#baby driver landau

[yingren]

❛  to be fair i only killed those at the gate. ❜ / gepard [ modern au ]

the bitterness of black coffee lingers on his tongue, a taste he relishes despite its association with days like this. everything around him seems to move at a snail’s pace, the bell above the diner door ringing out like a soft alarm, announcing the arrival of new patrons. the clientele is predictably subdued, a blend of students hunched over notebooks, elderly regulars nursing their cups, and the occasional weary, middle-aged customer smoothing the wrinkles of a tired grey suit jacket as they sip coffee sweetened with far too much sugar. to ren, they’re all the same. he prepares every dish by rote, following the same old recipes, his motions efficient and unchanging. the hours pass just like that, blurring into one another, each one quietly building toward the comforting certainty of a paycheck that'll keep him comfortable until the next one arrives.

every now and then, he takes a break, though it’s rare to catch him outside the kitchen. on occasion, however, he drags the greasy soles of his shoes into the dining room, pulling out a chair to sit across from someone. trading the solitude of the alley behind the diner, where he can easily burn through a pack of cigarettes in a day, isn’t exactly his preference, but a bit of conversation might not be the worst thing. his stained apron stays tied around his waist, a pale streak of flour smudged across the chest of his plain black t-shirt. leaning back in the chair, coffee still in hand, ren eyes gepard with a raised brow, his expression one of quiet scrutiny mixed with reluctant engagement.

“ mhm, that justifies it. ” ironically, it does, though ren isn’t here to reprimand someone he knows all too well. gepard’s work, for all its risks, is seemingly carried out with meticulous adherence to the law. still, a part of ren can’t resist imagining him as more reckless than he truly is, someone who tosses the rulebook aside in favor of his own moral compass, someone who operates on principles entirely his own. but reality, as ren reluctantly admits, is far less dramatic. gepard holds a respectable, overly long title that ren can never quite remember, backed by years of experience that solidify his place as one of the good guys. and somehow, ren thinks with a hint of reluctant approval, it suits him.

“ you didn’t scratch up the car though, right ? she’s been through enough with you. ”

a grin spreads across his face, amplifying the satisfaction in his expression, like the final flourish on an already complete picture. leaning forward, he props a tattooed arm against the table, the inked outline of a snake partially obscured behind the rack of spices and napkins at the table's center. ren sets his coffee down amidst the clutter and casually picks up the fork from his side, using it to snag a piece of fruit from gepard’s plate. he pops it into his mouth, swallowing it in one swift bite with barely a chew.

“ wanna get out of here ? my shift’s over soon anyway. ”

[scenes-in-between]

Without (1/2)

“You take him to the hospital.” “What about you?”

She doesn’t answer, knows the question is more rhetorical than anything. The answer is obvious. Even if Gibson is delirious, even if he might only be imagining that he hears Mulder, she cannot ignore the possibility that he’s right. That Mulder is really out here somewhere. “You’re so close now,” he said. God, if that’s true…

I’m sorry, Gibson. I have to try. Skinner will protect you. You can trust him.

She doesn’t know if he can hear her, if he’s out of range or too sick, but she hopes he will understand, somehow. Behind her, she can hear the car door slam and the engine turn over. The sound of the tires rolling over the dirt carries for a long time across the stillness of the desert air; when it finally fades away to nothing, Scully closes her eyes and holds her breath, as if she will be able to hear Mulder if only she tries hard enough.

The silence sits heavy in her ears. She holds the breath until her lungs start to burn, until Mulder’s name pulses in her ears in time to her heartbeat. Blinking her eyes open, then, she lets the air out in a long, slow exhalation and bends down to pick her flashlight up off the ground. She sweeps the beam in a wide arc in front of her, eyes straining into the darkness for a glimpse of something, anything, that might indicate Gibson was right.

Where are you, Mulder? Am I really so close to finding you?

Setting her jaw, she fixes the light in the direction Gibson was staring when she found him. It’s as good a place as any to start.

She is struck by the sudden and intense sensation of deja vu, of searching a wide open desert for a missing Mulder, so long ago. So much has changed since then, and yet here she is, five years later, doing the very same thing. She dreamed of him then, too, she realizes. The thought gives her hope, not that the horrors she's been seeing in her nightmares are real, but that if he were truly dead and gone, she would somehow know.

Longing swells in her chest, expanding until she might burst from it, until it can only escape as a cry into the night.

“Mulder!”

***

He flinches at the sound of the gunshot, but as soon as the “other” crumples to the ground, all Gibson can feel is relief. She got him, they're safe, it's over.

The relief lasts for about two seconds before he flinches again, this time from Agent Scully’s voice in his head.

NonononoNOOOOOOOO!

At first he wonders if maybe she doesn't understand. If she thinks she really shot Mr. Skinner instead. But that can't be it; the “other” starts to dissolve into a green puddle almost immediately. There's no way she could truly mistake that for her boss.

My last chance. Now I can't find him. How will I find him if I've killed the only one who knows where he is?

Oh. Right. That makes sense. Of course she's upset about Agent​ Mulder. It's too bad he was so out of it earlier that he couldn't do a better job helping her find him.

He jumps a third time when the door flies open and more men burst into the room. They’re all human, at least, but it gets a little confusing with everyone thinking so loudly at once, all of a sudden.

Where’s the shooter? Where’s the shooter? Where’s the… Whoa! What the--

Oh no, not now, not like this, not in front of him. I can't fall apart in front of Doggett. I can't, I--

Shitshitshitshit what the HELL happened in here? Is she okay? Somebody get help, God damn it! She looks like she got beat up pretty bad. Thank God we’re in a hospital. She’s going to be okay. She has to be okay. She--

Oh my God, the baby. I’ve lost Mulder, and if I lose this baby too, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Oh, yeah. He heard Mr. Skinner thinking about Agent Scully’s baby, earlier. He really does hope everything’s okay with that, but right now, all Gibson wants is to go back to his room. Actually, that’s not even true. He wants to go home. Back to the school, back to where things make sense. It’s the only place he’s ever been close to just feeling like a normal kid. (At least, as best he can imagine what that feels like.)

He can hear the hospital staff coming from halfway down the hall and braces himself for the onslaught of mental chatter. He doesn’t even realize he’s pulled himself back against the wall and shut his eyes until a hand touches his shoulder. A nurse is crouching down in front of him, looking at him with concern.

“...okay, sweetie? Come on, let’s get you back to your room. Everything’s going to be all right.”

Her thoughts come into focus like a radio channel coming into tune, the static of everyone else’s thoughts fading away into the background. It’s an unsurprising and all-too-common refrain of Oh, this poor boy, which usually Gibson hates. He’s been “this poor boy” for years now, and he’s beyond sick of it. This time, though… somehow he doesn’t mind so much. He’s so tired that just letting someone take care of him for once doesn’t sound so bad.

Nodding, he lets her guide him into a wheelchair, and he breathes a sigh of relief once they’re out in the hallway and on the way back to the quiet of his room.

***

They release her from the hospital in Arizona before they release Skinner and Agent Landau, so Scully flies back to Washington alone.

Flying out here with Skinner was strange enough, but making the return trip on her own is miserable. There is no hiding the angry bruise and abrasions on her cheek and jaw, and she tries to ignore the stares of her fellow travelers. If Mulder were here, he would undoubtedly make some sort of joke about it, leaning in with his hand pressed against her lower back and his lips accidentally-on-purpose brushing her ear.

But that’s the point. Mulder is not here. He’s not here, and not a moment goes by where she isn’t painfully aware of that fact.

It's hard not to feel like she's abandoning him, even though she knows logically that the likelihood of finding him now is essentially nil. She spoke with Byers before she got out of the hospital; all of the microburst activity in the area has vanished, which indicates that the ship has almost certainly moved on. So far, they haven’t picked up any promising signals on any of the other satellite scans, so there is nowhere to even start looking again. However painful it may be, waiting is currently their only option.

