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something-tofightfor · 4 years ago

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Since you said you’re always listening here’s some more about Curt: not only did he drop the ball with Lewis, he straight up just chooses Frank blindly in the Frank Billy divorce. Like... we’re meant to believe the three of them were all friends. Curt and Billy drink together at Frank’s grave. But Curtis keeps Frank being alive a secret while selling Billy out at every turn. But why? Until he shoots him in the shoulder Billy hasn’t done anything to Curtis. (1/2)

Answering everything in one go:

Lots of thoughts about Frank and Billy and Curtis under the cut.

1. I’ve always wondered why Curtis was so quick to take Frank’s side in the whole thing - and part of me believes it was specifically due to the fact that Frank and Curtis both experienced significant, lasting trauma while overseas/after arriving back home, and their lives changed a great deal. Frank pretty much just talks about how they served together, but Billy flat out says that Curtis saved his ass - and from what we see, Billy isn’t someone that typically would need saving, aside from situations like that ambush, where Frank had to go into that building and clear it to save the entire squad.

Billy and Curtis do likely spend a ton of time together stateside - both while Frank is presumed dead, and before, too. BUT I’m assuming that Curtis was helping Frank all along - which means that he lied to Billy the whole ass time but was still funding the rent for the support group. I’m actually wondering if part of that money wasn’t secretly being funneled to Frank, just to get him by when things were tough and he had to lay low.

It truly bothers me that Curtis automatically agrees with what Frank does to get revenge, and has the same warped sense of superiority that Madani does. Frank’s gotta do the hard jobs because neither of them can or will. You’re right - until Billy shoots him, Curtis was on the fringe of everything. Billy was lying and likely dangerous, but he didn’t want to hurt Curtis, even after he found out that Curtis had been lying. Why? Because Billy knew he was in the wrong, even if he’d managed to justify his own actions in his mind ... Curtis’ actions and keeping the news of Frank being alive were also justified, because no matter how close they’d been - Frank was a liability and a threat to Billy ... which meant Bily was unpredictable when it came to Frank - and finding out anything about Frank.

2. We never hear that Curtis was as close to the Castles as Billy was - so that would make me believe that despite the friendship we see between F/C... Curtis took a back seat to Frank and Billy’s friendship. Maybe it was because C got hurt and didn’t keep going overseas with them? Maybe it was because Billy looked up to Frank so much, and he fit in better with the family? But we never SAW Curtis with the Castles, so we don’t know their dynamic, aside from what the three say to and about each other. That’s tough. If the roles had been reversed, and Curtis had betrayed Frank, it would have made more sense to me that F would have gone to B with the secret - so unless Billy’s grossly overstating his relationship with F... then it’s a surprise to me that Frank didn’t reach out to Billy AND Curtis to let them know he was alive. Unless.... Frank had an idea that Billy was dirty? But that doesn’t seem likely ... because his shock in that warehouse is very believable. OR, Frank’s connection with Billy reminded him too much of the family he lost? IDK. We’ll never know, and that makes it really hard.

3. Granted - Billy’s participation and involvement in the Rawlins scheme eliminates him from sympathy via Curtis... but Frank always seems to get the benefit of the doubt and an opportunity to explain himself, which shows where Curtis’ loyalties have always been. ALSO. Frank and Curtis knew Billy so well that they’d know he’d go to Curtis...but didn’t know him well enough to see that he was a double agent the whole time? Seems fishy. You obviously know he’s capable of doing what he has to do to survive ... and Frank knew that he was in a bunch of shit in Kandahar ... that he told Curtis about ... put two and two together and save everyone a lot of trouble.

4. Curtis’ priorities have always seemed a little off to me - the whole thing with trying to “save” Lewis, and “talk sense into” o’connor, constantly lying to Billy, and yet being SHOCKED when he was lied to in return ... it’s really hypocritical. You establish him as a true friend to Frank because of what he was willing to do/how he was willing to respond ... but you AGAIN alienate Billy, and show that no one in his whole goddamn life was straight and honest and treating him well throughout the duration of the relationship.

