#i expect this story to be EDITED TO REMOVE MY DIALOGUE or completely taken down.

[fabbyf1]

Hi!

I’m not sure of this is how to go about this correctly.

I’m not sure what your position is on others drawing inspiration/directly from your incredible fan fiction writing but, on Ao3 there is a fic called ❤️lestappen- One shorts💙 by lestapeeen. The most recent chapter (14) is very similar to the monza chapter of long live(twwct) specifically the piggy back and proposal promise. some of the dialogue is exactly the same.

I figured you should know. If it’s a cool with you or if you knew already, sorry to be a bother.

DISCLAIMER: This post, by no means, is asking for ANYBODY to send this author mentioned (and tagged) below hate. On anon or main. I have been pretty damn clear with my feelings on the matter below. They know what they've done, and I won't stand for it. Nobody needs to make this worse by sending them death threats. With that out of the way, let's deep dive, shall we?

YOU KNOW WHAT?

First off, god bless you, bestie. God BLESS you. I want to smooch you on your incredibly wonderful forehead. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. I cannot be everywhere at once and cannot possibly read every fanfic posted to AO3, but it's not fucking cool for people to straight-up plagiarize my shit.

Secondly, I'd like to ask that if ANY of my followers come across something that looks very suspiciously similar to my fics, please let me know. You can for sure send it on anon, or send me a dm.

Now, with that being said, I clicked on this fucking fic not knowing what to think. I went into it with a pretty open mind, knowing that there are quite a few authors currently posting fics that are verrrrrrrrrrry similar to my writing style. I've gotten pretty close to calling a few of these authors out but haven't for a few reasons.

Fanfics based on the same ship, in the same canon setting, are always going to be... let's use the word "similar" here. The plot can only change so much when you're following canon events, you know? I don’t write AUs, so I’m only going off canon-inspired fics. My fics generally follow along with canon timelines and therefore, other author’s fics that follow the same timeline are going to be... similar. I get that and accept that.

Characterizations are bound to be... well, fuck it, let's use that word "similar" again. I'm gonna be pretty forgiving when someone's Max is damn near the same as my Max because one: I'm a good and forgiving person, and two: I think my characters (while totally fucking fictional) are very life-like to the real person. So, with that in mind, when I read a fic with characterizations similar to mine... I will usually give somebody grace... and accept that maybe, just possibly, they see Max Verstappen (the person) the same way I do (fictionally) and it’s a big old coincidence that our fics read so similar. You know? Does that make sense?

But with all that being said, I’m not a fucking idiot. 

And honestly? I give more grace than I should on this goddamn website. (lmfao, respectfully.) This is sadly not the first time that somebody has very much written in my likeness, and I know it won't be the last. But this is definitely the boldest version of plagiarism I've seen. I haven’t clicked on any chapter except for 14, and I heavily skimmed the first part, but let’s take a little deep dive into some of the highlights. Because I will show the receipts, bestie.

from their story:

from long live:

..... right, let's move on.

from their story:

from long live:

okay................. sure

from their story:

from long live:

If you're going to plagiarize my shit... you could at least put it in a different font, so to speak. "Hey, can I copy your homework?” “Sure, but change it up a bit.” 

Girlie pop, you stopped even trying to change it the fuck up. 

Let me be clear: I do not authorize anybody to translate, re-post or distribute my work without my written consent. This is in a disclaimer (that I will post below) in every single one of my fics. Taking MY dialogue is NOT okay. 

Direct quote from the beginning note of Long Live:  DISCLAIMER #4: This is 100% fictional, and I do not own any person, team, or sponsor referenced in this story. I mean no offense to any person(s) mentioned and characterized in this story. I am not affiliated with any part of Formula 1 or its subsections. Please do not translate, re-post, or distribute my work without my written consent. I will cry.

To sum up, writing is not easy, and it takes time and effort. Time away from my friends, my girlfriend, my family. Time away from my job and my other hobbies. Long Live is 76 thousand words and took me countless hours to write.

To have somebody so blatantly and disrespectfully post MY SHIT as their own and not even try to give me credit? To not write a note that said, “Heyyyyy go read long live, which I [clearly] really enjoyed!” or even a “Some of this dialogue was inspired by @fabbyf1” or even just a “lmfao some of this i didn’t write but the rest i did” really pisses me off.

Why did it ever have to come to this?

I am SO disappointed right now.

Happy fucking Friday, I guess.

For full transparency, here is the link to their fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55255699 and here is the link to their tumblr: @l-estappen

Here is the link to MY fic, which was posted on April 2nd, 2023, and written in Google Docs with revision history about a month before that. I have receipts out the fucking ass, my dear. https://archiveofourown.org/works/46190509/chapters/116284915

Be well.

[rnelodyy]

c!Dream and the rules

(/dsmp /rp, all names refer to characters, not content creators)

I think one of the most striking parts of Exile is something that I rarely see talked about, and it’s Dream’s rules. Or rather, how his rules were made to be used as justification to hurt Tommy.

The thing about exile is that, outside of the initial rule of “Don’t go back to L’Manburg”, Dream never told Tommy the rules, yet constantly operated under the assumption that Tommy already knew them, and had accepted them. The rules also changed constantly, without Tommy ever being notified until he was already in trouble.

The second time Dream told Tommy to put his armor in the hole, he didn’t tell Tommy to do that right away. Instead, the conversation went like this (slightly edited to remove stammering and unrelated dialogue).

Dream: Do you have, uh… something you wanna put on the floor here? Tommy: Yes. (drops two pieces of red concrete as Dream digs a hole) Dre-eam! You’re evil. You’re evil. Dream: Anything else, Tommy? Tommy: Nope! Dream: Oh c’mon, I know there’s something else you wanna drop down here. Tommy: (panicking slightly) No, there… (messages BBH “take this and run”, throws him the disc BBH had gifted him earlier) Um… I don’t reckon there is! (pause) Dream: Okay, are you suuuure? Tommy: YES. Dream: Alright… How ‘bout your armor, Tommy? Tommy: Well, no, this is- I actually earned this myself. Dream: I know you did! Tommy: Leave me alone. Dream: Just drop it in the hole, Tommy. Tommy: Wh- no, NO, you can’t just come and demand things from me! I’ve been exiled, I’ve done your shit, what do you mean?! Dream: (sing-song) Tommy… Tommy: What? (Dream hits Tommy with his axe, taking over half his health) Tommy: (screams, drops his armor) OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY!

The only rule Tommy was aware of at this time was that he wasn’t allowed to go back to L’Manburg. Dream had taken his armor the night before, but there was no indication that he expected Tommy to do this constantly. Taking his armor upon initially arriving at Logstedshire made some kind of sense, allowing Tommy to keep it would run the risk of him trying to fight his way back into L’Manburg. Taking his new, very shitty armor (seriously it was an iron chestplate and a pair of golden leggings he got from a ruined portal chest) made no sense at all, so the fact that Tommy was confused and refused to cooperate at first isn’t unexpected in the slightest.

And the thing is… Dream was aware of this fact. Throughout the conversation, he never really sounded annoyed, and was actively teasing Tommy at times. This isn’t a good thing btw, it’s a sign that he was fully aware that Tommy didn’t know what he wanted from him, and that that would create a situation where Dream could “put him in his place” as it were.

If you’re a parent, and your kid does something that’s not allowed, without knowing it’s not allowed, you don’t start off with a beating. You sit them down, calmly explain the rules to them and explain why those rules are there, then send them on their way with the knowledge that they shouldn't do it again.

This interaction wasn’t an instance of Tommy acting out and Dream correcting him. This interaction was a trap. Dream set Tommy up to fail by not telling him the rules beforehand, and when Tommy offered even the slightest bit of resistance and asked why he needed to drop his armor, Dream jumped straight to beating him. It’s a powerplay, plain and simple.

This is demonstrated again with the destruction of Logstedshire. Dream got pissed that Tommy disobeyed him by having hidden chests with gear under his house, and retaliated by destroying everything Tommy had built, destroying every item he’d collected, killing his pet and only foodsource, barring him from the Nether, banning everyone except himself from visiting, and telling him to start over from scratch after a whole lecture about how Tommy betrayed him.

Again, I wanna point out some specific lines from this lecture that illustrate my point very well.

Dream: You were lying to me! You were lying to me. Tommy: No- Why was I lying?! Dream: What do you mean, why were you lying?! Tommy: I wasn’t hi- I wasn’t- Dream: You hid things in a chest knowing they were things I wouldn’t want you to have! And you hid it in a way that way I would never find it!

Except Tommy didn’t know that. The contents of the stash were all items that Tommy had obtained previously without any issue (diamonds, emeralds, iron, ender pearls, some pickaxes, and some purely sentimental items like flowers, a jukebox, and pictures of Tubbo and L’Manburg). In fact, the vast majority of them came from Tommy’s aboveground storage, which Dream had full access to, and had looked through before!

Dream also never said Tommy wasn’t allowed to hide stuff, and there was nothing to suggest he didn’t want Tommy to keep secrets from him.

There’s been a theory floating around for a while that Dream knew about Tommy’s item stash beforehand, since it was a very strange place to dig a hole (like, right in front of the house in the center of Logstedshire itself, instead of out in the plains where the TNT wouldn’t damage any structures), and Tommy had previously forgotten to cover up the entrance ladder. While Dream hadn’t looked inside the house, he would’ve definitely heard Tommy place the block back.

If this theory is correct, then this was yet another trap. Dream knew Tommy had a hidden room, and instead of just saying “hey, I don’t want you to have a hidden stash, go put this back and fill in the room” (which would’ve still been bullshit btw), he went COMPLETELY ballistic, destroyed EVERYTHING Tommy had, and while doing it, kept admonishing Tommy for betraying him, said shit like “I thought we were friends”, and even accused him of preparing to attack Dream. Again, a powerplay.

Hell, even the exile conflict itself is this! Tommy was exiled for griefing the king’s property while being a high-ranking official in L’Manburg. Except Fundy, the then-president’s son, CONSTANTLY griefed Eret’s shit after the L’Manburg war, ranging from ripping down one of their towers to “shrink” it, filling another tower with water, and multiple elaborate plots to steal the throne from under their nose. But apparently, between all of that shit and the exile-conflict, the rules were silently changed, meaning Dream could exile Tommy for breaking a couple blocks and placing some rude signs in George’s house. Even the punishment itself was changed without warning, as Tommy went from being exiled from L’Manburg to exiled from “everywhere that’s ever been touched.”

...I was originally gonna make a different point here. I may put it in the reblogs, because I still think it’s very interesting. But, in the middle of writing this essay I had to stop because it was late, then I spent the entire next day packing up because I’m in the middle of a move. It's now the next evening, I'm sat in my new room, on my camping bed, I opened this doc because I pretty much forgot what I typed, I reread it, and then I realized… This isn’t an isolated series of events. This is a pattern for Dream.

Before Tommy first joined the server, there were only three set rules: no stealing, no griefing, and no killing people. Except by that point, those rules weren’t enforced at all. In fact, Dream broke all three at once at one point, by killing George and burning his diamond armor because he didn’t feel it was fair that George got to run around in full diamond when everyone else still had iron.

Tommy joined the server, and broke the rules like everyone else. He stole shit, broke shit, killed George for funsies… and he got exiled for it. Seriously, they dumped him in an empty snowfield for breaking rules that nobody had enforced for weeks. So technically, the Exile-arc isn’t even the first time something like this has happened to him!

During the events that would eventually spark the Disc War, Sapnap stole a bunch of Tommy’s items (including the only Netherite chestplate on the server at the time), and told him he’d only give the stuff back if Tommy helped him with a conflict he had with Ponk. Long story short, Dream tried to intervene and was killed by Tommy and Sapnap, and Dream stole Tommy’s discs to force him to apologize. He then kept the discs, and the Disc War followed. Sapnap, despite being the aggressor and arguably forcing Tommy to participate in the conflict, was never punished.

This proves not only that the rules can change whenever Dream feels like it, but that they’re arbitrarily enforced. Dream refuses to punish his friends for the same crimes he endlessly fucks over Tommy for.

L’Manburg was created in part because of the fact that the rules were unevenly enforced. Tommy, Wilbur, and later Tubbo were repeatedly killed, stolen from, imprisoned, and even held hostage for very minor crimes, while the people killing, imprisoning, kidnapping and stealing from them were able to do so without impunity.

This was also the point where Dream just started making up new rules; there was no rule against having governments on the server, or making a separate area where Dream’s rules wouldn’t apply, so Dream banned governments, and used this new rule as an excuse to kill them, take their items, and tear their land to shreds.

And that’s another thing: the punishments for breaking Dream’s rules are INCREDIBLY harsh.

Kill him non-canonically one time? Your most prized possessions will now be dangled over your head and used to hurt you for the next few months.

Make a country with different laws that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s territory, has no desire to expand, is explicitly pacifistic and open to trade negotiations? You’ll be forced to fight a war you’re in no way equipped to fight, you’ll be betrayed and murdered and have your land destroyed in front of your very eyes until you literally have no choice but to surrender.

Mildly vandalize the king’s house, which nobody else has ever been punished for? You’ll be dragged into court, exiled from your home, and subjected to weeks of abuse until you believe that all of your friends hate you and you actively want to kill yourself.

