#in the film it cuts after 'see what this little bad boy businessman's all about.'

[philhoffman]

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE: 12 SCOPITONES (2003)

[niikowari]

I've been into Jujutsu Kaisen lately and this kind of popped into my mind after doing movie marathon of my favorite classic films with my sister. As a result, here's a mini fluff AU for you all.

GoYuu x Parent Trap AU-ish with a dash of non-traditional omegaverse told in the eyes of the two brats.

Itadori Nobara and Gojo Megumi - as predestined by fate like Nobara usually says - meet at a summer camp for young pups in Tokyo. Nobara was rather rambunctious for a girl and contrary to her omega father's worry, she was able to befriend the mature and quiet Megumi. The two had stuck next to eachother like gums since the first day of camp. They found eachother's scent familiar and comforting that they think it was natural for them to stick together. On some nights, they'd sneak out of the camp and hang around by the lake - “ A peace away from those sloppy city brats”, Nobara would say when asked why she like hanging around there at night - The two eight-year olds would exchanged stories about their lives with their single parents. Nobara would complain how her omega father was too busy running the family farm in Iwate, unwilling to meet any suitors. She thinks her omega father is still unable to forget her alpha father.

"Do you hate your alpha father?" Megumi asked.

Nobara shrugged. “Not sure. How can I hate a person I haven't even met? Why? Do you hate your omega parent?”

Megumi shakes his head. “Not hate. I just think that may it's partially my omega parent's fault as to why dad is being what he is now."

Megumi's alpha father was a renowned lawyer and businessman. He was an eccentric man that showered his son with love and affection, unwilling to let him feel that he was unloved. But his father has quite a flirty tendency that Megumi doesn't like. Although his father was normally confident, there were times that he would see him staring at a cut out photo from his wallet, silently crying.

“My fathe's worse," Nobare frowned. "I'd often find him staring at the sky and just sighing. I then heard Uncle Sukuna scold him to stop thinking about it but my father would say the blue skies reminds him of my alpha father's eyes.”

“Do you think your father likes blue eyes?”

“Does your dad have blue eyes too?” Nobara asked excitedly. “Hey, hey. I have a great idea. Why don't we set our parents on a date? Wouldn't that be great? We'll be siblings!”

Megumi perked up at the idea. “But how are we supposed to do that? Summer camp's ending in three days.”

Nobara then delightedly explains the two ways of her master plan. First one; they could switch places. Nobara would go to Megumi's place and vice versa. When their parent's see that it's a different child, they'll have to meet up to exchange and BOOM! They'll fall in love when they meet.

“That sounds like a hassle and unrealistic,” Megumi complains.

Undettered, Nobara moves to her second option. When they reach home, Nobara will tell his omega father that she found a bestfriend during summer camp and wants to see him again. Unfortunately, said friend lives in Tokyo so Nobara will begged or maybe forced her father to bring her to Tokyo. They will then set up a meeting with their parents.

"I like that plan." Megumi says.

Three days passed like a blur since the two hatched their plan and soon, Nobara found herself on a plane, itching to get back home to start the plan. Once she was back, her father - Yuuji - a beautiful omega happily greeted her in the airport, peppering her cheeks with kisses while apologizing for being unable to pick her up at the camp in Tokyo.

Nobara tells him it was fine on their way to the farm, happily sharing tales of her activities in camp and lastly, about her newly found bestfriend, Megumi.

“He's really nice, father. You know how I keep telling you that I find something missing in me and meeting him made me feel whole. He's really cool too! Unlike those other sloppy city brats!”

“Oh~ did my little devil have too many admirers to count in the city?" Nobara laughed as she was ruffled on the head by Uncle Sukuna, her father's older identical alpha twin brother.

"They're big wimps," Nobara says. "Megumi's the only cool one that's why he's my friend."

“I see,” Uncle Sukuna chuckled. “Maybe you were too cute for those city boys huh. Just like your father.”

“Sukuna!” Her father exclaims, face turning red.

Nobara lets a few days pass before she started acting sad around her father and Uncle Sukuna. Soon enough, her father talked to her, asking why she seemed so sad.

“I miss Megumi. I wanna see him.”

“But he's in Tokyo...” Her father looked unsure on what to do.

“Let's go there! I wanna see Megumi. He said we can meet at a sweet shop he always goes.” She puts on her best puppy eyes and soon enough her dad agreed, saying they'll leave this weekend as he still have some work to do in the farm.

On the other hand, since Megumi was originally living in Tokyo, it was a short travel. He was picked up his dad's secretary, Nanami-san. The man explained to him that his dad was back at home, eagerly awaiting his arrival.

Before he could even step foot inside their large house, he was swept off the floor and pulled into a hug by his dad.

“Megumi~ Dad missed you a lot! Did you miss dad too?" His dad - Satoru - asked, pouting. His usual dark glasses perched on top of his nose, hiding his blue eyes.

“Yeah. I made a friend.”

His dad was acceptably shocked as Megumi rarely made any social connection from other people. “She's loud and brash but strong.”

“That's good to hear.”

“But she lives far away though so I don't know when I'll get to see her again.”

“That's too bad. Tell you what, if you ever get a chance to meet her again, tell me and I'll handle things okay?”

“Thanks dad.”

Now that Megumi has done his part of the plan, all he can do now is wait for Nobara's signal as hers would take the longest time planning for everything. They had exchanged numbers in summer camp and had continued updating eachother on their activities.

It was a few days later when Megumi received a message from Nobara stating of her successfully convincing her father and they were leaving this weekend.

Now they can only hope that this parent trap will work out.

Sooooo how was it? 😊 Would you like a part 2?

[tabloidtoc]

OK, March 8

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Bruce Springsteen

Page 1: Big Pic -- as part of Coach's latest campaign Jennifer Lopez posed with a supersized pink version of their new Pillow Tabby purse

Page 2: Contents

Page 3: Contents

Page 4: Chris Harrison gone for good? The Bachelor host's future with the show remains uncertain after his controversial interview with Rachel Lindsay

Page 6: Since the start of his career Justin Timberlake has endured his fair share of scandals but after welcoming his second son with wife Jessica Biel over the summer and celebrating his 40th birthday, he is confessing that he feels immense guilt about the past and he won't be making the same mistakes in the future -- Justin's done some soul-searching and accepts that he's wronged a lot of people over the years with his own terrible mistakes and he says he's still a work in progress, but step one has been to stand up and admit he's hurt too many women -- in addition to a boozy night out with his Palmer costar Alisha Wainwright in 2019 and his part in the now-infamous Nipplegate incident with Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl, Justin recently came under fire again due to the documentary Framing Britney Spears which showed him exploiting his breakup from Britney Spears to help his solo career -- Justin's learned from his mistakes and has a lot more sensitivity about the impact of his actions on other people and that's the big difference between the Justin of today and his old, immature self and that self-awareness was evident in an emotional statement that he posted apologizing to both Britney and Janet for the errors in his ways -- his words drew praise from his wife Jessica who says he's come a long way as a husband, a father and more importantly, a human being

Page 7: Wendy Williams is on the prowl for a new man and he's got to be husband material and she is ready for a serious commitment -- Wendy's been staying up until all hours of the night checking out guys online and on exclusive dating apps and she wants someone age-appropriate, fun, kind, independent and of course has no history of cheating -- she's feeling very optimistic and even buying new perfume and clothes and jewelry for all the dates she hopes to have once lockdown lifts

* Texas native Matthew McConaughey is seriously considering throwing his hat in the ring to become the state's next governor -- he's been putting out feelers to see if he's got sufficient support and if enough donors are willing to write checks, he'd mount an aggressive run in 2022 -- he's already gotten the thumbs-up from his wife Camila Alves and their three kids -- at this point, he needs to see an actual path to winning because he's not interested in just making a protest statement; don't be fooled by his aw-shucks attitude, Matthew means business

* Now that Keeping Up With the Kardashians is coming to an end, the hunt is on for a new family to replace the clan and one reality pro is poised to nab the prize: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Lisa Rinna -- there's already been talk about Lisa picking up the torch and her family is camera ready, consisting of husband Harry Hamlin, and their daughters Delilah Hamlin who's dating Love Island's Eyal Booker and Amelia Hamlin who's dating Scott Disick

Page 8: Things keep going from bad to worse for Armie Hammer -- he was forced to drop out of his upcoming movie Shotgun Wedding with Jennifer Lopez after direct messages he allegedly sent to women in which he described himself as a cannibal and detailed disturbing sexual fantasies were leaked online -- Armie was also fired by his talent agency WME and now the disgraced star may get cut from his new film Next Goal Wins which has already been shot -- he's radioactive and everybody knows it and his completed but unreleased work is getting a second look as studios want to do damage control, and that includes another of his finished projects Death on the Nile where his part could end up on the cutting room floor -- he's a pariah now and it's hard to see how he's ever going to come back from this

* Jennifer Aniston has always had a spiritual side but these days she is taking things to a whole new plane -- Jen has surrounded herself with psychics and has been doing Goddess Circles with the same group of close friends for 30 years, but now she's taking courses to learn to heal herself and be her own guru -- BFF Courteney Cox has been a big influence and Jen's learned a lot from Courteney, who's had a long-term interest in mediums, astrologists and horoscopes, and she's trying to fuse it all together into her own brand of spirituality -- Jen's had a lot of time alone, which has only deepened her questions about the universe and how she can make the most of her life and she's determined to find the answers

* Princess Eugenie is over the moon after welcoming her first child, a baby boy with businessman husband Jack Brooksbank but now the new mom is torn about taking time out from her royal responsibilities -- Eugenie would love to take a long break from everything and focus solely on raising her son however she knows deep down how much she's needed, especially since Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are showing no signs of coming back -- as she weighs her options, Eugenie is looking to her multi-tasking cousin-in-law Duchess Kate for some inspiration because she's impressed by how Kate is able to juggle her official duties while raising three young kids

Page 10: Red Hot on the Red Carpet -- stars captivate in enchanting puff-sleeve numbers -- Bel Powley, Aubrey Plaza, Lupita Nyong'o

Page 11: Kaitlyn Dever, Lucy Boynton, Margaret Qualley

Page 12: Who Wore It Better? Hilary Swank vs. Madeline Brewer, Bella Hadid vs. Devon Windsor, Alison Brie vs. Dua Lipa

Page 14: News in Photos -- Tayshia Adams and her fiance Zac Clark felt on top of the world when the visited the Empire State Building together

Page 15: Chrissy Teigen and John Legend were inseparable while out and about in Beverly Hills, Bill Murray and NFL player Larry Fitzgerald Jr. were among the many stars to shoot their shot during a charity golf tournament in Pebble Beach, Rita Ora performing on an episode of the U.K. show Dancing on Ice in Hertfordshire

Page 16: At the Australian Open Serena Williams came out on top during the fourth round, Bachelorette alum Jordan Kimball and fiancee Christina Creedon couldn't wait until they got home to enjoy Candy Pop popcorn's new Peanut M&M's flavor from Sam's Club in Houston, Heidi Montag spent the day hitting the slopes at Lake Tahoe

Page 17: Hailey Bieber starring in Beyonce's new Ivy Park x Adidas collection

Page 18: Brody Jenner had a blast snow tubing while shooting the second season of The Hills: New Beginnings in Lake Tahoe, Avril Lavigne stepped out with her new boyfriend Mod Sun for a romantic dinner in West Hollywood

Page 20: Justin Bieber looked like he'd just hopped out of bed in a sweater and checkered fleece pants in L.A., Robin Thicke in front of a piano in L.A.

Page 21: Steve Martin doubled up on face coverings on the set of his new project Only Murders in the Building in NYC, Michelle Obama on her new show Waffles + Michi, Cardi B spoiled herself with high-end goods during a day of shopping on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills

Page 22: Brooke Burke romancing with boyfriend Scott Rigsby on Valentine's Day, Lucy Hale accessorized her look with her newest rescue pup Ethel in L.A., Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon masked up for a snowy outing in NYC

Page 24: For Galentine's Day Vanessa Lachey snacked on macarons and sipped on wine in L.A.

Page 25: Bella Hadid alongside models Mayowa Nicholas and Heejung Park in Michael Kors' new campaign for the Spring 2021 collection, Hugh Grant stepped out for some fresh hair in London, Sofia Vergara kept it casual during a visit to a pal's house in Beverly Hills

Page 26: Inside My Home -- Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley's Rocky Mountain retreat

Page 28: Marriage isn't easy especially during a global health crisis but for Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard divorce is not an option -- Kristen said she and Dax at the start of the pandemic were at a point in their marriage where they definitely needed a little therapy brush-up and every couple of years they're being very antagonistic towards each other and they don't want that so they go back to therapy and figure out how they can serve their team goal better and it's been incredibly helpful and even in the toughest times they always have each other's back and they're committed to being each other's biggest support systems -- while their relationship may never be perfect, they're happy and love each other and that's what matters most

Page 29: Now that Tom Brady has won his seventh Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he has set his sights on the next prize: baby No. 3 with wife Gisele Bundchen -- they've been telling friends they hope to make an announcement by summer at the latest and Tom and Gisele have been super loved-up since leaving Boston and moving to Florida after the QB signed on with the Bucs and the change of scenery has worked wonders on their love life and put them in baby-making mode -- the duo, who recently bought a $17 million spread on Miami's exclusive Indian Creek Island, plan to build a luxury mansion there complete with a nursery and they hope to be all settled in when the new arrival comes -- they've never felt healthier or been happier

* Aaron Rodgers looked positively giddy when he revealed he had a fiancee, Shailene Woodley at the NFL Honors, but the QB is dreading the next step: bringing her home to meet his parents because it's no secret that Aaron's been estranged from them for years and the last thing he wants is for Shailene to get caught up in the drama -- Shailene wants Aaron to clear the air with his folks, but he's not ready to do that and he doesn't want to bring Shailene into a toxic environment

* It's only been two years since Miranda Lambert married Brendan McLoughlin but she's already itching for some alone time -- she's headed to Texas in April for her first concert in over a year and she's told Brendan he shouldn't come because it will be all work and no play but she really wants to get away from him for a while and after the pair's recent road trip together, Miranda is desperate for some space -- sometimes Miranda feels like she's living with a baby because Brendan whines and complains about life on her farm

Page 30: Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker's romance is heating up fast, so much so that she's practically handed over the keys to her Calabasas estate and she loves having Travis sleep over and sometimes he'll stay the whole weekend -- he gets along famously with her children and Travis has been a friend of the family for years, so the kids have pretty much known him their whole lives and they'll do fun stuff together like hiking or playing video games and Travis loves making breakfast and showing off his pancake-flipping skills --Travis is spending so much time at Kourt's place that he's moved a bunch of his stuff in to make it easier for his kids Landon and Alabama with ex Shanna Moakler to visit him there -- everyone's convinced they'll be living together full-time before you know it

* Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were met with a flurry of well-wishes after they revealed they're expecting baby No. 2 -- the couple decided to wait until Meghan was safely into her second trimester to share the news and they only told a handful of family members before the public and they wanted to cherish this secret for as long as they could -- Harry and Meghan have been nesting at their Montecito mansion and have been busy prepping the nursery and making sure it's eco-friendly with energy-efficient lighting and they're keeping it as plastic-free as possible

* Love Bites -- Clare Crawley and Dale Moss reunited, Kit Harington and Rose Leslie welcomed a baby boy, Paris Hilton and Carter Reum engaged

Page 32: Cover Story -- Bruce Springsteen's private world -- he's an open book in his songs, but here's Bruce's untold story of his struggles with depression and regret -- he still has dark thoughts from time to time but therapy and medication have helped a great deal

Page 36: Stars' Cheating Confessions -- sometimes all you can do is beg for forgiveness; these celebs have all had to plead their case -- Donny and Debbie Osmond, Jude Law and Sienna Miller, Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith

Page 37: David Letterman and Regina Lasko, Dean McDermott and Tori Spelling, Kevin Hart and Eniko Parrish

Page 40: Interview -- Elizabeth Olsen -- the Avengers star dishes about getting witchy again for Marvel's mind-bending WandaVision

Page 42: Golden Girls -- how these Golden Globes nominees get their award-worthy figures -- Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, Lily Collins

Page 43: Kaley Cuoco, Michelle Pfeiffer, Amanda Seyfried

Page 44: Aadila Dosani's vegan recipe for Chickpea and Potato Soup

Page 46: Style Week -- Ashley Graham is the new global brand ambassador for self-tanning label St. Tropez

Page 48: What's Hot Right Now -- create a naturally gorgeous, flushed look with fashion designer Jason Wu's namesake makeup collection

Page 49: Haute hippie retro jeans -- take a trip back to the '70s with Revice Denim's ultra-cool capsule, Los Angeles Lovers -- Delilah Belle Hamlin

Page 50: Flower Power -- floral prints are spring's hottest trend -- rock the pretty blooms for a fresh, boho-chic look -- Kaia Gerber

Page 52: DIY Blowout -- these foolproof finds deliver impeccable hair right at home -- Drew Barrymore

Page 54: Entertainment

Page 55: Q&A with Mary Fitzgerald of Selling Sunset

Page 58: Buzz -- after months of playing it coy, these celebs confirmed their relationships on Valentine's Day -- Scott Disick and Amelia Hamlin

Page 59: Vanessa Hudgens and Cole Tucker, Sharna Burgess and Brian Austin Green, Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker, Kendall Jenner and Devin Booker

Page 60: Sound Bites -- Halsey on not conforming to conventional beauty standards, Anderson Cooper on coparenting with his ex, Ashley Graham on the importance of self-care, Kate Winslet on feeling like a fish out of water in Hollywood

Page 61: Tom Holland on the plot of the next Spider-Man flick, Mila Kunis joking about keeping her family entertained during quarantine, Drew Barrymore when asked if she's ever been skinny-dipping, Madelaine Petsch on playing a teen in Clare at 16

Page 62: Horoscope -- Pisces Lupita Nyong'o turned 38 on March 1

Page 64: By the Numbers -- Riz Ahmed

[evanvvoods]

𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒊𝒐𝒈𝒓𝒂𝒑𝒉𝒚

warnings: implied/referenced child & spousal abuse

tw: parental death

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EVAN WOODS: A PLAY IN FIVE ACTS

act i: the days were bright red

ellingham, qc (0-14)

evan michael woods was born on may 4th, 1995 as the first child of jacob and samantha woods. jacob, the owner of a semi-successful auto repair shop, was ecstatic about having a son and heir who would carry on the family name and his business, which he built from nothing. samantha, a hospice nurse, was just glad to have a healthy child. she hoped that becoming a father would help to shift jacob’s attention from his business to his family, because he spent long hours working and very little time at home. unfortunately for her, his priorities never shifted. not when evan was born. not when lillian was born, nor olivia, nor rosanne. in fact, as time went on, jacob grew increasingly obsessed with his business, wanting to expand it beyond a simple auto repair shop into a nationwide brand. as he became more invested in his work, samatha grew more invested in her children. she quit her job at the maison des marguerites, which she loved, to make sure her kids never felt their father’s absence.

jacob doted on evan, often speaking of him as if he were his only child, boasting about how he would grow up to be just like his father, a hard-worker and an astute businessman, even before evan had spoken his first words. on the rare occurrences when jacob would be home for dinner with his family, he would hardly spare his daughters a glance, choosing only to speak to his son. evan’s sisters began to resent evan for being the sole receiver of their father’s attention and often deigned to exclude him from their conversations like their father did to them. it wasn’t until years later when they learned that jacob’s attention was not something to be jealous of. as adults, they were grateful they only received their mother’s love and none of their father’s attention.

growing up, evan felt trapped in the mould his father had carved out for him. he wanted to make his own choices, his own mistakes, live his life like every other kid, not follow a rigorous schedule planned out by his father from his birth to (according to his father) his inevitable rise to fortune as a auto repair magnate. he didn’t even know what magnate meant, if he was being honest, only that he wanted nothing to do with his father’s business or auto repair or anything of the kind. the thing that evan loved more than anything was music. with school as his only escape from his father’s scrutiny, evan spent as much time as he possibly could in his school’s musicroom, learning how to play every instrument he could get his hands on.

samantha, who loved all of her kids equally, encouraged them all to follow their interests, including evan. she would listen to him talk about all the new things he had learned in music class when she tucked him into bed at night and she noticed there was a light in his eyes when he talked about music that was missing when his father was around. she managed to save some money and buy evan a guitar, without his father’s knowledge. the guitar was evan’s prized possession from age 10 to 14, until his father found it in the garage. jacob was furious with his wife for encouraging their son to waste his precious time on something that would take him nowhere in life. he smashed the guitar into pieces and forbade evan from playing music ever again. his father often went on rants about how musicians were lazy and too stupid to amount to anything, especially rockstars, who were effeminate and indecent, but after the guitar incident, his hate for musicians became more pronounced.

it was a few weeks after the incident when his mother picked him and his sisters up from school and drove them to the nearest airport, saying that they were going to boston for a week to visit her sister. except a week turned into two, and two turned into four, and then years had passed since any of the woods children had set foot in ellingham. jacob tried to contact evan on many occasions, he was furious at samantha for taking away his heir, and even tried to get custody of evan, but samantha fought tooth and nail to keep all of her kids together and away from jacob. it was a difficult divorce, seeing as samantha had no proof of her claims that jacob was a bad father and husband. to the outside world, he was a hardworking man, loving husband, and caring father. but less than a year after they’d left their entire lives behind, they were finally free of jacob.

act ii: and suddenly darkness, suddenly only darkness

boston, ma (14-18)

distraught at having to leave his friends behind, but overjoyed to finally have the freedom to live his life on his own terms, evan began to settle into his life in boston. samantha’s sister, lesley, was married and had no children of her own, so she was more than happy to let samantha and the kids stay in her home. samantha got a job as a nurse, the children enrolled in new schools, and life went on. or it should have. the divorce was costly, not just in emotional terms, but financially, and samantha had very few savings to begin with. evan, terrified of ending up back with his father, got an after school job to help out his family. the after-school job soon turned into two, which turned into three, and then he dropped out of school altogether when he was 17.

despite their situation, they still had dreams. samantha dreamt of a life where she would be home for the holidays instead of stuck in a hospital ward with the sick and elderly. evan dreamt of music school and his songs playing on the radio. his sisters had dreams, too. lillian dreamt of culinary school and michelin stars. olivia dreamt of her name on a marquee and her face on billboards all around the world. rosanne, the entrepeneur their father had always wanted, dreamt of an app which would help people with disabilities find free services which would make their lives easier. they all had dreams, but someone had to make sacrifices for the others to follow them. that someone was evan. shortly after his 18th birthday, evan enlisted in the us army, hoping the increased pay would be enough to make a difference to his family.

act iii: in gold light, as the camera pans to where the action is,

various locations (18-22)

evan dedicated 4 years of his life to the us army, before he was honourably discharged following an explosion which took out most of the hearing in his left ear, as well as half of his unit. throughout those 4 years, he was stationed in many places around the world and he kept in touch with his family mostly through letters. unbeknownst to everyone, he wrote another set of letters, a set that he never sent, to his best friend back in ellingham. he hadn’t spoken to him since the day he had left and never tried to contact him after. his mother had decided it was best if they cut all ties with ellingham, to shake off the years spent there like a bad dream. at the time he had only agreed because he had no way to contact his friend, not with the sudden way they had left, and then as time passed, he realized his mother was right and he pushed his friend to the back of his mind.

but out there in the cold, desolate deserts, and the bleak, sterile army barracks, he thought of his friend often. he would lie awake at night in his cot or on a cold floor or a bed of sand, and he would remember him and he would let himself feel like that optimistic little boy again. just for a moment, his life was full of possibility and promise and friendship which was built around shared interests and happy memories and camaraderie, not survival and necessity and proximity. he would write to him and he would say all of the things he couldn’t say to anyone else. and then he would tuck the letter under his pillow or into his jacket and it brought him a sense of comfort that nothing else did. sometimes he considered the possibility of actually sending one. but he never did it.

he hardly speaks of his time in the army, but if he had the chance, he wouldn’t go back and take back his decision, because as he’d hoped, his sacrifice gave all of his sisters a chance to pursue their dreams.

act iv: the trees and the trees and the space between the trees, swimming in gold

boston, ma (22-24)

when he returned home to boston, his sisters were on their way to becoming everything they’d imagined. lillian, now 21, was in the best culinary school in boston. olivia, 19, was studying film and working as a production assistant in vancouver. and roxanne, 17, had just been accepted into a computer science program at boston university. his mother mostly made it home for the holidays and she got to spend time with her family more often than she ever could have if she were the only one working to support the family. evan was glad to see his family so happy, after everything they had been through, but he couldn’t help feeling resentful at times. he still didn’t regret his decisions, but he wished things were different and he could do what he loved.

he got a job as a mechanic, because it was the one thing he knew how to do, after all the years he spent with his father in the shop as a child. he hated it, just as he’d hated the violence of the army, but it was just one more sacrifice he had to make. it was difficult for him to adjust to civilian life again, and his family saw it. they saw how much he did for them and it hurt them to see him suffering while they were thriving. the encouraged him to pursue music again, but all he could see when he closed his eyes was the smashed remnants of a guitar.

still, after a heartfelt conversation with samantha, evan decided that he couldn’t continue on the path he was on. life in the city just wasn’t for him, maybe it never was, and he needed to get away. jacob had passed a few years back, while evan was still in active duty. to his surprise, jacob had left him his house and his business in his will, which made no mention of his 3 daughters. evan had simply allowed the business to continue as it was, letting the old manager take care of it, and renting the house out for extra income. however, since he was an army veteran on a budget who was looking for an escape from the city, he decided that he should give ellingham a second chance. he thought, maybe if he went back, made some positive memories there, it could make up for all the bad. he would take his father’s legacy of cold and calculated decisions and turn it into something good, something he and his family could be proud of.

act v: and the dark blue over everything, and them holding their breath—

ellingham, qc (24–)

that is how evan woods found himself back in his home town, 10 years later, a much different person than he had been when he left. the town had changed, too, including the people, but it was still ellingham, it was still home.

he came to ellingham with the goal of rewriting his past and making new memories to replace the old. but he’s also there to revisit the past and learn and grow from it. he wants to reconnect with his old self, who had hopes and dreams and the naiveté to think he could achieve them.

