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rantshemlock · 5 years ago

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It: Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#rantsfilmwatch #my writing #it 2017 #it chapter 2 #justice for richie :(

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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The Golden Compass Movie: What Went Wrong?

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Now that His Dark Materials is a TV show, we look back at what went wrong with the Golden Compass movie.

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With His Dark Materials currently making waves on HBO, we're taking the time to look back at what went wrong the last time someone tried to adapt Philip Pullman's beloved trilogy of fantasy novels to the screen in the 2007 flop The Golden Compass.

Pullman's His Dark Materials was much praised for its rich, imaginative fantasy world, nuanced and ambiguous characters, and powerful anti-religious themes. Critically acclaimed, award-laden bestsellers with a young heroine in the form of Lyra Bellacqua, the trilogy seemed an obvious choice to follow Harry Potter and Lord of The Rings and become a blockbuster movie series. New Line bought the rights after bringing Lord of The Rings to the screen, hoping for a similar success. The two stories are very different high fantasies, however, and The Golden Compass contains concepts less familiar to audiences than wizards, monsters, and swordplay. His Dark Materials was also occasionally categorized in shops as a children's book, unlike Lord of The Rings.

Further reading: His Dark Materials Season 2 Already Greenlit

This is an important factor when it comes to the adaptation. Say something is for children and for a lot of people you automatically impose limitations on what it can be. Consider how many times "for kids" is used as a derogatory term, even if that means you have to ignore the sheer abundance of brilliant stories that match that description.

It's self-perpetuating in many ways. So long as products for children have an air of complacency and simplicity their superiors will be tarred with the same brush, lending children's films a reputation that means some creators feel they don't have to try so hard.

The Golden Compass is one of those movies that taints other children's films by virtue of being compromised by an adult's idea of what children can cope with. With its unique aspects neutered, it becomes an anemic dirge at times, with exposition as subtle as a Michael Bay in the face. One character literally flies in just to explain a plot point before immediately leaving again.

further reading: His Dark Materials' Serafina Pekkala & The Witches Explained

Derek Jacobi almost salvages lines such as: "If we can save our children from the corrupting influence of Dust…" but ultimately can't do anything to stop it sounding like a line from Brass Eye. Christopher Lee is brought in to say a new line by New Line, whose own dust-strewn fingers are all over the final edit and some of the casting. Ian McKellen was also brought on board to have a fight with Lovejoy, but like the rest of the film it was a bloodless affair. With Rogue One writer Chris Weitz both writing and directing, you'd be forgiven for thinking he should take the bulk of the blame, especially when he chose not to use a draft by renowned playwright (and Star Wars prequels dialogue polisher, yes, I know) Tom Stoppard. Weitz, having co-wrote and directed About a Boy, seemed a sensible choice after producing a seemingly light film punctuated by moments of melancholy and darkness, and got the job after making an unsolicited pitch.

further reading: His Dark Materials' Major Differences From The Golden Compass Book

Daniel Craig was cast well, as were Nicole Kidman and Sam Elliott. The child actors are occasionally guilty of being child actors, though it feels harsh to criticize them at all when their dialogue has the ring of a production enclave asking: "But are we sure people will get that Lyra's feisty and intelligent?"

The end result is dialogue telling us that Lyra is special in a film that doesn't always remember to show us the same thing. This is partly down to a studio imposed running time of two hours, cutting around an hour from Weitz' first draft. This came despite Harry Potter being successful with lengthier running times. You'd have thought that the studio who made Lord of The Rings would have more faith. But faith was another issue altogether...

read more: Who is Mrs. Coulter?

Weitz trod lightly around the religious aspects of Pullman's books, but still found himself having to remove even mentions of "sin" from the script, leaving an important part of the story flailing amid woolly and ridiculous euphemisms. He left the project—replaced temporarily by Anand Tucker (Red Riding, Indian Summer), who himself then left over creative differences—before Weitz returned to finish the movie he'd started.

According to Vulture, the faults of the film do not lie with Weitz. He apparently turned in a more faithful draft than Stoppard, whose script was apparently less about Lyra and more about meetings (according to a Philip Pullman interview with The Atlantic, which is well worth a read).

further reading: His Dark Materials TV Series Creator Discusses Religion in the Adaptation

While only a hint of the religious subtext was left in that script, much of what made Weitz’ first draft work was cut to bring down that running time. Actor Tom Courtenay confirmed that his role was drastically reduced in post-production, with the studio editing the full-length version down, removing its original ending and staging reshoots to exposit information now lost. Ultimately, there were problems as a result of religious pressure and the studio being unwilling to risk wrath (wrath that would probably have descended on them at any rate), but this was far from unsalvageable. What really killed the film off it seems was the drive to get it under two hours, and the ensuing studio-imposed reworking of the movie. In short, it feels more like a bullet point list of things half remembered from the book than an actual film.

And we come back full circle a little here. The change in running time came because of a limited notion of what a children's movie can be, and what a younger audience can cope with. It's even more obvious in hindsight with the raft of young adult adaptations that the audience could have coped with a three-hour long version of The Golden Compass with its bleak finale, had New Line opted to go that way.

further reading: How Prisoner of Azkaban Changed Young Adult Cinema

It's hard to imagine a film in a New Line trilogy ending at a point that leaves the next film with a flapping tendril of leftover story, I know, but that's what happened in 2007: the finale of The Golden Compass was to be left over for the next film in the series, based on the book The Subtle Knife. Obviously, this film never came to pass, and we have two books unfilmed. Is this a bad thing? I'd argue that it is not.

