnotherapy, leading her down a path that results in a five-person murder suicide, a self-snapped neck, and a whole buncha screaming. Seriously, you should probably turn this movie down a tad.

This isn’t my favourite abduction film, and the only reason I’m reviewing it first is because I’d kinda forgotten what it was about and decided a rewatch was in order. In terms of the grotesque, it did bring a fair bit to the table. The recording Jovovich takes early in the film was pretty good, and if that wasn’t Jovovich herself, then I sincerely hope that person has a long and fruitful career in screaming. That was like, Sheila, bring the pepper spray level screaming.

But aside from the jump scares, the screaming, the levitating, the disfiguration... I really didn’t feel like there was much meat on the bones. The story itself is just a variation on the “lonely town is plagued by $paranormal_thing” trope, and although it had some good talent I don’t feel like it used it well enough.

Take Will Patton, for example. He plays a police officer, but his only role throughout the film is to provide legal chafing. Jovovich will dig a little deeper, revealing something new at the expense of somebody’s wellbeing, and then Patton shows up on the scene and says “THAT’S IT. THIS CIRCUS IS OVER!”

And Koteas’ role was more or less superfluous. In theory, his character shows up to provide some misplaced rationality and, eventually, corroboration to Jovovich’s therapist. But there was nothing here that could not have been cut and added to Abbey Tyler herself, and I feel like providing her own reason and “this can’t be right” logic would have added some much needed depth. Instead, Tyler runs with the yarn as far as it will go and, in the end, I think the producers just wanted some Koteas in the movie.  I can’t really blame them.

Ultimately, this movie is fun in the way that a ghost train is fun. It’s crappy, and cheesy, and not really well thought out, but if you can wear your horse blinkers well enough to tune out the obvious plot holes... meh, it’s kinda fun.

ROUNDUP

The Good:

The premise (multiple patients reporting seeing an owl that somehow comes inside the house. Also insomnia) is creepy. It lasts all of five minutes, but in those five minutes so-help-me I was interested.

The owl itself is genuinely creepy, and I can totally see a grey in there (so glad we don’t have many owls in Australia)

The combination of “real” footage with “reenactment” does, at times, work quite well. I didn’t feel like the film used this effect to the best of its ability, but I can see potential there.

The ambient horror effects like screaming, disfiguration, levitation, etcetera were generally well done.

Elias Koteas

The Bad:

Many of the characters serve no role. For example, Abbey Tyler’s daughter is a blind girl whose only purpose is to mope around for a few scenes and then get abducted at the end of the movie, never to be returned. Which leads me to:

Many of the characters have backstories which don’t matter to the plot. Why was she blind? Did the aliens make her blind? Is she faking it because she’s a little shit like her GODAWFUL brother? We may never know. Probably.

The film tries too hard to make us care about the characters. Abbey Tyler’s husband was MURDERED. Or not. Did you know that? Do you love her yet?

The Ugly:

NO ALIEN REVEAL! This is pretty much unforgivable for me. The whole reason I watch these is to stare into the dark, soulless eyes of the movie. I mean, the aliens. Instead, they only show us shadows and representations. I get why they wouldn’t show them; crappy alien design and implementation often ruins the film. It takes us out of it, it turns the fear into funny. I get it. But if you’re not going to try, don’t make an alien movie.

The “real life” footage characters are unforgivably annoying. The “real” Abbey Tyler is actually so awkward looking that she could have played the film’s alien. Little makeup, a bald cap, some black contacts, VOILA! Grey alien. The problem was that, in the role of the therapist, she rarely exibits more emotion than an emotionless alien would have, and when she does, it’s so awkward and annoying that you hope the aliens take her away and we won’t have to watch her anymore. I’m not even fucking kidding!

All in all, it’s a decent film as far as horrible films go. It’s a part of my “essential abduction film” list, and if you’re a terrible person like me, then you should add it to yours. If for no other reason than the sweet, sweet cred.

