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hms-chill · 5 years ago

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RWRB Study Guide, Chapter 8

Hi y’all! I’m going through Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue and defining/explaining references! Feel free to follow along, or block the tag #rwrbStudyGuide if you’re not interested!

James I (203): James I/VI (First of England, Sixth of Scotland) is known for both translating the Bible and being just... so, so incredibly gay. The book mentions that he promoted a dumb jock to gentleman of the bedchamber, but it leaves out that 13-year-old James would just make out with dudes in public, and that the dumb jock (George Villers) was James’s third serious adult relationship. His friends introduced him to George because his last boyfriend was bad for the kingdom.

George Eliot (205): Mary Anne Evans wrote under the pen name George Eliot to escape the stereotype that women could only write romances. She wrote seven novels, of which Middlemarch is the most famous, known for their realism and psychological insight.

Daniel Defoe (205): A pioneer of the English novel, Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe as well as a series of divisive political pamphlets and tracts.

Jonathan Swift (205): Irish political writer most famous for A Modest Proposal, a satirical piece that suggests cannibalism of infants as a more humane response to the British treatment of Ireland than letting them grow to starve in adulthood.

Dickens... “woman who languishes away in a crumbling mansion wearing her wedding gown” (205): Charles Dickens wrote stories concerned with the lower classes. This quote in particular refers to Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, who was left at the altar and refused to take off her wedding dress or even put away the food set out for the wedding.

Sense and Sensibility (205): This is probably Austen’s second most popular novel (after Pride and Prejudice); it follows the four Dashwood women in their move to a new home following the death of Mr. Dashwood. Like most of Austen’s novels, the opinionated narrator follows the women through a series of romantic mishaps, culminating in a happy ending.

Green American Money (206): Fun fact, British money is blue and orange and purple and all sorts of fun colors! It also all looks different, because (at least in Scotland) four banks are allowed to print pound notes, so there are four different designs all in circulation.

Sean Hannity (206): A conservative American political commentator.

Harvard rowing (206): Rowing is like... the bougiest of sports.

Pleiad (206): In Greek mythology, the pleiades were the daughters of the titan Atlas who became stars following his entrapment under the earth. They are remembered for their beauty and loyalty. Myths of the missing pleiad explain why only six of the seven stars are visible to the naked eye. According to some sources, the missing pleiad is Merope, who was shamed out of the sky for her relationship with a mortal.

Minute Maid Park (206): The baseball stadium associated with the Houston Astros baseball team; it seats just over 41,000.

Politico (207): An American political opinion news source.

Drop-kick Murphys (208): An American Celtic punk band. (listen here and here)

The Klan (209): The Ku Klux Klan, an incredibly racist organization that has been responsible for the lynching of thousands of people of color.

Kim Nam-June (210): Kim Nam-Joon, known as RM or Rap Monster, is the leader and rapper of the K-pop group BTS.

Milwaukee (211): The largest city in and main cultural center of Wisconsin, which is a “swing state”, meaning that it could go either way politically in a national election.

Seth Meyers (211): An American talk show host and comedian whose creatively titled show, Late Night with Seth Meyers, is liberal-leaning. He hosts celebrities and often chats about politics or the news.

Clear Crystal Quartz (211): Apparently the most “iconic” crystal, it is believed to be able to help with clarity and the achievement of goals.

Wimbledon (213): The oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious.

Royal Box (213): The royal box at Wimbledon is a section of the best seats, reserved for royalty and specially invited celebrity/politically powerful guests.

David Beckham (213): A former professional soccer player and current fashion icon known for being hot and wearing nice suits.

McQueen (214): Alexander McQueen was an openly gay British fashion designer who rose from a lower class background to become one of the most famous designers in the world. Though he died in 2010, his brand continues to be known for unconventional fashion shows and theatrical imagery.

Dashikis (215): A colorful, ornate piece of clothing somewhere between a shirt and a tunic originally from West Africa.

Orangery (218): A very large greenhouse or conservatory designed for growing orange trees.

Woman at her Toilet (218): This painting shows a woman in her bedroom putting on her socks with a little dog next to her; you can see it here.

Baroque bed* (218): Baroque art was designed to show off a monarch’s power; it is incredibly extravagant (Versailles is pretty much the iconic Baroque thing; you can see more about it here).

The Killers (219): An American rock band formed in the early 2000s and known for having donated over $1 million to charity (they did “Mr. Brightside”). (listen here and here). According to McQuinston’s twitter, the song Henry plays is “When You Were Young”, which you can listen to here.

Dred Scott (219): In the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford case, the US supreme court ruled that the constitution did not extend to or protect Black folks.

Nina Simone (219): An American singer/songwriter/political activist whose music spanned a variety of genres and whose activism focused largely on the civil rights movement and was largely influenced by her “friend” Lorraine Hansberry, a Black lesbian playwright. (You know Hozier’s “Nina Cried Power”? She’s Nina) (listen here and here)

Otis Redding (219): Considered one of the greatest singers in American pop music and was one of the foundational soul artists in the US. (listen here and here)

Brahms (219): A German composer known for sticking to more classical forms of music while his contemporaries often leaned toward more dramatic or opulent styles. (listen here and here)

Wagner** (219): A German composer who wrote both the music and the librettos for his operas; his works tend to be very complex, and he has been credited with beginning modern music. (listen here and here)

Romantic (219): Artistically, the Romantic movement was a direct response to industrialization that called for a return to and celebration of nature. Queerness was very much a part of this movement, as it was seen as a return to or celebration of one’s natural state (think Byron).

War of the Romantics (219): A music history term used to describe the split between conservative composers like Brahms who wanted to stick with the Baroque, opulent styles of the past century and radical progressive composers like Liszt, who favored newer styles that blended music with narrative and morals.

Liszt (219): A Hungarian composer known for a diverse body of work and his position as the leader of the radical progressive group in the War of the Romantics. (listen here and here)

Alexander Scriabin (219): Russian composer known for his atonal or dissonant music. (listen to the piece Henry mentions here)

Elton John’s “Your Song” (219): A song written before Elton John came out, but with his queerness in mind. In a 2013 interview, John referred to it as “a perfect song”, and that the lyrics (written by Bernie Taupin) got even better as he got older and sang it more. (listen here)

Consecrated (220): made holy.

DNC (221): The Democratic national conference, when members of the Democratic (liberal) party get together to prepare for a presidential race.

College Republicans of Vanderbilt University (221): Vanderbilt University is a private (and therefore more expensive) school in Nashville, Tennessee. Its location in the South and its price tag would both mark it as being more conservative.

Cage match (221): A type of wrestling match that takes place inside a steel cage; the most common way of winning is by escaping the cage, usually by climbing over the top.

Paul Ryan (222): A conservative retired politician and former Speaker of the House.

The Second Amendment (222): The second amendment grants Americans the right to bear arms (have guns).

Salon (222): An American news and opinion website with a politically liberal editorial stance.

Air Force One (222): the president’s plane

“My Canadian girlfriend” (223): A running joke that someone (often a high schooler) whose partner goes to another school or lives somewhere else is made up.

Five Guys (225): Five Guys Burger and Fries is a popular fast food burger chain across the US.

Vampire Weekend (225): An American indie rock band.

The general (226): the general election in November, when Americans would vote for their president

Plainclothes (226): out of uniform

The Beekman (226): A very fancy hotel in Lower Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge.

NATO (233): the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries.

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*every time I read this, I flinch just a little bit. Baroque architecture is just... so much, and the concept of a Baroque bed when beds/bedrooms are supposed to be simple to help you rest... It’s just so much and I hate it with all of my being. I’m sorry if you like Baroque furniture, but especially for Henry, who dreams of a simple life where he can just write and be anonymous... It’s a big yikes.

** Literally no one asked, but his stuff is just... it’s so boring? Like I’m sure it’s great to fall asleep to or calm down to, but I tried to listen to it while I wrote this and I just couldn’t. Liszt is better, but he’s no Mozart. Also? Mozart wrote BOPS. ONLY. “The Birdcatcher’s Song” slaps and no one can change my mind on that.

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If there’s anything I missed or that you’d like more on, please let me know! And if you’d like to/are able, please consider buying me a ko-fi? I know not everyone can, and that’s fine, but these things take a lot of time/work and I’d really appreciate it!

—–-

Chapter 1 // Chapter 7 // Chapter 9

#rwrb study guide #English Major Brain™#English Major Brain™️#rwrb #red white and royal blue #rwrb analysis #analysis #red white and royal blue analysis #henry fox mountchristen windsor #henry fox mountchristen windsor x alex claremont diaz #alex claremont diaz #FirstPrince #june claremont diaz #bea fox mountchristen windsor #pez okonjo #nora holleran

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tlbodine · 5 years ago

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1950s Horror: Threats From Beyond the Stars

Today we rounded out the 1950s with two very different types of space invasions.

First up was Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) directed by Don Siegel. I’d never actually seen the original, having grown up with the excellent remake from 1978 -- a film which we may visit when that time comes. But for now, we’re talking about the OG.

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The film follows a small-town doctor who becomes increasingly concerned about a series of strange occurrences. First, there are patients calling frantically to schedule appointments they never show up to. Then there is the apparent mass hysteria with people believing their family members have been replaced by look-alike impostors. Except, well...they weren’t so crazy after all.

The core concepts of this story are terrifying. An alien lifeform that can flawlessly steal your identity and your life? A slow-moving invasion that can sweep through a town without anyone noticing? Genuinely horrifying stuff, and given the time period, it’s not too hard to see echoes of the Red Scare. Your neighbors may not be pod people...but they might be Communists! There’s another equally chilling theme, too: Conformity as a loss of self, and a fate worth than death. In a way, the story manages to be simultaneously anti-Communist and anti-McCarthyism

A couple notes:

The story was actually based on a novel by Jack Finney, which I had no idea about. I might have to hunt that down!

As with so many films of this time period, the forced cheerful ending was the result of executive meddling. The planned end -- the main character turning to the camera and screaming “They’re here, They’re here! You’re next!” in a fourth-wall-breaking warning -- was deemed too bleak (the scene does still appear in the film), so a more optimistic ending was tacked on, along with a framing narrative that the filmmaker despised.

Honestly, the whole concept of the pod people is one that I really enjoy and which I am both fascinated and horrified by, and I want to write a whole post about that theme -- so keep an eye out for that soon.

But first, let’s talk about....The Blob!

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Directed by Irvin Yeaworth, this 1958 indie film became a well-known cult classic. It’s the first leading role for Steve McQueen (who would go on to be both a cultural icon and the best-paid actor in Hollywood, presumably thanks to much better acting than was on display in this movie). It’s also the first movie in color we’ve watched in this whole film series.

And it’s a good thing it’s in color, because otherwise how could we enjoy the oozing, shimmering, disgusting blobbiness of...THE BLOB!

This movie is ludicrous, but in kind of a fun way. The basic idea is that a meteor lands, bursts open to leak out some kind of living goo (a type of amoeba, presumably?) that latches on to the first thing it touches (an old guy who lives in the woods) and swiftly consumes him. It grows in size and power, slowly and ominously, uh, oozing through the town...and for Reasons(tm) it’s up to a group of spunky teenage greasers to save the day.

After being hit with acid, shot, and electrocuted -- to no avail -- it’s finally discovered that the blob can be rendered dormant (if not killed) by the cold. So the FBI comes to scoop it up and take it to the far north, where, as the main character helpfully points out, the thing has been stopped “As long as the Arctic stays cold.”

I don’t know if there is any way the filmmakers could possibly have known how funny/terrifying that line would turn out to be in 2019.

Anyway. The Blob was made to be a fun, cheap movie for teenagers to watch at the drive-in while canoodling, which may be why the pacing is so laboriously slow (leave more time for necking without missing anything important). A few fun facts:

The film was shot primarily in Phoenixville, Pa., which still hosts an annual Blob-fest celebrating it.

