#charles davis icons

[blacksea-bitch]

[acinematicworld]

Marcel Gerard Icons || The Originals Season 1 Ep. 1

[impactrueno]

Can we talk about the Maitland/Deetz home for a moment? What are your thoughts on it? Did we go back to it in BB as a "Yep, we were here" moment, (as many online claim), or do you think it might be a possible setting for B3? Because it is very possible, in my opinion, that the town and old Maitland/Deetz house could be used for a plot in B3. Maybe a new family is already in it and they call Lydia back to it to deal with a new "ghost" problem, Ie Beetlejuice? (I just love the Maitland house and don't wanna see it scrubbed from future Burton projects. It's an iconic set piece and I wanna see it be brought back to that old hill in East Corinth again soon.) I've been collecting a myriad of images from the internet of the house and have been building it over and over in The Sims 4 (which doesn't allow for much justice to be done to the house) and even have images of the original second floor plan, the house elevations, and the original model of the house from 1988! (All sides of the house are visible, too!) Sorry, that was a bad flex, but I'm just...UGH!!! I wanna see the house used for plot in a possible B3 film, and I want someone to gush over it with me lol

i said this a couple of days ago but it's pretty much impossible for the maitlands to return, since alec baldwin and geena davis can't reprise their roles and tim wouldn't replace them. it's why they had to come up with the loophole thing, they had to justify their absence somehow. similar to the charles situation albeit for completely different reasons

if there's a BJ3, delia probably wouldn't come back either, which is a shame because she was SO funny in BJBJ. but it seems like she and charles got on the soul train and you don't come back from that.

that being said i don't see why the house wouldn't return. the model is still in the attic, and that's where beetlejuice lurks. he seems to be linked to the house in some way because lydia returning to winter river was a key opportunity for him, he was able to annoy her more directly that way...

it really is such an iconic house that it would suck not to see it one more time

[f1-giuki]

Prepare for trouble (and make it double!)

plot: The Davis Cup has always been the most important international tennis competition for national teams, but from 1970 to 1980 the tournament was renamed "International Cup" and moved on a continental-basis. For half of that decade, the European team was the team to beat.

These four iconic players, Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen, George Russell, Esteban Ocon, under the guidance of Austrian tennis legend Torger ‘Toto’ Wolff, wrote one of the most epic pages of global sport.

After all those years, they have no more qualms in revealing the secrets and the stories behind their time in the funky and undisciplined Dream Team (alongside an incredible amount of gossip concerning Verstappen and Leclerc).

This interview tells their story and the story of the strongest tennis team in the world.

Chapter one here!!!

[bossiegifs]

UPDATE! CHARLES MICHAEL DAVIS GIF PACK ♛ In the source link have been added 87 gifs [268x151] of Charles Michael Davis as Marcel Gerard in ‘The Originals′ (episodes 3.03 + 3.09 + 3.15), making a total of 222 gifs. All of these gifs were made from scratch by me for rp purposes. Please, do NOT claim as your own, repost or add them to your gif hunts. You can edit them as gif icons or in crackships, but please give me some form of credit if you post it. If you found these useful, please REBLOG!

Remember that if my work and my gifs are useful to you, now you are free to donate to my KO-FI!

trigger warning: violence, fighting, choking, drinking (alcohol).

[tuppencetrinkets]

Sorted caps from Season 1 of The Vampire Diaries, the Originals and Legacies.

Nina Dobrev - Elena Gilbert

Paul Wesley - Stefan Salvatore

Ian Somerhalder - Damon Salvatore

Kat Graham - Bonnie Bennett

Candice King - Caroline Forbes

Zach Roerig - Matt Donovan

Michael Trevino - Tyler Lockwood

Steven R. McQueen - Jeremy Gilbert

Matthew Davis - Alaric Saltzman

Joseph Morgan - Klaus Mikaelson

Marguerite Macintyre - Liz Forbes

Sara Canning - Jenna Sommers

Claire Holt - Rebekah Mikaelson

Susan Walters - Carol Lockwood

Daniel Gillies - Elijah Mikaelson

Susan Walters - Carol Lockwood

Kayle Ewell - Vicki Donovan

Melise - Anna Zhu

David Anders - John Gilbert

Arielle Kebbel - Lexi Branson

Phoebe Tonkin - Hayley Marshall

Kelly Hu - Pearl Zhu

Mia Kirshner - Isobel Flemming

Sebastian Roche - Mikael

Charles Michael Davis - Marcel Gerard

Danielle Campbell - Davina Claire

Leah Pipes - Camille O'Connell

Nathan Parsons - Jackson Kenner

Danielle Pineda - Sophie Deveraux

Danielle Rose Russell - Hope Mikaelson

Eka Darville - Diego

Todd Stashwick - Kieran O'Connell

Elyse Levesque - Genevieve

Shannon Kane - Sabine Laurent

Aria Shahghasemi - Landon Kirby

Quincy Rouse - Milton Greasley

Jenny Boyd - Lizzie Saltzman

Kaylee Kaneshiro - Josie Saltzman

Demetrius Bridges - Dorian Williams

Omono Okojie - Cleo Sowande

Yasmine Al-Bustami - Monique Deveraux

Bianca Lawson - Emily Bennett

Steven Krueger - Josh

Lulu Antariksa - Penelope

Melinda Clarke - Kelly Donovan

Sheila Bennett - Jasmine Guy

Karen David - Emma

Gina Torres - Bess

This content is free for anyone to use or edit however you like; if you care to throw a dollar or two my way for time, effort, storage fees etc you are more than welcome to do so via my PAYPAL.  Please like or reblog this post if you have found it useful or are downloading the content within.  If you have any questions or you have any problems with the links or find any inconsistencies in the content, etc. please feel free to drop me a politely worded message via my ASKBOX (second icon from the top on my theme!)

[allergictocolor]

Character Profile - Cousin Itt

Cousin Itt was created for the 1960s TV show, so I don’t have a quote from Charles Addams saying what he should be like. He was fashioned after two drawings of a man completely covered in/made out of hair and wearing sunglasses:

In his first TV appearance, he was a little person wearing a suit and gloves, who simply had a tremendous amount of hair. You could clearly see his legs, arms, and hands. Here he is performing a magic act for the family:

That first costume was made using real human hair, but since everyone everywhere smoked all the time back in the 60s, the costume was later changed to synthetic hair to be less of a fire hazard. They also added more hair, glasses, and sometimes a hat. This became the iconic look of Cousin Itt.

He was played by Felix Silla (above right), who at 3’11” tall was the perfect height to wear the costume. While he performed Itt’s actions, they did not use his voice. Itt’s signature meeping sounds were created by the show’s sound engineer, Tony Magro. His way of speaking was replicated in various ways in every later incarnation, even when he was voiced by a celebrity. In the 2019 and 2021 3D animated films, his voice was provided by Snoop Dogg, but it sounds like it was played backwards and the pitch was raised and possibly sped up. Despite his speech being indecipherable, the members of the Addams family can all understand Itt perfectly.

In the sitcom, Itt will ring the doorbell when he arrives at the house, but if they take too long to let him in, he’ll climb up the walls and enter the house through a window or the chimney. Itt doesn’t live in the house, but he has a guest room built to his dimensions. The others have to stoop to fit inside of it. It’s played for comedic effect, but it’s kind of wonderful that there’s at least one place where other people have to deal with everything being built for his size, rather than the other way around.

