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twh-news · 3 years ago

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To land ‘Loki,’ Kate Herron had to pull out all the stops. How she won over Marvel

As a teenager, Kate Herron was obsessed with the “Lord of the Rings” films.

In particular, she recalls heading to theaters repeatedly with friends who shared her passion to see “The Two Towers” (2002), the second installment in director Peter Jackson’s trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy novel. She even wrote “Lord of the Rings” fan fiction.

“It was very silly,” the British filmmaker insists, revealing that one of her stories saw the heroic Fellowship traveling through a magical fountain and getting trapped in New York. “Honestly, I was just writing the stories to make my friends laugh. I guess it was kind of that first foray for me: ‘How do I tell a story?’”

Years later, Herron is again involved in telling a story about a protagonist displaced from the world he knows. But this time, her audience is much bigger.

Herron, 33, is the director of “Loki,” the Marvel Studios series that follows the adventures of the titular god of mischief after he has been plucked out of time by an agency charged with maintaining the sanctity of the timeline. Thus, the six-episode series, which premiered earlier this month on Disney+, features a slightly different version of Loki than the fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have grown to love since his first appearance in “Thor” (2011) through “Avengers: Endgame” (2019).

“I love villains,” says Herron during a recent video call from Atlanta, where she is putting the final touches on “Loki.” “I think that if a villain’s done right, you don’t necessarily have to like their actions, but you have to understand them. And I think that Tom [Hiddleston], in the last decade, has brought such empathy and wit and pain to a very real character for so many people. I just wanted to be part of whatever [Loki’s] next chapter was going to be.”

The series, on which the self-described Loki fan also serves as an executive producer, is Herron’s highest-profile project to date. Her previous credits include directing on Netflix’s “Sex Education,” as well as “Five by Five,” a series of short films executive produced by Idris Elba.

While growing up in South East London, Herron never considered filmmaking as a career. Her love of movies manifested as the aspiration to become an actor, and she often goaded her peers into putting on plays or making movies using a friend’s father’s camcorder. It wasn’t until some astute and encouraging teachers at Herron’s secondary school pointed out that she seemed more interested in storytelling that she changed course.

By introducing Herron to new texts, these teachers — as well as a film studies class that covered films directed by Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa — helped expand her perspective.

“I just didn’t know that you could have a voice and an authorship over a film, which probably sounds a bit silly. But I just hadn’t really thought about films in that way,” says Herron. Soon enough, she was on the path to film school at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, England, where she graduated with a degree in film production.

Herron laughs as she remembers how she believed she would just go off and find work in film straight out of school. “Obviously that did not happen,” she says.

With no post-graduate roadmap (or job offer) to help her break into the industry, Herron eventually started writing and directing short films with “no money” while juggling a day job as a temp. Both experiences provided Herron with material for “Loki,” which introduces a new bureaucratic agency called the Time Variance Authority to the MCU.

“I’ve worked at a lot of random places, which weirdly has influenced ‘Loki’ in some ways because we have this office culture kind of running through it,” says Herron. “I’ve worked in a lot of offices.”

In order to give the retro-futuristic offices of the TVA “a real lived-[in], breathed-in office” feel, Herron incorporated details that viewers could recognize from the real world — from paper files to the posters on the walls — and gave them a fantastical twist befitting the superhero series.

“One of the most exciting things to me about Kate is she has this amazing attention to detail,” says “Loki” co-executive producer Kevin Wright. “That was something that we saw on her very first pitch [and] it works its way into every frame of the show. Every monitor, every piece of paper in the TVA … she has looked over and approved everything you see.”

In an email, “Loki” star Hiddleston described Herron as “a dream collaborator” who possesses “a unique combination of extraordinary diligence, stamina, energy, respect and kindness.”

“Her affection for and understanding of Loki was so deep, profound and wide-ranging,” Hiddleston wrote. “She built a new world for these characters to play in with incredible precision, but she was also acutely sensitive to their emotional journey.”

Herron’s affinity for outsiders is apparent throughout the course of our conversation. There is of course her love for Loki — the heir to the king of Frost Giants raised as the prince of Asgard who has become one of the MCU’s most beloved villain-turned-antiheroes. Herron’s first introduction to the world of Marvel as a kid was through “X-Men: The Animated Series,” about the superhero team with mutant powers that set them apart from average humans. Herron cites Lisa Simpson — the overachieving, opinionated middle child from the animated sitcom “The Simpsons�� — as the reason she is a vegetarian who can play the saxophone.

And although Herron describes herself as shy, it’s no match for the passion she brings to discussing film and television.

She calls Wes Anderson’s 2001 film “The Royal Tenenbaums,” co-written by “Loki” actor Owen Wilson, “a perfect movie.” In addition to being obsessed with “The Simpsons,” Herron gravitated toward genre shows such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the updated “Battlestar Galactica” and “The X-Files” when growing up.

As Herron enthusiastically dives into “Loki’s” influences — which include “Alien” (1979), “Blade Runner” (1982), “Brazil” (1985), “Metropolis” (1927) and, yes, even “Teletubbies” — it’s easy to see why Wright knew she was the right person to bring “Loki” to life from their very first meeting.

Upon learning that Marvel was developing a show about Loki, Herron tasked her agents with calling Marvel every day until they would meet with her. And it worked.

“I was just so excited that somebody was chasing the project,” says Wright. “Which sounds crazy, that Marvel would be excited somebody’s chasing us. But it was the early days of us trying to get this Disney+ streaming stuff off the ground, so people were very hesitant … they didn’t know what it was yet.”

Herron’s enthusiasm for the show landed her a video meeting with Wright and executive producer Stephen Broussard. Believing it might be her only shot at the project, Herron came armed with so many stills and clips to illustrate her discussion of the scripts she’d been sent that a simple meet-and-greet turned into a four-hour conversation.

“Over the course of the next week or so,” Wright explains, ��it was really figuring out how to set Kate up to succeed when we got her in front of Kevin Feige to pitch this.”

Herron put together a 60-page bible of ideas for the characters, the story, the visual references and more. The rest is Marvel history.

She learned not to wait for permission, she says, after graduating from film school and becoming involved with improv and stand-up to both develop her comedy chops and to meet funny collaborators to be in her short films.

“I think I’d always find excuses, almost, [to not do it],” says Herron. “It was that thing of being like, ‘Oh, well, I’m not ready. So I’ll wait. I’ll wait until I’m perfect at it and then I’ll go do it.’”

Taking inspiration from Robert Rodriguez’s “Rebel Without a Crew” and a SXSW keynote speech by Mark Duplass, Herron realized that she just needed to start making things. She told herself it was OK if the films were messy. If a short was bad, nobody had to see it. If a short was “halfway to good,” she would submit them to festivals.

It’s this tenacious creativity that connects the dots between her early fan fiction, her short films, her pitch presentations — and now “Loki” itself. It’s a trait that has helped her navigate the industry to her current success, even during the periods it’s been most frustrating. As a female director, “I got asked crazy stuff in interviews sometimes,” she says of life on the festival circuit. “I remember being asked, ‘Are you sure you’re ready? Are you sure you’re ready?’ And male colleagues of mine were never asked that in interviews. I think that’s probably why I was so driven to just go out and make stuff.”

#loki #loki series #kate herron #interview #los angeles times #article

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a-duck-with-a-book · 4 years ago

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REVIEW // Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

★★★★★

Before I get into my rant, here is my very quick review where I parrot what everyone else has been saying:

Beautifully written, Bone Gap is a refreshingly different YA novel with a hypnotizing narrative and fascinating characters. I loved seeing their stories revealed amidst the magical realism of the story. Bone Gap itself was a fantastic setting that functioned almost as an extra character.

TL;DR -> read this book!

I've talked before about how much I enjoy many of the retellings in YA in a previous review, and this book once again shows why this trend deserves more academic attention. For anyone who isn't aware (which I certainly wasn't until I got about 60% of the way through the book... oops), Bone Gap draws from the story of Hades and Persephone. The myth of how the goddess of spring came to be in the Underworld has been a popular story for millennia, and in the past few decades it has (rightfully) faced some not-so-favorable scrutiny.

// image: official cover art Melissa Castrillon //

Largely, complaints stem from the kidnapping and r*pe of Persephone in most classical versions of the tale:

"He was riding on a chariot drawn by immortal horses. The son of Kronos. The one known by many names. / He seized her against her will, put her on his golden chariot, / And drove away as she wept. She cried with a piercing voice, / calling upon her father [Zeus], the son of Kronos, the highest and the best."

Homeric Hymn to Demeter, translated by Gregory Nagy

As I mentioned in my Circe review, the "retelling" of older myths and folk tales is by no means new-rather, humans have been adapting the stories each generation was raised with to suit their new needs and values. Stories meant to teach young girls how to prepare to become dutiful and doting wives in arranged marriages to ugly, older, and perhaps violent husbands (think the traditional versions of Beauty and the Beast) become tales of headstrong women who want more for themselves and *gasp* know how to read! See this description of Belle from the 18th century version by Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beautmont, then compare it with the "misfit", not-like-other girls bookworm of the Disney movies:

"When they came to their country house, the merchant and his three sons applied themselves to husbandry and tillage; and Beauty rose at four in the morning, and made haste to have the house clean, and dinner ready for the family. In the beginning she found it very difficult, for she had not been used to work as a servant, but in less than two months she grew stronger and healthier than ever. After she had done her work, she read, played on the harpsichord, or else sung whilst she spun.

Beauty and the Beast, by Marie Leprince de Beautmont

The Hades and Persephone myth has similarly gone through the 21st century transformation, but, interestingly, by way of two very different paths-"Good Hades" and "Bad Hades". "Good Hades" makes the god of the Underworld a sort of feminist character who, in a way, rescues Persephone from the misogynist world of Olympus and mankind, allowing her to blossom (as it were) in his realm. He is respectful of her body and frequently asks for her consent. Hyperaware of the history of the pair's relationship, authors will often beat the reader over the head with the "see! he's asking for consent!" element, which I'm not one to complain about. Rachel Alexander uses the "Good Hades" approach in her Hades and Persephone series (which I highly recommend). While the "Good Hades" stories make him into a misunderstood, kind, and respectful love interest who we are meant to want to end up with Persephone, the "Bad Hades" ones take his persona in an entirely different direction. "Bad Hades" is conniving, evil, and almost always described in ways that disgust the reader: corpse-like, cold, oily. He is a villain who Persephone must escape from, a foe with no regard for her bodily autonomy and twisted views of love and authority. This is the path that Bone Gap takes:

“Don’t worry. I won’t touch you until you want me to,” he said, as if he should be congratulated for such scruples."

