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astralartefact · 6 months ago

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Placeholder Name for Atarase's Media Diary

Entry 005 - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Remake

<<Prev: Unicorn Overlord

Synopsis

The Only Plumber I know is made to visit Fantasy America to collect yet another set of mystical stars - and we gladly do it all over again.

How much did I know before playing?

I played the Original and I liked it very, very, very, very, very, very much. One of my favorite games ever.

Did I like it more than I expected?

It was everything I hoped for <3

If you say you like Turn-Based RPGs and own a Switch you owe it to yourself to play the Classic.

Since I liked it, here's what I hated about it

I would be hard pressed to find anything really.

I guess they could have added more things (the Luigi fight we all crave and the rest of the Paper Mario 1 cameos that were even hinted at in the game files of the original) - but I think what they added is good enough. They added Super Bosses, they added non-intrusive QoL - I don't need them to change the face of the game, I like the OG for a reason.

(and also a thought I had was - I don't know how many writers from the OG Games (both PM1 and TTYD) worked on the Remake and if there isn't much overlap I could see the Remake Devs feeling weird about putting those fanservicey kind of things in on their own)

Also the Thinking Music is punishing don't stop the banger while I'm over here being stupid navigating the UI q_q

What did this game make me think about?

Similar to what I said in my Entry on Unicorn Overlord, I kept thinking that this game - at least in this day and age - isn't even all that groundbreaking - it just does the thing you're supposed to do, the normal Turnbased RPG Overworld-to-Dungeon-to-Boss Loop really really well and it's kind of weird that people don't do it more often.

I guess Thematic Takes on RPG Staples aren't interesting enough for the Unique Selling Point Crowd anymore :/

Specific Impressions that will stick with me

the soundtrack

The Excess Express was the Progenitor of my love for Train Levels.

Specifically for this Remake - How having Vivian's Trans Moment* makes Mario's actions more heartwarming.

*look forward to hearing about this in the ramble section

Outstanding Audio

Very non-exhaustive List because Goddamn. This Soundtrack.

vs. Shadow Sirens

vs. Atomic Boo

Moon Battle

vs. Magnus Von Grapple 2.0

There is one single "bad" thing I have to say about the Soundtrack and it is... that I think Origami King's OST is still unbeaten as my favorite. The banger ratio of that game is simply unbeatable.

All the Partner Themes they're all so good and they're used like twice each

Edit: ___the bonetail theme, goodness___

Besides that they did exactly what I wanted them to do. The Paper Mario Sound Team is just amazing, they do not get enough credit. I'm so excited to see what's next - whatever it is the entire team decides and/or gets to do.

btw there's nothing quite as irritating to me than people complaining about remake soundtracks, even in the off chance that i agree with the sentiment its always voiced in the most condescending tone possible and it drives me up the walls. and sure, ppl can voice 'valuable criticisms' and disappointments or whatever, but i also can read them and be baffled why you thought you needed to share it sounding like you're the only person on earth who understood the original, especially when - like it is in this case - the remake sound team is the same as the original, they literally made the thing you like so much and you thank it by calling them names for daring to 'not get' one specific second in their own work as much as you do.

especially now that we don't really have technical sound quality to improve on there's always going to be changes you like more and less because any remaining difference is closer and closer to a lateral move and the only 'value' difference is subjective opinion. and regardless, the original keeps existing, you hear the new soundtrack in context for a playthrough at most, afterwards you can just listen to the og again.

Favorite Character

Toadette. My All Time Fave, she steals the show everywhere she goes <3

Also Mini-Yoshi, Vivian, the Rich Bob-Ombs, Kammy Koopa,...

Favorite Arc/Story Line

The Excess Express, I know it's relatively short but I just really love Train Levels

Also Glitz Pit, I guess I just like when the Dungeon is the RPG Chapter Location.

Favorite Set Piece

The Remake is so beautiful I could really put anything in here.

Honestly I love all of the Chapter 6 locations, the train in the different atmospheric lightings, the Sunset train stop, Poshley Heights,... (Bad Glimmerich in german, one of the reasons I will allow Fluffy)

Favorite Scene

The Excess Express being covered in the Smorgs (is that the name, they're called Fluffys in german which is kind of lame but I will allow it)

Best Performance

I'm leaving this in here because they didn't replace Charles Martinet for this one and they got me too often with random Luigi Dialogue sounds there's a really good one where they talk about luigi and when they show his picture he echo-ey goes 'wahoo!'

Also the new voice sounds they gave all the characters were too cute, some of them sounded really really nice.

German Localization Notes

I can happily confirm that Barbara is Trans in German too! I can't tell you with certainty how the situation was with the original but I'm pretty sure it was also removed there.

Honestly the German Localization for this Game is and was so good, you people have no idea. I don't know how similar the text between the two is (I haven't played the OG in years) but they kept all the names from the old Localization - which I was a little bit worried about since the german names are so wildly weird (in a good way) I could have seen them go back and 're-align' some of them.

The OG Localization didn't give that much of a damn about keeping in line with the source material when it comes to Character and Location Names, but also they got the Vibe so well they honestly did a better job at it in certain places.

For every weird thing like calling Petal Meadows Fire Valley (which makes more sense when coming from the japanese name but still mischaracterizes the 1-1 world of this game in a way that's honestly fascinating to think about) and boring names like Fluffy we have things like calling "The Great Gonzales" Bomba Luigi, a change I will defend with my life, that's such a funny name, it even makes that Bowser Scene with Rawk Hawk funnier when Bowser is perplexed who the fuck Bomba Luigi is supposed to be. (mini yoshi calls you bomba throughout the game and nobody remarks on you being called like your brother - not even luigi himself, which makes it funnier)

Also the Grandma Bubu (Puni) yells the phrase "Soll ich mir in der Kälte hier Gicht holen!?" (do you want me to get gout in this cold) at the Boy Bubu and that's just. I'm still laughing about it. I hope you have a similarly fun-to-shout sentence in its place.

Ugh, I love it. I know if I looked it up people would complain about how much they 'changed'.

--- ENTERING THE PRETENTIOUS SECTION OF THIS ENTRY ---

What about this game gives me Hope for the future of gaming?

I just want this game to be a sign to let future Paper Marios break the character design regulations again. (if you didn't know, these are an actual thing and are why post ttyd has either fully unique looking npc or entirely non-unique npcs, it's for brand integrity reasons so new characters aren't confused as 'official' and like all brand integrity stuff it sucks the fun out of everything)

I'm even one of the four people in favor of letting them do whatever they want with the gameplay if they don't want to do Standard Turn-based RPGs anymore - by which I mean to say I was fine with Sticker Star - but the texture that only PM and TTYD have, the Texture we all want and crave so much, comes squarely from the unique Toads and Goombas and Koopas and Bob-Ombs..., all the ones they're not allowed to do anymore because the Brand Integrity Manager says no.

(okay so to put this a little more thought out: specifically the unique npcs make the paper mario style less about 'haha paper pun' (which, as funny as they might be once in a blue moon, not a single person cares about) and more an abstracted story book-esque depiction of the mario universe. it makes the entire thing work better by just being 'real but less detailed' - which also makes the plot work better with fewer details - instead of... well, a paper(thin) joke.)

What about this game makes me scared for the future of gaming?

The Unique Selling Point will be the end of me.

Ever since Dexit (yes i'm specifically blaming that hot mess) awakened the worst type of Gamer to the fact that complaining about Problems caused by Capitalism means nobody can disagree with you, Nobody gets to have fun anymore. Not gamers, Not devs, Not anybody.

Everything has to have Value now, everything has to have a reason to exist, a unique take and always also a quantifyable improvement on what came before. If it isn't as good as 'it should be' it's an insult to the people paying money for this! You need to fix this, I paid for this! I know what's good and need to share my intellectual opinion on this minor detail that you clearly don't have any idea about! What in god's good earth are you smoking that you thought this was acceptable?

It comes with this "Customer can do no wrong" mindset (which is often enough wrong btw, you're very much responsible for your own goddamn actions) and it always belittles the thoughts and decisions of the developers who more than likely have to fight higher-ups for those to actually end up in the video games they produce.

Sticker Star really is a good example of that, aside from the Brand Integrity stuff that made us lose unique NPCs the other thing people endlessly complain about is that the Sticker System disencourages Battles which i'm pretty sure they just heard someone smart say once and that therefore the system sucks, who could ever have thought of pivoting to something that stupid???

Well, it's actually a really creative idea on a very foundational RPG problem: Turnbased RPG Battles and the Overworld are for the most part distinctly seperated from each other. For a standard TRPG what you do in the Overworld has fuck all to do with your battles. This is an attempt to make Overworld Exploration a meaningful part in the Battle Gameplay Loop. It has its downsides and it didn't work out perfectly, but I think it was an interesting idea to put to the test!

But I guess that's not allowed. The Devs simply were too stupid to realize you would just end up doing a lot of backtracking to get good Stickers. They just simply don't know what they're doing and we have to make that clear to them by lambasting the game whenever it comes up. (and also to prove to everybody that you have very smart opinions)

There's a thing I learned in school and you might have heard that too before: You shouldn't tell people negative feedback (first). And that might sound like "a nice thing" to do, you "shouldn't hurt anybody's feelings" after all, but here's the thing why I think we should do that: Most of the time People already know what they did wrong, but they don't know what they did right - what they can capitalize on.

Maybe keep that in mind the next time you share your "Valuable Criticism" underneath an official Instagram post (btw who in their right mind does that)

The Ramble Section where I get to actually talk about what I thought about

Let's talk about 'Nintendo adds Transphobia.' I know it's just a meme. Still don't like it :) I liked that they added the Transphobia! I just don't like the meme.

It's like bnuuy. I don't get the joke. It's not fun to pronounce. If the joke is that u and n are upside down, then you could also type pnuuh, that's the entire word upside down. Why are you all finding this so funny. I just don't get it. And just for the record, it's fine you find it funny. I hope you feel validated that I'm okay with your choice of meme. I just don't get it.

But with 'Nintendo adds Transphobia' there is this undertone of "What they did is good" (that's the happy reaction gif in the background) - but the thing they added, the Transphobia, is some amount of bad, or else it wouldn't be funny to be happy about it. We would prefer if you added the Trans Character without including Transphobia after all. But would we? Would that be "better" - whatever that would even mean?

And just to get it out of the way, yes, for a lot of people it's probably haha just a joke about how it sounds funny to be happy about adding transphobia - but then i still don't know what you people think you're doing when spreading a haphazard joke about 'nintendo does a transphobia' in a day and age where nobody checks any of the news they receive when nintendo is literally doing the thing they are supposed to be doing, like come on guys i do have the moral high ground here and i am firing shots

Fully aware that I'm taking this too seriously - If this is what's resting at the heart of some these jokes then I would guess this comes from the "It shouldn't be a huge/integral part of their character!"-BS that people (on both sides) have been peddling for years (because assholes really want that and well-intentioned people rightfully don't want to be fetishized) - but regardless of what you're using that sentiment for, clearly it's not that easy. Like, it should matter to the character or else it might as well be a JK JKRO "Dumbledore is Gay" Tweet and never be talked about again.

It's not like Beldam bullies Vivian just because she is Trans, Beldam bullies everybody, she almost bullies Doopliss more than her. It's just that 'her bullying feels meaner ever since she realized she was a sister, not a brother.' You know, exactly what they state in game and exactly like somebody would probably feel about it even if Beldam's Transphobia didn't play any part in the bullying at all, Feelings don't really care about Facts after all and it creates another dimension to Vivian, a tangible relationship between her and her bullying.

Sure, everything about her story would work without her 'being trans' - but a little change like that goes a long way to color all of her interactions. Even just the simple fact that Mario is nice to her hits a little different knowing that her sister treats her differently since she lives as a woman.

But that's all kind of besides the point because while they wrote a Trans Character facing a struggle that hopefully people will at least feel a little represented by - that's not the only thing they did. They put a Canonically, Directly Stated Trans Character right next to the best plumber you know. And that's kind of the thing that annoys me the most about "They Added Transphobia." Like guys. She's a main character. She's not some weird side quest character that appears one time, doesn't even have a name and says a weird line about it before disappearing forever like that one quest people bring up to say FF14 has Gay Representation. You Can Have a Fully Canonically Trans Woman on Screen for 50% of this Game, Right Next to The Mario Man, And He's Like "You Rock Girl. Love Wins." He doesn't even wince when she implies she has a crush on him.

This is a much bigger deal than some of you make it out to be! This is a serious occassion and you made the social blunder to show up wearing "They added Transphobia"!

And for the people that missed it: Origami King also had a Trans-affirming Birdo Moment where they used her for a Secret Drag Show at the Coffee House at the Rainbow Spring. The Paper Mario Writers know what they're doing with Mario's Image and even Nintendo's Brand Identity Manager can't stop them. You look foolish and don't know who you're talking to. These people made Mario canonically visit a gay bar hiding as a coffee shop. Fix your wig.

#Paper Mario #pmttyd #atarasegamediary

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underratedandoverit · 2 years ago

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Immortal Fears (4/?)

The International title has the power to make you question so many things; yourself, your relationships, everything. It makes you believe the only thing worthy of it is you, and vice versa. It is believed that holding it will have… Maddening consequences. Is any of it true? Is this just mind games played by your opponents instead, to get under your skin, to make you think losing the title to them is worth it? But is the current champion Orange Cassidy willing to take such a risk…?

Tags: Kip Sabian/Orange Cassidy (future). Hurt/comfort (eventually). Title Belt Corruption Arc. Enemies to lovers. Slow burn.

Best Friends/Chuck & Trent and Penelope make frequent cameos. More to be added.

On AO3 here

Oh babes we are just getting started with this. Also swapped around few of the tags. We officially have a relationship promised in the later stages of the story, as well as the revealing tags of 'enemies to lovers' (thank you bugs i didnt even think about this one personally for some reason) as well as 'slow burn'. Gonna drive myself into early grave with this one I'm sure LOL (im also aware theres a lot of danhausen in this chapter but im not putting him on the character list since im not sure if/when he would return after this one so.. yeah)

Credits for the babe @ss-trashboat for the beta and my beloved @midnightpretenders0 for brainstorming this whole arc with me, it means so much to me 💜

@stormbornpirate as you wanted to be tagged for things!

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Kip smiled to himself, watching the events replay on the television screen in front of him. It brought him an unimaginable amount of joy to see everything unfold again and again as he kept rewinding and rewatching the clip. It was all just like he had hoped things would start to go down with the Zestest of Friends, and then some. After the last couple of weeks, this was inevitable; one of them was going to crack and start something, a chain of events, that in the end none of them were going to be able to stop.

He watched as Danhausen blind tagged himself into the match, just as Orange Cassidy was preparing the Orange Punch to put away their opponents. Cassidy backed into the corner as Danhausen ducked inside the ring through the ropes, even Kip being able to read the disappointment and disbelief on the stoic face of the champion. He was more than capable of taking this match home, he had set their opponent up perfectly for a single punch to take him down.

But no. No such easy victory was allowed. Danhausen was in the ring now, the legal competitor, ready to take the win and glory home with whatever trickery he had up his sleeve. The man radiating with confidence posed as he stepped inside the ring, ignoring the confused mixture of cheers and boos from the crowd as he turned to Cassidy, who had just now completely stopped to lean into the corner, starting to shoo him out of the ring, saying that he got this.

Cassidy just stared back at him, hand wiping through his hair, Kip mimicking the movement perfectly as he watched. He could act along this part beat by beat, bit by bit by now; he had watched the replay so many times, it brought him just as much joy with each rewatch. The way Cassidy refused to move, clearly getting under the skin of Danhausen who started to yell at him, telling Cassidy to go away, saying that he had this match won.

Only for Dante Martin to regain his composure while this was going on, and rolling up Danhausen with an easy school boy pin for a three count.

Kip’s eyes lit up, yet again, no matter how many times he had seen this part, as the camera panned from the shocked Danhausen being released from the pin to the unamused champion, still standing in his corner, staring down at him, having done absolutely nothing to even try to salvage the situation and save the match for them. Cassidy locked eyes with him, Danhausen getting up as Top Flight took their quick exit from the ring, continuing their victory celebration on the ringside.

“What have you done?!” Kip mimicked the words with his own mouth as Danhausen proceeded to yell at Cassidy, his higher pitched voice very clear over the noise the audience was making for the winners of the match. Cassidy barely shrugged, continuing to lean into the corner, clearly not in any hurry to leave the ring. Whether he was standing there to resolve the conflict was questionable though, as he clearly didn’t have anything to say back to the man covered in demon makeup and tattoos.

He just continued to silently stare, Danhausen giving him a push to the shoulder.

“We just lost! Are you proud of that?”

Cassidy continued to respond to him by not responding, the smirk growing on Kip’s lips as he remembered what was going to happen next. He had lost count on how many times he had watched this part already, but it tickled him in a particular way every single time. Something about Danhausen shoving the champion, this time directly on his face instead of the shoulder, Cassidy finally standing his ground against him as he pushed away from the corner, forcing Danhausen to back away from him, looking ever so slightly shocked by the sudden push back.

They stood toe to toe in the middle of the ring, Kip watching in gleeful anticipation as they stared each other down for a moment, finally Cassidy being the first one to avert eye contact. He was clearly already tired of this, not wanting to engage further, this being far from the first time Danhausen was causing havoc like this inside the ring while they had been tagging together recently. He was just done with it, exhausted from the match now that he could let his guard down as it was officially over. Cassidy didn’t want to have to deal with this right now.

Only for Danhausen to shove him away, taking advantage of his small moment of what seemed like weakness, throwing the hands up towards Cassidy, pointing, cursing him.

This time the crowd's boos were clear, people not liking the idea of this ghoul putting a curse on their beloved International champion. Soon their voices changed again, as the now fed up Cassidy slapped his cursing hands away from his face, being obviously not amused by such trickery. He wasn’t here to play these stupid, mindless games that Danhausen clearly wanted; he knew the “curse” was nothing but a made up threat to throw off their opponents for a surprise attack. It wasn’t actually going to work on him, and he was tired; he wanted this over with. Cassidy just wanted to get out of here already now that the official match was over.

What he did not expect or see coming though, much to the absolute glee of Kip, was the kick below the belt from Danhausen that he responded with to the physical contact from Cassidy.

Kip watched as Danhausen towered over the champion as Cassidy fell to the mat, his yells this time being covered by the loud booing of the crowd. They soon changed back to cheers as the remainder of the Best Friends came running down the ramp for the champion’s aid, Chuck taking to tending to Cassidy as Trent managed to chase the accursed ghoul out of the ring.

“Oh, Clementine,” Kip sighed, hand reaching towards his screen as it zoomed closer to Cassidy’s pained face as Chuck helped him sit up in the middle of the ring, Kip gently running a finger along the blond’s cheek. “If only you could choose your friends a bit better. You could be golden.”

He only pulled his hand away as there was a soft tap on his arm, making Kip turn to face Penelope as she smiled at him. “It’s time. We can go now.”

