#but it is so anathema to what we know of henry's character

[callmearcturus]

hello, hi i came across your post about dottie lasso and i wanted to say FUCKING THANK YOU for articulating how i feel about her. i couldn't msg you directly so i'm sending this lol.

i constantly see people pull the "oh she's trying, she's midwestern, she doesn't know any better" excuse which is completely baseless imo. she's manipulative and henry never gave any indication that he wanted ted to move back. they spent a whole episode showing how at home henry is/could be in richmond, that he has a support system there the same way ted does. it's one of the things i hate the most about how s3 ended (and that list is long). dottie doesn't like ted and she doesn't like him building a life away from what she thinks is the right place for him.

i also think her being so dismissive about therapy and his progress was very telling that she doesn't want him to do better and move on in a way ehe never could. she wants him repressed and sad bc that's what she still is.

Can I touch on the "midwestern" thing as a midwesterner myself? Bc that one is wild.

Because... Ted is midwestern too and he's a fascinating depiction. The show makes it a core of his character to be as wide with his references and interests as possible. When classic christianity is referenced, he always makes a lil remark that is clear code for "I grew up here and I know the language but I'm not one of you anymore." He has all the tics and habits of a man from that background, and he applies all of that candor to a lot of progressive ideals that doesn't come standard.

Like, lets be real, that's the core conceit and appeal of the entire show, that specific combination.

So why the fuck do we just say "oh it's okay, dottie's midwestern" like what the fuck. Like, when Ted was dismissive of therapy, I actually did chalk that up to him being midwestern at first, and then the show went on and established no actually it has nothing to do with that, he has bad history with therapy.

I dunno, I think diminishing someone's actions based on their circumstances is actually anathema to the show, so why would Dottie get a pass?

ANYWAY i'm rambling. probably bc the thing that hooked me on the show was i was gutted by seeing myself in a piece of media so vividly. there's a fucking reason I keep listening to Josh Ritter and looking at pictures of home.

[fideidefenswhore]

Not everything here is a failure—the film is more misstep than fiasco, perhaps due to a visionary director losing authorial control of a prestige film to his producers, who may have had a more conventional movie in mind from the outset. Among the more pleasing stuff, a nicely gruesome vein is developed here,

 centering on Henry’s hideous, suppurating leg wound, into which Parr is at one point instructed to drop live maggots.

See, now I’m confused, because other reviews are saying this film moves outside of the Victorian stereotype/misinfo of Parr as nursemaid. But this would suggest otherwise...

[tenaciouspostfun]

Stories

Submitted



Ferrari. Movie Review.

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"Ferrari" differs from "Ford vs Ferrari" that played several years ago. This movie deals with the personal life of Enzo Ferrari and his inner conflicts. Where "Ford vs Ferrari" dealt with the competition between the two great auto makers, this movie takes us to the life of the man in Modena,Italy.

Enzo Ferrari has had a long time mistress, Lina Lardi played by Shailene Woodling in which he has a son with her, Piero. Years before, Enzo had lost his older son (Dino) to a long illness and it has hurt him deeply; he visits his son's tomb often.

What makes "Ferrari" work so well is several-fold: the great cinematography, excellent directing by Michael Mann and the acting that each and every actor puts into their roles. One gets a sense of the time and place of where Ferrari grew up and lived his life.

In what maybe her best role since "Blow", Penelope Cruz hits it out of the park as Ferrari's wife, Laura Ferrari. Determined, classy, demanding and smart, Cruz is the true matriarch of this family; she takes no crap from anyone. Laura is bitter over losing her son; losing her husband as she toils with the car company that it teetering on bankruptcy.

Ferrari himself (Adam Driver) is a calm, calculating man who is always in control of his emotions, always. He too is a demanding man who does not suffer defeat very easily. He, after all is a car company that produces cars to support his racing team which is anathema to all the other car companies in the world. Being that he makes so few cars he needs to win races for his company to survive.

What complicates Ferrari's life is his other life, a mistress and a son that he tucks away in the countryside. Where his wife thinks that he is having multiple affairs, it his other secret life that lays bare the controversy in this movie. Only a handful of people know of Enzo's secret. Like his first child, Enzo nurtures this young boy, teaches him about engineering and even though he is young, he educates him about practical daily matters.

What makes Ferrari most appealing is that the director deftly moves us from a nasty wife at the beginning who is unlikable to a stealthy woman that we all respect at the end. Even though her husband has not been kind to her, she stands behind him at all times. She is by no means a pushover, however, she is his fortress. Laura manages the books, delves out the salaries of the workers and is a very shrewd businesswoman.

Another reason "Ferrari" appeals is the cars themselves and the racing scenes; lifelike and engaging, both the direction and cinematography make this movie a winner. I don't think I will ever forget the near end of the last race scene that involved fatalities; never have I ever witnessed a scene like that in all the years I have watched film!

Even though it is billed as a work of fiction, "Ferrari" is a work about real people who experience what the film depicts. Much of the story is based on the man, his company and his life, but not all of it is factual. What is factual about the man is that he loved his cars and his racing team, he built cars like no one else could. Where Henry Ford build an assembly line, Ferrari built works of art, something that Ford's son who would later take over the business couldn't do.

At a little over two hours, "Ferrari" for the most part moves nicely (there are some slow points), it engages the audience and keeps the characters interesting and for the most part, likeable.

Enzo Ferrari, Penelope Cruz, Adam Driver, Michael Mann, Patrick Dempsey, Hollywood, Academy Awards, Oscars.

