#chewing on narrative bookends

[nenoname]

Do it, kid! Do some brilliant thing that takes me down right now!

[asukiess]

theater kid félix.

it comes without warning. kagami just sits down for lunch, distributes the invitations to the core four and says they’re going. smiles. please.

everyone looks to adrien, who shrugs with a laugh. he didn’t even know felix joined any troupe! quietly Marinette chews her plastic fork to tiny shards. no fucking wonder argos had given her a schedule of his “availability” for the next two months. (being a hero isn’t just something you opt out of, you know! what if I need you? / what could happen, marinette? call me if kagami or adrien gets hurt. bye!)

opening night, here’s the front row seating line up: adrien, marinette, kagami, alya, nino.

felix is absolutely stellar.

adrien is wide-eyed, absolutely marveling at seeing this new side of his cousin. he hasn’t seen him this happy (stage emotion or not) in years.

marinette is breathless and internally cringing behind the playbook, bouncing her legs in nervous anticipation. she thinks she’ll actually pass out if she sees a bunny, or any masks, or felix falling to the stage. she rips the cover off the playbill.

kagami is stone faced, having the time of her life. smiles hidden behind the back of her hand, absolutely drinking up his performance. logically she knows the plot of the show is simple, moving; frankly all she can keep track of is felix.

that is, until the second act end. felix strides to the leading lady and in the middle of their arguing, he kisses her.

kagami’s nails dig half moons into marinette’s knee; alya is shaking kagami’s shoulder and holding in an incredulous laugh. bookending this, Adrien and Nino are genuinely moved by this narrative turn of events.

at the end of the show, everyone gives felix their praises, their disbelief he did so well. Adrien smudges a thick layer of stage makeup from his cheek and Felix remarks that he can’t believe Adrien wore that shit all the time. Marinette is still absolutely flustered and Felix leans into this, stepping close to her and asking her genuine thoughts; how does it compare to any other shows she’s seen? was it compelling, the story, the character motivations? was it swoon worthy?

[luckydicekirby]

erin hasn’t read jade legacy yet and i have 700 pages worth of Opinions about it and you can’t put stuff under a cut in tweets so i am finally returning to “posting on tumblr”

this book did not fully work for me! and i am really chewing on why. I enjoyed reading it, and it made me cry several times, but it felt structurally disconnected and didn’t really come together for me like, Thematically. the ending was just kind of eh. points for ending on bero and the twice lucky, because i’m a simple woman i love a good bookend, but it feels really weird that the end was basically like “well, we won bc our family likes each other and the mountain all hates each other” guys your family is a nightmare!!!!!!!! 

on some level I think I had expectations the book ultimately wasn’t interested in fulfilling so I’m not a super fair judge--my called shot for this book was that niko was going to kill hilo for murdering his mom, or that at least that was going to be a major point of contention between them. at a certain point it became obvious this was not the direction we were going in, which is fine, but eyni’s murder was SUCH a great momentous “oh shit” moment in jade war and I feel like we never fully followed up on it--it makes perfect sense that hilo would see it as necessary and like it was the right thing to do, because he’s a freak and he sucks (affectionate), but we barely get to see niko react to it as an adult. like I really thought we were going to get a moment in jade legacy that was like, hey hilo, turns out you cannot just kill your nephew’s mom and kidnap him as a toddler without consequences, but I guess......you can? i feel like we missed out on sooo much meaty crunchy stuff in this vein.

also this should have been at least two or three books. I was excited about the time skips, because I wanted to see the kids as adults, but a lot of specific moments had to get skimmed over to fit everything in, and the kids kind of got the shaft as far as characterization--we get the most interesting character stuff with niko, and he barely has any POV! I liked what we got of Ru (and his death made me cry like a baby), but jaya was cool but completely flat. my mind palace ideal structure is like. one book still centered on the adults while the kids are growing up, and then one book centered on the adult kids where we actually get to dig deep into their character stuff/their relationships with each other. 

anyway, stray thoughts:

making anden and lott narrative foils but then not having them get together honestly kind of a power move. i kind of respect it. my read is that lott is gay but decided he would never be able to be out and be the horn, and stuck to that. which WOULD sure make him feel real weird about anden!

shae/ayt mada real and no one can convince me otherwise. they both tried to kill each other they both saved each other’s lives that is romance baybee

i did really enjoy the continuing bero throughline/his ultimate insignificance, and inability to even MAKE himself significant by confessing to lan’s murder to niko. that scene was so good. 

it feels like all the interesting thematic stuff in this book was coming together in the wake of Ru’s death, and then it all had to get dropped bc we were once again at like, “uh oh mountain’s gonna take over”. like no go back i want to talk more about senseless death and about how vital it is to die for a cause as a green bone but ultimately lan’s death was also a senseless accident and hilo HAS ALWAYS KNOWN THAT AND ALWAYS LIED ABOUT IT AND THAT’S THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE WAR!!! CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT!!

2 black 2 green made me lose it. 

anyway i AM staring at my hands like is it just that i’m a slut for tragedy and wanted a worse ending to this book where like five major characters died....am EYE the problem for wanting this family to be irrevocably broken...am i too successionpilled.....

[grimmmviewing]

S1E22: “Woman in Black”—C+ (Watched 7/26/24)

Odd as it might be, I’ve always had this vague fascination with synopses of TV episodes, especially finales—something about the way they reduce so many minutes to several lines of bullet-point-worthy moments and particularly the special energy of the final moment of a given episode. The “worthiness” of it, in a sense.

Reduced to a summary like that, I think “Woman in Black” has exactly the vibe you want in a season finale for a show like Grimm. With regard to my weird interest, it has a satisfying amount of action and a number of callbacks to previous episodes, and it ends on an appropriately climactic revelation—that the titular Woman we’ve been seeing throughout the episode is actually Nick’s mother that he/we thought was dead. (In retrospect, I knew she wasn’t dead but had just forgotten over the years.)