(She refuses to accept the possibility that he will never be returned, that he is lost to her forever. It is completely unthinkable.)

Still, it feels wrong, like she’s giving up on him. It certainly doesn’t help that she’s going home to a new… she can’t bring herself to think of Doggett as a partner, even just a temporary one. He claims he wants to help her find Mulder, but if he cannot accept the reality of the situation, if he insists on adhering to this fiction of a desperate and dying Mulder out for revenge, then he is going to be no help to her whatsoever. And no, the irony of that sentiment is not lost on her. She’s given a lot of thought, lying in a hospital bed these past few days, to how readily she’s accepted the truth of Mulder’s abduction, and she has come to the conclusion that their partnership has always fundamentally been about balance.

She and Mulder worked -- work -- so well together because they are able to approach problems from all sides. Even if she doesn’t share his views or theories on every case, she can see how they make sense to him. With him gone, the balance is thrown off, and she’s found herself stumbling into his role. Because someone has to, and she knows him better than anyone.

(And if Agent Doggett continues to insist otherwise, she will probably end up getting fired for assault before the week is out.)

The problem, though, is that knowing how Mulder thinks is not the same as being able to think like him. He has always been able to see things other people miss, even in the more mainstream context of working as a profiler. The saddest irony of all may be that no matter how badly she or Skinner or Doggett may want to find him, the only person actually capable of knowing how to get Mulder back may in fact be Mulder himself.

She lands in DC both physically and emotionally drained, moving on autopilot as she makes her way through the airport and out to the taxi stand. It’s not until they’re on the freeway that she realizes she gave the cab driver Mulder's address instead of her own.

[iakaira]

tag game

Tagged by @xxxtenchittaphon

Relationship status: w an entire cute headass

Favorite color: peach

Lipstick or chapstick: lipstick

Last song I listened to: Long Gone - Phum Viphurit (My latest addiction)

Last movie I watched: Baby Driver too!!!

Book I’m currently reading: What they don’t teach you at film school by Camille Landau

Top 3 characters: elliot anderson, baby (from baby driver ofc), foxy brow

Top 3 ships: all the shibas in the world and me. thats it.

I’m gonna tag....

@free-running-wolf @dekushawnarroyo @grunge-ball and everyone else who follows my lovely shit posting

[tokyototokyo]

Day 13, Tokyo, 8th April

It was a bit wet this morning. We were very lucky to have seen Mt Fuji yesterday as it would have been a wasted trip, today.  The weather was also fairly cool.

The grounds of these places as everywhere in Japan are keep very clean.

The Great Buddha (Daibutsu). This 13.35 m tall bronze statue is the second tallest in Japan. He reminded me of the Buddha that sits on the top of Landau Island in Hong Kong but not as big.

Inside the Buddha looking up to his head. You could climb inside.

Bronze statues.

From the Great Buddha we could walk a short distance to the Hase-dear Temple. Another group photo in front of the entrance gates.

Detail of the roofline.

This garden was so beautiful. It was my favourite of the trip but then I thought I think I have said that before. The light rain even added to the beauty.

Tablet on the side of the slope.

It looked pretty impressive.

Offerings for the children who have died.

Goddess of Mercy.

The Hase-dera Temple which sat high up on the hill.

Part of a cemetery.

Small shine.

Shells used to make wishes or send messages to the gods.

Messages were written in all languages but obviously the majority were in Japanese.

View over the coastline to the Pacific Ocean

There were shrines all through the gardens.

Me walking the prayer wheels.

Sue pushing the giant prayer wheel.

Rhododendrons 

Beautiful gardens.

Gates to the cave temple.

This tunnel you had to couch right down to walk through.

Gates to the shrine.

You still see girls dressed in kiminos but not nearly as many as in Kyoto.

School children going home all with their white hats on. Parents are not allowed to walk their children to school or pick them up. That is to promote independence. Neighbourhoods look out for the children. If they are in kindergarten they have yellow on their bags so drivers know and take particular care when they are crossing streets. 

Island full of good luck flags.

Entrance to the island.

Me in among the flags for good luck. The weather was sunny but still has a bit of a bite to it.

Hachimangu Shrine

Bridge for the gods to enter the temple grounds.

The blossoms are starting to fall. As we travel north the blossoms are more fully bloomed and even dropping.

Rickshaw.

Walking out of the shrine grounds there was a path with cherry blossoms on each side down the middle of the Main Street. I ran into to this group who were more than happy to have their photo taken.

Very proud parents

The gorgeous baby was only 33 days old. That’s when they are taken to the shrine with the new name to have the Priest bless the baby. The babies are wrapped in a kimino.

Around the shrine was a popular shopping area in Kamakura called Komachi-dori. It had cafes, restaurants, and stylish shops. It was a very popular area for tourists. We are seeing more and more tourists as we get closer to Tokyo.

A side street.

Lovely flowers around an entrance.

After lunch and a wander we headed north to Tokyo. Driving into the city was quite amazing. So many impressive feats of engineering has sculptured this city.    Past the Port of Tokyo which is the second largest port in Japan and over this huge bridge.

From a distance the bridge looked like two sails.

More freeways, more bridges. There are many tired road systems. We travelled over a section that had seven layers. Three above the ground and three under the ground.

The black buildings on the water are being built to house athletes during the 2020 Olympics.

Another bridge. The traffic flowed freely and the bus travelled at a fast pace. 80 to 85 kms into the city. That was amazing going through a city so fast.

Bridge reflection on the bus.

Tokyo was full of blossoms but getting towards their end. Green shoots are starting to appear.

Our only stop in Tokyo before going to our hotel was at the Shibuya Crossing.

You had to experience this to see how crazy it was.

Some very cool salarymen.

Also near the crossing was the statue of Hachiko which is a monument dedicated to a loyal dog that waited on this spot even after his master had died. Locals fed the dog and gave him coats for winter until he died. It’s a very sad tale.

There are a number of metro lines coming into this crossing and when the lights change all sides can cross so there are a lot of people around.

Once the lights change people are off.

Huge numbers.

A group of Mario Cars were also waiting for the change of the lights.

You can hire these cars with an International license and drive around the city. People wear different superhero outfits.

Our hotel for three nights which will be great. Lots of tourists in Tokyo.

[bountyofbeads]

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Nine members of Mormon family with U.S. citizenship killed in attack in northern Mexico; Trump offers military support

By Mary Beth Sheridan | Published

November 05 at 7:43 AM ET | Washington Post | Posted Nov. 5, 2019 |

BREAKING: The victims were women and children who lived in a region plagued by cartel violence. President Trump lamented the deaths and offered to help Mexico take on its organized-crime crisis.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

MEXICO CITY —

Assailants have killed at least seven members of a Mormon family in northern Mexico, national media reported Tuesday, burning alive a woman and her children in a brutal assault that highlighted the growing danger posed by organized-crime groups around the country.

The daily Reforma reported that the victims included three women and four children. Another publication, El Universal, cited relatives saying that a dozen family members were killed — three women and nine children. They were part of a community of dual U.S.-Mexican citizens.

Mexican authorities said they have not yet confirmed the number of the victims.

Relatives posted video of a charred vehicle in which the victims had been traveling.

“This is how we live under the government of @lopezobrador,” tweeted Alex LeBaron, referring to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “Mexican Mormons, innocent women and children were ambushed in the Chihuahua sierra, shot and burned alive by the Cartels that rule in Mexico!”

The attack occurred on Monday when two of the women were driving a group of children from Bavispe, in Sonora state, to a Mormon community known as La Mora in neighboring Chihuahua state. Organized-crime groups in the area have been fighting and may have initially mistaken the vehicles for their rivals, according to news reports.

One vehicle, driven by Rhonita Miller LeBaron, had a flat tire, and the second car turned back to get help, according to the reports. The assailants attacked the first car, killing the driver and her four children — including two 6-month-old twins, according to the reports. They then set the vehicle on fire.