Kip nodded, pulling her closer for a brief peck on her lips, before allowing the woman to walk him out of the locker room after herself.

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“’Hoping dear Clementine learns something from this experience.’”

Chuck glanced up from his phone, only to be met with an unreadable expression and an annoyed look, from Cassidy and Trent respectively. The social media world was constantly pinging all three of them about what had occured tonight, and it was getting ridiculous at this point as it just kept going as the night progressed. Like his friends, Chuck had ignored most of it, until a very attention seeking notification from, once again, Kip had popped up on his phone.

“Just put it away,” Cassidy sighed, clearly not in the mood to be dealing with the Brit’s shit tonight either. While Kip had not been at ringside for tonight’s disaster, Cassidy was sure he could still find a way to somehow blame him for what went down out there. Enough weeks had passed by now where Kip had been cryptic and hinting at something; he wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest if it had been Kip who had gotten into Danhausen’s head about the desire of victory.

“So what do we do now?” Trent asked, looking between Cassidy and Chuck, both who responded with a directionless shrug. “We are a man down. Stat isn’t coming back until who knows when. Tonight was, shortly put, an absolute disaster. This ain’t a good look for us.”

“Yeah you don’t say,” Chuck snorted, pacing around the locker room trying to compose his thoughts. Him pacing around was making Cassidy even more annoyed honestly, but he remained quiet, just sitting on the couch observing the other man. Moving wasn’t still exactly comfortable; the assault from Danhausen had honestly been much more aggressive and painful than it looked like, the ghoul packing actually quite the kick in those skinny legs of his. Even with the help he got from Chuck and Trent, getting back to the locker room had been an absolute chore, and if it just could be helped, Cassidy wasn’t really going to be moving much tonight unless he absolutely had to.

Honestly, everything seemed to be kind of a chore recently. Cassidy wasn’t sure if it was the task of being a champion and having those responsibilities that above all pushed him closer to the edge every single day, but there was definitely something else going on alongside with the constant losing and infighting between his friends that was slowly grinding him to the ground. Cassidy wasn’t going to admit it though, after tonight it was the last thing they needed to hear. And who knew, maybe now that Danhausen was most definitely out of the picture at least for some time, they could catch a much needed breather.

Unfortunately, as Trent pointed out, this also put them in a disadvantage now that they were a man down. Cassidy already felt like a target in the locker room with one of the singles titles in the backpack on his shoulder, and if something, he was appreciative of having friends around to have his back at times. And a lot of people seemed to be avoiding Danhausen in general; he was unpredictable, and most described him kind of absurd and scary, so having him around as part of the group definitely had its benefits.

Now though, Cassidy wasn’t so sure how this was going to affect the image of Best Friends in the eyes of everyone else.

The sudden knock on the door immediately froze the air inside the locker room. The three friends shared quick looks, as if to try to count if they were all in the room to make sure nobody was missing, in an attempt to deduce who could be trying to get their attention so badly. Many people would try to avoid them after what tonight had been, knowing how much of a bad mood the three of them were in.

And yet, there was someone out there trying to get their attention desperately enough that they were knocking on the door multiple times in steady intervals.

Chuck cursed quietly under his breath as he approached the door, it being almost forcefully pushed open as soon as he flicked the lock off. Stumbling back a little, Chuck soon got face to face with Danhausen as the man burst into the room, almost immediately starting to hurl insults at Chuck, the first person in his sight.

From the corner of his eye, Cassidy saw Trent get up to defend his best friend from the assault of words, but the champion himself did nothing. The sudden yelling taking over the locker room felt almost paralyzing to him, freezing him on his spot on the couch, not being able to move, to get involved. Thankfully neither Chuck or Trent seemed to notice this, both of them being too busy trying to yell over Danhausen and the insults he was shouting, Cassidy barely being able to tell any of their words apart for the most part, but a few things Danhausen's almost piercing voice definitely managed to slip through to him.

Unworthy champion.

Filthy cheater.

Not a team player.

Selfish liar.

False friend.

With each statement he registered, Cassidy’s hand grabbed a tighter and tighter hold of his slacks; it almost felt like he could dig his fingers and nails through the thick canvas right into his skin if he kept going. His knuckles turning white as the yelling around him persisted, both Chuck and Trent joining in to defend him while the champion sat still, silent, eyes slowly falling down from the altercation happening to the floor.

Cassidy couldn’t lie to himself, he had heard so many of these same insults before. People didn’t think he was worthy of holding a title as big as the International one had turned out to be; they said he wasn’t fit for the Best Friends anymore due to being a singles champion. That his style didn't work, that he took this whole thing as a joke. That he wasn’t fit to be a champion; he was a farce, a mockery to the sport and the title he barely even carried around.

People had told him before that he was a bad friend for putting his friends through all of this: his selfish actions and thirst for gold, especially with how things had evolved recently; how he was putting them all under pressure, making them fight, how much happier everyone would have been if he wasn’t being such an awful friend to them and made them watch from the sidelines while he took all the gold and glory that the rest of them were not permitted to achieve, apparently due to some fault of his.

All these accusations, all these words, he had heard them before. And yet, it still stung the most coming from someone Cassidy had actually considered a friend.

As the fighting didn’t die down around him, Cassidy’s head snapped back up, in a clearly frightening manner as as soon as he locked eyes with Danhausen, the little ghoul perked up, taking a step back, actually falling silent. Chuck and Trent followed shortly after, both men slowly turning towards Cassidy as the champ just continued to sit on the couch, eyes staring daggers at Danhausen.

“Get out.”

His voice wasn’t very loud, but it was very obvious that he actually meant business. Cassidy was serious; this sudden turn in character leaving the trio looking at him in almost stunned silence for a while. Danhausen was the first one to speak up again, but he barely got more than a word out before Cassidy ordered again.

“Get out!”

Both Best Friends also stepped back slightly at the blond raising his voice, sharing a quick, rather confused look. Of course a little outburst would have been expected from the man after what had gone down tonight, but it was still so odd for them to actually see Cassidy like this. He didn't usually lose his temper quite like this, he never raised his voice. Even when he was seethingly mad, Cassidy was always just quiet, silent in his anger, letting it show only in the ring, if even then. He kept his emotions extremely in check at almost all times, unless they were positive emotions, so this kind of outburst really was… Something. To say the least.

As nobody responded to his demands, Cassidy pushed himself up from the couch, his voice only growing louder and stronger from the shot of adrenaline that crashed through his body as the pain took over after such a sudden movement.

“I said get out!”

Before Danhausen could argue with him again, Chuck turned towards him, grabbing the ghoul by the neck of his jacket, pushing him towards the door. Trent followed after them shortly, not being entirely sure if the command from Cassidy applied to all of them or only the now clearly former member of the Best Friends, but in his mind it was best to comply either way.

The anger he could see in Cassidy’s eyes was more than enough to push him out of the room, very much willingly.

As the locker room door slammed shut after the three of them, it took Cassidy a moment to dial back his emotions, finally the man sinking back on the couch with both an annoyed and agonized groan. Tonight had already been a lot, this wasn’t what he had planned for it at all. Taking in a deep breath, then another, he ran a hand through his hair, leaning his head against the back of the couch. The cold canvas felt good against his hot neck, helping him refocus himself back into the time and space where he belonged.

Was he wrong for that outburst? Cassidy really wanted to believe not. He had been done wrong tonight, and after having such insults thrown at him, he honestly could have said and done much more, much worse than he ended up doing. He just wanted it to end, to sit around in silence for a while, to not ponder over how much his friends were breaking apart and hating each other.

And most importantly, how much they were probably hating him in the process as well.

Closing his eyes, Cassidy tried to calm his breathing, slowly feeling the pain returning to the parts that had been assaulted earlier. It was actually a welcomed reminder of reality to him, telling him that he was shutting back down, going back towards the normal.

He ignored the locker room door opening and closing, assuming it was just Chuck and Trent coming back in. Cassidy would have liked to have more time alone to calm himself down, but he also couldn’t really blame the two for coming back so fast to make sure everything was under control, as the situation at hand was very much unusual to even their little misfit group.

Cassidy slowly opened his eyes, staring at the blank ceiling above him, listening to the silence lingering in the room. Something about it felt off, like it was almost overstaying its welcome. He had known both Chuck and Trent for long enough to realize how uncharacteristic being this quiet was.

Lifting his head up from the back of the couch, he soon got his answer though, as Cassidy got face to face with Kip instead of his friends.

Immediately Cassidy’s breathing tightened again, him shifting in a clearly more alert position on the couch; even if the change was very minor, they were both very well aware that it was happening. Kip just observed him from a few feet away, the deer-in-the-headlights look on the blond’s face being almost amusing to him. Kip was aware he was distressed, it was very obvious, but at the same time he found this turn of events rather hilarious. Here was the usually cool, calm and collected International champion Orange Cassidy, who was almost suddenly spooked out of his skin by the mere sight of the silver haired Brit.

“I’m not here to hurt you, Clementine.”

His words weren’t very comforting, even if Kip was sounding rather genuine behind the ominous smile playing on his lips. Maybe the biggest giveaway for Cassidy about it was the fact that the smile didn’t reach up to his eyes; it was purely for show, merely a facade, lulling him into a false sense of security. This, of course, only made him more tense over Kip’s existence in the locker room as the man glanced around himself for a while as if he was looking for something, before pulling a chair out for himself.

“Relax.”

Cassidy wanted to laugh at him, but no sounds were coming out of him as he watched Kip take a seat on the chair he found, sitting down across from him. As he settled on his seat, Cassidy could breathe a bit easier, knowing it was more difficult for Kip to suddenly jump him if he so wished if he was not up on his feet. The suited man carefully unbuttoned his jacket, leaning his arms against his knees as he leaned slightly forwards, never breaking eye contact with Cassidy.

“I saw what happened out there tonight. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

This time Cassidy let out a quiet snort, getting a raised brow with a confused head tilt back as a response. He already knew Kip was playing games with him, this very obvious false statement just bringing that fact home even harder. At least his threatening, sudden presence was slowly fading away, leaving only the lying fool behind that Cassidy thankfully knew how to deal with. It was making him relax considerably, he was just hoping Kip wasn’t picking up on the fact too, giving him a chance to take advantage of it.

“Yeah. Right.”

Kip broke eye contact with him for the first time since sitting down, looking around the room quietly. “So you’re saying that you being here all by yourself, left alone by your friends…” Kip glanced towards Cassidy, watching the unease grow in him again as he was unsure where Kip was planning on taking this conversation. “This is normal?”

Cassidy didn’t answer. He knew the answer to this question, he knew Kip knew the answer to it too. He didn't have to say it out loud.

“You’re saying that this is you being okay?”

“…Why are you here?”

Kip turned back fully towards him, snorting. “I already told you--”

“No.”

His brows furrowed, Kip clearly not enjoying being interrupted like this. He leaned a bit closer to Cassidy, almost as a threat, but the man in denim barely budged; he had set his mind on this and he was tired of these games. He had been through enough tonight already to want to deal with this on top of everything else.

“Why are you really here, Kip?”

He sounded tired, clearly not being amused by the situation at hand. Cassidy wanted, demanded answers, and Kip playing with him and beating around the bush was becoming a worn out gimmick real fast. The Brit was caught slightly off guard by this, especially over the fact that Cassidy was addressing him directly by name, which really wasn’t a usual feat for him.

“You… You really don’t think I’m worried about you?”

His words were hesitant, but Cassidy could feel some sort of… Odd sense of genuinity coming from him at the same time. Kip’s previous smile had turned more into a confused frown, but again not in the sense Cassidy usually saw him when Kip was being put on the spot and questioned about his odd behavior.

No, this time actually seemed like there could almost be something real behind this one.

“You know, I’ve seen everything that’s been going down recently. We all have. I’ve seen how you and your friends crumble, bit by bit, and I’m worried where this is going, especially after tonight.”

Kip looked away, Cassidy being able to see almost a sorrowful look in his eyes as the man sighed, inhaling deeply before his next words.

“And I, too, know what it’s like to… To be betrayed by a friend.”

The silence fell back into the room, Cassidy just observing as Kip seemingly struggled a little to keep himself calm and collected, hands rubbing together almost nervously as he was trying to regain his composure. It was almost endearing to watch in a way; Cassidy was so used to seeing Kip keeping up the overly confident and arrogant exterior that seeing him almost look vulnerable for the time being was definitely something different.

Maybe he was actually being more genuine than Cassidy thought. Maybe.

Kip slowly looked back at him, cracking a smile that could only be categorized as melancholic. It was extremely brief though; Kip quickly pushed it away, letting out a dramatic sigh as he ran a hand through his hair, relaxing a little bit on his seat as he leaned back, arms crossing over his chest.

“You may not think it… But I do know how you feel. And unlike for me at that time, I want there to be someone for you when that happens. Because, and let's be honest here, let’s face it… It will happen.”

There it was again, he was back. The smirk grew on his lips slowly, Cassidy watching as right in front of him Kip slid right back into his confident character, as if the small moment of weakness he had shown didn’t happen at all just mere seconds ago. The Brit pulled himself together in record speed, anyone not having witnessed the change just now would have missed it all. To be honest, Cassidy wasn’t entirely sure anymore if he had seen it correctly either, but as Kip continued to talk in much of the same vein as before, he knew that something had definitely happened. Maybe it hadn’t been a moment of weakness, but something had definitely been odd, and it wasn’t Cassidy’s tired, overworked mind playing tricks on him this time.

“I just need you to know that you won't be alone. I will be there for you when you need me.”

He wanted to say something so badly, but Cassidy remained silent. Kip looked at him for a moment, taking in the expression that, for once, he wasn’t fully able to read on the blond’s face. Was Cassidy confused about this? Was Kip finally getting under his skin enough that he was stunned in silence by how sincere he was actually being? Did Cassidy believe him in the first place? Kip wasn’t so sure. Usually he was good at this, but right there and then, something about the International champion just made him… Unreadable, even to him. As much as that infuriated Kip, he let it slide. Maybe it was a sign enough that he had gotten through to the one Best Friend he cared about.

Kip pushed the chair back slightly, finally getting a response from Cassidy as he did so. As Kip stood up, Cassidy leaned back on the couch, eyes never leaving the other man as he did, but his exterior for the first time in a while clearly relaxed. Kip wasn’t sure if he was just happy that he seemed to be finally leaving, but he made sure to stop for a moment to button up his suit jacket again as he stood there, staring back at Cassidy, trying to hide his pondering behind a smile tucking at the corners of his lips.

“Why do you think I believe you?”

Kip looked at him for a while, but didn't react. Try as hard as he might to be as genuine as possible, it seemed he still had to work hard to actually get through to Cassidy about what he was after.

“Because you need me. Because you need a friend.”

“No, I don’t. I have friends.”

Kip smiled at him, shaking his head at the blond who fell silent again, just watching him.

“See… That’s the difference between you and me, Clementine; you are just living in a lie.”

Without saying any more or giving Cassidy a chance to respond, Kip turned on his heels, making his way out of the locker room, leaving the International champion sitting there alone in a rather stunned silence.

#fic: immortal fears #setting: belt corruption arc #ship: orangekip #ship: kippenelope #character: orange cassidy #character: danhausen #character: kip sabian #character: penelope ford #character: chuck taylor #character: trent baretta #i wanna put them in a snow globe and shake them. we're just getting started babes #aew fanfiction #wrestling fanfiction

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speedyposts · 9 months ago

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Hong Kong fans boo Inter Miami, demand refund as Messi sits out friendly

Lionel Messi’s three days of adulation in Hong Kong ended in heartbreak for his fans as the Argentinian did not take to the field in Inter Miami’s 4-1 win against a local league XI in a friendly match played during the US club’s preseason tour.

Spectators chanted “refund” and the Hong Kong government said match organisers Tatler Asia may face a reduction in funding after Messi stayed on the bench during the match on Sunday.

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Dabiri-Erewa warns Nigerians against irregular migration, Especially to Canada

The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has urged Nigerians travelling abroad to go legitimately and with proper documentation

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The World Cup-winning captain, who has a hamstring strain, stayed rooted to the bench throughout the game. It brought a show of anger from the near-capacity crowd of 38,323, who had paid upwards of 1,000 Hong Kong dollars ($125) to see their hero, and in many cases five times that amount.

Halfway through the second half, chants of “we want Messi” rose around the Hong Kong Stadium from fans desperate to see one of the greatest footballers of his generation in the much-hyped exhibition game.

The booing became louder during the last 10 minutes when it became clear that the eight-time Ballon d’Or winner would not make even the briefest of cameos.

The jeers rose to a crescendo at the final whistle and Miami co-owner David Beckham was drowned out by booing as he tried to thank the crowd for “their incredible support” while fans signalled their anger with thumbs-down gestures.

The Major Sports Events Committee (MSEC) had granted 15 million Hong Kong dollars ($1.92m) for the event along with a grant of 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($127,854) for the venue, the government said in a statement.

“Regarding Messi not playing the match today, the Government, as well as all football fans, are extremely disappointed about the organisers’ arrangement. The organiser owes all football fans an explanation,” they said.

“The MSEC will take follow-up actions with the organiser according to the terms and conditions, which includes reducing the amount of funding as a result of Messi not playing the match.”

The organisers said they expected Messi and his former Barcelona teammate, Uruguay’s Luis Suarez, to play and were extremely disappointed that they did not feature in the match.

“Despite some news reports, Tatler did not have any information about the non-participation of Messi or Suarez prior to kick off,” they said in a statement.

“Messi and Suarez were deemed unfit to play by their team’s medical department, to everyone’s, including ours, disappointment.”

“I’m just really disappointed,” fan Jonathan Wong told the AFP news agency.

“Everyone is here to see Messi, so I feel a bit cheated.

“Without him, it’s just like another regular Hong Kong Premier League match, where a ticket only costs Hong Kong dollars 80 [$11]. This time, we paid Hong Kong dollars 5,000 [$625].”

Miami coach Gerardo Martino said the club’s medical team had taken the decision after an assessment on Sunday morning.

“We understand the disappointment of the fans for the absence of Leo [Messi] and we ask for their forgiveness,” Martino told reporters.

“We wish we could have sent Leo on for at least a while but the risk was too big.”

It was a bitter end to the days of the Hong Kong “Messi mania”.

Tens of thousands turned up just to watch him train on Saturday, when he did little more than jogging and stretching.

The team hotel was besieged by hundreds of fans trying to glimpse their hero, and a traditional junk boat was cruising around Victoria Harbour with Messi’s face plastered across its sails.

Messi can expect similar scenes in Tokyo when Miami continue their preseason tour with a friendly against J-League champions Vissel Kobe on Wednesday.

Dabiri-Erewa warns Nigerians against irregular migration, Especially to Canada

The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM), Abike Dabiri-Erewa, has urged Nigerians travelling abroad to go legitimately and with proper documentation

Read Article

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vampirenaomi · 3 years ago

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Now that Part 6 is over, here's my take on what I liked about it and what I didn't. Under a read more because of spoilers and because it's long.

