#he has nominated himself as her emotional support dog

[sculptorofcrimson]

The dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed. 

Now not even in death can duty end…

Snowfields

Synopsis: A cold walk atop the mountain with Valdor.

Relations: Valdor x female Emperor shard

Warnings: Suicide attempt

This is relatively tame for what I write, and I wrote it in one sitting when I had roughly 20 minutes to spare. Ty for your time!

“Do you remember Ararat, my liege?”

No. No, she didn’t remember Ararat. She has never heard the name before. But she will. By the gods, she will. 

The air was cold. It rattled through her lungs when she tried to breathe. The white seemed to stretch forever, like malignant bones, the wind laid bare and rattling its screams. It would rise like a frosty howl around the two of them, wailing like a soldier who had lost a limb, weeping its cries for eternity. The cold bit at her, tore at her, the snow would have frozen mortal blood solid in mortal veins. Thunder grumbles in the distance. A crack of lightning splits the sky in half, purplish white against the ghoulish grey. 

His cloak was warm when he wrapped it around her. But his touch, without doubt, without even question, was unfathomably cold. Without even thinking of it, she had shrunk away.

Valdor’s grip had only tightened then. He fastened the clasp of the too-large cloak, the stench of incense and parchment wafting from the silk. A small smile, the emotionless movement perfected by a mind that could not actually smile, flashed briefly across his visage as he took her wrist, trapped it so effortlessly between his fingers and kissed the soft skin there.

“There was a Primarch once. A magnificent man. One that even I respected, in some regards.” Valdor led her, slowly and patiently, holding her up when she stumbled through the knee-high snow. The mountaintop seemed to rage against her. Well, too damn bad. She hated mountains, and she hated snow, and she was about to teach him a lesson out of spite. It was pure pettiness, but it was hers, it was one last plan she held to herself, one last wish she was certain was hers and not his, and if she was going to die, drowned limb by limb into the unseeing gold, she wished to at least pain him with it. 

How had it gone so wrong? How had angels of such glorious aurite turned into nightmares wrapped in gold and crimson? 

She yanked her arm away. Valdor let her go without struggle, simply rising back with a singular, elegant motion, as if he were a dancer performing a long-awaited waltz. When she stumbles over another snow-covered rock mere moments later, he was there, as if he had never left, one arm gently wrapped around her waist as he hauls her upright. This time, when she tries to pull away, his grip only tightens, as if he was defying the very storm itself.

“The snow reminds me of him. The Cataegis Primarch of the IVth legion. You watched us duel atop a mountain not so unlike this one, my liege, when the storm ended. It felt like the top of the world. We were in a deadlock when you appeared, your attention straying just for a moment to our fight. I snapped his wrist with a twisting motion, and slammed him into the ground hard enough to snap part of his spine. Your attention had departed by then, but it was enough. You still remember the frost, do you not?”

No. No. She didn’t. She couldn’t. Valdor’s hand, so gentle, so damnably gentle, placed itself under her chin. It stroked her hair, his gauntlets’ touch heavy yet tender, the jewels flashing dully through strands of hair that were quickly becoming darker, swallowed first by brown and then by black. He had not forbidden her to cut it. Out of spite, she had ordered him to cut it for her. 

It didn’t matter.

The strands had grown back, with an unrelenting zeal, glossy and luxurious and flowing like ink over water. She was innocent once, she was mortal, she lived among men and walked amongst mortals, and she will never be again. She will never live again, and that truth was simply so jagged, so broken, so horrifyingly caught between her chest and her throat that it was as if something broke a little further every time she took a breath. Valdor had only quietly polished, brushed and glossed over her hair, his movements methodical and calculated, even when silent tears rolled their way down her cheeks, her vision blurred by the salt and the water but just visible enough to see the flakes of gold swirling in her pupils. Still clear enough to see herself die.

She had felt Valdor’s fingers through her hair then, braiding it carefully in an intricate style she had never seen before, but one that tugged at familiar roots she had never felt before. 

Her hair. Some mewling, broken part of her(was it her dream or His? Was there a difference anymore?) instinctively felt like it should be darker. Longer. Wreathed with gold, and weighed down by a crown. But it was her hair. It was her hair, once upon a time, and she had lost it strand by strand, inch by inch, as the gold swam up through her vision and blocked out her eyes.

A rock clattered over the side of the mountain, followed by dull, distant thunder. It jolted her back to her mind, to her body, to the world that she did not rule over and should have never ruled. 

Numbly, she felt herself shake her head. Valdor only raised an eyebrow, and adjusted the clasp.

“I remember the rock, my master.” Valdor was saying. His voice rose and fell like a litany, carefully retracing steps the Emperor had once guided him through, when He was a king and gods walked the earth. She felt so small against him, so tired, so far from the invincible god-warrior he had once served, but that was alright, He had returned to him, and he would shepherd Him, guide Him, protect Him, through this life and through this death till the last. “Even the rocks felt cold. It was black, and it glistened like oil whenever the sun shone. There were storms every day of that campaign, as if the heavens themselves were against us, as if the gods had conspired to strike you down, but yet you gave us the order to march. And the wind. You told me that you heard it screaming. Malcador jokingly asked that if you should live again, you would choose to enact Ararat during the summer instead, if only out of sheer annoyance from the wind.” Valdor’s smile was nothing more than a reflex. There was no humor in it, nor human emotion. “Do you remember it then, my master?”

The wind. Had it screamed then, as it screams now? Had it screamed, beneath the weight of the betrayal, wailing with the sheer horror of what it had taken? Did it scream, singing a threnody with the thunder, as the skies growl and hail shudders from overcast clouds ahead? She shivers underneath her layers. The finest climate suits had been prepared, coupled with the Custodian cloak over her shoulders, but she felt cold, so unspeakably cold that it was nearly painful. 

Oh Throne. She was cold, so cold. 

“Constantin?” she rasps. Her voice was not her own. It was rusty from disuse, and cracked, and weak, but yet some part of it resonated, it echoed like the tongue of a god, speaking through the plaintive shell of a mortal, just enough to hiss like a shadowy undertone. It should have been more sonorous, it should have been softer, it should have been the voice of a conqueror, it should have been the voice of a girl snatched away from her home by an angel and transformed into a god. It should have been hers, but it was His instead. She licks her lips and tries again. “Constantin.”

“Yes, my lord?” he was at her side(was he always so close?), the memory jarringly left unfinished. The hand once gently guiding her and became more insistent as he knelt down until they were eye to eye. 

“I don’t remember the mountain.” she replied flatly. Her voice was weaker than a whisper. She didn’t care. She knew he’d hear it anyway. And if he didn’t, she no longer cared enough to ensure he did. She no longer believed she had the strength to stomach that voice any longer. 

The cliff looked dizzyingly as she peered over the edge. She wondered if even a Custodian could survive a fall at such a height. 

“I don’t remember the snow, Constantin.”

“That is alright, my liege.” He was so sweet, so sickeningly sweet, so unerringly gentle. It made her want to claw at him, to crack him, to see what could finally burrow under that invincible flesh and make him howl. It made her wonder how the Emperor broke him to make him the man he had become, how deeply He must have laid His tongs in the forge of flesh and fire. 

She wondered what his screams would sound like, if he could scream at all.

“Do not trouble yourself, my liege. Your form is still young.” Of course, he could afford to wait. He had waited for ten thousand years, and he would gladly wait for ten thousand more. In that broken, delusional mind of his, it was only just, after all. He’d speak litanies of loyalty, roaring them over the screams of her brethren, he’d speak praises so numerous that they’d drown out the sobs of her family. “Your memories will return, when given due time. I can tell you about them. The preliminaries, the campaigns, the plans you undertook.”

Of course. They’d have to return. They must return. They will return, and He will live again, born out of this mortal shell under Valdor’s guidance. Valdor simply could not be, must not be, could not accept, could not live in a world where his liege has fallen forever. 

The snow was no longer biting her. It seemed to have been cowed, laid low beneath the vengeful eye of its rightful master. Even the storm seems to have settled, briefly, at least for now. For the eye of the King, the Emperor, the god-sorceror. 

It was so cruel, the revelation, the realization that welled up in her when she gazed dully back at him with listless eyes. The revelation that came for her, and not for him, for he would be nothing if not for his delusion. How quickly she understood the truth beneath why she had called him here, why she had suddenly finally accepted his offer to visit the mountain, when she had been delaying it, dreading it, putting it off for weeks upon months. 

The edge. 

The end. (And not the death).

She wondered if even a Custodes could survive a fall from this height. She wondered if it mattered anymore. 

The plan had been formulating itself for weeks now, brewing like boiled flesh in a cyst, nursing itself, grieving its wounds, growing stronger, gaining weight. First she had refused to eat, then to bathe, then to move at all, all the dreary, listless days crushed into the same monotony as brass as she had sat still upon a throne she did not want and stared off into oblivion, as he occasionally knelt by her and asked for her commands while she numbly stared off in the distance, her eyes a thousand yards away. Her gaze had been lost in a time beyond time, beyond memory itself, and not even dreams could steal her away. 

First it had only been how she stopped even trying to hide from him. She simply let him follow her, on her aimless, little walks aboard the massive ship that had become her only location. Then it had been how her tongue had stalled and she no longer even greeted the serfs that occasionally came by to deliver her food she did not eat, water she did not want, utensils she did not use, how she simply stared ahead, as reactive as a corpse, about as conscious to the world as the dead. Valdor had cared after her then, when even her memory had failed her, when she lay still and sullen like ash, the weight of the world upon broken shoulders, silent, painful tears trickling a cheerless trail from her eyes to her duvet. How he had lifted her up and cradled her to him, asking which stories she wished to hear, which glories she wished him to recount. Which memories that were not hers but soon will be, tales he regaled her of His conquests, of His victories and His lessons, His mantras drilled into her bones as they have been drilled into his.

She had left the world, bit by bit, husk by husk, until she felt as if she weighed no more than one of His eagles’ feathers did, frailly clinging onto the world with a whisper and a dream. It was as if she was sinking into some calm, clear, colorless water and feeling the waves close in above her, but there was no sensation of drowning, no voiceless cry in the deep. Simply the noiseless struggle in her own dreams, as she prepared herself for the final breath before oblivion. 

(Did she have the strength? Did it matter any longer, when he could overpower her no matter the answer?)

It was so beautiful, up here, at the edge of the sky. She could hear the storm breathing in the clouds. It was close enough that she could close her eyes, and dream of Ararat, listening to Valdor’s words. An end. An end, just like the Thunder Warriors He(and she?) slaughtered so long ago. The final unraveling. She didn’t want to die, but was she truly living? An immortality without life, without passion, without even joy itself, was that truly living when she was little more than a corpse, kept alive through obsession?

If the Emperor had loved them, He would have never created them at all. What merciful god would create such grotesque angels? 

If the Four were merciful, they would have sought Valdor, as they sought the Primarchs. They would have whisked him away, upon winds of change, tainted him with their mark, made sure He would never accept him as a servant again. They would have saved him, corrupted him, broken him, taught him what it felt like to dream, before the golden light shone again, and His dream took over his. 

But he was a servant, not a master. He was not a leader. He knelt, instead of ruling, and the Emperor had sunk in His claws so deep even the Four could not pry it out. And so he was His, forevermore.

He died ten thousand years ago. And somewhere, inside that twisted, broken Palace that was a mind, His dog was still waiting loyally at the door, waiting for Him to return. 

He was kneeling beside her now. She had never even heard him move. With infinite reverence, he cups her features, admiring the black strands falling over his gauntlets, the golden eyes - so broken, so gorgeous, so His - staring back at him.

“It was the end of the Unification Wars, my liege. And the start of your rule. The Imperium was born that day, your coronation happened atop that bloodstained snowfield, when Malcador held up that laurel, and crowned you King. How could you forget how I, the first of your Custodes, knelt first and rose last, when the ceremony ended?” 

So careful. So gentle as not to hurt her.

“Tell me about them.” a small, cruel smile had found its way onto her face. She was no longer looking at him, instead smiling serenely, blankly staring out upon the sky. The mountain truly was beautiful. It was such a shame this was where she would die. She should have felt something then. A sense of guilt, perhaps. A moment of horror for what she had become, for taking advantage of something so deeply broken into him that it was written into his very bones. Obedience was carved into his blood, seared into his marrow. He would know no other way but to obey. 

“The Unification Wars?” Valdor asks, the question poised so effortlessly, head tilted like a loyal dog, perfectly prepared to obey his master’s every word. 

It would be almost easier, she thought, if he had been a crueller man. Easier to break him, easier to hate him, easier to gaze upon that perfect, immaculate features and wonder what if he had lost those duels. If he had been taught to be mortal, what his screams would’ve sounded like, what sounds of pain he might wheeze out when his perfect, immaculate dancer’s grace falters and he learns, he learns the price for immortality. 

He was never meant to love. 

Not for the first time, she wonders if he can feel pain. If she’ll even care, if it’ll even matter. For a creature who loved no one but his master, would it even be a sin?A sin, to teach him what it meant to fear? To taste the copper tang of terror, to twist the knife in him as he had twisted the knife in her. And to die, exalted, knowing she would have hurt him, knowing she brought down a demigod. 

You can’t reason with a mad dog. You can’t plead with someone who knows they’re right. You can’t gaze into the eyes of Constantin Valdor and expect to see reason back, when his master was right in front of him and alive, so sickeningly alive he would rather kill than forget Him again.

Would he even mourn this time? Did he even know what mourning felt like? She had an inkling that he did, however twisted it may be. Because, for him, the tale isn't over yet, the tale must not be over. His Emperor is not dead, it cannot be, he cannot be, in a world without the Emperor, it simply is not possible. Without Valdor, the Emperor could not lead His Custodes, but without Him, the Custodes could not live. 

“No.” she replies. “The mountain. Tell me of them.” The smile that stretched across her face felt nothing like her. It did not belong to this life. It was too old, too heavy, too sad and too cruel for a face that was once joyous and wide with mischief. She had an inkling of the words Valdor was about to say, the bitter, treacherous words she would weep to hear, and regret ever having forced him to speak. 

“The Thunder Warriors.” she murmured. She had closed her eyes again by then. The plan was formulating, inking itself together with the same mindlessness of crawling, squirming things beneath the earth. And she didn’t want to see what the ground would look like when she fell. She didn’t want to see what it felt like to die a second time. This was only a distraction, a charade, a pitiful illusion built by a mind almost broken. There was no one here but a madman, a broken girl, and the ghosts of the storm calling out its mournful rage overhead. 

“Tell me what became of them. Of that Primarch you spoke so highly of. And no lies.” she sighs, and the voice that whistles out of her is too old, too broken. She brushes his hand away. This time, he doesn’t even insist on remaining. “Tell me what happened on Ararat. I want to hear the truth from your lips.” 

If there had been anything left of her heart, she might have mourned for him. For what he had become, living not for himself but for another. Living His life for Him. And when He died, what could become of him? What could become of him except to endure? When he had slaughtered brothers, lovers, children upon the snowfields, betrayed loyalists and watched life fade from their eyes, all in the name of Him, what could be left of him if not to serve?

He served, and loyalty was its own reward. Loyalty, unyielding, unbreaking, even in death his duty would not end.

Valdor tilts his head like a confused dog. “What good will it do now?” 

She utters a dry, raspy laugh. It had no inflection within it, no actual human emotion. 

“I command you, Valdor.” she spoke. There was nothing behind it, nothing even when the command hurt him. It stirred nothing but a deep, dull ache and the brief knife of guilt, which was quickly surpassed by the lasting numbness that did not seem to leave her bones. “I command you to speak of them. On Ararat. What happened on Ararat?”

She turns from him, walking slowly, and without care. She needed to be on a ledge. Distantly, thunder shrieks, and the storm crashes down. Lightning briefly illuminates her features, skin half-tanned, black hair flowing and golden eyes peering through the brume, and in that radiant flare of lightning she looked positively divine, a half-god caught on earth, if not for the weary, haunted gaze of a hunted animal. Her shoulders were hunched, her movements withered, as if her bones could no longer support her weight. She walked without a singular care in the world, and Valdor trailed immediately afterwards. She knew to jump was no longer an option. Even the stormclouds seemed to mock her. It was foolish, so foolish, she knew. He could not let her die. He would move faster than she could even think, he could catch her, snatch her around her waist and carry her to a safe distance before she could even advance an inch towards the edge. 

She could not die here. He would not allow her to die.

And they both knew that.

Voicelessly, soundlessly, she gazes up upon the stormladen sky. Its grey dances across her golden irises, the stormwind playing with her hair. Thunder crashes, and she feels herself scream back, wordlessly, soundlessly, without even conscious thought. Dully, she knew she was raging, screaming, that her mind was seizing at the clouds and tearing at them, begging them to save her, but physically she made not even a single move. Her body was frozen, the snow pelting her shoulders, Valdor’s cloak swirling from the wind. She felt frozen, too. Her mind was no longer wreathed with such self-pity it once had, it was churning, clawing, raging like a caught rabbit in a trap, desperately wishing the ground would open up and swallow it whole, not as a kind of freedom, but as a final form of spite to the hunter.

Thunder crashes around the two of them. Neither of them move. The edge was close, so dizzyingly close that she could feel the wind gusting around her. Valdor was watching her closely, the same way a starved wolf may watch a weakened deer.

When Valdor finally speaks, unable to resist the bluntness of her command, his eyes were still distantly focused on the memories of Ararat. And his voice was passionlessly dull, carefully kept neutral and utterly without pity. 

“I slit his throat.” he confesses dully, flatly, without even a hint of inflection. “The Primarch. I slit his throat on Ararat, from ear to ear, then from ear to clavicle. I only stopped when I felt bone scraping against the edge of my knife.”

Surprisingly she laughed, and the sound was garbled, as grim and as dry as bones. “I suppose you killed him then?” she asked. One more step. One more step and she would be at the edge. He would not let her. He would move faster than the earth could drag her down anyways. But it did not matter. Slowly, incredulously, she could feel herself smiling. It was going to be alright. She could feel it in her bones, the static, the storm. Even the snow seemed to be on her side. For a moment, she felt like a god, standing at the top of the world, the conquered earth groveling beneath Him, knowing that even the elements would fall beneath His gaze. 

She could taste the ichor then, sweet and lifeless and pouring from the sky along with the snow, the charge in the sky and the thunder. The vengeance it held. The sheer rage, an echo of her own. She would rule them. She did not want to rule. She would rule, for one singular moment in her wretched life, she would rule, and she would hurt him, as he had hurt her. For the serfs he terrorized, for the Sisters he slaughtered, for the martyrs he first betrayed and then hung out to die. All in her name. All for her wishes. She no longer wished to wish. She no longer wished to reign. 

Let her abdicate the throne of skulls. Just once. Just once, she prayed. 

“No.” Valdor shook his head. He was already moving, one hand reaching out to grasp her arm and drag her back before she could approach the edge. “It would have been a kinder fate if he had died then. It would have been a kinder fate if-”

“-if you had granted him an honorable death.” she finished for him. She spoke softly, plaintively, as if this was a comfort. She had turned her face a little, just enough to see him, just enough to see his elegant features illuminated by the storm. To gaze upon him, one last time. The way he held himself, like a dancer, his lean features accentuated by the lightning as the thunderbolt carved the sky open and struck the ledge beside her. The way his auramite had shuddered from the lightning as he had, for the first time in her memory, stumbled, his gait not utterly perfect before the divine rage. The first word she had heard him say that was not perfectly calculated.

The lightning snaps the ledge like bone.