5. Ow, my heart at the thought of Billy on that floor. I hope every fucking time Curtis goes into that room, he thinks of what he did and the part he played. Billy did a bunch of bad shit, yes, but in the end? He didn’t understand what he’d done or why he did it fully, and all he wanted - for once in his life - was to not feel truly alone. Fuck Curtis for not even giving him that in his final moments, and defaulting back to Frank to take care of everything.

6. Yeah, by the end of S2, his priorities shift again. And I can’t fault him at all for wanting to live his life, but ... he agreed to help. And that means sticking it out and doing what he needs to do. (God bless Brett Mahoney.) ... not just thrusting his responsibilities off onto someone else because he doesn’t know what else to do. That’s not how it works. That whole scene with him and Frank and Dinah in that trailer just pisses me off, because ... you’re saying that Billy truly doesn’t know what he did or why (and Curtis knows the truth - not the BS they’ve fed Billy or the public) .... and still OK with letting him die? Letting Frank finish it? If Billy had been in his right mind and actually had all of his memories, that’s one thing. But he didn’t, and the manipulation was coming in from another angle, and so... you’re doing what you’re doing to someone that isn’t really sure what is motivating them entirely. It’s bullshit. And it’s unfair, because you’re made to feel sympathetic - in at least some capacity for Billy, but then just be alright with literally everyone continuing to fuck him over in the end?

7. You are absolutely right. There’s no absolutes here. Frank isn’t all good. Billy isn’t all bad. Frank was justified in going after the people that were responsible for killing his family, there’s no question about that - and Billy is included. But Frank LET him live at that carousel for a purpose. Madani’s inability to let that stand when she realized she wasn’t going to get her way when it came to Billy is the only reason that Frank was even back in New York. Billy might have broken out. He might have still resorted to petty crime to cover himself over time, but it was krista that drove him to get revenge on the man that hurt him - without KNOWING why the man hurt him in the first place. Billy not recovering the memory of Frank being the one to hurt him would have changed so many things ...and that was only the case because fucking Dinah brought him back. Curtis withholding that from Billy was likely meant to be for Billy’s own good - so I guess I sort of applaud him for that, but that’s about all the praise I can give, because as soon as Billy found out, even though Curtis was the only one that had firsthand knowledge (Madani did too, but she would have lied through her teeth if it meant Frank going after Billy again) of Billy’s actual memory loss - he was still OK with Frank continuing this revenge plan.

It just blows my mind. Thanks for reading through this. There’s so much more I could say, but it’s just me repeating things in a circle.

#ask something-tofightfor #the-blind-assassin-12 #curtis hoyle was a shitty friend #billy russo #our thoughts #lots to say #im just aggrivated now #really aggrivated #thanks alyssa

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warstorys · 6 years ago

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season 2 commentary (after 201) i’m sticking to frank-centric stuff but boy! i have so many opinions about everything but i want to focus on frank for the sake of my blog.

i want my initial thoughts from over the course of the season down first, which is what this is, and then i’m gonna hammer out any canon divergences ... or if i’m even gonna bother with this season’s existence at all apart from amy lol

i’m not ... actually enjoying season two much. there are snatches here and there that i really like, and concepts in here that i think are really tasty, but then the rest of it isn’t sitting right with me and i’m not really enjoying watching it.

the two storylines - amy’s storyline and billy’s storyline - are both impressively weak and the moreso for the fact they don’t cross over at all. the trailer implied these things would be meeting up and marrying together but they don’t and it’s ... i really enjoy the individual characters - amy, curtis and dinah having a tonne of screentime with frank is awesome - but i don’t care for the story itself. it’s weak and disinteresting and crucial things like billy being a fucking fugitive have their important dropped after a couple of episodes and its just, it’s not an interesting season, sharon.

