#for the record I still think the Bay films are a crime
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Just finished watching a forty-minute video essay about Michael Bay’s Transformers movies, and I gotta say, I am incredibly impressed that this analyst managed to find a coherent and frankly shocking reading of the almost-nonexistent continuity between these movies, when I know for a fact that none of the same thought was put into any of the films as they were being created.
#once again. the revealing of an authoritarian autobot empire makes for incredibly interesting material#for the record I still think the Bay films are a crime#but major props to this reviewer for making such a well-written and well-thought-out piece#tf#bayverse#maccadam#transformers#wig's words
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I get by with a little help from my friends (and Link)
Hey everyone! E here with a random story popped into my head! I needed to write this for practice for another project but I still had a lot of fun with it. So this story takes place in the wild timeline between Age of Calamity and breath of the wild. Like that weird middle ground where the champions were getting ready. Upfront I did as much research as I could cuz it has been a while since I played BOTW and I did use a wiki with some references to the game and such, avoided spoilers I think and I did kinda go with my own conclusion in some places for the sake of story cuz the wiki only knows so much and I can't replay the entire game again. Well I can but not in a short time for this story. Also some Light Zelda and link cuz they’re cute and if nintendo wont canon them, I will!
So I hope you enjoy! have fun, stay safe, wear a mask and wash your hands! E is out! have a great week everyone! If you want to leave me comments or just have an easier time reading this story, it has been uploaded to Ao3. My user name is MrE42
“He’s still there, isn’t he?”
Impa shrugged, unsure what the princess was expecting her to say “You know he is.”
Zelda huffed, irritated at her father’s watchdog who silently kept watch just outside, stoic and stalwart in his duty to an annoying degree.
Zelda, princess of Hyrule and aspiring scholar, trained from birth to be poised and refined in the harshest situations, made a face towards the library door.
“I do not need a babysitter.” Zelda fumed as she filmed through the bookshelves “You are here Impa and far more suited to the task than my father’s knights.”
“Your knights” Impa corrected “And normally I would agree but with Yiga clan beginning to cause more and more trouble, you and the kingdom need my Sheikah to prevent their tricks. I am their leader and I have to lead. Same as you princess.”
“I know” Zelda replied, unable to keep out the frustration out of her voice “But I wish my father chose a...different person”
Impa rolled her eyes “We both know that Link is the most capable solider in the kingdom. He is without equal and you are only mad at him because your father chose him.”
“I am not a child Impa.”
“No but you are the magical princess whose power would help keep the calamity at bay. I can’t fathom why your father would want you protected at all times.”
Zelda glared openly at her best friend “Your sarcasm is noted and ignored.”
“Excellent” Impa beamed “But in all seriousness, these are dangerous princess. Your father caused quite a ruckus choosing a country bumpkin instead of the nobles lovely, incompetent children.”
Zelda shifted guiltily at the mention of the nobility. They were not pleased that the king of Hyrule had decided to entrust the safety of his only heir and future ruler of their kingdom to a nobody from Hateno Village. It did not matter that Link had come from a long line of knights whom had been protecting the land for almost as long as Zelda’s family had been ruling it. Nor did it matter that he was their most fierce and well trained warrior. He was not of nobility and it angered her that someone who simply wanted to do their best was being mistreated.
Even if she was guilty of the same crime.
“I just wish he appeared more human.” Zelda quietly admitted, hoping Link could not hear “He is emotionless. His gaze is entirely steely and he has not spoken a single word to me. He simply stands, watching and waiting.
“Judging?” Impa added.
Zelda glanced to the side shamefully “Judging. Judging that his talents are wasted on a princess who cannot even perform the single duty that has been entrusted to her.”
“I think you’re projecting.”
“And you are far too calm.”
Impa giggled cutely “Appearances. I’m as nervous as you princess but I know better than anyone how uneasy people get if their leaders show panic. Your powers will come when they come. You will figure it out.”
Zelda turned to the ninja leader fearfully “And if they don’t?”
“Then I’ll protect you.” Impa answered truthfully “Link will protect you and the champions will kick some ganon butt! You’re not alone so stop acting like it.”
“Thank you Impa.” Zelda moved in for a hug.
“Nope!” Impa took a step back “No, no, no! That’s not proper.”
“I order you to give your princess a hug.”
“…..sigh, yes your highness.”
-----
Zelda’s eyes twinkled with a rare softness as she, Link and Mipha watched the young zora prince Sidon swim so carefree in the deep blue waters of the lake. Link was further ahead of the two princesses, standing at the shore of the lake vigilante for any signs of trouble.
“He certainly takes his duty seriously.” Zelda murmured under her breath.
Mipha laughed softly “It is nice to see how age has calmed him.”
Zelda tilted curiously to the champion “Mipha, you’ve known Link since you were both children, correct?”
Mipha nodded in confirmation “Yes ever since he arrived with a group of knights on orders of King Rhoam. Even then he was courageous. Impossibly reckless however but I suppose that is simply who Link is.
Mipha’s soft laughter grew into a playful chortle. Zelda quizzically stared at her fellow princess.
“Sorry your highness.” Mipha waved her hand in embarrassment “I was just thinking to myself how much healing practice Link has gotten me. I suppose I am as proficient as I am thanks him.”
“Oh?”
“He was always getting into trouble.” Mipha began, her voice taking on a hue of nostalgia “Always injured after throwing himself head first into danger. He hated sitting still, allowing others to suffer for him. His shell might be more silent and stoic but he is still the kind boy I knew. That I…”
Zelda caught the slight longing in the zora princess’s tone “Mipha?”
“It is nothing.”
Mipha slipped into a comfortable silence but Zelda bristled uneasily at a sudden realization.
“Mipha….”
Mipha faced Zelda, worry and concern etched in the scholar’s face.
“Do you think…” Zelda spoke slowly “Link hates me? That his talented and training is wasted watching a princess who cannot even produce a glare of light. I drag him everywhere, fuming at his presence all while he watches with an endless vigil.”
Mipha gently placed her hand onto Zelda’s shoulder. Zelda felt a calming presence fill her body and a quiet peace that came with it.
Mipha gave a soft smile “Link knows better than anyone how hard you are trying. He knows how desperate you must be. He does not disdain your loathing. He simply is giving you the space you desire. His duty is everything to him and he will perform it to his dying breath. You are his princess. He will ensure your safety.”
Zelda said nothing and despite the calming peace she felt, the twinge of guilt began to eat at her.
“LINK!”
The tension broke as Zelda and Mipha glanced back towards the lake. Sidon giggled and chuckled at a full swim, rapidly heading for the shore and Link. Link, caught off guard in a rare moment, began to panic. He moved this way and that, frantically searching beyond the approaching zora in search for a nonexistent threat.
He realized, too late, what Sidon was up to.
With a mighty push, Sidon flew out of the deep blue waters and sailed through the air, hands outstretched as he collided with Link. Link flailed backwards, struggling to keep his footing but ultimately losing it. He fell backwards onto the shore, Sidon embracing him tightly a bone breaking hug. Even young, a zora was strong.
“Sidon!” Mipha chastised but before she could move closer, Link stood up with the still embracing prince, an evil glint in his eyes.
“Oh dear.”
“What is happening?” Zelda asked, unsure what was going on.
Link picked up Sidon, holding him high into the air as the young prince chanted “Do it, do it, do it!”
And just like that, Link spun around. Around and around, once, twice, five times building speed with Sidon’s cheers filled the air. Without warning, Link chucked the young zora through the air and back into the lake.
Sidon dove in wholeheartedly and broke the surface with a triumphant yell.
“20 feet! A NEW RECORD!”
Mipha rubbed her eyes tiredly “Boys.”
Zelda giggled softly as Link rose his arms in victory.
-----
“Daruk?”
“Yeah tiny princess?”
“Is that...a rock?”
“Yeah it is!”
“And why...is Link….eating the rock?”
“It’s prime rock roast! He got a real taste for it after the first time.”
“Oh. Right. I recall that now.”
Daruk bellowed with a hearty laugh “Dontcha worry princess, little guy might a hylian but he’s got the stomach of a goron! I bet he’d eat anything. Even some kind of dubious food that’s just too gross to look at. KEEP IT UP LINK!”
Link raised a thumb as he continued to chew on the rocky texture of the roast.
Zelda couldn’t help but smile the Daruk’s presence. His good nature and cheeriness were too infectious for even the royal princess to resist.
“Now what brings you out here tiny princess? Did you finally want to try out the roast? I can have cooks whip up a fresh, steaming one for ya.”
“What? Oh no.” Zelda quickly responded “No. I ate at home before we arrived so I am quite full. Perhaps next time. I am actually here to see if you needed anything.”
Daruk rubbed the back of his neck shyly “Aww thanks tiny princess! I appreciate it! Though if you don’t wanna eat the roast, you can just tell me. I know it isn’t everyone’s taste.”
“Oh. I am sorry I simply did not want to hurt your feelings.”
“Not to worry, I can’t be hurt!” Daruk beamed, posing heroic as an orangish translucent dome appeared over the goron chief for a moment, shielding him from the outside world.
The pair broke into a joyful laugh.
“Thank you Daruk.”
“Think nothing of it tiny princess. Though, now that you mentioned it I might need a little favor from ya.”
Zelda eagerly listened “Name it Daruk and I shall do everything in my power to ensure it done.”
“It’s about Rudania.”
Zelda’s heart sank “The divine beast? Is something amiss?”
“Oh no no no.” Daruk raised his hands as if to physically stop that line of thinking “Nothing serious. It’s just that that wonderful fantastic machine is able to have some alterations. The controls aren’t exactly goron friendly, ya know?”
“Oh! Hmm, I shall talk to Purah and Robbie. If anyone can alter Rudania, it is them.”
“Thanks tiny princess!” Daruk patted her back in a friendly manner. Zelda had to brace herself to make sure she didn’t fall sprawling to the floor.
Rudania.
Zelda glanced upwards Death Mountain, the divine beast in question clinging to the side the volcanic mountain as if keeping an eye out for the calamity.
The divine beasts, ancient Sheikah machines made of stone and an unknown source of power. Her father claimed these machines had been around since the dawn of Hyrule. Though information on these and other Sheikah made devices were contradictory at best and nonexistent at worst. Even Impa, clan leader, knew next to nothing about their functionality or purpose. Luckily for everyone Purah and Robbie had devoted their lives to the study of these machines and it was only thanks to the pairs ceaseless work (and Zelda would say sometimes obsession) that the champions could practice and grew proficient with their individual machines.
“How is your training with Rudania going Daruk?”
Daruk scratched the back of his neck anxiously “I wish I could say it’s going good but it’s not exactly a stroll in the lava, ya know?”
“Of...course.” Zelda nodded slowly, unsure what a stroll in lava would entail “Perhaps we can search for some sort of manual or instructions.”
“Nah” Daruk waved her off “We both know nothing like that probably exists but that’s alright. I’mma going just go for it and do my best!”
Zelda stared at the goron with admiration “I wish I could be as confident as you are.”
“I’m not!”
Zelda watched as Daruk’s face beaming grin melt into an uneasy smile
“I’m not confident” Daruk admitted “This is hard. This is a piece of technology unlike anything else in our little home. I have no idea how to use it or even if I’m doing it right. Heck, I don’t even know if what I’m doing is working. I’m a goron and I’m good at that but this? This is something else.”
Zelda felt that. Her inability to draw on her powers. Her failures and her father’s growing desperation pushing her to extremes, to find an answer regardless of the cost.
“But, I’mma gonna try all the same.”
Daruk’s smile returned. Not with happiness but with determination.
“That’s all we can do, right tiny princess?” Daruk chuckled “Do our best. Maybe it’ll be enough. Maybe it won’t but we gotta at least try.”
Zelda smiled “You are right Daruk. We must at least try. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome! Haha, for what?”
-----
Zelda could feel Link shift his weight back and forth ontop of the snow bank. The pair were bundled in winter gear, huddled close in an attempt to stay warm in the frigid chill of the snowy breeze. Though Zelda knew that wasn’t why Link was unhappy.
“You still here knight? Go home. You need to train some more if you want to keep up with me.”
Link’s face remained as impassive as ever but Zelda could see by the tensing of his cheeks that he was fuming: Revali had that effect on the knight.
She was unsure why the Rito had such a deep disdain for Link but it made it difficult to plan training exercises between the two. Even visits to check on Revali were scarce given the fact Link followed his orders diligently. Nothing would dissuade Link from his task, not even insults and mockery.
Zelda had been softening her stance on Link over the last few weeks. True she hadn’t reached the point where she completely accepted his presence but she no longer loathed him for it. It was not his fault her father was so stubborn and final in his decrees. He did what he was told and he did it with as much respect as he could muster. It was oddly comforting to have him near in the rare moment she was being honest. Whether it be researching any leads to unlocking her powers to her hobby of cataloging the various flora and fauna of Hyrule, he did not judge her. He watched in a quiet reverence, his eyes darting about for signs of danger so she would feel safe enough to focus on her task. And the more time they spent together, the more she realized he was more expressive than she previously thought.
His emotions were far subtler: A twitch of the ear, a raised eyebrow, clenching of his jaws. This is how Link spoke. This is how he displayed his emotions. Little signs easily missed unless you had been searching for them.
Not that Zelda was looking. That would be silly for her to simply stare at the knight accompanying her all across the kingdom, protecting her from the various threats found throughout. She was merely making observations like the good scholar she was. Link was no different than the flora and fauna she studied. Granted he was a much more interesting subject but….
“Princess.”
Zelda snapped out of her thoughts, her face flushed with embarrassment at her trailing thoughts.
“Are you well?” Revali cocked his head sideways “Your face is red. I rather you not get sick simply because you wish to stand in this cold.”
“I-it is nothing Revali!” Zelda stammered out “Perhaps a small chill. It will pass. I am here to…”
“To see if I need anything” he finished for her “No princess, unlike certain people” he eyed Link distastefully “I am fine.”
Link said nothing but rather shifted the weight on his feet once more.
“Link” Zelda turned to her knight “Perhaps you could patrol the area. I fear the winds are growing more fierce. I would not want to walk back to the castle among an ambush if there is a storm.”
Link remained silent but gave a rigid, steely nod. He caught Revali’s gaze for a moment then trudge off into the snow.
“I don’t why you bring him” Revali sneered “He’s a worthless knight.”
“If he’s so worthless, why do you waste your time berating him?”
Revali turned his head “Hmmph, if your knight is so fragile that a little mockery scares him off, he has no business being with us.”
“Revali!” Zelda began but was silenced by his outstretched wing.
“I am the best princess.” He spoke matter of fact “I am your greatest warrior. My skill is unrivaled across the kingdom.”
Zelda fumed but allowed him to continue.
“I have overcome many challenges and challengers to my title” Revali’s looked out to the various snowy hills and slopes of the mountain, the Rito village barely visible among the snow flurry “I bested them all. When you are so talented, many eyes will fall upon you and their expectations as well. They will say whatever they wish. You must ignore them. You must not allow their pitiful jealousy distract from your task, your goal. I am here to protect my people and for that, I must be the best. I must work with the best and I must train with people with some skill.”
“Revali, what are you…?”
Revali scoffed “You have kept me from training princess. Your knight might be the best among you but he certainly is no match for me. How is he supposed to survive the upcoming fight unless he fights with his all against a superior opponent.”
“I see” Zelda slowly caught on.
“Good. I will be at the castle tomorrow. Make sure your knight is ready for bruises and sores. I won’t have him die on us because he was being lazy.”
“Of course Revali. I’m sure Link will appreciate your concern.”
Revali huffed “I don’t like deadweight is all.”
Zelda said nothing but remembered that Link had won the champion’s last archery contest a few weeks ago.
-----
The desert was colder than you would expect at night but Zelda was not stranger to it. She loved coming out to the Gerudo desert with her mother, spending all day among the Gerudo and its splendor. It was quiet out here, bringing a rare peace not found in the city. The distant sound of thunder boomed but it was soft and enlightening more than frightening. It comforted Zelda.
“Thinking of her again little bird?”
Zelda nodded honestly, the desert stretched out before her as the twinkling stars glimmered beautifully overhead.
Urbosa, champion and her mother’s dearest friend, stood watch nearby.
Zelda turned back to Link, unable to keep the grin off her face as he remained slumped against the wall, his riding hood and cloak turned into a makeshift blanket. His breathing was slow and steady and while it was clear he was sleeping, she also knew that with one word from her lips he would awaken, ready for whatever awaited him.
She was glad he was resting at least. This had been his first trip to the desert and he had not quite been prepared for the intense heat nor the attention he received from the town. A male within its walls was a rare sight. She knew Link disliked attention above all else, except perhaps Revali.
She giggled at her joke.
“You seem more comfortable with Link than I remember.”
“Oh.” Zelda cleared her throat, willing her blush away “Well y-yes. Some of my conversations with the others have led to some interesting insight. Perhaps I had not been considerate towards Link. He is just performing his duty.”
Urbosa leaned in teasingly “Link now is it? Not the knight or he?”
Zelda’s blush spread rapidly throughout her cheeks.
Urbosa laughed loudly “You are far too easy to fluster little bird.”
“I am not flustered!”
“I don’t blame you” Urbosa glanced at Link’s sleeping form “He is quite handsome and not like most men.”
“Urbosa!”
Urbosa laugh once more “So it worked then?”
Zelda was confused “What did?”
“My distraction.”
“Distraction? From?” Realization washed over Zelda “Oh.”
Urbosa gave a solemn nod “I miss your mother terribly. She was an amazing woman and I feel her loss deeply now as I did then.”
Zelda tucked her legs under her arms “I feel like she would be disappointed in me. Not having unlocked my power. Chasing down lead after lead with nothing to show for it.”
“Don’t be absurd!” Urbosa scolded “She would be proud of you. Her beautiful daughter, a natural leader. Especially between Link and Revali. Hylia’s miracle you managed to wrangle them into line. I thought they were going to murder each other at their last training session.”
“I admit I was worried I was about to have to arrest one of them for murder.” Zelda admitted.
The two shared a laugh.
“Do not fret little bird.” Urbosa cupped Zelda’s cheek lovingly “She would think the world of you. She would want you to do your best, not hers.”
“I miss her Urbosa.” Zelda shed a single tear “I just miss her so terribly.”
“Me too little bird. But she lives on in you.”
Zelda clenched her fist, holding it close to her heart as she closed her eyes “I suppose I’ll just have keep at it.”