The trait that both of these trends share is that Persephone becomes an independent, active participant rather than a pawn in the game played by Zeus, Demeter, and Hades. She often takes charge of her fate, sometimes outmanoeuvring Hades or even developing powers that outmatch those of the other gods. While Ruby's Bone Gap and Alexander's Hades & Persephone series take opposite approaches in their interpretation of Hades, both give Persephone similar authority and liberation. Ruby's Persephone (SPOILER) maims her own face in order to force Hades to let her and Finn go (END SPOILER) while Alexander's is revealed to be (SPOILER) the "true" ruler of the Underworld and has powers over Tartarus that even Hades is intimidated by. (END SPOILER) The myth of Hades and Persephone can be a controversial one to approach-some readers won't even pick up a story if it is such a retelling simply out of principle. I've seen quite a few posts floating around which condemn every Hades and Persephone retelling, especially those with the "Good Hades" storyline, and I stringently disagree. Many of the myths, fairy tales, and oral histories we rewrite have problematic pasts that reflect the standards of the cultures they were told within. Modern retellings can further mold those same frameworks into new tales that instead show us our current standards. Bone Gap is such a beautiful and well-written rendition of the modern retellings trend, and I will just keep hoping that academic circles will start paying attention to the old stories finding their way into YA books.

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adamrevi3ws · 3 years ago

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Last Night in Soho

Last Night in Soho was the last of my three most anticipated films of 2021. While it’s a decent movie, it’s the only one out of those three that misses my expectations by a mile.

Unfortunately, I had a lot of reasons to be excited about it. The film is directed by one of my favorite comedy directors, Edgar Wright, in his first real foray into the psychological horror genre. Its premise is thoroughly unique, centered around a freshman in a London fashion school whose life gets consumed by haunting nighttime visions of a showgirl in the Swinging Sixties. Finally, I was excited to learn that it’d be starring the actress Anya Taylor-Joy as the aforementioned showgirl, who I really enjoyed in her debut, the fantastic period thriller The VVitch. Sadly, it feels like Last Night in Soho was ill-equipped to properly deal with these three big expectations.

A lot of my disappointment comes from its failure to go all-in with its premise. It’s by no means a bad movie, and I’m sure plenty of people will think it’s a good movie, but I think it just feels a bit too conventional and safe for my tastes. There’s a very good chance I’ve been spoiled by the art house horror films I obsess over (all produced by a certain company that rhymes with slay-twenty-four) but it feels so… pedestrian? Ironically, I think this is mainly due to it being helmed by Edgar Wright, whose lack of experience with psychological horror makes it feel very risk-averse and soft around the edges. The film barely feels compelling until the second half or final third, when Wright finally decides to dial up the drama and thrills. Aside from its concept, the only things that set it out from the rest are some inventive mirror shots and creepy quick cuts to depict the heroine’s growing captivation in her visions of the past. Even then, a peer of mine pointed out that Wright is remarkably unsubtle with his tricks, using them so often that they lose their novelty. Wright’s inexperience also shows in its attempt at a deeper social message, which practically boils down to a hilariously relevant quote from Cousin Greg in a recent episode of Succession: “I don’t know how you did it in the ’60s. Different times … better times? Not for all.” Even then, when the film hits its stride on its social horror, a massive plot twist near the end nearly undoes or heavily muddles its social themes at best. With his awkward and often boring grasp on the film’s storytelling, I truly believe Last Night in Soho would be perfect if it was directed by a proper horror director instead of Edgar Wright. I’d love to live in an alternate universe where we instead got Jennifer Kent’s, Ari Aster’s, David Lynch’s, or even James Wan’s take on what was otherwise a fundamentally unique idea.

Even as the top-billed talent for Last Night in Soho, I don’t think Anya Taylor-Joy is given much to do. Aside from a few great montages detailing her (and by association, the protagonist’s) psychological ennui, she feels more like a glorified point of view and vehicle for the protagonist more than anything. Instead, I think the actor that really sold the film for me was in fact Matt Smith, playing one of the film’s antagonistic figures with such menacing and uniquely British coldness. Last Night in Soho also happens to be the final film of 1960s icon and Game of Thrones fan favorite Diana Rigg, and unlike her younger castmates, Rigg is the one female actress Wright knows how to handle, harkening back to his Cornetto Trilogy days.

Just like Baby Driver, Last Night in Soho is another instance of Edgar Wright leaving his comfort zone just to make something so painfully average that it probably wasn’t worth it. To some extent I enjoyed it, but I mostly wish I spent my time watching the movies that inspired it instead. Seven stars out of ten.

#last night in soho #anya taylor joy #edgar wright #matt smith #diana rigg #cornetto trilogy

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365days365movies · 4 years ago

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April 3, 2021: Duck Soup (Review)

I think I’m a Marx Brothers fan now?

I really liked this movie. I really did, and it’s genuinely one of my favorite comedies so far this month...even if I don’t think it’s as good as the other two. A paradox, I’m aware. But, to treat this like the others, let’s see what happened to the Marx Brothers after this film.

Unlike Chaplin and Keaton, I won’t be going as in detail about these guys individually. They were successful throughout the 1940s, partnered with UA (unsurprisingly), and each eventually split off on their separate ways. Zeppo was first in 1933, right after Duck Soup, as he really wasn’t as featured as the rest of them. He and Gummo Marx went into business together, making a gigantic talent agency. Both were also engineers later in life, with Gummo making raincoats, and Zeppo making plane parts!

The remaining three persisted, then also eventually went their separate ways. Chico got WAY into gambling, racking up a fuckton of debt in the process, but he also starting a big band act. Harpo continued to perform on screen and stage for the rest of his life. And Groucho...well, Groucho never really stopped. Television appearances and film appearances persisted well into the ‘50s and ‘60s, until Groucho stepped away...for a bit, anyway.

And then, well...Chico dies on October 11, 1961, of severe arteriosclerosis, and at the age of 74. This broke all of the brothers (and their sister), especially Groucho. Three years later, shortly after an appearance on stage in September 1964, Harpo died of heart failure. Again, this broke Groucho, and the remaining three brothers. The only one of the brothers left to perform now was Groucho, so let’s look at him a little more, shall we?

Groucho, with his iconic eyebrows and greasepaint mustache, was BY FAR the most famous of the brothers. He was married three times, all of which ended in divorce. With the last one, he was 40 years his wife’s senior. WOW. OK. He had three children, two of whom had children of their own. And by the time of his last divorce, Groucho was 79 years old, and was a Hollywood and television legend (due to his appearances as host of the show You Bet Your Life in the 1940s and ‘50s). Also, fun fact, dude LITERALLY danced on Hitler’s grave! HA! NICE!

He continued making appearances in the ‘70s, which may have been the result of his agent Erin Fleming, who maaaaaaaay have pushed the elderly actor too hard. This is also considering the increasingly senility that Marx was experiencing, being in his 80s at this point. Eventually, she was fired, and Marx began to settle into his old age. He was given an honorary Academy Award in 1974, and given a standing ovation. This is the last time that he would appear publicly in such a major setting. Gummo died in April of 1977, and Groucho followed soon afterwards, passing away on August 19, 1977, at the age of 86.

Zeppo, the youngest of the brothers, would pass away in November of 1979 at the age of 78, of lung cancer, and was the last of the Marx Brothers alive. And so goes one of the greatest families in film history. Hot damn. I really should watch more of their films.

But let’s FINALLY talk about this picture! What exactly did I think, after all that? Check here for the Recap, and read on for the Review!

Review

Cast and Acting: 9/10

MAN, the Marx Bros are great! Like, holy shit! Zeppo, sadly, doesn’t really get a chance to truly shine, which was something that haunted his career with his brothers (and eventually led him to leave the group altogether). Harpo and Chico are both REALLY good here, playing off each other and playing to their strengths individually. Seriously, they’re great...but nobody here is as good as Groucho Marx. Like, dear Lord, Groucho is fantastic in this movie. Sure, a lot of that is in the writing and jokes, but the DELIVERY of those jokes! Hot damn! So, why the 9? Well...everybody else. Sorry, Margaret Dumont and Louis Calhern are just in a different film entirely. In fact...they’re actually not in a film, but in a play. Yeah, Dumont especially is acting for the stage, rather than for a film audience. And...eh. It’s not terrible, but it definitely shows. Still, the Marx Brothers more than make up for any flaws there.

Plot and Writing: 9/10

I thought the Marx Bros. wrote this movie, but no! Instead, it’s Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman, and Nat Perrin. Kalmar and Ruby were a songwriting duo, who had been working with the Marx Bros. on stage for years before they’d been in film. Sheekman was their writer for a few of these stage productions as well, and Nat Perrin was a film screenwriter, who would eventually move on to producing and writing...the original Addams Family TV series? DAMN! All four men were friends to the Marx Bros. throughout their lives, and they injected their flair into this film. So, why the 9? The jokes are absolutely fantastic, for sure...but the ending is a little abrupt for me, and hindered by the random-ass musical number near the end. Nitpicking, in other words. It’s still fantastic.

Directing and Cinematography: 9/10

Hey, Leo McCarey, how’s it been? I think you did a pretty good job with this one, although I’m not going to claim that it’s my favorite. I do think An Affair to Remember��was a little better than this, direction-wise. But Henry Sharp, your cinematography is goddamn SOLID in this movie, real talk. Still, good job to you both!

Production and Art Design: 9/10

And yeah, this film does look great. Despite not being based off of a stage production, it certainly feels like I’m watching I professionally produced play. The budget for this one must’ve been high, because the costuming and sets are pretty well-constructed all around. Not The General or The Gold Rush good, but still great.

Music and Editing: 9/10

And finally, the music. Done by the afore-mentioned Bert Kalmary and Harry Ruby, this music is...mostly pretty great. The opening song is a little off for me, and I’m not a massive fan of the random ending number, but the songs are still well-made and performed. Seriously, I don’t have any real complaints about it all, even though I would put in in my playlist or anything. And LeRoy Stone’s editing is also pretty solid, while we’re at it.

For you, Marx Bros., I grant a 90%!

This movie is a hell of a lot of fun, and a great introduction to the Marx Bros. I really need to watch Animals Crackers and A Night at the Opera, now. I love it, seriously.

But now that we’re into talkies, I think it’s time to revisit somebody from the past, attempting to break into this new era. I could go for a Laurel and Hardy film, or the Three Stooges, or even Abbott and Costello (yeah, forgot to mention them in the Recap Intro, sorry), but...no. No, we need to move on into the realm of talkies, and also close out this early era with an old friend...who isn’t doing great right now.

April 4, 2021: The Great Dictator, dir. Charlie Chaplin

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years ago

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The Weekend Warrior 10/1/21: VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE, THE ADDAMS FAMILY II, THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK, TITANE, MAYDAY, THE JESUS MUSIC

Yeah, so I haven’t had the time over the past couple weeks to write a column, and I kind of hate that fact, especially since I’m coming up on a pretty major milestone for me writing a weekly box office column and reviewing movies. In fact, that milestone comes next week! And once again, I’m struggling to get through the movies I was hoping to watch and write about this week, because I’ve been out of town and once again, very busy over the weekend. Let’s see how far I get...