The titular blob is made primarily of silicone and food coloring (with more food color added as the movie goes on and the blob absorbs more people), and it still survives IRL -- it lives in a 5-gallon bucket.

Steve McQueen was offered a choice between $2500 and 10% of the film’s profits. He went for the $2500, thinking the movie wouldn’t be a success, and was probably flabbergasted when it went on to net about $4mil at the box office.

Amusingly enough, at least one film critic has interpreted the story as being about the Red Scare: “According to Jeff Sharlet in his book The Family, The Blob was "about the creeping horrors of communism" only defeated "by freezing it — the Cold War writ small and literal".[24] Rudy Nelson, one of the scriptwriters for the film, has denied many of Sharlet's assertions, saying "What on earth can Sharlet say about the movie that will fill 23 pages—especially when what he thinks he knows is all wrong"?[25]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob

What we do know is that the very best part of the blog is its magnificent title sequence and theme song, which deserves a place on every Halloween playlist right beside The Monster Mash:

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#horror movies #science fiction #1950s horror #horror by the decade #horror through the ages #film history #invasion of the body snatchers #the blob

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citizenscreen · 6 years ago

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This is a special guest post by Scott Holleran:

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My first experience of this movie was probably on television, probably in fragments. It made an impression but the movie ranged into my memory as a series of scenes disembodied from the whole work. For example, I remember watching the burning of Atlanta and certain, distinctive scenes and not much else. So, my first impressions were perfect for today’s conceptual-deprivation culture. That’s the poverty of being among the TV generation.

It took a long time to appreciate this film as a work of art, which now I know it is. At some point, as I began to take a serious interest in movies, I rediscovered it on home video. Then, again, on disc and possibly again in a revival house on one of those scratchy prints with popping sounds. That a civilization could be gone with the wind came through and I was an admirer. Later, I read about the novel upon which the movie’s based, which, with a romance novel-type jacket design for the mass market paperback edition, was off-putting.

At some point, it dawned on me that Gone With the Wind is an important epic motion picture so I sought its source and read the novel. I was astonished at the brilliant writing. I instantly observed a similarity to my favorite novel, also an epic of American literature and also written by an author who happens to be a woman. Gone With the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell conveys the romanticism, scope and grandeur of Atlas Shrugged (1957) by Ayn Rand and it’s worth noting that Rand’s first novel, too, involved a love triangle woven into the end of an era in her own 1936 novel, We the Living.

After reading Mitchell’s novel, I saw the movie again — and again. Each time, I was more impressed. And, each time, I was more impressed that I was able to be additionally impressed. This is because, as you probably know, the more you know and study a motion picture, the more easily the film can lose its newness, its ability to hold and sustain interest or focus, suspense, tension or sense of plot progression and, as a result, the less likely it can be to stir one’s original passion.

Then, a few weeks ago, I saw Gone With the Wind, which, this year, marks its 80th anniversary in a culture in which it is extremely likely to be impugned or maligned. I saw it for the first time at one of the grandest movie theaters on earth: Sid Grauman’s Chinese theater on Hollywood Boulevard.

And, this time, for the first time, I was moved … to tears.

The nearly four-hour motion picture begins with three characters in Georgia talking about war. This is an essential starting point. The novel more or less begins with this starting point, too. Gone With the Wind frames its story within an argument over the fact of an oncoming war. It’s not that they’re debating the merits of war. They’re discussing the prospect of war as such; they’re considering the impact of war on their lives. So, this, the fundamental choice to face the facts of reality, is the starting point. Not the war itself. Not slavery, the issue in dispute.

Gone With the Wind is not a war movie. Gone With the Wind is not a slavery movie. Any discourse of it as either entirely misses the movie. It is also, strictly speaking, not a romance, though war, slavery and romance factor into its drama to various degrees. Gone With the Wind dramatizes an entire civilization through the life of a single individual.

Her name is Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh at her best).

Shallow, scheming and self-centered, she’s enraged when she learns during this discussion, in which she’s attempting to ignore the reality of impending civil war, that the object of her desire, Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), plans to marry his cousin, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). In subsequent scenes, the men who will become pivotal to the young, impetuous Scarlett’s life, including her father, Gerald O’Hara, but also Frank Kennedy, Ashley Wilkes, Charles Hamilton and a cad named Rhett Butler, argue war on the merits, whistle “Dixie” and, with the recklessness which exemplifies the pre-Civil War American South, crow about going to war.

In this sense, there is real substance to this movie in terms of its grasp of facts and history. Every Southern deficiency is depicted here. The staggeringly affected manners, the pompous preposterousness, the asinine traditions but also the proportionately and wildly irrational inflation of people’s sense of themselves with regard to their actual merit and worth, let alone the source of their wealth, not the main focus and therefore largely unseen. The fact of slave labor is, however, shown, even if it’s not dramatized, though it is more explicit than most films of the era. House, field and overseer are each crucial elements of Twelve Oaks and Tara, the plantations where Gone With the Wind takes place.

What’s good in the South, too, is depicted. The stunning visuals, the land, manners, socializing and courtship and the gentle way of life. Pretty and feisty Scarlett, who’s earned a reputation for being bolder than her peers, holds court and gets talked about by other females and looked upon by men. The outbreak of civil war occurs within her context.

The plot revolves around Scarlett O’Hara; there is a sense in which her pettiness will be tested by war — and what’s impure about Scarlett is fundamentally what will be Gone With the Wind.

The early evidence is Scarlett standing at the window, looking down upon newlyweds Melanie and Ashley. Here’s the heroine on the inside looking out. Yet think about the meaning of her dilemma; she’s really trapped within the Old South, as the opening titles refer to this archaic slave society. In this sense, Scarlett dramatizes how the South’s ways impair the powerful, too. Her only real saviors, friends and comrades, as far as Scarlett knows, are slaves and an angry Irishman. Everyone else is happily, some even stupidly, off to war. In a flash, again like the title, they are gone. Scarlett is left behind — abandoned, lonely and alone.

What comes next builds character, with an outbreak of measles, a move to Atlanta and the entre of the ridiculous Aunt Pittypat, as cartoonish a figure as in the novel. Scarlett’s Mammy (Hattie McDaniel in one of the screen’s greatest performances), knowing all along what exploits the ambitious young missy has in mind, represents the best of Scarlett’s youthful vigor; Mammy fosters, shapes and marks her charge’s growth. Amid a dance, a bid and donation of a ring, Scarlett learns from her new companion, Melanie, wife of the man she thinks she loves.

Here are women in service at war. This, too, is to the film’s credit. Gone With the Wind remains one of the most intelligent, insightful portrayals of women at war ever made, better and more knowing than the hordes of depictions of today’s mindless women on screen who rarely if ever think about anything having to do with serious issues, let alone war or the men sent to fight them.

With intermittent titles, David O. Selznick’s Gone With the Wind, famously directed by Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz), with others also filling in, shifts from breeze to gust with news from Gettysburg. Then, come the war-torn faces of those in Atlanta cast down in bonnets amid news of mass death. Fleming lingers on a list of those killed in action. It is words, not pictures that tell the horrid tale. The camera scrolls down, down, down and down on the same three words.

Cue the theme song “Dixie” as a reprise to the earlier tune’s sense of false jubilation and enter a man of reason, Doctor Meade (Harry Davenport), whose role in the picture is a crucial representation of what will become Scarlett’s education. In a shift to black-and-white color schemes from the rest of the film’s vibrant colors, Gone With the Wind goes from sad and mournful “Dixie” to a musically infused projection of a funeral procession in which Johnny comes marching home.

As Pittypat, Meade, Mammy, Melanie and a young slave named Prissy (Butterfly McQueen) besides Scarlett get dragged, plunged and thrust into the South’s mass death and destruction, in comes Rhett Butler (Clark Gable, brilliantly cast and stellar in the role) with vitality, passion and rage — at the Old South for being the Old South. Butler represents the New South, post-slavery, post-Civil War, though it’s never fashioned or made explicit. What a waste of human life — this is the meaning of his every form of his disgust and he makes no attempt to conceal his emotions or suppress himself in expressing what he feels. Like Scarlett, he is a liberated soul stifled and trapped by the way things are.

There’s music, humor and, during a dance which captures and underscores the surrealism of life during wartime, a total breach from traditionalism. Life remains drab as Scarlett and Atlanta face severe deprivation. Butler has a prostitute, Belle Watling (Ona Munson), to help him ease the chronic anxiety, guilt and agony of war and she’s more than a cliché. The pictures show rain, shadows and the hotly feared Union General William Sherman’s shelling of Atlanta, with churches coming on like a holy calling from God to cease and desist with the Old South rebellion. Pictures of Jesus Christ accompany the sound of moans, the sights of a church and, in one of the movies’ most iconic scenes, the camera pulls back for a scene of mass death and dying.

“Peace be within thy walls“ incongruously graces the screen after Scarlett O’Hara encounters a patient with gangrene. Perhaps you don’t know or remember the grit of Gone With the Wind but it’s there. Between marriages, the making of Scarlett from romantic Southern belle to seasoned war bride happens during Atlanta’s silence and siege. And it isn’t even Intermission.

Before that comes, as Rhett Butler finally kisses Scarlett and enlists in the war for a kind of misintegrated sense of honor, slave Prissy hinges the plot. Prissy’s trauma triggers a key reaction that results in the story’s classic and quite penetrating tale within a tale of three women and a baby. Though this famous scene is generally regarded as humorous, I think after seeing Gone With the Wind in the Chinese theater that simple-minded Prissy’s meltdown underscores the folly of slavery even as it echoes as a call and response to Scarlett’s own earlier cluelessness.

A foreshadowing scene on a bridge marks the end of slavery preceding a scene in which women take refuge in reading (in the novel, it’s a story by Victor Hugo; here, it’s fiction by Charles Dickens). The self-made theme continues with a rainbow followed by blackness, fog and a strange yet familiar place.

The shock and violence of post-war Tara soon becomes clear. Scarlett strikes her sister, Prissy and pretty much everyone else except her mother figure, Mammy, and she forges a secret bond with Melanie over the death of a soldier. By the time war widow Scarlett, who’s remade herself as a businesswoman in post-war Southern society, meets again with her true love Ashley Wilkes, who tells her that he admires her for “facing reality“, the heroine grips the earth and grasps her property rights, legacy and life lessons and vows … to herself and her own ego.

Gone With the Wind essentially carries Scarlett in conversation with herself throughout the epic movie. From that first conversation at Tara with her suitors, the Tarleton twins, to becoming a Confederate captain’s wife in New Orleans and hiring as her subordinate the man to whom she’d once pledged to worship and motherhood, Scarlett O’Hara is both intransigent and indomitable. She will not be struck down.

Like Mammy, the former slave woman whose respect everyone respectable seeks to earn and keep, Scarlett keeps company with herself as a worldly woman alone. She makes mistakes — she makes a terrible parent — and she makes money and love. Scarlett liberates herself from tradition for capitalism, egoism and her own way of life. Gone With the Wind traces her journey in this sense from selflessness to selfishness, in time for the man whose love she finally earns to come full circle with his own mistakes, i.e., drinking alone and taking pity on himself, to reject her with the movie’s most famous line.

“Frankly, my dear…” and the precision with which Mr. Gable delivers the line redeems the film’s previous strife and tension into a single moment. It is tempting to root for what at first might seem like his own redemption. But Gone With the Wind is not the leading man’s story and, on the movie’s terns, it’s a mistake to jeer or cheer the line.

‘Frankly’ spends itself on a serious dramatic moment; it signifies Rhett Butler’s ultimate betrayal of himself — in particular, his idealism — and everything he loves. And it signals one of the screen’s greatest victories.

While the ‘Frankly’ line endures in audience memories, it is tellingly uttered only after man and woman stand as equals on the landing of the staircase from which Scarlett has literally taken a tumble in a penultimate descent — only to rise again — and, also tellingly, it comes before the movie’s last and final line.

“I’ll figure out a way to get him back … tomorrow is another day.”