The plots for Cousin Itt’s appearances in the sitcom centered around him finding a job or, at one point, losing his hair. In the 1991 film, he falls in love with Margaret Alford, the wife of Tully Alford, who was scamming the family. This sort of establishes Itt as a ladies’ man, which carries over into the 90s animated series and the 3D animated films. Though in the 1993 movie, he’s happily married to Margaret and they have a hairy little child together named What.

Cousin Itt has not yet appeared in the Netflix show Wednesday, though an ancestor of his has. In the seventh episode, Fester, Thing, and Wednesday break into a safe behind a painting of Ignatius ”Iggy” Itt. The way that Fester refers to him makes it clear that this is not the Itt that they both know today, but a different, earlier relative. In addition to that, the dates under the painting are from 200 years ago, and we can assume that Cousin Itt is not over 200 years old. Though it is hard to tell with this family.

Will Cousin Itt make an appearance in Wednesday? It’s unlikely to happen in season 2 unless it’s a surprise. None of the guest stars listed are under four feet tall. There is the possibility that one of the new actors with an unnamed role could be the voice actor for Itt, and a little person would be hired to do the body work, but it’s far more likely that they would hire someone famous for the role.

We are already meeting Grandmama in season 2, and there will be some amount of plot happening in the Addams family mansion, so we can’t completely rule out the possibility of Itt making an appearance. However, they may also wait until a third season to introduce him, and hire someone like Warwick Davis to play him. Right now, only those involved in the show know for certain.

[goddamnmuses]

Long Ass Starter Call Thing

Soo here are a bunch of icons. Send an icon and get a starter! (It’ll probably be a one liner).  Feel free to do this even if we’ve not interracted or if we already have 10000 things on the go, just go for it. If you want something specific then feel free to specify or if you see this you also have permission to just throw a starter at me.

Harry Potter Muses: 🐍 = Salazar Slytherin Marvel Muses: 🦝 = Rocket Raccoon 🕸 = Peter Parker 🕷️ = Older Peter 🌯 = Wade Wilson 🏃‍♂️ = Pietro Maximoff 🖕🏾 = Aaron Davis 💰 = Harry Osborn 🔨 = Thor Odinson 👊 = Marcus Milton DC Muses & Lucifer because.. I guess?: 😈 = Lucifer Morningstar 🦇 = Bruce Wayne 🦸 = Clark Kent 🪲 = Jaime Reyes 🪁 = Charles Brown iZombie Muse: 👨‍⚕️ = Ravi Chakrabarti Archer Muse: 🥍  = Sterling Archer Misfits Muse: 🥴 = Nathan Young God of War Muse: 🪓 = Kratos Star Wars Muses: 🤺 = Darro Orniel Dragon OC: 🐲 = Draco The Boys Muse: 🔪 = Billy Butcher Invincible Muse: 🩸  = Mark Grayson The Witcher Muse: ⚔️ = Roufast of Alba Sonic The Hedgehog Muse: 🦔 = Shadow The Hedgehog Dragon Age Muse: 🛡️ = Aedan Cousland OTHER: 🎰 = One of my 'potential muses' (Will be random if not specified) 🎲 = A random muse.

[kevinsreviewcatalogue]

Review Double Feature: Beetlejuice (1988) and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

Another double feature, and once again, it's a classic movie and its nostalgic, decades-later sequel. How do they fare?

Beetlejuice (1988)

Rated PG

<Originally posted at https://kevinsreviewcatalogue.blogspot.com/2024/09/review-double-feature-beetlejuice-1988.html>

Score: 5 out of 5

While Beetlejuice wasn't the first movie that Tim Burton ever made, it was the one that made him a goth icon, turning his name into a byword for a particular kind of style that has at least one foot in the horror genre and is often rich in gothic flair but combines it with a strong dose of comedy and whimsy. In this case, he takes a classic horror movie premise, that of a family moving into a new house only to find out that it's haunted by ghosts that don't want them there, and turns it completely on its head by making the ghosts the protagonists and using that setup as the basis for a riotous comedy, powered largely by the force-of-nature performance of Michael Keaton in his comic prime as the titular villain. It still stands as one of Burton's best movies and one of the best comedies of the '80s, especially for the less raunchy end of the genre (even if I wouldn't by any means call this a family film, inexplicable PG rating aside), powered by an all-star cast and an early version of Burton's unique style that was already apparent here. It's a movie where, the moment you see it, you don't need to ask why it's a classic, you just know.

Our protagonists are Adam and Barbara Maitland, a young couple living in the idyllic small town of Winter River, Connecticut who have just died in a car accident. What's more, when they get to the afterlife, they find a tangled bureaucracy that tells them that they have to spend 125 years in their house before they can move on, which means that they have to watch as a new family, the Deetzes, move in from the city and renovate their beautiful home into the modernist art project of the stepmom Delia's dreams and the Maitlands' nightmares. As such, they make it their mission to scare the Deetzes out of the house, easier said than done given the Maitlands' easygoing nature, the fact that the Deetz family's yuppie patriarch Charles sees dollar signs in a possibly haunted house, and the fact that the Deetzes' gloomy teenage daughter Lydia can see them and ain't scared of no ghosts. Out of desperation, the Maitlands turn to the "bio-exorcist" Betelgeuse (pronounced "Beetlejuice") for help, only to get far more than they bargained for.

The secret to Burton's success in his glory days was that, while his movies were spooky, they were very rarely scary. Burton is a man who has a clear affection for classic horror movies and injects their style into his own work, but doesn't necessarily try to replicate the actual terror, instead using that style to make comedies and dramas about offbeat people who are actually pretty normal once you get to know them. In this case, he made what's basically Poltergeist as a comedy, with the ghosts getting as much character as the living humans. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis make for a great comic duo as the dorky yet lovable ghosts who are utterly clueless at being horror movie ghosts. They lift macabre imagery from contemporary '70s and '80s horror movies as they try to frighten their home's unwelcome new inhabitants, but John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper they ain't, and they come off as just lovably pathetic instead as they can't even get Charles and Delia to acknowledge their existence. They're Clark and Ellen Griswold as ghosts, slowly but surely melting down in frustration.

They're not the real reason everybody remembers this movie, though. It is, after all, titled Beetlejuice and not Adam & Barbara, and Michael Keaton walks away with the entire film. Beetlejuice being a comic character may have softened his nastiness and kept this rated PG, but he is otherwise presented as an absolute creep, a guy who sexually harasses every woman he meets, ruins the lives and unlives of everyone of any gender he meets, and looks like a disheveled drunk who isn't allowed within a thousand feet of a school, which only makes his plans for Lydia come off that much worse. (Apparently, the original version of the script made it explicit.) He's a whirlwind of chaos and destruction who, for all his comic presentation, brings the film the closest it comes to being actually scary, like if you took the lower-class lout character from other '80s comedies and recast him as a supernatural villain. There's a reason why Keaton, before his turn towards drama, was one of the biggest comedy stars of the '80s, making both the slapstick and the dialogue feel effortless as he makes both the Deetzes' lives and the Maitlands' afterlives into Hell on Earth.