Harry Potter had to leave out a lot of details from the books over its eight films, but His Dark Materials are books that are trying to do different things, richer still in just three novels, and so there's an inevitable loss of nuance even in a good film adaptation.

read more: What Year is His Dark Materials Set?

There's no need to adapt every single remotely popular story, as if things don't exist until they're moving pictures on a screen, so if there's going to be an exception, it's good that it's something that rewards multiple readings. That uses prose to tell stories more effectively than cutting edge CGI even could.

Meanwhile, at New Line, the additional shoot and post-production on The Golden Compass not only increased the cost of the film, but stopped it from being good enough to recover costs. Indeed, it contributed to a financial situation at New Line that required a surefire hit from one of their properties, and lo: Peter Jackson was brought back onboard, and The Hobbit began to happen.

The decision to make three films certainly paid off in that respect...

Stay up-to-date on all things His Dark Materials here.

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Books

Andrew Blair

Dec 6, 2019

His Dark Materials

from Books https://ift.tt/2GaodlC

#aion-rsa #Books

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imisphyx · 8 years ago

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} { } - life, still

Even though he’d been skeptical of my monster-hunting plans, Joyce still brought them to life with inexhaustible enthusiasm. I could have traced it back to his father’s conditioning, if I’d looked hard enough, but I wasn’t looking. I was busy gaping at the walls of our tree-house, which he’d managed to cover with dancing paleolithic horrors within days of me first suggesting we play the game.

He still liked painting with white-out, and he went through bottle after bottle of it while inventing beast after beast to slay. No one monster on its own was very complex, each just a handful of gooey dots and smears on the rough wood boards. But their individual simplicity belied their combined menace: in the amber lantern light, they were a constellation of cryptid limbs and eyes, both lovely and terrifying.

At least I found them terrifying, because it was up to me to slay them all.

My own supply of dime-store dragons and demons had dried up fifteen minutes into our first practice, and he deconstructed my inventions so swiftly and so utterly, I realized it would never prepare us to face a real threat.

So I’d embraced my role as hunter, content to watch him squint at the walls of our fortress, like a small Michelangelo scrutinizing the Sistine, porcelain fingers caked with white dust that left ghostly streaks across his peacoat. His hands trembled when he lost himself in his dreams, and whenever I got close to killing one of his creations, he’d reach into his pocket for that little bottle of white, fussing with it as though he could barely wait to present me with his next invention. I don’t think he realized he was doing it.

Then one afternoon, his ideas took a sharp turn toward something��different. I recall watching as his meddling neared madness; his nails dug into the tiny ridges in the bottle’s plastic cap, twisting right for five or six turns, then twisting left for just as many, then right again.

Closed. Open. Closed.

I was so caught up the waltz that I lost my train of thought until he cleared his throat.

I glanced up to find him waiting, an anxious gleam in his eyes. The hieroglyphic outline of a perfectly average human haunted his left shoulder.

“Well, this… uh…” I fumbled back into my thoughts: “This ‘hobbit dance’… it’s a demon, right?”

“Hobbididance,” he corrected, gently. His lips twitched into the phantom of a smile. “…and yes.”

“Okay, so I would just exorcise it, right?”

“Exorcise it how, exactly?”

“I guess by reciting the right Bible verses? I mean, I’m not sure which ones. I’d probably have to try out a couple, but—”

“It wouldn’t work.”

I scowled.

“Why not?”

“Because, the Hobbididance is The Prince of Dumbness,” he said, with a gravity that didn’t at all match the ridiculous thing he’d just said.

“The Prince of Dumbness?” I snorted. “What kind of lame title is that? Are you telling me he won’t understand the verses I’m reciting because he’s too stupid?”

“Not that kind of dumbness,” said Joyce. His answer was a very particular combination of warm and weary: a voice he used only when he knew damn well that he was withholding the lantern but was nonetheless teasing me for being in the dark.

“Well what kind of dumbness, then?” I played along.

“The Hobbididance prevents people from being able to speak.”

I considered this carefully. He returned to twisting the bottle cap.

“But, shouldn’t it only affect the person it’s possessing?” I asked. “So why wouldn’t I be able to speak?”

“That might be true of an average demon in his order. But he is The Prince. So his silence is a blanket effect.”

“That’s cheating,” I complained.

“How is that cheating?!”

It wasn’t cheating. I just really didn’t like it. So I huffed and went rummaging for my lunchbox in the corner, thinking maybe I at least had some celery sticks left.

“Fine,” he sighed dramatically, and collapsed down beside me, tossing up his hands. “Let’s just say, for the moment, that the Hobbididance only affects the person it possesses. How would you have known to exorcise it?”

“What do you mean? It’s a demon. That’s what you do to demons…”

“But how did you know it was a demon?” he demanded.

“Because you told me—”

“But I’m not part of this! If you’re out monster-hunting and you come face-to-face with a possessed person who can’t tell you they’re possessed, or by what, how would you know?”