Before we get to this week’s wide releases, I’m excited to say that my local arthouse movie theater, The Metrograph, is finally reopening for in-person screenings, and they’re kicking things off with a 4k restoration of Andrez Zulawski’s 1981 thriller, Possession, starring Sam Neill and Isabell Adjani, who won a Best Actress prize at Cannes for her performance in the film. I actually saw this at the Metrograph a few years back, and Metrograph Pictures, the distribution arm of the company is now distributing the 4k restoration. There’s a lot of exciting things ahead at Metrograph, including an upcoming four-film Clint Eastwood retrospective, including White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) and A Perfect World (1991) this Friday. Also, Lingua Franca director Isabel Sandoval will be showing her fantastic film from 2020 (a rare chance to see it in a theater and I’ll be there!) as well as program a number of other favorites of hers. Sunday will have screenings of Ingmar Berman’s Scenes from a Marriage (1973) in its full four plus hour glory, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993) and John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness (1994).. In other words, the Metrograph is back!

Moving over to the weekend’s three wide releases, the first one up being Sony’s VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE (Sony Pictures) with Tom Hardy returning as Eddie Brock aka Venom, joined by Woody Harrelson as the psychotic symbiote, Carnage. Taking over the directing reins is Andy Serkis, who has only directed two other movies, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle and Breathe, but as an actor, he’s been heavily involved with the CG VFX (and performance capture) needed to bring the characters in this Marvel anti-hero movie to life.

Venom has been one of Spider-Man’s most popular villains and sometimes allies for quite a few decades now, starting out life as a cool black costume Spider-Man found on a strange planet during the first “Secret Wars,” which turned out to be an alien symbiote that had malicious intentions. Spider-Man got the costume off of him but it then linked up with Eddie Brock, a sad-sack journalist whose emotions drove the alien symbiote to become the Venom we known and (mostly) love, thanks to one Todd McFarlane. Venom continued to play a large part in the Spider-Man books before getting his own comics, and not before a super-villain was created for him in Cletus Kasady, a vicious serial killer whose infection by the symbiote turns him into Carnage. And that’s who Harrelson is playing.

Being a sequel, we do have some basis to go on, although the original Venom movie, released in early October 2018, also arrived at a time when it was only the second time the character of Venom was brought to the big screen -- the first time being Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3, in which the character was received without much love as Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And yet, Venom did great, opening with $80.2 million and grossing $213 million domestically, which is more than enough to greenlight a sequel. (It made over double that amount overseas, too.) For comparison, the Wolverine prequel opened with $85 million but at the beginning of summer, so it quickly tailed away with other movies coming out after it. Venom: Let There Be Carnage has to worry about the new James Bond opening a week later, so it very likely could be a one-and-done, opening decently but quickly dropping down as other big movies are released in October (basically one a week).

I’ve already seen the movie, and by the time you read this, reviews will already be up --including my own at Below the Line. Social media reactions seem to not be so bad though, so maybe it’ll get better reviews than its predecessor, which was trashed by critics, receiving only a 30% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But if you look at the fan ratings, they’re higher with 81%, although it’s hard not to be

I’m thinking that bearing COVID in mind and the law of depreciation since the previous movie, Venom: Let There Be Carnage will probably be good for around $50 million this weekend, maybe a little more, but however it’s received, I expect it to drop significantly next week, though a total domestic gross of $135 to 140 million seems reasonable.

Another strong sequel to kick off October is the animated THE ADDAMS FAMILY II (MGM), which is following up the 2019 hit for MGM/UA Releasing with most of the voice cast returning, including Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, and Finn Wolfhard, as well as Nick Kroll, Snoop Dogg, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, and Bette Midler voicing the popular characters from the New Yorker cartoons, a popular ‘60s TV series, and two Barry Sonnenfeld movies from the ‘90s.

The 2019 animated film was a pretty solid hit for the newly-launched UA Releasing, grossing $100 million domestic after a $30.3 million opening, making it one of MGM’s biggest hits since it was restructured under UA and became its own distributor again. Who knows what’s going to happen with Amazon’s plans on buying MGM and whether the latter will remain a distribution wing, but MGM still has a number of movies out this year that likely will be awards contenders. But that doesn’t mean much for The Addams Family II, which will try to get some of those people who paid to see the original movie in theaters back to see the sequel… and if they’re not going to theaters, MGM is once again offering the movie day-and-date on VOD much like they did with last year’s Bill and Ted Face the Music, which opened much earlier in the pandemic (late august, 2020), so it far fewer options to see it in theaters compared to this animated sequel.

It’s highly doubtful that The Addams Family II was going to open anywhere near to $30 million even if there wasn’t a pandemic, and it wasn’t on VOD just because MGM just doesn’t seem to be marketing the movie as well as its predecessor. You can blame COVID if you want, but it’s also the fact they’re distributing the company’s first James Bond movie in six years, No Time To Die, on their own vs. through another distributor, ala the last few Daniel Craig Bonds. But we’ll talk more about that next week, since that’s going to be an important movie to help cover MGM’s expenses for the rest of 2021. (I haven’t had a chance to see this yet, but it’s embargoed until Friday, so wouldn’t be able to get a review into the column regardless.)

We’ve seen quite a few family hits over the past few months even when the movies were already on streaming/VOD, but parents are probably being a bit more careful with kids back in school, many younger kids still not vaccinated, and the Delta variant still not quite under control. Because of those factors, I think The Addams Family II is more likely to do somewhere between $15 and 18 million its opening weekend, maybe more on the lower side.

Third up is THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK (New Line/WB), David Chase’s prequel to his hit HBO series, The Sopranos, which went off the air in 2004 but still finds fans on the new HBO Max streamer. Ironically, this prequel will air on the streamer at the same time as it's getting a theatrical release, which probably won't be a very tough choice for fans.

Chase has reunited with director Alan Taylor, who won a Primetime Emmy for his work on the show in 2007 before moving onto other popular shows like HBO's Game of Thrones. Taylor has had a bit of a rough career in film, though, having directed Marvel Studios’ sequel, Thor: The Dark World, a movie that wasn't received very well although there were rumors that Taylor butted heads with the producers and maybe didn't even finish the movie. He went on to direct Terminator Genesys, which honestly, I can't remember if it was the worst Terminator movie, but it was pretty bad.

What's interesting is that because this is a prequel set in the '70s and '80s, none of the actors from the show appear on it, but it does star Alessandro Nivola, a great actor in one of his meatiest roles for a studio movie. It also introduces Michael Gandolfini, son of the late James Gandolfini (who played Tony Soprano, if you didn't know), playing the teenage Tony, plus it has great roles for the likes of Jon Bernthal (as Tony's father), Vera Farmiga (playing Tony's mother), Corey Stoll (playing the younger "Junior” Soprano), and Lesile Odom Jr, as the Sopranos key adversary, even though he ends up coming across like the good guy of the movie. It also stars Billy Magnussen, who oddly, also has a key role in next week's No Time to Die.

I'm sure there's quite a bit of interest in seeing where Tony came from and to learn more about his family, many who were dead long before the events of the HBO show, but will that be enough to get them into theaters when they already have HBO? I already reviewed the movie for Below the Line, and reviews are generally positive, which might get people more interested in this prequel.

As with most of Warner Bros’ movies this year, Many Saints will also debut on HBO Max and unlike some of the studio’s other 2021 offerings, it will actually make more sense to watch this one on the streamer since that’s how most people watched The Sopranos. That seems like a killer for Many Saints, and it’s likely to keep it opening under $10 million, where it might have done better on a different weekend (like sometime over the last two weeks).

This is what I have this weekend’s top 10 looking like:

1. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (Sony) - $50.4 million N/A

2. The Addams Family II (MGM/UA Releasing) - $16.5 million N/A

3. The Many Saints of Newark (New Line/WB) - $9 million N/A

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Marvel/Disney) - $7.5 million -44%

5. Dear Evan Hansen (Universal) - $4.1 million -45%

6. Free Guy (20th Century/Disney) - $3.3 million -30%

7. Jungle Cruise (Disney) - $1.1 million -35%

8. Candyman (Universal) - $1.3 million -48%

9. Cry Macho (Warner Bros.) - $1 million -52%

10. Malignant (Warner Bros.) - .7 million -53%

Opening in select cities is French filmmaker Julia (Raw) Ducournau’s TITANE (Neon), the genre thriller that won this year’s coveted Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It stars Agathe Rouselle as a young woman who has an interesting relationship with automobiles, but she also has psychotic tendencies that leaves a trail of bodies behind her. On the run, she decides to pretend she’s the missing son of a fireman (Vincent Lindon), who has been missing for 10 years, and things just get weirder from there.

I honestly wasen’t sure what to expect from this although I do remember walking out of Ducournau’s cannibal movie, Raw, just because it was so gross, even though so many of my colleagues and friends swear by the movie, and this one, for that matter. Sure, there’s a certain “prove it” factor to me watching a movie that wins the Palme D’Or, because it’s very rare that I like the movies that do win that benchmark cinema award.

After a flashback to Agathe’s character Alexia when she was an obstinate young girl kicking the back seat of her father as he’s driving. They crash and she’s forced to get surgery that puts an odd looking piece of metal in her head. Decades later, she seems to be a pseudo-stripper at weird punk rock car show -- I guess they do those things different in France -- and hooking up with a fellow “model” afterwards. Agathe is actually a very popular model/dancer but when one fan gets too grabby, she pulls a knitting needle out of her hair and stabs it through his ear, killing him. Oh, yeah, she then has sex with a car and seemingly gets pregnant, but that only happens later. First, she goes on a bit of a killing spree and then goes on a run and decides that by strapping up her breasts and breaking her nose, she can pass off this fire captain’s son… and it works!

So the second half deals with acting great Vincent Lindon’s absolutely bonkers steroid-addicted man who seems to be sexually attracted to his own son, and most of his fellow firefighters knows that he’s gay but in the closet, but I’m honestly not sure what that matters. He’s a pretty disgusting character whose 70-year-old ass we see way too much of, and even those who might find Rouselle to be quite fetching, there’s a certain point where her nudity is not alluring but quite horrifying.

Oh, and at this time, Alexia (or Adrien, as she’s now going) has also gotten significantly pregnant, but it’s not a normal pregnancy because what should be milk from her breasts seems to some sort of motor oil. That’s because she FUCKED A CAR earlier in the movie!!! What do you expect when you fuck a car and don’t use protection, girlie? The fact Alexia/Adrien is trying to hide the fact she’s a pregnant woman from a station full of men isn’t even particularly disturbing. The part that really got me was when she broke her own nose to pass off as this guy’s son -- I actually had to look away for that part.

Listen I’m no prude, and I think I can handle most things in terms of horror and gore, but Titane just annoyed me, because it felt like Ms Ducournau was doing a lot of what we see more for shock value than to actually drive the story forward. There just doesn’t seem to be much point to any of it, and once the movie gets to the firehouse, and we see her interaction (as a young man) with her “father” and his colleagues, it just gets more grueling.

It’s as if Ducournau had watched a lot of movies by the likes of Cronenberg or David Lynch, or more likely Nicolas Refn or Lars von Trier, and thought, “I could be just as strange and horrific as those men… let’s see what people think of this.” And way too many people fell for it, including the Cannes jury. While I normally would approve of any good body horror movie, especially one with cinematography, score and musical selections as good as this one, I doubt I’d ever want to watch this movie again. And therefore, I don’t think I can recommend this movie to anyone either, at least no one I want to remain my friend.