Words: 639

[ironasss]

VERY LONG POST THAT IS A CONNECTION BETWEEN MANY THINGS!

right, good omens stars michael sheen and david tennant. amazing, incredible. trivia: they were in the movies bright young things together in 2003 (dir. stephen fry) as well as james mcavoy and bill paterson.

As a furtherconnection(s), good omens has A nightingale sang in brekely square, sung by tori amos (who sang the song Graveyard, which nail gaiman used in the graveyard book).

A nightingale sang in berkely square is also the lyric to the song bright young things, which stephgen fry had the pet shop boys sing for the movie, although it ended up being left out.

neil tennant, singer for the pet shop boys, is actually where david tennant got his name, since david mcdonald was already taken in the guild of actors he wanted to join.

right so the book was based off the novel vile bodies, by evelyn waugh. michael sheens character, miles maitland(malpractice in the book), was based off of real life bright young person, stephen tennant. wow! another tennant!

stephen tennant had brothers, one of which was named david tennant, who we will call david pax tennant to avoid confusion. Right, so david pax tennant had four/five children(this is the inconsistency i was talking about) two of which were named david and georgia tennant.

actor david tennants wife is named georgia tennant.In addition, they met on doctor who, where she played his daughter. spooky, i know.

back to the book, evelyn waught also wrote a book called decline and fall, the movie of which had jack whitehall(who plays newton pulsifer).

david tennant and james mcavoy are both marvel, remember that. adria arjona(anathema device in good omens) is also marvel.

david arnold, who did the good omens soundtrack, also did the sherlock(bbc tv series) soundtrack. this of course stars bandersnatch custardwheel, and martin freeman.

bubblebath copperwire was ALSO in episode six of good omens, as satan. and then of course, both him and martin freeman are marvel, as well as tobey jones, a guest star in sherlock.

james mcavoy was in sherlock gnome, which good enough.

ok, bright young things, we remember that? stephen fry, the director of that, was in sherlock holmes: a game of shadows(2011), the sequel to sherlock holmes(2009). those movies had rdj(marvel), jude law(marvel), rachel mcadams(marvel), and jared harris(marvel).

stephen fry played mycroft, and jude law played watson. this is of course, RELEVENT, when you remember that in the movie Wilde(1999), they slept together. stephen fry ALSO slept with michael sheen in that movie.

james d'arcy(marvel) was an extra in that movie, and guess what? james d'arcy played sherlock in sherlock(2002), which had vincent d'onofrio(marvel) as moriarty. ian mckellan(marvel), was also in a sherlock, mr holmes(2015), i believe.

oh, and jude law was actually in a different sherlock as well, but that one doesnt matter. guy henry(who was in bright young things) was two different sherlocks. he was also in kenneth williams: fantaboulosa!(2006) with michael sheen.

ben kingsley(marvel) was in without a clue(1988).(i feel like im missing an important one, but i dont remember what)

ok so on the note of Shakespeare: first off, david tennant is in like eight. EIGHT.

first one we'll talk about is much ado about nothing. his has catherine tate, who! doctor who. doctor who also has matt smith(marvel), karen gillan(marvel) and guestars gemma chan(marvel), letitia wright(marvel), andrew garfield(marvel), michael sheen, ian mckellan(marvel), bill paterson(remember him?), nina sosanya(good omens,casanova which is totally relevant), fenella woolgar(bright young things), adrian scarborough(bright young things), stephen fry, toby jones(again, marvel!), mark gatiss(bright young things, good omens, and bbc sherlock. also im p sure hes gay). (speaking of gay, neil tennant of the pet shop boys is gay)Another doctor who thingy has hayley atwell(marvel) WHO.

was in brideshead revisited(2008), the book for which was written by evelyn waugh, and one of the characters for which was ALSO inspired by stephen tennant. that or evelyn waughs gay lover from college(literally the plot of brideshead revisted)(evelyn waugh was way cooler when he was gay. then he went conservative. then he died.)

(conservative unlike the (stephen) tennant family tree, a good amount of them were liberal scottish politicians, including one or two of the davids.)

back to much ado about nothing, another version had joss whedon(marvel) and clark gregg(marvel), which admittedly wasnt very good, shakespeare was not written for americans. the kenneth branaugh(marvel) version however, that was the best version ive seen.

its worth noting the david tennant one was like an actual stage production(a hilarious one), the other two were regular movies.

next one we will discuss: hamlet. everyones done hamlet. david tennant. michael sheen. good omens. kenneth branaugh. botany candycrush. jude law. ethan hawke(marvel). ian mckellan. its nearly ridiculous. oh god bright young things by the pet shop boys started playing as i was typing this

david tennant has also done richard ii. so has patrick stewart(marvel).richard iii is one that he has not done, but ian mckellan has. that version (1995) also had rdj. (they kissed lmaoooo)(not in the movie like outside of it)(magneto kissed iron man yes thats what im getting at). so has bonaparte cragglethatch.so has peter dinklage(marvel), and martin freeman. oh, and kenneth branaugh.

david skinny ass teeth(im sorry) also did as you like it, more shakespeare. so did, you guessed it, kenneth branaugh! and his version had alfred molina(marvel).

next we have romeo and juliet, yes david tennant did that, so did james mcavoy in gnomeo and juliet and sherlock gnome.paul rudd(marvel) also did that.

david tennant also did the comedy of errors, and thats the only one i know who did that ngl.he also did the merchant of venice. so did charlie cox(marvel).

i-need-a-more-exciting-way-of-saying-david-tennant-dear-god also did king lear.so did ian mckellan.

righty kenneth branaugh did henry v, which had christian bale(marvel and batman. batman might be relevent i havent decided weather i want to include it.)

he also did all is true, so did ian mckellan, and he did loves labour lost, and so did emily mortimer(bright young things)

shakespeaRe-Told: had james mcavoy, bill paterson, billie piper(rose tyler, i), and nina sosanya.