Good

Fujiko's characterization and portrayal were amazing. She got multiple episodes focusing on her, she was portrayed as a member of the gang who contributes her share, and the issues between her and the others never got bigger than some amusing bickering. There were some nice Lupin/Fujiko moments, but it wasn't shown as some kind of larger than life kind of love, just something casual. I was incredibly disappointed by Fujiko's portrayal in Part 5, so it's nice that Part 6 was exactly what I wanted to see.

Closely related, the gang dynamics and how well they work together and have each other's back was nicely portrayed all through the series. This is maybe the most important element in Lupin for me.

Albert coming back was something I had been hoping for since Part 5 but didn't dare think was actually on the table. Not only did he come back, but he got all bloody and had to be rescued by Lupin. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better return. My only gripe is that they kept bringing him back for short cameos that led nowhere. I liked the scene with him and Lupin in episode 12, but from a storytelling point I think it would have been wise not to bring him back at all after episode 1.

The Tomoe story arc was such a breath of fresh air and kept me on the edge of my seat. I wish the conclusion had had a little bit more bite to it, but overall, I'm fine with it. Kudos that it was Lupin who killed her because I didn't think they'd make him be the one to do it.

Yata!! He's the best innovation the series has had in ages and I'm so happy they're keeping him around. I hope he never goes away for good, even if they might not include him every time.

Mercedes! She was seriously cool and I hope to see her again in a one-off episode or something.

Bad

Seriously, did the writers forget that Zenigata exists? I'm devastated that he didn't get a focus episode when everyone else did. He felt completely irrelevant and like the writers didn't really want to do anything with him. Most of his appearances made me feel like they only happened because someone remembered that oops, we have a fifth main character.

The pacing was a huge problem in both of the main stories. It's just incredibly frustrating to get a good momentum going, only for them to put the story on hold for multiple weeks of one-off episodes. A Lupin series should never make me feel "ugh, it's going to be a random heist episode next week, boo" but Part 6 did. I said in one of my Part 5 rant posts that I didn't like the tight arc structure, but in hindsight it was a lot better than the approach in Part 6. I still think Part 4 did it the best by having a good balance between main story and episodic adventures. A lot of the random adventure episodes still had character and plot moments that contributed to the main story, even if it was nothing bigger than seeing Rebecca on TV for a brief moment.

Just the first arc in general. There's a good story in there somewhere, but it never really got off the ground, it lost momentum almost right away, and the conclusion felt like they just wanted it over with.

Why does Moriarty exist when they did nothing with him?

The animation and visuals were uninspired and mediocre and I'm sad that there were so many CGI cars, but visuals aren't the most important thing for me in Lupin. I can look past this.

#lupin iii part 6 spoilers

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bonesgadh · 5 years ago

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My thoughts on the final season of Orange is the New Black:

Obviously, some heavy spoilers below:

If you ask me, Piper’s storyline outside Litchfield was, for the most part, a complete waste of time. Instead of having her getting stoned with her brother or going to that pointless retreat, why didn’t they have her doing something productive like helping other former inmates or writing her book?

Speaking of the book, I’m high-key disappointed they gave the memoir storyline to Judy fucking King. Call me cheesy but I was looking forward to the show ending with Piper writing her book just like she said she would in season 6. Such a missed opportunity.

I really, really wanted Taystee to be cleared of Piscatella’s murder. I don’t understand why they gave so much importance to Suzanne writting what really happened and Taystee showing the text to her lawyer if it wasn’t going to make a difference in the end. Chekhov’s gun, anyone?

I’m so relieved she didn’t kill herself. I guess as long as there’s life there’s hope fucking Cindy will confess the truth and justice will be served. In the meantime, I was happy Taystee found a new meaning to her life and decided to help other inmates have a better shot at rebuilding their lives after prison.

Daddy’s death caught me by surprise. That said, I didn’t notice her absence at all for the reminder of the season. I guess she was a one-hit wonder character.

I have the feeling they had no idea what to do with Frieda so they just had her do weird stuff like accumulating trash.

Thank Christ they got rid of Badison so early in the season. Cringiest, most annoying character in the history of television.

Aleida is so stupid lmao. I get she wanted to protect her daughter from that pedophile but she fucked up. I was rooting for her to rebuild her life and I was disappointed at her.

I liked Suzanne coming to terms with her sentence and being more comfortable around people and making new friends. It’s what she deserves.

Why is Cesar out of jail? Didn’t Aleida say he was supposed to stay there until he was an old man?

So Yadriel isn’t Pepa’s biological father?

Shani, man. Her relationship with Nicky was so cute and you could tell she was different from Nicky’s other flings. She didn’t act like a stallion around her, she was sweet and considerate with her and her backstory was very sad. I’m pissed they weren’t endgame because they made such a good couple.

There was no need to kill off Lorna’s baby. That was unnecessary roughness.

What happened to Maritza left me devastated. That final sequence of her getting into the plane and all the other women who were deported as well slowly disappearing until there was no one left gave me fucking chills. It was tough to watch but it had to be done to make a point of how a good portion of the immigrants who get deported are young adults who have never lived anywhere else besides the US, but still they are not considered citizens.

I absolutely adore Fig. Her character development was one of the best in the show. Also I LOVE HER RELATIONSHIP WITH CAPUTO OMG.

Piper’s sister-in-law is annoying af. I bet she is one of those anti-vaccinations freaks.

Alex looked so damn hot in her flashback oh my god.

Goodall is adorable! For real, what a gorgeous baby.

I was not expecting CO Fischer to make a comeback.

Healy is still a piece of shit.

I can understand why Piper developed feelings for Zelda. She represented the potential life she could lead now that she was a free woman, the opportunity to start over and leave prison behind (like Sophia advised her to). However, there wasn’t anything exciting about being with her, it was way too safe and that’s the exact opposite of what she had with Alex.

Polly is even more annoying than she was before but Larry didn’t get on my nerves this time around, which surprised me. Maybe because his little prep talk is what pushed Piper to follow Alex to Ohio or maybe it was the nostalgia. Idk, but they brought him back in a nice way.

I felt really bad for Vinnie. He wasn’t only grieving for his son but he also had to see Lorna fall into that complete state of denial.

Sophia’s comeback was everything. She looked like a goddess and she seemed so happy and in control of her life. I thought we wouldn’t see her again after she got released from prison but I’m glad they managed to bring her back even for a couple of scenes.

Totally random statement but Piper looked very attractive at the benefit gala and the morning after. I don’t know if it was the hair or the way they did her eyes but she was smoking hot.

Danielle Brooks is the best actress in the show. Don’t @ me.

McCullough is the archetype of the psycho ex. I legit thought she was going to shoot Piper when she confronted her at her house.

Alex knows Piper so damn well. She is aware of the fact that Piper tends to run away from stuff when things get complicated and her choosing to have an affair with McCullough was her way to try to protect herself. Then again, I really thought they had moved on from that phase.

Fig lying about being pregnant to help that woman get an abortion was such a strong moment. Also her calling out the double-standard of the guard who was opposed to the woman aborting but wanted her to get deported? Legends only.

Lorna is such a racist but I can’t bring myself to dislike her. If anything I’ve always felt a bit sorry for her.

Linda is such a bitch.

Tamika was the only warden who actually cared about making a difference. I’m sad she got fired because of something that wasn’t even her fault but her good deeds made a profound impact.

McCullough is so damn unstable but I can’t blame her for developing such strong feelings for Alex. She’s quite irresistible.

Alex acting all unattached and cold as she was breaking up with Piper was painful to watch. I knew it wasn’t real but for a hot second I thought that was it for them.

The ICE storyline was out-of-this-world amazing. So powerful and brilliantly done, quintessential OITNB.

If you had told me six years ago I would cry like a baby with Pennsatucky’s death I would have laughed at you.

But for real, POOR PENNSATUCKY. I’m sorry she had to die for Taystee to stay alive.

Because of the ‘a fan-favorite character dies in the final episode to mark the end of the show’ trope I had the feeling they were going to kill either Red, Alex or Taystee. I was legit surprised when the final death was revealed to be Pennsatucky.

That Poussey flashback had me in tears.

Alex and Nicky’s goodbye scene was so sweet and I love they talked about eventually reuniting. They were my brotp.

What Larry told Piper when she visited him at his place was very interesting. When Piper told him she loved Alex he told her he believed her, but that he also thought she loved what Alex represented. I believe that was true at some point—well, for most of the series—and, unconsciously, Piper believed that as well. But, if anything, what they went through in season 7 helped Piper realize she did want to be with Alex. The extra limb analogy was amazing and I don’t think Jenji could have picked a better way to explain their relationship.

Hellman is the new warden? Gross.

My favorite part about the old inmates’ cameos was that they were shown doing the same stuff they did in Litchfield: Boo being tired of everyone’s bullshit, Yoga giving the mandala talk to new inmates, Gina feeling exasperated and Norma calming her down, Watson running and Alison checking her time, Angie and Leanne being stupid, Brook mooning over stuff.

I only missed two characters making a cameo: Sister Ingalls and Miss Claudette. I know most fans wanted to see Bennett again but fuck that coward.

Also wtf happened to Bayley? I kinda wanted to know.

Karla’s story broke my heart. I’m glad they included her character because her story is the story of millions of immigrants that are separated from their children, forced to return to their home countries and endure harsh conditions while trying to make their way back to the US.

Blanca really went out there and said “fuck it” to the american dream, didn’t she? In my opinion she had the best ending out of all the characters. I’m so happy she reunited with Diablo and is ready to live her life with him at last. My girl deserved it.

Maria’s storyline was so ‘meh’. It was way too similar to her season 6 storyline.

My mom Gloria had the second best ending. I was afraid they were going to punish her because of the phone thing but thankfully asshole Luschek finally did something right. I was rooting for her to have a happy ending and I’m glad she got it.

Also was that little girl living with Gloria and her kids her granddaughter? Because she was definitely younger than her sons but Gloria’s flashback stated her daughters are older, so I’m confused.

I really need to know if Aleida killed Daya. I hate it was left so open.

Flaca choosing to help immigrants was so sweet. I bet one of the reasons she did it was to stop them from suffering Maritza’s fate.

Fig and Caputo are adopting!

Cindy did not deserve a good ending after she ruined Taystee’s life. That made me so angry. I was really hoping she would confess the truth.

In the end, McCullough made Alex a favor by having her transferred to Ohio. She went back to minimum security, she was with friends and people she knew and far away from all the crap in max.

What happened to Red and Lorna was devastating. Red losing her identity and her memory was so tragic because of what a badass she was. Also I knew Lorna would lose it after her son’s death but it was heartbreaking. They deserved better.

It sucks balls Nicky lost every person who was important to her but despite that I liked her ending because, even though she suffered heartbreak after heartbreak, she found a way to keep herself sober and now she will help others the way Red helped her. It was the best way she could honor her.

Despite literally everyone around Piper advising her to leave Alex behind and forget about her (from her parole officer to her dad to Larry to Sophia) the fact that she chose to follow Alex to Ohio was a pleasant surprise to me. It showed her growth and how much she really wanted to be with Alex, and that she was not a mistake in her life but her life. I was never a Vauseman shipper but even I knew they had to be endgame, any other ending wouldn’t have made any sense. I feel bad for the shippers because it was a very tough season for them but love prevailed, so congrats.

I didn’t catch the Piper Kerman cameo until I saw someone mentioned it on twitter. That was so cool! Also I don’t know if this was intentional but I liked the visual parallel between Larry Smith & Piper and Piper Kerman & Alex. Larry waited for Piper for as long as she was in jail and never abandoned her, so I choose to believe Kenji and Co. are hinting at Piper doing the same thing for Alex.

It was a good decision to show us a glimpse of Piper’s new life. She has a stable job, a new home, she is studying about criminal law and using her time in a productive way, and also she looks happier than we ever saw her.

In conclusion, I liked the season very much. Orange is one of my favorite shows and I think they ended it in a very nice way. It was very well executed and, unlike other final seasons I have watched over the years, it never felt rushed to me. It was the best season in at least a couple of years and I’m in love with the series finale, I stand by my original statement that it is the best one I have ever seen.

I give it a solid B+, four-out-of-five stars, 8.5 out of 10.

Orange forever, indeed.

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kingdomblade · 6 years ago

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KH3 Thoughts - Spoilers for Monsters Inc and Frozen

Watch me accidentally rant about Arendelle!

Monsters Inc.

I legitimately had no idea that this world was going to take place after the movie so that was a fun little surprise! We don’t actually learn a whole lot about life after scream energy and the story here is a little flimsy, but gotta say I really enjoyed this world. It was so fun to adventure through and I love Sulley and Mike. Even Boo tagged along, though I felt bad for how much we outran the girl.

The implication that Sulley and Mike smuggle Boo in for playdates is kinda hilarious. They must keep her for a few hours each time, poor girl has gotta be exhausted the next day!

(It’s super cute that she visits like that, but imagine being a parent and finding out that someone takes your child for a few hours every week and you never knew it...)

Boo is such a brave little trooper. In a world of monsters, Unversed and heartless after her, explosions, fires, a giant goo creature. She handled it all like a champ.

Would have been nice attention to detail if the lights brightened every time Boo laughed like in the movie. Would have been even more fun if the same happened with Sora.

Each world has made a pretty valid reason for not having civilians around and this one does it just fine as well, but do they really not have a night shift at all?

Frozen

This world was absolutely baffling in how it was handled. I read that Disney had different guidelines and restrictions on how different properties were handled, was this one of them? Frozen is Disney’s pride and joy and yet the way it was handled here was so off. The Disney stories are always very abridged in KH, but never before this have the been so incomprehensible as Tangled and Frozen without knowing the movies beforehand. Again, who doesn’t know what Frozen is about, but still!

The fact that we never get to actually see Arendelle is disappointing, starting there would have been a nice contrast from the wilderness that was the rest of the world. I can’t believe we didn’t get to see the coronation at all, either from Elsa’s perspective or Sora’s.

A good chunk of the world is spent in an ice maze that’s just kinda bland. It doesn’t invoke Frozen at all, and doesn’t really have any flair of it’s own. And apparently Larxene has ice powers today? It would have made so much sense for this maze concept to have been in Elsa’s castle with her shifting the castle to keep everyone away, but nope, that’s another area we don’t get to go into.

With all due respect Let It Go looks amazing and they recreated it so well! But it feels like Disney yet again shoving the song into a movie/parade/fireworks show in it’s entirety. It’s a great song but another reminder of how I really don’t like how they handle this property in general. For some reason they throw in part of Do You Want to Build a Snowman as well instead of a flashback to something more relevant like the coronation.

I really didn’t like Olaf before this game and having to find pieces of his body didn’t help, let me tell ya. That’s the one thing I’ve had to look up help for in my playthrough so far!

Worst of all, the characters, which are the main reason Frozen is so popular, are barely in their own story. I loved the early interaction with Elsa, how SDG find out that’s royalty and treat her with that respect, but when they see how she’s hurting they’re much warmer and genuinely try to help - I love these guys! And then they try a little too hard and wind up being annoying which just makes Elsa worse - I love these dumb guys. It feels like the beginning of a really strong relationship between Elsa and Sora but.. that’s it. That’s the last time they really speak in the entire story. Somewhat the same with Anna, the gang gets a lot more time with her but they get separated as well, everyone’s reunion at the end is supposed to feel emotional but falls flat.

Lastly, Hans being demoted to a voiceless cameo who’s face is only shown once - even his Journal entry is next to nothing! Sad use of an iconic villain, while Marshmallow is a unique party member unlike any other it would have been great to travel with Hans instead and then have him turn on you just as hard as he does on Anna and Elsa. Instead he just... instinctively knows to attack you after he, uh, dies.

Admittedly that’s a lot of ranting but the world wasn’t all bad by any means! It was a very pretty world overall and on the PS4 they’re able to sell the frigid snowy atmosphere much better than they did on PS2 - I loved the footprint effect they did! The iconic areas like the ice forest and the frozen ‘sculptures‘ outside of Elsa’s castle were beautiful. It also had some of the most interesting Heartless designs and my favorite boss battle so far. It’s really a bummer, Frozen isn’t my favorite movie by any means but it had a lot going for it to make a great world in KH, but they really dropped the ball. I haven’t been this disappointed with a world since Stitch in BBS.

On the flip side, the next two worlds look like they’ll be the most impressive ones yet, so I can’t wait to see where they go!

#kingdom contemplations #kh3 spoilers

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zenosanalytic · 6 years ago

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Movie Buzz

So I went to go see the new Bumblebee movie and I liked it.

I wouldn’t call myself a transformer fan. I was big into the series when I was but a wee snek, but I never followed the comics, or made a Thing out of owning the toys, or really got into any of the shows other than Beast Wars, and I’ve never really been into collecting in general(except for a short period where I was big into fantasy model building&painting), which seems to be a big part of the fandom.

And, of course, the Bay films --as the audio-visual manifestation of an inner ear infection-- make me physically ill(this is not metaphortalk), and --as the audio-visual manifestation of macho marketized misanthropy -- morally disgusted/exhausted(a reaction which certainly isn’t alleviated by the whole, aforementioned, “making me nauseous” thing).

So it isn’t something I would have typically thought of as my sort of thing or bothered to go see in theaters.

But, I follow Lindsay Ellis on Twitter, and sub both Her Youtube and Black Nerd’s(and I’m a long-running David Willis fan), and they’re big Transformers fans, so I kinda have my ear vaguely to the earth re: Transformers stuff and when Ellis and Meadows made a Reaction Video/Review for Bumblebee, I saw it and thought “ok I have to see this film”.

And it’s just great. I don’t want to spoil anything(and btw that reaction vid has spoilers so, watcher beware) so I’ll just say this about it: Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts. Which, kinda cribs from Ellis a bit, tbh, but it’s really the most accurate thing to say about the film’s emotional impact on me. It’s a fun, sincere, competent, visually coherent movie. And I want to emphasize the “Visually Coherent” bit: The Transformers LOOK like Transformers, they are individually distinct, they can be easily identified, they’re even-flipping-color-coded(as in canon). The two main villains even have an inverted Red Oni Blue Oni dynamic it’s Gr8. Bumblebee lifts some visuals and story elements from The Iron Giant, the first Men in Black, and (yes, I’m not kidding)The Shape of Water; it’s view of the late 80s-early 90s period is probably a bit too rose-tinted; and it’s antagonists are cartoonishly villainous, but none of that hurt the movie for me. In fact that stuff, in that they are all common elements of the anticynical, pre-Edge 80s-90s films like Flight of the Navigator which it is obviously a love-letter to, make the film stronger, in my opinion.