The other character who's become synonymous with this movie is Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz, who likely inspired the goth phases ("it's not a phase, Mom!") of an entire generation of teenage girls in the '90s. Her look was instantly iconic, and fortunately, Ryder didn't just let the costume department do all the work for her character. If Lydia comes off in 2024 as something of a cliché, then that's because she helped create the cliché, the archetypal moody teenager of any number of family comedies past and present combined with an interest in the supernatural and a heart of gold beneath her creepy exterior. She's Wednesday Addams as a teen in a yuppie family that doesn't understand her, a few years before Christina Ricci made that character her own, to the point that the only thing that surprises me about the show Wednesday is that it took Burton so long to get the chance to take a crack at a proper Addams Family adaptation. Her parents, meanwhile, serve as her utter antithesis, with Jeffrey Jones making Charles a man who desperately needs to get a clue (especially once his reaction to a haunted house is to turn it and the town around it into a tourist attraction) and Catherine O'Hara having the time of her life as Delia, a full-of-herself artist who it's implied married Charles for his money and whose aesthetic tastes are a comically grotesque parody of everything that people make fun of modern art for. From the moment you meet them, you understand immediately why the Maitlands want them the hell out of their home. If this movie has anything on its mind other than its horror parody and its visual flair, it's making fun of yuppies, and while it's mostly the obvious jokes about how they're a bunch of pretentious dilettantes, they serve the film's style quite well.

And on the note of aesthetic tastes, while this wasn't the first movie that Tim Burton directed, it was the one that made him into "Tim Burton", and it still stands as one of the greatest demonstrations of his distinct and oft-imitated style. It is a special effects showcase, starting with a playful homage to '50s giant monster movies in the opening credits and continuing on with the varied looks of the ghosts we see later in the film, especially as the Maitlands explore an afterlife reminiscent of the worst DMV you've ever been to run by a scene-stealing Sylvia Sidney as a salty, seen-it-all bureaucrat who's Not in the Mood for Your Shit. The music, too, does wonders to set the mood, from Danny Elfman's legendary score that sounds like an '80s New Wave remix of a classic horror soundtrack (as befitting a former member of Oingo Boingo) to the heavy use of Harry Belafonte in some key moments. The look and feel of the film matches the tone of the writing and story, spooky but playful, which makes the jokes that much funnier once they start rolling almost immediately. That said, it's always grounded in something resembling reality, in this case a version of small-town New England drawn less from Stephen King than Norman Rockwell. It's what makes the supernatural mayhem hit that much harder (incidentally, the reason why King himself set so many stories in small-town Maine, before his own style was copied to the point of cliché), and honestly, I think it's the difference between this and other early Burton films on one hand and his late-period decline on the other. A lot of Burton's humor, here most of all, was rooted in the juxtaposition of classically gothic imagery with life in modern America, often suggesting that it was in fact the former that was more level-headed and "normal" than our society that, in its obsession with status and the appearance of normality, can often turn quite whacked-out in its own way. Burton kind of lost sight of this with his later films, but in his earlier movies like this, he was a master at it.

The Bottom Line

Like any great comedy, it's hard to describe in words without ruining the best parts, so I'll just leave it at this: Beetlejuice is still a classic after 36 years. It's a simple movie, but that just means it can sharpen its focus and deliver a hell of a spoof of supernatural horror.

----------

And now, for the sequel...

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024 A.D.)

Rated PG-13 for violent content, macabre and bloody images, strong language, some suggestive material and brief drug use

Score: 3 out of 5

If Beetlejuice was Tim Burton at his best, then Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is, for better or worse, an encapsulation of late-period Burton, both his continued strengths as a filmmaker and the points where he's lost his touch. The plot is perfunctory, a mess of multiple different storylines butting heads with each other, with Monica Bellucci seemingly only being here as the villain because Tim Burton has a Type while an actual, more interesting villain was wasted. It felt like screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar had tried to cram an idea for a Beetlejuice TV series, or multiple different first drafts from different writers over the course of over three decades, into a feature film, with lots of plot threads that went nowhere and were wrapped up far too hastily for my liking. The first movie wasn't exactly that deep, but this makes it look downright intellectual. But when it comes to the things that Burton's name is associated with, from creepy visuals to a twisted sense of humor, this movie roars to the point that I was able to largely shut off my brain and enjoy it. The returning cast is great, not least of all Michael Keaton demonstrating that he hasn't lost a step even after he became a dramatic actor, while Jenna Ortega gets another opportunity to demonstrate why she's one of the biggest young stars of her generation. The humor is as on-point as it was last time, and while the special effects have a much bigger budget than they did before, they haven't lost the practical, handmade charm of the original. There's more of a focus on horror this time, but much of it comes proudly paired with the comedy, from deaths straight out of Looney Tunes to a running gag about the fate of Charles from the first film that I'm surprised got by with a PG-13 rating. As far as nostalgia-bait sequels are concerned, this one did most of what it needed to, if little else.

The film starts with a grown-up Lydia Deetz, now the host of a talk show dedicated to the supernatural, and her teenage daughter Astrid, a student at a boarding school who believes that ghosts aren't real and that her mother is either crazy or a grifting hack, being called home to Winter River, Connecticut after Charles Deetz dies gruesomely in a plane crash. (He survived the actual crash; shame about the shark in the water around the crash site.) Meanwhile, in the afterlife, Beetlejuice is still plugging away at his bio-exorcist gig, while Delores, the evil witch he married in life who's still pissed at him after they killed each other (the feeling is mutual), escapes from her prison thanks to some carelessness and proceeds to go on a soul-sucking rampage hoping to take her revenge on her ex. Along the way, Lydia's douchebag boyfriend and producer Rory proposes to her out of the blue, Astrid meets a cute boy in town named Jeremy who's into the supernatural, and Delia... doesn't actually get to do much, but any excuse to get Catherine O'Hara back in full form is good in my book.

There are a lot of plot threads going on here, enough that I think I might have missed a few of them, which kind of highlights the biggest problem this movie has, that it's overstuffed with plot and doesn't really have much of an actual story. Even by the third act after everything's started to come together, the plot about Lydia rescuing Astrid from the afterlife with Beetlejuice's help and the plot about Delores hunting down Beetlejuice barely have anything to do with each other, with the former settled in an anticlimatic fashion only to promptly segue into the next as Delores literally barges in. An important plot point hinges on Lydia, a woman obsessed with the supernatural and the dark side of life, being clueless about a grisly true-crime story in her own childhood hometown. This movie does a lot of things right, but its writing is not one of them. It tries to do far too much plot-wise, and it largely faceplants every time it asks me to focus on such. It's a shame, because, while Monica Bellucci had almost nothing to do in this movie beyond look creepy and sexy in that distinct Burtonesque way (see also: Lisa Marie, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green), she did it well, and I wanted to see more of her. A better movie would've found a way to incorporate Delores more directly into the plot, perhaps by having her use Lydia or Astrid to get to Beetlejuice, and given Bellucci more of a chance to shine.