The assumed dead parent actually being alive isn’t just a fine-enough reveal that any show could have ended on, though. It also works well for Grimm specifically as a bookend to a season that began with family as a focus, with Nick losing his aunt Marie, the closest thing to a parent he thought he had. To end with the (re)introduction of his mother makes a lot of narrative and/or “artistic” sense. I was hoping that they’d re-use “Sweet Dreams” as well to circle back to the start of the season, but I suspected that wouldn’t actually happen. What is here is definitely… fine, engaging enough for what it is.

The big downside of an episode as stuffed as this one is, though, is that there’s not much to chew on, in stark contrast with the previous few episodes. Maybe that actually qualifies as justification of a sort—“Big Feet” can be a bit more interesting and creative and thoughtful, while the finale goes hard on action and pure, straightforward dramatic beats, which include a somewhat extensive brawl at the end between Nick and the last of the “Three Coins in a Fuchsbau” crew involved in the deaths of his family. I thought it was much better than the Nick-Adalind fight in “Love Sick,” though Nick’s vague Grimm abilities that I guess let him tangle with a trained fighter like this Akira Kimura remain a point of frustration for me. I’m not a Power Level-obsessed person, but exactly what Nick is capable of (or, more critically, what his limit is) is something that could have been more clearly established. I’m going to argue that that sort of definition and growth is part of the appeal of a show like this, though obviously there’s no predefined suite of “powers” for people to anticipate like there was in something like Smallville. I still appreciated the sustained melee action, however.

At the beginning, “Woman in Black” looks like it’s going to focus hard on the Akira Kimura angle, but there’s a big detour in the middle involving Juliette that may derail the pace of things. The obvious fairytale reference is tied to this plot, where Adalind (a witch) arranges for a bespelled cat to scratch Juliette (a beauty) at work, which eventually puts her into a coma (sleep). It’s incredibly slight in terms of an adaptation, I think, but the personal stuff with Juliette is still great since her relationship with Nick is a favorite part of the series for me. It’s just that I also felt like it pumped the brakes on the energy from the other conflict and that it could have been better paired with a more mundane case of the week so that it could more smoothly “steal” the spotlight.

From a craft perspective, I can definitely appreciate the “have your cake and eat it too” approach that the writers took here: Obviously, Nick telling Juliette about his Grimm work is a big, juicy chunk of drama the audience would love to feast on, but by having Juliette fall into a magical sleep during the attempted explanation, that lets them indulge the drama but also essentially punt on truly resolving things. Between seasons, they could (if they didn’t already know) decide if they wanted her to remember any of this or if they wanted to draw out the tension of her not knowing for longer.

A fair number of the callbacks I mentioned before are tied to this thread, as Nick takes Juliette to the trailer (and then to Monroe’s) to try to show her the truth and convince her that she needs to be worried about the cat scratch. This attempt is… bad, but I think intentionally so. As I mentioned before, I like Nick and Juliette as a couple. Their teamwork is a highlight of the episodes where it actually happens (see “The Thing With Feathers,” especially). I thought Nick would handle this better based on the precedent of their usual interactions. I’m going to just paste in a little chunk of my notes for “Woman in Black” below, as it shows the strength of my feeling about this major element of the episode from right as I was watching things unfold:

“You want the truth, you’re going to get it.” < Nick to J during their arg about Adalind and why Nick’s so suspicious of her and insistent about J getting her cat scratch seen by a doctor. Like, this ain’t good boyfriend! Vague! Threatening! Bad Nick!

Of course, the writers know this, and that’s why Nick’s desperate rant in the trailer comes off like what it is (a desperate rant from an increasingly sweaty-looking guy). It wouldn’t make sense for Juliette to not be scared! After doing this reflection, I added a “+” to the episode score solely because of this sequence and how thoroughly it got under my skin. The fact that I didn’t like it was probably the goal, and I simultaneously expected Nick/his writers to handle this moment better when it came while also wondering how you would “realistically” pull this off. I may have actually told Nick (to the screen) to focus on the fur Juliette found in “Big Feet,” which had her wondering about this stuff on her own. Maybe if he had led with that instead of all but throwing books and morning stars and terms like “Verrat” at her…

I wasn’t pleased with how he put Monroe on the spot about revealing himself to Juliette to make her believe either! It feels like the possible nadir of the more transactional side of their relationship, where Nick only spends time with or talks to Monroe about what amounts to work. I couldn’t say exactly if my opinion of “Woman in Black” would be better or worse if it had somehow ended on the Juliette plot rather than with the mother reveal. Although, to be fair, the coma stuff is also a good fit for a season finale.

[jasonfry]

More catching up with movies everyone’s seen but me. Baseball’s almost here so I better hurry....

Jezebel (1938)

It’s not exactly a portrait in subtlety -- I was actually close to giggles as Bette Davis exited surrounded by flames and accompanied by a yowling choir -- but it’s kind of fun. Davis is great as Julie Marsden, an antebellum New Orleans belle who keeps blowing through social stop signs to cause trouble, with escalating consequences. Davis (supposedly given the part as a make-good for being passed over for Gone With the Wind) plays Julie’s struggle wonderfully, showing us a lot with just a glimmer in her eyes and a certain set to her mouth. As well as with her wardrobe: there are few movies in which clothing is as important as this one, and it’s no accident that Julie’s always in the wrong outfit. 

Henry Fonda is his usual stiff and decent self, with a side of purse-lipped repression -- his Pres Dillard and Davis’s Julie are both trapped by social conventions they either can’t escape or can’t quite imagine setting aside. In the movie’s key scene, Julie wears a red dress in defiance of New Orleans conventions about what unmarried women can wear. Her social misstep clears the floor in a ballroom and she realizes she’s gone too far -- only to have Pres force her to finish the waltz at the center of dozens of icy stares.