[amplesalty]

Christmas 2019: Day 4 - A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Four rounds of sliders!

So, turns out I had the title of this movie wrong, it’s not just A Harold & Kumar Christmas, it’s a 3D Christmas! Which also answers the question of where we go from the second movie, apparently out goes all that racism and in comes just so, so many shots of things flying at the camera.

It’s 2011 by this point, have we not left all this in the past? Hell, they were doing this in House of Wax when I watched that last year and that was back in the 50’s. To their credit, they do poke fun at the whole 3D thing at times, like near the start Harold’s assistant brings in a big ass TV meant as a present for Harold’s father in law. Harold questions if the whole 3D thing hasn’t jumped the shark by now but his assistant disagrees, exclaiming that it’s going to be ‘amazing’ as he points down the camera for emphasis. Harold just dryly asks who he’s looking at.

Harold has been moving up in the world it seems, now a very successful businessman on Wall Street. Unfortunately this comes during the whole ‘Occupy Wallstreet’ movement and the streets outside his office is lined with protesters wanting to eat the rich. Perhaps with a side of eggs which they throw at him by way of the camera lens.

Like a good soldier though, his assistant steps into the line of fire and takes a barrage of eggs to the face. RIP in peace. They have this whole musical sting whilst it’s happening, I feel like this has to be referencing something but I’m not sure what, war movies aren’t my thing.

Harold’s father in law by the way is played by non other than Danny Trejo, which is a rather scary thought. Trying to impress the father in law is bad enough without factoring that into the equation. He’s predisposed to disliking Harold as well given that his mother was killed by a bunch of Korean street thugs when she came over to America.

We learn that in his youth, Mr Perez dreamed of celebrating Christmas with a Christmas tree but would never get his wish. It was only upon reaching America that his mother promised they would have one every year, only for his life to be cut short. That’s why he holds this season and Christmas trees in particular in such high esteem. We also learn that apparently he was born with his moustache, which honestly wouldn’t surprise me with Danny Trejo. Also, someone being viciously murdered by street thugs seems a bit dark for this franchise.

Speaking of facial hair, Kumar is still a layabout bum who got kicked out of medical school for failing a drugs test. I do dig the beard though. Vanessa has left him though and he lives in filth with a neighbor who rents out his bathroom to let homeless people take a shit. So yeah, little bit of a mismatch on how our two heroes lives panned out over the last 7 years. I’m digging the beard though, but he promptly shaves it off under the pretense of trying to finally mature somewhat when he finds out Vanessa is pregnant.

Although, he is a little distracted during this revelation by the unfolding scenes of A Christmas Story and Flick getting his tongue stuck to the flagpole. Clearly an Xbox man as well, seemingly playing some Crackdown and Gears of War recently. This isn’t like that time I kept seeing It’s A Wonderful Life everywhere, is it? I’m not going to start having A Christmas Story pop up in all these movies, am I?

H&K are reuinited for the first time in two years when a package turns up at Kumar’s apartment addressed to Harold, which turns out to be a massive joint. Kumar lights up, only for Harold to play narc and throw it out of the window. Miraciously though, it curves around and flies back in a different window, lighting up Mr Perez’s Christmas tree and nearly burning down the whole house. This only reinforces what a negative influence on Harold’s life Kumar is and it looks like our duo are going their separate ways again. But, this does give us our impetuous for another hour and a half of whacky shenanigans because if Harold doesn’t fix that tree, there’s a good chance Mr Perez might kill him.

So we get the odd foursome of Harold and his new white bread bestie, Todd (and his daughter) and Kumar and his neighbor, Adrian, out on the lookout for a tree. This does lead to perhaps the most racially driven portion of the movie as they head to a tree lot run by two African-American guys trying to do this ‘good cop, bad cop’ thing, the Fat Albert looking guy playing nice and the other wondering what a pair of honkey, cracker, white ass fools are doing coming up in their turf.

Turns out Mr Perez isn’t the only one out to kill Harold though, as the tree search takes them to a party by way of Adrian who has a hookup waiting for him that he met online. She’s a virgin because apparently all the guys at school are scared to go anywhere near her. Adrian realizes that’s because her dad is notorious Ukranian mobster Sergei Katsov. At first I thought this was Chris Meloni making his third outing in the series but no, it’s actually Elias Koteas who was Casey Jones in the Ninja Turtles movies.

After Adrian goes soft upon finding out this information, Mary will settle for anyone at this point and goes to start blowing Harold right in the middle of the party. An inopportune time then for Daddy to come home and find what looks like an Eiffel Tower situation going on.

Even after they barely escape though, the nightmare is far from over as they start tripping and think they’re in the middle of a multi storey evil snowman attack. And, this all takes place in claymation. This is a really awesome scene, the design of the snowman is great and the level of destruction going on is amazing.

I could do without Kumar showing off his clay cock though, I only dread to think how much worse this is in 3D with him waving it about in your face.

Luckily, old buddies Rosenberg and Goldstein are there to shake them out of their bad trip and take them to White Castle to relax. Man, they have a much easier time getting their this time. They’ve clearly learnt from their past experiences. Along with the whole 3D into the camera gimmick, the racism angle has been replaced somewhat with religion, notably here with a whole speech about how Goldstein’s wife had him convert to Christianity and him just going in on those ‘dirty Jew bastards’.

That and the use of his son as a distraction so Harold & Kumar can go steal a tree from a church. ‘Pillow fight in the altar boys room, last one there is a rotten egg!’. Going in on the Catholics as well, I see.

And of course, the big one, the main man JC. Apparently Heaven is like a nightclub and we get the story of how NPH was ushered in the front door following his altercation at the whore house. Only, Jesus didn’t take kindly to NPH macking on his ladies so put in a word to the big man upstairs to send NPH back down to Earth. I mean, it’s not 100% to the letter but I’ll take this as I fucking called it.

The third part of the trifecta of racism replacements in this movie is metaness. There’s a good example here how they call out NPH coming out of the closet in real life, only to reveal that NPH is as big of a poon hound as he’s ever been and this is all just a trick to get the ladies. David Burtka? He’s not his husband, he’s just his dealer!

There’s a couple of other moments like someone referring to Harold as ‘Sulu’ or Adrian saying he lied to Mary and said he was Robert Pattison’s acting coach and that Kumar worked in the White House.

NPH is starring in some big festive stage show and sweet talks one of the dancers back to his dressing room, suggesting she strip down so that he can give her a massage. Hey, it’s cool, we’re all girlfriends here, right? Now just give him a minute so he can squirt some of his special lotion on your back...

He hooks up H&K with a tree from the set but before they can head home, the gangsters catch up with them take them to a secluded part of town for an execution.

But as they make their escape, Harold finds his dick has become stuck to the pole they were tied to. Okay, firstly, between this and Office Chrstimas Party, I’ve seen just about enough dicks to last me til the end of the season. Secondly, maybe this is God’s way of reminding me that I have some unfinished business with A Christmas Story. Sure there was the original and that sequel no one asked for but there is another...

And just in case you forget this is a Christmas movie, Harold inadvertently shoots Santa out of the sky and Kumar has to perform impromptu surgery, because he always does. Santa being played by Richard Riehle who was in Grounded for Life and, relevant to this blog, Chillerama and the Rob Zombie Halloween II. Turns out he was the one who sent Harold the massive joint so that the two of them could reconcile. I never knew Santa cared so much about the friendship of two potheads. I don’t know if he’s a good fit for Santa though, a little too gruff and mean. Doesn’t have the heart of say, an Edmund Gwenn. That could have been an alternate way to do this actually, have a totally sacherine by the numbers Santa that gets corrupted by H&K when they get him to smoke with them, he’s on too much of a bad trip to deliver the toys like normal so it’s up to them to save the day.

I think I would have to put this above the sequel but behind the original in terms of quality. As one note and as fleeting an appearance as he is, the Ukranian gangster somehow feels more of a threat than the entire US government in the second film. Keeping this adventure local again makes it feel much more grounded and there’s just a more light hearted atmosphere to the whole thing when you don’t have that massively racist and oppressive tone pressing down on it.

[unkindrewind]

GENERAL >

FULL NAME: Charles Matthew Ayers NICKNAME: Charlie // Preferred, only his mother calls him by his first name . Ken // Around campus by peers due to attachment to Sarah. Charliebear // by Sarah .  Space-case. Airhead. Dunce cap. Nimrod, Etc // by Christopher AGE: 19 - 20 // Verse Dependent  BIRTH DATE: December 19th , 1964 ZODIAC: Sagittarius ETHNICITY: White GENDER: Cis Male PLACE OF RESIDENCE: Craven Creek , Washington SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual // Closeted would imply awareness of some kind , most attraction to those male presenting is seen as ‘ just being friendly’ in his eyes. Coming from a very traditional small town in the 70s & 80s with no obvious LGBTQ representation. . He is oblivious to his sexuality for the most part. RELIGION: Raised Protestant // Personally non - practicing , or practices only around family SPOKEN LANGUAGE: English . Handful of French and Spanish CURRENT LIVING CONDITIONS: Living within his messy dorm at SCU EDUCATION: EDUCATION: High-school graduate from Carpenter High // Had to repeat a few classes making him graduate a year later than his peers. Freshman at Silas Craven University - SCU - on a sports scholarship. OCCUPATION: Part time // Usually night - shift at Flick Picks Video Rentals. TRANSPORTATION: 1970  Ford Mustang Sportroof // Sky blue, basic model. TYPICAL LOCATIONS [ FOR PLOTS ETC ]:  Flick Picks Video Rental shop. SCU campus // Class, dorm and frat parties, hockey arena, pool . Movie theater.

RELATIONSHIPS >

PARENTS: Denise Ayers // Mother . Richard Ayers // Father - On friendly enough terms with the two of them, but the institutionalized 'parent /child' detachment has always been present . Richard, the businessman always on the go, has never taken a moment away from his work. And Denise, though a stay - at - home mother, often spends her time in the company of fellow mothers and projects around the house. Beyond the basics, they know very little about their children and hold to the belief their main job is to provide and care for them, not be their best friends. SIBLINGS:  - Christopher Ayers // Older brother, by three years - A very complicated relationship. Christopher is, in the eyes of everyone and especially their parents, the proverbial 'golden boy' : Smart. Handsome. Charismatic.  Popular. The desire of every girl's heart. Captain of every sports team he's been a part of, that position currently being in SCU's lacrosse and basketball teams. From the outside looking in, he is by old school terms, perfect, though few see or even know of the rather aggressive and twisted side of him, including their mother and father. That side is and, since their childhood, has been reserved for Charlie's eyes only. Yet despite taking the brunt of Chris's cruelty and jokes at his expense, Charlie has always admired and looked up to him. And sadly, still does. - Robert ‘Robbie’ Ayers // 12 year old brother - Close, though sadly not as close as they once were. Moving away from home has created a bit of an inevitable distance. Between games, parties, and basic expectations of highschool, Charlie had been Robbie's go-to babysitter. The two had been thick as thieves - Robbie being among the rare few to not only know of Charlie’s dabble in home-movie horror, but even star in a few films himself - and whenever a need for brotherly bonding and advice was warranted, Charlie was there. -Rosie Ayers // 3 year old sister - Sadly, Charlie isn't as close with her as he'd like to be. Born when he was just beginning his escalation in popularity, he didn't spend much time with her, and over all still hasnt. NOTABLE CONNECTIONS:  - Irene Fernandez // @gcrefxed Close Friend Fellow target of the mysterious killer .  - Sarah Reed // @killerxquccn Best Friend since middleschool. The term 'soulmate' has been thrown around [ Much to the annoyance of Charlie's exes ] due to how close they are and how well they get along. As have many other affectionate monikers; 'Sarah Sunshine' among them, inspired by the bright and warming smile that since knowing her the mere presence of has never failed to make Charlie's day all the better. A matching pair : The jock and the cheerleader. A match that due to their popularity hasn't gone unnoticed ; people speculating they are dating or saying they should be, and earning them the nicknames ' Barbie and Ken ' since highschool, and often heard around campus. Girlfriends and latenight partners come and go, but Sarah has always remained. She is considered by far one of the most important people in Charlie's life. One he could never - and would never - imagine living without. Fate, however, has different plans. SIGNIFICANT OTHER: Jessica Thompson // Recent Ex Girlfriend.  Beautiful, upper middle class, and notable mean girl. Well, notable only to those she targets ;  mainly fellow girls lower on the popularity totem pole. Sly and clever Jessica  knows who to target, how, and how to get away with it. Which is precisely what happens, and has her entire school career..  Charlie in particular was never aware of her actions, as she is always careful to show her cruelty when few are around and those least likely to spread word,  though to anyone else in his position the writing was very clearly on the wall. Through most of their close to two year relationship, Jessica used Charlie's good-hearted nature, penchant to fall hard for pretty girls, and unfortunate tendency to be too forgiving to the point of becoming a pushover to those he cares for to her advantage: taking more than giving, but giving just enough to make him believe there was more requited love than there really was. In truth, her sights - like many- had always been on Charlie's older brother, Christopher, ever since highschool, but being the revolving door of women type, his sights were never aimed in her direction. To Jessica, Charlie was merely a fall back; if you can't get the prize, second best was better than nothing. Until one fateful night, Charlie decided to stop by Jessica's dorm and found none other than his older brother there to greet him. Half dressed and radiating smugness. In no way did either Chris nor Jessica attempt to deny what had happened between them, Chris giving Charlie a pitying pat to the shoulder and leaving the scene with a final jab, ' Guess she wanted a real man. '  While it was a dream come true for Jessica, to Chris it was nothing more than a one night only event, with the added enjoyment of his conquest being his brother's girlfriend . Despite the betrayal, Charlie not only wanted to fix their relationship but blamed himself for her act, asking what he had done to drive her to it. Jessica, seeing Charlie's devotion as weakness, was merely disgusted.  Simply giving a cutting, curt 'There's nothing to fix.' And like that, it was over. Leaving Charlie heartbroken and devastated, with that wound never able to fully close seeing Jessica around campus often. SEXUAL / DATING HISTORY: Has had quite a few partners and girlfriends, but wouldn't be considered a playboy like his older brother by any means. While he can be on the promiscuous side, generally he wants more meaningful connections. Sadly, without realizing, he tends to lean towards more superficial relationships -not helped by his worry to open up about his true interests and passions in life- which takes a toll on said relationships longevity.

PHYSICAL TRAITS >

EYE COLOUR: Hazel // Warm brown with small flecks of mossy green HAIR: Dark Auburn // Kept short // Wavy HEIGHT: 6 ‘ 3 ” BODY BUILD: Athletic // Fit , broad shouldered NOTABLE PHYSICAL TRAITS: Has a very slight crookedness to nose after having it broken during hockey practice in highschool.   . A warm , sometimes described ‘dopey’ grin . Kind eyes. FACECLAIM: Ross Lynch

PERSONALITY >

INTELLIGENCE:Not the sharpest tool in the shed. Academically, he can be a bit slow. Emotionally and creatively, however, very adept and intelligent. More right brained. INTERESTS: Film fanatic . Horror movies // Has an interest in one day becoming a movie director but keeps it very close to the vest. Sports enthusiast . Hockey // Plays for SCU’s  team. Swimming // On SCU’s swim team.  Attending every party he can. STRENGTHS: Easy going . Understanding . Empathetic . Great sense of humor . Determined . Playful . Outgoing . Sweet . Loyal . Imaginative . Open - minded . Supportive . Energetic. Congenial. WEAKNESSES: Insecure // mostly about intelligence . Stubborn . Blunt // Says the first thing that comes to mind without thinking it through . Apologetic or sometimes overlooks the bad actions of those he cares for / his family . Gullible . Occasionally reckless // especially when stressed .  Too forgiving . Christopher. DISPOSITION: Very laid back, friendly and approachable // easy to strike up a conversation with on just about anything SOCIAL STANDING: Popular // Both he and his older brother Christopher have been since Highschool SLASHER TROPES: Dumb Jock // The Nice guy

SYNOPSIS >

Nice house. Nice yard. White-picket fence. Mother, the home - maker. Father, the shrewd businessman. Children, well behaved and well liked. The Ayers family lives the ideal cookie-cutter simplicity of upper middle - class conservative America. And for most that's enough. For Charlie Ayers, the second eldest son, it is. At least, he thinks so. An upbringing of keeping to the status quo, hard rigidity to conform, is all he knows. Evident in his persistent standing as another popular jock continuing into college . In 1983 small town suburbia, minor deviations from the expected norm is a thing balked or crucified. Even something simple as an innocuous interest. And therein lies the reason his true love, of media, of a genre most consider ghoulish and the dream to DIRECT and make such films , has been kept a secret from most.          A JOCK WITH A HORROR MOVIE FETISH? WEIRD!  A silly thing to hide, perhaps. Yet hide he does. Perhaps not entirely well, as the few home-made films in his repertoire have been surreptitiously added onto the shelves of the VHS rental store he clocks into most weekdays. But he'll take the fact he hasn't been reprimanded by his superior as a win. Flick Picks Video Rentals is, in many ways, a haven. A place where for the first time, Charlie could feel at home with his covert passions for film in which he would be expected to be ashamed anywhere else. A small respite, that unbeknownst to young Charlie, wouldn't last. Despite the kindly reminder to rewind before returning, most seldom listened. In the quiet and uneventful hours of the night, that became Charlie's job. VHS popped into the rewinder, eyes on the CTR TV to check for any scratches or tangling of the tape, slide into its box upon completion, rinse and repeat. It was a tedious task to be sure, but something Charlie found mildly comforting in its predictable repetition. One that seldom provided any surprises. 

               Until ONE TAPE …

It wasn't unheard of for someone to record over one of the rentals. Uncommon, yes, as it was guaranteed to earn you a ten dollar fine to replace what was lost, but not unheard of. Usually in such a case, rewinding was stopped, the tape set aside with a note. Yet something- … something wasn't right. This tape wasn't one of theirs. Or professionally made for that matter. The film had the signature grain, bad lighting and time code at the bottom of something made at home. But the stationary upward framing, fixed on a single person. A single tied person. Bloodied. Sobbing. This wasn't right. A masked figure stepping into view. Toying with the other. Armed with a knife. This definitely wasn't right. The one tied, turned frantic. The knife slicing. The blood. It couldn't have been real, right? Someone trying their hand at horror like he did. And effectively at that. It was unsettling to say the least. Something he brought up, showed to a coworker the next day, and was assured in a chiding manner it was fake. Even he in what film making experience he possessed, had reservations. Why, then, he remained uncertain he wasn't sure. 

 That uncertainty nagged. Knotted his stomach. And eventually, sent him in an unorthodox direction to his university's theater department for answers. The course of logic he followed said if it was fake, a third and perhaps more experienced opinion wouldn't hurt. It was by pure luck and happenstance that one person with such qualifications was there. While the two had apparently gone to the same highschool, Irene Fernandez had been a complete stranger to him. Might have had something to do with them traveling within social circles so different they might as well have been separate planets altogether. Her skill and knowledge in special effects, however, made her essential to his needs. Was a random encounter over a gory VHS tape an awkward first meeting? Yes. Yet it was not nearly so bad at its beginning as it became in the end, when upon repeated viewing with Irene, Charlie's fears were proven right. No dyed corn syrup or tubes used to spurt it. No retractable prop blades. The blood, murder, all of it was REAL. Which meant the killer was as well. 

 Such a realization made all the more terrifying as another tape appeared in the return slot ...

[lightsandlostbells]

Skam France season 3, episode 5 reaction

The opening clip gave me flashbacks to this SNL Totino’s commercial, another classic of gay cinema, so I FULLY expect to see some hot pizza roll action later this season. 

Episode 5

Clip 1 - Still no yellow curtains???

Dramatic music. Lucas and Eliott are passionately kissing. The camera swoops over parts of their bodies. Eliott is smiley, Lucas gets in a kiss to Eliott’s nose. The level of intimacy is very strong, that shot of their legs tangled together is nice. I think it’s great that they didn’t back down from the kissing and physical contact in this scene; it’s not that it needs to be very explicit, just respectful and on par to what they’d give for a het couple, and they filmed Lucas and Eliott about the same as they did Charles and Manon last season. Skam was so good in how it depicted intimacy between Isak and Even; I consider it one of the defining features of S3, setting it above other gay romances in media for its lack of skittishness and double standards, and it’s been a consistent concern of mine that the remakes will be a step back in that regard. This clip was definitely reassuring. 

Eliott asks Lucas if he’s his first guy, and Lucas just snorts so Eliott takes that as a yes. Lucas asks the same question and Eliott replies with this Even-worthy eyebrow raise, so Lucas is like, oh, I see! They laugh. So I that wasn’t an actual answer, lol? But I took it as Eliott having some experience with dudes. Could be a variety of things from kissing a boy to hooking up with one to a full-fledged relationship with a guy. Or the Mikael incident, if they include that in S4. They’ve apparently changed a huge amount, but that’s actually one detail that doesn’t need to be changed the way the bus storyline has to be, for instance.