This is the triumph, the meaning and the glory of Gone With the Wind. It is not a film about the slavery. It is not a movie about civil war. It is not a picture of what war does to a slave, a woman and a man — or a family, a home and way of life, though it rarely gets credit for its insights into each of those dramatizations. There is depth to this movie about Prissy, the overseer, Pittypat, India, Charles, Sue Ellen and more, not just Ashley, Melanie, Mammy, Dr. Meade or Scarlett and Rhett Butler.

Like We the Living, Atlas Shrugged and other epic novels by Hugo, Rand and other great works of literature and movies, it is an expression of the ability of the individual to resist the times, the trials and ruins of the day, rise and never let one’s ego be destroyed. It is the story of a man, or, in this case, a woman — or, in any case, a girl who becomes one — and it is certainly not a romance for romance’s sake. Gone With the Wind depicts the promise not to yield, suffer and be beaten down. It is in this sense, to paraphrase one its admirers, Ayn Rand, a paean to forging the “I” one must learn how to say before one can learn to say “I love you”.

This is why it ends where it vows to once again begin.

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Gone With the Wind screened during the 10th anniversary Turner Classic Movies festival on April 14, 2019 for its historic 80th anniversary at the Chinese movie theater designed and built by Sid Grauman. This was the 25th anniversary date of the film’s initial airing — the first motion picture showcased without interruption or editing — on Ted Turner’s Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable channel’s first day of launch. The movie was introduced by TCM’s festival director, Genevieve McGuillicuddy, before the original Robert Osborne introduction from April 14, 1994 was shown before the movie.

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Scott Holleran began his professional writing career as a newspaper correspondent in 1991. He’s worked in a variety of media, including magazines, broadcasting and Internet ventures. His news, cultural commentary, sports and other topical articles has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and Philadelphia Inquirer. You can find Scott on Facebook, Twitter or on his website. I’m thrilled Scott reached out to feature this entry on Once Upon a Screen. I hope there will be others.

Analysis: GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) This is a special guest post by Scott Holleran: ◊ My first experience of this movie was probably on television, probably in fragments.

#Butterfly McQueen #Clark Gable #David O. Selznick #Gone with the Wind #Harry Davenport #Hattie McDaniel #Leslie Howard #Margaret Mitchell #Olivia de Havilland #Ona Munson #TCM #Victor Fleming #Vivien Leigh

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dovebuffy92 · 3 years ago

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https://www.fanbolt.com/114248/line-of-duty-season-6-episode-7-recap-failing-upward/

In Line of Duty Season Six Episode 7, directed by Jennie Darnell, AC-12 learns there is no “fourth man,” but instead just Ian failing upward.

Chris briefs Kate and Steve about the forensic evacuation team found a strongbox underneath the floor of the gun workshop. The strongbox contains the gun Carl used to kill Gail and weapons used to murder AC-12 Constable Maneet Bindra and others. The series of knifes all have fingerprints on them from Ryan or DCI Tony Gates for blackmail purposes.

Ted is thrilled that Kate and Steve have solid proof that Carl murdered Gail. Kate plans to convince the Crown Prosecutor’s office to drop all charges against Terry. Chloe tells the group that Spain formally identified the two dead bodies in the villa as Marcus and his wife. In addition, the Spanish police found electronic equipment that routed communications to Jo through the estate that originated in the United Kingdom.

Amanda from Cybercrime reports to Ted that they found some messages to Jo that were routed through Spain. Ted notices that the notes contain a misspelling of the word “definitely” like other communications from ” the fourth man.” He orders Chloe to correlate the misspelling of “definitely” with anything written by their suspects.

Meanwhile, a suspicious police van picks up Jo from Brentiss Prison for a post-charge interview at Hillside Lake Station. Ted, Steve, and Kate drive speedily in convoy through the streets to Brentiss Prison. Chloe radios Kate that there was an order to bring Jo to Hillside Lake Station sanctioned by her. Kate never approved such an order. The convo rushes off to rescue Jo. A bunch of masked gangsters pulls over the police van in an attempt to kidnap Jo, but thankfully AC-12 intercedes. AC-12 arrests the masked criminals along with the corrupt police officers involved in the ambush.

Back at AC-12 Kate, and Steve interview Jo. Kate promises Jo that if she talks, then she will go into witness protection. Thus, Jo can have the life she deserves. Kate pointedly asks Jo if the man she has been communicating with is her fake father. Jo finally speaks. Tommy told her that this person was her Dad and forced her to do the police officer’s bidding. Jo tells them it’s Patrick.

The team drives back to Queen’s Chase Prison to search Patrick’s cell for evidence that he is ” the fourth man.” They find no proof. Ted, Steve, and Kate interview Patrick, but he doesn’t even recognize Jo or her mother. Ted storms out when Patrick says he can’t remember anything from that far back. Chloe calls Steve. She found something in Lawrence’s records. They all rush back to AC-12. Chloe briefs Ted, Steve, and Kate about how Cybercrime has studied Jo, Ian, Lisa McQueen, and the Organized Crime men’s electronic devices. They searched the devices for common misspellings and grammar mistakes. For example, they tracked the misspelling of ” definitely” in 2013 with communications to Lisa. When Cyber forensics looked into new files, they found the same misspelling in a document from the Lawrence murder case and Operation Lighthouse. Ian was the author of both filings.

The Firearm Unit brings Ian into AC-12 for an interview, which Patricia partially watches from her office window. Ted, Steve, and Kate sit across from Ian and his representation. Steve and Kate show Ian evidence that he has been messaging Jo about Organized Crime’s orders, but he won’t talk. Kate comments that she has worked in some of Ian’s teams, both undercover and as herself. He has always been the same cheap lazy supervisor. Ian starts to become nervous when Kate mentions they have DNA and fingerprints linking him to a laptop used to message corrupt cops and criminals on an Organized Crime owned property.

Ted explains that from Jo’s testimony, they know that the Organized Crime syndicate led by Tommy broke up after his death into separate gangs. However, one corrupt police officer, the so-called ” fourth man,” coordinates with these gangs. Ian won’t answer any questions until Ted needles him about how he’s a “blundering fool.” The corrupt officer then retorts he has been making a fool out of AC-12.

Ian argues for immunity and witness protection since Patricia not being in the room means the Police brass doesn’t want to deal with institutional corruption. Steve then asks Ian to tell him who the top man is. Ian explains that Tommy used to be the boss, but now it’s just him passing out orders between these different gangs. All Ian takes responsibility for is coordinating with all these criminal organizations. Ted is shocked that he has no remorse, but Ian says he didn’t plan the murders. However, these gangsters kept on asking Ian to organize more significant crimes.

Steve doesn’t understand why Organized Crime would kill Gail since she only had information on the corrupt police. Ted asks if Ian or Philip planned out the murder of Gail. Ian automatically starts whispering to his solicitor. Steve and Kate explain that if Ian doesn’t fully cooperate with their investigation, he won’t receive immunity, and if he confesses to murdering, he won’t receive witness protection. Ian stops talking. Ted ends the interview.

The episode finishes with the charges against Terry dropped. He now lives in a home with other adults with learning disabilities. Farida is now back on active duty at Hillside Lake Station. Darren is under investigation for murdering Lawrence. Jo lives happily in the countryside with her new girlfriend and dog under witness protection. Ian resides in an unknown Vulnerable Prisoners Unit in a maximum-security prison, but he may receive public interest immunity meaning nobody will hear about institutional police corruption. Finally, Patricia is in charge of a downsized combined AC Unit, weakening the authority of those investigating anti-police corruption.

Watch all of Line of Duty Season 6 on BritBox!

#tv recap #episode recap #recap #line of duty #line of duty season 6 #britbox #itv #british tv #season finale #ac-12 #tv reviewer #blogger

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adaplay · 7 years ago

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Breathtaking Coda

7/28/2017 ADA AND THE MEMORY ENGINE Essential Theatre ***** ( A+ ) 01001100 01001111 01000111 01001001 01000011 01000001 01001100 00100000 01001001 01001110 01010100 01010101 01001001 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110 01010011 (*) (Bias Alert: I am friends with Essential Artistic Director Peter Hardy and with leading actress Ashley Anderson. I also have not seen a Lauren Gunderson play I haven't liked -- her works topped my "favorites" lists in both 2015 and 2016. Yeah, I went into this one with my "inclined to like" filters focused fully.) So, computers. We all use them. Our cars use them. (Too) Many objects in our homes use them. We carry them in our pockets, a mere seventy years after the smallest computer filled a large room. So, when did all this madness begin? 1911's Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (Soon to become IBM)? 1946's ENIAC? 1950's Turing Test? 1981's DOS? All of the above? Let's go the whole way back to 1833, or "When Charles Babbage met Ada Lovelace!" You see, Mr. Babbage had conceived and modeled what he called his "Difference Engine," a machine that could be "programmed" to perform simple arithmetic functions. Ms. Lovelace, (pronounced "love-less," interestingly enough), the only "legitimate" daughter of Lord Byron, had been raised by her (bitter) mother to eschew anything artistic, becoming a bit of a mathematical genius. She saw the potential of Babbage's machine to do more than simple addition. In 1840, Babbage gave a lecture at the University of Turin about his engine, which was transcribed in French. Ms. Lovelace translated the paper into English, including a "Notes" section longer than the paper itself. That appendix included what is thought to be the world's very first "program," instructions for the "engine" to calculate a series of Bournoulli Numbers. (I'd explain what they are, but I'm not a mathematician. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_number if you must.) Okay, there is some debate over whether or not Lovelace actually conceived the program, or whether she merely transcribed Babbage's work. Whichever is true, it is definitely factual that she was an infinitely more accomplished communicator than Babbage, and it is reasonable to assume she had input to the production of the "program." Although Babbage was never able to get funding for his admittedly expensive engine, he had the last laugh -- In 2011, researchers in England actually produced a working model from his notes, and Lovelace's program worked perfectly. All this is basic Wikipedia background to Lauren Gunderson's marvelous "Ada and the Memory Engine," another in her series of plays about "forgotten" women of science. I loved both "Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends her Life Tonight" and "Silent Sky," and I expected to love this one as well. And indeed I did. Okay, maybe it has a tad TOO much in common with "Silent Sky," including clueless men, a heroine who suffers handicap and early demise, ineluctable societal paradigms, and a finale involving projections of the universe (so to speak). It's merely coincidental that the clueless Lord Lovelace is played by the same actor (Brandon Partrick) who played the clueless astronomer in "Silent Sky" at Theatrical Outfit. That being said, this production is driven by an incredible wide-ranging and energetic performance by Ashley Anderson, a dynamo of an actress who creates an indelible impression from moment one, a compelling portrait that continues throughout. Much of the sadness of Ada's story, as presented here, is the drastic "snuffing out" as her "life force" decrescendos as the cancer ultimately consumes her. It's a totally logical extension that death itself is merely another hurdle, not a roadblock, and it leads to an exquisite "coda" in which she encounters a mysterious man who turns out to be {Deleted by the spoiler police, but if you can't guess, you're not paying enough attention. An impossibility considering Ms. Anderson's undeniable magnetism}. I also have to give props to Mark Cosby, who brings to Babbage a wistful vulnerability that makes him attractive, even when he's being a bit of a jerk (which admittedly happens fairly often). Too old to sustain a romantic relationship with Ada, he and Ms. Anderson have a palpable chemistry that is electrical and compelling. This may be "hottest" "friend zone" relationship you're likely to see for a while. And the aforementioned Mr. Partrick is near perfect as Lord Lovelace, a bit pompous, a bit innocent, a bit more open-minded than probably ANY of his contemporaries, and as besotted with Ada as Charles. You almost feel sorry for him as he wallows in the gender-based paradigms of his era. Holly Stephenson also shines (as expected) as Ada's bitter mother, the former Lady Byron, Anabella. Perhaps painted a bit more "helicopter" than her historical analog (who, according to Wikipedia, left Ada with her own mother and referred to her as "it," except when it came to that whole custody thing with her wayward ex). Ms. Stephenson is equal parts society Grande Dame, and loving caretaker, at least as Ada lies dying. And she wears the best dresses! Which reminds me -- the remarkable Jane Kroessig outdoes her usual excellent work with a mid-19th century costume plot that is gorgeous to look at, character-specific, and as elegant as a perfect algorithm. The set stays simple, a schematic of Babbage's engine on the floor, projections setting the scenes; props remain period specific, though it was easy to see that all the "papers" and pages were blank pages. But that only matters to picky picky people without an ounce of logic or intuition. And, of course, director Ellen McQueen has gathered a perfect cast, put them in a perfect "space," and guided them to do what may prove to be their very best work. So, Lauren Gunderson shows WHY she's the most-produced living playwright in America. "Ada and the Memory Engine" is a sparkling look at another forgotten "Woman of Science," a well-researched, well-executed look at a specific period of history, complete with its own ethos and shortcomings, and she has peopled it with characters that dominate the stage. And Ashley Anderson glows, and sparks, and creates this woman I really wish I could one day meet. Perhaps in that same place where she meets {Don't Make me get out The Spoiler Stick} in the breathtaking coda. Ms. Gunderson writes like no other playwright, and the theatre is richer for her efforts. -- Brad Rudy ([email protected] @bk_rudy #EssentialFestival #Ada&TheMemoryEngine ) (*) Translation: LOGICAL INTUITIONS

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hollyoaksloversx · 8 years ago

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Let’s Hear it for the Kids!