He was close enough that I could nearly feel the way his throat clawed at the words of his question, trapping the last of his breath in his lungs. I stared at him, transfixed, and he stared back. It could have been seconds, or minutes, or seasons of silence—

—until he finally, finally blinked—

—his pale lashes looked like the afternoon light filtered through the slats in the wall behind him—

—and it seemed to restart time.

“There are lots of ways to detect demons…” I whispered, hoarse and barely believing myself: “Holy water. Holy artifacts. If the person cooperated I could have them write down what happened—”

“—If the possessed person cooperated?” Joyce’s eyebrows soared to the roof. “Gods, Danny, are you serious?!”

But he was laughing, and I allowed myself to feel triumphant for a spell. Not because I’d solved his riddle—I still hadn’t tackled the original version—but because I thought I’d succeeded in distracting him from reality. I believed I was fulfilling my duties as best friend, and admirably at that. I was too busy trying my damnedest to impress him with my hunting tactics to consider that maybe creating the monsters was his true catharsis. I was too busy battling a tiny, persistent creature in my stomach that watched the brilliant shiver of his hands and asked my brain what it might be like to reach out and hold them—just to stop them from trembling, just to keep them still.

My triumph upon closer examination looked an awful lot like greed.

- ❀ -

All the while, November’s chill took hold of the earth, and my desperate greed began to permeate my methods for finding Mrs. Jacoby’s flowers. The autumn crocuses were quickly passing their prime, as were the mums, and my neighbors threw their browning pots into the compost heap.

I turned to exotic imports, stealing blooms out of the living-room vase my mother kept bursting with color year-round. At first I tried to be subtle about my selections, only taking smaller specimens, or the ones that were hidden in the middle of the vase, but after a week or so I began to grab the first thing that caught my eye.

Exotic flowers yielded equally foreign results, I learned. Brighter hues produced wilder stories, high on emotion but lower on coherence. Redder flowers seemed to agitate her, while those on the bluer side of the spectrum made her melancholy. I wondered briefly if maybe I was being cruel, but the experimentation seemed worth it, somehow, just to get her to speak at all. She seemed to relish the chance.

Then there was the zinnia.

The surprise on Mrs. Jacoby’s face was apparent when I pressed it into her fingers—as was the confusion. I took a few stumbling steps backward, in case she decided that my gift was unsuitable, or worse: an insult.

She scrutinized it for a long, silent moment, brows furled as she twirled it this way and that between her thumb and forefinger. Her two front teeth, almost fey in their smallness, peeked out to gnaw on her lower lip, and for a second her son was blindingly present in her features. I shivered and tried not to be obvious about pulling my coat tighter.

“I can take it back,” I began, “If you don’t—”

“What color is this?”

“What?” I said, one step behind as usual.

“What color is this flower, Danny?” she asked, more urgently.

“It’s uh… it’s pink?” I wasn’t very good at the shades of pink. I hoped she wasn’t expecting something more specific.

“No… no…” she shook her head vehemently, pressing her eyes shut like an insolent child. “No. No, that can’t be right.”

“Okay,” I said, softly. After months of playing games with Joyce I was always open to the possibility of my assumptions being wrong. “What color do you think it is?”

“When I came to him, the rot had already taken root in the earth,” she replied.

I sank slowly to the floor at her feet, because that had to have been the craziest thing she’d ever said, and she didn’t seem to be finished. She tugged the tiny petals off of the zinnia one by one, stripping it bare as I listened:

“It had been summer for ages, and the hearts and souls of man had grown drowsy in the humid warmth, not recognizing the sweetness of the air for decay. He bought me spun-sugar at the county fair, and his sweetness wasn’t rot. It was dusty pink clouds and tacky pink fingertips and pink cheeks and pink-maned horses on a carousel meant for children. He brought me to his home, and his sweetness was bubbly rose wine and opal pendants and the ears of our newborn son. He was one of the last, the very last, and I came to him and kept the rot from finding him. But something else found him instead, and the pink in his cheeks became a fever, not a balm. And I could no longer protect him. I can no longer protect either of them, but—”

She stopped.

“But?” I whispered.

But she did not continue. Her fingers had frozen, centimeters from the head of the zinnia, but there were no more petals left to pluck. They were scattered like rain across her lap and around her feet.

That settled it, then—at least that’s what I remember thinking. Something sinister had gotten ahold of Mr. Jacoby, and possibly Mrs. Jacoby too, though she couldn’t say what. And even though she hadn’t finished her thought, I was positive that I knew its conclusion anyway:

“I cannot protect Joyce, but you must.”

I stood, shakily, and went to her, lowering her pinched fingers and extricating the barren stalk from her fist, settling both of her hands in her lap. “I-I’ll… I will,” I grit out. I had to say it twice to make the words intelligible; I was surprised to find myself in tears. “I… um… I’m going to go get the dust pan, okay?”

“Thank you, Danny,” she said. I was quick enough to realize that it wasn’t for the dust-pan.

I fled the room, scrubbing my shirt-sleeves hastily over my eyes and snuffling snot.

Joyce was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. It was unclear whether he’d been on his way up to find me, or if maybe he’d just been standing there the entire time, waiting for me. I braced against another shiver. But he was smiling, and enthusiastically thrust a tiny object into my fingers.

