#in case you were still wondering if the Warners were OK after the ending

[galactic-glamour-girl-posts]

Animaniacs Reboot Post-Credits Scene (REAL...kinda)

From the Animaniacs Vinyl (full picture under the break).

From @faithkossina's Twitter:

[strawberrielarrie]

Music Industry Stunts and why they happen

Stunts are a big part of the music industry, you may not know it, but they are.  The purpose of stunts is to push a certain narrative to the general public. Now this could mean many different things, PR relationship; coverups; or to peak the publics interest. Why? You may ask, why would the artist do this, why wouldn’t they just be truthful? Well, many don’t have a choice, the music industry is a place that I wish no one would have to be in, it is a cruel and awful place to be if you don’t know how to get around it, or if you don’t have the correct connections. In the past (and still now), many big brand music industries, such as Sony Music and Warner Music have controlled artists immensely.

George Michael

As a legend in the music industry, George Michael is a well-known name in the average household. From his time in the hit duo “Wham!”, Michael’s music was distributed through CBS, but in 1987 Sony took over and that’s when things went downhill. Michael reveled in the popularity of his hit album “Faith” in 1987, and so did Sony, because he was earning them money.

But that ended quickly with the news of his next album “Listen Without Prejudice” in 1990, Sony refused to promote the album and appear in the music videos for it. Michael in turn, disputed his contract with Sony, but he could not do close to anything, because Sony possessed the power of approval over everything that he put out. Meaning, George Michael could not release music without it going through the board of Sony, and if he did, he could get sued and fired.

(Sony is a whole other world of fucked up, they fucked MJ up so badly, Sony Kills)

During this whole time, George came clean, saying that the board of Sony, used many different homophobic slurs against him, and wouldn’t let him release any music that seemed to allude to the fact that he was gay.

George Michael brought Sony to court in 1993, claiming that between 1987-1992, he had made worldwide profits of £7.35 million ($9.8 million) compared to Sony making £52.45 million ($70 million). Ultimately, the case lasted till June 1994, and Michael had lost, the judge claiming that it was fair. Michael retaliated saying how Sony is “Professional Slavery”.

Suzanne Kessler, Entertainment attorney at Bone McAllester Norton and former in-house attorney at A&M Records and Universal Music Group stated, “There are two sides to this tale,” she said. “The music business is a relationship business, and he was uneasy with what was happening. A label often wants an artist to continue to trade on their established brand with the public. But after “Faith” Michael was trying for a new direction, to be taken more seriously as an artist instead of just as a pop star sex symbol.”

This brings me to my next point,

 Closeting in the Industry

(Now I could go on for day about closeting in the music industry, but I will only give you the basis and then I will link another post that goes further in depth.)

Closeting is not a rare thing in the music industry, it in fact happens more than you might think. Many different artists have come forward, saying how their management said they should remain closeted to the general public, in order to maintain the brand that has been established. A popular example of this would be Sam Smith, they were offered multiple times by their management to have a beard. More closeting in the industry comes from Colton Haynes, who has been open about how his management closeted him because he “could not be gay and work in the industry”.

Colton link

Beard: A woman or man who fake dates a person of the LQBTQ+ Community, to hide their real sexual orientation or identity

 The Types of Stunts and Stunt Songs

“Pap Pics”

Stunts are common, we all should know that. From the amount of staged paparazzi pictures and videos that get posted to twitter on the daily it is not surprising that stunts happen. One of the main reasons stunts happen is for publicity, I can tell you now, living in LA for as long as I did, the paparazzi aren’t at every corner just waiting for a celebrity to walk past. They are called to meet at a place where the celebrity is going to be, in order to get pictures. This call is made by the artists management normally, and many times it is done against the artists will.

“Relation-shit”

These types of stunts are the relationship stunts, normally it is two popular celebrities dating to gain publicity for a movie or song that they are doing. A popular reference to this would be Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato, Joe was approached by a head of Disney, who asked him to date, at the time, co-star Demi Lovato. This stunt was to push the new Disney movie that both were starring in, Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam. Now at the time Demi was unaware that Joe was approached to do this, so when Joe and hid dad approached her about it… wow that must have hurt.

Another example of a relation-shit would be Shawmilla. Now before you attack me for this, let’s look at all the facts. Everything that relationship has done has been staged, let’s look at the timeline.

 August 2015

-       the first time they publicly hung out (at the 2015 VMA’s), sparking rumors of them dating

September 2015

-       pictured together at the iHeart Radio Festival, sparking rumors of Camila branching off of Fifth Harmony

November 2015

-       “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was released and performed many different times, Camila was still in Fifth Harmony at the time

June 2016

-       Shawn and Camila win an award for IKWYDLS and accepted together

-       Camilla ultimately starts her solo career

December 2017

-       Shawn is pictured with Hailey Baldwin (Bieber)

February 2018

-       Camila is in a serious relationship with Matthew Hussey, confirmed by a trip to Mexico together

April 2018

-       Shawn and Hailey go to the Met Gala together (Iconic)

December 2018

-       Camila hints at music between her and Shawn on twitter (6 months before Senorita)

https://twitter.com/Camila_Cabello/status/1070381510740598785?s=20

May 2019

-       Matthew and Camila last spotted together, returning from a vacation in Italy

-       Met her family on May 14th

June 20th, 2019

-       Senorita is released, now this had been in the works for over 6 MONTHS, so this was all very planned out

-       On release day, the Senorita music video was also released, which is literally soft porn, I do not know how it is still on the internet, gross

-       But, Camila? Aren’t you still dating Matthew? Why would you release this very VERY touchy music video with Shawn, if you are still dating Matthew?

June 21st, 2019

-       Shawn and Camila in V Magazine, still very touchy

June 26th, 2019

-       Breakup articles about Matthew and Camilla, Weird since he met her family only a month before.

July 3rd, 2019

-       Staged photos of Shawn and Camila out and about

4th  

-       more staged pics

5th

-       Camila at Shawn’s Concert

6th

-       Shawn denies that him and Camila are dating

 https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1147700409919778816?s=20

7th  

-       Shawmila in San Francisco all day

12th

-       That god awful making out pics that shook the entire internet

-       More pics in SF

 Ok you get the point, they are pictured together only when one of them has music to promote, In this case its Senorita. Now for more recent proofs of this entire relationship being a sham. Shawn just released an album called “Wonder” and guess what we wonder Shawn? Why do you not post any pictures of Camila until you have an album to promote? And now you have a puppy? Pulling an Elounor are we?

Senorita is a total stunt song to “prove” to the public that they are together.

“Style”

Now this type of stunt gets its name from the queen of stunt songs herself, Ms. Taylor Swift. The notorious song Style, supposedly about “Ex” Harry Styles, is probably one of the most stunty stunt songs I have ever heard. Like come on! “James Dean Daydream look in your eyes” if you didn’t know, here is a short recap on the icon himself James Dean.

Taylor has time and time again written amazing songs, I would be lying if I did not call her one of the greatest lyricists on the 21st century, the woman can write extremely well. So why would she put a nod to James Dean, a famous actor, who was a closeted, RAGING bisexual in a song so clearly about Harry Styles? She knows what she is doing.

Talking more about the “Haylor” stunt, can we please end that? It was a 3-month PR stunt that happened 5 years ago, please just get over it, they never really dated. And to the hardcore Haylor fans, there is no chemistry between them.

Haylor; The Stunt

“I hate you because I’m getting paid to!”

Now I do not go into this one much, but basically it is when you see two artists publicly fighting and releasing diss tracks. A popular example of this would be, Machine Gun Kelley and Eminem, with their songs called “Rap Devil” and “Killshot”. Their “beef” was totally staged to boost views on both sides, its even more prominent because they have the same record label, INTERSCOPE.

Eminem v. MGK

 I will be adding to this the more things happens, but it you have and questions feel free to ask them!

[81scorp]

Consctructive criticism: Man of steel

(Originally posted as an editorial on Deviantart May 1, 2015. It has not been changed from how I originally wrote it.)

With Superman Returns not being the success Warner Bros hoped for, no more sequels that take place in the Superman universe that Richard Donner created have been made since. But since a reboot worked for the old Dark Knight it could work just as well for the big, blue, flying boy scout.Superman`s movie franchise got a reboot in a movie directed by Zack Snyder and written by David S Goyer. The result was... a little bit divisive. Some loved it, some hated it but never the less it made money, enough to greenlight a sequel... or rather: a bigger, shared movie universe. Not unlike what they were doing over at Marvel.Personally I kinda, sorta liked it, at least more than Superman returns. But, like I mentioned in my "More thoughts on Frozen" Editorial where I briefly talked about Avatar, I can see it`s flaws. Otherwise it wouldn`t have ended up here.

Where did it go wrong and how could it have been better?

The S stands for SPOILERS

The colour saturation

With the failure of Green Lantern and the success of The Dark Knight trilogy, the film makers came to the conclusion that future DC movies has to be more "Dark and Serious". Just because it worked for Batman it doesn`t necessarily mean that it would work just as well for their other characters. The tone of the story differs a tiny bit from Batman`s because Superman`s image of a beacon of hope rather than justice lurking in the shadows is heavily ingrained in the public`s perception of him. That left the film makers with one thing left to "darkify": The colours of the movie. A little bit more colour wouldn`t have hurt.

The shaky cam

Usually I don`t care (much) about this, but in this case I noticed it while watching the movie for the first time and it bothered me a little. Less of the shaky cam please.

Johnathan Kent`s advice to young Clark

Young Clark: "What was I supposed to do? Just let them die?"

Jonathan Kent: "Maybe." He`s not saying "Yes! You should`ve let them die!" So he`s technically not giving him bad advice, but he`s technically not giving him good advice either.

He should have focused on teaching Clark to have a low profile. That doesn`t have to mean that he shouldn`t help. He can still help as long as he does it in secret. So instead he could have said."If you`re gonna keep doing this, try not to get seen. Think before you act."Then he could pause and then add: "But at least your heart was in the right place." If it was my hypothetical kid from another planet with great powers who did something good and heroic I`d want the discussion to end on a positive note to give him the feeling that technically he did not do a bad thing.

Johnathan Kent`s death

Yes, I get that he did not want Clark to expose himself, but still. He died not because Clark couldn`t save him but because he wouldn`t let him. How about: Jonathan dies from a sickness. Yes it is similar to the Donner version but the difference is that in this version it doesn`t happen as suddenly and Clark gets time to say goodbye to his dad on his death-bed. Jonathan can remind him about the "Think before you act" bit, and say something about how he will change the world.

Lois telling Superman about her mindprobing

Movies are a visual medium and there`s a rule called "show don`t tell". Telling through pictures is a more universal language. Instead of Lois telling Superman what she went through they could have showed it in some way. From what I remember we saw what was going on in Superman`s head when they probed him but not what was going on on the outside. Here`s what they could have done: After we have seen Superman`s little nightmare landscape we could see what is going on outside his body as Zod`s voice keeps talking about how he`s gonna revive Krypton. We see him lying in an alien chair with a mindprobing helmet on and his face twitches as if he`s having a nightmare. Move the camera a bit to the right and we see Lois lying in an alien chair going through the same thing. Cut to: close up of Lois`s face, then cut to: inside Lois`s mind: pretty much the same thing we saw in Superman`s head. Cut to: close up of Superman`s face, then we go back inside Superman`s mind.

Yes, I said "lying in a chair". The correct word is "sitting", but I imagine them as kind of like dentist chairs...evil dentist chairs.

Zod showing Superman all that nightmarish landscape

Besides that it would "look cool for the trailer", what reason is there for Zod to scare Superman with that nightmare-landscape? Shouldn`t he try to make Superman trust him and see him as a friend?

How about: Supes is shown what Krypton looked like before it blew up.

Zod: "Behold Kal-El, this what Krypton once was, and what it can be again." Clark wonders what would happen to the people of earth. Zod uses the cold, empathyless logic that "simpler civilizations will have to make way for the more advanced ones."

"Krypton had it`s chance"

I get where they were going with this but still, it sounded a bit too cruel. This would have sounded better: "Krypton should not live at the expense of Earth!"

Saying it like that would make it open for the interpretation that he does want to see Krypton resurrected, (just not at any cost).

The level of destruction

They could have toned it down a bit. Some say: "But this is what realistically would happen if someone with Superman`s powers were to have a big fight." Someone with Superman`s powers yes. But how about someone with Superman`s mentality?

Yes: most of the destruction was caused by the terraforming machine, but when that destruction was over and it was just Superman and Zod they still plowed through a few buildings.

Let`s forget that it`s Superman. Someone with concern for human life and the ability to strategize, at least a little bit (which Superman is fully capable of doing), should try to direct the fight away from heavily populated areas. Yes, Zod would try to use this weakness and direct the fight back to said populated areas, but Superman would still do his best to keep the fight in safe/safer places.

Plus: The "Think before you act" lesson from his father could come back to play a part here.

"But he was new at this, he was learning to be a Superhero." We saw earlier in the movie that he had been doing this for a couple of years, so he would have gotten the hang of (most of) it by the time he donned the cape." It`s the first time he fights other super-powered Kryptonians." I can`t argue that much with this statement, even Supes has limits. On this point the fault is not on Superman as a character but rather the filmmakers who wrote him into a corner and made sure that there was no other way out than to destroy almost more than half of Metropolis. They seem to suffer from a "darker-and-more-action-is-always-better" perception. Not all DCCU movies have to be the Dark Knight.

On the fence: Jenny

First I thought that she had a last name, and that it was Olsen. So I thought she was a genderbent Jimmy Olsen. But last time I checked (on imdb) she didn`t have a last name. Could she be an original character created for the movie? I`m OK with that. But I want to talk about what I feel about if they were to change Jimmy`s gender.

This makes me feel like the film makers haven`t bothered to check the comics that the movies are based on. Not because of the change, but some seem to think that there are only four people working on the Daily Planet: Clark, Lois, Perry and Jimmy. The majority of the people that I mentioned are male so I agree that there could be at least one more woman. But instead of changing one of the characters they could just pick one from the comics. How about Catherine Grant? Or Alice the intern? And if you`re looking for a black character, how about Ron Troupe?

Sorry for being a purist, but I feel that if you want to add a little diversity, look for a character that has what you are looking for in the source material before changing one or some of the other characters.

That`s why  I hope that we in future DCCU movies get to see Maggie Sawyer and/or Renee Montoya.How do I feel about Perry White? Well, he`s played by Laurence Fishburne. So I`m good.

On the fence: Superman killing Zod

When I heard about it at first I thought "Oh come on! Superman doesn`t kill!" But then again, he could be pushed to a point where he would have no other option. Then I thought "If he`s gonna kill someone he should at least feel bad about it." And he did, so I guess I`m OK with it. But still, the way they did that scene made me feel like there was more that could be done before they went in for the kill. Technically, Superman could have just knocked him unconscious. And then there`s the film makers`s explanation: "He needs to kill so he learns that it`s wrong to kill." I haven`t killed anyone and I know it`s wrong to kill.

I think the real explanation is: He needs to kill because the movie needs to be dark, because DCCU movies needs to be dark to be good, because it worked for the Batman reboot. The thing is: Nolan`s Batman had a little thought put into it. Man of Steel`s darkness didn`t have much thought behind it.

A light-hearted, silly and campy movie with a bad script is a movie with a bad script. A dark, gritty and serious movie with a bad script is still a movie with a bad script.

If I were to change this, here`s what I would do: Zod and Superman are flying around, fighting each other. The spaceship (that was sent far away thanks to Clark`s babyship`s warp drive) is still on earth. Superman punches Zod so hard that he is knocked back onboard his ship. The warp drive is activated and Zod and his friends are warped to God knows where.I also want to point out that I´m not too crazy about when they kill characters that have played an important part and/or has been in the comicbook  a long time. That`s why I`m a bit critical not only to Zod`s death but Prof: Emil Hamilton`s as well. (Though he may not be dead.)

Yes, there are other things wrong with this movie. But if you did the changes that are mentioned here, I personally wouldn`t care about those other things

I want to finish with two things that, while they aren`t constructive criticism, are at least Superman related.

Joe Quesada`s reason for not liking Man of Steel

“As a comic book fan, I wanted to love that movie so much,” said Quesada. “I wanted to love it so much, and I didn’t love it so much. Again, there are little things here and there that you could pick at and things like that, but I just think at the end of the day, Zod was the hero of the movie to me.”