The surprised intake of breath she had uttered, a squeal that was nearly a gasp as the rock beneath her feet had caved in, and then crumbled as she had desperately hoped, the weathered stone no longer capable of supporting its own weight bending and breaking and shattering as the lightning arced through it, the smite separating the ledge like the same way Valdor had carved through that serf. That poor, poor serf who had slipped her a kiss upon her request. It was little more than a peck, that poor thing. And he hadn’t even been able to scream when Valdor separated his bones like paper. 

In a silent vow to him, in a wordless vow to them all, the corpses he laid so she could climb atop her throne, she promised she wouldn’t scream as she fell.

Grimly, lips drawn in a tight line, she only felt the distant thunder as she descended like a one-winged eagle, her face utterly expressionless, lightning briefly dancing sparks against her hair as if in reverence. 

Valdor’s cloak, still wrapped around her, its silk as crimson as spilled blood, unfurled around her as she fell.

Distantly, from somewhere beyond the mountaintop, thunder roared. 

~~~~

It was warm, when she finally awoke. She muttered something, tried to turn, and decided to burrow deeper against the warmth instead. There was a rumble, a purr-like sound, and the slow, drifting scent of incense as one titanic hand came up to rest against her hair. 

With careful reverence, it adjusted the master’s laurel. 

“Welcome back, by lord.” the voice purred. “You expressed quite the interest in the Cataegis Primarch.”

She groaned. Golden irises flickered back and forth, as if in distress, beneath her lids. Valdor’s other hand reached up to stroke through her hair, careful not to upset the laurel.  

“I had thought you would have recognized him, my lord. It was, after all, his grave that I showed you that night upon the mountain.”

He makes a long, slow chuckle, almost like amusement, if he had been capable of it. “I had expected you’ve greeted him already, my master. You were standing atop his bones.” 

Somewhere, distantly, thunder growled. And without even being conscious of it, she shivered, and tried to burrow closer to his warmth.  

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[brian-in-finance]

The Contenders, 2022 Edition

There's nothing like Oscar season to get our competitive juices flowing. The front-runners may be obvious by now, so let's advocate for the actors, directors, and one rock-star composer we'd like to see go the distance.

Best Director

CREDIT: NIKO TAVERNISE/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS; KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX; ROB YOUNGSON/FOCUS FEATURES; CHIABELLA JAMES/WARNER BROS. (2); ALISON COHEN ROSA/APPLE TV+; KERRY HAYES/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

The Competition

JANE CAMPION (THE POWER OF THE DOG)

The return of the talent behind 1993's The Piano, Campion's first feature in 12 years was already cause for celebration. But when Dog turned out to be the strongest movie of her career, it was full-on astonishing.

STEVEN SPIELBERG (WEST SIDE STORY)

All Spielberg had to do was avoid mutilating a classic and he probably would have gotten a pass. His reimagining, though, succeeds beyond all expectations: It's shrewdly updated and progressive, with a real reason for being.

KENNETH BRANAGH (BELFAST)

Branagh was nominated for a directing Oscar at the precocious age of 29 for 1989's Henry V. It would be a tribute to his deep-boned talent and longevity if he made it back to the bracket again this year — and Belfast deserves it.

DENIS VILLENEUVE (DUNE)

The visionary behind the biggest gamble of the year — one that paid off artistically and commercially — should be honored here. It may take the second film for the saga's heft to kick in, but Villeneuve's command is already clear.

On The Bubble

REINALDO MARCUS GREEN (KING RICHARD)

JOEL COEN (THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH)

GUILLERMO DEL TORO (NIGHTMARE ALLEY)

Best Supporting Actress

CREDIT: NIKO TAVERNISE/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS; KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX; ROB YOUNGSON / FOCUS FEATURES; A24; SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES; APPLE TV +; 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

The Competition

RITA MORENO (WEST SIDE STORY)

The narrative is so perfect, it's hard not to root for it to happen, just for the sake of a good cry: Exactly 60 years after her Oscar triumph in the original, Moreno could be back at the podium, shining and showing us the way.

KIRSTEN DUNST (THE POWER OF THE DOG)

Dunst's fans (we're at the front of the line) have been dreaming of a performance like this: all of her vulnerability, sadness, and moxie poured into a nearly silent turn. Exquisitely, she makes the entire cast lean in.

CATRÍONA BALFE (BELFAST)

This is a turn that vibrates in every scene. As the beating heart and Mother Courage of Kenneth Branagh's boyhood memoir, Balfe finds room for the emotional gamut of parenting in a war zone during the Irish Troubles.

GABY HOFFMAN (C'MON C'MON)

Call it the Phoenix Effect (and credit us, please): If enough of the acting bloc falls in love with Joaquin's avuncular central character, they'll no doubt notice his brainy costar — a believable sibling with plenty of fire herself.

On The Bubble

CATE BLANCHETT (NIGHTMARE ALLEY)

KATHRYN HUNTER (THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH)

ARIANA DEBOSE (WEST SIDE STORY)

Best Supporting Actor

CREDIT: APPLE TV +; ROB YOUNGSON / FOCUS FEATURES (2); FABIO LOVINO/MGM; KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX; NIKO TAVERNISE/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS; WARNER BROS.

The Competition

TROY KOTSUR (CODA)

If this Sundance crowd-pleaser has one performance that eases it away from the edge of sentimentality, it's Kotsur's father: gruff, bawdy, unbroken. Deaf himself, the actor allows us to laugh through the tougher moments.

CIARÁN HINDS (BELFAST)

It's a good year for dads at the movies: Hinds can seem spooky in films like There Will Be Blood, but his feisty, romantic grandpa in Kenneth Branagh's memory play is loaded with dignity and pure, overwhelming affection.

JARED LETO (HOUSE OF GUCCI)

We have eyes and thus can see that Leto's prosthetics-heavy turn as an untalented fashion scion is not for everyone. But once in a while, the Academy (especially its acting branch) is charmed by such deep dives.

KODI SMIT-MCPHEE (THE POWER OF THE DOG)

A long way from 2009's The Road, Smit-McPhee ain't your fragile moppet anymore. It took a skilled actor to embody Dog's most deceptively unpredictable character, and Smit-McPhee is already racking up critical wins.

On The Bubble

DAVID ALVAREZ (WEST SIDE STORY)

JAMIE DORNAN (BELFAST)

JON BERNTHAL (KING RICHARD)

Best Picture

CREDIT: NETFLIX; WARNER BROS.(2); NIKO TAVERNISE/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS; EVERETT COLLECTION; APPLE TV +; KERRY HAYES/20TH CENTURY STUDIOS

The Competition

KING RICHARD

Remember Rocky, Chariots of Fire, and Million Dollar Baby? Sports underdog stories are exactly the kind of movies that tend to make it to the top. Toss in the stellar performances of Will Smith and Aunjanue Ellis and we might be looking at the winner.

THE POWER OF THE DOG

Arty neo-Westerns have a way of crashing the final bracket — and sometimes prevailing. Jane Campion's triumph becomes richer and richer the more you think about it. And for a film shot in New Zealand, it feels distinctly American, a quality that helps.

WEST SIDE STORY

Audiences may not be coming in droves, but the pedigree here — both of Steven Spielberg's team and the property's legacy as a winner of 10 Oscars — is strong enough to make this one a force. Ariana DeBose's electrifying supporting turn may generate heat for the film's overall chances.

DUNE

The first half of Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi epic delivered on grandeur (if not on conclusions) and will almost certainly dominate the craft categories. Purely in terms of numbers, it will be the one serious contender seen by the most voters, which can't hurt.

On The Bubble

DRIVE MY CAR

THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH

NIGHTMARE ALLEY

A version of this story appears in the February issue of Entertainment Weekly, on newsstands Friday and available to order here. Don't forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.

Remember when something was conspicuous by its absence? As recently as 13 January, EW ranked it #1 for Best Picture. 🤷🏻‍♂️

https://ew.com/awards/2022-oscar-predictions/

[allaboutve]

FAVORITE MOVIE REVIEWS: #10 DREAMS, Akira Kurosawa

Dreams earns a spot as one of my favorite movies because it inspires childlike wonder and mature reflection in me.  Its images inspire wonder in me that I only ever seem to feel within my own dreams.  At the same time, I am moved by the movie’s careful treatment  of its main theme--how to live in a world where the only certainty is our own mortality.

Dreams is a thematic sequel to Ran, the 1985 epic period film that earned Writer-Director Akira Kurosawa an Academy Award nomination for Best Director.  Several critics have described Ran as pessimistic and nihilistic.  Some have even interpreted the film as evidence of Kurosawa’s depression during the later part of his career.

Kurosawa’s later life certainly contains elements of tragedy and hardship, but Kurosawa’s outlook should not be described as nihilistic.  Ran ends with a moral that human folly, not divine will, caused the film’s human tragedies.  

Dreams continues this theme.  It explores the subject of mortality and fear of death and seemingly concludes that this fear is the cause of human folly, and its crimes against nature.  

Dreams shares many creative elements with Ran and Kurosawa’s earlier film Kagemusha.  These elements are worth an entire treatment in and of themselves.  Instead, I will discuss the themes and artistic aspects of the movie that make it one of my favorite films.

Dreams is part of a subgenre of movies that are anthologies of dream sequences--a genre that includes some of the most famous films by Luis Buñuel.  Even though Buñuel was a surrealist with an interest in dream interpretation, Dreams may be a clearer window into its artist’s psychology than are Un Chien Andalou or The Phantom of Liberty.  This is because Buñuel created structure in his scripts by inserting conscious political themes and dream sequences provided by his collaborators--Salvador Dalí and Jean-Claude Carrière. 

Kurosawa frequently attempts to replicate the experience of his dreams.  His most frequent device is to end each dream sequence with a cliffhanger, which he does in dream sequences “Sunshine Through the Rain,” “The Tunnel,” “Mt. Fuji in Red,” and “The Weeping Demon.”

Kurosawa also tries to elevate the dreamlike quality of each dream sequence.  The most successful instance is in “The Tunnel,” when Kurosawa as a soldier sighs with relief after walking safely through a tunnel path.  There is no reason stated reason for apprehension, except that a dog illuminated in a red aura blocks the soldier from walking any other direction.

Details like these communicate Kurosawa’s experience within the dream.  Another device with the same effect occurs at the opening of the dream sequence “Crows.”  Kurosawa studies the Vincent Van Gogh painting The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing.  The sequence cuts to a live action image of the painting and Kurosawa steps into the foreground from outside the frame, implying he is walking into the painting.   Later in the sequence, Kurosawa runs through several of Van Gogh’s unfinished paintings, searching for the artist.  

For reasons I will elaborate further below, Kurosawa’s attempts to replicate the dream experience sometimes fall short and weigh down the movie.  Yet they are most effective where they distort space and time.  One of the best examples is in “The Peach Orchard,” which I will return to below.

Some details of Akira Kurosawa’s biography inform the meaning of Dreams.  Kurosawa paid attention to detail regarding his childhood home and his mother’s mannerisms in “Sunshine Through the Rain.”  Kurosawa is also said to have taken mountain climbing as a hobby as a young man, which informs the sequence “The Blizzard.”

The movie’s themes of artistry, suicide and the Pacific War all affected Kurosawa’s life.  Yet although Kurosawa was a soldier in “The Tunnel,” the real Kurosawa never served in Japan’s Imperial Army.  

Kurosawa’s career has at times put him at odds with Japanese culture.  His early films were at times criticized for emulating a Western style.  He did draw on literature by Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.  And was also quoted saying the Occupation changed the Japan’s film industry in some positive ways.  It’s conceivable his critical relationship with the Japanese film industry may have contributed to Kurosawa’s industry struggles between 1965 and 1985.

The theme of suicide in Dreams suggests Kurosawa’s tone may also be an example criticism directed toward Japanese social values.  Kurosawa was born in 1910 during the Imperial Period of Japan, where ideals of militarism and Samurai culture would have still been preserved.  

In “Sunshine Through the Rain,” young Akira is shut out of his home by his mother and told to either commit suicide or to find kitsune, spirit foxes, and beg their forgiveness.  Walking away from his home, the camera zooms out so he remains the same size in the foreground while the background shrinks.  Literally, young Akira is growing up.  However, he is leaving his home to beg forgiveness, not to commit suicide.

If “Sunshine Through the Rain” was an authentic dream, Kurosawa as a child may have emotionally understood suicide in its cultural context.  And this is supported by details at the end of the dream sequence.   

In every dream sequence Kurosawa rejects suicide when given the choice.  Yet Kurosawa himself attempted suicide in 1971.  Japanese ritual suicide (seppuku) is referenced in this sequence as he is given a dagger to disembowel himself. 

Seppuku is referenced in one other sequence--“The Tunnel.”  In that dream sequence, Kurosawa tells the spirits of several dead soldiers that as a POW he felt like dying, that it would have been easier.  The statement refers specifically to the expectation during World War II that Japanese POWs were to commit suicide--by seppuku or by other means.

Other references to suicide in Dreams do not involve sepukku.  But Kurosawa’s understanding of suicide as a child, when he presumably first dreamed “Sunshine Through the Rain,” would have come from his cultural context as Japanese.  Although Kurosawa may not have intended to criticize social norms regarding suicide directly, as far as he was criticizing suicide itself he was doing so from his own cultural context.

The theme of suicide is a small part of the larger theme of Dreams--fear of mortality.  Western critics tend to misunderstand this theme within the movie and believe Dreams as ‘misguided’ environmentalist preaching.  

Yet the environmental themes in Dreams are not as cohesive or detailed.  The theme regarding mortality is present in “Sunshine Through the Rain,” “The Blizzard,” and “Crows.”  The only other dream sequence with only an environmental theme is “The Peach Orchard.”  

Both themes are presented at the same time in “Mt. Fuji in Red,” “The Weeping Demon,” and “Village of the Watermills.”  I believe this caused critics to misunderstand Dreams.  Kurosawa was concerned about the environment and probably wanted to advocate for a harmonious relationship with nature.  But his message about morality is the more consistent and more clearly articulated theme in Dreams.

As far as Dreams is an authentic representation of Kurosawa’s inner life, it also provides insight into the way he saw women throughout his life.  This is important because Kurosawa has been criticized for his representation of female characters throughout his filmography.

The first three dream sequences heavily feature women.  “Sunshine Through the Rain” shows young Akira Kurosawa intruding into a Foxes’ Wedding.  His mother responds by refusing to let him into the house.  

An important detail is that the Foxes’ Wedding is a traditional Japanese wedding and the female and male foxes are separated based on gender.  For a young child, this detail represents an understanding of sexual difference.  And that understanding separates young Akira from his mother.

“The Peach Orchard” contains a similar theme.  However, young Kurosawa instead leaves his sister to chase after a young girl who is in fact the spirit of a peach sapling.  

In “The Blizzard,” Kurosawa is now a young man climbing a mountain during a snowstorm with three male companions.  When Kurosawa finally succumbs to exhaustion, he is visited by a Yuki Onna (literally “Snow Woman”).  He pushes her away as she tries to comfort him and as the storm subsides Kurosawa and his companions make for camp.

Female characters only feature heavily in two of the remaining dream sequences in Dreams.  This fact strongly suggests Kurosawa’s emotional life was not as strongly influenced by women after adolescence, a possible explanation why women are frequently not protagonists in Kurosawa’s filmography.  More than that, female characters in Kurosawa’s dreams are all either family or magical creatures until the dream sequence “Mt. Fuji in Red.”  

One last theme worth discussing is the role that Vincent Van Gogh played in Kurosawa’s career.  Vincent Van Gogh appears as a character in the dream sequence “Crows.”  Kurosawa was well known as a painter and used his paintings as storyboards.  His paintings have a wild quality and use a surreal, vibrant color palette--which influenced his use of color in Kagemusha and Ran.

Embarrassingly, it took me a few years and several rewatches of Dreams to realize Van Gogh was Kurosawa’s primary influence as a painter.

Dreams is one of my favorite movies.  However, it is Number 10 because it has some fundamental flaws.  

I have mentioned that the movie attempts to replicate the experience of a dream with mixed success.  The failures are mostly in scenes when the protagonist observes and responds to his surroundings.  The device works in dream sequences such as “The Tunnel” because the script viewer shares the character’s apprehension.  The tunnel is shot pitch black and a threatening dog emerges from the tunnel before Kurosawa enters.

Other sequences are less successful.  In “The Weeping Demon,” Kurosawa walks from the ruins of a city onto a desolate slope.  There is no shot establishing what Kurosawa sees as he changes his path from one direction to another.  This goes on for several minutes before any payoff.

Other dream sequences have the same problem with pace.  “The Blizzard” opens with approximately ten minutes of Kurosawa and his companions hiking through a snowy mountainscape.  Although we learn that the men are lost, no dialogue or action establishes that the mountaineers are lost or confused.  I must confess that I have fallen asleep more than once in the early parts of the dream sequence “The Blizzard.”

Another sequence with this problem is “Crows.”  The second half of the sequence shows Kurosawa chasing after Vincent Van Gogh while inside the artist’s unfinished paintings.  Unlike “The Blizzard,” this sequence does not harm the narrative of the dream sequence because the first half already established two things.  It established that Kurosawa is inside Van Gogh’s paintings and that he is chasing the artist himself.

One possible reason the film makes these mistakes is budgetary.  Shooting vast landscapes would have required the resources to shoot on location or create large elaborate sets.  Some sequences do exactly that--“The Peach Orchard” and “Village of the Windmills.”

Dreams had a large budget for a Japanese movie of its time.  But at approximately $12 Million US, the budget would have limited what could be done.

The mistakes regarding the pace in the end fall onto the screenwriting.  The runtime of Dreams is 119 minutes.  Trimming “The Blizzard” and “The Weeping Demon” would have solved these problems and still kept the runtime over 90 minutes. 

Critical characterization of Dreams as self indulgent is probably correct, and is the best explanation for these decisions.  But it is also a creative decision Dreams has in common with the earlier Ran and Kagemusha.  Both run nearly three hours and include several lingering shots--a stylistic trademark of Kurosawa’s later films.  The criticism that Dreams is self indulgent is less an indictment on this style than it is on the quality of the movie itself.

However, Akira Kurosawa’s self indulgence is forgivable because Dreams is such a pretty movie to look at.  Many sequences were Kurosawa’s first experiments with digital special effects, which are never used in a distracting way.  

Beyond that, several shots in the movie are made using experimental cinematography to great effect.  One shot is in the sequence “The Peach Orchard.”  Young Kurosawa is confronted by the spirits of several cleared peach trees in the form of hina-ningyo--ornamental dolls representing the Japanese Imperial Court.  When young Kurosawa expresses his grief for the trees, the spirits respond by performing a traditional dance for young Kurosawa.

The dance takes place on a hillside that is not especially steep.  Yet the spirits appear at the same approximate distance from the viewer, as though they are on the same display as a hina doll set.  Such a shot is obtained by using a strong telephoto lens, which tends to compress the depth of frame in a shot.  For this effect, Kurosawa would have had to shoot this image from at least 250 meters away.

“The Tunnel” is another surprising sequence for its cinematography.  Specifically, the dog that emerges from the tunnel is illuminated in a red aura that contrasts with the color palette of the rest of the scene.

Modern viewers might assume this was accomplished with simple digital editing.  In fact, the red light comes from a street light that is barely visible throughout the scene.  It does not shine brightly until the dog appears and is barely visible as faint glare on the street gravel.

How this shot was made confuses me.  I am certain that the effect is caused by increasing the brightness of the light because the red aura touches Kurosawa’s protagonist in some shots.  But I am not certain the shot could be illuminated from a street light unless the set was already shot in low light.  Other details suggest the sequence was shot entirely in low light.

These and other sequences in Dreams create surreal visual splendor that is only glimpsed in the earlier Ran and Kagemusha.  Although Dreams was not nearly as commercially successful, it is less trapped by its genre and is one of the best movies to look at.

Some of the sequences appeal to me personally because they are things I have only seen in my dreams, such as the mob of crows at the end of “Crows.”  Other images remind me of what I imagined as a child or the paintings I would have wanted to make when art was a greater part of my life.  For these reasons, I recommend Dreams to any viewers who look for that certain visual quality in what they watch.  

But Dreams also has an important message about mortality and loss.  For that reason, I recommend Dreams to anyone dealing with grief and recovery.

-ve