[jivingcryingboy]

Being In A Band

There's a always that situation for a musician when someone, like your girlfriend's mum, uncle, another parent asks you, "What do you do?" And you answer "I play in a band." Now, I've seen this first hand and it can go a few ways. One way is that the girlfriend's mum, or whoever it is, gets very interested and their eyes light up because it's an interesting journey and so on. The second way, which is common, is for the person to suddenly pause as if you've just told them their daughter is pregnant, kicked their dog and pissed all over their toilet seat. "Oh...that's nice", meaning that their girl's partner is someone who is broke and goalless and cannot provide for their daughter.

Now I'm not having a go at people who react like this. Usually these reactions are from people who don't play music and are casual music listeners at best. And ultimately, these people are only going to understand when you point towards the radio and go, "That's my band" or "Here's the paycheck". And yes, ultimately, even for the musician there does have to be some kind of success in terms of making music especially before huge responsibilities like a raising family come your way. And I don't mean success as in playing at Wembley or lots of fame, I mean earning money out of music so you can keep making music and doing what you love best.

And if that's not possible, you get a job on the side to fund the music you love doing. Making a living out of 'popular originals music', is hard. Extremely hard.

If you want to become a lawyer or an engineer or a doctor, there is some kind of path to get there. A very hard one, don't get me wrong, but there is a some kind of visible path to get there. You can't just stroll in to a ward and do an operation. You have to revise, take exams, get experience working in a hospital environment before you become a doctor. Making a living out of original music, there is no straight path. It's pinball. Some people take years to get there, some people are overnight successes, some people are rejected over one hundred times before they get a break, some people get lucky first time, some people never get lucky. There are no exams, no scale of how good or bad you are, no league tables, no nothing.

And that's the other side to all of this; everything is subjective. Good and bad have no significance. In sport, there are ways of tracking how good a sportsman is. Granted, there are subjective and aesthetic issues, but there are statistics to help you along the way. In music, we fall into that 'Art' category. That fucking word. For example, a single turd could be sitting in a white room at the Tate Modern and it could be considered the greatest statement of the 21st century through many eyes. Through other eyes however, it's just a turd in a white room. How is this special turd making such a statement? But I guess that's the beauty of it all. You could be watching a band, enamoured by their music whilst standing next to someone who can't wait until that band finishes. If you are a musician, an artist, a novelist, screenplay writer etc. you are in a game where there are no rules. For the people who get there, I reckon some of them don't even know how they got there.

'Art' is funny thing. It's as meaningless as it is essential. Whether you create some form of art or not is insignificant. We are all indulged in TV series, video games, films, novels, songs, paintings, theatre shows, whatever it may be. Most of them fictional. It is a natural human desire to wear a mask and pretend to be someone else whether you are performing or spectating. For me, if there is ever a specific definition that sums up 'art', it is the desire to be and to feel something more than ourselves. To express ourselves outside our human boundaries. Yep, I just did it. Pretentious art talk. Fuck it. I'm that pretentious guy at the party who says he writes songs. So even those people who don't fully understand someone's pursuit in this particular area, even they are indulged in some art form through whatever medium.

I keep banging on about there not being a 'good or bad' in music. I'll try and explain. Our debut EP was released not so long ago and I always try and get it reviewed. I emailed one particular website where I got a reply of which I'd never seen before. The guy emailed back and basically told me that he, the reviewer, does not pick what he reviews, 'tippers' do. Tippers are people who tell reviewers and blogs what to write about. It's a bit like keeping up with the latest fashion trends; if more people search for 'so-and-so band' on google, they'll review them, and people are more likely to click on the reviewer's page. Another website I found stated that you had to pay for the review. And if you put out that little bit extra, you get to be on the 'Upcoming Artist' Section.