Interesting defenition of a hero you have there.

“He wanted to save his race, and Superman didn’t let him."

Oh poor Zod, all he wanted to do was to rebuild his planet at the cost of billions of lives on an already inhabited one. It`s not like there were any other Earth-like planets in the solar system, suitable for terraforming, like Mars or Venus. No. Clearly Superman was the bigger badguy here.

“I was in the mood to watch that Superman movie, and afterwards I was just angry,” said Quesada.

Well, I, and many others, felt similar after reading One More Day so I guess that makes things even.

In defense of the Clark Kent disguise

I`m sure many of us has questioned that no one can recognize Superman in his Clark Kent disguise just because he wears a pair of glasses. However, here are some examples from real life:

An author who interviewed Marilyn Monroe later wrote of an incident that occurred when they were walking down the street talking. The author was confused that, although they were in plain sight, no one seemed to recognize her. Monroe then said, "Do you want to see her?" She changed her posture, walk and way she was speaking to what she used in the movies and suddenly people saw Marilyn Monroe, movie star and sex symbol, and reacted accordingly. Shakira, a famous singer, managed to spend an entire summer at UCLA posing as a normal person. She went by her middle name and dressed up in a cap and pants. The fact that it hit the news after she was done with the classes proved how effective her disguise was. Comedian Groucho Marx painted on his famous mustache with grease paint for most of his career. He was surprised to find a large crowd of fans who had gathered to see him at a train station completely ignored him when he got off the train. Realizing what had happened, he ducked into his car and smeared on a grease paint mustache, and was instantly recognized. So you see, real people are pretty stupid too. ^_^

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Batman: The Animated Series Season 1 (1 of 10)

Having finished with film reviews for the time being, I’m now back to TV series, and as planned some time back, the series I’m now taking a look at is one of the iconic animated classics of the 1990’s, namely Batman: The Animated Series.

Episode 1: On Leather Wings

Plot (as given by me):

A series of break-ins occur at pharmaceutical companies across Gotham, and witness reports from the most recent theft indicate the perpetrator was some kind of bat-like creature.  While Commissioner Gordon of the Gotham City Police Department refutes speculation that Gotham’s vigilante protector the Batman is the culprit, Mayor Hill approves the request of GCPD Detective Harvey Bullock to assemble an anti-Batman task force, with Gotham District Attorney Harvey Dent promising an airtight court case against Batman if Bullock can catch him.

 The following night, Batman investigates the latest crime scene, discovering an inadvertent audio recording of the incident and some strange hairs.  However, the dark knight is spotted entering the facility, and Bullock’s anti-Batman task force soon arrives.  While a SWAT team enters to try and subdue Batman, Gordon arrives and informs Bullock that another pharmaceutical company has just been robbed on the other side of town. The detonation of a tear gas grenade amid some cans of gas foils the SWAT team’s efforts to apprehend Batman, and after saving the life of an officer while escaping the blast, Batman flees with the evidence.

 Batman, in his other identity as Bruce Wayne, takes the evidence to a team of scientists working with bats at Gotham Zoo, comprised of Dr Kirk Langstrom, his wife Francine and her father Dr March. March is highly defensive of bats almost to the point of obsession, while the Langstroms appear more reasonable. Wayne passes them off as possible signs of a bat problem at Wayne Manor.  When March calls Wayne later with an explanation, the computer in the Bat-Cave swiftly disproves it, suggesting the scientists are somehow involved.

 Returning to the zoo at night, Batman discovers that it is Langstrom, and not March, who is the thief; Langstrom has acted on theories March created and developed a formula that transforms him into a bat-like creature.  He has become addicted to the transformation and claims the creature is somehow an independent being within him.  Transforming into his Man-Bat form, Langstrom attacks Batman, but tries to flee when his wife barges in on the confrontation.  However, Batman manages to hold onto Man-Bat by way of his grapnel device, resulting in a mid-air fight across the rooftops of Gotham. Eventually, Batman subdues his foe, and along the way Gordon and Bullock see Batman and Man-Bat together, proving the two are separate individuals.

 Taking Langstrom back to the Batcave, Batman is able to deduce a cure for the transformation formula.  As dawn breaks, he returns a restored and unconscious Langstrom to the laboratory at the zoo.

Review:

There are two ways of viewing the Batman Animated Series episodes; production order or broadcast order.  Apparently, the episodes were screened out of their intended order when the show first hit TV screens, which was actually in September 1992, which adds a certain resonance to me starting my review of the series in September of this year.  As the boxed set of the series which I own puts them in production order, that’s the order I’m taking them in, so in effect this episode is the proper pilot episode from an audience point of view.

 The show as a whole is visually darker than most, which is not surprising for two reasons.  First, this is Batman we’re dealing with, so darkness comes with the territory, as comics and TV makers forgot when 1950’s McCarthyism forced Batman to be pointlessly light and cliched instead of the dark, gritty urban vigilante around which all other facets of the character revolve.  Second, the show-makers opted to establish a darker look by painting the backgrounds for the animation on black paper instead of white, while also expanding the animation colour palette available to Warner Brothers at the time into darker shades, going against the normally over-bright colour palette typically used for animation back then.

 Looking at this episode, that darker colour scheme really helps establish the now-iconic look of the show, and it works brilliantly with the subject matter.  The episode also establishes the overall style of the show in other areas as well; it’s action-packed, and dialogue is relatively scarce, with most of the story being told visually instead of verbally, so this isn’t a show you can just watch as ‘something in the background’ unless you know it extremely well.  It’s well-acted by all those involved, and for the most part it’s not a bad first episode.

 The one thing that spoils the episode is a common conceit of DC animated productions, which is to assume you know the origins of the character you’re following from the comics or previous productions like the Tim Burton Batman films.  There’s no consideration for the possibility of the totally new fan getting into this as a first-time viewer.  Granted, Marvel acted similarly with the X-Men and Spider-Man in this era, not to mention Iron Man, but the X-Men animated series has suitable exposition in its two-part pilot, and both the Spider-Man and Iron Man shows went back to do the origins of the characters in later episodes.

 Having watched the first seven episodes of this series so far, Batman’s origins haven’t yet been explicitly shown, and while I hope I’ll find a later episode where they are shown, I’m somehow doubtful on that score.  So, while this is an ok first episode, it could have been better.  I’d give it about 7 out of 10.

Episode 2: Christmas with the Joker

Plot (as given by me):

The Joker escapes from Arkham Asylum on Christmas Eve, and Batman is determined to stop him.  Robin naively suggests that even the Joker would respect the festive season, and makes a deal with Batman that if after a standard patrol of the city no crime is found, they’ll go home and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. While the patrol reveals nothing, turning on the TV back at Wayne Manor yields a surprise that confirms Batman’s suspicions; the Joker has kidnapped Commissioner Gordon, Detective Bullock and news reporter Summer Gleeson, and is challenging Batman to save them by midnight in the form of a TV Christmas Special.

 To complicate the affair in his customary style, Joker has a railway bridge blown up so Batman and Robin must divert to save its passengers, then when the dynamic duo trace the Joker’s broadcast to the Mount Gotham Observatory, they must also battle a giant cannon and other automated firearm devices.  It soon turns out the observatory is also a decoy, but the Joker gives away his position by bringing an old and unique toy doll onto his “show”.

 Reaching the Joker’s hideout, Batman and Robin manage to battle their way through Joker’s henchmen.  They then find Joker, who threatens to dunk his hostages in a vat of molten plastic if Batman doesn’t open his Christmas gift from the Joker. The gift turns out to be a harmless pie-in-the-face prank on Batman, who manages to save the hostages, then leaves them in Robin’s hands while he apprehends Joker.  With the villain caught and returned to Arkham, Batman and Robin enjoy a recording of It’s a Wonderful Life back at Wayne Manor.

Review:

Second episode in and the show’s opted to bring along Batman’s iconic arch nemesis already.  Mark Hamill of Star Wars fame provides the Joker’s voice animation, after Tim Curry (the original choice for this role) found his own Joker voice was too much of a strain on his vocal cords.  Having heard some of Curry’s later voice-acting in the Disney animated series Gargoyles, I have to say switching to Hamill was a good choice. Not that Curry is a bad voice actor, or indeed a bad actor, because honestly, he is neither.  Hamill is just the better voice actor for this specific role, although it’s hard to judge where this version of the character is meant to land. Is he just a comedic criminal, a truly psychotic villain, what?  Honestly, it’s a hard one to judge, in part because the Joker looks a bit more comedic than he does in the later Justice League animated series.

 We also get Robin in this episode, and that adds to the show’s problem with not introducing characters properly.  It’s quite a way down the line before Robin’s origins get full exploration, and while he gets a full two-part episode for the job, it’s still very back-to-front.  Almost all of Batman’s villains are given proper introductions of one sort or another throughout this show, and yet the core character and his first protégé are more or less just dumped on audiences without showing how they became these people.  It’s a bit arrogant on the part of DC and Warner Brothers to assume everyone will know this stuff going in or have the patience to wait as long as we end up waiting just to reach that information.  Add in the most cliché Christmas film reference possible, and I’m only inclined to give this episode 5 out of 10.

Episode 3: Nothing to Fear

Plot (as given by me):

As a series of thefts and acts of vandalism plague Gotham University, Bruce Wayne runs into university professor Dr Long and reporter Summer Gleeson.  Long, who attended university with Bruce’s father Dr Thomas Wayne, scolds Wayne for bringing shame on his late parents by acting as a playboy.  While Summer tries to reassure Wayne that Dr Long is just lashing out because the troubles at the university, the millionaire businessman is clearly shaken by the encounter.

 The university is then subject to another crime, as a man dressed as a scarecrow and two hired thugs break into the university’s vault.  The Scarecrow, as he later identifies himself, subdues the guard with a gas that makes people see their worst fear.  He instructs one of the men to take whatever money he can grab and set fire to the rest, stating that his goal is revenge rather than profit.  Batman arrives, a gas mask initially saving him from the Scarecrow’s gas.  However, the criminal manages to shoot Batman with a drugged dart that has the same basic effect as the gas, and as the three crooks escape the burning vault, Batman sees a vision of his father echoing Dr Long’s words about him being a disgrace.

 Batman manages to leave the scene despite the appearance of Detective Bullock, who notices Batman holding a piece of Scarecrow’s mask and accuses him of stealing evidence; only the timely arrival of Commissioner Gordon gives Batman the moment he needs to escape.  Elsewhere, Scarecrow reveals to his henchmen the reasons for his actions; since boyhood, he was fascinated by fear and became a professor of psychology specialising in fear.  However, he was fired for experiments on students that were deemed unsafe, compelling him to strike back at his former employers.

 At the Batcave, Wayne examines Scarecrow’s mask and continues to be plagued by fear-visions.  He confides what he is seeing to Alfred, who states that as he is proud of Bruce, his father would also be proud, and insists on Wayne going to bed with a bowl of chicken soup.  Later, the Scarecrow and his men attack the university again, hitting a room full of donors with fear gas and taking Dr Long hostage.  Batman arrives and gives chase; his fear visions persist, but he banishes them through sheer force of will and affirming his identity as the Batman.

 Scarecrow and his men attempt to flee in an airship, and when Batman pursues them, the ensuing fight causes the craft to crash. All on board escape in different directions, Batman returning to the Batmobile and checks his computer’s analysis of Scarecrow’s mask.  With only five companies producing the chemicals found, Batman asks the computer to cross-check with the names of former Gotham University employees; the lone commonality is Dr Johnathan Crane of Crane Chemicals, the Scarecrow’s true identity.  Batman arrives at Crane Chemicals ahead of the Scarecrow and turns on canisters of his fear gas.  The gas causes Crane to develop his own fear hallucinations of bats and the Batman as a kind of demonic bat creature, and he is easily subdued for Batman to place in police custody.

Review:

This episode is the first in the series to touch on Batman’s past, but it’s still not a proper dive into his origins, so at this point we’re still not compensating for the lack of a proper introduction to the main character in the pilot.  By comparison, we do get a very effective villain introduction for the Scarecrow, and it’s our first look in this series at a villain whose motives we can potentially understand if not necessarily empathise with.  For Man-Bat that was a stretch because it wasn’t entirely clear if he was basically an addict, a split personality in subservience to a separate persona or both, and the Joker is always supposed to be unfathomable insanity and evil when done properly.

 With Scarecrow, on the other hand, you’ve got someone who gets fired for something they feel wasn’t wrong, and while objectively what Crane was doing was wrong, his desire for revenge is probably felt just as powerfully by those who are fired for actions that are objectively right. What drives Crane to his revenge is his over-riding fascination with inflicting fear on others, which is ultimately what keeps him from being a character to be empathised with.

 Scarecrow is also a great antagonist for getting into Batman’s mind and making him doubt himself, which in turn adds to the character’s depth.  We don’t get much in this regard just because the show’s format doesn’t allow enough time, whereas a live-action series or a feature-length production could allow more airtime on the matter.  That said, it’s still a good thing to see, and the way Batman essentially banishes his fear affirms what many people believe about this character, namely that Batman is his true persona and his civilian identity is the façade, as opposed to most other heroes for whom the opposite is true.  I’d give this episode 8 out of 10.

Episode 4: The Last Laugh

Plot (as given by me):

During April Fool’s Day in Gotham City, the Joker drives a garbage barge with a submersible craft underneath along the Gotham River.  The barge is treated with a chemical that emits laughing gas, causing uncontrollable hysterics in any who inhale the gas.  Batman, hearing of this, manages to obtain a sample of the gas for analysis, and learns that prolonged exposure to the substance will result in permanent insanity.  Things go from bad to worse when it turns out some of the gas has entered Wayne Manor and affected Alfred, who had opened the windows upstairs for some spring cleaning.

 Using the Bat-Boat, Batman races to stop the Joker’s crime spree; the clown prince of crime has been using the gas as cover to commit thefts, with the police in the river-front area unable to intercede due to the gas.  Batman subdues two of the Joker’s henchmen with ease, but he is over-whelmed by the strong and silent “Captain Clown” and left to drown in a metal canister by the Joker. Freeing himself through use of the Bat-Boat via a remote control of his utility belt, Batman pursues the Joker and his crew again.  During the second confrontation, Batman unmasks Joker’s human henchmen while dousing the barge with the gas-producing chemical, rendering them unable to fight.

 The dark knight, having deduced Captain Clown to be a robot, lures the machine to a nearby trash compactor and has his robotic adversary crushed.  Batman then pursues the Joker through the myriad obstacles of the nearby garbage processing facility, eventually managing to capture and subdue his foe.  With the Joker stopped, his victims soon recover, and Batman pays Alfred back for an April Fool’s prank the butler tried to pull earlier in the day.

Review:

This is a fairly basic and simple Batman-versus-Joker story that pays a bit more homage to the events of the Tim Burton film via the use of the laughing gas concept.  It’s a better episode than the initial Joker episode this series produced, and it’s the first where Efram Zimbalist Jr. takes over the voice-acting for Alfred, an actor by the name of Clive Revill having played the role for the first three episodes.  It’s perhaps not a massively noticeable change at first, but I think it is a slight improvement in the long-run.  My only criticism is the use of my least favourite day of any year, namely April Fool’s, as the setting.  Yes, it’s appropriate for the Joker, but in general I hate the tradition and hate even more that Batman or Alfred would even consider it.  As such, I only give this episode 8 out of 10.

Episode 5: Pretty Poison

Plot (as given by me):

While Mayor Hill holds a ground-breaking ceremony for Stonegate Penitentiary with District Attorney Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne, who is funding the project via the Wayne Foundation, an unknown individual carefully uproots and pots a wild rose before bulldozers start work levelling the land.  Five years later, the penitentiary is complete, and an inmate escapes by air.  Batman pursues and apprehends the escapee, delaying him in join Harvey Dent and his new girlfriend Pamela Isley for dinner.

 Batman later joins the couple as Bruce Wayne, and sometime later Pamela leaves after giving Harvey a rather passionate kiss. Harvey tells Bruce he intends to marry Pamela despite having only just met her, shortly after which he passes out into some chocolate mousse.  Bruce quickly deduces Harvey is ill and accompanies him in an ambulance to hospital. Commissioner Gordon and Detective Bullock also race to the hospital, and it turns out Harvey has been poisoned. Gordon orders Bullock to launch an investigation, starting with the restaurant, but Bruce manages to confirm with the doctor that it’s a deliberate poisoning rather than food poisoning, and the poison is unknown to any of the hospital’s staff.