Rounding up a week in Hollyoaks (27th February - 3rd March 2017)

It was the week of Nathan’s funeral and poor Marnie was beside herself with grief and guilt thanks to Mac’s lies about her role in her son’s death. It wasn’t all bad, though, as the occasion brought Marnie’s Mother, Tabby, back to the village, complete with her cutting put downs. At the funeral, Marnie decided that it was the perfect time to confess to her ‘crime’, leaving Ellie sickened and Marnie quickly found herself ostracised by the family. However, after the funeral, Marnie not only discovered that she hadn’t really been responsible for Nathan’s death, but the truth about Mac and Lisa’s affair! Returning to The Dog, Marnie went completely off the rails and attempted to set fire to the pub but was interrupted by Freddie and Ellie. Noticing the state Marnie was in, Freddie and Ellie decided that Marnie needed professional help and arranged for her to go into hospital.

It wasn’t the best of weeks for Neeta, who found herself in trouble with the law when she ‘kidnapped’ baby Daniel. After receiving a phonecall from Grace, asking her to bring Curtis to her, Neeta obliged, but took the wrong buggy, sending Leela into a panic. Well, it’s an easy mistake to make: newborn, mixed-race Daniel and 19 month old, white, Curtis. It could have happened to anyone! Neeta eventually did the right thing and handed baby Daniel over but quickly found herself arrested! Despite those around her encouraging her to give Grace up, Neeta stood by her pal and refused to tell anyone where she was. Fortunately for Neeta, Grace chose to do the right thing and handed herself into the police.

Meanwhile, Peri was still struggling to come to terms with her Father being a murderer and got into all manner of trouble this week as she shoplifted from the emporium. Despite returning the necklace, and promising Tom she would never rob again, it seems Peri’s become something of a kleptomaniac if the contents of her bag were anything to go by! It’s easy to see why Peri’s acting up, though. Not only is her Dad a murderer, but she feels that Leela has no time for her, and this became particularly apparent in the aftermath of baby Daniel’s disappearance. After Daniel was returned, a social worker, who’d received an anonymous tip-off arrived to speak with Leela, and she later received a series of creepy messages. It doesn’t take a genius to work out who’s likely behind all of this, does it?

Diego’s plan to con Frankie hit an Esther-shaped bump in the road this week when she discovered his ‘business plan’ was blank. I found it quite sickening just how many people were willing to take advantage of Esther’s memory problems. We’ve already seen Kim’s antics here, and I wasn’t surprised by Diego, but Frankie ripping notes out of Esther’s book was particularly horrible. Willing to sacrifice her Grandaughter’s recovery over a man she’s only known for 5 minutes! What a cow! With the money from Eva’s will about to clear, Diego made plans to flee the village, taking the money, Myra and baby Carmina with him...

There was much excitement in the Osborne house as Charlie prepared for his lead role in the school play. However, the youngster was left devastated when Nancy was unable to come along due to a hospital appointment and Charlie’s moment in the spotlight was ruined when he froze on stage. Later, after discovering Nancy throwing up, Charlie snuck a look at her internet history and convinced himself that his aunt was dying...

Finally, a family project had little Matthew asking John Paul some awkward questions about his Mother. However, it seemed like John Paul’s explanation left Matthew with more questions than answers and the little boy later asked James to be his Daddy! Given James’ track record when it comes to Matthew, it was inevitable that James’ response wouldn’t go down well and John Paul was left enraged when left to comfort his upset son!

5 Things We Learnt This Week:

1. It’s weird to fancy cartoon characters.

2. Darren really needs to up his taxi cleanliness. According to Alfie, Daz Cabs’ taxis ‘smell a little’.

3. Don’t trust Neeta with your baby...or your buggy.

4. Dirk loves a good ‘Storage Hunters’ marathon.

5. When Frankie looks into Diego’s eyes, she sees her future. I think she needs glasses...

One Last Thing:

It was all about the kids this week as some of Hollyoaks younger stars took centre stage. I particularly liked Daniel’s reaction to Neeta’s horror at having taken the wrong baby!

Characters Featured:

Adam, Alfie, Charlie, Cleo, Courtney, Curtis, Daniel, DS Armstrong, Darren, Diego, Dirk, Ellie, Esther, Frankie, Freddie, Grace, Jade, James, Jesse, John Paul, Kim, Leela, Lisa, Louis, Mac, Marnie, Matthew, Nathan, Neeta, Oscar, Peri, Sally, Simone, Tabby, Tegan, Tom and Zack.

Past Characters Mentioned:

Nico Blake, Cameron Campbell, Becca Dean, Eva Falco, Nathan Nightingale, Celine McQueen.

#Hollyoaks #Highlight #Marnie Nightingale #Ellie Nightingale #Mac Nightingale #Neeta Kaur #Grace Black #Sally St Claire #Nancy Osborne #Darren Osborne #Charlie Dean #Tom Cunningham #Peri Lomax #Leela Lomax #John Paul McQueen #Matthew McQueen #James Nightingale #Esther Bloom #Frankie Osborne

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nettlestonenell · 8 years ago

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Afterword

Here I am, five years to the day of when I posted the go-for-broke chapter of Don’t Give Out With Those Lips of Yours where Marion ‘dies’/is sent away to Germany, posting the final chapter of the entire Don’t series, as well as an afterword.

I have always thought of myself as a persuasive writer—certainly with regard to writing, that is what has most often drawn me to the process.

It might seem strange to say, a persuasive fiction writer, but it makes sense to me: getting the facts, figuring out the character, persuading a reader to buy into the fact that the story is genuine, [even though it is] set somewhere they’ve never been (time or place), and that the characters are believable and ring true.

Persuasion plays an even greater part in fan fiction. Can I, as an author, sell you on decisions this character—whom you may know quite intimately—will make? Do their words sound like them? How about the setting, the diction?

Not many know it, but I promised Glorious Clio that 2016 would see the conclusion of the Don’t Series. And I meant it when I said it. Well, 2016 proved a lot of things, a great many of them disappointing, and on this count I, too, failed 2016.

But here it is, February 9, 2017, and it’s DONE.

Funny, as Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree actually began in direct relation to my finishing the long work Death Would Be Simpler to Deal With—and fearing what came next.

What would I think about? What would I scribble notes about on random scraps of paper? What would I write?

It was 2010, the year of season one Sherlock in the US. The idea of an Alternate Timeline re-boot hung heavily in the air. And me? I couldn’t think about anything but Robin and Marian MOST OF THE TIME. Go to a concert—imagine every song through that lens, for example. I was still really, really burnt from the show killing Marian, and the failure to even follow through dealing with it on the scale it deserved. But mostly the show killing Marian. And Robin. And…[footage not found].

Look, Marian and Robin die OLD, their deeds accomplished, their lives fully LIVED. That’s how it works. It’s not JFK’s Camelot, a sort of short, limited run. It’s a lifetime. It’s-- Anyway…

I knew about AT or Uber-fiction from the Xena fandom, at the time the most famous of which was Melissa Good’s Dar and Kerry stories (Xena and Gabrielle’s dynamic transplanted into present day).

As for WWII? Anyone who examined my childhood would say that I was destined to create something about that era. Myself, I was raised in the post-war 50s. Yes, I am Older than Reblogginhood—but I’m not that old. But when one lives rurally, time does move slower, and despite my parents being born 1939 and 1941, they were raised more like turn-of-the-century babies. My mother recalls the installation of electricity in her home, a home that never saw running water. And so, despite living in a world with Original Madonna and Thriller, at my house we were listening more often than not to “Wonderful Songs and Inspiration” on Cincinnati’s WSAI (one of the program hosts was George Clooney’s dad/Rosemary Clooney’s brother). Big Band songs were often the standard, the soundtrack of a lot of our lives.

My father (more on him later) consumed WWII-centric film and television round-the-clock. From early days I saw war films (I may not know all their titles, but if Hollywood made it, chances are I saw it—multiple times), I went to bed at night to the sound of anti-aircraft guns, or submarines diving.

In the days of the big three networks, it was public television that most often showed my dad’s John Wayne films, Audie Murphy, documentaries, and (bless them) screwball comedies and serious dramas infused with pre-war or war time life of (often) civilians.

And that proved to be my jam. The lives of regular people, un-enlisted people, in the midst of war. Often, this means women. Sometimes, it means prisoners. And there’s simply not enough written or filmed about them for my taste. If the soldier’s role in WWII is well-documented (perhaps, even, in contrast with other wars, over-documented), the civilian/non-combatant story is nearly silent, with the exception of Holocaust literature.

So as Papa Nettlestone watched his war films, I was always like a research assistant, looking into the corners of frames, fixating on incredibly brief scenes and unnamed characters who seemed to fit into that class: ‘regular’ people and how they managed life during that war.

Shows like Jeeves and Wooster (and those period-filmed screwball comedies) showed me a pre-war lifestyle the wealthy in both America and Britain took part, or at least a facsimile of it.

And the timeline—the intersection of this period of human history: that a title-stripped Russian aristocrat raised in the opulent (and it could be said) out-of-touch Court of the Tsars could find himself in the war, become part of the new world following that war.

That an English lord born during the hoop skirts of the American Civil War, could see the colonization of India, women get the vote—and live to see the fashion of WWII, and the German’s plans to exterminate an entire people. Hot dog, that compelled me. Such drastic reorganization of the world, of society, of all European aristocracy. Still blows my mind.

But credit also must go to Clio, who stuck with me once she found Death, faithful in communication and reviewing. I knew she loved Hogan’s Heroes (at our house, also, required viewing), that team dynamic. I loved it, too, the soldiers now rendered non-combatants by virtue of the fact they are imprisoned—yet finding clever means of resistance. I loved The Great Escape (a film that has plenty for both me and my dad). Thomas Carter a definite character ‘descendant’ of Steve McQueen’s Cooler King, Hiltz.

I love stories about people hiding downed RAF pilots (Mary Lindell in One Against the Wind). Hiding Jews. Fusia Podgorska (Hidden in Silence) who hid thirteen people in her house’s attic for two and a half years, feeding and supporting them while she was still in her teens. Eight months of this time, German officers and their nurse girlfriends occupied the rooms directly below that attic. Charlotte-freaking-Gray (please, just the film version) getting stranded in France without a full cover story, unable to tell a soul who she really is, scheming to find a way to her crashed RAF lover, and living a constant knife’s-blade-edge away from being discovered.