When the rest of the group returned to the site in two vehicles, they were also ambushed. Several other children escaped.

The attack occurred as Mexico is in an uproar over a botched anti-drug raid last month. In that incident, Sinaloa Cartel gunmen seized control of the city after soldiers attempted to arrest Ovidio Guzmán, son of notorious drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, on a U.S. extradition warrant. The government relinquished the younger Guzmán rather than risk what it feared would be a bloodbath.

“Hard to imagine that what happened in #Sonora today won’t impact [Mexico-U.S.] relations and security policy in [Mexico],” wrote Falko Ernst, Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, on Twitter. “Over the next days, I’d expect pressure within the U.S. to build on the Trump [administration] — by media and evangelicals, e.g. — and for that pressure to be passed onto Lopez Obrador.”

The LeBarons are descendants of Mormons who moved to Mexico in 1924, after disagreeing with the central church over polygamy. For decades, they lived quietly in farming communities, maintaining close ties with the United States and speaking both Spanish and English.

But their relative wealth made them targets of extortion and kidnapping when organized-crime groups began to assert themselves in northern Mexico. In 2009, a prominent member of the clan, Benjamin LeBaron, 31, was shot dead near his community in northern Mexico. He had publicly denounced the drug traffickers, who had earlier abducted his younger brother, demanding a $1 million ransom. (The family refused to pay). The killers left a message saying they were retaliating for LeBaron’s activism.

The latest attack coincided with a visit to Sonora by U.S. Ambassador Christopher Landau. “The security of our fellow [U.S.] citizens is our priority,” he tweeted. “I am following closely the situation in the mountains between Sonora and Chihuahua.”

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At Least 9 Members of Mormon Family in Mexico Are Killed in Ambush

Six children were among the victims in a massacre attributed to organized crime, family members said. Other children were rescued, some of whom hid along a roadside.

By Azam Ahmed, Elisabeth Malkin and  Daniel Victor | Published Nov. 5, 2019 Updated 6:01 AM ET | New York Times | Posted November 5, 2019 |

MEXICO CITY — At least three women and six children in a prominent local Mormon family were killed on Monday when their vehicles were ambushed in northern Mexico by gunmen believed to be members of organized crime, family members said. The attack alarmed a nation already reeling from record violence this year.

Members of the LeBarón family, American citizens who have lived in a fundamentalist Mormon community in the border region for decades, were traveling in three separate vehicles when the gunmen attacked, several family members said. They described a terrifying scene in which one child was gunned down while running away, while others were trapped inside a burning car.

Two of the children killed were less than a year old, the family members said. Kenny LeBarón, a cousin of the women driving the vehicles, said in a telephone interview that he feared the death toll could grow higher.

“When you know there are babies tied in a car seat that are burning because of some twisted evil that’s in this world,” Mr. LeBarón said, “it’s just hard to cope with that.”

Mexico has suffered a string of violent episodes in the last month, each as devastating and infuriating for citizens as the last.

Fourteen police officers were killed in the state of Michoacán in the middle of last month, in an ambush stemming from violent clashes in the state. Days later, cartel gunmen laid siege to the city of Culiacán in the state of Sinaloa, forcing the government to release one of the sons of the infamous drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, after having captured the son hours earlier.

In both cases, the stark challenges of public security were laid bare, raising questions about the government’s seriousness in combating the spiraling violence.

But Monday’s brutal killings seem to have hit a new low, with infants, children and their mothers murdered in broad daylight. It threatened to become a galvanizing moment for citizens fed up with the endless bloodshed and the government’s inability to do much about it.

Details of the attack remained murky early Tuesday, as state and local authorities struggled to determine the extent of the violence, and how exactly it unfolded.

It was unclear whether the attackers intentionally targeted the family, which has historically spoken out about the criminal groups that plague the northern border states of Sonora and Chihuahua, or whether it was a case of mistaken identity.

Julian LeBarón, a cousin of the three women who were driving the vehicles, said in a telephone interview from Bavispe, Mexico, that the women and their children had been traveling from the state of Sonora to the state of Chihuahua.

His cousin Rhonita was traveling to Phoenix to pick up her husband, who works in North Dakota and was returning to celebrate the couple’s wedding anniversary. Her car broke down, Mr. LeBarón said, and the gunmen “opened fire on Rhonita and torched her car.”

She was killed, along with an 11-year-old boy, a 9-year-old girl and twins who were less than a year old, he said.

About eight miles ahead, the two other cars were also attacked, killing the two other women, Mr. LeBarón said. A 4-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl were also killed, he said.

Family members said several children were rescued, some having hidden by the roadside to escape the attackers.

“Six little kids were killed, and seven made it out alive,” Mr. LeBarón said.

The women had married men from La Mora, which is in the municipality of Bavispe in Sonora. The surviving children were being taken by helicopter from Bavispe, the town closest to the La Mora community, to a hospital, he said.

He expressed bewilderment over what could have precipitated the attack. “They intentionally murdered those people,” Mr. LeBarón said. “We don’t know what their motives were.”

One of the women even got out of her car, Mr. LeBarón said, and put up her hands. “They shot her point blank in the chest,” he said.

Mr. LeBarón said the family had not received any threats, other than general warnings not to travel to Chihuahua, where they typically went to buy groceries and fuel.

As he watched the helicopter fly off with the injured children, Mr. LeBarón said that perhaps the killings would finally spur enough outrage to force change.

“We need the Mexican people to say at some point, we’ve had enough,” he said. “We need accountability; we don’t have that on any level.”

The massacre came a decade after two other members of the LeBarón family were kidnapped and murdered after they confronted the drug gangs that exercise de facto control over the empty endless spaces of the borderlands south of Arizona.

A family member and other Mormons settled a town in Mexico in the 1940s; many of its residents speak English and have dual citizenship.

Kenny LeBarón said much of the family now lives in North Dakota, working in the oil fields and running their own businesses, but they frequently travel to the border area for holidays, vacations and other special events.

“We’re a huge family, but we’re very close,” he said.

Multiple family members posted a video, said to have been taken after the attack, showing a charred vehicle riddled with bullet holes, with smoke still rising from it.

Family members took to social media to implore the governments of Mexico and the United States to do something about the intensifying violence in Mexico, in particular in the areas along the country’s northern border, where Mormons and Mennonites have lived for decades despite the threat from rampant organized crime.

Many took particular aim at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose government has struggled to articulate a coherent security strategy even as homicides mount and organized crime groups have carried out increasingly brazen attacks both against citizens and the state.

In the aftermath of Monday’s attack, the government deployed the newly formed National Guard as well as the military to the area to assist with the search for missing family members believed to have fled when they came under attack.

Azam Ahmed and Elisabeth Malkin reported from Mexico City, and Daniel Victor from Hong Kong.

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Gunmen kill Mormon family members in north Mexico

By Lizbeth Diaz |Published November 5, 2019, 9:15 AM ET | Reuters | Posted November 5, 2019 ¦

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Gunmen have killed up to nine members of a U.S. Mormon family, believed to be mainly children, in the latest massacre to afflict Mexico, family members said.

The victims belonged to the LeBaron family from a breakaway Mormon community that settled in the hills and plains of northern Mexico decades ago.

Two relatives Alex and Julian LeBaron told Reuters nine people had died, though a government source only confirmed five.

It was unclear what motivated the killings, which took place on Monday on a dirt road between Chihuahua and Sonora states, both bordering the United States.

A video posted on social media showed the charred and smoking remains of a vehicle riddled with bullet holes that was apparently carrying the victims when the attack happened.

“This is for the record,” says a male voice in an American accent, off camera, choking up with emotion.

“Nita and four of my grandchildren are burnt and shot up.”

Reuters could not independently verify the video.