Hide some stuff in a secret chest? Your only shelter will be exploded, your pet/only food source will be killed, all your items will be destroyed, you’ll be banned from the Nether, and none of your friends will be allowed to come see you.

This is all such disproportionate retribution it’s ridiculous. It’s like punishing someone for speeding by blowing up their car with a ballistic missile.

So to sum up: Dream’s rules are arbitrarily enforced, and he can just straight up make them up on the spot if he feels like it. Sometimes, he won’t tell you a rule exists until you’ve already broken it, and you’re treated as if you broke it out of malice instead of genuine ignorance. And if you do break a rule, and he decides you have to be punished, it will always be a punishment so harsh it doesn’t even ATTEMPT to fit the crime.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty fucking corrupt and tyrannical to me.

When people say Tommy deserved exile, or made Dream spiral into villainy, or abused Dream somehow (seriously I’ve seen this take multiple times and every time it makes my brain melt) by breaking the rules, I would invite them to take a step back and ask themselves, why did that rule exist? Did Tommy know it existed? Was it enforced for everyone other than him as well? Does the punishment fit the crime?

Dream has a bad habit of making up rules, or enforcing old ones that were never enforced before, to punish those who threaten his power. None of the Dream Team were ever punished for anything, despite committing the same crimes as the L’Manburgians. That is, until they founded Mexican L’Manburg (i.e. went against Dream’s rule), at which point they were attacked by Dream and George was dethroned for “not being neutral enough.”

Tommy should’ve faced consequences for what he did. But those consequences should’ve come naturally, and been carried out by the people he hurt. Like, if Dream hadn’t intervened, griefing George’s house would’ve resulted in George griefing Tommy back in revenge. In fact, he DID do that, by turning Tommy’s entire house into granite and putting the Jump In The Cadillac picture on his front lawn.

These are natural, proportionate consequences. Exile was none of that. The Disc War was none of that. Everything that happened to L’Manburg was none of that.

Dream’s rules and how he enforces them are inherently corrupt and tyrannical. To pretend it’s anything but is disingenuous at best.

[senotsuri]

Way back when, I posted an image of an OC, who fairly recently got a full name (she only had a surname back then.) So, with Eliza’s name finally figured out, I realised I hadn’t actually given my overview of the game that spawned her; Champions of Vestroia.

Time to lose my mind, I guess.

Some fore-knowledge before we get into this.

I am, by all means, a legacy bakugan fan, not a reboot fan. I’ve only seen one double episode (the become-smaller-child episode, which was cute, and Outer Demons, which has a super good premise, but the execution is. something.) By all accounts, CoV is essentially my introduction to the world of the reboot, and I’ll come to this later.

I played both the first game (Bakugan Battle Brawlers, specifically the Wii edition), and the... third game (Defenders of the Core, shortened to DOTC, also for the Wii. The second game, for anyone curious, is Battle Trainer, a DS exclusive.) This will come up later, of course, but I want to point out these two as they’re basically my control group for the quality here (not for the battles though; different battle system and all.)

I am incredibly stay-at-home. A lot of people I know irl I don’t have contact with, and most of them don’t live in my city. This is only important when it comes to the protagonist and literally no one else in the game, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

So the game begins with the character creator. This is pretty standard stuff, honestly. My one issue with it is just-- this is probably my fashion sense speaking, but the fashion in the game is very... for lack of a better term, naff. There aren’t many options that look good, personally speaking. This is ignoring the issues where the protagonist loses their name, mid conversation, or is referred to as if I chose the male option instead of the female option. These issues are likely just oversights, by all accounts, but talk about jarring.

The first time you see your character is where 3. comes in. The protagonist, no matter what you chose (I have two save files, in case there was a difference. There isn’t), will always be a football/soccer player. Are you one of many, many people who isn’t sporty, who is trying to play as themselves? Sorry, your character is sporty, and you can’t do anything about it.

In the legacy games, this was never really a problem; your character was never seen doing anything other than brawling and interacting with other characters. Whether they played sports, or stayed indoors and wrote fanfic, the game let you decide on that for your character, by not having them do either of those things: your character only battled, or snuck around in DOTC’s case.

Once you stop playing football, you get to run to your best friends, and I guarantee you, you won’t immediately guess who they are unless you somehow already knew.

I mentioned BBB and DOTC being my control group on quality. Bringing the character creator back into this, the NPCs are laughable in quality. Any character who has the same model as you (older child. There are only two other model types: adult, and younger child) will look like a remixed version of your character. Had it not been for some characters having special eye shapes, you could practically cosplay any character in the game, because they were made the same way you made your character.

This includes your two best friends.

You could easily make the same character (minus clothes) as one of your best friend characters, without knowing it until you saw them.

While, yes, BBB and DOTC had the characters from the legacy anime in them, the fact that your best friends are nigh indistinguishable from any other character in the area, because you could easily make any of them in the character creator, isn’t... great.

Speaking of that. Characterisation is questionable, to say the least. Whatever bakugan you have in your first slot will answer to you the same as any other bakugan you have in your first slot. If you started off with Howlkor in the front of your party, and you replaced him with, say, Barbetra, Barbetra will act the exact same as Howlkor did, and it’s really something.

There’s only (?) Armoured Alliance bakugan in the game, other than Dragonoid, Pegatrix, Trox, Hydorous, Nillious, and the afforementioned Howlkor. That’s a small roster, by all accounts, so having varied dialogue depending on the bakugan would make sense.

The characterisation of the other characters is also a little funky in places. Your best friends don’t brawl, and I honestly forgot about them for a portion of the game. The tournament brawlers are practically as faceless as the villain minions, and the villains- oh the villains...

Preston. I don’t like Preston, at all. He’s a villain from the moment you see him, and the whole “try to find Preston” section in Helena Heights makes me want to punch someone. When you fight him in the Parasol HQ, his dad being the CEO, it’s fairly clear that Preston is little more than a tool for him. Sometime later, you fight Preston again, this time as the final tournament’s final battle, and he’s laughably weak compared to the other challengers. Remember, this kid fights you with Leonidas.

You’d think Leo would be good, but I’ll get into the butchering that happened to my death dragon later.

Anyhow, he fights you, assuming his dad will enjoy him defeating you. With the power of you’re the player character, you beat him, he hands all of his bakugan to you, and gives up on brawling for good. Kinda.

The next time you see him... hoo boy. In Old Town, on the way to defeat dear detestable dad, you come across Preston. He offers you help, and when player character is understandably suspicious, Preston complains that... one of his toys was taken away because you beat him, and now he wants Revenge On Dad.

I wish I was joking. His revenge, by helping you defeat his dad, isn’t because he’s obviously neglected by his dad (company taking priority over him, the CEO’s son), and then is used as a minion to try and get rid of you. It’s not out of bitter feelings because his dad doesn’t care about him, no, it’s because his dad took his ball away.

What’s worse is how player character reacts: “Oh! :) You’ve learned that bakugan aren’t just tools! :) Yes you can help me, despite the fact that you learning this sounds less than genuine and definitely not last minute! :)”

This is a level of stupidity I’ve only seen in DOTC Mira when Spectra tricks her into giving him Drago. He’s literally sulking and moping about over his ball, and then he sees the player character, immediately being manipulative so that player character can take down his dad for him. 

Leonidas also forgives him, and has the same reaction as the player character.

Speaking of Leonidas! I think everyone’s been excited for Leonidas in general - we all love a shark headed death dragon, and we wanted one in the reboot for ages.

I refuse to call reboot Leonidas Leonidas. This is like the Shun Kazami debacle, but one I’m substantially more angry about.

Leonidas, in BBB, was untrusting of everything, wanted to throw down with everything in sight, had no fear of anything because “I don’t fear weak [humans]”, and literally came from hell. He eventually grew to trust you and others, to calm down and enjoy himself at his own pace, and was willing to have help from others, showing anyone around him that his origins aren’t the be all and end all about him.

Leonidas, in CoV, is immediately trusting of the first human who showed a hint of kindness, has a weakness to all attacks in the game, comes from Vestroia (not the Doom Dimension), and forgives the human who threw him away when he didn’t win the battle against you for him.

Ignoring the fact that Leonidas just doesn’t look good in CoV, I’d say he got bastardised. That’s not Leonidas, it’s just a dragon with the same name.

The main villain is the CEO of Parasol, an energy company that, assumedly, used to use solar power. Upon finding out that bakugan battles give off incredible levels of power, they turned to using bakugan, forced to battle, to generate power. These guys literally dug into someone’s house to try and get Leonidas. They’re evil.

On the topic of the battling for power generation; this has a decay effect on Vestroia, as it happens, as battling energy would usually go back into Vestroia, which would be recycled and reused.

The CEO doesn’t bend the knee to you until you break him, which is undoubtedly nice for a villain; I was honestly expecting him to give up, but he doesn’t. You beat him into a corner.

But as my introduction to the world of BP, through CoV, is lackluster at best. Obviously the game is meant for those who have seen the reboot, and don’t mind being completely disconnected from the story, because CoV is self contained, and Dan only shows up to be the tutorial giver (as a jpg, no less).

From what the game tells me about the setting; bakugan are often exploited by adults, bakugan do not like adults because of this, but can’t tell when a human child is manipulating them, unless another child removes them from that situation (the lack of agency here is somehow worse than in the legacy series, who knew).

Despite bakugan being around for 18 years in the setting, no one seems to be aware that they’re living beings, other than the main charcter, as if BP humans are equivalent to Legacy’s Vestals. I was already aware of Vestroia and Earth sharing a location in space, but the fact that drilling deep enough causes bakugan to appear on Earth seems... really weird? Schrödinger’s Bakugan Summoning Pit, but they exist on every digging site possible. Bonus points to all bakugan being able to speak, and they do speak a lot, but only to the player and whoever is around the player in a cutscene.

I’m missing a lot of things, such as battle items being the worst sometimes, I’m aware, but at this point I’m tired of rambling, so let me end off in a comparison.

CoV has, in my opinion, the same replayability levels as Pokemon Shield; I couldn’t replay either game to the end, and I wouldn’t recommend either to anyone unless they were desperate for a new game to play, and had nothing else to chose.

[douxreviews]

Constantine - Series Review

I come not to praise Constantine, but to bury him.

Well, okay. A little of both.

In a fairly short amount of time from when this is posted, season four of DC's Legends of Tomorrow will premiere, featuring Matt Ryan as a regular cast member playing our favorite bisexual petty dabbler in the mystic arts; John Constantine. This makes it a great time to mention two things. First, if you weren't aware, Doux Reviews has a regular reviewer of Legends of Tomorrow who's both insightful and terribly sexy, so you should definitely check that out. Second, Constantine's one and only season as an independent property is ripe for a fresh look, now that we know we have more trenchcoated goodness coming our way.

So, let's take a look at Constantine's thirteen episode run, in light of what we've learned about the character since, shall we?

The series is now available on demand, so let's go episode by episode, while we count down to his next appearance.

'Non Est Asylum':

Re-watching this episode – and for the record, I re-watched it three times while trying to sort out how I felt about it – two things become very clear. Almost everything in the episode is brilliant, and they absolutely should have thrown away all but the last two minutes and started from scratch there, even if it meant only getting twelve episodes on air.

The issue, as most of you who care will remember, comes down to studio interference. 'Non Est Asylum' exists to establish two characters, John Constantine, and Liv. Liv is the daughter of a friend of John's who mysteriously died recently, has a mysterious magical cabin which is not at all like the TARDIS as owned by John Dee, will serve as the show's home set, and has all sorts of mysterious hints about why he abandoned his daughter and what his story was. All of this is clearly meant to set up Liv's character arc as 'female Neo who fights demons instead of robots'. That's her character brief, and it couldn't be clearer that it was meant to carry the season.

But at some point the studio clearly insisted that they cut Liv's character and replace her with a different type of female lead that they thought would fit the vibe of the show they wanted better. This isn't an inherently terrible thing and is totally within the studio's rights. The exact same thing happened with Big Bang Theory, and if you've ever watched the abandoned pilot of that show with Not-Penny, you know that it was a change for the better. But they absolutely needed to cut this episode loose as a result of that decision, because the scars of Liv's removal really, really show.

You can identify without effort the one single scene that was changed. In the original plan, John has Chas drive Liv past the place she scryed about earlier to see that something terrible had indeed happened there. Obviously this was meant to affirm her commitment to helping people despite her fear of the magical world. Instead, they inserted a scene to follow it wherein other characters discuss how she was so scared by the realization that she left the area, moved to the other side of the country, and would never be mentioned again. Good thing that she left the keys to her dad's cabin, so we still have a home base, huh? It's a sloppy edit that leaves the whole episode feeling wasted, and they absolutely should have scrapped the whole thing, starting the new pilot with John's encounter in the alleyway where he ignites his hands, because that's an amazingly strong image, segueing into the introduction of Zed drawing that same image, which should have, and would have, been a strong intro to her character if it didn't feel so much like a back pedal away from Liv.

It's all a shame, because like I said, the rest of the episode has a lot of wonderful stuff. The dialogue is absolutely cracking, specifically lines like, 'Where do you come from, John?' 'Oh, the sordid passions of my parents.' The effects are beyond first rate, specifically all the flashes to skulls and zombie/demon makeup, which is really tricky to not overdo and they stuck the landing every time here. And finally, the performances, even Liv's, are better than you should usually expect from a pilot. Anyone who thinks that Matt Ryan is just playing himself as John Constantine would do well to watch his portrayal of the electricity demon dressed up in John's body to taunt John. He's playing two entirely different characters arguing with one another, one of which is in what could easily have turned into Halloween makeup, and he completely crushes it.