Fortunately, this movie didn't forget to do the same for its other top-billed stars. Michael Keaton still has it as a comic actor, and Beetlejuice is still the same force of nature he was before, a guy who's about as profane as the PG-13 rating will allow and feels eager to punch through its bounds. Catherine O'Hara's Delia, like Delores, doesn't really get much of a plot, but she does at least get to make for some hilarious comic relief, still the same shallow yuppie arteeste she was in the '80s and one whose knowledge of the reality of the afterlife has simply given her false hope of finding Charles again. Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega together get most of the dramatic arc of the film as the mother and daughter Lydia and Astrid, both of them turning in solid performances and Ortega in particular feeling very much like the heir to '90s Ryder in terms of being the one you cast when you want someone who can play a moody teenager really well. (One missed opportunity, though: I think the funniest version of Astrid would've been to make her the biggest girly girl imaginable, one who embraced a life in pink as her own form of rebellion against her goth mother. Not only would it have made sense given the tension between the two, it also would've done a great job of sending up Ortega's typecasting.) The supporting cast, meanwhile, was a who's who of fun bits, from Justin Theroux as Lydia's vapid boyfriend and spiritual guru who feels very much like a male version of Delia (maybe Lydia hasn't escaped her mother's influence as much as she thought) to Willem Dafoe as a Hollywood action hero who died doing his own stunts and now gets to be a loose cannon cop for real in the afterlife chasing Delores and Beetlejuice.

And when it comes to Burton himself, he brings a lot of this movie's best parts. Once I accepted that this was gonna be one of those movies where the plot made no damn sense and wasn't worth following, I stayed for the humor and the style, and this movie largely sticks to what worked last time even if they've got more money to throw around for the effects now. Jeffrey Jones' very public disgrace (I'll spare you the details, but let's just say he was really lucky he didn't land up in prison) means that this movie takes every opportunity it can to piss on Charles' grave with some of the most backhanded "tributes" I can imagine, his over-the-top death rendered in a stop-motion animated sequence being just the start. The afterlife is once again full of cool-looking ghosts whose appearances let you know right away exactly how they died, and while the balance of comedy and horror this time leans more towards actually trying to be scary, the kills are still goofy and cartoonish enough that it manages to remain lighthearted and fun. As a visual stylist, Burton has always been distinct even in his lesser films, and while there's nothing here that's particularly groundbreaking, it's always at least fun to watch.

The Bottom Line

"Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but at least fun to watch" sums up my thoughts on this movie in general. It's kinda dumb and needed a top-to-bottom rewrite, but as a showcase for a great comic cast and a lot of spooky and cool special effects, I had a good time. Check it out.

[itsawritblr]

So . . . I was sent these.

A couple of you know I used to have a Beetlejuice x Lydia blog. Used to be into the fandom big time, since the movie first opened in 1988. Then, for reasons I won't get into, I lost interest in all things Beej.

But some people still read my Beej fics on AO3. And one of them sent me these photos from Beetlejuice 2. They also sent me the link to the article they appeared in.

So for you few Beetlebabes who still Follow me -- you know who you are -- here's the article.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”... Beetlejuice returns in first look at Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder

Nick Romano

Wed, March 20, 2024 at 9:00 AM CDT

It's been 36 years, but once again, the juice is loose.

After reprising Batman in last year's The Flash, Michael Keaton returns to another iconic role in Entertainment Weekly's exclusive first look at Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to director Tim Burton's cult hit.

Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara also reprise their roles as Lydia and Delia Deetz, respectively, while Burton's Wednesday star Jenna Ortega plays Lydia's daughter Astrid, and The Leftovers star Justin Theroux plays Rory. Further details on Rory remain under wraps for now — unlike the titular "bio-exorcist."

The original Beetlejuice (1988) followed the recently deceased Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin), who enlist the aid of the mischievous demon Beetlejuice/Betelgeuse (Keaton), to expel the current living residents of their home, the Deetz family. All hell, subsequently, breaks loose.

The sequel picks up decades later with a death in the family. "That's all I will say," Burton tells EW in an interview. "There's something that happens that sets things in motion." Could that be the death of Lydia's father, Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones)? The director plays coy: "We'll see." One thing's for sure, Beetlejuice comes back into play.

Burton describes getting Keaton back in the classic costume and makeup as "a weird out-of-body experience."

"He just got back into it," the filmmaker behind 1989's Batman (also starring Keaton) and 1993's The Nightmare Before Christmas recalls. "It was kind of scary for somebody who was maybe not that overly interested in doing it. It was such a beautiful thing for me to see all the cast, but he, sort of like demon possession, just went right back into it."

Burton says he and Keaton have talked about a sequel on and off over the years. "Unless it felt right, he had no burning desire to do it," the director recalls. "I think we all felt the same way. It only made sense if it had an emotional hook."

Many concepts were floated around, some dating all the way back to the '80s, including a treatment set in Hawaii. "We talked about lots of different things," Burton says. "That was early on when we were going, Beetlejuice and the Haunted Mansion, Beetlejuice Goes West, whatever. Lots of things came up."

What they needed, however, was time. His actors, including Ryder and O'Hara, had all moved on to other projects after the original came out, and "nobody," Burton notes, "was really pushing for it." The filmmaker also admits he didn't initially (and still doesn't to some degree) understand the success of the first film, so he wasn't motivated to move forward with an idea that didn't excite him.

The hook he was looking for, as it turns out, revolves around Ryder's Lydia and bringing together three generations of Deetz women, including O'Hara's Delia and Ortega's Astrid. "I so identified with the Lydia character, but then you get to all these years later, and you take your own journey, going from cool teenager to lame adult, back and forth again," he explains. "That made it emotional, gave it a foundation. So that was the thing that really truly got me into it."

Other details on the film itself are being kept secret for now, other than the presence of Monica Bellucci (Spectre), Arthur Conti (House of the Dragon), and Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) among the cast. (Dafoe previously disclosed his role as a B-movie action star who died and became a police officer in the Afterlife.) Burton feels "a bit jinx-y" about revealing such things, given that he's still shaping the movie in the editing phase. But he does confirm he'll be using stop-motion animation to bring a lot of the classic Beetlejuice effects to the screen. "It needed a back-to-basics, handmade quality," he says. "It reenergized why I love making movies."

And what about that title? Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. "It's been, what? Thirty-five years. So it didn't feel like Beetlejuice 2 to me," Burton says. "It didn't feel like that kind of a movie. The other one I thought of, because one of my favorite Dracula movies is Dracula A.D. 1972, was Beetlejuice 2024 A.D. But this was a nice simple one."

Just don't say the name one more time, or you risk summoning the man himself.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will hit theaters on Sept. 6.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Addendum: Was sent the link to this, too.

I'm . . . fearfully optimistic . . . .

[whoreviewswho]

What phantasmagoria is this? - The Unquiet Dead, 2005

There is an element of fun to be derived for anoraks such as ourselves in exercises of comparison and contrast. One such game I have been musing upon lately relates specifically to Doctor Who writers of the original and revived series. For example, Steven Moffat is the modern Robert Holmes, Russell T Davies something more like a Terrance Dicks and Mark Gatiss, the subject of today's discussion, is perhaps more akin to a Bob Baker and Dave Martin. To a certain kind of fan, this might sound incredibly derisive and, to an extent, it is but it is worth noting that the original series' Bristol Boys were hardly hacks or even especially poor writers. Between the two of them, as a partnership or otherwise, no less than nine stories were broadcast in their names over eight years and every single one of them is bristling with creativity and energy. If anything, the downfall of Baker and Martin was that they brought too many ideas to a Doctor Who script. But despite really nobody pointing to any one of their serials and crying "Yes, that one's my favourite", it would be ludicrous to suggest their work left little impact with iconography of Axons, the Mutts, K-9 and Sarah Jane's Andy Pandy costume being etched into the minds of audiences for years to come.