NEXT POST--#9: THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (dir. John McTiernan)

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Political Rant: Nothing To See Here

Literally, I just need to vent for a bit, just move along.  You didn’t see anything.  Go about your business.

I can’t keep pretending that I want Joe Biden to be president.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m gonna vote for him, but only because it’s a broken 2-party system, and I would literally rather die than vote for Donald Trump.

Joe Biden is at best a moderate centrist, and at worst a mainstream conservative who acknowledges what the people in his party want without actually doing it.  The Overton Window has shifted so far right in the last few years that people are hailing him as some bastion of liberal democracy; Democrats are acting like he’s the greatest politician they’ve ever nominated, and Republicans are calling him a communist.  He’s neither of those things; he’s store brand white bread, he’s a single scoop of plain vanilla with no mix-ins, he’s room temperature with 40% humidity so as not to be explicitly uncomfortable.

He very well could win in November.  I don’t doubt his qualifications, nor his popularity relative to the Gonad Lump we have now, but he’s not going to make any substantive changes if he takes office.  He’s not going to defund police, he’s not going to shrink the executive branch, he’s not going to raise the minimum wage, he’s not going to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal or the Paris Climate Agreement or the WHO, and he’s certainly not going to abolish ICE and close the actual literal CONCENTRATION CAMPS. He’s going to uphold the status quo so as not to alienate the Republicans who didn’t vote for him, while driving a wedge in his own party between the old guard moderate leadership and the up-and-comers who even so much as lean to the actual political left.

Republicans are united under a common banner of cartoon supervillainy, Democrats are a party of chickens running around with their heads cut off. 

Republicans are lemmings who will follow their leader off a cliff. Democrats are turkeys that look up and drown when it rains.

There are no progressive Democrats in any real positions of power; their voices are being drowned out by the career politicians who would rather compromise with the right than fight for anything they claim to want.  Democrats will bend over backwards to reach across the aisle for the sake of bipartisanship, but Republicans would never budge an inch in our direction.  This is demonstrably true, just look at the last 50 years of presidents; Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for Ronald Reagan’s entire presidency, and he still managed to get a shit ton of legislation passed which fucks over the middle class and minorities to this day.

Bill Clinton was effectively a Republican, and they absolutely HATED him.  Newt Ging-bitch’s Republican Revolution?  And Obama, don’t even get me started on Obama.  George W. Bush was so unpopular that BOTH parties ran candidates under the platform of “I am not George W. Bush,” and it’s no surprise that between Barack Obama and John McCain voters chose the one who was the least like Bush.  Obama was a perfectly competent president who pulled us out of the worst economic recession since the 1930s, and Republicans hated him even more than Clinton!  The Tea Party rose up less than a month after he took office, before he’d even DONE anything!  I don’t agree with everything he did as president, in fact I oppose a lot of it (drones), but I know that America was a better place under his leadership than it is now.

And now the Democrats are kowtowing to the Republicans AGAIN, nominating an adequate politician, Average Joe, that Republicans wouldn’t complain about if he wore a red tie instead of a blue one, but even now they’re complaining about it!  They’re acting like he’s a far-left socialist because they want the country to think that his middle-of-the-road policies are WAY too radical; they want to make people think that normalcy lies to the right of Joe Biden, they want to keep shifting the Overton Window until they pick a candidate in 2032 or 2036 that will make Donald Trump look like Bernie fucking Sanders.  Republicans never shift to the left, they never try to appeal to Democratic voters, they never think twice about alienating liberals, they won’t compromise, they’d rather shut down the government than spare a dime for any even remotely liberal talking points.

I’m sick to death of this country.  I’m sick to death of everyone pretending like what we see is not what it is!  Joe Biden is better than Trump, but the bar is so low at this point that I’d feel ore comfortable with a flaming bag of dogshit in the Oval Office than the racist date rapist we have now.  I will swallow my pride and vote for Joe Biden, but I will not be happy about it.  This man does not stand for the people’s best interests.  He will face overwhelming opposition, cave to the pressure from the right, then lose re-election because I know for a fact that he’s too proud to admit he’s too old to run again in 2024.  People keep pretending like his VP is going to get the nomination, but there’s no way on Earth or in Heaven that this man is going to just retire!  This year was a vanity run; he wants to be president because he wants to be president, not because he wants to do anything.  He’s wanted it his whole career; he’s a dog chasing cars, he doesn’t know what to do when he catches one, and no, I don’t means he’s like the fucking Joker, I just think he’s focusing more on himself than the country.  What would it look like in 2024 if the president retired because he’s TOO OLD to keep the job?  The Democrats would be even bigger laughingstocks than they are now; there wouldd be no way for him to retire with dignity without admitting defeat and giving the Republicans a political victory.

He’s going to run for re-election in 2024, and he’s going to have his ass handed to him because by that point he’s going to be stumbling over his words even worse than Trump is now, and the Democrats aren’t going to blindly rally behind him like the Republicans do for Trump.  Republicans will vote in line with Trump whether they like him or not, they know their career depends on it, but Democrats won’t get in line behind one of their own because they want to appeal to everyone, even if that means ignoring the people they claim to represent.

If Trump wins in 2020, America will go the way of the Soviet Union.  You know what, no, that’s not true.  America will never break apart, it’s too obstinate.  What will happen is America will go the way of the British Empire; once a global superpower, now just a bunch of isolationist racists who don’t know they’ve been irrelevant for the last 80 years.  America will continue to alienate its allies while sucking up to its enemies, the wealth gap will widen, life expectancy will drop, infant mortality will rise, and we’ll peak in the 2030s or 40s before losing our position as the de facto “leaders of the free world.”  Under normal circumstances I’d say that’s a good thing because we have no right to force the rest of the world to do whatever we want, but the resulting power vacuum will almost certainly be filled by China which is even worse than we are.  If Trump wins in 2020, democracy dies.  His handlers will find a way to skirt the 22nd Amendment so he can run for a third term in 2024.  They’ll just unilaterally amend the constitution so he can do whatever he wants; every right-wing dictator does that.  Hitler did it, Pinochet did it, Putin is doing it now.  IF the Republicans want to PRETEND that laws still exist, they’ll have him “retire” at the end of his second term, but then stay on as a top advisor to his successor, who will almost certainly be his daughter he wants to fuck, at which point he will be president-by-proxy, ruling vicariously through her until his brain melts enough for him to disappear into the woodwork like Reagan did in the 90s.

If Trump wins in 2020, the Trump dynasty will hold power for decades.  This regime will be no different than the fucking Saudi Arabia or North Korea.

If Biden wins in 2020, we’re just kicking the can down the road; Trump won’t let himself become irrelevant without a fight.  Carter and Clinton and Bush and Obama don’t pretend that they’re still president, they don’t make their voices heard, but you KNOW that Trump will.  He will try to stay in the limelight forever, and the media will let him; they’ll report on every snide comment and contrarian remark he makes on Twitter and compare him to Biden every single day because he’s a demagogue, and Republicans aren’t just gonna move on after they’ve invested so much emotional capital into him over the last five years.  They’ve doubled down in support of him, he can do no wrong in their eyes, he’s their golden boy, the Fuhrer is Always Right; they’ll follow him to Hell and back (though let’s be honest, he’d never lead them out of Hell once he brings them there).  They’ll treat him like an elder statesman and a genius political strategist/advisor until he dies.  He’ll basically get to pick the nominee in 2024 because Republicans will vote for whoever he endorses.  And he’s going to pick Ivanka or maybe, MAYBE, Tom Cotton because he’s a brown-nosing right-wing toadie.

FUCK.

[theheartofpenelope]

Simple Things : Chapter Eight

Excerpt - He found it were just those little things he was longing for. And it was not at all that crazy; those things he wanted. They were simple things really. Someone to talk to. Someone to come home to. Someone to disappear with. Maybe even, on a good day he pondered, someone to belong to...  Tag list: @winterisakiller, @devikafernando, @scorpionchild81, @messy-insomniac-bookgirl, @smutsausage, @hiddlesbitch1 @noplacelikehome77 @wolfsmom1 @meh1217 @dina-bln @lilaeye39 @tinchentitri @fairlightswiftly @nonsensicalobsessions @wolfsmom1 @stmeiou @ink-and-starlight @givemecocoaa @profkmoriarty13 @nikkalia @massivelemon @lotus-eyedindiangoddess @argo-shila @etmoietmoi @redfoxwritesstuff Author’s Notes/Warnings: tags will follow later on Anyway thank you in advance for feedback - would love to know what you think…Also on AO3 through this link Masterlist available through here Bonus: click here for the pinterest moodboard (always updated)

Chapter Eight Airport intermezzo

1. Hell

Charlotte pulled her carry-on luggage around the airport hall while desperately searching for her gateway. Up until now her day had been nothing short of vile or just plain dreadful.

It all started when woke to find she had - albeit slightly - overslept. Upon that awful discovery she’d immediately launched herself into a frenzy to make up for all the time lost, cursing badly and loudly while doing so. You see, she was on a very tight schedule - timewise - today; with first a train and nearly consecutively a plane to catch. Charlotte was expected for a discourse in Geneva. And the fact that she would be flying back home later on that very same day left her with simply no time for this kind of nonsense and no patience to deal with any of it either…

Oh no, this was definitely not the way she had imagined started her day. She did, however, get to count her lucky blessings when her train conveniently got delayed... By that point the adrenaline had nevertheless been rushing through her veins, pushing her nerves to unhealthy high peaks.

When she’d finally made it to the airport, it was only barely past 10.30 but the weather was already well beyond hot. She huffed and puffed, yet felt stubbornly confident she might just about make it to her flight in time.

Her heels clicked along the gatehouse and she inwardly cursed herself for not slipping into a pair of sneakers when she scurried from her house earlier and made a mental note to start packing a pair at every single occasion, no matter how short her stay would be…  

Finally spotting her gate, Charlotte rushed to the queue to board. She’d made it - just barely though - but she’d made it. Desperately catching her breath, she flashed a kind smile to those furrowing their brows at her; the flushed woman panting in line. However she could care less at that point...

But then, Murphy.  Murphy and his stupid law… As if fate just refused to let Charlotte get back at ease, the steward proceeded to announce a 50-minute delay through the speakers and Charlotte spontaneously cursed all deities. Out loud. With passion. Frowns from bystanders turned into aggravation. Oh yes, this particular day was just getting worse and worse. Charlotte muttered terms of annoyance while turning on her heels towards the overpriced airport-bar in search of a refreshment. All that rushing had left her parched and severely frustrated, but right now mostly parched.  

Standing at the bar Charlotte checked her watch while she wondered whether or not it was too early for a glass of chilled wine but ultimately opted against it. The odds weren’t in her favour today, that much was quite clear by now. Tempting fate some more with a glass of alcohol would not be a wise decision.

When the waiter smoothly slid Charlotte her beverage over the perfectly polished counter, he politely refused her to pay for it and kindly informed her, “Compliments du monsieur à l’arrière.” (*)

Charlotte closed her eyes and sighed before unleashing some very unkind words to nobody in particular. God no! Frustrated or not, now she would have to be kind, to look back and smile appreciatively, possibly engage in some small talk (which would be sexist no doubt, seeing the turn her day had been taking so far), while in silence all she would hope for was for her flight to depart sooner rather than later.

(*) compliments of the gentleman in the back.

2. Purgatory

Tom sat stirring a spoon in his coffee while counting down the minutes. He was nervous, anxious, on edge. Luke had snuck away a few minutes earlier, on the account of picking up ‘a little something’ in the tax free shop while they waited on their plane.

Tom placed his elbows on the table in front of him and upon inhaling, rested his head in his hands, his fingers firmly adding pressure on the bridge of his nose. He groaned and sighed. Barely back home and he was already travelling to and fro again. It was what he wanted though, wasn’t it? This particular trip was his idea, no? He couldn’t remember....

Long ago he had made the very conscious decision to fully invest in his professional career; to submerge himself in it, to stroke the iron while it was hot. It was, without doubt, the best decision he’d ever made. Even if it meant his emotional life would have to remain shelved for a while.

He’d started out his path full of good intentions and promises though. And also truly and faithfully in love with his girlfriend at the time, an aspiring actress just like him. It was a perfect match really. She understood the trials and tribulations that came with the acting territory like no other because she lived the exact same life. They were so alike, so in tune. Paradoxically their relationship proved powerless in its crusade against time and geography.

It hurt like hell, there was no denying in that. But very soon Tom felt how the advantages outweighed the disadvantages in that particular stage of his life. Without a lover to take into account it was suddenly very easy to be the first one to arrive on set in the morning and the last one to leave in the evening. No pressure, no guilt. And he made the best out of his situation. When life gives you lemons… right. With a kind word for everyone who crossed his path, no matter their place on the social ladder, he gave every project his all and more. Every time again. It was no surprise, except maybe to himself, that quite soon he became well known for his strong work ethic. And pretty soon he’d secured himself of a breakthrough role along his already golden reputation.

Tom sighed and ran his hand through his curly hair which was longer now. He had made the conscious decision to grow it out, as if he wanted to shed the burden of Hollywood’s clean-shaven and neatly trimmed posterboy-looks in plain sight, for everyone to see. He longed to hold his own reigns again, especially now, when his life had (seemingly overnight) turned into quite the rollercoaster. His hand proceeded to slip over his chin, where it caressed his beard softly, yet another ‘in your face’ to the industry, as he contemplated his fate.

Looking back he could see a very promising career was now slowly coming into bloom, yet it did not warm his heart the way he had expected it to. His professional prosperity thrilled him of course, but it saddened him there was nobody to share it with.

Well, naturally his mother was extremely proud of her son, even his father came around. Tom’s sisters teased him relentlessly when he was nominated for a 'rear of the year' or sortlike award, but also supported him in earnest and with pride. His friends and colleagues were warm, generous and true. And he much enjoyed meeting up with them, just talking over drinks or just laughing over banalities.

But when he would touch down at home, really touch down, after sleeping off the fatigue he found the silence in his house was deafening. It was his house and a beautiful one at that, but it did not feel like a home. To feel like a home he would perhaps have to spend more time in it. Enter Bobby. A soulful companion to Tom’s heart. A soft pitter patter that broke the silence in the house. A four-legged companion that required attention and who had became very good at taking Tom’s preoccupied mind off of things. Tom adored the faithful creature with all his heart, but it wasn't enough somehow. Although Bobby was a truly great listener, when he wasn't hungry. A very patient listener even, particularly after an early morning jog that would leave the poor mutt happy but exhausted. Bobby had the most earnest twinkling eyes, and he did give the best cuddles, but he was a dog. Let's face it.

Remnants of characters portrayed has started to stain Tom’s soul over time, ready to haunt him on the occasional sleepless night. However he would never let it get it to him. Not really. He was adamant about that, but it was getting harder lately and he didn't quite know why.

Maybe it was the fact that reuniting with his friends back home after rounding up a project would, without fault, lead him to the conclusion (again) that their lives had moved on further, while he was still standing still.

It was fairly strange; a lot of emotions had run through Tom professionally. From happiness to grief and from loss to absolute bliss. But in his personal life he had nothing to show for any of it.

It hadn't bothered him before really, but after the umpteenth wedding party, baby celebration and whatnot he felt it would have been nice to have someone to share it all with. The single's table was getting smaller with each and every occasion. And his thirties were making a rash progress.

It's not that he didn't feel successful, because he did. Only… loneliness fell upon him like a heavy blanket these days. Silly really. Here was a man who virtually had (or could have) everything he would wish for to make him happy, and yet…..

He found it were just those little things he was longing for. And it was not at all that crazy; those things he wanted. They were simple things really. Someone to talk to. Someone to come home to. Someone to disappear with. Maybe even, on a good day he pondered, someone to belong to...  

Someone smart but down-to-earth, someone passionate and ambitious but not overly so, someone who was easy on the eye without even trying, someone who appreciated the little things with him, like he would appreciate in her. Someone with a heart of gold...

He rested in his chin in his propped up arm again as he lazily and boredly scanned the area. The business men getting their ristretto-fix, the tourists wandering around curiously, noses up in the air in amazement. A flustered woman rushing to the bar, dressed to the nines but clearly frustrated, in need of a break. Join the club, he huffed.

His eyes remained on her though. Was it a daydream when he thought he saw her? Sitting up straight he studied her silhouette. Her long brown hair had been tied up in a loose braid, her left hand rubbed the back of her neck as she installed herself on a barstool implicating she was stressed and tired. She was even more beautiful than he remembered.

3. Heaven

Tom snorted slightly when he saw her snapping her head back when the waiter pointed into his direction. 2 seconds. Just 2 seconds and Charlotte’s severe and annoyed frown had melted into a broad smile. She curtsied him in good fun.  

Tom’s eyes fell onto her curves as she made her way towards him, drinks and carry-on luggage in tow. A flowing blue dress, matching high heels, sunglasses in her hair. He gestured his appreciation to her clothes. She rolled her eyes but instantly radiated with a dazzling smile.

“Hello there stranger,” her eyes darted over Tom’s suited appearance as he unfolded himself from his chair, “you clean up quite nice yourself.”

“Well, well, well, who do we have here,” he murmured quietly into her ear before greeting her with a kiss on the cheek.

“What on earth brings you here?”

“Well, I could ask you the same thing….”

Charlotte followed his invitation to sit at his table and casually dropped her belongings on the tabletop. A boarding pass held her page in the book she’d been reading, motioning to it she kindly informed him; “Geneva, I got delayed for 50 minutes.”

Tom titled his head to the side to get a proper look at the book instead and smiled when he noticed the author was in fact Paulo Coelho.  

“You finished the Alchemist?” he deducted, “I would ask you if you liked it, but it seems the answer to that question is pretty obvious,”

“Oh don’t get me started… there are no words, I think I fell in love with it,” Charlotte took a gulp of cool water, “honestly, if that book was a tall and handsome dark stranger,…”

Tom chortled, then flashed her his pass, “Mallorca, technical issues.”

When Charlotte scrunched her nose, he was quick to add, “What? Mallorca is nice. Ever been?”

“Technical difficulties,” she winced, “you’d have to drag me on the plane kicking and screaming.”

There, so easy to talk to. She felt like coming home. Familiar. Calming, reassuring.

He laid eyes on her again. It had only been a few weeks since he’d seen her last. But it felt so comfortable and pleasant to sit with her again. It was an enjoyable and very welcome surprise.

When she informed how his downtime was coming along, he humorously confessed he might be suffering from withdrawal.

“It’s strange,” he elaborated, “for the longest of time I’ve actually yearned for this. To be able to slow down. To be the only one in charge of my diary. To reunite with friends, quality time with family.”

Charlotte frowned and expressed her concern that surely he wasn’t tired of his leave already, now was he? Tom cast his eyes to his half-empty coffee cup and sighed. “No, most definitely not. Only, it’s quite confronting.”

“They say you are confronted with yourself while on the road alone?” Charlotte cursed herself as she realised this comment could very well boomerang back into her own face but was all the more glad Tom took no notice of it.

“Which is true; let me tell you that,” he agreed, “but to me, the confrontation back home with friends and family is proving to be a bit harder than I had anticipated.”

She frowned, “how’s that?”