Mexico has been hit by a wave of attacks in recent weeks, shocking even for a country inured to a decade of drug war violence. The most notable incident was a military-style cartel assault that forced the government to release a leader of the Sinaloa Cartel in October.

Given U.S. citizens were killed on Monday, the incident may increase pressure from Washington on President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to rein in armed groups. There was no immediate indication of who was behind the attack.

“WE DON’T KNOW WHO DID IT”

Chihuahua and Sonora state governments issued a joint statement saying an investigation had been launched and that some people were presumed dead and others missing.

The statement noted additional federal and local security forces were being sent into the area near the border between the two Mexican states, but did not provide further details.

Julian LeBaron described the incident as a “massacre,” saying some family members were burnt alive. In a text message, he said other injured members of the family were being transported to Phoenix, Arizona for treatment.

He said four boys, two girls and three women were killed.

“We don’t know why, though they had received indirect threats. We don’t know who did it,” he said.

Several children who fled the attack were lost for hours in the countryside before being found, Julian LeBaron added.

“My cousin was murdered with her children in the truck,” Alex LeBaron said, adding he believed nine people died.

In 2010, two members of the Chihuahua Mormon community, including one from the LeBaron family, were killed in apparent revenge after security forces tracked drug gang members. The Mormons had suffered widespread kidnappings before that.

Mormons of Germanic origin settled in northern Mexico in the 1920s from the United States. The group broke away from the mainstream Mormon church when it abandoned polygamous marriages.

U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Christopher Landau, who traveled to Sonora earlier on Monday for unrelated work meetings, said he was following the incident closely.

“The security of our co-nationals is our great priority,” he said on Twitter.

The U.S. embassy in Mexico did not immediately respond to a request for more information after hours.

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At least 9 US citizens die in cartel attack in north Mexico

By Mark Stevenson | Published November 5, 2019 9:20 AM ET | AP | Posted November 5, 2019 |

MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least three women and six children, all apparently U.S. citizens, were slaughtered by drug cartel gunmen in northern Mexico, officials said Tuesday. Six children were found alive, one child had a bullet wound and one child was still missing.

Mexican Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said the gunmen may have mistaken the group's large SUVs for rival gangs. He said at least five children have been taken to Phoenix, Arizona for treatment.

The slaughter of U.S. citizens on Mexican soil quickly became an international issue, with U.S. President Donald Trump tweeting, "This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth."

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador refused that approach, saying at a Tuesday news conference, "The worst thing you can have is war."

"We declared war, and it didn't work," Lopez Obrador said, referring to the policies of previous administrations. "That is not an option."

Still, it was the second failure in recent weeks for López Obrador's "hugs not bullets" anti-crime strategy. Two weeks ago, Mexican troops had to release a drug lord after his supporters mounted armed attacks in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

"The United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively," Trump tweeted. "The great new President of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!

A relative said the victims lived in the hamlet of La Mora in Sonora state, a decades-old settlement founded as part of an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

La Mora is about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Douglas, Arizona. Many of the church's members were born in Mexico and thus have dual citizenship.

The group was attacked while travelling in a convoy of SUVs. The relative asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.

The relative said he had located the burned-out, bullet-ridden SUV containing the remains of his nephew's wife and her four children — twin 6-month old babies and two other children aged 8 and 10.

"The mafia vehicles got her and four of her kids, and then set their vehicle on fire, burnt them to a crisp," said the relative.

Two women and two other children were later found dead.

"A wonderful family and friends from Utah got caught between two vicious drug cartels, who were shooting at each other, with the result being many great American people killed, including young children, and some missing," Trump wrote.

Durazo said police, soldiers and the National Guard were searching the rural, mountainous area on the Sonora-Chihuahua border for the missing child.

The relative said "We're guessing right now, but we believe it was a case of mistaken identity. They just opened fire on the vehicle because it was an SUV."

Durazo said the Sinaloa cartel had an important presence on the Sonora said, but that a rival cartel was trying to invade the territory from the Chihuahua side.

The relative said he saw cartel gunmen gathered about a mile away after the ambush. "The cartels from Sonora, there were probably 50 or 60 of them, armed to the teeth."

Another relative, Julian LeBaron, said on his Facebook page that one of the dead woman was Rhonita Maria LeBaron.

Jhon LeBaron, another relative, posted on his Facebook page that his aunt and another woman were dead. He also posted that six of his aunt's children had been left abandoned but alive on a roadside.

It would not be the first time that members of the break-away church had been attacked in northern Mexico, where their forebears settled — often in Chihuahua state — decades ago.

In 2009, Benjamin LeBaron, an anti-crime activist who was related to those killed in Monday's attack, was murdered in 2009 in neighboring Chihuahua state.

🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕

[topbeautifulwomens]

#Richard #Burgi #family #jewelry #makeuplooks #modelo #motivation #naturephotography #rap #singer #viral #youtube

ICHARD was born on July 30, 1958 in Montclair, New Jersey. He is married to Lori Kahn, and they have two sons, Jack and Samuel.

For Richard, a strong interest in music and theater is in his blood. His parents and three siblings were interested in the performing arts and the Burgi home was a fertile environment.

Richard recalls, “…my brother and I had a detective agency when we were kids. We were really enamuch mored with these kids’ novels, the Brains Benton series. They’re rather obscure. They were, I guess, a thinking boys’ alternative to the Hardy Boys. Not that the Hardy Boys were idiots. But, I mean, these were really wildly constructed stories that these two junior detectives went through. So he and I had fashioned ourselves after Brains Benton and his partner, and had a laboratory and all these Erlenmeyer flasks – beakers and condensers. And we’d make this and boil that. And we had gunpowder, and we’d light fires in the basement. And it was total insanity. But the final straw, as far as my parents were concerned, was when… well, the house caught on fire one day. It got messy. So we had to retire early.”

After finishing school, Richard traveled throughout the U.S. and Europe. Though a career in acting was always one of Richard’s goals, it took a while for the goal to become a reality.

He finally ended up in New York City and began studying acting and gaining acting experience with commercials and cameos, which led to regular roles on several daytime dramas.

When Richard left Days of Our Lives, the co-executive producer said “Richard has such amazing timing, whether dramatic or comedic.”

A move to Los Angeles allowed him to read for different types of roles. A recurring role as Lane Cassidy in Viper led to a lead role in One West Waikiki with Cheryl Ladd.

His character, Mack Wolfe, was a man fighting demons, struggling to become a hero. “I think it was organic in that way to take him in that direction, because I think to watch people struggle through their dark ingredients is appealing. Going through it and out and up into a joyful, winning, positive, light area is appealing… and the possibility of sliding back.”

As Jim Ellison in The Sentinel, Richard played “a champion of the light, of the good, that’s where he is, that’s where I am in some way.”

Richard has been keeping busy since The Sentinel ceased production in 1998, beginning with a guest spot on the popular CBS drama Touched By An Angel as well as appearing on E! Entertainment TV’s Celebrity Homes feature. His character in the pilot of the short-lived 1999 FOX comedy, Action — action movie star Cole Riccardi — came back for a second appearance in the show’s controversial fourth episode, “Blowhard.” Richard guested on a 1999-2000 season episode of NBC’s comedy Veronica’s Closet as Veronica’s new beau Mark, as well as an episode of the popular NBC drama Providence as Dr. J.D. Scanlon. He also filmed a Fall 2000 episode of NBC’s Just Shoot Me, appearing as action hero Robert “The Nomad” Gallatin, and joined the recurring cast of the hit CBS drama, The District, in the role of Captain Vincent Hunter. He also appeared as the ill-fated Paul Donovan in the March 18th, 2001 ABC/Wonderful World of Disney feature “Bailey’s Mistake,” opposite Linda Hamilton .