“I’ve been monitoring the flowers for days now,” he said. “And I think you might be right…”

The object was a ring, made of polished aluminum, and lined with tiny blueish lights that flickered on and off in an inscrutable pattern.

“You know I don’t know how to work this thing,” I said, tossing it back.

Joyce rolled his eyes and sighed a why-do-I-even-bother sigh. He slipped the ring onto his own thumb, and grabbed my coat sleeve, dragging me into his living room.

The last light from the front windows was barely enough to resolve the outlines of a camelback sofa and a few wing chairs—and the silhouette of Joyce lifting his hands toward the ceiling beside me: a shadowy maestro about to conduct a symphony.

The ring on his finger uttered a tiny, agreeable chirp, and the coffee table before us glowed brightly—lit by multitude of tiny projectors embedded in the geometry of the room. Arthur Jacoby had always been into the latest gizmos and gadgets, and their house, despite its Victorian charm, boasted a hidden myriad of high-end tech.

I fell back into one of the wing chairs, sitting on the edge of the seat so as not to drown in the size of it, and waited as Joyce commanded the “Ring of Power,” as he called it, with a series of delicate hand gestures.

“Shoulda just let the scrying stone watch them,” I joked.

Joyce said nothing, but spared me an approving glance in between hunting through the videos he seemed to have been collecting.

One by one, I watched the bouquets I’d given to Mrs. Jacoby take shape, suspended above the coffee table in a neat matrix as he stacked feed upon feed. The resolution was almost too good. It made the flowers look like the ever-perfect plastic replicas that my Mom bought in craft stores. She always claimed she would make a wreath for the front door, but they usually ended up on the opposite side of a closet door, never touched again…

“I kept a camera on each one for three days. It’s mostly the most boring thing ever,” admitted Joyce, and the flowers all flickered in unison as he skipped forward in time, “but I watched almost all of it—

“—What?!—”

“—I kinda thought it would help me get better at drawing if I tried to sketch them all,” he explained, hastily, “But just like you thought, every so often one of them changes color. Like—there, see?!”

The flowers flickered again as he rewound and replayed the last ten seconds. My gaze darted from bud to bloom, eagerly awaiting something fantastic—but I saw nothing.

“I feel like I’m trying to set a bunch of my mom’s ugly old paintings on fire with my mind,” I complained. “What am I looking for?”

“There,” said Joyce again, pointing at a cluster of red and orange mums. “That one got a little more purple.”

His fingers continued to play and replay the same few seconds of footage, twitching an obsessive pattern at his side. It did look like one of the mums was changing. But even though I’d been quick to suggest that monsters were mixing colors, I now found myself desperate to disprove my own hypothesis.

“It was probably just a change in the light. Like, a cloud passing over the sun or something—”

“But that would make it darker,” he protested. “It’s not darker. It just goes magenta and then back to red again.”

“Well maybe the camera is broken,” I said, suddenly irritated. “Give me the ring.”

“You said you didn’t want it.”

“Well, I changed my mind,” I said. “Give it to me.”

“Make me,” he taunted, idly. He was still watching the flowers, lost in his thoughts. He clearly didn’t expect me to take him up on the provocation.

…which made his undignified yelp twice as satisfying when I lunged for his hand and checked him bodily onto the carpet.

“What the hell, Danny!” he coughed, breathless and struggling as I tried my damnedest to uncurl his knuckles and claim the ring.

Above us, the video feeds began to dance, swapping places with each other and exchanging themselves for other videos in the family collection—birthday parties and science documentaries and a tutorial on how to bake christmas cookies. They cast a discotek rainbow around the dark walls of the room, and through the quartz of his wide eyes beneath me.

“C’mon! I wanna see something,” I said, pinning his arm to the floor.

“You said you didn’t even—Ow!—know how to use it!”

“I just didn’t feel like it right then.” It was only half a lie. “I needed to get the dust pan for your mother, and I—”

“Wait. What’s that?” Joyce cut in.

His eyes were glued to something beyond my shoulder.

“Yeah no, sorry. Not falling for that,” I said.

But to my surprise, he twisted and slipped from my grasp so quickly that it left me staring gobsmacked at the rug where he’d just been.

“Danny,” he hissed. He was standing behind me at the table, as if our tiny sparring match had never happened. “Look at this.”

“The flowers didn’t change color,” I pled with him in a whisper, suddenly incredibly tired. “They couldn’t have.”

“It’s not the flowers, Danny. Someone’s been in here. Look.”

At that, I whipped my head around, following Joyce’s gaze to a dimly lit feed on the far right. A few flicks of his wrist got rid of the rest of the miscellany and centered the footage in the room. He zoomed in until the shadowy protagonists were nearly life size.

“That’s your basement…” I said, because I always provide helpful commentary. Joyce, understandably, did not reply. His earlier delight had been replaced by quiet terror. “What are they doing?”

“I don’t know…”

There were two figures moving about the lab bench Arthur Jacoby kept downstairs—one altogether average, with short, dark hair, and the other thin to the point of frailness, with long, lighter hair drawn back into a ponytail. They dressed in black, the way spies from old war movies did, and the amber Edison bulbs that Arthur fancied didn’t shed much light on what either of them were doing.

And neither of them had a face.