i was really unimpressed with the fight scenes so far but the sequence at the end of 203 finally brought things up ... closer to the standard that i’m used to ... a good use of music meets some impressive shots and a bunch a good atmosphere and for the fights to be well-choreographed, that’s what i want out of Every tps fight and it’s what s1 gave me and i just don’t quite feel that from season two

i don’t think frank is necessarily appreciating how scary he is to a 16 year old girl even if she is a smartass and it’s bugging me a little considering he’s usually pretty good at making girls comfortable and interacting with them ... ? i wouldn’t mind if he just eased up a little. just a drop. just a teeny tiny bit. obviously he does as the season goes on but then he does shit like hold amy at gunpoint and like - not in my canon thanks

“a man's got a right to defend himself and those who can't” is probably my favourite concept because of the way it pivots frank away from vengeance and more towards being a true antihero but here’s the thing — the rest of the season isn’t following through on that? frank’s temperamental and self-destructive - in part because of his tbi - but. i don’t like the direction the season is taking with him, particularly from about mid episode eight onwards. curtis pointing out that frank is very, “he doesn’t want to feel for you because he’s scared of getting hurt ... and he’d rather stay mad at the world than risk being a part of it” is dead on, but ... um ... like, frank unlearning his shit and starting to move on was the entire point of the end of season one. i wanted season two to be about him reconciling that crap whilst finding a way to exist as the punisher, too. i think there’s negative character development and there’s just ... idk, a complete breakdown of frank as a person. i want him to care about himself and the people around him?

frank constantly being an asshole to curtis pisses me off also; “way to go curt” are you serious? curtis doesn’t have to do any of this or be involved in any of this and to my mind ... it doesn’t tally, again, with season one. frank being shitty to curtis literally makes zero sense and makes me so angry. the flip-flopping on this is crazy, too; you can’t have frank treating curtis like shit and then going “yeah you don’t owe me anything” with no apologies in between. i’d rather frank is just, decent to curtis, given that curtis one of his oldest friends and someone he trusts so completely

and i don’t care if s2 tallies w the comics, i’m not writing comics frank

i’m kinda trying to work out how i feel about the kastle stuff; largely i Don’t want frank to keep shutting himself off and acting like he doesn’t or can’t care, but at the same time karen suggesting they just ... run away together was never going to fly. frank can love people and be the punisher and that’s what i want; if people’s lives aren’t compatible with frank’s choices then they need ... to stop. it can’t be all or nothing. frank has to learn how to strike a balance, you can’t ask him to give it all up. and that’s something i appreciate about amy and dinah and curtis? like they know frank can’t just wholesale Stop, even if they’d like him to, so they live with frank as he is, and they (i believe) know their own limits for when they’re done with him.

i feel like ... this whole thing has just culminated in driving everyone away from frank and i might be repeating myself as per previous bullet points but that is the exact opposite of what i want...? i feel like he’s successfully driven curtis away and he pushed karen away and ... they’ve done this thing where, they’re balancing out frank letting some people live, people with families or people who aren’t “worth it”, letting frank’s moral code evolve into protecting the innocent and. yet. he’s just isolating himself? even when he says “i’d do anything for amy” they’re still letting frank be driven apart and isolated and made alone - they send amy away, they sent micro away, curtis is ‘done with frank’, etc - and i don’t ... want that, i’m powerfully disinterested in frank being alone forever.

uhhhhhh lmao the flash forward at the end of 213 was literally horrible like are you - serious the last shot we have of frank castle is him contextless murdering a bunch of minority youths? you really cannot be real???? FUCK OFF thats so cancelled

whatever i do with this mess of canon, i want the scene where dinah and curtis are napping together on the couch to exist forever. esp with, as amy called it, The Punisher Pity Party, gndfkgfd. just a bunch of people sat around being mad that they love frank castle. what a mood.

finally: why doesn’t netflix/marvel know that curtis hoyle is gay?

anyway the tl;dr is that i’ll probably toss the majority of season two out of the window because i didn’t like it. and it doesn’t matter anyway bc in a couple of weeks they’ll cancel it ✌️

#tps s2 spoilers

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thesearchforphantaman · 7 years ago

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SUPER-COOL NEWS!

Hey, guys! It’s sure been a while since I posted here. I’d thought the trail on this had all but dried up, but just the other day, out of the blue, I got a LENGTHY and super-detailed email from an individual named Andy Shepherd!