Fall 2001 located Richard in the new FOX drama, 24, playing the part of Alan York/Kevin Carroll in the Golden Globe-winning drama’s first season. In addition to filming his eleven-episode story arc on 24, Richard entired filming the new “indie” feature film, “Wheelmen,” playing former hotshot ambulance driver, Nick Torino. “Wheelmen” is currently awaiting a distributor. Richard joined the recurring cast of the CBS drama Judging Amy in Spring 2002, playing the part of Judge Amy (Amy Brenneman) Gray’s ex-husband, Michael Cassidy. He spent most of May and June with the Matrix Theatre Company’s production of the Neil Landau-written “Johnny On The Spot,” playing dual roles, Fred and Sy. After appearing at the 42nd Monte Carlo Television Festival (July 1-6) in Monaco, Richard rejoined his “Johnny On The Spot” castmates for the July 20th Los Angeles finale.

Richard brought in Fall 2002 with an appearance in the season premiere of Judging Amy, once again in the role of Amy’s ex-husband, Michael. Head writer Barbara Hall revealed that the custody dispute between Michael and Amy would be a continuing theme throughout the season, which proved to be the case with three of his four episodes: “Lost in the System,” “People of the Lie,” and “The Best Interests of the Child” all dealt with and finally resolved the custody issue, while the most recent — “Marry, Marry Quite Contrary” — showed Michael and Amy as friends who still care for each other. In addition to his continuing association with Judging Amy, Richard returned to CBS’s The District in two episodes, appearing once more as Captain Hunter in “The Second Man” and “Good-bye, Jenny.” He has also filmed an episode of the “most watched” CBS show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, playing paragliding instructor Rick Weston in “High and Low,” which aired December 12th. Richard closed out 2002 playing Lieutenant Womack in “The Message,” one of the final episodes of the FOX network’s Firefly, a sci-fi series from Joss Whedon, producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Though FOX decided to cancel Firefly before airing all of the contracted episodes, the show was temporarily snatched up by the syndication market; “The Message” aired on the UK Sci Fi Channel in July 2003.

Richard ushered in 2003 with his most recent episodes of Judging Amy and The District, and worked with producer Chris Thompson (Action) on a new pilot for the WB Network. The new show, a comedy titled Trash, was described as “Romeo and Juliet set in a trailer park,” with Richard playing Bud Blue, father of teenager Luna — the show’s Juliet. Unfortunately, Trash was not picked up by the WB for the Fall season.

In addition to his television work, Richard spent part of March and April in Ottawa, Canada, where he joined the cast of the Matt Hastings-directed “Decoys” as Detective Francis Kirk. Hastings described the movie as “‘American Pie’ meets ‘Species'” — a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi thriller set on a college campus. Next up was the long-awaited sequel to “Starship Troopers,” titled “Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation,” from producer Jon Davison, director Phil Tippett, and writer Ed Neumeier. Richard leads the cast as the “hero” mentioned in the title — a tough trooper named Captain V.J. Dax. Principal photography ran from May 14th through June 20th. The film premiered on the Encore Action Channel, part of the Starz! group of Cable channels, on April 24th, 2004, with DVD release starting in May.

Richard enjoyed a brief flirtation with summer vacation, but was at work on “Jack’s Back,” the Fall 2003 season premiere episode of The District by mid-July, after which he headed to Sofia, Bulgaria to shoot “Darklight,” a sci-fi thriller designed by UFO Films for the Sci Fi Channel’s 2004-05 roster of original features. The “Darklight” shoot ran from July 28th through August 20th. The last quarter of 2003 proved to be just as busy, with additional episodes of The District as well as a role in “Cellular,” a thriller from New Line Cinema starring Kim Basinger, William. H. Macy, Chris Evans and Jason Statham. Richard played Craig Martin, husband of Basinger’s character Jessica. Cellular premiered in theaters on September 10th ’04.

February 2004 found Richard once again at work on a major feature film — “In Her Shoes” from Fox 2000 and 20th Century Fox. The dramatic comedy stars Cameron Diaz (Maggie), Toni Collette (Rose), and Shirley MacLaine (Ella), with Richard playing the part of Rose’s love ’em and leave ’em cad of a boyfriend, Jim Danvers. The film is expected to premiere in 2005.

While waiting to film his remaining scenes for “In Her Shoes,” Richard worked on Point Pleasant, the pilot for a new “superall-natural” dramatic series. From producer Marti Noxon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, and 20th Century Fox Television, Point Pleasant has been described as “a kinder, gentler ‘Rosemary’s Baby,'” and “a cross between Peyton Place and ‘The Omen.'” Richard plays Dr. Ben Kramer, a fortysomething husband and father whose family takes in the show’s lead character, a mysterious young girl who washes up on the beach one day.

Point Pleasant was given a 12-episode order (13 including the pilot, portions of which have been re-shot) in late August ’04 and went into production in San Diego in November. FOX launched the show on January 19th and 20th at 9:00pm as a two-part premiere, with 9:00pm Thursday becoming its official timeslot following The O.C.

May 2004 found Richard in New Orleans working on a film for Lifetime Television titled “Torn Apart.” The thriller stars Tia Carrere as Vicki Westin, Dale Midkiff as Jerry Bender, and Richard Burgi as Billy Westin, and premiered in late September ’04. Tia Carrere plays a doctor whose husband (Burgi) and daughter are kidnapped by a man (Midkiff) whose wife and daughter Dr. Vicki Westin couldn’t save. Instead of a ransom, Jerry Bender demands that Vicki decide on whether her husband or daughter will die.

Richard brought in Fall 2004 with a guest role on the new ABC series Desperate Housewives, where he played Karl Mayer, the philandering ex-husband of series star Teri Hatcher’s Susan Mayer. Next came a five-week shoot on the new Jim Carrey comedy, “Fun with Dick and Jane.” The film, a remake of the 1977 original starring Jane Fonda and George Segal, stars Jim Carrey and Tea Leoni as Dick and Jane Harper. The Harpers are a young couple who turn to a life of crime to pay the bills after Dick loses his job. Richard plays a new character, Joe Kleman (we’re uncertain of the exact surname spelling). The movie is slated for a June 2005 release in the USA.

The last quarter of 2004 saw Richard working on a second episode of ABC’s breakout hit, Desperate Housewives, before starting production on his new FOX series, Point Pleasant. The episode of Desperate Housewives, “Move On,” premiered just over a week before Point Pleasant launched on FOX. Richard also filmed an episode of ABC’s midseason drama Eyes sometime in late 2004, roughly concurrent with his work on Desperate Housewives. The Eyes role was intended as a recurring character, but Richard’s commitment to Point Pleasant prevented his continued involvement with the show.

The first quarter of 2005 found Richard still hard at work on Point Pleasant. Though FOX decided to cancel the show in late March with five episodes unaired, 20th Century Fox kept the show in production and finished all thirteen episodes. With the complete season available for broadcast, Point Pleasant aired in a variety of international markets. FOX later released a Complete Series DVD boxed set, as was done with Firefly. Late March found Richard being featured in launch promos for ABC’s Eyes, which premiered on March 30th. (Sadly, ABC pulled the show before Richard’s episode could be aired).

The second quarter of 2005 saw Richard finishing the last episodes of Point Pleasant in mid April and, roughly a week later, returning to Wisteria Lane and Desperate Housewives, where he took part in the season finale episode, “One Wonderful Day.” As it turned out, the finale appearance also served to reintroduce the character to viewers — by July, Richard would be confirmed as a series regular for Fall 2005. Richard started a six week feature film shoot in Shanghai, China in mid-June, where he worked on “Shanghai Red,” a joint venture between MAR de ORO Films and Shanghai Film Studios. Richard costars with Vivian Wu, whose husband Oscar L. Costo is the writer, director, and producer of the film. Richard plays an expatriate American named Michael Johnson. As described for us by Oscar Costo, “‘Shanghai Red’ is a dramatic film about the journey of a young, modern Shanghai mother Meili Zhu (Vivian Wu) who suffers the loss of her husband and how she comes to terms with her state of depression. In her murderous journey of revenge, Meili meets Michael Johnson (Richard Burgi), an expatriate American from Chicago escaping his own dark past. Even though Michael’s motives for being with Meili are originally laced with deception, he ultimately finds hope, love and honor through her.”