And Gatiss is much the same. Contributing just as many stories over a twelve year period as well as appearing in front of the camera and helming one of the show's finest spin-off ventures, his legacy is arguably even harder to ignore. True as it is that he was never awarded tasks as monumental as The Three Doctors or The Hand of Fear nor creating something as iconic as K-9, Gatiss' unwavering position as the Moff's reliable partner ensured his mark on the series would be left no matter what he was writing and, even then, what he was writing did offer up its fair share of iconic moments. Like the kids who grew up with the Bristol Boys, you'd be hard pressed to find a fan my age who was not unnerved by the peg dolls, introduced to the Ice Warriors or able to recreate the exact cadence of Maureen Lipman's "HUNNNGRYYYYYYYY" at a moment's notice. Hell, they probably even learnt who Winston Churchill was thanks to him. Yet, the comparison still is not flattering. At the end of the day, I am celebrating Mark Gatiss for being a competent writer during two eras of Doctor Who where the overall production was some of the best it has ever been at every level. 

With this in mind, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Gatiss' legacy is the one he was never allowed to have – the showrunner. Gatiss pitched a complete reboot of the series with G*reth R*berts and Cl*yton H*ckman but obviously lost out to Davies and, it has to be said, the prospect of even one full season of stories that are about as strong as Empress of Mars and The Shakespeare Code is hard to get excited about. There were some potentially interesting aspects such as the Doctor being introduced as an antique shop owner, the continuation of the serial format and Derek Jacobi as the Doctor. All of these things could have made for something entertaining to watch.

But reflecting on this pitch gets us to the biggest problems with Mark Gatiss as a Doctor Who writer and, arguably, the same things that made him the perfect co-writer for Sherlock; he is an old-fashioned, conservative writer and a dreadful romantic for all things nostalgia. His scripts are like the TV equivalent of an interactive museum exhibit that passionately recreates bygone eras. Sometimes this comes good, sometimes it does not but they are qualities that make it hardly surprising that Russell T Davies found him the perfect person to pen the very first historical revived Doctor Who.

Like practically all of Davies' initial run on the programme, My Name's Dickens... Charles Dickens (as it was originally titled) came about from a brief he hired Gatiss to fill. Davies insisted that the story take place in Cardiff, be set during the Victorian era and feature Charles Dickens in an adventure with charlatan medians. Gatiss' original pitch was entitled The Crippingwell Horror and took place in a hotel for fake medians with the character that would becomes Sneed being an employee who suddenly realises his powers are not a mere act. Interestingly, the original script would have drawn some similarities with The Empty Child two-parter with the character that became Gwyneth being haunted by the ghost of her recently deceased brother. Across the various drafts and at the production team's behest, the script became a less and less grim affair with a healthy injection of humour and self-awareness. The concept of the Gelth, however, was present across all versions with Gatiss taking inspiration from a childhood nightmare for the image of the possessed Mrs. Pearce.

In the context of its home season, The Unquiet Dead is perfectly slotted. The third story (and episode) of the season, it follows The End of the World with something completely different. It shows the full breadth of the programmes basic possibilities across three weeks and sets the template for the three modes Doctor Who will continue to alternate between and subvert until the present day. This was probably disappointing for some longterm fans as it does lay down a fundamentally different foundation to the 1963 season. In Verity Lambert's first three stories, Doctor Who was a survivalist drama that oscillated between educational historical settings, futuristic political allegories and surrealist horror flavours. Davies' Doctor Who was a soap opera that shifted between satires of contemporary England, futuristic camp absurdities and pastiches of revered literature. Neither of these is more valid but the distinction is essential to understanding how British television had changed over forty years and, indeed, the kind of fans that each version of the programme has continued to garner.

It is also important in understanding what The Unquiet Dead is actually accomplishing as it is essentially intending to fulfil a dual function. The first, as we have established, is to introduce a new audience to the historical Doctor Who but the second, and arguably harder, is to reintroduce fans to the historical Doctor Who. The way it goes about these things is the same; it turns to pastiche. For new audiences, the cultural context of Charles Dickens' writing and his literary depiction of the Victorian era is heavily leaned upon as a shorthand for establishing the world and characters of Gatiss' story. Leaning on tropes and cultural signifiers is an essential aspect of streamlining for the forty-five minute format and really the only choice for a show as fast paced as Doctor Who set out to be. It's a very savvy choice and, to be fair, not an entirely new one since it is essentially something David Whittaker was employing as far back as The Crusade. However, Whitaker never had to contend with the second aspect of this that works which is making the story equal parts a pastiche of the Doctor Who historical arguably a literary style in its own right in 2005. Henceforth, The Unquiet Dead would be just as the general audiences remembered and expected it to be; famous figures from history, gothic horror tones and colourful and exaggerated period stereotypes. 

The latter of these two examples, of course, pertain almost exclusively to the mid-'70s period which, fair enough, was when Doctor Who was at its peak of general audience popularity (and even then it's pretty much exclusively Talons of Weng-Chiang we are referring to). As for the first, that practice was pretty much abandoned after The Crusades. No, this is not a genuine Doctor Who historical anymore than this is a genuine recreation of Victorian Cardiff. Rather, it is a streamlined and romanticised version and the one that Gatiss is most fond of recreating (and he would several times after this, even in Sherlock). Authentic to real history and Doctor Who or not, The Unquiet Dead set the precedent for practically every historical episode moving forward with every season (save for exclusively series seven) uniting its main cast with a celebrity historical figure for a heightened romp around some bygone literary tropes.

The more attentive reader would likely have noticed by now that I have been avoiding actually talking about The Unquiet Dead itself for some time now. There is a good reason for this which is simply that, besides the context surrounding it, there is very little to actually say. Even what I have is mostly just production background and reiterating points El Sandifer made years ago now (and more eloquently than me at that). I promised an analysis of the episode so let's just bite the bullet and get on with it. As I have already suggested, there is plenty to like about The Unquiet Dead that makes it hard to write off as some wholly disposable runaround. Being so obviously in the mould of the original show, more so than its predecessors and really any other episode of the first season, there is a simplicity to the affair that I find works to its advantage. There are some mature but simply laid out themes of spirituality versus science that come together rather deftly in a climax that hinges on children realising that an open-mind and attentive nature can allow for new discoveries and broader horizons. The constant reoccurrence of gas as a thematic symbol is effective and easy for children to spot. It provides a coherent, visual link between the Victorian era and the modern day, the old world hurtling into a new age.

Dickens himself is key to conveying these themes as well which is impressive considering that Gatiss was reluctant to include him in his story in the first place. Dickens is portrayed marvellously by Simon Callow, an expert on the author with prior experience playing the character and recreating his public readings. Callow was adamant that for him to sign on, the script would have to be of a sufficiently high quality. Allegedly, his initial reaction to the news that the author would be part of a Doctor Who was disappointment, feeling that fiction often did an injustice to the man. Thankfully, he was very much won over by the material and brought, not only the best performance of anybody in the episode but, some serious credibility to a programme that needed it. Simon Callow does not just sign on for any old slop and why should he when he brings such gravitas and grandeur in his characterisation of Dickens? Callow single-handedly elevates the already solid material to make the part simply superb. Like all the great character actors, and like this episode's approach to history, he may not be one-to-one accurate to Dickens as he was in real history but he embodies his spirit and essence of the author as he is remembered by us today.