The videos were three dimensional. I could walk around the coffee table and see the scene from whatever angle I wanted, thanks to the absurd number of cameras Arthur had installed. But there wasn’t a single angle that revealed so much as a nose. Anywhere there should have been a face just seemed to fade, like when you try to take a picture indoors, but you’re too close to a window, and all you get is glare.

Another twirl of Joyce’s fingers conjured the video’s metadata out of thin air. The timestamp read October 12, 8:47PM.

The night his father died.

Joyce was frantic, whirling through all the video feeds of his house, hunting for any other glimpses of the mysterious intruders. But my eyes were stuck to the original footage, desperate to make sense of it.

All at once everything went black, and it took me a moment to understand that Joyce had shut down the media system, and not my mind. We stood there, side-by-side in the dusk, listening to each other’s hearts pound for what felt like an hour, until I managed to find the courage to speak:

“We need to tell somebody.”

“No!”

His reply was barely more than a whisper, but it stung like a smack to the face.

“But—”

“Danny, we can’t. You can’t tell anyone,” Joyce insisted, voice trembling. “If they think I’m not safe here—”

“—But what if you’re not safe here—”

“—they’ll take me away. They’ll take her away. I won’t let them take her away from me.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but my jaw dangled uselessly on its hinges.

“Please…” he whispered.

I sat with a thump on the floor for the second time that afternoon. Mrs. Jacoby’s lament echoed in my skull: I could no longer protect him. I can no longer protect either of them, but—

“They won’t take her from you, and they won’t take her from me, and they won’t take you from me, okay?” I said. I didn’t even know who ‘they’ were. Why had they come? Were they Mr. Jacoby’s colleagues? Burglars? Wraiths? By that point in my life, almost anything was starting to seem possible. “Nobody will.”

He sank down beside me, hugging his knees to his chest.

“… Danny?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I sleep over at your house tonight?”

“Sure,” I said instantly, but then paused. “I mean, I think so—but only if my mom says yeah.”

My words were only a formality, and he knew it. He smiled, gently.

- ❀ -

Every time Joyce spent the night at my house, my mother would try to offer him the guest room, and every time, Joyce would politely turn it down in favor of sleeping on my floor, causing her to turn the house inside-out to give him every spare pillow and blanket we owned, while Joyce tried and failed to stop her. This time was no different. It took her an hour to finish doting and leave us alone, and when she did it was with a reminder not to stay up talking on a school night.

Joyce didn’t need the warning; he shook hands with the sandman the second he crawled into his enormous blanket fortress. But I couldn’t for the life of me get the crusty bastard to pay me a visit less than five feet away, so I just lay there in a ball at the very edge of my mattress, and watched Joyce sleep.

We’d made sure Mrs. Jacoby was settled for the evening before we’d taken off for my house, but it didn’t feel right, leaving her there alone. My legs twitched with a ceaseless desire to get up—to don my shoes and coat and venture back into the night to check on her—or, at very least, to walk down the hall and wake up my parents, and tell them about the trespassers in Joyce’s basement.

You can’t tell them. They’ll take her away…

Joyce’s hands were curled into fists in one of my mother’s quilts as he slept. I stared at them, thinking suddenly about the way they’d felt in my grip when I’d tried to take the ring from him. I’d been afraid to pry too hard for fear I’d snap his fingers. His wrists had been warm and beating with life, their blue and red blood barely concealed beneath milk-white skin. I’d thought I’d had him pinned, yet he’d vanished the moment his will had shifted…

They’ll take me away…

I’d kept secrets from my parents before, but this one felt awful.

You have to protect him…

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

At some point, finally, I slept, and dreamt that the wraiths in Joyce’s basement were there because they were waiting for light to seep through the cracks in the concrete and give them their eyes back.

- ❀ -

He was gone by the time I woke up at eight— he always was, when he stayed with us on weeknights. His school started an hour before mine, and even before his father died, Joyce was the one who made his mother breakfast.

I, meanwhile, slouched sleepily at the kitchen table like a typical ten-year-old as my mother plopped a waffle and a bottle of maple syrup in front of my face. She hovered as I began to eat, and I waited for a question. For an announcement. For her to realize I wasn’t Joyce. For something.

“Danny, why do you keep taking flowers out of the living room vase?” she asked, finally, and I nearly choked.

“I didn’t—”

She sank down into the chair across from me and tilted her head toward the refrigerator door, which was displaying the last few days' worth of home-security footage at 40x speed. Apparently Joyce hadn’t been the only one pointing cameras at flowers that week.

I watched myself repeatedly plucking blossoms from a bouquet: a thief caught red-handed, and yellow-handed, and pink-handed. A thief like the wraiths in Joyce’s basement.

I pushed my plate away across the table, suddenly too nauseous to eat.

“It’s not okay to just take things that don’t belong to you, Danny.”

“I know,” I mumbled.

“You could have just asked me. I would have let you have them.” My mother’s voice was gentle, but unyielding, and it only made me feel sicker. But to my surprise, when I didn’t say anything, her mouth slid into a mischievous smirk. “If there’s a girl at school, you can ask her over, you know. I’d love to meet her.”

“No! Mom. Ew. No. It’s not… it’s… it’s nothing like that.”

“Then what is it like, Danny?” she pressed.

There are monsters in Joyce’s house, and I think they killed his dad, and I’ve been using your flowers to try to track them down.