We get some whispery voiceover as Eliott asks Lucas what he thought of him when he saw him the first time in the common room. We cut to them lying shirtless, so this is later in the day, after things got more heated. The lighting is very warm and golden, it’s a very romantic staging. Like there might as well be white curtains billowing in the breeze. (The curtains are white, but not billowy.)

Eliott volunteers that the first time he saw Lucas wasn’t in the common room, but on his first day in the corridor. Basically he describes the trailer to Lucas. Lucas didn’t see him but he was all Eliott saw. So that revelation happened fast. Not a surprise to anyone who saw the trailer (or you know, saw OG Skam) but it cuts out some of the mystery for Lucas - like Isak was doubting Even’s interest through much of the season, especially in this episode and afterwards, and when Sonja said the relationship was fake. Isak was so taken aback by Even revealing it in the last episode in part because he (and the audience) had doubted it so often. But Lucas has this reassurance from Eliott right from the beginning. Lucas just has so much more to go off from Eliott at this point: Eliott is more upfront telling Lucas how great he is, Eliott has said he wants to break up with Lucille and have a relationship with someone else who’s not necessarily a girl, Eliott didn’t choose plans with Lucille over a day with Lucas, Eliott told Lucas he wanted the double date to be just the two of them. Even when Eliott disappeared for a few days, he followed it up by apologizing to Lucas and saying he was sick. And that’s nice for Lucas, that he’s not doubting himself as much, but I have to wonder how this will affect the story? Or their relationship trajectory? When Eliott cuts off their relationship, it will come out of nowhere even more than in Skam. 

Lucas whispers about what Eliott would have done if he didn’t go to the common room, or Lucas came to the bus earlier or later, as they lay there in their underwear with Eliott on his back, in between lots of kissing. The camera keeps cutting back and forth between kissing and talking, different angles, lots of pans, etc.

Eliott saying that he imagines two paths when he has a choice to make, but it drives him mad when he doesn’t know the outcome of the one he doesn’t take. So Lucas brings up parallel universes. (Piano music starts playing at this point, which seems to happen at significant Lucas/Eliott turning points, like the first time Lucas saw Eliott, or when Lucas played piano for Eliott. Like in OG, this conversation might have a huge effect on Eliott and how he sees himself and their relationship.) When Lucas makes a choice, there are all these other Lucases making other choices, like he’s surfing in Bali or in he’s in a NYC skyscraper signing a deal. I don’t know if these are things Lucas actually would like to experience in his life, or of they’re just examples of things that are so far and distant from his present reality, fun fantasies. 

Eliott asks if maybe New York businessman Lucas didn’t jump off the building because he burned out. Lucas says that’s awful, Eliott asks if he’s ever thought about it? That’s good foreshadowing, a good hint as to Eliott’s state of mind.

Eliott says he doesn’t believe in parallel universes, though he doesn’t explain why (like Even say it made him feel lonely). Lucas says there are Lucases and Eliotts in other universes who are together right now. Lucille calls and Eliott groans, then says Eliott #425 can go talk to her, heh. Lucas #1 is very happy with that decision. They lie on each other and it blurs as the clip ends, as they fall asleep.

This is one of those clips that I completely get why people would love it, it’s very apparent, and I don’t think it’s bad, not at all, but at the same time it’s just personally not my thing. I’m sorry! Again, I understand why this clip blew up. It’s just ... similar to how I feel about cupcakes. People love cupcakes. I love some cupcakes! But I don’t care for a lot of cupcakes, like the really fancy ones with tons of frosting, because most frosting is too sugary for me. Do I get why people like the cupcakes with mountains of frosting, though? Or why people prefer the frosting to the cake itself? Absolutely. 

Most of my issue is with the editing. There had so many cuts and jumps and I don’t think it served the mood or purpose of this clip. Actually, I found it really distracting. I could never just relax into the moment because of how the camera was spinning and panning and cutting between different points in time, something that has been done in various scenes in Skam and the remakes, but not usually with weighty dialogue happening at the same time? I found it hard to focus on what they were saying. 

On that note, I don’t think the way it was shot was the best way to demonstrate to their chemistry. I think they have quite good chemistry! But there was so much moving around and cutting between moments that it began to feel like a series of poses rather than two actors working off each other, if that makes sense. 

It just felt a bit too much like this clip was a perfume ad, lol. It’s very heavy and sensual and romantic, and it’s beautiful, but it’s not what I prefer from the Skam universe. It takes away some of the rawness and vulnerability of this kid’s coming out story - something that they’re still integrating into the show by keeping many of Isak’s struggles in Lucas - and makes it more full throttle OTT mature romance. Like - this feels like a romance between adults, not teenagers, and I don’t mean because of the level of intimacy/shirtlessness, more like the level of confidence, the way it doesn’t feel like they’re figuring things out, but that this is familiar territory (and for Lucas at least, it is not). And well, another some of that is because the actors are adults, too. 

There’s some more stuff I can say but again, it’s just not my style for this material. In other contexts I would eat up this hardcore French romanticism, lol.

Clip 2 - Guess Who(’s not staying for dinner)

Lucas wakes up alone at 14:34 on Saturday. It’s later that day, so what’s his excuse for missing Basile’s party? Eliott is not actually there to keep him occupied. Is he just going to lay in bed and smell Eliott’s pillow or something? I realize he’s distracted but isn’t he going to be receiving texts from the guys?

Eliott left him a note on the pillow. It’s a hedgehog in bed, but when you open the note it’s a raccoon and a hedgehog in bed together with a little heart. AWWWW. That’s so cute. It’s so cute I won’t make any interspecies erotica jokes. The note says “Eliott number 3546 is a lucky guy” and that Lucas is handsome when he’s sleeping. Lucas looks bummed, though. I mean, I would be if I went to bed sleeping beside someone who looked like that and I woke up alone.

Lucas goes into the kitchen where everyone else is. Manon has been up early cooking, because she slept on the couch and got woken up by the neighbors. Lucas is like, oh sorry, forgot I’m not in my room anymore. WHY ARE YOU APOLOGIZING, IT’S YOUR ROOM. SHE HAS NEVER LIVED IN IT. (Also, I don’t think she meant anything by it, but her mentioning that she woke up early hearing the noise from the couch comes across as oddly passive-aggressive.)

But Manon is OK with it, because Lucas needed his room more! Eliott seemed super cool! UMMMM this is kinda weird. I know Eskild said the same thing but the situation seemed less pointed, like Manon’s borderline suggesting I know you needed the bed more than I did, Lucas, because of all the gay sex you were having last night.

The roommates all met Eliott when he left and Lucas covers by saying he’s a good friend who got too drunk so Lucas offered him a place to sleep. Manon is all “OK!” in a way that is too casual to be truly casual, if you know what I mean. Lucas gets on the defensive and says what, we can’t bring friends over here now? Now Manon is all, “OK...” in a way that says calm down, dude.

Mika eyes Lucas as he leaves. I don’t think they’ve really built that relationship in a substantial way, but at least they added that brief glimpse to show that Mika has Lucas on his mind?

Clip 3 - Cake!

Lucas and Manon walk into school, Lucas carrying baked goods made by Manon. Manon gets a call from Charles and ignores it. There needs to be a substantial Lucas and Manon heart-to-heart at some point. They’ve set up too much between them - I feel like their dynamic is more developed than Lucas and Mika, or Lucas and Yann this season.

The girl squad + Lucas sit around and eat cake. Well, the girls eat cake, Lucas is sitting back in his seat with his arms crossed. I know you are thinking about Eliott, dude, but there’s this thing people do called “eating our feelings” that works ... not very well in the long-term, but provides short-lived distraction and satisfaction. I recommend it!

There’s a mattress in the common room now and Manon asks, “Don’t you stop napping after kindergarten?” and I like Manon fine but she must have put some crack in that cake. Lmao, what human being is going to be like NAPS??? AN ABSURD TRADITION MEANT FOR TODDLERS. Like when you’re a little kid, you don’t want to nap, you want to run around and keep being an asshole; it’s when you grow up and become miserable that you start to appreciate the art of shutting your eyes in the middle of the day. Anyway, Daphne said the headmaster gave the students the right to nap in the common room. You know, that is a legit quality use for the common room, tbh. Everyone would use the nap room.

The downside is, as Lucas accurately points out, people are going to bang on that mattress. Well, I guess they could like … require the door to the room to be open at all time or something. Or put up a giant sign saying THERE ARE SECURITY CAMERAS IN THIS ROOM AT ALL TIMES. They don’t need to install security cameras for real, just use the sign to dissuade people. (Who am I kidding, none of that will stop the students from banging on that mattress.) Daphne is incensed at the notion, but Imane’s like, hookup-land is what’s gonna bring people here. LMAO. Again, not wrong.

They talk about the ugly mural some more (God I still do not get why everyone treats that mural like it’s a nude painting of one of the orcs from Lord of the Rings, it’s just a somewhat outdated mural, my eyes would glaze right over it). Lucas says he’s waiting for Eliott about the mural and Manon does a little “mhm” so he hurriedly changes the subject (good subtle detail). 

They discuss getting WiFi in the room and one of the nerd dudes who showed up to the first meeting, who has been sitting in the corner, starts talking about how they can get set up WiFi. The nerd dudes have the password. Everyone is happy! But nerd dude says he would like compensation. Daphne assumes they are talking about her breasts as she is showing ample cleavage. Nerd dude says no, they were talking about the cakes. LMAO. I like this guy. Manon hands over a cake, the other girls are sad at the loss of cake. Understandable, but it seems like a fair trade to me. Also, there are multiple cakes and baked goods on that table, just scarf it down before the nerds come back for more.

Manon signs off with, “Bye, bitches!” The others talk about how weird she’s being. Well, yeah, but I’m wondering how her Charles-related sadness translates into her saying, “Bye, bitches!” Trying to put on a super happy and lighthearted facade? Would go along with all the baking.

This scene is cute and all, and I assume there will be relevance to something in the plot later on but ... what does it have to do with Lucas’ story or his POV? Other than a brief look at his closed-off body language (which didn’t last long since he was very engaged in the conversation) and a brief mention of Eliott and the mural, something that has happened before? There just didn’t feel like a point to his story in this clip, whereas every scene in Skam S3 felt like it had a point to Isak’s POV and advanced his storyline, telling us something about his mental and emotional state. I know that the other seasons of Skam didn’t have such a narrow focus, but usually there was some tie-in to what the protagonist was feeling. IDK, is this to foreshadow him and Eliott fucking on the couch? More hinting at Manon being off her game and having Charles problems? My guess is that they felt like they needed a girl squad scene sometime this week. If they had unlimited time for these episodes, I wouldn’t care if they had clips like this, but they do have a time limit, and so I think it’s fair to question if they’re making the best use of it.

Daphne is by no means required to have a boyfriend, I still root for lesbian Daphne at the end of the day, but that nerd dude who asked for cake instead of cleavage is already a better option than Basile.

Clip 4 - Lucas out of the loop

Lucas waits for Eliott outside of class, but instead it’s his bro Raptor Alex who exits. Lucas asks if the guy in his class is there. You know, the guy. Clearly the only guy who matters in Alex’s class.

Alex says Eliott isn’t there much, he freaked out in class the other day and doesn’t go anymore. Oh no :( I wonder what he means by “freaked out” though, like hopefully people weren’t gossiping about whatever happened? It didn’t make its way to Lucas, in that case.

The boy squad comes around the corner. Lucas completely phones it in when he apologizes to Basile. Not that I care about hurting Basile’s feelings, as my opinion of him is well-documented, but Lucas does, and he’s not even trying to sound sorry. And the family excuse is lazy and not believable at all, like with Isak it was also predictable but he put a smidge of effort into it. Lucas says the excuse like he’s on auto-pilot. The boys just let the excuse roll by, uninterested.

Lucas asks what happened at the party and Arthur says Basile went into the bathroom with Daphne and he won’t tell them what happened. Basile say she stayed on her knees in front of him for a long time. Which I take to mean she was barfing and Basile was holding her hair back. Also her hair smelled good according to him. SIGH. I’m sure this is the start of Basile/Daphne or whatever, but you know, it would be easier for me to buy that Basile is really a good guy if he did not describe Daphne in such an objectifying way. If you’re a fucking gentleman, why are you making it sound like she sucked your dick? I know toxic masculinity, ~it’s realistic, blah blah. They could’ve had Yann and Arthur make the crude jokes and Basile get serious and tell them not to talk about Daphne that way, it would’ve been character development. (Actually, now I’m wondering if there will be a moment like that later in the season. I can’t support Basile/Daphne at all at this point, but I feel like if they want to make him worthy of her in the slightest, he’s going to have to renounce his sleazy, perverted shtick very clearly.)

Lucas looks back after the boys as they leave him behind, not interested in telling him more, barely caring about his absence. He’s just not part of the gang right now. IDK, I think they should’ve directed Axel to play this more remorsefully - not his fault, I feel like they rushed this scene for time reasons? For instance when he sees the boys and apologizes to Basile, there wasn’t time for anything to land, like he didn’t care much, not even that he was disappointed in himself for forgetting. Just this look from Lucas at the end signals what he might be feeling.

Also, very weird choice to put this clip on Tuesday and the one with the girls on Monday? It makes way more sense to switch the two, because basically Lucas must not have interacted with his friends at all yesterday. Even though we’ve seen he has a class with Arthur and we’ve gotten a clip of that class on a Monday (although I don’t know how French class schedules work). 

Clip 5 - Argh

When I started to watch this clip, I noticed it was 2 minutes and 43 seconds long and was like … are you kidding me? If this is the scene, we’re going to just fly through it? What in the fresh hell?

For comparison, the OG clip was 4 minutes and 36 seconds. And it didn’t have the end credits as this scene does, and it didn’t have this opening part with Lucas and Imane (or Isak and Sana).

Without the credits, this clip goes to 2:22. Eliott and Lucas meet outside starting at :55. Meaning there was about a minute and a half for the conversation that defines that second half of the season. Yikes.

Lucas and Imane are in class, I think they’re taking a test. She helps him out when he forgets something. There’s a lot on his mind and he’s not doing the best he can, I guess. Anyway, thoughtful of Imane to help him cheat (if this is a test)? 

He gets a text from Eliott - is this a test or not? It’s not terribly important but LMAO at this teacher who (correctly) notices two of her students passing drugs under the table before class, but fails to notice the same two talking during an exam and one of them whipping out his phone during a silent class period. Cheating must not be a main concern of hers. Eliott is waiting outside the room, grinning at him through the window. So we have students talking to each other, looking at their phones, and non-verbally communicating with other students through the window. Now I’m really surprised that the teacher noticed the weed.

Lucas gets up to meet Eliott outside. Lol, really, dude? He’s going to get a bad grade just because he can’t wait a few minutes. I mean, the desperation is funny, but Lucas is not the brightest here.

Although I laughed a lot when Imane said he wasn’t done and Lucas was like, “Minimalism, Imane. Minimalism.” That might be the best line he’s had on this show.

Imane seems concerned but I’m not sure if she suspects anything’s up with him or if she’s just like how did I get partnered with such a dumbass.

So this clip was ... not good. Bad. It was bad.

This is the kind of content I feared we would be getting from Skam France based on the first two seasons. Luckily it’s been better than this on average, I really do think the show has improved! But not here. It’s such an important scene that I’m disappointed this is the one they bungled. There are multiple things that are ill-advised or underwhelming about it.

I’m aware that I can be harsh/nitpicky/critical about these remakes, but I really don’t intend to come from a place of default negativity, or like, FUCK THIS SHOW FOR EXISTING. And I don’t want to crush people’s buzz if they enjoy something! The reason I get so nitpicky is because I feel like it helps me better understand film-making overall. If a clip just doesn’t feel right, then I want to try to parse out why it didn’t work for me. 

For starters, choosing to place this extremely intimate, private, honest, confessional scene outside. And not in some isolated space, but where tons of people are. You can fucking see students walking around behind Eliott when he’s glancing in the window at Lucas. As Lucas exits the classroom, you can see a girl headed in the same direction as him. I mean … what?? They are not remotely alone? Not only does it ruin the atmosphere of the scene, it tanks the plausibility of it.

Because Eliott’s waiting for him outside, and holy shit, gives Lucas a kiss on the mouth. Dude! People will definitely see you. He knows that he’s Lucas’ first boy(friend) per their conversation in bed, so what is he doing? I guess it’s cute but also, not a great idea to out Lucas like that Lucas hasn’t been with a guy before, Lucas has been deliberating no-homo-ing their interactions in front of his friends, Lucas has been trying to play up his relationship with Chloe (for instance slinging that arm around her when Eliott came to talk last episode, not to mention, you know, dating her while flirting with Eliott) so it’s a completely reasonable and likely assumption that Lucas is closeted and doesn’t want people to know he likes guys. I don’t think Eliott is a bad person for doing this, but it seems weirdly insensitive of him. (Even tried to kiss Isak in public in episode 8, but it was while he was manic, and I don’t want to make that same assumption of Eliott here.) 

Eliott wants Lucas to leave with him but Lucas says he can’t ditch classes. Eliott says he’s told Lucille. He’s really brimming with confidence here, like he just swoops in for the kiss, he brings up Lucille without hesitation, he seems completely sure of himself. Lucas looks a little uncomfortable, though. Eliott is like, doesn’t that make you happy? Lucas says it does, although he doesn’t look that happy. 

Lucas: “I just don’t want you to be sad if it’s my fault.” No offense because this is a tiny thing but this is one of Skam France’s typical flaws from S1 and S2, which they have largely improved on in S3, but here it creeps up again: adapting something from OG without retaining the context that makes it effective.

That’s a line from Isak, and it made sense in context for him, because Even was looking and acting very, very vulnerable when he said that he had told Sonja about Isak. Nervous eyes, hesitant voice. Holding back on his normally demonstrative body language - Even is very tactile but you can tell he’s very restrained at the start of that conversation. He speaks slowly and is very focused on Isak’s reaction, because he really didn’t seem to be sure what Isak would say. It was when Isak said, “Cool,” that Even started to relax, his eyes start to light up, because Isak responded positively. And when Isak said, “I hope you’re not sad,” it was to fish out what Even was feeling, because he needed that confirmation of how Even felt. Isak wanted to know Even wasn’t sad as a way to determine that Even really truly wanted to be with Isak. It’s a nice, subtle bit of dialogue.

Which makes zero sense here because Eliott is radiating happiness. He kissed Lucas on the mouth as soon as Lucas came outside! He’s smiling, his eyes are shining! It’s not subtle! LMAO WHAT. I guess you can take this as Lucas being insecure, but it just feels so bizarre and dense for a character to project joy as strongly as Eliott does and to ask whether he’s sad. However, maybe we’ll assume that Lucas really is just fishing for confirmation. The thing is, Lucas also has little reason to think that breaking up with Lucille would make Eliott sad. Eliott hasn’t said anything about not being able to break up with Lucille; he has made it clear that he would like to move on and have a relationship with someone else, not necessarily a girl. (Compare to: Even talking about how he felt like he was growing apart from Sonja, but saying he could not dump her, as well as not hinting nearly so heavily that he wanted to get into an actual relationship with Isak.) Eliott didn’t choose Lucille over Lucas the other Saturday when Lucas wanted to hang out, he was just busy, not necessarily with Lucille. (Compare to: Even saying he had plans with Sonja, essentially choosing her over Isak that day.) Eliott straight up told Lucas that he hoped their double date was just the two of them, that was his plan. (Compare to: Even feeling basically the same way, but not telling Isak outright in words.) 

And throughout the season, Lucas has been even bolder in some ways than Isak was. He’s done more to go up to Eliott and try to chase him, he’s stolen a class register to find him. On Saturday he felt very confident about making out with Eliott and taking their shirts off. So you could take this as Lucas being insecure, but it doesn’t make a ton of sense even with Eliott ghosting the past few days. I don’t think it matches with the characterization. I think it’s just lazy writing, sorry, especially since much of the other dialogue in this scene is copy+pasted from OG. Or maybe more vulnerability and uncertainty was meant to come through at the beginning of the scene, but the directing and acting didn’t match up with that intention. Whatever happened, this is just an example of why this scene wasn’t very well-adapted. (Also, if Lucas is so insecure he can’t notice that Eliott is smiling happily and kissing him, then how did he get so confident within like 30 seconds to move in for a kiss in public? Overcoming both his internalized homophobia and his doubts to that degree in that short of a time?)

I do want to acknowledge that in Julie’s original script, the scene played out more like the one here, with Even kissing Isak at the very start and having his happiness and desire for Isak more visible. But in Julie’s notes, she also acknowledged that it was a hard scene to figure out and that the changes from script to shooting benefited the scene. Ultimately, this line felt right and fitting to the tone of the OG scene as it was filmed, but here it felt off. I didn’t get why Lucas was asking except because it was in the original show.

We get Eliott asking if Lucas would tell his parents, and at this point I was flabbergasted that they really were going to rush this hugely important, amazing scene to this degree. No room for buildup or mood, just cranking out the dialogue as if it’s obligatory. We get this conversation similar to OG where Lucas explains his dad feels guilty for leaving so he’s not going to say anything, and his mom is crazy so he doesn’t care. There is one nice moment where Lucas tells Eliott not to worry and Eliott says he’s not worried, but immediately asks why Lucas doesn’t talk to her. So you know, he is worried. That was a good, subtle moment. Eliott has a clear sad reaction to Lucas saying he doesn’t need crazy people in his life, and IMO it’s pretty obvious to viewers (though not to Lucas) but I still think Maxence did a decent job here.

Lucas is pulls out the drawing made for him, but Eliott just says Lucas is going to be late for class, all his warmth gone. When Lucas goes in for a kiss, Eliott ruffles Lucas’ hair instead. LMAO. Well, it’s not really funny at all in context of Eliott’s feelings, but it’s also just such a clear shutdown that I can’t help but find it amusing. Lucas does not find it amusing, stands there in surprise and confusion, looking down at his drawing. 

Also, Eliott ruffled Lucas’ hair in episode 2, at the end of their lovely evening together, with a lot of sexual tension between them, so this is an unpleasant reversal. That moment felt like a “hello, I’m looking forward to getting to know you.” This moment is a goodbye.

Anyway, this scene was a mess!

Was there a reason why they were outside? Did someone see them? Is there going to be gossip? Why did Eliott kiss Lucas outside when he knows Lucas is closeted? Why did Lucas go in for a kiss at the end (more on that in a minute)? If there is a bullying/rumors storyline as people suspect, that could just as efficiently be done with, for instance, having them meet in an empty classroom and someone walks in on them or spies on them, or secretly takes a picture of them looking close. Maybe they don’t even see the person in the clip themselves, or they hear a noise but by the time they turn around, the person is gone. That way it would be more believable that they would kiss when they think they’re in total privacy, but could also lead to a storyline where the rumors get out. Or, you know ... there were rumors in OG because of Emma, so just have that escalate with Chloe. She fucking yells that Lucas is gay at the end of the episode. There’s just no need for this scene to be outside, it defies logic, and it kills the mood of the clip. It destroys the feeling of Lucas and Eliott having a secret relationship, it ruins the intimacy of making their feelings so clear to each other and of Lucas’ confession about his mom. It’s a really big deal for Lucas to tell someone about his mom! Overall the setting should reflect the content of the scene and this was just strange. Lmao, they didn’t even seem to go very far, weren’t they talking right outside the classroom? Is Imane going to look up and be like, hmm, there’s Lucas and Eliott having a conversation through the window?