THE SANDMAN. the sandman(written by neil gaiman, ofc) had david tennant, james mcavoy, and michael sheen in the same episode, as well as georgia tennant.

the sandman also had lourdes faberes(pollution in good omens), and stephen fry in three episodes.

it also had bill paterson.

smaller connections, kinda:-stephen tennant(remember him? brother of david pax tennant?)'s mother had a cousin who was a lover of oscar wilde. I also have a family tree of this family written down, i dont know why.

peter o'toole, who was in bright young things, played casanova in the tv show casanova, the same person david tennant was playing. (they played the old and young versions)

Ill add more connections later probably,for now I'm watching doctor who.

[toast-the-unknowing]

HI! I wanted to say that I really love your writing and I get really excited to see notifications that you've posted new work! And I was just curious if you worked in an office of some kind, and if so how do you find the time/motivation to sit in front of the computer and write personal work. It's just something I've been struggling with myself, and I wanted to ask if you had any similar experiences. If the answer is no, then no worries :) Thanks again!

Oh, that's a tough one, Anon.

I do currently work in an office -- as An Adult I've had an array of jobs, all of them either retail or customer service or "office assistant in a field I don't care about." And I’m sure that every job has the power to take away from your creative work, just as a simple matter of resources -- time and energy spent working can't be spent writing -- but there's something extra challenging about jobs you don't like, jobs you're doing just because you have to. They take so much out of you.

Motivation is one of my personal crosses to bear. I don't have it. I consistently struggle to find the motivation to do basic life tasks. So I don't know that I have answers for you, but I definitely have sympathy.

I also have, like, so many more words than I thought, so they’re going behind a cut.

When motivation is in short supply, the stuff that has to happen or you will literally die comes first. That's okay. It gets to come first. If I put on clothing and show up for work and eat some kind of food at some point, I got through the day. That's an accomplishment. And sometimes doing that uses up all my motivation for the day. Sometimes I can't even get up that much motivation, let alone do anything else. That sucks, but it happens.

But it doesn't happen every single day.

Some days have more motivation than others. Some seconds have more motivation than others. Why can I do the thing in this one second when for weeks it's been blocked like a grayed-out option on a computer menu? I don't know. But I could. Motivation is weird like that. You never know when it will show up, so you have to give yourself opportunities.

You know your office better than I do -- is the culture "get the work done on time and we don't care what you do" or "YOU MUST PERFORM 'PERFECT EMPLOYEE' AT ALL TIMES"? What's the layout of your desk? Can people read over your shoulder? How nosy are your bosses/coworkers? How strict are the internet controls your IT department uses? How busy are you? What are your own particular psychological quirks and philosophical attitudes? What's your anxiety look like?

It may be that "work on my writing while on the clock" is not an option for you. I get that; in the time I've been an office worker, I've been all over the place, from "my own writing is what I spend the majority of my time on while I'm at work" to "I won't even touch my writing on a company computer." Right now is closer toward the latter. But, if writing at work is an option for you, now, don't lose out because your current project is saved to a .docx file on your home desktop. Make it so that if you had to, you could write under literally ANY circumstance. I carry a Chromebook with me everywhere. Before that I carried a composition notebook and a pen at all times. I know people who write fics in draft emails or the notes app on their phone.

When time and motivation are scarce, you have to build in the opportunity anywhere that you are able to. Those might not be the same opportunities that work for other people. I've heard established writers say things to newer writers like "if you don't have the time during the day, just wake up earlier," and that's so discouraging and heartbreaking for me to hear. "Wake up earlier" isn't an option for me. "Wake up on time" is barely an option for me. Getting out of bed is a bottleneck for all of my motivation issues to all run into each other at the same time. But "work on the bus" does work for me. Not every single day. Maybe one day I'm tired. Maybe the bus is really full. Maybe the person I'm sitting next to looks like my mother and that makes it weird to write about boys kissing. Maybe the one fic I really really really want to work on that day is porn, and no I'm not going to do that on the bus/at work/on my lunch break. Maybe I pull out my Chromebook and open it and look at my fic with every intention of working on it and just.....nothing happens, for forty minutes, and then I'm embarrassed and put it away. That's fine. Because if I do write something on one of those commutes or lunch breaks or "just gotta kill time" evenings even once, then it was worth it. If I give myself lots of opportunities, then even if I don't take most of them, I still get stuff done I wouldn't otherwise.

Little bits COUNT. If all you manage to write is "in this scene the characters argue" THAT COUNTS. You wrote a thing. Because the next time you write, that can become "in this scene the characters argue about money and Adam storms off". And then the next time it can be "the characters argue about money and Adam storms off and Blue says something really cutting to Gansey and Gansey is crushed." And then, and then, and then.

It sucks to write a story one tortured sentence at a time, but it can be done, and sometimes that's the only way that it does get done. Some days all I do is turn [gansey says hi] into "Hello," Gansey said, and you know what, that counts.

