#if tim burton was to dream up a sea star this would be it

[montereybayaquarium]

Many hands make light work. Or in the case of the basket star — many branches catch more snacks! 

This sinuous sea star stretches its many branches into the current to skillfully snatch small crustaceans and other prey as they drift by. 

[violetrose-art]

Frankenweenie Headcannons, Theories, and Ideas

This is just a list of the theories, headcannons, and ideas I came up with for Tim Burton's Frankenweenie. I might add more later on, so watch out

-When he was six years old, Victor Frankenstein got Sparky as a small puppy from the local pet shop

-Elsa got Persephone as a gift for her seventh birthday

-Victor’s full name is Victor Charles Frankenstein

-Victor is strongly not fond of sports, especially baseball. But he does love to play fetch with Sparky and ride his bike

-Victor secretly has a crush on Elsa, but he’s too nervous to say anything. But he wouldn’t mind just being friends with her

-Even though he doesn’t get along too well with Toshiaki and Nassor very well, Victor doesn’t mind Bob (who was one of the “cool kids”) being nice to him

-Victor used to have a pen pal in London named Shamus Holmes. They wrote to each other back and forth almost every week, until Victor reached college. That was when the letters from Shamus stopped coming

-Victor isn’t allergic to anything, but he does get nauseous around peaches for some reason

-When he grows up, Victor either wants to become a scientist, a vet, or a movie director… but he can’t decide

-Victor likes to watch both horror and sci-fi films. His favorites are Karloff’s “Frankenstein”, “The Fly”, “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”, “Behemoth the Sea Monster”, and “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers”

-The Monday after Dutch Day, Victor was told to stay after school for baseball practice, but when he hit the ball and ran around the diamond, he broke his arm and got a black eye and he was suspended from the baseball team… which he thought was the best day ever

-Victor isn’t particularly fond of his young cousin, Vincent Malloy. He’s often annoyed by Vincent's slightly obsessive mannerisms and all of his Vincent Price talk and Vincent's mother blames Victor for introducing her son to scary movies in the first place

-Victor was born on August 31st, 1957

-Elsa’s full name is Elsa Anais Van Helsing

-Victor and Elsa first met on their first day in kindergarten. They both reached out to grab the same toy, but their hands touched and their eyes met. After a tiny squabble over the toy, they started playing together and they quickly became friends

-Elsa was born on October 28th, 1957

-Elsa isn’t into sports, but she enjoys going swimming or roller skating on occasion… She also likes to watch Victor Frankenstein at baseball practice sometimes

-Elsa is highly allergic to bees and pistachios

-A year after Dutch Day, Mayor Bergermeister forced Elsa to take ballet lessons recently and she doesn’t like it

-Elsa has an interest in history and she thought about becoming a historian someday

-Elsa has a secret crush on Victor, but she’s too shy to say anything

-After the events of Dutch Day, Victor promised never to reanimate Sparky again if he died one more time. Eventually when he was in his late teen years, he let Sparky die because he and Elsa wanted Sparky and Persephone to be together in death. The two dogs were buried in the pet cemetery together (Romeo and Juliet style)

-Elsa likes to watch horror movies in secret. Her absolute favorites are “Bride of Frankenstein”, “Dracula”, and “The Phantom of the Opera”

-After Dutch Day, Victor and Elsa started to grow closer and closer, as well as their dogs Sparky and Persephone

-Despite her uncle's protests of having a dog around, he agreed to let Elsa keep Persephone. But he insists that she keep the dog away from his front lawn

-Sparky and Persephone had four puppies together. Their names are Coal, Raven, Anastasia, and Hades

-When they were in the eighth grade, Victor and Elsa had their first kiss at a Halloween dance at school. They had their second kiss after a Christmas dance recital; they were performing the Nutcracker together. They started officially dating when they were freshmen in high school

-Elsa’s favorite books are “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, “Romeo and Juliet” and other works of William Shakespeare and her favorite writers are Lewis Carroll, Harper Lee, and Shakespeare. She also enjoys Edgar Allen Poe’s works

-Elsa considers Weird Girl (aka, Mindy) a friend, but she doesn’t like it when she creepily stares at her

-Elsa had a pen pal in New York City named Kristen. They wrote to each other a few times a month, but they lost touch when they reached senior year in high school

-When Victor and Elsa grew up and got married, they had two children. Their names are Peter Timothy Frankenstein (age 12) and Moira Juliet Frankenstein (age 8)

-Weird Girl’s full name is Mindy Cecilia White

-Mindy was raised by a single mother who was a medium, as well as a psychiatrist

-Mr. Whiskers was adopted as a kitten by Mindy from a local pet store. He was the only one of the litter that wasn't adopted because of his large starring eyes

-Mindy took the same ballet classes as Elsa

-Mindy has a crush on Edgar. She secretly hoped that Mr. Whisker's would one day dream about her and Edgar

-After Mr. Whiskers’ death, Mindy fell into a deep depression. Elsa was there to comfort her in her time of need and she even helped her bury the body in the pet cemetery

-Mindy first discovered Mr. Whiskers’ ability to predict the future through cat litter one morning after changing it; it was shaped in the letter B. On that same day, a girl named Brooklyn from school got three strikes at the bowling alley

-Mindy was born on April 3rd, 1958

-Edgar’s full name is Edgar Abraham Gore

-Edgar has a crush on Mindy, but he believes she’s out of his league and was too afraid to approach her

-At one point, Edgar wanted a snake or spider for a pet, but his mother told him no. Once tried to adopt a wild raccoon, but got a scolding from her when he let it into the house

-Edgar was born on September 14th, 1958

-After Dutch Day, Edgar developed a fear of rats

-Edgar still wants to make a death ray with Victor, even though they can't actually make one

-Mindy and Edgar started dating when they were in their sophomore year

-When they got married, Mindy and Edgar had a daughter named Giselle (age 7 ¾)

-Toshiaki’s full name is Toshiaki Ito Oroku

-Toshiaki's mother and father were originally born and raised in Japan until they moved to the US a month before he was born. Being an open community towards different race groups, New Holland was the perfect location to start a family

-Toshiaki was born on May 28th, 1956

-As a reward for winning his first science fair, Toshiaki was given a pet turtle, who he named Shelly. Shelly was unfortunately passed away when he was left outside in the hot afternoon in his aquarium for too long

-Toshiaki and Victor are frenemies, mainly friends, but mostly enemies

-When Shelly died two times, Toshiaki was very upset. But luckily, he had his friends to comfort him after his second and final burial

-In school, Toshiaki met one of the new girls, a Japanese girl named Mae-Lee, and he quickly developed a crush on her

-Years later, Toshiaki and Mae-Lee got married and had two children, a daughter named Shelley Sue (age 8) and Yoshi (age 7 months)

-Nassor’s full name is Nassor Hannibal Karloff

-In school, Nassor stood out from the other children due to his height and cynical macabre personality. The only thing that made him happy as a child was his pet hamster, Colossus. One day Colossus went missing and Nassor was frantic with worry. About five days later, Colossus was found trapped inside the wall and he had starved to death, leaving Nassor heartbroken

-Nassor has an interest in Ancient Egyptian culture around pharaohs and the afterlife. It was his idea as tribute to Colossus would be mummified and placed in a large tomb

-After Dutch Day, Nassor was found wrapped up and he was untied by the others. While he holds no grudges against Toshiaki, he doesn't exactly forgive him for causing Colossus's second death

-Nassor was born on February 24th, 1956

-After Dutch Day, Nassor met one of the new girls, a young lady named Hillary, and he was instantly infatuated with her

-When Nassor and Hillary grew up, they got married and had a son named Darwin (age 12)

-Bob’s full name is Bob Adam Hill

-Bob’s dad passed when he was rather young, making his mother, Mrs. Hill, extremely protective of him, and he finds it super embarrassing

-Bob hates it when people talk about his weight. When he fell down a manhole by accident, he got stuck and had to have a crane to pull him back out

-Bob was born on July 6th, 1957

-In school, Bob had a crush on a girl named Jenny

-Bob first met Toshiaki shortly after Shelly's death. Despite Toshiaki's cold behavior towards him at first, they became good friends

-Bob has an interest in marine life and he has a fish tank full of different kind of fish up in  his room

-When he grew up, he and Jenny got married and had a son named Carl (age 12)

-Mr. Frankenstein’s full name is Edward Steven Frankenstein

-Edward was an avid lover of sports, especially baseball. He played as a star athlete in high school, where he first met Susan who was cheering with the other cheerleaders

-Edward has a bit of hard time understanding his son, Victor, but still supports him nonetheless

-Edward likes to role play with his wife Susan that he's a travelling salesman when her "husband" isn't around the house

-Edward often gets people who ask him about his last name Frankenstein. An old family rumor was that he was a direct descendant of the original presumed fictional scientist, Dr. Frankenstein

-Edward tries to get along with his next door neighbor, Mayor Bergermeister

-Mrs. Frankenstein’s full name is Susan Delia Woods Frankenstein

-Susan and Edward Frankenstein first met in back high school; he was a star athlete while she was the head cheerleader. A few years after graduation, they got married and she gave birth to Victor at age 31

-Susan has two sisters, Lillian and Francine. Francine is the eldest, Susan is the middle child, and Lillian is the youngest. Lillian is Vincent Malloy’s mother

-Susan isn't as social with the other mothers/housewives with their gossiping. She prefers the company with her family instead. She is friends with Mrs. Van Helsing, though

-Susan had a pet calico cat when she was younger named Lacey. But poor Lacey died when she was around Victor's age, so she knows what her son was going through

-Mayor Bergermeister’s full name is Robert “Bob” Clarence Bergermeister

-The Bergermeister family has been mayors of New Holland for generations. They were known for their strict laws, rules, and leadership towards its citizens

-Bergermeister has a very low tolerance towards animals, especially dogs… probably because he never had any pets growing up

-Elsa’s father’s full name is Jonathon Gabriel Van Helsing

-Elsa’s mother’s full name is Lydia Hermione Bergermeister Van Helsing

-Mr. and Mrs. Van Helsing are philosophers, hence why they tend to be away a lot. They travel to countries mostly in Europe, like Romania and the Netherlands. They sometimes take Elsa with them when they have to go out of the town, state, or even country. But most often, she stays behind because of school and just wants to be at home and spend time with Victor

-Mayor Bergermeister is in fact the older brother of Lydia by four years. Like most siblings, they do love each other but sometimes can’t stand each other

-Lydia is one of the few people and things that actually scares Mr. Bergermeister, despite the fact that that she’s his little sister. She doesn’t take nonsense from him or anyone else and she’s not afraid to stand up to him. When she’s done, he usually replies weakly “yes, sis” or “yes, little sis”

-Jonathon grew up in Romania for most of his childhood, but when he lost his parents, he immigrated to the United States to make a better life for himself. He met Lydia when he was about to start high school

-Bergermeister loves gardening, especially his first prize flowers. He absolutely hates it when the neighbor's dog lays his "business" all over the lawn

-Bergermeister cares deeply for his niece and younger sister… but he isn't very fond of her husband, Jonathon

-At first, Bergermeister greatly disliked the idea of Elsa and Victor being together, but he eventually grew to respect him

-Bergermeister used to be married; he and his wife even had a son named Bernard. But the couple had a huge fight and they filed for a divorce. When the divorce was finalized, his ex left New Holland and she took Bernard with him

-Bernard Bergermeister was never close with his cousin, Elsa. In fact, Elsa often found Bernard to be quite repulsive

-When Bernard grew up, he met a wealthy young woman named Lucille and they had a son named Bruce (age 13)