The rest of Jezebel is less interesting -- the black characters are reduced to insulting comic relief from start to finish, and Julie’s unconvincing bid for redemption saddles Davis with some truly ghastly dialogue. But that ballroom scene is a showstopper, Davis is watchable throughout, and there’s enough bubbling beneath the surface to keep you thinking.

San Francisco (1936)

Clark Gable stars as Blackie Norton, a ne’er-do-well nightclub owner in San Francisco’s dodgy Barbary Coast neighborhood who hires talented singer Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald), then winds up in a tug of war for her after Mary catches the eye of Nob Hill kingpin Jack Burley. Oh, and then all that’s interrupted by the 1906 quake.

The idea for San Francisco came from Hoppy Hopkins, an MGM gag man and dialogue fixer with a colorful past who formed half of a rather unique writing team with the great Anita Loos. Hoppy generally left the actual writing and pitching to his partner, and this bit of film lore helps explain why: his idea for San Francisco, as told to Loos, was “there’s this canary who thinks her cunt’s just for piss and this cocksucker of a priest and this brass-balled gambler who get thrown together during the earthquake.”

Wow. Anyway, Gable happily chews scenery as the gambler, and Spencer Tracy makes the most of his scenes as the priest, bringing some weight to a stock role. MacDonald’s less interesting as the canary, but some of that’s by design: she’s stuck as the prize in a contest between two powerful men, a singer rendered voiceless by circumstances and conventions. In the movie’s best scene, MacDonald meets Burley’s mother (Jessie Ralph), who tells her about her rags-to-riches upbringing -- a capsule San Francisco history that’s really about the constraints on women and the necessity for them to appease, manage and outmaneuver men. That scene is a Loos cry from the heart, one that cuts through the melodrama to hint at a much more interesting story.

The earthquake special effects are pretty good for 1936, but the movie loses its nerve after the buildings come down, sticking the characters with a lame redemption narrative. Oh well. By the way, the song “San Francisco” was penned for this movie, adopted by the city as one of its official anthems and is still heard today.

The Third Man (1949)

Orson Welles’s arrival in The Third Man is one of the great movie reveals. Before that, you get a claustrophobic, off-kilter thriller, as scuffling pulp writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) tries to navigate the ruins of postwar Vienna and discover who killed his friend Harry Lime. Director Carol Reed uses Dutch angles and light and shadows to keep us off-guard as Holly encounters more of Harry’s creepy friends and sinks deeper into the mire of his investigation.

Holly solves the mystery, but it’s no real solution. The reveal is wonderful not just for the puckish expression on Welles’s face, but also how Reed builds it out of little elements. (That’s right, we were told that little detail about the cat, weren’t we?) Welles’s speech atop a Ferris wheel is a pitch-perfect bit of brutality, and then the movie ends with a long, enigmatic sequence Reed had to fight to keep. The movie’s over and you’re still guessing. Like The Magnificent Ambersons, this is a movie I’ve kept thinking about and know I’ll have to see again.

Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Dick Powell is Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s famous private eye, in this adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely and a key early film noir. I can see why it’s so influential, but its descendants built something better on the foundations. Powell doesn’t make much of an impression as Marlowe, though his supporting cast is strong -- particularly Mike Mazurki, a wrestler who’s all too convincing as unhinged goon Moose Malloy, and Claire Trevor as the inevitable femme fatale. BTW, the title was changed because Powell was best known as a crooner at the time -- he’d lost out on the starring role in Double Indemnity, another early film noir that’s a bookend of sorts to this film -- and RKO feared moviegoers would see the title and Powell’s name and assume the film was another musical.

King Solomon’s Mines (1950)

A “darkest Africa” travelogue from the 1885 H.R. Haggard adventure novel, the second of five adaptations. I held my breath when I started watching this one -- generally speaking, time has not been kind to depictions of Africans in such movies. King Solomon’s Mines is surprisingly progressive in that regard -- the Africans are treated as exotic “others,” but they’re not mocked, infantilized or reduced to comic relief. It was also interesting to note the reverberations in other films -- Out of Africa’s shampoo scene is basically lifted from King Solomon’s Mines, Black Panther has a king challenged to single combat, and so on. And the wildlife scenes, while nothing special today, were probably pretty eye-popping in 1950. 

What didn’t work for me -- at all -- was the role of Elizabeth Curtis. The fault isn’t Deborah Kerr’s -- she does the best she can -- but the script’s. At any given moment Elizabeth is screaming, fainting, being attacked by an animal (seriously, it’s like she’s a magnet for the entire wildlife population) or sometimes being kissed. She’s either a nuisance or a prize, but never anything more than that, and it rankles even for a movie made in 1950.

[chiseler]

SWEET YOUNG INNOCENT

Coleen Gray and Sterling Hayden in The Killing

Long before Coleen Gray arrived in Hollywood, when she was still a teenager named Doris Bernice Jensen living in Staplehurst, Nebraska, doppelgängers playing the Coleen Gray role were already appearing on the big screen. In the 1940 RKO programmer The Ape, Maris Wrixon took a Coleen Gray turn as a sweet and innocent young woman with a spinal defect who becomes the focus of Boris Karloff’s affections. Unfortunately, being a mad doctor, Karloff’s efforts to find a cure for the poor girl drive him to kill a whole bunch of people. A year later in John Huston’s High Sierra, it was Joan Leslie in the Coleen Gray role, as the good hearted young woman with a club foot who very nearly convinces Bogart’s Roy Earle to change his criminal ways. Then she makes the mistake of telling him she’s engaged to someone else. And in an oddly prescient move, three years after Coleen Gray earned her first major role, Jean Hagen played Sterling Hayden’s lonely, desperate and long-suffering girlfriend in Huston’s Asphalt Jungle, some six years before Gray would at long last play the role herself in The Killing.