“You see, I’ve made this choice long ago to fully invest in starting up my career. And while I don’t really regret having made that decision, I came to realise that while my career has evolved, I have not. Or maybe I have, but not on my personal level. Am I making sense?”

Charlotte smiled, she understood. Probably more than he could imagine..

“I have a house, I have a car. I have a loving family and friends….”

“You speak of a house, but not a home,” she pondered quietly.

Tom sighed, “I feel as though I’m no more than this... empty vessel. I’m good at playing the scenes and the emotions on a stage but I return to an empty home. There I said it: home. Not house,” a kind wink for her benefit.

Charlotte leant a bit more forward and searched his gaze, “but are you happy Tom?”

Talk about a question you didn’t expect...Tom leaned back, slipping back into his usual guise of apologizing, only able to offer her, “oh no, I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful because I do enjoy life in general and my life in particular. But there are times that it starts to get to me.”

“Like today,” she finished his sentence, lifting a critical brow.

“Like today,” he nodded.

Charlotte paused on traced the condensation on her long drink glass, she was clearly not buying the façade and didn’t even attempt to hide her incredulity. Tom sighed and paused before finally and surprisingly letting her into his dreary trail of thoughts.

“I see love and divorce and death all around me,’ he concluded, “but when I look back at me… what do I have to show for it?”

Charlotte slanted her head, “I fear you think the grass is greener elsewhere… And I understand you hate an empty house, but running from it won’t fill it either.”

“Running? I’m not…”

Charlotte raised a brow and curtly interfered, “in the short time I’ve come to know you, you are always so busy doing something. Instead of taking a real break like the rest of us. You’re not a machine though Tom.”

She made him feel, not alive, but aware. She was able to pick up on emotion he thought he’d kept hidden. She forced him to name his concerns out loud. And while he would wave it off when it was his mother asking or a close friend. She didn’t seem to fit into any category just yet. But he did not, could not neglect or deflect her questions. He enjoyed talking to her and hearing her authentic reply or vision on a matter. Familiar and honest, he needed that.

“Maybe,” he paused and sighed, “I feel so guilty that I am here and I did not bring Bobby along. It’s like I desperately want all these things, but I somehow can’t seem to manage it the way they should be managed.”

“Who says anything needs to be managed? Life is life. Like a river, it meanders through the scenery. There is no set path. Not the last time I checked anyway,” she chuckled.

“And I firmly believe that life guides us down a path we are meant to pass through. How we deal with it however is completely up to us.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.”

She flashed him a playful smirk.

And then the intercom announced her flight was now boarding again.

4. And back again

“That’s me,” she stated.

“Up, up and away,” he nodded solemnly.

“To infinity and beyond,” she countered with a toothy grin.

Tom chuckled, “it felt good though, to say those things out loud.”

“I know, I make a cheap therapist,” Charlotte winked in good humour as she started collecting her things, ready to make her leave.

Smart and down-to-earth, he reflected.

“So, I was thinking,” Tom spoke as he copied her moves. “I do believe we are both in Edinburgh at the same time...”

“Mmm?” she looked back up to him again as she rose to her feet.

“How about we just - run into each other again over there, but on purpose this time,” he suggested, “get a bite to eat, show you around. If you’d like...”

“I would,” a quiet nod, “ I think I would like that.”

She was rewarded with his warm smile and the promise that he would call her. Leaning in for the casual peck on his cheek, she felt his arms envelop her in a casual embrace. His hand soothed her back softly. Charlotte closed her eyes for a second as a sense of safety fell upon her. His warmth, his mesmerizing cologne, his tender yet firm hold. The last of her rushing nerves were now resolutely squandered.  

It felt as though someone had pulled her safety blanket away just to show her what she was missing out on. It felt cruel, yet soothing at the same time. The tour was really getting to her now. And Charlotte caught herself wishing for Tom to please hold her just a little while longer.

Compassionate and easy on the eye, raced through his thoughts as her sweet perfume teased and he whispered, “I’ll see you soon.”

Slightly stepping out of their embrace, his hand traced her jawline and he leant in to place a soft kiss on her other cheek. To Charlotte it felt as though he moved in slow motion and she distinctly fell the press of his warm lips against her skin. A tingle in her stomach. She was fairly certain she forgot to kiss him back. How silly was that...

The hand she had resting upon his shoulder slid down his arm to where she bumped and then squeezed his hand. Charlotte nodded and manage to mumble, “nice seeing you.”

Mind Boggling though, how a conversation that flows so casual and easy one instant suddenly turns so anxiously tense the next.

"And you as well," Tom admitted. It was true, she was a breath of fresh air. He never realised he’d actually missed talking to her. “Have a safe flight,”

“Mmhm,” she scraped her throat, “I do hope you get on a safe plane… Enjoy your holiday,”

“Well actually, not a holiday.”

Charlotte saw her moment to step back, roll her eyes and shake her head disapprovingly while ridding herself of the sudden raging pheromones, “honestly!”

He shrugged and smiled sweetly, “goodbye Charlotte.”

“Goodbye Tom,” she slanted her head in a kind salute and off she was.

Luke couldn’t have chosen a better moment to stroll back into the bar. He’d furrowed his brows when he saw his client-turned-friend entangled with an unfamiliar looking woman and quickly high-tailed himself back to his booth again.

“So who was that then?” he murmured, “I leave you alone for a split second…”

He stood looking around for cameras, but Tom hushed him and motioned for him to sit down and stop making a spectacle of himself.

“That was Charlotte,” his friend was smiling again. That was a good turn to the day, finally.

“Charlotte?” Luke racked his brain, “well, she does seem lovely.”

“She’s – erm, ” Tom paused and then simply nodded, “yes she is. She is.”

“And how’s Sadie?” Luke lifted a brow sarcastically.

“Sadie? Sadie doesn’t hold a candle to Charlotte.”

It was all Luke needed to hear to realize he better start gathering some information on this ‘Charlotte', whoever she was...

[uss-donnie]

Season nine puts the pieces in place for Norman Reedus' bow-wielding badass to finally find love.

At long last, it's here: the Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) love story … maybe.

"Bounty," Sunday's episode of The Walking Dead, hinges on the first open conflict between the Hilltop and the Whisperers. Somehow, it's also the most romantic episode of the time-jumped ninth season, with several different couples wandering into the spotlight: Ezekiel (Khary Payton) and Carol (Melissa McBride), Henry (Matt Lintz) and Lydia (Cassady McClincy) and — depending on your interpretation of the final scene — perhaps even Daryl and Connie (Tony-nominated actress Lauren Ridloff), the deaf survivor first introduced in Andrew Lincoln's final episode.

The tensest scenes of "Bounty" focus on Daryl facing off against Alpha (Samantha Morton), queen of the Whisperers, who has arrived at the Hilltop to retrieve her daughter, Lydia. She's joined by her pack of feral survivors, one of whom is the mother of an infant. When the baby's wailing draws the attention of nearby walkers, Alpha very nearly allows the child to be sacrificed, a testament to what she sees as the natural order of things. Hiding nearby: Connie, who risks life and limb to save the baby, leading to a tense action scene built on her inability to hear in visibly difficult surroundings.

Connie nearly loses her life when a walker sneaks up from behind, only to be saved in the eleventh hour by Daryl, their first true scene together. Hours later, after the Whisperers are gone, they have a much more impactful conversation: Daryl, who has decided to leave the Hilltop in search of Alpha and her pack, runs into Connie, who has decided much the same. The two proceed to communicate to each other on note cards (as far as a meet cute, to Andrew Lincoln, this is perfect), all while Emma Russack's emotional ballad "All My Dreaming" provides the score:

The mostly written exchange goes as follows:

Connie: "Where are you going?" Daryl: "Couldn't live with it. Left to find Lydia." Connie: "I'm going with you." Daryl, speaking out loud: "No." Connie points at her previous card: "I'm going with you." Daryl, speaking out loud: "Why?" Connie: "I can't live with it, either."

The two wander out of the Hilltop (accompanied by Daryl's dog, Dog), closing out the episode with an undeniably electric charge.

What, no one else feels it? Just us?

Fine, maybe. Admittedly, it's hard to convey the emotional weight of the scene in the written word, which is ironic, given how much is said in the scene using the written word. It's a bit of a feel thing. But there's also much in the way of body language, the way Connie interrupts Daryl and refuses to let him continue on alone, the way he opens himself up for that possibility after spending the last few years all on his own.

There's all the build-up beforehand, too, even if it's unrelated to Daryl and Connie specifically. Russack's moving music plays underneath various scenes of Walking Dead heroes finding love with one another: Ezekiel and Carol, Alden (Callan McAuliffe) and Enid (Katelyn Nacon), Henry going off in pursuit of Lydia after they shared a kiss a few scenes earlier… even the baby Connie rescued finds love in the form of new caretakers Earl (John Finn) and Tammy (Brett Butler), who lost their son Kenneth at the start of the season.

Really, love is the central theme of "Bounty," not just the closing montage; the fact that the hour ends with Daryl and Connie together at the height of an emotional ballad doesn't feel like a coincidence. Even the lyrics to "All My Dreaming" seem to call to Daryl's often unspoken core:

All my dreaming, All my wishing, It hasn't come through, But life's just like that. And I don't know what I am looking for, But when I find it, It will feel right. I've dreamt of love and I've wished for control. It hasn't come through, But I won't push that. Maybe all that I've ever wanted Is what I have and That is alright.

Let's look beyond feeling. Is there comic book precedent for Daryl and Connie becoming an item? At first glance, it wouldn't seem so, since Daryl doesn't exist in the comics. But Connie does, and as she's written by Robert Kirkman, she enters the scene in a relationship. In the adaptation process, Connie's comic book boyfriend Kelly has become Connie's television sister Kelly, played by Angel Theory. Connie isn't a major character in the source material by any stretch of the imagination, but there is indeed precedent for her to be romantically linked with a fellow survivor.

Beyond the comics, of course, Daryl's romantic life has been the subject of conversation in Walking Dead circles for years and years now. So many characters have been raised as possible partners, from the late Beth Greene (Emily Kinney) to Aaron (Ross Marquand) and even beyond. The most popularly mentioned hopeful partner, without peer: Carol. For what it's worth, Connie and Daryl getting together would give new meaning to "C ryl," the portmanteau some fans have used in support of a Carol-Daryl romance. How's that for fate?

For his part, Reedus' most recent remarks on the subject make it clear that if Daryl ever embarks on a relationship, it will be a major moment for the show.

"I think when it happens, it's going to be a big deal," he said in an interview. "I'm glad that we have played him the way we've played him. I think if we would have had some hot, steamy barn sex somewhere, it would be over and done [by now]. I don't think he's that type of a guy. I think he's the type of guy that when he does it, he will be in love. He'll fall in love. He wears his heart on his sleeve. Everything he means, he says. When he cares about somebody, he cares about them. Playing it in that direction is better than having an episode or a scene in one thing. I think it means more to him."

If Daryl's ever going to find that meaning, there's no better time than now. Andrew Lincoln and Lauren Cohan are gone, with Danai Gurira on her way out. With so many comings and goings in the Walking Dead universe, Daryl Dixon remains a constant. The idea of pairing him off with an equal — someone as complex as Connie, brave and morally sturdy enough to face down certain death in order to save a child of the enemy — feels like the right move for the character. When Michonne leaves, potentially (and likely) in pursuit of Rick, it will be hard for the show to explain Daryl's continued dedication to the Alexandria Safe-Zone. A new person to care about, someone he can fall for and fight for — someone like Connie — might just be what keeps him grounded in place.

Beyond what's right for Daryl as a character, it feels like the right moment for the Walking Dead as a franchise. As viewership continues to drop, showrunner Angela Kang and her fellow creative forces are incentivized to do everything in their power to invest the audience in new characters. They are already doing an admirable job of turning Connie into one of the most compelling new characters on the board. If the focused characterization of Connie continues while drawing her closer to the most iconic character still left in the series in Daryl, consider the audience investment in Connie (and "C ryl," or "C ryl 2.0" if you prefer) well and fully made.

[sweetheartjeongguk]

love letters

pairing: namjoon x reader

genre: high school au, fluff, minimal angst

rating: g

warning(s): insecurity, slight jealousy

word count: 2.2k+

summary: you’ve held his heart in your palms since the age of eight years old, but there was a difference between true love and wishful thinking. 

masterlist

He writes you the first letter at the tender age of eight years old.

It is filled with numerous grammatical errors and multiple ink streaks from him forgetting that he can’t erase pen marks. He signs the bottom as “Joonie” because everybody calls him that.

Everybody being his parents and his sister.

The next letter is written when the two of you are graduating middle school and heading to the same high school. He is extremely ecstatic that day when he finds out, kicking his feet up and down and jumping high on his bed until the springs yelps in agony (more so, when his sister barges into his room and screams at him to stop bouncing or else she’ll take away his Pokemon cards). Needless to say, Namjoon bottles up his excitement and lets the words flow onto paper, all summed up with a shaky “Kim Namjoon”.

The third letter comes nearly a day after the homecoming dance. Namjoon is forced to go by his best friend Seokjin who ends up vomiting on the dancefloor after eating a few bad shrimps and has to be picked up by my mom. Namjoon writes about this in full concern, hoping that you would share his worries too.

Not that you’ll ever see these letters, but Namjoon would like to think that despite not knowing Seokjin that well, you’d feel sorry too.

He also comments on your beauty that night – how the yellow dress you wore brought out your smile and the lipstick was a nice shade of red.

‘You looked like a princess that night. Kind of like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I wish I could have told you that myself, but you wouldn’t want to be seen by a guy like me.’

Namjoon tries to write a fourth letter, but he finds himself unable to do so. He watches you from a distance – seated at the back of the cafeteria, vaguely listening to Seokjin’s rant about the cost of school lunches while staring intently at your figure as you walk across the room to your friend’s table. Ever since your debut at the high school, you’ve been dubbed popular royalty by pretty much the entire student body. Boys grovel at your feet while girls are desperate to be called your “best friend”.

Call it wishful thinking, but Namjoon likes to think that he understands you. He likes to think that he can understand your emotions better than your “friends” can, better than the boys who claim to be in love with can. While Namjoon could very well be sucked into the “boys-who-are-hopelessly-in-love-with-you” category, he likes to think that he’s different.

He hopes that, given the opportunity to get to know you, you’d start to feel the same way.

That night, he writes you the letter. He recalls the look on your face in the cafeteria when your friends are joking around you and aweing at your every move. He could see the pain in your eyes at the insincerity. He could see your longing for more, for something real.

‘It’s okay to feel sad and anxious. It’s okay to feel like you’re fighting against the entire world. Just know that I’ll be by your side when the time comes. I’ll fight for you.’

His fifth letter is written at the back of Biology class during a boring documentary about biodiversity. The side of his hand smears at the pencil markings, but he’s too desperate that he doesn’t seem to care that grey stains his skin. Today, you come into class late, your hair a tangled mess and the lipstick smudged at the corner of your mouth. If you had looked closer, you could have seen that the concealer over the reddened mark on your neck didn’t cover a thing.

Namjoon feels a sharp pang in his chest – no doubt, jealousy – but he also feels anger towards himself, more than anything.

‘Why am I too cowardly to do anything? Why must I force myself in the distance while you drift further away?’

This time, he signs off as “KNJ” – someone mysterious, someone unknown.

Exactly what he is to you.

For a while, he stops writing you letters. It feels awkward to write to you now. Looking back on his old letter, he’s ashamed of the way he thought of you. You weren’t his – everyone knew that, Namjoon especially. This is why he stops writing to you – in an attempt to collect his thoughts and not spew them out of the pages like an immature teenage boy. Seokjin would disagree and say that ‘Yes, we are immature teenage boys’, but Namjoon still enjoys a little blissful ignorance once and a while.

The two of you are reaching the end of your junior year, heading closer to your last year of high school. Soon, you will be off to college, off on your own separate paths.

He overhears one of your friends’ conversations that you had been planning on going to a university in America. You have been desperate to study abroad and to experience a culture so different from your own. This is no secret to everyone – even the janitor knows. Namjoon decides to play it safe and aim for a university closer to home, possibly even in Japan if he tries hard enough.

He tries to ignore the innate feeling to pick up a pen and scribble down his thoughts as they rush through his brain and spill onto the paper. He tries taking an extracurricular afterschool despite his teachers telling him not to overload his already-packed schedule. He takes his dog out for walks almost twice as long as usual, in hopes that the cool breeze and scenery will force him to forget. He even takes a minute to text Seokjin back, even during his scheduled My Hero Academia binging.

No matter what he does, you always seem to creep back into his thoughts.

The start of senior year kicks off before Namjoon could even take a breather. Homecoming is shoved down their throats, demanding for school pride and support for the upcoming homecoming game. Namjoon sees on the senior board that you have been nominated for homecoming queen. He has no doubt that you’ll win and even puts in a vote with a heart at the end of your name in the little bucket at the front of the cafeteria.

When you finally do, he’s sitting there on the bleachers, clapping alongside everyone else. He smiles at the look of complete surprise on your face as you walk down onto the field with your partner Jung Hoseok to receive the obligatory crown and sash.

As you link arms with Hoseok and wave at the crowd, Namjoon gulps as your eyes meet.

Your stare lingers until Hoseok nudges your side and pulls you in for a group photo. Namjoon sighs (from relief or dissatisfaction, he doesn’t know which) and starts down the bleachers to head towards the parking lot. Seokjin is waiting by the car for him, and Namjoon gets in without another word, ignoring the look of bemusement on his best friend’s face.

Certainly ignorant of the wandering eyes that had been watching him from the bleachers for quite some time.

His sixth and final letter is written hours after prom. Once again, he is forced by Seokjin (as well as his parents) to attend. Something about it being “one of the most important moment in your high school career, nay, your entire life!”

He could have told Seokjin (and his parents, primarily his mother) that he was overreacting, but he didn’t exactly want a smack in the face to leave a big bruise on his cheek before the “big day”.

Namjoon sits on the gym bleachers, awkwardly holding onto a flower corsage that his mother bought for him to give to his so-called lovely date. He didn’t want to mention to her that he may or may not (emphasis on ‘may not’) have asked someone to the dance, but the teary smile on her face is too precious to destroy with his devastating news.

The flowers are a simple yellow color – a symbol of happiness and sunshine. Yet Namjoon is sat here with no one to share it with.

Seokjin is dancing it up with his date amidst the large crowd of teenagers by the DJ, making her laugh with his ridiculous rendition of the Chicken dance mixed with some other obscure dance move that is certainly outdated. The gym is filled with sweaty teenagers either standing around while waiting for someone to ask them to dance or grinding it up and making the teachers stew angrily at the blatant provocative moves.

Namjoon twirls the flower in his hand, pausing to scratch behind his ear and scan the crowd for anything interesting to watch. Suddenly, the visual of Seokjin crowd-surfing isn’t enough to satisfy his entertainment needs. No one seems to pay him any attention as they pass by, shouting over the loud music or laughing drunkenly. Namjoon scrunches his nose when he catches a whiff of the strong alcohol, but he stays silent in his seat. He couldn’t care less about what those people were doing – besides, what he is doing isn’t any special either.

“Mind if I sit?”

Namjoon turns with widened eyes at the sudden voice. More specifically, your voice.

You stand at his right with a hopeful expression on your face, wearing a fluffy peach dress with matching heels. Namjoon wipes his sweaty palms on his pantlegs in an attempt to rid his mind of his lovesick thoughts.

“S-sure.” Namjoon stammers.

“Thanks.” You settle down next to him, fluffing up your skirt in an attempt to avoid catching it on your heels.

The two of you sit there in silence for a few minutes – Namjoon trying hard not to sweat profusely and you bobbing your head to the upbeat song playing throughout the gym.

“So…” You start, shocking Namjoon back into reality. “Where’s your date?”

“My…date?” Namjoon asks stupidly.

“Yeah, your date.” You point at the corsage in his hands. “Isn’t that for her?”

