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leizl08blogs · 4 years ago

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Leizl's First Blog♥️♥️😉

Anyeong haseyo, I’m Leizl Keith imnida. I’m from South Korea, ahahhahah just kidding, I’m actually from the mainland of Philippines♥️♥️♥️. So I want to tell something about myself before we go to the succeeding content of this blog. So, I am a girl who loves to mingle and play with kids, they are my stress reliever. I am a girl who loves to be alone in times of situation where I know I can’t handle it by myself. I am a girl who can’t express herself to other people cause of the thought that others would judge me, just kidding but seriously I am that kind of girl. I am a girl who loves to write poems but a tagalog one. Actually I have a page on Facebook where I post the poems I wrote, if your curious to the poems I made just search “MALAYANG TALUDTURAN” and its pages profile was a horse with a pink hair hahahaha. I am a girl who loves to watch Korean dramas specially when I’m bored. I love watching those dramas specially when the leading actor was SONG JOONG KI, HYUN BIN, and LEE MIN HO. Mianhae readers, hahahha I just want you all to know☺️☺️. I am a girl who loves to read wattpad stories, yes you read it right WATTPAD STORIES. Specially the stories of OWWSIC, the tragic one. Stories that end with a sad one like the boy or the girl will die at the end. I also love reading fantasy stories, where magic exist ahhahaha. Love it, but I love him more, charrrr I’m just kidding. I am a girl who do everything to be a good daughter to my parents. I committed different mistakes that disappoint my parents, yeah you read it right I’m not a perfect or a good daughter either. I just did those mistakes to get the attention of my parents, now I regret what I did on the past and learn from those mistakes. I am also a girl who have a negative mindset, yes you read it right. I am a secretive person but there is one person who knows everything about me and that is my cousin/bestfriend. I am a friendly person, aprroachable in times of needs, you can lean on when you have a problem, advice giver(but I can’t apply to myself), and a helpful one. So that’s it guyssss, I hope you will enjoy reading my introduction part where I tell some important things about me, hahahaha just kidding. I hope you will read until the end of my blog, hope you will not get bored yet after reading this introduction thingy. And again, I am Leizl Keith from South Korea (P.S- don’t judge me please, it is my dream to go to Korea that’s why) just kidding, I’m from Philippines. And another thing guys, you can call me on my nicknames: LEI, ZEL, LEIZ, VINE, DIVINE and KEITH. So I hope you will enjoy my blog. Gracias readers, Mamatsuuuu. Labyouuuuu allll, hope you like it😉😉.

So now we will proceed to the first content of my blog the Q and A portion, just kidding hahahah. I’m just going to answer the given question by my teacher. So, here are the given questions:

1. Where do I see myself 10 years from now? Is my learning in SPUP vital to where I’m leading to?

2. Was ABM the best choice after all?

3. What course will you take in college and why?

4. What topic would you like to learn more in this subject?

5. What the corona virus has taught you about life?

So guys here are my answers to this questions, hope you will like it and don’t get bored.

1. I see myself having my own RESTAURANT and being a BUSINESS WOMEN 10 years from now. And I think my learning in SPUP are vital that will lead me to what I want. Why? Because they taught me the things I must learn to continue venturing what I want in life.

2. For me ABM was the best choices cause it is connected to what I want to be in the future. I want to own a RESTAURANT someday and ABM is helping me to know how can I analyze, balance, record and many more a transaction.

3. The course I want to take in college was HRM (Hotel and Restaurant Management) cause I want to have my own RESTAURANT someday to help my parents and for them not to work anymore.

4. I want to learn more about the technologies in the subject Empowerment Technology. I want to learn the real meaning of technology, its branches, functions, and uses. I want to know how ICT evolved, developed, improved and upgraded its feature.

5. Corona virus has taught me the meaning of life and its purpose; it remind me of what I am, deep down inside me. Corona virus thought me that life is important and should be appreciated. Corona virus taught me to be comfortable with what I have know and be contended. It gives me an opportunity to slow down in this fast changing world right now and to appreciate what truly matters: FAMILY, friends and the connections I’ve made over the course of my life. I also rediscover myself because of this pandemic. And with every passing days, I’m rekindling my passion, likes and dislikes, my interest, the things I need to value, understanding what really I want, the importance of time, and most important, my desire to live, rather than merely survive. That the things that Corona virus has taught me.

So now guys we will proceed to the second content of my blog which was named as “CREAT A TECH REVIEW”.

