#i may have gone a bit crazy with the saturation in this piece but oh well. i kinda like it i think

[0rchidm4ntis]

Femstars Week Day 5: Tragic Yuri / Exes

Ruler of my heart 🥀⚔️

[greencardback]

The mid-February weekend marks every toy nerd’s favourite time of year – New York Toy Fair. Each year the big guns of the toy world set out their wares for the next 6-9 months, giving us our first glimpse of how our collections are going to take shape.

Last year’s NYTF was a disappointment for this collector as far as Star Wars was concerned; the repack heavy and entirely cynical 40th Anniversary Black Series line failed to hit the mark. Meanwhile the Tatooine themed Black Series 3.75″ wave (more repacks, but at least ones I would buy) looked good but didn’t even make it to these shores.

We already knew that the Vintage Collection was coming back at some point this year while the first wave of 6″ Solo: A Star Wars Story figures were revealed this week, but we didn’t know how the rest of the line was going to shake out. Would Hasbro bring the goods to make a success of things this year?

The answer was a resounding yes. Click through to see the most exciting Star Wars reveals from NYTF 2018!

7. Imperial Hover/Assault Tank (The Vintage Collection)

This was my #1 most anticipated upcoming release after SDCC last year, and now seeing it in the plastic makes the need all the more real. The incredible bulk of the vehicle, the excellent weathering, the cockpit details and the myriad little features (kyber crystals, anyone?) make this vehicle a must for anyone who loves Rogue One. I agree with some online that it’s a touch undersized, but it still fits the bill for the revitalised Vintage Collection.

Throw in the 3.75″ super articulated Hovertank Driver and the battle of Jedah is going to come to insurgent life in geek caves all across the globe.

6. Princess Leia (Hoth) (Black Series)

If you ask, then so you shall receive. Princess Leia in her Hoth attire is the second character from the GCB Black Series Most Wanted List 2017 to make it into plastic (following the Rebel Fleet Trooper), and she looks fantastic.

A brilliant likeness of Carrie Fisher in pretty much everyone’s favourite Star Wars film, the addition of her goggles and spanner make her perfectly suited for fixing that 6″ scale Millennium Falcon that we’re definitely going to get one day. When Leia hits shelves the Hoth crew will be complete!

5. Commander Wolfe (Black Series)

Back in the day (let’s say about 10 years ago) clones were as divisive as The Last Jedi is today. Since then we’ve all had plenty of new Star Wars to hate and so, as a community, we’ve started to accept the many Jaangos as the part of the saga that they are.

Personally I love me some clones. Some day I’ll get around to watching Clone Wars from start to finish and appreciate each CT as the character they no doubt grow to be, but for now I just love how they serve as kick ass space commandos in a war against robots. And that’s something that Wolfe here looks like he does with aplomb.

4. Mimbam Stormtrooper (Black Series)

So let’s get this straight. You take one normal Stormtrooper, make him filthy from the ground up, give him a black cape (because Captain Phasma – it rhymes), and voila: you’ve made a new kind of Imperial that people are going to go nuts for and squad build? Screw you Lucasfilm, you crazy geniuses – it just might work!

Is it the most exciting toy revealed this year? No way. But no matter what Solo is like (the film, not the man), these figures are going to generate so much great action figure photography that I can’t wait to see them hit shelves.

3. Han Solo (The Vintage Collection)

Troops aside, the Black Series reveals for Solo: A Star Wars Story haven’t been particularly enthralling. That was why it was such a great surprise to see the film get a strong showing in the relaunched Vintage Collection, with an Alden Ehrenreich-style Solo joining a 3.75″ Mimban Trooper and Range Trooper in the new VC line.

And it’s a great looking figure, no doubt. There’s something about the saturated browns and blues that places this character firmly in the OT era, while the boots, Correllian blood stripe pants, belt and holster make this unmistakably Han.

2. Range Trooper (Black Series/The Vintage Collection)

As alluded to above the Troopers for Solo: A Star Wars Story have both looked exceptional. However, it’s the way that the Range Trooper blends the Hovertank Driver and AT-AT Commander’s armour (topped off with heavy duty mech legs and a fur coat, of course) that make this design such a winner. It’s a bit of a cheat putting both the Black Series and Vintage Collection Range Troopers in this spot, but both figures look ace in their own right; the VC version is a stocky, well sculpted powerhouse of a trooper, while the 6″ version achieves the rare feat of making soft goods look good.

It’s unlikely that they’ll get loads of screen time, but as long as they’re not complete chumps I think any Star Wars collector will be hard pressed not to put together at least a small squad of these.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

1. Jabba’s Sail Barge (The Khetanna) (The Vintage Collection)

Wow. Who saw this coming? Fans have been asking Hasbro for years to get into a crowd funding model to deliver the biggest items such as Jabba’s Sail Barge, and now with the Haslab project the big H has delivered – and asked fans to stop moaning and start fronting.