“They’re for Mrs. Jacoby,” I sighed. “There’s nothing in her garden anymore and… I dunno… I thought they’d make her feel better?”

My mother’s face was a difficult thing to read, at that moment. It somehow simultaneously softened and tensed.

“I’m sorry,” I added, when I didn’t get any other response.

“I wish you wouldn’t go over there so much.”

She said it all at once, like she’d been trying really hard not to say it.

“Why?” I asked, startled.

“I just don’t understand why you’d want to. There’s nothing for two boys to do in that house. Over here you have your tree-house, and all sorts of games, and I keep the pantry stocked with all your favorite snacks—”

“All of Joyce’s favorite snacks!” I snapped, before I could stop my half-awake brain from sending the words to my tongue.

My mother blinked at me like I’d smacked her. I half expected her to yell, or ground me on the spot, but nothing came. I pulled my plate back toward me, mostly so the squeal of the china across the table would fill the silence.

“Danny—”

“Why don’t you like Mrs. Jacoby?” I asked, impaling the undeserving waffle repeatedly with my fork.

“Honey, it’s not that I don’t like her. She’s… I mean… your father and I don’t know her that well—”

“Because you’ve never even tried!”

“Because we’re scared, Daniel!” cried my mother, then, and it was my turn to blink like I’d been struck. “It’s not just Joyce’s mother, Danny. You know that! You know there are other people at your school who just—” she made some opaque gesture with her hands, “And if you follow the news, it’s the entire East Coast! Maybe the whole country. And nobody knows how it happens or why it’s happening, Danny. And your father and I, we love you, and we care about Joyce, and we don’t want either of you to—”

“Hey-ho, my Comet and Cupid!” my father’s voice echoed through the landing. He walked in still buttoning the last few buttons of his dress-shirt. The collar was still all askew. “Who here is ready to rot behind a desk for the next eight hours, huh?” he asked, jovial until his gaze fell upon our faces. Then he frowned. “Christ, who died while I was in the shower?”

“Hank—”

“Mom thinks Mrs. Jacoby is going to make me sick,” I said.

“I didn’t say—” started my mother, but she trailed off with a sigh.

She and my father shared a long look, while I shared a long look with my abused breakfast and pretended not to notice.

“I, for one, think that it’s very noble of you to be so kind to her,” my dad announced, then, putting his hand on the back of my chair. His voice had the same soft tension as my mother’s face. “I’m proud of you for having such a big heart. We could all stand to learn a little from you, son.”

“We just want you to be careful, okay?” whispered my mother.

“Right. Just be careful. That’s all.”

You know nothing. You’re worried about Mrs. Jacoby making me sick, while there are monsters in Joyce’s basement. I watched the damning security footage of my flower-snatching continue to play out across the fridge, and said nothing.

#imisphyx #prologue #danny #oh look an update #progress is progress however small!

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toddrogersfl · 7 years ago

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Vintage men’s fragrance advertising down the decades

To celebrate National Men’s Grooming Day, we thought we’d share this article by novelist, blogger and columnist Maggie Alderson from ‘The Magic of Mimosa’ edition of The Scented Letter – which looks at men’s scent ads new and old…

Spending an afternoon than researching pictures for a feature about great aftershave advertisements can have quite an effect on you. Holy plumped pectorals! After five minutes browsing muscular torsos and manly gazes, I didn’t know whether to take a cold shower or dance a tango.

But once you really study these images (as opposed to just drooling over them) it becomes clear that there is in fact a lot more to this genre than photographs of ridiculously beautiful men.

In-depth scientific research (ahem…) reveals that they fall into four main categories, which involves said living gods wearing one of four outfits: practically nothing, a suit of superb cut, sporting attire, fancy dress.

But whichever of those it is, the very best aftershave print ads share one thing, in my opinion; they consist of nothing more than the picture and the name and brand of the fragrance. There’s not even a smart tag line – yet these heavenly images create an entire world, telling a story that draws you in wanting to know more. And makes you very keen to lean in and smell that particular man’s neck…

Here are some favourites from the archives – and a few vintage classics that show how not to do it, perhaps.

HOT, HOT, HOT

Giorgio Armani Acqua di Gio

This was a masterstroke of casting, taking all-American blond hunk Jason Morgan and photographing him in moody black and white. Mr. Morgan’s astonishing blue eyes are his calling card, but who knew they’d be even more arresting in greyscale? One of the greatest aftershave photographs of all time, taken by Matthew Brookes, with that serious expression adding dreamy depth. There is also a video… Have your fan ready. And a mint julep.

Chanel Allure Homme Sport

Probably the medal winner in the sporting genre, the series of Spanish super dude Andrès Velencoso Segura – ex-squeeze of Kylie Minogue – with a surf board stopped me in my tracks when I first saw it (and inspired the leading man in my novel ‘Everything Changes But You’). It’s the combination of hunky, yet sensitive, which is so devastating. Senor Velencoso has his mum’s name tattooed over his heart and loves dogs. I’m working on finding out his favourite biscuit.

Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue

Our very own David Gandy wearing little more than his birthday suit and showing how it is possible for art to improve on nature. Even the azure waters of the Amalfi coast are enhanced by his white Speedo-clad proximity. And how could a fragrance associated with a scene so pleasing to the eye smell anything but divine?