As far as the movie’s box office, NEON is opening the movie in 562 theaters to build on buzz from various film festivals, including the New York Film Festival earlier this week. I think it should be good for half a million this weekend, although maybe it'll surprise me like NEON's release of Parasite a few years back. I just don't see this getting into the top 10 but maybe just outside it.

And then we have a few more movies that I got screeners for but just couldn’t find the time to watch, but might do so once I finish this verdammt column.

The faith-based doc THE JESUS MUSIC (Lionsgate) by the Erwin Brothers (I Can Only Imagine, I Still Believe) takes a look at the rise of Christian Contemporary Music through artists like Amy Grant and Stryper and everything in between, featuring lots of interviews of the artists’ trials and triumphs. Even though there isn’t much CCM I ever listen to, I’m still kind of curious about this one, since I generally like music docs and this is guaranteed not to be the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of most of them. I have no idea how wide Lionsgate intends to release this but it certainly can be fairly wide, because the Erwins have delivered at least one giant hit for Lionsgate, and I Still Believe may have been another one if not for the pandemic. It actually opened on March 13, just days before movie theaters shut down across the country, so it's little surprise it only made $7 million domestic. That said, the acts in this one have a lot of fans, and if Lionsgate does release The Jesus Music into 1,000 theaters or so (which is very doable), then I would expect it would make between $1 and 2 million, which would be enough to break into the Top 10.

I haven't seen any of the movies based on Anna Todd's YA romance novels but the third of them, AFTER WE FELL, will play in about 1,311 theaters on Thursday i.e. tonight through Fathom Events, and may or may not continue through the weekend. These movies just kind of show up, and again, having not seen any of them, I'm not sure what kind of audience they have, but this one stars Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes, as well as Stephen Moyer, Mira Sorvino and Arielle Kebbel with Castille Landon directing.

Grace Van Patten (Under the Silver Lake) stars in Karen Cinorre’s action-fantasy film MAYDAY (Magnolia), playing Ana, a young woman who is transported to a “dreamlike and dangerous” coastline where she joins a female army in a never-ending war where women lure men to their deaths. It also stars Mia Goth, Havana Rose Liu, Soko, Théodore Pellerin and Juliette Lewis. It will be in theaters and On Demand this Friday.

The great Tim Blake Nelson stars in Potsy Ponciroli’s action-Western OLD HENRY (Shout! Studios/Hideout) about a widowed farmer and son who take in an injured man with a satchel full of cash only to have to fend off a posse who come after the man, claiming to be the law. Not sure who to trust, the farmer has to use his gun skills to defend his home and the stranger.

The romantic-comedy FALLING FOR FIGARO (IFC Films) is the new movie from Australian filmmaker Ben Lewin (The Sessions), who I’ve interviewed a few times, and he’s a really nice chap. This one stars Danielle Macdonald, Hugh Skinner, and Joanna Lumley, and it will be in theaters and On Demand this Friday. This rom-com is set in the world of opera singing competitions with Macdonald playing Millie, a brilliant young fund manager who decides to chase her dream of being an opera singer in the Scottish Highlands. She begins vocal training lessons with a former opera diva, played by Lumley, where she meets Max, a young man also training for that competition. Could love blossom? This actually sounds like my kind of movie, so I’ll definitely try to watch soon.

The second season of “Welcome to Blumhouse” the horror movie anthology kicks off on Amazon Prime Video on Friday with the first two movies, Maritte Lee Go’s Black as Night (which I’ve seen) and Gigi Saul Guerrero’s Bingo Night (which I haven’t), and actually I’ll have an interview with Ms. Go over at Below the Line possibly later this week. The former stars Ashja Cooper as a teen girl living in Louisiana who has a bad experience with homeless vampires, along with her best friend (Fabrizio Guido).

Also, Antoine Fuqua and Jake Gyllenhaal’s remake of the Danish film THE GUILTY will begin streaming on Netflix starting Friday after premiering at TIFF a few weeks back. I never got around to reviewing it, but it’s pretty good, maybe a little better than the original movie but essentially the same. I’d definitely recommend it if you like Jake, because he’s definitely terrific in it.

Also hitting Netflix this week is Juana Macias' SOUNDS LIKE LOVE (Netflix), a Spanish language romance movie that (guess) I haven't seen!

A few other movies I didn’t get to this week, include:

STOP AND GO (Decal) VAL (Dread) BLUSH (UA Releasing) RUNT (1091 Pictures)

Next week, it’s not time for James Bond, it’s time for James Bond to die… no, wait… there is NO TIME TO DIE! Also, a very, very special anniversary for the Weekend Warrior….

#The Weekend Warrior #Venom: Let There Be Carnage #Many Saints of Newark #Addams Family II #movies #review #box office #reviews #The Jesus Music #Titane

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route22ny · 4 years ago

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We’re Never Going Back to the 1950s

The year 2020 shattered America’s shared reality.

by DEREK THOMPSON

DECEMBER 16, 2020

***

Twenty years ago, the sociologist Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone used the decline of bowling leagues since the middle of the 20th century to symbolize America’s declining social engagement. This year, he published a sequel of sorts, The Upswing, in which he identified more stray threads of our social unraveling: in lower marriage rates, church attendance, and trust in government; in falling membership in all chapter-based associations; collapsing social trust among young adults; and even a decrease in mentions of community versus identity in novels and nonfiction books.

But no measure of communitarian pessimism could have prepared Putnam for the circumstances of the past nine months. America’s bowling alleys haven’t just depopulated; they’ve gone dark, along with thousands of churches, restaurants, bars, cafés, gyms, theaters, and almost every other physical space that could preserve or nurture a physical community.

Mirroring this civic fragmentation, America’s media and entertainment industry has spun apart, and the spinning is accelerating. On December 3, the film studio Warner Bros. announced that subscribers of the company’s digital streaming service HBO Max will be able to watch all of its 2021 film releases at home, on the same day that they’re released in theaters. The movies affected by this decision aren’t humble indies. We’re talking Dune and The Matrix 4—the sort of films that, if they were released exclusively in theaters next year, might earn a domestic box office roughly equal to the GDP of Micronesia.

Like Putnam’s beloved bowling alleys, cinemas are an example of the decline of semiweekly gatherings in the United States—even if they’re less chatty establishments. In the 1940s, the average American bought more than 30 movie tickets a year, regularly packing into theaters with scores of strangers. In the past few years, that figure fell below four. In 2020, movie tickets sold per-person will fall below one—possibly for the first time since the late 1800s. The decision by Warner Bros. will likely encourage other entertainment companies, such as Disney, to funnel more of their marquee content to streaming services in the next few years. And the result could be a death spiral for movie theaters as we know them, as the film industry continues its shift from a public, ticketed affair to a private, living-room experience.

Home entertainment is fracturing as well, and along with it the communal-while-alone possibility of a shared popular culture. Since 2010, 33 million households have either cut the cord or never signed up for cable TV in the first place. The traditional cable bundle is slowly dying, and its death is fertilizing new subscription-only streaming services, such as HBO Max, Disney+, Peacock from NBCUniversal, and Quibi (RIP), which join a landscape crowded with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu, not to mention user-generated video platforms including YouTube and TikTok.

It would be hackish to accuse Netflix or Warner Bros. of being the main accelerants of American loneliness. But the fact is that cinematic entertainment, which was born as the ultimate communal ritual, an experience whose technology required simultaneity and togetherness, has become the ultimate personal activity, an incomprehensibly long spectrum of different stories mostly consumed in a state of solitude.

This media shift—from the scarce and communal to the abundant and privatized—also describes the evolution of the news industry. In the past 20 years, newspaper circulation, advertising revenue, and employment have cratered. But overall, news—that is, sources of new information, of varying truthiness—didn’t decline; it exploded. The web created a phalanx of news publishers, not just websites but also Facebook pages, Instagram personalities, newsletters, podcasts, and so on; at the same time, Google and Facebook duopolized digital advertising, creating a situation where publishers were multiplying as advertising declined.

In ecology, the term niche partitioning describes the way that competing species become hyper-specialized in an attempt to co-exist in an environment with scarce resources. I think that’s what’s happening in the news industry. As the number of competing publishers increases, it makes sense for each of them to carve out an ecological niche. This niches-get-riches race leads logically to a set of more outlets that embrace a more unabashedly partisan perspective—just as they did in the late 1800s.

One might assume that polarization is what happens to people cut off from information. But the truth is closer to the opposite: More information means more polarization. Research shows that access to broadband internet in the U.S. has in many cases increased various measures of polarization, as the web introduces voters to a bigger menu of partisan news from which voters select the sites that match their political tastes.

We’ve seen this phenomenon accelerate in 2020. Four years ago, most people would have said there were three major cable news networks: the center-left one (CNN), the liberal alternative (MSNBC), and the conservative juggernaut (Fox News). But in the past few months, the conservative-news monolith has shattered. Since the election, Newsmax TV and the One America News Network have stepped up to backfill President Donald Trump’s election-fraud lies with programming from an alternate reality. And behold, niche partitioning works: Last week, Newsmax rode the election-conspiracy story to its first-ever ratings win over Fox. Because Trump devotees are going to buy tickets to whatever media universe offers the best narrative, networks are competing to tell the Trumpiest tale.

With weekly religious attendance at low ebb and live TV in structural decline, national elections are arguably the only activity that Americans do together in shared time. But shared time is not shared reality. Led by the president, Republican lawmakers have petitioned to sabotage the results of the election, based on fantastic conspiracy theories. The GOP fever dream, which is credulously reproduced across Trump-friendly media, is clearly contagious: More than 80 percent of Trump voters believe that Biden’s win is illegitimate, a figure corresponding to about 60 million people. There is nothing unique about reality and fantasy blending together in politics. But the speed and severity with which Trump’s “Stop the Steal!” mind virus has infected the GOP is the sign of a compromised civic immune system. A far-right cohort has been effectively quarantined from reality in one corner of our honeycombed media landscape.

There is no going back to the 1950s. We will never again be enfolded by those bespoke mid-century circumstances, the scarce broadcasts and broadsheets. The dividing forces are too strong and too many. The film experience pushed out across millions of flatscreens; the live-television networks splintering into millions of digital entertainment queues; the news dissolving into innumerable political realities: One by one, these are not evil trends. But they add up. Or, more aptly, they divide. They individuate.

People ask me if I’m optimistic about 2021, and the answer is that, in a way, I’m ecstatically optimistic. The economy will reopen, and life will reopen. People will come out of their homes; they will send their kids to school; they will hug and kiss and live. But underneath the high tide of economic growth and social normalization, I think we’ll feel something else, an eerie undertow of isolation and anxiety.

“The definition of community is ‘where you keep showing up,’” said someone I met, whose name I’ve forgotten, back in the days when it was normal to meet new people whose names you could forget. I haven’t forgotten that line, though: Community is where you keep showing up.��What a lovely idea. But where do people keep showing up, these days? Nowhere. Not the office, not the COVID-aerosolized bars and gyms. A lot of people have spent a year finding community via a glowing screen in a room they never leave.