For all the doppelgängers who came along before and after—and there were plenty—none of them could top Gray herself as the embodiment of lovely, wide-eyed, corn-fed All American innocence—though an innocence, while incorruptible, that often wandered unknowingly into some shadowy territory and the company of some pretty rough characters.

After getting her BA in Dramatic Arts from Hamline University, Gray (still Doris Jensen at that point) set out to see more of the country, stopping first in La Jolla. She worked as a waitress for a few weeks before making the headlong plunge into Hollywood. She enrolled in an acting school, began appearing in some small theatrical productions around L.A., and, as the classic story goes, was spotted by a talent agent who offered her a contract with 20th Century Fox. In an early magazine interview, gray told the reporter of her girlhood dreams of being a movie star, particularly how she would decorate her dressing room and buy gifts for her staff—all the standard dreams of a typical Coleen Gray character. But as so often happened with her characters, after getting what she wanted she soon realized it wasn’t nearly as glamorous as the movie magazines would have us believe.

First came the name change, from Doris Jensen to Coleen Gray, the single “l” to make her unique, and the “Gray” to subconsciously remind people of Betty Grable.

After an uncredited role in 1945’s State Fair was followed by two other uncredited roles, in 1947, the year film noir really came into its own, the newcomer Gray established herself as a genre stalwart, nearly as inescapable as Ida Lupino, but with her own unique character and persona. In counterpoint to all those devious, dime-a-dozen femme fatales out there, and counter even to Lupino’s streetwise and world wary dames, Gray was redemption, a sign of hope within a dark and nihilistic world.

Her big break came as the narrator and co-star of Henry Hathaway’s seminal and groundbreaking Kiss of Death. Working opposite Victor Mature and a young Richard Widmark (making his unforgettable screen debut as sociopath Tommy Udo), it was Gray’s opening narration that established her screen persona for time immemorial.

Over shots of the snow falling on Midtown Manhattan, her gentle Midwestern voice explains:

“Nick Bianco hadn't worked for a year. He had a record - a prison record. They say it shouldn't count against you but when Nick tried to get a job the same thing always happened: ‘Very sorry. No prejudice, of course, but no job either.’ So this is how Nick went Christmas shopping for his kids.”

While most Noir Era opening narration tended to be stern and authoritarian, warning audiences about the scourge of crime, the dangers to be found in the shadows of the big city and what have you, Gray’s voice is empathetic and, yes, innocent, the voice of a young woman in love, and so willing to overlook a few of her beau’s minor character glitches. She understands nick’s circumstances and makes no moral judgment about his decision to rob a jewelry store in the Chrysler Building in order to buy Christmas presents for his family. What we don’t learn until later is that our narrator, Nettie, was actually the criminally young Bianco family babysitter when the events of the opening scene take place. 

Gray herself doesn’t appear onscreen until much later, when she shows up at the prison and breaks down, telling nick his wife has killed herself, his daughters have been put in an orphanage and, oh, yes, she’s been in love with him for years.

That seems A-OK with Nick, and through the narrative economy that so marked Hathaway’s film. The moment he’s sprung we jump months, even a couple years ahead to find Nick and Nettie married, settled down and living a deliriously happy suburban existence. Nick’s finally found work as a bricklayer, and Nettie has given her inner Midwestern girl free reign, keeping house and making dinner in a dress and apron. Even as things go to hell soon afterward, with Nick drawn back into the shadows to try and ensnare that cackling Tommy Udo, Netti’s perhaps naive optimism never falters.

It was a very good year for Gray, who also found herself co-starring opposite Tyrone Power in another, much darker noir touchstone. Her role in Edmund Golding’s Nightmare Alley (based on the William Gresham novel) would at first blush seem a radical departure from the sweet young innocence of Nettie, but you watch closely, and there’s still plenty of Nettie in Molly. Yes, Molly is a carny working a sideshow electric chair gag in a seedy traveling show , but for all the men lusting after her she remains sweet and virginal. Even when she takes up with the mercenary con man Stanton Carlisle (Power) and the two split the carnival to shoot for the big time with a mentalist act, her conscience comes with her. Once the act morphs from a simple nightclub routine into a spiritualist scam preying on the fragile emotions of the mourning and desperate, pretending to offer comforting contact with lost loved ones, that conscience rears up and Molly splits the show. She returns at film’s end, however, back at the sane carnival where Stanton himself lands after falling as hard and low as a man can manage. While all the other women Stanton has dealt with along the way proved themselves just as conniving and wicked as he is, Molly reappears as a singular symbol of possible redemption. Unlike the book, her presence offers that hope, however slim, Stan might pull himself together yet.

Five years later in Phil Karlson’s Kansas City Confidential (with Lee Van Cleef, Neville Brand, Jack Elam and John Payne), Gray doesn’t appear until late in the film, but works the same redemptive magic. Sweet and innocent as ever, she’s unaware that her retired cop father has turned criminal mastermind. She’s also wholly unaware her father’s about to settle a score with his three cronies while the patsy he framed for a million dollar armored car heist is closing in to settle a few scores of his own. She just decides to pay a visit, like any loving daughter, because she hadn’t seen her dad in awhile. Worse, during her unwittingly ill-timed visit, she falls for the patsy in question (Payne) even though she knows he’s already got a recored, because as ever she can see beyond such trifles.

The crowning jewel, and the perfect bookend to her role as noir’s ever-present symbol of goodness and light and hope within the darkness came in 1956 with Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing.