My teacher told me or us I should say to choose our favorite technology and make a review for it. So now here is my answer, Hope you will like it. And oh! guys please read until the end of this blog, thank you.

• Before I will answer it let me first elaborate what technology is, “TECHNOLOGY” means the use of scientific knowledge for practical purpose or application, whether in industry or in our everyday lives. So the technology that I choose was Gadgets specifically “CELLPHONE”.

Here are the questions that I made for this Tech Review about the technology that I choose.

1. What is cellphone?

2. What are the characteristics that cellphone have?

3. What is the importance of cellphone?

4. What are the negative effects of cellphone among teenagers?

5. Why do we use cellphone?

Here are the answers:

1. A cellphone is any portable telephone which uses network technology to make and receive calls and messages. It is also about the technology used to transmit calls and messages, rather than what the handset itself can or cannot do. As long as a phone can transmit signal to a cellular network, it is a CELLPHONE. This is also a wireless telephone that permits telecommunication within a defined area that may include hundreds of square miles, using radio waves in the 800-900 megahertz (MHz) band.

2. Here are the characteristics of a cellphone:

- Has a Wi-Fi or cellular access to the internet

- A battery that powers the device for several hours

- A physical or onscreen keyboard for entering information

- Size and weight that allows it to be carried in one hand and manipulated with the other hand

- Touch-screen interface in almost all cases

- A virtual assistant, like Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant

- It has the ability to download data from the internet, including apps and books

- Wireless operation

3. The importance of cellphone was the perfect way to stay connected with others specially a family member whose away from you. It also provides a user with a sense of security. Example, in an event of emergency, having a cellphone can allow you to help to seek for a help and it could even save lives of others. This is also capable of internet access, sending and receiving photos, videos and files, and some cellphone are equipped with GPS technology. This allows users in locating some places around the world and allowing the cellphone to be found and the user location in the event of loss or emergency.

4. Here are the negative effects of cellphone among teenagers:

- Cause headaches

- Decreased attention

- Shortness of temper

- Sleep disorder

- Depression

- Lack of human contact

- Psychological problems

5. Cellphones are used in a variety of purpose, such as keeping in touch with family members, for conducting business, and in order to have access to a telephone in the event of emergency. We also used this to socialize to other people in different places through the use of social media. We use cellphones to share information to others, read news, stories and others. We use cellphone as one of our source of information. To meet other people and etc.

So guys were here at the last content of my blog, a “MOVIE REVIEW”. My teacher told me or us to choose 3 of our favorite that had a profound impact on my or our life. After every movie I should answer the guide questions that was given. Hope you will enjoy reading this. So, here are the questions:

1. What life lesson can be learned from the movie?

2. What part of the story told by the movie was the most powerful? Why?

3. Who was your favorite character in the movie? Why?

4. Did anything that happened in the movie remind you of something that has occurred in your own life or that you have seen occur to others?

So the first movie that I choose was MIDNIGHT SUN

SUMMARY:

A girl named Katie Price (Bella Throne) has a rare genetic condition called Xeroderma Pigmentosum or commonly called as XP, in where she is allergic to sunlight. Katie’s condition prevents her from being out in the sunlight. At the age of 17-years-old, Katie was been sheltered since childhood and was confined to their house during day because of this rare disease that she have that makes even the smallest amount of sunlight are deadly or can kill her. She has her father and her friend named Jack and Morgan to keep her company. When she graduated from home schooling, she asked her dad to allow her to go out. Katie comes out of the house every night, when the ray of the sun is no longer present. One night, she was noticed and asked out by her longtime crush, Charlie, whom she had been watching from her window from time to time. She was playing a guitar at the train station that time. Charlie heard her voice that’s why he walked towards Katie. When Charlie tried to talk to her, Katie suddenly leave and forgets her notebook. Charlie saw the notebook that Katie forgot so he keep it. He returns the next day, hoping that Katie was there. When he arrived at the train station he saw Katie singing again, so he walks towards Katie and talk to her. He explains to her how he got his injury that prevented him from getting a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley. They fell in love with each other as she secretly hide her health condition to Charlie. One night, she forgot about the danger and she was a little bit exposed to sunlight and eventually got her sick. She at first couldn’t accept the truth and didn’t want to see Charlie again. But at the end, she learn the importance of the time she could spent with the people she loved. She enjoyed her remaining days of her life with Charlie, her dad Jack and her best friend Morgan.