Mr. Shepherd has apparently been looking for Phantaman separately for quite some time, though fell out of it recently due to getting busy... go figure! How cool is that, though?

I’ve included most of it here under the read-more label. Have a look-see!

Hi. My name is Andy Shepherd and I saw your page/Tumblr post (Search for Phantaman) and thought I would share some things with you.

Ogon Batto (Golden Bat) was dubbed by Bill Ross and his wife Japanese wife, Michie, at Frontier Enterprises in Tokyo. They rechristened the show ‘Fantoma’ for sales in the English speaking territories. I think Ken Fujita hire them to do it. More on Ken later.

Ross/Frontier was the go-to guy in Japan for a bit of comparatively inexpensive dubbing (when compared to Glen Glenn Sound, Titra, etc.) for Japanese media that was being distributed/shopped overseas. Bill died a couple of years ago, but I and a few others (Steve Ryfle and August Ragone) corresponded with him via email and snail mail. I spoke with him several times by phone over the course of a couple of years, and I have at least one taped phone conversation with him.

Frontier/Ross hired local expats and military personnel living/stationed in Japan in the 1960s. The series, according the scant records Bill sent me copies of (which I cannot find at the moment), was titled “Fantoma” and the only English audio clip that has survived the decades bears this out. Not sure where alternate spellings/names, Fantaman or Phataman, come from. Maybe it was printed this way in the Aussie TV guides/promo material. I’ll have to ask Kelly Patrick Lannan about that. He’s in the weeds on the series and films shown only in Oz (i.e. The Samurai, Phantom Agents, Gazula, Space Ace, Fantoma, etc.).

Although, Ross never kept records of the people he hired to dub these things, he did recall a couple of names and those were enough to start the dominoes tumbling for me. The narrator on the Fantoma ‘coming attractions’ audio clip is Burr Middleton, once known in the business as Burr Hoyle. He’s an actor and announcer, and you can catch him eps of Matlock, Hunter, and such things. During the 1960s, he was stationed in Japan (military, I think) and was hired by Ross for dubbing in Fantoma and Princess Knight (confirmed). He also acted in the Bill Ross-co produced sino-American sci-fi movie, The Green Slime. [...] But he confirmed for me his voice in the Fantoma clip. He also voiced Duke Duralumon, the villain, in the little-known Princess Knight/Choppy and the Princess dub, which finally saw a release in the U.S. a few years back, after decades of legal issues and copyright mishandling. I can try to ask Middleton who else worked on the Fantoma dub. Maybe he’ll remember.

Also, you’ve got the two ‘K. Fujitas’ mixed up. Yep, two. Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions was also known as K Fujita in the 1960s, but he shouldn’t be confused with the other and, I think, more important, K. Fujita of K. Fujita & Associates. Kazuhiko (a.k.a. Ken, or just ‘K’) of K. Fujita & Associates was one of the first, if not the first, to have the idea of marketing Japanese movies and tv content outside of Japan. For years, little more than an enigmatic name found only in the end credits of Speed Racer, Marine Boy, The Amazing 3, Star Blazers, etc., I hunted for years for him and finally my persistence paid off, found him semi-retired in Japan. We became friendly and got his story.

He first took sample footage of what was to become Astro Boy to shop around in the states and was pretty much laughed out of New York by the folks at NBC, ABC, Screen Gems, etc. Until he later sold a b/w live action Samurai series to Mexico. It was such an enormous success/ratings hit, south of the border, that the Americans were more ready to listen to him on his second pass. However, when he returned again to the states to negotiate a sale for Astro Boy, he walked away from the puny deal at NBC Films. Then, along comes Kiyoshi Fujita, of Video Promotions, apparently now negotiating on behalf of the Japanese producers/Mushi and accepts the same shitty NBC deal, or so I was told. The Japanese needed whatever NBC offered in order to bankroll future projects. I think Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions may still be around. I don’t know him and have never spoken with him. Since Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions had made the deal with NBC, he/they were well-positioned for the Kimba deal. You can read most of this in Fred Ladd’s book. Fred directed the dubs of both Astro Boy and Kimba for NBC Films, as you know.