Other thoughts about this episode; it was a mistake to rush that much information about Astra in right at the beginning of the series in what was already a pretty full episode. Ritchie was a fun character, but they really shouldn't have introduced both him and Chas in the same episode because that reads as a bit of a wasted opportunity for later. And speaking of Chas, now that we know that John is bisexual, do we suppose that he and Chas have had sex? Clearly, the answer at this point appears to be yes, but we'll keep checking in on that point as the season progresses.

'The Darkness Beneath':

Jesus Christ, yes. This. This is what the show should have been directly out of the gate. Just look at how much less we know about Zed than we did about Liv, and yet how much fuller and richer a character Zed is simply by virtue of the fact that we aren't being force fed studio notes back story about her for the entire episode. Ditto for John Constantine. This, apart from being set in the US instead of England, is exactly the sort of situation he'd have been mixed up in in the pages of Hellblazer, and the show was rarely stronger because of it. The absence of Harold Perrineau helps as well, since all he really accomplished in the pilot was to loom menacingly and say, 'I'll be important later.'

If they'd had the balls to completely throw out the pilot and start with John Constantine in the alley with his fists on fire segueing directly into this episode, we would currently be enjoying the premiere of season five of this show. I have absolutely no doubt about that.

'The Devil's Vinyl':

Satan cuts a demo. Reviews are mixed. I suspect that this is the version of the show that the network wanted to have; basically The X-Files with demons for aliens and a warlock/psychic combo for FBI agents. It's not terrible, as monster of the week episodes go, and it provides a good intro for Papa Midnite, but you can't help but feel like the show is rushing to introduce as much Hellblazer back catalog as they can to make up for the pilot episode misstep.

And Chas brought John orange juice because he was worried about his blood sugar. They didn't just have sex in the past, they're currently still at it. John even called him 'Daddy.' Can Chas show up on Legends? Because I am shipping them so hard right now.

'A Feast of Friends':

For thirty-eight minutes of screentime, we get a pretty standard demon of the week wrapped up in a not particularly subtle addiction metaphor. Good enough television, but nothing groundbreaking. But then John walks his old friend Gary into a theater, fully aware that he was leading him to his slaughter just because he couldn't think of another way to win, and we get our first real glimpse in this series of John Constantine: Hellblazer. The interesting thing about Constantine in the comics is that he is always a man who fully expects every single thing he encounters to be the shittiest possible version of itself, and is rarely disappointed. But contrary to how that sort of character is usually portrayed in fiction, that knowledge neither makes him bitter and cynical, nor longing for hope. It makes him pragmatic. And pragmatic is scary and interesting, because it's rarely seen as a virtue and never portrayed as aspirational. Except in Hellblazer.

I hate to keep focusing on sexuality, but it would be fascinating to know what Matt Ryan thought about John's sexuality while filming this series, because we keep encountering moments like John's kiss to Gary's forehead which display an extraordinary level of comfort with male on male physicality while at the same time not glamorizing it or making it feel exploitative. At the very least, I bet Matt Ryan is a hell of a kisser.

'Danse Vaudou':

Jim Corrigan! Dammit, I'd forgotten that they were setting up the Spectre and never got to pay it off. I know I've been saying this almost every story, but can Jim Corrigan please, please, please, show up on Legends?

This is the episode that almost broke me as far as re-watching Constantine goes. There's just so much rich potential and setup that we know is never paid off. The rising darkness that never happens, the live action realization of The Spectre that they were clearly building up to and would have been amazing, Papa Midnite who they had properly set up to be as compelling and layered a character as he had been in the comic books. It's just heartbreaking.

'Rage of Caliban':

A fairly standard Halloween filler episode, the likes of which The X-Files had been banking for most of the 90s. The title exists solely to allow me to make a poncy literary reference for the sole sake of validating my English degree, which I'm going to hold off on for the moment. But the scares are genuinely scary, the child actors aren't irritating, and the twists are pretty good.

Chas, meanwhile, has taken to arguing with Constantine like an old married couple while he's under the influence of the truth telling sword. But then he goes and raises questions by mentioning someone named Rene, so I guess the implication is that John is his rebound relationship? Yes?

'Blessed are the Damned':

Apparently there is a rule that all genre shows are required to do at least one show about snake handlers and one show about faith healing. Sensing that their run would be limited, Constantine does both at once. And, it's pretty much your standard genre show about snake handlers and faith healing, to be honest. Zed's sudden desire for faith stands out as a little out of character, but that's because it only happens for the sake of making us fall for the 'grab the feather' fakeout later on.

It is interesting to wonder what Manny thinks is going on in this episode, with the benefit of hindsight. Were he and Imogene working together? Did he pull out her feather? Or is it just a coincidence that two different angels are up to shady dealings simultaneously? Don't hold your breath for an answer on this one, I'm afraid.

'Saint of Last Resorts, Part 1':

This is the moment you can see the show figuring out what it wants to be. As an added bonus, as the scripting and themes are gelling, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and there are a couple of directorial flourishes that are just beautifully handled. The DP on this one was Scott Kevan. I will be looking up his CV later, because his work here is so much better than we usually get.

'Saint of Last Resorts, Part 2':

It's a little odd how completely the naming ties these two episodes into one coherent two-parter, because really they have very little to do with each other as far as plot goes beyond this one picking up where the last one left off.  But then, this one picked up the previous episode's cliffhanger from before the holiday break, so that's not so unusual.

By the end of this episode, all the pieces are in place for what the show should have become. Zed's backstory is just roughed in enough to allow for a lot of future development. We've explored why John makes the choices he does through the time honored technique of taking a different character and watching them get forced into making those same choices so that we can better understand how John got there. And Chas continues to prove that he's John's one true soulmate. I've started referring to them as Chastantine, if anyone would like to join me in shipping them.

'Quid Pro Quo':

In which we meet a really fun potentially recurring villain, the pathetic, elderly, also-ran magician Felix Faust, who you just know they would have found a way to bring back repeatedly as a sort of Mudd/Quark hybrid. Plus we finally hear Chas' backstory, in which we find out how he basically became Captain Jack with a countdown clock, which is a great idea and could have been explored in a thousand interesting ways.

Okay, I've been a little puckish about Chas and John's relationship, but this seems like the right time to address the issue like a responsible adult. I think, based on what we've seen this season, that John and Chas have definitely been physically intimate at least once in the past, but purely on a friendship basis. I think that they currently have feelings for another that transcend what we currently think of as friendship but don't really qualify as romantic love. I'd say that they'd reached a pure form of the Greek concept of Philia, but I'd hate to be that pretentious. And I'll tell you why. Because John Constantine would never, ever, think to worry about whether someone was still all right to drive after a night out. But he does for Chas.

'A Whole World Out There'':

And we're back to what's essentially a Supernatural or X-Files monster of the week episode. That's not a terrible thing, intrinsically. As they go, this would have been one of the better Supernatural or X-Files episodes. Plus, Jeremy Davies is always worth watching. It just suffers a little bit from being sandwiched between the previous week's excellent study of character relationships and the knowledge that we're only going to get two more episodes after this.

The show can hardly be blamed for it, but our time with Constantine is rapidly running out, and we don't have time to waste treading water like this. Frustrating.

'Angels and Ministers of Grace':

The evil artifact of the week is a black diamond and not one person made a skiing joke. I find that disappointing.

It's really hard to square this episode with the following week's revelation about Manny. It feels like the whole point of this installment was to humanize Manny and bring him more into Team Constantine's fold, but we learn pretty conclusively in the following episode that that is not where Manny's storyline is going, so what exactly are we supposed to make of what happens here? And what was the long term plan for Zed's brain tumor, which is clearly sitting there in the final scene wearing a tiny t-shirt that says, 'I'm going to be a significant plotline later on', and then never gets the chance to be.

Honestly, as I near the end of re-watching these, the thing that's striking me the most is how much optimism the writing room is showing; diligently moving forward with planting the seeds for long term plans, carefully setting up mysteries inside backstories, all meticulously orchestrated to come into play later on. There's a strange and tragic nobility in the amount of faith they were showing in the show's prospects for a future.

'Waiting for the Man':

This was an amazing season finale. It gelled the developing Constantine/Zed/Jim Corrigan triangle, which we already know to be doomed. We get the foreshadowing of The Spectre, who clearly has very specific wounds that we're going to presumable see inflicted on Jim as he dies and is transformed into his supernatural identity. We get the new information about Manny that completely flips the table on everything we thought we knew about the season's storyline and just begs the viewer to re-watch the season while waiting for answers in season two. Plus we get a stand alone story whose style feels like it could be straight from the pages of Hellblazer; involving ghostly goings-on colliding with the most grotesque and debased aspects of humanity.

This is a heartbreaking series finale for all those same reasons. The showrunners' optimism about the program's future remains unbowed, and no concession is made to the possibility that they might not be renewed. Instead the storyline marchs boldly on, telling a solid standalone story while delicately weaving in the seeds of events to come. If you'll pardon the mixed metaphor.

The closest the show itself comes to acknowledging its situation vis-à-vis renewal is a speech of John's early on in the episode about human life, in which he basically says 'we're here as long as we're here, and then we're gone. It can't be changed, it can't be helped, and it can go screw itself double hard, because we're not going to let fear of that matter.' Which is basically the most John Constantine sentiment ever expressed.

So, now that the charms are all o'erthrown, if I might borrow an appropriate line, what do we make of it all?

This would have been an amazing show, is the closest I can get to a concise answer. It was doing everything right, it was proceeding in good faith and making no concessions to fear, and it got screwed out of continued existence by the most banal and crushing forces. So, in a way, the show Constantine is very much a reflection of Constantine the man.

For those who don't know, or don't remember, the answer to what happened is depressingly simple. The network needed to make final decisions about renewals and cancellations by a fixed date, and Constantine hadn't aired enough of its run by that point to get the amount of positive feedback it needed to survive. It might have made the cutoff if they hadn't tripped out of the gate with the replacement of Liv for Zed, making it feel like the show was already troubled to network executive eyes from the get go. The combination of that initial wobble and the show happening to air a lot of its episodes after the cancellation decision had been made finished it. There aren't really any bad guys in the story, just a confluence of terribly unfortunate factors that no one could change. This is also, in its way, the most Constantine thing ever.

It's ironic that Constantine, the television character, has lived the opposite experience of Constantine the comics character. In the funny books, John was a random factor that occasionally cropped up in other supernaturally flavored books, most usually Swamp Thing. We didn't know much about him, but every time he randomly popped up he got more popular until they eventually gave him his own series. On the television, they jumped right to his own series, and then after that wasn't renewed began using him to pop up in other character's shows as a mysterious magician who served as a random factor in their storylines. Maybe if they'd done it the other way around his own show would have flourished earlier, I don't know. What I do know, however, is that Matt Ryan is clearly beloved, both by fans and by the people making decisions on the TV shows, because a character from a cancelled show on another network just does not get a brought back and given a second chance at life on other shows. That absolutely, categorically, never happens. The closest possible other example is Richard Belzer, and both of his shows were at least on the same network.

So, I highly recommend going back and watching these 13 episodes, because they really are for the most part damn good television. And John would absolutely want a party, not a wake. As to the overarcing plot about the rising darkness, I managed to find peace with it by telling myself that the rising darkness referred to the demon Mallus, who John was eventually able to help defeat on Legends of Tomorrow, and so it all worked out. We still won't ever know what the hell Manny wanted out of the whole situation, but if you squint at it sideways it all hangs together.

Nine out of ten trenchcoats. It's only not ten because the first half of the season is clearly finding its feet, but even so it's fantastic. Now bring on season four of Legends, wherein Chas turns up and helps John summon the Spectre to rescue Zed from the Brujaria.

I can dream, can't I?  

Oh, and 'Rage of Caliban' is a quote from Oscar Wilde's introduction to Picture of Dorian Gray. You're welcome.

Mikey Heinrich is, among other things, a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and roughly 78% water.

[dweemeister]

“Women Make Film” marathon reviews (2/?)

Sleepwalking Land (2007, Mozambique)

From 1977 to 1992, Mozambique was in a state of civil war. Mozambique, situated in Africa’s southeast corner above South Africa and separated by a channel from Madagascar, still reckons with the human, political, and social legacies of that conflict. Exacerbated by the Soviet Union and the anti-communist Apartheid South Africa (both meddling for influence in Mozambican affairs), the war quickly reached a conclusion as those foreign regimes disintegrated. In the final year of the Mozambican Civil War, author Mia Couto published an acclaimed magical realism novel, Terra Sonâmbula (Sleepwalking Land), that takes place with the war as a backdrop. Couto’s book inspired a film adaptation by Teresa Prata – Portuguese-born, Mozambican-raised, and now living in Germany.

Sleepwalking Land is Prata’s first feature film as a director. She was mesmerized by Couto’s book, saying that memories of the war rushed through her head while reading. Believing the text to be deeply cinematic, she spent seven years to complete this adaptation of Sleepwalking Land. The final print is a film difficult to categorize. Comprised of two parallel narratives, Prata has the narratives blend into the other as the film progresses. Its magical realism elements only appear in the final half-hour of the film. One scene in particular will most likely shock, if not offend, Western viewers. But the actions in that scene are considered a traditional behavior in Mozambique (something that I shall explain later in this write-up). Central to Sleepwalking Land is the idea that storytelling is integral to survival – especially as the innocent trod through their war-torn homeland.