“Oh…” Namjoon’s gaze shoots down to his lap where the sad excuse of a corsage lays. “Y-yeah, my mom got them for me, but I-I couldn’t tell her that I…”

“…didn’t have a date?” You finish.

“Y-yeah.” Namjoon chuckles nervously. “I know, it’s stupid, right?”

He half expects you to agree and laugh at him too, but you do nothing of the sort.

“Of course not!” You frown. “I think it’s sweet!”

“R-Really?” You nod, your frown replaced with a cheeky smile.

“Yellow’s my favorite color, so you get extra points for that.” You wink.

‘Oh, god, I feel like my heart is about to explode in my chest.’

“Any girl would be lucky to be given flowers by the one and only Kim Namjoon.” You continue as you fiddle with the rings on your fingers.

“Y-You know my name.” Namjoon stutters, fumbling with the flower in his hand and nearly ripping out a couple petals as a result.

“Of course, we’ve been in the same classes since elementary.” You hum knowingly. “Also, between you and me…”

Namjoon waits for your next words, his heart pounding in his chest. He wouldn’t be surprised if he died in the next five minutes.

“I’ve heard from Seokjin that you like me.”

Namjoon pales.

‘What the fuck, Seokjin?’

“Actually, not really.” You backpedal on your words. “Seokjin was telling his girlfriend about you and it just seemed to come up. She’s one of my friends so…”

Scratch that, Namjoon is about to die in approximately five seconds.

“What?” Namjoon awkwardly laughs. “He’s just lying, he just says all that to rile me up.”

Namjoon’s crooked grin falls flat when he sees the expression on your face drop. “Oh…I’m sorry then.”

You shift in your seat, suddenly wanting to leave and never face the boy ever again.

‘Seokjin, you said he liked me!’

As you begin to rise up from your seat, Namjoon starts to panic.

‘Shit, this isn’t supposed to be happening!’

In the span of the five seconds that you begin standing up, Namjoon has already visualized the future.

You ignoring his very presence at graduation and proceeding to move out of the country, never to see him again.

Namjoon decides that it’s not a future he’s willing to live in. Not if he had anything to say about it.

“Y/N, wait!”

You turn on your heels to face him again, your face flushed from heat and embarrassment.

“Seokjin wasn’t…wrong.” Namjoon watches as you raise an eyebrow. “I…”

‘Suck it up, Kim.’

Taking in a gulp of air, Namjoon begins to speak again, but the soft touch of your lips to his cheek startles him into silence.

You pull back, the familiar grin pulling on your lips.

“You busy this Saturday?”

“Um…no.” Namjoon coughs. “Why?”

“Good.” You turn on your heels again as you begin walking towards your group of friends that stay clustered next to the food bar. “Pick me up at 6! We’ll go see a movie!”

Namjoon stammers as he shoots up from his seat, clutching onto the corsage for dear life. “What movie?”

“Your pick.” You mouth from across the room, turning back around to dance with two of your friends.

That night, Namjoon rushes upstairs and throws his suit jacket on his bed. He instantly picks up a pen and begins to write.

‘This is a start of something unknown, but I’m no longer afraid. I’m no longer scared of taking hold of your hand and telling you how I feel. This time, it’ll be different. This time, you’ll see the real me.

Signed, Joonie.’

[marredbyoverlength]

Year-End Awards 2018

2018 sucked personally, professionally, and politically. But hey, at least the movies sucked too!

Ok, there were plenty of good movies. But the bad vastly outnumbered the good, and the highlights weren’t especially high. Even my favorite filmmakers had weak years: Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers both put out some of their most mediocre films in 2018.

But no year is devoid of value, and damned if I won’t do my best to find it. Let’s dive into the only blog post I still do, the year-end awards.

(Honorable mentions, as always, are listed in no particular order.)

Best Lead Performance: Paul Giamatti & Kathryn Hahn, Private Life.

Giving this to two people is a cheap trick (and one I’ve used before), but this is my blog and I make the rules. Private Life is a powerful, painfully realistic film about a middle-aged couple, played by Hahn and Giamatti, going through IVF to get pregnant. Their relationship is at the core of the film; singling out one for praise would be a disservice to the other.

A film like this could easily be a one-dimensional tragedy about baby angst, but both lead actors go through a broad range of emotions that are at once inarticulable in words but instantly recognizable. The highs and lows of their journey and the stress it puts on them and their relationship come out in every expression, every movement of their bodies. This is the highest praise you can give actors: that they portray something that can’t be portrayed any other way.

Honorable Mentions: Olivia Cooke, Thoroughbreds; Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here; Toni Collette, Hereditary; Ryan Gosling, First Man; Viola Davis, Widows; Olivia Colman, The Favourite; Emma Stone, The Favourite; Annette Bening, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.

Best Supporting Performance: Anton Yelchin, Thoroughbreds.

Enough has been written about this already, but Anton Yelchin could easily have become one of the greatest actors of our time had he not died such a weird and sad death. His performance in Thoroughbreds is the perfect example of why I say that.

Yelchin plays a kind of guy that everyone knows, the wannabe operator who hangs out with, and deals drugs to, kids much younger than him and feels cool for doing so. He slips perfectly into that role, but what makes it better than just a caricature is how he captures the character in the scenes where he’s out of the element he’s chosen for himself: once after two high school girls violently rob him and once at the end after he sees what one of the girls has become. He is shaken and unsure, and letting that façade drop in real time is an impressive feat of acting.

Honorable Mentions: Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Alison Pill, Vice; Oscar Isaac, Annihilation; Jason Isaacs, The Death of Stalin.

The Costner Award for Worst Actor: No Winner

Before going into more detail, I’d like to point out that I didn’t see any Gerard Butler movies this year, so take this with a grain of salt.

There were a lot of god-awful movies this year. But all those movies are awful for reasons distinct from acting. Bruce Willis was boring in Death Wish, sure, but his character was boring. Tye Sheridan was annoying in Ready Player One, but his character was annoying. Travolta was actually pretty good in Gotti, even though the movie was a total disaster.

In fact, I can’t think of any performances this year that made me angry in the same way the Kevin Costner makes me angry. Congratulations to actors, I guess? If you know of a truly heinous performance, let me know.

Nicest Surprise: Aquaman

Aquaman is a superhero movie about a very strong, very stupid dog in the shape of Jason Momoa (just look at his dumb face!). There is also a giant octopus who plays the drums. That’s about all you need to know about Aquaman.

Honorable mentions: Mission: Impossible – Fallout; Game Night.

Most Insulting Moment: “Street Weapon,” Robin Hood.

In Robin Hood (2018), Little John (Jamie Foxx) trains a fledgling Robin (Taron Egerton) in the art of hoodery. At the completion of this training, he says to Robin, “you’re going to need a street weapon.” Then he hands Robin this:

“Patrick, is that a full-sized bow with brass knuckles tied to it?” Yes, yes it is. You know, for the streets.

Honorable Mentions: Queen Saves Live Aid, Bohemian Rhapsody; Tactical Furniture, Death Wish; Pretty much all of Ready Player One.

Winter’s Tale Memorial “What the Hell Am I Watching” Award: No Winner

I almost gave this award to Gotti, a movie so widely panned that the marketing campaign explicitly told potential viewers that critics are scum. But then a friend of mine live-blogged his first viewing of The Book of Henry, the current title-holder, and I was reminded of just how gonzo bananas a movie has to be to get this award.

Sure, Gotti is an incomprehensible failure tornado that somehow had enough money for John Travolta but apparently not enough for, you know, lighting and sound guys, but it’s not bewildering like Winter’s Tale was, or like Book of Henry was. A winner should make me ask not just “what the hell is going on” and “how the hell did this get made,” but also “why the hell would anyone want to make this?”  I didn’t see anything that prompted that last question this year.

Prettiest Movie: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

I used to give out an award for technical filmmaking, but in hindsight, I don’t know enough about filmmaking to confidently give that award. But I am an expert on the topic of “things I find visually appealing,” and since film is a visual medium (despite what the Academy would have you believe), I’m bringing the category back in this form.

Anyway, the winner is Spider-Verse, no contest. It’s the most brilliantly animated film I’ve seen in years, and easily the best-animated CGI film ever produced. In a world drowning in endless round-and-shiny Pixar clones, Spider-Verse made something entirely unique, influenced by the styles of comic books through the ages but ultimately producing something all its own. The end sequence, with manifold universes spiraling out of a black hole and bleeding into each other, will no doubt be the most impressive feat of animation for years to come.

Honorable Mentions: Mandy; Annihilation; You Were Never Really Here.

Best Picture: Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.

After seeing this beautiful film, I resigned myself to the fact that it wouldn’t receive any Oscar buzz. I was more right than I realized: not only did it not get any nominations, it didn’t even qualify for consideration. The Academy considered this a Film Stars a 2017 movie, as it was released on a very limited run on December 29, 2017. I didn’t hear the name until I saw a trailer for it in January of this year, and I didn’t get to see it in my city until February. This is the great crime of Oscar season: everybody tries to put their stuff out as late as possible, and real gems like this one get crowded out by Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a movie that gets worse every time I think about it.

I’m correcting this injustice. Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is the only great movie of 2018. The script is heartbreaking, the acting is profoundly human, and the fluid cinematography masterfully blends past with present, creating a portrait of the last days in the life of Gloria Grahame (Annette Bening) in all her messy detail, seen from her own perspective as well as that of her former lover, the much younger Peter Turner (Jamie Bell). Where those perspective diverge is where the film is at its best, and those moments are easily the most moving of the year.

Honorable Mentions: Annihilation; The Death of Stalin; Private Life.

That’s it, that’s the whole post. Peace out.

[dweemeister]

Best Animated Short Film Nominees for the 91st Academy Awards (2019, listed in order of appearance in the shorts package)

So continues a proud tradition on this blog. This is the first of hopefully three omnibus write-ups on this year’s Oscar-nominated short films. We begin with this year’s slate for Animated Short Film. The category – once the domain of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Paramount, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) – is now one of the most democratic of all Academy Award categories, with so many smaller independent studios nominated in recent decades. This year, four of the five nominees are about child-parent relationships – from the beginning to the end of life; showing parents who can be overbearing, bad influences, supportive. Here now are the Oscar-nominated animated short films.

Bao (2018)

Armed with an awards campaign war chest from Pixar and Disney, Domee Shi’s Bao is the prohibitive favorite on paper. For Bao, Shi – a Chinese-Canadian storyboard artist for Pixar – was influenced by her father’s artwork (he was an art professor) as well as two anime films in My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) and Spirited Away (2001). The film opens with a Chinese-Canadian woman cooking baozi dumplings for herself and her husband. Once he goes to work, one of the dumplings sprouts limbs and begins acting like a human. She takes care of the dumpling as if it was her child. This relationship between the mother and the dumpling child is actually an allegory for her inability to let her real-life child go – empty nest syndrome, if you will, playing alongside Toby Chu’s beautiful score.

The film should be lauded for its display on how the Chinese mother in the film expresses how much she cares for her dumpling child/actual child – through food and other smaller acts of love across time. Bao nevertheless runs into trouble when its twist first appears (far too late and far too abruptly). The moment – though steeped in allegory – is such a tonal departure from the rest of the film, that it is impossible to know whether a gasp of disbelief or belly laughter is the appropriate response. It calls into question why even use the dumpling child as a stand-in for the mother’s actual child in the first place. And, as one of very few Asian-American persons who personally dislikes Bao, if the relationship problems between mother and son is concentrated on the mother’s inability to let her child grow into adulthood, then why is it incumbent upon the son to come to her to reconcile (the fact the father literally shoves his son to do so is nearing emotional abuse)? It is unclear if the mother has learned from her behavior, acknowledging what damage she has done to the relationship. As valuable as Bao is in its depiction of an Asian expatriate family, its mixed messaging continues to vex me.

My rating: 7/10

^ I saw Bao last year in front of Incredibles 2 as part of the 2018 Movie Odyssey. I enjoyed it more the second time around, lifting it from a 6/10.

Late Afternoon (2017)

From Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon, Late Afternoon is directed by Louise Bagnall. Bagnall served as character designer and animator on Song of the Sea (2014) and The Breadwinner (2017). An elderly woman named Emily (voiced by Fionnula Flanagan) lives at home with dementia. On this titular afternoon – the title perhaps also referring to Emily’s stage in life – Emily is recalling experiences from the past, not entirely living in the present. Also in Emily’s home is another woman who is seen packing Emily’s personal belongings. This woman seems familiar to Emily, somehow. For anyone who has ever had a loved one with dementia, what is represented in the film will be familiar: a reliving of scenes from one’s past (whether real, murky, exaggerated, or imagined) at any and all parts of life. Their speech, rooted in those flashbacks, make little sense in the moment.

But with Bagnall’s direction, Emily’s utterances become comprehensible. Awash in and playing with simple colors, Bagnall takes us inside Emily’s mind – breaking geometric reality whenever she is reliving her expressionistic memories. Though Emily may find joy in these reflections, there is melancholy in her inability to understand all that she is going through. Emily’s dementia breaks through in the final seconds of the film, but we suspect that when the day or the hour is new, she again will be frolicking on the beach as a child or playing with her teenage friends or something else that may cause nightmares. Late Afternoon will probably play best to those who have been close to those with dementia, but the film will still move those who have not.

My rating: 8/10

Animal Behaviour (2018)

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has been responsible for many memorable animated short films, and Alison Snowden and David Fine’s Animal Behaviour is the newest addition to that lineup. Snowden is a long-time NFB figure who also helped develop the Shaun the Sheep television series for Aardman Animation and the BBC; Fine is married to Snowden and, together, created the adult animation series Bob and Margaret. For Animal Behaviour, we sit in on a therapy session. The catch is that this very human situation is comprised entirely of animals. Dr. Clement is a pitbull who has repressed the urge to sniff another dog’s butt when meeting them for the first time, Lorraine the leech has a problem about being clingy in a relationship; Cheryl the praying mantis keeps cannibalizing her significant others; Todd the pig had a chocolate addiction but remains gluttonous; Jeffrey the bird says nothing about a past trauma; and newcomer Victor the ape has many things to sort out himself. There is also a cat whose reasons for attending the therapy group session are unclear.

Animal Behaviour’s jokes are tonally uneven and it almost wears out its welcome after Victor the ape has been present at the session for a few minutes. Many of the behavioral issues found among the therapy session participants are grounded in each animal’s typical behavior. Animal Behaviour romps around in its darkly comedic dialogue – from the animals sniping at each other’s behavior in direct and passive-aggressive ways. The humor is not the most inappropriate for children, but it is dependent on one’s acceptance of biting zingers that never descend into demeaning exchanges (a comedic balancing act that is difficult for humans to master, let alone through the medium of animation via animal characters).

My rating: 7/10

Weekends (2017)

Trevor Jimenez has been a storyboard artist for Blue Sky Studios, Pixar, and Walt Disney Animation Studios. With Weekends, Jimenez presents a semiautobiographical story about a six- or seven-year-old boy who splits his time between divorced parents – drawn from his own life going to his father’s residence on the weekends and staying with his mother during the week (in Jimenez’s own words, a, “fractured family”). The film is without dialogue, set in 1980s Toronto, and shows a boy in near-constant emotional anxiety (overt and otherwise). Unable to express to his parents the turmoil their divorce is having on his mentality, Jimenez instead uses music (Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No.1 when with his mother; Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” when with his father) and especially surrealistic dream sequences reflect the boy’s sense of displacement. Using a charcoal background with hand-drawn animation, Weekends is gorgeously animated – with the assistance from Jimenez’s Pixar colleagues – and it would not be surprising if Jimenez was influenced by Bill Plympton’s (2008′s Idiots and Angels, 2013′s Cheatin’) angular, pencillike lifestyle.

Few divorce narratives ever adopt a child’s perspective. We see the mother attempting to adjust to her new life, as well as the father living in a way more befitting of an undergraduate student in a dorm room rather than an independent adult. But Weekends always draws back to the boy, allowing the audience to see how he feels about his parents’ attempts to move on from the other (he is terrified of his parents forming new relationships; because Weekends is not seen through the adults, much is suggested, left off-screen) and his evolving relationship between both his parents. Weekends takes a meditative pace, but never feels overly ponderous in delivering its message. A sense of belonging and togetherness is essential to being human. In times of distress, it can be difficult to understand what role one plays in another’s life. All that doubt and the comforting revelations that eventually arrive are on full display in Weekends.

My rating: 8.5/10

One Small Step (2018)

Fledgling animation studio Taiko Studios has made their first film in One Small Step – a co-production between the United States and China. Directed by Andrew Chesworth (former Disney animator) and Bobby Pontillas (formerly with Disney and Blue Sky), One Small Step is about a Chinese-American girl named Luna Chu, who is inspired to become an astronaut after watching television coverage of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission. She lives with only her father, a shoemaker and footwear repairman. Mr. Chu helps support her fascination with spaceflight and her dreams as best he can, even on the days when Luna is in a dire mood, believing that becoming an astronaut is out of reach.

If this story and this parent-child bond sounds rote, One Small Step handles one aspect of this narrative differently (the film, however, could benefit with more time due to its packed plot). On Luna’s darkest of days, she forgets to remember how important it is to treat herself and others with grace and kindness. Her academic failures are not an indication of who she is as a person. Her changing relationship with her father demonstrates how Luna loses sight of what is important as she struggles with schoolwork. Things as simple as her father’s offering of extra food before and after she heads off to university for the day or his repairing her shoes are taken for granted. Deliberately or otherwise (perhaps incidentally because there is no dialogue in this film), the film intuits that many parents of Asian descent express love through their actions, not with words. That includes Mr. Chu. As we see Luna in the film’s closing scene, she is of an age where she knows there are many things she wishes she could have expressed to her father. The tenacity she has shown in pursuing her dreams is enough.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

Two other films also played with this package: Wishing Box (2017) and Tweet Tweet (2018, Russia).

From previous years: 85th Academy Awards (2013), 87th (2015), 88th (2016), 89th (2017), and 90th (2018).

[theresabookforthat]

FRIDAY READS: GOLDEN GLOBES BOOKS

Nominations for the 76th annual Golden Globe Awards were announced  on Thursday morning, December 6th, from the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Many of the nominees, in both television and film, are adaptations of Penguin Random House books. You can access the entire list of nominees at Variety.com. Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg will host the 2019 Golden Globes Awards on January 6th.  Before then, we highly recommend reading the writing that gave rise to your favorite viewing:  

 FEATURE FILMS

 IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (Movie Tie-In) by James Baldwin

Nominated for: Best Motion Picture/Drama; Best Actress (Regina King); Best Screenplay

From one of our greatest writers, James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk is a profoundly moving novel about love in the face of injustice that is as socially resonant today as it was when it was first published. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions—affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.

 CRAZY RICH ASIANS (Movie Tie-In) by Kevin Kwan

Nominated for Best Motion Picture/Musical or Comedy

When Rachel Chu agrees to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend, Nicholas Young, she envisions a humble family home and quality time with the man she might one day marry. What she doesn’t know is that Nick’s family home happens to look like a palace, that she’ll ride in more private planes than cars, and that with one of Asia’s most eligible bachelors on her arm, Rachel might as well have a target on her back. Uproarious, addictive, and filled with jaw-dropping opulence, Crazy Rich Asians is an insider’s look at the Asian jet set; a perfect depiction of the clash between old money and new money; and a fabulous novel about what it means to be young, in love, and gloriously, crazily rich.

 THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN AND OTHER TALES OF TRUE CRIME by David Grann

Nominated for: Best Actor in a Motion Picture/Musical or Comedy (Robert Redford)

“The Old Man and the Gun” is the incredible story of a bank robber and prison escape artist who modeled himself after figures like Pretty Boy Floyd and who, even in his seventies, refuses to retire. “True Crime” follows the twisting investigation of a Polish detective who suspects that a novelist planted clues in his fiction to an actual murder. And “The Chameleon” recounts how a French imposter assumes the identity of a missing boy from Texas and infiltrates the boy’s family, only to soon wonder whether he is the one being conned. In this mesmerizing collection, David Grann shows why he has been called a “worthy heir to Truman Capote” and “simply the best narrative nonfiction writer working today,” as he takes the reader on a journey through some of the most intriguing and gripping real-life tales from around the world.

 BOY ERASED: A MEMOIR OF IDENTITY, FAITH, AND FAMILY (Movie Tie-In) by Garrard Conley

Nominated for: Best Actor in a Motion Picture/Drama (Lucas Hedges)

The son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small town Arkansas, as a young man Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality. When Garrard was a nineteen-year-old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. Through an institutionalized Twelve-Step Program heavy on Bible study, he was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and stronger in his faith in God for his brush with sin. Instead, even when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to break out in search of his true self and forgiveness.

 TELEVISION

 SHARP OBJECTS (Movie Tie-In): A Novel by Gillian Flynn

Nominated for: Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television; Best Performance (Amy Adams); Best Performance/Supporting (Patricia Clarkson)

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

 A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL: SEX, LIES AND A MURDER PLOT AT THE HEART OF ESTABLISHMENT by John Preston

Nominated for: Best Television Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television; Best Performance (Hugh Grant); Best Performance/Supporting (Ben Wishaw)

The behind-the-scenes look at the desperate, scandalous private life of a British MP and champion manipulator, and the history-making trial that exposed his dirty secrets. With the pace and drama of a thriller, A Very English Scandal is an extraordinary story of hypocrisy, deceit and betrayal at the heart of the British Establishment.

 VULGAR FAVORS: THE HUNT FOR ANDREW CUNANAN, THE MAN WHO KILLED GIANNI VERSACE by Maureen Orth

Nominated for: Best Performance (Darren Criss); Best Performance/Supporting (Penelope Cruz and Edgar Ramirez)

Two months before Andrew Cunanan murdered the iconic fashion magnate Gianni Versace on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion, Maureen Orth was investigating a major story on the serial killer for Vanity Fair. Here, the award-winning journalist tells the complete story of Cunanan, his unwitting victims, and the moneyed, hedonistic world in which they lived and died—now the basis for the second season of American Crime Story, the FX television series.

 THE HANDMAID’S TALE (Movie Tie-in) by Margaret Atwood

Nominated for: Best Performance (Elizabeth Moss)

A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has become one of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time. Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules.

 For more information on these and related titles visit Golden Globes

[blackkudos]

Forest Whitaker

Forest Steven Whitaker III (born July 15, 1961) is an American actor, producer, and director.

Whitaker has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird, Platoon, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and The Butler, and for his work in independent films and for his recurring role as LAPD Internal Affairs Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the Emmy Award-winning television series The Shield.

For his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, Whitaker won the Academy Award, British Academy Film Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and various critics groups awards.

Early life

Whitaker was born in Longview, Texas, the son of Laura Francis (née Smith), a special education teacher who put herself through college and earned two master's degrees while raising her children, and Forest Steven Jr., an insurance salesman. According to DNA tests, his father was of Igbo descent, while his mother had Akan ancestry. When Whitaker was four, his family moved to Carson, California. Whitaker has two younger brothers, Kenn Whitaker, an actor, and Damon, and an older sister, Deborah. Whitaker's first role as an actor was the lead in Dylan Thomas' play Under Milk Wood.

Whitaker attended California State Polytechnic University, Pomona on a football scholarship, but a back injury made him change his major to music (singing). He toured England with the Cal Poly Chamber Singers in 1980. While still at Cal Poly, he briefly changed his major to drama. He was accepted to the Music Conservatory at the University of Southern California to study opera as a tenor, and subsequently was accepted into the University's Drama Conservatory. He graduated from USC in 1982. He also earned a scholarship to the Berkeley, California branch of the Drama Studio London. Whitaker was pursuing a degree in "The Core of Conflict: Studies in Peace and Reconciliation" at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study in 2004.

Career

Film work

Whitaker has a long history of working with well-regarded film directors and actors, as well as, for a brief period of time, working in direct-to-video films alongside novice actors such as Lil Wayne, Maggie Grace, and 50 Cent. In his first onscreen performance of note, he had a supporting role playing a high school football player in the 1982 film version of Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age teen-retrospective Fast Times at Ridgemont High. In 1986, he appeared in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money and Oliver Stone's Platoon. The following year, he co-starred in the comedy Good Morning, Vietnam. In 1988, Whitaker appeared in the film Bloodsport and had his first lead role starring as musician Charlie "Bird" Parker in Clint Eastwood's Bird. To prepare himself for the part, he sequestered himself in a loft with only a bed, couch, and saxophone, having also conducted extensive research and taken alto sax lessons. His performance, which has been called "transcendent", earned him the Best Actor award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Globe nomination.

Whitaker continued to work with a number of well-known directors throughout the 1990s. He starred in the 1990 film Downtown and was cast in the pivotal role of Jody, a captive British soldier in the 1992 film The Crying Game, for which he used an English accent. Todd McCarthy of Variety described Whitaker's performance as "big-hearted", "hugely emotional", and "simply terrific". In 1994, he was a member of the cast that won the first ever National Board of Review Award for Best Acting by an Ensemble for Robert Altman's film, Prêt-à-Porter. He gave a "characteristically emotional performance" in Wayne Wang and Paul Auster's 1995 film, Smoke.

Whitaker played a serene, pigeon-raising, bushido-following, mob hit man in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, a 1999 film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. Many consider this to have been a "definitive role" for Whitaker. In a manner similar to his preparation for Bird, he again immersed himself in his character's world—he studied Eastern philosophy and meditated for long hours "to hone his inner spiritual hitman." Jarmusch has told interviewers that he developed the title character with Whitaker in mind; The New York Times review of the film observed that "[I]t's hard to think of another actor who could play a cold-blooded killer with such warmth and humanity."

Whitaker next appeared in what has been called one of the worst films ever made, the 2000 production of Battlefield Earth, based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard. The film was widely criticized as a notorious commercial and critical disaster. However, Whitaker's performance was lauded by the film's director, Roger Christian, who commented that, "Everybody's going to be very surprised" by Whitaker, who "found this huge voice and laugh." Battlefield Earth won seven Razzie Awards; Whitaker was nominated for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to his co-star, Barry Pepper. Whitaker later expressed his regret for participating in the film.

In 2001, Whitaker had a small, uncredited role in the Wong Kar-wai-directed The Follow, one of five short films produced by BMW that year to promote its cars. He co-starred in Joel Schumacher's 2002 thriller, Phone Booth, with Kiefer Sutherland and Colin Farrell. That year, he also co-starred with Jodie Foster in Panic Room. His performance as the film's "bad guy" was described as "a subtle chemistry of aggression and empathy."

Whitaker's 2006 portrayal of Idi Amin in the film, The Last King of Scotland earned him positive reviews by critics as well as multiple awards and honors. To portray the dictator, Whitaker gained 50 pounds, learned to play the accordion, and immersed himself in research. He read books about Amin, watched news and documentary footage featuring Amin, and spent time in Uganda meeting with Amin's friends, relatives, generals, and victims; he also learned Swahili and mastered Amin's East African accent. His performance earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor, making him the fourth African-American actor in history to do so, joining the ranks of Sidney Poitier, Denzel Washington, and Jamie Foxx. For that same role, he was also recognized with the British Academy Film Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, Screen Actors Guild Award, and accolades from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, London Film Critics’ Circle Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics, and New York Film Critics Circle among others.

In 2007, Whitaker played Dr. James Farmer Sr. in The Great Debaters, for which he received an Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor. In 2008, Whitaker appeared in three films, first as a business man known only as Happiness, who likes butterflies, in the film The Air I Breathe. He also portrayed a rogue police captain in Street Kings, and a heroic tourist in Vantage Point.

In 2013, after working in several limited releases and independent features such as Freelancers and Pawn, Whitaker has enjoyed a bit of career resurgence, having played the lead role in Lee Daniels' The Butler, which has become one of his greatest critical and commercial successes to date.

Whitaker also starred in the film Black Nativity, alongside Jennifer Hudson, Angela Bassett, and Jacob Latimore. He also co-starred with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2013's The Last Stand, playing an FBI agent chasing an escaped drug cartel leader.

Whitaker played Saw Gerrera in the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Television work

After completing several films in the early 1980s, Whitaker gained additional roles in multiple television shows. On the series, Diff'rent Strokes, he played a bully in the 1985 episode "Bully for Arnold". That same year, Whitaker also played the part of a comic book salesman in the Amazing Stories episode "Gather Ye Acorns". He appeared in the first and second parts of North and South in 1985 and 1986. Throughout the 1990s, Whitaker mainly had roles in television films which aired on HBO, including Criminal Justice, The Enemy Within, and Witness Protection.

From 2002 to 2003, Whitaker was the host and narrator of 44 new episodes of the Rod Serling classic, The Twilight Zone, which lasted one season on UPN. After working in several film roles, he returned to television in 2006 when he joined the cast of FX's police serial The Shield, as Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh, who was determined to prove that the lead character, Vic Mackey, is a dirty cop. As opposed to his previous character work, Whitaker stated that he merely had to draw on his childhood years growing up in South Central Los Angeles for the role. He received rave reviews for his performance—Variety called it a "crackling-good guest stint"—and he reprised the role in the show's 2007 season.

In the fall of 2006, Whitaker started a multi-episode story arc on ER as Curtis Ames, a man who comes into the ER with a cough, but quickly faces the long-term consequences of a paralyzing stroke; he sues, then takes out his anger on Dr. Luka Kovač, who he blames for the strokes. Whitaker received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his performance in the series. Also in 2006, Whitaker appeared in T.I.'s music video "Live in the Sky" alongside Jamie Foxx.

Whitaker was cast in the Criminal Minds spin-off, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, that was subsequently cancelled by CBS on May 17, 2011.

In December 2016, it was announced that Whitaker would reprise his role as Saw Gerrera from Rogue One for the Star Wars Rebelsanimated series.

Theatre

Whitaker made his Broadway debut in 2016 in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's play Hughie at the Booth Theatre, directed by Michael Grandage.

Producing and directing

Whitaker branched out into producing and directing in the 1990s. He co-produced and co-starred in A Rage in Harlem in 1991. He made his directorial debut with a grim film about inner-city gun violence, Strapped, for HBO in 1993. In 1995, he directed his first theatrical feature, Waiting to Exhale, which was based on the Terry McMillan novel of the same name. Roger Ebert observed that the tone of the film resembled Whitaker's own acting style: "measured, serene, confident." Whitaker also directed co-star Whitney Houston's music video of the movie's theme song, "Exhale (Shoop Shoop)".

Whitaker continued his directing career with the 1998 romantic comedy, Hope Floats, starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick, Jr. He directed Katie Holmes in the romantic comedy, First Daughter in 2004 while also serving as executive producer; he had previously co-starred with Holmes in Phone Booth in 2002. He had previously gained experience as the executive producer of several made-for-television movies, most notably the 2002 Emmy-award-winning Door to Door, starring William H. Macy. He produced these projects through his production company, Spirit Dance Entertainment, which he shut down in 2005 to concentrate on his acting career.

Whitaker and his partner Nina Yang Bongiovi produced the film Fruitvale Station, which won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, as well as Repentance (2014), Dope (2015) and the upcoming Sorry to Bother You.

JuntoBox Films

Whitaker plays an active role as co-chair of JuntoBox Films since his initial involvement as co-chair with the collaborative film studio starting in March 2012. JuntoBox was developed as a social-media platform for filmmakers and fans to share ideas to create films and then collaborate to make them. Since Whitaker joined as co-chair, five projects have been greenlit for production.

Honors

In addition to the numerous awards Whitaker won for his performance in The Last King of Scotland, he has also received several other honors. In September 2006, the 10th Annual Hollywood Film Festival presented him with its "Hollywood Actor of the Year Award," calling him "one of Hollywood's most accomplished actors." He was honored at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2007, where he received the American Riviera Award.

Previously, in 2005, the Deauville (France) Festival of American Film paid tribute to him. On April 16, 2007, Whitaker was the recipient of the 2,335th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion pictures industry at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2009 at the 82nd Commencement Ceremony. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from California State University, Dominguez Hills on May 16, 2015.

Personal life

In 1996, Whitaker married actress Keisha Nash, whom he met on the set of Blown Away. They have four children: two daughters together (Sonnet and True), and his son (Ocean) and her daughter (Autumn) from their previous relationships.

Whitaker studies yoga and has a black belt in kenpō. He also trains in the Filipino martial art of Arnis, under Dan Inosanto. Inosanto is best known for having been a student of the late Bruce Lee and has trained actors such as Denzel Washington and Brandon Lee.

Whitaker's left eye ptosis has been called "intriguing" by some critics and "gives him a lazy, contemplative look". Whitaker has explained that the condition is hereditary and that he has considered having surgery to correct it, not for cosmetic reasons but because it affects his vision.

Activism

Charity work

Whitaker, who is a vegetarian, recorded a PSA with his daughter, True, promoting vegetarianism on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). He is also a supporter and public advocate for Hope North, a boarding school and vocational training center in northern Uganda for escaped child soldiers, orphans, and other young victims of the country's civil war.

Politics

In politics, Whitaker supported and spoke on behalf of Senator Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. On April 6, 2009, he was given a chieftaincy title in Imo State, Nigeria. Whitaker, who was named a chief among the Igbo community of Nkwerre, was given the title Nwannedinamba of Nkwerre, which means A Brother in a Foreign Land.

Whitaker was inducted as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Peace and Reconciliation, in a ceremony at UNESCO headquarters on June 21, 2011. As Goodwill Ambassador, Whitaker works with UNESCO to support and develop initiatives that empower youths and keep them from entering or remaining in cycles of violence. At the induction ceremony, U.S. Ambassador to UNESCO David Killion described Whitaker as a "perfect choice as a Goodwill Ambassador... he has exemplified compassion in every area of his life, with humility and grace. He does this because it's the right thing to do."

In 2010, Whitaker received the Artist Citizen of the World Award (France).

Whitaker co-founded the International Institute for Peace (IIP) at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Launched during the international Newark Peace Education Summit, IIP's mission is to develop programs and strategic partnerships to address cutting-edge issues such as increasing citizen security through community-building; the role of women and spiritual and religious leaders in peacebuilding; the impact of climate change; and the reduction of poverty. IIP operates under the auspices of UNESCO as a Category 2 Center.

Wikipedia

[tabloidtoc]

National Enquirer, February 15 -- 3 of 6

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Page 10: Hot Shots -- Tyler Cameron showed off his buff bod in Florida with his dog, Rick Ross wore plenty of bling for his Miami dinner date with daughter Toie Roberts, Eiza Gonzalez leapt into action as a paramedic on the L.A. set of the upcoming thriller Ambulance, Carey Mulligan on The Graham Norton Show, Julianne Hough shared her video call in West Hollywood

Page 11: Entitled Hollywood elite offered to fork over more than $10,000 a pop to skip the COVID-19 vaccine line -- L.A. County recently opened super sites to deliver the jabs to thousands of qualified folks amid news that bigwigs were wheeling and dealing in desperate bids to finangle the life-saving shots and one exec likened the cutthroat competition to The Hunger Games -- but docs claimed they've turned away the deep-pocketed patients because of government restrictions on distribution

* George Clooney pledged to wife Amal Clooney he would use Dry January to get into shape for awards season but teetotaling is driving the former tequila mogul crazy -- his wife was all over him about ditching his drinking after he was hospitalized in December and she wants him to take better care of himself so he can properly take care of his family -- people are predicting George and Midnight Sky will get awards nominations and Amal wants to ensure he looks his best to send a message to Hollywood that he's back and better than ever -- and while George is cooperating he's been jonesing for his evening cocktail and the drier he remains the more irritable he gets -- he's feeling better and looks great but he's been a real pain in the butt and even Amal is looking forward to when he can safely have a couple of drinks again

* Emotional Robert Irwin revealed escorting big sister Bindi Irwin down the aisle on her wedding day was definitely one of the most incredible moments of his entire life but the son of late Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin heartbreakingly added he was also thinking how much he wished his dad could have been there because it was his job to escort the bride -- Bindi and husband Chandler Powell are currently expecting their first child

Page 12: Straight Shuter -- Gwen Stefani was positively beaming while sporting her $500,000 engagement ring (picture)

* Wannabe legal eagle Kim Kardashian has taken the reins in her $1 billion divorce from Kanye West -- she has hired celebrity divorce lawyer Laura Wasser but Kim is involved in every decision -- Kim is well into her four-year apprenticeship with an L.A. law firm and will become a lawyer in 2022 and her split with Kanye will be her first big case with her new legal skills

* Liza Minnelli played marriage counselor to Las Vegas legends Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn -- Liza met up with the famous illusionists after a New Year's Eve concert and Siegfried and Roy would alternately drag Liza into the bedroom to complain about the other

* Bethenny Frankel's boast that she was the highest paid Real Housewife is flat-out wrong, NeNe Leakes was -- the highest earners are the ladies who have been with the show for the longest time and NeNe was a Housewife much longer than Bethenny plus NeNe's show The Real Housewives of Atlanta is the top-rated show in the franchise -- Bethenny has a big ego but NeNe was the highest paid

Page 13: Elliot Page has filed for divorce from wife Emma Portner -- Elliot who came out as transgender in December filed for a contested divorce in December -- Emma who is a choreographer and professional dancer supported Elliot's coming out last year, saying she was so proud

(continued)

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #199 - The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) According to IMDb:

New Line Cinema wanted Peter Jackson to start the film with a prologue done by Cate Blanchett, something that Jackson didn't want to do. Ironically, a year earlier, New Line Cinema had been opposed to opening the first film with a prologue narrated by Blanchett, something, of which, Jackson was in favor.