Questions answer:

1. For me, the life lesson that can be learned from the movie was be brave enough to faces every struggles, pains and most specially fears in life.

2. For me, the part of the movie that is the most powerful was when Katie and Charlie slept outside and Katie woke up when the sun was going to rise, so she hurriedly run and told Charlie to get her home fast but still she was exposed to sunlight. This is the most powerful part for me cause it made me realize a lot of things like how special our life is, I have a lots of complaints in life not realizing how blessed I am among others, I have a life and freedom which I never a blessing from above, it also teaches me to use my time wisely, and lastly and most specially I realized that our parents or my parents can be overprotective with us but chose to allow us to be happy and enjoy the life outside the house.

3. My favorite character on the movie was Katie price, cause she became brave enough to face the one she feared of the most.

4. When the time that Katie was dying it reminds me when I was a child (I don’t know my specific age that time), when my grandfather on my fathers side is dying because of the illness he have.

The second movie that I choose was FIVE FEET APART

Summary:

Five Feet Apart is a movie about Stella Grant (Haley Lu Richardson) who is a cystic fibrosis patient who actively uses social media to cope with her illness. She tries to live a normal life like others even if she had this kind if illness. At the hospital, she meet Willian “Will” Newman, who is there for a medical trial, in an attempt to get rid of the bacteria infection (B. cepacia) he has in his lungs. Those patients that have a CF are strictly kept six feet apart to reduce the risk of cross-infection, as a contracting bacterial infections from other CF patients can be dangerous – even life- threatening to them. Stella is determined to follow the rules not like Will who likes to break the rules and take dangerous risks sometimes. She notice that Will isn’t strictly following the treatment regimen and eventually gets him to agree to do so. As time goes by, Will and Stella began to fall for each other and secretly go on their first date, staying only five feet apart instead of six feet apart. Stella explaining she’s “taking that foot – for us”, they eventually end up to the hospital pool where they strip to reveal scars from their past surgeries they have. The next day is Will’s birthday and Stella throws him a surprise dinner party with the help of her best friend Poe and their fellow CF patients. The next day, Poe dies which leaves her devastated and because of this she pushes Will away. Later Stella realize how Poe did not get to live his life so she decided to live her life and see the lights with Will. As they walk on solid ice, Stella almost die but Will gave her a mouth-to-mouth and save her. At the hospital, the lung transplant for Stella was successful, and Will learns that Stella did not contract his infection. When Stella wakes up after her surgery, she sees Will through the glass of her room. He has set up a display of lights outside her room, saying that his only regret was that she did not get to see the lights, so he brought them to her. He tells her that his drug trial isn’t working, and he doesn’t want her to have to deal with his eventual death. He gives her a notebook of his drawings of her and he confesses his love for her. Will makes her close her eyes, because he says he won’t be able to leave if she is looking at him so Stella close her eyes and Will walks away. Years have passed, Stella can be seen in a video on her channel, saying she misses Will’s touch now that she has lost it forever.

Questions answer:

1. The moral lesson that I learned from this movie was: first, Even healthy young people can die; second, illness can devastate families emotionally and financially; third, it is scary to love someone and it can be even scarier to let someone love you, especially when you are embarrassed by your scars; fourth; always find a way to feel in control in something; and lastly, live life to the fullest, because you never know what might happen tomorrow; sixth, love can really conquer all.

2. When Stella and Will fall for each other despite of the risk they may encounter and that can give death to the both of them. It so hard to fall for someone who can’t be yours until the end because of the reason that he/she must let you go because of a reasonable reasons.

3. My favorite character on the movie was Will, cause he was willing to give up his love for Stella even if it will break her heart because he doesn’t want Stella to deal with his eventual death because the medication is not working to him.

4. I haven’t seen any of the situation on the movie that was happened on my life but maybe it happened to other but I don’t who they are. But watching this movie makes me so emotional and I even think or put myself on Stella’s situation. Just thinking of it, it breaks my heart into pieces.