So Dickens becomes the heart of the narrative, somewhat inevitably given the mythic status he holds in British literary canon. While Rose is still serving as an audience surrogate in the sense that hers are the eyes with which we view the past (more on that later), it is Dickens who serves a more traditional protagonist role to no small extent. If we consider the Doctor and Rose as analogous for Doctor Who as a series and the Gwyneth/Sneed double-act as our vessels for historical pastiche, Dickens falls in between as the baffled and wry viewer of events who understands the rules of period costume dramas and is being introduced to the weirdness of a Doctor Who story. All of the characters are awarded strong moments but only Dickens receives a full-blown opportunity for change and it is he who actually saves the day (with a healthy dose of real-world science for the kiddos at that). Dickens is the narrow-minded know-it-all whose beliefs are challenged by exposure to a new facet of his world and this, on the surface, is an extremely obvious direction to go. In the absence of a full-blown special, The Unquiet Dead is honorarily regarded by some fans to be the Ninth Doctor's Christmas episode and the allusions to Dickens' most renowned work in that arena are anything but subtle. The door-knocker is a cute touch and offering Dickens his own Scrooge arc, of a sort, works well enough however on-the-nose it is but going so far as to quote the book, not only several times but, as his final line is a level of overtness that I could have done without.

What is more interesting to talk about is Dickens' role in a metafictional sense. Like every story of the first series, The Unquiet Dead is drenched in metatextuality, in this case responding directly to its prior television version. Dickens is the original series of Doctor Who; a beloved icon that still has many fans that has grown stale, burnt its bridges yet continues to go on and on "the same old show... [p]erhaps I've thought everything I'll ever think". Yet, Dickens' worldview is challenged and his morale reinvigorated as the new show, the Doctor and Rose, enter the scene and disrupt his entire understanding. Doctor Who is more than capable of continuing in a new form for a modern world but its older form, the one Dickens embodies, cannot continue alongside it. Zooming out to a broader lens, we can see an even cheekier read where Dickens is symbolic of an entire storytelling approach for science-fantasy and drama that is reinvigorated by the potential of what Doctor Who could be.

Despite Dickens taking over the narrative, the medium aspect was obviously not abandoned and the bridge between the two worlds in this story is not Dickens but literally and figuratively embodied through Gwyneth, played very charmingly by Eve Myles. Gwyneth is the core character embodying the spirituality aspect of the story, essentially serving as the opposite for Dickens. The latter refuses to accept the Gelth exist because they do not fit the facts of his worldview while Gwyneth accepts them more readily than anyone because the facts presented align with her spiritual beliefs. Gwyneth is a medium, communicating with her “angels”, the Gelth, and ultimately understands both conflicting parties’, the Doctor and Rose's, ideologies but refuses both and makes her own choice to help the Gelth, regardless of what others think and makes her own choice to destroy them be sure it is what she believes to be right.

Besides it being a good choice formally to air this episode in the third slots, The Unquiet Dead also lees back an appropriately further layer to the Doctor's character, challenging the audience's morality without ever making him non-empathetic. Plagued by guilt over the consequences of the Time War, still something that we know nothing about beyond the fact that it wiped out there Time Lords, the Doctor offers the Gelth the opportunity to roam freely amongst the bodies of the dead, much to Rose’s disdain. The Doctor's role has little precedent in the televised show, clearly suggesting that his mistake comes from an overwhelming and misplaced emotional response. The Doctor projects his guilt onto a situation that takes advantage of that but his moral position is never seriously challenged. Rose takes a more conservative position which stems naturally from the best scene in the episode where she and Gwen are conversing about their respective upbringings. The scene overtly positions Rose as the educated, condescending lady of privilege which is a delightfully intelligent role to cast her in given her introduction in Rose explicitly establishing the opposite. Rose thinks she knows better than Gwyneth because she thinks she is smarter than her. It could have been a disastrous move and it is impressive that it never paints her in an entirely unlikable light. Importantly too, this scene is written by Russell as a late addition to extend the runtime. 

Everything in the story up until here is working but the climax is ultimately where it kind of breaks down and never recovers. The story needs the Doctor to be right for the arc and theme of enlightenment and indulging other perspectives to broaden your own to actually work but it also needs to have an exciting third act with monsters and life or dearth stakes. So, the Gelth are just irredeemably bad beings. As Sandifer exposes in her own essay, this story is infamously criticised for xenophobic undertones regarding the Gelth and she breaks the entire argument down incredibly well. My only addition to that critique is that I think it is barely a matter of conjecture to say that this reading was unintended given Russell's insistence upon recreating the 1980 moment from Pyramids of Mars. The scene was, mercifully, cut but the intention was to explicitly depict a present-day Earth that has been invaded by the Gelth which would have more than doubled-down on their position as irredeemable monsters. 

This is not a story about immigration, it is not Flip-Flop, and Rose is never painted as morally correct for insisting that their cohabiting the Earth is wrong. The focus of the conflict is on the whys of their choices, not the what. The Doctor is perhaps the most enlightened, for lack of a better word, of the cast but his emotions override his judgement and he allows the Gelth a way to invade while Gwyneth has an unwavering belief in her angels and the blind faith gets her killed. Dickens is only able to save the day once he accepts that his life has been fundamentally changed which leaves Rose as the one character whose development is somewhat confused. Rose thinks herself superior to Gwyneth due to her relative education and life experience but is shamed by her for assuming she can make decisions on her behalf. The result of this is... nothing really. Rose just sympathises with Gwyneth and is as moved by her death as her two surviving companions and that is about all here is to it. The sombre tragedy of the scene following Gwyneth's death ("She saved the world. A servant girl. No one will ever know.") is staged like a story that is fundamentally about class but The Unquiet Dead just is not. It's not that it doesn't come up from scene to scene but the theme is not a driving force of the story until it very suddenly and awkwardly is.

The Unquiet Dead is a good episode of Doctor Who with a great sense of atmosphere and tonal consistency but is more than a little shy of greatness. The production quality is excellent, the corpses and wonderfully creepy, there are great performances from the whole cast and the only real holes in the production are the lack of ambition in direction and editing (it is cut very slowly) and the surprising lack of score from Murray Gold that is something I would never criticise a story with his name attached for otherwise. The final script here is something much messier than the rest of the production and favours individual moments over a cohesive bigger picture. It is entertaining, clever and the right story to be airing three weeks into the show's run but becomes, nonetheless, somewhat more and more insubstantial on repeat viewings. It is a solid episode of a promising programme that likely needed at least one more draft to tease out its most interesting ideas. And maybe tackle that inadvertently problematic bit. In other words, the consummate Gatiss. Start as you mean to go on, I suppose. 

[sureabel]

i. the violent bear it away - flannery o'connor // ii. "ptolemaea" - ethel cain // iii. jude 1:14-15

( charles michael davis / dog soldier wolf, 140, cis man, he/him ) — Look who it is! If you take a look at our database, you’ll find that ABEL BARNES is a PASTOR ( + PODCASTER ) that works in SECTOR 10. According to the file, they’re a mutant with the power of ROUGAROU PHYSIOLOGY. That must be why they’re CHARISMATIC and VOLATILE. If you ask me, they remind me of moonlight shining on a room of crosses, a slap on the hand for stealing the cookie out of the cookie jar, the creature every child fears. They are affiliated with NOBODY.