“That a girl. Now want to see something funny?” Urbosa grinned mischievously, a snap at the ready while she approached the slumbering form of Link.
-----
Link was unsure what to make of princess Zelda’s request to ask him some questions. It had been a few months since he was first assigned to her guard detail and while it had been rather rocky start, she grew to tolerate his presence and was almost friendly with him.
Almost.
Today started off no different than any other: Princess Zelda wanted to stretch her legs out in the fields. Link was used to this particularly outing. He noticed the princess often wished to leave the castle on the days her father was being forceful about her training her powers. Something that was happening with increasing occurrence nowadays.
Despite his lack of talking and general stoic disposition, he enjoyed his time with the princess. True most of it had been at a distance, carefully watching out for her safety but these last few weeks had been a nice change of pace. She allowed to walk closer to her, hadn’t scoffed or turned up her nose at him trailing behind her and became more visibly relaxed when alone with him.
Though she had also become more distracting to the young knight. Everyone knew the princess was beautiful but Link still hadn’t gotten used to it even after all this time. Every morning he would face that same beauty and every morning he would be thoroughly flatfooted at the sight of her. It was easier when she forced him to watch far away, when she spoke to and about him with a quiet disdain. She didn’t like him and he was just here to do his job. Nice, done and easy.
But lately the princess had been asking him to stay close regardless if they were traveling through the countryside or to the frigid Rito Village or the blazing furnace that was Death Mountain. She smiled often now, especially when she found a new plant or animal about. Link would be standing, vigilante when the princess would call for him and when he whirled around, sword at the ready, he found not monsters but the sight of the princess mid-smile and holding out some new thing for him to see, excitement twinkling in her eyes.
It was getting really hard to focus on his task.
“Link, are you alright?”
Link flushed, nearly tripping over himself as the princess broke him from his stupor.
They were sitting at peaceful meadow not too far the castle, the princess’s notebook at her side filled with her various observations and musings.
Link must’ve spaced out because he had not noticed the princess approach him, her face inches away from his.
“I am sorry.” She apologized “I did not mean to startle you.”
Link shook his head in disagreement, raising a hand to tell her not to worry.
“I-if you don’t feel comfortable answering my questions, you do not have to.”
Link gestured for her to continue.
“Link” the princess composed herself “Why don’t you speak?”
Link was caught off guard by the question. No one really questioned why he chose not to speak. Most assumed it was some strange choice by some stranger lad from the country. Or perhaps he could not speak. As long as he stabbed the bad guy, no one seemed to care beyond that and the more renown he gained, the more Link felt he needed to maintain the illusion, the stoic unflappable hero of Hyrule.
Well, until the real hero of Hyrule appeared.
Link mused for a moment, wondering how to best explain his situation to the princess.
“I’m sorry.”
Link was taken aback by the princess’s shameful tone.
“I….I did not mean to be so personal.” She began, eyes cast away from him “It….it just occurs to me I have known you for a few months now and yet I have never once heard you speak. I know I have not been most friendly person to you and I understand if you find me rude or perhaps annoying. I know watching me wade through the fields is not the most effective use of your talents.”
Link could feel panic setting in. He couldn’t let the princess blame herself! Especially now that she was making an effort to open up to him. Link licked his lips, willing the words to form into existence.
“I am sorry Link” Link’s heart fluttered at the sound of his name. She said his name! She said his name! She’s never said his name to him before!
“Perhaps I should just remain silent.” the princess went on “I am truly sorry for mistreating you and taking my frustration about my father out on you. You did not deserve that.”
Wait! No no no no!
The princess sighed dejectedly, turning away from Link.
Link bit his lip, taking deep slow breathes as he tried to form the words in his head.
-----
Zelda was disappointed but not surprised by Link’s lack of a response. She knew it might’ve been a little too late given her treatment of him but she had been hoping perhaps she could convince him that she was not as nasty as she appeared to him. Alas, it seems it was for naught.
“W-wait.”
Zelda blinked, unsure if she really heard what she thought she heard. She turned slowly to Link, surprised to see him with a hand outstretched, sweat forming upon his brow as he awkwardly moved his mouth as if trying to get it to work.
“D-did you say something Link?” She asked quizzically.
Link gave a short nod.
Zelda whirled around, knees against the grass as she leaned in closer, unable to get Link’s voice out of her ears.
Link gestured to himself, touching his chest with an open hand.
“You.”
Link nodded, wincing as he struggled to speak.
“I. Don’t. Like. Talking.”
Zelda was in awe at Link. For a warrior so fierce, so steely, so loyal his voice was soft. It was gentle and quiet like a breeze yet still lingered in her mind.
“You don’t like talking” Zelda repeated “I understand.”
Link nodded once before breaking into a toothy smile.
Zelda’s heart raced at the sight of the indifferent Link forming a full smile on his face. She pulled back, trying to will the red out of her hair.
Link tilted his head curiously towards Zelda before he closed the distance.
Zelda’s heart thundered in her ears as Link placed a cool hand upon her forehead, his face returning to its stony indifference but his eyes filled with worry.
“I’m fine!” Zelda waved him off, pulling away before she turned any redder “I...just thought of something.”
Link looked unconvinced but let it go. He stood to his feet and offered his hand to the princess.
Zelda stared up, the sun glowing brightly behind Link’s form as he waited patiently for her. She took his hand and he, firmly but gently, pulled her to her feet.
Link gestured to her horse.
“Yes.” Zelda nodded in agreement “Perhaps it is time to go home.”
Link gave a thumbs up and went to retrieve their horses.
Zelda pinched her cheeks with all her might.
“Urbosa was right. He is handsome.”
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Peter Parker - See the light (10)
This is not edited, sorry in advance for any mistakes!
Small sneak peek
First part
Second part
Third part
Fourth part
Fifth part
Sixth part
Seventh part
Eighth part
Ninth part
Plot: Peter and you find your way to each other, and one last obstacle to fight.
Warnings: not to give any spoilers, but things are about to get nasty. If you have seen the film, the last part. If not, BLOOD.
“Y/N, treasure?” your mother called up the stairs. “I know I said come down soon, but dinner’s is ready. You wouldn’t want it cold, would you?”
You tensed, and came back to life. Quickly, you threw yourself off the bed and stalked towards the door, an new hatred brewing behind your eyes. The woman climbing the stairs right then, Gothel, your mother – the imposter – made your stomach turn. You were the lost princess, the girl who they held all those celebrations for, and to who the flying lanterns were destinated. All those years, staring out the window when you could have been there. All those years, because of a woman who had played with you.
Freedom is about letting go.
“Y/N – “
You opened the door and started down the stairs, where your mother was midway up. She wore her characteristic smile, that you already knew was fake. As your life, as your identity and as everything you had ever known. You noticed, in the way she seemed to change her face as soon as she saw you, lifting up in nothing but interest and selfishness.
“Treasure” Gothel said with a grin. “Have you washed up? Dinner’s is ready, don’t you hear me?”
“I’m the lost princess”
“Y/N speak clearly, you know I hate it when you whisper” she rolled her eyes.
“I’m the lost princess!” you faced her, for the first time in your life not being afraid of saying no to her. “Right?”
There was a pregnant pause. The sun was almost down, it was dark in the tower but you could see the shock written all over her face. She had wide eyes and had stopped walking up; and you had never seen her so scared.
“Have I spoken clearly, mother?” you asked, cold. “Or maybe I shouldn’t call you that?”
“Oh, treasure, are you hearing yourself?” she let out a high pitched laugh, and smiled just too wide. She kept walking up. “Why are you asking me such as stupid thing –“
“It was you!” you cried out, stepping away from her, as if her touch burned. “ You stole me from my parents all those years ago! You did it!”
The façade fell from your mother’s face, and the expression you had seen peeking out so many times in your life, that face that she made when she was really angry or you asked too much, came out. Her eyes became hard and cold, she pouted and, when she talked, her voice was sharp as a knife.
“Everything I did was to protect you”
“All my live I’ve hiding from other people who might eyes me” your fist clenched tightly, and you walked down the stairs. You pushed her out of your way. “But I should be hiding from you! You used me!”
“Where will you go?” She asked, a fire burning behind her eyes. “He won’t be waiting for you”
You stopped dead in your tracks, and looked back. There was a river of your hair running down the stairs, and you mother walked down with a sickening smile. She looked crazy, and you worried for the first time for Peter. He had been your way out, and she probably knew it; so your stomach tightened at the thought. Even if he had hurt you, even if he had broken his promise, you worried for the boy.
“What did you do?” you inhaled quickly, panic spiking.
“To that – criminal?” she folded her arms on her lap, proud. “He shall be hanged for his crimes”
Your eyes widened, and all the confidence fell.
“N-no!”
The switch flickered in her eyes once more, and the fake mask she had wore came back. Her eyes softened and the volume and strength of her voice went down. She circled you like a prey, almost crouching down as you drowned in panic: Gothel was right back into mother-mode, and tried to run her hands through your hair.
“Oh, treasure, it’s alright! It’s okay, listen to me” she finally was facing you. “Things are like… they are meant to be, everything –“
“No!” you cried out and teared away from the woman. “You’re wrong about everything! You were wrong about him! All he showed me was respect, and love, and freedom, and didn’t use me for my powers! I’ll never let you use me or my hair again!”
You slapped her hand away, and pushed her with all your strength, trying to keep the woman who was no longer your mother as far away as possible. She stumbled, hitting the mirror with her elbow and making it fall.
The cracking was heard and echoed through the tower; then, silence. She kept looking between the broken glass and you, and for a moment, her eyes filled what betrayal and hurt almost made you change your mind. But that was what she wanted, that was what she had always done with you; and no longer would you fall for that.
Finally, the switch changed, and Gothel’s kind and motherly side died completely. Her expression slowly started to fill you with dread, and before you knew it, she was gripping your wrist with a strength you didn’t know she possessed.
“You want me to be the bad one?!” she screamed in your face. “Then guess what… you have never seen someone as evil as me!”
-
The metal tugged on your skin painfully, and you whimpered into the gag around your mouth. The chains tied around the metal dragged your down and left you feeling more exhausted than you should have. You were tired, scared and angry; but mostly, you were sad. Sad, because at this time Peter would be dead, and by the looks of it all because of you. You should have never involved him in your business, just let him go when you had the chance; he hadn’t even tricked you or break his promise, your mother had manipulated him too.
And he was going to die thinking you didn’t want to leave with him. Because, after having time to think chained to the wall, the gesture of giving him the satchel did look a little like refusing. You were new to the whole social world, and you regretted ever asking him to go and see the lights. Maybe, she wouldn’t have found you then. Maybe, Peter could still be alive.
“Quiet, treasure, quiet” Gothel cooed, dragging the back of her finger along your cheek. “It won’t be long until we can take those off”
You resisted a shudder at the feeling of her cold fingers, and you couldn’t help a second whimper. You were closer to sobbing your heart out, but you wanted to be strong to take advantage of any possibility you may had. She kept shushing you, more like a pet than a person. When she got tired of you pulling away, she quickly backhanded and moved back where she was packing up the last of your things.
There weren’t much, and she was making sure that yours were nothing more than an old bag that didn’t have anything important. Like, the flag you wanted so desperately to take with you.
It was morning already, but the sun wasn’t out. Clouds covered the sky and it threatened to rain. Suddenly, a cry of a horse had both resident of the tower whipping their heads towards the open window. You struggled for a second more curious than anything.
“Y/N!”
Someone was shouting seconds later, and your hear soared. You started to struggle hard against the metal chains, the gag sitting uncomfortably between your lips as you screamed Peter’s name. Your mother looked at you and the window, and you saw how she paled and feared the boy.
You could almost laugh of happiness.
“Darling, let down your hair” Peter shouted once more.
You couldn’t hold back anymore the tears of joy that pricked at your eyes. You tried to push past the gag and call out more, but you knew he could never hear you. The metal was starting to dig into your skin, and blood started do come out. You were pushed back with a hard push until your back met the column, Gothel in front of you and pushing you from your shoulder. She took hold of your hair, and pulled at it harshly.
You cried out when the sharp tug made your head lean forward. Even if you couldn’t see him, you could already hear the stones of the tower being pierced by his knife, a sign that Peter is alive, Peter is here, Peter is coming. You mother got exasperated and grunted.
“Make a noise and I’ll slit your throat”
That shut you up pretty quickly. You watched as she picked up a good amount of your hair, and a moment later, she was throwing the weight out of the window. Gothel tugged at it violently, until you were stretched between the grip of your hair and the chains on your hands, tears running down your face. You were looking at the ground forcefully, trying to keep your breathing at bay.
Finally, you felt how a more gentle tug happened, and the familiar feeling of someone using your hair to get up hit you. Peter was gentler, you felt how he still used the wall to get up, and you felt even worse. He didn’t know what was up there.
Peter climbed until he reached the window in record time, and your heart screamed when you heard the familiar out-of-breath sigh. Without your hair being used, you could finally look up, and saw him leaning against the window, still getting into the tower. Your mother quickly hid into the shadows, out of view, and you finally made eye contact.
You witnessed how Peter’s chocolate eyes filled with apologies and love, as he walked forwards and towards you. There was a messy mop of brown curls on his head, damp with sweat, and his face was flushed red. You could see some rough marks on his neck and forearms, and you tugged harder to meet him.
“Y/N” Peter gasped, trying to keep down the smile. “Thank god, I – “
Only then, he seemed to realize that you were chained to a wall, not gripping your hair to help him climb or running to meet him. He stopped midsentence, following the chain with his eyes and frowning. The happiness disappeared, and his mouth turned into a tight line, jaw clenching.
You saw her before he did, so you cried and shouted, every word of warning smothered by the cloth in your lips. The metal actually cracked, and Peter’s eyebrows screw up in confusion; but before he could get anything else out, the knife was plunged on his side and your mother was smiling proudly besides you.
Peter grunted out of breath, and stumbled to the ground messily; still, he fell towards you, as if he wanted to touch you one last time. For you, you screamed, shouted, yelled, cried, sobbed and trashed until your mother walked towards you. And watched how Peter looked at you with wide eyes, as his blood soaked the ground.
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7 Scariest Times The Paranormal Was Caught On Camera That You NEED To See, And The Real Stories Behind Them
What hasn’t been caught on camera?
There’s the 'accidental’ sextapes which are now a confirmed marketing technique, there’s the montages of racial slurs spewed by streamers looking to get, ahem, relevant, and then there’s the clips of customers telling shopping assistants that yes, having to wear a mask is in fact an infringement on their human rights.
(It’s not f*cking hard. Wear a damn mask.)
But everything isn’t just online.
Oh no.
It’s online and filmed in full HD.
And it’s not only the living that are having their most embarrassing moments projected to the world in Ultra-4K. The dead have also been making their name in viral videos.
In fact, it’s the desire to capture the paranormal on camera which has been used by influencer-wannabes and paranormal investigators to secure views and get people talking. But as a result of this, there’s a vast range of clips, pics, and tv shows that claim to capture evidence of the paranormal. And if that wasn’t enough, most of these are faked or fluffed to encourage viewers to fall for the alleged evidence of the afterlife.
But there are some which can’t be explained.
There are some which show no scars of ‘shopped shadows and ghostly figures.
There are some which fit the local legends and complete the paranormal puzzle of the location.
I’ve sifted through YouTube, and I’ve scoured the web for real footage of the supernatural. Now it’s time for you to get traumatised.
#1 - A late-night visitor to The Shaws Bay Hotel wanders around the bar, Australia
In this clip - taken at 1am in August 2015 - we see a white glowing mist move around the tables in full view of the CCTV camera. It keeps its peculiar form in the shape of an orb or a round shadow for a couple seconds, and appears to walk between the tables like a customer before quickly flying off camera.
Check out the video here.
Surely the glowing mist could just be a small bug buzzing across the camera? Or maybe a spec of dust floating in the thick air of the bar?
The thing is, this mist-figure set off the motion sensor security camera, prompting it to record. A moving bug wouldn’t be enough to cause it to start filming.
And if that wasn’t worrying enough, this potential paranormal evidence fits the local legends all too well. This is believed to be the ghost of ‘Little Sarah’, a 7 month old that died in the neighbouring Fenwick House in 1887. She was actually the daughter of the captain - Captain Fenwick - who built the house.
Locals are well versed in her hauntings:
'As a person who has lived in the old house, let me just say it is a very spiritually active house and area’
They typically cite strange noises and objects moving by themselves as the most common activity, but alarms being set off and doors opening are oft mention, too, matching the video in question. She is also known to wander around houses and buildings nearby, and clearly chose the local pub to explore that evening.
#2 - One of the black-eyed children of Cannock Chase wanders in the woods, UK
Black-eyed children are the latest urban legend trend, with creepy kids now dominating discussions of the paranormal. And this video clip is just one more scrap of evidence to suggest that maybe, just maybe, they are real.
You can see the evidence for yourself here.
Filmed by paranormal investigator Lee Brickley (okay, right, it might not have been filmed by him, there is some confusion over who filmed the video or who’s investigation it was in my research), he claims he was filming the notoriously haunted Cannock Chase location when he saw the young girl with pale skin and ‘coal-black’ eyes.
He claimed the child was roughly a metre in height and her head was tilted to one side as if she had been hung or her neck had been snapped (either way it ain’t good). For five minutes the young girl stared at them with her deep, dark eyes, until she sprinted back into the dense trees.
The thing is, this is not the only sighting of black-eyed children in Cannock Chase. As far back as 1982 sightings have been recorded. And all of the sightings - whether the children scream for help, run for the hills, or stare into the darkness - match other claims of supernatural activity local to the area.
The pig-man of Cannock Chase also haunts the location, and is probably presumed to be an evil entity similar to that of black-eyed children. These black-eyed children are believed to be either aliens, vampires, or ghosts.
But they are still largely considered to be simply an urban legend.
The haunted nature of the woods is only furthered by its bloody past: in the 1960s, 3 young girls went missing which were eventually traced back to Raymond Leslie Morris. Could these black-eyed children be the victims of his crimes?
#3 - Antiques move by themselves in Barnsley Antiques Centre, UK
Thanks to the Annabelle movies, haunted objects - whether in creepy-doll format or another vintage style - are the latest trend in terror. And it's for that reason that video clips like this are quite so scary.
In this video we see CCTV footage of a dark shadow next to a shelf. It then gently sways and a huge, heavy lamp comes crashing down from the shelf.
See for yourself.