The empty bowling alleys and movie theaters; the infinity buffet of entertainment and partisan media; the dissolution of a shared American reality—these are distinct yet connected phenomena. Digital technology has spawned a choose-your-own-adventure mediascape, which has flooded the electorate with alternate realities, at the same time that its community ties wither. America is coming apart, and these pieces will not be easily reassembled.

***

DEREK THOMPSON is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, technology, and the media. He is the author of Hit Makers and the host of the podcast Crazy/Genius.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/12/how-2020-shattered-shared-reality/617398/

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chiseler · 3 years ago

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Tales of the Unexpected: SANTA CLAUS

Most of my life I’d been haunted by an image—five seconds from a film I could not name: Santa, in someone’s living room on Christmas Eve, fires a toy cannon at a demon’s ass. That’s all, but it stuck with me for decades. The only thing I was sure about was that it came from a film my father had taken me to see when I was four or five. There was snow in the theater parking lot.

It clearly wasn’t a typical holiday film, so as the years progressed I decided it must have been Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (co-starring Jamie Farr and Pia Zadora as martians), but I was mistaken. There are no demons in that movie. I asked my dad, but he had no idea what the hell I was talking about. Then, as the universe would have it, when I was well into middle age the film was placed in my hands by someone who had no idea I’d spent much of my life looking for it. Seeing the film in its entirety for the first time in 40 years, I finally understood why things might have turned out the way they did.

When the conversation rolls around to bad Christmas movies, there’s of course a broad spectrum from which to choose. Given that nearly every Christmas movie ever made is insufferable to some degree, it’s generally easier, I’ve found, to break things down into categories that stretch from the simply godawful (Jingle All the Way) to the agonizingly painful (A Very Brady Christmas or that Marlo Thomas remake of It’s a Wonderful Life) to the merely baffling (An Ewoks Christmas). Of course there are some people who think they can bring the conversation to an abrupt end by pulling out Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as the last word on holiday cinema. There’s simply nothing more to say.

Oh, but that’s far too simple. There’s another level out there. Something that reaches far beyond banal categorizations like “good” and “bad” and even “weird,” deep into the almost unfathomable territory of “brain damaging” and “utterly terrifying,” and a number of adjectives that have yet to be discovered. Films that cannot and should not be called “bad” no matter how easy it would make thinking for the smug hipsters in the Mystery Science Theater crowd. These are films that come from another plane, another universe, another way of thinking, and for that they remain fascinating, and cannot be so easily dismissed.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, K. Gordon Murray was an American film producer and distributor who made a decent living for himself by picking up the rights to foreign genre pictures (mostly from Mexico), dubbing them into English, and renting them to U.S. theaters. English-speaking audiences can thank Murray for The Brainiac and Robot vs.The Aztec Mummy.

In 1956 he bought the rights to a children’s holiday picture directed by René Cardona, a man better known for horror and exploitation pictures like Survive! and Night of the Bloody Apes. Instead of widespread distribution, Murray limited the film to short (two or three day) runs around the holidays, when the film would only be shown as a children’s matinee. In retrospect I have to wonder if he limited viewings that way because he knew what kind of effect the film would have on people.

Santa Claus sounds about as innocuous as they come. Who would even pay attention to a title like that? It’s only when you note the shrill, almost frantic tone of some of the taglines attached to the film that you begin to get some sense that there’s something else going on here—that this isn’t another Rankin/Bass production:

Bursting upon our BIG SCREEN in all the colors of the rainbow… a prize-winning blue ribbon treat for old and young alike! Here’s something for the whole family to see together!

Another tagline makes it sound even more ominous:

See All the Weird and Wonderful Characters of Make-Believe! The Fantastic Crystal Work-Room of the Happy Elves! The Fabulous Realm of the Candy-Stick Palaces!

Those families who weren’t scared away by those dire warnings were never the same again.

René Cardona

In Cardona’s vision, Santa (José Elías Moreno) lives in a cloud kingdom in space, positioned in a stationary orbit above the North Pole. Instead of elves, Santa has collected groups of children from all corners of the world—North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa. It’s unclear who these children belong to or if they’re in space willingly, but they open the film with a long recital of traditional songs from each nation.

Ten minutes later we cut to Hell. Although this happens in most Christmas movies, few do it so literally. There amid the flames, Satan informs a minor and bumbling demon named Pitch (José Luis Aguirre ‘Trotsky’) that he is to turn all of the children on Earth evil in order to anger “that old goat Santa Claus” and show the people of the world “who their true master is.”

We are then introduced to three storylines: a lonely rich boy whose parents neglect him, a poor girl whose single mother can barely support them both, and three young thugs. Behind each story, we hear Santa’s echoed laughter. Santa laughs through the entire film, often at scenes of misery and despair. It’s unclear why.

Finally and centrally, we see the core of Santa’s orbiting kingdom—an observatory equipped with a collection of surveillance devices that would put the NSA to shame. As the narrator (Murray himself) describes it:

This is Santa’s Magic Observatory. What wonderful instruments! The Ear Scope! The Teletalker, that knows everything! The Cosmic Telescope! The Master Eye! Nothing that happens on Earth is unknown to Santa Claus!

He’s not kidding, either. Santa can see anyone he chooses merely by thinking of them, listen to what they’re saying, even watch their dreams, and these are powers he abuses freely.

There is no reason to attempt to describe the plot any further. It’s not an issue. Visually, however, the film is a thing of deranged wonder, reminiscent of Japanese films that would be made ten or fifteen years later. It’s a world of remarkable and sometimes frightening imagination. The telescope features a large, roving eyeball instead of a lens. Santa’s sleigh is actually a giant wind-up toy, the living reindeer replaced with carousel reindeer made of white plastic. The color palate throughout the film (if you can find a decent print) is intense. And the film’s multiple dream sequences are, well, pretty jaw-dropping.

It’s also a remarkably subversive film—which intertwined both with the visuals as well as the director’s background, may be no surprise at all. Along with the kidnapped children he’s using as slave labor, the cannon he fires at the demon’s ass, and Santa’s often inappropriate laughter, which snakes throughout much of the soundtrack, there’s Merlin, another of Santa’s employees. Merlin runs a drug lab, and on Christmas Eve has just developed a “magic powder” that will “give people a sound sleep and fill them with wonderful thoughts and good intentions.”

Santa is perfectly willing to deliver babies to children who request little brothers or sisters, and one good little boy is set to receive “an atomic lab and a machine gun.” And then of course there’s the role of the demons here, in a world in which Santa and his toys have replaced Christianity.

It’s a film that’s often mocked by fools for its cheap sets and bad acting, without pausing to think about what’s really going on here—the kind of twisted, alien imagination at work, or the ideas that Cardona is sneaking in under their smug noses. It’s a deeply strange and disturbing work, a visionary work on a minuscule budget, and one that says more about the holidays than we may care to think about.

Maybe that’s why my dad has blocked it out of his memory, and why I spent a lifetime trying to track it down.

by Jim Knipfel

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bambirex · 4 years ago

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Random fic rec, just because I'm in a very appreciative mood and would like to give a shout-out to some frankly amazing writers:

The March of The Black Queen and Killer Queen by @borealis-strange

You like Queen? You like fantasy, magic and adventure? Some beautiful friendship moments, perhaps? Then you need to read this amazing series by this extremely talented, and unfairly underappreciated writer!!!

And you ask yourself, how did I get here by Sharonglitterbombjohn who sadly deactivated on here. A very raw, heartbreaking fem!queen fic that will make you cry like a damn waterfall.

Calling All Ladies by @nightoftheland. One of the first fem!queen fics I've read, which pretty much got me into this AU. It's hard to make me blush, but this super steamy story managed.

The Millionaire's Dinner by @stars-across-space. This one's for the more kinky crowd- quite delicious, if you ask me! And it's fem!queen, too!

Solitary Fame and Rhiannon by @emmaandorlando. The first one is a gorgeous piece written for the Freddie Mercury Weekend, which admittedly became one of my favorites. The second one is a fic that I would just call "THE fem!maylor fic".

The Spoiled Brat Universe by @feedermercury. This is once again for those with a specific kink, but this cool series offers more than that; there's plenty of fluff, too!

Always On My Own by @freesiafields. A beautiful fic written for the Freddie Mercury Weekend, that broke my heart and then put it back together by the end.

Like Tops, Like Gyroscopes and Va' Tu Sei Libero by @freddieofhearts. I'm not gonna lie: reading these fics will hurt. Like, a lot. But both of these are heartbreakingly beautiful and realistic.

So tell me (why my gods look like you) by @iamnotbrianmay. This is not a fic: this feels more like a beautiful poem, something that sticks with you after reading it. An utterly gorgeous fem!queen story.

Canon fluorescent!verse by @immistermercury. It was extremely hard to pick just a few fics from this certain author, who, I believe, is one of the (if not THE) best Jimercury writers in this fandom. This beautiful, often heartbreaking but more often uplifting series of Freddie, the young ballet dancer pushing through all the hardships that life is throwing at him, while finding the love of his life and having a family, is absolutely touching. I'd recommend it to everyone.

The Words Unsaid by @queensilveryrog. This story of model!brian and photographer!john just absolutely blew my mind. It's insane how much emotion this author managed to put into such a short story!

Death On Two Legs by JessiDWalton who I believe is not on tumblr (at least I couldn't find them). This is the hot Maylor demon!AU that I didn't know I needed.

When the monster is too big to slay by @jessahmewren. You can just tell I love breaking my own heart, right? Gosh, the emotions in this! And the dialogue is simply gorgeous all throughout.

I Will Tell You I Love You by lover_of_blue_roses (i think they are also not on tumblr). A sweet Jimercury fic featuring the famous bath video and some sexy times.

Dawn of Aquarius and Blacklight in Zero Gravity by @a-froger-epic. I keep saying that the first fic feels like watching an artsy indie movie - check it out for yourself, if you haven't yet! The ultimate Froger fic, which is painfully realistic and gives you a good glimpse at what life was like for a young gay man in the '60s. The second one is a thrilling Frian fic set in the future - I promise you, you will fall in love with it after the very first chapter.

Calling All Boys and The Way You Love Me Like You Do by @nothingelsematterswrites. The first one is a Deacury/Maylor Tinder AU- did I get you hooked yet? The second one is one of the hottest poly!queen one-shots I've ever read.

Loverboy by @his-majesty-king-mercury. A super sweet Froger story, with plenty of drama- and then a wonderful ending!

Let Your Heart Decide by @pumpkinlilyao3. Only three chapters in, and I'm already in love- another fantastic Froger fic! We love a good friends-to-lovers trope, don't we?

To Tell You When I Find You and Under The Elderberry Tree by @quirkysubject. The first fic is a Froger Titanic AU - do I need to say more? Go, and read it, everybody! Tbh, it's a thousand times better than the actual movie, with flawless characterization as well! The other mentioned fic is a cute Jimercury one-shot, that will make you cry and smile at the same time.

Safe And Sound by Stolentragedies. A fem!queen fic, in a Hunger Games setting? And also full of angst and insanely good characterization? Sign me the fuck up!

this time I know it's for real and Safeword by @freddie-mercurial. I only needed to read the summeries to these to know I will fall in love right away. One is a cute story with single parent!Brian falling for artist!Freddie, and the second is a super steamy, but also very lovely BDSM fic with healthy messages.