QUICK FACTS:

full name: abel lucas barnes

date of birth: may 29th, 2035

zodiac big three: gemini sun, capricorn moon, virgo rising

gender & pronouns: cis man & he/him

sexual + romantic orientation: bisexual + biromantic, but celibate now!

ethnicity: 1/2 black, 1/2 filipino

nationality: usamerican

religion: christian ( raised southern baptist, current ideals (when he's preaching! not when he's entirely insane!) are baptist-adjacent )

languages spoken: english (5), french (5), filipino (4), latin (4)

enneagram: 1w2

mbti: isfj

temperament: phlegmatic-melancholic // choleric

alignment: lawful neutral // neutral evill

ability: rougarou physiology

affiliation: n/a

task: mutation breakdown

BACKSTORY

triggers: brief implication of dementia, murder, religious insanity, more murder, more religious insanity

Recounting all 140 years of Abel Barnes's existence ( at least, all 140 fictional years... because we actually do love history in this house, but... ) would be rather difficult. A man who went from a restless child in New Orleans, LA to a man leading evangelicals in Sol City... and to think, it was only one event that caused the change. But that event, the split that that event caused, did not come from nowhere.

See, Abel Barnes's grandmother, Ruthie, played a very integral role in his upbringing. His parents both picked up two jobs upon the birth of his younger brother, thus leaving Ruthie in charge of the boys. It was nothing unremarkable. But Ruthie? Oh, that old broad -- she was unremarkable!

She did not raise Abel gently -- not that she raised him poorly, but she would not let him believe that God would ignore his existence just because he only went to Church on the important holidays ( oh, she certainly tried to force him and his brother to go every Sunday with her, but she ultimately had to accept what their parents demanded... something she had learned the hard way ). The most effective way she found, however, was telling him about the Rougarou.

-> Ruthie was a superstitious woman by nature, so it only made sense that she would weaponize the iconic figure in Cajun folklore.

The Rougarou had been all but cursed after breaking his Lenten vows. Every night, he was turned into a creature -- the body of a man, the head of a wolf. He was nearly invulnerable, and he was very, very hungry. He feasted most often on misbehaving children. And he made sure that their deaths were not quick! He made sure that they suffered! Not that he discriminated, plenty of sinners were targets, but children were his favorite.

Well, this concept terrified Little Abel™... but gradually lost its allure as he aged. By the time he was a teenager, he was doing everything the Rougarou would hate to see and joking with his buddies about how 'ooh, he's gonna get me!' And his absolute favorite? The Rougarou Fest in Houma.

Nothing Ruthie weaponized was working... so she just had to pray he would learn the error of his ways.

He did mellow out as he grew, became a more respectable man. By the time he was 30, he'd married a lovely woman. By the time he was 35, he had a child of his own. By the time he was 38, Ruthie had come to live the rest of her golden years out with him.

He was careful to keep his child away from Ruthie's superstitious and religious ramblings, worse now that she was aging and her brain was slowly deteriorating.

40, however? That was when his life changed forever.

-> The meteor struck the Earth, killing his wife and infecting him.

The head of a wolf, the body of a man. All but invulnerable. Blood-thirsty. Righteous. Complete 180º.

Seeing his child wearing mismatched clothing, he killed him first. Ruthie? She begged. She told him she had spent her entire life in the pursuit of God's love. And that was the exact problem -- how very selfish! Her slaughter... well, he relished in it.

He continued the spree, though it was now focused on friends and strangers who had managed to scrape by, up until the cure was found. He did not like the cure. He did not want the cure. But it was forced upon him...

It just wasn't as strong as it could've been. While he did return to a... slightly saner version of himself, mourning the loss of his son and grandmother and his friends, feeling great guilt over the murders of strangers... something had been permanently rewired.

It was comparable to sundowning. Every morning, Abel awoke as a... fairly sane man who had simply become much more religious than he had been before the meteor ( he would say it was the miracle of surviving it that turned him to God, but that wasn't the truth ). Every night, Abel was that Rougarou, pursuing all sinners he had seen throughout the day. And, as the day went from morning to night, he became progressively worse. Afternoon? The itch was there. Evening? He had begun a podcast inspired by televangelists, one where he went upon raging tangents regarding the Lord.

The physicality matched this. Every morning, Abel awoke with glowing golden eyes and sharp canine teeth. Afternoon? His nails had sharpened, fur was beginning to grow on his hands. Evening? Every tooth was sharp, his ears were standing upon the top of his head, his face and back had become hairier. Night? He had a wolf's head with fur littering his back and torso.

Morning? He awoke with faint memories...

He traveled from settlement to settlement, not leaving until the Rougarou had rampaged throughout and killed all of the worst sinners. Sometimes, that meant destroying entire villages... other times, that meant just a few bodies in his wake.

He reached Sol City some months back. As with all other settlements, he took up his usual mantel as a baptist-adjacent Pastor. But the Rougarou? His eyes have been scanning... and god save The Bearded Lady!

TIMELINE

BORN: New Orleans, largely raised by his religious and superstitious grandmother, Ruthie.

CHILDHOOD: A good kid... mainly caused by the fear his grandmother had instilled in him -- fear of God, fear in superstitions, fear in the Rougarou.

TEENAGE YEARS: Gradually stopped believing in those superstitions and the Rougarou, became a bit more reckless, much to Ruthie's dismay.

YOUNG ADULTHOOD: Started cleaning himself up. Became more respectable.

ADULTHOOD: Had a family (a wife and a child). Ruthie moved in as she gradually became incapable of caring for herself. He kept her far from his child, not wanting the fear she had spilled out onto him to be spilled out onto his child.

DIRECTLY FOLLOWING THE METEOR: His wife was killed by the meteor, meanwhile Abel? Infected by the virus. Rougarou form, baby! Mind did a complete 180. He murdered his child for wearing mismatched clothing. He murdered Ruthie for begging and telling him she had dedicated her life to God. He murdered some of the friends who had made it out. He murdered some strangers.

EARLY POST-CURE: His mind did not entirely recover. He went from roughly agnostic to very Christian, and that was the best of it. By night, he returned to who he had been before the cure -- save, perhaps, for not seeing any nuance in any situation.

POST-CURE: Traveled from settlement to settlement. Delivered sermons in the morning, ranted on his evangelist podcast in the evening, rampaged against all the sinners at night. He would move on only when all of the worst sinners had been wiped out.

HEADCANONS

Every time I imagine this guy talking, I just hear Rodney Barnes's voice. (Totally used the same last name.) (I did not learn about the Rougarou from him, but he does have an episode on it!)

The faint memories he has in the morning typically include nothing but flashes of where he had been. It's the blood on his mouth that tells him he'd done the unthinkable.

-> Of course, he does not always kill in Rougarou form. Sometimes he just attacks! And, y'know, there are even sometimes where all he does is scout out future targets.

more tbd!

CONNECTION IDEAS

Parishioners. When he's not going completely insane, he preaches Baptist-adjacent ideals. A lot lighter on the judgment and hatred, though! We don't need that in a safe space and who really wants to write that?

Friends by day. Besides being a bit fanatic, Abel's... fine in the morning. Tolerable in the afternoon, too.