At 4ft long the Khetanna, from Return of the Jedi, is the biggest Star Wars toy vehicle ever made and it looks mighty. The imaginative playset features an exclusive Jabba, an armoury, a kitchen, a prison (with emaciated Ithorian corpse) and even a two-figure seating cockpit. The roof features two cannons and plenty of Skywalker hack ‘n’ slash room, and it’s all topped off with soft goods sails. A hidden compartment, prison cell trapdoor and opening shutters round out the rest of the features to make this the greatest looking playset that Hasbro have produced since the Legacy Collection Millennium Falcon.

It’s a Star Wars collector’s dream vehicle, and it can be yours for only $499.99 (plus tax and 4,999 of your friends committing to do the same). Oh, and it needs to reach that target by April 3rd 2018.

If it does get over the line it won’t be coming my way for a few reasons – cost, space, and the fact that it’s so far only available in the US being the main factors. But that aside, it’s great to see Hasbro throwing down the gauntlet; either we get an awesome toy, or the more obnoxious voices in collecting get a reality check. It’s a win-win either way.

Visit the Haslab site to view the dream, and share the link far and wide to try and make it a reality.

**

You know, it’s much easier to differentiate between scales now that the Vintage Collection is back – no more BS 3.75″ required when a simple TVC will do. Hopefully there will be more upsides to the all-but-certain associated price rises, right? And no, recycled old card back designs don’t count.

The Haslab project is a great idea on Hasbro’s part that I sincerely hope works. It could enable fans to get the vehicles, diorama pieces and exclusives that wouldn’t see release any other way, while it also re-opens a long dormant community dialogue. However, 5,000 is a heck of a stretch goal for something so expensive. I get why they launched with such a big ticket item but with the number of backers not even in four figures at the time of writing, it may well struggle to get there. Furthermore, at $499.99 and with no lights, sounds or electronics, it’s definitely in keeping with Hasbro’s recent sky high pricing policy – and that’s not a good thing.

All the same, this year NYTF marks Hasbro finally turning back to engage with collectors. From Haslab to Solo to TVC and the proper return of super articulated 3.75″ figures (damn, doing it again), it looks like 2018 will see Star Wars toys getting back on track.

Twitter | Instagram

NYTF has been and gone once more, and this year Hasbro delivered. Check out the best of #StarWars 2018 right here >> The mid-February weekend marks every toy nerd's favourite time of year - New York Toy Fair. Each year the big guns of the toy world set out their wares for the next 6-9 months, giving us our first glimpse of how our collections are going to take shape.

[thegnasticious]

Stanley

“Everybody acknowledges he’s the man, 

and I still feel that underrates him” - Jack Nicholson

From 2001 to Barry Lyndon to The Shining and beyond, Stanley Kubrick was a genius beyond his time. Rather than writing a factual, to the bones post about Stanley, I want to focus on how I interpret his works and why I feel as many other’s seem to feel; that there may have been parts missing. It’s like finding out the Mona Lisa’s smile was retouched and the real expression never existed, maybe in that is the trick of a true film maker; making the magic as one goes along to enhance the sense of reality within a story or character. Whether this allowance was apart of Stanley’s original vision remains in debate for a few films. I want to start by point out obvious inconsistencies in “Eyes Wide Shut”. Never has such a film been made, that has the galls that “Eyes Wide Shut”, did. Some have even speculated that the final edits, done by Warner, after Stanley’s demise, cut much of the original vision. I have tended to feel that Nicole Kidman’s, “Let’s Fuck”, and the whole toy store scene that looks like it was funded from from the same type of producers the true ending would of possibly ripped apart. Something about the end has never felt fully Kubrick to me.

“Suddenly I see him, his beard was all White. 

I said “Oh God, oh my, what happened?”, 

so I just stop the car I say Stanley ”you’re ok?” and he more or less had the courage to say ”...yes”, 

I said “no, you’re not, I said look get hold of me”, 

he said “how much have I done?”, I thought christ don’t you even remember what you were doing? 

So I said “Whatever you’ve done, you’ve done quite alot” 

- Emilio D’Alessandro, on filming the final scenes of Eyes Wide Shut in S is For Stanley

One does have to wonder, even with the eccentrics and age of Kubrick if there was something he else he saw in the final scenes of “Eyes Wide Shut”. Something so volatile and key to wrapping it all together that the secret was taken to the grave, never to be released to the public. If a re-edit was hypothetically made there is little doubt in my mind that key actors and actresses would be aware of this. True Kubrick conspiracists have summarized that this is strongly an inaccuracy as well as the last scenes would of surely been set back in the mansion and focused on the secret society. I have my own ideas on this, and a quick SPOILER warning to lead in.