Lastly, the movie that I choose was TOMB RAIDER

SUMMARY:

Adventurer Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) defeats a robot in an Egyptian tomb, revealed to be a training exercise arena in her family manor, where she lives with her technical assistant Bryce (Noah Taylor) and butler Hilary (Chris Barrie). In Venice, as the first Lphase of a planetary alignment begins, the Illuminati search for a key to rejoin halves of a mysterious artifact, “the Triangle’” which must be completed by the final phase, a solar eclipse. Manfred Powell (Iain Glen) assures the cabal that the artifact is almost ready, but has no real idea of its location. Lara’s father Lord Richard Croft (Jon Voight) long missing and presumed dead, appears to her in a dream. Lara awakens to a mysterious ticking, and finds a strange clock hidden inside the manor. On her way to consult a friend of her father’s, Wilson (Leslie Philips), Lara crosses paths with Alex West (Daniel Craig), an American associate and felloe adventurer. Lara shows Wilson the clock, and he puts her in touch with Powell. Lara shows Powell photographs of the clock, which he claims not to recognize. That night, armed commandos invade the house and steal the clock, bringing it to Powell. The next morning, a prearranged letter from Lara’s father arrives, explaining that the clock is the key to retrieving the halves of the Triangle of Light, an ancient object with the power to control time. After misuse of its power destroyed an entire city, the Triangle was separated: one half was hidden in a Cambodian tomb, the other in the ruined city, now modern-day Siberia. Her father tasks her to find and destroy both pieces before the Illuminati can exploit the Triangle’s power. In Cambodia, Lara finds Powell, who has hired West, and his commandos already at the temple. West solves part of the temple’s puzzle, and Powell prepares to insert the clock at the moment of alignment. Lara, realizing they are mistaken, she finds the correct keyhole; with only one second left, Lara persuades Powell to throw her the clock. She unlocks the first piece of the Triangle, and the statue of the temple come to life and attack the intruders. West, Powell, and his remaining men flee with the clock, leaving Lara to defeat an enormous six-armed guardian statue. She escapes with the piece; recovering at a Buddhist Monastery, she arranges a meeting with Powell. In Venice, Powell proposes a partnership to find the other half of the Triangle, and informs Lara that her father was a member of the Illuminati, and offers to use the Triangle’s power to resurrect him; though reluctant, she agrees to join forces. Lara and Bryce travel with Powell, West, and the Leader of the Illuminati (Richard Johnson) to Siberia. Entering the tomb, they discover a giant orrey, which activates as the alignment nears completion. Lara retrieves the second half of the Triangle, and Powell kills the Illuminati’s leader to restore the Triangle himself, but the halves will not fuse. Realizing Lara knows the solution, Powell kills West to persuade her to complete the Triangle to restore West’s and her father’s lives. Lara complies, but seized the Triangle herself. In a “crossing” of time, Lara faces the memory of her father, who urges her to destroy the Triangle for good rather than save his life. Returning to the tomb, Lara manipulates time to save West and stab Powell instead, and destroys the Triangle. The tomb begins to collapse, and all flee but the wounded Powell, who reveals to Lara that he murdered her father. After a hand-to-hand fight, Lara kills Powell, retrieving her father’s pocket watch and escape the tomb. Back on her manor, Lara visits her father’s memorial and finds that Bryce has reprogrammed the robot, and Hilary presents her with her pistols, which she takes with a smile.

Questions answer:

1. The life lesson that can be learned from the movie was: first, Don’t be afraid to fail. Failures makes us strong, it is a part of our life. Second, women are strong. Never ever under estimate what women can do cause sometimes they are more stronger than men. And lastly, believe in yourself. If you think you can’t make just believe in yourself that you will can do it.

2. For me, the part of the story that was the most powerful for me was when Lara choose to destroy the Triangle rather that to retrieve his father’s life. It was hard to choose when one of the family member was involved, especially your father. It can make you confuse to think what to do or what to choose.

3. My favorite character to the movie was Lara. She was so brave to face all things that she encounter even her fears. She never ever let negativity surrounds her. She let her fear make her brave enough to face them.

4. When Lara decide what to do. That’s the thing that happened in my life. Deciding whether what to choose between two things, What to do, and others.

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

So, That is it guyssss.... Thank you for readingggggg♥️♥️♥️♥️💞💞💞.... Hope you didn't get bored😅😅😅😅😅..... Love lotsssss, till the next blogggg😘😘

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artycloudpop · 4 years ago

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1hey are u bored at home, wanna chill and netflix....... but just can’t find some thing nice to watch? here’s a list of movies for u watch

A Ghost Story (2017)

Director David Lowery (Pete's Dragon) conceived this dazzling, dreamy meditation on the afterlife during the off-hours on a Disney blockbuster, making the revelations within even more awe-inspiring. After a fatal accident, a musician (Casey Affleck) finds himself as a sheet-draped spirit, wandering the halls of his former home, haunting/longing for his widowed wife (Rooney Mara). With stylistic quirks, enough winks to resist pretension (a scene where Mara devours a pie in one five-minute, uncut take is both tragic and cheeky), and a soundscape culled from the space-time continuum, A Ghost Story connects the dots between romantic love, the places we call home, and time -- a ghost's worst enemy.