The entire I Lay My Life Before You series by @i-lay-my-life-before-queen. I wasn't even all that into a/b/o before I stumbled upon these fics - but these beautiful, compelling stories completely turned me around. We follow Freddie through his fight against Omega discrimination in different settings and versions- and let me tell you, every single story in this series is a touching masterpiece. I would also like to add I Reign With My Left Hand (I Rule With My Right), another fantastic a/b/o story, this time in a poly!queen setting!

hijack my heart; by @sweetestsight (I really hope it's them on tumblr too, if not, I'm sorry for the random tag). This fem!queen fic is just simply brilliant. Badass gangster ladies? Poly!Queen? Mindblowing dialogue? Girls supporting girls? If this was a movie, I would watch the shit out of it.

Don't Turn Around When You Hear Me Tread and Dim The Lights (and sing you songs) by @rhapsodicalfreddie. A secret agents, and a rockstar/groupie AU? And both of them are Frian!? *chef's kiss *

Children of The Land, Love Is Still The Answer by TheHeartOfTheStar AKA the fic that made me fall in love with the OT5 ship, complete with a beautifully written soulmate AU.

Four Men And A Rock And Roll Band and Princes of The Universe by @tikiniki. The mentioned series is what inspired me to write my very first fic. When people mention poly!queen, this writer is the one that immediately comes to my mind (i hope she's doing well!). I didn't realize I would like the second one as much as I did, but it simply blew my mind! Star Wars/Star Trek who?

These are just the ones I can list from the top of my head- but of course there are many more, and let's be real: I'm eternally grateful for all the writers in this fandom! 💕

#fic rec #fandom appreciation #appreciatethequeencreators #i know this is sort of late but still #long post

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rogerdaltreysautomatacollection · 4 years ago

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Transcript of Roberts live Facebook Q&A, 9th September 2014

RP: Amazing questions guys. We’ll be starting any minute. Keep them coming!

Q: Why were you ringing that bell in the ice water challenge ????

RP: What bell?

Q: Do you believe that hard rock is dead?

RP: Is there a pulse?

Q: What are some of the great journeys you have travelled while creating the new album? And how do they differ from your previous solo work?

RP: Perhaps it was the cardinal journey, it’s called going home. And as far as any different, my whole life and times are perpetual emotion. I was blessed with a passport recompass.

Q: Dear Robert……loved the Glasto set…… sometimes you were “elsewhere” it seemed…what kind of thoughts you through your mind when singing? Love and power to you…David

RP: I’ve played Glastonbury many times, in fact I’ve played in that area in the 60s, before Glasto, and sometimes, all of those experiences channel through me for a second or two, and with the passing of time, I was wondering if it was really the Veil of Avalon, and if Joseph of Arimathea was waiting for Metallica.

Q: What was the inspiration for the album cover , I received it today , it’s fantastic xx

RP: It is the home of the Ceaseless Roar

Q: what lullabies does Robert Plant sing to his grandchildren?

RP: The theme for Match of the Day

Q: Do you think your journey through the Mississippi Delta pushed you to keep moving in the music industry, inspired by the ageless musicians of that era?

RP: Yes. But now, my heroes are ghosts.

Q: what’s your favourite venue ever played?

RP: These days, I love playing Red Rocks in Colorado, but when I was a kid, I had no idea where fate would take me so any place with a microphone worked for me.

Q: What sparked your interest in ethnic music and folk music traditions from all over the world?

RP: I lived with a girl from India when I was an impressionable teenager.

Q: Would you consider working with Jack White at Third Man Records to record a single/album/anything? You two are my favourite artists and I would love to see you work together

RP: I love Jack White’s buccaneer spirit, and the way he dodges through the musical horizons. I’d be happy to make a single with him. I’d like to do a track called ‘Love Me’ which was originally recorded by The Phantom. In fact, I’m going to Nashville on Sunday and can do it on Monday morning! I’ve got lunch with Alison Krauss at 2pm and cocktails with Patty Griffin at 8pm.

Q: How long will you carry on playing Sunday football, and do you fancy playing The World Famous Railway Tavern in Brightlingsea (at footplay)? Our teams ages range from 19 to 59.

RP: My management company is concerned about my health, though I am available on Wednesday evenings.

RP: -- P.S. I am an overlapping fullback.

Q: Has the heart and soul been taken out of football?

RP: Times have changed, when I were a lad, our footballers travelled to the stadium on the bus with the fans. I haven’t seen Ronaldo on the way to Wolverhampton on the Midland Red 318 lately.

Q: Hey Robert..I was a young girl, do you remember having dinner in Disney world on the steam boat I walk up to you and said something stupid..your hold band laugh….if you remember let me know that’s one one of my regrets in life!!

RP: Everything that comes out of my mouth is relatively stupid, so I probably wouldn’t have recognised your supposed error. It’s always lovely to meeting a young woman on a boat.

Q: Robert, please advise me on which cider and cob combination to have at the Anchor pub in Cornsal?? Cheers!!

RP: Stick with the Heritage! and make sure you have a telephone number of a great taxi fir

Q: If you could reveal to us one secret, what would it be? For some of us, all has yet to be revealed.

RP: Holidaying in Madagascar, I tried my luck as a cross dresser. It was before the beard.

RP: Howdy pop pickers!

Q: I have always loved the photo of you and Strider on a vintage bike. Do you have a four legged companion and/or motorcycle now?

RP: I have a beautiful, four legged Bedlington Greyhound cross Lurcher. His name is Arthur. He was 6 recently.

Q: Robert I know this might sound like a crazy question but I am just curious.. I am a huge tea drinker as you are… my favourite is Earl Grey w/ lemon and honey .. what is yours?

RP: Nilgiri tea from the town Ooty, where the game of Snooker was invented.

Q: You’re on death row, they will allow you to listen to one song before you die…only one…what’s it gonna be?

RP: Nervous Breakdown by Eddie Cochran

Q: Will you marry me?

RP: Send full details. You’ll be right after Jack White.

Q: If ever a movie was made based on your life, who would you pick to portray you???

RP: Zaza Gabor

RP: Thanks for all the questions. Here’s my brand new music video for Rainbow (link to Rainbow video from The Colbert Report)

Pssst @firethatgrewsolow 😉

#robert plant #rp #modern day robert #2014 #live #facebook #q & a #just an overlapping fullback who loves his footie

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Hickman’s X-Men Line: One Year in Part 1: Prelude, House and Powers of X, X-Men and New Mutants (Hickman)

Under the cut is an explination of how hickman’s run happened (the mass decay will be covered another time probably), and dives into his x-books: house of x, powers of x,x-men and his breif run on new mutants and what i thought. Pax Krakoa baby.

One year ago, I breathed a sigh of relief as I read the utterly masterful house of x #1. See for the past few months, i’d been waiting on baited breath for this comic with a level of anticipation not matched by any before or since. Even the debut of a spinoff to Chew, one of my faviorite comics of all time that i deftnetly need to do a retrospective on, this week got within the same galaxy and it still wasn’t on the same level. This was big, grandiose and everything I hoped for. And whatever issues I had as House and it’s sister series came out slowly died out as the full story unfolded, my jaw dropped and my faith in Hickman to save the x-men was fully delivered. At last the x-men were back on top. And it was going to be one hell of a ride.

As you probably know the x-men had been treated pretty badly at marvel due to fox having the movie rights, a move that still baffles and frustrates me. Instead of making money to rub in fox’s face by promoting the hell out of them in merchandise, animation, video games and of course comics ALONGSIDE the avengers, they basically ignored the x-men and fantastic four to give fox less to work with to spite them while fox.. entirely ignored this as since both franchises have been around since the 60′s and the x-men had had mountains of spinoffs to give them mountains of characters. So in short: a decision to spite and hurt their compeitors only cost marvel money, pissed off fans and fox’s eventual absortion as far as I can tell had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

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Thankfully marvel DID stop being stupid eventually and relented: The Fantastic Four came back a year before house of x with a decent run by dan slott, which is thankfully more like earlier spider-man work and ff work, and less like what his spider-man run became from superior onward despite the ocasional misfire but i’ll talk about both runs another day. I mostly bring it up because with this revivial, marvel also slowly reintegrated the four back into the marvel universe and made their return feel like a big deal. The X-Men however took a bit: while they got an earlier shot at returning with ressurxion. Buuut with the idea of having hickman return in their back pocket, marvel apparently refused, at least according to cullen bunn who I fell has no real reason to lie, to let the writers rock the boat too much and the era perdictably was just meh, especially flagship book X-Men Gold which was written bafflingly by Mark Gugenhiem and outside of one or two good ideas basically felt like the comics equivlent of one of those party store albums where every song is a cover done by someone who couldn’t give half a damn. There were bright spots though with Cullen Bunn finishing out his awesome x-men tenure with x-men blue, Sina Grace’s wonderful iceman that took the wonky execution of Bendis’ decision to make bobby drake gay and made it work beautifully, and the decent if somewhat baffling x-men red. But overall it just felt like a missed opportunity and with the fox deal in bloom and a new EiC, marvel NEEDED something bigger, bolder and grander to do with marvel’s strangest heroes of all. After all all eyes would be on them while Marvel’s Movie department took a few years, probably longer now thanks to the pandemic, to let things cool off before bringing the x-men into the mcu. Enter Jonathan Hickman: Writer of another one of my faviorite runs of all time, his Fantastic Four run, along with an enjoyable but heavily flawed avengers run, a secret warriors run i’ve read half of that was a hell of a ride, tons of ultimate comics, and a bunch of indies I haven’t read but are probably great. A wordy weirdo and i’m convinced the second coming of grant morrison, and I hope one day the two work together on something tha’ts equal parts weird and amazing.