I saw people be happy that Lucas moved in for the kiss at the end, and I mean, I get it, that’s the ideal outcome, for Lucas to be out and proud and comfortable with himself. I’m not going to rag on people for being happy about that. But I don’t buy it. He’s startled Eliott kisses him at the beginning of the clip. Then 60 seconds later he’s moving in to initiate a kiss. In public. Like … what is that doing for Lucas’ character arc? Is the only reason he didn’t want to kiss at the beginning of the clip because he didn’t know what Eliott had been doing, and not because of his internalized homophobia? How did he become okay with kissing him outside where people could see in just a minute? It just seems terribly weak for his characterization, and unrealistic that someone who’s so deep in the closet that he goes around flinging homophobic slurs and romancing girls can undo part of that in such a short time. (Especially combined with the Pride clip the next day.)

On that note, Lucas did not ask Eliott where he had been the past few days, there was no acknowledgment of all that Eliott had been gone, so if that was a problem for Lucas, it got swept away. Not as big of an issue as others, but it seemed odd that it went unmentioned when Lucas spent time looking for Eliott and trying to talk to him.

Why was this scene so short? I know there are time restrictions for the episodes, but why in the world was the cake clip necessary over more time allotted to this incredibly important clip? Just because they’re required to include the girl squad? Does the entire squad have to be in every episode, and was there no better way to include them? For example, instead of this clip, what if we opened with the girls eating cake and talking about the common room, but Lucas gets a text from Eliott and excuses himself, then meets and talks with Eliott? If there was anything relevant about the cake clip for future episodes, start with the girls talking about that, then Lucas gets the text and leaves. Seems like a way better use of time.

I don’t mind Eliott being frostier with Lucas at the end, turning away from the kiss, but he does such a complete mood change in such a short time span that it feels a little ridiculous that Lucas didn’t notice. Eliott up until he asked about Lucas’ parents: smiling his ass off. Elliot when Lucas said that thing about his dad: still a tiny smile, receptive to what Lucas is saying. Eliott when Lucas goes in for a kiss: not having it. There is one thing that they talked about in between Eliott’s mood change (or two, I guess, with Lucas mentioning hedgehogs). The mystery element is made less, well, mysterious and more obvious for both viewers and Lucas. Even still gave Isak a goodbye kiss, a parting affection, meaning that it’d be harder for Isak to immediately trace the source of the breakup to that conversation; Eliott is done with Lucas right that fucking second. I get that Lucas isn’t the brightest, but I’m also like … he’s really not going to connect the dots even a little? Even if he doesn’t understand the whole scenario, doesn’t that stick out to him? (Even when Raptor Alex said something like Eliott freaked out the other day?)

Eliott asking about Lucas’ parents was such a jarring transition, and it’s because of pacing. Even just asks it of Isak, too, in a way that could be jarring, but because of the slower pace, the more vulnerable atmosphere, the acting, it doesn’t feel like a 180-degree scene change, it feels more like a natural direction for their conversation to take. The boys tentatively began the scene and were somewhat walking on eggshells toward each other; Even’s question therefore has a kind of fragility that’s in line with the atmosphere, he’s testing out whether Isak will be OK if they date. There’s a lack of vulnerability in this scene, at least up until that point: Eliott is perfectly fine and dandy, Lucas is apparently conflicted but it doesn’t really land. So the transition of topic just feels sudden rather than fitting the mood. It’s just a hugely weird execution.

Stuff I feel bad about saying but I’m going to say it in the interest of honesty: I think Axel has improved a huge amount from earlier seasons and has done good work in other scenes this season. But it felt like Lucas was bored during this scene. I got zero sense of say, wistfulness from him talking about his mom. He didn’t even seem that happy once Eliott told him things were off and they were bumping foreheads? It could have been a much more layered performance. Like … I just don’t feel happiness for Lucas once Eliott tells him it’s off with Lucille, because Lucas himself doesn’t seem to care. I think his parting look of confusion was good, but during the conversation itself, it was lacking. Is it just because Lucas is putting up a front and not trying to show how much he cares? Then how does that work with him trying to go in for a kiss at the end? Like with the previous clip with the boy squad, I blame this a lot on the clip being rushed and not having time to really sink into Lucas’ emotions. But it was just unfortunate because the material in this scene is so complex. 

Another thing I feel bad about saying but have to admit: Their chemistry has been good so far, but in this scene, it felt off. Like when Eliott went in to bump foreheads? Super awkward. He’s beaming and Lucas is not into it. And you can say that’s because he’s still not sure what’s going on, sure, but there’s no sense of like … wanting to lean in to the touch but feeling conflicted, or the gesture calming him or convincing him, it’s like Eliott is on a completely different plane than Lucas, and that doesn’t really make sense before Lucas drops the bomb about his mom. You can’t avoid that this scene between Isak and Even made such an impact because the actors were so in sync with each other. That scene felt overwhelmingly intimate, like we were spying on them in a private moment (which it was). The lack of intimacy here in what’s essentially a soul-baring moment is disappointing.

Just. Not good.

Clip 6 - Pride

Lucas is lying on the couch, his new home. Mika plops down and talks about how awesome the couch is, especially if someone like Eliott sleeps over again. Again, it feels jarring because there is zero buildup to this conversation, Mika says it right away, no easing into the conversation (and again, I know that there are time restrictions with the episode, and I’m sympathetic but that doesn’t make it feel less weird - not to mention I have quibbles with how they’re allotting their time). However, Lucas is like “seriously?” and Mika does seem to reconsider, saying that he’s there if Lucas wants to talk and getting up to leave. It works in the sense that Mika’s not been portrayed as sensitive to Lucas as Eskild was to Isak, so I can buy him being inelegant with bringing it up, but still, feels more like a necessity of them having to cram in this scene rather than a conscious character choice.

Lucas does decide to tell Mika about Eliott, and Mika seems pleased. Lucas wants to keep it under wraps, though, saying he doesn’t want to scream that he’s with Eliott or walk hand in hand with him. Which feels off considering he was ready to kiss Eliott on the mouth in public yesterday, which would scream he was with Eliott to anyone watching - again, why I feel that moment was inconsistent. Mika compares it to when Lucas was with Sarah, and Lucas says it was fake with Sarah. I like this bit comparing the two relationships. Mika is chill and happy for Lucas. Despite their relationship not being depicted in the strongest way IMO, it’s a nice moment.

Lucas says this doesn’t mean he’s gay, it’s fine to be proud of being gay, but he’s not gay as in camp. When Mika asks what he means, Lucas says he’s not going to tell people how many dicks he sucked over the weekend, or dance to pop music, or post naked pics on Grindr (especially damning since we saw Mika do just that a few weeks ago). Mika of course connects it to himself. Lucas tries to backtrack but puts his foot in his mouth further, saying he’s never going to Gay Pride and throw dick-shaped glitter on people just because he liked a guy. Mika gets pissed and the scene happens much like the OG Pride clip, talking about how the guys Lucas is talking about are suffering for just trying to be themselves. Mika gets pissed and walks off.

I’m fine with Mika’s reaction being more focused on anger whereas Eskild seemed more hurt and betrayed. Eskild and Isak were closer so that made sense. Mika seems more distant from Lucas so it works that the focus is more on his anger, less than someone he considers part of the family is degrading him.

This scene is so important in all contexts, all cultures, that I am really glad it’s here. Of all the things I hope that the remakes do include, the Pride clip is one of them - even if it’s not the exact same speech or dialogue, then a similar sentiment or lesson is really needed.

That being said, I do think they could have done this scene better from a storytelling standpoint, just by building up Mika and Lucas’ relationship and by not rushing the conversation. There are some nuances in the OG that did not come across here - like I think part of the reason that Isak started running his mouth about not being gay was that he noted that Eskild didn’t seem surprised, and Eskild didn’t deny it, saying he met Isak at a gay bar, and Isak was feeling some insecurity over being so transparent. That’s just my interpretation, though. However, Lucas also has not been dealing with the issue of stereotypes and generalizations to this point? His “gay test” was over something else, he didn’t call out the dance teacher for being too gay, etc. so this is like the first time he’s brought up this topic. I know we had the issue of generalizations mentioned by Alex and Imane but Lucas barely seemed affected by that incident. They could have built that up more, or preferably, re-wrote this scene to be more about Lucas’ behavior in past episodes, like him throwing around homophobic slurs just to distance himself from being gay. Have Mika call him out on that (like instead of focusing on stereotypes, Lucas says, “I’m not a [slur] just because I like a guy” and that’s why Mika gets pissed).

Side note, but it occurs to me that I don’t think we’ve heard about Mika and Lucas’ backstory at all? Like how Mika came to let Lucas hide in the basement before Manon invited him to take her room. I hope we hear about it in a future episode, because even if their relationship isn’t as important, it’s still something of an unresolved plot issue how Lucas came to live in the cellar last season.

Also, not to make light of this, but kind of awkward now because Lucas is living on the couch and can’t hide out in his room from Mika after this conversation.

Lucas texts Eliott that he told his roommate. I wonder what he was expecting from Eliott - probably support? Happiness? Eliott wanted to know how Lucas’ parents would react, and Mika’s not a parent but he’s someone in Lucas’ life, who lives with him, so it would be important. Instead, Eliott texts back, “That’s cool, I’m happy for you” which is frankly rather cold and detached, especially considering he follows up with the spiel about needing more time and them going too fast. This makes Lucas angry and he smacks the cushions. I think this is a good reaction, different from Isak who seemed just in disbelief that Even could be calling it off after asking to be his boyfriend the previous day. It fits with Lucas being more hot-headed and feeling out of control. He texts the guys about their plans for tomorrow, then throws his phone aside and sits back. Again, more like he’s pissed rather than stunned.

Clip 7 - Really bad night

The other three boys are playing a video game (not FIFA!) and Lucas is sitting there dejected, staring at Eliott’s last text message. The sound goes from happy fun-time boy party to sad droning despair when we cut from the others to Lucas, like he’s so checked out he doesn’t hear his friends, or the game, or anything, he’s just so focused on that one awful text message.

Yann, bless him, notices Lucas is in a bad mood, and has him get up and go to the kitchen with him. Lmao but also OUCH at Lucas wearing a hoodie that says “romance” at the worst possible time.

Lucas is super snotty about Yann not being able to find one of the many beers in the fridge, but of course Yann just wants to talk about what’s clearly bothering Lucas and why he’s avoiding them. Lucas denies there’s a problem, but Yann wants to know whether they’re friends or pretending? Lucas keeps denying and says if there was a problem, he’d tell Yann, and he just wants to enjoy the night. Curious way of showing that, sitting there completely checked out from everyone else and snapping at them.

I’m so, so glad they had this scene, because I think they’ve done Yann a disservice this season. They’ve cut out some Jonas moments, such as Jonas calling out Isak for his comments on the dance teacher (the French boys didn’t call out Lucas to nearly the same degree, nor single out his bad mood of late) and the scene where Jonas talks to Isak at his locker in episode 4 was not there. Basically, other than the scene in episode 3, there haven’t been many clips to this point that indicate Yann has been watching Lucas and growing concerned like Jonas was for Isak. This part is a great addition and I’m happy they had a moment to build up this relationship.

Arthur and Basile run in and say they got a text about a party at Chloe’s tonight, Basile thinks it’s his night to hook up with Daphne. GOD WHY. SHE SAID NO TO YOU. WHY MUST THIS TORTURE PERSIST.

They want Lucas to get them into the party, Lucas says Chloe is mad at him, Arthur says she’s not and it’s all in his head. How would he even know? They haven’t even been talking to Lucas lately. They just want to go to the party. Yann seems to be realizing that the situation is not good, but Basile says Lucas can’t do that to him, Lucas missed his birthday

Lucas agrees to go with zero enthusiasm, Basile wants a high five but everyone ignores him, thank God. Yann seemed happy when Lucas agreed to go, so I guess he thought Lucas was trying to have a good time instead of moping all evening, but Lucas was so blatantly not into it and peer pressured into going that IDK how you can think Lucas is anything but miserable.

The boys show up to Chloe’s house and Basile is already screaming and being obnoxious with people staring at him, but there’s a guy at the door who shoves Basile back and won’t let them in. In Skam, that guy at the door seemed like a total tool, but this guy? This guy is my hero.

Daphne comes down the stairs and Basile yells at her to tell the guy to let them in. Maria sees him and is all, hey, you were the guy who held my hair at the last party! Daphne is like, oh, so you hold any girl’s hair? And she walks off. Oh, fuck you, Skam France. Of course they’re going with Basile and Daphne. Lol at them trying to pretend Basile is a totally new character and not French Magnus when we get this subplot.

Basile is dismayed. Arthur says jealousy is a good sign. GODDAMMIT. This pairing is fucked up, I don’t care if I sound like a humorless uptight meanie SJW. It’s full of sexist tropes. Basile does not take no for a fucking answer, he’s disgusted and bothered Daphne over and over again, but she’s going to fall for him because he held her hair back one time. We’re just going to reward creepy male behavior because the creep didn’t actually rape her, I guess.

Lucas sees Eliott inside the house and shoves his way inside past the bouncer dude. No convincing the guy like Isak did, just shoving, which goes with his larger temper and sourer attitude. He sees Eliott talking to Lucille. But before he can get any farther, Chloe comes up and says he has no right to be here. Lucas starts to apologize for last time, and Chloe says she’s not mad about that, she’s mad that Lucas used her and treated her like a fool when he’s gay.

She outright yells, “You’re gay, Lucas!” in the middle of a crowded room so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone heard. JFC, Chloe. She is understandably pissed considering the way Lucas has played with her, but it is not okay to out someone like that. She’s being extremely careless. He seems like he’s not even totally present or hearing what she’s saying, like he seems in disbelief that she’s saying what she is. It’s a good reaction, like he’s overwhelmed by everything, and numb that she’s calling him out on what he’s denied to himself and others.

I actually could not tell if Eliott and Lucille disappeared, or if Lucas noticed that they were gone before he left the house. The way it’s filmed makes it seem like he was so rattled by Chloe that he just decided to leave. Eliott was already with Lucille so Lucas didn’t seem about to confront him (compared to Even who was not with Sonja until right as she showed up and kissed him).

So Lucas walks out and shoves Yann out of the doorway. Then shoves Basile. Then Arthur drops a comment about Lucas having a family issue, which seems … out of character, kinda. Mahdi and Isak had more of an established friction than Arthur and Lucas, AND Arthur was very supportive when Lucas first told them about his mom in episode 3. Basile was the one throwing a fit that Lucas canceled the party with the girls. I’m pretty sure that’s why people were speculating(/hoping) that Basile would be the one to get punched, because it was Basile with the prior issue. (But honestly, I feel like Arthur hasn’t been given a ton of characterization in the gang, and his primary role has been to egg on Basile’s pursuit of various women. For all people say Mahdi is underdeveloped? We still knew more about him at this point than Arthur, actually. We had more of a sense of his role in the group, and it didn’t seem out of nowhere that Mahdi would say that thing about Isak’s family.)

Lucas shoves Arthur against the side of the house. Yann jumps in, Arthur manages to hit Lucas in the head, which is shitty but tbh, I can’t get too mad at him since Lucas came out shoving everyone for seemingly no reason. Obviously Lucas is going through tons of shit but the boys don’t know the context, only that he’s lashing out at all of them. 

And as a final blow, as Lucas walks away from the house, he sees Eliott and Lucille kissing against the side of it. Eliott seems happy and initiating the kissing with Lucille, unlike Even who seemed to only respond and get into the kiss after Sonja initiated (and IMO, had a twinge of sadness in his reaction). So Eliott seems way more suddenly OK with Lucille and satisfied with choosing her. Which is kind of interesting because Even was the one giving more mixed signals to Isak, while Eliott seemed so much more sure he was done with Lucille and ready to move on with Lucas.

Meanwhile, Arthur is yelling about how he wants to slap Lucas and how he’s been acting like an asshole for several weeks. Would’ve been good if we got some clearer signs that Arthur was upset about it? Not super obvious, but IDK, more focus on Arthur’s reactions, or being more passive-aggressive. Obviously he could have been bottling up his resentment toward Lucas, but from a narrative perspective, it feels like there should have been more of an indication. (There is some passive-aggressiveness from him in the SM content but I didn’t feel like it really carried into the clips themselves.)

Lucas storms home alone, then starts punching a door and yelling before clutching his fist and sliding to the ground, crying. His fist is bleeding. Again, way more rage, and it seems like the full extent of all that’s happened sinks in only at the end.

Social Media/General Comments

Eliott posts a drawing of rain on his secret IG with the caption “not scared” on it. No prize for guessing what that’s about, but still, very sweet! Not just in a romantic way but a nice moment for himself, not being afraid to take his life in a new direction.

Also, Lucas posts that he’s listening to a song called “Over There, It’s Raining” which is touchingly sentimental, heh.

Chloe is PISSED and is mad about being stood up alone with a crying Lucille and says she’s not going to forget it this time, he’s taking her for a fool. Which is ominous as hell and makes it seem like her outing him is going to be more deliberate, tbh.

Basile’s party was a busy night.

The boys ask “Where’s Lucas?” on IG and document their booze/grocery shopping trip, noting from time to time that Lucas isn’t there. Dude, why isn’t Lucas there? Eliott left in the late afternoon. Anyway, Yann in particular seemed annoyed about it since he seemed to bring it up. Although they were ready to buy Lucas ice cream.

I mentioned this in the last reaction post, but I have ZERO idea why the girl squad showed up to Basile’s party when Basile has been actively creepy to Daphne and when the boy squad was just shitting on the girls a few days ago when ranking them on IG. Not just being gross and sexist in general, but shitting on Alex and Daphne and Manon in particular. I’m serious, why would you even bother with these dickheads?

Sure enough, Basile tries to get a kiss from Daphne in an IG story and she goes for Alexia instead. Why. Why. (Not her giving Alex a kiss, that’s great. Why must I watch this other nightmare of a pairing happen.)

Basile said his hot cousin was supposed to be there, but it looks like just the boy and girl squads showed up, lmao.

The absence of Lucas is so well-documented in the IG stories from this party that it goes from passive-aggressive to just plain aggressive.

NO, do NOT let Basile and Daphne leave together. Daphne is really really fucking drunk. They’ve been gone for like 30 minutes…. Daphne’s friends just let her wander off with Basile when she’s super drunk and has made it clear she doesn’t want him? JFC.

I did not worry that Basile was actually going to rape Daphne or something, because that would be way too extreme for this show in this season. I did worry that we would maybe get more “comic relief” sexual harassment that the SkamFr crew doesn’t seem to realize is harassment. Plus, in-universe we have had Basile touching girls while drunk, we’ve had him being creepy. So while my knowledge of genre/TV prevented me from thinking he’d assault her, there are completely valid reasons to be concerned for Daphne in this moment. 

The Skam France must have seen people’s horrified reactions to the Basile and Daphne content, because they broke Lucas’ POV to have a text message between the two of them. Daphne says “thanks for your help last night, you’re not so dumb (don’t tell anyone I said that)” and Basile is like, you’re welcome, hope you’re feeling better! And like … I’m relieved that this was all it was between them, but I’m still pissed this is where they’re going with it. I hate that Basile “not being so dumb” after all is going to be his redemption or whatever. This dude has been gross enough that it’s a meager consolation. It’s as if I kicked you in the face and knocked you down and then helped you stand up. One nice deed doesn’t make up for everything else.

Not to make generalizations, but: I have lots of problems with Noorhelm/William, in terms of sexist tropes, but there’s something about that storyline and his character that feels specifically like a female fantasy. I can tell a woman wrote it. Taking the bare bones of that romance: handsome rich bad boy falls for strong independent girl and changes his womanizing ways? Classic romantic trope. At its core, it’s not so different from something like Twilight, the “dangerous” guy and the one girl who’s special enough to break through his walls. It’s something that is appealing to women (not all women, obviously, but it’s disingenuous to pretend this isn’t a popular romantic dynamic.) It is appealing to women because the love interest is someone desirable.

The Basile/Daphne thing, though? Male fantasy. I can tell men were behind the camera (even if those dudes are not straight). Because I don’t think women particularly enjoy this dynamic. A gross dude who pursues a girl despite her being uninterested? Not really a fantasy that women have, that their nasty classmate or co-worker will keep trying to romance them until they’re worn down. In fact, many women have to live through this so-called fantasy and know it’s not pleasant. Basile is not portrayed as romantically desirable, and that’s not a value judgment on his attractiveness or anything, just a fact about his characterization. What I feel is that we’re supposed to align our empathy with Basile more than Daphne: the poor unlucky awkward loser who has a good heart, really, he’s just not the most skilled with girls. And that’s why it seems like it’s a male fantasy. The unlucky-in-love guy is the one who will get the girl at the end of the day. It’s funny and relatable to the male writer/director/crew because, no offense, perhaps they don’t get the girl’s perspective. The societal pressure and media characterization is not the same with the genders reversed. Men are socialized not to take no for an answer, to think that they are entitled to women’s affection.

Anyway, I really don’t think they expected some of the backlash to Basile and to Basile/Daphne, they probably figured it would be funny, like Magnus/Vilde, ignoring that Magnus/Vilde did not have the same consent issues and harassment. So in S4 it’s likely we’ll get more wacky Basile/Daphne antics and TMI, since they don’t have time to take the viewer feedback into account before they film the season.

Lucas trying to get Eliott’s attention by sending him a picture of a baby hedgehog is really cute. He also embraces that hedgehog motif by posting a pic of one on IG. I find that really endearing, like he’s latching onto something Eliott said about it, he’s making it meaningful. It reminds me a lot of Even latching onto every single thing Isak did and making it a Thing between them.

Meanwhile, Eliott had a shit time - he didn’t reply to Lucas at all, it seems, although Even replied briefly to Isak after he left, even though he didn’t give clear answers to why he’d gone. Eliott is instead posting pics of My Own Private Idaho alluding to his rough situation, saying everything will be all right, and then showing his raccoon fursona behind a brick wall after Lucas tells him that crap about not wanting mentally ill people in his life. Which is way too sad than anything involving a cute cartoon raccoon has the right to be.

There’s an IG story of Mika and Manon book shopping, referring to their “common passion” and mentioning a gay author, which makes me think they went shopping for LGBT-related books in relation to what’s happening with Lucas. I mean I guess their common passion could just be books in general, but I like the idea of them trying to find ways to help Lucas.

Mika also makes an IG post after the Pride clip about respecting “queens” and LGBT elders for their sacrifices and all the shit they’ve had to go through. It’s a more structured way of what he was expressing to Lucas in the clip and would have made for a great speech, although I think it makes sense for him to be angrier in the heat of the moment, and then this is him gathering his thoughts afterward, when he has more time to think about what to say. Great post, though.

After the end of the episode, Eliott posts some sketches of his raccoon and Lucille the cat being all cuddly, which I think were deleted later because I can no longer see them? But I think they’re the same sketches he had done earlier in the season, pre-Lucas, so it’s like him going back to the status quo, same as before, by getting back with Lucille.

Yann posted a pic where Basile and Arthur are happy and Lucas is so blatantly miserable that it feels like a parody, why the fuck would Yann even post that if he’s concerned about Lucas’ well-being. 