In the Mozambican countryside, we encounter eleven-year-old Muidinga (Nick Lauro Teresa) and a much older man named Tuahir (Aladino Jasse). Their relationship is unclear, but Muidinga refers to Tuahir as “Uncle” (if the film’s dialogue is to be believed, they are probably not related). Muidinga wishes to find his mother, but the search has been fruitless. The young refugee also appears not to remember much about his life before his journeys with Tuahir; he cannot even recall how he and Tuahir met. The elderly Tuahir is a storyteller who makes clear his desire to leave the past behind – the audience learns almost nothing about that past by film’s end. This duo has been wandering the countryside, but one day stumble upon the wreckage of a torched bus. They bury the charred bodies of those who died in their seats, salvage a diary from one of the victims, and take shelter in the bus (“What is already burnt cannot burn again.”) Muidinga reads from the diary (Tuahir is illiterate), and learns that the writer is a woman searching for her missing son. He believes, however unlikely, he is that very son and that the writer is his mother.

If the viewer expects details about the Mozambican Civil War itself, just note that those details never appear. Prata elects to keep the affiliations of the roving militias as ambiguous as possible. Like Couto’s text, this film adaptation of Sleepwalking Land has not taken any sides or political stances – save the notion that war is solely a destructive force. But it is not war itself that Sleepwalking Land focuses on, but how its central characters respond to the traumas it has unleashed on their lives. Muidinga and Tuahir enter the film with unrevealed, if not unknowable, pasts. “You don’t even have a story,” Tuahir tells the young boy.

Muidinga responds by creating his own life story, however fantastical. He is reborn; the particulars of the civil war, the loss of his parents, and the famine that affected Mozambique prior to this rebirth is fully removed from his lived experiences. Muidinga’s imagination leads the film into its magical realism. Having never seen the ocean and despite being nowhere near the beach, Muidinga transports himself and Tuahir there – without ever leaving the bus. Muidinga has broken the inescapable cycle that has trapped him and Tuahir. Upon this development, Tuahir realizes that the young boy he has been accompanying has learned all that he needs to survive in desperate, nightmarish times. In each of these scenes, Paulo Rebelo’s (2000’s O Fantasma) editing does well to transition between the scenes depicting the diary entries the roundabout travels of Muidinga and Tuahir, lending a documentary-like feel to the latter.

Plot-hungry viewers will probably demand for explanations for Muidinga’s amnesia and Tuahir’s past, but the film refuses to provide any answers. To those viewers: stop resisting the film’s refusal to accommodate your expectations, and allow it to tell its story on its own terms.

And as for expectations, one shocking scene in Sleepwalking Land will undoubtedly startle Western audiences and requires explanation for anybody reading this review after viewing the film. The behavior in that scene is custom in Mozambique. In Mozambique, young boys and girls are “initiated” by elder men and women, respectively, as they reach puberty. In a secluded environment, the elders will teach the young ones about sexuality. Sexual initiation of Mozambican children was banned by the left-wing FRELIMO party after securing independence from Portugal and establishing one-party control. FRELIMO argued that initiation rites promoted female subservience; their many critics dismissed this as simplistic, saying that the rites provided women with sexual education they might not otherwise get.

The ban on initiation rites has long been lifted in Mozambique, though the practice is no longer as prominent as it used to be. In keeping with the film’s fidelity to Mozambican culture at this time, Prata includes Muidinga’s initiation in this film. The scene is filmed obliquely, in a matter-of-fact way. The audience never sees anything graphic and Tuahir’s verbal descriptions are innocuous, but the implication of what he is doing to Muidinga is clear. Prata, a child of both Africa and Europe, could not have filmed this scenario with any greater respect to her actors and the cultures she was raised in. For Western viewers like myself, it is one of more than a few teaching moments in Sleepwalking Land.

The film’s two leads in Nick Lauro Teresa and Aladino Jasse are both non-professional actors. Their acting might not be the most accomplished, but the dynamic between the two is a joy to watch. Though they probably are not related, their characters have an asymmetric emotional intimacy understandable considering their situation. In what might have been a dour, overlong experience, Teresa and Jasse inject enough charm and humor to keep Sleepwalking Land bearable. The same cannot be written for the parallel story fronted by Kindzu (Helio Fumo) and Farida (Ilda Gonzalez), which throws the film’s narrative propulsion off-balance whenever Teresa and Jasse are not on-screen. To everyone’s credit, the acting ensemble helps Sleepwalking Land feel like a vivid dream – from the silences paired with the rural landscapes, the decisional logic, and the film’s impossible conclusion (but it is one that, mind you, works).

Though Sleepwalking Land has made appearances in film festival across the world, it – and Teresa Prata’s career (this is Prata’s most recent movie, and by what is provided in Sleepwalking Land, I would like to see much more from her) – has never found much traction. I may not have read Couto’s novel prior to viewing this film (the novel is available in an English translation), but its novelistic overtures are felt throughout the film. The blending of narratives flows like something from a printed page, rather than quickly edited into yet another one of Christopher Nolan’s moviemaking mazes. From its humble, low-budget origins, Sleepwalking Land is composed in its singular artistic vision and confident about the depth of human endurance.

My rating: 8/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

NOTE #1: This is the second of an unspecified amount of film reviews on this blog relating to films that I saw as part of Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) Women Make Film marathon.

NOTE #2: Sleepwalking Land is currently available to watch on YouTube for free. The print includes English subtitles in the closed-captioning options.

[spryfilm]

“Baby Driver” (2017)

Action

Running Time: 113 minutes

Written & Directed by: Edgar Wright

Featuring:  Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Jon Bernthal

Doc: “So here’s the thing, I’m looking at some of the country’s finest thugs and of course young Mozart in a go-cart over there. People love great bank robbery stories, so let’s give them something full and brazen as fuck to talk about over their lattes.”

After much anticipation Edgar Wright’s career course correction has arrived, after leaving the super hero project “Ant-Man” (2015), (which in fact turned out very well thank you) he has brought to the screen an almost entirely original proposition. In seeing this weeks new release “Baby Driver” (2017), we can only wonder what his vision of the diminutive super hero may have been. To be frank I was shocked watching this new film as it hits the mark on almost every cylinder, it is full of action, drama, comedy, music and thrills, all packed in at under two hours, pedestrian by the lengths of some of the movies released this Summer – especially considering some of them go absolutely nowhere.

After all the shenanigans with mates Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as well as the overtly pop culture referenced work of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World“ (2010) it is great to see him create something (albeit with a nod towards Walter Hills now classic “The Driver” (1979)) original as well as slick not forgetting smart. This feels like the movie that Wright has promised for so long after the double hits of “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) and “Hot Fuzz” (2007). With “Baby Driver”, Wright has built a film around solid if not extreme characters, that are all driving towards goals that while not unified are understandable in the world they are living in. When you watch this movie it works because of the nature of the narrative that builds the plot which is the use of scene appropriate music that frames almost every scene, whether believable or not. This is a fantasy, a dream that asks us to leave real life at the door, welcome the madness as well as holding on to our seats for a truly unique experience.

The film is centred around Baby (Ansel Elgort), a young getaway driver in Atlanta, Georgia. When he was a child, a car accident killed his parents and left him with severe tinnitus, which he blocks out by listening to music. He also records his everyday conversations and remixes them into songs using vintage audio equipment. Baby works for Doc (Kevin Spacey), a mastermind heist planner, to pay off a debt he incurred after stealing one of Doc’s cars. Baby lives with his deaf foster father, Joseph. After pulling off a robbery, Baby is told that the next job will pay off his debt. Baby meets waitress Debora (Lily James) at a diner he frequents, and they fall in love.

Wright has done something few writer/directors are capable of, that is he has reinvented his style to accomodate a new movie. Now while the pace of this film is quick, the actual editing and the way we shift from scene to scene is not. This is in contrast to Wright’s previous films, pretty much all of them, where the audience would be taken from scene to scene with a frenetic style that may have been hiding some of the flaws that were hidden within the plot. Whilst music has always played a large part in Wright’s movies this is the first time he has injected them into the narrative without them being a crux that the move relies on. What I mean by this is if you remove the music from this movie you still have a heist/chase film. With the music added you are witness to a deeper story that invigorates the characters motivations – something special indeed.

The plot of this movie is something audiences have seen many times before, you know, the one about a person trapped in a situation that they cannot extricate themselves from, but can see a way out, particularly after meeting a third party, which normally turns into their love interest. However, this films plot is framed by the well thought out, as well as the soundtrack, full of deep cuts which opens with the toe tappingly great Jon Spencer Blues Explosion ‘Bellbottoms’, where Baby and his crew rob a bank, this plays while they make their outrageous getaway, something that hints at the pace for the rest of the film. The opening also makes a statement about the movie as well as Wright saying “I have arrived!”, in the loudest way possible. Most, if not all the music is diegetic which is unique in itself without the movie being a musical, although at times this movie has many of the same beats as a musical – witness the opening credits sequence with Baby moving in a single shot to the original ‘Harlem Shuffle’, as well as the ending all choreographed to the amazing ‘Brighton Rock’ by Queen. Baby moves as well as drives like a dancer, and the car fu (if you will) beats almost anything seen in the ‘Fast’ franchise, seemingly without the massive CGI that is needed for those behemoths.

Talking about Baby, played by relative newcomer Ansel Elgort, is a character that almost reaches the heights Wright had for him, but maybe his face is a little too baby, without the lived in physique another actor may have had – they try and rough him up by scarring him, but he is almost too pretty – maybe even prettier than leading lady Lilly James – who in my mind seems a little too twee for the part as well as out of her depth in the role. However none of this really matters when the stars come out to play with some of the best dialogue around, they chew it up and roughhouse with each other like the pros they are. Witness Kevin Spacey as ‘Doc’ (an obvious homage to Steve McQueen) who runs the show, Jon Bernthal as Griff (seen all too briefly) and Eiza González as Darling a a lovingly twisted partner to the scene stealing (saying that in this film is a real compliment) Jon Hamm as Buddy.

Speaking of the absolute best performances, they come from the aforementioned John Hamm as Buddy and Jamie Foxx as way too crazy Bats. It can be no mistake that these two actors have the best roles as well as give the best performances; they are polar opposites in this and are set up against each other for most of their time onscreen. However, it is Hamm in the bigger and more defining role that steals the entire movie – including the music. Hamm shines like no other time onscreen in his career, here he is not relying on his winking at the camera or chiseled looks, it is just his menace as well as his complete understanding of Baby that makes his part in this film timeless. Foxx is excellent as well in a dangerous role that sparks the entire third act into motion as well as offering some menacing looks and dialogue, he is always great, but here like Hamm he is off the hook, unlike anything I have seen him in since possibly “Django Unchained” (2012). These two performances are reason enough to see this movie at the cinemas.

Judging from the box office success of this film, quickly approaching US$100 million at the US box office alone this will be one of the bigger success of this Summer season, given that this is an original movie, much like “Dunkirk” (2017) which at this stage looks like it too will be a big success. It can be no coincidence that these two original films (both written and directed by Englishmen) will be surpassing expectations, unlike the glut of sequels, reboots and comic book movies which have mostly lagged behind expectations both critically and financially. What does this say about the tastes of audiences, for one thing maybe its time that more original movies were being made and that filmmakers should be left alone to create original properties?

If you want to see an excellent action/thriller movie this year then this will be the one for you. You will definitely get a kick out of the music as well as the interplay with Baby, as well as the rest of the cast. This is a modestly budgeted film with a cast that is worth their weight in gold. You would be crazy to not see this on the big screen with the volume turned up to 11.

Oh yeah, and look out for the great Paul Williams dressed in a white suit – priceless.

Track list:

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – ‘Bellbottoms’

Bob & Earl – ‘Harlem Shuffle’

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – ‘Egyptian Reggae’

Googie Rene – ‘Smokey Joe’s La La’

The Beach Boys – ‘Let’s Go Away For Awhile’

Carla Thomas – ‘B-A-B-Y’

Kashmere Stage Band – ‘Kashmere’

Dave Brubeck – ‘Unsquare Dance’

The Damned – ‘Neat Neat Neat’

The Commodores – ‘Easy (Single Version)’

Rex – ‘Debora’

Beck – ‘Debra’

Incredible Bongo Band – ‘Bongolia’

The Detroit Emeralds – ‘Baby Let Me Take You (in My Arms)’

Alexis Korner – ‘Early In The Morning’

David McCallum – ‘The Edge’

Martha and the Vandellas – ‘Nowhere To Run’

The Button Down Brass – ‘Tequila’

Sam & Dave – ‘When Something Is Wrong With My Baby’

Brenda Holloway – ‘Every Little Bit Hurts’

Blur – ‘Intermission’

Focus – ‘Hocus Pocus (Original Single Version)’

Golden Earring – ‘Radar Love (1973 Single Edit)’

Barry White – ‘Never, Never Gone Give Ya Up’

Young MC – ‘Know How’

Queen – ‘Brighton Rock’

Sky Ferreira – ‘Easy’

Simon & Garfunkel – ‘Baby Driver’

Kid Koala – ‘Was He Slow (Credit Roll Version)’

“Baby Driver” is out now in cinemas everywhere.