Papa Nettlestone is a 1939 baby. He never really saw his father (that he would remember) until the man returned home after the war (Purple Heart, Battle of the Bulge). Papa N was six years old at the time. Their relationship was never less than damaged. So he’s that bridge between Then and Now, my dad, as is Zara--but he’s also quite strongly the story’s Carter.

Although what he would guaranteed say to me if he were ever to find and read these stories (which will never happen), is that they should contain battlefront action. And that it’s a great shame that they don’t.

Mind you, when I began writing this I had no thought to cultivating a series of stories. Apple Tree was meant to be a one-off as they say in television, not a back-door pilot.

It was just meant to get me over the hump of concluding Death. But, as with any good (I would say) short story, the final lines of it conveniently spiraled outward.

And then Clio said she would read the story forever in one of her reviews.

And that? That was clearly a challenge.

And Carter proved to be the necessary plot propulsion key.

I don’t know how long it took me to fully ‘break’ the story (obviously, via the series, certain plot beats were already there—but how to re-imagine them?), it happened over time.

I remember where I was standing in my house when I realized not only that Guy should burn down the barn, not the house, but that Marian wouldn’t die but would be sent away to a camp. (Originally, those two plot points happened more back-to-back in the narrative.)

I went with four stories primarily because that’s how many lines from the song I wanted to use. Purely dumb luck that it worked out so well.

I chose the Channel Islands after seeing an advertisement for the Island at War DVD series in a mail order catalog, and reading the small blurb saying the Nazis had occupied British islands, which left me suitably dumbstruck. I know A LOT about WWII for someone who has never studied it, as I said above. I’d never heard of these islands, much less their war-time past.

So, I looked them up.

Now, keep in mind: when I began this odyssey in November of 2010, the Internet was not what it is today. Today I can sit and watch YouTube video after YouTube video of Channel Islands travelogues. I can *see* Sark. Then, Google could find exactly ONE image to show me of Joe Kennedy (Carter). The Channel Islands had neither an official webpage nor a very good Wikipedia entry. I was largely flying blind. I wasn’t even certain the estate I’d imagined as Barnsdale (and its house) could feasibly be located on Guernsey.

The internet has vastly improved in Channel Island content in the intervening years. (Somewhat, likely, due to interest in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society published in 2008, but of which I was unaware until a reader brought it to my attention in the review section of-–I believe—Lover’s Lane.)

As I learned new information I tried to make use of it—without mucking up anything I’d shared in the narrative prior.

Finding Sark was, quite frankly, the kind of plot/setting gift any writer would endlessly thank her muse for. It is, and I say this as a person having never been there, the almost perfect 1:1 stand-in for Sherwood.

I do have regrets. I regret not better outlining how the Sheriff even caught wind that Stoker’s sub was coming to Sark in Lips (sylvi10 caught me out on that giant oops when it was far too late to fix).

I regret that fanfiction.net turns all my double dashes (--) into (-) single ones. That its cut and paste interface erases my (*,&,+)s that are meant to help me insert lines where breaks need to be.

I regret not allowing for more of a story between Mitch and Eva, that I didn’t get to make better, fuller use of Freyga Tuckmann and most particularly ReichKaptain Lamburg (at one point there was a whole side story during the break in Lips right after the wedding that focused on the unit and Lamburg, with R/M only in the deep background).

I regret misplacing the notes (I will find them someday!) that name Allen and Eleri’s two daughters.

As a (fan? is that the right word here?) of A Tale of Two Cities, I regret not having Robin reference Dr. Manette’s being ‘returned to life’ in the wake of his own ‘death’ and Marion’s ‘death’ and rediscovery. (I will not elaborate here on the Sidney Carton/Charles Darnay similarity to Marion/Magda, but I will recognize that I see it in the narrative, and that reading a lot of Dickens in my formative years is doubtless to blame.)

And while I don’t at all regret the format/design of ‘Til I Come Marchin’ Home (I 100% believe that it is done in the right, and the only, way to best relate the stor(ies) at that point), I do recognize that it is a format not at all conducive to reading easily in choppily posted, stretched-out-over-time excerpts.

I do not regret, but will take a sentence or two to explain that if at times words for things or spellings alter, such as sometimes tire, others tyre—color or colour, it’s because I always thought of the original series as a sort of US/British hybrid. US in the sense that so much pop culture is from there, and a series as openly anachronistic as BBC Robin Hood is going to have that aspect to it, Hollywood sort of creeping in here and there, the word ‘Okay’ being thrown around. For that matter, though he’s become a German Kommandant, the Sheriff, to me, still pronounces his English the same as Keith Allen doing Vaisey. He still barks LEFT-tenant at Guy, though a German would say LOYT-nant. Robin still says ‘punch’ like Jonas.

I try not to regret that there’s a lot of Love in this story, a lot of couples. The BBC series is responsible for a lot of that, I think. Sometimes I wonder if it were to be placed in a bookstore (and not shelved as fanfiction) if it would get sorted into the ‘Romance’ section.

I did write it for myself—make no mistake, this is 5000% the story I Want to Read, and one of the reasons I wrote it down (that I write anything down) is because it started to become so immense I was having trouble keeping track of it all in my head.

I had gone to an October yard sale the year of the first story (some of you know this story), I bought a cassette tape of Time Life’s “Romantic Memories of the War Years”—filled with pre-war and war-era Big Band. A four tape series, they only had the first one. Because at that time I was doing a sort of Robin/Marian overlay to almost anything I thought about, I overlaid them on those songs, and it was a potent fit for me.

I had Glorious Clio on board, and soon enough sylvi10 joined in, and—much later—reblogginhood. I mention them in particular because while I was writing the story for myself, their comments—as do any comments—caused me to turn my attention to certain parts of plot and character, and the narrative changed in specific ways directly related to those reviews. (Which is a definite endorsement that readers should consider writing reviews.)

Allen Dale bloomed as fully as he did in the way that he did due to sylvi10, I’ve no doubt of that. Chatting with her about the stories, hearing her thoughts on Allen, her investment turned my brain to his corner, caused me to think more about him than I might otherwise have done. (Allan does tend to take over stories I write anyway, tbh.)

I had at least one reader caution me about putting Robin and Allen as the two main characters in the fanfiction description for Marchin’, saying it would make people think the story is about a romance between the two. But I couldn’t not list Allen as second-most-important in that story (and at times, first). For a great deal of Marchin’ is Allen’s story. He’s at a point in his grief and dealing with the war where he’s finally agreed after years of swallowing it down to become proactive. Where he’s realized that his path to handling what he did in the war is to pursue facing it, whatever the consequences.

Perhaps his personal life triumphs/finding the love of his life are his ‘reward’, then. The good that came to him from his agreeing to hunt down and conquer--face the bad. He would not have re-met Eleri, after all, had he not traveled back to put his memory of Annie to peace, and avenge and memorialize her death. And it is in Eleri, who is able finally to understand what he was during the war, to whom he needn’t hide any longer, that he needn’t be two-faced anymore.

There’s a definite Allen/Marion parallel (not 1:1 in any sense) in the series. From the first moment they meet when he, just, misunderstands 1000% about her, to the life that she leads (like him) where no one knows all the contradictory and self-transgressive it involves. And she misunderstands him, too, thinking he’s nothing more than a short grift con man.

But it’s Robin who, while he doesn’t see all about either, knows both for being more than is shown.

I wrote Edward/Miranda entirely for myself. I fell so HARD for them and their narrative. But some of the latter sections with them (particularly their backstory in Marchin’) is directly resultant of reblogginhood having commented that she would read about them if it were written. That made me feel okay (because by the time you’re that far in to writing a series of this scope you can find yourself TOTALLY distracted by audience expectations) to write those portions, which were, to me as a reader, a joy in every way. So, thank you for that.

I learned some things: I learned that if I, with the RL I have, with the lack of RL time-to-myself, can not only find time to write, but to finish, this is an accomplishable goal for anyone. If you want it.

There’s a lot of writing advice getting blogged around on tumblr, but being a writer can be boiled to the simplest terms: the thing about writers is, They Write.

You can go to school for writing for as many years as you like, and your instructors will tell you this, they will expect this of you, but until you embrace it yourself, you won’t really get it. Writers write.

Look at these ridiculous timelines:

Apple Tree – Nov. 1, 2010 - November 10, 2010 – completed in TEN DAYS!

Lover’s Lane – November 11, 2010 – January 18, 2011, it’s 67K words. In just two months’ plus one weeks’ time.

Lips – January 20, 2011 – March 24, 2012, 239K word count. Fourteen months. That is within spitting distance of the length of HP and the Order of the Phoenix, for reference, which has 257K.

The first stories are ridiculous because of how MUCH was accomplished, and how quickly.

I posted the final chapter of Lips from the hospital, after having a baby—largely because I knew from experience I wasn’t about to get many chances to work on Don’t anytime in the near future.

So, I came to Marchin’. Of which contemplating it is hysterical to me, because I had always expected it to be only just slightly longer than Apple Tree. [laughs maniacally]

Marchin’ – April 1, 2012 – February 9, 2017. (Completed, though not yet fully published on fanfiction.net) Final count will show it just over 220K words. 30K more than HP and the Goblet of Fire. [Yes, I realize the almost five-year timeline to finish this was really, really, not acceptable. Way tooooo long to expect anyone to still be hanging around. I am not Susanna Clarke. And not only because I never got close to the 308K final word count of JSAMN in a single one of the discreet stories.]

And please don’t forget the little bit of holiday side-fic of Zara and Carter, with gang-based Christmas flashbacks. Don’t: The Ghosts of Christmas Past, published January 2012, at 5K words.

And to be accurate, I was occasionally writing and posting other fic while also writing Don’t (including fic outside of BBCRH).

I learned that I can write to an epic length (an important discovery for a short story writer), I learned how to craft a chapter (feel free to tell me I failed if you disagree). I learned how to juggle 10K plot strings and tie them off in the ending.

I learned that in the beginning writing is easy, slick as soap in an empty-but-wet bathtub; words can pour onto the page. You’re building. But then something clicks over in your plot, and suddenly you’ve got a lot of things to juggle, a lot of stitches not to drop.

You have to navigate among and around what you’ve built. Writing speed slows, writing time can get eaten up referring back to what you’ve written before to make sure all your pieces fit. To make sure you’re still holding the strings of all your marionettes.

I learned (I already knew a little about this before) that sometimes, when the words are gross and sticky and not coming out onto your screen you must fight to put them there anyway. That 97% of scenes/writing is clumsy and workman-level rather than craftsman quality. But you have to put down the bones and sinew before you can go back and build on that and add the plump flesh, the other parts of it that add beauty and poetry.

You have to trudge at times before you can dance. And if you’re not willing to slog through, you’ll be done (but not finished), your work will stall—and you’ll never dance.

As for process, I wrote these straight through, beginning to end. Does that sound crazy? I don’t know. I got into the way of that due to posting updates online, I suppose. In the early days, I would always be posting something a little earlier in the narrative than what I was presently working on. But at some point that stalled out and I was publishing in tandem with what I had just done, having no other writing ‘banked’.

As for the ‘finale’, I will confess that portions of Carter’s journals used there were written—as many as five to six--years ago. And a lot of the reunion scene speeches were also conceived and written before the last chapters of Lover’s Lane were posted online (that was posted Feb 2012).

I don’t mean that as a brag, only, to say that the storyline has always been pretty closely orchestrated and set for some time. Not all the particulars, though.

Clio said something recently about it being difficult to get back into the swing of writing Don’t, but you know, I’ve never really been out of it all these years. I wrote the unconventional narrative format of Death as what I expected to be my way to work through Marian’s on-screen murder.

And I started Don’t even before I completed the ending of that story. And creatively and in any daydreaming, I have lived solidly in that world ever since. Spare time? Think about Don’t. Can’t sleep? Think about Don’t. People, that’s a long time. Am I over Marian’s death? Probably not, but that frustration point is more like background noise at this point. But Don’t’s been with me long enough that I don’t think it will ever leave.