Enemies by night. I mean... without even thinking about it, he hates everyone who works at The Bearded Lady, as already shared with Doc (though I still need to get back to more messages!). But there are so many sinners in this RP! If Heaven and Hell are real, as Abel believes, I'm pretty sure more characters in this RP would go right to Hell than the ones who'd go to Heaven <3

ElTangoDeRoxanne.mp3. But moooommmm, lust and envy are sins!

idk more to come probs

[pynkhues]

Hi Sophie! How are you?

I wanted to ask who were your picks for Gabrielle, Marius, Akasha, Magnus, the marquis, Lestat’s brothers and, idk, other characters I might be missing. Thanks if you’ll answer!

Hey! I'm good, anon, how are you? And ah! I feel like my picks are a bit same-ish at the moment, because they haven't really changed in a while, which is kind of hilarious given I doubt any of them will actually be cast / think that a lot of them are probably too big for the show (although all of them have done TV recently). I've tried to keep it to my top two picks, then listed some maybes below, but! I'd love to hear other people's choices / fan casting too, especially for roles I haven't really thought that much about (i.e. Lestat's brothers, haha).

Gabrielle

Lesley Manville

Janet McTeer

Other maybes: Isabelle Adjani, Judy Davis, Patricia Clarkson, and maybe Miranda Otto (she's probably a little too young)?

Marius

Lee Pace

Andre Holland

Other maybes: Morgan Spector, David Dastmalchian, Tobias Menzies, Orlando Jones

Akasha

I'm really stumped for Akasha, actually! I'm really hoping they go with an Arabic or North African actress given Akasha's supposed to be from Uruk (now Warka, in Iraq). I think it could be good too of separating the show's version from the (iconic!) Aaliyah version in Queen of the Damned. The ony actress I can really think could do her justice in that sense is Sofia Boutella? But I feel there's a good chance they'll go for an unknown in this particular role.

Magnus

Mark Strong

Gabriel Byrne

Other maybes: Christopher Eccleston, Michael Shannon

The Marquis de Lioncourt

Jason Isaacs

Charles Dance

Other maybes: Rufus Sewell (he's probably a little too young too? Someone suggested him to me a while ago for Marius too, and I like him there too)

Lestat's brothers

I haven't actually really thought too much about them! You could probably do something fun and cast Sam's actual brother, haha, but he's a lot older so I don't know if that would quite work (I also don't think he's as strong an actor). I'm also mmm, curious as to how old they'll be in the show? Lestat's the youngest, of course, but I imagine we'll be seeing them across a few different ages given TVL goes a lot more into Lestat's childhood than IWTV goes into Louis'.

I don't know though! What do you think?

[besidesitstoowarm]

"The Unicorn and the Wasp" thoughts

this is the best historical of the davies era. sorry

i really think it has exactly the right vibe. charles dickens was a good pick bc he was instantly recognizable (unlike madame du pompadour) but not too famous to portray normally (unlike shakespeare). agatha cristie, again, extremely recognizable, but not ubiquitous. i imagine many people like myself are more familiar with the "vibe" of her stories than the actual content. and i think a fun murder mystery is a better use of a historical figure than a mostly-unrelated ghost-not-ghost thing that's mostly about the doctor's survivor's guilt

i loved the setting, the costumes. the scene where the doctor is dying of cyanide and needs to shock himself out of it is ICONIC, i can't believe i'd completely forgotten about it. HOW IS HARVEY WALLBANGER ONE WORD. and then revealing all the secrets and learning the wasp secret. condolences on the dead gay son

i was kind of caught up, though, on the doctor and donna AGAIN being confused for a couple. i mean, i get why it happens all the time in "bones", bc they're doing a will-they-won't-they and the two leads ARE secretly in love w each other. but the doctor and donna aren't, and they don't even act like they would be. and people assume it straightaway without even talking to them first. why is that?

and i think it's another example of the kind of. inevitability, of the season ending. in the same way that there were so many hints about "bad wolf" both in the text (kept coming up as graffiti, code names, in welsh) and in the music (had its own theme). it drew rose towards that ending, both as an active choice (she'd heard the words bad wolf and knew they were linked to her somehow) and as the creators' doylist decisions (the music again). the characters in this story recognize that there is a link between the doctor and donna so profound that they can only conceive of it as romantic. and this has been true since the beginning! she appeared on the tardis in "runaway bride" bc this is her DESTINY. it was always going to happen! she's been dead since the beginning!!!

i don't know if that was intended but it's the only thing that makes sense to me. we know from last episode that the cut-off hand drew them to jenny, who wasn't created until they landed. paradoxes exist. donna keeps getting drawn closer and closer to forming the relationship that is so profound it echoes back through her every adventure with the doctor. doctordonna, two souls in one body. the bad wolf was rose/tardis, it was THE representation of the rose-doctor relationship, that's why the theme played every time they got codependent in s2. the doctor and donna aren't in love, not like he was with rose, but it's the same kind of relationship, melding at intimate seams until it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. it's an intimacy that leads to extreme vulnerability which is why he's able to violate her mind like that

the episode is too good for me to have much to say about it so that's what i thought about instead. the echoes, the echoes. this was always going to happen.

[1001albumsrated]

#20: Ray Charles - The Genius of Ray Charles (1959)

Genre(s): RnB, Pop, Soul

Remember what I just said about cheesy string sections in my last post? Can't wait til we're done with those. Anyways, here's Ray. I can't imagine anyone not knowing Ray Charles, but yeah it's Ray Charles, one of the most iconic voices in RnB and pop music. He broke racial and cultural barriers and enjoyed enormous mainstream success for decades. This album sees him entering fully into the world of traditional pop, performing mostly standards and classics, half with a big band and half with an orchestra, and to massive commercial success. Of historical note is that two of the arrangements were done by a young Quincy Jones (we'll talk plenty about him in future posts, watch this space).

I'm not into the arrangements across the board on this one. They're very much stuck in the 50s. The production leaves a bit to be desired too, despite the appearance of a high budget. Ray, however, is in top form here, both on vocals and the piano. And these renditions would go on to be definitive versions for many of the tunes on the album, mostly just on the merits of his performances. This leaves me in a bit of a strange spot... MUST you hear The Genius of Ray Charles before you die? I'm feeling a lukewarm Yes. I think there's some historical merit here, and he's certainly an iconic voice. I dunno, I'm just string-sectioned out man. If I were looking for space to fit in other albums on the list I would probably consider cutting this one (more Ray will be coming down the pipeline), but I'm not mad at its inclusion.

I listened in hi-res on Qobuz, although I'm not sure it helped bring much else out of the recording.

Next up, we've got a big one, one of the biggest in fact: Kind of Blue, by Miles Davis!

[bossiegifs]

CHARLES MICHAEL DAVIS GIF PACK ♛ In the source link you'll find 135 gifs [268x151] of Charles Michael Davis as Marcel Gerard in ‘The Originals′ (season 3). All of these gifs were made from scratch by me for rp purposes. Please, do NOT claim as your own, repost or add them to your gif hunts. You can edit them as gif icons or in crackships, but please give me some form of credit if you post it. If you found these useful, please REBLOG!

Remember that if my work and my gifs are useful to you, now you are free to donate to my KO-FI!

trigger warning: violence, flashing lights, flames (candles), stabbing, blood, murdering, drinking (alcohol).

important! this is a project in progress. Gifs from more episodes will be added.