Losing the chewing gum and the cheap eyelashes, Gray essentially reprises Jean Hagen���s role in Asphalt Jungle, but with a certain melancholy purity that makes the role all her own.  Kubrick made it clear he signed Sterling Hayden specifically on account of his performance in Asphalt Jungle, and yes, Fay’s relationship with Johnny Clay (Hayden) echoes the relationship in the Huston film in many ways—the sad young woman yearning for little more out of life than a scrap of attention from her outlaw boyfriend. More interesting within the context of the film is how the relationship acts as a mirror image of that scheming Sherry (Marie Windsor) and her sap of a husband George (Elisha Cook) across town. Sherry endlessly belittles George, having not the slightest inkling he’s involved in planning a massive heist. Fay, meanwhile, is a simple kid who—like Nettie in Kiss of Death—knows full well what Johnny’s business is, and loves him anyway. Again, all she wants is a little attention in return, but knows she’ll have to wait to get it. Despite the company she keeps, she’s as wide-eyed and innocent as ever, and at film’s end, when everything goes to hell, she doesn’t run, doesn’t scream or panic. She offers a few gentle suggestions about possible escape, but when a clearly defeated Johnny shrugs off her suggestions, she waits again as he turns to face the cops, and you know she’ll keep waiting until he gets out of prison.

For noir nuts, that was the high water mark, though afterward gray was busier than ever, mostly on television and mostly in Westerns, where her midwestern beauty made her a natural. There were a few weirdies dropped in along the way, including her starring role in the 1960 low-budget drive-in hit The leech Woman. Essentially a knockoff of the previous year’s The Wasp Woman, and one of her very few villainous turns, Gray plays a middle aged woman who learns the secret to eternal youth lay in a formula that calls for the pineal gland of a male. Given the serum’s youth-restoring properties are only temporary, well, that means she’s going to have to start collecting a lot of pineal glands. In another less than wholesome turn in 1962’s The Phantom Planet, she plays the blond and manipulative daughter of a…well, to be honest it’s a bit too much and too mind boggling to get into here, but Gray does seem to be having fun playing against type.

In an era when such a thing wasn’t the kiss of death (so to speak), Gray was an outspoken political conservative and Christian, and as early as  1964 was lobbying Congress for a Constitutional amendment allowing prayer in public schools. She continued working steadily into the mid-Eighties, retiring from show business while only in her sixties. Along with her third husband Joseph Fritz Ziesier, she devoted the last three decades of her life to social work, from the Red Cross and Girl Scouts to an evangelical fellowship group aimed at prison inmates. Which is pretty much what you’d expect from a Coleen Gray character.

by Jim Knipfel

[recentanimenews]

FEATURE SERIES: My Favorite One Piece Arc with Greg Werner

  I love One Piece and I love talking to people who love One Piece. And with the series going on 23 years now, there is a whole lot to talk about. As the series is about to publish its 1000th chapter, a true feat in and of itself, we thought we should reflect upon the high-seas adventure and sit down with some notable names in the One Piece fan community and chat about the arcs they found to be especially important, or just ones they really, really liked.

  Welcome to the next article in the series "My Favorite One Piece Arc!"

  My next guest in this series is Greg Werner, the official One Piece columnist for Shueshia and Toei. For my chat with him, he chose the Arlong Park, in which Luffy and his crew take on Arlong and Nami officially joins Team Straw Hat.

  A note on spoilers: If you haven't seen the Arlong Park arc yet, this interview does contain major plot points. Watch the Arlong Park arc starting RIGHT HERE if you'd like to catch up or rewatch!

    Dan Dockery: Sell me on Arlong Park, in one sentence. Let's say that I'd gotten to the end of the Baratie Arc, and I decided "You know what? I don't think this is for me." What would you say to convince me to keep going?

  Greg Werner: I don’t know if I could sell a bottle to a milkman, but I’ll give it a shot ... Can it be in the form of a question?

  Yes.

  Do you want to know Nami’s backstory? And that seems so facile, but you’re coming off Baratie with the knowledge that Nami has betrayed the crew, she has left the crew, and she has stolen the ship. But it seems like she’s not acting freely, and she mentions the name “Bellemere.” So if you’ve gone through One Piece and you’ve come to that point, that’s simple enough. 

    So, you have Luffy who wants to go get her, an injured Zoro, Usopp, who's gotta be in a weird state, and Sanji who finds her extremely attractive and cool. It's a fun dynamic.

  Zoro and Usopp are an interesting combination, they always are. Usopp always feels like Zoro’s little brother and Zoro kind of has to take a back seat due to injuries here. But I always find their interactions to be very sweet, and you get to see a kind side of Zoro, which is the antithesis of how he interacts with Sanji. And you’re getting hints of the rivalry between Zoro and Sanji here, one that ramps up to the hunting contest in Little Garden, at which point they cease to call each other by their names and just insult one another. And between Luffy and Sanji, you get these kindred spirits due to their dreams. Usopp and Zoro are a little more straight-faced about their dreams, but both Sanji and Luffy utter their dreams with these big smiles. So even though Oda has his pieces all over the map, it’s nice to see the freshness of all of them working together, which is something you won’t find in anything but the best shonen action series.

  When you meet Arlong, he's kind of a jerk. He doesn't seem very nice. But he's one of the first One Piece villains who seems like a complete character. He's mighty but underhanded and deceitful. What does his introduction do for One Piece?

  So I bought the first ten volumes for a co-worker because he’d seemed interested in it, and I said “There, you’ve got the first ten volumes. Now you have no excuse not to get into it.” And we’ve been talking about it recently, especially the little details, and we found something very interesting about Arlong. There’s one aspect of Arlong that is completely different from every villain up to this point and it’s how he treats his crew. Buggy starts off beating up one of his crew members. Part of Kuro’s plan is to kill his crew. Krieg only sees his crew as numbers and will gas them. Arlong, though, to members of his crew, he’s extraordinarily loyal. When he finds out that Zoro has beaten up his crew, Arlong is pissed. In some ways, he’s very similar to Luffy, but he’s despicable and terrifying and he’s one of my favorite villains. 

    That's a great point; Arlong is the first bad guy to have pride in his crew. Speaking of Arlong's crew, this is the first time we get the classic 1v1 where a Straw Hat member matches up against an antagonist crew member. When you first read this, because it's electric every time I watch it, how did you feel to watch it go full-on battle manga?