  Film review: “Baby Driver” (2017) “Baby Driver” (2017) Action Running Time: 113 minutes Written & Directed by: Edgar Wright Featuring:  Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Jon Bernthal…

[t-oresama]

"Ouran High School Host Club" volumes 1-18 by Bisco Hatori

Synopsis: In this screwball romantic comedy, Haruhi, a poor girl at a rich kids' school, is forced to repay an $80,000 debt by working for the school's swankiest, all-male club-- as a boy! There she discovers just how wealthy all six members are and how different the rich are from everybody else...

Published: 2002-2010 (Hakusensha/ LaLa Magazine [JPN], Viz Media [USA] Genre: Manga, Romantic-Comedy, Slice-of-Life, Parody Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Reader Review: It has been nearly a year (or so) since I've done a review. Half of the reason for this is because I've been too busy to be reading much of anything. The other half of the reason is because I've been reading (pretty much) nothing but this series. I don't remember how I was first introduced to the manga series, but it was years ago and probably came to know about it from knowing the anime. Because, let's be honest, every anime originated from some sort of manga. My best friend and I were looking for something to watch one night way back in 2011 (as I said, years ago), and stumbled upon the "Ouran High School Host Club" show. We binge-watched it over the course of a week and loved its humor and the way it constantly broke the 4th wall and parodied many a played-out trope of manga/anime/otaku culture. It must have been from there that I found out it was a manga and started to chip away at it. 7 years later... I only had volumes 1-10 in my possession and I must have only read half of them. Meanwhile, work, life, other books etc, took precedence and Ouran the manga sat on my bookshelf. For the incoming new year, I decided to (try not to) buy any new books and read the ones I had first, starting with the entire Ouran manga series. And finally, I’ve finished.

Let me just say now that I'm going to get very nerdy with this review and talk about things apropos of nothing. And let me also say that, although I love the Ouran TV series, 26 episodes are not enough to do the whole manga story justice. Much like FullMetal Alchemist, Inuyasha, and so on, the manga was an ongoing publication when the idea to turn it into a TV series came about. But the need to have it made into a TV series outweighed the patience to wait for the manga to end, thus the show got a new, original ending, completely separate from how the manga ended. In fact, the manga wouldn’t get its ending until FOUR YEARS after the anime ended. Because of this, a lot of creative liberties were taken for the second half of the show. It's something I both understand and hate about anime adaptations. Like, there wouldn't have been a "FullMetal Alchemist Brotherhood" if the anime creators just let the manga creator finish her series, and then we'd only have one FullMetal Alchemist anime series to save all the confusion. Long story short, the Ouran manga series has so much packed into it, that a lot of the things alluded at in the anime series (Tamaki's relationship with his family, Hikaru's feelings for Haruhi, and so on) make so much more sense now. It really makes me want to re-watch the anime to look out for those subtle nuances portrayed in the manga. ***I will add that there is a live-action TV series and movie for the Ouran series that does take place while the manga was further along than when the anime series was made, but both series were made while the manga was ongoing. Anyway, the manga series itself is a visual feast. It switches up art styles so many times, mostly to show the zany/funny parts, with a consistent, beautiful art style for the more serious parts. You could read the whole manga series in Japanese and still get the gist of the story based on the illustrated panels alone. The dialogue is also equally sharp, with the same ability to go back and forth between a funny moment and a serious moment without the tonal changes being too jarring for the reader. It's a testament to Hatori's storytelling ability that such transitions happen pretty frequently, yet instead of feeling inconsistent or sloppy, the comedic moments hit you that much harder because of how well-timed they're delivered. Better yet, Hatori creates this world of flip-floppy wacky-serious moments and makes you believe that, in this world, such back and forths are totally normal. The dialogue between characters itself feels organic despite some of the topics being absolute nonsense (after all, this series is mostly about boys who are stupid rich and mistake middle-class living for living in poverty), but it adds to the characterization of the Host Club boys (and girl). The characters, much like the situation, are caricatures of tropes long unironically portrayed in mangas that have come before it. Tamaki is the darling charmer who knows just the right mushy thing to say to make the ladies swoon, Mori is the ridiculously strong and stoic type, Hunny is the cavity-inducing cute boy who likes sweets and bunnies and everything pure in the world, etc. And the character of Haruhi, while of course having her own personality, works for the reader as one that the reader can insert themselves into, as she sees the absurdity of the rest of the boys, and the workings of the rich in general, that no one else in the school sees, and reacts accordingly. It makes the reader's transition into this fanciful world easier thanks to Haruhi acting as the bridge between the two. If not for her, the goal of understanding this world, rather than taking it seriously, because it really isn't a series to take all that seriously, would be much harder to do. The cohesion of the main story itself is consistent. This is a series based in romance, after all, and at one point, there is a love square with Haruhi as the object of three boys' affections. While the main story is going on, we get side stories and inside looks into the lives of the Host Club members, which allow for us to get a better understanding of who each of the characters are and why they are the way they are. There's world-building in conjunction with story-building, and that makes for a more well-rounded story. By the last volume, the main story really picks up, but it's also the volume that let me down the most just because of how rushed things felt (despite the last volume actually being the thickest). The main romantic plot is comes to fruition, but the slow build that has been happening since volume 1 becomes a jump from present-day to three months in the future to eight months in the future in volume 17. Don't get me wrong, I loved the little future bits, but it didn't flow with me as well as the rest of the series. Oh, and the ending. I won't spoil much of it, but you really really really have to bear in mind that this is a series of nonsense and that anything can happen because most of the characters are rich enough to make that happen. Despite all of that, the ending, which I can best describe as a "tie it all up in a nice neat bow" happy ending, asks a lot of the reader to accept. It doesn't really provide the characters with the obstacles that I'd hoped for (in the same way that Hunny and Mori graduating high school didn't provide the situation of the Host Club going on without two members in the way I'd expected). If I could just have one more volume to develop the story and relationships just a bit more between the present day and the eight months in the future we’re left off at, I would in a heartbeat. It wasn't that I was dissatisfied, quite the opposite, but more just that I feel there's unexplored opportunity that would've really done justice to the pace and world-building of the rest of the series. With the completion of this manga series, Ouran High School Host Club goes up there as one of my favorites series. Its re-readability is way up there, and its comedic tone is unmatched even today.As Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey” is a parody of Gothic tropes, “Ouran High School Host Club” is a parody of romantic tropes in manga, and if you like humor in your romantic shojo mangas, this is quintessential for you. The series also succeeds in helping me overcome a huge hurdle as the Haruhi/Hikaru shipper I came in as reading this: it made me not only understand, but like Haruhi and Tamaki as a couple. That alone makes it worth the read, and re-read.

[EDIT: Tumblr is apparently a money-hungry schmuck ever since they partnered with Yahoo, and because I used “Ouran High School Host Club” as a tag, they put a Yahoo advertisement on my post like ?????? That’s just icky. Since I’m obviously not going to remove the tag, I just want to say please  DON’T CLICK THE LINK BELOW THAT TUMBLR/YAHOO IS FORCING ON MY OWN PERSONAL POST. I DON’T APPROVE OF IT BEING THERE. Man, Tumblr’s really hit a new low... Anyway, thanks for reading <3 ]

[dgcatanisiri]

Just got some #MakeJaalBi related salt I need to vent out of my system, and I’m putting it here since I know how futile actually arguing the point is. Free to reblog, but I’m not responding to anything.

What do straight women lose in Jaal being made bi? The most they’ve lost is exclusivity to a character. That’s it. Anyone saying that ‘he’s perfect as is’ is implying that him being bisexual, that there would be people rolling male Ryders and romancing him with them would somehow have an effect on them and how they play. That restoring a character’s bisexuality which was cut for whatever reason matters less to them than the fact that they are able to keep exclusive rights to romancing this character.

Why aren’t we asking for more content for the other characters? Oh, believe me, we are. I’d love it if Gil’s character arc were rebuilt from the ground up and expanded to be more than the homophobic afterthought it is now. Hell, if Reyes were better incorporated to the whole game’s story, I’d be on board with romancing him, despite not caring for him as a romance as he is now. BUT there’s a practical component – Jaal’s romance as it is currently, to my understanding, is done in such a way that he rarely if ever uses gender pronouns, and at least some lines were recorded of BroRyder’s voice actor voicing lines for it. So if it comes down to writing entirely new scenes and conversations, dragging the actors back into the studio, and programming all of that into a patch, versus unlocking already recorded dialogue and editing the game files to offer BroRyder, guess what we expect to happen?

Believe me, I’d love it if they’d give Gil new and better content and offer more content for Reyes. Hell, I’d love some new companion included to get that squadmate romance. But that is likely only going to matter for DLC. A lot of us have no interest in paying extra for content that we were led to believe we were getting in the base game. If the only fixes come through DLC – meaning we have to pay an additional fee to get the things advertised as existing in the base game – then there are a lot of people, and not just gay/bi guys but gay/bi women and a lot of our straight allies, who will refuse to do so on principle, on the grounds that they do not want to reward this behavior with their money.

Because this is a shitty way to treat the customer base that they actively court. And BioWare DOES actively court queer players. They have claimed repeatedly that they care about diversity. That they want to offer games for everyone, not just straight male players. But their money was nowhere in the vicinity of their mouth here. It was an active and conscious decision of everyone making the decisions for this game to not have a M/M romanceable squadmate – knowing that these are the characters who get the most content because they are venturing out in the field with the player character – and it was an active and conscious decision to give the least content of all the romances to the male characters romanceable by male PCs. It was a choice to remove/not implement Jaal’s bisexuality.

And BioWare has a history of not implementing male characters’ bisexuality. Kaidan. Thane. Cullen. Solas. All of these characters were at some point intended to be bisexual options and had that cut, for whatever reason. Kaidan at least was able to have it restored later, but the fact that this has happened in a third (out of four!) Mass Effect game says that there’s a pattern of treating M/M romances as something shameful, something that they don’t want to actually implement. From male Shepard not getting to even flirt with another man until ME3, while FemShep had Liara as an option from day one, to Shepard speaking to Kaidan as if the date on the Citadel in ME3 was the first time he’d thought of a relationship with Kaidan, despite flirt options intended and accepted as flirts by Kaidan, to here and now with Ryder, the actions BioWare has taken have completed undermined their words.

The problem is in the broken trust BioWare has left us with. We are an audience who feel betrayed by the people we thought were working to treat us right. And a campaign like #MakeJaalBi is a matter of saying where reparations can be started. We want more and better treatment, to be sure, but this is a start. It’s an apology we believe is both showing an understanding of what was wrong and how to make amends while remaining feasible for the production and development teams.

This isn’t asking that Jaal’s straight romance be removed. Just that it’s available to men and women. If Jaal’s so perfect as he is, why can’t BroRyder get to experience that perfection? What is the harm in there being more to share in the love? I mean, sharing the love seems perfectly in character for the angara. Why would they restrict their love by such arbitrary means? We have the asari openly offering their love for anyone interested, regardless of gender, why shouldn’t the angara be the same?

And, on another note, anyone saying that the saltiness on the part of those asking for this ‘isn’t helping’ clearly doesn’t get it. This is a hurt and burned group of people who want to love this series coming to terms with the fact that it doesn’t love them back. We’re hurt and in pain because we care so much about this franchise, but the way it’s treated us has been lackluster at best, malicious at worst. Of course we’re going to be salty about this. We want to know that we’re being heard and listened to, not just dismissing our words – our expressions of how much this hurt us, the fact that BioWare games are for many of us our primary, even our only source of representation in a world that actively hates us – being just a bunch of whining.

[luucarii]

Fire Emblem Echoes Ramblings

Okaysss so hopefully this won’t be as long as my Persona 5 Ramblings (I’m honestly going to start a “Rambling” series where I just give my opinions on games and anime and just other shit soo)

spoilers and bitching abroad my friends.

edit: most of my bitching is toward the story not the game itself. The gameplay is amazing, save for some few nitpicks I mention down below.

Fire Emblem Echoes. A game I’m extremely conflicted about. Now, this is coming from someone who has only played Awakening and Fates. Echoes was… okay. I don’t think I’ll go back to replay it for a while. Like a long, long while.

Echoes physically drained me after about Act 3. Maybe it was because I was a little high on Persona 5 at the time, maybe it was because I was finishing up school. I don’t know for sure.

Everything just grew so repetitive. The constant “rout the enemy” missions, the lack of memorable map layouts, the lack of memorable anything really. Nothing really stood out to me.

The story, was an extreme slow burn and the amount of exposition was incredible for how simple the overall layout was. The title screen cutscene that plays where Alm and Celica are talking about Duma and Mila perfectly explain what the whole game is going to have you accomplish. Duma’s the bad God and is going mad and with the help of Mila you (or Alm and Celica) are going to have to put him down. I get why they had to have all this fluff in the beginning with the prologue (to establish Alm and Celica’s relationship even though their relationship wasn’t exactly executed properly I feel but I’ll get into that later) but all the other shit involved like why Alm has a Brand and the Masked Man (two “plot twists” that literally anyone could have seen coming - YOU GET THE MEMORY OF CONRAD’S “DEATH” THE BATTLE BEFORE/AFTER YOU MEET HIM HOLY SHIT ITS SO OBVIOUS) was just a bore to me.