Okay, fine, it’s a small shadow, and yeah only a few objects fall down. But according to the owner and visitors to the centre, it could be one of the spirits that haunts the location. So much so, that the centre actually has a YouTube channel devoted to their haunting which you can find here.
In 2016 the owner of the Barnsley Antiques Centre claimed he had experienced over 50 occurrences of peculiar activity alone. From the employees that work there to those looking to bag a bargain, this is not the first time something supernatural has been seen.
Fact is, if you collect enough old and potentially haunted objects under one roof, the unexplained is bound to occur. You can read more about haunted or cursed objects right here.
#4 - A glowing light and distinct orb is seen flying over a crib, UK
In this clip we open to a baby’s cot and 8 week old infant that is fast asleep. A baby monitor records a light floating above the cot. We also see the father of the child lean over the child, and a distinctive ghostly glowing orb shake and sway next to the child.
Check out the video.
Orbs are considered one of the most popular signs of paranormal activity that can be captured on camera. But what I want to focus on here is that it is hovering just about the baby.
Children are known for their ability to see and communicate with the paranormal far more than adults. Of course, this could just be an ‘imaginary friend’ or something simply from a daydream or a nightmare; but it's when children mention people that actually did exist that concerns arise.
The connection between children and spirits might just explain why this paranormal phenomenon lingered so closely to the infant. Could this have been a protective spirit, perhaps?
#5 - A haunted calculator is used to communicate with the dead, USA
It's a rule of thumb amongst paranormal enthusiasts:
You never, not ever, attempt to communicate with spirits.
Calculators controlled by spirits come under this umbrella of communication - even if it does sound like it belongs in a parody film.
What do you think?
There are enough videos on the web showcasing the uses of a ouija board, whether they’re real or not. But according to some psychic mediums, ghosts can use any conduit they want to communicate with us. Spirits on the other hand typically only communicate with us through mediums.
In fact, most paranormal investigators often resort to asking ghosts questions and waiting for a visible or audible response, such as a knocking sound. That’s why this video is quite so concerning.
Not only is the calculator old and seemingly unhackable to those ‘using’ it, by communicating with the ghost or spirit, they are inviting the presence to latch onto the location or the people communicating with it, allowing it to feed off their energy.
If this is an evil or negative spirit, this could be the start of a haunting.
#6 - The ghost of an RAF soldier is filmed walking along a busy road, UK
These days, hitchhikers are rarely picked up by passing cars. If anything says potential murderer, it’s that. But this video doesn’t catch a killer - it shows someone who has already been killed.
This clip shows a man clad in khaki and dark brown walking around a road near Belsay who is trying to flag down cars driving past. He appears to be an RAF soldier, but he actually served a couple decades ago. According to local history, this could be the spirit of a soldier that crash landed during the Second World War.
*insert Donald Trump meme about basic f*cking history*
What’s your verdict?
In October 1943, a spitfire spun into the ground at Middlepart Farm. Could this be the ghost of a soldier walking free from the wreck?
#7 - The spirits of soldiers are recorded at Gettysburg, USA
In this video we see small lights and shadowy figures move along a small leafy hill in Gettysburg, a national military park. And as a result of its history, this clip is believed to capture the spirits of soldiers that were caught up in the 3 day battle in Pennsylvania.
Check out the video here.
Thanks to its bloody history - from which approximately 7,800 soldiers died - claims that there is paranormal activity are easy to make. But the location itself has garnered a reputation for supernatural occurrences.
Books, documentaries, EVPs, videos, and pictures all claim to connect and reveal the spooky truth of the location. This video only fits too well.
Numerous spots within Gettysburg have been considered specifically haunted, including the local college, an orphanage, and the home of the only civilian that was killed during the battle. Soldiers tend to lead the haunting, but a ghost cat and ghost children are also spotted at a local inn.
The high emotional atmosphere and bloody violence that took place here - along with the severe volume of deaths - suggests that this short clip showcases just a few of the spirits that still linger here.
As video becomes the mainstream format for communication - whether you’re aiming to become the next big TikTok star or are just sending a meme to a mate - one thing is clear:
Why not use it to prove that the afterlife exists?
Liked this post? Want to read a new article about the paranormal every week AND hear a new real ghost story everyday? Hit follow.
And while you’re at it, make sure you check out The Peoples Paranormal Archive where you can binge accounts of real paranormal experiences and contribute to the project with your own.
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Amnesty International does'nt recognize Julian Assange as a political prisoner. Amnesty International does'nt recognize the status of whistleblower at Chelsea Manning. Not only, it's a shame but, as well, it's a betrayal. It's a criminal position that endangers all politicals refugees and asylum seekers, all the citizens of the world. Amnesty International acts like Lenin Moreno. It destroys international law, human rights and the fundamental rights of the individual. From today, its prescriptions and its positiontakings are no more valuable than that of the President of Ecuador. It's a evildoer NGO.
Amnesty International is violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is complicit in the injustice and suffering inflicted on Julian Assange.
Amnesty International should be at the forefront of defending Julian Assange because all rights, without exception, of Julian Assange have been violated by Sweden, Ecuador, the United Kingdom and the USA. All of these countries have violated their territorial laws and the international laws, the criminal law, the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 7 of the Rome Statute. They are all guilty of crimes against humanity.
And Amnesty International declares that Julian Assange is not a political prisoner!
I urge all independent journalists to search the bowels of this sympathetic human rights organization that would'nt see a mass grave in the middle of a deserted street. No need to go very far I think. It will be enough to look at who finances it …
International law violated. Territorial right violated. Refugee law violated. Geneva Convention violated. Covenant on Civil and Political Rights violated. Article 7 of the Rome Statute, violated. Right to information violated.
Practice of Torture. No respect UN's instructions. Abusive sequestration. Isolation. Deprivation of lawyer. Violation of the lawyer-client secret. Violation of the medical secret. Violation of the right to intellectual property. Defamation.
But what does it take for Amnesty International to declare a human being in danger?
But what does it take for Amnesty International to demand the release of a human being who has committed no crime, who faces an in camera trial, torture, life imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay or the penalty of dead?
That his bones were broken, his eyes gouged, his anus shredded, his body dismembered? Maybe dead ?!
Let's recap the facts
Ecuador has violated its constitution, the Geneva Agreements and all rights related to refugee protection, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 7 of the Rome Statute, criminal law. The equator killed political asylum and nationality. No more citizens are safe nowhere, but Amnesty International finds it normal.
It does not matter if a human being is deprived of his territorial protections in exchange forhard currency and housegold goods. The republic's presidents must have offer a good time. And then the money does'nt smell. But then no smell at all because money issue, Ecuador is insatiable. He does'nt just sell Julian Assange to the USA. He makes profit on his back. It makes profits of him. He sells it piece by piece. He gives him to be skinned to the vultures. I recall, for all intents and purposes, that Julian Assange is a human being and that a human being musn't be sold.
It does'nt matter, Amnesty International validates the sale of human beings, journalits being. Lenin Moreno has its blessing. For Amnesty International, Ecuador, the United Kingdom and the US, Julian Assange must not have the status of being human. It 's a piece of furniture perhaps? A pushing-ball ?! A horse that is sent to rendering.
Ecuador has also sold Julian Assange's medical records, his computers, his notes, his defense documents, the images of his private life. He delivered, in violation of all the laws, all the effects of Julian Assange in the USA with the complicity of England. Criminal Association at the state level. It's a crime.
But Julian Assange is not a political prisoner for Amnesty International !
No ! It's just a man, a journalist, who has been subjected to the worst outrages, the worst tortures while being innocent, while committing only one crime: denouncing war crimes and state's wrongdoing.
Ecuador tortured Julian Assange, deprived him of air, light, exercise, doctors and medicines, forbade him to see his lawyers, deprived him of visiting and any contact, filmed him 24 hours a day, including in its most intimate moments, sold the images filmed to the highest bidder (ongoing investigation in Spain), put him in complete isolation 60 h by week.
But Julian Assange is not a political prisoner for Amnesty International.
By not recognizing the political asylum and the Ecuadorian nationality of Julian Assange (Violant UN requirements), by threatening to kidnap him to extradite him if he left the Embassy, England has violated the Convention of Geneva and all the rights relating to refugees, the all the laws of international law and human rights.
But Julian Assange is not a political prisoner for Amnesty International.
By reopening a third preliminary investigation for rape while Julian Assange was cleared in 2010 by Finne's procecutor first investigation, (Julian Assange left Sweden free and innocent) and that the Marianne Ny's prosecutor second preliminary invetigation, opened for no reason had closed for no charges (normal for te reason the first Finne's preminary investigation had proved that there was no rape), Sweden strikes politically Julian Assange to ensure his extradition to the US.
But Julian Assange is not a political prisoner for Amnesty International.
The USA do a closed-door trial, without lawyers, for Julian Assange. They'll torture him, and they'll condamn him at a life imprisonment at Guantanamo or the death penalty. But by the way, what is the US accuse of Julian Assange? ... US want kill Julian Assange because he's to daring to reveal to the general public the war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, the financing of DAECH by the Clinton Foundation. It's therefore for information crime that the US wants to judge Julian Assange. For do that, the US must violate their first amendment.
But Julian Assange is not a political prisoner for Amnesty International.
But who does Amnesty International work for ?!
If Amnesty International does not grant Julian Assange the political prisoner's status, it's because it works for his tormentors. To deliver, a man who has denounced war crimes, or to accept that he is, to those who committed them, is to condemn him to death. And Amnesty International knows it.
Amnesty International condemns to death Julian Assange! She is an accomplice of the USA, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ecuador to persecute him. Criminal conspiracy. Crime punished by law.
I recall that the UN has denounced the torture of Julian Assange, that it demanded that he be immediately released, compensated and taken to a safe place.
But Assange is not a political prisoner for Amnesty International.
It's a flower pot, maybe? A baseball? Nothing ?
The masks fall one after the other. The crucifixion of Julian Assange will have served to unmask the usurpers. Amnesty International is one of them.
Boycott and Blacklist for Amnesty International. It does'nt defend human rights.
Amnesty International, by not condemning the improper imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, the torture she suffered from the US to compel her to testify against Wikileaks and Julian Assange (Intimidation of witness, crime condemned by law), proves that Amnesty Internationl doesn't defend human's rights and must be boycotted and blacklisted by all of us.
Amnesty International, by not defending Julian Assange, by not recognizing his status as a political prisoner, proves that he does’nt defend human rights. This association must disappear and all genuine democrats must disassociate from it.
If Amnesty International is not fighting to demand that Julian Assange be immediately released and protected, as the UN demands, it’s because it does’nt defend human rights.
I therefore urge all those who care about the unfair fate of Julian Assange, the fate of all whistleblowers, human rights, freedom of information, freedom, equality and the Brotherhood to join the WikiJustice Committee Julian Assange. We 're still a very small structure but we defend human rights, we oppose torture and all attacks on life. Come swell our ranks! We will eventually turn this committee into a Foundation for the Defense of Human Rights and Respect for the Human Person, focusing our actions on the protection of all living beings and the planet so that NGOs, like Amnesty International that seeming to defend the rights of life and doesnt do, that desappear and no longer prevent justice and equity from triumphing.
Shame on Amnesty International. It putting at risk all whistleblowers, opponents, and journalists around the world. It validates the killing of political asylum and nationality. It validates the killing of human rights. It validates the torture. It validates the crime against humanity. It is complicit in the killing of Julian Assange.
Citizens never bring him your support again. She must end up in the trash cans of the story.
Freedom for Julian Assange. Now !
Phroyd
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Seditions of You: An Interview with Filmmaker Joe Wakeman
vimeo
Joe Wakeman’s second feature, The Shoplifters (not to be confused with the Palme d’Or-winning film of the same title, but hopefully SEOs are none the wiser) is “a series of tableaux depicting the follies of a group of na��ve Marxist would-be radicals” striving to be revolutionaries, only to discover that “what they really want is to be seen wearing berets.”
Although he began work on it a decade ago, The Shoplifters carries some very timely themes about online activism, consumerism, and the shallowness of modern culture as a whole. With fairly little effort, its thought-provoking vignettes resist passive cultural consumption and its stylistic fluidity keeps it visually stimulating as well. Its 70 minutes also offer a lot of seamless humor, from a slightly slapstick dressing room shoplift to a smart, satirical "revolutionary bake sale” in Washington Square Park.
Ahead of The Shoplifters’ appearance at the NewFilmmakers New York Film Festival on February 6, I spoke with Joe via email about collaborations, Maoist propaganda and Communism as fashion statement, among other fun topics.
1) What ignited your interest in Marxism & Maoism?
I've been interested in Marxism since I was a teenager, probably about when I was 13 and first encountered the politically inclined punk of The Sex Pistols and The Clash, and Dead Kennedys -- I think it's somewhat common for young suburbans to go through a "Communist" phase. What I didn't realize at the time was that my interest in Marxism was really less about politics, which admittedly I knew precious little about (though I do lean rather strongly to the left) and more about the iconography of Communism: I would go around with sickle and hammer belt buckles and spell "Revolution" with a backwards “R.” That sort of corny thing.
Later on, when I was 18 or so, I saw Jean Luc Godard's La Chinoise and his Groupe Dziga Vertov films with Jean-Pierre Gorin, all beautifully boring films depicting sexy French Maoists who do very little real revolutionary activity, despite their ability to quote at length from Marxist texts. These films made it apparent to me that what we think of in the US as "Marxist," where Communism has never been a reality, is as much a set of fashion and cultural signifiers as is the uniform of a typical "Goth" or "Emo Kid" -- berets, fists in the air, shabby clothes, shiny boots and cigarettes.
2) I believe you've mentioned that you started working on -- or had least conceived of -- The Shoplifters about 10 years ago? In what ways has it changed in that time?
Yes, at that time my friend Taylor Bruck (who plays Che Smith in the film) and I were also sometimes engaged in the "cool crime of shoplifting." There was a certain politically oriented moral code about it, where it was okay to shoplift from big corporations like Barnes & Noble but not right to steal from local businesses. But after seeing the Godard films we talked about how goofy it would be to take those politics further and call ourselves "revolutionaries,” which became the kernel of the absurd story for The Shoplifters that we wrote together.
The original script had a lot more characters and more action, arsons and assassinations and a lengthy courtroom finale at the end, where the Shoplifters are put on trial for sedition and theft. All that sounds exciting, but keep in mind, this was the script of a teenager. It's really rather cringe-worthy to read today. I threw the whole thing out when I reworked the film, though a couple scenes survive: the opening speech and the fitting-room sequence, where we pile on layers of stolen clothes, are both from the original version of the movie. We tried to shoot scenes from that script at that time, when I was 18 years old, with some borrowed equipment from the TV studio I was working for at the time, but we shot on damaged tapes and botched the sound recording. The material was practically unusable so, dejected, I hung up The Shoplifters for awhile and dedicated myself to working on other things and developing more before taking another crack at it.
3) Do you see The Shoplifters as sharing any similarities with your first feature, They Read By Night? Although stylistically different, they both seem to lovingly mock certain countercultures. I also like that they both have "nested" films within films (the short in They Read by Night and the music video and "Post-Capitalist Potential for Mass Education in the Internet Age" sequence in The Shoplifters).
Definitely. Actually They Read By Night was an attempt, after the first failure of The Shoplifters, to write a similar film on a smaller scale. I swapped out the berets for leather jackets and the characters became greaser-rock ‘n’ roller juvenile delinquents instead of revolutionaries, but the point is essentially the same -- that their so-called rebellion is still a symptom of capitalism, buying into another kind of "outsider" fashion.
As for the films-within-the-film element, I've always been attached to the idea that a movie does not have to tell one story, or focus on the story, or even just be one type of film. This is the other big element learned from the likes of Godard and other counterculture filmmakers, Dusan Makavejev, Warhol et al. -- that the "plot" of a film is not so important as the ideas which animate it, and to express those ideas more in the form of a lively discussion that, in a movie, can be shown with images rather than just spoken with words. Let's make our characters watch a film together and see how they react, or in The Shoplifters they educate themselves about Mao Zedong by reading about the Cultural Revolution on Wikipedia and from there its a free-flowing association of images culminating in some psuedo-Greek philosophy. It's the kind of methodology that people experimented with in the ‘60s and you see less often today, though occasionally you do see it, in Sion Sono's excellent recent Antiporno. Or, actually, the web-browser screen cap stuff in The Shoplifters is inspired by the 2014 teen horror film Unfriended. It's kind of a limitation of the cinema's potential when a movie just tells you a story one way, unless the story is really good, like Titanic or something.
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4) Both films also have musical sequences (the fight scene in They Read By Night and "Style Revolutionaries" in The Shoplifters). Given your involvement in the music scene here in Brooklyn (Joe is in the band Toyzanne, who you should definitely check out, and directs music videos as well), would you ever consider doing a musical?
I love musicals! They're a popular illustration of that same idea -- the story stops, and somebody sings a song that comments on it, or sometimes the song continues the story, or presents a separate situation which is analogous to the story. I was raised on musicals and I think they can still be cutting-edge as a genre, even though many might regard them as old-fashioned. I composed a lot of the music for The Shoplifters, together with DP Torey Cates and help from musician friends from the Brooklyn scene: Brendan Winick (also in Toyzanne), Frank Rathbone and Jenna Nelson (of Sic Tic), Kate Mohanty. Holly Overton and Sannety (who also stars in the film) contributed their unique stylings for different sections of the film as well. When I showed my friend John Sansone an early cut of the film, he remarked that he didn't realize that it was a "musical" which surprised me because there's no singing, (except for the Smiths cover and "Style Revolutionary"). But when I considered the role music plays in the film, it's really not too different from a musical in structure and tone, which was something that made me feel very happy about it. I'd like to eventually do a proper musical with lots of songs that plays with the genre in a more direct way, but I also don't think I'm mature enough yet as a filmmaker to attempt that.
5) How did the various collaborations in the film (the score, and the sequences from Oliver David and Preston Spurlock) come about?
Oliver David had made two music videos, one for my old band Bodega Bay and one for ONWE that had this style of a slow-motion fashion advertisement for the bands. I really enjoyed these videos and wanted Oliver to do something of a "remake" of the same style, this time advertising the revolutionary cadre in the film instead of a rock ‘n’ roll band, making the not-so-subtle commentary even less so. Likewise, when I was preparing to make the film I became close friends with Preston Spurlock, who makes these mind-blowing video collages of old commercials and such that are like wading through cultural toxic waste dumps to tap into some unconscious reflections that can't be put into words. I connected these in my head to stuff like Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema or the work of Adam Curtis (HyperNormalisation, The Century of the Self) and thought they would add a lot to the dialogue of images I was trying to present in the film.