I’m not French so please feel free to clarify or correct me if I missed something.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

[abitterlifethroughcinema]

                                            “Villains of Verano”

                    WOKE! Film Reviews for a Hot Time in the City

                                                          by                                    

                                              Lucas A Cavazos

No summer cinema season is complete without some bad guys and gals to muck things up oh just so right. These three films have just hit our movie screens, and while they don’t necessarily run circles round a boogeyman, they surely do make it easy to despise a few characters. Let’s

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood #### Quite likely one of the finest films I’ve seen all year, Quentin Tarantino’s latest film burst into Spanish cinemas this week, and I do declare that this is perhaps some of the most fun he has had making one of his celluloid, revenge opuses in years. Why, you ask? Because he gets to return to the envisioned Hollywood of his childhood and in this way, we the viewers get to escape into an idealised late 60s Los Angeles. Starring Leo DiCaprio, who plays former TV Western actor Rick Dalton, as well as, Brad Pitt as his stalwart driver and stunt double, Cliff Booth, director Tarantino takes us into the hills to his Cielo Drive home and lets comical magic just flow. What we then learn is that his next door neighbours are Roman Polanski and his young actress and beautiful wife, Sharon Tate, played to utmost perfection by my newest fave actress over the last few years, Margot Robbie. It is certainly important to state that Tarantino more than takes his time giving us plenty to think about. I’ve heard that DiCaprio would not permit workers on set to look him in the eyes, even when speaking to him…only other actors of his ilk. If that is so, and it likely is, fuck him, but boy does the director do his fair job making us look at our own desperate attempts to not be left stuck in the past when we so want to be relevant in the here and now. DiCaprio plays this fear to utter success and there are so many joyously hilarious scenes that should earn him a spot on actors’ awards lists later this year, assuredly. But it’s the scenes with Pitt as Cliff that engage us and ingratiate us more into the goings-on of the time and just how easily Tarantino starts to play historian and detailing the scenes of US-American life via California, long before it was a Democratic/liberal haven. Using Pitt in his car, we meet some of the guys and gals that were clamouring together at the Spahn Ranch, and we even meet Charlie Manson for a quick spell. And one gets roused by the way Tarantino also tips his hat to filmmakers of yesteryear, players like Sergio Leone or the silly minds behind Sharon Tate’s film Wrecking Crew, nothing lost on me, and he paints a picture that definitely comes across as nostalgia gone all-too-real. When the finale presents itself, and it does so on an evening that hints at incorporating a good time and all next to Polanski’s compound, we kind of know what we are in for, but naturally Tarantino loves to paint history to his own liking. We then determine who lives on and who doesn’t. One thing should be known: Tarantino and his oeuvre will continue to live on proudly…Loves!

Cold Pursuit ###  Oh Liam Neeson, we verily know thee…If you think that this is just another over-55/60 year-old, angry dad getting revenge movie that the actor’s been so famous for the last decade, you’d be right. If you think that this may be the last in the tired genre that he can possibly eke out to moderate success, you’d also be very correct! As it stands now, the film which cost roughly $60 million to make has only recuperated $75 million in its worldwide box office. Let it be known that a film, in order to be considered financially successful, in this millennial digi-age in which we live, a film must garner two-and-a-half to three times more than its total budget. To have a varied cast that also includes Laura Dern as Neeson’s wife, as well as, TV faves Emmy Rossum and Tom Bateman, you certainly lack not for having a set of decent, emotionally-charged actors. The challenge with this hopefully last of the Livid & Vengeful Neeson series is that we dive so quickly and head-long into his pursuit of the band of no-goodniks who attacked his family and thereby set off the action which the film follows. Norwegian film director Hans Petter Moland remakes his own film from five years back, merely changing the main character’s name from Nils Dickman to Neeson’s Nels Coxman. Phallic naming aside, the film’s Denver setting does little to paint a picaresque action film and instead, stays true to the Neeson theme of late, pursuing him as he pursues those responsible for his family member’s demise until he slowly makes his way to the top drug lord. How this ski-lift plow man has the skills to bust up a ring like this and simply murder away is beyond anyone, except perhaps the Native Americano thugs thrown in for, I suppose, PC measure although that falls flat. In the end, what we get is a sometimes engaging, sometimes too formulaic film and a pile of mob boss and Native American villains do nothing to enhance the fun. Over it…NEXT!

Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw ###-1/2… Say what you will about this interminable franchise as one must certainly have an opinion about this modern testosterone putz-fest by now, but man alive, do they serve up incredible, often impeccable, action sequences that either keep you at the edge of or throw you right the hell off of your seat. A couple of flicks ago, we had to say our goodbyes to poor Paul Walker after his uncannily and ill-fated final car ride demise. Since then, the last F&F was a sad complaint of a film, cast members had a series of rows and since Dwayne Johnson is also a businessman, his smart self decided to screw over shmuck Vin Diesel and silly-ass Tyrese and buddy up with charming Brit Jason Statham and POOF!... another branch of the series is born! This time around, we focus on a more comical, emotional and familial Hobbs and Shaw as, early on, we see a split-screen sequence between their US/UK lives, but soon enough after that, the action gets legit lit when we’re introduced to Shaw’s sister and criminal Hattie (Vanessa Kirby) who has been in possession of a fast-acting super-virus which can jelly one’s guts instantly. Throw in eye candy delight Idris Elba and a Robin Hood-esque attempt at “saving humanity’ from the spread of this virus only serves to boost the action and fun when we realise we’re also up against a real villain of verano, which in this case is a big tech demon called Etheon. As all my readers know, I despise spoilers so all I can say is that, even when the film cuts to a boring scene or two, it is the symbiotic nature and wittiness between the main characters that keep you smiling and highly convinced that F&F should be put to rest please and the mid-life crises adventures of Hobbs and Shaw should slide easily into its place…perhaps served up with non-stop celeb cameos and hot cars as always.

[one-of-us-blog]

SPECTRE (2015)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap 2015’s SPECTRE, the twenty-fourth and final (for now) James Bond adventure. 007 has been put through the ringer over the course of these last few movies, but now it’s all come down to this. Can Bond unmask the shadowy puppet master who’s been pulling the strings this whole time? Can he find out who’s been manipulating not only himself and MI6 but the whole world? When the time comes, will he want to?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, I can’t believe you’ve done it, you madman! You can now say you’ve watched every single episode of The Golden Girls and The Golden Palace. What a coup! I’m extremely proud of you, and you’ve done an amazing job with your recaps over the years. I know you still have one more post to go, but you should give yourself a well-earned pat on the back! And hey, mister, this duo’s got two powerhouses and their names are You and Me!

Buttocks tight!

Screenplay by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade & Jez Butterworth, film directed by Sam Mendes

We start off with a traditional barrel shot, which it feels like we haven’t seen in forever, and then we get a menacing quote about the dead being alive. We cut to an absolutely banging Día de Muertos celebration in Mexico City, where Bond, decked out in full skeletal garb, is led to a hotel room by a hot-to-trot Mexican lady. Bond’s only interested in her hotel room because he can use the window to get out on the roof, much to her disappointment. From the roof he can see into another building where a shady deal is going down. He snipes a few henchmen but then a bomb goes off in the room and the whole damn building comes crashing down, taking part of Bond’s hotel with it. I sure hope that lady got out in time! The man Bond was actually after, Marco Sciarra (Alessandro Cremona), survived the explosion, and Bond chases him out into the Black Parade. A helicopter is coming to collect Sciarra, but Bond boards it right after him and gets in an aerial fight with Sciarra and the helicopter pilot. Bond yanks a ring off Sciarra’s finger before kicking him out of the ‘copter to his death, then kicks the pilot out for good measure and barely manages to get the helicopter under control before it crashes into the parade-goers. Bond flies toward Mexico City proper and notices a stylized octopus on the ring he took off of Sciarra.

With that high-flying action behind us, we cut to our opening credits as Sam Smith, the first gay to ever win an Oscar, sings “Writing’s on the Wall”. A nude bond is felt up by some fiery ladies as a spooky octopus waves its tentacles around menacingly. Also, there’s some full-on hentai shit going on as some naked ladies get felt up by more octopi.

C’mon, I don’t need to be Samuel L. Jackson to know tentacle porn when I see it. In addition to this flagrant display of fetishes, we also get some call backs from the last few movies. We see smoky visions of Vesper Lynd and Le Chiffre from Casino Royale, Raoul Silva from Skyfall and even the late, great Dench-brand M. I guess Dominic Greene from Quantum of Solace was too busy to come in that day, huh? From here things get very amateur-filmmaker-going-into-their-first-year-of-film-school-with-a-big-chip-on-their-shoulder as Bond and a woman make their way through a motionless crowd of people and embrace while a massive octopus with a skull-with-eyes for a head looms over them and the nonexistent film strip melts. Bond prepares to shoot someone, but an adorable baby octopus envelops his gun and turns his bullet into ink, which zooms through a crowd of sexy naked ladies. We get shots of a board meeting overseen by a cecaelia and some body horror in the form of an iris made of tentacles (which is actually a pretty cool shot) before we head back to wear it all began with a nude Bond being felt up by some fiery ladies.

With that hour-long sequence behind us we jump to MI6 HQ, where Bond is getting reamed by M (née Gareth Mallory) over the destruction he caused in Mexico. Turns out Bond was going a bit rogue, and M has no idea what Bond was doing in Mexico City. Bond refuses to tell M what he was doing south of the border, and M takes Bond off active duty. Bond meets Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott), the head of the new Joint Intelligence Service whom Bond dubs ‘C’. C seems friendly enough, but M informs bond that he’s intent on dismantling the 00 program for good.

Miss Moneypenny catches up to Bond and delivers him a box of stuff MI6 managed to recover from Skyfall. Bond has Moneypenny deliver the box to his spartan apartment, where he shows her a tape from the late M telling him to hunt down and kill Sciarra. She also notes that he should attend Sciarra’s funeral, which is in three days. Moneypenny points out that the current M won’t sign off on that, but Bond’s not worried about that. He needs Moneypenny to do a little digging for him and investigate a name he heard in Mexico: The Pale King.

Moneypenny leaves and Bond sifts through the stuff from Skyfall, finding an odd, partially burnt picture of him as a boy with a mysterious man and an unknown young man. Bond heads to the Q Branch, where Q implants a tracker in his arm on the orders of M. Q then shows off an amazing new car, which it turns out is actually for the mysterious 009, and gives Bond a normal, totally non-gadgety watch instead. Bond convinces a reluctant Q to make his tracker go on the fritz so he can sneak off to Sciarra’s funeral and heads off to run some errands. He drops Moneypenny and a thank you note and a conspicuous cell phone, then breaks into Q Branch, steals 009’s car and a big gun.

He arrives at Sciarra’s funeral in Rome and immediately puts the moves on the dead man’s widow, Lucia (Monica Bellucci). Lucia rebuffs Bond’s advances, but he later saves her from some assassins at her house and she tells him her husband belonged to a shadowy cabal of businessmen before they fuck the pain away (Peaches. “Fuck the Pain Away.” The Teaches of Peaches, Kitty-Yo, 2000. MP3.). Lucia tells Bond where this shadowy cabal is meeting, and he heads that way despite her warnings that he’s definitely going to get killed. He uses Sciarra’s ring to gain access to the meeting, and he witnesses the group planning all sorts of untoward and illegal activities. Bond notices the chair at the head of the table is empty, though that soon ceases to be a problem as the head honcho (Christoph Waltz), shrouded in shadow, arrives and takes his seat.

The group moves onto discuss the death of Sciarra, and one of the businessmen argues that they should scrap the plot Sciarra was working on. That businessman is promptly killed by Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista), a hulking beast with metal thumbnails that he uses to gouge out the unfortunate dissenter’s eyes. With that display of power over, the man in the shadows calls out Bond by name. He hints at a past connection with Bond, and reveals his face. Bond seems to recognize him, but he’s set upon by various henchmen and barely manages to make it to 009’s car. He sets off through the streets of Rome with Mr. Hinx in hot pursuit. Bond thinks this is a good time to give Moneypenny a call and finds out that the Pale King is in fact Mr. White (remember him?). He asks Moneypenny to look into a man named Franz Oberhauser, who’s supposed to be dead. With that out of the way Bond gets back to the whole chase thing, and finally gives Mr. Hinx the slip by using the ejector seat in 009’s car before he drives it into a canal.

In Tokyo, C is advocating the Nine Eyes program, which would unite the globe under unprecedented surveillance. M secretly votes against Nine Eyes being enacted, then he receives news about Bond’s car crash in Rome. He orders Q to track Bond down, and Q reports that Bond is in Altaussee, Austria. Bond’s tracked down Mr. White with Moneypenny’s help, and it’s finally time to give that wily rascal his comeuppance. Or, well, it would be if a gnarly case of thallium poisoning hadn’t done most of the work for Bond. White explains that Oberhauser has ordered his assassination because White had a problem with him taking their work, which was always pretty bad, in a much darker direction with a lot of innocent bystanders getting hurt. Bond demands to know where he can find Oberhauser, but White says Oberhauser is everywhere. Bond deduces that White is trying to protect his daughter; White tells Bond to find her, and if he keeps her safe she’ll take him to someone called L’Américain so he can find Oberhauser. White then eats a bullet from Bond’s gun, and Bond leaves.

Back in London, C reveals to M that he’s bugged Moneypenny’s phone so he knows Bond was headed to Austria. Right about that time, Mr. Hinx arrives at the dead White’s house. Bond arrives at the office of White’s daughter, a psychiatrist named Dr. Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) Bond informs Dr. Swann about her father’s death, but she refuses to take him to L’Américain. Bond goes to a bar where he’s met by Q, who informs him that all hell is breaking loose in London. He tells him Franz Oberhauser is dead, and that he and Moneypenny are both going to get screwed if Bond doesn’t get his shit together and come home. Bond gives that idea a pass, and instead gives Q Sciarra’s ring to investigate. Bond is about to be escorted away by security when he sees Dr. Swann being kidnapped by Mr. Hinx and some nondescript goons.

Bond just can’t keep his feet on the ground in this movie, so he steals a little plane and pursues Mr. Hinx et al. Q, meanwhile, is having problems of his own. He’s been hacking away at the mainframe inside Sciarra’s ring, unaware that he was totally about to be assassinated by a pair of henchmen. He’s only saved by the arrival of a bunch of ski bunnies in the cable car he and the assassins are on. Bond uses his plane to crash one of the cars in Mr. Hinx’s entourage, and the sound of the explosion is enough of a distraction for Q to slip away from his would-be assassins and hide in a closet. After a rather rough landing involving a crash through a barn, Bond rescues Dr. Swann. She’s not thrilled about the idea of working with him, but he convinces her to tag along as he goes to meet up with Q.

Q’s managed to hack into the ring, which reveals that several important figures from past movies, including Le Chiffre, Patrice, Mr. White, Sciarra, Raoul Silva and Dominic Greene (who gets shown on Q’s screen but apparently doesn’t warrant being mentioned by name, which is really making him feel like the middle child of this criminal underworld), are all linked together by Franz Oberhauser. Q doesn’t know what this collection of hoodlums is called, but Dr. Swann does: SPECTRE. Oh shiiiiiii

Dr. Swann finally spills the tea on L’Américain. Turns out it’s not a person, but a hotel. Specifically a hotel in Tangier, Morocco, which is where Bond and Dr. Swann head while Q goes back to London. Dr. Swann checks into a room that her father would always check into, and Bond begins to dismantle it in search of some kind of clue or message while Dr. Swann gets shitfaced on wine like a soccer mom with a kid-free afternoon. After Dr. Swann passes out Bond gets a hot tip from a mouse he has an intimate moment with and discovers a secret room connected to the hotel room. The room is littered with pictures of Dr. Swann as a baby, as well as a VHS that apparently recorded Vesper Lynd getting interrogated, but more importantly it holds a set of coordinates which lead to Oberhauser’s base in the Sahara.

Back in London, C has gone behind M’s back and gotten Nine Eyes approved. He’s also gotten the 00 program shut down, which M is understandably not thrilled about. Meanwhile, Bond and Dr. Swann board a train headed for Oberhauser’s hideout. Bond tries to mansplain guns to Dr. Swann, but she’s a badass in her own right and doesn’t need any lessons from him. They begin to Bond, but this is interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Hinx. Mr. Hinx beats Bond’s ass up and down the train, but Bond and Dr. Swann working together are able to get him yeeted out of the train by a rope around his neck. They then have sex, because of course, before arriving at a deserted waystation on the Sahara. They have to wait a while, but eventually a car comes to collect them and takes them to a secret hideout located inside a crater.

In a very Dr. No-esque scene, Bond and Dr. Swann are greeted politely by Oberhauser’s staff and sent to bespoke swanky rooms (after Bond turns over his gun). In Dr. Swann’s room she finds a picture of herself and her dad, and in Bond’s picture he finds an unburnt copy of that picture that was recovered from Skyfall. Turns out the mysterious other young man who was standing with baby Bond and that unknown man was none other than a young Oberhauser. Dr. Swann and Bond are taken to meet with Oberhauser, who shows off the meteorite that made the crater he’s built his base in. He gives a heavy-handed monologue comparing himself to the meteorite before he gives them a tour of his facility. The tour culminates in a room full of people monitoring news stations and hidden security camera feeds, including one hidden in MI6. Bond deduces that C works for Oberhauser, and Oberhauser’s been striving to dismantle the 00 program.

Oberhauser describes himself as the author of all Bond’s pain and takes credit for the deaths of Vesper Lynd and the previous M. He confirms that Le Chiffre, Greene and Silva all worked for him, and then he plays a recording of Mr. White’s suicide to torment Dr. Swann. Bond is knocked out, and he wakes up he’s strapped to a chair as Oberhauser prepares to fiddle around with his brain. Also, just to give the game away, we get a shot of a certain signature white cat. Dr. Swann is forced to watch while Oberhauser drills into Bond’s brain, and when she demands to know why Oberhauser is doing this he launches into some backstory. Turns out the guy from the photograph is Oberhauser’s father; after Bond was orphaned at a young age Oberhauser’s dad took him in and asked Oberhauser to think of him as a little brother. Bond and Oberhauser’s dad formed a strong connection, so Oberhauser killed his own father out of jealously and faked his own death. As you do. He tells Bond that Franz Oberhauser really did die in an avalanche alongside his father, and the man now torturing Bond is Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Hey, it’s been a while (sort of)!

Blofeld begins to drill into Bond’s brain again, this time with the intention of destroying the part of his brain that lets him recognize faces. Why not! Bond is able to pass the watch Q gave to him forever ago to Dr. Swann, and it turns out there’s a bomb in that little sucker. Blofeld is caught up in the explosion but Dr. Swann is able to free Bond from his restraints and the two beat feet out of there. Bond sets off another explosion which destroys Blofeld’s entire facility, and then, because Bond’s feet have been on the ground way too long, he and Dr. Swann fly off in a helicopter.

Bond and Dr. Swann arrive in London, where they meet with M in secret. Bond lets M know that C is dirty, and they plan to take care of him. Dr. Swann can’t handle being part of all this cloak and dagger stuff anymore, so she peaces out while Bond, M, Moneypenny and Q head off to TCOB. This super squad lasts about a minute before the car carrying M and Bond gets t-boned. M manages to slip away, but Bond is taken prisoner. Q and Moneypenny pick up M while Bond manages to take out two goons with his head in a sack and his hands tied together. M and Q try to keep C’s Nine Eyes system from going online confront the traitor in his office while Bond navigates the ruins of the former MI6 HQ in search of Blofeld.

Bond finds Blofeld safely encapsulated behind some bulletproof glass. The explosion from earlier has given him his trademark scar and milky eye, and he informs Bond that he’s once again captured Dr. Swann. He’s wired the building with explosives, and Bond only has three minutes before they go TF off. Bond can either waste time trying to find Dr. Swann or he can save himself and escape. Blofeld triggers the countdown and heads out, leaving Bond to search for Dr. Swann. Q manages to keep Nine Eyes from going off, but M and C scuffle and C falls to his death. Bond catches sight of Blofeld getting away in a helicopter (the helicopter budget for this movie must have been off the chain), but he manages to rescue Dr. Swann and the two make it outside as the building explodes behind them.

Bond, riding in a speedboat, manages to shoot Blofeld’s helicopter out of the sky with a handgun. Let that sink in for a minute. The helicopter crashes, but Blofeld survives and escapes the wreckage. Unfortunately he scuttles right into Bond’s path, and Bond prepares to execute him. Blofeld urges him to finish it, but Bond declines and turns Blofeld over to M while he goes to meet Dr. Swann instead. Blofeld watches Bond and Dr. Swann walk away together as M informs him he’s being arrested.

Some time later, Bond arrives in Q Branch and gets the newly rebuilt old-timey car so he and Dr. Swann can drive off in style.