 Analysis of the poison at the Batcave reveals the poison is derived from a species of rose now believed extinct, suggesting that there is no cure to be found.  Later, Pamela tries to visit Harvey in hospital but is denied access, and Bruce walks her to her car.  Narrowly avoiding a kiss from Pamela as he remembers the kiss she gave Harvey at the restaurant, Bruce becomes suspicious.  Alfred researches her background and learns that Miss Isley has a PhD in botany, that she works for a cosmetics company as a perfume chemist, and she also offers a weekly lecture series at Gotham University on rare and extinct plant species. The information suggests Pamela to be behind Harvey’s poisoning.

 Confronting Pamela at her greenhouse laboratory where a giant Venus Fly-Trap restrains him, Batman learns Pamela is an eco-terrorist operating by the alias Poison Ivy.  She poisoned Harvey to make him pay for “murdering” the plants that were bulldozed when the penitentiary was built, using a toxic lipstick derived from the petals of the lone rose she was able to rescue.  She also poisons Batman and teases him with the antidote.  Batman uses a concealed blade to cut the fly-trap vines holding him.  As Ivy tried to shoot Batman with a wrist-mounted crossbow, an overhead lamp falls and breaks, setting the greenhouse on fire.

 Saving Ivy from another falling lamp, Batman ends up hanging on to the edge of a trapdoor pit, and Ivy prepares to make him fall.  However, Batman reveals he has grabbed the near-extinct rose in the confusion, and his death will also result in the rose’s death.  With this leverage, Batman is able to secure the antidote from Ivy in exchange for the rose’s survival.  Batman soon recovers, and as Harvey does the same, Bruce advises him not to proceed with his relationship with Isley.  In a cell at Stonegate, Ivy vows to return.

Review:

We’re getting back into villain introduction territory on this episode, and with Poison Ivy that’s always fun just because Batman’s gallery of rogues has never been especially heavy on female characters. As such, it’s always fun to see a femme fatale as his adversary instead of it being just another male villain. We also get a bit more of Harvey Dent in his pre-Two-Face days, which is also great to see.  Dent’s transformation into Two-Face is something best built up to and not just skipped over, which is why I will always rate something like this series or the middle instalment of the Dark Knight trilogy over the infamous Batman Forever film.

 The other fun part about bringing in Poison Ivy is that, methods aside, she is motivated by an otherwise noble goal, namely the preservation of the Earth and its native plant-life.  It’s not a unique motivation for a DC villain, mind, given that Ra’s Al Ghul has the same motivation but with a wider focus than just plant-life, but at the same time Ra’s isn’t a walking toxin factory.  However, this episode seems to suggest Ivy is just a human with a talent for plant-based toxicology, but even then, the overall character remains unique and fun to watch.  Overall, I think this is the first episode of the series that doesn’t put a single step wrong, so for that I think it deserves 10 out of 10.

Episode 6: The Underdwellers

Plot (as given by me):

After rescuing two teenagers who are almost killed playing chicken on the roofs of Gotham’s overground trains, Batman tries to apprehend a thief described by witnesses as a “leprechaun”, but the thief eludes him.  The thief is actually a child, part of a large group of runaways who live beneath Gotham, where they are ruled over by a man later revealed to be known as the Sewer King.  Sewer King maintains a strict and abusive reign over the children, forbidding them from making any noise and punishing one boy for doing so by putting him in an over-bright room for several hours while the other children are sent to commit more thefts.

 Batman eventually catches up with the thief from earlier, and after identifying that he is a child, he takes him back to the Batcave.  Alfred does his best to care for the boy, but much of what he has been taught by Sewer King remains engrained.  Back in the sewers, the boy is identified as “Frog” when Sewer King asks the boy to hand him food and learns he is missing.  Outraged, Sewer King hurls the meal onto the floor and yells at the other children to find Frog, bellowing that they will not eat until the boy is found.

 Batman enlists Frog’s help in finding the Sewer King, and is enraged when he discovers the abusive regime the children are living under.  He takes photos as evidence against the villain and breaks the bell that is used to summon the children to their despotic abuser.  The Sewer King then arrives with his pet alligators in tow, and a fighting chase evolves through the sewer system, Batman overcoming or bypassing the alligators and capture Sewer King, though Batman is sorely tempted to pass judgement on the villain himself.  The children then return to the surface world where police, paramedics and social workers await to help them.

Review:

This is the first episode to feature a villain original to the Batman animated series, and it’s very much a one-shot character as except for one small cameo in the comics, this is the only time to date that Sewer King is ever seen.  Some, myself included, might hear the character’s voice and assume the voice acting for this role was done by Mark Hamill, but it’s actually an actor named Michael Pataki that provides the Sewer King’s voice.  There’s not much to the character, which is probably why he’s not broken out into other Batman media as other characters have, but then there’s not meant to be.

 The basic point of this episode is to further develop this incarnation of the Batman by revealing another aspect of his character, namely his affection for children, especially those who are suffering in some capacity.  It’s another manifestation of the psychological impact left on Bruce Wayne by the death of his parents, in that when Bruce sees children suffering, it reminds him of his own trauma and the sense of rage he felt towards his parents’ murderer adds to his anger in the present.  Granted, with parents like his, Bruce would be compassionate towards those in need and help them out even if his parents had lived, but the trauma of their deaths magnifies and focuses this aspect of who he is.

 Overall, it’s a good episode, but given the minor villain and how quickly the mute children thing gets old, it’s not exactly among the best.  On balance, I’d give it 7 out of 10.

Episode 7: P.O.V.

Plot (as given by me):

Following a botched sting operation by the GCPD, Lt. Hackle of Internal Affairs interrogates Detective Bullock and Officers Wilkes and Renee Montoya, Commissioner Gordon being present as a witness to the interrogations.  Each officer tells their story in turn.

 Bullock’s account claims Montoya and Wilkes were late, and that Bullock saw Batman entering the warehouse where the sting was to take place.  Inside, a random noise accidentally alerted the crooks to Bullock’s presence, and when they attacked him, a fire was started in the melee.  Bullock then claims Batman was overcome by the fire and he’d had to rescue the vigilante.  In reality, Bullock went in without waiting for the other officers, and inside he tripped on an empty soda can, which tipped off the criminals.  Batman then saved a knocked-Bullock from the fire, and Bullock only saw Batman when he briefly came to, giving him a convenient scapegoat to cover for himself.

 Wilkes and Montoya’s accounts both state they were not late, and found Bullock already down when they arrived.  Learning that some crooks were still inside while others were escaping, Wilkes pursued the escaping criminals while Montoya entered the burning house.  Wilkes witnessed Batman downing the escaping criminals and overhead the word “Doc” from one of them, while Montoya overheard a crook inside say the word “Hathcock”, shortly before being spotted.  Batman then saved her before being buried under a section of warehouse roof that collapsed on him.

 As the accounts of the incident don’t all match up, Hackle concludes at least one officer is lying, and orders all three officers suspended until he makes his decision; Bullock, Wilkes and Montoya all turn in their guns and badges at Hackle’s insistence.  Heading home on an overground train, Montoya realises that the word Wilkes overheard was dock, not doc, and suspects Hathcock might be a place. She investigates the area and finds a warehouse bearing the name Hathcock, inside which she finds the criminal gang from the botched sting are holding Batman prisoner.

 When the gang’s boss arrives, Batman fights his way free, and together with Montoya, he manages to subdue the whole gang in a protracting fight, Montoya using a claw crane to capture the gang’s boss. When Hackle tries to reprimand Montoya for taking action while suspended, Gordon snaps and over-rules him, closing the I.A. investigation and reinstating Montoya, Wilkes and Bullock.

Review:

Montoya is another character created for the animated series, but the comics actually managed to pick her character up and introduce her to the Batman readership prior to the animated series starting. She actually first appeared in this show back in episode 5, but this episode is very much her showcase episode, even though it doesn’t initially appear to be based on the title and the initial format of the story.  As many will be able to guess, the episode title is an acronym of the term “point of view”, and initially that’s what the episode boils down to; showing what happens either side of the opening scene from the perspectives of three different characters.

 Bullock, of course, lies through his teeth, which is reflected by his words not matching the events on screen.  Wilkes, in turn, tells a distorted version of the truth based on witnessing events on a dark night and being an impressionable, inexperienced officer, which leaves Montoya’s account as the only one that’s relatively true. This part of the episode reflects a core lesson of criminal investigation preached by the CSI franchise, which is that witnesses are fundamentally unreliable because people lie, and only evidence tells the truth.  Bullock’s lying is also a sad reflection on how “dirty” cops can often behave, and while this show plays that for comedic effect, the new in the past couple of years has showcased the more serious side of this issue.

 Once past the initial POV concept, however, the episode becomes about Montoya going off on her own to finish the job, and while Batman does help her, she is also key in helping him at the very end.  This gives us a quite effective female POV character for the show, albeit not one that would be easily recognised as such by some viewers.  Given that this show is meant to be centred on Batman, the introduction of Batgirl would have been a more recognisable, albeit over-obvious, option.  All in all, it’s a good episode, the only real issue being the lack of any notable adversaries.  I’d give this one about 8 out of 10.

[aion-rsa]

Zack Snyder’s Vicious Wonder Woman Photo Reflects Warner’s Early Internal War

https://ift.tt/3hrGuKh

While the bellwether day-and-date HBO Max release of Wonder Woman 1984 left audiences divided, there can be no question that the sequel’s storyline reinforced writer/director Patty Jenkins’s vision for Gal Gadot’s version of the DC Comics heroine, reflecting ideals of compassion and mercy with pathological nuance. However, shockingly vicious imagery from an early concept photo displayed by the character’s first directorial steward, Zack Snyder, presents a stark contrast to her current ethos of unbridled optimism.

The photo (see the article’s main image,) was prominently showcased by Snyder in the background of a virtual interview with ComicBook Debate, in which the director’s upcoming HBO Max miniseries version of Justice League, a.k.a. the once-mythical “Snyder Cut” of the 2017 film, was the main topic of discussion. Supposedly set during the Crimean War (1853-1856), the photo, which further surfaced on social media, shows Gadot’s Wonder Woman posing stoically at a military encampment among a surreally-diverse group of warriors, notably joined by an arguably-hilarious kicker, a fully-armored Japanese Samurai (don’t ask why). Yet, the catch here, is that she’s holding a trio of severed heads—presumably of Russian soldiers, given her depicted allies, and the war’s historical catalyst being that country’s territorial seizures in the Middle East.

Here is a clear look at the pic shown during Zack’s interview today, it was used as a placeholder in BVS and was taken before Patty was hired and took on Wonder Woman’s origin Story. Thanks boss @ZackSnyder for letting us share this.#UsUnited #ZackSnydersJusticeLeague pic.twitter.com/qeBFCev9MT

— NQ Cole & Nana #UsUnited (@TheNerdQueens) January 4, 2021

So, how and why did the concept of Wonder Woman holding heads—that she presumably severed—exist in the first place? Well, such imagery was the byproduct of studio Warner Bros. and its long-held ambivalence about how to approach a big screen rendition of Wonder Woman, who, despite being an iconic DC character, primarily remained associated by laypeople with the campy, sexified 1970s television series, as played by Lynda Carter. Yet, Jenkins, who had broken big directing Charlize Theron in 2003 crime drama Monster, had been pitching her concepts for a Wonder Woman movie sporadically since 2004, only to be repeatedly countered by intractably dark and violent visions from studio suits. However, the studio ultimately greenlit the film in 2014—contextually, after Gal Gadot had already landed the role for the movie that would become Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice—and hired director Michelle MacLaren, a successful small screen helmer from shows such as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead.

Unfortunately, the MacLaren era of Wonder Woman saw the studio conspicuously circle as many as 30 scripts, which led to a significant amount of confusion over the general direction of the film and the character herself; a dilemma that Jenkins recently described on podcast WTF with Marc Maron (via The Playlist) as “an internal war on every level about what Wonder Woman should be.” Indeed, the confusion remained ongoing, even after MacLaren’s 2015 departure and Jenkins’s subsequent hiring. “They wanted to hire me like a beard; they wanted me to walk around on set as a woman, but it was their story and their vision,” Jenkins continued, further explaining of the studio’s expectations of an ultraviolent Wonder Woman, “Even when I first joined Wonder Woman it was like, ‘uhh, yeah, ok, but let’s do it this other way.’ But I was like, ‘Women don’t want to see that. Her being harsh and tough and cutting people’s heads off, that’s not what— I’m a ‘Wonder Woman’ fan, that’s not what we’re looking for. Still, I could feel that shaky nervousness [on their part] of my point of view.”

Read more

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By the time Jenkins had finally stepped into the Wonder Woman director’s chair, Gadot’s first performance as the character in Snyder’s Dawn of Justice was already in the can, shaped—albeit in a limited capacity—by his vision. Thus, while Jenkins had finally procured her dream gig, she was dealt the dubious task of crafting a proper introduction for a character that Snyder had depicted in the 2016 film as a sword-and-shield-wielding super-powered femme-fatale; one who, in the fog of war, you could envision being ruthless enough to decapitate villains in order to move things along. Of course, Jenkins’s work on the 2017 solo film brought poignant dimensions to the character, presenting an artful mix of action sequences with comical fish-out-of-water tropes and genuinely heartfelt moments, which yielded tremendous audience acclaim and financial success.  

Nevertheless, Snyder’s wall art—apparently a placeholder for the Easter Egg World War I-era photo we eventually saw in Dawn of Justice foreshadowing Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor and the gang—is a shocking scene for fans. This is especially the case after the sanguine, literally stratospheric note on which Wonder Woman 1984 ended, and the film’s compassionate treatment of antagonists Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) and Barbara Minerva/Cheetah (Kristen Wiig). Indeed, both of her enemies were given relatable backstories and motivations that defied cinematic definitions of being “villains,” despite the fact that Wonder Woman could have easily mitigated the global threat of the wish-granting Dreamstone by chopping off a couple of heads quick enough to be home in time to watch Miami Vice. Moreover, she no longer even carried her once-trusty sword and shield in the sequel, proving that some 70 years of living in human civilization as Diana Prince made her reluctant to dish out the more brutal aspects of Themysciran justice.  

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Wonder Woman 1984 is still currently available on HBO Max, although you might want to catch the film before its initial streaming window closes on Sunday, January 24.

The post Zack Snyder’s Vicious Wonder Woman Photo Reflects Warner’s Early Internal War appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[tatlergazette-blog]

The Day Joker Saved Me From A Jersey City Pimp 

By Eiko La Boria 

For River Phoenix 

Based on a True Story 

 PROLOGUE

JERSEY CITY:  Much has been said about the contagious rage of the Joker, especially it’s potential of inspiring white males that have been bullied or are societal outcasts. Their good nature bludgeoned and discarded. But in Jersey City, white males should be the least of our worries, because rage has no color or sex or social class. Righteous rage can seep into the psyche of anyone that has been taken advantage of, oppressed, tormented, used and abused, treated like garbage or in my case, the attempt to be pimped. The concise effort of a wanna-be hustler to exploit me, have me work for weeks, only to try and keep my money and refuse to pay me, turn-me-out so to speak in the ways of this unapologetic boy’s town. Like Gotham, Jersey City has her share of villains, but in Jersey City they hide and are protected by the cloak of being city employees, community activists, pastors, influence peddlers, and do-gooders who really care about the poor, destitute, minorities, women, the middle class. Insert Joker’s laughter here.  Jersey City, like Gotham, is a place where what you see is hardly ever what you get.  Every story has endless angles. The wolves do not bother with sheep’s clothing. Greed is God! When you’re hurting the greater good more than you are producing it--that’s a problem--a big one. These are dangerous times in Jersey City. 

                                               ACT I 

The night before Joker arrived an ominous cloud hovered over New York City, creeping its way across the river and toward Jersey City. I was mesmerized by it’s forewarning. 