Sometimes when writing has been hard or impossible for me, I've done writing adjacent tasks. Maybe the motivation isn't there, right now, to get writing done. Can you daydream about something you know you'll never write in a million years? Can you spend your commute, or the time you spend watching paper feed through the scanner, or that awkward minute in the break room when your boss is getting coffee at the same time as you -- can you spend that time thinking about a Hogwarts/ABO/vampire/fake dating/rock band/Groundhog day/all-of-the-above fic that you would never write? Because daydreaming and dicking around can be very helpful for getting your brain in gear to write. And if you daydream about the story you're actually writing, or one you'd like to write, (a) you get caught up in it needing to be GOOD ENOUGH which is anathema to free wheeling fun times, and (b) you run that risk of coming up with that PERFECT bit of dialogue that you aren't able to write down and then you forget it. If you forget that really funny bit of dialogue for the Declan/Henry soulmate alien abduction shapeshifter fic you were never going to write, well, what does it matter?

I've done this before when I've been in a place where I'm not writing, and there's something about being able to say, "okay, I didn't write anything, but I came up with five different fun little stories that I can go back to, in my brain, any time I feel like it." And I've discovered things about the characters that I do then want to use in a "real" story . Maybe you will stumble across an interesting dynamic or interaction in that OT6 West Wing crossover you were never going to write, but it's worth revisiting in something you do want to write. When you're able to.

The ways of motivation are mysterious. I don't really know why it's easier to find the motivation now than it's been at other points in my life, in other fandoms. I think part of it is momentum, from accepting "okay I'll just try to do a little bit of writing" and then the little bit happens and keeps happening and becomes a big bit. There's been so many times now where my bus pulls up to my stop and I go "ugh I have to put the laptop AWAY and GO HOME why" and I just try to race home so I can sit down on the first chair I find and keep writing.

Are there some places, or times, or situations, or writing mediums, where the motivation comes a little easier? If you don't know of any can you pay attention for those? Is there any way to capitalize on that? If super boring meeting where I don't have to do anything but I'm not allowed to skip is a great time for day dreaming about your writing, is there anyway to take your lunch/a coffee break/a really long bathroom break where you hunt & peck type into your email drafts right after that?

I tried tracking my writing once, on the suggestion of a very convincing essay by an author who promised that only good things could come from meticulously noting where the writing happened and when and how many words. The result was that my word count dropped to zero. Very easy to track! Not so great for literally any other goal I had. But I've learned a lot about my process since then, not from spreadsheets and journals but just from...paying attention, and asking myself questions, and thinking back on all the thinking about writing I do, and it's become easier to make words happen. Not a guarantee, but -- easier. So I think the most helpful thing is just to give yourself opportunities, even little ones, to write or create, and then just...pay attention. To your process and your words and your motivation and your situation, and try to work within those and not against those.

[coldtomyflash]

What do think about Trial of The Flash storyline? I am hella excited for it, but I hope they don’t waste such an amazing opportunity play this storyline nicely!

I have a lot of jumbled thoughts on this. I think this season is gonna be… intense. It already is.

I think that there’s a lot that’s going into this that if we consider, are heavy and horrific. By another token, I think the way they’ve gone about it so far is… excellent? I mean, terrible in all the typical CW ways where they have problematic elements completely undiscussed and inherent in what they’re doing. 

But excellent in terms of how intimidating Clifford and Marlize DeVoe are, how terrifying they are. We as the viewer can’t anticipate their next step, neither can Barry. They feel ten steps ahead to everyone, as they should. Their easy manipulation of Barry and Joe and the outside perspective of this situation, how little can be traced back to them and therefore how tied Team Flash’s hands are. I love all of it.

The thing is… people are going to react wildly different to this. I’ve already seen it. 

Some people have their own thoughts about the storyline from the comics. Personally, I don’t know much about that particular arch except that it exists (and didn’t it involve Eobard in the comics? I might be wrong, this is how little I know about it). So some fans are coming into this with expectations and frustrations based on that, and we’ve known it’s coming down the line ever since the end of S1.

Still other people are… well, I know at least one friend of mine can’t watch this season, the themes are getting under their skin too much. The sinister elements of the villains twisting and manipulating our hero in a way he can’t fight back against, and Barry being innocent but implicated at work for stalking and now for he’s framed for murder? 

And I know another person I adore in this fandom is taking a very empathetic perspective on Barry’s position right now, and all the trauma he has attached to what Clifford just did to him, and how he’s feeling now - stuck in prison in a parallel of the worst thing he went through, revisited on him.

So I struggle a bit with just how…. freaking excited I am. 

Because we all have tropes that we react strongly to. The trope I viscerally hate might be a trope another person viscerally loves. Some people were disgusted by the Savitar storyline, others ate it up. Some people found Zoom dull, others were intrigued by his character. My favorite fics might be another person’s squicks, and vice versa? I’ve had this experience a lot - there are perfectly normal tropes that I cannot and will not touch with a ten foot pole (including one of the most popular fics in the fandom) and yet I might love a trope that is anathema to others, and that’s perfectly… valid.

And right now, everything about this season’s storyline is hitting so many of my narrative buttons.

I live for sinister villains. For ones that have had time to plan and get a few steps ahead. Ones who lord power over the hero in such a way as to say “I have you right where I want you” and manipulate them, twisting them around. It’s not just a battle of brute strength then, like it all too often felt like with Zoom, it’s something more haunting? And a villain who isn’t here to do great horror with no motivation? He’s here for a purpose, one he (they) believe(s) is just. He’s not just angry, not just selfish - and that makes him a thousand times harder to figure out, in another way.

And while I understand why this narrative is horrible on Barry, I also live for the particular type of struggle he’s just been thrown into. 

The moment he clenches his jaw and says to himself “don’t run” I died. That characterization and that dilemma, that person being brought up against something they hate and fear and holding strong and holding tight and clamping down and pushing through?