The morrison comparison is also apt as both came into the X-Men at a time when the x-men badly needed them: Just like Hickman morrison had to deal with a largely stagnant x-men and changed them to fit the times. And yes unsuprisngly i’ll also be covering morrisons run, warts and all, and it’s also one of my faviorite comics of all time. However Hickman was given a huge advtange his spirtiual predecessor, and really few comics writers EVER have gotten: full control of the x-men line. Unlike morrison who wasn’t even allowed to use certain characters despite writing the main fucking x-book, Hickman got full creative control: full say in the direction of the story, full say in who came on board and to let them pitch whatever they wanted to do. And honestly it’s an apporach that’s not only reovlutionarly but makes the books FEEL like their actually occuring around the same time. Sure their all still seperate entities, but it DOES feel like one coheisive universe. Contrastingly with the avengers Black Panther’s solo has had him on a year long sojurn in space, before returning to earth.. while also running the avengers over in jason aaron’s run and having his own spinoff team, without any fucking clue as to when intergalactic empire of wakanda takes place in relation to everything else. Tony Stark is currently just taking back both his own damn name and the iron man name in his own book, but is also a major player in avengers, and empyre with no mention of his seeming drunken spiral (itw as a ploy) or arno taking up the armor and I feel these issues rather than the neglect the x-men once had are why krakoa’s impact isn’t being felt more in other titles. I’m not saying don’t let books do their own thing, but I am saying let them have fucking consequences and weight instead of just acting like one isn’t happening or at the very least have a character be absent for an arc so you can fit the other stories into continuity easier. As X-Men’s shown it dosen’t stifle inovation and hell even immortal hulk easily fit into no road home with a fucking note saying “this takes place before x issue” it’s not that hard. This advantage was likely part of Hickman’s terms for coming back. See the x-men were the one thing at marvel he never got to do. The Gillieon and Aaron runs and Bendis runs meant the spot simply wasn’t open and by the time he was leaving it was clear marvel wanted to bury the x-men not praise them, so his ideas had no run. But the X-Men were what got Jonathan into comics. A shocking fact I learned at last years comic con, during which most of the dawn of x titles were revealed, was he WASN’T a fantastic four or avengers fan as a kid, not hating them but like me with the avengers for some time, not really caring about them. But with both runs, he did his homework, read as much as possible, and BECAME a fan, and it shows as both runs show a deep love for both marvel and the teams present. With X-Men they were his dream, his golden goose, his windmill, he just never was in the right place at the right time... but with Marvel needing his starpower and creativity and having nothing to loose with the x-men and badly needing a big run to hlep keep intrest in the x-men till the new movies, he finally was. So seeing the company needed him and he could get his dream and the control he needed, while dc had just taken bendis, didn’t need him and until very recently was ran by a moron, his choice to come back to marvel instead of go to dc as he’s admitted, was obvious. And it ended up being the right one. House and Powers of x were massive creative and commerical hits and the following titles have all been mostly praised. The new direction has been a boon for the franchise,k the fans and marvel. So being a fan of this direction, as you can tell by the massive intro, to give my thoughts on each book so far: what I think their doing right, where some went wrong etc, since I’d rather wait another year or so befor ediving into these and let some more of hickman’s plans and future story hints spread throughout his books pay off first. WIth that all out of the way it’’s time for a deep dive of x.So grab some plant based snacks, your x-shaped helmets, and your krakoan coffee, it’s time to finally get into hickman’s era of x-men.

HOUSE OF X AND POWERS OF X The opening salvo and just with two mini series that are one, though why he DIDN’T just have them be one big mini series I genuinely do not know, probably to justify having two diffrent artists to carry the load, is an utter masterpiece. Plain and simple. Let’s get the status quo the series set up out of the way so I can dig into it more: Magento and Xavier were revealed to have been working together for years behind the scenes.. with Moira Mactaggert, one of my favoirite x characters who the series changes utterly and forever. See instead of being the one human who consitantly is on mutants side and one of the x-men’s staunchest allies who sadly hadn’t been resusrected in 20 fucking years, she was a mutant herself, her ablility being reincarnation.. and thus had lived through 9 of her 10 lives seeing mutantkind always loose so told xavier and magneto about this in the hopes of breaking the wheel and letting mutantkind live this time. However hickman , while revealing the alliance does brilliantly still make it work in continuity for me: it’s clear from moira’s notes in one issue, as house and powers and any following titles love having charts or text based sections that I feel give the comics a unique flavor and really help boost most issues, that Charles optimism she was trying to break him of and faith in humanity took years to fully shatter: he plotted and schemed with her to protect his species but it was clear he probably felt it woudln’t be necessary that humanity would prove her wrong.. and by this series it’s clear, no they haven’t changed, the majority of them just want to genocide mutants and have tried again and again and again while the rest who don’t necessarily want it, paticuarlly the superheroes did nothing while Magneto chaffed against her after the whole “alter his infant self after he was deaged by a mutant he made into a baby to be more pacificsitc which naturally pissed him off when that wore off”. Yes that’s a thing that actually happened pre and post retcons it’s why a survivor of the holocaust is , while not a YOUNG man, still healthy and vibrant. It’s a clever way to not undermine those stories while still telling this one and this retcon is a move I like as unlike most retcons it’s both there to tell a good story and excuted in a way that outside of moira dosen’t undermine anything. The Moira retcon I was and to a degree still am mixed on. While the new version of her is brilliant, creative and intresting and I can’t wait to see what happens with her next time she shows up, I do mourn the old as the x-men had few human allies and now their only big one is now a mutant herself, but it IS in service of a really damn good narraitive and the twist that the bad futures presented were in fact other lives of moira was brilliant, and it’s nice to see SOMETHING done with her. I’d rather something that i have a small problem with lead to really great things and be worth the sacrifice of her former character, than just changing things because “fuck it I want to do this and their letting me do this’ as a lot of retcons tend to be. Hickman’s story needs moira and her cycle of defeat to truly soar to the heights it’s reaching, and to make Charles and Xavier’s back alley actions make sense, so i’ll glady sacrifce one version of a character that I really liked for another version of her that’s also really good. The other big swing though I was completley on board for: Hinted at early on by serveral dead mutants being alived, after a sucidie mission against new big bads and mutant hating extermists orchis, who are far better written than other extermists, it’s revealed just why death has seemingly taken a holiday: the big plan that has been decades in the making for xavier and co? That will reshape mutant kind and required working with mr sinsiter of all people? Revivie all dead mutants. See in a brilliant reveal Cerebro isn’t just a mutant tracker; It’s a copier, copying their essecnes reaguarly and storing them for later, updating them every so often and thus meaning any who died can come back. Why it took Chuck so long to do this is also explained as he needed 5 specific mutant power sets to do it and thus had to wait till they had everything they needed: Goldballs, yes goldballs, spits out his giant golden balls, phrasing, which hickman in an insane and awesome turn revealed to be EGGS. Yes EGGS. Proteus, Moira’s son and former villian whose now pacificed since this body cloning process means he has an infnite suply of xavier bodies to burn through and thus isn’t killing people, warps reality to mamke the eggs viable. Elixir, a healer whose been through some shit the poor guy,gives the eggs , once injected with the mutant in questions dna via syringe because of course, life, and Tempus, goldballs former classmate fellow bendis creation and mistress of time, speeds it up a bit so they don’t have to wait a good few decades for some mutants to rerez. The fifth that makes all this possible is hope summers, mutant messiah and adopted daughter of cable returned to promence once more, whose power is revealed to be power maniulation and thus can boost their powers to the degree neded for this. it’s a BRILLIANT turn that not only undoes all the pointless deaths mutants have undergone, but changes the game: Genocide is now near impossible, as humanity has no idea bout any of htis, and instead of mutant lives going down, they can only go once.. as one man once put it...

And as an x-men fan having watched characters I love die again and again for stupid reasons, especially int he placeholder run right before house of x, this was so satsifying. Everyone the x-men had lost, every character I loved who was gone and forgotten.. they were back or would be back. And thanks to Krakoa they were thriving: By giving mutantkind a homeland instead of a headquarters, a nation given to one of their own because he demanded itbasically, or an island fortress designed to give a dying species refuge, they have a goregous sentient island (I’ve always loved krakoa for the record though I wonder what happened to his clone son), with abundant food, teleporting gates across the world to visit wherever they like or live in the various worldwide habitats if they please, and peace and security they’ve neve rknown. No more being woken up to get to a panic room because a sentienl attacked. No more having religious maniacs blow up busses containing your tine. No more having the vast majority of the superhero community do nothing as a fucking plauge cloud wipes out your species. Anything apporaching krakoa now has hundreds of the most powerful beings alive defending all mutants.. and that includes the worst of the worst, all given amntesty.. but they must tow the line or else be given a fate worse than death. After years of pain and suffering and misery mutantkind is free safe and happy. They still have to fight to get the rest of their kind out of racist hands and to saftey, the fight’s not over.. but now the odds are in mutantkinds favor. It’s paradise. And yet this mini, and this whole run dosen’t run from tough issues; The mutants are now isolationists and only mutants are allowed on krakoa itself.. on the one hand this is a bad idelogy and potentially dangerous, instead of fighting for harmony fighting for my land alone.. but it’s also see why Mutantkind has taken to it. The X-Men have tried for at the least a decade in universe and at the most and most likely 15 years to live in harmony, fight for mankind and make peace with them.. and only a small chunk has acutally tried to help them with that. The other large fraction? They either build death machines to try and wipe out all mutants, and in the case of Cassandra NOva who while not a human is still a racist genocidal bitch, SUCCEED in wiping out a large chunk, or do nothing while mutantkind suffers. The series forces you to think about the implications that marvel comics themselves previous ignored: That with all the superheros in this world who arent mutants.. more often than not htey’ve done fuck all when terrible shit happens. When Genosha died, not a one asked the x-men what happened or tried to hunt down those responsible. When Decemation happened, the avengers were more concerned with helping the x-men cover it up than helping them move on and did nothing as the goverment made xavier’s into a reservation, even after regrestration happened and the goverment had more heroes than ever to spare to helping them. When the T-Mist happened years later instead of stopping terrigin or asking the inhumans to stop it for the good of another race, the rest of the heroes just did fuck all. Sure the avengers were on a budget and the ff were asbent, but there were enough heroes in the world still and enough teams to do something about it and only the ones with mutants on them did!. IT’s hard to say “well you shoudln’t exclude them”.. when the rest of superhero kind has been subtly doing it their whole lives. But it dosen’t shy away from the claims of racial superiority the isoaltion or the fact the x-men basically sued for nationhood by making requiring recognizing their nation hood the price for trading for their life saving and extending, world changing drugs, which you would still need to buy. There’s other issues, one that i’ll get to in a moment as it was only revealed in x-men. Various characters, Corsair in issue one of the ongoing, the fincial summit in issue 4 and the ff both in house of x #1 and ff/x-men, all question this and some of the ethics. Hickman brilliantly decides instead of just painting the x-men as absolute moral rights, to show their new nation warts and all: the genuine good their doing and trying to do but also the price they have to pay for it and the mistakes they may be making. And the compromise necessary to build a nation. It’s all chiling, compelling shit that’s even more releveant in a time when bigotry is piling up like crazy. Both house and x-men, which i’ll get to in a second, ask questions with no easy answers and it makes them a compelling read. Also compelling is the two mini series use of flashbacks: The two previous moira timelines, which we learn are just that as we go, are compelling with the apoclaypse timeline having loveable heroes were are heartbroken to see die in the struggle, while the last timeline seemingly sees the mutants turn as bad as the humans.. only to peel back a layer at the end and reveal humans are still very much the real monsters, and them evolving via machine is a threat to mutant kind's natural evolution. It was a good story twist and of course there’s FAR more to dig into in both books, and I defintely will at some point in the future as I said. But there’s tons of great ideas here: Sinsiter not only being a mutant but a reluctant ally, the same of apocalyspe, the heavy questions I got into above, the idea of machines being mutants greatest threat which makes a ton of sense, and the various ones I already went into. I can’t gush about this book enough, but since this is already long enough i’m trying. The point is both mini series are great and how you do a self contianed event perfectlY plenty of consequence, plenty of scope but enough character and brilliant ideas and a FUCK TON of quotable and iconic lines, all blend into one of the very best series i’ve ever read. And lead directly into..