-Mr. Rzykruski’s full name is Ivan Darius Rzykruski

-Ivan was born in a small Eastern European village. He grew up influenced around various scientists in the community. Both of his parents were scientists in different fields of expertise and would encourage him to pursue his dreams

-By the time Ivan was 18 years old, he immigrated to the United States and eventually landed a job as a university professor teaching quantum mechanics. He met with various famous scientists in his career

-Ivan tends to be a bit dramatic in his teachings. He briefly took acting classes in his youth, but he wanted to focus more on being a scientist

-During one of his science lectures, Ivan met a woman by the name of Vanessa. They quickly fell in love, got married, and had a son named Dirk. Unfortunately when Dirk was about 9 years old, Vanessa passed away because of cancer. Ivan was heartbroken and he and Dirk missed her terribly. When Dirk was 10, Ivan sent his son to a private boarding school in another part of the state. But when the boy turned 14, he went back to public school

-Dirk grew up and met a woman named Clarice. They got married and had a daughter named Ingrid (age 13). But Clarice died of a terrible sickness when Ingrid was about 3 or 4, then Dirk died in a car crash when Ingrid was about 7. That was when Mr. Rzykruski took his granddaughter in and raised her as his own

-The gym teacher’s full name is Coach Darla Gladys Barnes

-Bob’s mom’s full name is Barbara Deborah Ferguson Hill

-Vincent Malloy’s full name is Vincent Sebastian Malloy

-When Vincent grew up, he met a woman named Marilynn, they got married and had a daughter named Winona (age 7). But Marilynn got into a bad car accident and passed away, leaving Vincent to raise his daughter on his own

-The invisible fish Victor reanimated didn't die. In fact, the fish used its invisibility powers to slip out of the glass jar Edgar was keeping it in and disappeared into the sewer, rumored to still be there

-The reason that New Holland has so many lightning storms is part of an old town legend. Centuries ago when the first settlers built New Holland, there was a young witch by the name of Loretta Thistletwing and while she was a good witch, she kept her true nature a secret from the superstitious townsfolk. Unfortunately, one fateful night, Loretta accidentally caused her powers to be revealed and the townsfolk formed an angry mob to have her killed. However, her beloved familiar black cat, Midnight, heard of the danger and tried to defend his mistress, only to get killed in the process. Outraged by the loss of her beloved pet, Loretta unleashed a curse upon the town right before they burned her at the stake, saying that the town would be cursed with perpetual thunderstorms and any lightning that hit a deceased pet would bring it back to life, unleashing its fury upon the town. This is why the lightning brings dead pets back. But Sparky is the only good one to be reanimated because Victor loved him so much

-Susan and her two sisters are the three granddaughters of Victor Van Dort and Victoria Everglot. Susan’s son and only child, Victor, was named after his great-grandfather who passed away before his birth

-In the past, New Holland had experienced horrible monster attacks and many of them were based on famous movie monsters. There was a mutated bulldog made out of slime (based on the Blob), a half lizard/fly (based on the Fly), a gigantic pet capuchin monkey (based on King Kong), and even a phantom like cat (based on the Phantom of the Opera). Of course, the current townsfolk never believed these supposed stories until the Dutch Day incident

-Legend has it that the curse Loretta put on the town could only be broken when a pet that had been deeply loved by its owner was brought back peaceful and the townsfolk came together to save it should it die again. This ultimately ended up happening by the end of the movie and the curse was unwittingly broken

This is all I've got so far, but feel free to tell me what you think and tell me which one is your favorite

[daydream-believin]

The Never-Ending Roadtrip (new beginnings)

Summary: Reader joins Douxie in the quest for Nari’s safety. He’ll need company won’t he? - Also, a talk about Merlin and grief. It’s big feelings time. (part two)

Warnings: Swearing, theres like three bad puns and at least one meme im sorry

Word Count: 2713

A/N: inspired by the fact that i recently moved states and it was the most tedious trip ever. It took the entire day. i was bored out of my mind. So i decided to write about going on a long boring roadtrip with Douxie instead. also, i have a black cat myself and i can attest that they are little domesticated demons. she didn’t like the long trip either.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” Douxie deadpanned when he saw (Name) run up to join him on the ship, perching on the edge. “Well I’m coming with you, obviously.” Douxie had known the young woman long enough to know that there would not be a point in arguing. They would just go round and round for hours before she ultimately won. She fought dirty, puppy dog eyes and all. He didn’t have time for this.

After making sure that Archie and Nari were secure, Doux turned back to (Name), “You’re absolutely sure about this decision, love? Once we take off there’s no going back. We could even be running for the rest of our lives. You really should stay with the others,” he warned.

She looked annoyed. “Yes, Doux. I am absolutely sure. I wouldn’t want you to do this alone. And besides, you’ll need me.”

He blushed for a second before realizing she meant he would need her as in extra backup and not that he needed her needed her. Trying not to show the slight disappointment that was written on his face, he chuckled and covered his cheek with his palm, “Of course.”

They set off into the early morning sky. After waving goodbye to the rest of the gang, (Name) clung to the golden railing, looking out over California in amazement. It was like she was in a movie. This was her life changing magic carpet ride. Of course, a lot about her life had seemed to be out of a movie lately. Ever since she discovered her gift for sorcery. Ever since she got mixed up in all this Arcadian mess. Ever since she met Douxie.

Surprisingly, Douxie was really talkative for the first few hours of the trip. (Name) had expected him to be a bit more closed off, considering the week they had just gone through. He was really gushy too, with his heart on his sleeve even more so than usual, and that’s saying something for Douxie. Maybe momentary death was good for unclogging heart pipes.  (Name) was loving it. Not the momentary death thing. That had almost stopped her heart. No, it was so nice to be having such lighthearted conversation with her friends. Kept her from dwelling on things. Once night got closer, though, she couldn’t help it. What could she say, the pink splattered purple sunset made her sentimental. She and Douxie had slipped into a little talk about Arcadia, about the kids, about what had happened, and about what was next for them. Despite her gushing about how happy she was to be here with him, Douxie still felt really guilty that he put her through all this. She made the mistake of telling him how much it scared her, everything that happened earlier. She made a bigger mistake telling him how she cried over his body, refusing to accept that he was gone. He wasn’t of course, but she didn’t know that.

He suddenly got quiet after that. The conversation lulled. Even Nari and Archie seemed to sense that something was off and kept quiet. After watching the stars roll by in silence for a few hours, (Name) started to feel the tug of sleep. She tried to find a cozy spot, but failed, because she was on a ship. A pretty basic little vessel. There were no seats or anything even kind of cushiony. She contemplated using Archie as a pillow, but that probably wouldn’t fly well with him. Pun intended.

Douxie was still as statue, staring out straight ahead into the clouds. Like a grizzled old sea captain. The bags under his eyes were getting worse than usual, but (Name) decided to not to say anything to him and let it be. He looked like he was enjoying the silence. She didn’t think he’d sleep tonight. How could he? She mused. (Name) herself hadn’t even begun to truly process all that had happened. She wished she knew what to say. Anything to comfort him, to let him know she’s be there. But (Name) was no use now, in her sleepy state. She might make it worse. She’d try talking to him in the morning. If he even wanted to talk.

In the end, (Name) wound up leaning against the corner, using her balled up over-shirt as a pillow. It was a bit colder now, but with Nari snuggled up in her lap and Archie stretched out over her legs, she’d be just fine. They might as well had been heaters. Doux wouldn’t join them, insisting that they needed to fly through the entire night to put as much distance between them and Arcadia as possible. He assured them that he’d wake them up if something was the matter. Of course, they were sleeping on an open deck floor. Any sort of trouble would wake them up immediately anyway, but it was a nice thought. (Name) snuggled into her makeshift pillow. She took one last look at Douxie, brooding at the helm, before slipping off to dreamland. It was a mediocre dream.

The morning sun came sooner than (Name) wanted. The cheeky bugger. There was no use trying to go back to sleep. The sun was too big and bright. so, so bright. Nari also stirred when the sun beam hit her face. She blinked blearily and let out a cute yawn. Or at least it would have been cute, had it not been directly into (Name)’s face. (Name) had to give it to Nari though, her morning breath actually didn’t smell bad. It was earthy, floral even. Damn nature spirits. Despite (Name) and Nari being awake, the sun’s rays seemed to have little to no effect on Archie. He could sleep through anything, on anything, at any time. Damn cats.

Douxie looked like the dead. His raven hair was a mess, lips chapped from the wind. Those eyebags had somehow gotten even worse. Douxie gave Tim Burton characters a run for their money. (Name) decided it might be better to wait until she was a bit more awake and articulate to try and talk to him more about… the, ah, events from yesterday. Yet, she was fully aware that if she kept procrastinating, the conversation was just going to get worse and worse. But the timing’s not right. Yes, the timing’s just not right. The stars, they’re not in position. In fact it might be easier if she got him to take a nap first. Yeah, no need to cause sleep deprived Douxie to have an unnecessary breakdown.

It took some convincing, but (Name) finally got him to agree to let her take the helm and get that well deserved rest. Not that Douxie thought he deserved it. He wasn’t too happy about leaving (Name) and Nari alone, figuratively, while he was unconscious and unable to protect them. He wasn’t too happy about a lot of things, really. He especially didn’t care to be alone with his subconscious. But with the worried look (Name) gave him, he couldn’t help but comply with her demands. Her and her bloody puppy dog eyes.

He woke up to the sound of (Name)’s singing. She probably hadn’t meant to wake him up, with her soft voice hushed, but nonetheless he was awake. Douxie was a light sleeper. He had to be, after all his troublesome years. She was singing a sweet little love song. He felt a drumming in his chest as he listened. Speaking of his chest, there seemed to be a bit of pressure on it. A familiar pressure. It started to purr, sending the comforting vibrations through his ribcage. He gave Arch a good scritch behind the ears before sitting up.

“Your voice is so lovely, you know. I cannot imagine why you’re always hiding it.”

Name startled. “Did I wake you?” she asked, concerned since he hadn’t been out but for a few hours.

“Yes, you had,” He began gently, “But, I’m glad.”

“You’re glad?”

“Of course, I got to hear that beautiful singing voice of yours. Quite the rarity, innit?”

(Name) flushed. She wasn’t sure if she was flattered by his compliments or embarrassed that he had caught her singing once again. Still, she tried to refute his words but all that came out was a flustered sputter. Thankfully, Nari came to the rescue. Unintentionally, but a rescue all the same.

“Hisirdoux, now that you are awake, may I ask where it is that we are going?” the small goddess asked.

“Oh, uh, about that,” Doux wrapped his arms behind his back and sucked some air through his teeth, “I actually didn’t have a set place in mind. I think we’ll just wing it. On our winged boat.”

(Name) whipped her head towards him so fast she’d get whiplash. She didn’t even acknowledge the terrible joke. “I’m terribly sorry, but you what.”

“I just thought we’d head northeast for now. Once we run out of land, we’ll pick a new direction. It’s not like we’d be able to stay too long in a place, after all. It’s safer to be constantly moving.” He tried not to sound to unsure in this rambling. He did have a plan, just not one that looked too solid on a piece of paper. It’ll be fine. They’ll be fine.

“I- okay.” She didn’t sound too panicked, which Douxie counted as a win. Still, he didn’t want her to be too stressed about the uncertainties. He figured he might as well just pick a place to ease her fears a bit. She couldn’t worry herself raw, that was his job.

“How about New York City? That can be our first official destination on the Never-Ending Roadtrip.”

“Yeah, yeah okay. New York City, that sounds nice.” Victory.