Airplane! (1980)

This is one of the funniest movie of all time. Devised by the jokesters behind The Naked Gun, this disaster movie spoof stuffs every second of runtime with a physical gag (The nun slapping a hysterical woman!), dimwitted wordplay ("Don't call me, Shirley"), an uncomfortable moment of odd behavior ("Joey, have you ever seen a grown man naked?"), or some other asinine bit. The rare comedy that demands repeat viewings, just to catch every micro-sized joke and memorize every line.

A24

American Honey (2016)

Writer/director Andrea Arnold lets you sit shotgun for the travels of a group of wayward youth in American Honey, a seductive drama about a "mag crew" selling subscriptions and falling in and out of love with each other on the road. Seen through the eyes of Star, played by Sasha Lane, life on the Midwest highway proves to be directionless, filled with a stream of partying and steamy hookups in the backs of cars and on the side of the road, especially when she starts to develop feelings for Shia LaBeouf’s rebellious Jake. It’s an honest look at a group of disenfranchised young people who are often cast aside, and it’s blazing with energy. You’ll buy what they're selling.

Anna Karenina (2012)

Adapted by renowned playwright Tom Stoppard, this take on Leo Tolstoy's classic Russian novel is anything but stuffy, historical drama. Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander are all overflowing with passion and desire, heating up the chilly backdrop of St. Petersburg. But it's director Joe Wright's unique staging -- full of dance, lush costuming, fourth-wall-breaking antics, and other theatrical touches -- that reinvent the story for more daring audiences.

NETFLIX

Apostle (2018)

For his follow-up to his two action epics, The Raid and The Raid 2, director Gareth Evans dials back the hand-to-hand combat but still keeps a few buckets of blood handy in this grisly supernatural horror tale. Dan Stevens stars as Thomas Richardson, an early 20th century opium addict traveling to a cloudy island controlled by a secretive cult that's fallen on hard times. The religious group is led by a bearded scold named Father Malcolm (Michael Sheen) who may or may not be leading his people astray. Beyond a few bursts of kinetic violence and some crank-filled torture sequences, Evans plays this story relatively down-the-middle, allowing the performances, the lofty themes, and the windswept vistas to do the talking. It's a cult movie that earns your devotion slowly, then all at once.

Back to the Future (1985)

Buckle into Doc's DeLorean and head to the 1950s by way of 1985 with the seminal time-travel series that made Michael J. Fox a household name. It's always a joy watching Marty McFly's race against the clock way-back-when to ensure history runs its course and he can get back to the present. Netflix also has follow-up Parts II and III, which all add up to a perfect rainy afternoon marathon.

NETFLIX

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

The Coen brothers gave some big-name-director cred to Netflix by releasing their six-part Western anthology on the streaming service, and while it's not necessarily their best work, Buster Scruggs is clearly a cut above most Netflix originals. Featuring star turns from Liam Neeson, Tom Waits, Zoe Kazan, and more, the film takes advantage of Netflix's willingness to experiment by composing a sort of death fugue that unfolds across the harsh realities of life in Manifest Destiny America. Not only does it revel in the massive, sweeping landscapes of the American West, but it's a thoughtful meditation on death that will reveal layer after layer long after you finish.

Barbershop (2002)

If you've been sleeping on the merits of the Barbershop movies, the good news is it's never too late to get caught up. Revisit the 2002 installment that started Ice Cube's smack-talking franchise so you can bask in Cedric the Entertainer's hilarious wisdom, enjoy Eve's acting debut, and admire this joyful ode to community.

NETFLIX

Barry (2016)

In 1981, Barack Obama touched down in New York City to begin work at Columbia University. As Barry imagines, just days after settling into his civics class, a white classmate confronts the Barry with an argument one will find in the future president's Twitter @-mentions: "Why does everything always got to be about slavery?" Exaltation is cinematic danger, especially when bringing the life of a then-sitting president to screen. Barry avoids hagiography by staying in the moment, weighing race issues of a modern age and quieting down for the audience to draw its own conclusions. Devon Terrell is key, steadying his character as smooth-operating, socially active, contemplative fellow stuck in an interracial divide. Barry could be any half-black, half-white kid from the '80s. But in this case, he's haunted by past, present, and future.