I like to see people pushed to their limits? It comes out a lot in my fics. I’ve put it like this before: I want to see how far you can bend things before they break, and once they break, how do you put them back together? And I’m not talking about “breaking” people in that disturbing way (human beings do not ‘break’), I mean breaking situations. Breaking tension. Pushing the narrative until something in it snaps because it has to - because something has to give.

And I know… Barry has been through so much trauma. He’s been through hell, and back, then back to hell, then back.

The thing is, the last two seasons felt like they were layering trauma on him for no better purpose than to “hurt the cutie”, y’know? Like sure, let’s have Zoom kill Henry Allen right when he’s back and helping and happy, why not? Let’s make Zoom’s motive to do that nothing more or less than because he wants to see Barry angry and fucked up just like he feels inside? We need to motivate Barry to make flashpoint and this is the only way to do that, right? Let’s just heap some more trauma on him when he’s already been super traumatized this season because it’ll show how ~evil~ Zoom is.

See? That… that was just frustrating writing to me. So was how they randomly killed off Dante Ramon to motivate tension between Barry and Cisco and because “the heroes can’t have nice things”. (See, so many bad tropes here). And the way they never really dealt with Barry’s relation to Savitar and all that entails, or his thoughts about his despondent and defeated future self?

So…

What I really like about this so far is that things feel like they have a purpose. I’m sure it’ll disappoint me, but everything DeVoe’s done has been calculated with intent. Setting up Barry the way he has, framing him for murder, even that’s part of a broader plan, it has to be. And if he wants Barry to suffer, to experience a “loss” he says it’s to prepare him more for what’s coming. It’s calculated too. It doesn’t feel cheap in the same way?

And it’s something I have faith he can handle. It’s something I think he’s in a position to handle, based on his narrative this season (ignoring for a second just how much of his past trauma has been erased by the show multiple times now, like during Flashpoint and then during this season break). He’s got his support network. If they didn’t believe him, this would be an entirely different thing and I would probably feel completely different emotionally about this arc, like a 180. But they’re on his side and that’s what matters.

So the rest of it is just… deliciously horrible, instead of horrible in a way I can’t stomach. It feels like something I would write. That’s probably what I really love about it. I would never write Zoom, and if I were to ever write Savitar it would be with more motive and would’ve been fleshed out so differently. But DeVoe? I can intuit this storyline. It makes so much sense to me narratively to do things this way. To set it up this way. I can’t predict what will happen, but I haven’t felt like they’ve dropped a single ball with it yet.

And I guess I’m just glad that they made the CCPD relevant again in a big way? I missed seeing David Singh on my screen. And I have so many angsty thoughts about how he must have felt arresting Barry, like I absolutely have to write an episode coda from his perspective because it’s just… giving me feels.

That’s what his season is doing - giving me feels. I guess that’s why I’m enjoying it.

[marcjampole]

Trump is almost the same person as Teddy Roosevelt in personality and character, except Trump speaks loudly & carries no stick at all

Since the election pundits have from time to time compared Donald Trump to various former presidents, most frequently Andrew Jackson because both were racist populists with tempers who liked talking tough and using the military. But I’ve also seen writers find similarities in Trump’s temperament to both Adamses, in incompetence to Buchanan and in dishonesty and political strategy to Nixon. Trump himself has spoken of his accomplishments as worthy of a Lincoln, which to people who live in the real world is akin to claiming an average Little League baseball player is as good as Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays (or Giancarlo Stanton and Mike Trout for younger readers).

In a continuation of this trend, Vice President Mike Pence recently compared his boss to Theodore Roosevelt — a comparison that may have surprised many Americans because TR is depicted as a hero and one of our greatest presidents in most history books while the public already realizes how unprepared and incompetent Trump is for the job he has now held for about eight months.

But as Stephen Kinzler’s depiction of TR in his entertaining and illuminating The True Flag reminds us, Trump and Teddy share so many personality, character and class traits that you might think they’re the same person. The True Flag discusses the debate surrounding the Spanish-American War and its bloody aftermath in which American soldiers tortured, raped and slaughtered their way to victory against rebels in the Philippines, the first time the United States used its military might to make acquisitions beyond the borders of the contiguous 48 states. The book focuses on the imperialist arguments made at the end of the 19th century by TR, Henry Cabot Lodge and the yellow journalist William Heart, who with Joseph Pulitzer pretty much invented fake news. They and many others were in favor of projecting American military might, holding possessions in which the inhabitants could not have free elections and extending U.S. control to peoples considered racially and culturally inferior. On the other side, the peaceniks believed fervently that the U.S. should not pursue military adventurism and that it was unconstitutional suppress the voting rights of people in other lands; they included such luminaries as Mark Twain, former President Grover Cleveland, Jane Adams, Andrew Carnegie and the distinguished Senator Carl Schurz.

Nowhere in The True Flag does Kinzler mention Donald Trump, but the picture he paints of TR is so similar to the Donald we have seen for the past 30 years that you could swear it was Trump being described.

Let’s start with their backgrounds. Both TR and Trump were born in the lap of luxury with a silver spoon in their mouth, on third base and thinking they hit a triple. Filthy rich.  The Roosevelt family had what’s called old money. Very old money. The original Roosevelt arrived in the New World from Holland sometime in the years just before 1650 and bought a lot of land in mid-town Manhattan, the original source of the family wealth. Trump family money also originally came from real estate—developing and managing properties.