X-Men I talked about a lot of what this book represents above as it’s a direct continuation of the above, but the book on it’s own is still something diffrent. while it continues setting things up, playing with the new toybox hickman set up, and asking the tough questions, x-men does it in a diffrent way. House and Powers bounce around through time while all telling one huge story and one huge bundle of setup for this status quo. X-Men instead is a bunch of single issues. It’s still a ton of setup, though with enough payoff to house and powers that it at least so far hasn’t become tedious, especailly since hickman specifically has plans for all of it and has shown in the past he’s a long game man when it comes to storytelling, but through more action packed stories that, with the exception of mistque’s spotlight issue so far, have one shared element: Cyclops, aka Scott Summers, who as grand captain of krakoa is the nation’s ruling council’s go to guy for missions and who he himself can form any team he once for any mission. Cyclops, like the x-men hadn’t been treated well for years; Various characters lambasted him after the phoenix force drove him mad and lead to him killing charles xavier, and before that his run as leader of utopia, not helped by x-force painting him as a cold heartless dickweed, had him forced to make questionable decisions that made fans turn agains thim despite the hard position he was in. But now with the burden of absolute leadership of mutantkind in other hands, HIckman writes scott beautifully and has restored him to his proper place. WIth Xavier taking over as absolute leader of mutantkind and his race no longer hanging by a thread for the first time in years scott can relax and ENJOY himself. As the first issue shows he has everything he ever could have possibly wanted: A healthy marriage with Jean again, and an open one at that with him free to still see emma and Jean openly seeing Logan. Logan himself no longer trying to murder scott for his mistakes or kill his teenage self due to bad writing, but being his best friend again and also living with him and presumibly having threeways because they have connected bedrooms and of course jean would want both at once. Maybe they also just fuck each other sometimes again the details haven’t exactly been clear but it’d explain the tension disappearing. Maybe the schism would’ve ended quicker if Cyclops and Wolverine just fucked each other after children of the atom. Hey not every question is a deep personal one on krakoa sometimesm it’s just “Are these two fucking and could it have solved things faster in the past if they did?”. Also I almost forgot to mention, and added this near the end of writing this, in additoin to everything else scott now lives ON THE FUCKING MOON, on the blue area with a breathable atompshere, on a moon house with his family and fuckbuddy and Vulcan’s buddys. It’s fucking amazing. But moving back to other things scott’s gotten besides logan’s wang up his butt, as seen in issue one thanks to the gates his dad can now visit anytime, his brothers live with him with Vulcan going from genocidal dickweed to weirdo thanks to his experinces between his “death’ and this series, and he’s just. happy. And as a leader he takes the x-men on thrilling missions: the series combines action with character and worldbuilding and it is great. The worldbuilding part has been tremendous; we’ve seen new foes in the returning children of the vault and horticulture, aka what if the golden girls were tv ma, and also plant based supervillians plotting a better future for mankind that krakoa’s drugs clash with. We’ve seen nimrod creeping close, charles and magneto not playing ball with mystique start to backfire, the return of krakoa’s lost love, and in my faviorite arc, we’ve seen broo, one of my faviorite x-people and intellegent brood, eat an egg and thus become god emperor of the brood, not only giving the vicious race a chance to reform but giving the x-men a huge advatange in space, doubeldby events we’ll get to in a second. And biggest of all we saw the crucible: Since those depwoered by the decimation can get power back by dying again, and to prevent overworking the five with mass sucidies krakoa came up with a nasty solution,: earning resurection via ritual combat. And like the above there aren’t easy answers to this: mass sucidie isn’t better or faster, but having mutatns forced to EARN repowering by dying brutally isn’t a great solution either and is kind of sick. And it also opens up questions about ressurectoin that Nightcrawler feels made need reegion to answer htem. It’s again good heavy instreating stuff. We also got my faviorite issue #4 where the x-men go to a fincial summit, and while security detail cyclops and gorgon fight off hired goons...

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Xavier, Magneto and Apocalypse discuss with world leaders about the implications of krakoa’s policys, with Magneto not hiding his love of flexing his superiority. And Charles ends the confrence, after it’s revealed one hired them in an utterly masterful moment: Taking off his helmet to reveal no this is charles, this is him and that even after they tried assintating him he has and always will love humanity he’s just sick of being treated like crap and suffering for doing it and his people suffering for it and he won’t tolerate this sort of shit again. See it for yourself it’s an absolute triumph:

It’s a great scene. Overall an utterly great title that really keeps the momentum moving and I feel is only setting up for even more things.. the only real issue is that A) the title’s been slower at coming out than the other dawn of x titles, though in the case of the empyre tie in’s it’s not hteir fault but the rest sure as shit are, and B) that it has mostly been just setup but it’s been good enough and enjoyable enough and I feel payoff is coming, so I truly don’t care. At long last we have a main x-men book that’s not only fantastic but uttterly engaging and I read most issues multiple times. An utter slam dunk

Giant Sized X-Men: This one is incomplete, so I can’t fully say what the full picture is.. but for the three released so far it’s a mixed bag, though the art in all three is gorgeous as Hickman brought on the best artists in the buisness but it’s telling that while New Mutants bellow had issues that bugged me but was still kinda fun, and the above havem y utter priase I nearly forgot to include these issues. None of them are bad and all have gorgeous art as I said, these are some of the best in the buisness, they feel padded. These were supposed to be annuals, but when they decided to change this to one shots.. they shoudl’ve just made them regular length instead, as there simply isn’t enough story here to fill them and so far only Davis’ issue has both had huge setup (both revealing doug’s fusion with warlock is a secret for some reason and that he is indeed still fully alive and revealing what happened to the x-mansion), and due to Davis background as a writer/artist the pacing to fill one issue and even then it could’ve been trimmed. Not bad and I don’t fault the artists for not being used to being writer/artists or having to do so while also conforming to a larger narriative which likely didn’t help or in the third one’s case having to take over for someone else entirely, but it’s , while not bad no ton par with the two above books and I expect better from hickman.

New Mutants (HIckman’s Issues) I’ll cover Brisson’s issues next time as they feel like a diffrent run entirely, but New Mutants was.. a disapointment. I was utterly pumped for this title going in being a huge fan of the team thanks to finally reading the claremont and sikenwitz run and before that re-reading abnett and lannings utterly great run and hey jonathan hickman who’d already done gangbusters was writing it! It had a great roster!

And it starreed one of hickman’s faviorite mutants and one he’d taken a shine to on avengers, and one of my faviorite superheros, Roberto DeCosta, aka Sunspot. On Avengers hickman took Roberto , already a decent character and made him amazing. He was still rich, young and a playboy as ever.. but he used said wealth and his love of fun wisely. When undercover at an AIM casino instead fo throw down, he offers the agents a free day of partying and gambling on his huge dime, then puts them on payroll as his undercover agents. So to recap Roberto DeCosta won the avengers two valuable double agents in what at the time was one of their biggest threats.. by buying them tons of beer and gambling and presumibly hookers. And later got the loyatly of the rest of AIM through these guys, and when Steve found out tony betrayed him and went off hte deep end hunting him instead of stopping the end of the goddamn world, TOOK OVER AIM HIMSELF IN COMBAT WITH THE AIM SUPREME, and then formed his own avengers.

Literally. He got his own avengers team, most of which left after the apocalypse but he simply found younger and hungrier replacements, and aim.. with blackjack and hookers. The man is a legend. And knowing Roberto if hookers were actually involved he probably treated them with respect and overpayed them because he’s a class act. Then under Al Ewing’s mighty pen, Roberto not only formed another avengers team since most of the avengers he formed to stop the end of the world were busy elsewhere, of young and great avengers, while dying of the aformentioned death cloud, but became an utterly brilliant chessmaster, only failing ONCE becaue of hydra cap getting into his head while AIM was working for the us goverment towards the end as the USAvengers. And yes that’s a real team. It’s as insane and beautiful as it sounds. And his new avengers once fought american kaiju, a godzilla with a flag painted on it chaning usa. Al Ewing is the best and I love him. But he also became a master stratigest and schemer with schemes within schemes within schemes, his crowning one being faking his own death and using his fake funeral to clear out any remaning enimies in AIm, and only quitting AIM to keep it out of goverment hands and in the hands of a trusted friend. He was and still is one of the best avengers there ever was and ever will be. But here, as the new mutants go on a road trip to get sam? He’s a fucking dumbass who hires the worst space laywer possible, only gets off trial because Sam and his wife save them, glad they weren’t broken up by the way, and is utterly useless most of the time. It’s like HIckman forgot the last part of his run.. granted time runs out isn’t very good but still, that wasn’t a good thing to forget and like Hickman wants to ignore ewing’s work for no damn reason, even though Ewing did great things with Roberto and kept him relevant when marvel was choking the x-men to death. It’s fucking embrassing and disapointing to see. The rest of the New Mutants aren’t much better mostly being happy but also not really acting like themselves, with only mondo really standing out since he gets great moments and hasn’t done anything in a while. And Doug, who I negelcted to mention above is one of my faviorite mutants and thanks to being krakoa’s primary method of commuincation, is now one of krakoa’s most important mutants, has a seat at the council with krakoa, and weirdly has his best friend warlock hiding on his arm for reasons that haven’t been explained yet. In Short doug went from beign forgotten to being used awesomely again. Roberto instead of getting the same is set back as a character and ends the arc deciding to stay in space because he misses sam, and will likely become third in his marriage i’m sure, and wants to bone deathbird, x-men villian and frequent shiar usuper. But while rahne actually being happy is a good sight to behold they , except Dani, really dont’ do much. Though Magik gets a fucking amazing scene where she asks the various assasians sent ot kill them if they want to make out , not only revealing she’s bi, but that she’d prefer that to killing them all but does so when they dumbly refuse .. I mean seriously who, whose not in a relationship that’s open or way older than her, not take her up on that? The plot their thrust into isnt’ great either, mostly just more setup but not present as well as in x-men about Gladiator giving the shiar empire to xavier’s daughter.. yes charles has a daughter that was created from his and his ex wife lilandra, whose still dead’s dna, and letting DEATHBIRD Of all people teach her instead of his damn self. Xandra taking over isn’t a terrible idea it’s just handeld poorly. It just feels disapointing.. like hickman WANTS to do a JLI style book here but the combination of him only doing one arc and not really wanting to write the characters as they should be, an issue that only pops up here and in the new mutants cameo during x-men proper and not for doug ever, that makes it fall falt.. I mean there are utterly great moments like the above, and hte image i used to lead off their just stifled by misusing roberto and everyone else.

But overall hickman’s works on x-men are fucking great, intresting and engaging. I’ve read the issues a ton and will again. One small mistep dosen’t take away from all the large good he’s done and he’s made the franchise feel alive again and hopefully the MCU take on it will take after this run, as it’d be a great way to break from the endless xavier vs magneto battles of the fox universe. So yeah overall 2 great books and a thankfully short misfire, HIckman’s on top. And next time we’ll see who he picked to help him carry the x banner home to us all, and who did well with it and whose stumbled a bit as part two delves into the rest of the dawn of x. For now subscribe for more comics stuff as I plan to get back on that, including I hope a restrospective on the fox era x-men sometime soon, animation reviews, and more fun stuff. And until then, courage.

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