What I have seen as the preferred ending for years is this:

Tom Cruise’s character proceeds to fall asleep with Nicole Kidman, knocking the mask to the ground. Camera pans to mask. Mask fades to Tom cruises face, now awake in the ceremony room. The men in red cloaks surround him, taunting with knifes and animal like noises. In fear he looks back to the balcony to see nothing, as he is now being tried and the woman who helped him before was perceivably dead. This dilemma coincides with the secret societies intervention on his life as they were secretly in control of not only his wife, but his sense of self and safety. A strange music now fills the blackened mansion, what appears to be blood can be faintly seen running down and repainting the walls. He tries to run from the men, through a set of doors and down a long hallway. I would believe that in this scene there was a quick flash of a satanic ritual involving a pentagram in a room he runs by, I would assume involving the man from the beginning who is after is wife, taking his mask off. When he looks to Tom cruise he smiles, and Cruise’s character goes through a set of doors still with a haste. He enters an all black room, and the doors he now shut, lock sealed on the other side. He struggles in the confusion of darkness and bumps a bannister of a stairway. When he bumps it, he looks up behind him to see the woman who was supposed to be dead(the one in the morgue) holding her arms out to him, floating at the top of the darkened staircase. Faint light surrounds her. He reaches out, then she drops weightless, exposing a pre-tied rope around her neck. Her body lights into flames, exposing still, masked people watching all around upstairs. Cruise runs in horror. through another set of doors, and immediately wakes up in bed. At this point is probably when she says, “Lets Fuck”. Credits proceed to roll. 

This ending would of made more sense in my opinion as the actual focus of the story is given some amount of closure beyond a couple’s realization of entity, to an individuals. The end of the current movie provides closure to a closed mindset, and I hate to sound like the other theorists out there but most of the analyzations of what would be Kubrick final edits are alike to master splices of all the man’s work, and that is just a part of a piece of the puzzle. 

Now to Jump back a couple of years to his work on The Shining. Many people say that the easter eggs to Apollo 11 are especially abundant in this work. Whether Kubrick had a hankering for space, or was just trying to generate PR is still a very much unanswered question. Some have said these easter eggs were actually a personal revelation, that he was trying to show the public that Hollywood was possibly more than just movies. With the abundance of fake news and counter media constantly occurring in the modern age this theory seems to have turned into here-say, but I want to give it a little bit of plausibility. What if he was eyed at that time because of his knowledge of lenses and cameras to make something that truly appeared as state of the art? This question is further put under the lenses of time as we see new technologies that might not be all that new. Is this just because of what we perceive? or are we controlling our perception and even defining it by the mediums that are capturing it?

This might sound ludicrous, I know, that people could be as much of construct as an alternating act, or script. But most of our life’s even at the most sophisticated people, are a stage. Our performance is whatever individuality happens to seep through that, our adversity is sometimes just as much of a prop. And at that point we define these things it’s all too handy that predefined technologies entomb the concepts into usually seldom changed footprints in time.

Returning to the halls of the Overlook hotel, you can’t help but see the contrast between Apollo 11 and the family being thrusted into what is otherwise a dark part of the universe to them. In this darkness is a vast experiment, a wondering is the ship is going to blow up, if the inhabitants will collapse on themselves, and a lingering feeling that someone else is in on it. The families trip is actually more or less an execution sentence for Jack Torrance. As both Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick seem to highlight, there is something else to the hotel, and it’s not just the ghosts. I think to understand this you have to jump back to the man who owns and rents out the overlook. Something about him is deceptively comfortable with the whole situation, and as a viewer you tend to get the vibe that he’s to some degree sending sheep to slaughter, but he’s hiding the blade the whole time. This blade is the boy’s shining which the film seems to develop as an anomaly, what I have always thought about the film adaptation is alike to eyes wide shut, a different ending or cut that wraps things up in a more discernible way.

WARNING!!!! SPOILERS AHEAD

As the final cut begins on picture of Overlook staff and patrons, it would zoom out to a tour group/prospectors being shown around the hotel. As the group exits the main room with picture, one man stays back. He pulls tennis ball from his pocket, and now the viewer can recognize its an older Danny. He looks at the picture, turns away, and rolls the tennis ball. The ball rolls back as it always has, he looks up and to his dismay,momentarily sees the same twisted Jack Torrence insanely smiling at him and beckoning. He sets the ball down and leaves. The movie ends on the owner returning to the lobby, grinning then grabbing the ball and proceeding to bounce it on the wall as credits roll.

This ending I feel is more conducive to showing that the whole experience was more or less sold. The concept of space is in way the rebirth of Jack Torrance, as what he had become was manifestation of the hotel; that part of him was now long gone. He was now no more than the ghosts that filled the halls and his insanity is what saved Danny from his own shining. 

To look at the Overlook as a sort of monolith is not an inaccuracy as well. As 2001 illustrates, a technological manifestation is much different from a physical one, but there is similarities. Sometimes humans approach dark matter, or the unknown, and it’s alike to the ape’s reaction to the monolith in 2001. Whether the monolith made the apes try to kill each other, or did the apes kill each other because of the monolith? Something obviously was released by the monolith, more than likely this is the disease or outbreak reference later in the movie.

And HAL. Like all good Kubrick villains he’s ball to the walls crazy and deserves a place as the centerpiece of technological mishap. I have always wondered if what occurred with the apes, spread to HAL, and 2001 is actually tale of an evolutionary disease more or less. 

Whether The Shining was about ghosts or 2001 a murderous computer, we all see something different in a Kubrick film, we all react to something different. In an era where entertainment is becoming so heavily saturated by technology I do believe we are losing sight of auteur filmmakers(and auteur artists in general) but in an odd way, their work has never looked or felt better than it does now. No matter what the future holds, the past sells itself. 

Stanley’s the Man