Jersey City had been preparing for months for Joker’s arrival. I was a part of the preparation. In August 2018, a contractor that I knew for his unique political aspirations, which were supposedly to help Hispanics, let’s call him Emilio, asked for my help in preparing a proposal for a project at the Loew’s Jersey Theatre in Journal Square. He told me that he was a subcontractor and that the electrical contractor, the main contractor, in charge of the project told him that it was a big project that was good for him, but that he needed to submit a proposal.  Emilio didn’t know how to write a proposal and needed help. English is his second language and he was not proficient in writing in English. He said that he could not pay me for writing the proposal. I was OK with that. I had no intention of charging him for writing the proposal anyway. Without a second thought I agreed to it. I thought this would be good for him, would help him grow his business and I said, “Why not?” I had also worked for a maintenance company for the past year and I knew how to write specifically for government, private and municipal proposals and bids. 

“This is a big project, it has a big budget, something like $ 40,000.00 and it can really help me out.”  he said. 

I met with Emilio, asked what he wanted the proposal to reflect and I wrote it up. The job required painting, replicating a steel awning, cleaning electrical sockets, pedestrian safety, removing, cleaning, shining and reinstalling the side panels of a marquee. I wrote it up. He got the job. He then said to me, 

“You know I don’t have any good people that I can rely on. I need help making sure the job moves ahead. I’d like you to work for me on site because I can not be there everyday and communicate with me, tell me what’s happening. I have to do other jobs. Can you help me?”

“Yes, I can help you.” I replied. 

“But I can only pay you $ 15.00 dollar an hour because of the budget and I need a lot of people there. It’s a big, big job.” he said. 

I didn't care about the hourly wage, he needed help and I wanted to help him. Besides money comes and goes, but experience and memories are forever.

“Is that the prevailing wage?” I asked. “There is a lot of specialized work in the proposal. It doesn’t matter to me, but make sure you know what the prevailing wage is, you may not be able to find professionals.” 

I looked up the prevailing wage for such a job and emailed it to him. It was $ 25.00 an hour, $ 10.00 less than he was offering. He advised that the electrical contractor told him to just pay everybody $ 15.00 dollars an hour, no matter what they did and that was what he was going to do. 

“But just so you know, I’m paying everybody at the end of the job, because that’s when the electrical contractor will pay me.” Emilio said.

“That’s fine, but you have to pay me in full.” I replied. 

“Yes, of course, I pay you everything. But you have to be there every day and tell me what is going on.” he replied. 

He accepted the job and hired me. I was there when he did the initial walk through of the Loew’s. I took notes for him, took pictures, and worked with the Loew’s Management to assure that everything they asked of us was done, especially the materials that were to be used. The protector of the Loew’s, let’s call him Harlin, was meticulous and finicky with his baby, he knew exactly what needed to be done, how it was to be done, and when . It was paramount to Harlin that everything he wanted done, be done to a T. It was during the initial walk through that I learned that this was all in preparation for the Warner Bros. film, Joker. 

In its heyday the Loew’s would have been Joker’s natural favorite hangout, it was one of the original wonder palaces erected in 1929. It was a center of entertainment and distractions, movies were just a part of the fun. It was a vaudeville paradise where residents would spend an entire Saturday or Sunday, hours of pleasure and spectacle, an extravaganza that captured the imagination of the young and old alike. 

“Joker! You’re kidding me!” I said. 

“It’s a Warner Bros. film with Joaquin Phoenix” he said. 

And when I heard the name Phoenix, bells went off in my head, I got weak in the knees, my heart raced, my eyes watered, the melody of chirping birds filled the air, a melancholy smile swept my face. My eyes enamored with thoughts of my first crush. Oh baby, like an unforgettable lover he still had an effect on me, he still had a hold. I went back in time, I was a teenager in my bedroom. Poster plastered walls. Joaquin is an exceptional actor, but his brother River was it for me. Growing up in an urban city, not many people understood my fascination with River but I couldn’t care less about their understanding. It was River!

In my basement, there is still a poster or two or three of River Phoenix. He’s one of my favorite actors of all time. When he died of a drug overdose on a dirty Hollywood sidewalk with Joaquin by his side, I wept for days. His death hurt me so much. It became a call of duty for me to do an exceptional job at the Loew’s. This was for River Phoenix’s baby brother whose middle name, Rafael, is my father’s name, and who was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico just like me. It mattered not that he would never know my name. Everything had to be perfect for Joaquin. 

On the first day, the job was shut down because the proper permits were not obtained. The crew consisted of me, Emilio’s uncle, and a high schooler. It was a no-go until the proper permits were submitted and approved. Although permits for the average Jersey City resident takes weeks if not months, all the necessary permits for this job were obtained in a few days. We went back to the Loew’s, Emilio, myself and Emilio’s uncle. The high schooler didn’t make it back, he got a higher paying job. 

“ It’s OK, we can do everything that needs to be done. We don’t need anyone else. We’re going to make a lot of money.” Emilio said. 

As Emilio said that, an uproarious deafening laugh spilled out of a car waiting at the red light. A big hearty cackle, the laughter just came coming and coming. The crazy laugh instantly made me think of the Joker.  It was eerie,

“Ooooooh oooooh ooooooh, aaaaaahhh aaaaaahhh aaaaahhhh, heeeee, heeeee, heeeee” 

 I could still hear it as the car raced past the green light and down Bergen Avenue. 

For the first two weeks, we worked on procuring the materials, removing the side panels of the Loew’s marquee and scraping the old peeling paint, assuring pedestrian safety as there were several teams working on the marquee, traveled to New York City for steel and cleaning hundreds of electrical sockets. The first two weeks was all the prep work and the days were long. Emilio hired another worker, named Dwayne, but after a few days, Dwayne told me, “This job is not paying right he’s paying us way below what we should be getting.” And just like the high schooler, Dwayne left for a higher paying job. I couldn’t leave. This was more than a job, it was an opportunity to do something for the brother of someone I adored. 

And then there were the influx of memories from the people strolling by, an elderly couple came up to me,

“Are you fixing the theatre, that’s so wonderful, I love this place.” said the elderly woman. 

“We are restoring the marquee for a movie.” I respond. 

“We met here about sixty years ago, we were both teenagers. It was love at first sight. We’ve been together ever since.” says the elderly man. “I wish you well with the job.”

“We’ll try our best, we want this to look just like it was built yesterday. We are hopeful that it will, we are working very hard.” I say. 

“Something tells me that your best is quite good. You have an aura, an energy, you will do great things here.” says the elderly woman. 

Just then, I noticed a butterfly landing on a traffic cone next to me. For me it was a sign, a sign that I was working toward something good, something that will be remembered for a long time. It was hope personified. A masterpiece in waiting. I was giving rebirth to a thing of beauty.  I took a picture. I took two. 

The couple kissed and smiled shyly at me, before continuing walking down Kennedy Blvd. I stared at them, until I could see them no more. 

About half an hour later, a loud and shiney Harley Davidson pulls up in front of the Journal Square Pub, next to the Loew’s.  A  tall and stocky biker, clad in head to toe leather with a bushy beard hops off. He’s hard to miss and the leather seemed to he speaking with his every step. He strolled over to me. Let’s call him Johnny. 

“Holy shit! What are you guys doing here, Oh man, you just blew my mind when I saw you guys working on the marquee. I use to hang out here in the 70’s man. I love this place” says Johnny.

“We’re restoring it, a lot of people are excited.” 

“I can’t tell you how many good times I had here. I mean I would just come and hang out for the entire day. I made so many friends here. Damn, have you been inside?”

“Yes, it’s grand.” 

“It's a fairy tale, you know what I mean. I can’t wait to see the marquee finished, it brings back so many great memories. Man, I gotta get a drink now, my fucking brains just blew out my head, you know what I mean. God bless.” 

And just like that he walked away and into the pub. I still smile when I see him in my mind’s eye. 

I quickly learned that not everyone was a fan of the Loew’s, the restoration, the fight for the theatre to remain alive. I was moving the railings to make a safe passage way for pedestrians as Emilio’s uncle was working on a lift. I see a thin white woman approaching me with a smile on her face. Let’s call her Beth. I smiled back, as I was sure that she was going to share with me some of her memories...I was getting used to strangers connecting with me because of my work on the theatre. 

She comes up to me and says, “Instead of fixing this marquee, why aren’t you getting rid of the homeless people that sleep everyday in front of this shithole. That’s what you should be fixing. I’m a taxpayer, I’ve been in Jersey City for five years and I’ve been walking past this dirty theatre and all the homeless for five years. You’re taking my money so that I can walk past the smell of piss every night.” Beth said. 

“I’m sorry ma’am, the homeless is not what I am fixing.” 

“Well, you should be. I am a taxpayer and this theatre is taking my money so that homeless people can just sleep in front of it. How is that right? How is me walking past homeless bums and smelling their shit right?” 

I just stare at her...I can’t find the words, I can actually, but if I say what I really want to say, things may escalate and at that moment I didn’t think that it was my place. 

“Well, I can certainly convey your message to the Loew’s Management.” 

“They should just close this disgusting place and put up a nice building, with some beautiful storefronts, that’s what the people around here really want. Why should I be speaking with you? You’re just a worker, I’m wasting my time.” she says. 

“Well, Ma’am, the homeless are people too, we just can’t get rid of them.” 

Then she breaks out in a boisterous laughter, she bends over, and continued her wild cackle. Pedestrians looked at her as they walked past. 

“Homeless are people too,” she says, mocking me, as she continues laughing uncontrollably. 

“Aha haaaa haaaa haaaa haaaaa haaaaa haaaa haaaaa ha…”

The laughter was loud and familiar. She turns around and continues her laughter as walks toward a shiny new building past the Loew’s. 

I continued working blissfully, with intent, everything that was asked of me I did. And I did so happily. I didn’t take another job while I was there. My complete focus was on making this marquee brand new. They could have asked me to remove every piece of gum from the sidewalk with a toothpick and I would have done it. I was on a mission. I was a soldier. 

At the end of the first two weeks, as we were  removing the safety railings from Kennedy Blvd and moving them to the basement, Emilio’s Uncle says:

“I’m glad it’s finally payday, it’s been a long two weeks.” 

“Are you getting paid today?” 

“Of course, it’s been two weeks.” 

Just then, Emilio arrived and his uncle shouts out to him, 

“You have my money?” 

Emilio’s eyes widened as he noticed my stare. To his chagrin, his uncle let the cat out of the bag. Emilio was going to pay his uncle, but not me. 

“Yeah! Yeah!, I have your money. Eiko, I forgot to tell you that I got some money from the electrical contractor and can pay you too. You don’t have to wait till the end of the job.”  Emilio said. 

I could’ve taken the money and run, but I didn’t.

Just then a group of teenagers from nearby Dickinson High School walked past and broke out into a group laughter. They couldn’t contain themselves. They were hugging each other, barely able to stand up from the laughter. 

“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh hhhhaaaaaaa ooooooooohhhhhh heeeeeee” 

The laughter. The laughter was my friend. The laughter was warning me. 

                                       To be continued...

All pictures are property of Eiko La Boria -- Thank you for reading!

[machetelanding]

For more than a decade, despite the increase in domestic population, the number of movie admissions sold has stalled. For some time that fact was papered over. Premium pricing through gimmicks such as 3D and IMAX were at least able to increase annual box office revenues (a bit). Nevertheless, the movie business is no longer a growth business, and 2017 is beginning to look like the year when the industry will have to finally come to terms with that.

Globalism was supposed to save Hollywood. The exact opposite ended up being the case. The worldwide audience became the tiger held by the tail; for the global village is one that demands shockingly expensive spectacle, which means huge investments, all-in gambles, that cannot begin to see a profit until $600 to $700 million in tickets are sold.

Worse still, leftwing filmmakers were counting on these oh-so sophisticated internationales to make political diatribes profitable, to appreciate their cinematic calls for multiculturalism, moral equivalence, anti-Americanism, and statism. Whoops! Turns out the rest of the world is even more addicted to mindless escapism than us rubes.

And so, over the last ten years Hollywood slowly painted itself into a corner, where at the expense of everything else, only $250 million franchises, low-budget horror, animated films, and raunchy R-rated comedies can make any money. But today about half those franchises are flaming out and R-rated comedies are in a coma.

Oh, there will always be movies. But let's face it, other than the pretentious, wankfest indies America's foo foo critics pretend to like and the thrilling exceptions that used to be the rule — Dunkirk, Baby Driver — going to the movies anymore is like going to Six Flags; an expensive ride on the latest CGI rollercoaster, something that is no longer about affirming the soul or a relaxing good time. Instead of coming together to explore our shared human condition, we buckle in to overload the senses.

Anyway, let's look at all the suicidal mistakes made by the film industry…

1. The Death of the Movie Star

The men who made Hollywood — the Selznicks, Warners, Mayers, Cohns, Goldwyns, Thalbergs, Zanucks, Schencks, Zukors, Laskys and Laemmles — quickly figured out that the movie star was the key to the world. Not just to box office success, but the key to shaping our culture, fashion, politics, Americanism, and even our humanity.

And so it was until the 1990s. Believe it or not, we used to go and see Eddie Murphy movies, Sylvester Stallone movies, and Goldie Hawn movies. We liked Harrison Ford and trusted his choices. We loved Chevy Chase and trusted his choices. This reality was good for everyone because you didn’t need $250 million in computer effects to put butts in seats. All you needed was Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal or Sigourney Weaver. All you needed was John Candy trying to get it right or Kathleen Turner merely showing up.

Fearing their $20 million salaries and growing power, Hollywood killed the movie star. But without the face on the poster selling tickets, all that's left to sell is the narcotic of CONCEPT, which must get bigger and bigger and more expensive in order to feed the fix.

2. Partisan Politics

Movies have always been political, have always had something to say. But it used to be that for every leftwing High Noon you had a response in the form of Rio Bravo. And look at what this healthy competition created — two masterpieces, both of which are political as opposed to partisan or divisive.

Today, movies and actors go out of their way to create ill-will through insulting and divisive commentary that attacks more than half the country. Sure, in their time, John Garfield, Humphrey Bogart, Charlie Chaplin, Katherine Hepburn and many others were leftwingers who advocated for their respective causes. But they had class. They never insulted or demeaned those who disagreed with them. Creative giants, leftists such as John Huston, Orson Welles and Elia Kazan, managed to have their say without throwing poop.

And that is all the difference in the world.

Insulting your own customers is not only bad business, it cannot begin to make up for a deficit of talent.

3. The Death of Censorship

Just because I believe that certain things should be legal — porn, getting drunk, loveless sex, homosexuality — that does not mean I believe those things are healthy for our society. Quite the contrary. I side with freedom because the messy and oftentimes tragic results of freedom are almost always preferable to the result of government control (see: Obamacare).

The same goes for censorship. I'm not for any form of movie censorship, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware of how lifting censorship, removing all barriers, has greatly diminished the art form of the motion picture.

There are exceptions (DePalma, Scorsese) where excess can be in and of itself art, but for the most part the depth, creative energy and artistic breakthroughs required to find another way through subtext are almost always preferable to text.

Had Alfred Hitchcock been allowed to get his full freak on, does anyone believe Psycho, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Vertigo, Strangers On a Train, Notorious, Rebecca, or Rope — all violent films stewing in sexual, and sometimes homosexual subtext, would be anywhere near the classics they are today?

Almost always, limits benefit art. There are no limits today and creative laziness is the result. For this reason, movies are not even sexy anymore.

4. The Leftwing Sycophants Who Cover the Movie Business

Whether it is Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter or Variety, whether it is pretty much every critic you read at Rotten Tomatoes, the people whose job it is to cover the movie business are almost all leftwing Social Justice Warriors, all sycophants who refuse to challenge the status quo or speak truth to power.

Yes, there are people on the political right like myself who sometimes cover these things, but we are all on the outside looking in. The publications within the bubble, however, are all bubbled themselves, and all about protecting the bubble. The only time they raise a fuss is when Hollywood is not leftwing enough — We need more homosexual movies! We need more trans movies! We need more women and minorities! We need more Stephen Colberts! Trump is icky!

A perfect example was published over the weekend when two new movies released on more than 3,000 screens tanked. The franchise wannabe Dark Tower failed to clear $20 million; the oh-so topical and critically-lauded Detroit lit itself on fire with $7 million.