***

“Ugh, we’ve been flying over basically the same damn thing forever! Can’t this thing go any faster?” (Name) whined as she leaned over the edge like a wilted flower. Her wind-mussed hair hung over her face. It took everything in Douxie not to flinch whenever she got to close to where she might fall out. Sure, she would most likely be able to break her fall with magic, not coming out with too many scratches, but it still scared him just the same. (Name) was gonna give him a heart attack one of these days.

“It’s a fucking magical flying boat, (Name). It goes eighty miles per hour tops. Do you know how advanced that was in the twelfth century? It was a fucking miracle of technology, (Name). It’s not the boat’s fault we’re currently travelling through Kansas.” Doux huffed. He quickly felt guilty for snapping at her and apologized. He felt a bit on edge lately. Their conversation last night kind of freaked him out. He wanted to be a little more protective of her now since she told him about how scared she was, but snapping at her would just accomplish the opposite of getting across how much he cared.

Name sighed. Looking around the ship, she noticed that Nari and Archie were just napping in the sun, completely unbothered by her and Douxie’s loud outbursts. She looked back out into the seemingly infinite grass field again.

“Well, I guess now is a pretty good time,” She said cryptically, “Hisirdoux, we need to talk.”

It was like she just injected ice water into his veins. He didn’t like her tone, plus, those words were never proceeded by something good. Never. “To talk?” he asked with a nervous tinge in his voice, hoping if she elaborated it wouldn’t be as bad as the conclusions he was jumping to.

“Yeah. Talk. About your feelings.” Well now he was panicking. She said that so solemnly. How did she know? Fuzzbuckets, she was about to reject him, on this boat they were stuck on, in the middle of Kansas. Rip out his heart and throw it into the grassy void.

“To talk, about my feelings?” he repeated her again, incredulously. He put on his best fake smile.

“Yes, Doux.” She sat down on the railing near him and crossed her legs. “I just- I think it’s time we had a proper conversation about stuff. Like say, I don’t know, how you’re handling your grief over a certain mentor.”

Douxie quickly let go of the breath, he wasn’t sure when he started holding, in a loud sigh of relief. Oh thank Merlin, he thought this was going to be bad. That’s what she wanted to talk about? Okay, not the problem he was expecting, but one he could deal with. He’s already had a couple of good cries. He spent most of last night mulling over not just Merlin but the whole concept of death. He could talk about the weight of grief hanging over his heart, no big deal.

“I believe I am handling it well, thank you for your concern, Love.” He tried to sound nonchalant.

“Hisirdoux Casperan, you stared out into the distance with unblinking glassy eyes for hours last night and barely spoke to any of us. Hell, you fucking died yesterday, Doux. Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that. You’re not fine. And you’re not weaseling your way out of this conversation either.” She said sternly. They entered an unspoken staring contest.

“Alright, Love, fine. I am fine. Okay?” She quirked her brow. “I am, truly. I’m at peace. He lived a good life and I’ll continue his legacy with honour. Of course I’m still sad about it, but I’ve got other things to focus on right now. Sure, my chest is still heavy, but it’s not crushing like it was when the wound was fresh,” he rubbed the back of his neck, “And I did get my last goodbye talk with him when I was dead,” He chuckled to try and lighten that last bit up, but name still winced at his words.

“Douxie, I just- I know what it’s like, ya know. To suddenly no longer have that father figure in your life. Someone you looked up to for so long. It’s hard Doux, I get that.” She sympathized. She tipped her head down towards the deck floor.

“Well, in a way, he’s already been gone for about, say, nine centuries. I’ve had my time away from him, so I know that I can do it. It’s the knowing that now he’s gone gone that’s the real kicker.” He glanced across the boat over to the sleeping pile of fur and greenery. Nari was curled up into a ball while Archie mirrored the same, but on top of her. They were like a couple of stacked buns. Douxie smiled at the sight. “And yet, do you know what makes it all feel better?” Name looked back up at him and furrowed her brows.

“You. And Archie. And Zoe. And Claire. And my bandmates and my coworkers and the rest of the Arcadia gang. I’ve got plenty of people in the world now. I know I’ve got all kinds of love.”  He hung his arm over her shoulders. He had made up his mind, he was going to open his heart to her soon. Almost dying really puts one’s priorities in view. “Recently, a great man, well, a great dragon, told me that family is not just who you have, it’s also who you’re with. If one thing I’ve learned in this nightmare week, it’s that you’ve got to enjoy people while you can. Because once they’re gone, they’re gone. You can’t dwell on past love, you’ve got to soak in the love you’ve got now, or you’ll miss it.”

“I guess I understand that.” (Name) said softly. She took in his words. Focus on the now love, huh. She could use to do that too. She felt his hand move from her shoulder to the small of her back.

“Oh hey look at that, we’re coming up on Missouri. How about we stop for brunch, Love?”

“Oh I’m starving,” Archie butt into the conversation and flew over to rest on (Name)’s shoulder. He did one of those black cat yawns where they turn their entire faces inside out and they become nothing more than a black hole with teeth, “I could really go for a bagel with extra lox right now.”

[ruminativerabbi]

Awakenings

For some reason, I’ve always been drawn to Rip Van Winkle-style stories about people who fall asleep for one or many years and then wake up to find themselves in whole new worlds. First of all, there’s Rip himself—a fictional character who first made his appearance in Washington Irving’s collection of stories and essays, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which came out exactly 200 years ago in 1819. The book has long since been forgotten by most, as unfortunately also has been its author: one of the true giants of American literature in his day, Irving has for some reason not joined the authors he himself encouraged in their careers—writers like Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—in the pantheon of American authors still read other than by people to whom their books have been assigned in American Literature classes. And he really was one of the greats! I believe that I’ve read all his stories, certainly most of them, and “Rip Van Winkle” is one of my favorites. His other still-famous story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” turned into a whole series of Hollywood movies—most memorably Tim Burton’s 1999 film, Sleepy Hollow—and television shows, is also a terrific piece of writing that deserves to be more widely read in its original format. But I digress: I wanted to write here about Rip van Winkle himself and not the author who dreamed him up.

The story is well known and easily retold. One day while wandering deep in the woods near Sleepy Hollow to escape his wife’s endless nagging, Rip runs into the ghosts of the sailors who in their day manned Henry Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon, and promptly joins them in a game of nine pins and in drinking a lot of liquor, whereupon he falls into a deep sleep. Then, when he awakens twenty years later, he discovers that his son is now a grown man, his wife has died, and that he missed the entire American Revolution while he slumbered away. He makes his peace with being a widower easily enough (the Van Winkles don’t seem to have had too happy a marriage), finds it more challenging to abandon his native allegiance to King George, and finally ends up settling in with his grown daughter as he tries to figure out the new world and his place in it.

There are lots of parallel stories to Irving’s tale. Third-century (C.E.) Greek philosopher Diogenes Laëterius, for example, wrote about a man named Epimenides who fell asleep for fifty-seven years and then had to negotiate an entirely new world when he awakened.  Jewish literature has its own version of both Rip van Winkle and Epimenides in Honi the Circle-Drawer, a wonder-working rabbi of the first century (or thereabouts) who fell asleep for seventy years and awakened to find a man tending to carob trees that Honi himself had witnessed the man’s grandfather planting just (it must have felt like) a day earlier. Other cultures have their own versions, but what makes them appealing—and also slightly terrifying— is the fantasy that this could possibly happen to us readers, that we too could possibly get into bed tonight, turn off the light, drift off into sleep…and then awaken not tomorrow morning but a century from now. Nor is it hard to explain why this is such an arresting theme to so many. We all like to think that the world is so sturdy, so substantial, so there, after all…and then an idea like this takes root and suggests that it’s all a chimera, all a fantasy, all an elaborate illusion played out against an equally illusory dreamscape, that what feels so real is only an elaborate set that the stage crew will take down the moment we breathe our last. And why shouldn’t the theater of life mimic the way things work in real theaters? The show closes, the crew strikes the set, the actors return their costumes, and everybody goes home. And, on Broadway, that is that!  

And now it turns out that it really is so that people fall asleep and awaken decades later. Some readers may have noticed a story in the paper a while back about one Munira Abdulla, a woman from a small town in the United Arab Emirates, who was in a terrible automobile accident in 1991 when she was only thirty-two years old. She fell into a coma, but was kept alive by her family in the hope that she might one day awaken. And she did just that, awakening, apparently on her own, after twenty-seven years. Technically speaking, Ms. Abdulla was in the state technically called “minimal consciousness,” which is less bad than being in a full coma (i.e., in which the patient shows no sign of being awake) or in what’s called a persistent vegetative state (in which the patient appears to be awake but shows no signs of awareness). It is, however, still extraordinarily rare for patients possessed of minimal consciousness simply to awaken.

It’s happened closer to home as well. Terry Wallis, for example, was nineteen when his pickup skidded off a bridge near his hometown in Arkansas, which accident left him in a persistent vegetative state. Doctors told his family that he had no chance of recovery. But then he somehow managed to move up a notch into the same state of minimal consciousness that Munira Abdulla was in. And there he remained for nineteen years, domiciled at a nursing home near his parents’ home. And then one day in 2006 his mother walked into his room, whereupon he looked up and said “Mom” out loud, the first word he had uttered in almost two decades.

Donald Herbert’s is a similar story. A Buffalo fire-fighter, Herbert was injured on the job in 1995 when debris in a burning building fell on him and left him in what doctors called a state of “faint consciousness” for a full decade. And then, in 2005, after a full decade of silence, he opened his eyes one day and asked for his wife.  

These are rare stories, obviously. Most comatose people—including people possessed of faint or minimal consciousness—do not suddenly wake up and start talking. Indeed, in every real sense, these people I’ve been writing about are the rare exceptions to an otherwise sad rule. But the fact that such people exist at all is very meaningful: even if the overwhelming majority of comatose patients do not spontaneously wake up, some apparently do. And in that thought inheres the huge problem for society of how to relate to the somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Americans who exist in states of partial, faint, or minimal consciousness. Most will never recover. But some few may.

Many readers will remember Penny Marshall’s terrific 1990 movie, Awakenings, starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, and based on Oliver Sacks’ 1973 book of the same title. (Less well known is that Harold Pinter wrote a short play, A Kind of Alaska, based on Sacks’ book as well, which is often performed as part of a trilogy of the playwright’s one-act plays.) The story of the book and the movie (and presumably the play as well, which I’d like to see one day) is simple enough: a doctor working in 1969 at a public hospital in the Bronx is charged with caring for a ward of catatonic patients who survived the world-wide epidemic of encephalitis (specifically the version called encephalitis lethargica) in the 1920’s. The doctor, very movingly and effectively portrayed by the late Robin Williams, somehow has the idea to try using L-Dopa, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s Disease, on these patients and gets astounding results; the movie is basically about one of those patients, portrayed by Robert De Niro, whose “awakening” is depicted in detail. It doesn’t work in the long run, though; each “awakened” patient, including the one played by De Niro, eventually returns to catatonia no matter how high a dose of L-Dopa any is given. The movie thus ends both hopefully and tragically: the former because these people on whom the world had long-since given up were given a final act in the course of which they sampled, Rip Van Winkle-style, the world a half-century after they fell asleep; and the latter because, in the end, the experiment failed and no one was cured in anything like a long-term or fully meaningful way.