I think that it's unimportant for an artist to be the "sole author" of a film. It is more interesting when I think, “Oh, Sannety can do things with electronic music that I don't even understand,” or “Oliver and Preston work in video in a completely different style from me which can form a relationship with my style, so why not ask them to contribute and make it a real dialogue rather than a constructed one.” I think collaboration is key in filmmaking -- it keeps the spirit of montage living through and through the work, which if you consider Eisenstein and Vertov, is really "Revolutionary" filmmaking. 6) I liked the criticisms of Internet activism the film presented. In the ego-driven realm of social media, do you feel there is any way for a pure act of protest or activism to thrive or even exist?
Yes I do think real activism can exist and can even be given a lot of strength through the Internet and social media -- those things have leveled the playing field and given voice to marginalized communities who hadn’t had that kind of visibility before the advent of these networks. Community organizer Candice Fortin, introduced to me through Gwynn Galitzer and Suffragette City Magazine, is another voice present in the movie, in keeping with the collaborations that exist throughout the film. She explains activism in the modern era and what people can do to start enacting change very eloquently midway through the movie, and i don't think I can say it better than the way she did in the film. She is constantly posting about progressive candidates, organizations and other concerns through social media to bring about political change on a grassroots scale. You can follow her @candicefortin for a start, but mainly pay attention! These opportunities to help are all around. 7) Do you have a favorite piece of Maoist propaganda?
Yes! This Maoist ballet from the cultural revolution, encouraging women to form feminist revolutionary cadres: The Red Detachment of Women. You can watch it on Youtube. Footage from it appears in Preston Spurlock's section of the film, I think it's beautiful and absurd, but I think weirdly Old Hollywood despite its anti-Western screed, like An American in Paris or something but cheaper looking. I really get a kick out of it. Perhaps when this one-day musical comes to fruition I’ll dole out some political ballet as a quiet (or more likely, loud) nod.
The Shoplifters is screening as a part of the NewFilmmakers New York Film Festival at Anthology Film Archives on Feb. 6, 2019. RSVP here.
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The RubinoosThe Rubinoos
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The Rubinoos are an American power pop band that formed in 1970 in Berkeley, California. They are perhaps best known for their singles "I Think We're Alone Now" (1977, a cover of the hit by Tommy James & the Shondells), "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" (1979), and for the theme song to the 1984 film Revenge of the Nerds. Although "I Think We're Alone Now," reaching No. 45 in 1977, has been their only charting hit, the group has a significant enduring cult following among fans of the power-pop genre.[1]
History
In November, 1970 Tommy Dunbar and Jon Rubin formed the Rubinoos to play at a dance for Bay High School in Berkeley, California. Other founding members included Greg 'Curly' Keranen, Alex Carlin, Ralph Granich and Danny Wood. Inspired by siblings' 45s and the Cruisin' vintage radio recreations LP series, Jon Rubin and the Rubinoos played rock and roll oldies, including covers of songs by Chubby Checker, Bill Haley and the Comets, the Dovells, the Troggs, Little Eva, the Chiffons, and others.
Soon after the performance at Bay High School, where Rubin and Dunbar were enrolled, the original band dissolved. In May 1971, they shortened the name to the Rubinoos and reformed as a quartet with Donn Spindt on drums and Tom Carpender on bass. The group now focused on original material by Dunbar, in association with Rubin and others.
The band's early development was assisted and inspired by the success of Earth Quake, whose lead guitarist and principal songwriter was Tommy Dunbar's older brother, Robbie Dunbar. The Rubinoos often appeared as an opening act for Earth Quake in clubs such as the Longbranch Saloon and the Keystone, in Berkeley.
After the expiration of their contract with A&M Records, Earth Quake along with their manager, Matthew King Kaufman, founded Beserkley Recordsand started recruiting additional talent. This included Greg Kihn, Jonathan Richman and the Rubinoos.
In June, 1973, Greg 'Curly' Keranen re-joined the group. In September, 1974, they recorded a cover of the DeFranco Family's "Gorilla", released as a single and included on the Beserkley Chartbusters compilation album. The group also provided accompaniment for Jonathan Richman on two Chartbuster cuts, "The New Teller" and "Government Center." Shortly after the release of "Chartbusters" Keranen left the Rubinoos to join Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers. He was replaced by Royse Ader.
Several 'high points' of the band's early career included: A performance at Bill Graham's Winterland Auditorium, September 24, 1974, on a bill with the Jefferson Starship. At this concert, the Rubinoos were joined on stage by Jonathan Richman, who danced to their version of The Archies' "Sugar, Sugar". This was greeted with intense booing and a pelting of unripe bananas by members of the audience.[2] Having a number one single in Modesto, California, for 13 weeks. Having one of their concerts raffled off to a high school by Burger King. Appearing in Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine many times.
In 1977, Beserkley released The Rubinoos, the group's eponymous debut album. It was well-reviewed and New York Rocker called it "The Best Pop Album of the Decade." The single, a cover of Tommy James' "I Think We're Alone Now," reached No. 45 on the Billboard Hot 100 becoming Beserkley's first hit. The group appeared on American Bandstand (live), So It Goes (by video) and Rolling Stone Magazine: The 10th Anniversary television special in which they were cast as a garage band, performed a tribute to the newly deceased Elvis Presley and morphed into claymationfigures.
The group's next album, Back to the Drawing Board (1979), featured the single "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," which had been released in 1978 and received heavy airplay in England and Europe. In support of this album, the Rubinoos appeared on Rock Goes To College, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Top Pop and opened 56 shows for Elvis Costello on the U.S. portion of his 1979 Armed Funk tour.
In 1980 Royse Ader was replaced by Al Chan. The Rubinoos then recorded the demos for a third album which never came to fruition. These demos, released in the 1990s as Basement Tapes, engineered by well known audio guru, Dan Alexander, is still thought to be one of their best efforts. Spindt and Chan left the group in 1982 when Tommy and Jon decided to move to Los Angeles. In 1983, the group, now consisting of just Rubin and Dunbar, signed with Warner Bros. Records and released the Mini LP Party of Two, produced by Todd Rundgren. Party of Two yielded the single and cult classic music video "If I Had You Back," which has been in continuous rotation on MTV and VH1 for over 25 years. In 1984, they recorded the title song "Revenge of the Nerds" and "Breakdown" for the film Revenge of the Nerds.
The Rubinoos playing in Barcelona, Spain, in 2010
The Rubinoos began a long sabbatical in 1985. In 1989, Dunbar, Spindt, Chan, and John Seabury formed the group Vox Pop and recorded an album of material, co produced by Dunbar and Dan Alexander at Alexanders Coast Recorders. Also in 1989, Jon Rubin joined the noted Los Angeles a cappella Doo Wop group The Mighty Echoes. During the 1990s, two compilation CDs, Basement Tapes and Garage Sale were released. Their success led to the end of The Rubinoos sabbatical and a new album, Paleophonic (1999), produced by Kevin Gilbert. This album did not see the light of day until The Rubinoos' performance, their first in seven years, at the 1999 International Pop Overthrow Festival in Los Angeles. The lineup at IPO featured Rubin, Dunbar, Chan and Spindt. In 2000 Tommy and Jon were hired to sing the Flo and Eddie parts of Frank Zappa's 200 Motels at three concerts with the Netherlands' Philharmonic. In 2002 The Rubinoos toured Spain and Japan, released the all-covers Crimes Against Music (2002) and recorded the album Live in Japan (2004). In 2005 the group reunited with their original producer, Gary Phillips, to record Twist Pop Sin (2006). In 2007, Castle Communications issued the 63-song retrospective Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Rubinoos. Also in 2007, The Rubinoos toured Japan and released a two CD compilation titled One Two That's It. In 2009 the band toured Spain and released the compilation CD HodgePodge which featured one newly recorded track, a cover of The Hollies' classic, "Bus Stop."
Music critic John M. Borack called Paleophonic No. 36 in his list of the best power pop albums of all time, praising its "trademark pitch-perfect harmonies".[1]
In January 2010, The Rubinoos played their first kids show in support of their first all ages CD Biff-Boff-Boing. The CD is a mix of covers and new originals.
In May 2010, to coincide with their Spain/Italy tour, the Rubinoos released their first new original album in five years - Automatic Toaster, produced by Robbie Rist.
More recently, the group was in the news after filing a plagiarism lawsuit in mid-2007 against Canadian pop-punk musician Avril Lavigne claiming that her song "Girlfriend" had too much in common with "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend". The parties confidentially settled out of court in early 2008.[3]The conflict led to a re-interest in the Rubinoos' music, particularly on YouTube.[4]
Lawsuit
In 2007, Dunbar and co-writer James Gangwer sued Canadian pop-rock singer Avril Lavigne, claiming that her hit song "Girlfriend" had too much in common with "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend".
Filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the case also named Avril Lavigne Publishing, her songwriting partner Dr. Luke, RCA Records, and Apple Inc. as defendants.[5] Lavigne's manager, Terry McBride, as well as Lavigne herself, denied that "Girlfriend" was copied from "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," and pointed out that "Boyfriend" itself was similar to the Rolling Stones' "Get Off of My Cloud". The two parties reached a confidential settlement in January 2008.
Members
Current lineup
Jon Rubin - vocals, guitar (1970-1985, 1999–present)
Tommy Dunbar - guitar, vocals (1970-1985, 1999–present)
Donn "Donno" Spindt - drums, vocals (1971-1985, 1999–present)
Al Chan - bass, vocals (1980-1985, 1999–present)
Touring musicians
Susie Davis - keyboards, vocals (2002–present)
David Rokeach - drums (2007–present)
Former members
Greg 'Curly' Keranen - bass, vocals (1970–1971, 1973–1975)
Alex Carlin - organ (1970–1971)
Ralph Granich - drums (1970–1971)
Danny Woods - saxophone (1970–1971)
Tom Carpender - bass, vocals (1971–1973)
Royse Ader - bass, vocals (1975–1980)
Michael Boyd - keyboards, vocals (1981–1982)
Discography
Studio albums
The Rubinoos (1977)
Back to the Drawing Board (1979)
Party of Two EP (1983)
Paleophonic (1998)
Crimes Against Music (2003)
Twist Pop Sin (2006)
Biff-Boff-Boing (children's CD) (2010)
Automatic Toaster (2010)
45 (2015)
Compilations
Bezerk Times (1978)
The Basement Tapes (1993)
Garage Sale (1994)
The Basement Tapes Plus (1999)
Anthology (2002)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Rubinoos (2007) (3-CD box set)
One Two That's It (2008)
HodgePodge (2009)
The Best of The Rubinoos (2014?)
Live album
Live in Japan (2004)
A Night Of All Covers -Live At Koenji High, Tokyo (2018)
References
John M. Borack (2007). Shake some action: the ultimate power pop guide. Not Lame Recordings. pp. 17, 64. ISBN 978-0-9797714-0-8.
"Jojoblog backstage : Interview #15 : Greg "Curly" Keranen". Jojofiles2.blogspot.com. 2007-04-12. Retrieved 2014-04-25.
"Avril Lavigne "Girlfriend" Lawsuit Settlement; Rubinoos Avril Lavigne". popcrunch.com. January 10, 2008. Retrieved July 3, 2010.
James Montgomery (July 9, 2007). "Avril Lavigne Responds To Lawsuit, Says She's Been 'Falsely Accused'". MTV.com. Retrieved July 3, 2010.
"Apple sued for duping Apple TV image, hosting iTunes track". Appleinsider.com. Retrieved 2014-04-26.
External links
Official site
The Rubinoos facebook
The Rubinoos Automatic Toaster Review
The Rubinoos at AllMusic
Review of The Rubinoos Live In Madrid Feb. 7, 2009 at solo-rock.com (in Spanish)
Review of One, Two, That's It at Buhdge.com
December 2007 article from The East Bay Express
Review of Paleophonic at thenightowl.com
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49th Parallel (1941)
The Allies were losing the Second World War. In London in 1939 or 1940, the Ministry of Information (the propaganda house of the British government) met with film director Michael Powell and asked if he might want to make a film about minesweepers. Powell’s interest was piqued, but then he suggested making a film that might inspire the United States to abandon their neutral stance on the conflicts in Europe and Asia. His new partner-in-crime, screenwriter Emeric Pressburger (Pressburger would soon become Powell’s co-director on their subsequent movies), relished the prospect, hoping to “scare the pants off the Americans” with this newest project.
By the second half of 1941, the situation appeared dire. The Allies evacuated Dunkirk (their last foothold in continental Western Europe) the year prior; Nazi Germany was making advances in the Balkans; Fascist Italy was reclaiming the former African lands of the Roman Empire that it long sought; Imperial Japan had completed its military stranglehold on modern-day Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was the most vocal in pleading with the United States to enter the war, but still Washington sat on the sidelines, adopting the policy of appeasement. Michael Powell’s 49th Parallel is an unusual propaganda feature film, and ultimately did not inspire the Americans to declare war on the Axis. Though released in the United Kingdom in late 1941, the film was not given a general release in the U.S. until April 15, 1942. By then, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor already provided the impetus for the Americans joining the Allies.
Powell and Pressburger’s newest work was no longer needed to scare the pants off any American. With 49th Parallel (originally released in the United States as The Invaders, which is also how it is listed in the records of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences), they introduced a narrative centering around Nazi soldiers looking to impose their values an ocean away from home. Many WWII-era propaganda movies have lost much of their watchability given time, but that is not the case here.
A German U-boat has surfaced in Hudson Bay in Canada. Six sailors are tasked by the captain to search for foodstuffs and supplies, but shortly after they reach land, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) has destroyed the U-boat. The six Nazi raiders are now at large, looking for ways to return to Germany or to rally the Canadian people to their side and begin an insurrection. Their commanders, Lieutenants Hirth (Eric Portman) and Kunhecke (Raymond Lovell), push the men forward. The raiders soon terrorize a band of French-Canadian trappers led by Johnnie (Laurence Olivier with an atrocious French accent) and murder a local Inuit named Nick (Ley On; whose people is described by Hirth as, “sub-apes like Negroes, only one step above the Jews” – this line was cut from the American release to avoid offending segregationists). Kunhecke is killed by an Inuit marksman as their raiding party attempts to steal a floatplane, and becomes the first casualty as these six are picked off one after another. Their mission to return to Germany will encounter several stops, including a community of Hutterites (a Germanic Anabaptist group, similar to the Amish, that fled Europe in the nineteenth century due to religious persecution) that they will attempt to convert to Nazism and Banff National Park.
Also featured are: Hutterite leader Peter (Anton Walbrook), Hutterite villager Anna (Glynis Johns), writer Philip Armstrong Scott (Leslie Howard), and Canadian soldier Andy Brock (Raymond Massey). Rounding out the U-boat’s raiding party are Vogel (Niall MacGinnis), Kranz (Peter Moore), Lohrmann (John Chandos), and Jahner (Basil Appleby).
If 49th Parallel was not a propaganda film, it would be more commonly labeled a war thriller. Editor David Lean (1962′s Lawrence of Arabia, 1965′s Doctor Zhivago) was one year away from directing his first feature film, and his ability to string together frantic images in the handful of pursuit scenes means that 49th Parallel never needs spectacular violence nor masses of soldiers engaging in a firefight to send hearts racing. Lean’s future cinematographer for both Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, Freddie Young, is also involved. And though the widescreen camera lens of the 1950s and onwards had not been standardized yet (the film is in the typical 1.37:1 ratio for the time), his opening images of Canadian mountains and the nature photography found in the film’s second half are spectacular to behold. For eighteen months, the filmmakers traveled over 50,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean and Canadian wilderness to shoot this film. 49th Parallel is a cross-country, cross-continental effort. When put through the paces of Lean and Young’s work, puts into doubt the certainty of any propaganda movie’s ending – even for a few minutes.
Emeric Pressburger’s screenplay keeps the war thriller based in Western anti-authoritarian rhetoric. Pressburger, a Hungarian Jewish refugee who fled continental Europe and whose command of English was imperfect, allows the Nazi characters to spout dogma without challenge; their ignorance and contempt for anyone not like them obvious soon after the U-boat surfaces in Hudson Bay. Their victims are never entirely helpless, often challenging the Nazis with celebrations of Western democratic and classical ideas championing a person’s fundamental rights to free thought and to live the life they please. Unlike a typical, pure war movie, 49th Parallel is a Nazi struggle to escape North America contained within a grander ideological dialectic. The film makes no pretense on what side it is on (it should not in any case). Its messages are articulate, achieving its initial goals to disturb and terrify the audience with the mindsets of men willing to slaughter their way home.
Uneven performances are expected in propaganda cinema, and 49th Parallel is no exception. Established actors like Leslie Howard and especially Laurence Olivier are serving overcooked ham with their performances. By the midpoint, Eric Portman, as Lieutenant Hirth, begins to dominate the proceedings – all of the scathing and pedantic lines penned by Emeric Pressburger go to the unshakeable Nazi commander. As a result, Portman’s performance lacks any nuance or self-doubt, as he becomes the equivalent of a tea kettle that has been left on the stove whistling for too long. Nevertheless, Portman is also involved during 49th Parallel’s most blatantly political, yet most effective moment. At a community meeting, Lieutenant Hirth, believing that the German-speaking Hutterites are closeted Nazi sympathizers, begins to traffic slogans of racial superiority, shredding the Allied nations as unwilling, unmanly combatants. Hirth has misinterpreted the people who have offered them food and temporary shelter. The Hutterite community’s leader, Peter, played by future Powell and Pressburger regular Anton Walbrook (1943′s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, 1948′s The Red Shoes), dismisses the hateful rhetoric by invoking the history of his people – a history, defined by personal freedoms and the intolerance of others, that makes their existence a living refutation of Nazi doctrine.
Concludes Peter:
You think we hate you, but we don’t. It is against our faith to hate. We only hate the power of evil which is spreading over the world. You and your Hitlerism are like the microbes of some filthy disease, filled with a longing to multiply yourselves until you destroy everything healthy in the world. No – we are not your brothers.
One could say that Walbrook is over-explaining the film’s subtext here, but other propaganda films released from the Allied nations were far more heavy-handed than this to insensitive faults (see: 1944′s The Negro Soldier – an American propaganda piece meant to increase black enlistment which celebrates black cultural excellence, yet completely fails to mention slavery or racial segregation in its historical passages). Walbrook’s presence, however brief, electrifies the audience’s energies in the scenes that follow.