2) Beginning this film by revisiting such an iconic moment from the first (The Bridge of Khazad Dum) and continuing to push said moment past where it ended in Fellowship helps to make the film unique. It won’t just be a retread of familiar material but instead something which continues to push the story forward as all the best sequels do. It also sets the bar high for all ensuing action, as this was one of the (if not the) best moments from the original.

3) This film really doubles down on deepening the relationships introduced in Fellowship, with the romance kinship between Sam and Frodo. It is their relationship which the audience invests in, it’s something personal we can attach to. Sure Frodo losing his life or soul to the ring would be awful, but seeing how it effects Sam just ups the pain.

4) Andy Serkis as Gollum.

Holy shit, Andy Serkis as Gollum. Don’t let the fact that this is a CG role fool you, this is pretty much ALL Andy Serkis. Gollum’s facial features were based on his performance by the animator. All the physicality, all the vocals, the emotion, the heart, the character is Andy Serkis. He is so freaking otherworldly as the iconic character, blending completely into the role in a way only the best actors can. You don’t SEE Serkis in the part because he casts anything that is him aside to embrace the devious Gollum. And while I cannot possible undersell the importance and absolutely stellar work Serkis put into the part, a motion capture role is either limited or supported by the animators behind it. The character of Gollum is a perfect marriage between animation and performance, making you not doubt for one second that this is a real living character. Stealing pretty much every scene he’s in if not the entire film, Serkis should have been nominated for an Oscar because of his role in these films but wasn’t because it was motion capture. But this does not undermine the fact that Serkis by far gives the best performance in the entire trilogy.

5) The fact that the Fellowship was broken up in the last film allows for much more character development in this one. The heroes are not fitting for screen time or development in a scene with eight other characters. By separating them into the groups of Frodo and Sam; Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli; and Merry and Pippin, all the characters get more room to shine and be developed.

6) Karl Urban may not have a lot of room to shine but that doesn’t mean he’s not as good in this movie as he is in others. Urban is a wonderfully gifted character actor, able to blend into any role which comes his way and Éomer is no different. You don’t see Urban so much as you just see the character.

7) One of my favorite things in the entire trilogy really begins to take form in this film and that is the bromance between Legolas and Gimli.

Legolas [after Éomer threatens to cut off Gimli’s head, pointing an arrow at him]: “You would die before your stroke fell.”

8) There’s this wonderful scene in the movie where Aragorn and company are at the site of the orc fight (where Merry and Pippin last were). What makes it work is that we briefly got a glimpse of this moment earlier. The orcs began fighting attackers and it looked like Pippin was going to be crushed by a horse when it just cut away. But by flashing back to what really happened while Aragorn figures it out for himself does two things well. First of all, it follows the rule of show don’t tell. Secondly: it doesn’t waste the audience’s time by showing us what happened THEN having Aragorn realize it himself. By combining it the film’s pacing improves.

9) Treebeard.

I really like Treebeard, he’s a wonderfully multifaceted character. He is able to be slow, paced, patient, but also has some deep anger sometimes. Voiced by John Rhys Davies (who also plays Gimli), the actor does a good job of making Treebeard sympathetic and interesting when (in lesser hands) he could’ve come off as boring. I dig it.

10) As with many parts of the trilogy, the Dead Marshes scene has a wonderful sense of place to it. It’s viscerally creepy and eerie, making your skin crawl and your stomach turn. Peter Jackson’s roots as a horror director really come in handy in these scene as it’s a place you know the characters should leave ASAP.

11) Can I just so: Gandalf is really freaking dramatic.

When he’s revealing to Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas that he’s been RESURRECTED (dramatic enough on its own) he even disguises his voice to make it sounds like he’s Saruman just to screw with them. And then we have this wonderful moment after Aragorn calls him Gandalf:

Gandalf: “Gandalf? Yes, that is what they used to call me.”

Dude! You did NOT forget your name! You remember literally EVERYTHING ELSE! You remember Aragorn and Merry and Pippin and everything. Take a chill pill, Gandalf.

(GIF originally posted by @marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer)

12) I really like the whole Merry, Pippin and Treebeard subplot. It’s largely conversation but it brings up a lot of really interesting ideas about why the trees should participate in the war. Not only that, but it very organically develops Merry QUITE well. He and Pippin both started out as pretty immature in the first film, but by the end of this movie (through the subplot with Treebeard) he’s accepted his responsibility and is ready to fight for what’s right.

13) Miranda Otto as Éowyn.

Although Éowyn really gets her shining moment of glory in Return of the King (and the best damn moment in the entire trilogy), I love her from the first moment we meet her in this film. She’s my favorite character in the entire trilogy. I love that she can cry/grieve but still comes off as incredibly strong. She always has the best for her people and king in mind, always looking to fight against those who threaten those she loves and constantly frustrated when others try to get in her way. She is a great leader and a great fighter, as no moment fills me with such joy as seeing this badass royal practicing how to fight with a sword. I just…gah! I fucking love Éowyn.

14) This is one of those lines in a movie which has stuck with me my entire life.

Théoden: “No parent should have to bury their child.”

It really speaks to the grief Théoden is going through and an honest truth. Children are meant to outlive their parents, not the other way around. According to IMDb:

One time while Bernard Hill was in England, a woman came up to him and told him about how one of her children had died shortly before then, and that parents shouldn't have to bury their child. His confrontation with this woman affected him so much, that he asked to have a line put in about it.

15) Cutting between the three groups in the film could have easily dogged down the pacing, but the film knows when to make their cuts. The tension continues to build organically and the structure is never disrupted.

16) The conversations between Gollum and Sméagol.

Mostly I talk about how scenes like this work from a storytelling aspect as opposed to a technical aspect. And while these moments clearly illustrate the conflict and layers within Gollum/Sméagol, I am actually more impressed with the technical aspect of it. The scene works very well with two basic rules of filmmaking: Eye line and the 180 degree rule.

You can probably gleam what eye line means just from the name of it, but it’s making sure that when you cut between two characters looking at each other between shots the eyes match. Not only is that done very well here, but so is the 180 degree rule. The 180 degree rule is very simple: it means that when two character are in the same scene they should always be on the same side of the frame. Whether the shot is a wide, over the shoulder, or whatever, unless there is movement going on in the scene they should be on the same side of the frame so the continuity matches. In this scene, Gollum is always on the left while Sméagol is always on the right. Even though they’re the same physical person sitting in the same spot, the way the scene is framed just drives home the idea that they’re talking to each other because it follows the 180 degree rule. I just really dig that.

17) One of the most tragic things about Sméagol/Gollum is that for like MOST of this film he’s actually trying to redeem himself. He’s trying to be the good buy, he’s trying to help Frodo and Sam, but it is the harm done to him by fearful men which results in his regression back to a greedy backstabber. The more you sympathize with a villain, the more powerful they are.

18) I like the little update we get on Arwen and Aragorn’s relationship via flashback, but the later extended sequence with her, Elrond, and Galadriel is always something I zone out during. I like that she’s not forgotten but also the 15 minute segment where her arc is developed can feel a little pointless TO ME at times.

19) The Wild Riders attack.

While a little long, the set piece is very well done. It has interesting, well choreographed action which takes advantage of the wide space its in and a wonderful sense of tension. And it has some very real consequences, with Aragorn not being the untouchable hero trope but instead taking a fall off a cliff and being presumed dead. Also, Legolas and Gimli have their first of many competitions of who can kill the most bad guys in it and I love that.

20) A film is a story told in cuts.

Wormtongue [after talking about how it’ll take tens of thousands to take Helm’s Deep]: “But my lord, there is no such force.”

[Saruman shows Wormtongue such a force.]

21) I get that Elrond is Arwen’s dad and he’s worried about her, but she’s an adult who is living her life. Can’t he just respect the choice she’s made to live for Aragorn instead of pressuring her out of it? Please?

22) David Wenham as Faramir.

There’s a lot more patience with Faramir than his brother Boromir had. You can see a far amount of grief in Wenham’s performance. He’s wiser than his brother but not as favored (as we will get a better peek into in Return of the King), which causes a conflict in him. He wants to please his father and make him proud, but he also understands that his father is not always the best decision maker. This conflict shows greatly in Wenham and he’s able to make the character very interesting because of that.

Faramir: “A chance for Faramir, captain of Gondor, to show his quality.”

23) Get friends who react to you not being dead like Gimli and Legolas do with Aragorn.

Gimli: “I’m going to kill him! [Not 30 seconds later] Bless you!”

Legolas [after thinking Aragorn died]: “You look terrible.”

24) I know the source material dates back to 1954, but I HATE the, “get the women and children to safety,” trope. Like, Éowyn proves that women are capable of defending themselves just as well as men can. But they’re constantly infantilized, LITERALLY thought the equivalent of children, needing to be protected and hidden away from danger. If they trusted women to fight in the battle of Helm’s Deep there wouldn’t be all this talk about, “Oh, we don’t have enough men to fight for us.” THEN FIND SOME WOMEN WHO ARE GOOD WITH A SWORD! YOU’RE LITERALLY HAVING TEENAGERS FIGHT, YOU DON’T THINK YOU CAN FIND A WOMAN WHO IS AS SKILLED WITH A SWORD AS TEENAGERS!?

25) Aragorn really gets to go on a great journey throughout the three films. I mean in the first film he’s a loner, a ranger who doesn’t lead men. But in this film he begins to accept his responsibility as a king and lead the fight in the Battle of Helm’s Deep. It’ll only grow in the third film and I appreciate that.

26) One thing that these films do really well is they don’t let situations get too dire. This is a story largely about hope and fighting because of that hope, so to have a battle be too depressing goes against that idea. Legolas and Gimli are great of keeping the human heart of a scene.

Gimli: “What’s happening out there?”

Legolas: “Shall I describe it to you? Or would you like me to find you a box?”

[Gimli laughs.]

27) Battle of Helm’s Deep

This is an absolutely incredible climax to the film in the truest sense of the word. While the battle is INCREDIBLY long the filmmakers do a great job of carrying the action and pacing so that it never loses your interest. Legolas and Gimil help with that, but so do the character choices. Théoden gives up, Aragorn is ready to fight. The battle has tides, it changes favor, and it really just does a great job of holding your interest the whole time.

28)

Théoden: “Is this it? Is this all you can conjure, Saruman?”

[Battle starts to get worse]

(GIF originally posted by @welcometoyouredoom)

29) I love this exchange.

Treebeard: “This is not our war.”

Merry: “But you’re part of this world!”

30) While this film does feature a tone of development for Merry, it is Pippin who knows what to do so Treebeard will get invested in the war. So he’ll fight. He’s a tricky one, that hobbit.

31)

Théoden: “What can men doe against such reckless hate?”

Honestly (and Aragorn’s actions prove this): unite. Stand up against hatred and bigotry together and show the world that you will not stand for it.

32) One thing I haven’t talked much about for this film which also plays a much larger factor in Return of the King is Frodo’s continued corruption. The ring is getting to him, it’s darkening him, tempting him, causing him to doubt and fear. Wood plays this VERY well, this development. It feels organic, it makes sense even if it is brought upon by an outward force. It just really works.

33) According to IMDb:

When Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin) are in Osgiliath, Sam says, "By rights, we shouldn't even be here." This was a nod to the deviation the screenplay had taken from the book's storyline. In the book, Sam and Frodo never passed through Osgiliath.

34) I freaking love this. I forgot about this exchange and honestly it gives me hope.

35) Deciding to end the film on Gollum/Sméagol deciding to betray the hobbits in Return of the King I think works really well. It resolves his crisis of identity that has been featured in this film. He tried to be good and it didn’t work so now he’s going to be bad. I think even when a film ends on a cliffhanger there needs to be some form of resolution to it.

There’s really not a weak link in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Two Towers continues the excellence which began in Fellowship by giving each character more room to shine, continuing the battle of Middle Earth in an epic and investing way, while making sure these films still have a beating human heart to them. It’s just really great.

[brianjaeger]

2020 Academy Award Best Picture Nominees Guide For Those Who Haven’t Actually Watched Them

The 92nd Oscars are here and it’s time yet again for all of us to lord over one year’s worth of millions of people’s passions with the certainty of a judge at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show (which ironically takes places one day later) and say aloud, “This art is and forever shall be known as better than that other art!” 

Throw the notion that expression through the medium of film can exist simply to reflect a myriad of emotions and varied experiences right into the wind. We gotta know what that BEST art is, son!

So with mere hours left before Sunday’s spectacle, you’re probably asking yourself one question. “Brian, why do you keep doing this?” No, not that one. “Brian, Tumblr? Really? Does that still exist? Why don’t you spend the slightest amount of time to find a better medium for this?” No, not that one either. “But Brian, I haven’t actually watched any of these films. What am I going to do?!” Ah, now that’s the one. But fear not. I’ve got you covered. For the 6th time, I’m here to give you a rundown of what I think all of these movies are about without actually seeing them, along with some pithy little talking points to take into your Oscar parties to sound like a goddamn genius.

Ford V Ferrari

In this epic clash of man vs. nature set in the den of Harrison Ford’s summer home in Plano, Texas, the extremely hungry aging star has just had a large pie from Ferrari’s Pizzeria, located at 3949 Legacy Drive, delivered…and now it is time for battle. On the About Us section of their website, Ferrari’s Pizzeria makes a “promise to our customers to provide the best Italian food using recipes handed down from our Italian grandmothers.” Hold on to your Italian grandmothers, kids - that promise is about to be put to the test. (Yeah, it’s real.)

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

That cameo by Mater from Cars is really what pushed this film into Oscar contention.

Christian Bale's car in Ford V Ferrari is also an unwavering method actor and remained in character as a car for the entirety of production.

Who won? I'll give you a hint, in the long run, it was not the quality of life for the American working class!

The Irishman

In this gritty thriller, Lucky the Leprechaun’s father, Frank Leprechaun, an immigrant who worked as a farrier making horseshoes in Ireland before coming to America, wishes on a shooting star for a way to make a better life for his family. He finds that chance by doing hits for the mob and we see his first job take place under a pale moon, when he shoots a diamond store clerk in the heart, blood red ballooning out onto the green grass, like crimson and clover. Later, an aging Frank Leprechaun kills union leader Jimmy Hoffa and as he dies, he divulges the secret that Hoffa’s body is buried on a plantation in Lexington to Lucky. The young boy looks back and makes a firm promise to his dying father. “They’ll never get Kentucky farm.”

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

The de-aging technology used in The Irishman was so advanced that, while you can’t see it, De Niro's testicles are actually two inches higher in the first half of the movie.

The run time of the movie is 3 hours and 30 minutes which is also the average amount of time Netflix users scroll through options before deciding to just watch the same episode of The Office again.

In Ireland, this movie is known as The Man.

JoJo Rabbit

From M. Night Shyamalan comes the story of a scared young boy who claims to see Jewish people. While adults around him are trying very hard to see them too, it’s Adolf Hitler who helps the boy to overcome his fear and actually communicate with the Jews to understand them and realize that the reason that he can see them is because he can help them. And then at the end we realize that Hitler was actually a Jew himself THE WHOLE TIME!  

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

I thought it was just a bit on the nose that Taika Waititi chose to have JoJo sing her hit “Leave (Get Out)” at all the Nazis during the Allied occupation of Germany.

While juggling roles in Marriage Story and JoJo Rabbit, Scarlett Johansson would often get confused resulting in one day on set when she tried to cut Sam Rockwell’s hair in a bathtub.

Of all the nominated films, when it comes to winning Best Picture, this is…Nazi one! (Cough. Look around. Place your drink on the table. Slowly collect your coat, walk to the door, pause as if to turn, sigh, leave.)

Joker

It’s 1964 and Cesar Romero has established himself as a force in Hollywood. A multi-talented performer and veteran of WWII, Romero has amassed an impressive body of work playing roles as a versatile character actor, when he gets a call from his agent.

Agent: Cesar, I’ve got something that I think you’d be perfect for.

Cesar Romero: Is it a complex villain in a new Western? A dark turn as a gangster in a noir? A comedic foil in a Sinatra vehicle?

Agent: No. Better.

Cesar Romero: What is it?

Agent: Get this. An evil clown Batman nemesis…on TV!

(Silence.)

Cesar Romero: Um.

Agent: You’ll be kind of like a sidekick to Burgess Meredith! And guess what he is?

Cesar Romero: (Deep breath.) What is he?

Agent: Like a half-man, half-penguin sort of thing…I think. But he’s also evil! Oh, and you’ll also get to star alongside Julie Newmar!

Cesar Romero: Oh, well that may have legs. So, do we have a “will they, won’t they” dynamic?

Agent: Not at all! But she is evil too. And also part cat!

Cesar Romero: I do not understand any of what you are saying.

Agent: And it’s got Frank Gorshin!

Cesar Romero: And what is he? Let me guess. Like an evil frog person?

Agent: No, no! He’s The Riddler. It’s sort of the same exact deal as your character, only he doesn’t wear any makeup. Isn’t this wonderful?!

Cesar Romero: (Pause.) You have to be joking.

Agent: No, Cesar. YOU have…to be joking.

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

We still have a little bit of time for Joaquin Phoenix to die and win a posthumous Oscar for this role and keep with tradition. Then in 11 more years, a woman will win Best Supporting Actress for playing the Joker role and then in another 11 years the actual Joker will direct Joe Kerr in a reboot co-starring the Impractical Jokers…and win an Oscar.

I found the end scene touching when Arthur’s wife delivers his child and asks, “Arthur, what do you want to name your son?” And he replies, “Béla.”

Todd Phillips only made this big flashy blockbuster for the studio so that they’d let him do his deeply personal, intimate art house project, The Hangover IV.

Little Women

In a fresh take on a movie that I think is about some nuns living in a cottage during, fuck, I dunno like 1845? 1912? Aught 5? but there’s like a mean one, and a smart-and-sort-of-pretty-but-not-too-pretty one, and they probably have a dog, oh and a horse, and they have fights about vying for the love of the same boy they grew up with who is now some hot stud with poofy hair and poofy shirts and a nasally British accent, oh and there’s 2-3 other sisters that really just serve to further the main sister’s plot, and there is like fucking grass everywhere and how is all that grass not staining the shit out of those long flowy dresses that they always wear on their farm – or is it a glen? can you live ON a glen? – but later the guy marries the right one and he’s a strong man but is totally cool with her writing about some bullshit about being like a female doctor pioneer or something – oh and she’s wearing a straw hat with like a ribbon that’s always flapping the fuck around behind her – I forgot also that they only have one parent, the other is definitely dead and that comes up a little too often, and my mom and two sisters have to have tissues near the goddamn couch while they watch this seemingly 14 hour fucking miniseries or movie or Hallmark marathon because even though each of them could goddamn recite the dialogue from memory they still cry every…single…time…and OH MY GOD, CAN THIS ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, SOUND OF MUSIC, LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE OR WHATEVER THIS GIRL STUFF IS PLEASE BE OVER SO I CAN HAVE THE LIVING ROOM TV BACK TO WATCH BOY STUFF!

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

Not many people know this fact but on her death bed, Louisa May Alcott’s final request was that if a woman ever directed a film adaptation of Little Women they would absolutely under no circumstances be nominated for a Best Director Oscar. So, really, that’s on her.

To ants, these are very big women.

Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew's favorite film.

Marriage Story

Dr. Ellie Sattler has established her second career as a divorce attorney after years as a paleobotanist and now fights so that “woman inherits the earth”...or at least gets primary custody and more than half of the assets.

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