  Zoro’s a beast. Sanji’s a beast. But Usopp? Facing down this insurmountable force? How is he gonna do this? And I think that’s the moment that got me. The others are awesome, and I love them, and they’re great, funny battles. But with Usopp fighting Chew, it showed Oda’s ability to shine in a certain way. Like Toriyama and Dragon Ball, Oda’s been very influenced by Jackie Chan, because Jackie Chan fights are awesome, visually stunning fights, but they’re funny. And that’s what Oda strives for sometimes. When you combine the action with the gags, you get something very special. You’re not just excited, but you’re laughing, too. And I think Usopp’s battles represent the pinnacle of that. It clicked for me there and it became a page-turner. It feels like what a shonen action series should be. And I enjoy Oda’s different takes on it, but he does it so well here.

    I’m glad you bring up Toriyama and Dragon Ball because if you read any interview with any Shonen Jump author, they praise Toriyama. And it’s deserved. The man’s battle scenes and pacing have never been beaten and probably never will be. He’s the master. But one of the things I like about Oda is that he doesn’t try to copy them. Rather, he takes bits and pieces and spins it off into his own thing. Do you remember the Oda interview with Toriyama where he was like “I really liked Tao Pai Pai …”

  From Color Walk 1.

  And Toriyama was like “I ... drew that?” It’s the funniest thing in the world to me. 

  I think his exact words were “Now you’re getting into the minor characters.” And Oda’s like “MINOR CHARACTERS?”

  He nearly killed Goku! But I dig that kind of reverence and inspiration. So Nami’s backstory — it’s heart-wrenching. Bellemere’s awesome. Makes you wish she was still around in the series.

  Isn’t that perfect? That’s exactly what he goes for. 

  In the end, she refuses to say that she doesn’t have children, even after a bad spat with Nami. This flashback is one of my favorite ones. What did you get out of it and how did it take the story to another level? Because to match it, every flashback to come had to do some heavy lifting.

  Every detail in this flashback builds on itself. There’s no excess. And maybe outside of the Chopper backstory, I can’t think of another backstory that is so full of necessary information that weaves into a single narrative. Every event evokes an emotion in the reader and pushes the story forward. Bellemere has the fight with Nami, makes dinner to reconcile with her, a Fishman crew member sees the cooking smoke from her house, the Fishmen find her, she refuses to discount Nami as her family, and she’s killed. It all comes together so neatly in three chapters, I think. Oda sets a reeeeeally high bar for himself, but to be able to match that through nearly a hundred volumes of story takes a special kind of manga genius. It’s also the very first time I cried while reading manga. 

  Next, we run through basically a Greatist Hits collection of One Piece moments: Nami asks for help, Luffy gives Nami the hat, the march to Arlong Park, Luffy slugs Arlong, the fights happen, Luffy brings down the Gum Gum Battle Axe, Arlong’s spine gets turned into clam chowder, etc. So much of what we think about One Piece is distilled into the final chapters of Arlong Park. So do you have a favorite moment from this climax? I honestly can’t pick.

    I didn’t realize this when I first read it, and it took me several years to understand the importance of the giving of the hat. It’s one of only two times in the series that Oda uses five exclamation points in a row. The other one is when Luffy comes swooping in to save Vivi from Crocodile. Even the famous “dreams of mankind will never end” doesn��t get five. Luffy’s pissed and the best part about this is that he doesn’t have a single reason to be. He knows nothing about Nami’s history and actively refuses to listen to it. He takes a nap instead. He’s just ready to be a tool for her, so when she asks him to help her? YOU GOT IT. And then, the next thing he tells her, after the fight with Arlong, he tells her that she’s his crewmate. Nami has held this by herself for so long, she’s so strong, and she finally opens up to accept help from someone else. And it tells us that Luffy knows what kind of person you are, even if he doesn’t know that much about you. He might be dumb and reckless and strong, but there’s a spark there. He can read you. 

  One thing I like in the anime is that Nami is the first Straw Hat introduced in the story. She’s at the boat party that gets attacked by Alvida, and her showing up there and then being the main focus of Arlong Park bookends East Blue and kind of turns it into her saga. But as they leave this arc and head to Loguetown, what is new about One Piece? What's there that wasn't around before?

  That’s a good question.

  Because I hear many people say “Arlong Park is what made me a One Piece fan.”

  You get to see their daily routines onboard their full ship. You have the established East Blue crew in one location and we get a slice of life. In just a few scenes or panels, you finally get to watch the crew relax. You get a window on their lives and there’s a sense of completeness. It’s a warm, fuzzy feeling. 

    ONE PIECE LIGHTNING ROUND!

  Favorite character?

  Luffy, Franky, and Zoro.

  Favorite villain?

  Arlong.

  Favorite fight scene?

  Luffy vs Bellamy. It’s so satisfying.

  One Piece island that you’d want to live on?

  Skypiea.

  What Devil Fruit would you eat?

  Flower-Flower fruit that Nico Robin uses. I’d get so much work done.

  One Piece moment that made you cry the most?

  Bellemere’s death.

  One Piece moment that made you cheer the loudest?

  The defeat of Lucci. That was remarkable.

      Stay tuned for the next installment of "My Favorite One Piece Arc" as we speak with Aggretsuko and The Black Mage writer Daniel Barnes about his favorite One Piece arc: Marineford!!