I’ve been stalling a long time (telling myself to finish it first), not going back to Story 1 and reading straight-through sequentially to the end.

It’s startling to think I don’t have to put it off anymore.

Don’t has received its share of criticism—not necessarily hostile criticism (thankfully). A reviewer thinking Marion’s reaction to Robin upon seeing him in Story 1 is too stoic (yes, I may have been watching too many stone-cold Barbara Stanwyck films, but I stand by the characterization), LOTS of feedback on how Marion was not in ‘Til I Come Marchin’ Home, the notion that all four stories are too sad/depressing, just to name a few.

It was always a deliberate intention to keep Marion absent for most of Marchin’. She is, after all, a ghost at that time. And readers should feel the Marion-shaped hole she left just as much as do the characters. Even saying her name is at times too much a trigger for them. And almost every side-flash scene of Marion when she appears post-war refrains from using her name in a familiar way. As though she no longer even thinks of herself as Marion.

I do believe her absence and the emotion of her post-war storyline is more bearable when all of Marchin’ can be read as a seamless whole rather than in parts and pieces and stops and starts.

As for sadness—well, okay. Maybe? I’ll say it’s hard for me to judge. If it is sad, to me it is an exquisite pain, a pain felt on the way to coming joy. But then, I always knew the end. I always knew the pain would not end in loss and futility.

And the end, frankly, may not satisfy all. [spoilers] Everything that happened (even, took place pre-series) to our beloved Robin and Marion can’t be fixed, simply, by mind-blowing sex following their reunion.

But their scars and insecurities still present shouldn’t be taken as unreclaimable. Only, the time it takes to regain such things in a relationship isn’t covered explicitly in the plot.

Real world studies have been done about those imprisoned in the camps. Contact me if you want some links. Everything from (obviously) PTSD to a myriad of health complications plagued those liberated, often for the rest of their lives. To pay true respect to what Marion is to have been subjected to, is to admit that there is no easy fix for it, not simply a ‘spunky’ disposition that can overcome it.

As for why Marion stayed away, when taken as a whole, pieces of that puzzle are (without direct mention of Marion) everywhere within Story 4’s narrative (and strong correlations exist to it in earlier stories), spoken about, by, or with regard to everyone tainted by the war, from Allen to Miranda to Djak to Carter (and others).

As for the long timeline between Marion’s ‘death’ and her being located alive, I respect cries of ‘too long!’, but as a person older than reblogginhood, I say: a decade, when life is at its most distracting (as with small children to care for), passes as less than two years’ time in one’s carefree singleton twenties. Time simply shortens later into life.

From Story 1, Don’t has always been about the conundrum of sexual loyalty, just as the song it was crafted around. A loyalty that goes (according to the original song’s lyric) both ways, just as the woman is asked not to sit under the apple tree, the man is later on admonished (*significantly, but curiously, this lyric is absent from The Andrews Sister’s most-famous version of the song) “Watch the girls on the foreign shores, you'll have to report to me, When you come marchin' home. Don't hold anyone on your knee, you better be true to me… you're gettin' the third degree, When you come marchin' home”

Clearly calling out the woman’s mate who is currently serving overseas.

So the sexual loyalty question in WWII goes both ways. Let me be clear: I don’t necessarily believe jealousy and compromised sexual loyalty are a 1:1.

I would, in fact, mount a defense of BBC series Robin as not necessarily motivated by jealousy toward Guy. At least not ‘simple’ jealousy. (ie: you have Marian! And I don’t!)

With as much in-series as is NOT said between Robin and Marian (recall: he tells her he loves her when she’s dying/dead/unconscious—and when she recovers he doesn’t bother to re-state it), a partial dynamic of Marian/Robin’s relationship is what goes unspoken between the two of them. Yet Guy is held back by no similar scruples. He may pursue BBC series Marian openly, speak with her openly, offer her safety, a home, financial and societal security. In short, as given, Guy represents a future for Marian. (And to most people/certainly her peers and her betters, an ACCEPTABLE future, as Guy is allied with the present power structure and law-in-place).

In this, BBC series Robin is frustrated (and Don’t series Robin even more so). What can he offer Marian? What can Don’t Robin offer Marion? Even less. He has nothing of stability, no home, no financial means he can access. He cannot even offer her (with any certainty) that he, himself, will remain alive and accessible to her.

I confess, I kept from placing Marion into a fait accompli sexual relationship with Guy primarily because that felt like more weight than the story was prepared to bear, and secondarily because I find the idea of Geis’ sexual frustration really enjoyable, and it drives him very particularly as a character. A Geis who agrees to be put off by Marion repeatedly, when nothing truly stands in the way of his forcing himself on her is far more interesting than Geis as Marion-rapist. (Now, Geis as Anya-rapist is interestingly fraught in its own way, and faithful to the BBC series, as well.)

Sexual loyalty through the lens of female characters whose agency is compromised by something like an Occupation exists as well. Marion and Eva (on the BBC series more of a contrast than a comparison) here become two versions of a similar story. Yet the chance arose to give Eva, the more sexually transgressive (for the era depicted) with a bastard child and a confirmed sexual relationship with the Kommandant, offered the chance to give that character a happy ending sooner than that of her former mistress.

Early on, in a world where so little can be counted on, the question of Marion’s loyalty is of paramount importance to Robin, more so one might argue, than whether, even, she reciprocates his love.

The sexual aspect of her loyalty early on in Apple Tree and Lover’s Lane is almost always their departure point for argument. Marion expects him to have faith in her. But Robin, as would any of us (like the rest of Guernsey), logically assumes she is sexually involved with Geis.

Robin believes that sleeping with Geis would equal a betrayal of English values, and therefore, of him.

He carries the wound of Marion, at the time of their break-up fight, attempting to (in his eyes) use sex to manipulate him before she intends to leave him behind for America. And he knows, historically in their relationship, that Marion has never viewed sex in the same light as he has (and was socially expected to do).

Which culminates in the argument on Sark before Marion is returned to Geis following her kidnapping, wherein she attempts to get him to see that on the Islands during occupation, believing her agency is uncomplicated and without consequences in any sexual liaison is merely an illusion.

Hopefully, the series is more than just this debate/discussion. Certainly, to me it’s about more than sexual jealousy, but certainly that was an inciting catalyst.

Then again, maybe the overriding issue of sexual loyalty is just a notion I contemplate to try and defend the large number of hook-ups in finalizing the series…

But Don’t is also about heroism. At its very core.

I have personally long been fascinated by certain ‘hero’ narratives that see the heroes returning to normal life, such as the man instrumental in the Warsaw ghetto uprising who survived the war, moved to Florida, and successfully opened a chain of grocery stores. Or the Daniel Craig character/ real-life figure of the Jewish commando, Tuvia Bielski, who hid people in large numbers in the Polish woods in Defiance and went on to live a life in New York, running a small trucking company for 30 years--where his own children were ignorant of what he had done during the war.

For a long time this kind of “post war information”/return to normalcy always bummed me out. But as I’ve aged, I’ve honestly come to believe that this is wherein true heroism lies.

To know when to stop fighting. To manage to reclaim something of a ‘normal’ life. To enjoy the accomplishment of what was being fought for, the fruits of your wartime labors—and particularly for the oppressed people groups in WWII (Jews, the Rom), to partake in the society, culture, and family life/continuation of your people, as that is exactly what your enemies were trying to prevent you from doing.

To thrive in the wake of your oppression.

And in my age, I think I’ve realized that even though these heroes, these people who accomplished remarkable things during the war, then stop behaving quite so obviously heroic (no longer action movie stars) the heroism that they then face is a quieter one, one of learning to cope and process what the war did to them.

And really, it’s not flashy, but it is no less compelling. No less transformational, and dramatic as can be.

Some readers may still wish to argue that twelve years is too long a time, that it is impractical that Carter’s grandson is not well-acquainted with all that took place in the narrative. Rest assured; I’ve read more than my share of war and post-war narratives, of combatants and non-combatants alike, and the thread of survivors never again speaking of what happened to them, or simply never coming back home (though they lived) are more common than not.

Sometimes they find a way to speak of what happened to them, they speak only to others who experienced it, they go on to help curate a memorial—that safe space where they can speak and share about their experiences; they write it down, they paint it.

I’ve had two feedback responses that I think are important enough to include here for the general reader.

The first involves the gang not attempting to canonize Marion as a hero during the time she is missing/a thought that Marion should not feel quite so awfully, or make such drastic decisions based upon her wartime life choices.

Historically, honestly, that would have been pretty unlikely. The taint of collaboration would have overwhelmed any ‘redeeming possibility’ of Marion's resistance work as the Nightwatch (which it would not be simple to convince anyone she 100% was; the wrong accent--the fact no one ever really saw the Nightwatch, the fact Vaiser put forth that it was really Joss Tyr just for starters), and the fact Marion was female, in the 1940s; the world at large would hold the likelihood of her having been Geis' lover (recall: the importance of sexual loyalty) far above the slim chance that she was also the Nightwatch. Such things as promiscuity (especially with the enemy) weren't taken lightly, nor forgiven in females. Robin’s connection to her would have been colored by the notion she had been a scarlet woman, and him, doubtless unable to resist being in her thrall. (Honestly, as backward a notion that man is defined by an inability to resist his private parts as that a woman is in all situations responsible for what befalls hers). In fact, into the 1980s and 90s, the Channels were still fighting over who collaborated and who didn't. (Jersey records account for at least 900 illegitimate babies born to Islander mothers and German soldiers during the Occupation. As recently as 20 years ago the Islands were still in denial of this, despite Public Records being released that proved the numbers.) It was very divisive, a true crisis of the islands, and remains so to this day. So while I think, in later decades, yes, the world could embrace Marion as a hero, could believe her tale--those alive during the war, living out those years and trying to survive the wake of its ending, would not have been in a state of mind to accept her. In that starkly black and white, right and wrong, mindset of the times, she would have been condemned on all accounts. She would have had to be dead for real for her to be lionized, or even thought acceptable in Britain. Additionally, the National Secrets Act, which kept Robin & Co., and likely Carter from speaking about their war work for DECADES (if ever) following the war's end would have prevented anyone from talking about the Nightwatch, their time on Sark, etc., under penalty of imprisonment, and/or threat of a charge of treason. Not to mention being socially ostracized.

And Marion is that great sort of pragmatist/realist that fully understands this. And she's right, really. At least in that she's right that collaboration was not at all tolerated in the wake of the war. The taint she fears for Robin would have been 125% a real thing. He would have been tainted.

And we all know how skeletons in the closet are found and often via spin made into skeletons when they may not really be—in the political (or as he calls it, public) world. In fact, despite the majority of Islanders alive during the Occupation having died (and some, emigrated elsewhere) the Channels are still trying to work through and figure out how to accept WWII collaborators among them, how to speak of them historically. As said, it is still a tremendously divisive issue. So Marion's right in her conclusion about what association to her would bring about (even if her Nightwatch identity were known), but she's wrong in her understand of Robin. She's always hoped for that public life of doing good and legislating for Robin (no doubt because Edward was her standard for how a good man behaves/takes action), and she's right that Robin would excel at it, but she has never been able to get her head around the idea that Robin doesn't have any interest in that, playing that game, being that person—no interest in matters of state and diplomacy. It is that tragic flaw of a mistake/miscalculation she makes over and over again.

It may seem to go without saying, but let me thank you (any of you, all of you) for reading. Let me shower laurels on those of you who reviewed. I did write this work for myself, no doubt about it, but the encouragement of hearing from others reading cannot be undercut. It is an immense support to know as an author that your words matter to someone else out there.

And if you’ve been reading and you’ve never commented or checked-in, by golly, you’ll never find a better time than now.

I made some promises to myself, for when I finished Don’t. To buy all four CDs of Time Life’s Romantic Memories of the War Years (digital files of the original versions of many of the songs on them not available). To commission some fan art. To work to get the entire series posted to AO3.