Why do these stories exert such a strong effect on me? It’s not that easy for me to say, but if I had to hazard a guess, I think I’d say that the concept of dying to the world briefly and then coming back to life to see what happened while you were gone is what draws me in. (Fans of Mark Twain will recall Tom Sawyer’s wish to be “dead temporarily.” But even Tom and Huck only manage to be gone from the world long enough to attend their own funeral and enjoy the eulogies they hear praising them, not to vanish for decades and then come back to life.) I’m sure there would be surprises if I were to go to bed tonight and wake up in 2089. Some would be amusing—seeing what model iPhone they’ve gotten up to or what version of Windows, or if anyone even remembers either—and some would be amazing: if the President of the United States in 2089 is sixty years old, then he or she won’t have been born yet.  But mostly it would be chastening, and in the extreme, to see how all the various things that seem so immutable, so permanent, so rooted in reality in our world, have all vanished from the world, as will probably also have all of the houses in which we live today, the banks in which we store our cash, and even the shore lines that mark the boundary between the wine-dark sea and the dry land upon which we live in safety or think we do. Depending on a wide variety of factors, that thought is either depressing or exhilarating. But in either event, it makes it easier not to sweat the small stuff or allow our own anxieties to impact negatively on the pleasures life can offer to the living.

I will bring all these thoughts with me as I prepare for Israel in a few weeks’ time because the Rip Van Winkle and Terry Wallis stories are Jerusalem’s own as well. The vibrant center of Jewish life for more than a millennium when the Temple was destroyed in the first century, the city was suddenly emptied of its Jews by its Roman overlords who renamed it and forbade Jews from living there. And yet…some small remnant always remained in place while the city slept. And then, just when the Jewish Jerusalem’s faint consciousness seemed poised to flicker and die out entirely…just the opposite happened as Jews from all over the world built a new city on the outskirts of the old one and breathed consciousness and life itself into its ancient alleys and byways. As the patient came back to life, she didn’t only re-enter history either—she began to be a player in her own story, stepping off the stage to become her own play’s playwright and director. It felt like a miracle then and it feels like one to me today too.

When I’m in Jerusalem, I myself feel my consciousness expanding and becoming in equal parts rejuvenated, reconstituted, and revivified. I never run out of things to do, to write, to read, to experience. I can’t imagine being bored in Jerusalem, even on a hot day in mid-summer when I could just as easily be on the beach in Tel Aviv. I love the beach! But there is something about the air in Jerusalem, and the light, that is the spiritual version of L-Dopa that Robin Williams gives his patients in Penny Marshall’s movie. Except that it doesn’t wear off with time and, if anything, only gets stronger and more powerful as the weeks I spend in Jerusalem pass one by one until the time comes to come home and begin a new year in this place we have all settled.

[marvellouslymadmim]

This is a fruit salad! Save it till last and awssr all the questions you have not been sent ehehe

Well, turnabout’s fair play, ha!

Raspberry: favorite flower?

Stargazer Lillies, or Kate Jasmines (I think most people call them Gardenias…)

Lemon: do you have any pets? what are their names?

Sadly, not anymore. But I have a dream of getting a white stoat and naming it Anderson Cooper. Look up white stoats and tell me there’s not a resemblance.

Mango: what is your trademark?

My weird laugh, probably. Or just making it awkward in general. Or using a lot of fucking curse words. 

Strawberry: favorite desserts?

To make: madelienes, and lemon polenta cupcakes with mascarpone icing topped with fresh fruit. To eat: probably something decadently chocolate or citrus flavored.

Cherry: can you play any musical instruments or can you sing?

For a while I taught myself piano but apparently I’m a rather boring teacher. But I can sing. If you’re around me for more than five minutes, I WILL sing.

Banana: favorite horror movie?

None of them. Unless Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow counts?

Cantaloupe: what are your parents’ names?

James and Patsy. 

Guava: dark & dramatic makeup or natural makeup?

Personal preference? Super natural. Like mascara and that’s it. Most makeup gives me a weird headache so even though I enjoy how I look, I can’t wear it often or for long periods of time. Before this weird allergy appeared, I used to do a lot of weird, fun stuff with makeup.

Tangelo: if you could be any mythical creature, which would you be?

A dragon. My life would probably be short-lived, but I would get to fly and to roast people’s outfits (quite literally). So yeah, a dragon.

Coconut: favorite perfume?

Pacifica Tahitian Gardenia. It works really well with my body chemistry and is light and wonderful smelling.

Lychee: satin or lace?

To wear? Well, in general: satin. As underwear: lace, all day erryday.

Blueberry: what do you want to dress up as for Halloween?

Not sure yet but there will be at least 3 costumes. We’re going to Comic Con in July and all my costume focus in on that–Arya Stark, Darkcissa (a very edgy version of Narcissa I do), Loki, River Song (two outfits: Day of the Moon green dress and Let’s Kill Hitler transformation outfit), and possibly Lady Stoneheart or the Silk Spectre OG version or Helena from Orphan Black. Also a really fun one that I’m keeping under wraps for now.

Apple: what do you use more, tumblr or twitter?

Tumblr, for sure. Twitter just makes me anxious and angry these days.

Watermelon: do you have a job? if so, what is your job title?

I’m a nanny. *cue literally any Mary Poppins song* These days I tend to work with children who have spectrum behaviors or similar needs, from nonverbal autism with global apraxia to severe ADHD (we’re talking debilitating inability to focus) to Oppositional Defiant Disorder. A lot of times I help parents connect with services such as cognitive behavioral therapists and neuropsychologists, to help them learn how to parent in a NNT style.  

Cranberry: favorite time of the day: morning, afternoon, dusk, or night?

Um all of them? I just really like being alive. Morning is the best time for writing, afternoon is the best time for naps and artwork, dusk is the best time for walks and adventures, and night is just dark and so full of possibility, anything can happen.

Nectarine: would you consider yourself an emotional person?

*wipes back tears* no, why would you ask that? Seriously, though. Yes. I cry a lot. Happy tears, sad tears, empathetic tears. I experience joy very easily, and inexplicable sadness more often than is strictly comfortable. I feel my life and that is extremely important to me. Also, I’m a Cancer so…typical.

Orange: do you have long eyelashes?

Yes. But my sister’s are longer. Ugh. I hate her for it.

Apricot: what do you do when you’re sad?

I sit with my sadness, usually. If I don’t really know where it’s coming from, I self-psychoanalyze until I figure it out. Not to sound overdramatic, but I have experienced a lot of grief and death in my life, so sadness happens quite a lot. She’s not quite an old friend, but more like a cat that has adopted me. She’ll stop by the house sometimes and I’ll let her keep me company until she drifts away. 

If it’s actual depression, usually I sit in the dark and watch reruns of Fraiser until my roomie finds me and reminds me to have food. And I tell myself this too shall pass, as it did before, and I wait. There’s not much else you can do.

Star Fruit: favorite sea creature?

NOT FISH, that’s for certain. I find just about any type of whale pretty fascinating. WAIT DO SEA OTTERS COUNT BECAUSE IF SO DEFINITELY SEA OTTERS.

Dragonfruit: do you drink alcohol?

Oh, the stories my liver could tell you. Nowadays I don’t drink much because I don’t like how blah my body feels afterwards and how it affects my skin. I’ve only been white-girl wasted once in my life and lemme tell you, once was enough.

[thenightling]

Gothic romance?

Well, let’s see.  I guess it all depends on what you mean by Gothic Romance.   A long time ago the term Romance was used to mean anything emotional, dramatic, or exaggerated.  And most Gothic fiction fits under this category but I’ll answer under the assumption that you mean the modern definition, as in Gothic love stories.

Here we go…

Edward Scissorhands.  Probably the saddest but most obvious one to list with beautiful and haunting music by Danny Elfman.   

Crimson Peak.  This one is practically a love letter to Gothic literature of the late nineteenth century and practically personifies Gothic.

Faust.  The silent version by F. W. Murnau.  This version beautifully follows Goethe’s Faust Parts 1 and 2 and ends with the bitter-sweet ascension of Faust and Gretchen to Heaven, Faust’s love saving him from damnation.

Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride.   Animated with beautiful music by Danny Elfman this film is today strangely under-rated whereas when it first came out people seemed to think it would be the next Nightmare before Christmas. 

The Company of Wolves . This one is an odd film.  Using werewolves as a metaphor for sex, sexuality, and even puberty the film tells several classic werewolf legends all within the mind of a sleeping pubescent girl (having her first period).  In the dream Granny (Angela Lansbury) tells terrible werewolf stories to Rosaleen (Little Red Riding Hood) to warn of the dangers of men but in the end Rosaleen shows sympathy to a werewolf huntsman and it’s implied she becomes one as well.  This is from director Neil Jordan (Interview with the vampire) and can work on it’s own (without understanding of the metaphors) as a good, yet trippy early 1980s werewolf movie.  

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.   Nineteen forties novel, movie, and 1960s TV series.  This is a sweet story of a self-sufficient young widow (in the Victorian era) who ends up in a very peculiar and loving relationship with the ghost of a cantankerous old sea captain.  It’s more empowering than anything you’ll ever find in Twilight.

She Creature (2001 film.  Not to be confused with the 1950s film of the same name.  It has a very different plot.  Also sometimes titled She-Creature: Mermaid Tales).   This film deals with some carnival people trying to take a captured mermaid back to America with them but the mermaid is more of a predator than they realize and she starts to kill off the men who hold her prisoner, only showing sympathy to the one female on board, whom she seems to have developed feelings toward.

Dracula (1979 film).  I like this one because the Mina character (called Lucy in the film) is actually a very strong and aggressive character. You can even argue that she is the one who seduces Dracula first.  She also speaks her mind when she disagrees with his actions.   And it intrigues and delights him. 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula.   The love story might be purely created for the film but I still like it.  Even if they did take some odd liberties about how Dracula became a vampire.

Dark Prince: The True Story of Dracula.  Surprisingly respectful to history while still implying Dracula becomes the vampire, the dynamic between Vlad and Lydia is sweet.

Love at First Bite.  This one is a romantic comedy but I have a soft spot for it.  It even gives Dracula a happy ending.

The Vampire lovers.  If you want a little bit of Lesbian romance than The vampire lovers might be for you, it’s an adaptation of Carmilla with one of the main character’s names changed but other than that it follows the novel better than some other adaptions and has a great ambiance and atmosphere.

Interview with the vampire. If you can’t tell that Lestat is in love with Louis than you have no eye for subtlety.  Not strictly a romance but you can tell there is love between the main characters.

The Bride.   Not to be confused with The Bride of Frankenstein this movie is from 1985 and is a very modern (though set in the past) exploration on the Bride of Frankenstein idea. It also gives The Creature a happy ending and I’m kind of a sucker for hopeful outcomes.

Beauty and the Beast.  Nearly all versions of Beauty and the Beast (when done well) are Gothic romances.  Though if you want something a little darker than Disney than I would suggest the 1940s version or the surreal 2014 French version (now available on DVD in the US.)  The 2014 French version has beautiful visuals but the chemistry between the leads is a little weak.  It also gives a very intriguing new backstory for The Beast.  

Sleepy Hollow.  The romance between Ichabod and Katrina is simple yet beautiful. (1999 movie.  Not the TV series.)

Warm Bodies.  May people call this the zombie equivalent to Twilight but R has a lot more character depth and development than Edward ever had.  Also it’s the only Zombie apocalypse movie to have a happy ending. And though the metaphors are a bit ham handed I think it’s sweet.  Love and feeling is what makes you alive.

Let the Right One In.  Though the relationship is platonic the protagonist’s bond is deep and sweet.  And if you want a little violence in your romantic movie night wait until you get to the “bullies at the pool” scene.  You’ll get something delightfully terrible.   

Phantom of the Opera (2004 musical / opera version)

Disney’s Hunchback of Notredame.  I say the Disney version because the romantic aspect of the original is purely in the emotional nature of the story.  Any “Love story” aspect was purely one sided but in the Disney version you get to see reciprocated and unappreciated love.  Also, who doesn’t love “Hell Fire”?