The individual whose work on 49th Parallel could be called transcendent is English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Those knowledgeable with classical music probably just read that last sentence in disbelief but, yes, Ralph Vaughan Williams composed for films. In fact, 49th Parallel contains the first Vaughan Williams score for a feature-length film. Decades earlier, Vaughan Williams studied under Impressionist composer Maurice Ravel (Boléro), and the Frenchman considered his English pupil among his most gifted. Influenced by English folk songs and Tudor-era modal music, Vaughan Williams’ rhythmically complex style did not cohere until shortly before World War I. He served in the Great War, returning home emotionally traumatized, his hearing permanently damaged. For 49th Parallel, Vaughan Williams wished to invoke musical nationalism in ways he believed no composer had yet accomplished in British cinema.
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Recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, Vaughan Williams begins his score with the “Prelude” – a molto legato statement of an opening, meant to invoke the lyricism of Christian hymns that extol freedom and human fellowship. One can hear the influence of Ravel’s Impressionist roots in this music, rejecting Wagnerian leitmotifs and versatile enough to adapt to 49th Parallel’s shifting moods and settings. The majesty of the prelude shares few similarities to “Hutterite Settlement: Anna’s Volkslied” (“Volkslied” is German for “folk song”). Wandering flutes, wisping the rural landscape along with the solo German-language vocalist. It is a peaceful, somewhat elegiac cue – combining Vaughan Williams’ strengths of string-led pastoral stillness, pre-Baroque influences, and the sweep of North American music. Throughout, Vaughan Williams will alternate between non-resolving passages for the Nazis to juxtapose a musical uncertainty to their ideological rigidity, as if their experiences in Canada may be inspiring second thoughts; the early Hollywood musical-esque bustle of a large city; and an Englishman’s interpretation of Native American music. Much of the music is written not to respond to what is occurring on-screen, but to empower the images. It is a virtuosic composition from Vaughan Williams that sounds as fantastic within the film as when listened to independent from it. Vaughan Williams would work on ten more movies until The Vision of William Blake (1957), with his efforts for 49th Parallel displaying a remarkable musical versatility in style and in musical medium.
During production, Raymond Massey, Leslie Howard, and Laurence Olivier all agreed to half-wages during production to assist the war effort. An aberration the year of this film’s release, the remainder of the cast was not comprised of just English actors (more specifically, London-area or Southern English actors), but Scots (Finlay Currie) and Irishmen (Niall MacGinnis). Few British films had ever been made with such a stacked cast, let alone being set on a grand international stage. Lawrence of Arabia this might not be, but this is as close to being an epic film as any British film production was able to be by the 1940s. The film’s financial success across the West allowed for the creation of independent British film production companies like The Archers (Powell and Pressburger) and Cineguild (David Lean), among others. The face of the non-Alfred Hitchcock British filmmaking industry would be strengthened by the marvelous reception given to 49th Parallel, securing the nation as one of the greatest forces of world cinema.
With its value as propaganda ended due to the course of history, 49th Parallel should be watched as both a historical landmark for British filmmaking as well as an excellent, potent thriller. It may not have changed any of the military or political outcomes Powell and Pressburger and the rest of its cast and crew were targeting, but the positive impacts of this production – for audiences and within the film industry – have outlasted many other works of propaganda.
My rating: 8.5/10
^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.
#49th Parallel#Michael Powell#Emeric Pressburger#Leslie Howard#Eric Portman#Laurence Olivier#Raymond Massey#Anton Walbrook#Glynis Johns#Raymond Lovell#Niall MacGinnis#Peter Moore#John Chandos#Basil Appleby#David Lean#Freddie Young#Ralph Vaughan Williams#propaganda film#TCM#My Movie Odyssey
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Review Variety Pack: Singers, Vampires, and Autopsies
When you write reviews, there are some weeks where there’s simply nothing on the schedule that grabs your interest or sparks any ideas that you feel compelled to write down. Then there are the times where you have the opposite problem, and you end up watching more than enough content to fill two or three articles, and you just don’t know what to pick. When this happens, I’m often torn between my desire to cover everything I see to produce more content and talk about as many different things with my readers as physically possible, and the practical limitation of only having so much time each week to properly go into extensive detail of what I’ve seen. Well, on this occasion, I thought I would try something a little different and take a quick look at a couple films and a TV series rather than dedicate an entire article to just one of them. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to the more in-depth format for my reviews soon enough. For now, this approach just allows me to catch up on some of the content I’ve been meaning to talk about, as well as point you all in the direction of a couple of items. There may even be one or two which have flown under the radar for you.
‘A Star is Born’
Okay, so maybe not ALL of these are smaller projects that haven’t received a lot of media attention. But whatever – the deal with this movie is that Bradley Cooper decided to direct the latest in what has apparently been a long line of remakes and adaptations of the 1937 movie A Star is Born. Cooper plays a popular male singer who discovers a young woman with a talent for singing, played by Lady Gaga, who he wants to introduce to the world and drama ensues as they start a relationship and her fame keeps growing. I have no familiarity with the original or any of the other three remakes listed on Wikipedia, so take that for whatever it’s worth when I say I’m glad I saw this film.
The 2018 A Star is Born seems to be made with the knowledge that the audience has likely heard this song before. Even if you’re like me and you haven’t seen any of the four previous versions of this film, the rise-to-stardom story is so well-established that it’s a safe bet that you’ll recognise many of the typical story beats of this kind of film. You see the future star’s humble origins, their soaring debut, their optimism for their bright future, them getting signed on for a record label and a soulless manager character entering the picture, their image having to be changed as they get pushed further into the public eye, someone close to them criticising them because they believe the star has lost their way, one of the characters taking a bad turn as it starts to feel like the star has lost all control of their life, and so on. It’s a story we know, but A Star is Born appears to be conscious of this fact. Towards the end of the film, there’s a conversation where a character reflects on how the same notes are repeated over and over between different songs. The character remarks that it’s in the different ways that people see those notes and interpret them through their music that new experiences are created.
And I think that’s what this film does. The story may be similar to half a dozen other examples, but the execution is what engages. There’s a naturalistic direction to the film that you can see through the way characters talk over each other as they conduct their conversations, or the slight documentary-style to the cinematography, or the minimal use of non-diegetic music which makes the soundtrack seem as if it’s coming from the characters themselves as they sing and play throughout the story. This increases the sense of impact to some of the events within the story because the film is selling you on the impression that what you’re seeing is really happening. On top of that, Lady Gaga’s experience as a professional singer not only enables her to sing well throughout the film, but it also helps her to convey the emotions and thought processes being experienced by her character as she sings. She’s able to deliver a dramatic performance alongside her musical performance, and that’s compelling to watch.
The 2018 version of A Star is Born is not telling a new story, but it manages to tell a familiar narrative in a way that manages to be distinctive and emotionally affecting. If any of the people involved make the film of interest to you, or if the mood takes you and you want to experience a decent version of this sort of rising-star story, then this version of A Star is Born is a decent pick. Now I just have to watch Bohemian Rhapsody and see if the other film about musical celebrities currently out in cinemas does as good a job at hitting its marks.
Final Score: Bronze / Silver
‘Castlevania’ Season 2
Castlevania is one of those franchises that, on first inspection, appears to have a complicated history with dozens of instalments all coming together to form this grand tapestry telling the story of the war between Dracula, destined to reincarnate every 100 years, and the Belmonts, a family of vampire hunters that have dedicated their entire lineage to keeping Dracula and his forces of darkness at bay. And for fans who want to read into it, that expansive timeline is absolutely there, but on a very simple level, every Castlevania game more or less tells the same story. Dracula shows up along with his huge labyrinthine castle, and someone with a whip and a bunch of vampire-hunting equipment rocks up to kick him back into his coffin. Sometimes there are other characters along for the ride to make it slightly more complicated, but that’s the general gist. Also, there’s always some excellent music accompanying the proceedings.
The first season of the Netflix animated series Castlevania adapted the story of the third game in the series. As it was only four 20-minute episodes, the first season is barely longer than a feature-length movie, and just as it finds its purpose and you feel like you’re getting into it, it ends. It wasn’t anything more than a semi-decent series, but I felt like there was potential when I watched it last year. The animation during the scenes where characters are simply talking to one another was stiff and you’d only see characters shift in place after a sentence or two, rather than exhibit more natural, flowing movement from moment-to-moment. But the action scenes were clearly where the animation budget went, as fights were creative and choreographed with a satisfying flair which showcased the animator’s passion for the source material. Performances were suitably brooding and at the right level between genuine human levels of emotion and melodramatic excessiveness, which is fitting for something Gothic and cheesy like this. At times the excessive gore and general revelling in shock-factor violence grated on me, and none of the characters really captured my interest or felt like I could get behind them until the second half of the last episode.
Now Season 2 of Castlevania doesn’t fix all of my issues with the previous season, but I am very happy with some of the progress I’ve seen so far. I haven’t finished the season yet, as I’m six episodes in and have two left before I’m done, but I’ve seen enough to say that the extra time has benefitted the writers, allowing them to take the time to further explore characters and focus on conversations and interactions between the different members of the cast. The result is a more satisfying and complete-feeling season.
Apart from that, my thoughts are more or less the same as the first season. I like their presentation of the series’ established Gothic aesthetic through the impressive backgrounds and character design. I enjoy seeing characters and references from the games and think the showrunners are doing a great job at translating the tone of the games to an ongoing TV series. The excessive gore is a little much at times, and not because I can’t handle it, but because it feels inelegant and unnecessary when they’re already doing such a good job at establishing a Gothic atmosphere. I am enjoying the characters more, even though the attempts at humour feel a little awkward (though I think that’s part of the intentional style of the series, so take that for what it’s worth). All in all, a solid series that has gotten better since last year, but still has several areas in which it could improve. If you enjoy the original games or are a fan of cheesy Gothic fantasy, then give it a watch.
Final Score: Copper / Bronze
‘The Autopsy of Jane Doe’
Watching this 2016 horror movie from André Øvredal, the director of Trollhunter, was how I spent Halloween this year, and it was a night well spent. A father-son pair of coroners are given an unidentified body of a woman that was found on a crime scene and are tasked with finding a cause-of-death by morning so that the local sheriff can give a full statement on the matter. As they proceed with the autopsy, they find more and more things which don’t add up. There are signs of things happening to the body which don’t make scientific sense when you consider the body’s appearance, and to top it off, there’s an uneasy atmosphere around the office as things just don’t feel right. And from there, I’ll keep you in the dark, as one of the most enjoyable elements to watching this film for the first time is trying to work out what’s going on alongside the two main characters as they dig further into this mystery.
The Autopsy of Jane Doe got under my skin because it taps into the uneasiness you often feel when you’re stuck in an office or medical building late at night and you’re one of the only people remaining. It makes effective use of space to create a suffocating feeling to the autopsy room and the one or two other spaces our characters find themselves in as the film goes on. The use of the right-angled corridor to create suspense as you fear what might come around the corner is commendable. Both of the two main actors, Brian Cox as the father and Emile Hirsch as the son, work well in their roles, selling you on their close, familial relationship as well as the fact that they are professional coroners, so they know what to do and how to handle their nerves around a dead body, but they’re also human enough to get a little uneasy when things start looking weird.
As I touched on earlier, I was really drawn in by the set-up to The Autopsy of Jane Doe, fascinated to learn more as conflicting pieces of information are revealed to both the characters and the audience. It’s an exciting sensation that I think is unique to horror; it’s the human urge to find out more even when all signs are telling you that you should stop delving into this unsettling area. You have to know the truth and understand what’s going on, even when it takes you to deadly territory. It’s such a recurring feeling that I experience when watching horror, as well as see in the motivations of the characters within horror narratives, that I consider the horror and mystery genres to be close relatives. The Autopsy of Jane Doe is dripping with that sense of horrific mystery as it centres on an autopsy, a procedure that is done when you want to find out the truth behind something but is also inherently unsettling as you are staring face-to-face at death, in all its detail.
This horror movie has a great premise which is executed with impressive technical ability by its actors, cinematographer, and director (even if it leans on the jump-scare tactic a little too much). For those who like their horror with an air of mystery, then this is a hard recommend.
Final Score: Silver
#The Inquisitive J#Film Review#film#movies#film critic#movie critic#critic#reviews#television review#netflix castlevania#castlevania#a star is born#a star is born 2018#the autopsy of jane doe#netflix castlevania review#a star is born review#the autopsy of jane doe review#the inquisitive j reviews
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You Have to Be Smart to Survive: Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal on Blindspotting
During a press tour last month, Diggs and Casal spoke with RogerEbert.com about their meticulous approach to sound design, their seamlessly stylized dialogue and why having intelligent characters is a politically charged statement.
RC: The idea was to give every character their version of what was right in their mind. Early on, there are moments with Val where the audience is made to be pitted against her, and we make sure to eventually come around to her perspective, as well as the perspective of Miles’s girlfriend, Ashley. Even for Miles and Collin, it was necessary to have those moments. We liked the idea that it was messy and complex, because that is usually how perspective works.
DD: I am attracted to art that doesn’t present itself as an authority. As an artist presenting a piece of art, you have to be aware of your own blind spots. I think I am attracted to art where woven into the fabric of the thing is this fractured perspective, this idea that there are many ways to look at this thing that you are watching right now.
Your portrayal of the film’s inciting incident—the brawl outside the bar—is twofold: we first see it from a comedic angle, where the clueless white victim is dubbed “Portlandia,” and then from a tragic angle, as we hear the man echo Eric Garner’s cries of “I can’t breathe.”
DD: We do so much work early on to ensure that everyone can feel the world from Collin’s perspective, where we understand a lot of his reasoning for everything and for all of his choices. To present that moment in a way that is comedic allows you to really watch it without judging him initially. Then all of a sudden, you get to see the moment play out from Val’s perspective, in order for the audience to understand much more about her feelings, and also about the nature of this crime. If we’ve done our job right, this shift occurs without the audience realizing it. By the end of the film, you are rooting for a felon convicted of a violent crime, who maybe doesn’t get a lot of second glances in real life. We did a lot of work in the script to try and underscore Collin’s humanity and make sure that his entire self was represented. He is not only the crime that he committed, and even from one perspective, the crime is hilarious if you think about it.
RC: Our intention was to make the entire theater be on his side for most of that fight. Everyone in the room hates the hipster and thinks that Miles is being funny and the fire is entertaining. That flip on the perspective regarding the violence, depending on how we are encouraged to feel about it, matters. It shows how easily you can get swept up in a point of view if it favors your beliefs or is playing to your intuitive nature. We are giving you comedy, and so you are responding to the comedy, same as when you are watching the news. If the newscasters tell you that a person is a villain, you will treat them like a villain. The same trick that is happening in the film is what’s happening on the news every day.
I found the tonal shifts and lyrical dialogue in “Blindspotting” to be so much more seamless and assured than they were in a picture like Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq.”
DD: We’re doing different things than Spike. “Chi-Raq” was an adaptation of a Classical Greek comedy, so the way he was attempting to use poetry was already forced. It was a forced situation that was meant to draw attention to the fact that the dialogue was poetry and not prose. We are doing the exact opposite. We’re trying to make you forget that you are listening to verse, but still have it function in the same way where it forces you to hear the important things and as a result, you sit forward a little bit in your chair. The writing is different, yes, but the biggest difference is in terms of performance. Carlos also played a big role in helping it feel natural when people are reciting verse but performing it as text. Rafael and I grew up doing that, so we’ve had a lot of practice. In many ways, the film is a reflection of how we grew up interacting with language. That is a big thing in the Bay Area, so we were really just trying to show off what we can do.
I particularly loved when Miles tells Val, “I am as moved by your greeting as you are moved by an elliptical.”
RC: It’s a joke that takes a couple seconds to register, and by the time it does, it’s more of an internal laugh. It’s a headier joke where you are like, “Oh, because an elliptical doesn’t move…” [laughs] But what I love about that line is it gives you a sense of the character’s vocabulary. One thing Daveed and I talked about a lot is how important it was for all of our characters to be really intelligent people. The Bay’s a very well-read place. A lot of the parents are very educated, whether traditionally or nontraditionally, and that savviness, that sophistication also coexists with the norm of city life and street culture. It doesn’t change it, it just gives it this nuance. That is a very heady joke for Miles to make and in any other movie, It would feel so strange for the street dudes to reference an elliptical as a joke in passing. Their intelligence has this broad stroke to it that allows you to watch them process things much faster, which also enables the verse. You know that they’re quick, witty and clever, but you don’t have a good sense of what their knowledge base is. You really just know a little bit about their behavioral flaws and not necessarily the limits of their intellect. For all we know, in every moment we don’t see him on camera, Collin sits around reading all day. There were versions of the script where that was the case. Miles and Ashley watch the news every night, and as younger people, that is not as common.
DD: I think it’s a politically left statement to not have stupid people in our work. We are existing in a world where there is this normalizing of ignorance, which is dangerous and actually untrue. That’s not how people are. I don’t know very many stupid people in my life, certainly not among disenfranchised people because it is hard to live that way. This normalizing of people being uninformed is dangerous because it presents it as okay, whereas that’s contrary to our survival mechanisms. You have to be smart to survive.
How involved were you both in the film’s extraordinarily visceral sound design?
RC: We were deeply involved from the beginning. All of those rhythmic musical refrains and elements to design Collin’s PTSD were originally in the script and decided on before we shot the film.
DD: We set the tempo months before we started shooting with members of my band Clipping. We did some rough passes on sound design elements, and though very little of that stuff got used, we recorded to them. When we performed the scenes, we had clicks in our ear. For the scene toward the end where Collin is in basement, I had that beeping sound in my ear to keep in line with the rhythm.
RC: I had a similar click in my ear during the dream sequence set in the courtroom. We knew super-super early on that both the score and the sound design were going to be essential in tracking Collin’s descent. We knew those PTSD moments were going to ramp up and climax in some of our final scenes, and that everything would have to get threaded back throughout the entire film, so we have alternating start points of when we learn about them, such as car horns or other sounds. We also had to make sure that the sounds were accurate in relation to where the characters were in Oakland, because we knew that people from the area would intuitively know if we had gotten something wrong.