But how did Deadline spin these dual duds…

For the second weekend in a row, Sony figured out a way to work around the Rotten Tomatoes system to get a lackluster title to open. Last weekend, it was the Emoji Movie, which posted an OK $24.5M in second. This weekend, it’s their Media Rights Capital co-production The Dark Tower, which is taking No. 1 with a modest take estimated at $19.5M. …

Call it what you will, but it’s distribution’s job to open a movie. In the case of Sony, they held back reviews as late as they could for Dark Tower and Emoji Movie and got them started so they could last the rest of the month. Again, not a wondrous result with Dark Tower, but here it sits in first place.

It gets worse…

Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit from Annapurna, despite having the best reviews and audiences scores out of this weekend’s wide entries – respectively with an 88% certified fresh and A- CinemaScore – didn’t find that love spill over into its opening weekend, which looks to settle at $7.25M. Not a fantastic start for a movie which cost between $35M-$40M. …

Once moviegoers leave Detroit, they’re amazed. The trick for Annapurna is to keep word-of-mouth alive[.] … We hear the original 20 runs of Detroit held quite well.

For the sake of context, let's look at this very same Deadline writer's analysis of a movie that opened in January of 2016. Both Detroit and 13 Hours are topical, controversial, and political. Both are modestly-budgeted ($40 million for Detroit; $50 million for 13 Hours), but that is where the similarities end.

13 Hours, Michael Bay's Benghazi story, is aimed at conservative Middle America. Detroit is aimed at the Black Lives Matter crowd.

13 Hours opened cold in only 2,389 theaters. After a limited run to boost publicity and word of mouth, Detroit opened in a whopping 3,007 theaters.

Over at Rotten Tomatoes, critics buried 13 Hours with a miserable 50% rating. Critics lauded Detroit with a 88% fresh rating. Nevertheless…

13 Hours opened to much, much better $16.5 million 3-day when compared to Detroit's miserable $7.3 million 3-day opening.

And yet…

This weekend Paramount launched Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, drawing more noise from the CIA, Republicans and Democrats than moviegoers with a middling 4-day opening of $19M.

But despite audiences embracing the Michael Bay film with an A CinemaScore, bureaucrats have had a heyday kicking 13 Hours around like a political football. And it’s never good when partisan factions get their hands around a movie. Such squabbling is one of the chief factors seen in 13 Hours coming in under its $20M-$23M four-day projection.

This sort of partisan spin and wishcasting from those who should be telling cold truths is part of what's destroying a cowardly and out of touch film business desperate for any kind of affirmation that encourages them to never change.

5. The Death of the Women's Movie

After the studio system gasped its last in the mid-60s, the leftists of New Hollywood took over, and while they had an incredibly creative 10-year run, these oh-so progressive leftists also killed the women's picture.

In the hands of leftist Hollywood, in the hands of a Hollywood where more women and feminists are in charge than ever before, how freakin' pathetic is it that a Wonder Woman is a revelation, a cultural epoch, a record scratch in Hollywood history.

Sorry, but no it's not.

When patriotic right-wingers ran Hollywood, when those stodgy, old and backwards "sexist" conservatives were in charge, up on that big screen, women enjoyed real equality. They were goddesses — tough and beautiful, independent and accessible, whip-smart and classy, in charge and selfless, sexy and decent.

The list is endless… Garbo, Davis, Crawford, Grable, Stanwyck, Simmons, Kerr, Hayworth, Lamar, Hepburn, Rogers, Colbert, Bergman, Bacall, de Havilland, Fontaine, Hayward, Taylor, Dietrich, Loren, Lombard, Garland, Loy, O'Hara, Pickford, Harlow, Day, Monroe, Kelly, Gardner, Leigh, Swanson, Holliday, Grahame, Reynolds, Neal, Saint, Caron, Wyman, Wood, Tierney, Darnell, Goddard, Grier and Arthur.

What do we have today? An aging and increasingly unappealing Meryl Streep and a whole host of cookie cutter babes (many of whom look like 14-year-old boys) all-too eager to degrade themselves, to act like sexist men. Hollywood uses these girls for nothing less than chum, and every year wonders why they can't find even five decent choices to fill the Best Actress category.

Oh, yeah, you've really come a long way, baby.

6. A Bubble That Has Lost Touch With the Audience and Now Makes Crap

The movie industry has lost complete touch with its audience. Gone are the talent scouts looking to build a farm club by spreading out across the country in search of The Next Big Thing. Instead it is an incestuous bubble that only reproduces within the family, within the rarified zip codes of Manhattan and Los Angeles.

7. The Death of Comedy

What in the world happened to the family comedy? The romantic comedy? The high school comedy? The ethnic comedy? The guy comedy? The snobs vs. slobs comedy? The stick-it-to-the-man comedy?

I'm no prude. I love The Hangover and American Pie. But every comedy today is man-boys and their body fluids, gross-out and heartless.

I don’t want to walk out of a theater feeling like I need a shower. And judging by the endless string of R-rated flops, we are all tired of this soul-killing garbage.

8. The New Production Code Is Much More Stifling Than The Old One

The old Production Code that guided the movie business throughout much of the golden era was more about how content like sex, violence and human sexuality was presented. In other words, these topics were not placed off limits. Hitchcock was allowed to make clear that Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint did it, he just couldn’t show them doing it; Hitchcock could make clear Martin Landau and James Mason were homosexual lovers, he just couldn’t show it.

Today's Production Code is an unspoken one. Nevertheless, it is much more fascist and creatively stifling than its predecessor because you cannot work around political correctness, you cannot turn text into subtext when certain subjects are placed completely off limits. For instance, unless you are black, you are no longer allowed to tell certain stories. A movie that told the truth about transsexuals being mentally ill could not be made today. Certain special interest groups cannot be satirized today. Conservatism cannot be portrayed as having any good ideas today. Every Western must apologize to the Indians. The list is endless and grows by the day. Just look at this stupid controversy surrounding HBO's Confederacy.

You can argue that anyone can make any movie they want. Sure. And that was true back in the studio era. But within the system, within the mainstream, you risk the same thing you did in 1955 — being blacklisted, shunned, and personally destroyed.

9. An Expensive Bad Time

With insanely high ticket and concession prices, movies are no longer accessible to millions of Americans. Like major league baseball, the theater experience is not only expensive but becoming more and more elitist, with high-priced luxury theaters becoming their own form of skyboxes.

For those of us who do gamble a hard-earned $80 for family night, we are forced to deal with the stress of theaters that do not police the talkers and texters; we are forced to gamble all that cash on an industry with a 15% success rate when it comes to producing a satisfying product.

Pathetic.

[littlebitofbass]

Artist management contracts have been known to contain some idiosyncratic clauses over the years, but the one buried deep inside Stuart Camp and Ed Sheeran’s contract at the artist’s behest is surely one of the most unusual.

“He’s inserted a clause that says I will be with him at all times, looking like I’m enjoying myself,” Camp laughs. “It gives the lawyers sleepless nights, like, Surely we could be in breach if there are pictures where I look grumpy? But I don’t have to actually enjoy myself. As long as I look like I am, that’s OK…”

Right now, his joy seems to be genuine. And he’s certainly been with Sheeran every step of the way during the singer-songwriter’s remarkable rise.

After his 2014 album X sold 2,948,802 copies, according to the Official Charts Company, Sheeran’s return was always going to be huge, but the innovative double-single release of Shape Of You and Castle On The Hill has turned it into a blockbuster event.

Both tracks broke the previous UK one-week streaming record, Shape Of You smashed the all-time Spotify record, while Sheeran became the first artist to have the Top 2 UK singles for five weeks in a row.

So no wonder Rocket Music Management’s Camp answers the door at his newly-done-up house in the nice part of Clapham with his trademark smile on his face.

His still-unpacked suitcase from his Grammys trip (Sheeran performed at the ceremony, as he did at the BRITs) is still in the hall, his house refurb is so recent he doesn’t know where the sugar is and he’s fighting off the effects of glandular fever, but he seems perfectly relaxed in what he terms “the eye of the storm” before the most anticipated album since Adele’s 25.

But then, Camp’s experiences with Sheeran have taught him to be unfazed where others might be daunted, as the ginger kid with the guitar and the loop pedal has made the impossible look pretty darn easy at every turn.

Camp actually started on the label side of things, first at Infectious then, when that was bought by Warner, at East West, which in turn became Atlantic.

He was product manager for a bunch of American rock bands and James Blunt when Rocket’s Todd Interland finally persuaded him to try life on the other side of the fence as Blunt’s day-to-day manager.

By his own admission, he “took to it pretty quickly”. Later, he looked after Lily Allen before taking on Sheeran in 2009. Sheeran was homeless and had been turned down by almost every label in the country, but Camp took him on, let him sleep on the sofa at his place (then considerably smaller than his current abode) and, slowly but surely, helped guide him to international superstardom.

Today, Sheeran is his only client, “the last thing I think of before I go to bed and the first thing I think about when I wake up”.

Right now, those thoughts are full of dizzying projections for global first week sales and touring plans that will take him and Sheeran up until at least summer 2018, not to mention the constant Sheeran-related questions from Camp’s own 119,000 Twitter followers.

But there’s still time for him to warn Music Week about his “potentially vicious” cats and sit down to talk streaming, stadiums and social media strategy…

Who actually had the idea for the two singles?

Me, [Atlantic president] Ben Cook and Ed were sitting in Ed’s house in Suffolk, arguing over which one should be the single.

We were just going round in circles, pros and cons, pros and cons. Then it was like, The album’s called Divide, why don’t we have both sides? It was a Eureka moment which, at any one point over the next few years, one of us will claim to have been solely their idea, but it was pretty mutual.

Had you been arguing for different singles beforehand, then?

Yeah. You can probably guess who wanted which. Ed wanted Castle, I was very much either/or. I could see the merits of both. But that’s why we weren’t falling out or coming to a decision, because everyone knew that the other was a very good argument as well.

How are you feeling about the album?

Very confident now. We know the market’s there, we know people want and are desperate to hear more music, so it’s now more a case of seeing where those numbers land.

Does it feel like an even bigger deal now?

It does to a certain degree, but there’s less pressure. We could have been worried if one of these singles had fallen off quite quickly, if they hadn’t been doing quite as well, we might have been, Ooh, how’s the album going to do? But we now know that there’s the demand there. I’m just desperate to get it out, we just want people to hear it.

Do you worry about fulfilling industry/retail expectations at all? I do worry that some people might be getting a little silly on what they expect. But I’m not worried about it. Does that sound horribly conceited? There’s someone very close to me and this project who thinks it’ll do 350K [in week one] and I’d be very happy with that. That’s one of your best band’s lifetime best sales.

Even the big sales are usually around 200K. So I’d be ecstatic. But really I’m thinking, What will we have sold by the end of 2018? It’s about the long game.

Has streaming changed the dynamics of selling an album like this?

Yeah. It might not necessarily be about the album sales and what they tot up to, but at the end of the day we just want as many people as possible to hear the music, because our primary business is still live.

If people are hearing it on whatever, I can’t feel too bad [because] they might buy a ticket. It’s about getting out there as much as possible.

The album will debut on streaming services on release day. Are you a believer in streaming?

Absolutely, 100%. Always. We were always over-indexing on streaming, even from the first record. We became the poster boys for Spotify to a certain degree, before anyone else really latched on.

In the years since the last record, it’s caught up and it’s now taken over for everybody. But we were always that act.

So far, your touring plans look relatively low-key. Are there bigger things to come?

Yeah. In 2018, we just do stadiums. I knew three nights at The O2 would be an underplay and create a bit of fuss, but I didn’t realise quite how much.

But to be fair, we wanted to play this year and we can’t do all the stadiums all the time, because they’re weather dependent, so we knew we’d do arenas first. But in summer ‘18 there’s a lot of outdoor shows, a proper stadium tour, even obscure stadiums!

Were you disappointed by the secondary ticketing furore around the dates?

It’s always a shame. We do what we can to try and stop the bastards putting them on the secondary market, but you’re always going to get it.

A load of people bought tickets on [secondary sites], even though we told them not to, quite explicitly and they were getting billed for three or four grand. Everyone comes back to us like, What are you going to do about it? It is frustrating.

I’d love to do a Glastonbury model where it’s names and tickets but even that is just a pain in the arse for everyone.

You’ve got to balance it with what’s actually a good fan experience for buying a ticket. It’s an on-going thing and we’ll be looking at it even further for the stadium shows. Hopefully we’re doing enough shows so that the people who want to see us can, and aren’t spending hundreds of pounds.

Why has Ed connected as well as he has?

The music’s great and he just comes across well as a person. It’s been the same since Day One, everyone has wanted us to do well and people have been cheering for him. That helps.

He’s not a jack of all trades, but he does go across genres, he gets so many different people championing him, from grime acts to hoary old rockers, everyone just gets it and he does tick a hell of a lot of boxes, but without weakening him in any areas or looking like we’re going for a compromise.

He’s crossing those barriers and he just does it perfectly. He is sometimes quite sensitive about it, especially for Sing and Shape Of You, that was a little out of his comfort zone, so will people think he’s jumping on a bandwagon? But with him, if it’s good there’s no barrier to it becoming an Ed Sheeran song.

Does it help that he came up the hard way? Will he be the last superstar to make it like that?

You’d imagine so. Everyone else is either looking for or expecting a quick fix in this internet age. But for years before I met him, he had CDs in his rucksack and was sleeping in railway stations and doing all sorts. He really slogged it from the age of 14.

Did you always think he was going to make it?

Yeah. Not that I put a limit on it in my head, but I never at the time thought he’d be playing Wembley Stadium or anything like that, but I always knew there’d be a market for him.

When he came to me, he’d exhausted his turning up at record labels, chubby and ginger and that’s when we just took a year out of it.

He did the No.5 Collaborations Project EP. When that first charted, we were out walking in Richmond Park and we were like, How do I screengrab this, it’s No.55 on iTunes, thinking that was amazing.

Twenty minutes later it was No.10 and by teatime it was No.1. That was a nice day. That’s when the labels started coming back to us. He thought the doors were all closed and that’s when he thought, Fuck it, I’ll just do it myself. He’d been around but bless him, he didn’t give up.

Have you ever fallen out with each other?

Never. It was almost unspoken, we knew the mission and we were making progress. There are certain things we disagree on, but eventually we come round to each other’s way of thinking.

I don’t care how we get there or who gets the credit, as long as we get there. I saw everything and anything in life [with previous clients]. Ed’s always like, Am I a pain in the arse? And I’m always telling him, Yeah, you’re terrible, knowing full well that I have literally put my head into the mouth of the lion. You learn a lot in those situations.

How would you describe your management style?

I think I’m very fair and understanding. I’m not a shouter, silence scares people more. Having been on the other side, I knew the managers I loved and ultimately you’d always work harder for them.

So you try and be that person. There were so many managers in the late ‘90s, mentioning no names, where you’d be like, You’re an arsehole.

That was before the spirit of [legendary Led Zeppelin manager] Peter Grant had completely disappeared and everyone was just going, I’ve got to be a complete c-u-n-t, that’s the only way to get things to happen. And it isn’t at all.

The managers I got on with were people like Tav [Alt-J/Wolf Alice manager Stephen Taverner] and CJ [Raw Power Management CEO Craig Jennings]; they have their moments, but they were still decent and fair and would listen to you, even when I was the 20-year-old kid.

Your bond with Ed sometimes looks less like business and more like friendship…

I think that’s important. Some people always refer to their acts as my client and I’ve never been one of them. Our bond comes from living together and, glandular fever aside, I do everything with him. If you want an act to get up at 5am to do bloody German breakfast TV that’s going to be hell, at least be standing next to him when he does it. You can’t expect otherwise. There’s no airs and graces between us, we speak our minds.

What’s different about managing him now, compared to the early days?

Not a lot to be honest. He certainly hasn’t changed as a person. There are bigger things and I’m spinning more plates but, as a whole, it’s no easier or harder. We’ve always had that same attitude. We want as many people to hear the stuff as possible.

His whole attitude is, If I’ve made a record I’m proud of, I will do anything and everything to promote it. He’s not one of those people who’s like, I’ve had two No.1 albums, you can fuck off. He was really looking forward to getting back on the promo trail.

Six weeks later he’s still like, eah, bring it on, two hours sleep, Dutch TV.