Dior Eau Sauvage

Here’s one that spans the genres – it could equally fit in Famous, because while the ad appeared in 2105, this bearded beauty is none other than French actor Alain Delon, snapped in his youthful glory in 1966, the year this most classic of Colognes was launched.

It would also fit in Story. That little frown…what just happened? Who was she? Is he about to write a poem, jump off a cliff, or sail off into the horizon? We’ll never know, but it’s so easy to imagine that lemon-y herby sillage trailing behind him as he goes.

STORYTELLING

Dior Eau Sauvage

Could this be the most iconic aftershave advertisement of all time? Part of the wonderful series of works legendary fashion illustrator René Gruau created for the brand, somehow this gorgeous – fictional – man’s entire sophisticated, sexy, city life is conveyed by this cheeky image of a most personal moment, through a half-closed bathroom door. I know I’m not the only person whose entire ideal of what a man should be like was inspired in childhood by seeing these advertisements…

Michael Kors for Men

The American designer is the current master of the atmospheric advertisement, reaching standards set by Martini commercials in the 1960s, conveying the sense of lives of perfect insouciant glamour. It took Martini a couple of minutes of film of ski lifts, helicopters and white horses on beaches, plus an iconic theme tune to achieve it; somehow Mr Kors pulls it off with one picture. Where exactly was this open-shirted hottie last night? Who was he with and where’s he off to now? Is he getting into that seaplane landing behind him? Are his tanned feet bare, below those white jeans? Is that a gun in his pocket or…? Whatever he smells of, we like it.

Givenchy Gentleman

Swoon. That’s the only word to describe this photograph. While the frontal lobe of our brain might try to tell us it’s just beautiful models in a studio doing what they’re told, the imagination immediately has other ideas. You can practically feel the skin on skin. How they managed to convey such passion in one shot is quite miraculous and you just want to know more. Is their embrace illicit? Or are they reunited after a long spell of enforced separation? I’m feeling army (could be those shoulders…). To me this is Prince Andrei and Natasha from War and Peace and oh my lord, do I need to smell him, the most romantic character in literature, ever. Swoonavich.

Guerlain Habit Rouge

As befits the most classic of French perfume houses, this image has a more metaphorical feeling to it – the romance between a man and his horse, rather than that old une femme et un homme storyline. But is it a real horse, or an imaginary one? An expression of his innermost feelings? His essence (said in a French accent). Or, when you consider the meaning of the aftershave’s name Habit Rouge, which is French for a huntsman’s red coat, does it represent the male’s eternal hunt for a mate? Whatever – cor!

Aramis by Aramis

Forget the silly text – which modern advertising has shown really isn’t needed. This brilliant 1980s picture says it all for Aramis. She’s a modern girl and she likes what she smells so much she’s got him pinned up against the fridge. He’s not going anywhere until she’s fully explored all those intriguing wormwood and leather notes. But where have they been in their black tie outfits? Whose kitchen is it? And why does he look a little bit uncomfortable with his hands in his pockets? Might somebody be about to come in and surprise them?

FAMOUS FACES

David Beckham Urban Homme

Aftershave ads featuring famous chaps fall into two types – famous faces modelling for the brands and famous men who are the brand. David Beckham is a classic of the latter with seven aftershaves to his name, plus spins on those – all of them promoted by this sporting living national treasure in different moods. Sometimes casual in a classic T, showing off his tatts (Instinct Sport and Beyond Forever), in a fetchingly undone black tie (Instinct Gold Edition), or here in his full metrosexual glory in an immaculate mohair suit and crisp white shirt, ready for dinner at the coolest restaurant in town.

Jimmy Choo Man

The Jimmy Choo man is dark and brooding, a modern warrior in urban leathers and biker boots, ready to swoop to the aid of a damsel in distress – possibly because she is wearing such very high heels. And who better to pull that off than dark and brooding actor Kit Harington, Game of Thrones’ tortured hero Jon Snow, who looks born to smell of suede and patchouli?

Mont Blanc Homme Exceptionnel

A sub-genre of the famous man aftershave advert is the man who is famous for something specific, not acting or modelling, or owning the brand. Brut owns the concept, with their legendary 1970s commercials with Henry Cooper. Other sportsmen featured included tennis player Vitus Gerulatiis, racing driver James Hunt and American footballer Richard Todd. Montblanc run a posher version of this, featuring men exceptional violinist (and hot tottie) Joshua Bell.

Bing Crosby

If you’re going to go famous, why not go pure legend? LA based toiletries outfit Courtley Ltd. did, with a Father’s Day ad for their ‘virile Courtley fragrance’ in 1946. The backdrop photo of His Bingness looks as though it might have been sent out by the publicity department of Paramount Studios which was also promoting his new film Road to Utopia on the ad, but a more personal connection has been shoed in by adding a cunning gift tag to the ‘flagons’ (their word) making the gift set appear to be a gift from four of his six sons. Can’t see David Beckham’s team trying that stunt.

VINTAGE TREASURES

Old Spice

‘Joan Daly says she likes it when men wear Old Spice’. Likes what, exactly? But the finger resting playfully on lips and the position of her right hip ready to move into the twerking position gives a hint. The lower tag line is brilliant in its disingenuous simplicity. ‘Girls like it. Is there a better reason to wear Old Spice?’ Ms Daly was Miss Massachusetts in 1953.