The battles were quickly forgotten as well as the named villains you fight. Besides Berkut (who is probably the best villain in the damn game even if he isn’t the main antagonist) and Jedah (who was obviously the main antagonist considering all the cutscenes he was in) I literally only remember Fernand because of his death near the end of the last dungeon. Everyone else who had names and who you were forced to fight are just footnotes because there’s nothing memorable about them. They’re just commanders for Rudolf’s army or are apart of the Duma faithful. Removing their names wouldn’t affect the plot at all.

I feel like the plot as a whole was an attempt to make a simple plot more complex and failed in process. It’s literally a Mila vs Duma fight but all this extra stuff made it drag on longer than my 33ish hours of playtime. And I’m very disappointed because after Fates and Awakening (two games that I genuinely enjoyed) I was looking forward to Echoes. From the trailers and screenshots I was interested in the whole concept of dueling gods but the execution was just subpar for me.

Now, I have one more gripe with the overall story. Alm and Celica. Specifically their relationship. In my personal opinion, Alm and Celica’s relationship seems so forced from the minute the prologue starts. I’ll admit there are a few sparing cute moments here and there but I feel they’re quickly overshadowed once you realize they had only been friends for maybe a good 3-5ish years as children before Mycen took Celica away. You honestly expect me to believe that they continued to want to see each other after 8+ years of being apart? You honestly expect Alm, Gray, Tobin, Faye, everyone to remember Celica from childhood when she was taken away from them at such a young age? I… I just can’t buy it. You can also argue that their fates were intertwined since they both have the Brand and they are the “Children of Fate” but I still can’t swallow that without any lingering thought of bullshit. I never shipped Alm and Celica because I can’t see any actual romantic development with them besides them obviously caring about each other. The fight at the beginning was just a plot device to drive them away from each other and having Celica get momentarily possessed at the end and have Alm kill her was just another cliche and having Mila save her (when to be honest, Celica was better off dead) just made me shrug and say “she’s one of the main protagonists, obviously she won’t die.”

Guys, Nintendo. If you’re going to establish a relationship in one of your games, for fuck’s sake make it at least somewhat likable. Shulk and Fiora (even though Fiora can get a bit bitchy sometimes), Reyn and Sharla both from Xenoblade Chronicles, Link and Zelda from Skyward Sword (specifically). These relationships had development. They grew. Yeah, they had a fight here and there but that wasn’t the only basis as to why they’re loved as a couple. Shulk and Fiora while yes they had their fair bit of problems (mostly the whole revenge relationship plot) you can still see them let their hair down and have fun and Fiora teases Shulk a lot throughout the game. Reyn and Sharla start as a sort of friends while Reyn has to work himself to show Sharla that he can be a man to take care of her after the stuff with Sharla’s fiancé (story shit I won’t get into because spoilers). Link and Zelda (while if only in the first few cutscenes) you can see Zelda poke fun at Link, you can see the care she has for him, HELL THEY EVEN HAVE A FAKEOUT KISS AT THE BEGINNING. During SS you see Zelda grow as she begins to realize her role and Link meanwhile is risking his life all for her, all so he can get back to her.

Alm and Celica, I feel, have none of this. Guys, having them fight at the beginning of the game just to drive a wedge in between them and have them come back together at the end doesn’t make them a good couple if the reason for the fight was overall shit and hypocritical on Celica’s part.  Just… ugh. I’m sorry to any Alm/Celica shippers but I just don’t like them together.

Maybe it’s my bias because I really really don’t like Celica as a character but either way I don’t ship Alm/Celica and there’s nothing that can convince me that they’re good together.

Now, this is already long enough so I’ll sum up the rest of things about  Echoes that disappointed me.

The Supports. Don’t get me wrong, the voice acting is absolutely amazing, one of the best I’ve seen this year. But just… the lack of them compared to Fates and Awakening is so disappointing. Now I get Echoes was based off one of the older games so it’s not completely fair to compare the supports to that of recent games but there’s literally a maximum of 3 supports per character and the supports do literally nothing to show off character. Fates and Awakening’s supports had 3 (4 if it was a marriage support) short bursts of dialogue away from the main game to establish character, likes, dislikes, compatibility with other characters the works. These supports, if anything, are lighthearted pieces of fluff to distract from the somewhat serious tone of the game.

Enemy Variety and Class Variety. Again more I can’t exactly complain about since Echoes was based off an older game and thus took aspects from said older game. But… the amount of Dread Fighters and Barons I saw in the last dungeon just made me hate the classes as a whole (despite two of my best boys Tobin and Kamui being Dread Fighters with Brave Swords who fucked EVERYONE up with crits). Fates and Awakening had such a fun cast of classes, my favorites being Nohr Noble and Assassin and dropping the number of classes just… ugh.

Also, one last quick note. The suddenly difficulty spike is one of the main reasons I considered dropping the game midway through. I played on Normal/Casual (I’m still a newbie leave me alone…) and although I died once, there was a bunch of times where I was sitting in frustration of not knowing what to do. Though as a strategy game, you’re kinda suppose to do that so…

OKAY ENOUGH BITCHING ABOUT THIS GAME, LETS GET INTO THE SHIT I LIKED…which is going to be a few short paragraphs…

The Voice Acting. Holy shit the voice acting. Not only is it featuring some of my favorites (Cherami Leigh, Max Mittelman and the like) but nearly every line is spoken beautifully. Special props to Alm’s voice actor Kyle McCarley who brought me to near tears with some of his lines. Absolutely incredible.

Bows!!! BOWS ARE ACTUALLY GETTING LOVE! I rarely used archers in Awakening but I did pick up using them in Fates (Takumi and Kiragi are incredible) and I fell in love with them here in Echoes. Finally they’re not just limited to 2 spaces and they can hit as far as 5 and just… Python and Leon were my main favorites.

Dungeons. It’s a nice break between battles and they’re interesting locals. But please, Celica, that weird squeak that you have while attacking… just… please stop.

The Design. The character design is something I can’t NOT praise. Everyone looks incredible. While the cutscenes I feel lag a little compared to Fates and Awakening you can’t deny they still look amazing for a 3Ds game.

The Soundtrack. I’m a sucker for good music (one of the reasons why I love XC, Okami, Botw and the like) and a good majority of the tracks on the ost I’m completely in love with. The credits theme especially “The Heritors of Arcadia.” Props to Bonnie Gordon (Silque’s VA) she did an amazing job.

Verdict. Overall, Echoes was okay for me. It was different compared to Fates and Awakening and I knew that going in. I knew there was no marriage system, I knew they were getting rid of the weapon triangle, I knew it was going to be similar to the older games to close divide between the fans before Awakening and after Awakening. And it was a good different in some ways but in most other ways just disappointed me. The fact that I had to force myself to marathon the last dungeon just so I could finish the damn game speaks miles. I was drained. I didn’t want to continue but I did just for the sake of saying I beat it. It didn’t feel like 30 hours of game play for me, it felt like months (which in actuality was nearly two). Like I mentioned, I doubt I’ll pick this game up again anytime soon (while Fates I replayed and beat nearly 6+ times, 2 for each path and Awakening I’ve replayed maybe 3 times I can’t remember). It could’ve been so much more, I feel, if they didn’t try to shove Alm/Celica down my throat and if we could have had some more character development. But eh, that’s just me.

ALSO IM REALLY HAPPY MAE AND BOEY ENDED UP TOGETHER.

[toolgirl2]

Why Does It Take So Long To Publish?

I’m talking more about my upcoming book recently, ramping up, generating interest, and building excitement. But, in exposing more information about the book, more questions have been surfaced, too. Mostly, I hear, “Why does it take so long to publish?”

We’ve all grown accustomed to instant gratification, instant access, instant answers, but writing a book and publishing it professionally, are not instantaneous. Most people don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, so I thought I would share the process. I admit to doing this partially as a defensive move, because many who know me and how fast I move through life, are incredulous that taking an idea from start to finish has taken three years. So, here’s what that has looked like:

The idea is born

I have the idea of a plot, a theme, and for me, an overall goal. What do I want the reader to take away from this book?

The Characters are created

I picture the main character and map out characteristics: What does he/she look like? How old will they be as the story unfolds? What personality traits does he/she have?  For instance, my character is in her late twenties, brunette, average-sized, and mostly alone in the world. She talks to herself a lot and bites her nails when she’s nervous.

In order to plot a believable road-map, the main character must interact with other people. Who will they be? Why are they important? Are they friends she’s had for years? A stranger she meets on the bus? Who is the antagonist? Why Is this person a problem for my main character? What makes their interaction suspenseful?

All of these people must be given names, traits, and extinguishing trademarks, so the reader will know who’s who and relate to people walking in and out of the story. Because they’re all new to me, too,  I usually create an outline to help me initially keep them straight. If I get them confused, or suddenly indicate someone is 40 years old when they were supposed to be 30, the reader will be equally as baffled.  

The Setting is Chosen

Where will this story primarily take place? For me, this starts broad and narrows as I develop the plot. I may start off with something as simple as, “The majority of this story will be in Savannah, Georgia.” I then write out everything I know or research about Savannah: The central highway systems, a few good restaurants, well-known places to visit, the weather, etc. These can then be woven into the story as the character moves along, drives to work, has lunch with a friend, etc.  If a big part of the story begins to take place at work, I will then create that environment. And, so it goes.

Creating and developing the story, the people, the setting, and outlines may take a month or more.

Now we Write

And write and write. Here the manuscript takes on a life of its own as I build in the back story, the dialogue, the bits and pieces which hopefully take the reader along on the journey. This can take a year.

Involve others

Once I have the story arc completed, I ask friends and family to read it. This can take a while, because first I have to convince them to give of their time, and then be unbiased but thorough in their feedback. Are there holes in the plot? Do you relate to the characters? Are there areas that bog down or move too fast?  

Gathering input is time-consuming. There may be a month or more spent on this portion alone. And, more times than not, there are issues with the story. As the author, I know what’s happening and without meaning to, often take shortcuts, or make assumptions. These new readers are not privy to what is in my head and point out areas of concern.

Now we Rewrite

Based on the feedback, chunks of the story need to be re-written, tightened or expanded. Fixing chapter 8 might affect something which happens in chapter 12.  This takes 1-2 months.

Edit

Editing for me, is a four-stage process. I run it through basic software looking for grammar and spelling errors. I then pass it through a more extensive software program looking for repetition, deeper grammatical issues, etc. I read it aloud which always results in me finding something else. I send it off to be professionally edited. This can take anywhere from 2-4 months.   The professional edit involves more re-write so there went another month or so.

Tweak

I can’t seem to leave the book alone at this point. I wake up with a little tweak, a small change, to make the plot smoother, tighter, faster-paced. Give this process another 2 months or so.  Mostly, I’m having a confidence issue at this point. Have I done everything possible? Have I covered all the angles? Is it even interesting?  Eventually,  I have to let it go and trust instinct, but that’s difficult having poured so much into the story.

Create a cover

I am not an artist. I draw terrible stick people. I am, however, creative and usually have an idea for the cover. I research, look for pictures, pick the brains of readers, cruise around Amazon to see what others have done.  Then I get a graphic artist involved.  I don’t care what the powers that be spout; a book is chosen by its cover. This process can take a month.

Get Reviews

I use a professional review company, so this goes quickly. I can expect reviews in about 2 weeks. If nothing is glaring, I then find at least 3 readers who don’t know me well and ask them to read the entire story. This is my last good look before publishing.  If there’s a lingering problem, I’ll know it here.    The whole process takes a month or so.  

Share it with Potential Agents:

I develop what’s called a query letter, which is a one-page compelling (I hope) letter. Here I need a one-sentence hook which encapsulates the story, and a short synopsis. This is harder than writing the book because I have so much to say and so very little space. Sending it out and waiting for responses can take six months. If an agent loves it (and this is speculative as they each have their own preferred genre and input from publishing houses as to what is popular at the time), it will then take approximately 14-18 months to go to print.  Meaning, if they accept my book in January of 2020, it will not be in print until Summer 2021.  I’m not always that patient.

Format

Now the manuscript needs to be formatted into a book ready document.  While it’s in the writing, editing, and review stage, it’s written on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, double spaced with one-inch margins.  Now it needs to be condensed into 6 x 9 pages, with a more considerable left-hand margin to make room for the spine. Chapter Numbers or headings need to be bolded and more substantial. I look for chapters that may have one or two sentences that run over to the next page. I find this irritating as a reader and try to remove such things from my book.  This can take another month to get it ‘look’ right.

Get an Author Copy

I learned the hard way not to simply trust what the book looks like on my computer screen.  So, I order a printed copy and go back through it to ensure it’s pleasing and doesn’t have errors.

Marketing

While I’m waiting for the author's copy to show up and be reviewed, I start getting my marketing campaign together. This requires updates on my webpage, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. I will create an ad, a newspaper posting, and a press release. These need to be timed within a week of the book actually being published and released to the public.  

Between the author copy and the marketing allow at least a month, most likely 6 weeks.

Finally, a release date is set! And this is why it takes three years!

[729renegades]

WEBSITES ARE DEAD! MAYBE NOT….

OK, so maybe I worded that badly.

Last month I tackled the death of websites as we know them, and since publishing that article, many of my peers have shot me down, in much the same way as a blasphemer would have been in the dark ages for saying there was no god or that the earth was round.