It’s certainly a very nostalgic film(verging on being too nostalgic; there were a few 80s references which were almost too on-the-nose, but in the moment I felt they fit the characters and I laughed), but I personally felt like that helped to establish and strengthen the Sincere Sentimentality which Travis Knight and the rest of the crew wanted to make its emotional heart. While they skirted up to the cliff separating time-distorted-fondness from commercialized memory, they thankfully didn’t tip over it. There’s also some, shall we say, oblique symbolism in a few scenes for the weirdos out there which, being a weirdo myself, I really enjoyed uwu

It’s also a very funny film, which brings me to my My Main Concern about it. I worry that the nostalgia may get in the way for people who didn’t live through(or in the cultural wake of) the 80s. I worry this because, while my theater was verging on full attendance(very good for a Thursday early morning show), me and maybe 3 other people seemed to be doing most of the laughing. Given, audiences in my particular end of Texas tend to be pretty subdued/polite, but the film had about the same joke-concentration as Deadpool and definitely NOT the same laugh-concentration. The thing is I don’t know if this is because of younger audiences not connecting with the older setting- and reference-jokes, or because of the humor being subtle and situational rather than the super-obvious reference and physical comedy that Deadpool deals in. Anyway, while all of the performances are great and funny John Cena, in particular, does an excellent job in a simultaneously comedic and antagonistic role as, what I’ve read, is supposed to be a GI Joe cameo, setting up a potential spin-off franchise.

The only complaint I have --and it’s not really a complaint so much as a taste difference or maybe just even a plot-bunny watching it left me with-- is, and this is potentially

<<<+++SPOILER+++>>>

territory here, so be advised, but:

I wish she’d gone with him. I feel like it’d have been a more interesting and honest-to-the-character(and franchise, given TF always has a human audience-standin character) ending, though I also see how it’d have gone against the feel, themes, and homage they were going for with the movie, and been a bit too confident about getting a sequel-chance.

Oh, and having Bumblebee turn into the Camaro at the end I didn’t like. But, then, I ALWAYS thought the Bay films having BB be a Camaro was a dumb and asinine decision, and it’s a big reason why I never watched any of them in theaters to begin with. BB’s supposed to be a friendly, reliable, and approachable character who makes it easy for audiences to sympathize with and care for the Autobots(and thus boo the Decepticons for putting him in danger), and there’s nothing more friendly, reliable, and approachable than a slugbug. Turning him into a Camaro was always an act of pathetic male insecurity; since their reissue in the late 90s, Volkswagen Bugs have been heavily marketed to women in the US(I’m convinced because they’re small and quiet), and so Bay --a man whose whole career is basically an audio-visual cathedral to his masculine insecurity-- couldn’t stand that, and made him a generic “muscle-car”(*requisite gigantic, space-visible wanking motion*) instead. I get that they had to include some nods to this being a “prequel” rather than a reboot, but I’d have preferred this not be one of them.

But Anyway: Hailee Stanfeld was Great, Pamela Adlon was Great, Lendeborg and Drucker were Great; I loved how they focused on friendship over romance and Memo was cool with it; it’s just a really Competent, Good, Fun movie you guys.

Aaaaaand I guess I had more to say about it than just “Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts” :p :p If any of this sounds appealing to you and you’ve got the free time&cash, plz go see it, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

#Bumblebee(Movie)#Transformers #Movies #Long Posts #zA's Outside Viewing #Movie Reviews #zA Commentary

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junkienicky · 6 years ago

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Some things about the DVD extras

The bloopers are 5 minutes long and are pretty funny. I posted them already if you haven’t seen them

Cast interviews is around 15 minutes and is pretty interesting. They talk about their character’s mindset in 72 hours and what it was like for themselves working in that timescale

Jessica said she constantly had to wear wet clothes for about two or three days because of the rain in episode 11 lol

Selenis said “there’s a strip tease... Sorry, it’s not Laura Prepon” hahahahah

She also said it was hard to get out of the mindset of how Gloria was feeling when she got home

Danielle’s favorite moment was setting the cheetos and tampos on fire because it felt like a badass moment

Laura described directing episode ten, how she had to give the actresses notes while she had duct tape on her mouth and around her feet “it’s like insane”

Natasha has a funny moment with Rootbeer where she’s like “still has not made a cameo on the show” Rootbeer barks and Natasha says “we’re all upset about it at home”

Taylor thinks although it is an intense season, she believes that it is one of the funnier seasons they’ve had

Julie says because the writers were saying the subject matters in this season are so dark, they needed a lot of Leanne and Angie this season.........

The writers didn’t write any dialogue for Lea when it came to the talent show because she is a stand-up comedian, and so she improvised her lines but because she didn’t have a mic, she had to loop them in editing lmao

Natasha thinks there is an unfairness to actors who have opinions about the current situations the world is in and that people see it as like “shut up and entertain us”

Danielle thought the season was really challenging because she had to stay in the mindset of someone who is fighting for life and justice. The death of Philando Castile had happened and she remembers watching his girlfriend, Diamond, give a speech and not wanting her lawyer to speak for her but using her own voice. She tried to translate that to the OITNB audience and describes it as an “experience she will never forget.”

Commentary for Tattoo You with director Mark Burley and writer Tara Herrmann;

They mention the eyes being real prisoners for every episode they’ve had commentary on, I swear.

They were filming episode twelve and thirteen in mid winter but they made it look like summer by putting fake leaves in the trees and digitally removing breath.

One of the hallmarks of the show is that they make good social commentary, Mark thinks.

They believe Taystee was standing up for her principles.

Tara wrote the scene where a woman on the bus hands her baby to Bailey while having a panic attack from real experience, except on a plane.

Alan had never held a baby before in the scene.

Freida's bunker was a tiny set and really difficult to shoot in.

Nicky’s “tear drop” tattoo was mistakenly drew in the wrong order. Apparently in one of the bunker scenes it is visible - (I haven’t checked, I wouldn’t know).

They explain that they go far away from the book, then right back to it with moments such as Piper's first tattoo flashback with the fish, which is what Piper Kirman had in real life.

They were originally going to travel to film this flashback on a beach and the flashback was originally planned as three scenes. They cut it back to one. The flashback was filmed on a stage set and the beach in the background is green screen.

Sometimes they have to alter cast members' real tattoos because they don't get the rights from every tattoo artist.

Tara thinks Natasha is a great on-camera smoker, although she is "currently" (at the time the commentary was recorded) was off the cigarettes.

During the scene in the pharmacy, Tara explains that in season one, one of the big notes that they kept getting back from the real Piper was that they were not telling enough "mom stories" so they really doubled down on that.

The line in which Red says "without disappointment, she and I have nothing" in reference to her relationship with Nicky was specifically called out as a great line by Jenji - which Tara describes as her "happy day" when she gets kudos from Jenji.

Kate stays in character as Red all day while she is on set.

The salt shaker tattoo on Alex, is one that Jenji always wanted to have her whole life.

Mark thinks it was nice catching up on the backstory of Piper and Alex as there was always more to explore there.

They both joke about how they wonder if Red would be a YouTube blogger on the outside making cooking videos, and that it should be a spin-off.

As you'd imagine, the continuity aspect of the season being based in three days was overwhelming.

Early on, the writers really wanted to "lock Linda in the prison and at some point she needed to be stoned" and "not in the way [we as an audience] are thinking, or in the biblical sense" I have literally no idea what they were talking about here, if I’m honest.

They think Flaca and Maritza are great together.

They think Taylor did a really good job with her scene where she calls Carol, as it was very emotional as Piper has not had the best relationship with her mum over the years and this scene makes a connection.

The corn story from Carol is a real story from co-writer Carolina Paiz’s mother (or husband) but it was actually a can of beans, like we see in the proposal scene.

They shot Piper's second flashback in an actual tattoo shop and the woman tattooing Larry is the owner of the shop.

They was "delighted" to have Jason Biggs back...

They built a bathroom set for when Piper calls Alex that cost around $32,000.

Alex's scene was filmed in a real hotel.

There was a longer shot of Tiffany making the cereal she eats at Donuts' house, but it was cut because it was too long.

They love the unique and odd conversations between various characters, and the scene between Gloria and Luschek was one of them.

They were stuck schedule wise with the phone call between Nicky and Vinny. Originally they wanted a scene showing him at home, but logistically it wasn't working. They shot it with him in his car so the audience had the impression that he spent the night there.

They describe the scene as being big for Nicky, wherein she is essentially saying "odd as it may be, I respect what you guys have but you need to step up and take care of our girl.” And that she is doing Lorna a favor though losing out for herself. In addition, they confirm Nicky would like to be loved in the way she describes in the scene.

Crew had to shoot in the bar terminal at night as they were only allowed to shoot there after 11:00PM.

They struggled on how to tie up bailey's story. They didn’t want him to commit suicide, but they also didn't want it to necessarily feel hopeful for him.

They thought Uzo did a fantastic job of 'sleep acting.'

They mention each character has musical themes.

Mark thought Taylor was wonderful in the proposal scene.

commentary for Storm-y Weather with executive producer Tara Herrmann and writer Lauren Morelli;

It is one of Lauren's favorite episodes she wrote and one of her favourites in general because it was so much work.

They didn't anticipate how stressful writing, production and continuity wise this season would be to create with the seventy-two hour timeline.

They had around 120 meetings (an over exaggeration) on how they were going to do the opening storm scene, because of the glass, smoke, special effects and ensuring health and safety (especially because the actress who plays Alison was pregnant).

They have moments where they realise all the bits they've planted in the season actually come together.

They spent around twelve hours a day shooting in the bunker.

They comment on how beautiful Taylor looks in her "janitor overalls" costume.

Tara mentions about they they are "currently" (at the time of the commentary) [were] working on season six, and there are a lot of things Lauren doesn't know about as she no longer works on the show. She goes on to say how she so badly wants to tell her where each character ends up.

The scene where the Nazis and Ouiji (along with her other two friends - names I can't remember) are deciding which way to go in the corridor, describe how the scene was only a page long, but took hours to figure out.

While writing the season, Tara saw a photo of Natasha on the red carpet with bangs. That's where the inspiration came from to have Nicky's hair like that in this season.

Lauren says she loves both Nicky and Lorna and has a "soft space in [her] heart for them." They comment how they're "so great together."

They think Yael is a really good crier.

They wanted to make sure that we saw every character that we basically know in this episode.

Jenji tries to have every character in the first and last episode of the season.

All of the SWAT team are named after writers of the season.

The season is supposedly set near the end of September/beginning of October.

Mornings on set, they had to use leaf blowers to get rid of snow and leaves and digitally colour correct (add green and brown in editing) to ensure it looks like late summer.

They pitched early on to have Carol and Pat meet in the season.

They describe the episode being "really physical" for the actors because there is a lot of running around.

They had a lot of debate in the writer's room on whether to kill off Humps or keep him alive.

They commented that they often put some of their subconscious thoughts into these characters.

They call the booby-trap making the "home alone montage", they also compliment the art department for all the props such as the sling-shot made out of a bra.

Expanding on this, they refer back to Big Boo's flashback in season three when someone from the art department had to go out and buy dildos lmao.

Lauren spent several seasons trying to get the pool to film in at Rockland.

The pool was difficult to shoot in because it would get very cold, but also very hot at times under the lights.

They had a long meeting about whether we were going to see Humps' butt or not, because he was in a hospital gown, so if he fell out the wheelchair would the gown be open and would you see his butt or would it be a prosthetic.

They had many meetings on how much work special effects put in to figure out how to place the tower of books so that it would be stable enough to stand, but easy enough to fall by being pushed over by a SWAT member. They had to build two towers.

They thought Big Boo and Linda were realy funny and great together.

Lauren received many angry tweets regarding the Epipen moment where they used it to wake up Suzanne. Apparently they researched but it was wrong "according to twitter." They then go on to say that Suzanne didn't OD she was just "really sleepy."

They had to build a fire proof stage set for when Leanne and Angie set the files on fire.

They mention that the girl who gets her nose broken all the time is also pregnant, adding "wow, so many orange babies" lol.

They had a technical adviser on set most of the time to give them guidance with the "SWAT stuff."

It was Diane and Jackie's idea to draw nipples on their bra when Flaca and Maritza make a video for "belieber1996."

Nick Sandow requested if he could shave his mustache, but they said no "because the world wasn't ready to see his naked lip yet."

They mention about how they set the show in the past "we're like what? In 2014, or something." And that they've sort of abandoned the rules in that way, timeline wise.

They think Danielle was spectacular this season.

Uzo is wearing a wig in the bunker scenes, Jackie also often does.

The trailer/security van is a set they built.

They talk about Donuts and Doggett's scenes being complicated. Tara think they should not be together, and Lauren agrees. But they see where these characters come from, and understand why they (as characters) think they should be together.

Jenji named Piscatella originally.

For a long time they discussed Taystee actually killing Piscatella, but decided that would be perpetuating the cycle of violence and that she is not a killer.

They think the scene is really a moment of grace.

They also think Danielle is a really good crier.

They love the rivalry between Red and Piscatella.

They originally had a line as Piscatella leaves where he says "God speed", however it was cut. Neither can remember why but Brad William Henke was pretty upset about it. He also felt like it was a moment of redemption for his character.

While they were shooting the end scene in the pool, the actors requested if they could hear the end song, so that they could have the emotional feel of it.

The whole season/Taystee's fight emphasizes how Litchfield is truly her own home, and the only one that she's had in her life.

The end pool scene was pitched from Toy Story 3 where they're all in the incinerator.

#oitnb #orange is the new black #oitnb season 5 #lauren morelli #tara herrmann #vauseman #flaritzia #nichorello #oitnb season 6 #Danielle Brooks

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celmation-gibson · 7 years ago

Photo

Well, It's Time I started these 'Best of' Reviews for what Animated thing had Happened this Year, and Now I'm ready for it, and for me, I think that 2017 was a great Year for Cartoons on TV (and one on the Net), and here are my Reviews on why.

Ben 10(2016 series) – Although the Show was Made and Released in 2016 at other Foreign territories, It finally got a Release in the US in 2017. And some Folks might say that some reboots aren’t very too Bright (and I would agree on TTG and/or PPG 2016), But I find this to be a Nerve Calming excitement, some of the Character Designs/Re-Designing look Cute & Likable to Me. And the One Thing that gets me Fired up for this Series is that some Artists I know worked on this Program, like Mr. Ryan Krammer(Uncle Grandpa, & SpongeBob's 'Food Con Castaways' episode), Ms. Monica Ray(Harvey Beaks, Magic Children Doing Things) as Storyboard Artists & additional Writers& Mr. Colin Heck(Legend of Korra, Harvey Beaks) as Supervising Director. And It was Wonderful to hear Ms. Jessica DiCicco(Lynn & Lucy Loud) voicing a Different-looking FrightWig, who the Character was previously voiced by Cree Summer in the Original Series. But believe me, I remember seeing the Original Ben 10 series along with Alien Force, but didn’t quite go thru the Rest of the Series until the Reboot came. Even the Original villains of this Show look so Cute (except for Billy Billions), which that Cuteness also goes to the re-Designing of the other Villains from the Original ‘Ben 10’ series, and the More appearance I’ve ever seen from a Villain is Steam Smythe (voiced by Roger Craig Smith of ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ & ‘Regular Show’).

Billy Dilley’s Super-Duper Subterranean Summer – Quite an Interesting Show, and I bet many people thought that the Program reminded them of ‘Uncle Grandpa’, so Keep in Mind, Most of the Artists & Writers who worked on this Series previously worked on ‘Spongebob Squarepants’ & ‘Uncle Grandpa’. Even the Show’s Creator Mr. Aaron Springer voicing Billy almost sounds like Paul Rugg of 'Freakazoid', 'Pig, Goat, Banana, Cricket', & 'Secret Mountain Fort Awesome'.

Samurai Jack(Season 5) - I truly Enjoyed watching 'Samurai Jack' when I was Young, this Program along with 'Courage the Cowardly Dog', 'Juniper Lee', & 'Chowder' are Probably the only Good Old Cartoon Network Programs that I give Full Circle to in my Childhood. After the "Jack and the Baby" episode, the show went into a Deep Cliffhanger, and I truly Sympathize the Great Hero Jack for it, But Twelve Years Later, a New Season had Finally cometh, with the Show's Original Creator Mr. Genndy Tartakovsky coming to Ex. Produced the series after some Great Work back at Sony Pictures Animation(Hotel Transylvania films, & that Popeye Test Footage). And Instead of the Program being a-little Lighthearted like the Past Seasons with just Slime, Oil & Robotic Guts, and Major Boo-boos, the New Season 5 now airing on Adult Swim has moved to a Darker Tone, which I like as much as 'Return to Oz', 'Over the Garden wall', & 'the Black Cauldron', with some major Blood, Profanity, and some Grown-Up jokes put into it. And it was a Surprised to see some Old Characters that I recognize to make some Cameos in that one episode(or few), such as the Woolies, Demongo, and the Ravers, the Robots and their Robo-Samurai, and the "Jump Good" Monkey man & his Tribe. And some Fresh New Voices came in by Surprise, such as Mr. Chris Parnell & Keegan Michael Key in some Episodes. And I was Lucky to film the Final Confrontation between Jack & Aku during the Premiere of the Series Finale for Instagram. And did I nearly weep during the Part that Now that Aku is Gone, Ashi will Never be Born in the Future(because of the Space Timing Continuum), and I got to say, Ashi was a Cute Character that I truly Sympathize because of her Dark Past & People Torturing her back then, and I like her Voice Actress, the Legendary Ms. Tara Strong (Powerpuff Girls, My Little Pony, Ben 10, & Chowder). And even since Aku's Original voice actor Mr. Mako passed away back then, I say that Mr. Greg Baldwin really did a Good Job impersonating Mako voicing Aku, just like he did with Iroh of 'Avatar: the Last Airbender' & 'Legend of Korra', almost sounded like If Mako aged Puberty. I would say I'm Gonna Miss this Show, just like how I'll miss Chowder, Regular Show, and soon Uncle Grandpa.

Star vs. the Forces of Evil: Battle for Mewni /SvtFoE Season 3– To come Clear, I only watched the First Four Stories of that TV Movie Special, from “Return to Mewni” to “Marco and the King”, Because during the Further Episodes there was an Artist whose Career I clearly dislike, Tyler Chen of ‘Clarence’, ‘Fish Hooks’, ‘Pickle & Peanut’ & the Overrated Bravest Warriors minisode “drama Bug”, and that’s why I never made it to the Ending point, But I do read Perfectly that Star won the Battle against the Vile Toffee, and she got her Wand Redesigned. But what I can tell you that one of my Favorite Episodes from that so Far is “Moon the Undaunted”, and I gotta say that Eclipsa, Queen of Darkness is one of my Most Favorite Characters from the show so far. As for the Rest of Season 3 so Far, I’ve only watched Episodes that are NNOT directed by Chen, cuz remember when I said I don’t like his Career, but my Most Favorite Episodes out of Season 3 so Far is ‘Stranger Danger’, ‘Lint Catcher’, & ‘Trial by Squire’. Also, Despite having appeared in the 2016 episode "Page Turner", I like Hekapoo's appearance in the 2017 episode "Running with Scissors", which is One of my Most Favorite Episodes of Season 2.

The Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos - I really Enjoyed this Half-Hour Special of ‘the Loud House’, the New Characters there seemed Likable/Lovable unlike the Unlikable/Hate-able ones in Royal Woods where some Folks aren’t that Disgusting as Hell(Funny Business, Cereal Offender), and It’s also a Good Episode where no Sister Siblings were Complete & Utter jerks(Sleuth or Consequences, a Novel Idea), Even what surprised me Completely is that this was the First Thing in a Kids’ Cartoon to showcase a person with Down-Syndrome, and believe me, I felt Really Disappointed on how they were Portrayed in Adult Cartoons, Mostly *COUGH*Family guy*COUGH*. But in a Kids Cartoon, they were Treated Properly with Good Respect. And the Character Rosa reminds me of Mrs. Claus/Mama from Rankin/Bass’ ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ for some Wacky Reason, “Eat, eat, EAT”. And I still Love the RonnieColn Fandom Completely, that one LH Episode “Back Out There” almost Ruined some Things, and that Led me to have Mixed to Negative Feelings for Lincoln’s Friends Clyde, Rusty, Liam, Zach. So I would say that ‘the Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos’ is a Fun-Filled Episode that I could watch Multiple Times, It’s got Cute & Funny moments, some Heart-Warming Drama, and some Great Entertainment when the Alley Cats run amuck in the Casagrande apartment.

OK K.O! Let’s be Heroes – This Show has become a Great New addition to the Grand CN, It was created by Mr. @ianjq, who was previous storyboard supervisor & storyboard revisionist of ‘Adventure Time’, Writer & Story Artist for ‘Secret Mountain Fort Awesome’, voice of Wallow of ‘Bravest Warriors’, & developer, co-executive producer, supervising director, storyline writer & storyboard artist for ‘Steven Universe’, and I really like him Voicing Rad & other Characters such as Darrell & Crinkly Wrinkly in the K.O. program. It was based off a short Pilot episode ‘Lakewood Plaza Turbo’ back in 2013, in that Great Year of Discoveries along with other pilots for ‘Steven Universe’, ‘Over the Garden Wall’, & ‘Clarence’, and that was a Time when I was also Fascinated with Disney’s Nine old Men and their Work/Book ‘the Illusion of Life’, and watching that Awesome Documentary on Cartoon Network’s ‘Next Generation of Animation’, I will always accept New Cartoon Network shows like ‘Adventure Time’, ‘Regular Show’, ‘Uncle Grandpa’, ‘Over the Garden Wall’, ‘Steven Universe’, & ‘We Bare Bears’ into the Cartoon Society. But as for ‘OK K.O.’ , the seems pretty Wonderful, It has a Blend of 1970’s Obscure Anime looks into the Western Animation looks, and How they have some Classical Cartooning Principles(Funny Cartoon Noises, Jokes & Gags) into the Modern Day Greatness. Even some of the characters seemed likable, Mostly on either Lord Boxman(voiced by the Great Jim Cummings), some of the Villainess Characters that the Heroes might met(Professor Venomous, Cosma, & Mr. Cardsley), and even some of the Main Good Characters, especially the Ones I also Sympathize like K.O., Rad, Enid, Dendy, Carol, & Mr. Gar, and I gotta say that Character Crinkly Wrinkly is the Funniest character that I’ve ever seen. I think it was Good that I first get to watch the Series when It was On-Demand before it aired on actual TV, but I have yet to see it’s 2013 Pilot episode along with the Rests that Aired on 2013, But I do know that it had a Mobile Game back then (though I did not Download it or played it) and a Series of Shorts by other Animation Studios, but I haven’t watch them because I am Never a huge fan of SCIENCE SARU and I’m Not too certain about Studio Yotta. But I gotta say also, This Show is a Fanstastic Experience on the Grand CN, Filled with Precious Heart-Warming episodes with Good Life Lessons like How to handle your own Duties as an Employer or how Great your Boss can be (‘Legends of Mr. Gar’), or If you Try not to Spoil your life by being a Self-Proclaimed Selfish ‘Cool Kid’ like Brat, you should have a More Focused Future ahead of you, even without going to Jail (‘We’ve Got Pests’), and the Show had some Crazy Developments such as Enid & Rad used to being a Couple (‘Second First Date’), and Enid being a Witch and being in a Family of Halloween-Themed Characters (‘Parents Day’). Plus the shows got a Good crew, Like the Program's Supervising Director Toby Jones, who Previously worked on 'Regular Show', and one of the Show's Story folks Dave Tennant, previously does some Stories for Pete Browngardt Cartoons, Which I think makes it Better for Me.

Pickle Rick – Why not, It’s “PICKLE RIIIICK!!!!”, I thought I would pass on this, But eventually won my Heart, don’t ask why, but Things just happen like that.

The Summoning - I just Discovered this while browsing on the internet probably from Fan-Art on DA, and I watched it on Youtube, and I gotta say, this Cartoon is Really Cute, Funny, & Creepy at the same time. The Main Characters seemed Lovable, and I mean Claire & Edgar, the Bunny Character is hugely Funny in a way, Though I feel Terribly Bad for the characters accidentally eating some things like Eating some Dandruff from a Big Head Island which Claire thought it was Dirt, and Eating Poop which Edgar thought it was Chocolate. But to make Matters Better for the Cartoon, Celmation Hero Ms. Natasha Allegri(Bee & Puppycat, Fionna & Cake) worked on the short as Director, Story Artist, & Character Designer, WHAT A HERO!!! And the Animations/Celmation was done by Digital eMation inc., the Celmation Team behind ‘Ok K.O. Let’s be Heroes!’ & the Season 5 of ‘Samurai Jack’.

The Movies of 2017 & Probably some on Video Games should be made soon.

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secretliz001 · 4 years ago

Text

翻译：Paul McCartney: One for the Road

原链接：https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/paul-mccartney-one-for-the-road-43295/ He blew it. Not that anybody spotted it. The audience at the Rosemont Horizon, outside Chicago, was too busy swooning in the ersatzcandlelight of a few thousand cigarette lighters and luxuriating in the warmbalm of nostalgia as a real, live Beatle reprised one of the band’s biggesthits onstage. Nobody appeared to notice — or care — that Paul McCartney had completely botched the words to his enduringturn-of-the-Seventies hymn “Let It Be.”

他搞砸了，虽然倒也没人发现。在芝加哥外的好事达体育馆，千千万万观众们都忙于举起打火机，在虚假烛光中陶醉，沉浸在温暖怀旧气息里，因为舞台上，一位真实的披头正在重演披头士乐队最受欢迎的歌曲之一。没有人发现（或者说，没有人在意）McCartney完全把Let It Be的歌词唱错了，这首发行于七世纪年代头上，经久不衰的歌。

“I condensed that little one very nicely — it took on a newmeaning,” McCartney confesses later with an embarrassed laugh. “All I did was,I forgot the second half of the first verse and put in the second verse. And Ithought, ‘God what am I going to do? I’ll just do the second verse and probablyno one will ever notice that I’ve done it twice.’ But I was so thrown off thatI ended up getting it wrong in the last verse as well.” Not that it was all hisfault anyway, he insists with a disarming smile. “I spend most of my timewatching these little cameos in the audience. It’s like all human life isthere, a big sea of it. And it’s a bit distracting. If I get off on the wrongfoot, it’s because I’m hung up on the audience.”

“这首歌我提炼得不错，给了它些新内涵。”McCartney尬笑着坦白，“我就，把下半首歌的第一段给忘了，唱成了第二段，想着天哪咋办，要不我就直接唱第二段得了，大概也没��会发现我唱了两遍。然而我脑筋整个被搞乱，结果最后一节也弄错了。”他毫无防备地笑着，坚持说这并不都是他自己的错，“大部分时间我都在观察观众席。看着人山人海，人类生活都浓缩在那儿，有点让人分心。心思都在观众身上，把我的步骤都弄乱了。”

And because, he might have added, that audience always was, still is and forever will be hung up on the Beatles. Currently in the midst of hisfirst major concert tour since his splashy 1976 American jaunt with the lateWings, Paul McCartney is digging deep into his half of the Beatles’ song bagafter spending most of the past twenty years pretending — in concert,anyway — that he had never been Fab in the first place. He is nowrediscovering to his eternal surprise, night after night, the enduring impactand resonance of the act he had effectively denied for all those years.

他可能还会补充说，这也是因为披头士乐队依然永远吸引着观众。McCartney正在进行一场大规模巡演，是自Wings乐队在1976年的那场高调美国巡演以来的第一次巡演。在过去的20年中，他一直在假装自己从来不是披头士乐队的一员（至少在演唱会上是这样表现的）。而为了这次巡演，他则深挖了自己创作的，占据披头士曲库一半的作品。如今每一晚他都能重新体验那份惊喜，那份他曾经故意拒绝面对，但是对观众有着经久不衰的影响和共鸣的惊喜。

It’s not all hot tears and wet seats, of course, like it was in’64. At the Rosemont Horizon, where McCartney and his five-piece band holdcourt for three sold-out nights, it’s more like bright shrieks of astonishmentand deep sighs of contentment, spiced with moments of poignant intimacy anddroll hilarity:

Two teenage girls in the front row gently sobbing during“Yesterday,” a song written nearly ten years before they were born.

A middle-aged couple slow-dancing in the balcony to “Hey Jude.”

A family of three, including a little girl of kindergarten age,holding up signs that read, “We ♥ Paul,” except the little girl is holding the “We” upside down.

The thirtysomething fella in the tenth row holding a cellularphone over his head, apparently phoning in the gig to a ticketless yuppie palat home.

在好事达体育馆，McCartney和他的五人乐队举办了三场售罄演唱会。现在不是1964年，观众席已经没有粉丝们的滚滚热泪和湿哒哒的椅子。取而代之的是快乐的惊声尖叫和愿望满足的大叹，点缀着各种亲情与搞笑时刻：

前排的两个少女听着 "Yesterday "轻轻啜泣，这首歌是在她们出生前10年写就的。

一对中年夫妇缓缓地伴着“Hey Jude”在看台上跳舞。

一家三口，举着“We ♥ Paul”的牌子，不过那个看着才在上幼儿园的小姑娘把“We”的牌子举倒了。

第十排的三十多岁的小伙子高举着移动电话过头顶，显然在给一个没买着票只能家里蹲的雅痞朋友打电话。

“I’m touching a lot of different nerves out there,” saysMcCartney, quite rightly. “Young couples and not-so-young couples who wereyoung when ‘Hey Jude’ came out. You see lots of guys doing high fives to eachother, a lot of communication, a lot of warmth.

“不同的人对我的表演都有感触。”McCartney说。他没说错。“不管是对年轻的情侣，还是对“Hey Jude”刚出时很年轻但现在已经不年轻的情侣。你可以看着好多人互相击掌，看到各种交流各种温暖。“

“It’s not so much déjà vu for me. I’ve come back asanother person. I have different sensibilities now. I have kids, all that.Let’s face it, the first tours the Beatles did, the main essential thing wasscoring chicks. I’m a different person now, because that’s not allowed” Hegrins.

“但其实我对这场景并不熟悉，因为我回归时已经成长为另外一个人了，带着更多感情更多见解，有了孩子什么的。老实和你说，披头士第一次巡演最重要的目标就是找妹子而已。现在我不一样了，可不允许我这么干。”他笑笑。

“And what I find now is, I get really touched by the audience,” hesays. “I keep telling Dick Lester [the director of A Hard Day’s Night and Help!, whois making a film of the tour] to capture all the little things we see from thestage. Nobody in the audience really sees it. But we do, because we’re lookingat them. And that’s the real show.”

“我发现自己倒是被观众感动着。我一直和Dick Lester说要捕捉到从台上向下看的各种细节。（Dick Lester是A Hard Day’s Night and Help!的导演，也在为此次巡演进行拍摄。）我们能看到观众在席内看不见的细节，因为我们才是面对观众的人。观众的反映才是真正的演出。”

That’s also the crux of Paul McCartney’s continuing dilemma as anex-Beatle. McCartney, 47, has been a solo artist for nineteen years, nearlydouble his tenure as a Beatle. In 1988 he made a welcome return to his Fiftiesrock & roll roots with the Russian-only “covers” album Snova v SSSR, a.k.a. Back in theU.S.S.R. Last spring he released his most critically acclaimed(although commercially disappointing) album in years, Flowers in theDirt. In addition, his recent songwriting partnership withElvis Costello has yielded two Top Forty hits, his own version of “My BraveFace” and Costello’s recording of “Veronica.” He capped 1989 by debuting afine, new touring band featuring top-drawer studio and road guys who couldoutplay Wings blindfolded — guitarist Robbie McIntosh (the Pretenders),singer-guitarist Hamish Stuart (Average White Band), keyboardist Paul “Wix”Wickens (Paul Young, the The) and drummer Chris Whitten (the Waterboys, JulianCope), plus McCartney’s wife, Wings vet Linda, on keys and harmonies.

这也是McCartney作为一位前披头士一直进退两难的症结所在。47岁的他已经单飞19年，几乎是他披头士生涯的两倍。1988年，他推出了一张只在俄罗斯发行的翻唱专辑Snova v SSSR（又名Back in the U.S.S.R.），令人欣喜地追溯回（影响到他的）五十年代的摇滚乐根源。去年春天，他发行了多年来最受好评的专辑Flower in the Dirt，虽然商业成绩不理想。此外，他最近与Elvis Costello的合作了两首歌曲，McCartney版本的My Brave Face 和Costello的 Veronica，都打到了排行榜前四十名。1989年，他首次组建了一支优秀的新巡演乐队，都是优秀的录音室和巡演音乐人，蒙着眼睛弹也能超过Wings乐队--吉他手Robbie McIntosh (Pretenders)，主唱吉他手Hamish Stuart (Average White Band)，键盘手Paul “Wix” Wickens (PaulYoung, the The)和鼓手Chris Whitten (Waterboys, Julian Cope)，再加上他的妻子，Wings乐队常驻成员Linda，负责键盘和和声。

Yet it has hardly escaped McCartney’s attention that many of thepeople packing arenas and, later this spring, stadiums on his 1989-90 worldtour are not coming to see him play obscure album tracks from Flowers in theDirt. They are coming to see the Beatles-by-proxy. They arecoming to have their emotional buttons pushed by the songs that defined andtransformed their youth — “The Long and Winding Road,” “Can’t Buy MeLove,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Good Day Sunshine,” “Things WeSaid Today,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” the climactic“Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End” medley from Abbey Road. Theyare coming to see many of these songs performed live for the first time (thebulk of the Beatles oldies in McCartney’s show postdate their 1966 retirementfrom the stage) and, quite possibly, the last.

然而，McCartney当然不会假装无视，其实铺满场馆的人们并不是来听他演出Flowers in the Dirt中稍显晦涩的曲目。他们是来食用披头士代餐的。他们希望听到那些定义并改变了他们青春的歌曲，去触动自己的情感开关— “The Long and Winding Road,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Good Day Sunshine,” “Things We Said Today,”“Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” Abbey Road中高潮迭起的 “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End” 组曲。他们的目的，是来欣赏史上头次（也有可能是最后一次）现场演出的披头士老歌，大量1966年披头士离开舞台以后创作的曲目。

At the Rosemont Horizon and later that week at the Skydome inToronto and at the Forum in Montreal, you could feel the audience buzz take apalpable dip every time McCartney went into an unfamiliar number from Flowers in theDirt, like the reggaefied shuffle “Rough Ride” or “We GotMarried,” a Flowers highlight recalling the hard-rock melodrama ofmid-Seventies Wings. The pressure drop was particularly noticeable at thebeginning of the two-and-a-half-hour show, as the crowd cheered the soundtrackof Beatles, Wings and solo McCartney hits that accompanied Richard Lester’sopening rockumentary-film montage with its kinetic blasts of Beatlemania,flower power, Vietnam, et cetera. After which McCartney and his band hit thestage and stepped right into … his new single, the appealing butcomparatively low-key “Figure of Eight.”

在他巡演的各个场地都能感觉到，每次McCartney表演一首Flowers in the Dirt中的新曲目，观众的热情会陡然下降，比如雷鬼风的“Rough Ride”或者 “We Got Married”，令人眼前一亮回想起七十年代中期Wings的硬摇旋律的“Flower”。这在开场尤其明显。观众们欢呼着披头士，Wings, McCartney的solo作品，伴着导演制作的记录着摇滚年代开场，屏幕上展现了披头士狂热，花之力，越战等等。之后，McCartney和乐队上台直接演出新单曲，是吸引人但相对低调的 "Figure of Eight"。

“We did thaton purpose — we had to do that,” McCartney argues over aveggie burger (the McCartneys are devout vegetarians) during a preshowdinner break backstage in Toronto. “Originally, we were going to open with ‘ISaw Her Standing There.’ But I really got upset by the idea. I was going homeone night and I thought, ‘That’s really betraying our new material, sending itright down the line.’ Like saying, ‘Hey, I haven’t been around for thirteenyears and I haven’t done anything worthwhile. Here’s the Beatles stuff.’

“我是故意的。“McCartney吃着素汉堡解释道（McCartney一家都是坚定的素食主义者）。”本来我们想拿I Saw Her Standing There开场，但我真的不支持这个想法。一天晚上回家的时候我想着，‘这简直在背叛我们的新作品，整个把格调拉低了’。这个安排就好像在说，‘嘿，我神隐了13年，啥有价值的事都没干。喏，给你们听听披头士的歌得了。‘“

“It’s the obvious thing. Boom, bang, Beatles, Beatles. Then yousay, ‘Now we’d like to do some new material.’ Boo! Hiss! I’ve seen the Stonestry and do it, and it doesn’t go down that great. That’s a fact of life. Evenwith the Beatles, new material didn’t always go down that well. It was theolder tunes. ‘Baby’s in Black’ never went down nearly as well as ‘I Feel Fine’or ‘She Loves You.’ That’s just the nature of the beast.

“真的很明显。如果上来就砰砰唱披头士的歌，然后说‘现在我们想演一些新作品。’嘘声就来了。我见过滚石他们这么做，效果不太好。这就是人生嘛，就算是披头士，新作品落地激起的浪花也不会大，老歌才更能带动人们。唱‘Baby’s in Black‘的效果就没有唱‘I Feel Fine’ 或 ‘She Loves You’好。这行就是这样。”

“It is hard to follow my own act,” he admits. “But the only answerto that would be to give up after the Beatles. I only had two alternatives.Give up, or carry on. And having elected to carry on, I couldn’t stop.”

McCartney has been consistently productive as an ex-Beatle. He hasnot, however, been consistently successful. His Eighties chart duds include Pipes of Peace,Give My Regards to Broad Street (the soundtrack to hisdisastrous feature film of the same name), Press to Play and thesolo/Wings “greatest hits” package, All the Best. Notably, McCartneyincludes only one song from the first three albums in his current show: “SaySay Say,” his Number One duet with Michael Jackson, from Pipes of Peace, isfeatured in Richard Lester’s opening film.