Dorian Gray (2009 version).  Though this film deviates from it’s source material it does capture the heart and feel of the original story and also features a sort of quasi-redmption near the end, out of love.

The Canterville Ghost (1996).   The love story in this is a bit thin but it is there between Virginia and the young lord next door.

Gothic only in it’s atmosphere, nearly any version of Les Miserables.

There are a lot more but that’s what I thought of off the top of my head.

Bonus Fantasy suggestions:  Maleficent (though it’s more of a maternal love), Splash, and Date with a Angel. 

For Gothic Romance TV shows:  She-Wolf of London, Dark Shadows (original and 1990s version), and Forever Knight, and Lucifer.

For Gothic Romance novels try Carmilla, The Dracula Tape (retelling of Dracula by Dracula, himself) by Fred Saberhagen, Goethe’s Faust parts 1 and 2 (Closet Drama), Warm Bodies,  Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Beauty and The Beast (original French novel, not the fairy tale version), and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R. A. Dick (Pen name of Josephine Lesley).

TV mini-series:  Jekyll.  A direct sequel to the original story by Steven Moffat and it shows just what happens when Hyde develops feelings toward his alterego’s family.

And the 2004 Hallmark mini-series of Frankenstein starring Luke Goss as The Creature.  It’s very faithful the novel and has good chemistry between Viktor and Elizabeth.  

Plays:  Frank Wildhorn’s Dracula The musical.  Particularly the German production.  Dracula das Musical and the Japanese version where Wao Yoka plays the best Dracula ever done by a woman you are likely to come across. 

The up coming movie The Shape of Water looks very good too.

[salcmes]

Tagged by the amazing, talented @litanyofdreams whose strenght and sheer coolness i’m in awe of

1. Nickname: none rn, but i have, at different points in my life, been called elvis, brave and tim burton   2. Gender: female 3. Star sign: scorpio 4. Height: 5′1  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 5. Time: 9:35 PM 6. Birthday: october 30th 7. Favourite bands: the beach boys, nick cave & the bad seeds, wolf alice.

8. Favourite solo artists: father john misty, lana del rey, leonard cohen, johnny cash, regina spektor, marika hackman, sufjan stevens, hozier, eartha kitt.

9. Song stuck in your head: nobody speak, by dj shadow and run the jewels. the video is a masterpiece and i’ve watched it 500 times in the last week. help me :))))) 10. Last movie I watched: reservoir dogs 11. Last show I watched: ir’s been a depressingly long time since i’ve watched a tv show, but i’ll be on holiday after tomorrow and i’m gonna start netflix’s dark because it seems perfect 12. When did I create my blog:  3 years ago? 13. What do I post/reblog: beautiful shit, inspiring things and words that make me wanna rip out my own spleen in envy 14. Last thing I googled: edgar wright 15. Other blogs: just a character one for a rp. I used to have a personal one but deserted it once i started dropping everything in this one. I am way too lazy to be a two blog person. 16. Do I get asks: nope  17. Why did I choose my url: because serpents are gorgeous and it felt like every good url was already taken 18. Following: about 150 19. Followers: about 300 20. Average hours of sleep: seven 21. Lucky number: 4?? i don’t give a shit tbh 22. Instruments: The piano, the piano, the FUCKING PIANO. I would sell my soul to the devil to learn how to play it. Sadly, my fingers are short and stubby, and not even the devil can help. 23. What I’m wearing: a black sweater i bought for my grandmother but ended up keeping because it has pink flowers and she doesn’t wanna stop wearing black yet, a pair of loose black pants and a messy bun. that sunday look ™. 24. Dream job: trophy wife, tbh. i’d say journalist but I think that would only be a dream job if I was a white man and it was still the late 70′s (*whispers* cultural reporting sounds so fucking cool though) 25. Dream trip: russia. st.petersburg, moscow and a trans-siberian ticket. 26. Favourite food: pizza with banana and bacon 27. Nationality: portuguese 28. Favourite song right now: ok, so funtimes in babylon and cash’s cover of the mercy seat HELPED ME ASCEND TO A HIGHER PLANE OF EXISTENCE and I want everyone to love them with me. 29. Last book I read: Breakfast at Tiffany’s - book Holly Golightly is now one of my favorite characters ever. It also gave me the urge to fry my hair with bleach again. Truman Capote is laughing in hell.

30. Top three fictional universes you’d want to join: HP’s ‘cause I’m a basic bitch, the one of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (<3) and then maybe the world in joanne harris’s chocolat saga.

Tagging: I never tag anyone specific for these things because social anxiety is a bitch, but if you’re reading this, I’M TAGGING YOU. For real, though, I love to read other people’s surveys. Do this and then send me the link <3

[higherfeed]

What's Coming to Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Hulu in November

This month all eyes are on The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s epic gangster drama. But until you can see it on November 27, there’s plenty of other highly-anticipated releases in TV and movies coming to Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Hulu, including shows like Jack Ryan, The Crown, and Silicon Valley October Streaming Guide: The ‘Breaking Bad’ Movie, ‘Glass’, and More to Watch This Month Along with those new options, movies like Creed II, Step Brothers, The Matrix Series, the James Bond collection, and Rounders will be streaming on various sites. The Best Adventure Movies, TV Shows, and Documentaries You Can Stream Right Now Here’s everything new you can stream in November 2019:

What’s Streaming on Netflix

the King / The Irishman / NetflixNov. 1 Apache Warrior American Son Atypical: Season 3 Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures: Go Team Roberts: Season 1 Billy on the Street Christmas Break-In The Christmas Candle Christmas in the Heartlands Christmas Survival The Deep: Season 3 Drive Elliot the Littlest Reindeer Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Fire in Paradise The Game Grease Hache Hello Ninja Holiday in the Wild Holly Star How to Be a Latin Lover The King Love Jones The Man Without Gravity Mars: Season 2 The Matrix The Matrix Reloaded The Matrix Revolutions Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: Seasons 1-2 Paid in Full Queer Eye: We’re in Japan! Rosemary’s Baby Rounders Santa Girl Sling Blade Spitfire: The Plane That Saved the World Step Brothers True: Grabbleapple Harvest Up North We Are the Wave Wild Child Zombieland Nov. 4 A Holiday Engagement Christmas Crush Dear Santa The Devil Next Door District 9 Nov. 5 The End of the F***ing World: Season 2 Seth Meyers: Lobby Baby She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Season 4 Tune in for Love Undercover Brother 2 Nov. 6 Phillip Youmans Burning Cane SCAMS Shadow Nov. 7 The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open Nov. 8 Busted!: Season 2 The Great British Baking Show: Holidays: Season 2 Greatest Events of WWII in HD Colour Green Eggs and Ham Let It Snow Paradise Beach Wild District: Season 2 Nov. 9 Little Things: Season 3 Nov. 10 Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj: Volume 5 Nov. 11 A Single Man Chief of Staff: Season 2 Nov. 12 Harvey Girls Forever!: Season 3 Jeff Garlin: Our Man in Chicago Nov. 13 Maradona in Mexico Nov. 14 The Stranded Nov. 15 Avlu: Part 2 The Club Earthquake Bird GO!: The Unforgettable Party House Arrest I’m With the Band: Nasty Cherry Klaus Llama Llama: Season 2 The Toys That Made Us: Season 3 Nov. 16 Suffragette Nov. 17 The Crown: Season 3 Nov. 19 Iliza: Unveiled No hay tiempo para la verguenza Nov. 20 Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator Dream/Killer Lorena, la de pies ligeros Nov. 21 The Knight Before Christmas Mortel Nov. 22 Dino Girl Gauko Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings The Dragon Prince: Season 3 High Seas: Season 2 Meet the Adebanjos: Season 1-3 Mon frere Nailed It! Holiday!: Season 2 Narcoworld: Dope Stories Nobody’s Looking Singapore Social Trolls: The Beat Goes On!: Season 8 Nov. 23 End of Watch Nov. 24 Courtesy of Bold Films Shot Caller Nov. 25 Dirty John: Season 1 Nov. 26 Mike Birbiglia: The New One Super Monsters Save Christmas True: Winter Wishes Nov. 27 Broken The Irishman Nov. 28 Holiday Rush John Crist: I Ain’t Praying For That Merry Happy Whatever Mytho Nov. 29 ‘Atlantics’ Courtesy of TIFF Atlantics Chip and Potato: Season 2 I Lost My Body La Reina del Sur: Season 2 The Movies That Made Us Sugar Rush Christmas

What’s Streaming on Amazon Prime

Jack Ryan Season 2 / Amazon Prime Video / Paramount TelevisionNov. 1: A View To A Kill (1985) Bad Santa (2003) Big Top Pee-Wee (1988) Chinatown (1974) Diamonds Are Forever (1971) Die Another Day (2002) Double Jeopardy (1999) Dr. No (1962) Escape From Alcatraz (1979) Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex * But Were Afraid To Ask (1972) Fatal Attraction (1987) Fire with Fire (2012) Flashdance (1983) For Your Eyes Only (1981) Freelancers (2012) From Russia With Love (1963) Gloria (English Subtitled) (2014) Goldeneye (1995) Goldfinger (1964) Kingpin (1996) LicenceTo Kill (1989) Light Sleeper (1992) Live And Let Die (1973) Moonraker (1979) Never Say Never Again (1983) Octopussy (1983) On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) Overlord (2018) Reds (1981) Save the Last Dance 2 (2006) Soapdish (1991) Summer’s Moon (2009) Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) The Counterfeit Traitor (1962) The Firm (1993) The Living Daylights (1987) The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) The Ring (2002) The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) The World Is Not Enough (1999) Thunderball (1965) Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) Training Day (2001) Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family (2011) Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection (2012) Jack Ryan Nov. 6 Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) Nov. 8 One Child Nation (2019) Nov. 12 Angel Has Fallen (2019) Nov. 13 Anna and the Apocalypse (2018) Romans (2017) Nov. 14 Instant Family (2018) The Souvenir (2019) Nov. 15 Creed 2 (2018) The Man in the High Castle: Season 4 (Amazon Original) Nov. 19 Bottom of the 9th (2019) Nov. 20 The Fanatic (2019) Nov. 22 Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019) (Amazon Original) Costume Quest: Christmas Special (Amazon Original) Nov. 29 The Report (2019) Nov. 30 Low Tide (2019) The Feed: Season 1 (Amazon Original)