The End

~~~~~

Man, I know I’ve complained about how long these movies can get before, but I really wasn’t prepared for this puppy. To start off with some things I liked, I thought Mr. Hinx was a neat henchman and it feels like it’s been a long time since we had a good goon with a physical quirk like his metal thumbnails. It was fun to see some gadgets at play, and in a lot of ways this movie felt like a nod to classic, cheesier Bond films as opposed to the grittier, more realistic movies that have preceded it. I liked Dr. Swann a lot, and I appreciated that M, Q and Moneypenny all got stuff to do instead of just meeting with Bond before he jets off on his adventure and they’re left in the office. Now, I’ve got to comment on Blofeld… First of all, it’s neat to have him, and SPECTRE, back in the game after such a long absence. But why they heck did they need to make it so he and Bond grew up together? And Blofeld has built this entire criminal empire just because he had daddy issues and he was jealous of Bond? There has to be more to him than that! Also, I hated that Silva got turned into a henchman for SPECTRE. It was pretty blatantly stated that both Le Chiffre and Greene were part of a larger organization so I don’t mind them getting retconned into Blofeld’s agents, but Silva’s vendetta against the late M felt so personal and it doesn’t make sense to me that he was working for someone else. A lot of this movie was fun and I enjoyed most of it, but if I think about the motivations behind it all for even a little bit then the whole thing comes apart. This isn’t the worst Bond movie by any means (lookin’ at you, Thunderball), but it feels like it did a disservice to its immediate predecessors and didn’t come anywhere near the heights of Casino Royale or Skyfall.

I give SPECTRE QQQ on the Five Q Scale.

I can’t believe it, but there aren’t going to be any new recaps after that! We did it, Eli! Well, almost. Eli’s going to do a final post recapping his thoughts on his time spent with the Girls in The Golden Girls and The Golden Palace, and after that I’ll put up a post summing up my final thoughts on the James Bond franchise.

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for joining us on this wild ride and thank you for being One of Us!

[shaykeijser]

riverdale 2x16

 here are my thoughts/reactions to this weeks episode that no one asked for, which will include spoilers (obviously) so i’m putting them under the cut. i’ve already watched the episode so these aren’t my first reactions technically but they’ll be the same. 

caution: i’m not a fan of jughead or the core four. so i’ll be poking fun/getting annoyed at them.

- why did betty not go straight to alice with the dna test? why would she give chic, who she thinks is capable of hurting her, the opportunity to last out at her? i also still don’t get why she didn’t just get a normal dna test. like you’re a journalist, get the full truth, not just some of it

- i fucking called it!! why do ya think hal wanted nothing to do with chic? remember when he said “you’re letting this stranger into our house”? he wouldn’t call his own son a stranger

- fp is the dad and that’s the facts (that wouldn’t make bughead wrong don’t even try to defend that)

- chic is such a good creep IM LIVING FOR IT

- if it wasn’t a for-profit prison it wouldn’t be the worst idea. but it is so :///

- southside high was falling apart at the seems. the old students were aware of that and were plenty happy to go away! yes the lodge’s had other intentions with shutting down the school, but overall it was a good thing. there’s other, more valid reasons to not like the prisons that aren’t being talked about!!

- lol we know that veronica running for stuco wouldn’t end up well

- fred getting more screen time <333 (even if i don’t totally agree with him)

- does everybody at this school watch the same tv shows how is jughead quoting scandal (which i had to google) universally understood? i’m actually a sophomore and my friends and i quote vines.

- why isn’t ronnie defending herself? she gave that look to archie so he could defend her. where did kick ass veronica i don’t take no shit’ lodge go??

- ‘hunger strike for southside high’ BOI 

- ‘for it to re-open’ i had to pause this when i first watched this scene. he went there for like 2 weeks. toni was his only true friend for the majority of it. he didn’t like the idea of it and didn’t like what he had to do to survive there. the other students were happy with it closing!! why you gotta be so extra?? and if he really wants to get out of riverdale to be a writer he shouldn’t be trying to go back to a school that had teachers who gave up hope on their students

- ew ethel (i was eh with her all together but i’m still >:( over how she got mad at veronica for what hiram did to her father. veronica was one of the only people who was comforting her and tried to make amends. we can’t forget that when that all was going down veronica didn’t like her dad)

- WHY ARE KEVIN AND JOSIE SITTING ALONE

- wait jk i remembered 

- HAHAHA ok i’m josie (don’t get me wrong i like veronica and is the only tolerable lead for me atm but that slushie thing is really funny. it was sorta uncalled for, but she is working with her father soz)

- props to veronica for being the bigger person in this scenario

- 'what are the odds your father’s gonna be the first inmate in that prison?’ #boomroasted #thatwasatheofficereference #didanyonegetit

- lol at least veronica kept her cool for a little bit (go her btw)

- MY POOR CHERYL NO

- mama blossom is shady and nana rose is sassy

- that tea’s gonna be poison i’m calling it

- why would ethel’s dad want a job at the prison? he was a businessman

- veronica’s own parents are threatening her UGH

- power to veronica for wanting to run but this isn’t gonna end well

- TONI’S HOT & even if her audition flopped cheryl still would’ve made her member #lovemybabies

- tbh i didn’t like the lodges being the main plot point and i’d still prefer for the serpents to get more screentime than them BUT this is getting interesting

- drag him archie

- i want to see other south siders fighting for this why does jughead get to be the leader of this revolution (that i’m here for!! except for the school thing bc it doesn’t make sense)

- y’all have been having friendship problems since the ms. gr**** thing i think the trains have been getting closer than you think jug

- FINALLY, THE CHONI I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

- something bad is gonna happen to cheryl i’m calling it, and nana rose

- (about what betty said after cheryl opened up) betty let chic into her and her family’s life can she not just be cautious from a distance and let her mom enjoy having her son back

- of course toni’s in the bed you sly little bird cheryl

- y’all gonna fuck? kidding this the cw that’s only for het couples

- THEY GONNA KISS AWE

- ok fuck why can’t we have some happiness for once

- penelope and claudius pushed her, i mean penelope had obviously prepared a back up plan incase she didn’t die (mentioning sundowners syndrome)

- #ProtectCherylBlossom

- aw archie’s mom is back i’m happy 

- YES SCHOOL THAT BOY FOR DISRESPECTING FRED GO MAMA ANDREWS

- charles melton looks really hot with a bruised face oi oi (so does jordan connor)

- that lowkey sounds like a bribe veronica.... 

- fang, toni, and pea are in this scene?? new favorite scene

- honestly, if any other serpent was the one in jugheads spot i think i would be all for it lmao

- i thought mary (andrews) was gonna also give archie the safe sex talk that he archie never got dang

- mary’s giving good advice though let’s just hope archie will listen to it

- I LOVE KEVIN 

- kevin had the right to tell chic, she was the one who forced him into the poorly planned catfishing (like seriously - she shouldn’t have been there and they shouldn’t have done it at a school). kevin has barely got any good storylines that actually continue and i’m so damn happy that he’s sticking up for himself. betty only reaches out to him when she needs help.

- betty talking about her darkness and saying ‘darkness’ in general is the most cringey thing ever. she has some sort of mental illness. i don’t know what but they shouldn’t have taken this ‘darkness inside of me’ approach.

- i wish V tried to become josie’s friend before asking her for an endorsement. actually, i wish the show resolved their friendship ages ago. they’re the one of the few WOC and overall i’m tired of girl x girl friendships being ruined like this

- it’s got so bad that veronica had to bribe josie to endorse her. i know this isn’t gonna go well

- sweet pea looking like an out of focus snack <333

- DRAG HIM JUGHEAD (lol you can tell how much i don’t like archie being up hiram’s ass that i’m praising jughead)

- give betty cooper therapy, you cowards

- ‘i caught the black hood’ bitch no you didn’t that hoe still out there & i’m taking that theory to the grave

- sheriff keller woah i forgot about him

- my boy fp!!

- omfg imagine when betty tells jughead that chic’s dad isn’t hal they better have him be like “...what if it’s mine” (i just realized that sorta sounds like jughead saying ‘what if the kid aka chic is mine’ and that’s not what i meant, i meant that chic’s dad is jughead’s dad but that made me laugh so i’m keeping it)

- oh sHIT something’s gonna happen @ this concert/rally for veronica’s campaign thing

- kevin’s filming it yeps something’s happening

- ope i knew it ethel is passing papers out 

- woop there it is

- i don’t ~really~ get why betty’s mad 

- JOSIE’S APART OF IT WTF I DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING but i should have :(

- this show tries to be all about female empowerment but then they have two girls banding together to bully an already manipulated and hurting girl. smh

- again, i don’t ~really~ get why betty can’t trust her anymore

- :((( i feel so bad for ronnie. she’s being manipulated by her parents and i really want her out of lodge industries. she’s taking blame for the shit that her parents have done

- THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

- HAHAHAA THE WIG OH MY GOD

- “i was guessing” congrats betty, you’ve played yourself

- the offer that hiram made to fp actually sounds nice :((( if only he wasn’t so shady 

- archie is so far up hiram’s ass he sounds exactly like him

- YOU GO MARY! SCHOOL YO CHILD

- finally a parent (alice) talks bout safe sex to their kid (betty)!!! my mom is gonna be so happy when she watches this episode (yes i watch riverdale with my mom, no it’s not awkward during sex scenes because we watch every show together so we’re used to it)

- “absolutely not.” keep telling that to yourself alice

- alice cooper is my favorite cooper

- “he’s dangerous.” bitch so are you? you held a lighter up to his face?

- i thought alice killed that drug dealer is that what betty is saying he did

- cheryl doesn’t have red lipstick on in this hospital scene something’s gonna happen

- nana was being poisoned by the tea :((

- i guess i’m remembering this wrong i thought alice shot him (about the scene in chic’s room)

- how did betty not remember that he didn’t touch anything

- CHERYL DROP AND ROLL OUT OF THAT CAR NOW

- look at archie being all smart aw

- why is betty next to kevin?? stay away from my baby (kevin)

- this scene is actually really powerful? even though them chaining themselves to the school is a repetitive and cliche thing to do, the aesthetics and the filming of it is really cool

- can we see all those young serpents more often pls

- what is jughead talking about why does he think they’re gonna lose riverdale high? is it because of veronica running? bc no one’s gonna vote for her after those flyers

- uGH i can see him being a good president

- why is betty so done with her and veronica’s friendship? i really don’t get why she’s so mad at her?

- jughead, betty, and fp all living together. that’s a concept

- SOMEONE WRITE A HEADCANON OF ALICE BUSTING INTO THE TRAILER TO GET BETTY BACK AND THEN WE GET SOME CUTE FALICE ANGST

- i’m happy mary’s staying bc maybe with her around we’ll get more fred screen time #canyoutellilovefred

- FUCK YEAH FRED IS RUNNING

- toni topaz is the caring type of girlfriend who goes to her girl’s house when they aren’t in school pass it on!!

- but really though where is cheryl what are they doing to her

- CHERYL DOESN’T DESERVE THIS SHE’S BEEN EMOTIONALLY ABUSED FOR YEARS AND HAS LOST A BROTHER, FATHER, AND BEST FRIEND 

main takeaways

~ veronica is being manipulated by her parents and doesn’t deserve half of the shit that’s getting thrown at her

~ jughead is still cringey and extra

~ toni is the girlfriend of all of our dreams let’s be honest here

~ cheryl blossom doesn’t deserve this bullshit

~ betty cooper is mentally ill

~ chic is fp and alice’s son

~ #FredForMayor

[ratherhavetheblues]

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘ FROM THE LIFE OF THE MARIONETTES’ “Weak people choose strange paths…”

© 2020 by James Clark

   The films of Ingmar Bergman have elicited from his loyalists a bemusing history. At the point where a consensus about the remarkableness of his skills and heart was at full tide, there also began to occur some battle fatigue in face of waves of other demanding presences of his. A pantheon readily arose, by way of influential critics who jumped to the idea that the mother lode had been reached and that the latter flood was secondary and not worth the strain. That Bergman began to produce films by way of television, also seemed a sign of losing it. (Also a sign of the viewers’ easily losing it, was the myopia about films predating 1957, regarded, if at all, as quirkily overreaching.)

For what it might have meant, the television series of Scenes from a Marriage (1973) became a last hiccup before finding other entertainments to go with popcorn. The soap opera (with a difference), in question, displays a couple of patricians and their on-again, off-again liaison, ad nauseam. But Bergman-being-Bergman, he inserts another couple, very different from the silver spoons. The protagonists host a dinner party for their friends, Peter and Katarina, who proceed to humiliate each other. After the hosts are rid of them, they stage a rededication to their superiority. “Peter and Katarina don’t speak the same language. We speak the same language…” Peter and Katarina, played by different actors, in German rather than Swedish, resurface in the 1980 film, From the Life of the Marionettes, in order to elaborate what heterogeneity can look like and feel like. Peter, another silver spoon, manages to remain another Peter Pan. His malaise with a Katarina drawn from one of his staffers, drives him to butcher a prostitute, perform necrophilia upon her and end up in a mental hospital holding his teddy bear. His wife is left to be an adult. Few of the original loyalists would have seen this film. Too bad, because it’s easily as brilliant as Scenes from a Marriage and any of the other films thought to be great.

The immediate shock, so unlike Bergman’s usual sophisticated procedure, signals, I think, a new form of traction bidding to surmount the dilemmas of a perverse planet. Doing something that new, the project would suggest, might occasion a rich departure.

Therefore the film today begins with the savagery meted to an anonymous  (but eventually named) young girl becoming, in a coward’s eyes, an enemy army. The first we see of her is a close-up of her lips having been heavily covered with scarlet lipstick, along with a necklace of cheap tags, resembling a dog collar. (This imagery will pay dividends, later.)  Then the attacker whispers, “I’m tired…”  Long after the presentation of the hooker’s demise, we’re given a second look at the preamble to the horror. She tells him, “I don’t smell anything anymore… When I was a kid, my mother would take me to see her parents in Denmark. I remember how the seasons smelled. Winter… winter smelled like snow, coal stoves and wet gloves. And summer smelled like seaweed and ant hills. Spring smelled like melting ice and snow in ditches… budding Easter catkins and rain. But the autumn was the most beautiful of all…” She notices that Peter’s fallen asleep (that being a familiar “glitch,” when a heart was vividly at its best). She comes over and kisses his cheek. “I wasn’t asleep,” the Lost Boy lies.

   The violence at the shabby brothel speaks to a hatred of nature, in someone letting fear overtake a brave and confused hope. But, as with the victim’s word-choice of “catkins” (a blossom resembling a spike), much thrilling dare and joy anoints her last moments. In his fatigue, she covers his face in a sort of benediction—her grace engaging his errancy. On the other hand, her swatch of black hair cascading over his head discloses a monstrous figure. During the explosion of his attack, small features speak to the ways of primordial action whereby intensities entail a gentle gift. As she struggles to avoid being crushed, a wash cloth appears on a clothes line. Its contours describe a bear cub. She manages to run to the concern’s stage, a vision of blood red, where two paper palm trees on the wall fail to bring a cogent dance. With each tree, however, as so often maintained, a subterranean force is called upon. Here the crazed figures crash between the trees, describing, instead of a harmony, a horror. At this moment, the coloration subsides to black and white, where many thoughts and many feelings bid for truth.

   Though not over the hill like Peter, Katarina has a tiger by the tail which she manages quite badly. Firing up his indiscretion, the body of the work consists of several vignettes regarding his policy of refusal to grow up, and particularly refusing to touch the phenomenon of death. Two weeks before decimating a large percentage of the poetry of Munich, Peter Pan sees fit to pay a visit to a family friend by the name of  Mogens Jensen, a professor of psychiatry. (At another instalment, twenty hours after the murder, that academic was quick to insist, to some kind of tribunal, that, “To be honest, I am deeply shocked. I’ve known Peter Egermann for twenty years. He is an amiable, talented, conscientious man whom everyone likes, as far as I know. He’s happily married to a hardworking career woman. He has a large circle of friends and leads a comfortable, rather modest life. A charming mother, Cordelia Egermann, the actress. His father died a while ago. His family is wealthy. His brother is a consul [in Bergman's film, Dreams [1955], a wealthy  man seeking a miracle is also a consul]. His sister is married to a businessman.”/ “No hereditary depression in his family?”/ “Not that I know of… ” [all speaking the same language, until Katarina crashed the party]. “Peter and Katarina never consulted you?”/ “It was never serious. Nothing Valium couldn’t cure…” [This interplay includes the doctor’s large collection of African sculptures, seemingly the antithesis of classical rational logic.]) Peter admits, “There have been many long nights and too much drinking, recently. Besides, I am very aware of the fact that time is passing.”/ “Fear of death?” the specialist asks. Peter very ill at ease, without mentioning his fear, claims that what precisely bothers him is that he wants to kill his wife. “I’ve been carrying that idea around with me for two years.” The Valium expert, expert at circumventing death, listens to Peter’s assurances that, though both have been unfaithful, “We’re great in bed” [sounding like Johan and Marianne, in Scenes from a Marriage]. Then he reproves the conscientious man for asking, “I want you to tell me my hormones are responsible for my urge to kill her…”/ “Why did you come to me? You don’t believe in your own agony. You don’t believe in the existence of the soul…” [serious matters, but bemusingly pursued]. Peter, far gone in a relapse of bourgeois snottiness, can’t imagine what the family friend could be fussing about. Jensen continues, “Of course I’m angry. Because you have so little respect for your fear” [a paramount fear which the scientist won’t touch].  Concluding their conversation with Peter’s, “Maybe you should prescribe something for me,” the delinquent only pretends to leave the office, and, “letting himself out,” lurks in the darkened foyer, his advantageous cleverness leading him to expect the doctor to speak to Katarina. He’s wearing a woolen scarf, woolens being a flash point of the Anna of the film, The Passion of Anna (1969), who can only tolerate a mundane life and will attack at any chance to butcher carnal unruliness. On one occasion, she expresses her dislike by butchering a herd of sheep. Just before the exit, a Peter, who could feel he’d made an ass of himself, trots out a little homage to Katarina. “I’ve always loved to watch my wife, even when we hated each other. Or when she was revoltingly drunk… I’ve always loved the way she moves.” (Cut to her in their bathroom.) “She watches me in the mirror. She is lost in her own thoughts and she breathes heavily. I’m standing behind her, and I’m holding the razor in my right hand. She watches me the whole time. And now she really sees me. An imperceptible smile hovers around her lips. Now the knife slowly moves toward her throat. I can feel her slight agitation, a slight pulse at the throat…” (She smiles in seeing the now-constant clash this way.)

   While standing in the dark, Peter lines up within a lamp alight on the wall and a pronounced part of that wall. Nothing happens. Katarina, rushing to what Jensen might enlighten her, stages an opening gambit far from impressive, to wit, “Have you got anything drinkable around here?” Completing the triad, the doctor proposes her coming to Tunisia with him, on business, for six weeks. She tries for the high road with, “Why hasn’t a clever man like you realized that I love Peter?” Cut to Peter, superimposed upon three windows, the depths of which might as well be in Tunisia. Giving us a sense of the priorities of that haute couture business she runs as a sidebar for Peter, Katarina exudes studious bourgeois unflappableness. The healer perseveres, “I think it’d be a lot of fun to have an affair with you…” Showing more urgency than the first responder, she snipes, “I didn’t come here to sleep with you, but to talk about Peter… Besides, I have my period…” Neither coitus in the office nor the possibility of someone getting hurt attains to seriousness. But the surroundings themselves lift this misadventure. There are two identical table lamps and one of the pedant’s wild creatures in between. Far, unfortunately, an impressive array. The lady with unstable cares pronounces, “If Peter’s really sick, he needs me.” In that frame of melting solicitude, the caregiver declares, “I don’t know, Kat…  My intuition won’t let go of this…”/ “I also have an intuition,” she chides. Asking her what her intuition reveals, he receives a feeble strain of one-upmanship: [My intuition discloses] “that consciously or unconsciously you’re trying to figure out Peter’s and my relationship.” Despite this self-aggrandizement, she also reveals that the “relationship” is veering out of control. It veers promptly in her “relationship” of the world of classical reasoning, being so cavalierly wielded. “I’ve always been afraid of you…” This window of her intuition” curdles to the cartoonish. “Peter’s a part of me. Don’t you understand that? I carry him inside of me, no matter where I go. He’s inside me [that intuition of kinship being a vastly complex system, not amenable to whimsy].  I’ve never felt that with anyone else… If we had kids, it’d be different. He’s my child, I’m his…” (In the film, Dreams, a fashion careerist hears from a married lover of her’s that he has reached a state of affairs where he is as weak as a toy, “a worn-out teddy bear.” The connections between these two films will blossom throughout.) “No, that’s not true. We didn’t want to be clever or mature. That’s why we fight and hit each other and cry. We don’t want to grow up. But we share the same blood circulation. Our nerves have grown together in some strange, uncanny way. Can you understand that?” Her so seemingly passionate about their closeness of sensibility is far more hope than substance. In fact, her bidding, in painful truth, to be not of the same language as  Peter, carries a danger she underestimates. Her final words with Jensen here, therefore, measure her cowardly incompetence. “Whenever Peter’s not feeling well, the same happens to me. I want to run home to Peter and hold him and say, ‘Now, from now on, I’ll understand everything you say or think… everything you feel…’ I want to hold him fast until he finds me. Why the hell don’t we see each other, although we live together?”

   The next step involves her mother-in-law, a week after the murder, receiving a police investigator at her estate. “Peter was the child I’d always wanted. We were so happy. He had a wonderful childhood. Maybe it was too sheltered… He was a fearful child. He was afraid of the dark. He always wanted the light in the hall to be left on. He was afraid of all sorts of things: dogs, horses, large birds. He was like me. I was also sensitive and somewhat sickly. He was very close to his sister… They’d play with dolls and put on puppet shows. He was a quick learner at school [not, you can bet, a quick learner at what they don’t teach in school]. He always got the highest grades. When he was twenty, he met a nice girl [you can bet a patrician, like him]. They got engaged and planned to get married after finishing college. And then he met Katarina and fell madly in love with her. Katarina had a lot of control over him. She had the say. What Peter’s parents said or thought wasn’t important anymore… I don’t understand anything… I’ve had a good and happy life. Peter came to see me a few days ago. He had a list of things that needed to be dealt with, pertaining to his fixing up an old house for them.” (A rare lingering bit of rebellion. She noted that the roof is badly insulated. In The Passion of Anna [1969], a weak-willed man addresses his rotting roof. Disaster follows. But here, not a complete massacre occurs; therefore, we’re enmeshed into a very complex dynasty, a life of marionettes that, rarely, beats the odds.) Onscreen, many candles surround the old lady. A surfeit of candles. Three lamp lights—two, rigidly, side-by-side: another, way off beam. He stands behind her, being eclipsed by his mother, with only his arms and hands seen at her head (a configuration resembling his threatening knife upon Katarina; and also resembling the precious fashion designer, in Dreams).

   The episode, “Five Days before the Catastrophe,” tests the catastrophic errancy of a woman struggling to navigate a true magic which her vision fails her. The odd couple find themselves at variance, unable to sleep, and they come to the dining room table to table their agendas. He begins a cognac, while raggedly choosing to cover up with a bedsheet. Then he opines that the meal they had that night at another couple’s place was “horrible.” She chooses whiskey. “That relaxes me. And it’s healthy.” He argues, “Don’t drink so much…”/ “I’ll drink as much as I want, my darling. I never go overboard…” That goads him to remark, “You were pretty insufferable last night.” Her rebound is, “Don’t I know it… I was like that on purpose. That’s the way it is. On purpose[making sure she was at an advantage; that being the bane of any hope for that disinterestedness she needs to practice on the way to creativity]. I enjoy embarrassing Martin… He always tries to fondle me in secret. So I get tipsy and fondle him. Openly. That’s a subtle way of getting back at someone, Little Peter.” Subtle! The pressure requires real subtlety. And the pressure for us is to realize that Katarina has embarrassed herself. We won’t get much subtlety from her. But this film has challenged the viewer to provide the vast subtlety she lusts for and fumbles. He, from his sterile decorum, complains, “You’re starting to get loud and nonsensical.” Her, “That’s your opinion… Everyone else thinks I’m terribly nice,” would be a prelude to hating herself when alone and sober. More empty loudness from her, pertains to an argument about his mother, cropping up the following day. When he reminds her that she promised to be present for a discussion of the quirky house, she sneers, “I don’t have the time. Your business friends consider it an honor to eat that grub your awful old mother prepares… She’s a rotten old monument to your [deceased] father’s imperium of oppression…” (Though Peter laughs at that, that we  know now he’s been contemplating her murder for two years, there has to be some quiet rancor.) The tenor of their conflict reaches an unexpected turn for Katarina. “Now I’ll tell you what I actually didn’t intend to tell you. No, it’s nothing special, just a feeling… It happened early yesterday morning. I was in the bathroom drying myself with a freshly washed, rough towel that smelled good. Suddenly, I had an insight, or what it’s called… I saw all these familiar things around me and knew that they soon wouldn’t belong to me anymore. That everything would be taken away from me. None of these things around me would belong to me anymore… That feeling was gone after a minute or two, but last night it came back…” 