Meanwhile, you’ve become a cult figure yourself on social media…

I only ever went on Twitter so I could see where Lily Allen was when I was looking after her. And then when we put [Sheeran’s] first tour on sale after the album was released, we literally broke the internet at 9am and I couldn’t get hold of anyone.

I had to get on Twitter and put the fire out and it snowballed from there. So now, when people ask me sensible questions, I try and answer as many as I can. My father was trying to show my very elderly neighbour what I did for a living and he came across some [Tumblr] site entitled Stuart Camp Gives Less Fucks Than The Virgin Mary. I got in trouble for it. I was like, I’m 38 years old, why am I in trouble for this, it’s not my fault...

Do you have targets for this campaign?

I know Ed would love to do 20 million albums off this one record, that’s his personal one. We did 14m of X, so... Let’s see! Beyond that, we don’t know.

There are folders on Ed’s laptop that have the next three albums on them, though that might change. He has his little secret ambitions for every campaign, which he never tells anyone until after the event. The Wembleys were the last one, he hasn’t told me what this album’s are and he won’t until after we’ve done them.

Where do you see the two of you being 10 years from now?

We’ll be at the end of what may be Phase 1. He’s got a clear plan - he knows the titles for the next two records, it won’t take a genius to work out what they may be! I’d like to think we’ll still be relevant and I’m sure we will be. He wants to be [like] Springsteen, career-wise. He’s definitely in it for the long haul.

And finally, have they asked you to do next year’s Super Bowl yet?

No. I’m not sure we want to do it. It’s always been a strong point for us that he’s a solo act on stage but, for that, you really have got to have the fire-breathers and dancers. I’d love them to ask us. I’m just thinking what we’d do for a show like that, but I’m sure Taylor Swift’s got an album out this year...

Originally posted in [Music Week], February 27, 2017.

[s-o-n-de-r]

Heads in the clouds: How The Maine’s untouchable, fierce independence has created something genuine

If you go back in the history of Tempe, Arizona’s pop-rock, lovebird band called The Maine, 

you’ll eventually come to a point where the band notes struggle and strife as a result of being tied to Warner Bros. Records during the making and release of their 2010 record, Black & White. It sounds like a pretty classic case of creative stifling, but the important thing is that, when they got out, they stayed independent. Pioneer, Forever Halloween, American Candy and now, Lovely Little Lonely, as well as a smattering of support content, has all been released independently.

Lovely Little Lonely is brand-spanking new (it’s still got that new-record smell), and when it dropped, it was hard not to look back at the legacy The Maine has spent the last 10 years building. Ten years in the music industry is a remarkable amount of time to remain relevant – just look at The Maine’s tour history and see the number of former tour mates that have dissolved in the big swirl of the music scene. And like most bands that have stuck around, The Maine has shown a stark change in form, maturing from the summer’s hottest neon/emo pop band to a refined and handsome rock band.

It is 10 years, after all. They were teenagers starting out. Now they’re approaching 30. They’ve got some things under their belt. Their career and independence has coalesced under the so-called 8123 family, which they have been building up for years. In fact, their current Lovely Little Lonely tour is an 8123 venture, with fellow members Beach Weather filling the first opening slot. Between all of these factors – their lengthy career, their independence as 8123, their numerous albums – there’s something else that rises to the surface: This is a band that is greatly admired by their fan base. You only have to pay attention to the social media chatter or walk the line to get into the show to get a sense for it. There is loyalty here.

Part of this, no doubt, stems from The Maine’s total, unflinching commitment to being available to fans. During the 2016 Vans Warped Tour, the band’s merch tent had “Why would you pay money to meet a human being?” printed big and bold on it. That about sums up the band’s approach to meeting fans. In a guest post on Medium reflecting on 10 years as a band, they write,

“We had grown tired of seeing other bands charge their fans for meaningless photos or meet and greets instead of adapting to the state of the industry. These bands who have stayed behind the curve struggle to make money, and as a result end up passing those costs onto their loyal fanbase with pay-to-win schemes like VIP packages and signings.”

They put their money where their mouth is, too – after the show in Orlando, the band spent plenty of time meeting with crowds of leftover fans. This total rejection of the VIP model is rare in the scene, with bands often quietly charging for exclusive meet and greets with varying levels of unique bonuses. This isn’t to say that the issue is some clear-cut thing or that VIP meet and greets are an objectively bad approach – just that this is the way The Maine has chosen to go.

It’s just a small slice of a type of authenticity that emanates from The Maine – fan interaction, music, work ethic, staying power. When bands thrive for as long as The Maine have, and they have fans that have stuck with them through it all or new fans discovering a bounty of new and old releases, there’s a real sense of maturity that feeds directly into how they carry their live show.

Lovely Little Lonely, the new album and namesake for this tour, exists in a bubble that The Maine have been working on since Pioneer. The Maine’s independence has afforded them a certain sense of separation from the music scene as a whole – not alienation, but you get the sense they’re doing their own thing. Since their split with Warner Brothers Records, their albums have captured a vitality and vigor that is difficult to find elsewhere. American Candy (2015) was a superb example of this, but Lovely Little Lonely arguably surpasses even it. Lovely Little Lonely is cohesive, exploratory and emotional, both musically and lyrically. And that’s emotional – the full word, not the three-letter shorthand, which has different connotations.

Part of the magic of The Maine as a single unit is how tightly their music is written. Jared Monaco and Kennedy Brock (lead and rhythm guitar, respectively) bring in some really creative arrangements, often a crafted blend of traditional rock and roll and the alternate/emo/pop legacy that has been a part of The Maine’s past. So you end up with some heavy-hitting instrumentals, such as the solo in “Taxi,” the rolling fervor of “Bad Behavior” or the crunchiness of “Do You Remember? (The Other Half Of 23).”

And vocalist John O’Callaghan brings mature, confident lyrics, presented in his trademark silky suave melodies. It’s difficult not to be absorbed in the feelings of the moment when he coolly rolls off lines such as “To the lows in every high / The hellos in the goodbyes / In this moment I could die with you / Never felt like this before / Dizzy drunk and beautiful” (“Don’t Come Down”) or “In the back seat / When you asked me / ‘Is the sadness everlasting?’ / I pulled you close, looked at you, and said, ‘Love, I think it is” (“Taxi”). Lovely Little Lonely is full of phenomenally well-structured and packed songs – it never feels like you’re coming across filler content, especially since the transition tracks (“Lovely,” “Little” and “Lonely,” fittingly) give the album a good pacing.

American Candy made you wonder if the band could outdo themselves, and with Lovely Little Lonely, it seems the answer is “yes.” In Orlando, the band opened with Lovely Little Lonely’s “Black Butterflies and Déjà Vu,” a touching tune about the fever of love and not knowing how to express said love. But their set rolled through a far-reaching chunk of their whole catalog, even throwing in “The Way We Talk” from their 2007 EP The Way We Talk. Other notable picks were “Am I Pretty?,” “Another Night On Mars,” “Take What You Can Carry” and “My Heroine.”

All dressed up, with a stage décor bristling with ambiance, The Maine put on a dashing performance. O’Callaghan charms and commands the attention of the crowd with a surprising amount of ease, rounding out his role as a vocalist by being an engaging frontman. He jokes with people, talks about shirts people are wearing, comments on what’s going on and, perhaps most importantly, gives the whole room attention. As the one talking and singing the most, he breathes the personality of the band’s show into the air, and it intoxicates you. At one point, the band brought a fan on stage (as they often do) – “Ryan from New Jersey” – and encouraged him to sing the rest of “Girls Do What They Want,” all while O’Callaghan called him “his new boyfriend.”

Between their label independence and ethic when it comes to meeting fans, it’s relatively easy to see how the theatrics and cohesion of their whole show (and existence as a band) are maintainable. This band is not locked in a contract. This band is not being pushed to do something they don’t want to. This band is not being pushed to act or write a certain way.

The Maine is pure passion, guided by their own hands. It’s OK if you don’t like their music, but you should acknowledge that this is a band who has carved an entire corner out for themselves, and it’s all on them.

---

Article and photos by sonder editor Andrew Friedgen. Enjoy this? Sonder is an independent music, travel and photography feature journal published at sonderlife.com. Give us a follow here or at our Twitter, Instagram or Facebook if you like in-depth talk about music, travel, photography and lots more.

Also check out:

Our past photos of The Maine

All photos from the Lovely Little Lonely tour in Orlando

We’re giving away a few signed copies of a sonder-exclusive photo of John O’Callaghan. Check the details here.

[81scorp]

Constructive criticism: Justice League (2017)

(Originally posted on June 9, 2018)

Ah yes, Justice League. The comic with some of DC`s greatest heroes coming together to form a team that made Marvel so nervous that they created their own superteam: Fantastic Four. Fast forward a few years later, Marvel started to not only make their own movies but they they also created a shared cinematic universe. Warner Bros, owners of the film rights to DC, became eager to strike while the iron was hot and make their own Cinematic universe. It could have gone well if WB hadn`t insisted on paying catch up with Marvel. I do not envy the makers of this movie. Filmed pretty much directly after Batman v Superman only to find out that Bvs did not sit well with audiences so the film makers were forced to do changes mid filming. Add to that a family tragedy that forces the original director to step down and be replaced by a director with a different style. Sure, I don`t think any film productions go flawlessly, all have a few hiccups, and in some cases they can lead to a better movie. This was not the case for Justice League. Personally I didn`t hate it, it made more sense than BvS and I found it more enjoyable. There has been talk of a "Snyder Cut" and people are convinced that it would be a masterpiece. Judging from Snyder`s previous work and his tendencies to always believe that "darker is better" I doubt that. I`m sure it would have been more in tone with Batman v Superman, but would it have been good? If I could run so fast that I could screw the laws of physics, travel backwards in time and change these movies, What would I have done?

Contains SPOILERS for Batman v Superman and Justice League

Secret identities

Bruce, Clark, Barry and Hal should have one. Victor, Arthur and Diana doesn`t have to have one. That`s right, Diana could be open about her superheroing and still keep her day job. (Hey, it works for Jennifer Walters.)

Wonder Woman and the Male gaze

Don`t do the male gaze on Wonder Woman. Nuff said.

The Amazons bikini armor

Give them practical armor that doesn`t expose their midriffs.

The Mother boxes as rare, super important Macguffins

The movie doesn`t have to be superfaithful to everything in the comics but this time I`m gonna be one of that "In the comics" guy. In the comics the Mother boxes are pretty common things on the world of the New Gods. One of their many functions is opening "Boom tubes" to travel long distances. Like the teleportation portals used in this movie. How about this instead: The rare Macguffins are round spheres instead of cubes, and they`re called "Worldbuilders".

The Parademons

Make them a little more green. Once when I watched it there were a few scenes where Cyborg was fighting them and, to be honest, I had trouble telling him apart from them.

Steppenwolf and Cyborg`s CGI

They could have used practical effects mixed with CGI. The metal on Cyborg`s face and the upper half of his torso could have been practical.

Superman being dead

Killing him off in BvS was way to early. Even if JL had been a better movie than it was I still would have written a CC bringing it up. This was also the hardest part of writing this CC. Coming up with a plot where Supes isn`t dead but at the same time keeping the stuff from the movie that could still work.

I`m biased here, but I`d like to think that I did OK.

Plot

3 years ago: A group of scientists dig up an ancient, otherworldly, seemingly high-tech, spherical artefact. Present day: Coast City, Ferris Aircraft: Carol Ferris has finished working for the day and is going home, she notices something (or someone) floating in the air above her. She looks up. It`s Green Lantern. He has been busy keeping order in the galaxy and has been away from Earth for some time. He wonders if anything interesting has happened while he was gone. As if to answer his question we get an opening credit scene to a montage of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Flash and Aquaman doing what they do best to heroic music, in slow motion. (The style of Zack Snyder can be good if you know where and when to use it.) In one part of this montage Superman should save a kitten (or a puppy). Why? Because he`s frickin` Superman! That`s why!

Gotham: A burglar robs someone`s apartment, Batman shows up and beats him. Bats has the upperhand but gets attacked by a parademon. The parademon has the upperhand but gets attacked by Superman who tries to restrain it. The parademon, fights like a maniac to get out of Supes grip but realizes that Supes is much to strong, so it self destructs. Bats and Supes talk a little. The attacks by these flying creatures have been happening more and more around the globe. Possible invasion? Supes hears that he is needed elsewhere and flies away. The Burglar thinks that Bats has forgotten about him and reaches for his loot but Bats steps on his arm and looks at him as a way of saying "Oh no, my friend, I haven`t forgotten about you". The burglar is left tied up outside the nearest police station. Bats calls Oracle and asks if she`s made any progress. We see a woman in a wheelchair in front of a couple of computerscreens. One of the screens shows info about Barry Allen being the Flash (Yes, Batman knows Barry`s secret identity, because he`s Batman!) On the computerscreen there`s a photo of Hal Jordan (from when he saved Carol Ferris`s life) and a video log made by Silas Stone, where he documents the process of trying to save his son`s life by giving him cybernetic limbs.

Oracle: "Nothing new about the flying, green guy I`m afraid, but I`ve found something about the guy with robot limbs."

She tells him that the young man is Victor Stone, a promising athlete and very intelligent. He was injured in an explosion. The other man is Silas Stone, Victor`s father, who tried to help his son by replacing his lost bodyparts with cybernetic prosthetics. Cybernetic legs and arms (from Lexcorp*) and a bionic eye (from S.T.A.R. labs) to replace one that he lost. It`s rumored that Victor didn`t survive the procedure. She says she`ll look into it more.

Metropolis, S.T.A.R. Labs: Silas Stone is going home for the day, A janitor (let`s call him Bob) gives him his condolences (because of what happened to Victor). Silas goes home to his apartment where his son, Victor is (who is very much alive). Silas talks to him and tries to offer support. Victor tells him that he`s having trouble adjusting to his new body. We get a little backstory through a flashback. After the accident It took him some time, but eventually Victor started to adjust to the idea of living with robot limbs. Then came the day when some scientists brought some unknown, small, high-tech rectangluar device (a Mother Box) to S.T.A.R. labs. When it was put in the same room as Victor it came alive, grew in size, disassembled itself and reassembled itself as a robot body around Victor. The difference between his new cyborg body and his old cybernetic limbs is that the new body is changing, upgrading itself. Everyday he wakes up with something new, like the ability to fly for an example. He also has images of a sphere-shaped object in his head. He`s a stranger in his own body, and it scares him.

Central City: Barry visits his dad in prison and tells him that the investigation has reached a dead-end. His dad, having no hope of ever getting out of jail, tells him to not waste all of his time on his case and move forward with his life. But Barry is determined, he`s not giving up on his dad. Paris: Diana is working in the museum, talks a little to her co-workers, one of them shows her the news where a professor living in Paris is missing. Diana goes to investigate. She arrives at the professor`s apartment. There`s police tape on the crime scene, a big hole in the wall that leads out to the streets and the whole place is a mess. Suddenly she`s not alone, a parademon shows up. She fights it, binds it with her lasso, it tries to break free, can`t, selfdestructs. Wonder Woman knows what it is, and realizes she has places to go and people to see. Metropolis, S.T.A.R. Labs: Bob the janitor is about to leave and go home, hears something, goes to investigate, is ambushed by a parademon.

Central City: Barry is on the phone with Iris. He talks to her about the situation with his dad and how he can do nothing to help him. Iris wants to help. Her best suggestion is that he goes for a walk to clear his head. Barry thinks it`s a good idea. He goes for a run as the Flash, ends up on a rooftop, takes time to reflect. Someone is being robbed, Flash pauses his thinking, stops the robber and goes back to his thinking.

The next day, Maine, Amnesty Bay: Diana is standing on a pier waiting for someone. Arthur shows up. She tells him that they could use his help. Arthur has heard about the flying creatures and wants to help but his hands are tied by the Atlantean royal council who think that he shouldn`t care about the surface world and focus on Atlantis. He tells Diana that he`ll do his best to convince the council but he can`t promise anything. Then he dives into the ocean and hitches a ride on an orca.

Themiscyra: Steppenwolf shows up to steal the worldbuilder. The Amazons put up a good fight and do their best to keep the worldbuilder away from him but in the end he gets away with it. The Amazons send the flaming arrow signal. Diana (who is travelling through the US to tell Bruce about what she knows) and Oracle both see the signal on the tv news.