Even though it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. It's just the way it is. I think there was a time before social media where this concept was less blurry. Before the internet, it was more about the music. I won't bullshit too much, image still played a massive part, but when the internet came along it introduced so many more factors that artists had to deal with. In social media, not only is it about music, it's about marketing, branding, audience, image, current events, being quirky and so much more. Quirkiness is everything. You can't just play your song and expect anything anymore. You have to play a song, live streamed with piano-playing cats, five people playing one guitar, juggling at the same time, looking gorgeous, crazy clothes, no gravity rooms, bla bla bla. The music becomes a passenger. This is why we have music videos. Audio is no longer enough. That's why we did our music video down Bold Street. Don't get me wrong, it did fit the song, but just releasing the track by itself won't get you anywhere. If you scroll down the Facebook feed right now, literally right now, (come back though) count how many videos there are. There's a tonne of them! So many! Why? Because it grabs your attention. Cats, racist people, accidents, Donald Trump. You have to punch someone in the face to get their attention. I think it's not about being good or bad, it's about being quirky, loud and different, even if it's shite, it doesn't matter

I know you can get magazines and blogs who rate albums out of five/ten stars but that's complete bullshit as well. Critic's Choice, IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes spoon feeding you your opinion before you've even made it. There used to be so much analysis about Kurt Cobain's lyrics, a ridiculous amount of people weighing in about what they thought Kurt meant, when Kurt actually for the most part did not really give much of shit about the words he was writing at all. I'm not gonna get started on the whole concept of criticism but there's a lot of vagueness going on there as well. In my opinion.

One thing I do know for sure is that you need money and to be fair, that could be said about everything in life. Uni fees are sky high, so many educational paths are laminated in debt. Maybe this is a naive point. Earning money though from your own songs is sticky.

https://www.theguardian.com/…/how-much-musicians-make-spoti…

The Guardian did a post not so long ago regarding stream revenue for artists. I think it was round the time after Taylor Swift kicked off and left Spotify. What this says ^ is that if, like us, you are an unsigned artist, in order to earn minimum wage in America ($1,260 per month) your songs must be played 180,000 times per month. That's for Spotify. That's $0.001 per click. 2% of all Spotify artists actually achieve minimum wage out of their music. There's torrenting, youtube mp3 converter files, the way to make money out of music bands on our level is touring. And that's another drama.

So why do it? Why be broke, play songs that maybe no one cares about and set yourself up for failure? I don't think there is a definitive answer to this as everyone has a different take on it. In my case, and I can only speak for myself, I guess it's meaning. A phenomenal piece of the makeup that constitutes to be living. Talking as someone who tries to write songs, creating something is such a beautiful thing. To give birth to little worlds, stories, characters that exist in my own creative realm is for me personally, the one thing I am most thankful for. Even if the next tune I write is the worst thing you've ever heard, even if you listen to the song and think, "please, never sing again", the feeling of creating something, making a story is priceless, indecipherable even. I also think what everyone forgets is that for the people who are pursuing 'originals' music as a career, we are in such a fortunate position; a position in life where we have the opportunity and capabilities to actually pursue music. We're not struggling to feed our families, we're not fleeing our countries because of famine and war, we are in a place where we can choose an artistic way of life, even if it doesn't pay well. For many people, the idea of even trying to make music is so far way from their reality as the restraints of their lives do not allow them a single chance to prove themselves at it. You get this one life, yolo, do what makes you happy. If you want to be a musician, work tirelessly to be one. Those people who look down on you, laugh at you are people probably not happy with how their lives have gone. Just do it. If we can continue to make and play music then job done. Even if it goes nowhere, I can be proud of what we have done, proud to say I was part of a music video down Bold Street, proud to say we released music knowing I felt emotions that would not have been possible for me to feel anywhere else. Through the difficult times we have had, music never lets you down. If anyone ever locks into our songs and tunes in to what we are doing, gets the same feelings as we got when we listened to our favourite bands for the first time, that is biggest cherry on top you can ever ask for.