他承认，“追上先前的成就很难，唯一的答案是在披头士之后就放弃。只有两个选择：放弃，或者继续。既然选择了继续，我就停不下来。"

McCartney作为前披头士一直都很高产，但也没有持续成功。他80年代排行榜上的哑弹包括Pipes of Peace、Give My Regards to Broad Street（超灾难的同名电影原声带）、Press to Play和Wings的精选集All the Best。值得注意的是他本次演出只收录了前三张专辑中的一首歌：Say Say Say，是他与迈克尔-杰克逊合作曲，打上了榜单第一，也在演唱会片头影片出现了。

Flowers in the Dirt has done reasonably well saleswise — 600,000 copies inthe United States, 1 million in continental Europe by year’s end — but hasnot been the chartbuster either McCartney or his manager, Richard Ogden,certainly hoped for.

Flowers in the Dirt的销量相当不错--在美国发行了60万张，到年底在欧洲发行了100万张--但还没有达到McCartney与他的经纪人Richard Ogden希望的畅销程度。

“It was as if it didn’t exist,” Ogden says ruefully. “I sat with aradio program director from Chicago, very nice, very up about the show. And hesaid, ‘What’s the next single?’ And I said, ‘We’re just starting with “Figureof Eight” ‘ And he said, ‘What about “This One”? That’s really good.’ And Isaid, ‘That came out in August, mate.’ That really drives me crazy.”

“打单结果就好像消失了一样，”Ogden怅然若失地说，"我和一个芝加哥的电台节目总监坐着，他人很好，对这个节目很上心。他说，'下一张单曲是什么？’我说：" Figure of Eight " 他说"那This One呢？这首很好听。”我说, ‘这首8月份就发行了啊，老哥。’真的好抓狂。"

McCartney’s response, says Ogden, is a bit stoic. “Paul’s beendoing this for a long time, and he’s going, ‘I don’t want to think about thisanymore. You guys sort it out.'” In fact, McCartney’s response to his ongoingEighties commercial and, until recently, critical slump has been to get out andplay, something he had done infrequently (Live Aid, the 1986 Prince’s Trustconcert) since Wings broke up following his arrest in Japan in 1980 forpossession of marijuana. In 1987, with Ogden’s active encouragement andorganization, McCartney initiated a series of Friday-night jam sessions at asuburban-London studio with an eye toward eventually finding enough new,inspiring players to start a formal band. He also liked the idea, he says, ofhaving a rockers’ equivalent of cafe society.

McCartney的��应倒是挺淡定，他在这一行太久了。他说，“我不想考虑这个了，你们搞定吧”。实际上对于自己八十年代作品商业上的低迷，和最近才上升的风评，他的对应方式一直是出去演出（Live Aid，1986年Prince的Trust演唱会），虽然自1980年在日本因持有大麻被捕后Wings解散以来，他很少这样做了。1987年，在Ogden的积极鼓励和组织下，McCartney在伦敦郊区的一间录音室发起了一系列周五晚上的即兴演奏会，目的是找到足够多新人、有灵感的乐手来组建一支正式的乐队。拥有一个像咖啡公社一样的rocker团体，这个想法他很喜欢。

“The Beatles nearly did that once,” says McCartney. “We were goingto open an Apple tea room, where we could all go and be intellectual, talk artor Stockhausen. So I thought, ‘We’ll do a similar thing with the jam. Maybe theword will get out that there’s a jam every Friday night, see who shows up.’ Butin fact, because it’s done by your office, and they just ring specific people,it didn’t work out like that. Whoever they rang, showed. Whoever they didn’t ring,didn’t show.”

McCartney 说，“披头士差点就这么干了，本来我们想用Apple的一个茶室，大家都进去开拓思路，聊聊艺术或者Stockhausen。我想着我们的即兴排练也学样，每周五的活动的话传开了，看看谁会参加。但其实因为是办公室组织的，而他们只会给一些特定的人打电话，效果不好。接到电话的人会参加，没接到的就不参加。”

When asked why he stayed off the road for so long, McCartney saysvery casually: “I just couldn’t be bothered. Until Live Aid came along, Ididn’t think of doing anything live. I don’t know why. Maybe because nobodyasked me. Nobody asked me personally, anyway. I’d hear little things here andthere; I heard that Elton John was quoted as saying, ‘What he needs is to getback on the road.’ But it never seemed that vital for me; I was alreadyenjoying myself.”

问他为什么这么久没有巡演，McCartney反应很随意，“我就不是很care嘛，在Live Aid之前都没想过现场演出，我也不知道为什么。大概因为没人问过我吧，至少没人当面问过我。小道消息确实听说了点，我听人说Elton John说过“McCartney他现在需要的是回去巡演”。但这对我来说也不太关键，我已经很享受自己的生活了。”

McCartney was never really much of a road hog. Wings’ first andonly American tour came ten years after the Beatles said sayonara to the roadat Candlestick Park. And it’s easy to tell how much time has elapsed by watchingMcCartney’s current show. The production is heavy on Seventies arena kitsch:lasers galore, levitating keyboards. McCartney’s between-song patter alsoprobably seems quaint (“We’re going to go back through the mists of time, to atime known as the Sixties”) to veteran Eighties concertgoers used to thenarrative command of Springsteen or Bono’s spiritual cheerleading.

McCartney从来都不痴迷巡演，披头士在Candlestick Park演出和观众彻底说byebye十年后Wings才在美国巡演。这是第一次也是最后一次。而看McCartney现在的演出，马上就能知道时间过去了多久。这场演出充满了七十年代舞台上的奇特风格：激光灯效，键盘悬浮着，对于八十年代资深演唱会观众，他们已经习惯了Springsteen 的narrative command【？】或者Bono的精神鼓励的，McCartney演出间歇的唠嗑风格古早，“我们将穿过时间的迷雾，回到一个被称为六十年代的时代”。

One distinctly Eighties aspect of McCartney’s tour is hiscontroversial tour-sponsorship deal with Visa for the 1990 American shows. TheVisa arrangement — reportedly worth $8.5 million, which McCartney saysbasically covers the cost of transport for the tour — represents a new,potentially troublesome twist in pop-music sponsorship: rock & rollsponsored (some will say co-opted) not simply by a merchandiser butby a credit-card company, with close ties to banks and their complex networksof possibly questionable investments. McCartney says he vetted Visa asthoroughly as possible before saying, “I do.” “It may be true that they are agigantic money corporation,” he says, “but I can’t see what’s wrong with that,unless you can prove to me South African links.”

本次巡演的一个明显80年代特征是他与Visa公司就1990年美国演出达成的赞助协议，这个协议其实有点争议。据报道，Visa公司赞助达850万美元，McCartney说，这笔钱基本上包括了巡演的交通费。它代表了流行音乐赞助中一个新的、潜在的麻烦：摇滚乐的赞助（合作）不是简单地由一个商人赞助，而是一家信用卡公司，与银行及其可能会出问题的复杂投资网络关系密切。McCartney在说 "我同意 "之前，他尽可能彻底地审查了Visa。"他们可能确实是一家巨大的财团，"他说，"但我不觉得有什么问题，除非你能向我证明他们和南非之间有关系。"

McCartney also insists he is not betraying any kind of political,social or emotional trust represented by the Beatles or the songs of theirsthat he’s performing on tour. “Whether you like it or not,” he says, “no matterwhat people thought was going on in the Sixties, every single band that didanything got paid for it. You look back at the early Beatles concert programs,there were Coke ads. We always got paid for everything we did, and when we madea deal, we always wanted the best.

McCartney坚持认为他并没有背叛任何一种披头士乐队代表的政治、社会或情感寄托，也没有与他在巡演中歌相左的行动。“实话实说不怕你惊讶，"他说，"不管你觉得六十年代是什么风气，每个乐队做的任何举动都是有报酬的。你回头看看披头士早期的演唱会，有可乐做的广告。我们做任何事情都会得到报酬，做交易总是希望得到最好的。“

“Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.’That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now let’swrite a swimming pool.’ We said it out of innocence. Out of normal, fuckingworking-class glee that we were able to write a ‘swimming pool.’ For the firsttime in our lives, we could actually do something and earn money.

“有人和我说，‘可是披头士是反物质主义的呀。’这只是个传说罢了。John和我以前真的会坐下来写歌，说“咱们写个游泳池出来”，这些都是无意识说出来的。这种普通的，tmd工人阶级的志趣使我们通过写歌赚到了一个“游泳池”。这是我们人生第一次，确确实实可以种瓜得瓜挣大钱。

“You get any act around the table with their record company, theytell their manager, ‘Go in and kill.’ They don’t say, ‘Oh, let the punters inat half price.’ We’ve actually done a lot of that — the free program, thatwasn’t necessary.

“你和唱片公司打交道，他们都会和经纪人说，‘去吧，大干一场’。他们不会说，‘欧我们票价打对折吧’。事实上我们也做过免费的项目，不过也没必要罢了。

“And I think it’s just going to be tough if people don’t like it,”he says coolly. “Stick the finger up and say, ‘Sorry, boys, it’s tough. You maynot like me because of it. Tough darts. I know I’m not doing it for whateverperception you put on it. It doesn’t alter me.’ I’ve taken money off of EMI.The Beatles took money off of United Artists.

“而且我认为如果人们不喜欢，他们就得忍着。”他酷酷说，“我会举个中指说，‘Sorry咯，这事就这样了，你可能不喜欢，但你也只能忍着。我做这个并不是为了你对我的看法，你怎么想都不会改变我’。我拿的是EMI的钱，披头士拿的是联美公司的钱。”

“I wish we’d taken a little more actually,” he says, suddenlylaughing, taking some of the chill out of the air. “The accountants on A Hard Day’s Night gotthree percent. We got a fee.”

他突然笑着说，“我倒是希望当时多薅点，A Hard Day’s Night的会计都拿了百分之三，我们只拿了一笔固定的钱。” 气氛突然放松了起来。

“I‘m actually getting tired of Paul interviews,” Linda McCartneyremarks with a shrug while her husband is being trailed by a television-newscrew backstage in Chicago. “People always ask him about the same things. WhatJohn said about this, or what such and such Beatles song meant? Why don’t theyask him about other things, about the important things going on in theworld?”

当他电视新闻人在跟着McCartney在芝加哥场后台采访时，Linda McCartney耸耸肩说，“Paul的采访我都已经疲了。人们总是问他同样的问题：John说了什么，或者这个那个披头士歌曲是什么意思？他们为什么不问其他的，问问世上真正发生的重要事件？"

For many of the press hounds, radio DJs and TV interviewers following this tour, not to mention the fans who are paying for the privilege, the Beatles are still one of the most important things in the world. In a world still reeling from their original sound and remarkable creative vision, the Beatles’ significance as a cultural touchstone and spiritual anchor cannot be overestimated. In the Sixties the group was the embodiment of youthful ambition and utopian desire amid the graphic realities of war in Southeast Asia and at home in the urban ghettos. Now, with the world plagued by crack, wracked with racial hatred and poised on the edge of ecological apocalypse, talking about the Beatles is like a form of therapy.

对于关注这场巡演的许多狗仔，电台DJ，和电视记者，更不用说付钱来看的观众，披头士乐队依然是世上最重要的事情之一。他们的原创声响和非凡的创作理念仍在影响着这个世界，作为文化试金石和精神支柱的意义是不可低估的。在六十年代，这支乐队在斗争纷飞的东南亚和城市贫民窟，体现了青年们的志向和对乌托邦的向往。而现在，在这蔓延着毒品，种族仇恨和生态灾难的世界，谈论披头士乐队更像一种疗愈手段。

That seems to be just as true for McCartney as it is for any fan. During rehearsals for the tour, the band would take an occasional tea break, at which point, Paul Wickens recalls, “anecdotes would come out about the old days, little stories about him and John.”

对McCartney来说似乎也是如此。在巡演排练期间，乐队偶尔会进行茶歇，Paul Wickens回忆道，“他会说一些旧日轶事，关于他和John的小故事"。

But the usual aura of Beatlemania that accompanies McCartney wherever he goes has increased tenfold, at least, with the inclusion of so many Beatles songs in his set. The recent settlement of the band members’ lawsuits with their record company, Capitol-EMI, and among themselves has also brought the tiresome issue of a Beatles reunion back to the fore. McCartney himself fanned that flame at the start of the American tour in November when he suggested during a Los Angeles press conference that with their legal differences settled, maybe he and George Harrison might write songs together for the first time. (He didn’t say anything about writing with Ringo Starr.) Harrison quickly put the kibosh on a possible reunion, issuing a terse press statement: “As far as I’m concerned, there won’t be a Beatles reunion as long as John Lennon remains dead.”

但无论McCartney走到哪里，平时就伴随着他的披头士狂热至少成十倍地增长，毕竟他的演出中加入了这么多披头士的歌曲。最近，乐队成员结束了与Capitol-EMI唱片公司的诉讼，这也重新聚焦了披头士重聚这个老大难问题。McCartney在11月的洛杉矶巡演的新闻发布会上表示，随着他们解决法律分歧，也许他和George会第一次一起写歌。(他没有说任何关于与Ringo一起写作的事情。)George很快就打消了这个念头，发表了一份简短的新声明：“就我所知，只要John没活回来，披头士是无法重聚的。"

Indeed, John Lennon is an extremely conspicuous presence on McCartney’s tour, by his very absence. His name, his music and his celebrated differences with McCartney during and after the Beatles’ lifetime repeatedly come up in both interviews and idle conversation. Lennon figures prominently in the autobiographical passages that constitute the bulk of the 100-page concert program McCartney is distributing gratis at his shows. But in discussing Lennon in the context of his own contributions to the Beatles’ legacy, without Lennon to answer back, McCartney runs the risk of looking like he’s grabbing all the glory.

事实上，John的缺席反倒在本次巡演中成为了一个极其显眼的存在。采访和闲谈中人们都反复提及他的名字、音乐以及他与McCartney在披头士解散前后的著名纠纷。巡演中免费【免费!!!!!!!!】发放的【多达!!!!!!!!】100页场刊大段的自传段落中，John的身影占重要地位。但在讨论Lennon对披头士作品的贡献时，此时没有Lennon回击，McCartney看着像抢走了所有风头。

For example, a portion of the program’s interview section is devoted to McCartney’s adventures in the nascent London underground of the mid-Sixties: hanging out with art scenesters like gallery owner Robert Fraser, attending avant-garde music concerts, helping to set up the pioneering Indica Bookshop and Gallery, funding the seminal underground newspaper IT (International Times). “I’m not trying to say it was all me,” McCartney points out in the program, “but I do think John’s avant-garde period later, was really to give himself a go at what he’d seen me having a go at.”

例如，场刊访谈有一部分是关于McCartney在伦敦六十年代中期新生地下艺术中的穿梭：与画廊老板Robert Fraser等艺术界人士混在一起，参加前卫音乐会，帮着打造先锋书店画廊Indica，资助开创性的地下报纸IT（International Times）。"我并不想说这都是我的功劳，" McCartney在场刊中指出，"但我确实认为John后期对先锋艺术的探索，是为了给自己一个新生活的机会，因为他看到了我经历的新生活。"

“Because I talk about this so much, people go around saying, ‘Oh, he’s trying to reclaim the Beatles for himself, to take it away from John,'” says McCartney while relaxing on the chartered jet ferrying him, his family and the band between Toronto and Montreal. “I’m not doing anything of the kind! I’m not trying to claim the history and achievements of the Beatles for myself. I’m just trying to reclaim my part of it.

"因为我经常谈这件事，所以人们到处说，'哦，他想把披头士据为己有，从John那里夺走它'，" McCartney乘着包机轻松谈到（这包机在多伦多和蒙特利尔之间接送他自己、家人和乐队成员）。"完全没有的事! 我不想把披头士的历史和成就据为己有。我只是想找回属于自己的那部分。”

“It’s not sour grapes. It’s true. I was there in the mid-Sixties when all these things started to happen in London. The Indica Gallery, art people like Robert Fraser. I was living in London, and I was the only bachelor of the four. The others were married and living in the suburbs. I was just there when it all started to happen.

“真不是酸葡萄心理，六十年代中期伦敦百花齐放的时代，我就在那旋涡中心，在Indica画廊，与Robert Fraser这类艺术人士在一起。我就住在伦敦，也是乐队里唯一一个单身的。另外三个都结婚了住在郊区，我只是正巧那时在那地而已。”

“The difference is that once John got interested in it, he did it like everything else — to extremes. He did it with great energy and enthusiasm. He dove into it headfirst with Yoko. So it looked like he had been the one doing all the avant-garde stuff.

“It’s the ultimate conundrum,” he admits rather helplessly. “If I don’t say anything, I go on being the so-called wimp of the group. If I do open my mouth, it looks like I’m sullying John.

"不同的是，约翰一对它产生兴趣，他就开始走极端，就像他做别的事情那样。他以极大的精力和热情去投入，和洋子一起，一头扎进去。所以看起来他才一直在做各种先锋前卫的活动。”

"这是终极难题。"他颇为无奈地承认。"如果我什么都不说，我就一直是所谓的群体中的懦夫。但如果我真的开了口，看着就像是我在diss约翰。”

“And this has only become an issue because he’s dead. Because of the mythologizing that inevitably comes with someone as special as that. And he never wanted that for himself. I remember driving in a car, listening to an interview with John on the radio on the day he died in which he said, ‘I don’t want to be a martyr.’ He didn’t want that responsibility, to be larger than life, to be some kind of god.”

No one brings it up, but this discussion, ironically enough, is taking place on the evening of the ninth anniversary of John Lennon’s murder.

"而正是因为他去世了，这才成了一个问题。因为他地位如此特殊，不可避免会被捧上神坛，可他从来都不想这样。我开车时，听过约翰去世那天的电台采访，他说，'我不想成为烈士'。他不想要那种责任，大于生命，要成为某种神什么的。"

虽然无人提及，但讽刺的是，这场访谈是在John Lennon遇害九周年的晚上进行的。

“The fact is, we were a team,” McCartney states firmly as the plane begins its descent, “despite everything that went on between us and around us. And I was the only songwriter he ever chose to work with. Nuff said.”

"但其实我们是一个团队，"他在飞机开始下降时坚定表示，"尽管我们之间以及周围环境发生了各种事情，但我依然是唯一一个他自己选择合作写歌的人，就是这样。"

A day in the touring life, McCartney style, is a nonstop series of interviews, photo opportunities, press conferences, sound checks and meals grabbed quickly by a band on the run. And, of course, the nights are busy, too.

McCartney的巡演生活每天充斥着持续的采访、拍照、新闻发布会、试音，在奔波中随意扒几口饭。当然，晚上也很忙。

This evening’s performance at Toronto’s Skydome includes McCartney’s nightly plug for Friends of the Earth, the international ecological lobbying group that he is promoting throughout the tour. As the final notes of the closing Abbey Road medley reverberate around the cavernous Skydome, McCartney and the band jump into a fleet of golf carts, which zoom through the hallways to a waiting tour bus. With all aboard, the bus pulls out of the Skydome Starsky and Hutch-style before most of the fans have even left their seats. Back at the hotel at 1:00 a.m., McCartney hosts a small bash for the tour entourage in his suite. The food is vegetarian Chinese. The main attraction is a video of the evening’s Sugar Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran fight. At 2:30 a.m., as the party breaks up, McCartney, wearing a bathrobe, dances alone in the living room to the new Quincy Jones album.