DD: Getting to mix in Dolby Atmos was an extra sort of bonus after we received their grant. We worked with their artists while sitting on Michael Bay’s mixing stage and got to make adjustments like, “Can we throw that train noise back into the right because we know where this house is in relation to the actual train tracks in Oakland?” Coming from music, that was the sort of stuff that we were obsessed with. I am super-proud of the sound design in this film, and next time we do a movie, we’ll do more. We’ll actually start that process way earlier. I think there’s so much more we could’ve done.
RC: Even when we were doing our web series [“Hobbes and Me”], sound design was always our favorite part of the process. That is when everything on the screen comes to life, so when we got to sit in that room, that is where we, as filmmakers in post-production, really got to excel.
DD: That’s the coolest part to me. On my next film, I’m going to have composers onset the whole time.
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"Hmm... Your Honor, the Defense requests that we examine these new pieces of evidence!" Phoenix exclaimed
"Nick, I just thought of something... Even with these new pieces if evidence, we can't use them to prove Matt's guilt. But I have thought of two ways we could use them to our advantage" Makoto whispered to his partner
"How?" Phoenix asked
"We can either make Matt plead for the guilty verdict or... we make DeKiller break his contract with Matt, that way if he gets declared guilty, Maya will still be safe" Makoto whispered before Phoenix thought for a moment
"How about... we do both?" Phoenix asked with a smirk
"That works too. Let's strike while the iron is hot!" Makoto said before they both looked at Junko
"Your Honor, the Defense is ready to present their next piece of evidence. However, we would like to present it to not just the court, but to a specific person" Phoenix said
"Mr. DeKiller, I think this video tape might interest you. Does it look familiar?" Makoto asked as he held up the tape
"Hmm... that is the very same tape Mr. Engarde has told me not to watch..." DeKiller said
"Well we can explain to you why he didn't want you to see it. It's because, you're on it" Phoenix said
"Me?" DeKiller asked
"There was a video camera hidden at the crime scene. Your actions were being recorded" Makoto said
"Wh-What?! Who... Who was it that planted a camera...!?" DeKiller exclaimed
"Well, the only person who could have placed a camera at the scene of the crime... would be your "client" naturally." Phoenix said with a smirk
"Your "client" specified a place and time for you, isn't that right?" Makoto asked with a smirk as well
"Y-Y-Yes..." DeKiller said
"That was so they could film you. Why? Simple: So he could blackmail you" Phoenix said
"In fact, he told us some very interesting things yesterday. Like "But I'm no weakling. I don't believe anyone... least of all assassins." "Oh, come now, Mr. Wright, Mr. Naegi. Assassins aren't above blackmail." And "Yes, that's where the video comes in. With that, I can keep him at bay, and even blackmail him if I want." Your "client" didn't trust you at all. They were thinking of using this video to blackmail you! What do you and your student have to say to that, Shelly de Killer!?" Makoto asked
astral-multiverse:
But Phoenix and Makoto were still silent
“Hmph… There’s no need to ask, lady. After all, my lawyers are going to say what I want… aren’t you?” Matt asked with a smug, evil grin on his face. Phoenix and Makoto looked at each other one last time before they both let out a defeated sigh
“Our client… Matt Engarde… is…” The two started to say before-
And with that, the doors to the courtroom were kicked open and they saw a familiar face holding onto a dark green bundle of cloth
“Not another word Makoto! Or you Mr. Wright! This fucking trial isn’t over yet!!” Mondo cried out
“M-Mondo?! What are you-?!” Makoto asked
“Shut the hell up and just open the coat! That scruffy detective didn’t risk his life just to have this evidence dismissed!” Mondo snapped before he handed the bundled up coat to Byakuya
“WHAT THE FU-?! M-MPNDO, WHERE DID YOU-?!” Junko began to shouts before remembering something and smirked
“Well, if some new pieces of evidence have been found. i can’t exactly give my verdict until they’ve been discovered.”
Jack just laughed at the side
“I;d be annoyed,. but honestly this shit’s really freakin’ entertaining.” They thought.
“Mondo…Thank you.” Kyoko sighed before they began to examin the pieces of evidence.
“A Pistol…More than likely the one that shot Ms. von Karma and Celeste… A Tape with unknown contents…and a Bellboy uniform…”
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Some answers for the question list prompt.
What’s the most important thing to know about you?
What subjects do you know about most?
What are the most important things you’ve learned in life?
What routines do you have?
How do you decide what to post on tumblr?
What do you post about on tumblr? How did you gain this knowledge about it?
Are there any artistic/literary/musical works you’d want people to see/read/listen to?
Who are the people you admire most?
What are the most important concepts for people to know?
What is your favourite characteristic in people?
Which artists do you listen to?
Which non-fiction authors do you enjoy? Which fiction authors do you enjoy?
Would you change anything in life if you could redo it?
What areas would you like to learn more about?
What are your hopes for the future?
What would you like to change about yourself?
What are your main interests?
What are some works which can take us into your mindset?
What’s the most important thing to know about you?
I want you to come away from our interactions feeling better than you arrived. Very seldom am I acting in bad faith.
Also, I will read anything you recommend (more often than is healthy for me).
What subjects do you know about most?
Cooking, cycling, sys admin and programming, and distributed computation.
What are the most important things you’ve learned in life?
How to be disappointed. This is not a joke answer. You'll make plans that won't work out due to external factors and you have to roll through that to the version of you that isn't phased by the setback.
Over communication is better than under communication. This one may be idiosyncratic but perseverance in the face of communication difficulties pays off more often than it hurts.
How to ride a bicycle. This made me functionally independent from a young age and I would give every kid the same freedom if I could. How to be safe on a bicycle.
How to have an opinion on everything. How to refrain from sharing your opinion when its not appropriate. This means you're able to enter any conversation or relationship with something to offer and also means you're not an overbearing ass when you do.
Coordination is hard.
What routines do you have?
Every two months, I break the caffeine dependence.
How do you decide what to post on tumblr?
There are three main categories of post. What I'm reading and some analysis to keep me honest, quality posts that resonate with me, and any post from someone I'm following where I have a response that seems relevant.
This is generally a place to dump my writing - only slightly better than a journal because some small amount of time it gets a response.
What do you post about on tumblr? How did you gain this knowledge about it?
Most of my knowledge is from recreational reading and some of it from life experience.
When I post, I try to strip identifying information out since I'm of an age to appreciate op-sec in identity on the Internet.
Are there any artistic/literary/musical works you’d want people to see/read/listen to?
This could be a very long, very crowded section. I'm going to include the first quality picks in each category that come to mind.
Beksinski, Gregory Crewdson
Rubberbandance, Firebird by Stravinsky
Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Fisher King), Pom Poko
Watership Down, Kim (Kipling)
Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World (Stanovich)
Genesis, Gentle Giant, La Dispute
Bob and Doug MacKenzie
Who are the people you admire most?
I always had this problem when I was young when they asked in school "who is your hero?" because I didn't have an answer. Usually I mentioned my grandfather because he was the kindest and most supportive person that I knew. Honestly, I don't pay much attention to other people.
Of the people who are not in my life, Borges (for thinkers who can make improbable connections), Keanu Reeves and Tony Levin (for people who are kind, who can share), and Galois (for being transcendent).
What are the most important concepts for people to know?
The peak-end rule of experience applies to happiness and pain. An over focus on the average experience will not capture human experience.
Culture is not just food or a preference for certain colors in clothing and does not exist purely along racial/national lines. It would be too easy to break a town apart along fundamental values if the right questions were made a subject of public concern.
Addiction is about the need to escape. You don't break it by removing elements from life, you must supplant it with something worth living for.
How to use a turn signal?
What is your favourite characteristic in people?
Humility - direct honesty about the bounds of your knowledge.
Which artists do you listen to?
Various, I could dip into my records and put together a few primers. Genesis is my favorite group. I'm currently waiting on albums by Dessa, Protomen, and Circa Survive. When I find a song I like, I add it to my collection. When I find a band that performs well, I get their best album. My collection holds days worth of music.
Feel free to hit me up for targeted recommendations if you're bored.
Which non-fiction authors do you enjoy? Which fiction authors do you enjoy?
This is harder to answer than it should be as I've actually been remarkably bad about recording the books that I've read and its hard for me to recall them without some prompting information.
Nonfiction
Amartya Sen
Keith Stanovich
Jorge Luis Borges
Anne Carson
Fiction (not necessarily quality authors but I like them)
Glen Cook
David Gerrold
My favorite author that I haven't finished a work by
Leo Tolstoy
Waiting on their latest work
Patrick Rothfuss
Would you change anything in life if you could redo it?
I would never have chosen to live in the Bay Area for as long as I did.
If I could send one message to my younger self, I'd ask them not to neglect social knowledge. Its valuable when you need to get anything done (push model of action).
If I could send two messages, I'd ask them not to neglect their physical skills - they are not less valuable for not being "on the pathway to immortality".
What areas would you like to learn more about?
My reading list is too long. Here are some of the nonfiction materials on it.
early schools of atheism (The Epistle of Forgiveness by Al-Ma'arri)
history of class (The Making of the English Working Class by Thompson)
crime in London and the formation of the Thames River police (still looking...)
more riding techniques (Sport Riding Techniques by Ienatsch)
early religious evolution (The Formation of Hell by Bernstein)
distributed algorithm analysis (Distributed Computing by Herlihy)
social dynamics (Distinction by Bourdieu)
city dynamics (Out of the Mountains by Kilcullen)
home medicine (Where There is No Doctor by Werner, Green Pharmacy by Duke)
native american culture (Shooting Back from the Reservation by Hubbard)
chinese history (Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian)
What are your hopes for the future?
To reach a point where my ambitions and logistical skills are matched and I never take on more challenges than I can handle.
What would you like to change about yourself?
Less generalized anxiety would be nice.
To be a quicker writer, optionally a better, more coherent one too. It still takes me forever to put any kind of thought on page and that's a problem when you're an aspiring pseudo-intellectual like me.
What are your main interests?
Distributed coordination, theory and practice. Promoting good outcomes for people.
I wish I could be part of some mutual support organization but am honestly not that good with sustaining enduring relations with others.
What are some works which can take us into your mindset?
Rationality and the Modern World will always get my recommendation for thinking about humans thinking. War and Peace, I still have not finished this book but the deep empathy that Tolstoy displays in the early sections that I've read makes for a good reflection of my beliefs. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (both play and film) would also work.
I’d tag @drethelin, @morteledraco, @injygo, @house-carpenter, @bambamramfan. Feel free to play if you want to.
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Mark Ruffalo's career is in full swing. His starring role in ‘Zodiac' is just the start.
Author/Byline: BARRY KOLTNOW Orange County Register March 2, 2007
When pressed, Hollywood producer Bradley Fischer will concede that Hollywood producers occasionally lie. For instance, when they tell you that a certain actor was their first and only choice for a particular role, they're usually lying. More often than not, a role is filled by the first competent actor who accepts the part. "I know people always say that, but I swear that it's true in this case," the producer said with his hand raised, pleading his case. "Mark was always our first and only choice." Fischer said he respects Mark Ruffalo's work from their collaboration on last year's "All the King's Men," but he said has been a fan since he first saw the actor in the 2000 film "You Can Count on Me." Ruffalo, 39, was cast by Fischer and director David Fincher to play a real-life San Francisco homicide detective whose investigation and stalking of a serial killer becomes a personal obsession in "Zodiac," which opens today. "Most directors and producers never say they need a movie star. That's something you might hear from the marketing department," Fischer said. "What most directors and producers say they need is an actor, and Mark is one of those actors who directors and producers always go to when they need one of the best in the business." High praise, indeed, for an actor who believes that as recently as five years ago, he was considered "damaged goods" in the movie industry. Fresh off his triumphant turn in the 2000 film "You Can Count on Me," Ruffalo was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery was successful, but he was out of action for 10 months, which is a lifetime for an actor just coming off his big break. "Right after the movie, lots of offers were coming in, but then my career completely cooled off," he said. "There was no work at all, and rumors were circulating that I had AIDS and leukemia. Some people actually heard that I was dead." Ruffalo credits two directors – Jane Campion and Isabel Coixet – for resurrecting his career by giving him major roles in their films, "In the Cut" and "My Life Without Me." It wasn't the first time a director had saved Ruffalo from oblivion. It was a chance meeting with director-playwright Kenneth Lonergan in 1986 that, literally, dragged Ruffalo out of a Los Angeles bar and into show business. Ruffalo wasn't drinking in the bar; he was working in it as a bartender. In fact, the aspiring actor tended bar in Los Angeles for nine years while trying to get his foot in the proverbial show-business door. The most frustrating aspect of his bartending career was that he was working in one of Hollywood's hippest nightspots, the bar at the legendary Chateau Marmont hotel. "It was a horrible period," he said, the pain still evident in his voice. "I was interfacing every night with everyone I wanted to be. All the young working actors hung out there, and there was a lot of resentment on my part. My friends used to call me Bit 'O Honey, because I was really bitter about these actors having the jobs I wanted, but I always acted sweet to them. "I admit that I'm pretty much one of those glass-is-half-empty kind of guys, rather than the glass-is-half-full guys. I even take it a step further by saying: 'And look how small the glass is, too.' In my heart, I hoped that something would happen, but deep down I kept thinking that it was never really going to happen for me." When he met Lonergan, the two men hit it off, and Lonergan asked Ruffalo to star in a one-act play he was directing in a small Los Angeles theater. That one-act play eventually expanded into the well-received off-Broadway play "This Is Our Youth," and Ruffalo's performance garnered rave reviews. Lonergan later cast Ruffalo opposite Laura Linney in the film he was directing, "You Can Count on Me." Ruffalo, who lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children, was born in Kenosha, Wis., but spent his high school years in Virginia Beach, Va., before the family moved to San Diego. He set out on his own for Los Angeles, where he attended acting classes and auditioned for roles he didn't get. "I was too tall or too short, too ethnic or not ethnic enough," he said. "There was always some reason for them to say no to me." But his career is in full swing now, with three films awaiting release, not counting Fincher's "Zodiac." The new film also stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Gray-smith, then-editorial cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle whose two books on the Zodiac case are the basis of Fincher's film, and Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery, the newspaper's colorful crime reporter whose obsession with the serial killer almost destroyed him. Ruffalo's character, homicide detective Dave Toschi, also became obsessed with the mystery murderer who terrorized the Bay Area starting in 1968. He is believed to have killed at least five people, and boasted of his dastardly deeds in letters sent to local newspapers. He taunted law-enforcement agencies and dared them to catch him. Fincher, who grew up in the area but was only 7 years old at the time of the first killings, says he has only fleeting memories of the terror that gripped the northern part of the state. He does, however, remember riding in school buses accompanied by a police escort. The director has traveled this path before, making a serial-killer movie in 1995 called "Se7en," but this film is different. Unlike his earlier film, "Zodiac" does not follow the killer, but rather the investigation of the crimes and the pursuit of the killer. "David (Fincher) was not interested in repeating himself," producer Fischer explained. "He wanted to make a movie about how this killer got under these people's skins. This is a movie about obsession." The producer said he never doubted the filmmaker's choice for the actor who would play Toschi, who was the inspiration for the character played by Steve McQueen in the 1968 film "Bullitt," right down to his upside-down shoulder holster. But the brilliance of the casting choice was confirmed after he set up a meeting between Ruffalo and Toschi. "Mark shadowed Dave all day and, when he returned to L.A. that night, he was speaking exactly like Toschi. It was eerie." Sitting in his Westwood hotel suite, the soft-spoken Ruffalo needs no prodding to jump into a dead-on, but respectful, impression of Toschi, who is in his 70s but works full time for a Bay Area security firm. "The man is remarkable," Ruffalo said. "He still dresses to the nines, and he has managed to maintain his dignity, even though the case did not end as he had hoped." For the record, no one was ever charged or prosecuted for the Zodiac murders, although investigators privately were satisfied that they had found their man. "In his heart, Dave Toschi knew that the suspect he was chasing was the right guy," Ruffalo said. "But it doesn't matter what he believes. He's a good cop and, like any good cop, he needs solid evidence to make a case. "He spent so many years on this case, only to have it end in frustration. To maintain your dignity after an ordeal like that makes Dave Toschi an amazing character to play." Mark Ruffalo: partial filmography "You Can Count on Me" (2000) "The Last Castle" (2001) "View From the Top" (2003) "In the Cut" (2003) "My Life Without Me" (2003) "We Don't Live Here Anymore" (2004) "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004) "13 Going on 30" (2004) "Collateral" (2004) "Just Like Heaven" (2005) "Rumor Has It" (2005) "All the King's Men" (2006) "Zodiac" (2007)
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(A note from Miss Thunder: Cassie had the idea to spice things up a bit and film our responses like in the American game show, Love Connection. I wasn't familiar with the show but in the UK, we had the show Blind Date so I knew the gist of the format. Cassie filmed us on my couch at my flat.)
Miss Thunder: Are we ready to record, Cass?
Cassie: Let me get the tripod set...aaaaaand there! It's on! *Ahem!* Okay, Penny, Eli, how was your Valentine's Date?
Miss Thunder: Well, it wasn't quite what I expected but I'm certainly not gonna complain! Looking back, I should've known something was up when Eli brought his duffel bag to my flat.
Eli: I sauntered up to Penny and asked, "When was the last time you went out as Miss Thunder?". Very discreet, if I say so.
MT: "Oh, the day before yesterday, why?"
E: I reached into my bag and pulled out my Black Dog mask, "Well, do you think, for Valentine's Day, Miss Thunder could use a partner?"
MT: I'll be honest, I was totally flabbergasted by this. A trillion thoughts probably raced through my mind in a split second. Not all of them good.
E: Why's that?
MT: Because, luv, there's like countless ways a patrol could go wrong. What if you got hit by a stray bullet? What if you fall off a roof and I can't catch you in time? What if some old lady turned out to be a shapeshifting dog-eating alien and grabbed you in her slimy tentacles? It's hard to prepare for all and any eventualities, y'know?
E: I remember you making a lot of "Uhhhh...."' and "Hmmm" noises.
MT: I was thinking! But... you seemed really eager and it was Valentine's Day so I thought "What the hell? If nothing else, it'd be a fun if cautionary story to tell.".
E: I glad you said yes, otherwise I don't know how I would have gotten around to the other steps of my plan.
MT: You gave a little cheer, I remember, and started changing clothes right on the spot.
C: Ooh! Things were already getting steamy!
E: Penny yelled out, "ELI! WAIT!"
MT: I didn't yell, you just caught me off guard! I spun around and went straight to my room to change.
E: You were blushing.