Bat cave: Bruce is working on a big airship, Diana comes in and wants to talk to him. Alfred reveals to Bruce that it was he who let her in. Diana tells the story of the first time Steppenwolf tried to take over Earth. 1000 years ago the Amazons, the greek gods, the Atlanteans and a guardian from the stars (the Green Lantern who guarded sector 2814 back then), joined forces to defeat him. The worldbuilders were kept separate and the one given to the humans was buried.

Gotham: Oracle is searching for info on Victor. He contacts her, tells her he`s aware that she`s looking for and wants her to stop. She manages to convince him to let her talk to him. He doesn`t want to leave the apartment however and she`s not very mobile herself, being in a wheelchair and all. She tells him that she`ll send someone to speak for her. After giving it some thought Victor`s OK with it.

Metropolis, Daily Planet: Clark and Lois talk a little, about the flying aliens that have shown up recently and people that have been kidnapped. Could there be a connection? If so, what do the creatures need the people for? Clark hears something and excuses himself (looks like a job for Superman), he leaves and Lois gets a phonecall. A little later Supes lands outside a building where a group of reactionary terrorists have taken people hostage. They believe that the invasion of flying creatures is a sign that the world needs to be purged with fire. Not only do they have a time-bomb but they also start shooting at the hostage. Superman is fast and protects the hostage from bullets, as he reaches the time-bomb there`s only one second left and... The bomb is suddenly surrounded by a green forcefield that takes the force of the explosion. It was created by a flying masked man in a green suit. It`s Green Lantern.

Silas Stone`s apartment: The person who comes to talk to Victor in Oracle`s place is Lois Lane.She tries to convince him to join in the fight and reminds him of when he helped her find evidence that saved Supes`s life. Victor`s final response is "I`ll think about it".

Atlantis: Steppenwolf invades Atlantis, fights, defeats and kills two guards. Fights and defeats Mera, Fights and defeats Arthur, takes the worldbuilder and boomtubes away. When Arthur recovers he tells the Atlantean royal council that now is a time for action. Mera supports him. The council admits that they`ll have to get more involved and not distance themselves too much from the surface world. Mera gives Arthur a trident and assures him that she can take care of Atlantis in his absence.

Metropolis, S.T.A.R. Labs: Silas Stone gets kidnapped by a parademon.

Gotham Police Department: Commissioner Gordon is, together with another cop, looking at police reports. He says that with the things that has happened lately he`s starting to wonder if Batman`s help is enough. Heck, soon maybe even Superman`s help won`t be enough. Might be a good idea to call Batman tonight, see if he knows something they don`t.

Metropolis, Silas Stone`s apartment: Victor realizes that his dad should have been home by now and accesses the internet. He hacks into the Police`s database and finds out that his dad has been kidnapped. He takes the big step of stepping outside his apartment.

Central City: Barry gets a call from Bats who tells him to meet him in Gotham. Flash suits up and runs to Gotham.

Somewhere in Russia: We see a town where people and families do everyday stuff, cleaning their houses, reading the news paper etc. In one of the families (lets call them the Dostojevskis) the daughter sees something in the sky. Parademons! Their little town is now under siege by parademons. The people hide in their houses.

Gotham City: Commissioner Gordon turns on the Batsignal. Bats, Wondy and Flash show up. Gordon hopes that Bats has figured something out, he has. Based on where the kidnappings have taken place Bats has deduced that they will most likely find what they`re looking for on an island outside Gotham.

"Count me in!" Arthur shows up.

"Me too!" Victor shows up as well. The gang`s all here it seems... except one.

"Mind if I tag along?"

They look up, it`s Green Lantern. He introduces himself and tells them that Supes is busy elsewhere and may come later. They travel to the island where they go through some underground tunnels. Some of them talk a little, Barry is bothered by the fact that Bats knows his secret identity but he doesn`t know Bats`s

Batman: "I may tell you someday in the future."

Flash asks Bats one last question.

Flash: "What are your superpowers?"

Batman: "I`m good at detective work."

They find Steppenwolf interrogating the kidnapped people. Among the hostage they find the professor from Paris, Bob the janitor and Silas Stone. Flash zooms in and gets a few of them out, Steppenwolf and the parademons react, a fight starts, Flash saves the rest of the hostage. Green Lantern gets knocked out. Steppenwolf realizes that Victor`s body is a Mother Box and uses his own MB to scan and extract possible info from Victor`s body about the whereabouts of the final worldbuilder. Victor`s robotbody resists, but doing that is painful to Victor. Steppenwolf gets the info he needs, blows a hole in the wall, causes a flood and boomtubes away. Things look grim for the heroes but Supes shows up and gets them out of trouble.

A secret base a few miles outside Metropolis: Steppenwolf shows up via boomtube, breaks through the safety doors, the parademons kill the guards, Steppenwolf gets the final worldbuilder and boomtubes away.

The Batcave: The heroes take some time to recharge and come up with a plan. Victor knows that it`s not his fault but he`s still angry that Steppenwolf found the worldbuilder through him. Determined to make things right he goes online to search for any info on where Steppenwolf could possibly be. Flash asks Bats:

"Didn`t you use to have a sidekick? I think I read something about it."

Bats opens up about how he adopted a young cirkus acrobat when his parents died. The kid found out that Bruce Wayne was Batman and wanted to fight crimes by his side. Bruce agreed to train him but made sure that the training would be hard and challenging in the hopes that the boy would give up the idea of becoming a crimefighter. The boy persevered and became Robin. Years later the boy grew up and he and Bats went their separate ways. Bats found a new kid who became the next Robin who sadly was killed by the Joker. This turned Bats down a dark spiral. Flash understands Bats`s pain.

"It`s Bruce by the way, Bruce Wayne."

Bats finally reveals his secret identity to Flash. Alfred shows up, is surprised that Bats has brought company but quickly adapts and asks if he can get them anything to eat or drink. Flash would like something to eat.

As he`s searching databases for info on Steppenwolf`s whereabouts Victor once again comes in contact with Oracle. She gives him her backstory: Batman inspired her to fight crime. She called herself Batgirl and wore a bat-costume of her own. Then Joker shot her and made her a paraplegic. She has fought crime from a distance in a wheelchair since then. The doctors say that there`s a small chance that she may be able to walk again (because in this universe Joker didn`t shoot her directly in the spine). Victor understands Barbara.

Somewhere in Russia: The russians (among them are the Dostojevskis) are still hiding from the parademons. Steppenwolf unites the third worldbuilder with the others and activates them with his Mother box. They start to charge up. We get a little backstory about how he once fought for Darkseid in a war against New Genesis. He made a mistake that helped the forces of New Genesis get the upperhand which lead to them stopping the forces of Apokolips from taking over their planet. Because of this Steppenwolf was demoted and would only get his general-title back if he conquered a number of planets in the name of Darkseid. (We get a flashback where we see Steppenwolf kneel before Granny Goodness, but we don`t get to see Darkseid.)

The Batcave: Victor has found Steppenwolf, the coordinates point to an old town near an old powerplant in Russia. The gang gets ready and they fly to the place in Bats`s airship. Victor tell them how to stop the worldbuilders during the trip. They arrive and come up with a plan. Supes and GL takes care of saving and evacuating civilians, the rest of the team attract the attention of, and fight the parademons to get to the worldbuilder. The League charge into battle. The worldbuilders are fully charged and start to terraform the environment around them. The Dostojevkis are in trouble

The League fight their way through the parademons, the terraforming continues, Supes and GL save and evacuate civilians, the Dostojevskis are still in trouble.The League fight their way through the parademons and reach Steppenwolf, the terraforming continues and it`s getting worse, Supes and GL save and evacuate civilians, the Dostojevskis are still in trouble and it`s getting worse. The League fight Steppenwolf, the terraforming continues, Supes and GL save and evacuate civilians, but it looks like no one is gonna help the Dostojevskis, they`re doomed.But then: Superman saves the Dostojevskis!

He takes them somewhere safe, far away from the warzone. He takes a moment to breathe and gather his strength before he gets back in the fight. The Dostojevski daughter says "Thank you" in russian. Superman says "You`re welcome" in russian. Steppenwolf fights the League, he`s getting the upperhand, GL joins the fight and gets the upperhand for a moment. Steppenwolf gets the upperhand back but then Supes joins the fight. The two of them are pretty evenly matched. While the rest of the league fight Steppenwolf. Victor (with a little help from GL) manages to shut down and separate the worldbuilders, ending the terraforming. Furious, Steppenwolf punches out GL and tears off Victors leg. The league fight him again and destroy his axe. Steppenwolf realizes that he has lost and boomtubes the hell outta there with the rest of his parademons. The heroes have won and the civilians are safe.

Later, somewhere in the U.S.A: Remember the scoutship from Man of Steel? Supes does. He`s found it, placed somewhere in a remote place in the U.S. and it`s gonna become their new HQ. Bats says they should have a round table with seven chairs.

"With room for more." adds Diana.Central city: Barry visits his dad and tells him that his case is moving forward again. His dad wonders how it`s possible. Barry tells him that he has a friend who`s good at detective work.

Metropolis: Victor has joined a kind of big brother mentor program where he teaches basketball to kids.

Batcave: Bruce is reunited with his old protègè Dick Grayson, who now calls himself Nightwing. Apokolips: Steppenwolf bows and apologizes to Granny Goodness, she reminds him that it`s not her that he should apologize to.

Earth: We get Lois`s speech about hope and darkness as a voiceover to a montage where we see Oracle, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Cyborg, Green Lantern and Batman and Nighwing in their natural element. The montage ends with Clark Kent walking the streets of Metropolis, he looks up, walks away from the crowd to avoid being seen as he opens his shirt to reveal the Superman logo. Superman flies off into the sky.

The end

Not great but hopefully not bad.

* In my CC I wrote that Lex mentions that a young athlete who got into a terrible accident is now able to walk again, thanks to Lexcorp`s advancements in the field of bionics. I felt I had to keep some of it because I want to have a little continuity.

[spryfilm]

“Justice League” (2017)

Action/Fantasy

Running Time: 120 minutes

Written by:  Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon

Directed by:  Zack Snyder

Featuring: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J. K. Simmons and Ciarán Hinds

Diana Prince: “People said the Age of Heroes would never come again.“

Bruce Wayne: “It has to. We don’t have any more time!“

Has there ever been any more problems in modern movie history than the struggles that Warner Brothers has had with the DCEU attempting to get a comic book universe off the ground that will rival the mighty marvel comic book universe? It really isn’t a faor comparison, Marvel are into their seventeenth movie with this years “Thor: Ragnarok”(2017), while this weeks “Justice League”(2017) is just the fifth – with at least four of the previous being major disappointments – of course their only real bright spot is that they have continued to make money. But audiences as well as critics have not held back with their own opinions on how dreadful they really are.

Now comes the second team movie to be under the DCEU banner after the horrible “Suicide Squad”(2016) that seeks to unite at least three of the biggest superheroes ever, along with three definite B characters to form the titular ‘Justice League’. This was kind of teased in the derided “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”(2016). Of course even before “Justice League “is released it has had its share of issues, massive amounts of reshoots, changing directors for at least a quarter of the movie, mandated running time of less than two hours as well as heightening the humor, decreasing the darkness, finally not forgetting to increase the amount of Wonder Woman in the movie. This really does not bode well, especially as many of these issues and changes faced “Suicide Squad”, however “Justice League “has turned out much better – for the most part. There is a large  caveat, that is this is still not a coherent movie, not only that I had pretty much forgotten about it as soon as I left the theatre.

The bare bones plot takes place months after the events of “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”, inspired by Superman’s sacrifice for humanity, Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince unite a team consisting of Barry Allen, Arthur Curry, and Victor Stone to face the catastrophic threat of Steppenwolf and his army of Para demons, who are on the hunt for three Mother Boxes on Earth, while the world reflects on Superman’s death.

The good news is that this movie for the most part holds together, (that is being kind)  serving as a kind of origin movie as well as a look to the future as to what to expect in the coming years. It also serves to introduce Cyborg, Flash and Aquaman to an audience so as to show what those individuals offer. This is accomplished through the recruitment that Batman as well as Wonder Woman attempt to accomplish so as to give the audience someone they do know making the introductions for us. This works quite well overall, but I could not help feel that out of all this that Aquaman is the one best served (although not the deepest character) which could have something to do with his own movie arriving next year – while Flash and Cyborg are given the scraps off the table, as it were.

Other than the bringing together of the team, there is what feels like a necessary call back to “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” in the fact that the main villain here is Steppenwolf and his army of Parademons who made appearances in that movie (actually Steppenwolf only appears in the directors cut which to me is odd to say the least) – does this work? For me the answer is no, but antagonists in all comic book movies do seem to be an issue – there are a few exceptions but it does not necessarily mean that this makes for a negative experience – origin movies tend to be forgiven more, which this for all intents and purposes is.

The trailers for this movie have been out for months so we have all known what to expect casting wise, there is Gal Gadot and Ben Affleck as Wonder Woman and Batman who have appeared in their own features so we know what to expect from them. In this movie Affleck has taken a step forward, Gadot a step back. However this is the first time we are spending an extended amount of time with Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ezra Miller (Flash) and Ray Fisher (Cyborg). While Momoa and Miller are known genre actors and know how to play to the cameras in big films, it was Fisher for me who is an unknown element, he acquits himself well with the role as Cyborg, but the issue for me is that this just seems like an Iron Man rip-off with the exception that his amour is bonded to his skin, which for me makes a hollow hero – maybe in time I will grow to like this character, but for now he seems a little redundant. The supporting cast is rounded out with highly experienced character actors that we have seen in previous movies, the likes of Connie Neilsen as Queen Hippolyta, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Diane Lane as MAARRTTHHAAA Kent (no jokes please), Jeremy Irons as Alfred, Jesse Eisenberg as Lex, who all do their jobs well, although they seem to be there as identifiers of earlier movies. There is now the arrival of new supporting characters (assuming we are supposed to see more of them in the next standalone movies) such as Amber Heard as Mera, Kiersey Clemons as Iris West, Billy Crudup as Henry Allen, J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon and Joe Morton as Dr. Silas Stone. Now while these actors are all great I cannot help think that they were appearing as some kind of preview to possible standalone movies, whether they eventuate or not – Marvel got bashed for this. See “Iron Man 2”(2010) for the reaction to their version of this.

Famously the original director, Zack Snyder left the movie late in the game so screenwriter Joss Whedon was given the job of completing the shooting as well as being solely in charge of reshoots. For many movies this might be an issue, however because the story is so simple it meant that it was relatively easy to marry the two directors work making a story that is what the creatives wanted – to me it seemed fairly standard with little in the way of surprise or real stakes. As with most DCEU movies they seem to be overcooked with too many chefs as well as creators who seem to lack any vision for what they are doing. Snyder has proved again and again an overreliance on tropes as well as storylines that existed in the 1980s with the inability to be able to movie forward modernizing these wonderful characters. With Snyder gone (apparently never to return thank goodness) Whedon has picked up the mantle adding his signature dialogue and humor as well as a shorter tighter movie that is brisk with its narrative – no pondering heroes here or heavy handed dialogue, just a lot more fun in general – thank goodness because really the plot makes little sense or bears no relation to any real situations you can think of. The other screenwriter who is credited is Chris Terrio who believe it or not received an Oscar for “Argo” (2012) but revealed the kind of messy uneditable writer he actually is with “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice”. Of course when you have someone like Whedon who has always been about a plot with character moments you can see his fingerprints here – Terrio like his friend Affleck to have been cut out of any production decisions since their first disaster was released.

As you would expect the movie looks like a Snyder movie, mostly, although there are cracks in the seams with some fairly ordinary CGI, again an over reliance on these which makes for a rather blurry action movie. This is a shame but comes from late reshoots as well as a general feeling that the people behind the scenes were all making different movies – something it seems all the DCEU movies have in common. What we end up watching is an OK movie that rates probably third (maybe) behind this years “Wonder Woman” and “Man of Steel”(2009) – although they had plenty of issues as well – it is also a small reset which is welcome, showing a way forward. I have to admit that after this movie I am hoping that next years “Aquaman” (2018) will improve and should be a treat in particular because it will not involve Terrio, Snyder but will involve Geoff Johns.