What’s Streaming on Hulu

Nov. 1 America’s Cutest: Complete Seasons 2&3 (Animal Planet) Giada’s Holiday Handbook: Complete Seasons 1-3 (Food Network) Holiday Baking Championship: Complete Seasons 1-4 (Food Network) Into The Dark: Pilgrim: Episode Premiere (Hulu Original) Kids Baking Championship: Complete Season 4 (Food Network) Love Island: Australia: Complete Season 1 (ITV) Sex Sent Me to the ER: Complete Seasons 1&2 (TLC) Too Cute!: Complete Seasons 2&3 (Animal Planet) A Fairly Odd Christmas (2012) A Simple Plan (1998) Albert (2016) Big Top Pee-Wee (1988) Chinatown (1974) The Counterfeit Traitor (1962) Dinner for Schmucks (2010) Double Jeopardy (1999) The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain (1995) Escape from Alcatraz (1979) Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, but were Afraid to Ask (1972) Fantastic Four (2005) Fatal Attraction (1987) Fever Pitch (2005) Fire with Fire (2012) The Firm (1993) Flashdance (1983) Freddy Vs Jason (2003) Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) Freelancers (2012) Fun with Dick and Jane (2005) Gloria (2014) Head of State (2003) Home for the Holidays (1995) I Heart Huckabees (2004) In Enemy Hands (2003) Interview with a Vampire (1994) Kingpin (1996) Light Sleeper (1992) Madea’s Big Happy Family (2011) Madea’s Witness Protection (2012) Magic Mike (2012) The Mexican (2001) The Nightingale (2019) Overlord (2018) The Pink Panther 2 (2009) Reds (1981) The Ring (2002) Santa Hunters (2014) Shall We Dance? (2004) Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas (2002) Soapdish (1991) Spy Next Door (2010) Summers Moon (2009) Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) Terminator Salvation (2009) Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005) Tiny Christmas (2017) The Two Jakes (1990) Under the Tuscan Sun (2003) Undisputed (2002) Waiting… (2005) You Laugh but It’s True (2011) Available Nov. 4 Denial (2016) Nov. 5 Framing John Delorean (2019) Available Nov. 6 Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story (2017) The Biggest Little Farm (2019) Nov. 7 Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) Nov. 9 You’re the Worst: Complete Season 5 (FX) Nov. 13 Anna and the Apocalypse (2018) Ugly Dolls (2018) Nov. 14 Instant Family (2018) Veronica Mars (2014) Nov. 15 Dollface: Complete Season 1 Premiere (Hulu Original) Creed II (2018) Wings of the Dove (1997) Nov. 18 Booksmart (2019) The Tomorrow Man (2019) Nov. 19 Apple Tree Yard: Complete Season 1 (Fremantle) Margaret Atwood: A Word After a Word After a Word is Power (2019) The Quiet One (2019) Nov. 20 Some Kind of Beautiful (2015) Nov. 22 The Accident: Complete Season 1 Premiere (Hulu Original) Holly Hobbie: Complete Season 2 Premiere (Hulu Original) Vita & Virginia (2019) Nov. 24 Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas (2010) Nov. 25 Love & Mercy (2015) Nov. 26 NOS4A2: Complete Season 1 (AMC) Astronaut (2019) Nov. 27 Meeting Gorbachev (2019) Nov. 28 Mike Wallace is Here (2019)

What’s Streaming on HBO/HBO Now

Movies Big (11/1) Blindspotting (11/1) Bruce Almighty (11/1) Chocolat (11/1) Crazy, Stupid, Love (11/1) Ernie & Joe: Crisis Cops (11/19) Flawless (11/1) For Love of the Game (11/1) Forget Paris (11/1) Head Full of Honey (11/2) Hope Floats (11/1) Indignation (11/1) Jingle All the Way (Director’s Cut) (11/1) King Arthur (Director’s Cut) (11/1) Lindsey Vonn: The Final Season (11/26) Little (11/16) Look Away (11/4) Mr. Bean’s Holiday (11/1) Nine Months (11/1) Pan (11/1) Reversal of Fortune (11/1) Shazam! (11/30) The Apollo (11/6) The Condemned (11/1) The Condemned 2 (11/1) The Darjeeling Limited (11/1) The Darkness (11/1) The Day After Tomorrow (11/1) The Kid Who Would Be King (11/9) The Town (11/1) True Lies (11/1) Us (11/23) Very Ralph (11/12) Wes Craven Presents Wishmaster (11/1) TV Daniel Sloss: X (11/2) Entre Nos: Erik Rivera: Super White (11/1) Halfway — HBO Access pilot (11/1) His Dark Materials (11/4) Message Erased (11/1) Pajaros de Verano (aka Birds of Passage) (11/8) Papi Chulo (11/15) Santos Dumont (11/11) Sesame Street (11/16) Sesame Street’s 50th Anniversary Celebration (11/9) Sobredosis de amor (aka Roommates) (11/1) Sterling — HBO Access pilot (11/1) Unimundo 45 — HBO Access pilot (11/1) Expiring 11/30 Blackkklansman Breakin’ All the Rules Captivity Crazy Rich Asians Darkman Darkman II: The Return of Durant Darkman III: Die Darkman Die The Darkest Minds Deja Vu The Diary of Anne Frank Disclosure Hop Insidious: The Last Key Legend Lions For Lambs The Lost Boys Macgruber (Extended Version) Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again Manhattan Night My Friend Dahmer Paper Heart Paycheck Peter Pan Pride Ramona and Beezus Robin Hood Steve Jobs Stratton Read the full article

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND June 21, 2019  - WILD ROSE, TOY STORY 4, CHILD’S PLAY, ANNA

Before I get to this week’s usual column, I want to draw some extra attention to a movie opening this weekend, NEON’s WILD ROSE, a terrific musical drama starring newcomer

Jessie Buckley as Rose-Lynn, a single mother from Glasgow, Scotland who has just got out of prison after spending a year there. She’s a talented singer who has big dreams of being a country star at Nashville’s Grand Ol’ Opry, but she constantly has to choose between this dream career and her two young children.

Directed by Tom Harper (“Peaky Blinders”), the film is pretty amazing, especially to watch Rose-Lynn’s story unfold and how much energy Buckley brings to the role. It’s almost impossible not to love Rose-Lynn’s feisty take-no-shit attitude, which really drives the film but it’s also nice to see Julie Walters as her mother, who is tired of her daughter neglecting her two kids.

This really has been amazing year for musical films between Rocketman, this and the upcoming Yesterday, and I hope that continues since I love inspirational music films. I really hope people seek this one, although I do worry that in some of the places where country music flourishes, audiences might have trouble with the difficult Glaswegian brogue, though I do hope that isn’t a hindrance, since the movie is quite wonderful.

Rating: 8.5/10

Now, let’s get to the other new movies in wide release, and I’m afraid to say that I don’t have a ton to say about any of them other than my actual reviews. Obviously, Disney and Pixar Animation’s TOY STORY 4 (Disney-Pixar) is going to be the big movie of the weekend, and I’ve already reviewed it and loved it. I won’t have a chance to see Orion Pictures and U.A. Releasing’s remake of CHILD’S PLAY until late Wednesday night, but I’m a little trepidatious of it other than the fact it stars the wonderful Aubrey Plaza. (MY REVIEW of Child’s Play is now live.)I guess we’ll see how it goes, but my review will be on The Beat on Thursday at noon.  Lastly, there’s Luc Besson’s new action movie ANNA (Lionsgate), starring Sasha Luss from Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which I actually won’t be able to see before Thursday night but I hope to have a review of that over at The Beat, too.

I talk more about the upcoming wide releases over at The Beat, so do check that column out as well, but if you’re still here, than you know that there’s lots of other stuff to city, especially if you’re lucky enough to live in New York and L.A.

LIMITED RELEASES

Some really great docs opening this weekend, and I want to focus on those first. First up is Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s TONI MORRISON: THE PIECES I AM (Magnolia), an amazing doc about the influential and inspirational author of books like “Beloved,” “The Bluest Eye” and “Sula,” none of which I’ve read, but I’m definitely more intrigued after reading about the influence she’s had on black culture as well as promoting black writers since her editing career began in the late ‘40s. The movie isn’t just about her history or her process, though, and in some ways it reminded me of Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro to show how important Morrison has been to literature and the Civil Rights movement. This movie opens Friday at the Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center in New York and Pacific Arclight and Landmark 12 in L.A., and I highly recommend it.  I’m hoping Magnolia will be able to get this out there, and it looks like they have a fairly robust release plan, so definitely seek it out if it plays in your city.

Equally enticing is Oliver Murray’s doc THE QUIET ONE (Sundance Selects), which takes a look inside the amazing archival efforts made by Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman. I’m a pretty big Stones fan and have been for decades and the access Murray gets to his archive of pictures and films really helps painting a picture of his time with the Stones. While I think this will be more interest to Stones fans than anyone else, I do recommend it. It will open at the IFC CenterFriday, as well as in Boston, L.A. and San Francisco and then will be on VOD on June 28. Both of the opened played at the recent Tribeca Film Festival.

It’s kind of crazy that Jordan Roberts’ BURN YOUR MAPS (Vertical Entertainment) (based on the short story by Robyn Joy Leff) premiered at the Toronto Film Festival way back in 2016 and it’s finally being released now, but hey, it happens. It stars Jacob Tremblay as an 8-year-old boy -- Tremblay is now 12 – named Wes who has dreams of becoming a Mongolian goat herder, befriending an Indian immigrant (Suraj Sharma from Life of Pi) and they travel to Mongolia together. Also starring Vera Farmiga and Virginia Madsen, it will be in select cities and On Demand.

Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, Peter Simonischek, Max von Sydow and Colin Firth (woo, what a cast!) star in Thomas Winterberg’s THE COMMAND (Saban Films). It tells the story of the Russian flagship nuclear submarine K-1413 KURSK  that sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea in August 2000, and like Saban’s other films, it will get a nomination theatrical release but mainly be seen on VOD.

Let’s get to some fun genre stuff….

A new horror anthology worth checking out is NIGHTMARE CINEMA (Good Deed Entertainment), which premiered at last year’s Fantasia Fest. The premise that ties the five chapters together involves five strangers who come to an abandoned theater to face their greatest fears with Mickey Rourke playing a mysterious character called the Projectionist. The episodes of the anthology are directed by Juan of the Dead’s Alejandro Brugués; the legendary Joe Dante; David Slade, who has directed “Hannibal,” “American Gods” and “Black Mirror” (including Bandersnatch!); Japanese filmmaker Ryuhei Kitamura and the man who put it all together, Mick Garris. It will be in theaters and On Demand Friday.

A late addition to the weekend is Israeli director Guilhad Emilio Schenker’s Madam Yankelova’s Fine Literature Club (Rock Salt Releasing), which premiered at Fantastic Fest last year. It’s about a woman named Sophie who is getting older but who only has to seduce one more victim in order to achieve the rank of Lordess.

Lastly, there’s Carolina Hellsgård’s “post-apocalyptic feminist gothic fairy tale” Endzeit Ever After (Juno Films) follows two young women who develop a friendship while trying to survive after zombies overrun the Earth as they’re stranded in the Black Forest.  This opens at the IFC Center Friday and in L.A. at the Laemlle on June 28.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Streaming Weds on Netflix (and opening at the IFC Center in New York) is Petra Costa’s documentary THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, which I’m mainly interested since I have family in Brazil who are quite political and this looks at what happened that cause two Brazilian presidencies to unravel.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

On Friday, Metrograph Pictures releases a 4k restoration of Jack Hazan’s 1974 film A Bigger Splash, an intimate portrait of British artist David Hockney at a pivotal time in his life after he breaks up with his boyfriend and muse Peter Schlesinger and is trying to complete his painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)”, which sold last year at auction for $93 million (!!!) The Metrograph will have all sorts of guests and QnAs at the screenings of the movie over the weekend.

This week’s Late Nites at Metrograph  is the influential Japanese thriller Battle Royale (2000), while Playtime: Family Matinees  will screen Tim Burton’s 1995 family comedy Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Over the weekend, the Metrograph will also screen two films by Juleen Compton, 1965’s Stranded and 1966’s The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean, neither which I’ve seen so I don’t have much to add.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Besides the Weds. matinee of Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain (1966), starring Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, the New Bev is doing a double feature of Lady in Cement (1968) and Pretty in Poison (1968) on Weds and Thursday, then Paul Mazursky’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) with Cactus Flower  (1969) on Friday and Saturday. Friday’s Midnight movie is Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, while Saturday’s Midnight is something called Candy (1968), co-written by Buck Henry.  The KIDDEE MATINEE this weekend is one of my personal childhood favorites Chitty Chitty Bang Bang  (1968), starring Dick Van Dyke. Sunday and Monday, the theater is showing the Shirley MacLaine/Bob Fosse film Sweet Charity (1969) and Monday is a matinee of Ocean’s 11. No, not the one from 1960 as that would screw up the Bev’s late ‘60s motif.. it’s Steven Soderbergh’s movie from 2001 starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Matt Damon. The Tuesday Grindhouse is off next week replaced by a double feature of Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn’s There’s a Girl in My Soup (1970) and Don Knotts’ The Love God? (1969).