In fact, at the time of writing the article, I had employed the services of one of the top UK digital agencies to help with my click-through conversions to boost the effectiveness of my online advertising.

From the start I was quite clear that I did not want to mess around with web pages and in fact, I was unwavering, that from the outset all of my new ad-words lead generating traffic would be driven to one of my Infusionsoft CRM Landing Pages.

A month into the deal, the vendor having agreed with these terms then proceeded to tell me that the sophisticated page design needed to drive traffic could not be generated by the CRM Landing Page.

What utter BS.

Firstly, all of the very high end direct marketing gurus emphatically protest sophisticated landing pages.

Secondly, I was always told that simplicity and downright ugly works best.

So, I cancelled the contract and demanded a refund after sending them a copy of my article for last month… Boy did the shit hit the fan.

I was told that: far from websites being dead, they were critical to the growth of business and at no time had they or my previous mentors ever suggested otherwise. OK, so was I confused, had I misread the message?

Over the last month I’ve done some serious soul searching and I still believe that what I said is true. There is no doubt that websites are what got me to where I am now, and I can still remember when Google AdWords were called Overture. Yup, I’ve been in this game a lot longer than most.

There is no doubt that over the years, the purpose and role that a website plays in your overall marketing strategy has changed. For some, it’s remained the same from day one. But, for others that embrace the technological advancements that we enjoy, the role it plays too must adapt with the ever changing way we engage with our customers.

As an example, and by way of explanation, then when I first set up a website for my business way back in 1999, it was an info site, its purpose was to let people know what I did and what my products were. My sales were driven by people phoning in and ordering.

Then as time progressed, I changed my whole site from an info site to a shopping cart and watched as engagement plummeted. The market was not ready for a direct buy now with no back story. So, I changed it back to an info site which is what it’s been ever since. For a period, the site had a shopping cart functionality which ticked over, but never did big numbers. I guess that’s because I sell high end and people want to have a natter before they commit.

The shopping cart functionality and the online purchase were removed from my site along with the price list 4 years ago.

“No price list?” I hear you say, “WTF is the man mad?”

Yup, no doubt about it, but when you have prices which are 10x the average, you need to engage with the customer, you need to have a dialogue and ease them into paying so much more. In the early days, the sales process went something like this:

Gardening Show > Flyer > Website > Call > Buy

Or

Magazine Article > Website > Call > Buy

The purpose of the website was to inform, and as a result my site has always featured videos. Since upgrading my website 4 years ago, 2 more site overhauls have been instigated but never completed. “Why?” you ask.

too damn complicated

not fast enough to respond

by far too much specialist help required

Plus, and the most important reason, most of my traffic comes from AdWord Pay Per Click marketing

So, do I really want to spend a large amount of money on website overhaul when all of my traffic comes from an AdWord or a call from a referral? NO.

The website, as a whole, has a purpose for organic search; people who find you organically then go to see what you are about. But they have a lot of stuff to get through, and it can be hard work when you have a lot to share, so they leave either because you try to feed them too much or too little.

Nope, in my opinion it’s much better to drive people to a Landing Page, this is what I’ve always been taught.

A Landing Page for every product

AdWords Campaign for every Landing Page

Squeeze Page for every enquiry

A targeted email sequence for every Squeeze Page enquiry which relates to that product and that product alone

And an optional up-sell to other products on the Thank You page

This is a true marketing system or machine. It puts you in control of the info that the prospect gets. You’re in the driving seat of how they get it and when they get it, plus it gives you a database of potential, interested, customers, much better than just a website.

So, there’s some overlap between having a Website and a Landing Page, namely that your website can just be a lot of landing pages and, yup, that’s fine if you’re in control of how that all works and functions; but I’m not computer savvy, and modern websites I find difficult to build, Word Press is supposed to be easy, but I find it’s not. So, hence back to my CRM Infusionsoft which can host the Landing Page and control the traffic and information feed.

No, I’m firmly of the belief that, as CRM’s become better, there will be no need for a website and the faster you get in control of the information fed to your customer, the higher the quality of customer you will attract. I’ve just rebuilt my 3 main Landing Pages and 2 weeks ago spent 8 hours in front of a camera shooting new videos, not for the website, for new subject related Landing Pages to drive traffic to take action.

Simplicity and Downright Ugly Works Best

Personally, for me, a website is an online brochure where people can browse but with little commitment to part with valuable information. But they’ll only find the website if they already know of you or you feature high in the rankings. If I’m going to pay good money for someone to look at my page, I definitely don’t want them browsing, I want fast action.

Let’s be honest here, look at any of the big boys of digital marketing: Frank Kern, Russell Brunson, GKIC, Chris Cardell, Dan Kennedy, Lisa Sasevich, Kim Walsh Phillips, Bob Proctor. They all use Landing pages either from a Google AdWord Campaign or from a Facebook ad from a referral link.

The one thing that stands out when you look at what they are doing: the page is simple and formulated. They ask direct questions to get direct responses. There is a wallet-opener opportunity and active engagement; you go directly into a structured multi step marketing email sequence.

Not once are you sent back to a website.

I say that again: after first engagement, you are never ever sent back to a website.

I guess what I’m saying then is: ‘What’s the point?’

If your CRM can host webpages, and you can build them quickly and easily, and

if your business is driven by advertising through Google, Facebook or LinkedIn; it’s simple landing pages that answer the direct question that the prospect was asking in the search phrase. So, what better medium than a targeted, content specific, landing page with a direct call to action?

Ok, so I hope I’m making sense… Just a couple of things that I need to clarify:

Primarily from an ad, you need to drive the prospect to a landing page. After an action is taken on a landing page, you can drive the prospect to an email sequence. You must not go directly from an ad to an email sequence.

I guess this is what my mentors were getting at when the shit hit the fan, because most people don’t have a CRM that can build Landing Pages, and therefore would need to do that within a website.

In their minds a Word Press site can hold a basic 10-page website, giving all the cotton wool experience that a prospect may expect, but within the fluffy organic pages you also keep 100’s of different landing pages, pages designed for one purpose alone: to make them give up their personal contact details so that you can send them stuff.

As I write this, I’m just getting my bags ready to fly to America to attend Dan Kennedy’s ‘Marketing to the Affluent’ 3-day seminar in Cleveland.

So, in next month’s edition, I’ll give you an update on what’s hot and what’s not in this arena.

from Blog | 729renegades http://bit.ly/2IKQsHe

[dragnews]

Vietnam set to tighten clamps on Facebook and Google, threatening…

HANOI/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – A struggle over internet laws in Vietnam is pitting a government keen on maintaining tight control against U.S. technology companies trying to fight off onerous new rules – with the country’s online dissidents among the biggest losers.

Rights activist Le Van Dung (R) live streams on Facebook in a coffee shop in Hanoi, Vietnam May 15, 2018. Picture taken May 15, 2018. REUTERS/Kham

The latest conflict centers on new cybersecurity legislation set for a vote by Vietnamese lawmakers later this month. It aims to impose new legal requirements on internet companies, and hardens policing of online dissent.

Facebook, Google and other global companies are pushing back hard against provisions that would require them to store data on Vietnamese users locally and open offices in the country. But they have not taken the same tough stance on parts of the proposed law that would bolster the government’s crackdown on online political activism.

Vietnam offers a case study in the conflicting pressures the likes of Facebook and Google confront when operating in countries with repressive governments. It also shows how authoritarian regimes try to walk a line in controlling online information and suppressing political activism without crippling the digital economy.

Such tensions are playing out across Southeast Asia, where the enormous popularity of Facebook and Google has created lucrative business opportunities and outlets for political dissent. With that, though, has come both government censorship and a way to get propaganda to large audiences efficiently.

The region is particularly important for Facebook and Google because most Internet users in China are blocked from accessing them.

An industry group called the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) is leading efforts to soften the proposed cyber law in Vietnam. Jeff Paine, managing director of the AIC, said he and others were able to raise concerns about the law directly with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and other top government officials when they visited Singapore last month.

The discussions took place as part of a seminar about internet issues that included academics, industry officials and the high-level Vietnamese delegation, according to Paine. He said there was “a healthy dialogue” that focused mostly on how Vietnam can leverage the next stages of the digital revolution.

But he said there was no discussion of content restrictions.

The Vietnamese government did not respond to a request from Reuters for comment for this article.

Political activists in Vietnam rely on social media to rally support, and the new cyber law comes on the heels of an April letter from more than 50 rights groups and activists to Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg accusing the company of working too closely with the Vietnamese government to stifle dissent.

Facebook and Google say they have to abide by local laws in the countries where they operate.     

Facebook’s latest “transparency report,” released Tuesday, shows that in the second half of last year, the company began blocking content in Vietnam for violations of local law for the first time. The company reported 22 such instances – though it said they were prompted by “private reports of defamation” rather than direct government requests.

Google last year also blocked YouTube videos at the request of the government for the first time. Updated figures released Friday show the company was asked to remove more than 6500 videos in 2017, mostly for criticizing the government, and that it complied with a majority of the requests.

A man uses an iPad device in a coffee shop in Hanoi, Vietnam May 18, 2018. REUTERS/Kham

The transparency reports do show that the companies don’t automatically do the bidding of the government. Facebook said it had received 12 government requests for Facebook user account data in 2017 and complied with only 4 of them, all of which were “emergency” requests. The company defines an emergency as involving “imminent risk of serious physical injury or death.”

In cases where content is alleged to violate local law, both companies say takedown requests are subject to legal review, and when they comply the material is only blocked locally.

Direct government censorship requests don’t tell the whole story though.

Facebook also removes content and blocks accounts for violating its own global “community standards,” which bar material and behaviors ranging from posting pornography to hate speech and inciting violence.

“The first thing we do when a government tells us about content that violates laws is we look at whether it violates our standards,” said Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of global policy management. The company this week began providing data on community standards violations but does not break it down by country.

“My account was blocked for 8 months,” said Le Van Dung, an independent journalist in Vietnam who signed the letter to Zuckerberg. “I sent letters to Facebook management for months but there’s only an automatic reply saying they have completed your request.”

His account was restored last month, the day after the appeal to Zuckerberg was sent, he said.

Facebook said Dung’s account was correctly removed for violating community standards provisions barring “spam” activities and was restored by mistake. Dung denies engaging in spam. He did, though, have more than one account. Multiple accounts are not allowed on Facebook and fall within the company’s definition of spam behavior.

TIGHTENING THE SCREWS

Vietnam has had tough internet regulations in place since 2013. They ban any postings that are anti-government, harm national security, cause “hatred and conflicts” or “hurt the prestige of organizations and individuals.”

The rules also ban social media users who “spread fake or untruthful information.”

New rules implemented in 2017 tightened the screws further. One turning point, according to Yee Chung Seck, an attorney in the Ho Chi Minh City office of the international law firm Baker McKenzie, was an April 2017 meeting convened by the government to discuss a range of Internet ills including disinformation, hate speech and bullying.

Slideshow (2 Images)

That came just after the government called on all companies doing business in the country to stop advertising on YouTube, Facebook and other social media until they found a way to halt the publication of “toxic” anti-government information.

Yet another decree implemented last month stated that social media platforms had to remove illegal content within three hours of it being reported by the government, though Paine said the rule applies only to domestic companies.

Still, Facebook and Google don’t seem to be under any imminent threat given how deeply they have penetrated into Vietnam society.

About 55 million of Vietnam’s 96 million people are regular social media users, according to research by Simon Kemp, a digital media consultant based in Singapore.

Facebook, YouTube and Google Search are far and away the most popular internet destinations, Kemp’s data shows. Facebook is also the most popular platform for online shopping in Vietnam.

And the government is eager to nurture the country’s digital economy: smartphones and all that they enable, especially e-commerce and online banking, are transforming economies across Asia, and no one wants to be left behind.

“They love that part of the story,” said Chung.

But the government also wants more control, including local data storage and local corporate offices – a provision company officials privately fear is designed to allow the government to intimidate companies by exposing individuals to arrest.

Both Facebook and Google serve Vietnam from their regional headquarters in Singapore.

The new law also gives more power to Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security, which is tasked with crushing dissent in the communist-ruled country.

Facebook said it expected the new rules would require it to restrict more content. Google declined to comment.

LONG JAIL TERMS

For the rights activists, there appears to be little hope of relief.

For example, just this month, a Facebook user in Vietnam was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail for posts which “distorted the political situation,” according to a statement posted on an official Communist Party website.

Still, Facebook remains an important tool for activists in Vietnam – a country where government criticism is rarely tolerated and the battle between the authorities and dissidents is a game of cat-and-mouse.

“Sometimes we use Facebook to distract authorities, like we pretend to discuss an important meeting, which obviously won’t happen,” activist Nguyen Lan Thang said. “Then we watch from afar and laugh as they surround our fake meeting spot,” Thang added.

Additional reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Martin Howell

The post Vietnam set to tighten clamps on Facebook and Google, threatening… appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2KAW7x4 via Today News

[toolgirl2]

Why Does It Take So Long To Publish?

I’m talking more about my upcoming book recently, ramping up, generating interest, and building excitement. But, in exposing more information about the book, more questions have surfaced. Mostly, I hear, “Why does it take so long to publish?”