But right now, I’m learning something new. I’m learning how to deal with surviving in the wake of completing a long, long work. As I mentioned earlier, when the end of Death came, I was already working on Don’t.

But, what now? What next?

I will never be over Robin/Maria(on). Of that you can be sure. But will I write more BBCRH? It seems doubtful, unless I do so to conclude at least one unfinished story (hi, sylvi10!). Don’t is certainly my ‘last word’ on the BBC series (I think). While I’ve not ‘gotten over’ them killing Marian (etc.), I have at least worked through it.

There was a time I thought to play around with writing “Widow Hood”, wherein Robin is killed in S2 in the Holy Land, not Marian, and Marian is the one left to reassemble the gang (re-recruit Will and Djaq back to England) and we sort of see if she can accept Guy into the gang, as the show had Robin doing, if she can forgive Allan’s betrayal, and see if she can overcome Robin’s loss (as the show had Robin ALLEGEDLY doing in S3). But I think my pursing that (at least as a whole) is pretty unlikely at this point.

What I do know, is I feel confident I can write to a longer form now, and manage chapter breaks to my own satisfaction if not others’. And somewhere out there, the promise of The Perfect Hat is waiting for me.

#the don't series #afterword #neftzer #'til i come marchin' home #fanfiction

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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How Cruella’s Director Took Disney to a Darker Place

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One of the most infamous villains in Disney’s storied history is Cruella de Vil, the wickedly evil heiress and socialite who obsessively wanted to make a coat from the fur of puppies in 1961’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Based on a novel by Dodie Smith, the animated classic introduced Cruella as a fully formed monster, intent on skinning all 101 of the title Dalmatians for her own personal luxury.

Cruella became such an instant symbol of vanity, greed, and malevolence that she has appeared in the decades since in a number of animated and live-action sequels and spin-offs, with Glenn Close most notably playing her in two live-action films in 1996 and 2000. But with Disney in recent years launching a successful series of live-action prequels and remakes based on their iconic animated films, such as Maleficent, the studio decided the time had come to explore Cruella’s little-known background.

The result is Cruella, in which Emma Stone plays the title character. Left to her own devices very early in her life, Cruella—or Estella as she is originally known—is a London street thief who dreams of becoming a fashion designer. She falls under the mentorship of the narcissistic, cruel Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson), a prestigious designer who recognizes Estella’s talent. But their relationship turns to rivalry and more as a deeper connection between the two comes to the surface.

Cruella is directed by Craig Gillespie, who has been specializing in toxic relationships lately with 2017’s Oscar-nominated I, Tonya and the upcoming Pam & Tommy, about the turbulent love affair between Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee and Baywatch star Pamela Anderson. Each are period pieces as well, and with Cruella, Gillespie takes the origin story of a classic villain and turns it into a sly satire on the fashion industry set in the chaotic yet liberating milieu of London’s 1970s punk rock scene.

While the film does not redeem Cruella’s later evolution into pure villainy, it does provide a backstory that makes sense, and one which Gillespie was happy to talk about with Den of Geek.

Den of Geek: How did you envision this when it was first presented to you?

Craig Gillespie: It’s interesting. [Disney president of production] Sean Bailey called me and he said, “Hey, what do you think about Cruella with Emma Stone set in 1970s punk London?” That trifecta for me, I was like, “That sounds amazing.”

Then I got the script, and it was beautifully written and it was a great sort of journey with all of these milestones and turns, but tonally, it didn’t have the… For me, I have this sensibility that I love being in this dance between humor and drama. That was the place that I feel like I can really excel. So that’s what I was looking for and I needed to bring to it.

Visually I had a very quick response, just from that headline that Sean Bailey had given me, and I was already doing a deep dive into that era with photographs of the time at King’s Road and Notting Hill, and the squatters and just the club scene. It’s just such an incredibly rich backdrop to work with. So I was compiling that, and the show was going to this very sort of gritty, dark, authentic place, and very quickly I just fed that to every production head as they came along. So visually, I got that, and I just needed to make sure we could get it attitudinally, like in the script with the characters and the music.

One of the things with these sorts of origin stories is the idea that we know what happens to the character down the line. So what’s the key for you to getting around that and creating a story that’s still compelling?

You know she’s going to live. Outside of that, I don’t really know much else about Cruella. It’s crazy. There’s no backstory. As we started to delve into it, okay, so when she was five, she went to school with Anita Darling, she was married to a furrier and she wanted a Dalmatian for a coat. That’s about the extent of her backstory, and I kind of loved that we had so much freedom with that. It gave so much license to really create our own persona. Then we started getting into the themes of what we could say about nature versus nurture and suppressing your true self. Then it got really interesting about how to bring that to life. So it was a really fun journey to go down.

You mentioned that the London punk era was already present in the script. Did it become even more present as you worked on it with your production and costume designers?

Yeah, absolutely. Just the visual research that Jenny Beavan did for costumes and then Nadia Stacey did for the makeup and the hair design—I think everybody got really excited about that era. And then just from a story standpoint, it’s like I really wanted to lean into these events.

I was particularly drawn to [designer] Alexander McQueen, which is obviously not that era, it’s the ’90s, but his attitude and his relationship with the press and with high society was… I saw a lot of parallels with Cruella’s attitude and the way that he would do these fashion shows that were deliberately confrontational. So that inspired me more with the pop-up fashion moments that she would have where she would sort of jump into these red carpet events and in these very aggressive ways. So we started heightening all of that and it all just kept building.

Were there any ideas that you considered and ultimately discarded? Anything that was just either too crazy or just didn’t work?

Disney was incredibly supportive. There was a scene where she’s breaking her friends out of jail and originally I’d conceived it that she takes her car and drives that in, but there were all these conversations about that car and needing it later on and this and that. I’m driving to prep one morning, and I go, “She’s used that garbage truck before. Let’s just have her drive that garbage truck in there.” We did a whole police chase with a garbage truck. There wasn’t really anything we said no to.

Movies

Cruella Review: Sympathy for the de Vil

By Rosie Fletcher

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By David Crow

There’s a lot of talk about director’s cuts these days. Is there a director’s cut that we might see of this?

No. I’ve got to say I’m incredibly fortunate that this kind of is my director’s cut, and the same with I, Tonya. Disney had some great notes along the way, and it just became the best version of the film in my mind. I mean, literally outside of a few jokes in the final act and a 30-second scene with the Baroness and Estella, nearly everything’s in the movie.

This movie kind of dances in between the raindrops of different genres. Were there any films that you looked at for any particular inspiration?

Well, the interesting thing is, even though there are a lot of visual effects, it’s almost the invisible type. We didn’t have a 25-minute massive CG battle at the end of the movie, or fairies and princesses and characters that can transform. There’s no visual feast that way. So I was like, “What can we do that as a genre that can really keep people engaged?” And that was the heist genre for me.

So the one thing I did go back and look at is heist films, and in particular Ocean’s 11, to really sort of break down how much the audience actually needs to know about what’s going on. Are they ahead of the heist or behind it? All those kinds of questions came up. So that was a fascinating study for me.

How was it working with the two Emmas in this film?

The most exciting part to me was always those scenes with the two of them. And those things got elevated with Tony McNamara’s writing. He added in a lot more opportunities to put those two women together and go head-to-head and really enjoy their performances and the complexity of their performances. There’s a lot of humor going on, and there’s a lot of heavy topics, as well as drama.

They’re such versatile actors that they can do that dance in the scene between the humor and the drama. It was something I really knew I could lean into with them and Tony’s writing. It was candidly something that, on the page for Disney, sometimes felt a little flip or aloof—they weren’t sure, like when you were talking about a mother’s death, that you could have any humor in that scene. I knew that with these actors that they could do that nuance so beautifully that it would just elevate all of it. They were using that humor in a way to deflect the pain, and it was really exciting to see them do it.

It’s a bit darker than you expect for a Disney film.

Yeah. It was really exciting that they were so supportive of that. There were a few times where they would say, “Maybe shoot some kind of alt [version] as a safety,” but to their credit, they really leaned into all of the darkness.

You’re shooting Pam and Tommy right now, with Lily James as Pamela Anderson and Sebastian Stan as Tommy Lee. How’s that going?

It’s amazing. It’s such a fun experience, and they’re such phenomenal actors and the prep they’ve done to get into character has been incredibly impressive.

Cruella is out in theaters and also available on Disney+ via Premier Access.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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The onset of fall means, as it does every year, that film critics and awards prognosticators are once again tossing around the phrase “Oscar-worthy performance.”

Not every great movie performance is really worthy of an Oscar, of course — and there are only 20 nomination slots available for acting at Hollywood’s biggest awards. But great performances are always worth watching, even if they don’t end up on year-end lists during awards season. Great actors don’t just deliver lines; they make you doubt reality for a moment. They let you sink so deeply into a character that you forget you’re “just” watching a movie.

The recent Toronto International Film Festival — the traditional start to awards season — was once again a showcase for a lot of great performances, from both veterans and newcomers. It’s impossible to note them all, but here are nine we’ll still be talking about months from now.

Daniel Kaluuya and Brian Tyree Henry in Widows. 20th Century Fox

In the two short years since he emerged onto many people’s radar with his role as rapper Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles on the FX series Atlanta, Brian Tyree Henry has become an actor to watch. He’s been nominated for multiple Emmys (for Atlanta in 2018 and This Is Us in 2017) and a Tony (for the Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero), and he’s starting to look like a contender on the big screen too, working with two of Hollywood’s most sought-after directors in films that screened at TIFF.

In Steve McQueen’s Widows, he plays a political candidate with a lot of righteous anger and many shady secrets. And in Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, he has a short but memorable scene as a friend of the film’s two protagonists who gives a searing, devastating monologue about his time in jail. In both, Henry’s range is considerable, and his screen presence is absolutely magnetic.

Bradley Cooper and Sam Elliott in A Star Is Born. Warner Bros.

As it turns out, the 2018 version of A Star Is Born is a vehicle for three stars. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, who play the film’s two protagonists, have electric onscreen chemistry, and they turn in fine-tuned performances. (It seems very likely that Cooper, at least, is headed for a Best Actor nomination.) But whenever Sam Elliott shows up onscreen — in a supporting role as Cooper’s character’s much older brother and manager — he’s all you can look at. It’s the perfect role for him: gruff, reserved, and wounded, with a deep core of care. (In fact, Cooper based his own character’s voice on Elliott.)

Kiki Layne stars in If Beale Street Could Talk. Annapurna Pictures

If Beale Street Could Talk is stacked with talent, but newcomer Kiki Layne, tasked with carrying the film through both narration and her onscreen performance, is a revelation. Her portrayal of Tish — a pregnant 19-year-old who’s trying desperately to exonerate her love, Fonny, after he’s unjustly accused of a crime — is both vulnerable and steely, determined and hurting. This is Layne’s first big-screen role, and it seems to indicate that she’ll go very far.

Robert Pattinson stars in High Life. Courtesy of TIFF

Robert Pattinson spends a sizable stretch of High Life in a spaceship with only a baby as a scene partner, and that might be the most conventional part of the movie. Pattinson plays a death row inmate who is sent into space to serve as a subject of experiments that are hard to understand; it’s a wild premise, and one that fits the actor’s recent proclivity for tackling challenging portrayals with innovative directors (in this case, French director Claire Denis). He’s the film’s moral center and its backbone, and a large part of what holds it all together.

Ryan Gosling plays Neil Armstrong in First Man. Courtesy of TIFF

Ryan Gosling’s performance as First Man’s reserved Neil Armstrong is studiously understated; he doesn’t say much, and when he does, it’s often after several beats of silent contemplation. It’s not a typical role for Gosling, more muted than even his brooding performance in 2011’s Drive. But First Man is Armstrong’s story, and the film often pulls in tight, relying on Gosling’s eyes to convey every emotion, from grief and fear to love and determination. Whether a performance like this attracts as much attention as other, showier performances during awards season is yet to be seen, but it’s a great onscreen turn nonetheless.