Peter ignores this (as he ignored, by sleeping through the prostitute’s insight, she being light years more significant than he). What he doesn’t ignore, however, is the mention, by Katarina, that his friend, Harry, had set up a tennis workout early in the morning. On hearing the reminder, Peter informs her that his friend’s tennis elbow was acting up and that therefore the game was off. This brought to mind (despite her having so recently come close to cogency) a recurrent annoyance about Harry’s smoking habits, which reach 70 cigarettes a day. Her gambit of attending to some form of vitality (which does not touch her alcohol habit) becomes a case of her (ragged) concern for a peculiar sensual force. There is another Harry, the protagonist of the film, Summer with Monika, who, after disastrously attaching himself to a poisonous girl, runs her out of his life. This figure makes plenty of sense here, inasmuch that Katarina is on the hook to ditch a dead-end sensibility. That other Harry becomes adept in work and wider responsibility. But Katarina’s wider responsibility is as hard as it gets. Next morning the rush-hour traffic powers past their flat. Two streams of vehicles, headed in opposite directions, presenting much statement but no links. There are contrasting lights in the German darkness, depending on the direction. At work Peter dictates to a secretary, “We have two alternatives.” Not three. Later he notes, “The problem is that a completely new point was raised…” In an ironic conclusion to this very long instance of pedantry, rounding off a punishing display of mutual disarray, we have Katarina rehearsing the models for her imminent fashion show. The effete impact being a paragon of how not to deliver well.

   Our major protagonist makes good on her threat to be missing in action at Mama’s soiree. At a bar (where she drinks heavily and shoos Peter along to thrill to something she too should care about), one of her colleagues, the major designer of her concern, spirits her away to his art deco gem of a flat (showing two diamond-shaped lamps vertically positioned in the dazzling darkness along with one rounded lamp too far-off be a player), for the sake of lifting her spirits, and becoming, as far as his lights allow, a genuine friend. Tim, the first responder, had mooted, “I have a wonderful idea. Come to my place for a few hours. You can take a nice long bath. I’ll make us a salad.” In face of this handsome proposal, she corrosively claims, “I’m fine where I am.” In standing up she collapses upon his chest. “I feel so bad.”/ “I suddenly had the feeling that you were terribly unhappy,” he perseveres. (She covers one eye with her hand.) Once to Tim’s tidy home, he shifts the subject to that Martin she felt she had to outsmart with “subtlety.” “We were very attached to each other. But as you know, fidelity doesn’t exist. Not true fidelity.” (Tim is shown by a full-length mirror. A twosome.) “When you’re gay, you can’t be faithful.” Pulling himself back to the subject of conviviality, Tim states, “You have to cry if you feel like it.” Then back to political advantage: “Most gay men like women. Not because we’re particularly feminine, but because we’re more in touch with our feelings. I didn’t come up with that. Martin said that. But it could be true.” (One light is on behind her.) 

Tim emotes, “Splits! It’s immeasurable grief… Maybe it isn’t grief at all, but some sort of madness.” (She in the way of a lamp with two lights.) She contributes, not entirely candid, “People like me have never given the soul much thought. Then the soul starts acting up, and you’re helpless. You know?” Tim says, “I understand.” She continues, “Perhaps a few tears are shed at first. A strange kind of crying which then turns into a terrible howl of grief and hopelessness. Then it turns into a blind roar… a roar… a roar…” (Cut to Tim, nonplussed. Is Katarina caught up in Tim’s sentimental menu?) The designer avers, “Everybody breaks down once in a while… I’m pathologically addicted to intimacy!” (Two diamond lights between them.) Then Tim speaks at length about about the horror of getting old.“Two incompatible people… Sometimes I think they all stem from one and the same origin.”  He concludes this rampage of intimacy by asking Katarina to lay her hand against his cheek. She does. But when he asks—“Can you feel that my hand is me? That it’s me?”—she shakes her head. (Katarina joining a host of dullards ignoring what’s up. Can she rally? That’s the heart of the saga.)

  Three days after the murder, Tim, the apostle of intimacy, is summoned by the police due to his being instrumental in Peter’s meeting the victim. After a lot of flim-flam at the expense of a one-track-minded functionary, he declares—what happened to intimacy and more in touch with our feelings?— “I  liked the idea that Peter was cheating on her with a prostitute. But that’s only part of the truth. Weak people choose strange paths. I gradually focused on taking Peter from his wife and making him mine. I saw the coldness in his marriage… I knew  I could save him… People like me have a feeling for such things.”

   A somewhat less predatory scene pertains to a letter from Peter to Mogens, which never becomes sent. It functions as a glimpse of the influence of Katarina. And it confirms that that toss away platitude, “Weak people choose strange paths,” is studded with deadly practices. Peter premises is cri de coeur, by declaring (Tim-like), “What I’m going to describe isn’t a dream in the usual sense.” (It’s, in fact, more a dream like the fervid dreams of the film, Dreams.) “Although I experienced this under the influence of pills and alcohol, the experience seemed more real and horrible than the reality of  everyday life.” Cloaked in a calming fog, there were him and Katarina seen in bed from the vantage point of the ceiling. The documentor struggles to describe the fabric of this action: more than “sensual;” not only “erotic;” “a direct link between my lower body and the intense, sweet-smelling moisture of a woman.” (Katarina’s hair tumbling as she sleeps.) Then a moment showing them nude from a long distance, with over-exposed visuality, insinuating a snowscape. In the vein of “more in touch with our feelings,” Peter gushes, “I moved over a glittering, spacious surface with my eyes closed. And all was very quiet. My contentment was complete. I had a strange urge to tell a funny story.” (Can Katarina’s heights get past the funny story stage?) “There was a little eye on every finger.” (In Dreams, one eye upon a raincoat suffices; here the push to be “big” collapses the traces of remarkable initiative.) He moves to touch one of her nipples. Then he rattles off a formula, where only the deftness of motion can prevail: “If you are death, then I welcome you, dear death. If you are life, then I welcome you, dear life.” Amidst such sophomoric efforts, he does break from tradition to realize, “that it was dangerous to become afraid.” Back to his cruising speed, he imagines consistently to be unable to penetrate her. “I fell into a rage. I withdrew to stop myself from killing her.” Her vigorous countering of his aggressiveness, leaving him holding his head, produces a long glare of intransigence between them. This is followed by her gently soothing his wounds. “It is difficult to describe that particular moment. The very air I was in was transformed… We entered a sudden spirituality without reservations.” That her range puts his to shame culminates in his fantasy of having killed her “in some cruel way.” The missal describing a weakling. No wonder it was never sent.

   The episode, “Two Days before the Catastrophe,” brings the letter to solid action. It begins with Katarina frantically trying to reach Professor Jensen, because Peter is up on their roof contemplating jumping to his death. True to form, the psychiatric flop is not available. Her backup choice is one of his cronies, namely, Arthur, a name (in the form of King Arthur) redolent of maintaining good breeding. (In The Passion of Anna, a weak-willed artisan on a broken roof ends up like a figure in the works of Samuel Beckett. From here on in, it’s about whether Katarina can fare better than that.) Arthur tries to rally the on-again but largely off-again rebel with, “It’s respectable to want to jump, but inhuman to torment one’s fellow man.” He adds, “Someone will see you and alert the police… Can’t I at least get your fur coat?”/ “That would be nice of you,” the not quite desperate enough malcontent replies. (Weak people choose strange paths.) He’s back before Arthur can carry the furs. Katarina attempts to calm the country club regular, but at this stage he shows no interest in their constellation. She drops that hot potato and hopes to find more success with the paragon of easy chivalry. “Poor Martha (Arthur’s wife), we’ve disturbed her.”/ “Not at all,” he tells her. “She had an early operation at the children’s clinic.” In the Swedish Bergman film, Dreams, a woman, named Marta, uses a trump card of children to fend off the protagonist fashion entrepreneur, Susanne, intent  on a weak paramour. Marta is a pretty smart cookie, but not as bright and brave as she thinks. On the subject of hard knocks, Peter, attempting to look somewhat less weak, kicks Katarina backwards from her position of sitting on the carpet by the chair he occupied after doing without his furs. Arthur does nothing noble here. “Come sit with me,” is his policy of law and order. An embarrassed lady of the house chirps, “I’m fine on the floor…” Then both of them begin to glare at each other. She plunges on with, “We had a drink with Johan and Marianne. Then we all went out to that new Italian restaurant near the theatre.” (She drinks. Arthur smokes. Far less overt is her uphill climb to bring her seldom uncanniness to a full fruition and a hope for beating back a horde of cowards, along lines of surpassing those who kick, while keeping in play those who meant something, being held in reserve.) Arthur asks her, “What’s that on your neck?” This brings instant communication from Peter, “Her necklace broke… I got caught in it, and then it broke.” (Peter got caught in Katarina’s audacity. And then it broke.) Arthur remarks, “Make sure it doesn’t get infected.” Peter the Weak blurts out, “Oh, Katarina says she wants to leave me.  I say great. What a godsend. Then she says she can’t live without me. I say I can live better without her. She says I’m important…” (Katarina lies back on the floor.) As the transaction spins crazily, Katarina loses her temper, as she has done may times. But, while she has an end-game, he has nothing.

   During the rest of the humiliation from out of that overt consideration of suicide, the conflict and its results do nothing but confirm that their life together is no more. She snipes, “Shut up, Peter, you’ve had your performance.” But now Peter—terrified in face of his wife’s reckless and valid cares (and occupying  the model of that Anna, the little pedant and coward, emerging from the film, The Passion of Anna)—opts for an eleventh hour return to full bourgeois appetites, including a final “performance” to recompense his treason against his clan. How far apart are they? One indicator says a lot, though no one notices. As Katarina lies back on the carpet, pondering her future as a solo act, we see her from upside down and particularly the collar of her shirt. Two button holes and a button: the two of them no longer in business, but, for her, filling little needs could go far. That she is far from steady enough to see her way through this snake pit may be transparent in the following communication later in the conversation. “Poor Peter, I feel so damn sorry for you.” (That is precisely what the protagonist, Susanne, in Dreams, has to endure, from a prim, nihilist Marta, who believes that no couples ever become magic. That, in the cyclone going on at this point, Katarina becomes a stiff, is food for thought. She set this doomed, underground adventure by way of a degree in charisma. We’d like to discover if she can reinvent (and then some) a new and wider fruition. Out of the pointlessness of tons of clashing verbiage, there is one kernel of might from her: “We accepted the rules  [of skepticism] but had no knack for the game [the play and its good-naturedness].”

   In the episode, “Three Weeks after the Catastrophe,” we find some signs that Katarina is beginning to find a knack. Paying a visit to her grieving mother-in-law, our protagonist counsels lightening up, going on a visit to Paris where the grieving one has a sister. As to being possibly needed by the butcher now ensconced in an institution for the hopeless, the daughter-in-law relates, “I went to see him yesterday. He didn’t seem to be all there…  He’s getting injections to stave off distress.” So prostrated is the mother with the shock, Katarina (surely feeling some irony, which now, though, for her, might have an impact for some good, for some people) suggests Professor Jensen to lighten her load. The offer is accepted. Despite Katarina’s history of hating that lady, she now declares, “I can come to see you every day…” This gambit is promptly shot down by the host’s digging into their troubled relationship. “You think it’s all my fault…” (But Katarina has begun to leave such sterile warfare, while needing to stand up to a history of panzer violence.) The mistress of the mansion argues, “You’ve always been very critical of Peter’s and my relationship.” Having to retort, “You were critical of our marriage,” would simply not be what was on her mind. A better manoeuver, though, would—in face of the woman with no future (like her son), dictating, “I gave birth to him and raised him. He’s a part of my life. You don’t have any children. You don’t understand a mother’s feelings…”—“You’re right. I don’t understand.” Pleased to feel on top, the maternal one speaks through a dynasty. “I didn’t want to hurt you.” The guest in the leopard-skin coat, assures the old lady, “You didn’t hurt me.” Pouring on that favorite insult by those smelling a kill, “I feel so sorry for you,” is met by Katarina’s, “I don’t believe that… I’ve been here for half an hour. All you’ve talk about is your feelings…”Perhaps her parting words forever (but not necessarily), the solo pours out her heart to someone who wouldn’t give a shit. “Full of astonishment, I look back on our lives… on our former reality, and think, ‘Was it all a dream?’ It was a game. Lord knows what the hell we were doing. This is true reality, and its unbearable.”(It could be that being in the presence of Peter’s mother has somewhat rattled the soloist.) True reality is not unbearable to the strong, and Katarina knows it. She also knows that being a soloist is madness. Her being felt on the spot to match the matron’s emotions swings her into a line she’d find ludicrous when composed. “A strange, hard surface. But under the surface I’m crying. I’m crying for myself because I can no longer be the way I was… I cry for Peter. I’ve never been able to put myself in other people’s shoes… But suddenly I think I know what Peter is feeling and thinking….” And even in such a maudlin funk, her better self returns. “But the [exponentially] worst part of it is… that poor woman. I tell myself she was only frightened for a moment… That doesn’t help.” Just before Peter presumes to make his piddling statement for the sake of the “betters,” he learns that the woman knowing catkins is also a Katarina. The guest that day to the mother-in-law was very significantly on a track to touch those worth touching. To more fully disclose Katarina’s distinction in leaving that fortress of enmity, we look back to Peter’s doggerel where his wife (the only thinker that long family tree had ever enclosed) had had her creative heartiness cribbed and twisted into a cheap stunt. “There was a little eye on every finger.” What had the unsteady thinker wasted, on a worthless associate, was her hard won realization that her gentle and powerful proof against inertia  not only opens and drives the fireworks of the cosmos itself, but being gifted by a vast menu of carnal initiatives, by way of which to be truly blessed, truly loved. (The outset of the film, Dreams, with its producing a large set of red lips, like those of Katarina’s, also traces a word for the wise: “One has to say no at some point.”)

 An Epilogue showing Peter’s cell returns coloration. It has nothing to do with him (the exponent of, “no way out” and solitary chess, recalling the cowardly patrician in The Seventh Seal), but that Katarina is in the building, perhaps for the last time.

As this saga has unfolded, we’ve come to a unique need to add to Katarina’s struggle. Bergman’s exceptional skill about problematic drama eschews attending to further steps along this endeavor. The hundreds of montages accompanying the narratives were not only about the “mood” of the stories, but the actions of the viewers. The placements about the mundane, the ecstatic and their harmonics are not precious museum-pieces; but a way of life hugely dissimilar from the dynasties which have commanded fealty for, in one case 4000 years, and, in another, 2500 years. That they are massively wanting is one thing. That their homicidal proclivities exude a pall upon the land may be well seen by the former’s incompetence and arrogance to the point of a world-wide collapse, without so much as an apology. That is the reality which Katarina and we must deal with at a level of difficulty so extreme as to seem, “no way out.” But along with the Byzantine history, there is a stunningly underused resource to foster a “knack” in return. The likes of Katarina, who finds snippets of magical dynamics setting her apart, can, if alert enough, become buoyed by an agency recommending action for the sake of interplays that have no end of joys, but very much end of sentient life. This planet of toxic dynasties, so effective in paralyzing the full range of creativity (delivering a world of marionettes), is far from the only place graced with a creative knack.

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #204 - The Untouchables

Spoilers Below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: No.

Format: Blu-ray

1) Al Capone at the barber.

First of all, this scene establishes Capone’s position in the world of the film. The press treats him as a legitimate businessman despite his immoral standings (he’s a KNOWN bootlegger, he doesn’t even hide it), which means it’s going to be all the more difficult to take him down. He’s totally in control of the scene and the fear we see in the barber’s eyes when he accidentally cuts the mobster shows just how dangerous he really is. It’s a great first taste of the gangster.

2) The second scene - of the shop blowing up and the little girl going up with it - does well to draw in audience sympathy. Despite all his showboating Capone is a monster who kills whoever gets in his way. A bully on the worst scale. He literally murders a little girl as collateral damage because someone doesn’t want to serve alcohol. That’s just fucking evil.

3) As I’ve noticed with many mob movies, The Untouchables has a woman problem. Patricia Clarkson is great but here character is nothing more than the dotting and supportive housewife. Like, there’s no conflict to her AT ALL. Her husband is doing work which puts her and her family at risk but she’s always supportive/understanding. Can’t have the woman questioning her man now can we. It’s kind of annoying. And then the only other two female characters I can even think of - the mother of the murdered girl and the woman at the train station - aren’t even characters really as plot devices. They’re just there to up the stakes for Ness.

3.1) ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? I just googled this shit and for one thing Eliot Ness didn’t have any children during the time this film is set and two HE DIDN’T HAVE A HAPPY MARRIAGE! They ended up getting divorced a few years later IN THE 30s! But the film decided to drop that ripe conflict and interesting character interaction to instead give us a cliché dotting wife trope!?

4) Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness

The best movie heroes don’t see themselves as heroes and aren’t portrayed as invincible/mythological but as just normal people trying to do good. That’s exactly what Ness is here: a good man doing his best. While at the beginning of the movie he’s a bit of a boy scout, it’s his development from that into a man who is willing to go further for a good deed which makes him interesting. This is a guy who pins up a headline of his first really big failure, who is able to remove any sense of ego and pride to ask for help when he needs it. He HATES it when he has to kill people (as seen when he has to shoot one of Capone’s goons in Canada) and just wants to get home at the end of the day. Costner portrays all of these qualities very well, making Ness an honest and down to earth character. Writing a character to be that is one thing, but Costner actually portraying that helps the audience get invested in our protagonist.

5) Sean Connery as Malone.

Connery was won his only Oscar (and it was the only time he was nominated for an Oscar) in this part and you can see why. From his very first scene Malone is striking and memorable, taking complete command of every scene he’s in. Robert DeNiro as Al Capone is a tough guy to go up against, but through Connery’s performance you believe Malone can really help take him down. That’s how strong a performance he gives, being the standout player in an already great cast. And one of the key things about Malone is that he’s not all about bravado. He’s not a trope, but a character. He has fears, insecurities, but he’s able to push past these to do the right thing. This just means Connery’s performance is all the more layered as he plays out Malone’s decisions and conflicts. It’s absolutely great.

6) The church scene.

I think this scene is largely memorable because of how powerful the cinematography is. It’s a unique visual; the characters are kneeling/in a state of submission but by towering over the camera they’re given power in the shot. But it’s more than just an amazing shot (which that is), the scene also clearly sets up the stakes and goals of these two cops. You clearly understand Ness’ morals and convictions here while Connery’s always amazing performance as Malone really helps to carry the scene.

7) I love the way Malone tests George Stone/Giuseppe Petri (played wonderfully by a young Andy Garcia). He wants a real fighter, someone strong in their convictions, not someone who could easily be pushed over by Capone. So seeing how reacts to blatant racism is very telling of this. Also I just love that THIS is the way Giuseppe (I think I’m going to call him Giuseppe in this post) handles it.

8) I go to school in Chicago, so I recognize a ton of the bits in the film which were actually shot in the city and I always get a kick out of it. Like, “oh, I walk down that street. Oh, I’ve been there. Cool!”

9) The ease with which the titular Untouchables handles the first liquor raid reminds me of a quote by Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Everyone KNOWS where the liquor is, Capone’s not HIDING, just no one wants to take him one because of his power and because they don’t care. It’s not hard at first, it just gets hard once you actually make a move.

10) The dinner scene.

I think this is DeNiro at his best in the film. The dinner scene is ripe with tension as soon as Capone picks up a bat. You KNOW what’s going to happen with that bat. He’s Al Capone for pete’s sake! The slow pacing of the scene as well as what is basically a demented version of “duck duck goose” (as Capone makes his way around the table, we’re waiting to see who he’ll wail on with the bat) really ramps up the tension, while the total brutality of the scene’s outcome raises the danger/stakes for our heroes.

11)

Ness [in shock at the suggestion]: “Try [Al Capone] a murderer for not paying his taxes?”

I was originally going to use the “Dramatic Irony” gag from Netflix’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events” but it doesn’t really work in the context so instead:

12) This line always stuck with me.

Canadian Mountie: “And surprise, as you very well know Mr. Ness, is half the battle.”

Ness: “Surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle. Losing is half the battle. Let’s think about what is all the battle.”

13) The entire shootout in Canada actually works very well. There’s a grand amount of tension in the scene before anyone even fires a gun, just when we’re waiting in the shack. Then the fact the mounties kinda screw up Ness’ plan creates interesting conflict because anything that can be done to throw off a well thought out plan is interesting. But what works the best is the fact that the ensuing skirmish between Capone’s men and the authorities is just so damn entertaining to watch. The music, the action, all of it makes it feel really heroic honestly. I dig it.

14) I really like Malone’s trick that convinces Capone’s guy to turn on him. It’s really intelligent and the fact that the movie kind of takes it seriously (with the music and the focus on Capone’s living goon) actually makes it pretty funny.

15) Wallace’s death packs a considerable punch, primarily because he was the best on the team. He was the most honest, the most earnest, just a good man. Even better than Ness you could argue. So the fact that he’s the first to die and in a truly awful way just drums up a lot of sympathy/reaction from the audience.

16) If you want to understand the impact Wallace’s death has on the story, look no further than the following scene. The fact that Eliot just straight up goes to confront Al Capone is A) a powerful choice by the character and B) very telling of his emotional state that he does something so reckless.

17) I love how pissed Malone gets when it seems like they’re done going after Capone. When he’s in, he’s all in. His own personal stakes are so high by now. What would the point be of all of this, of Wallace’s death, if they’re not going to go all the way? This whole moment could really be considered the low point of the film, meaning a big change needs to happen.

18) A lot of my notes lately have been about scene and in some ways how one scene leads to another. The death of Wallace leads to Eliot making a hasty move as well as the crumbling of the investigation. The crumbling of that investigation leads to Malone confronting his police pal about Capone (more on that in a moment) which leads to the next scene which leads to the next scene. The best structure of a film is an invisible one and the organic nature of this plot means just that. It���s pretty great.

19) As I mentioned above, the scene where Malone confronts his cop friend about Capone is really great. Not only is it organically born from what’s happened but it’s pure stakes. If a character - ANY character - can leave the scene without getting what they want and not being totally devastated the stakes are too low. NEITHER character can yield to the other without being totally fucked, to the point where they have a fist fight trying to hold on to their stakes.

20) Malone being stalked by one of Capone’s men in his own apartment is INCREDIBLY effective as a scene of suspense. The use of point of view camera angles in this shot is great. The audience is given the information we don’t think Malone has and we’re worried for him. Much like the shark in Jaws, it seems like he’s about to get jumped on by a bad guy before he turns around with a friggin’ SHOTGUN and utters one of the greatest lines in film history.

Malone: “Brings a knife to a gun fight.”

21) Following this, Malone’s extended death sequence is absolutely gut wrenching and another strong example of Connery’s excellent acting. It speaks once again to stakes. He’s holding on as desperately as he can, as long as he can, until he can tell Ness what he died for in the first place. Until he can do one last thing to help put Capone away. It’s just totally heartbreaking and I love it.

22) The Union Station shootout.

This is by far the most iconic moment in the film I think. First of all, let me mention two personal things about this scene: I walk those steps REGULARLY and one of my teacher’s at school is a sailor in this scene (I just don’t know which one, I think the left one walking up the stairs).

A perfect example of high stakes from slower tension, not only does the scene take its wonderful time building up to the shootout but the violence itself is also in suspenseful slow motion. The inclusion of the baby buggy not only adds a slight ticking clock element to the pre shootout scene but also a grander scene of immediate stakes as the action unfolds. NO ONE WANTS TO SEE THE KID GET HURT! It’s just really freaking great.

23) The final encounter with Ness and the man in white who killed Malone always felt a little extra to me. On the one hand it ties up that loose end and is very entertaining to watch. At this point I’m more interested in what is happening in the court room with Capone though. So…I don’t know. The movie is pretty great so I guess having it in doesn’t hurt it. Also Eliot killing him in basically cold blood shows a lot of development for his character. As does…

24)

Eliot [on how he convinced the judge to change juries]: “I told him his name was in the ledger too.”

Lawyer: “His name wasn’t in the ledger.”