Inherited money gave TR and Trump immediate access to the public through the news media and to political circles that would not be available to most people. Both used that access to expatiate about controversial topics, going to war and projecting America’s might in TR’s case and, for Trump, spreading the bold-faced, racially-tinged lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

But access doesn’t necessarily translate to respect. For the most part, the ruling elite, including the Republican Party, disliked both and found both to be a royal inconvenience, and with good reason: The Rough Rider was and Trumpty-Dumpty is a self-centered and loud-mouthed buffoon who often spoke/speaks without thinking and acted/acts impetuously. The center of TR’s world was TR, who thought himself the best man for every job and burned to wield the power of the presidency. Sound familiar? Many in the Republican Party at the turn of the 20th century feared that the irresponsible Roosevelt would gain the power that he so blatantly sought. Same for Republicans during the 2016 primary and election season.

But while despised by the political, civic and intellectual elite, TR and Trump were/are highly popular with large segments of the American public, thanks to the news media. In TR’s day, the media meant newspapers, of which there were many, many more across the country than today. Interestingly enough, Teddy’s rise in the public esteem was fueled to a great extent by one media giant, William Randolph Hearst, who owned and ran a media empire of newspapers based on sensationalizing the news and saber-rattling for wars of conquest. Hearst grew to dislike Teddy, especially after Hearst also became infected by political ambition.

Here’s where the similarities get really sick: Both Theodore Roosevelt and Donald Trump built their reputations on fabrications. TR was the warrior, the hero, the Rough Rider who led a band of volunteers up San Juan Hill against the Spanish Army in Cuba. In fact, the hero spent a total of two afternoons in battle. His one casualty was an escaping unarmed prisoner surrounded by TR’s men who he shot in the back several times. Kind of sounds like big game hunting.

Most of us now know that when Donald Trump agreed to be the business mogul featured in the original “Apprentice” he was a failed real estate developer and casino operator in multiple bankruptcies and a mess of financial trouble. It was the mass media—the television show and the entertainment and celebrity media that covered it—that established his reputation as a business master of the universe, thus giving Trump the platform to pursue his sometimes successful and sometimes disastrous branding business.

Two frauds that the media turned into celebrities.

The last similarity: both were accidental presidents. The Republican Party made Teddy McKinley’s VEEP to remove him from power and the public eye. The plan backfired when McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt assumed the presidency. Let’s not dwell too long on the long string of freak occurrences that enabled Trump to win the electoral college despite losing the popular vote by about three million, including the wave of voter suppression laws, the interference by the Russians, the weakness of the other Republican candidates and former FBI Director James Comey’s ridiculously stupid twin decision to release information about the Clinton probe but not about the Russia-Trump connection.

A consideration of the differences between the two men is sobering, because it reminds us that the problem with Donald Trump is his not his emotional frailties but his political positions and the reasons he holds them.

Roosevelt believed in science and in weighing the evidence, which among other things, informed him of the need to protect the environment from the degradations of human beings. He backed down from his imperialism once he became president and had more information and experience (and perhaps the power after which he lusted). TR was well-read. His beliefs in domestic matters tended towards the progressive, which in those days meant minimizing the power of large corporations and setting the rules to create fairness for workers and consumers.

By contrast, Trump is poorly read and educated and holds a basket of deplorable beliefs about immigration, crime and the economy that are rooted in the myths of the 1950’s, and by myths I mean beliefs that were wrong then and not held now. On global warming and environmental regulations, he has ignored basic science and the advice of virtually every reputable expert in favor of his own irrational beliefs. He looks past the crime statistics which shows an enormous long-term decline and instead believes in the harsh image of crime in the cities depicted in the tabloid newspapers that he read in the 1960’s and 1970’s, before the days of cable news.

Which brings us to the issue of racism. TR made and Trumpty-Dumpty makes a large number of racist statements. Racism was inherent to the Rough Rider’s imperialism and lurking behind many Trump’s beliefs and actions. But TR’s racism reflects the mainstream thinking of his era. Like Woodrow Wilson and much of the Progressive movement, TR believed in the inherent superiority of white people of European descent. Racism tars his reputation, but most every other white American was racist at the time. I doubt that TR would be an overt racist today, since all his views, even his foreign expansionism, were mainstream. By contrast, Trump’s racism puts him out of the mainstream. Virtually every Trump statement or action to be condemned by other Republicans has involved denigration of or harm to African-Americans, Muslims, Mexicans or other non-white minorities. He flirts with racist groups that hold views that are so far out of the mainstream as to be an anathema to virtually everyone else.

Finally, despite his heavy-handed narcissism, Roosevelt ended up being one of our better presidents, rated by some among the top ten. In contrast, by ending DACA and U.S. support of the Paris agreement, disrupting relations with long-term strategic allies, cracking down on immigrants, trying to kill the individual health insurance markets created by the Affordable Care Act, threatening the civil rights of the transgendered and rolling back environmental, business and educational regulations, Trump has already done enough damage to America and the world to rate as the second worst person ever to win the electoral college or succeed a dying or resigning president. All he has to do to slide below Harry Truman to the very bottom of the list is convince the American military to drop a nuclear bomb on some enemy.

The lesson, again, in comparing these two highly narcissistic individuals is that it’s not the state of Trump’s emotions that should be of concern, but his politics. It’s his harmful, racist and misogynist stands and beliefs that are most dangerous to the future of the United States.

[falkenscreen]

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE X 6

This is the best Mission Impossible film since the first one and that’s now the fourth time you’ve heard that.

Going against the grain in more ways than one, super-agent Ethan Hunt’s escapades are not only getting better with successive instalments (save of course the first sequel) but, converse to just about every other Hollywood franchise, showcasing progressively shorter gaps between entries. Going from a six-year hiatus between Mi2 and Mi3 to five, then four, then three, the change of pace befits and reflects the series’ transition from anthology action to a set of straightforward sequels.