The upshot is that Kiyoshi Fujita of Video Promotions, while he maybe still around, isn’t the K. Fujita of K. Fujita & Associates that sold Ogon Batto and the other anime and live action Japanese series in Australia. It was Kazuhiko (or Ken as he liked to be called by his western friends) who did that. Sadly, Ken passed in 2012. Kiyoshi probably won’t be much help to you in your search.

Kelley Patrick Lannan and Glen Johnson in Australia have been poking around for years for surviving prints of some of these series, including Fantoma. Kelley, if remember correctly, works in the TV industry, there, and he has his tentacles out, forever groping and prying to see if somewhere in Oz, somebody has 16mm prints of these series in storage, an attic, a basement.

Sometimes, all of the groping and prying by fans pays off. Episodes of both b/w live action shows “The Samurai” and “Phantom Agents” were finally located and released on DVDs. Unfortunately, the “Space Ace” and “Fantoma” dubs seem to more elusive. When I asked him, Ken Fujita couldn’t remember the names of the producers he sold/licensed the properties to. He’d thrown out 40 years of old paper work from his former companies, along with tons or original artwork and cels from his company’s (Japan Tele-Cartoons) production of “Marine Boy”. I nearly had a heart attack when he told me that. He simply had no idea anybody would be interested in having it, much less paying money to own it.

[...]

Starting in the mid-1990s, I decided that I hated reading misinformation/incorrect crediting in all of the animation reference books and articles about 8th Man and Princess Knight, and spent subsequent years researching Copri, Frontier, and Titra dubbing facilities. There wasn’t much information out there at all. I was starting from scratch. I would get one half remembered name from somebody, which then led to another half remembered name from somebody else, and so on. I finally got enough to put a picture together of the Miami dubbing outfit in the mid-1960s.

I’ve shared this information over the years with Fred Ladd, Dave Merrill, Glen Johnson, August Ragone, Chris Palmer, etc. and now it’s public information, which is good. The Copri and Frontier folks, unlike the Titra dubbers (Pete Fernandez, Fred Ladd, Corrine Orr, Jack Grimes, Paulette Rubenstein, Earl Hammond, Jack Curtis, etc.) never got credit for their work because of how it was done (under the table to skirt the union rules and union pay scales in Florida for Copri) and in Japan, it just wasn’t thought important and seen as an added (unnecessary) cost (i.e. cast list/end titles). Besides, the Florida and Japanese casts were local actors, school teachers, disc jockeys, moonlighting military personnel and their bored wives, etc. Nobodies, really. So, what did credits matter to them? They got paid few shekels and had some fun. End of story.

Many of the folks are gone, now. I was lucky that I got to know and speak with many of them and get their stories for posterity. I have a number of taped phone interviews, and still have some chapters of Pete’s unpublished auto-biography, hand typed, that he sent to me. He was a real sweetheart, and he is missed. I’ll what I can do about digitizing this stuff to post for everybody to enjoy.

In any case, I’ve written more than I intended. Sorry. I hope you find it some of it useful and if not, at least interesting.

It’s been years since I was actively researching. Just got busy. But I can try to reach out to Kelley Patrick and Glen to see if they’ve made any headway on the Fantoma and Space Ace hunt.

Regards,

Andrew Shepherd

What a surprise, right? As you guys following this blog know, I spoke with Mr. Burr Middleton myself, and he confirmed for me that he voiced not only the Narrator for Phantoma but also Gabby, Dr. Zero, and the big golden skeleton himself! (Though, granted, Phantoma didn’t exactly have a lot of dialogue in the series -- mostly laughing.)

As I mentioned to Mr. Shepherd in my response, I also discovered some Australian TV listings from the time, which is where the title “Phantaman” came from. My post about that can be found here:

https://thesearchforphantaman.tumblr.com/post/143665817167

Regardless, this is such exciting news!! Hopefully we’ll be able to continue the search from here.

Hailey out!

#phantaman #golden bat #ogon bat #ougon bat #fantaman

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