25) And this is a final good note.

Reporter: “They say they’re going to repeal prohibition. What will you do then?”

Eliot: “I think I’ll have a drink.”

Eliot was never fighting for prohibition. He was fighting for the law. He was fighting against a bad man who was killing people and alcohol was a part of that. And I think this last line represents that perfectly.

Despite whatever issues I may have with it’s female representation, The Untouchables is an absolutely excellent film. It is wildly entertaining, able to be fun and dramatic at the same time. And although Sean Connery gives the best performance in the film, he is a part of an ensemble with no weak link in its bunch. From DeNiro to Costner to Garcia, they’re all great in the film. All in all, The Untouchables is just a great movie.

[amsterdammotherfucker]

Semi-inspired by Phelous’ recent review of the 2016 Cabin Fever remake, I was once again thinking about what I would to if I were to ever do a remake of Hostel:

- Keep the original cast, just age the characters up so they’re not obnoxious, immature college students anymore; instead they’re world-weary career men having midlife crises. 

- Paxton is a lawyer, Josh is a struggling writer looking for inspiration for his next bestseller, and Oli is a family man; they’ve all been friends for years, likely since their college days. Add a bit at the beginning just to establish all of this, or hell, even exposition dialogue could do the trick.

- Tone down the sex a lot. Like, A LOT. The drugs and drinking, too; to an extent. A lot of the opening montage can be cut down, especially with older, more mature lead characters.

- Instead of getting themselves locked out of their hostel past curfew like idiots, the boys meet Alexei at a club frequented by tourists; Alexei could potentially prevent them from getting thrown out like they did in the original movie.

- CUT THE TRAIN SHENANIGANS FOR GOD’S SAKE. In fact, a lot of Oli’s character can be toned down in general.

- Have Pax and Oli actually be weirded out by the Dutch Businessman instead of finding the whole thing hilarious. Hell, even just have Pax be weirded out and have Oli try and brush it off. Because ~FORESHADOWING~ I guess.

- For the most part all the stuff with Natalya and Svetlana can stay relatively intact, just shorten the spa scene and make it infinitely less awkward.

- CUT EVERY SINGLE USAGE OF THE WORD “GAY” IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE

- Instead of being mopey about his ex-girlfriend, Josh is mopey because of his writer’s block.

- Also flesh out the friendship between Pax and Josh a lot more.

- Do a better job of introducing Kana and Yuki and establishing their characters, mostly in Kana’s case, before Yuki is whisked away to tortureville.

- Of course I’d add plenty of romantic tension between Pax and Kana but nothing ever comes of it because I’m TERRIBLE.

- Add a scene with Natalya and Svetlana in the shower together laughing and joking about the guys’ skills in bed and show absolutely zero nudity throughout the whole scene.

- Actually have the Elite Hunters try to nab each group of people all at once instead of one at a time to rouse less suspicion. Have the girls take the trio somewhere else after the morning after scene as a means of luring them all in at the same time, and have Pax and Josh unwittingly save their own lives by slipping back outside to I don’t even know check their phones or something, or converse privately about whatever.

- In the same vein, have Kana run into the boys outside and stop to talk to them while Yuki goes inside and is captured along with Oli.

- I’m toying with the idea of the Lake Michigan story actually being put to film in the form of a flashback/nightmare for Pax at some point, but it’s not entirely necessary, just a detail from the original I’d want to keep in there somehow.

- Cut down the role of the bubblegum kids A LOT. Have them there more as an Easter egg for fans of the original than to further the plot in any way, shape, or form.

- Trim down and alter the bar scene with Josh and the Dutch Businessman because OHHHHH MY GOD.

- Omit the poorly photoshopped phone image of Oli and Yuki entirely.

- Spend less time on Pax and Josh looking for Oli, and shorten the museum tortury/dude wearing Oli’s jacket scene to just the bare necessities.

- Have Pax actually give Josh some fairly decent advice that getting out more will help him find his inspiration.

- Because Josh is a writer I really want to have him get inspired and churn out a story on his laptop at some point between club scenes, though I know it’s completely unrealistic for him to churn out an entire manuscript in one night, I think that since I’m fixing as many of the unrealistic things from the original as I possibly can I’M ALLOWED TO HAVE THIS ONE UNREALISTIC THING :P

- Some things can proceed as normal, like the boys being drugged by the girls and Pax accidentally getting himself locked in a closet and unwittingly saving his own life.

- I’d actually tone UP the gore effects in Josh’s torture scene to a certain extent, other than that I’d change very little about that scene.

- CUT THE VOMIT IN BOTH TORTURE SCENES JUST CUT IT

- When Pax goes back to the hostel and has the “deja vu” scene with the two other girls, have one of the desk clerks standing behind Pax frantically gesturing for them to shut up, making it clear that they didn’t know Pax had already gotten that treatment from Nat and Lana.

- Have the girls actually be shocked to see Paxton when he turns up at the seedy bar where they’re hanging out.

- Potentially add something to confirm my headcanon that the girls are on some kind of drugs and severely malnourished/unhealthy?

-  You know how Takeshi Miike made a cameo outside the warehouse? Yeah I want Eli Roth in that role. PLEASE. IT WOULD BE AMAZING.

- MAKE THE WAREHOUSE LOOK LESS SKETCHY ON THE OUTSIDE SO IT’S PLAUSIBLE THAT PAX WILL BELIEVE IT’S AN ART GALLERY

- Have Nat just smirk instead of full-on evil laughing

- It’s kinda unrealistic that the Dutch Businessman would still be toying with Josh’s body a day later, so maybe just have Pax see his dead and mutilated body on the surgical table.

- This is a little thing but just have Pax call Nat a bitch twice, cut him calling her a whore; it fits better with the “that makes you my bitch” follow-up line.

- 10% more shaky cam and like 80% more blood in the Hall of Horrors scene.

- I don’t want to touch Pax’s torture scene too much because it’s almost perfect as is and it’s my favorite scene in the original movie, just cut the vomit (have Pax like I dunno dry-heave or something to prompt Johan removing the gag) and ADD SUBTITLES ON THAT GERMAN LINE PLEASE FOR ALL THE PEOPLE TOO LAZY TO LOOK UP THE TRANSLATION IT’S TOO BEAUTIFUL TO LET SLIP THROUGH THE CRACKS.

- Eliminate the deus ex machina with Johan sawing off his own leg somehow, even if just cutting off Pax’s fingers and breaking the handcuffs in the process gives him enough leeway to wiggle his way closer to the table and grab the gun. It’s less suspenseful and somewhat anticlimactic, sure, BUT AT LEAST IT MAKES MORE SENSE.

- And have Pax not tip his chair over, eliminating that continuity error from the original.

- Cut him trying to save his fingers, it serves no purpose and is ultimately a fool’s errand anyway so

- From there everything can more or less proceed as normal for a while, up until Pax makes it to the laundry room. 

- We can keep the bit about the police in the village being in on it, because why not, they’d have to be I guess

- I actually want to add a scene with Pax struggling as he’s changing his clothes. It doesn’t have to be overly long or gratuitous in any way, just enough to show how he managed to change clothes with an injured, bleeding hand. And maybe have him look less polished and put together than he did in the original.

- CUT THE WHOLE MONOLOGUE FOR THE AMERICAN CLIENT. Have him walk in, possibly be on his cell phone muttering something about “for that price she better be worth it,” toss the gun on the table, nod in Pax’s direction, and leave. THERE, HE FULFILLED HIS ENTIRE PURPOSE IN THAT SCENE.

- Make it slightly more difficult for Pax to break into the car

- Possibly have a callback to the Lake Michigan flashback when Pax hears Kana screaming? Again, not entirely necessary

- Show Kana’s dangling eyeball VERY LITTLE. I love the idea of have a shot from behind Kana’s head, so we don’t see any of Pax removing her eye, we just focus on Pax’s face during the scene.

- Give Kana more lines during their escape beyond just screaming and crying

- Change the arrangement of Nat, Lana, and Alexei slightly so it’s more believable that Pax running them down would kill all three of them instantly. Possibly also add a separate, prior scene explaining why they just so happen to be hanging out so close to the warehouse?

- Cut Pax having to bribe the street kids with gum to get past and the kids subsequently murdering the guys tailing them; replace it with a car chase that ends with the guys tailing them crashing and dying spectacularly.

- Fix them running into the police, have them be checking cars but NOT beating up random people, and have the officer get distracted so Pax and Kana can believably escape the car without being seen.

- Have some dialogue between Pax and Kana after she sees her reflection in the glass, establishing why Kana feels like life’s not worth living for her anymore, and Pax trying as desperately as he can to convince her otherwise while also trying to urge her along to avoid getting caught, but Kana runs and jumps in front of the train before he can stop her. That way we have her motivations, we feel bad for her, and Pax didn’t have LIKE FIVE WHOLE MINUTES TO TRY AND STOP HER BEFORE SHE ACTUALLY JUMPED

- We kind of have to have the wacky coincidence of the Dutch Businessman being on the train, that one’s kind of inevitable for plot reasons unfortunately

- From there things, again, proceed as usual, with Pax stalking the Dutch Businessman into the bathroom and then killing him in the stall, the only things I would tweak are to have Pax not cut off the Dutch Businessman’s fingers, and to add the line “This is for Josh” right before he slits his throat. That way he’s more focused on avenging his best friend than getting revenge for his own suffering.

- I’m tempted to add the bit from the beginning of Hostel 2 where Pax is found bleeding out on the train, ends up in the hospital, and has to recount his story to a police officer/detective, albeit it’d be a much shorter scene and not end up being a fakeout dream sequence.

- Then add an extra bit at the end that cuts to one year later. Pax goes into his office and talks with his secretary, at one point saying something along the lines of “if someone named Stephanie calls, send it straight to voicemail” as another Easter egg, and ultimately have the secretary mention that a package came in from the publishing company. Then Pax opens it and finds the first test copy of Josh’s new book, “The Hostel.” Turns out Pax found the manuscript on Josh’s laptop somehow and had it published for him posthumously.

- It COULD end there, but I’m fond of having another nod to the second movie by having Pax later eating cereal in his apartment, and build up suspense when he thinks he hears someone else in the apartment. Keep the audience guessing as to whether there’s actually an intruder or if it’s all in Pax’s paranoid, PTSD-riddled mind.

- Surprise, surprise, there IS actually an intruder come to cut off Pax’s head, but he’s too quick for them. He fights his would-be assassin and wins, demanding to know who sent them, but ultimately killing them when they won’t surrender the information. It’s then that Pax realizes that they’ll never stop coming after him, and he packs his things and speeds off into the night. Roll credits.

[aspirant-writer]

Together: chapter 1

Youngbin sat on the chair in front of his boss desk. He blankly stared at his hands on his lap, nervously tapping his feet. What had he done to deserve this? He deserved none of it. He had been a good boy. He went to bed early every night, called his parents every week, always made sure none of the boys accidentally (or willingly) killed each other. What nasty thing had he done to deserve this sick karma? As he was mentally listing all the bad things he had done in his lifetime - which consisted in a list with exact seven topics - the office door was furiosly open interrupting his thinking. Their CEO was now sitting in front of him cursing under his breath.

- What the hell were you… Have you got any idea…- his boss pressed a hand to his forehead looking down at his desk not being able to even finish a sentence.

- I… I’m sorry, sir, I did not… we did not mean to disappoint you - he mumbled sitting up straight.

- But you did! - he shot back looking at the rapper in the eyes - You boys embarrassed yourselves, this company and even me!

Those were harsh words Youngbin never expected to hear from their CEO. He tilted down his head dry swallowing. As the older man kept on going how bad his mistakes had been his mind was clouded with mixed feelings and thoughts. Yes, their last comeback stage had been beyond embarrassing, but did they truly deserve to get scolded like this?

- Maybe it wasn’t that bad - he tried hesitantly, his boss immediately stopped his furious talking, perceiving it as an encouragement to go on he quickly continued - I’m sure there is something we can do to fix things, we’ll work harder…- he gained confidence in his talking -… we’ll do our best, I promise…- but his voice fell silent as he saw the other man reach his jacket pocket for his phone. After a few quick touches the boss started talking once again.

- After a lackluster and amateur looking performance, the new rookie group, SF9, decided to end their comeback stage with a shocking apparently new dance move - Youngbin slammed his eyes shut feeling shivers down his spine as he recognized the lines of one of the many articles written about the catastrophic happening.

A familiar sound echoed in the room, it was one of their songs and it was during their concert. He could hear the fans’ screams. He looked at the phone’s screen that was now almost shoved to his face. Besides little choreography mistakes it was all going fine. Even when one of the boys messed up his lyrics it was still going fine. They could’ve managed it if had been only that. But the video cut to another scene that the rapper remembered so well. He had replayed it in his mind so many times, he had seen that same video countless times. It was Taeyang’s part. Knowing what was about to happen, Youngbin sunk in his seat covering his mouth with one hand.

In exact two seconds the singer accidentally stepped off the stage, lost his balance and fell off the stage. Just like that. Some of the boys went on with the dancing not realising what had just happened, some of them just froze on their places in complete shock. The crowd was now screaming in horror. The young boy squirmed in his chair. The room was silent again.

- It was not that bad? - the CEO growled with arched eyebrows.

- I’m sorry - he faltered letting his gaze fall to his lap.

Putting the phone away the businessman regained his composure. He let out a heavy breth before breaking the silence.

- I have already decided how we’re going to fix this - he firmly stated. Youngbin’s eyes lit up. That meant their boss wasn’t dropping them.

- How?- he avidly asked.

- We have signed a contract with a performance company, you’ll be going under training again - the boy looked at him with brows knitted in a frown - and it’ll be a reality show so everyone can see that you are recovering from that…- he cleared his throat.

- What…? - he blurted out in confusion. Was his mind tricking him? Was this for real? They were going under training? Again? After their debut? He stared at the older man with his mouth hanging open. The man kept his gaze unaffected by the younger’s reaction. He snapped back to reality again - For how long?

- Four months. - he declared resting his back on the chair.

- Four months?! - he leaned foward.

-

Four months. Four. Freaking. Months. Youngbin was too old for this trainee shit. He was too tired for this shit. He had no time or patience for this shit. But still, a week later after the fateful day he had met his manager, he was sitting in a van with half his crew heading to the perfomance company’s studio. There already were cameras filming them and Youngbin couldn’t be feeling more uncomfortable. It felt like d.o.b all over again.The rapper shifted in his seat before taking the courage to break the silence.

- I’m sorry about all of this.

- This is not only our fault - Rowoon reassured from the backseat.

- But it is! How could it not be? I’m the one who got the stage measures wrong and…

- Stop blaming yourself - Chani’s deep voice interrupted him. Youngbin turned his head to look at the boy next to him. He had never interrupted him like that. The youngest member of the group was looking out the car window. Great. Now everyone was upset with him.

-

The nine boys reluctantly stepped in the building. It was luxuriously furnished and clean. Their manager walked in the hallways as if he had been there several time (and that thought felt like a sting on Youngbin’s pride). He stopped at a glass door at the end of the hallways.

- Are you boys ready to meet the crew you’re working with? - he grinned.

Cameras were capturing every moment and the rapper had to fight the unexpected urge to tell them to get off his face. He was so angry. They were being treated like children. But he managed to pretend like he wasn’t totally displeased with the situation. Their CEO opened the door allowing them to get in. It was a big dance studio with two mirror walls and a shinning wooden floor. It looked bright new. At the center there were people sitting in a semi circle. There was a honey skinned girl standing up in front of them. They were casually talking. Until a girl called her attention. The girl turned around offering a bright smile.

- Eva! So pleased to see you again! - their manager stepped past them, she bowed to him and offered her hand. He happily shook hands with her. Yes. He had definitely been there before and he already knew the people who were working with them. Youngbin felt betrayed even though perhaps he had no reason to.

- It’s my pleasure - she smiled letting his hand go turning her look to the boys.

- Boys, introduce yourselves.

They did their regular introduction. Eva bowed and glanced at the people on the floor, that Youngbin now realised were all girls. How convenient.

- I’m Eva and this is my crew - she glanced back again with a wide grin - I’m sorry, we don’t have a cool introduction like you.

Was she flirting with us? No, that’s crazy, get a grip. Youngbin thought to himself. The other boys laughed but the leader had a skeptical frown. He was meet with a questioning gaze by Eva and he quickly faked a smile.

- So…- he turned his head to their boss - Who’s going to be in charge of our training?

The man simply responded by pointing at the young girl standing in front of them. Eva? She was the one in charge? He shot her a look of confusion and she just waved at him. But she was so young? He tried to hide his surprise. Then he remembered this was all being recorded. God damn it. He must be looking stupid right now.

- Good training, I’ll get going now and let you guys work - and he left them. That was it. Youngbin wanted to scream but he had to keep his shit together.

- So we should start by introducing ourselves, shall we? - Eva started.

They started introducing themselves among soft giggles and embarrassed smiles. But the SF9 leader was paying no attention to that. How could this happen to him? He had been a trainee for years, he had worked his ass off to debut and now they were being coached by someone who was at least younger than half his group? Not only that, but everyone and their dog were watching it. He started listing the possible reasons for the universe to have decided to slap him on the face until he was elbowed by someone and snapped back to reality. Everyone was staring at him. And then he remembered he needed to introduce himself.

- Uh, I… I’m Youngbin, SF9 leader - he wanted to slap himself for stuttering. You’re being filmed, idiot.

- Wow, I’ve never seen the leader at loss of words - one of the boys teased. Fuck. I must be looking like a stupid teenager.

- Let’s get to work - he grunted trying his best to pretend he didn’t care.

—

author’s note: get ready cuz this is a slow burn. anyways, let me know what you guys think about it! don’t forget to reblog/like this post, if you guys enjoy it i’ll keep on posting. hope you liked it ♡

[jesusbukkake-blog]

The Aristocrats

The BBC Director-General’s door opened and a tall man in a crisp Italian suit walked in. Without prompting, he walked over to the chair in front of the desk and sat down. He was very muscular; his wide shoulders dwarf the small businessman in front of him. He was wearing dark sunglasses, which he removed and put in his front-breast pocket, revealing his tanned face, deep eyes, and neatly trimmed eyebrows. He put his hands on the desk; his nails were clean and white and freshly trimmed, shaped neatly enough to indicate the use of a manicurist. His skin was darkly tanned, save for a small pale circle around the gold band on his ring finger.

The Director-General peered over his desk through his glasses at the handsome character. Despite his power, he felt somewhat intimidated by his presence. “Can I – can I help you?” he stammered.

The man replied in a low and smoky voice. “I’d like to pitch to you my idea for a short film. Me and my family are very talented and we have a proposal that will change your channel forever.”

The Director-General knew he was somewhat pressed for time, yet he responds, “please sir, go on.”

“It’s set in front of a live studio audience. I come on stage first, to the sounds of smooth jazz, and tear off my shirt, revealing my bronzed, ripped body. My wife follows wearing a full-length robe, which I rip off too, unveiling her beautiful black lingerie. She is a stunning woman, petite but propped up on 6-inch heels, and we embrace and kiss passionately. I begin to grope her, rub my hands up and down her curves.

“My kids follow on-stage, skipping around us and throwing rose petals. My 14-year-old daughter wears a summery floral blouse, and my 3-year-old son wears a sailor’s uniform and a big nappy, like Tommy from Rugrats. They look adorable; such sweet little kids, and so talented too.

“I then remove my wife’s bra and panties and begin to massage her breasts and suck her nipples. She has fantastic breasts, sir, two perfectly-sized fleshy orbs and a neat, hairless little cut of a vagina. My little girl bends down and starts to lick her out, as my son unbuckles my belt and allows my jeans to slide to the floor. My wife drops to her knees and leans towards my boxer shorts, which she removes, revealing my cock. I’m about 10 inches, me; the audience love it. She starts to suck me off, moaning as our daughter eats her out from behind like a professional.

“My son joins my daughter at the back of my wife and squeezes his tongue into her anus. The cunnilingus and anilingus continues until I’m about to cum, at which point I withdraw from my wife’s mouth and ejaculate over my son and daughter’s face and my wife’s bottom. I aim for my son’s eyes; it looks like he’s crying cream – it’s a lovely effect.

“My wife stands upright, with our kids feeding from her like her insides are made of Nutella. My wife climaxes – she doesn’t fake it, by the way, our little girl knows just what mummy likes – and our girl takes her tongue out and undresses quickly, throwing her clothes and her sanitary towel into a pile upstage. She looks lovely, my daughter, especially at this age – a few pubes are appearing, her breasts are just beginning to get shapely; they’re like two fried eggs. I lie down and look at my little girl’s winking vagina as she urinates on me, like she’s marking daddy as her territory. It’s very nice, this normally goes down a treat.

“As I’m being submerged in urine, my little boy takes his tongue from mummy’s arsehole. We have a very specific diet for show days, and her intestines are full of chunky diarrhoea, which my son is plugging up, so the moment he removes himself it all floods out, brown water and brown chunks spray all over his face and chest; it’s a bit like a waterfight except for instead of a hose it’s my wife’s bottom. Usually the force of the diarrhoea knocks his little sailor’s hat off – this gets a big laugh from the audience – it’s very cute.

“We try to have these both happening simultaneously, big daddy drinking little girl wee and little son drinking mummy’s poo – y’know, give the audience something to think about, in terms of family relations.

“When all this liquid has finished being expelled, I go to my daughter’s clothes and pick up her sanitary towel. I then slap it on our son’s face, by means of wiping the poo off. Of course, it doesn’t work that well, and when I remove it, he looks like he’s eaten meat and tomato pasta in the sweet, messy way a little kid would, a few blood smears and a lot of liquid faeces.

“We then take off my little boy’s nappy. We know he shouldn’t wear one, he’s a little too old, but he’s toilet trained, he only wears a nappy when we’re performing. With a quick flip upside-down, I put it on our daughter’s head – it’s a bit like when someone gets slimed on kids’ TV – his wee and poo runs down her face and over her eyes; she wipes it off with a big grin on her face and runs her tongue around her mouth, collecting as much poo as she can.

“I pick up my boxer shorts, turn them inside out, and wipe off the poo with my gusset. I wear them for days, there’s usually a good bit of crusty pre-cum and smegma there, and they smell terrible; so bad, in fact, that they make her vomit instantly. I try to pool the vomit in the boxers and pour it over my wife – half in her mouth and half in her arsehole. It’s not long after it’s in her mouth that she starts retching too; she stands upright, the puke from her bottom splashes on to the ground and she throws up her puke and my daughter’s puke directly into my mouth. I spit it out over the first three rows – y’know, try to get the audience involved a little bit.

“The smell of puke and poo and urine is pretty eye-watering at this point, but this is a massive turn on for me, and my cock has hardened again. My wife goes to her clothes and takes a pair of nail scissors out of her handbag, which she pokes into my urethra. I lie down in the mess of body fluids as she thrusts it in and out and in and out like some bizarre reverse handjob. It’s not long before my hard-on is dribbling blood like I’m pissing cranberry juice with a bladder infection, and I dribble this all over my family, aiming in particular for my daughter’s eyes.

“I take the nail scissors off my wife and put them into my 3-year-old boy’s little freckle of an arsehole. I cut up and down his arsecrack with them – snip snip snip – and open his bumcheeks like a book. It gets easier every time; it takes him ages to heal and sometimes I just have to rip them apart and forget about the scissors. I shove my head into his rectum and stand upright, like some bizarre piggyback ride. He can’t really handle this yet, to be honest – he still normally starts to cry. But don’t worry; the audience won’t even notice, because my wife guides me towards her chasm of a vagina and I begin to shove my kid into that, like I’m fucking her with my head and he is a condom. My wife’s vaginal lips can stretch like a balloon, and I have always thought that this unbirthing says a very profound thing in itself about the nature of life and death.

“Usually he’s passed out from lack of oxygen at this point, so we all take turns trying to tug his little willy into erection. He’s not even old enough for it at his age; I guess half the fun is that it’s impossible. I act like I’m pissed off with him, and for his punishment he’s got to ‘eat daddy’s shit too’, despite him already having nearly drowned in mummy’s shit. I also eat a specific diet for this; I squat over his face and release the corniest, smelliest log you ever did see. It lands on his face with a ‘thud’ and then we all kick his head about until he comes to.

“His face and arse are streaming blood far worse than my cock, and now there’s corn in his eyes and a far more solid shit covering his nose, forehead and cheeks. Most of it falls off when he sits upright, but to get the last bits off, my daughter does a fantastic vaginal ejaculation on him. What a talent she’s got; I’m so proud of her.

“We’ve got a good final pose, too. I violently stomp each member of my family, in height order, face first into the slippery puddles of poo and wee and blood and shit and semen, in such a way that bits of it splash up and cover my legs. They all lie on the floor, prone, and I assume the same position as John Travolta on the cover of Saturday Night Fever.

“The lights dim, and we all stand up and we all take a bow.”

The Director-General was stunned. “What. The. Fuck. What the Hell do you call an act like that?”

The man smiled and replied, “The Aristocrats.”

…

“I’d like to see that,” the Director General said.