The same can be said for the recruitment of the series’ now first-time returning Director Christopher McQuarrie, who has tried crafting something closer to the original’s style and sensibility than any other sequel. Picking up with “The Syndicate’s” efforts to subvert world order, Rogue Nation’s troupe of rogue super-spies, now known collectively as ‘The Apostles,’ are hatching all sorts of dastardly plans, because destruction and chaos will beget a better future, or something. Think Ghost Protocol, the League of Shadows, Inferno, whatever.

Henry Cavill joins proceedings moustache in tow, his CIA Agent proving more than an adequate counter to Cruise’s Impossible Missions Force veteran. Kicking off an extended second act with a HALO jump, this first of innumerable exciting sequences signals the commencement of what is just about as close as any film has come to a recreation of the beloved Spy vs. Spy serial. Contending with a myriad of shady figures, multiple identities, double-crossing, triple-crossing and reveal upon reveal, the littered illustrations that would have constituted Fallout’s plotting are a joy to behold in a breathless, consummate hour-plus of action story-telling.

And it is action story-telling to be sure with Fallout, with few exceptions, permitting it’s blustering sequences to evolve naturally from proceedings or character interactions, rather than feeling the need to summarily insert shooting because there hadn’t been any for a while. Certainly the case for the initial encounter between Hunt and Cavill’s Walker, the rivalry as they launch from the plane into a thunderstorm tells us all we need to know about these characters and a dynamic which thrillingly persists.

As for the action, reliably excellent throughout, it is a pleasure to see Cruise at work knowing that it is actually Cruise, whether it be him running around London landmarks, engaged in brutal hand-to-hand combat in a bathroom or hanging off a helicopter as it perilously chases another through a ravine.

Comparable in style and story to much explosive fare, among them The Dark Knight and some modern-era Bond flicks, curiously Fallout is markedly similar to Spectre; not just for the heated return of a frazzled antagonist but for it’s blatant and none-too-blatant hark-backs to earlier iterations. Packing an early scene eerily similar to how we were first introduced to Hunt all those years ago, an elegant allusion to the first movie is also the centre-piece of an arresting sequence that no doubt took inspiration from John Wick and its assassin-heavy sequel in an entry that more than any other seeks to reckon with it’s precursors while attempting to emulate the series’ still greatest triumph.

Mission Impossible was the first action film I ever saw and more than any other opened up for this author, and no doubt many others, a world of phenomenal heart-pounding action extravaganzas. Fallout’s greatest asset and vice is simply that it has a script, co-written by McQuarrie, beseeming Brian De Palma and his early vision here handled by a Director content to sacrifice the semblances of that master’s intensity for needless levity.

For all the faults of the hapless Mi2, and there are many, it at least stuck to the mettle of the first and the sincere, singularly tension-filled adrenaline-heavy bearings that so recommended it. There’s nothing wrong with a film least of all a thriller being self-serious, with the series following J.J Abrams advents in Mi3, here returning as Producer, pivoting to encroaching comedy and occasionally light irony. Fairly this was done to at least tacitly account for the unavoidable and increasing incredulity which later came to characterise the likes of serial death defiers ala James Bond, Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne and fairly Dominic Toretto; anathema to a series that still relies on Hunt being a nominally grounded character. Having said this, as Cruise’s ever-endearing Hunt, now in his sixth outing, evolved from a relatively fallible figure to a performer of any and all death-defying theatrics the series both delivered some of it’s best moments and lost what at the very outset De Palma rendered so stylistically distinct.

Consider the train sequence in Mission Impossible where we first meet Ving Rhames’ Luther, or any encounter with Jon Voight’s or Vanessa Redgrave’s marvellous creations; all are littered with confounding and wholly unrealistic dialogue that worked ideally in the world De Palma built. Identically stylised dialogue appears in several sequences in Fallout, whether it be in reunions with Rogue Nation veterans among them the excellent though underused Rebecca Ferguson, or The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby doing a spot-on impression of, well, someone famous.

Bookended by tonally divergent comic stylings in the likes of both the terribly miscast Simon Pegg and Alec Baldwin and absent the original’s noir-ish self-confidence, the injections of humour clash terribly with the stylings McQuarrie has otherwise pursued and those abounding action sequences that don’t let up. At one point a character quips “don’t make me laugh” – advice the filmmakers should have taken more measuredly.

This is not to say that the first film did not have humour; far from it, there’s a light, very memorable sequence as Hunt goads Jean Reno’s tough-guy over a disc he thinks is in his possession, and of course there’s any scene involving Max. In Fallout it’s comparatively forced and never as endemic to proceedings, with Hunt wholly pausing before an anticipated stunt to proclaim to Pegg’s Benji that he’s going to jump out of a window, as if the act of doing so wasn’t enough to fixate us or required an acknowledgement that this is all just a bit preposterous.

Yes, of course it’s preposterous; we’re not here in spite of action that we know is improbable, we’re here because of it and to see Cruise perform stunts barely any star of his calibre will even attempt. We don’t, nor have we ever needed constant reminders that the filmmakers are in on the shtick and don’t really think someone can pull all this off. An apparent drawback of now the last four entries, the undue levity has the added effect of breaking up that tension otherwise so well evinced. In the first movie and that now iconic bullet train sequence, De Palma at least waited until after everything literally ground to a halt following ten breathless minutes to allow the conductor to faint and let us have a chuckle. As good as Fallout is, there’s no such sustained excitement here and hasn’t been for now twenty-two years.