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

By: Daniel Dockery

[tialovestelevision]

Restless

Epilogue! What is the cost of becoming Voltron Person? 1. Nothing but the Previously On before the credits. 2. “Guest starring Kristine Sutherland.” 3. Riley has to go get court martialled or something, but he’ll be okay. 4. Joyce just met Riley. Holding off on that seems like a good idea. Joyce disapproves. Xander got chick and British guy flicks, in addition to Apocalypse Now. 5. FBI Warning: Everyone is asleep. Cut to commercial. 6. I’ll be watching the dreams without much commentary here. I am glad to see Tara in Willow’s yet. And Miss Kitty Fantastico. Tara says they’ll find out about Willow. Willow is painting on Tara’s back… in Greek. Willow doesn’t want to leave, but she has to get to drama. But she mostly doesn’t want to leave because there’s a desert outside, and there’s something in the desert. Creeping. Miss Kitty Fantastico will protect her! Now she’s in the hallway, talking to Oz and Xander. Xander says she does spells with Tara. Then he talks about masturbating to fantasies about lesbian sex. Oz disapproves. Willow is in a production, and Riley is Cowboy Guy. Giles is the teacher. Harmony is there too. Everyone Willow knows is in the audience. So is the creepy thing in the desert. Giles says to hide, and Harmony is trying to eat him, and Willow keeps stepping on cues, and Riley is Cowboy Guy in Death of a Salesman. This fellow has made space for the cheese slices. Willow is in a corridor of curtains, and creepy music. Tara is there, though, and there’s a cowboy in Death of a Salesman and something’s wrong and something’s following her. Cowboy Guy is looking for a salesman. Tara says people are wondering about the real Willow, and if they find out she can’t help. Buffy chewed Riley out, and now Willow is being attacked by a thing with a knife. Buffy helped her out, and they’re creeping through a classroom. Willow is very seldom naughty. Buffy asks why Willow why she’s in costume. She took the outfit away, and now Willow is Season One Willow, and Tara and Oz and Anya and Xander are making fun of her. And now she’s being attacked by the creeping thing and nobody’s helping and something happened to her skin and now outside the dream she’s choking. 7. Xander wakes up, and they’re watching a war movie. He and Giles and and Buffy are, anyway. Buffy offers Xander some New Car Smell popcorn. Xander doesn’t need help to pee. Joyce is… my brain is rebooting. I will never be okay again. I will NEVER be okay again. Xander is a comfortadore. This is terrifying and I really dislike Joyce and Xander and every single hair on my arms is trying to escape. Xander’s using the bathroom now. And being watched by the Initiative. They are taking notes. He’ll find another bathroom. Now he’s in his basement, and something’s coming downstairs, but he didn’t order any vampires. The door is not the way out. The park is the way out. Spike and Giles are on swings while Buffy plays in the sand. Giles is going to teach Spike, who is like a son to him, to be a Watcher. Xander is watching Xander sell ice cream, because you have to move forward, like a shark. With feet. And less fins. And on land. Spike suggested that last bit. The sandbox is infinite, and the creeping thing is coming, and she called him big brother. Swinging is important to Watcher training, because a Watcher scoffs at gravity. Now our viewpoint Xander is ice cream Xander, and Anya’s in the truck with him. She’s thinking about getting back into vengeance. It’s going to be a big year for vengeance. Xander doesn’t want Anya to have a vengeance hobby. Willow and Tara are in sexy clothes and making out in the back of the truck. Their mouths don’t properly move when they talk. Xander is staring at them making out, and Tara invites him in the back with them. Huh. When people are going out of character to cater to his sexual fantasies, their lips don’t move. Now he’s back in the basement, and Willow and Tara aren’t, but the thing at the door is trying to get in still. That’s not the way out, Xander… god, I’m actually worried for him. He knows what’s up there. The cheese will not protect him. The dor just gave out… it’s in the basement. Xander is in the high school corridor, being stalked by the creature. He found Giles. Everything is green-tinted. The thing after him is because of what they did. They’re giving him important instructions in badly-dubbed French, and now he’s in the war movie. Kneeling on the ground. “Where are you from, Harris?” There’s a guy… it’s Snyder! Snyder’s Martin Sheen! Xander is glad he got eaten by a snake. He’s supposed to meet Tara, Willow, and Joyce, but time is running out. He’s trying to get away because he can’t fight the thing. This scene is amazing. I love Armin Shimmerman. Now Xander’s at Giles’s house. The creature is there, and Giles and Anya and Buffy are figuring out what to do about Willow. Now he’s in the dorm. Buffy’s dorm. Into the closet to escape. Through the tunnels. Back to the basement. The door isn’t the way out. His father is there. Yelling at him. His father is scarier than the thing chasing him. His father is pulling his heart out. The person - it’s a person! - chasing them is pulling his heart out. 8. Giles’s dream. He’s hypnotizing Buffy. She’s laughing. Now there’s a glowy elephant hedge and Buffy is his daughter and they’re with Olivia. She’s throwing water balloons at a vampire, and she hit it with one. She gets cotton candy. Which is mud on her face. Spike has garden gnomes in front of his crypt. Olivia is crying, and Spike is being a sideshow freak. Spike called him Rupes. The guy wears the cheese. It does not wear him. Cheese guy is appalling. Giles is at the Bronze. It’s time for research. Willow and Xander are there, and Xander has a chest wound. Anya is terrible on stage, but also very Anya. This is his fault. Giles has a gig. It was the duck and not the man that spoke. Willow called him Rupert. He’s singing about what’s going on. Warrior beast. Giles has to warn Buffy. Giles is following the wire from his mic to the back, crawling. Found a huge wire tangle. The watch he was using earlier. The warrior never had a Watcher. 9. Buffy being woken up in her bed by Anya. Anya’s in Willow’s bed. Now Buffy’s at Joyce’s house in the bed she and Faith made. It’s a mess. Tara’s there to talk to her. They don’t know who the bed’s for. Her friends need her to find them. The clock is wrong. Tara is giving her a tarot card, and the bed is made. Buffy’s going to go find the others. “Be back before dawn.” Buffy’s at the university, looking for her friends. There’s a hole in the wall. Joyce is inside the hole, living in the walls. She’s fine there. It’s dirty in there. She made lemonade and is learning mahjong. A mouse is playing with her knees. Buffy could break through the wall, but she’s looking for her friends instead. She found Riley at a table. He’s Surgeon General. They’re drawing up a plan for world domintion with coffee makers. There’s a gun on the table. Adam - human Adam - is at the table. The warrior is following Buffy. The demons have escaped. Please run for your lives. Riley and Adam are going to make a pillow fort. Buffy has weapons. Or mud. There’s mud in her weapon bag. And on her hands. And now on her face. Riley is back. He’s decided Buffy is on her own. Now she’s in a dress and sandals, walking on sand. No more mud. She’s in the desert. She won’t find her friends there, but Tara is there, telling her that’s why she’s there. Tara is speaking for the warrior. The warrior is looking at Buffy. She has no speech or name. She is the first Slayer. Cheese guy shows up; Buffy decides to wake up, but the first Slayer attacks. Now Buffy is in the living room, working on getting up, and being attacked by the Slayer. The stabbing isn’t working. She’s going to ignore the Slayer. Now she’s awake, and so’s everyone else, and they’re very confused. 10. Clean-up plot stuff. Overall: Well, that was foreshadowy! Also very good. There’s a lot to break down. First off: The franchise is now up to three major characters of color. Kendra, who is awesome but is killed off after appearing in like four episodes, Mr. Trick, who is a vampire who is amazing in and of himself but also reminiscent of 80s racist stereotype wrestler/manager character Slick, and now the First Slayer, who is a savage killing machine explicitly denied a voice by the narrative. The First Slayer SHOULD be of African descent, but the franchise needs a few people of color who aren’t there to get killed off or victimized to advance a white person’s story as well. Right now, it has none, and that’s a very bad thing. As for the rest… this episode is amazing. It belongs in a pantheon of the best Buffy episodes with “Amends” and “Hush,” because it is just that good. I love basically everything about it - the individual dreams, the running thread with the First Slayer, the play with Riley as Cowboy Guy and people talking about Willow being in costume, Xander’s weird sexual fantasies and his own subconscious being aware how out of character they have everyone acting, Giles singing about figuring out the plot, Buffy meeting Adam’s human self (by the by, how much more interesting could Adam have been had they played THAT up?), cheese guy, Buffy’s confrontation with the First Slayer… all of it. This was really great, and bookends Season 4 nicely. It did what Season 4’s actual season arcs failed to do - made me want to watch more Buffy. But I get to do the ending of Angel season 1 instead, so time to start that!