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

Out in Astoria, they’re beginning the series Grit and Glitter: Before and After Stonewall in conjunction with the 50th anniversary with screenings of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures  (1962) with two George Kuchar shorts on Friday, Tony Richardson’s 1961 film A Taste of Honey and Kon Ichikawa’s 1963 An Actor’s Revenge on Saturday and Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason  (1967) and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Taorema on Sunday. (All of these are screened separately with separate entrance fees.) On Saturday and Sunday, MOMI screens a special The Muppet Movie 40thAnniversary Celebration, as well as a screening of 1979’s The Muppets Go Hollywood on Saturday. As part of the See It Big! Action series on Saturday, they’re showing Shaft director Gordon Parks, Jr.’s 1974 film Three the Hard Way.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

A new restoration of Jennie Livingston’s 1991 film Paris is Burning continues to play as part of Pride Month and the 50thanniversary of Stonewall, and Alain Resnais’Last Year at Marienbad will continue to play through Thursday. This weekend’s Film Forum Jr. is Gurinder Chada’s 2002 film Bend It Like Beckham starring a very young Keira Knightley. Next Tuesday night, the Film Forum is screening a double feature of Dean Hargrove’s 2015 film Tap World along with his 2004 short Tap Heat.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

On Thursday, the never-ending Scorsese/Cassavetes series continues with Faces  (1968) and Mean Streets (1973)  and maybe this is the end of that series. Friday night is a screening of Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse (1967) and on Sunday, the Art Directors Guild Film Society screens Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

AERO  (LA):

On Thursday, Cinematic Void is screening a double feature of Brian De Palma’s The Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and Dwight Little’s 1989 The Phantom of the Opera (with Little in person). Friday starts a Tying the Coen Brothers Together series in conjunction with Adam Layman’s fantastic Coen Brothers book with double features of No Country for Old Men and Blood Simple on Friday, The Big Lebowski and The Man Who Wasn’t There on Saturday and Fargo with A Serious Man on Sunday. Adam Nayman will be in person for the first two and actor Fred Melamed will be there for the latter.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

On Friday, the Quad premieres a new 2k restoration of Greta Schiller and Robert Rosenberg’s 1984 film Before Stonewall as well as a new series called Queer Kino playing through June 27, including Frank Ripploh’s German film Taxi zum Klo (1980), Wieland Speck’s Coming Out (1989) and more.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

This weekend, the Tribeca theaters is showing Toshio Matsumoto’s 1969 film Funeral Parade of Roses, the Wachowski’s Bound (1996), a 20thAnniversary screening of the thriller Jawbreaker with director Darren Stein and a few more recent movies including Booksmart. Not a bad line-up for this upstart arthouse theater.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

This week’s Waverly Midnights: Parental Guidance is David Lynch’s Eraserhead (again) and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook,Weekend Classics: LoveMom and Dad screens Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life  (1959), while Late Night Favorites: Springscreens Pulp Fiction, Alien (again) and Jaws.

FILM OF LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

The Ermanno Olmi series continues through June 26.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This week’s Friday midnight is Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining.

Next week, the month of June closes off with the threequel Annabelle Comes Homeand Danny Boyle/Richard Curtis’ musical rom-com Yesterday.

[thepatricktreestump]

Pretty Odd. (ask challenge)

PRETTY ODD. ASK CHALLENGE Tagged by @emoxxtrash my beloved fren

WE’RE SO STARVING: LAST THING YOU ATE? I went to Starbucks and had a Coconut Milk Mocha Macchiato and a sugar cookie NINE IN THE AFTERNOON: WHEN DO YOU USUALLY SLEEP/WAKE UP? Well I have insomnia so I go to bed anywhere from midnight to four a.m. it just depends. This week I’ve been going to bed around two in the morning. And I wake up at six a.m. to seven a.m. but on weekends I usually pull all nighters lol. SHE’S A HANDSOME WOMAN: WHAT FAMOUS PERSON DO YOU FIND THE MOST AESTHETICALLY PLEASING? A lot of people come to mind but mainly: Johnny Depp, Carrie Underwood, Tim Burton, Lady Gaga DO YOU SEE WHAT I’M SEEING?: DESCRIBE THE WEATHER WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW Well we just had a fucking tornado a couple days ago where I’m at lol so uh lots of rain and gray skies. THAT GREEN GENTLEMAN (THINGS HAVE CHANGED): HOW ARE YOU DIFFERENT FROM HOW YOU WERE TWO YEARS AGO? Um two years ago I was in a super dark place in my life, I had extremely bad depression, self-harm issues, an eating disorder, it was just very bad. I’ve gotten a lot better since then. I’ve also gained a lot more confidence and have better friends. I HAVE FRIENDS IN HOLY SPACES: HAVE YOU MET ANY FAMOUS PEOPLE? WHO? I don’t know if any of you watch Dancing With The Stars, but I came super fucking close to touching Val Chmerkovskiy and I was freaking the fuck out I was like five feet away from him. I know I’ve like DMed conversations with Riley Bria (American Idol) and Anthony Amorim (Youtuber) so yeah idk if that counts. NORTHERN DOWNPOUR: WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? I was watching Moana yesterday and yeah, Disney movies got me with all the feels and emotions. WHEN THE DAY MET THE NIGHT: DO YOU PREFER SUNSET OR SUNRISE? I love the sunset! Where I live there’s lot of trees and forests and lakes and the sun filters through the branches and reflects on the water and it looks so pretty and the skies turn yellow to orange to pink to purple and it’s so gorgeous I take so many pictures. PAS DE CHEVAL: IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY ANIMAL FOR A PET, WHAT WOULD YOU PICK? I want that little chameleon from Tangled, that little dude Pascal, like he’d be pretty swaggy to just carry around in my pocket or someshit like that. I’d love that. THE PIANO KNOWS SOMETHING I DON’T KNOW: DO YOU PLAY ANY INSTRUMENTS? I play acoustic and electric guitar and I dabble in the bass. BEHIND THE SEA: WHAT WAS YOUR LAST DREAM? So um, I have this thing, it actually exists and a lot of insomniacs actually have it. It’s called Nightmare Disorder and so I have really bad dreams at night. Last dream was being trapped inside this auditorium and being held hostage by a terrorist organization and having some of my friends tortured in front of me in order to get information. Um, you can ask @ani001011 my dreams are like weird apocalypse, horror, thriller, adventure movies or something like that and they often scare the shit outta me. It’s not really the monsters or “bad guys” that scare me, but it’s the thought of losing or hurting the people I love that terrify me the most. FOLKIN’ AROUND: DO YOU HAVE A REGIONAL ACCENT? IF SO, WHAT KIND? Nope I’m just an American SHE HAD THE WORLD: IF YOU COULD GO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, IN ANY TIME PERIOD, WHERE WOULD YOU GO? Idk I really like the European Renaissance or Medieval Era, but I also adore the American 60’s and that kind of stuff, but honestly I’d just want to go a couple years back and be able to attend the Twenty One Pilots, Panic! at the Disco, and Fall Out Boy concert from the Save Rock and Roll era FROM A MOUNTAIN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CABINS: EVER BEEN CAMPING? DID YOU LIKE IT? Yeah we go camping every year and it’s always great, there’s a hella ton of people and we stay up all night all week long and just cause trouble and run around and just, it’s amazing. Especially when my best friend comes. MAD AS RABBITS: WHAT DOES “REINVENT LOVE” MEAN TO YOU? Actually lol my soulmate/bestfriend and I are going to get matching tattoos of “reinvent love.” I think the phrase is beautiful and personally I think of it as saying that each one of us see the world try to sell us this concept of perfect love and a lot of times, it’s not what we perceive it as. It’s not perfect body, love at first sight, cliché coffee dates and valentine day presents, no fairy tale prince charming or princess, not a romantic chick flick high school sweetheart, nothing like that. Our own love is personal and defined only by ourselves and that other person. It’s unique, it’s different, it’s not standard. We break our own hearts searching for what we’ve been told all our lives and driving ourselves crazy trying to find what we’ve been told the definition of love is, but we need to first understand to push those concepts aside and recreate our own version, in order to truly find the person that our heart belongs to. We must “reinvent love” in order to find our own. If that makes any sense.

*okay this was fun! Rollercoaster ride :) I’m going to tag @chubbybrendon because she’s a fucking Panic! queen and she basically owns pretty odd soooooo

[519magazine]

Not Just a Pelvic Thrust: Stratford's Rocky Horror Picture Show Entertains

I have been a fan of Richard O’Brien’s 1975 cult-classic, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for such a long time. I remember setting my sights on Tim Curry (who played Frank N. Furter) in fishnet stockings, smudged lipstick and eye liner and feeling that twinge of excitement. I had no idea boys (other than my heart throb Robert Smith of The Cure who smudged his makeup proudly) could look so feverishly handsome this way and I had even less knowledge about what a sweet transvestite from Transylvania was all about. One thing that was crystal clear, I knew early in my life that I was not quite like the other girls and that was okay. I had the pleasure to see a stage play of Rocky Horror before, which was really impressive. I bought my first pair of fishnets for the event, put on gobs of makeup and looked like a walking dominatrix.  I felt really uncomfortable until walking through the theatre doors and saw everyone was dressed in a similar fashion. For one night, no one was judging.  I could swoon over all the boys who looked liked girls, or maybe it was girls who looked like boys. It was hard to tell at times.  I hung up my fishnets that night after coming home with a little jump to the left and then a step to the right. Fast forward to the present day. When I found out that the Stratford Festival was putting on the broadway musical at the Avon Theatre (produced by David Auster),  I was incredibly excited to see what this version would look, sound and feel like.  Of course after seeing the movie countless times (note the tv special in 2016 was cringe-worthy and I couldn’t even get through it) and getting a taste of a live theatre performance, it wasn’t just about the music, the characters really needed to WOW me. I have a lot of praise to give, which I will go into more detail later, but unfortunately, it wasn’t a flawless performance in my eyes. Here’s why: One of my favourite songs “Eddie’s Teddy” was a huge letdown. How can I describe Eddie’s (Trevor Patt) character? It felt like a fake orgasm.  Sorry, I had to be so blunt but where was the hyper-masculine, bad-boy, you’d never bring home to your parents that we all grew to love? He was lost in a sea of air guitars and broad way smiles. Nope, pass. Then there was Rocky (George Krissa). I’m going to be superficial but it was something that really stood out. Rocky’s hair was poofy and kind of reminded me of Carrot Top. His physique was... perfection and even being higher up in the balcony section, I could count his glistening abs. His hair though was another story. I much rather preferred the slick down hair cut, just like what was in the movie. Character wise, I don’t think he was able to get the right balance of passive creature and aggressive. Plus during Touch-a-Touch-Me, he should have looked at Janet’s ta-ta’s with awe and lust, yet his facial expression told a different story. Instead it felt like “yeah i’ve seen these before, let’s move on.” For a song that is meant to be highly sensual and sexual, my libido fell flat. Next, oh Janet! (Jennifer Rider-Shaw). Although her voice was angelic and her look was pure as snow, I didn’t really get the demure vibe even at the start of the show that Susan Sarandon (1975 movie) pulled off so wonderfully convincing. Also, where was that repressed sexual tension? It was really missing for me. Then we have Columbia (Kimberly-Ann Truong). When I think of her, all I can envision is the phallic lollipop sucking. It was really distracting and not in a good way. I felt her role was really over the top, yet in the scenes where she should have been highly dramatic (when Eddie’s death was announced), it felt like she was holding back.  She hit that level of crazy that just didn’t work for me. Her whole character was really quite confusing to be honest, but despite those flaws, she had quite the voice on her! Magenta (Erica Peck) didn’t really grab me. Magenta was the spitting image of Tim Burton’s ex-wife, Helena Bonham Carter, yet she kind of blended into the background with the phantoms. Plus where was her inappropriate lusty self? Lost in the shadows, I guess. Dr. Scott...well this was played by the same person as Eddie, so I definitely didn’t enjoy this performance. Now onto the positives! Riff Raff (Robert Markus) and Frank N. Furter (Dan Chameroy) were incredible, beyond anything that I really could have dreamed of! You could see the passion and love in both of these characters.  To me, they were the stars of the show. Brad (Sayer Roberts) also did a great job, exuding in overt geekiness and awkwardness, just like what I remember. Plus, what a voice! The narrator (Steve Ross) was also enjoyable. His deep voice gave me chills and he never broke out of character once, even when he went down to his skivvies and fishnets! The choreography (done by Donna Feore) for the dance scenes were wonderful. I loved hearing all my favourite songs with a few surprises along the way. The set, lighting, and costuming (kudos to: Michael Gianfrancesco, Dana Osborne, Michael Walton) were done really well. I have to find out where Frank N Furter gets his lingerie. Ooh la la! Also, despite a lot of the character flaws, the vocals of everyone really blew me away, especially Frank N Furter’s solo part of “I’m Going Home.” I almost shed a tear. I loved the audience hecklers who blurted out random comments throughout the show. They had the audience in stitches. Be warned that they don’t hold back. You will hear lots of profanity! Nothing is off limits, including a quick shout-out for the legalization of marijuana, which fit in rather perfectly since it was actually legalized on the day we went; Oct. 17, 2018 and some mentions of sexual positions that you may or may not have tried already at home.  There are audience alerts up mentioning mature themes and offensiveness, so if you tend to trail along the overly-sensitive path, this show is NOT for you. Despite some criticisms, I really loved the show. I understand the blood, sweat, and tears that go into making these productions and I can appreciate that they didn’t want to stick to the film entirely and used their own creative juices to add a bit more flair. If you are looking for a fun-filled, gender-bending good time, then I would highly suggest you book your tickets to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They have added a number of new shows, but they sell out quickly, as does everything in Stratford because this is truly world-class entertainment. The show runs at Stratford Festival until Nov. 25, 2018. Tickets start at $25 and are available online. Read the full article