We’ve all grown accustomed to instant gratification, instant access, instant answers, but writing a book and publishing it professionally, are not instantaneous. Most people don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, so I thought I would share the process. I admit to doing this partially as a defensive move, because many who know me and how fast I move through life, are incredulous that taking an idea from start to finish has taken three years. So, here’s what that has looked like:

The idea is born

I have the idea of a plot, a theme, and for me, an overall goal. What do I want the reader to take away from this book?

The Characters are created

I picture the main character and map out characteristics: What does he/she look like? How old will they be as the story unfolds? What personality traits does he/she have?  For instance, my character is in her late twenties, brunette, average-sized, and mostly alone in the world. She talks to herself a lot and bites her nails when she’s nervous.

In order to plot a believable road-map, the main character must interact with other people. Who will they be? Why are they important? Are they friends she’s had for years? A stranger she meets on the bus? Who is the antagonist? Why Is this person a problem for my main character? What makes their interaction suspenseful?

All of these people must be given names, traits, and extinguishing trademarks, so the reader will know who’s who and relate to people walking in and out of the story. Because they’re all new to me, too,  I usually create an outline to help me initially keep them straight. If I get them confused, or suddenly indicate someone is 40 years old when they were supposed to be 30, the reader will be equally as baffled.  

The Setting is Chosen

Where will this story primarily take place? For me, this starts broad and narrows as I develop the plot. I may start off with something as simple as, “The majority of this story will be in Savannah, Georgia.” I then write out everything I know or research about Savannah: The central highway systems, a few good restaurants, well-known places to visit, the weather, etc. These can then be woven into the story as the character moves along, drives to work, has lunch with a friend, etc.  If a big part of the story begins to take place at work, I will then create that environment. And, so it goes.

Creating and developing the story, the people, the setting, and outlines may take a month or more.

Now we Write

And write and write. Here the manuscript takes on a life of its own as I build in the back story, the dialogue, the bits and pieces which hopefully take the reader along on the journey. This can take a year.

Involve others

Once I have the story arc completed, I ask friends and family to read it. This can take a while, because first I have to convince them to give of their time, and then be unbiased but thorough in their feedback. Are there holes in the plot? Do you relate to the characters? Are there areas that bog down or move too fast?  

Gathering input is time-consuming. There may be a month or more spent on this portion alone. And, more times than not, there are issues with the story. As the author, I know what’s happening and without meaning to, often take shortcuts, or make assumptions. These new readers are not privy to what is in my head and point out areas of concern.

Now we Rewrite

Based on the feedback, chunks of the story need to be re-written, tightened or expanded. Fixing chapter 8 might affect something which happens in chapter 12.  This takes 1-2 months.

Edit

Editing for me, is a four-stage process. I run it through basic software looking for grammar and spelling errors. I then pass it through a more extensive software program looking for repetition, deeper grammatical issues, etc. I read it aloud which always results in me finding something else. I send it off to be professionally edited. This can take anywhere from 2-4 months.   The professional edit involves more re-write so there went another month or so.

Tweak

I can’t seem to leave the book alone at this point. I wake up with a little tweak, a small change, to make the plot smoother, tighter, faster-paced. Give this process another 2 months or so.  Mostly, I’m having a confidence issue at this point. Have I done everything possible? Have I covered all the angles? Is it even interesting?  Eventually,  I have to let it go and trust instinct, but that’s difficult having poured so much into the story.

Create a cover

I am not an artist. I draw terrible stick people. I am, however, creative and usually have an idea for the cover. I research, look for pictures, pick the brains of readers, cruise around Amazon to see what others have done.  Then I get a graphic artist involved.  I don’t care what the powers that be spout; a book is chosen by its cover. This process can take a month.

Get Reviews

I use a professional review company, so this goes quickly. I can expect reviews in about 2 weeks. If nothing is glaring, I then find at least 3 readers who don’t know me well and ask them to read the entire story. This is my last good look before publishing.  If there’s a lingering problem, I’ll know it here.    The whole process takes a month or so.  

Share it with Potential Agents:

I develop what’s called a query letter, which is a one-page compelling (I hope) letter. Here I need a one-sentence hook which encapsulates the story, and a short synopsis. This is harder than writing the book because I have so much to say and so very little space. Sending it out and waiting for responses can take six months. If an agent loves it (and this is speculative as they each have their own preferred genre and input from publishing houses as to what is popular at the time), it will then take approximately 14-18 months to go to print.  Meaning, if they accept my book in January of 2020, it will not be in print until Summer 2021.  I’m not always that patient.

Format

Now the manuscript needs to be formatted into a book ready document.  While it’s in the writing, editing, and review stage, it’s written on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, double spaced with one-inch margins.  Now it needs to be condensed into 6 x 9 pages, with a more considerable left-hand margin to make room for the spine. Chapter Numbers or headings need to be bolded and more substantial. I look for chapters that may have one or two sentences that run over to the next page. I find this irritating as a reader and try to remove such things from my book.  This can take another month to get it ‘look’ right.

Get an Author Copy

I learned the hard way not to simply trust what the book looks like on my computer screen.  So, I order a printed copy and go back through it to ensure it’s pleasing and doesn’t have errors.

Marketing

While I’m waiting for the author's copy to show up and be reviewed, I start getting my marketing campaign together. This requires updates on my web page, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. I will create an ad, a newspaper posting, and a press release. These need to be timed within a week of the book actually being published and released to the public.  

Between the author copy and the marketing allow at least a month, most likely 6 weeks.

Finally, a release date is set! And this is why it takes three years!

[spryfilm]

“Baby Driver” (2017)

Action

Running Time: 113 minutes

Written & Directed by: Edgar Wright

Featuring:  Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Jon Bernthal

Doc: “So here’s the thing, I’m looking at some of the country’s finest thugs and of course young Mozart in a go-cart over there. People love great bank robbery stories, so let’s give them something full and brazen as fuck to talk about over their lattes.”

After much anticipation Edgar Wright’s career course correction has arrived, after leaving the super hero project “Ant-Man” (2015), (which in fact turned out very well thank you) he has brought to the screen an almost entirely original proposition. In seeing this weeks new release “Baby Driver” (2017), we can only wonder what his vision of the diminutive super hero may have been. To be frank I was shocked watching this new film as it hits the mark on almost every cylinder, it is full of action, drama, comedy, music and thrills, all packed in at under two hours, pedestrian by the lengths of some of the movies released this Summer – especially considering some of them go absolutely nowhere.

After all the shenanigans with mates Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, as well as the overtly pop culture referenced work of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World“ (2010) it is great to see him create something (albeit with a nod towards Walter Hills now classic “The Driver” (1979)) original as well as slick not forgetting smart. This feels like the movie that Wright has promised for so long after the double hits of “Shaun of the Dead” (2004) and “Hot Fuzz” (2007). With “Baby Driver”, Wright has built a film around solid if not extreme characters, that are all driving towards goals that while not unified are understandable in the world they are living in. When you watch this movie it works because of the nature of the narrative that builds the plot which is the use of scene appropriate music that frames almost every scene, whether believable or not. This is a fantasy, a dream that asks us to leave real life at the door, welcome the madness as well as holding on to our seats for a truly unique experience.

The film is centred around Baby (Ansel Elgort), a young getaway driver in Atlanta, Georgia. When he was a child, a car accident killed his parents and left him with severe tinnitus, which he blocks out by listening to music. He also records his everyday conversations and remixes them into songs using vintage audio equipment. Baby works for Doc (Kevin Spacey), a mastermind heist planner, to pay off a debt he incurred after stealing one of Doc’s cars. Baby lives with his deaf foster father, Joseph. After pulling off a robbery, Baby is told that the next job will pay off his debt. Baby meets waitress Debora (Lily James) at a diner he frequents, and they fall in love.

Wright has done something few writer/directors are capable of, that is he has reinvented his style to accomodate a new movie. Now while the pace of this film is quick, the actual editing and the way we shift from scene to scene is not. This is in contrast to Wright’s previous films, pretty much all of them, where the audience would be taken from scene to scene with a frenetic style that may have been hiding some of the flaws that were hidden within the plot. Whilst music has always played a large part in Wright’s movies this is the first time he has injected them into the narrative without them being a crux that the move relies on. What I mean by this is if you remove the music from this movie you still have a heist/chase film. With the music added you are witness to a deeper story that invigorates the characters motivations – something special indeed.

The plot of this movie is something audiences have seen many times before, you know, the one about a person trapped in a situation that they cannot extricate themselves from, but can see a way out, particularly after meeting a third party, which normally turns into their love interest. However, this films plot is framed by the well thought out, as well as the soundtrack, full of deep cuts which opens with the toe tappingly great Jon Spencer Blues Explosion ‘Bellbottoms’, where Baby and his crew rob a bank, this plays while they make their outrageous getaway, something that hints at the pace for the rest of the film. The opening also makes a statement about the movie as well as Wright saying “I have arrived!”, in the loudest way possible. Most, if not all the music is diegetic which is unique in itself without the movie being a musical, although at times this movie has many of the same beats as a musical – witness the opening credits sequence with Baby moving in a single shot to the original ‘Harlem Shuffle’, as well as the ending all choreographed to the amazing ‘Brighton Rock’ by Queen. Baby moves as well as drives like a dancer, and the car fu (if you will) beats almost anything seen in the ‘Fast’ franchise, seemingly without the massive CGI that is needed for those behemoths.

Talking about Baby, played by relative newcomer Ansel Elgort, is a character that almost reaches the heights Wright had for him, but maybe his face is a little too baby, without the lived in physique another actor may have had – they try and rough him up by scarring him, but he is almost too pretty – maybe even prettier than leading lady Lilly James – who in my mind seems a little too twee for the part as well as out of her depth in the role. However none of this really matters when the stars come out to play with some of the best dialogue around, they chew it up and roughhouse with each other like the pros they are. Witness Kevin Spacey as ‘Doc’ (an obvious homage to Steve McQueen) who runs the show, Jon Bernthal as Griff (seen all too briefly) and Eiza González as Darling a a lovingly twisted partner to the scene stealing (saying that in this film is a real compliment) Jon Hamm as Buddy.

Speaking of the absolute best performances, they come from the aforementioned John Hamm as Buddy and Jamie Foxx as way too crazy Bats. It can be no mistake that these two actors have the best roles as well as give the best performances; they are polar opposites in this and are set up against each other for most of their time onscreen. However, it is Hamm in the bigger and more defining role that steals the entire movie – including the music. Hamm shines like no other time onscreen in his career, here he is not relying on his winking at the camera or chiseled looks, it is just his menace as well as his complete understanding of Baby that makes his part in this film timeless. Foxx is excellent as well in a dangerous role that sparks the entire third act into motion as well as offering some menacing looks and dialogue, he is always great, but here like Hamm he is off the hook, unlike anything I have seen him in since possibly “Django Unchained” (2012). These two performances are reason enough to see this movie at the cinemas.

Judging from the box office success of this film, quickly approaching US$100 million at the US box office alone this will be one of the bigger success of this Summer season, given that this is an original movie, much like “Dunkirk” (2017) which at this stage looks like it too will be a big success. It can be no coincidence that these two original films (both written and directed by Englishmen) will be surpassing expectations, unlike the glut of sequels, reboots and comic book movies which have mostly lagged behind expectations both critically and financially. What does this say about the tastes of audiences, for one thing maybe its time that more original movies were being made and that filmmakers should be left alone to create original properties?

If you want to see an excellent action/thriller movie this year then this will be the one for you. You will definitely get a kick out of the music as well as the interplay with Baby, as well as the rest of the cast. This is a modestly budgeted film with a cast that is worth their weight in gold. You would be crazy to not see this on the big screen with the volume turned up to 11.

Oh yeah, and look out for the great Paul Williams dressed in a white suit – priceless.

Track list:

Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – ‘Bellbottoms’

Bob & Earl – ‘Harlem Shuffle’

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers – ‘Egyptian Reggae’

Googie Rene – ‘Smokey Joe’s La La’

The Beach Boys – ‘Let’s Go Away For Awhile’

Carla Thomas – ‘B-A-B-Y’

Kashmere Stage Band – ‘Kashmere’

Dave Brubeck – ‘Unsquare Dance’

The Damned – ‘Neat Neat Neat’

The Commodores – ‘Easy (Single Version)’

Rex – ‘Debora’

Beck – ‘Debra’

Incredible Bongo Band – ‘Bongolia’

The Detroit Emeralds – ‘Baby Let Me Take You (in My Arms)’

Alexis Korner – ‘Early In The Morning’

David McCallum – ‘The Edge’

Martha and the Vandellas – ‘Nowhere To Run’

The Button Down Brass – ‘Tequila’

Sam & Dave – ‘When Something Is Wrong With My Baby’

Brenda Holloway – ‘Every Little Bit Hurts’

Blur – ‘Intermission’

Focus – ‘Hocus Pocus (Original Single Version)’

Golden Earring – ‘Radar Love (1973 Single Edit)’

Barry White – ‘Never, Never Gone Give Ya Up’

Young MC – ‘Know How’

Queen – ‘Brighton Rock’

Sky Ferreira – ‘Easy’

Simon & Garfunkel – ‘Baby Driver’

Kid Koala – ‘Was He Slow (Credit Roll Version)’

DVD & Blu-ray review: “Baby Driver” (2017) “Baby Driver” (2017) Action Running Time: 113 minutes Written & Directed by: Edgar Wright Featuring:  Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey, Lily James, Eiza González, Jon Hamm, Jamie Foxx, and Jon Bernthal…