Late July 2005 found Richard home from China and once again at work on Desperate Housewives, this time as a series regular. As suspected, Karl spent the Fall 2005 season stirring up trouble on Wisteria Lane by becoming romantically involved with neighborhood vamp, Edie Britt (Nicollette Sheridan) while still pining after ex-wife Susan (Teri Hatcher). By the end of the season, Karl had secretly remarried Susan to provide her with medical insurance coverage while still stringing Edie along with a sham engagement. He had also been hired by Bree (Marcia Cross) to serve as her lawyer in her son Andrew’s emancipation case. Richard’s work as Karl was often mentioned in the press as a highlight of the season. Sadly, a reorganization of the Desperate Housewives production and writing staff led to a reprioritizing of storylines for the Fall 2006 season, which led to Karl being sidelined and essentially excised from the ongoing saga.

While waiting for news of his fate on Desperate Housewives, Richard spent the summer of 2006 working on movies and making public appearances. “Firestorm: Last Stand at Yellowstone,” a telemovie for A&E, was filmed in May in British Columbia, Canada. After a quick June trip to Rhode Island and the Newport International Film Festival, Richard was once again in Canada — Ontario, this time — to work on “In God’s Country” for CTV and Lifetime TV. August found Richard at the All*Star Cup charity golf tournament in Newport, Wales, and by October, he was hard at work in Prague, Czech Republic, on “Hostel: Part II,” the sequel to Eli Roth’s horror blockbuster “Hostel.” In addition to “Hostel: Part II,” Richard filmed a short scene for a Sweeps episode of Desperate Housewives, “Children and Art,” which has been his last appearance on the show to date.

2007 found Richard working on a mix of television guest spots and movies, beginning with three back-to-back episodes of NBC’s Las Vegas, which were filmed in January and aired in late February and March. A fourth Las Vegas episode — the conclusion of the previous season’s cliff-hanger finale — was filmed in May, after which Richard was once more Canada-bound for another movie role. “Thomas Kinkade’s Home for Christmas,” scheduled for a Christmas 2008 release, found Richard playing Bill Kinkade, father of famous American painter Thomas Kinkade. Richard filmed an episode of the CBS legal drama Shark in July, playing an unscrupulous plastic surgeon. The episode, “Eye of the Beholder,” aired October 7th.

Richard’s last role before the WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike effectively shut down television production for the rest of the year was in ABC’s Big Shots, playing billionaire adrenaline junkie Gavin Carter. The episode, “The Way We Weren’t,” aired November 29th.

Thus far, 2008 has gotten off to a slow start for Richard, due largely to the strike-related industry shutdown. He filmed a commercial for the 2008 Cadillac DTS DeVille Touring Sedan in mid-January which, as of mid-February, has yet to premiere. Now that the WGA strike has been resolved and television production resumed, Richard and his peers should soon be back at work.

Right now, Richard cherishes his time with his family. Marriage and fatherhood agree with him; in fact, they “changed my life around,” he says. “I’m more in love than I’ve ever been. I can’t imagine anything that surpasses this.”

Time with family dovetails beautifully with Richard’s other loves — music, surfing, nature and bird-watching. Richard is the proud owner of a vintage Buddy Miles drum-set and enjoys playing it whenever possible; during a Spring 1999 appearance on Access Hollywood, he revealed that get-togethers in the Burgi household often turn into impromptu concerts, with adults grabbing instruments and children singing along.

An enthusiastic surfer and nature lover, Richard spends as much time outdoors as possible, either at the beach or hiking through the hills with his family. Introducing his sons to the natural world is an added pleasure. He feels a strong connection to nature and is an advocate of environmental protection and preservation.

Richard was involved for a time with the Yellowstone Ecological Survey,an organization devoted to educating the public on the delicate Yellowstone ecosystem. The Bozeman, Montana-based organization is best known for its part in the reintroduction of wolves to the Yellowstone ecosystem. Richard now supports the work of the Surfrider Foundation, a San Clemente, CA – based organization which works to protect and preserve shoreline and coastal environments. “Life comes and goes, and I think we require to save our planet and not hurt it,” he explains. “I like to be proactive, but at the same time I like to work in a grass roots way and impact my environment as best I can.”

Richard is also an avid bird-watcher, an interest he discovered as a ten-year-old. Sharp-eyed viewers of The Sentinel may have noticed a variety of bird-watching books and framed bird prints scattered throughout Ellison’s Loft; many, if not all, belong to Richard or were selected by him. Perhaps the most noticeable is a National Audubon Society print on the wall of Jim’s bedroom.

Richard’s interest in and commitment to preserving the environment for future generations, his preference for “grass roots” work, and his passion for and devotion to the sea and the marine mammals common to the waters of his California home led him to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, a Laguna Beach, CA – based, volunteer-run and funded organization which tends to the needs of sick or injured seals, sea lions, and other marine mammals. The RBFC is delighted to join Richard in his support of and interest in the Pacific Marine Mammal Center.

Name Richard Burgi Height 6' 1½” Naionality American Date of Birth 30 July 1958 Place of Birth Montclair, New Jersey, USA Famous for

The post Richard Burgi Biography Photographs Wallpapers appeared first on Beautiful Women.

source http://topbeautifulwomen.com/richard-burgi-biography-photographs-wallpapers/

[mchenryjd]

2017 in Review

Necessarily incomplete, mostly for my personal record. I will probably regret this.

MOVIES

10.  mother!

Got to a screening late, had to sit in the third show, could barely tell what was happening and spent most of the movie staring at J. Law’s flared nostrils. An ideal viewing experience.

9.     Personal Shopper

Nothing captures the purposeful emptiness of spending time online like Kristen Stewart texting a ghost.

8.     Get Out

I kept telling my dad this movie was funny to get him to see it, not realizing he didn’t already know it was a horror movie. Afterwards, he texted me, “that was not a comedy!” Feels like that’s enough a metaphor. Daniel Kaluuya for best actor.

7.     Star Wars: The Last Jedi

A Star Wars movie about loving Star Wars movies, which means loving the epic, silly struggle between good and epic, loving the spiral staircase that is John Williams’s force theme, loving it when character always do the coolest possible thing followed by the next coolest possible thing, loving dumb furry creatures and sarcastic slimy ones, loving it when characters kiss when you want them to kiss, loving the hundred-million-dollar sandbox of it all. After the constricted dance steps of The Force Awakens and Rogue One, give me this bleeding freestyle any day.

6.     Phantom Thread

Finally, proof that everyone in a serious relationship has lost it.

5.     Call Me By Your Name

I refuse to believe that being stuck in rural Italy would be anything other than deadly boring and if my father insisted on turning everything into a lecture on classical art, I would run away. Also, there’s a contrast between the book (vague on the details of place and time, vividly specific on matters of sex) and the film (more contextually specific, sexier, but less horny than the original). Also, who am I kidding, I was moved and unsettled by the force of the thing. *Michael Stuhlbarg voice* Pray you get a chance to fall in love like this.

4.     Dunkirk

Having your tense, churning, clanking, thrumming, score transform into Elgar right when the beautiful, imperiled young heroes are reading a stirring speech (and Tom Hardy is heroically sacrificing himself in what looks like the middle of a Turner painting) is a level of craft so deft if feels like cheating, but it works.

3.     BPM

A film about a community in danger that acts as both a memorial to and rallying cry for that community. Uncompromising, accommodating, queer in the best way, BPM makes you want to cry and go dancing at the same time.