Mission Impossible: Fallout is in cinemas from August 2

[fideidefenswhore]

Who is your most hated Seymour? For me, it's John, Thomas, Edward and Jane.

roflmao, tbf, i know intellectually that there's not enough there there to justify hating john seymour, but he does give me bad vibes...whatever happened with catherine fillol was weird and i do get the sense he was involved even if not in the rumored way. and also, when siblings hate each other to such an extent, it's often bcus they were pit against each other by their parents, so i get the sense he was not a good father (there's some debate on whether he died late 1536 or 1535, tbf, but if it was the former it's strange that none of children seemed to mourn his death, that he wasn't mourned at court as the queen's father, etc) . margery doesn't have enough about her known for me to judge; it's sort of weird to me that this stereotype has fallen she and jane had a bad relationship and her favorite child/daughter was elizabeth (this occurs in like...several...novels). we don't have an equivalent positive remark to 'next to mine own mother, no woman alive i know better' (AB, about her own, and to bridget wingfield), nor any records of them often being in each other's company during significant events or eras, but we don't have anything negative either. i get you have to make choices in fiction and 'neutral' is not an interesting one but like...damn.

what's interesting about edward and thomas is that, even before their sister becomes queen, edward is not spoken of well by his contemporaries. very early (iirc, 1535) on, his 'small conscience' is decried, and he becomes such an avaricious figure that cromwell and the king have to interfere in his attempts to manipulate and loophole property laws to his own advantage and the impoverishment of others (and, not usually in his favor, despite him being a royal in-law). thomas, however, seems like he's better liked in the 1530s, although this can maybe be attributed to him being more of a nonentity (a comparative example is some tudor authors insisting GB was 'better liked' than his sister anne-- not true, it seems-- or more often, that their sister mary was...which is probably true, but also probably more indicative of relative lack of power and positions and leverage than 'kinder' personality)...it's not until the 1540s that we get comments of the same genre ("somewhat empty of manner"). thomas thus seems more like a figure of gradual corruption, his arrogance was increased by his nephew becoming king, it seems, and resentment brought out an ugly side of his character (arguably, the same with edward, just earlier on).

it's extremely unpopular to say this on here, but yeah, jane is definitely not a favourite of mine, either. but i don't think my reasons for this are really common...i don't care if she slept with henry before marriage, i don't care if she didn't, i just find her biographers weirdly contradictory in their judgements of her character, the nature of her rise, and her own beliefs. there's also like, this sense of historic illiteracy from some of her defenders...joining a royal household (as far as the most prestigious positions, that is) was not the equivalent of serfdom (as in, they could leave at any time). jane's supporters were courtiers who hated anne, so it's reasonable to assume she did, as well. so, there's this sort of moral hypocrisy about jane as a figure and her advancement and how she came to her position that has always prevented me from warming to her as a figure. 'she hated anne and all she stood for' explains her involvement in her downfall, but not her securing the position in her household in the first place. and by virtue of her close proximity to anne as queen, she also knew that it was nigh impossible that she was actually guilty of the accusations of adultery.

what else...her defenders insist that the oaths of supremacy and succession were anathema to her moral compass, yet she likely did have to have had taken them herself, just as a subject, and if not that then definitely as a member of anne's household. this wouldn't have martyred/imperiled her life, althought it probably would have her career (elizabeth darrell never took these, so i wonder if the penalty for women was different...? barton is often cited as an example but this was not in her indictment. princess mary seems to almost have been a victim of this, but it might've been more that her signing was more important since she was a rallying point for dissenters).

and even if jane never took these, the presence of noblewomen serving anne as queen lent to her greater image of royal legitimacy. she had to have known that, and if she didn't believe her position was legitimate...then why be part of that tapestry? there's not an equivalent to her predecessor to be made here, not when anne left her own predecessor's household and began her own as soon as she came to believe catherine was not legitimately queen or henry's wife. any credulousness towards contemporary report of this time would suggest anne was extremely hostile towards her rival, but there is a difference between declaring that you'd sooner watch your rival hanged before revering them and, well...actually doing that (...effectively, if not literally).

actually, i don't think there's actually much to suggest jane was set against the religious supremacy unless you make some suppositional leaps (the dissolution wasn't so explicitly connected here, her support of mary as princess, even if rather cosmetic, could be seen as support for her decision not to take those oaths herself for nigh on two years...). nor against succession acts as brought by parliament, since the same illegitimized any potential rivals to her future children, and she seemed to make a point in one of her only pieces of writing we have in emphasizing edward's legitimacy (implicitly, at the expense of her stepdaughters).

the narrative fiction i probably dislike about jane the most is this idea that she was so reverent of catherine's memory, it's really fucking weird, honestly... it bothers me because i know it's embellished to increase reader/viewer (the tudors comes to mind) sympathy and somehow for me it does the opposite, lol. there's something about the concept of her trading on the memory of this beloved woman (who, herself, probably didn't even remember jane, there's nothing to suggest any kind of friendship between them) who was exiled, this woman whom jane did not a single thing for (not even abstaining from joining the household of her rival), that just really grosses me out. henry was the one who was her husband, and obviously he was a fucking asshole to and about her, but there's at least something more...direct, in his attempted erasure of her memory. it's always bothered me that it's never acknowledged that the antecedent (which was carried on throughout) to jane's queenship was the erasure of both her predecessors, the illegitimization of both their daughters, both of them being subordinated, and, more or less (mary present for christmas, elizabeth not, but both there during the rebellions) equally expelled from court.