Centaur

‘Are you ready for Centaur?’ Frankly not. If the ads looked like this, what on earth did it smell like? Goat blankets? The image alone is terrifying, but wait til you read the copy. ‘It’s the massage cologne. Half man, half beast, all male!’ proclaims the headline.

And also a little bit sex toy, it would seem: ‘Out of the Wild and Violent days of ancient Greece comes the exciting concept of Massage Cologne… Massage CENTAUR [so manly it always has to be written out in caps] into your arms, legs and loins. CENTAUR [can you hear us at the back?] has no alcohol [their itals] to irritate, so it massages with comfort into sensitive areas.’

SENSITIVE AREAS. [my caps]. But wait! There’s more: ‘CENTAUR adds a delightful new dimension to your body, a low level aroma that hovers close to the skin for hours, transmits its virile message only in moments of close and intimate contact.’

A virile low level aroma, like around hip level… Basically it seems to be perfume for his nether regions.

Brut

His rakish eye patch (not available on the NHS) and general air of nudity are just red herrings. This ad is really all about the way he is grasping the, er, shaft of that Brut bottle. But that really is a very small cigarillo.

Denim

There’s something rather contemporary about this image – and it still has sex appeal. It’s just the name of the fragrance that adds the cheese. But then you get on to the copy, clearly written in the afterglow of a 1970s ad agency creative department expenses lunch.

‘DENIM. For the man who doesn’t have to try too hard. He doesn’t have to. Things come easy for the man who wears DENIM (trademark). Because a man feels better. A man feels cooler.’

Despite seemingly being permanently off their trams on Beaujolais nouveau and Black Forest gateau, this shows what geniuses those copywriters were at subconscious messaging. Read it carefully and you’ll see that this blurb has several key words planted in it: hard, easy, feels and man. Next stop, CENTAUR?

Tabac

‘Peter Wyngarde smells… great’ declares this ad for Tabac. How could we ever have thought otherwise? As the magnificently coiffed, Windsor-knotted and luxuriantly moustached Jason King, his performance was OTT top you could practically smell his aftershave through your TV screen. Really worth checking out on YouTube if you are too young to have witnessed Mr. Wyngarde’s hilarious delivery in this early 70s classic TV show. He makes Austin Powers look demure.

Written by Maggie Alderson maggiealderson.com

The post Vintage men’s fragrance advertising down the decades appeared first on The Perfume Society.

from The Perfume Society https://perfumesociety.org/vintage-mens-fragrance-advertising-down-the-decades/

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aion-rsa · 6 years ago

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The Golden Compass Movie: What Went Wrong?

https://ift.tt/2L6qYDc

With His Dark Materials set to become a TV show, we look back at what went wrong with the Golden Compass movie.

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Andrew Blair

Dec 10, 2018

His Dark Materials

With His Dark Materials set to get the TV show adaptation treatment, we're taking the time to look back at what went wrong the last time someone tried to adapt Philip Pullman's beloved trilogy of fantasy novels to the screen in the 2007 flop The Golden Compass. Here's hoping the BBC adaptation avoids these pitfalls...

Pullman's His Dark Materials was much praised for its rich, imaginative fantasy world, nuanced and ambiguous characters, and powerful anti-religious themes. Critically acclaimed, award-laden bestsellers with a young heroine in the form of Lyra Bellacqua, the trilogy seemed an obvious choice to follow Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings and become a blockbuster movie series. New Line bought the rights after bringing Lord Of The Rings to the screen, hoping for a similar success. The two stories are very different high fantasies, however, and The Golden Compass contains concepts less familiar to audiences than wizards, monsters, and swordplay. His Dark Materials was also occasionally categorized in shops as a children's book, unlike Lord Of The Rings.

Further reading: His Dark Materials Season 2 Already Greenlit

Derek Jacobi almost salvages lines such as: "If we can save our children from the corrupting influence of dust…" but ultimately can't do anything to stop it sounding like a line from Brass Eye. Christopher Lee is brought in to say a new line by New Line, whose own dust-strewn fingers are all over the final edit and some of the casting. Ian McKellen was also brought on board to have a fight with Lovejoy, but like the rest of the film it was a bloodless affair. With Rogue One writer Chris Weitz both writing and directing, you'd be forgiven for thinking he should take the bulk of the blame, especially when he chose not to use a draft by renowned playwright (and Star Wars prequels dialogue polisher, yes, I know) Tom Stoppard. Weitz, having co-wrote and directed About a Boy, seemed a sensible choice after producing a seemingly light film punctuated by moments of melancholy and darkness, and got the job after making an unsolicited pitch.

Further reading: Mortal Engines — Everything We Know

The end result is dialogue telling us that Lyra is special in a film that doesn't always remember to show us the same thing. This is partly down to a studio imposed running time of two hours, cutting around an hour from Weitz' first draft. This came despite Harry Potter being successful with lengthier running times. You'd have thought that the studio who made Lord Of The Rings would have more faith. But faith was another issue altogether...

The decision to make three films certainly paid off in that respect...

from Books https://ift.tt/2GaodlC

#aion-rsa #Books

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