2.     Columbus

The kind of movie that makes you want to get in a car and keep driving until you find something beautiful, it has stuck and expanded in my memory ever since I saw it over the summer. Like the architecture that looms large in the setting, the plot can feel uncomfortably schematic – John Cho wants to leave and gets  stuck, Haley Lu Richardson is stuck and gets to leave. The question is how people live within, and blur the edges of, those confines. John Cho has a winning, curdled decency; Haley Lu Richardson gives the hardest kind of performance, in that she often seems unaware of her character’s own wants. I’d watch her quietly assemble dinner for hours on end.

1.     Lady Bird  

A movie that feels less plotted and more prefigured – every fight between Lady Bird has happened before, every high school landmark lumbers by with inevitability, every boy disappoints in the way you expect. What redeems all this? Paying attention, which is also love, in this movie’s pseudo-religious sense. Between Lady Bird and Marion, between Lady Bird and Julie, between Lady Bird and Sacramento. Watch people closely, as Greta Gerwig does, and they reveal glimmers of themselves (I know so little, and yet everything, about Stephen McKinley Henderson’s drama teacher from a few moments that feel perfect, in the sense of contained, past-tense completeness). It’ll all so ordinary. Fall in love with it.

Honorable mentions: Regina Hall’s speech about friendship in Girls Trip, Sally Hawkins tracing a droplet with her finger in The Shape of Water, Meryl Streep on the phone in The Post, Cara Delevingne in Valerian, Rihanna in Valerian, the part where the ghost jumped off the building in A Ghost Story, the fact that Power Rangers was surprisingly good, the soldier who gasps as Diana whips out her hair in the trenches in Wonder Woman, Ansel Elgort’s jacket in Baby Driver, whenever anyone tried to explain anything in Alien: Covenant, Elisabeth Moss in The Square, Anh Seo-hyun feeding Okja in Okja, Lois Smith being in movies, the kids eating ice cream in The Florida Project, the Game of Thrones joke in Logan Lucky, Vella Lovell in The Big Sick, and finally, most preciously, the moment in Home Again where Reese Witherspoon kissed Michael Sheen and someone in my theater shouted “she’s not feeling it!”

TELEVISION

10.  The Good Doctor

Listen, he’s a good doctor.

9.     Riverdale

They’re hot. They’re angsty. They do drugs that look like Pixy-Stix. They never seem to do homework. They love to hook-up in weird locations. They have terrible taste in karaoke songs. They love hair dye, and a well-defined eyebrow. They have really hot parents. They’re TV teens! I love it.

8.     Insecure

This is just to say that I am far too invested in Molly’s happiness as a person. I would also like to view a full season of Due North.

7.     American Vandal

From Alex Trimboli to Christa Carlyle, the best names on TV are on this show. Also the best reenactments, and somehow the most incisive take on what fuels, and results from TV’s true-crime obsession. Jimmy Tatro mumbling!

6.     Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

More shows should take the opportunity to explode in their third seasons, rocket forward at full speed, diagnose their main characters, and give Josh Groban wonderful, unexplainable cameos.

5.     Alias Grace

A show that conjured a performance for the ages out of Sarah Gadon and somehow made Zachary Levi palatable as a dramatic actor, this miracle of collaboration between Mary Harron and Sarah Polley is all the better for being binged. Down it in an afternoon, think of Grace under her black veil, daring you to disbelieve her, for years to come.

4.     Twin Peaks: The Return

A show that drove nostalgia into itself like a knife to the chest. Totally absurd. The best revival/exorcism yet on TV.

3.     Please Like Me

“Sorry about your life.” “I’m sorry about your life.” In a time when things tend to peter out, what a final season, in which everything goes to shit and then some. Maybe TV’s most prickly comedy, Please Like Me’s heart is of the “stumble along and keep going” sort and never does it test itself as much as it did with this bleak, pastel final statement.

2.     The Leftovers

Do you believe Nora Durst’s story? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think it sounds ridiculous. Sometimes I relax in the comfortable, academic premise that it only matters that Kevin does. It’s a haunting idea, though, this image of world even emptier than The Leftovers’s own, where it’s possible to wander for untold time in darkness. Carrie Coon’s description of it is a kind of journey to the underworld – we’re there with her, maybe, and then we make it back, maybe. The trick of The Leftovers is the wound’s never fully healed.

1.     Halt and Catch Fire

The world changes. People sorta don’t.

Honorable mentions: the twist in The Good Place, the Taylor Swift demon character in Neo Yokio, Claire Foy on The Crown, Vanessa Kirby on The Crown, the stand-up in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Cristin Milioti in Black Mirror, the televised Academy Awards ceremony, the weeks when Netflix didn’t release new TV shows I had to watch, Girls’s “American Bitch,” the fact that Adam Driver is both in Girls and Star Wars, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys performances on The Americans (and life in Brooklyn), the moments in Game of Thrones that were good enough to make me stop thinking about what people would write about Game of Thrones, season 2 of The Magicians’s resistance to any sort of plot logic, Jane the Virgin’s narrator, Nicole Kidman at therapy on Big Little Lies, Reese Witherspoon’s production of Avenue Q in Big Little Lies, Alexis Bledel holding things in The Handmaid’s Tale, Maggie Gyllenhaal directing porn in The Deuce, Alison Brie’s terrible Russian accent in Glow, Maya Rudolph in Big Mouth, Cush Jumbo miming oral sex with a pen in court in The Good Fight, the calming experience of watching new episodes of Superstore and Great News on Fridays, Eden Sher in The Middle, the fake books they make up for Younger, and Rihanna livestreaming herself watching Bates Motel.

THEATER

10.  Indecent

History, identity, community all mangled together in something that’s both excavation and revivification. I’m so mad I didn’t get to see it with my mom.

9.     Mary Jane

A nightmare that goes from bad to worse, which Carrie Coon performed with the endurance of a saint.

8.     SpongeBob SquarePants

Highlights: The tap number, the Fiddler on the Roof joke, the many uses of pool noodles, David Zinn’s design in general, the arms, the volcano setpiece, the fact that somehow I kept laughing for two-and-a-half hours at something SpongeBob SquarePants. Tina Landau, you’re a hero.

7.     Hello, Dolly!

I had a wonderful viewing experience like this, in that I sat alone on an aisle next to an older gay man who turned to me right when the curtain came down on the first act and said, “man, we love Bette.” (Shout out to any and all gags involving the whale.)

6.     Groundhog Day

Proof you can dig deeper into the material you’re adapting and still find more. Sometimes, the funniest gags come out of old-fashioned repetition. Andy Karl has the Rolex-like ability to make it all speed by without revealing any of the ticks, and then wallop you in the second act.  

5.     The Glass Menagerie

A lot of unconventional ideas piled onto each other that go so far into strange territory that they loop back around to being immediate. Maybe distant to some, but enough to unsettle me. I can still smell the onstage rain.

4.     The Wolves

A sign of a good play is probably that you remain invested in the characters long after you see it, and I’m going to spend so much time worrying about all the girls on the soccer team in The Wolves for the rest of my life.

3.     The Band’s Visit

Katrina Lenk has a gorgeous voice. Tony Shalhoub is restrained to the point that he could move his baton with nanometer accuracy. The songs are transporting. But most of all, The Band’s Visit manages to capture loneliness better than nearly any musical I’ve seen. Everyone, audience included, experiences something together, and then it all, slowly, both lingers and drifts apart.

2.     A Doll’s House, Part 2

What, you think I wasn’t going to include a play with a Laurie Metcalf performance? ADHP2 is perhaps clever to a fault in its set-up, but in the right hands, it turns into something both funny and moving – a story about what it takes to become a complete person, in or outside the influence of other people. Nora’s monologue about living in silence near the end is the full of the kind of simple statements that are so hard to act, and so brilliant when done just right.

1.     The Antipodes

Both an extended meditation on what it means to run out of stories and a brutal subtweet of Los Angeles, The Antipodes is my kind of play, in that it’s mostly people talking, Josh Charles is involved and very disgruntled, and everyone eats a lot of take out.