The roommates of Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig have become increasingly annoyed listening to several minutes of the two repeating, “No I hope YOU are recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with the Academy Award for Best Picture…and hang up first,” before ending their long phone calls every night.

While juggling roles in Marriage Story and JoJo Rabbit, Scarlett Johansson would often get confused resulting in one day on set when she tried to hide Robert Smigel in the attic.

Variety reports that a remake of Marriage Story is now slated for fall of 2026 with Colin Jost in the role originated by Adam Driver in a version of the story that will be produced by real life.

1917

The seventh and final installment of the 1910's saga follows the previous successful box office hits 1911: The First One, 1912: Now There's Two, 1913: Why Not Three, 1914: Get It? Years Are Sequential. That’s Really All This Joke Is, 1915: This Is The Fifth One (But Fourth Sequel), and 1916: 19 Fast 16 Furious.

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

Originally, the movie was supposed to have a ton of cuts between scenes but after saying, “Action,” a producer whispered to Sam Mendes that they only had budget left for one single take after hiring every single recognizable British actor still alive – so Mendes started screaming, “Run! You there, start shooting at them. Keep rolling! Keep running! Jump down that waterfall! Let’s go, people, keep up! Hide in those trees now! Oh look, more bad guys! Pew pew! Duck! Run over that way! Do not…stop…shooting!”

If this movie was called 2017, Colin Firth would have just pulled out his Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and texted, “Call off attack,” with a GIF of Admiral Ackbar saying, “It’s A Trap!” Then, mere seconds later he would have received, “lol k thx”.

1917 earned Benedict Cumberbatch a nomination for “Most Distressingly Off-putting Mustache”.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood harkens back to a time long, long, long ago in Hollywood's history when the majority of top actors were white, the majority of directors were old men and individual parts of women's bodies were oddly objectified and sexualized. We’ve come so far since then!

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

Please don’t ruin the fun and let Brad Pitt know that a movie was actually being filmed around him from June to November 2018.

I didn’t think the film was particularly that great but every single person I know who lives in L.A. and is either in or adjacent to the entertainment industry corrected me that it actually is.

Oh, I’m sorry – I think you’re in the wrong place. This is the once upon a time where a man is burned alive with a blowtorch. If you’re looking for the once upon a time where a man’s eyes are drilled out of his face, well then, pal, you’re gonna want to go to Mexico.

Parasite

Oh. I’m sorry. I accidentally put a Best For'n Language Film here at the end of this list of the best ‘Murican films.

3 Things To Casually Inject Into Conversation To Prove You Saw The Movie And Sound Like An Expert:

Parasite was, by far, the best movie I read this year!

나는 기생충을 진심으로 감사 할 수 있도록 한국어를 배웠습니다.

Bong Joon-ho's Parasite might leave you asking who are the real bottom feeders in the black comedy about social structures. There's plenty of food for thought as this picture is deeper than than what it may seem like on the surface…is the word-for-word review from Rotten Tomatoes Super Reviewer Aldo G that I just read to you out loud after pulling it up on my phone here.

[thisisheffner]

Gary Clark Jr.: "Music is my religion" - CBS News

There's a certain confidence when Gary Clark Jr. takes the stage, and from the first riff, it's clear why; he wields his guitar like a man possessed.

"I'm not, like, a religious person," he said. "I quit going to church a long time ago. But, like, music is my religion, I guess you could say. It's calming, it can hype me up. It's everything."

His mastery of the six-string won him a Grammy in 2013, and has earned him four more nominations this year. He's played the White House, and even toured with The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, who said he'd never seen a flow like Clark's on the guitar since Jimi Hendrix.

"Oh, damn," Clark responded when told by correspondent Kristine Johnson. "Pressure!"

This 35-year-old is still allowing comparison like that to "sink in," as he told us, when he sat down with "Sunday Morning" on his ranch in Texas. "It doesn't really resonate until I'm at home, and I'm goin', 'Wow, this is real,'" he said. "You know what I mean? Like, all those dreams and hopes and aspirations I had as a kid and I thought were silly and I was scared to share with people because they might think that I'm, you know, out of my mind?"

Clark is from Austin, Texas, the son of Gary Clark Sr., a car salesman, and his wife, Sandi, an accountant.  Mom still does his books, and says her son's life changed forever at the age of 12: "He got the guitar for Christmas, and then, checked out a couple of books, and was just totally self-taught."

"He was upstairs in his room playing," his father recalled, "and I told her, 'Come here. Come here and listen to this!' We open up the door and there he is, he was hitting [Jimi] note for note."

"He's got a gift," Gary Sr. replied.

His wife added, "Yeah, and he said, 'Sandi, he's really good.'"

The very next year Clark was good enough to play gigs in the city, on school nights no less. "I used to feel guilty having him in nightclubs," Sandi said. "And I'd look around, why do I have my 13-year-old kid in a bar?"

Why did she?  "Because he wanted to be there."

Gary himself explained, "I was raised real religious – Baptist, go to church every Sunday. The fear of God was very present in the house, you know what I mean?

Johnson caught up with Clark as he was shooting the music video to his latest single, "Pearl Cadillac."  The song is about leaving home to go on tour for the first time, and understanding everything his mother had done for him.

"I didn't realize what it took to be a parent," he said. "I was like, 'Wow.' They put up with a lot, like a lot a lot. And I was like, 'Dang, thank you!'" he laughed.

For example, his parents put up with him "borrowing" the family car without their permission. That earned him the nickname Hotwire. 

"I would steal my parents' car. I would start that thing up and just go wherever I wanted, from 'til whenever my dad fell asleep watching 'Star Trek,' 'til, you know, when they woke up to get everybody ready for school."

In 2001, Gary, just 17 years old, was performed on the local news. That same year the Mayor of Austin proclaimed May 3, 2001 "Gary Clark Jr. Day."

When asked how he measures success, Clark replied, "I got a beautiful family. I've got two kids that I'm crazy over. I got amazing, supportive wife who is, like, my backbone. I think that's success to me."

His success has also allowed him to buy his own piece of Texas Hill Country. "This is my peaceful zone," he said. "This is my serenity."

"It's so different than when you're on stage and you've got your screaming fans up there, and you've got your guitar going," said Johnson.

"My life is so loud and noisy. And I like to hear crickets. At heart, I am kind of a country boy. I like to be around nature, and nothing."

Clark's ranch outside of Austin is where he lives with wife, Austrailian model, Nicole Trunfio, and their children, and where he records music when he's not out touring the country.

It was also this land that gave Clark the material for the title track for his latest album. The song is about a confrontation with a neighbor who couldn't believe that a black man could own "This Land":

"He said, 'I need to speak to the owner of the house,' and I'm like, 'Dude, you're talking to me.'

"You know, I'm 35. I've been dealing with this since I was in elementary school. You know what I mean?"

"That's a sad statement," Johnson said.

"Yeah, it is, but it's a reality."

A reality Clark's parents couldn't shield him from. As he was growing up, the family had dog feces put into their mailbox, and the N-word written on their fence.

Johnson asked, "And what was the discussion in the household when those things happened?"

"You just can't let that get to you," Sandi Clark said. "That's that other person's issue. That doesn't speak to you as a person and what kind of person you are. That's someone else with the problem."

"I was born this way and I love it, you know what I mean?" Gary Jr. said. "And so, for somebody to judge me based upon this, and not ask any questions, and not even try and get in here [indicates his mind], it made me upset, it made me sad, it made me curious about the future. Having kids and a family, you know, they tap into your emotions."

"So it's not all about you anymore?"

"Yeah, they unlock things that I think I didn't realize I was holding onto."

Gary Clark Jr. is considered one of the greatest guitarists in a generation. But don't tell him that. "I'm not special. I'm just a simple dude, simple dude from Austin, Texas who picked up a guitar and [explosion]."

You can stream Gary Clark Jr.'s album "This Land" by clicking on the embed below (Free Spotify registration required to hear the tracks in full):

       For more info:

        Story produced by Anthony Laudato.

This content was originally published here.

[secondsightcinema]

All Twisted Up Inside: Arthur Kennedy and Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running (1958)

This is about Kennedy’s performance in Some Came Running (1958), directed by Vincente Minnelli. Kennedy scored his fourth Best Supporting Actor nomination for his portrayal of Frank Hirsh, the embodiment of small-town small-mindedness and hypocrisy. 

I am thrilled to be writing this as part of the Arthur Kennedy’s Conquest of the Screen Blogathon, hosted by Virginie at Wonderful World of Cinema, and today is Kennedy’s 105th birthday, which makes the celebrating all the sweeter.

Some Came Running was adapted from James Jones’s second novel. The first Hollywood adaptation of Jones, From Here to Eternity (1953), had been the vehicle for Sinatra’s comeback, and had won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Minnelli writes a little bit about it in his memoir, I Remember It Well, but he doesn’t mention Kennedy.    If you’re not familiar with the movie and want a plot synopsis, here you go.

I’m going to look at the movie, its themes, and how Kennedy’s character Frank fit into the bigger picture.

Some Came Running was Jones’s sophomore effort, and it took him seven years and 1,200 pages to say what he felt needed to be said. Minnelli writes that some critics felt the book was unfocused and lacked strong themes. Jones told Minnelli that the book’s basic theme is the failure of people to ultimately connect, and how much more people want to be loved than they want to love.

Its protagonist, Dave Hirsh (Sinatra), finds himself in his hometown, Parkman, Indiana, with a wicked hangover and no memory of getting there. The book is set in 1948, and Dave is still wearing his army uniform. He is a writer, but Minnelli makes it clear that Dave doesn’t feel good about himself or his work. He says he’s quit writing. 

 Minnelli makes it clear why Dave is so lost: older brother Frank, a wheel in the small town who owns a jewelry shop, is on the board of directors at a local bank, and is on the local planning commission, sent 12-year-old Dave to a boys’ home when he married his well-to-do wife, Agnes. Dave doesn’t even know if their father is alive or dead. It’s easy to believe that with a complete lack of family and the betrayal of being sent away to fend for himself, Dave doesn’t have much in the way of relationship skills beyond card games and bars. He’s intelligent and talented, but he feels so unwanted, such an outsider, that though he knows it was Frank who jettisoned him, that it had nothing to do with him, he’s, to use one of my favorite phrases for describing such characters, all twisted up inside. He has no reference for feeling loved, so he will need a lot of help learning to give and receive it.

Frank is not the guy who can provide it. Frank is as messed up as Dave, though he would protest mightily if he heard me say it. After all, he’s a pillar of the community, a successful local businessman, married for the past 18 years to Agnes, who is as superficial and materialistic as he is (so they’re well suited). While Dave doesn’t pretend to be anything he’s not, so authenticity is one thing he won’t have to learn, Frank has made his way in little Parkman by acting the part of the guy who belongs. He will do anything to preserve what he’s got, and Dave’s showing up in town terrifies him. He’s afraid Dave is going to show him up for the utterly phony and emotionally and spiritually bankrupt empty suit he is. Frank is a little sweaty, always afraid, always watching for an opportunity or imagined danger.

This is a classic Kennedy portrayal of an unsympathetic character. Kennedy could play any kind of man, from a hero to villain, and all points between. His honesty allows him to construct an unpleasant man like Frank—vain, self-pitying, self-involved, always on the make, unable to feel any remorse for abandoning Dave or to offer him any honest way to rebuild their relationship. 

To Frank, Dave is merely a threat to be managed. Frank and Agnes never really rest. All their energy goes into managing appearances, faking emotions, and avoiding bad press. Dave has Frank’s number, but to his credit he is able to relate to Frank’s daughter, Dawn, as a fond, protective uncle. When, inevitably, Frank and Agnes’s dishonest life leads to a family crisis that threatens their daughter and their spotless reputation among Parkman’s wealthy, it’s Dave who steps in to offer Dawn the benefit of his experience, and a way out of the inevitable false step that so many mixed-up girls in ’50s movies seem all too ready to tumble into. She avoids that, thanks to Dave, but still follows through on the sidestep such movie teen girls make: She leaves Parkman and goes to New York City, just like her spiritual sisters in Picnic and Peyton Place. 

Frank is loathsome. I wonder if the writers considered making him a little less so, perhaps softening him slightly toward the end of the movie. But it’s an honest choice to depict him this way. There are people like Frank, who when they have left tire marks on your back, have the nerve to ask you to feel sorry for how bad they feel as they pull the knife from your back.

Anyway, Kennedy isn’t the only morally compromised character in Some Came Running, but as Dave’s big brother he carries a lot of the story’s weight. Other characters have their own limitations. Gwen (Martha Hyer) is massively conflicted about her feelings for Dave, and ‘Bama (Dean Martin), Dave’s gambler friend, breaks with him when he decides to marry Ginny (Shirley Maclaine), whom he calls a “pig.” Ginny, the girl who followed Dave to Parkman from Chicago, is the only person in the story who is able to love unabashedly. That is, it’s messed up that she loves Dave, who is only nice to her when he’s drunk, but her love is unconditional, something Dave has never before experienced, and he wants to allow her to love him even if they’re poorly matched in just about every way. 

There’s a chaotic quality to this movie, perfectly expressed in its final bravura sequence, which Martine Scorsese highlights in a TCM featurette about CinemaScope. A fair at night, all brightly colored lights, noise, and chaos. It’s as if Dave’s emotional confusion has finally exploded, and it doesn’t end well. 

One more thing: Some Came Running is about gamblers, drunks, small-time hoods, and their more respectable opposites. It’s squalid, and Minnelli found the bars and louche characters intriguing. It’s another reminder that even in the ’50s, a decade before Bonnie and Clyde was said to have been the final nail in the Production Code’s coffin, directors continued to pick away at the Code. Ginny isn’t exactly a prostitute, but she is called “tramp” and “pig.” ‘Bama is a gambler, living at the edge of the law, but he still feels morally superior to Ginny. Frank tries hard to convince himself of his own virtue, but his frustration and let’s just say it, horniness almost destroys his carefully cultivated life—his, not any of the shame he so operatically fears Dave will bring upon him. A question: In this tiny town, where everybody knows everybody else’s business, isn’t it a little strange that people don’t remember Frank sending Dave off to the home? And those who knew Dave when he was a kid, like Connie Gilchrist in a terrific small part—wouldn’t they perhaps bear Frank a little ill will for throwing his brother away so his ascent wouldn’t be dragged by caring for his only living relative?

Here’s two of Kennedy’s early scenes with Sinatra. They lay out the relationship dynamic and let viewers get to know Frank, his sad, dishonest way of life, and how emotionally barren he is. 

Frank, pushing open the hotel room door: Dave? Dave, shaving at the mirror: C’mon in. Frank: How’d you know it was me? Dave: I figured it’d be you. Frank, extending his hand: Dave, you old son of a gun, welcome home. [Forcefully pats Dave’s shoulder] Oh it’s good to see you, boy. … It’s been a long time.  Dave: Sixteen years. Frank: Oh, you dog you, 16 years and not even a postcard.  Dave: I didn’t think you’d worry about me. Frank, trying again: Oh…you’re looking fine, Dave. … Oh, I know, I know, [fiddles with his hair] it’s getting a little thin on top. But like they say, not much grass on a busy street. Dave: You may be losing your hair, but you haven’t lost your razor-sharp wit. You want a drink? Frank: At 10:30 in the morning?   Dave: I don’t watch a clock.  Frank [chuckles mirthlessly]: What ever happened to your writing? When we used to see your name in print, at least we knew you were alive. Dave: I gave it up. Frank: Why? We heard you were doing pretty good, you got some— Dave [interrupting]: The old man still alive? Frank: Oh, oh…you didn’t know. No, no, God rest his soul, he passed on four or five years ago. Towards the end, Dave, he was just hell on wheels. Dave: …booze. Frank: Well, what else?  Dave: Tchew, what a family… Frank: Oh, wait till you see the new generation, Dave, why that niece of yours is a real lady. … Say, why don’t you pack up and move out to the house, huh? We got plenty of room… [Dave regards him] Well, I’m pretty sure we have. Dave: No thanks, Frank. I’m okay right here. Frank: Well then let me call Agnes and have her get a—a fatted calf out of the deep freeze. You’re gonna have dinner with us tonight, Dave, you know that, don’tcha? Dave: Sorry, Frank, I got plans. Frank: Oh. Uh, well, what are your plans, Davie? Uh, what made you decide to come back to Parkman? Dave: Cause I shot my big fat mouth off to a couple of drunken friends of mine and told them where I was born.  Frank [slightly defensive]: Well, what’s wrong with that? Parkman is your home… Dave shoots him a look. A long pause. Dave: How’d you know I was here?  Frank: Practically everybody in town knew you were here…before I did. [aggrievedly, again] You might have called me, Dave. You owe me that much.  Dave: No, I owe you more than that. Four hundred and ten dollars, to be exact, I’ve got the check all made out.  [Frank looks anxious] Frank: What’s that for? Dave: This little check represents room and board for Mrs. Dillman’s home for little boys. Three dollars and fifty cents a week from the time I was about 12 until I read a travel folder.  Frank: You can’t still be brooding about that.     Dave: I’m not brooding, I’m grateful. I was a little better off than most of the kids. I had a generous big brother. I was what they called a semi-charity boy. Frank, jumping out of his chair: What the devil’d you expect me to do, have the whole family move in with me? You knew I had just married Agnes.  Dave is silent. Frank: Good Lord, Dave, you’re a man now. You know that a man has to live his own life.  Dave: How is Agnes, Frank? Frank: Oh…Davie, I did what I thought was right. Nobody can do any more than that. Sure it was tough on you, but how do you think I felt, putting you in the home, my only brother… I’m not made of wood, Dave. [theatrically] If you only knew the nights I couldn’t sleep.  Dave smiles maliciously: Your story moves me to tears. Take the check, c’mon… Frank protests, then takes the check: Oh all right, if it’ll make you feel any better. I’m not gonna fight with you, Dave. Life’s too short for that. Say, why don’t you have dinner with us, I’d like it very much. …Not that it’ll look funny if you didn’t, you know, but…will you do it? Dave, quietly: What time? Frank: You mean, you’ll come? Dave: If you’re sure Agnes won’t throw up. I’m not her favorite relative.   Frank: Ohhhhh, what talk. Uh, meet me at the store, say, at 5, and I’ll call Agnes and have her fix something real special. [pats Dave on the shoulder again, all brisk and manly, reaches for the doorknob, then stops, chuckles to himself] Uh, Davie, about that little gag of yours of putting your dough in the other bank, and all that… Dave: I thought it would break you up. Frank [opens the door]: See you at 5. 

   *    * 

Frank enters, sighs heavily: If you could just see yourself. Dave: And a good morning to you, sir. Frank, sarcastically: That was nice going, Dave, I’m real proud of you. One day in town, just one day, and you’re picked up in a drunken brawl with a floozy and tossed in jail…like a common hoodlum.  Dave: I know all about it. Frank [pacing]: I just don’t understand you.  Dave: Is that your problem for this morning? Frank, putting his hand over his heart: What have you got against me?  Dave: Not a thing. Frank: Oh, yes you have. I take you to my home, I introduce you to the best people in town, like the Frenches, and this is the thanks I get. You seem to resent my position. It’s no crime to be successful. I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve got. Nobody’s helped me. Dave: Is this gonna be another one of those long lectures? Frank: Oh, I might have known….  Dave: Frank, I’m not trying to needle you, I don’t feel well. I got a headache, and I have to be in court.  Frank: You won’t have to be in court, I’ve squared it. And that mobster friend of yours has already skipped town. You both forfeit bail.  Dave: Ohhhh, thank you. Frank: I didn’t do it for you, Dave. I’m raising a decent girl [however, it is Frank who presents the moral hazard to his daughter, not her Uncle Dave].  Dave: That she is. She’s a fine girl. Frank: And I’ve told the judge you’ll be leaving town.  Dave [pauses]: Did you tell him where I was going? Frank, raising his voice: How do I know where you’re going? Dave: How did you know I was leaving? Frank: Aren’t you? Dave [pauses]: Yeah, I guess so. Frank, aggrievedly: I wish I could say I was sorry, Dave.  Dave: I wish you could say so, too. Frank: Well, I suppose it will be in all the afternoon papers. That’s all I need. Just when my name was beginning to amount to something. … How could you do this to me? Dave: Me, me, me, me! Don’t you ever get tired thinking about your dull, greedy, small self? [Frank does not reply] Now get out of here, I’m tired of listening to you, get the hell out of here. 

   *    *

This was written for the Arthur Kennedy Conquest of the Screen blogathon, hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema. Go on over and read about more of his work. 

from Second Sight Cinema | http://bit.ly/2STeFAH via http://bit.ly/1om9FS6