MT: Well, of course! If your exceedingly handsome boyfriend started stripping in front of you, you'd go red in the face too!
E: (Mumbling) I don't know about "exceedingly", but go on.
MT: So we got into our costumes and headed for the roof.
E: I was hopping up and down, I was so excited!
MT: Hee hee! You were! I had you cling onto my back as I leaped into the sky.
E: Oh! Getting to go jumping with you is so fun, Penny! If I could jump like you, I'd never stop! It's like flying!
MT: You weren't scared of falling off?
E: Nuh-uh! I had a good grip on your scarf and shoulder. Plus, I knew you'd never let me fall.
MT: Blimey, I'm glad to hear you have so much trust in me. I'd prefer to carry you in my arms but I'd doubt you want to look like I'm carrying you like a baby.
E: Well, Eli wouldn't mind...(Deepens voice) but the Black Dog's gotta look tough! He's no baby!
MT: Heh, that's what I thought.
C: So how did the patrol go? Any bank robberies or fires?
MT: Uhmm...Well...not really. It was a bit of a slow afternoon.
E: Don't get me wrong, it was fun sniffing around and keeping my eyes peeled but nothing was really happening. Not even a jaywalker or litterbug in sight!
MT: I had been jumping around the city for over an hour but it was as calm as a church mouse. I was starting to feel peckish so I asked Eli if he wanted to stop in the park to grab a bite.
E: Yeah, I was feeling hungry too so I sniffed out a hot dog cart in a little plaza in Hamilton Park.
MT: Something cute did happen, though. Since the hot dog cart was by a playground, all the little kids playing there saw the two of us land and rushed towards us in a mini stampede. I could see Eli get into character. He started grimacing and growled softly.
E: The Black Dog doesn't care if you're a child! You even look at this dog funny, you're gonna get bit! (In normal voice) Also, I noticed you changed your voice too, Penny.
MT: Oh, you loike me Cockney accent, do ya, guv'nah?
E: (Laughing) What is that voice?! It cracks me up when I hear it!
MT: (Tickling Eli) You wot, mate?! You wanna have a go?! You think you can dress oop like a black shuck and have a go at Miss Thunder?! I'll tickle you silly, I will! I swear on me mum!
(All three break into a loud giggle fit)
C: Ha ha ha! Oh! Oh my goodness! Hee hee! So, so what happened with the kids?
MT: Oh, they were all "Miss Thunder! Miss Thunder!" and "It's Black Dog the wrestler!" It was so cute! We took pictures, signed autographs, the whole celebrity experience.
E: I did my patented Black Dog Howl!
MT: (Rubbing ear) I know, Eli. I can still hear it a bit.
E: It was fun getting to see our fans but danger finally reared its head at the worst time.
C: What happened?
MT: *Sighs* A big "villainous" nuisance, that's what!
C: I'm gonna stop you right there, Penny. When we come back, we'll find out who our mystery villain is! I'm Cassie Paxton, the fabulous Red Rabbit, and we'll back in two and two!
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C: We're back! When we last left our heroes, they were on a Valentine's "patrol date" and enjoying the adoration of their young fans. But the hero's call of duty beckoned as a mysterious villain has mysteriously struck! So, who was it? El Toro? Technopunk? Oh! I bet it was Dr. Chimera! I heard he's been seen around town lately!
MT: *Scoffs* No, we weren't graced with their presence. For context, for every A-list Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and Electro, there's a D-list Stilt-Man, Hypno-Hustler, and Paste Pot Pete. What we got, for Eli's first patrol, was Doctor Devil.
C: ...Ugh! That wannabe creep?
E: I take it you girls are familiar with him?
MT: Unfortunately, yes. He's some office worker who got bored with his job and decided he wanted to be a supervillain, of all things. So he grabbed a doctor's coat and a cheap devil mask and has gone on a "crime" spree ever since like dumping trash on the street or spray painting curse words on school playgrounds.
C: So what was he doing now?
MT: Well, he went and stole an ATM.
C: *Gasps* He's finally moving up in the world!
MT: You'd think but the idiot had hijacked a towing lorry and was dragging the ATM behind him like a wrecking ball so the police didn't have a hard time following him.
E: I could hear the racket he was making from clear across the park. We said good bye to the kids and told them to stay close to their parents in case the situation went sour. I hopped on Penny's back and off we went.
MT: I'm not sure what happened but when we arrived, his lorry had flipped on its side and he was standing on top of it, having a shootout with the cops.
C: Who gave that maniac a gun?!
MT: It wasn't just a gun either, it was some sort of experimental gun that shot fireballs or something. It was basically like shooting Molotov cocktails because his shots would land on the ground and they'd set the ground ablaze. I don't know about you but that just screamed like something the Buzzards would have.
C: Tsk! They would sell him something stupid and dangerous like that!
E: He was certainly trying his hardest to be a bad guy because he was laughing all "HA HA HA! Feel the heat of my hellfire, pigs!".
MT: I told Eli to stay low and try to sneak behind him. While he scurried away, I leaped into the fray, right between him and the cops. He just laughed, "Ah! Miss Thunder Thighs! How nice of you to join us! I suppose the smell of roasted pork might have lured you in!"
E: Penny just rolled her eyes, "Har har. I'm fat. I bloody get it. Now, why don't you just put down your wee doofer and we'll get you a nice room at Greyshore. Maybe one with a view."
MT: "Oooh! Not this time, fatty! Not when I'm packing HEAT!" He twisted some knob on his gun and gun became like a flamethrower as a huge stream of flames shot out at me. "BURN BABY, BURN! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA! MELT BEFORE THE FIERY GAZE OF DOCTOR DEVIL!"
E: I remember feeling scared, seeing Penny engulfed in flames like that but I could see she kept walking towards him like it was nothing. "HA HA HA HA Ha ha ha heh heh he he...ooh."
MT: I was standing just inches in front of him as I pinched the barrel of his gun shut. My scarf was a bit singed from the fire but other than that, I was fine. He must've been desperate as he actually had the nerve to swing at me.
C: No!
MT: It went as well as you'd expect as his fist just embedded itself in my cheek fat. "Really?", I asked him. After that, his whole demeanor changed. "Heeeeeeyyy...sorry about that whole 'fatty' crap. Just let me put out that fire on your shoulder there. Th-there's really no need for you to hit me or anything, is there?" I cracked my knuckles and smiled. "No, no, no, mate. I'm not gonna hit you. He might, though."
E: When he turned around, that's when I struck, doing my leaping Wild Dog Punch right in the face, knocking his mask off. I grabbed him before he could fall off the truck and did a Top Rope Suplex.
C: Damn, Eli! Did you pin him too?
E: You better believe it! Sadly, there was no one there to count me though so I had to do it in my head.
MT: I'm sorry, sweetie. I would've done it but I didn't realize what you were doing until the cops pulled him from under you.
E: That's okay. He was just a jobber anyway. Now if we get one of your big supervillains, that would be worthy of a countdown!
MT: (Grinning) I'll be sure to keep that in mind, luv.
E: With Doctor Devil on his way to jail, I remembered the next part of my admittedly slapped-together plan. I had asked Penny a few days ago what building had the best view. "Personally, I'd have to say the Imperial Hotel.", she answered.
MT: It's not the tallest building but it has a fantastic view of the bay and boardwalk.
E: So, with great cunning, I asked Penny, "Hey, that Imperial Hotel is nearby, right? Maybe you can show me this 'beautiful view'?".
MT: Apparently, I'm more naive that I like to think I am because I answered, "Sure! It's just a hop, skip and jump away!"
C: (Rolling her eyes) Oh God, Penny! How long were you waiting to unleash that one?
MT: (Winking) Everybody gets at least one cheesy line from me.
E: Indeed, we did hopped, skipped, and jumped to the roof of the hotel. I'll be honest, it was really pretty up there. The ocean waves, the sailboats cruising by, all the couples on the boardwalk.
MT: Told you!
E: We stood for a while, enjoying the "golden hour", as they say, when we both heard a knock on the service door.
MT: I got a bit worried because I though it was gonna the hotel staff, telling us we can't "loiter" there. Remember that time at the Chez Poisson, Cassie?
C: That was bogus! We weren't bothering anybody! We were just catching a breather on the balcony during a patrol and the hostess starts screaming at us that we can't be there. I don't care how nice that place is, I'm never eating there!
MT: It turns out it was a pizza guy with an order of six extra large pepperoni pizzas and two 20-liter Cokes for a "Mr. Black Dog".
C: Wait. When did you call for delivery, Eli?
E: During our time with the kids, I had slipped off for a few moments to "use the restroom". When actually I had ran to the nearest pay phone to place an order.
C: Ah, sneaky!
E: It turns out the delivery guy was a fan of mine so he knocked a few bucks off the order in exchange for a picture and autograph.
MT: And that was pretty much the rest of our evening, just people-watching from above while we enjoyed a delicious meal together as Miss Thunder and Black Dog.
E: Penny?
MT: Yes, luv?
E: I'm sorry it wasn't quite the Valentine's Date you deserve. I forgot about all about it and I couldn't take you to a nice concert like last time.
MT: (Holds his hands) Oh, Eli. Don't fret about it. I know I was being a bit of a worrywart at first but I had a wonderful time going on patrol with you! And frankly, now that I think about it, a lot of the dates we go on are about you trying to make me happy and you going out of your way to do that. That's not fair to you. I have to contribute to our relationship, too and if that means letting you go on patrol with me, I'd be more than happy to.
E: (Tail wagging) You mean it?
MT: Of course, Eli. I love you.
(Eli leaps from his seat and plants a big kiss on Penny's lips)
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C: Oh my! Well, I think that concludes our time here on The Love Connection. On behalf of us here in Ocean City, I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day and may all your dates be good ones!
*THUMP!*
(Camera pans to Penny and Eli on the floor, passionately making out)
C: Theirs certainly was.
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The Best Films of 2018, Part IV
Scroll down for Parts I, II, and III. VERY GOOD MOVIES THAT STILL AREN’T TECHNICALLY GREAT--SEE, I LIED, NEW CATEGORY, WHICH REALLY SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT THIS TIER IN 2018 AND MAYBE HINTS THAT THERE WEREN’T MANY MOVIES THAT I GENUINELY LOVED
44. Hotel Artemis (Drew Pearce)- It should be illegal to watch this movie before midnight because it is an exploitation flick to its core. Is it a problem that it's shaped like a triangle, that it starts wrapping up its answers the minute we understand what the questions were? Yes. Is that a problem that Jeff Goldblum, playing the Wolf King, wearing a double-breasted camel's hair coat like a shawl, can't fix? No.
43. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Stefano Sollima)- Considering how much I liked Sicario, I'm impressed by how close its sequel came to its chilly hardness. Strangely enough, the craft suffers more from the absence of Jóhann Jóhannsson than it does from the absence of Denis Villeneuve. Aside from a lull at the two-thirds mark and the pulling of exactly one punch, this entry feels as vital and astute as the last one.
Which means the real auteur must be Taylor Sheridan. His script mimics the structure of the original while twisting its characters just askew enough to breathe new life into the material. His screenplays just sort of unfold in a way that I find organic--it's hard to even say what the conflict is until halfway through most of the time. And if he wants to write five more of these, I'll gladly take them.
42. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)- Like almost anyone else, I'm grateful that The Other Side of the Wind exists at all. The fact that it's so more personal and experimental than I expected is a bonus. It's kind of a mess until it congeals at the drive-in, but every choice still seems labored over. (The claustrophobic nature of the party versus the wide open spaces of the film-within-the-film, for example.) Nonetheless, it's hard to go to bat for a movie whose backstory is more captivating than the final product.
41. The Mule (Clint Eastwood)- Besides the breezy glide of the pacing, the performances stand out. Eastwood's is the type that we haven't seen from him in a while. He smiles a lot. He sings and dances and flirts. He's generally carefree and loopy. And he's contrasted with* a nervy Bradley Cooper in one of those humongous-star-taking-the-back-seat performances, sprinkling charisma the way Sean Connery did in The Untouchables.
But there is no elegance at all. Besides Chekhov's cough and the cheesy elbowing of "If only somebody had $25,000 to save the VFW Hall," we get the messy racial politics of Eastwood once again. Whereas Gran Torino worked for me because it's aware of its own racism, this one thinks that it's doing some good. The subtext is that an old White man would never catch trouble from police, but the text is a Hispanic man getting pulled over and nearly pissing himself for laughs. Hard to argue this isn't a fun time at the movies though, despite the fact that it's almost entirely about regret.
40. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)- Too theatrical and outre for my taste, but it's easy to get lost in its cosmetic pleasures: the lush colors, the lavish costumes, the immaculate close-ups, the best score of the year. I liked it, especially the Brian Tyree Henry tangent, but as the movie is swooning over itself, it's easy to catch yourself thinking, "What is this even about?"
39. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller)- Can You Ever Forgive Me? hits every beat you would expect from an "in over her head" crime movie, but the time that the film dedicates to the central relationship creates a rare intimacy. If you stopwatched it, I imagine the majority of the film would be McCarthy and Grant talking to each other. That focus, along with a resistance to smoothing over the characters' rougher edges, elevates a kind of boilerplate story.
38. Blockers (Kay Cannon)- Even if the ending is kind of exhausting, desperate to give each character his or her moment, this is hilarious. Not so much in the setpieces showcased in the commercials but frequently in an expression or line reading. The Blu-Ray has a line-o-rama gag reel that is funnier than some entire movies. It's pretty progressive and fair in its portrayal of young female sexuality too.
37. Game Night (John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein)- It gets a little tidy and full circle for my taste, but this movie has some great laughs while being a good example of a film that nails both the characters' "want" and the characters' "need." Rachel McAdams is winning, and Jesse Plemons steals all of his scenes.
Game Night also has way more of a filmic identity than one might expect, since it doubles as a sort of Fincher parody. Besides Cliff Martinez's insistent electronic score and some CGI-for-no-reason establishing shots, Daley and Goldstein borrow the auteur's desaturated palette, locked-down camera, and narrow light range. There's even an elaborate one-r. The visuals elevated a premise that had the potential to be really dopey.
36. First Man (Damien Chazzelle)- I think this is exactly the movie Chazelle wanted to make, but, to match my expectations or his filmography, it's not quite good enough. Cool to the touch, though anything else would be antithetical to who Armstrong was. In the shape of suspense, but with an outcome that is obviously never in doubt. Flipping to the IMAX ratio the second the crew docks onto the moon is a cool trick, but it's as innovative as things get.
The cast is game. Gosling's fastidious brooding resists any of his Movie Star charm but still holds every scene, and the framing of Armstrong's motivation works very well. Foy's reading of "a bunch of boys" is about to become a t-shirt. Kyle Chandler and Jason Clarke and the suddenly mature Patrick Fugit all get their moments. The final scene places the film into the Chazelle tradition of people whose calling is greater than even their most transcendent relationships, and a protest sequence is a welcome break from the eraser-streaked perfectionism.
I'm sorry that I wanted Apollo 13 instead of a hipper Apollo 13.
35. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Perischetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman)- Within the course of one year, we got two possible solutions for the "problem" of inspiring but self-serious origin stories. At the beginning of the year, Black Panther mastered the form and presented it so solidly that it couldn't be argued against. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse goes the other way, so impressionistic that the final sequence is people flying through abstract shapes and colors, so irreverent that a character cuts someone off mid-sentence as he says, "With great power comes..." Though I would have trouble explaining the film, all of the dimensional comings-and-goings make sense in the moment, and it's easily the funniest Marvel movie ever made.
Maybe purposefully, it is overstuffed though. Six different iterations of Spider-Man is enough to juggle; I definitely didn't need a cadre of villains that was even less defined. I have to admit, even though I couldn't tell you what to cut, I was exhausted by the end, even if I was huffing and puffing fresh air.
34. Boy Erased (Joel Edgerton)- Many characters do bad things in this movie, but they're people trying to help and doing their best, justifying the pain that they're causing. This is a film that easily could have been drawn in caricature, and it never is. It does, however, draw the characters as fairly as they deserve, so the Joel Edgerton gay conversion therapist does wear bad ties and pronounce some words incorrectly. The Russell Crowe character, especially in the powerhouse final scene, is more complex and real, at least if I'm to judge by my own father, who has disturbingly similar moral authority and power moves k thx bai.
33. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville)- This one is more cohesive than 30 Feet From Stardom, but these Morgan Neville docs are sometimes too slick for their own good. If you've never made the "jerking-off motion" with your hand, then you'll be tested when he asks his subjects to close their eyes and imagine someone special to them.
That's not to say that the nearly pornographic reverence of Fred Rogers is not deserved or effective. And one of the most daring notes of the film is the suggestion that, in our hostile times, Rogers's message might not have stuck. The jabs at Trump aren't overplayed, but the president is sort of a pall over the entire film. When Rogers says, "The most essential things in life are invisible," it's hard not to imagine the person on our TV daily who is the antithesis of that idea.
32. Hearts Beat Loud (Brett Haley)- This is a heartwarming movie that ends on a high note with solid music. (Important because, if the music that the father and daughter made had been bad, the whole thing would have fallen apart.) Occasionally, it falls into that ensemble problem of "Good news: We got Ted Danson. Bad news: We have to find something for him to do." And it's a weird sideways ad for Spotify. But if I gave Begin Again three stars, then I have to kick this Once-core entry up to three-and-a-half.
If I may, though, I would like to analyze a recommendation that Offerman's record store owner makes to Collette's character. Since she's buying Dig Me Out by Sleater-Kinney, he puts her on to Animal Collective's Merriweather Post Pavilion, an album she has not heard of. Which is absurd. Forget that Animal Collective should not be recommended to any woman ever. Any person who knows Sleater-Kinney also knows Animal Collective. She would have heard of them if only because they would be a bad match for someone who likes Sleater-Kinney. But here he is all like, "Check out 'My Girls'--killer song." You're going to recommend the lead single, fam? You're not even going to go out on a limb and push "Bluish"? No wonder your store is shutting down if you're pushing free folk/art-punk onto riot grrls.
31. Western (Valesta Grisebach)- While I was watching Western, I can't say I was having too much fun. It seemed like an adequate story told in a patient, austere way. But in the days since then, I haven't been able to get it out of my head. The way that Grisebach gets so much out of non-professional actors, the way that each character seems to exist not so much as a person but as a totem for something like aggression or labor or exploitation or occupation. Like few other movies--though Beau Travail comes to mind--it's a portrait of masculinity that seems really resigned about its conclusions. 30. American Animals (Bart Layton)- I worry about the potential Boondock Saints effect of this movie: Do I want to be in the same number as the college dorm crew attracted to it only for its style? Is it only style? I don't think it adds up to much ultimately.