The big question to ask is – should you see “Justice League “in cinemas? The answer is I guess, especially if you have made the trip for previous movies. “Justice League” is a sign that even though Warner Brothers will have you believe that they make these movies in a vacuum, they most certainly in reality do not. They have looking at feedback as well as reviews and are making course corrections on the fly – which can be good as in “Wonder Woman” or can be disastrous as in “Suicide Squad”. In the case of this movie it has worked out somewhere in between but it is a sign of things to come, so take the chance and enjoy a rare thing, a pretty good Joss Whedon inspired super hero movie.

“Justice League” (2017) is out now only in cinemas.

Film review: “Justice League”(2017) “Justice League” (2017) Action/Fantasy Running Time: 120 minutes Written by:  Chris Terrio and Joss Whedon Directed by:  Zack Snyder…

[rontweedie]

The Castle of Otronto by Horace Walpole

After I finished "Wagner the Werewolf", since I was in a Gothic vein, and Karen had bought me a copy of "The Castle of Otronto", I decided I may as well read it. It's only 106 pages long. To be honest I was a little disappointed in "Wagner the Werewolf". He only changed into a werewolf three times in the book, which was 474 pages long, and when he did he just ran around like crazy all night like the Tasmanian Devil from the Warner Brothers cartoons.  The beginning was OK, but it soon started to drag when he found himself stranded on an island in the Mediterranean. Because of the immense popularity of "Robinson Crusoe", in most 19th century works, if they were long enough, a few chapters where the characters find themselves stranded on an island almost seemed almost mandatory. I read "Robinson Crusoe" years ago and I remember it as being dreadfully boring. How could it be anything other? Do you think being stuck on some island out in the middle of nowhere is terribly exciting? It was no more exciting in "Wagner the Werewolf" even with all the giant snakes on the other side of the island. Giant snakes should present any imaginative writer with a wonderful opportunity, but, unfortunately Mr. George W M Reynolds just must not have felt equal to the challenge this time around. I find this odd because "Varney the Vampire" was a delightful book and I loved the character. He was a hideous and freaky looking vampire, nearly seven feet tall with a face like a rat, but oh so polite. Whenever his irate neighbors burst into his home to challenge him to a duel or insist he evacuate the premises and vacate the village he's always careful to offer them refreshments. If they refuse he asks them, "Are you quite sure? I have an extensive selection of tempting cordials to chose from!" Such impeccable manners. A true gentleman through and through. I absolutely loved it. I guess there's also the possibility that Wagner and Varney were the creations of two different authors since these Victorian potboilers were published in installments in cheap, rubbishy magazines that no respectable person would really want to be associated with.  Many writers used pseudonym, and sometimes the same pseudonym could be used by more than one author. OK, back to, "The Castle of Otronto". To be honest I had a very hard time understanding the first few paragraphs. The syntax and manner of speech was initially very opaque to me. Of course it was written in 1764 so that may have something to do with it. Anyway I was able to make the adjustment and understand what I was reading quickly enough. The story didn't make much sense. It reminded me of a dream in a lot of places and I felt the story was overburdened with heavy and obscure symbolism. After I read it I did a little research and apparently creating impossible events and having his characters react to them naturally as if they were commonplace was one of the concepts he was exploring with this piece. Also, you may be interested to know, this is officially the first Gothic novel ever written, but since he admits Hamlet was his inspiration does that mean Shakespeare should be considered the first Gothic writer instead of Walpole? I think the definition of "Gothic" has either changed or enlarged during the past 250 years since this book was set in the 12th century and dealt with knights and castles. In fact, when it was first released the author told everyone it was just a translation he did of an old Italian work from the Middle Ages found in a private library on an ancient estate. He later confessed it was his own creation and the work received mixed criticism, some praising it while others dismissed it as romantic fluff. Walpole himself was obsessed with English Gothic architecture and began enlarging his Strawberry Hill farm Hearst Castle style trying to make it into a sort of castellino. Since he knew nothing about structural architecture his Gothic additions were basically decoration. At any rate it still stands and you can book tours by calling: +44 20 8744 1241. Although originally about knights, ghosts, castles and princesses in distress, most people these days, when they hear the term "Gothic" think of 19th century stories dealing with monsters like "Frankenstein" and "Dracula", maybe even "Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde". Most modern readers would feel cheated if they read a Gothic novel without a vampire in it or a monster chained in the cellar or dungeon. Maybe a few creatures of the night would have livened the story up a bit, but I appreciate this kind of literature so much that personally, I don't require the addition of monsters. If it's well written enough I enjoy seeing a story unfold in the chivalrous world when Europe was young and green, and observing plots and schemes enacted in the context of the ancient moral code. For instance I love Sir Walter Scott. OK, spoiler alert here in case any of you think you may ever want to read this in the future, I'm about to outline some of the plot: Manfred, the Lord of Otranto, was about to marry his son off to princess Isabella. Out of nowhere a giant helmet falls out of the sky and crushes his son, Conrad, the death(!). Of course everyone is totally freaked out by this, but, evidently Manfred is very single minded, he needs an heir to the property to continue his family name, so he goes up to Isabella and basically says, "Oh well, shit happens. He was a sickly little loser anyway. I'll just divorce my wife and marry you instead", which, I'm sure you will agree, is a most singular response to the situation. Isabella is mortified by his plan and, of course, runs away. Since it was a superstitious age some poor guy was accused of using sorcery to kill Conrad so they put him under the helmet. They don't provide him with any food because they assume that if he gets hungry he could just conjure up a snack for himself using the black arts. So, anyway, while the princess is frantically running through the castle to evade the crazed Manfred she runs into this guy who was imprisoned under the helmet, a peasant named Theodore, Some people thought he stepped out of a picture on the wall of the castle because he resembled it so much, but we are given to understand that the giant helmet damaged the castle wall and he was able to escape his makeshift prison and penetrate the castle through the rupture. Theodore opens a trap door in the floor that leads to the local church and the princess is able to escape, unfortunately the hatch slams shut after she descends and the noise attracts Manfred and his servants. They can't find the trap door but once they conclude Theodore aided the princess in her escape they take him prisoner with the intent of torturing him into revealing where she is. Manfred chooses friar Jerome to be his confessor, but we soon find, once they strip off Theodore's shirt in preparation to laying him on the rack, that a mark on his shoulder reveals that Theodore is friar Jerome's long lost son. I won't divulge anymore, but I trust I've given you a good idea of what the story is like. Like most literature the plot takes numerous twists and turns where secret relationships between the characters are revealed, unexpected events shatter well laid plans and, in the tradition of Shakespeare, nearly everyone dies or is killed by the end. Since the place is getting fixed up nice maybe I should make more of my book review videos. I must have read a room full of books since the last one I made. I guess it's getting time to make some more.

[bromfieldhall]

“Redwood” - A Mentalist Fanfiction

TIMELINE: Set some time after season five episode, ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’. Goes AU from there.

SYNOPISIS: Jane and Lisbon are forced into a deadly game when they try and catch a new serial killer.

PAIRING: Patrick Jane/Teresa Lisbon - Jisbon

Previous Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

CHAPTER 7

Zack waited impatiently by the creek. He hadn't been there long but every second felt like an hour, as he was desperate to get back to the hunt. He paced the small clearing in agitation and had just decided to hell with it and leave when he heard the faint whines of the approaching dogs.

"It's about time," he commented angrily when Wade appeared a few moments later with the two muzzled canines from the cabin.

"Where's Dad?" he younger man asked ignoring his cousin's rudeness.

"The Fed's tricked us and he's trying to find them," Zack replied bitterly. "Now we need to use the dogs to find him."

Wade frowned but nodded. Dropping to his knees, he petted the animals then ordered curtly, "Go find, Dad. Go."

The dogs barked a couple of times then whined and jumped up in their desire to get going. It was a command they were used to hearing whenever they were exercised. Ben would hide and Wade would let them off to seek him out. It was good training practice.

Unable to wait any longer, Zack snatched one of the leashes from Wade's hand and trotted off, letting the dog lead him to his uncle. He wasn't about to miss out on any more fun.

xxTheMentalistxx

Sheriff Newland was absolutely livid. After Cho's call regarding the missing CBI agents, he'd headed out to Old State Highway and brought a couple of deputy's and a Ranger friend with him ready to help with the search. As soon as he'd seen the SUV and the state of the tyre, however, he'd known exactly what had happened. The couple his brother had told him about were actually Lisbon and Jane.

He'd have his crazy son's hide for this.

He'd attempted to try and convince Cho that there wasn't any foul play involved but the agent had been adamant it was to do with the investigation.

"All the vic's went missing when they were exercising in this area," he'd said. "Now Lisbon and Jane have too. We can't ignore the possibility that the killer might have them; it's too much of a coincidence and until I hear from her otherwise, I'm treating this accident as suspicious."

Newland had opened his mouth to refute his supposition as ridiculous and unsubstantiated but even his own deputy's had eyed him a little dubiously and so he'd quickly just acceded that the pair were likely in some kind of trouble.

Now that they were all agreed, his friend, Ranger Bill Townsend spread a forest map out over the hood of the CBI vehicle and pointed to a spot near the bottom.

"We're here," he stated then looked up at everyone before gazing back at the map. "Now if, as Agent Cho suspects, this is to do with the killer they're investigating, then we need to look at any places where they could possibly be held. There's not many. We've got some houses in the area and a few old cabins in the woods; here, here and here," he said, pointing to a location on the map with each word.

"I'll check out that one," Newland said pointing to the cabin he knew they were being held in. "It's the old Kinsella place, right?"

"Yeah," Townsend concurred. "I'll take Bridger's cabin. It's quite a trek but I know it well."

"OK, take Rigsby with you," said Cho, knowing the ranger would need someone that carried a gun with him. He then turned to the deputy's and asked, "Do either of you know where the last cabin is?"

"I do," replied the taller of the two. "I used to go camping around there a lot."

"Good. I'll go with you," he decided then looked at Grace and added, "Van Pelt, you go with Deputy Warner and check out the houses. You can keep an eye on the GPS signal that way. If you get a fix then try and let me before following it up, OK?"

The red head nodded and everyone made their way to their respective vehicles.

Newland almost ran to his car so desperate was he to get to the cabin and deal with the situation as quickly and cleanly as possible. He got in and sped away, assuming correctly that they merely thought him eager to find the missing pair. They were right, he did; but just not for the same reasons. He'd make up some crap about finding them there already dead and make sure there wasn't any evidence left lying around that might point the finger at any of his family.

He hadn't covered everything up this long for it all to fall down about his ears now.

xxTheMentalistxx

Ben doggedly tracked Lisbon and Jane until he realised they were backtracking to where Zack had first shot at them and then he moved faster. There had been a couple of odd diversions that had thrown him for a couple of minutes but he wasn't fooled for long. He'd hunted for too many years to get caught out.

He walked quickly, looking ahead avidly in case he caught sight of them amongst the trees ahead. He was going to have to finish this alone, he realised. Once they got back to the fork in the pathway, they would reach the forest track a few minutes after that. It was a more open area and although it made it easier for him to take a shot, it also made it easier for them too. He was assuming that they only reason they hadn't fired before now was that they were saving bullets.

He continued on mentally cursing his brother and nephew to all kinds of hell. If it weren't for them, he'd never have been caught up in all of this. One stupid accident had sent everything spiralling out of control and set Zack off on a psychotic path that was proving more and more difficult to contain. His own son was beginning to be tainted by the very evil that lurked deep within his cousin and after all this was over he knew he was going to have to get him away before he was unable to stop him heading down the same self-destructive. There was only ever going to be one ending for Zack; he didn't want the same fate for Wade.

xxTheMentalistxx

Jane and Lisbon walked steadily on through the undergrowth until eventually the blond began to notice that the forest wasn't quite as dense as before. Looking left and right, he frowned as something clicked in the back of his mind.

"Wait a minute, does this look familiar to you?" Jane asked as he came to a stop and gazed around.

Lisbon turned from where she'd been walking in front of him and surveyed their surroundings with a frown.

"We're in a forest, Jane. There's lots of trees everywhere, of course it looks familiar," she commented wryly.

"Tsk, tsk, Lisbon," he censured lightly as he turned and wandered away from her, staring hard at each tree he passed. "It's that lack of appreciating nature that would have been your downfall if I weren't here."

"Oh, really?" she challenged with a touch of irritation as she watched him seem to be taking a moment to enjoy the scenery. "What the hell are you doing? We need to keep moving."

"Ah-ha!" he suddenly exclaimed before turning to her with a huge grin on his face. He gestured to a small hole in the trunk behind him.

"What?" she demanded brusquely when he wasn't any further forthcoming.

"Gunshot, my dear," he explained in a slightly patronising tone that had her annoyance rising a notch. "We must be near the fork." He took a couple of steps forward then stopped and glanced around before finally pointing to Lisbon's right as he added, "That way I believe."

The brunette stared back at him in bemusement and shook her head. How the heck he'd recognised the area she'd never know. Everything looked the same to her and she would've most probably carried on walking completely in the wrong direction. She'd be damned if she let him know that though.

"Fine. Can we go now?" she queried sardonically.

"After you," he replied lightly as he raised his arm and gestured for her to lead the way.

Lisbon rolled her eyes at his mocking gallantry and stalked off.

xxTheMentalistxx

"Thank you for your time," Van Pelt said to the elderly homeowner with a rather forced smile.

It was only the second house they'd visited but she was already trying to damp down her frustration at getting nowhere. She wondered how the others were doing and hoped against hope that they were having better luck than she and Warner were.

"You ready for the next one?" the deputy asked in a low voice after they had got back into his car.

"Sure," the red head replied flatly as she placed the laptop on her knees and opened it up.

She doubted that anything would be showing but still felt a pang of disappointment when she was proved right. With a long sigh, she tapped in a code and waited for everything to refresh again.

Warner started the car and headed smoothly down the road, glancing over at the computer screen every now and then.

"Anything?" he queried.

"No," she answered then stiffened suddenly as two small dots unexpectedly appeared on the screen. "Wait, I've got something. I think I've got their phones," she exclaimed with growing excitement. She turned the laptop towards the deputy. "Where is that?"

The young officer slowed down and pulled over then took the computer from her to get a better look.

"It's near the Kinsella cabin," he said after a few moments. "We're heading that way as it is and the Sheriff should be there soon."

"Great, let's get going," Van Pelt instructed as she took the laptop back so he could drive again.

Heart hammering in her chest, she pulled out her phone and tried Lisbon's number. It went straight to voicemail and so she dialled Cho next. The line was awful, breaking up every few seconds until it finally disconnected. With a tut of frustration, she tried to send a text message to both Rigsby and Cho. It seemed to go and she just hoped they received it.

"How far are we out?" she asked, staring at the tiny dots lest they disappear again.

"About fifteen minutes," Warner replied.

"Make it ten," she ordered curtly, flicking the deputy a stern look.

The young man's eyes widened and he murmured a, "Yes, ma'am," before pressing down harder on the gas pedal.

xxTheMentalistxx

Ben neared the fork, moving even swifter than before. He could literally feel the time slipping away from him. Then, all of a sudden he saw something…or rather he saw him. The late afternoon sun catching his blond hair, making it stand out like a beacon.

He took a few more steps then raised his rifle and stared down the sight of the barrel. It was a clear shot but before he could take it, the man moved then stopped again. A branch obscured the view to his head, but not his body.

Ben readied his gun again; took aim…then fired.

xxTheMentalistxx

Lisbon automatically ducked and spun around with a startled gasp as soon as she heard the shot ring out. Jane was still a few feet behind and her cry for him to get down died on her lips as the consultant stared back at her with an expression of astonishment on his handsome, but extremely pale, face.

"Jane?" she queried, her voice no more than a fearful whisper as she straightened up and took an involuntary step towards him.

He shook his head slightly and reached around his left side to his back. His legs wobbled violently then he let out a strangled groan as they suddenly gave out and he dropped to his knees. Bringing his hand back around, Lisbon put her hand to her mouth in shock as she saw that it was covered in blood.

Stunned, Jane could only stare at his hand in disbelief before the pain in his back became overwhelming.

"Lisbon," he gasped as everything closed in around him then, with a little cry, he fell forward onto the leafy ground.

END CHAPTER 7