Viola Davis and Cynthia Erivo in Widows. 20th Century Fox

There’s a wealth of talent in Widows, but Viola Davis, as always, is like a bolt of lightning that rips through the screen. She leads the cast as a grieving and vulnerable widow who digs deep to find strength after her husband dies, only to discover that everything about her new life is much more complicated than she thought. Her role in Widows calls for her to display every kind of passion, and Davis is more than up to the task.

Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Mary Cybulski/Fox Searchlight Pictures

Melissa McCarthy stars in Can You Ever Forgive Me? as a misanthropic, lonely writer fallen on hard times, and she is splendid in the role. But it’s Richard E. Grant’s performance that will you leave you eager to see anything he appears in. Grant plays a flamboyant stranger named Jack whom McCarthy’s character meets in a bar; his devil-may-care attitude is at first a foil, then a pleasure, and then an irritant to her, and you can understand it all, since all those qualities are embedded in his buoyant, occasional maniacal, always delightful performance.

Yalitza Aparicio stars in Roma. Netflix

Yalitza Aparicio stars in Roma as Cleo, a housemaid who left her village to work and live with a family in Mexico City. It’s a difficult role since for much of the film, Cleo is too timid to exercise much agency — but that’s the point. In Aparicio’s performance, Cleo’s evolution from withdrawn to mature, spurred by grief and loss, is authentic and heartbreaking, and her laugh, when it shows up, is infectious.

Joanna Kulig in Cold War. Amazon Studios

Joanna Kulig plays a young Polish singer in Pawel Pawlikowski’s decades-spanning romance, and it’s the sort of performance that instantly signals you’re watching a star. Her character is required to be impish, scandalous, depressed, and in love, sometimes all at once, and Kulig has the sort of screen presence that’s impossible to tear your eyes away from, whether she’s singing, weeping, dancing, or staring into the abyss.

Original Source -> 9 great movie performances to watch for this fall

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Noticias de series de la semana: El futuro pinta regular para 'American Gods'

Habrá otro showrunner para American Gods

Fremantle, la productora de American Gods, le ha pedido a Jesse Alexander, nuevo showrunner tras la marcha de Bryan Fuller y Michael Green, que abandone la serie debido al descontento de los actores y a los retrasos y desavenencias con el guion -ya en su séptima versión- de la segunda season finale, que debería estar grabándose ya en lugar de los cambios que se están haciendo de episodios ya terminados. No se usa la palabra despido, pero se sabe que no participará en la edición, la producción o la postproducción. [Fuente]

Renovaciones

Netflix ha renovado Las chicas del cable por una cuarta temporada

BBC One ha renovado His Dark Materials por una segunda temporada

Netflix ha renovado Insatiable por una segunda temporada

Amazon ha renovado Absentia por una segunda temporada

Cancelaciones

La quinta temporada de Poldark (BBC One) será la última

Incorporaciones y fichajes

Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad, The Path) se une como regular a la tercera temporada de Westworld. Se desconocen detalles.

Katherine Langford (13 Reasons Why; Love, Simon) será Nimue, destinada a convertirse en la Dama del Lago, en Cursed, reinvención de la historia del rey Arturo.

Zachary Quinto (Heroes, American Horror Story) y Ashleigh Cummings (Hounds of Love) protagonizarán NOS4A2. Serán Charlie Manx, un villano aparentemente inmortal que se alimenta de almas de niños; y Vic McQueen, una artista de clase obrera con la habilidad de rastrearlo.

Chloë Sevigny (American Horror Story, Big Love) y AnnaSophia Robb (The Carrie Diaries, Mercy Street) se unen a The Act. Serán Mel y Lacy, madre e hija y vecinas de Dee Dee (Patricia Arquette) y Gypsy (Joey King).

Vincent D'Onofrio (Daredevil, Law & Order: Criminal Intent) será Vincent 'Chin' Gigante, un exboxeador que consigue convertirse en líder de la mafia genovesa, en Godfather of Harlem. Ilfenesh Hadera (She's Gotta Have It, Show Me a Hero) será Mayme, esposa de Bumpy Johnson (Forest Whitaker).

Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives, Telenovela) participará como invitada en Grand Hotel interpretando a Beatriz, primera mujer de Santiago (Demian Bichir) y antigua dueña del hotel. Jencarlos Canela (Telenovela, Pecados ajenos) será recurrente como El Rey, un cantante conocido al que ofrecen actuar como habitual en el hotel.

Melanie Griffith (Working Girl, Lolita), Claudia O'Doherty (Love, Trainwreck), Sherie Rene Scott (P.S. I Love You) y Dan Aid serán recurrentes en SMILF como la madre y la hermana de Nelson (Samara Weaving); Jackie, tía de Bridgette (Frankie Shaw) y hermana de Tutu (Rosie O'Donnell); y Hank, compañero de clase de Bridgette.

James Marsden (Westworld, X-Men), Ed Asner (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Studio 60), Max Jenkins (The Mysteries of Laura, Grey's Anatomy) y Luke Roessler (Legion, Bates Motel) se unen a Dead to Me. Marsden y Asner serán el nuevo interés amoroso de Judy (Linda Cardellini) y un anciano de la residencia en la que Judy trabaja.

Shane West (Nikita, Salem) será recurrente en la quinta y última temporada de Gotham como Eduardo Dorrance, un antiguo compañero del ejército de Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie).

Barry Sloane (Revenge, Six) será recurrente en L.A.'s Finest como Dante, hermano de Ray Sherman (Zach McGowan).

Neal McDonough (Desperate Housewives, Arrow) será recurrente en la segunda temporada de Yellowstone como Malcolm Beck, un adinerado magnate que dirige un casino junto a su hermano.

Bob Saget (Fuller House, Entourage) será el padre D'Amico, un sacerdote con el que tendrán que hablar Kev (Steve Howey) y V (Shanola Hampton), en un episodio de la novena temporada de Shameless. Jess Gabor (Mormon for a Month) y Luis Guzmán (Code Black, Narcos) serán recurrentes como Kelly Keefe, hija de un oficial del ejército y alumna de West Point que entra en la vida de Carl (Ethan Cutkosky); y Mikey O'Shea, un contrincante de Frank (William H. Macy) en una campaña para encontrar la cara representante de un licor barato.

Elaine Hendrix (Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, The Parent Trap) será recurrente en Proven Innocent como Susan Andrews, una desvergonzada autoridad televisiva que lidera la opinión pública.

Shaun Toub (Homeland, Iron Man) será recurrente en Snowpiercer como Terence, un antiguo conserje convertido en un peligroso gangster.

Ben Miller (Johnny English, Death in Paradise), Alexandra Roach (Utopia, No Offence), Sean Sagar (Top Boy, Our Girl), Susannah Fielding (Black Mirror, The Great Indoors), Gwilym Lee (Jamestown, Bohemian Rhapsody), Phoebe Nicholls (Fortitude, The Elephant Man), Ritu Arya (Humans, Doctors), Michael Cochrane (Downton Abbey, The Iron Lady) y Debbie Chazen (Holby City) acompañarán a Ken Nwosu en The Man.

Ted Levine (The Alienist, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), Mel Rodriguez (Getting On, The Last Man on Earth) y Beth Ditto (Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot) se unen como regulares a On Becoming A God In Central Florida. Usman Ally (Veep, A Series of Unfortunate Events) se une como recurrente.

Xander Berkeley (The Walking Dead, Nikita) será el padre de Ben (Sam Witwer) en la cuarta temporada de Supergirl.

Noah Emmerich (The Americans, The Truman Show), Topher Grace (That '70s Show, War Machine), Robert Sean Leonard (House, Dead Poets Society), James D'Arcy (Agent Carter, Broadchurch), Nick Searcy (Justified, 11.22.63), Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones, Clash of the Titans), Paul James (The Path, The Last Ship) y Robert Wisdom (The Wire, The Alienist) protagonizarán The Hot Zone junto a Julianna Margulies.

Lily Dodsworth-Evans (Genius), Kerri McLean (Electric Dreams), Sofia Oxenham (Grantchester), Vincent Regan (The Royals, 300), Peter Sullivan (Marcella, Entebbe) y Freddie Wise (Maleficent 2) se unen a la quinta y última temporada de Poldark. Se desconocen detalles.

Elizabeth Tulloch (Grimm, The Artist) será Lois Lane en el crossover del Arrowverse.

Craig Parker (Reign, Spartacus: Blood and Sand) será Alastair Caine, CEO de Morningstar Biotech y benefactor de la universidad en la que trabaja Macy (Madeleine Mantock), en Charmed.

Jason Dirden (Greenleaf, House of Payne), Iantha Richardson (This Is Us), Christopher Jefferson (5th Ward), Katlyn Nichol y Jelani Winston se unen a American Soul.

Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump, Justified) será recurrente en la tercera temporada de Lethal Weapon como Tom Barnes, quien recluta a Cole (Seann William Scott) en la CIA.

Adan Rocha (Brockmire) se une como regular a Murphy Brown. Será Miguel, inmigrante mexicano y estudiante universitario que trabaja con Phyllis (Tyne Daly).

Clementine Nicholson (Underworld: Blood Wars) será recurrente en la segunda temporada de Knightfall como Margaret, princesa de Borgoña y esposa de Louis (Tom Forbes).

Matthew Le Nevez (Offspring, The Kettering Incident) y Natasha Little (The Night Manager, Thirteen) se unen a la segunda temporada de Absentia. Serán Cal Isaac, un ex Navy SEAL que entiende muy bien a Emily (Stana Katic); Julianne Gunnarsen, agente especial del FBI que viaja a Boston tras un ataque terrorista.

Nikki Amuka-Bird (Quarry, Luther), Alex Jennings (Unforgotten, The Crown), Julia McKenzie (The Casual Vacancy, Notes on a Scandal), Sebastian Armesto (Poldark, Broadchurch), Jemima Rooper (Atlantis, Trauma) y Archie Renaux se unen a Gold Digger. Serán Marsha, antigua mejor amiga de Julia (Julia Ormond); Ted, exmarido de Julia; Hazel, madre de Ted; y Patrick, Della y Leo, los tres hijos de Julia.

Terrence J (Burlesque, Battle of the Year) y Lyndie Greenwood (Nikita, Sleepy Hollow) serán recurrentes en la tercera temporada de Star como Ryan French, un presentador con muchos seguidores; y Megan Jetter, abogada que acaba de abrir su propia firma.

Jay Reeves será recurrente en All American como Shawn Scott, antiguo amigo de la niñez de Spencer (Daniel Ezra).

Maya Lynne Robinson sustituye a Xosha Roquemore en el papel de Geena, esposa de DJ (Michael Fishman) y madre de Mary (Jayden Rey), en The Conners.

Pósters

Nuevas series

Peter Calloway (Cloak & Dagger, Legion) escribe la adaptación televisiva del videojuego Alan Wake, sobre un novelista de éxito que viaja a un pequeño pueblo del estado de Washington para acabar con su bloqueo de escritor y allí descubre que el argumento de su último libro, que no recuerda haber escrito, ha cobrado vida. Sam Lake, creador del videojuego, producirá la serie.

Starz ha dado luz verde directa a P-Town, drama que trata la actual crisis de muertes por sobredosis de opiáceos en Estados Unidos y que se centra en Jackie (Monica Raymund; Chicago Fire, Lie to Me), una chica lesbiana de Provincetown, Massachusetts que trabaja como agente federal en el servicio nacional de pesca marina y, al encontrar un cadáver en la costa, se enfrenta a su adicción mientras se obsesiona cada vez más con resolver el asesinato. Escrita y producida por Rebecca Cutter (Gotham, The Mentalist) y producida por Jerry Bruckheimer.

ABC ha adquirido la secuela de Designing Women (1986-1993). No hay encargo de piloto aún.

Fechas

Queen America llega a Facebook Watch el 21 de noviembre

Otras imágenes

Titans

Tráilers

Queen America