But it does have style, and it's way too fun of a caper flick to resist. It presents an interesting bridge in Bart Layton's career, from non-fiction that is a bit too fictional to fiction that is a bit too factual. The segments with the real people involved in the heist serve as decisive punctuation to the florid sentences of the narrative. I also appreciated that the film didn't dwell too much on the trial, since we know exactly where the boys faltered and what evidence did them in.
29. The Land of Steady Habits (Nicole Holofcener)- I loved the rich characterization of the first half, which resists hand-holding as it plops the viewer into a post-divorce setting that is familiar but specific. The film bounces off into tangents from there, some of which are great, but Edie Falco seems to draw the short straw. There are three actors on the poster--weird-voiced Ben Mendelsohn, Thomas Mann, and Falco--but her character is left undeveloped, a bit unfairly, as the proceedings favor the men. The film is still another ground-rule double for Holofcener, a filmmaker who gives the impression that she has no idea what a ground-rule double is.
28. Private Life (Tamara Jenkins)- I don't know anything about Tamara Jenkins's personal life, but there's no way that the details and emotion of the central couple's infertility don't come from her own pain. That frustration and obsession take center stage, and we get filled in with the rest of the details patiently as the film goes on. I don't think we even know what Giamatti's character does for a living until forty-five minutes in, and that's okay. The movie cares more about the supporting characters than I did, but I appreciated the lived-in realism of an apartment with books filling up the fireplace.
27. Flower (Max Winkler)- Although I didn't believe Zoey Deutch as a seventeen-year-old, I was impressed by this script, which moves slowly until it doesn't. I guess "Flower" is good branding since there doesn't appear to be a movie called that already, but I kind of wish this had just been called "Erica." It builds that character carefully, plants her in an impossible situation, then unleashes hell upon her.
An advantage of a movie with teenage characters is that they don't necessarily have to make the most logical decision in a given moment, so even when these characters are being dumb, they're being true to themselves. As the most prominent Zoey Deutch stockholder in North America, I actually thought about bumping this up an extra half-star.
26. Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)- Leave No Trace is partly about how existing outside of society can be as much of a contrivance as buying in, but the way the movie delivers that message is less ham-fisted than my description due to the intense performances at the center. Ben Foster, uncharacteristically restrained here, reportedly worked with Debra Granik to excise 40% of his dialogue, and that choice speaks volumes about the trust the film has for the audience in limiting the exposition.
The only thing holding me back was how exclusively internal the father-daughter story is. Unlike Granik's Winter's Bone, which functions as both a (similarly compassionate) coming-of-age story and a race-against-the-clock thriller, Leave No Trace is tracking only emotional growth. Will and Tom aren't headed anywhere in particular, which is part of the survival-versus-living point. But, you know, get you a Debra Granik movie that can do both.
25. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)- Socially terrifying when it isn't being effortlessly funny. Sometimes the protagonist is downright frustrating, which the film doesn't shy away from, but the vulnerability of Elsie Fisher's performance grounds everything around it. Besides nailing adult condescension, Burnham's script works because the big social disaster is always averted until it suddenly isn't, and that's when the moment hits the hardest. Somewhere in the back of my mind though, I kept thinking that perceptive realism is easy to do if that's your only goal. To quote the kids: "Some shade."
I spent most of the movie thanking God that YouTube channels didn't exist when I was thirteen.
24. Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle)- I'll be the millionth person to write "truth is stranger than fiction" with regard to this movie. And sometimes having no idea where a movie will go is enough. 23. Green Book (Peter Farrelly)- When a dramatic director makes a comedy, it often feels self-conscious and overt. I'm thinking about Von Trier's The Boss of It All, in which the technique is more important than any audience joy or release. Or Michael Haneke explaining tirelessly why he thinks Happy End is "actually a comedy." Unsurprisingly, the results work a lot better when a comedy director of twenty years decides to go more serious. He knows what audiences want, he already understands how to wring tension out of each scene, and all he needs is the right subject.
The last item is where Green Book suffers. In the end, this is still a movie in which a White guy learns not to be racist. The first third, there seemingly to insist that Tony is the main character, is shaggy. I would wager the men don't get into the car inside of forty minutes. But once we're on the tour? Man, is this a crowd pleaser. The men's respect for each other grows gracefully, and the film's proud sentimentality powers its best moments as they fly by at a clipped pace. I had given up on Farrelly after Hall Pass, which felt amateurish, so a work of such professionally manicured (manufactured?) emotion was a shock.
On a different note, are any of you interested in a thousand words on Linda Cardellini's posture?
22. Den of Thieves (Christian Gudegast)- Despite the February release date, a director with no track record, and the most #basic studio lead there is, Den of Thieves is a caper film as sprawling as it is humane. Even Potato-face Butler is perfect for his role.
I watched the unrated version, which should be called the "depressing version," since I know exactly what was cut. (Hint: The wordless scene of Butler's jilted family ignoring him when he sees them in the grocery store, not anything from the shoot-out.) There's a spot where I would end the movie, and it's way before the Keyser Soze epilogue, but this was a welcome surprise for me. The movie seems to find its star in O'Shea Jackson, Jr. as it goes, and I completely agree. Many more like this please.
21. The Front Runner (Jason Reitman)- Reitman starts with a complicated oner that cranes up and down, zooms in and out of new characters, and times itself perfectly to catch snatches of conversations about "how can you even lay this much cable?" And in all of its Altman-esque indulgence, it's kind of the movie in a nutshell. Something simple--a scene shot with one take--commenting on how damned hard it is. What seems like a straightforward thesis moves at a breakneck pace with a game ensemble until you realize that it was all more complicated than it seemed.
Hugh Jackman has the challenge of playing someone essentially unknowable, but he has an amazing moment in the first third. On the chartered boat called Monkey Business--such a bad look, dude--Gary Hart is composed and dignified until a woman we don't see* sits down across from him, and his whole affect changes. His guard drops, and he seems absorbed by her, giggly. We can't hear what he's saying, but he's asking her about herself and joking about himself. Both or one or neither of those personalities is the real guy. The Front Runner is a movie about a tragic Great Man, and they're always described as if they can't help themselves, as if they're fighting their demons until the magic moment when they aren't. Jackman made that magic real for me when Hart's personality fell out.
20. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen)- Patently uneven and bizarrely sequenced, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs doesn't stack up to the Coens' major works--though it demands another viewing. I did think, in all of its bleak absurdism, that it belongs in their neighborhood. To me, there's a dichotomy that most of the brothers' films trace. We're all doomed, but the force that does us in is sometimes fate (A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Hudsucker Proxy, No Country for Old Men) and sometimes the stupidity of other people (The Big Lebowski, Blood Simple, Burn After Reading, Miller's Crossing). This new movie seems to start with the latter, waver sometimes in the more interesting middle stories when Zoe Kazan and Tom Waits break my heart, then end up at the former. Tracking such a thing in miniature can be really instructive.
19. The Tale (Jennifer Fox)- If you can look past Common's goofy voice and the more afterschool special aspects of this movie, then you can realize that it should actually, as disturbing as it is, be an afterschool special. It spins its wheels sometimes, but the questions that this movie asks about memory and abuse are invaluable. Presenting a downright shocking portrayal of grooming and secrecy, it avoids easy answers and over-sympathizing with the protagonist all the way through. (Especially notable because the character is "Jennifer Fox," and the director is Jennifer Fox.)
Laura Dern remains Laura Dern, but I loved Jason Ritter in this. Exactly because he has been in a hundred failed sitcoms, he is terrifying here as a devilish knock-off of the type of guy approachable enough to be on TV.
18. Paddington 2 (Paul King)- At first, during the extended introduction, I was worried that Paddington 2 was falling prey to the curse of the sequel: more, not better. But as each family member pays off what we learned about him or her in the introduction during a sprightly train setpiece that owes more than a little to Keaton, I realized that I shouldn't have doubted the Paddington empathy machine. This one carries over the humor and sweetness but goes even harder on the pathos in its attempt to convince us to have good manners and care about the people around us. I'm not sure any other movie this year hit me harder than when the Browns don't show up for their weekly meeting at the jail.
Hugh Grant, an actor who always seems to be having fun, has never seemed as if he is having more fun.
17. Set It Up (Claire Scanlon)- I guess I believe in true love now.
16. Blindspotting (Carlos Lopez Estrada)- The stylized climax is going to be polarizing, but I thought it was a heightened, artful moment whose seeds had been sown throughout. The film meanders, but its angles on subjects like gentrification and probation and identity show tenderness and openness, and Estrada's visual energy recalls early Spike Lee or Jarmusch or Aronofsky. It's worth seeing if only for its fresh sense of place.
The two leads play off each other especially well. If Daveed Diggs is the fourth lead or whatever of Hamilton, then I guess I finally have to see it.
15. Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird)- Incredibles 2 is a good example of a sequel rhyming with the original in a way that doesn’t feel like a retread. Accidentally topical in its subtext about just rule of law, the film hits upon some of Brad Bird’s ideas of exceptionalism and hope for the future while being slightly more cogent in that messaging than the original. (Slightly. The villain problem is still there. If superheroes are already illegal, then why employ and promote them at all if your goal is to make them even more illegal?)
This entry is a bit more overstuffed, less timeless, and less funny than the original. There’s nothing on the level of “Honey, where is my super suit?” which I still say to my wife fourteen years later. But the fight choreography and the textural animation take advantage of the gap in between films. The Paar family dynamic is altered only slightly, but it’s enough to re-invent the proceedings. Violet has more confidence in herself, Dash is more in control of his powers, and it’s the, yes, thicc Elastigirl who is working solo this time. Especially in the opening sequence, we see how each character’s skills complement the others’. If Finding Dory is the bar for “sequels to Pixar movies that didn’t need sequels,” then Incredibles 2 leaps over that bar.
14. Chappaquiddick (John Curran)- "We need to tell the truth. Or at least our version of it."
After the Kennedy Curse claimed JFK Jr., it seemed as if the culture reached a saturation point with Kennedy coverage. Aside from the occasional "Look who's dating Taylor Swift," we gave them their space. Who would have thought that twenty years later would be the perfect time to dust off the coldest case in the dossier?
See, now that we're having a national conversation about who gets the breaks, there's a little bit of extra weight lent to a scene of Ted Kennedy waiting for a sheriff he summoned as he drafts a statement at that absent sheriff's desk. A sheriff who then helps Kennedy to escape through a backdoor lest he answer any untoward question about his manslaughter. The film is delivered with an even pitch--especially the Jason Clarke performance that could have been overdone--but it makes no mistake about its real subject: privilege.
The attempts to keep Kennedy safe become more brazen as the film goes on, and each dodged consequence--getting Teddy's driver's license renewed on the low, for example--is balanced by Ed Helms's desperate performance as a voice of integrity. In all of the best tragedies, we know what's going to happen in the end. All along, the Kennedy Curse was that they are not like the rest of us.
13. Love, Simon (Greg Berlanti)- Can we all agree that an anonymous gossip web site for a high school is a bad idea? And that, though the film doesn't pursue this angle, the vice principal is the one maintaining it?
This propulsive, observant, and witty movie is an outright pleasure from beginning to end. Hocking spitballs at its PG-13 rating, its greatest strengths are having the courage to get dark and having the wisdom to give every supporting character his or her own moment.
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Spectrum Spectator: One Step Back
Daisy Wences: Welcome once again to your show of shows, Spectrum Spectator. Where we take everything broadcast during the past week and blend it into a concentrated, easy-to-digest paste. I’m your entertainment emissary, Daisy Wences, and with me as always is this other person.
Lars Gonall: Why do I feel like the job title ‘Paste Purveyor’ would go over better with my parents than ‘Spectrum Critic?’
Daisy Wences: Because even though you’re a grown adult, you still live your life seeking your parents’ approval?
Lars Gonall: Once again, thanks to Daisy, I’m going to have some deep thinking to do after this show.
Daisy Wences: That’s why we’re all here, right? Profound self-epiphanies.
Lars Gonall: Profound epiphanies through the prism of spectrum are the perfect medium for self-reflection.
Daisy Wences: Which reminds me, have you caught Far From Home yet?
Lars Gonall: I have…
Daisy Wences: Yes! How many episodes have you done? Ten? Twenty?
Lars Gonall: Daisy has been begging me to check it out since she discovered it last week and I gotta say… it’s not for me.
Daisy Wences: What?!
Lars Gonall: For those of you unfamiliar, Far From Home is this personal diary and advice show that a solo pilot puts out from his Freelancer. It’s basically like when you get seated next to your friend’s uncle at a dinner party and they just want to talk about how good ships used to be in the old days.
Daisy Wences: You did not just compare Old Jegger to someone’s random uncle.
Lars Gonall: Later, when you go back and check the recording, you will see that I, in fact, did exactly that.
Daisy Wences: Despite what Lars says, I still think that this is a show worth checking out. I heard about it on a DIY forum when I was trying to fix a glitchy heater in my hab. Of course, instead of actually fixing the stupid thing, I wound up spending the rest of the night consuming every Far From Home episode I could find. Maybe because part of me always wondered what it would be like on the drift. Hearing him talk, you start to understand the difference between a solitary life and a lonely one.
Lars Gonall: I will say that I appreciated how he seemed very much about everyone finding their own best way to live. It wasn’t just him preaching about how we should all be space hermits. And I’ll also give it a few more points now that there’s that rumor circulating that he’s dead.
Daisy Wences: Wait? What?
Lars Gonall: You didn’t see this? It was on the Galactapedia page. Turns out he hasn’t put out an episode since the last one he did from Charon. People are speculating that something might have happened to him. A bunch of fans have started trying to organize a search for him.
Daisy Wences: He is a hermit, right? I bet he’s simply staying off the grid for a bit. I’m sure this is just one of those dumb spectrum rumors and he’ll show up in a week or two with a great story to tell. At least, I really hope that’s what’ll happen.
Lars Gonall: Yeah. You’re probably right. Just promise me that you’re not gonna run away to join the search.
Daisy Wences: Don’t worry, Lars. I’m not leaving the show… yet.
Lars Gonall: Since we got to talk about one of your new favorite shows, you want to talk about my new crush that you can’t stand?
Daisy Wences: Fine. Go ahead.
Lars Gonall: From the makers of such fine reality vids like Kid Empire and Weapon Wars: Shoot-Out Edition comes my brand new obsession, Face to Face, a dating show with a brilliant premise.
Daisy Wences: You mean an insanely creepy premise.
Lars Gonall: Oh, yeah. Won’t argue with you there. This is definitely a show for people who love cringe binging. All the contestants are sent into one of those new and really expensive BiotiCorp machines and given identical faces.
Daisy Wences: Want to know how they picked what that face would look like? They created a composite head from all the main single person’s exes. How messed up is that?
Lars Gonall: The show claims they’re trying to create an ideal partner for the selector by looking at their previous romantic choices. The lucky -
Daisy Wences: I guess that’s how they could be described…
Lars Gonall: The lucky bachelor is a fitness instructor from New Babbage named Eris who goes on dates with all the contestants and eliminates anyone they don’t like. Once eliminated, the candidates are reverted back to their original face.
Daisy Wences: I swear it’s like some bizarre cult. One of the contestants who got cut was sobbing because they didn’t want their old face back. I know it’s pretty common these days to adjust how you look, but the way they were all losing their identity while trying to become someone else’s fantasy made me really uncomfortable.
Lars Gonall: You had a much darker take than I did. For me, it was fun to watch people get to know each other in a situation where their looks didn’t matter. Eris couldn’t judge people on who was attractive or not, it was all about if they had a connection. What’s really going to be interesting is that the winning contestant gets to reconstruct their face however they want. Do they go with their original? An ‘improved’ version of themselves? Keep their new face? So many choices.
Daisy Wences: Do you think the people at BiotiCorp would have made the Calliope if they knew that this was how their amazing invention was going to be used?
Lars Gonall: I assume all scientists hope for a day when their discovery or invention can be used to help strangers pretend to be in love on spectrum.
Daisy Wences: Shall we move on to a show that we were actually scheduled to review this week?
Lars Gonall: Even better, a show that we both actually liked.
Daisy Wences: Last Friday saw the premiere of the much-heralded docu-series One Step Back. Filmed on Asura, it’s a hard look at what life is like for former criminals trying to re-enter society. The first episode focuses on Liz ‘Necro’ Salguero, a convicted shipjacker who was released from Quarterdeck last year.
Lars Gonall: You get a real sense of what it must be like to have this criminal reputation hanging over your head. At one point, she goes through a checkpoint on her way to sell some scrap and seeing how security swarms all over her to do a deep scan was really surprising to me. Maybe this is just my naïveté talking, but I always figured that serving time was enough to clear your record. It turns out though that the Advocacy keeps you flagged as a person of interest for a long time after you’ve been incarcerated, and a lot of people get access to those records.
Daisy Wences: One of the people they interview is a criminal rights advocate who is trying to change the law so that once your crime is atoned for, your records remained sealed unless you are charged with a crime again. We expect these people to be able to make a life for themselves, but with their past available to potential employers, many can’t find work and even when they do, it’s a long hard road to earning trust and respectability again.
Lars Gonall: This isn’t exactly the same thing, but I do remember this one time growing up when my dad accidentally clipped a ship that was rising out of hangar bay. He got flagged and until he paid off the fine, we weren’t allowed to use a lot of public landing areas. It was only a week, but still.
Daisy Wences: I had no idea you came from an outlaw family. It’ll be interesting to see what the show does to help forward the dialogue about all this. Apparently, since the episode was released, Liz has been overwhelmed with job offers and people looking to help her out. Pretty touching really. Of course, that’s just one person.
Lars Gonall: Strongly recommend you give this show a try. It’s not exactly lighthearted, but it’s doing some important things.
Daisy Wences: All right, on that surprisingly serious note, we have to take our first break. When Spectrum Spectators returns, we’ll be discussing the new Tavi Arteaga comedy, One Mann’s Treasure, about a young woman named Aleria Mann who leaves her bustling life in Prime to run her sick mother’s salvaging business out in the far reaches of Corel.
Lars Gonall: I’m pretty excited because we haven’t reviewed a ‘the character’s name is a title pun’ show in a long time, so be sure to stick around and we’ll be right back.
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