今晚在多伦多Skydome的演出，包括McCartney每晚为Friends of the Earth做的宣传，一个国际生态游说组织。当空旷的Skydome回荡着Abbey Road组曲最后一个音符，McCartney和就乐队跳上高尔夫球车，穿过走廊驶向一辆等着的巡演大巴。大多数歌迷都还没来得及离开座位呢，大家就都上了车，飞速驶出了Skydome，像在演警界双雄似的。凌晨1点回到酒店，他会在套间里为随行人员举办一场小型派对，吃的中式素食，电视里放着当晚Sugar Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran的比赛录像。凌晨2点半派对散场，他会穿着浴袍，听着Quincy Jones的新专独自，在客厅里独自跳舞。

Sedate in tone, organized with stunning military efficiency, the 1989-90 Paul McCartney World Tour is strictly business — the business of putting on a good show, promoting the latest record, getting maximum publicity and attempting to satisfy the constant public hunger for all things Beatle.

“This is more like a Beatles tour, strangely enough,” says McCartney. “In doing this tour, I’ve taken hints. If someone comes up and says, ‘How should we do this?’ my mind goes back to the best tours I’ve been on. And those were the first Beatles tours of America. They were highly organized, very efficient.

基调沉稳，组织高效，1989-90年Paul McCartney世界巡回演唱会是一场严格的商业活动—是为了举办一场优秀演出，推广最新唱片，获得最大宣传，并试图满足公众对披头士相关的持续渴望。

"挺奇怪的，这倒更像是一场披头士巡演，"McCartney说。"巡演中，我有一些自我暗示。如果有人过说，'我们应该怎么做？'脑海里就回想起我参加过的最好的巡演：披头士的第一次美国巡演，组织得很好，很有效率。

Where there was once the hysteria of four wild boys with the world at their feet, however, now there is the calm of a middle-aged man who spends nearly all of his offstage hours meeting with assorted advisers, attending to his family (he and Linda are accompanied on this series of shows by two of their four children, Stella and James) and in turn being attended to by personal staff and security, the most prominent of the latter being three muscular, well-dressed men who look as if they had graduated with honors from Secret Service finishing school. Hell raising, needless to say, is at a premium on this tour.

曾经的，是四个狂野男孩带动的歇斯底里，站在世界之巅，现在的，是一个冷静的中年男子，几乎把所有台下时间都用在会见各种顾问、照顾家人（四个孩子中Stella和James这次陪他和Linda巡演），并反过来又受助理们和安保的照顾，其中最突出的是三个肌肉发达、衣着光鲜的男人，看着像特工学校毕业的优等生。Hell raising【？】在此次巡演中很重要。

“I’m not used to that,” Robbie McIntosh says of the tour’s emphasis on organization. “When I was with the Pretenders, we would do a sound check and then we would go to a pub or something. Now with this, I get a feeling I can’t do that. It’s a lot more regimented, basically because the security is a lot heavier, because of who Paul is. And I guess because of what happened to John, although nobody directly mentions that.”

"我不习惯这样。" Robbie McIntosh提到这次巡演很强调组织性。"当我和Pretenders乐队在一起时，做完音响检查，我们就回去酒吧或者别的地方。现在我感觉自己不能这样做了。一方面因为Paul的身份，安保工作更加严密。另一方面我猜也是因为John的原因。虽然并没有人直截了当提出来。"

McIntosh observes that the band “is sort of sacred” to McCartney, wholly separate from business. “He never talks business. Never, ever. He’s never mentioned money or anything like that to me. If he’s got something to say, then he’ll say it to the manager, and you will get it from him.

McIntosh发现乐队对McCartney几乎有些“神圣”，是完全与商业活动分开的。“他从来不说商业上的事情，从来都没有。他对我从来不提钱啊什么的。如果他想说，他会和经纪人沟通，经纪人再来和你沟通。”

“And he’s got a very young approach as far as the band,” says McIntosh “You’d think this is his first band the way he goes on. You see him at sound checks, going around in circles and doing those silly little jumps. It’s a real novelty to him to have a band again — and he treats it like that.”

"搞乐队这方面，他的各种行为都显得相当年轻，" McIntosh说，"他的做法会让你以为这是他待的第一个乐队。试音时你会看到他绕圈圈，傻傻在蹦跶。对他来说，再度拥有乐队是一件很新奇的事情--他也是这样应对的。"

The sound checks are shows in themselves. McCartney doesn’t run through any of the songs in the regular production; instead, he leads the band through a batch of oldies (Carl Perkins’s “Matchbox,” an old Beatles cover, and tracks from the Russian album, like “Just Because” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”), the Wings B side “C Moon,” the jaunty British music-hall number “Me Father Upon the Stage” and a Latin-hustle medley of Beatles songs.

试音本身就是一场演出。通常人们会过一遍歌单，但McCartney不这样。他会带着乐队演一些老歌(Carl Perkins的“Matchbox,” 翻唱披头士的歌，俄罗斯独家专辑里的歌, 类似 “Just Because” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore”这种。)Wings的B面单曲“C Moon”，英式音乐厅的欢快曲目 "Me Father Upon the Stage "和披头士曲目的拉丁风串烧。

“He’s a real clown,” Wix says quite admiringly. “He loves to show off, and he loves to be there doing it, making people laugh.”

And sure enough, onstage you can see by the light of his beaming, vintage Beatle Paul smile and the way he throws himself into the sixteen Beatles songs featured in the show that no one is enjoying this forward-into-the-past expedition more than McCartney himself.

“It’s twenty years, man,” McCartney says a bit wearily in response to the questions that have dogged him the whole length of the tour — why Beatles songs, and why so many?

"他真的是个小丑式人物。"Wix相当佩服地说。"他喜欢炫技，喜欢在台上搞笑让观众快乐。"

在舞台上，你可以从他那笑容满面、复古的披头士Paul的笑容，以及他投入演出中的十六首披头士歌曲中的方式看出来，没有人比他本人更享受这种向着曾经去探索的征途。

麦卡特尼有些疲惫地回答了困扰他整个巡演的问题--为什么是披头士的歌，为什么这么多？

“You can’t keep angry forever, twenty years after an event that hurt,” he says, referring to the band’s acrimonious breakup. “Time is a great healer.”

谈起披头士乐队的激烈解散，他说道，"已经二十年了，老兄，二十年前的事我再心痛，也不可能永远生着气。时间很能疗伤。"

McCartney explains that in preparation for the tour he actually sat down with pen and paper and drew up a list of his favorite Paul McCartney songs, Beatles and otherwise. He came up with so many of them that at one point there was talk, briefly anyway, of doing two completely different shows in each city. “I’d said to myself, ‘You’re a composer,'” he says. “‘There’s no shame in doing these songs.'”

他解释说，“准备巡演时自己真的拿着纸和笔，坐下来，写了一份他心中的Paul McCartney最佳曲目，其中包括披头士乐队和其他时期写的。单子太长了，甚至一度提到要在每个城市做两场完全不同的演出。"我对自己说，'你是作曲人'，"他说，"'演这些歌并不丢人'。"

The songs of late partner John Lennon were a different matter. “In fact, I considered doing a major tribute to John,” says McCartney. “But it suddenly felt too precious, too showbiz. I was going to have a whacking great picture of John and just say, ‘He was my friend.’ Which was true. I’m totally proud to have worked with him.

演出已故搭档John Lennon的作品则含义不同。“我其实考虑过加一个John的致敬环节，但这回忆对我来说太珍贵，这环节也太作秀了。我本想挥着一张John的照片说，‘他是我的朋友’，这是真的，能与他合作我真的很骄傲。”

“But then people started saying, ‘Why don’t you do “Imagine”?’ And I thought, ‘Fucking hell, Diana Ross does “Imagine.” They all do “Imagine.”‘ That’s when I backed off the whole thing. You go on tour, you sing your songs, arrange ’em nice, do it, and if you do it well enough, that’s what people will remember.”

“但人们又要说了，‘为啥不唱Imagine?’我就觉得，‘草了，Diana Ross也唱过Imagine，所有人都唱Imagine’。于是我退却了。我就想着去巡演，唱着自己的歌好好编排，如果做得够好，大家是会记住的。”

Paul McCartney was rather late out of the starting gate for the 1989 Dinosaurs on the Road Sweepstakes, eating the dust already kicked up during the summer and early fall by the Who, the Rolling Stones and even Ringo Starr. But he’s not bugged either about his membership in the club — “I’m another dinosaur,” he says frankly — or by the implicit pressure to prove his viability as a contemporary artist to an audience obsessed by his past, if necessary at the expense of his peers.

【这段的典故没咋看懂，也没查到，有无老师解答？】

“It’s never stopped,” says McCartney, sitting on a bench in the Montreal Canadiens’ locker room while a sold-out house awaits him inside the Forum next door. “I will never stop competing with every other artist in this business. Pet Sounds kicked me to make Pepper. It was direct competition with the Beach Boys. So what? That’s what everyone’s doing. Although when Brian Wilson heard Pepper, he went the other way.

“竞争从来没有停止过，”他说，在更衣室里坐在板凳上，隔壁漫长的人都在期待着他演出。“我永远不会放弃和这行艺术家们竞争的。Pet Sounds促使我推动Sgt. Pepper项目，这是和the Beach Boys直接竞争，但又怎样呢？大家都这么做。虽然Brian Wilson听完Sgt. Pepper，他就调转枪头啦。”

“But, yeah, it’s competition. If you put ten children in a room, after an hour or so, they’ll sort themselves out. The smart one. The big, tough one. The cowardly one. The funny one who’s the friend of the smart one and the big, tough one. They will establish a pecking order.”

And where does McCartney place himself in rock’s pecking order?

“I’d put me at the top. Just because I’m a competitor, man. You don’t have Ed Moses going around saying, ‘Sure, I’m the third-best hurdler in the world.’ You don’t find Mike Tyson saying, ‘Sure, there’s lots of guys who could beat me.’ You’ve got to slog, man. I’ve slogged my way up from the suburbs of Liverpool, and I am not about to put all that down.”

“但竞争就是这样。你让10个孩子在一个屋子里，过一两个小时，他们就分出区别了。聪明孩子，壮硕孩子，强悍孩子，怂孩子，以及和聪明孩子壮硕孩子强悍孩子关系都很好的搞笑孩子。他们自己就会分等级。”那McCartney认为自己在哪一级呢？

“我觉得自己是最高一级，因为我确实很有竞争力。你看不到Ed Moses到处说：‘我是世上第三好的跨栏选手哈。’也不会发现Mike Tyson说，"很多人都能打倒我啊。”人必须要努力啊，伙计。从利物浦的郊区一路打拼上来，我不会放弃这一切的。"

Nor is he about to let all that go forgotten. With the key Beatles lawsuits settled, he’s keen to go ahead with the long-discussed authorized Beatles film biography, The Long and Winding Road, although the project hit an early snag in terms of finding a director. McCartney mistakenly attempted to solicit interest from top screen talent by sending form letters outlining the project to the likes of Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott and Michael Apted. “George [Harrison], who’s in the film business, went, ‘Major no-no, man, we shouldn’t have done that.’ And he should have stopped me. It was a mistake.”

他也不打算让这一切消失于记忆深处。随着披头士乐队关键官司解决了，他开始积极推进讨论已久的乐队授权电影传记The Long and Winding Road，虽然在找导演时就早早遇到了阻碍。他错了，他试图征求顶级大导的兴趣，他向Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott 和Michael Apted等人发送了邀约。"涉足电影行业的乔治说，'可千万别，咱不能这么干。’他确实该阻止我，这决定是错误的。"

Yet having willingly reawakened the Beatlemania beast with his current show, Paul McCartney enters the Nineties with a new variation on his old Seventies dilemma: How do you follow an act like the Beatles — again? He talks of making a new album with his touring band, and he’s halfway through a major orchestral and choral piece, written with British conductor Carl Davis, to be debuted during the 150th-anniversary celebrations of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic next year. More important, though, he’s come to realize that you don’t follow an act like the Beatles. You learn to live with it, and learn from it.

Paul McCartney通过他目前的巡演，有意唤醒了人们对披头士的狂热。进入九十年代后，他对这七十年代的老难题态度又有了变化：如何重现披头士的行事作风？他说自己会和巡演乐队一起制作一张新专辑，和英国指挥家Carl Davis共同创作的大型管弦乐和合唱作品也已经完成了一半，将在明年皇家利物浦爱乐乐团150周年庆祝活动中首次亮相。但更重要的是，他已经意识到，自己不能重现披头士的作风了，而是要学会与之共存，并从中学习。

“I’ve already done the thing where you go out and shun the Beatles,” says McCartney. “That was Wings. Now I’ve done this whole thing. I recognize that I’m a composer and that those Beatles songs are a part of my material.

“出门演出，假装自己不是个披头，这事我已经干过了，就是Wings。我现在想要的，是意识到自己是一位作曲人，而披头士的歌曲是我作品的一部分。”

“The only alternative is that I turn my back on it forever, never do ‘Hey Jude’ again — and I think it’s a damn good song,” he says before heading out onstage, where he’ll play it again for a grateful crowd. “It would really be a pity if I don’t do it. Because someone else will.”

“另一个选项是，我得永远无视披头生涯，永远不能唱Hey Jude。可这真tm是首好歌。”他上台演出前说着，“如果我永远不唱那就太可惜了，因为会被别人唱掉的。”

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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Bill Belichick’s husky headlines the very good NFL draft dogs

10/10 would draft all of these doggies.

When the 2020 NFL Draft began Thursday, I was excited to see so many good dogs. Since teams and prospects were participating in the draft virtually from their homes, there was hope there would be plenty of canine cameos, especially when Giants head coach Joe Judge talked about prepping with his dog Abby ahead of the draft.

Instead, I was incredibly disappointed by the lack of very good dogs during the Round 1 broadcast.

Although the first night was a letdown, the great news is the very good dogs made a resurgence on the second night of the draft, headlined by Bill Belichick’s dog.

The Cincinnati Bengals had a dog in the first pick of Friday night

Cincy’s director of player personnel Duke Tobin (which sounds like a dog’s name) showed off his very good dog during the Bengals’ second-round pick:

one pick into Day 2 of the NFL Draft and we've already got a dog which lay down to get a bellyrub pic.twitter.com/DU8lWkoOrE

— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) April 24, 2020

The Bengals selected wide receiver Tee Higgins, and the dog probably very much approved of this pick. Higgins is one of the best wideouts in this draft, and it means the No. 1 overall pick Joe Burrow can throw to Higgins and A.J. Green!

Rodger Goodell’s dog made an appearance on both nights

At the start of the broadcast Thursday night, we got to meet commissioner Rodger Goodell’s dog Bruce, who was very cute. Unfortunately, Goodell used the very good boy Bruce as a prop for piped in boos:

A message from @nflcommish. (by @budlight) #BooTheCommish pic.twitter.com/VgtyC7HIQD

— NFL (@NFL) April 22, 2020

We had another appearance from Blake on Friday — well, kinda:

Is this Blake the Goodell family dog at the draft? pic.twitter.com/wK9Oc8B74h

— Judy Battista (@judybattista) April 24, 2020

Falcons owner Arthur Blank’s golden retriever made the broadcast, too

Look in the middle of the screen! You almost could miss it!

Turns out, Blank has two golden retrievers — although they didn’t make an appearance on TV, they were on-hand for Round 1.

Checking in on the Blank household during the #NFLDraft. pic.twitter.com/DQFXhWHmBj

— Atlanta Falcons (@AtlantaFalcons) April 24, 2020

A Jets fan put his dog on the fan cam!

Before each team’s pick is announced, Goodell’s screen behind him has fans of each team on-camera. One fan put his dog up to the camera when the Jets took WR Denzel Mims, because why not? Look at the bottom left:

Best fan on-camera of the draft by far.

Giants GM Ryan Pace showed off his adorable golden doodle before a commercial break

You could’ve easily missed it if you weren’t paying attention:

The undisputed dog champion of the draft was Belichick’s husky

When the broadcast flipped the Belichick’s home setup in Nantucket, instead of coach sitting in the chair we saw a very good husky instead:

Bill Belichick looks different pic.twitter.com/iOqFkyAcsz

— SB Nation (@SBNation) April 24, 2020

Eventually we did see Belichick — the very good dog earned a much-deserved treat from coach himself. This was also a rare moment that proved the Pats’ head coach isn’t a robot and he’s capable of showing human emotion!

Bill Belichick gave the very good dog a treat pic.twitter.com/yWH6YfSvGc

— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) April 24, 2020

This was the early highlight of the night, TBH.

The chances are 10/10 I would draft this very good husky.

Every prospect and team should make this at-home draft more exciting by putting pooches in view of the cameras. We want to see your dogs, and, no, we won’t care if they disrupt anything.

We’ll update this post with more good dogs if they make the broadcast. Hopefully we see a lot more!

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primus-why · 7 years ago

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I had to get off mobile to briefly talk about Last Knight...

As you might have guessed, spoilers (in no particular order) below the cut.

• “Je m’appelle ‘AUT ROT” - I DIED.

• Also, I knew it. I knew Cade’s daughter would be “in college” during the apocalypse.

• “We were brothers once.” - Honestly?? I cracked up. Megatron it’s been... so, so long... 4 million plus 10 years now... Also this came out of nowhere. This was not a film where Optimus and Megatron’s history was the main focus. You could argue that, in that line, Megatron is trying to say something like “We were once brothers who fought on the same side, why can’t you just do this to save our planet?” but tbh I doubt he really wants to include Optimus in anything anymore. I just... busted a gut because I imagined Optimus first saying something like “Why are you bringing this up???”

• That’s another thing... I wanted to ask WHY so much in this movie... and HOW. Like, how did the knights reform the dragon when they were down a few mecha? (we saw one die in the ship at the beginning and one fall over the edge during the underwater battle). Why exactly was Vivian able to turn on and maneuver a sub again? I thought she could only work the magic staff...

• S/O to the fact there’s like... 0 robots and it turns into a mid-2000′s treasure hunt flick for like a full 1/3 of the run time.

• “Bumblebee... I haven’t heard your voice... since the fall of Cybertron...” AND I GUESS WE GON’ NEVER HEAR IT AGAIN, cuz even though it’s fixed, Bee goes right back to his radio-speak.

• Honestly Optimus was only Nemesis Prime for like, a combined total of 11 minutes. Boo.

• I’m also a tad disappointed that Megatron didn’t have to work with Team Prime. I was kinda hoping this was going to be like when in TFP they have to work to defeat Unicron, only this time Optimus would be evil for half of it so that would make it difficult.

• “Soon I’ll destroy this wretched planet and rebuild our world. If only you were here to see it, my treacherous old friend.” - wHAT THE FFUCK WHERE DID THIS SUDDEN FONDNESS COME FROM OH MY GOD. Gently holding Starscream’s head, kinda??? looking at it sadly??? oh my loorrrrrdddd Megatron is just thirsty for everyone.