[ethanalter]

10 Classic '80s and '90s Movies That Influence 'Spider-Man: Homecoming'

Tom Holland and Jacob Batalon in Spider-Man: Homecoming (Photo: Sony Pictures)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for key scenes and plot points of Spider-Man: Homecoming.

If you’re a Marvel Comics fan, Spider-Man: Homecoming is a veritable gold mine of Easter eggs from the wall-crawler’s 55-year-and-counting career of catching thieves just like flies. At the same time, it’s equally rich with homages to popular teen movies from the ’80s and ’90s. Even before the film went into production, Marvel Studios chief, Kevin Feige, made a point of describing it as a “John Hughes movie,” directly name-checking the writer and director responsible for so many of that era’s high school classics.

In separate interviews with Yahoo Movies, star Tom Holland explained that director Jon Watts gave the young cast a must-watch list of classic movies to watch before shooting began, while Homecoming  co-writer John Francis Daley elaborated on the Spidey-Hughes connection. “What John Hughes was best at was finding the funny in the relatable… and to keep Peter as a truly normal, grounded, relatable person I think is really set him apart from all the other versions of Spider-Man that people have seen.” Homecoming‘s cinematic influences do extend beyond Hughes, though. Here’s a list of 10 teen favorites that are overtly, or subtly, referenced by Spider-Man and his amazing friends.

Matthew Broderick in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ (Photo: Everett Collection)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) This one is kind of a gimme; while in hot pursuit of the Vulture’s henchmen, poor Peter Parker (Tom Holland) has to forego his usual web-slinging action due to the fact that he’s in that dreaded low-rise territory known as suburbia. Crashing through backyard after backyard, he passes a pool party where Matthew Broderick’s own climactic backyard chase from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is playing out on a TV screen. “Great movie,” Peter calls out as he continues on to the next yard. (Wonder if he considers Ferris Bueller to be as ancient a film as The Empire Strikes Back?) “That scene is a perfect example of our challenge to take Spider-Man out of a world where he’s comfortable,” director Watts told Yahoo Movies. “If you put him in the suburbs where there’s nothing tall to swing from, what does he do? It was a great opportunity to put him in an awkward situation.”

Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy in ‘The Breakfast Club’ (Photo: Universal/courtesy Everett Collection)

The Breakfast Club (1985) At a press conference in June, Zendaya revealed that Ally Sheedy’s proto-Goth girl, Allison Reynolds, is a direct ancestor of her Homecoming character, Michelle “M.J.” Jones. And the two do have a lot in common, including a quiet manner that masks a caustic wit, as well as a flair for epic side-eye and eye-rolls. In fact, Michelle is glimpsed sitting in detention alongside Peter — the Anthony Michael Hall of her school — in one memorable Homecoming scene, despite the fact that she’s not even supposed to be there. Speaking with the press, Zendaya made it clear that she hopes modern teens take away the same lesson from Michelle that their parents learned from Allison, namely that: “It’s OK to be weird. If you make things awkward and uncomfortable, that’s cool. I love that Michelle’s outspoken and says what everyone’s thinking, but she just doesn’t care.”

William Zabka and Ralph Macchio in ‘The Karate Kid’ (Photo: Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection)

The Karate Kid (1984) He may not pledge allegiance to Cobra Kai, but Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori) is totally the Johnny Lawrence to Peter’s Daniel LaRusso. Whether calling him “Penis Parker” (itself an indirect shout-out to another ’80s classic, E.T.) or engaging in some decidedly unsportsmanlike trash talk during Academic Decathlon training sessions, Flash is always eager to humiliate his rival on the most public stage possible. But Peter, like LaRusso before him, scores the final knockout, hijacking Flash’s car and leaving him by the side of the road with his homecoming date. Revolori, who previously played the hero of Wes Anderson’s acclaimed 2014 film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, has said that he enjoyed breaking bad in Homecoming, especially since the movie doesn’t make an issue about his race. “The fact that there’s not a single line of exposition to explain why I look the way I look. I’m just in the movie. It’s not about being a certain race, and I think that’s the kind of diversity we need in Hollywood right now.”

Can’t Hardly Wait (1998) If only Peter had re-watched this nostalgic ’90s favorite before heading over to Liz Allan’s shindig, he would have realized that a high school house party is the absolute worst place to try and impress the girl you’ve been crushing on for years. Sure enough, his plan to swing in and make a big splash as Spider-Man is thwarted by an unplanned side mission involving the Shocker. Can’t Hardly Wait‘s Preston (Ethan Embry) is similarly unable to persuade his dream girl, Amanda (Jennifer Love Hewitt), of his affection due to a series of increasingly crazy circumstances. According to Daley, an early version of the storyline involved Peter hosting the party instead of Liz, but is similarly prevented from joining the festivities in costume. “All the cool kids from school burst into his bedroom while he’s gone and just start going through all his s—t, like all the toys he still kept.” Adds Daley’s co-writer, Jonathan Goldstein: “That’s very Hughes-ian, like the characters Anthony Michael Hall used to play. The kid who’s too old to still be doing this stuff.”

Anthony Michael Hall, Kelly LeBrock, Ilan Mitchell-Smith in ‘Weird Science’ (Photo: Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)

Weird Science (1985) We should probably be glad that geek buddies Peter and Ned (Jacob Batalon) are only applying their serious science and tech skills to making web fluid and hacking Tony Stark-designed super-suits. Otherwise, they might go and do something really weird…like building a cyber-girlfriend who steps out of the computer and into reality. Here’s another fun connection between Weird Science and Homecoming: Robert Downey Jr. is a big ol’ spoilsport in both. Back in ’85, he dropped a red Icee on dorks Gary and Wyatt, and 32 years later, he drops a bomb on Peter by taking away the teen’s Spider-Man suit after his Staten Island Ferry mishap.

Jon Cryer and Molly Ringwald in ‘Pretty in Pink’ (Photo: Paramount / Courtesy: Everett Collection)

Pretty in Pink (1986) High school law eschews the designated dork from taking the pretty girl to the big school dance. But Hughes went and upset the natural order of things by having Duckie (Jon Cryer) swoop in and rescue his best friend and longtime crush object, Andie (Molly Ringwald) from being stood up at the prom by status-conscious Blane (Andrew McCarthy). Truthfully, it was a bridge too far for audiences at the time, who demanded that the ending be reshot with the pretty girls and the popular guy walking off into a happily ever after. For a brief moment, though, Duckie got to be the hero who gets the girl, a geek dream that Peter gets to live out when he asks the significantly more popular Liz to the homecoming dance and she says yes. For better or for worse, he ultimately loses the girl to her villainous dad rather than a petty prepster.

Michael J. Fox in ‘Back to the Future’ (Photo: Universal/courtesy Everett Collection)

Back to the Future (1985) No sooner has he gotten to Hill Valley High’s “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance than Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) has to ditch his date — and future Mom — Lorraine (Lea Thompson) in order to take care of some pressing time travel business. Peter isn’t able to bust a move at his school’s homecoming soiree either, regretfully abandoning Liz on the dance floor in order to thwart her Vulture father’s plot to raid Tony Stark’s airborne storage locker. At least Marty gets to invent rock and roll during his time brief time at the Hill Valley dance; Peter has to bail before he can show off how he can out-Rihanna Rihanna.

Jennifer Connelly and Frank Whaley skate the night away in Career Opportunities (Photo: Universal Pictures)

Career Opportunities (1991) Peter Parker isn’t the only nerd lucky enough to spend a night locked in a facility with Jennifer Connelly. This John Hughes-scripted comedy traps awkward outcast Jim (Frank Whaley) and knockout Josie (Connelly) in a Target store after closing time, where they have to contend with their wildly different backgrounds, as well as a pair of bungling burglars. Midway through Homecoming, Spider-Man’s attempt to foil a Vulture robbery lands him in deep storage inside the U.S. Department of Damage Control, with only his “suit lady,” a.k.a. his in-suit A.I. K.A.R.E.N. (voiced by the Beautiful Mind Oscar winner), for company. We’ll leave it to you to decide whether Target for the Damage Control storage locker has better toys.

Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985) Not a teen movie, you say? Perhaps that’s true, but Tim Burton’s feature filmmaking debut is nevertheless an ’80s classic for young kids and teenagers alike. Besides, it can’t be accidental that Spider-Man’s first big victory in Homecoming involves stopping a bicycle thief. And he doesn’t even have to leave Queens to do it! Poor Pee-wee Herman has to travel all the way to Texas to recover his beloved two-wheeled ride. Here’s an eye-popping face-off we want to see in the Homecoming sequel: Spider-Man vs. Large Marge.

 Watch: Tom Holland Wants His Peter Parker to Be This Generation’s Marty McFly:

Get more Spider-Man scoop from Yahoo Movies:

Your Ultimate Guide to the Spider-Man: Homecoming Easter Eggs

Decoding the End Credits of Spider-Man: Homecoming

Revisiting the James Cameron Spider-Man Movie That Never Was

[stevviefox]

Now think about ferns on land looking and acting like this. A little spooky but likely pretty damn amazing to watch!

Many hands make light work. Or in the case of the basket star — many branches catch more snacks! 

This sinuous sea star stretches its many branches into the current to skillfully snatch small crustaceans and other prey as they drift by.