Honorable mentions: the music in Sunday in the Park With George, the pies in Sweeney Todd, the ensemble of Come From Away, seeing Dave Malloy in The Great Comet of 1812, Alex Newell’s “Mama Will Provide” in Once on This Island, Cate Blanchet having fun in The Present, Imelda Staunton in the NTLive Follies, Michael Urie in Torch Song, Patti LuPone’s accent(s) in War Paint, Ashley Park in KPOP, and Gleb.

[movienewsemail-blog]

Movie News 07/17/17

Hello Everyone and welcome back to this week's edition of your Movie News Email.

Due to another "Technical Difficulty" (AHEM!!!), the news is coming out a day later.  Sorry for the inconvenience, and even though you probably know most of what we are going to go over, again, just act surprised when we get there.

This week, we rundown the top 5 box office movies, and we will see who won the number one spot.  Will it be "Spider-Man: Homecoming", or will "War For The Planet of the Apes" knock Spidey from the top spot. It's a battle royale between the two for supremacy at the box office. We also have some news to deliver, and we, sadly, say goodbye to a couple of greats.

It's the Movie News Email, and it begins....NOW!

First up we must go to our “In Memorium” segment.  This weekend we lost legendary director George Romero. George is best known for his “Night of the Living Dead”, and “Dawn of the Dead”.  Romero died from what is being called a brief but aggressive battle with Lung cancer.  He was 77. God Speed to the man who made zombies cool. Also lost to us this past weekend was Martin Landau.  Landau starred in the TV series "Mission: Impossible", and in the 70's starred in the Sci Fi show "Space: 1999". Martin died of "Unexpected Complications" at the young age of 89.  God Bless and Rest In Peace.

Now to the box office.

At number 5 this week, moving UP 3 places from number 8 is “The Big Sick”.  The romantic comedy starring Holly Hunter, Zoe Kazan, and Ray Romano took in 7.6 million dollars and knocked “Wonder Woman” out of the top 5. Falling one spot to number 4 is the action film “Baby Driver”.  The Kevin Spacey did a box office take of 8.75 million dollars. Coming in at number 3 with a weekend box office of just under 19 million dollars, is the hit animated film “Despicable Me 3”.  With this weekend, the Minions closes in on the 188 million dollar mark. Now to the top 2.  At number 2, falling out of the top spot, we have “Spider-Man: Homecoming”.  Now don’t feel too bad for the movie.  It pulled in another 45.2 million dollars and in just two weeks passed the 200 million mark. And our new number one movie, “War For The Planet of the Apes”.  Ceasar took the number one spot with 56.5 million dollars, and that makes it a close call with “Spider-Man”, as we thought it might be. But the Apes got it and congratulations to them.  Now it will be interesting to see who can take the top spot next weekend.

So what do we have coming out this coming weekend.

Well first up is Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and Regina Hall get together to take a “Girl Trip”.  I suspect this will make the top 10, but with everything that’s out now, I don’t think it has the power to crack the top 5. The next two movies may, though I would suspect one of them won’t either. The one that I don’t think will make it, but should, is the Christopher Nolan film “Dunkirk”, which is the story of the battle between Allied forces and the Germans at Dunkirk, France during World War II. Previews for it look fantastic, but again, may not be strong enough to debut in the top 5. What I do think will be strong enough, and may actually turn out to be the next cult film is Luc Besson’s Sci Fi film “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”. Now I know one of our members will be seeing this one and I am hopeful of a review. But if anyone sees any of these films, please send me a review so I can add it to the News.  Thank you.

Now to the news.

In a major move, the BBC has announced today that Doctor Who will get it’s first female Doctor.  Jodie Whitaker will take over as the 13th Doctor after current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, enters the Tardis for the last time in the Christmas special.

At the Disney D23 Conference that went on this weekend, we got some new information about upcoming Disney movies. First up, it was announced that "Toy Story 4" will be released on June 21st of 2019. Also from Pixar we will see the return of The Incredibles.  Original cast members Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, and Samuel L. Jackson were on hand and will returns to reprise their roles.

Audiences were then treated to cast memebers of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, as the director Rian Johnson came out on stage along with Daisy Ridley, Gwendoline Christie, Benicio Del Toro and Laura Dern.  A Behind the Scenes clip followed thier panel. I have seen it, and it looks fantastic.  Go to youtube and search for "Star Wars:The Last Jedi Behind the Scenes" to watch the 3 minute clip. But rounding out the panel was the presentation for "Avengers: Infinity War".  All I can say is I sure wish I was there.  Here is how it went down. Kevin Feige, Marvel's genius Studio president, introduced Josh Brolin who will play Thanos, but then the others came walking out one by one, Dave Bautista (Drax), Karen Gillan (Nebula), Paul Bettany (Vision), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch).  But that's not all-Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange) came out alone with Tom Holland (Spider-Man). But where were the Avengers?  Well fear not-Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk) and Robert Downey Jr (Iron Man) came out on stage followed by Joe Russo, one of the two directors. A teaser trailer was shown (Sorry, not available to us yet), and by that time, the crowd was in an uproar that was louder than a concert by AC/DC. (MAN-I WISH I WAS THERE)

Also in the news, we have learned that "Wonder Woman 2" will take place in the 1980's and the Amazon Princess will face off in Russia.  This places her smack dab in the middle of the cold war.  I kind of like this idea.  We got Wonder Woman in her first major adventure, we see her, now more experienced in "Batman V Superman", now we get to see a little bit of her in the middle of the two.  Now there is a rumor going around that Chris Pine will appear in the movie, reprising his role as Steve Trevor, so, of course, there are a plethora of explanations as to how this will occur.  But this could only be rumor brought on by fans, so take this one with a grain of salt. No word as to when production will begin, but you know we will tell you as soon as we find out.  (Can't wait)

In the world of Marvel, Sony announced 6 future dates for new Marvel related movies. Those dates are: June 7 2019 November 22 2019 March 13 2020 June 26 2020 October 2 2020 March 5 2021

Now they didn't announce what movies these dates relate to, but with San Diego Comic Con coming up, it is suspected that we will get those titles then.  Stay tuned.

We started getting TV teaser spots for the upcoming "Gifted" series. 

Samuel L. Jackson has been confirmed to be in the upcoming "Captain Marvel" film.  If you remember, at the end of "Captain America: Winter Soldier" Nick Fury went into seclusion.  This news might signal his return to active duty.

Bushmaster and Nightshade will make their debut appearances in season 2 of Netflix's "Luke Cage".  Mustafa Shakir will play Bushmaster, and Gabriel Dennis will play Nightshade.  Fans of the comics will know that Nightshade is Queen of the Werewolves, and Bushmaster is an antagonist that covets Luke's powers. And we have also learned that the premier episode of season 2 will be directed by Lucy Liu.  Definitely one to catch.

Oh, and rushing through last week's edition, I completely forgot to mention a little Easter Egg in "Spiderman: Homecoming".  In the movie (Spoiler Alert), Spiderman's A.I suit is named by Peter as "Karen".  Well, Karen is voiced by Jennifer Connelly.  Jennifer is married to Paul Bettany, who by the way voices "Jarvis" who is the A.I. voice of Iron Man's suit.  Just a cute little tidbit of information. There are other Easter Eggs in the movie, and maybe we will go over them next week when "Spider-Man: Homecoming" regains the number one spot.  (Don't believe me?  We'll see.)

OK, that should be enough for this week.  San Diego Comic Con kicks off with a Preview Night on Wednesday, and then the whole show goes into full gear Thursday through Sunday.  So we should have some really exciting news to deliver next week.  So, by all means, stay tuned.  And if anyone is planning on attending SDCC, Take me with you...please.

So join us next week for another edition of your Movie News Email.

Thank you for being here.  As always it's a blast, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

See you next week.

So until next time,        “Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars” - Kasey Kasum

Rocky