• Cade kinda?? insults Vivian a lot??? and then they kiss??? Like one of their last exchanges was basically “Thanks for the compliment” “Uh, you could return one too.” and “Damn your cute accent!” mm boy, got wild chemistry like a dumpster fire.

• I think when they were doing the submarine chase (yes, that was a thing. I can’t believe it either.) they accidentally had Hot Rod holding onto the sub, not Bee like it was in the other shots. And don’t tell me it is both of them, cuz when they dock, only Bee is with them.

• John Tuturro is LITERALLY phoning in this cameo. I, again, died.

• Speaking of cameos, how much do you think they had to pay Shia LaBeouf to use his image? Also... does that mean he’s dead? Cuz basically they said Vivian is related to the Witwickys (or whatever the British version was), so they’re kind of distant cousins??? But Old British guy said she was the only living relative on this Earth??? Then again, is that a play on words??? Would they be implying Sam is in, like, space??? Am I looking too much into this? (yes)

• So many loose ends. What was Galvatron up to this whole time? Anyone think he’ll team up with Quintessa (who I think is gonna bring the REAL Quints into the next film after the Bumblebee prequel). What about the Dino-babies? How are they and what are the Dinobot’s doing rn? And Soundwave? He was in Earth’s orbit last film... is he grounded now cuz Cybertron whacked him out of the sky? Why won’t Bee talk with his normal voice???

That’s it for now, I might add more later but it’s 4am and I can’t believe I spent real money on this in the theaters... definitely should have been a Netflix binge...

#bayformers #maccadam #transformers #transformers 5 #transformers the last knight #Optimus Prime #Megatron #Quintessa #Starscream

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briangroth27 · 6 years ago

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Hell Fest Review

Hell Fest came out of nowhere for me last fall and wasn’t on my radar at all initially. Once I knew about the premise—a slasher loose in a Halloween theme park—I was in. It turns out that it could’ve been a little more inventive in places and gone further when it was doing new things, but it was definitely a fun thrill ride!

Full Spoilers…

The movie absolutely nailed the atmosphere and feeling of being at a Halloween event like Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights, except when the characters were in the haunted houses: there’s no way the people in line would wait for each group to go through alone. I wish Universal could manage that! haha That said, I agree with some other comments I read online that Hell Fest could’ve used the theme park setting (in particular, the rides) a little more: this environment could’ve lent itself to a wider variety of kills based on the existence of the rides alone. One area where not using the theme park mentality as expected actually worked to great effect was the security guards’ reactions to the news that a killer was on the loose. The one-night-only conceit of Hell Fest could’ve given the security guards’ disbelief in a real serial killer a more sinister bent (they can’t shut the park down because it’d be disastrous financially), but it was a nice surprise that they genuinely believed that it was just an employee doing their job and only pretending to kill people. That was a great layer of the “what’s really happening and what’s fake?” psychological games our heroes have to contend with. It’s actually also what I wish they had pushed further with the theme park setting rather than deaths on rides: even more uncertainty about what was actually going on.

I also liked that the movie subverted my expectations regarding some of the deaths. Given one of her first scenes at Hell Fest, I thought they’d have Brooke (Reign Edwards) get killed first, following the “black girl/guy dies first” cliché, so it was an awesome surprise that charging into an isolated area after the killer in defense of her bestie Natalie (Amy Forsyth) by herself didn’t result in her dying. I also expected good guy Gavin (Roby Attal) to survive the film, allowing the harrowing events of the night to give him and Natalie the confidence to get together, so his being killed first was another shock. He also got an inventive death—killed with a carnival “test your strength” mallet—which was a good change of pace from the typical slasher M.O. Taylor’s (Bex Taylor-Klaus) death was probably the best scene of the film: first we get a theme park-sanctioned fake-out as she’s “beheaded” by a guillotine in front of a crowd, then the murderous ‘Other’ tries to kill her while she’s still strapped to the guillotine only for the blade to not be sharp enough, so she manages to free herself and escape for a brief chase where no one believes she’s in real danger. That sequence managed to create a whole lot of tension, dread, and even some comedy with the Other’s reaction to the guillotine not working the first time. It’s an extremely well-crafted sequence, so it’s a shame that it ended with the Other just going on a stabbing spree, which was much more generic (and disappointing) than the deaths that had come before. Another innovation was Nat giving up the location of a terrified Hell Fest-goer (Courtney Dietz) to the Other and even encouraging him to kill her (thinking it was all part of the haunted house). That forged a connection between them, but I wish they’d taken a lot more time to explore its effects on Natalie once she knew people were really dying. One of my favorite scares at Halloween Horror Nights was a scare-actor pulling a planted employee out of line inside one of the houses and killing them in full view of everyone, so having Natalie goad the Other into ‘doing his job’ was the most unsettling moment in this movie. Anyone could’ve made her mistake: in that kind of environment, how would you be able to tell if something like that was real?

While I liked Natalie as the lead, there was a weird streak of vaguely-defined darkness in her past that was repeatedly referenced but never really expounded on. It seemed like it was there to make her “deeper” or something, but darkness and angst aren’t shortcuts to depth, nor do they necessarily add anything to a character. She didn’t need that weirdness to make her relatable; there wouldn’t have been anything wrong with her just being a normal college student. She was a solid character without some past tragedy and it didn’t make her fight for survival any more compelling to have this vaguely referenced past (especially when the creepy bond between Natalie and the Other is established and is MUCH darker than almost anything that could possibly be in her past). Still, it was great to see Nat fight back in classic Final Girl fashion and popping out of a Boo Hole to stab the killer was great! That was a nice use of her earlier clocking the pattern of scares in the houses. The bond between Natalie and Brooke was well written and acted by both of them, making even a reference to running off to Spain that could’ve felt completely random feel like a piece of their shared history. I really liked that all these friends actually had each other’s backs and stood up for each other instead of being the unlikable idiots that you might expect in a slasher movie.

Bex Taylor-Klaus had the most energy amongst the cast and I wish the others matched her more often (though everyone else’s characters were written to be much more subdued than hers, especially the other women). She was best playing off of Tony Todd, who was wasted in his cameo. If only four people died as the news at the end of the movie says, I hope Taylor survived her stab wounds.

The villain was unfortunately kinda lackluster and the humming he was constantly doing didn’t add any creepiness. It’s not that he wasn’t a threat—the circumstances of Hell Fest made him potentially omnipresent and definitely dangerous—but he didn’t stand out as an iconic slasher. I did like how easy it was for him to get a weapon inside Hell Fest, but otherwise the Other was a pretty run-of-the-mill character, with the environment doing the heavy lifting of his intimidation factor. The reveal at the end about who he really was worked well; I wasn’t unsettled, but I liked the fact that it was just some guy. Maybe that’s an argument to not give him iconic and memorable characteristics like Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger, but the balance between his ability to blend into normal society and the memorable factor should’ve swung more in the latter’s favor for the purposes of a movie.

The movie’s dialogue was a little off in the first few scenes, but once they got to Hell Fest it flowed much more naturally. This was especially true of Natalie and Gavin’s bonding scenes; they sounded just like real people trying to find their groove on a slightly awkward first date. I liked most of the characters and thought their respective actors did a good job, particularly Forsyth, Edwards, Taylor-Klaus, and Attal. The score was good too. I thought they did a good job of crafting a more or less new environment for a slasher film, even if they didn’t utilize it to its fullest potential. Things like a ride “breaking down” and Natalie not knowing if the masked man approaching her while she was trapped in the car was the real killer or just an employee, were very cool tricks to throw the audience and the characters off-balance as to what was real and what was just part of the experience. More of that could’ve created a bigger thriller vibe, but what was there worked well.

Overall, Hell Fest is a fun slasher movie that could’ve pushed itself further. It’s worth watching, and if a sequel were to dig deeper into some of the themes and uncertainty this movie touched on, I’d watch that too.

Check out more of my reviews, opinions, and original short stories here!

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justanothercinemaniac · 8 years ago

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Epic Movie (Re)Watch #139 - Brave

Spoilers below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: Yes.

Was it a movie I saw since August 22nd, 2009: Yes, #166.

Format: Blu-ray

1) Like a lot of post Toy Story 3 Pixar movies, Brave gets some crap from people for not being as brilliant as movies like Up. But I really like it!

2) The entire prologue works very well for the film. We get a clear sense of the relationship between Merida and her parents, specifically her mother. It is that relationship with her mother which allows for juxtaposition of their more flawed relationship in the rest of the film. We also get a nice introduction to Mordu and the wisps.

3) Kelly MacDonald as Merida.

There are so few voice over actors who so perfectly represents their characters as perfectly as Macdonald does Merida. I mean it’s mind blowing! The actress is able to capture the princess’s youthful vigor, stubbornness, struggles with her mother, love for her family, and sense of adventure all...perfectly! There is no Macdonald there is only Merida. Merida through and through. Reese Witherspoon was originally cast in the part but dropped out because of her accent problems I think (not 100% sure) and honestly - while I love Reese Witherspoon - I’m so glad she did. I can’t imagine ANYONE else playing Merida quite as spectacularly as Macdonald does.

4) Emma Thompson as Queen Elinor.

Thompson is a fine voice over actress (not fine as in mediocre but fine as in fine wine). She has had experience before in Treasure Planet and would do voice over work again in this year’s Beauty and the Beast, and she imbues Elinor with the same great sense of character as she does her other parts. You are able to understand that Elinor is trying to come from a place of love and caring for Merida, even if you don’t agree with her actions (which I don’t). It is easy to see where Merida gets her ferocity from as Thompson plays Elinor with the same sense of strength and even gets moments to show off some nice humor. I like Elinor mostly because of the journey she goes on through the film, and i think Thompson does a nice job in the part.

5) “Touch the Sky” by Julie Fowlis is a nice first song to feature in the film. It represents not only the film’s Scottish setting but also Merida’s sense of adventure quite well.

6) Billy Connolly as Fergus.

Connolly is a master comedian and honestly I’m laughing just looking at this GIF of Fergus I’m using. He’s so funny and his voice has such life to it that its a wonderful part to isolate for this movie. But Connolly also has range. Towards the end of the film when he thinks his wife is dead Connolly is able to show some great grief and focus through his portrayal as the Scot. You understand why this man is king in those moments, but you still laugh for most of the film.

7) Was Pixar ever subtle with their references, or was I just too stupid to get them as a kid?

^^^^Lord Macintosh (Steve Jobs helped get Pixar started)^^^^

Elinor [after telling Merida about the forced arranged marriage]: “I don’t know why you’re reacting this way!”

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

9) We get a nice peek into how Fergus & Elinor work as a married couple in small moments throughout the film.

Fergus: “You’re muttering.”

Elinor: “I don’t mutter!”

Fergus: “Ay, you do!”

The way Fergus shows pride in his queen being fierce, the way she is able to quell his rivalry with the other clan heads, his love for her seen after she’s presumed dead, all paint a nice image of a marriage.

10) I may be biased because I first saw this film when I was 16 years old, but I always felt that Merida was listening to her mother’s reasons but they just don’t matter as much as her mother thinks they do. To the contrary, I feel like Elinor really does not listen to or consider what Merida is saying.

11) Obligatory John Ratzenberger cameo in a Pixar film!

Since this is my first recap of a Pixar film, I’ll explain for those who may not know: John Ratzenberger has had a role in literally ever Pixar feature length film ever made. Ham in Toy Story, PT Flea in A Bug’s Life, Mack in Cars, John in WALL-E, the list is all encompassing. They even called notice to this fact in Cars when all the characters are at the drive in movie during the credits.

It’s nice that Pixar has continued their tradition of including the voice actor in all their films, but I’m a bit disappointed his roles seem to becoming progressively smaller. Still, better some John Ratzenberger than no John Ratzenberger.

12) The trio of Macintosh, Macguffin and Dingwall provides a fun extra layer of comedy to the film. Their feuding and bickering are funny in the classic sense. In a lot of ways they are the animated Scottish equivalent to the Three Stooges.

Craig Ferguson as Macintosh, Kevin McKidd as Macguffin, and Robbie Coltrane as Dingwall all do an excellent job with making their characters unique and playing off of the other. They’re really just a lot of fun.

13) This film has some A-grade humor.

Lord Dingwall: “I present, my ONLY son!”

14) I would say the film’s biggest weakness would be is that it can lack focus at times. Especially earl on, some scenes feel like they go on just a little bit too long meaning the film might feel like it doesn’t get very far in it’s 90 minute run time. It’s not fatal and as I said above I still truly enjoy this film, but there’s also a behind the scenes for that I’ll get to later on.

15) With the trio of Merida, Fergus, and Elinor, the film really does do a nice job of fleshing out their relationships in small but important ways. Merida and Elinor’s relationship IS the focus on the film, and I’ve commented on Fergus and Elinor before, but Merida and Fergus are shown to have a nice camaraderie between them. A respect and admiration for each other, as well as a shared sense of humor. This was scene first at the dinner table before Merida was told of the arranged marriage and is seen again (at its best) when Merida and her dad are providing colorful commentary on the suitors as the compete for her hand.

16) Dude...

Merida: “I am Merida, first born descendant of clan Dunbroch. And I’ll be shooting for my OWN hand!”

Okay first:

Second: THIS FREAKING SCENE!!!!!

This entire scene has become wildly iconic, and one could say it was so upon release. It is by far the best scene in the entire film, supported by strong character writing, sleek simplicity, and incredible visuals. It is the turning point for the movie. The time when Merida is at her strongest and we as the audience or most enthralled with the plot of the movie. I truly love it.

17) Elinor roughing up Merida and throwing her bow in the fire after the archery contest always made me uncomfortable. It is hard to watch the queen get physically rough with her daughter, even if it isn’t really abusive. I think that’s the point of the moment though: we as the audience (or at least me as an audience member) can really imagine how shook up Merida must feel from this encounter. This is her MOM! Even though they have their differences there’s supposed to be a trust there.

18) The Woodcarver!!!

Voiced by Julie Walters (Molly Weasley herself), The Woodcarver/Witch is a wildly memorable and funny character. She is well established and well used in her brief amount of screen time, providing the film with a sense of visual comedy that feels like it’s straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon. I truly appreciate that.

19) Have you heard of Pixar Theory?

Pixar Theory is the in depth theory that all Pixar films take place in one shared continuity/universe, even going into some dark details about how the world of Cars can be the same one that the human filled world of Up or The Incredibles is in. There is one very key and very important idea in Pixar Theory that applies to Brave. Are you guys ready? Okay...

The Witch from Brave is Boo from Monsters Inc.

You can read the full theory here, but the gist of it is that Monsters Inc. does not take place in an alternate dimension but in a future Earth without humans. Therefore, the doors in Monsters Inc. allow the characters to travel in time. Here’s an excerpt from the theory:

And then there’s Boo. What do you think happened to her? She saw everything take place in future earth where “kitty” was able to talk. She became obsessed with finding out what happened to her friend Sully and why animals in her time weren’t quite as smart as the ones she’d seen in the future.

She remembers that “doors” are the key to how she found Sully in the first place and becomes…

A WITCH. Yes, Boo is the witch from Brave. She figures out how to travel in time to find Sully, and goes back to what she believes is the source: The will-of-the-wisps.

A carving of Sully can briefly be seen in the Woodcarver’s/Witch’s hut, lending support to the theory.

Later Merida is also opening doors that lead nowhere, and the author of Pixar Theory argues this is because The Witch found out how to get doors to travel between time. I just thought I’d share this with you. Moving on.

20)

Merida [when she tells the witch what she wants]: “I want a spell to change my mom. That’ll change my fate.”

According to IMDb:

It took six years to make this film. Mark Andrews was initially the consultant, providing the Scottish themes for Brenda Chapman. However, by October 2010, Chapman left after four years of work with Andrews subsequently taking over but still keeping the intended story that Chapman wrote. Originally 80% of the film took place in snow, but when Chapman left the project so did much of the white stuff.

Part of the film’s issue with focus is that it can at times feel like two different films at once: a fantasy epic and a mother/daughter story. I assume these issues are born out of the change in directors (although Brenda Chapman does claim the film is something she’s proud of and that it kept her original vision) and at the end they do mesh well, but they don’t necessarily mesh well throughout the ENTIRE movie.

21) I’m going to be honest: the fact that the big magical twist of the movie is that Elinor is turned into a bear caught me 100% off guard the first time I saw it.

I like it now in hindsight but I was just totally blind sided upon initial viewing. Which was actually kind of nice, because I’d seen 165 films in less than three years before then. I’m not surprised as much as I’d like.

22) The rare time in a film where a character actually says what I’m thinking:

Merida [when Elinor wants to go to the "Let’s Kill a Bear” party downstairs]: “Dad? The Bear King!? If he so much as sees you you’re dead!”

23) This is so applicable to so many talking animal films.

Merida [to Elinor]: “You’re covered in fur! You’re not naked!”

24) So The Witch is sort of a one trick pony. She turned Mordu into a bear, she turned Merida’s mom into a bear, and later she describes her shop as, “Home of bear themed carvings and novelties.” Like, is that like all she can do? Turn people into bears?

25) The scene at the river (underscored by “Into the Open Air”) is a key moment in the relationship between Merida and Elinor. Elinor finally sees that all the things she wanted of her daughter have no use to her now, while all the things “unbefitting” to a princess are what’s keeping them fed in the wilderness. They have some nice fun and it’s just a really great moment.

26) Momma Bear Elinor almost attacking Merida when she’s full bear mode almost kinda makes me jump.

(GIF originally posted by @musicalhog)

27) I wish we got a bit more of the evil bear Mor’du. He shows up in the beginning, he shows up briefly in the middle so Merida and her mom can understand how the spell works, and then he shows up at the end. He’s actually very frightening to look at but not in the film much which is a shame.

28) Merida’s whole speech before the clans about her final decision is a really great moment, I think. It shows how Merida and her mother have grown as they’re finally able to communicate (ironically/poetically when Elinor can’t speak), it shows Merida’s skills as a leader, and it is nice that all three sons agree with Merida about choosing their own destiny. Also Merida is just so happy afterwards!

29) Merida thinking her mom is gone breaks my heart.

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Yeah, I’m tearing up now as I watch it. It’s been a rough month for me.

30) The ending of the film is nice. Filled with optimism and energy, in no small part because of the Birdy and Mumford & Sons song “Learn Me Right”. It’s a nice note to finish the film on.

31) Always. Stay. After. The credits.

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Look I don’t get why Brave gets a bad wrap. Sure it’s not as brilliant as Up or Toy Story 3 but so what? It is a fun, entertaining, well made film with some wildly powerful moments and great characters. Merida is incredible, the relationship between her mom is fleshed out very well, and it’s just...I love it. It’s one of my favorite Pixar films, so I definitely recommend it.

#Brave #Merida #Pixar #Kelly Macdonald #Emma Thompson #Epic Movie (Re)Watch #John Ratzenberger #Billy Connolly #Craig Ferguson #Kevin McKidd #Robbie Coltrane #Julie Walters #Pixar Theory #Movie #Film #GIF

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