[robedisimo]

Star Wars - The Last Jedi first teaser trailer: could it be an Empire rerun?

Anyone keeping an eye on the nerdsphere was expecting the first official teaser for Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi at some point during this year’s Star Wars Celebration and, sure enough, it dropped like clockwork, generating massive hype and quite a few questions – not last of which why, exactly, the episode’s subtitle was translated as plural in almost all non-English languages, while the production insists it refers to Luke Skywalker alone.

The very plot-conservative trailer – in true Lucasfilm fashion – showcases a lot of beautiful imagery courtesy of Rian Johnson’s keen directorial eye, as well as the film’s darker, more ominous tones. The Last Jedi is positioned as the second chapter in the “Sequel Trilogy”, and as such it’s expected to fill certain specific narrative roles: namely, answering some of the questions raised by The Force Awakens and setting the scene for the no-doubt epic conclusion in Episode IX (unless that changes somehow).

Amidst all the hype, however, one question is so far being kept on the back burner: after The Force Awakens arguably served as a remake of A New Hope just as much as a sequel (and reboot) to the franchise at large, will this new chapter continue on that trajectory and feature a number of story beats lifted directly from The Empire Strikes Back? I, for one, would welcome some more original content, but let’s look at the evidence we have so far.

Empire followed on the heels of the first Star Wars by introducing a very specific change in the formula: it broke up the main cast, sending Han and Leia on their own adventure while Luke went off on a much less action-packed – but much more lore-establishing – character arc as he trained under Yoda. The Last Jedi promises to do the same, as Rey, Finn and Poe get separated, the latter on a decidedly more action-y storyline judging by the footage we’re being shown.

Of course we have no way yet of determining just how much of the film’s runtime Rey’s training will occupy, but there are good reasons to assume it will be a central theme throughout the movie. If nothing else, because we also need to get to know Luke all over again. The trailer shows us a broken, defeated character, as well as – a definite first for the saga – actual flashbacks detailing the fall of his new Jedi Order at the hands of the Knights of Ren, something that will have to be discussed at a certain length.

While that’s going on, the film will also need to keep the high-octane, effects-heavy action going. In Empire, the more contemplative mid-section of the plot was bookended by the Hoth-centric first act and the Cloud City-set third act. The Last Jedi promises to shuffle things around a bit, since Rey, unlike Luke, has already reached her mentor’s hideout at the beginning of this new instalment. And yet, look at what we have here: a fleet of small aircrafts evidently trying to use a clever stratagem to prevail over a revamped version of the Imperial AT-AT walkers. And, most likely at the film’s climax, a new space-set dogfight, near a planet which might be the same Ahch-To on which Luke is training Rey, possibly providing the chance for the cast’s inevitable reunion.

Also: traditional storytelling would require this second chapter in the new trilogy to conclude with the heroes’ side suffering a crushing defeat, before things can start looking better by the end of Episode IX. Will that rule keep being enforced, with Kylo Ren exacting his revenge in a rematch against his direct rival and former master? And then, just as in Empire, the question of our main character’s parentage will also have to be addressed. Could Rey actually – and bafflingly – have been a Kenobi all along, as a fan-darling theory dictates? And will The Last Jedi end with another massive reveal, just as its archetypal older sibling did?

All in all, this first teaser gave us very little to chew on, and all this is just idle speculation. But the point stands: if you’re looking for parallels between The Empire Strikes Back and The Last Jedi, nothing in it seems to actively contradict that notion. How much of it comes from the authors intentionally following in the Original Trilogy’s footsteps? How much is fear to stray from a beaten path? And just how much is just misdirection, making us unprepared for something (hopefully!) radically different?

We’ll see. Eight more months to go.