Being John Malkovich (1999)

You can't doubt the audacity of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Anomalisa), whose first produced screenplay hinged on attracting the title actor to a script that has office drones discovering a portal into his mind. John Cusack, Catherine Keener, and Cameron Diaz combine to create an atmosphere of desperate, egomaniacal darkness, and by the end you'll feel confused and maybe a little slimy about the times you've participated in celebrity gawking.

A24

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2017)

Two young women are left behind at school during break... and all sorts of hell breaks loose. This cool, stylish thriller goes off in some strange directions (and even offers a seemingly unrelated subplot about a mysterious hitchhiker) but it all pays off in the end, thanks in large part to the three leads -- Emma Roberts, Lucy Boynton, and Kiernan Shipka -- and director Oz Perkins' artful approach to what could have been just another occult-based gore-fest.

Bloodsport (1988)

Jean-Claude Van Damme made a career out of good-not-great fluff. Universal Soldier is serviceable spectacle, Hard Target is a living cartoon, Lionheart is his half-baked take on On the Waterfront. Bloodsport, which owes everything to the legacy of Bruce Lee, edges out his Die Hard riff Sudden Death for his best effort, thanks to muscles-on-top-of-muscles-on-top-of-muscles fighting and Stan Bush's "Fight to Survive." Magic Mike has nothing on Van Damme's chiseled backside in Bloodsport, which flexes its way through a slow-motion karate-chop gauntlet. In his final face-off, Van Damme, blinded by arena dust, rage-screams his way to victory. The amount of adrenaline bursting out of Bloodsport demands a splash zone.

Blue Ruin (2013)

Before he went punk with 2016's siege thriller Green Room, director Jeremy Saulnier delivered this low-budget, darkly comic hillbilly noir. When Dwight Evans (Macon Blair) discovers that the man who killed his parents is being released from prison, he returns home to Virginia to claims his revenge and things quickly spin out of control. Like the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple, this wise-ass morality tale will make you squirm.

WELL GO USA ENTERTAINMEN

Burning (2018)

Some mysteries simmer; this one smolders. In his adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story, writer and director Lee Chang-dong includes many elements of the acclaimed author's slyly mischievous style -- cats, jazz, cooking, and an alienated male writer protagonist all pop up -- but he also invests the material with his own dark humor, stray references to contemporary news, and an unyielding sense of curiosity. We follow aimless aspiring novelist Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) as he reconnects with Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), a young woman he grew up with, but the movie never lets you get too comfortable in one scene or setting. When Steven Yeun's Ben, a handsome rich guy with a beautiful apartment and a passion for burning down greenhouses, appears, the film shifts to an even more tremulous register. Can Ben be trusted? Yeun's performance is perfectly calibrated to entice and confuse, like he's a suave, pyromaniac version of Tyler Durden. Each frame keeps you guessing.

Cam (2018)

Unlike the Unfriended films or this summer's indie hit Searching, this web thriller from director Daniel Goldhaber and screenwriter Isa Mazzei isn't locked into the visual confines of a computer screen. Though there's plenty of online screen time, allowing for subtle bits of commentary and satire, the looser style allows the filmmakers to really explore the life and work conditions of their protagonist, rising cam girl Alice (Madeline Brewer). We meet her friends, her family, and her customers. That type of immersion in the granular details makes the scarier bits -- like an unnerving confrontation in the finale between Alice and her evil doppelganger -- pop even more.

THE ORCHARD

Creep (2014)

Patrick Brice's found-footage movie is a no-budget answer to a certain brand of horror, but saying more would give away its sinister turns. Just know that the man behind the camera answered a Craigslist ad to create a "day in the life" video diary for Josef (Mark Duplass), who really loves life. Creep proves that found footage, the indie world's no-budget genre solution, still has life, as long as you have a performer like Duplass willing to go all the way.

The Death of Stalin (2017)

Armando Iannucci, the brilliant Veep creator, set his sights on Russia with this savage political satire. Based on a graphic novel, the film dramatizes the madcap, maniacal plots of the men jostling for power after their leader, Joseph Stalin, keels over. From there, backstabbing, furious insults, and general chaos unfolds. Anchored by performances from Shakespearean great Simon Russell Beale and American icon Steve Buscemi, it's a pleasure to see what the rest of the cast -- from Star Trek: Discovery's Jason Isaacs to Homeland's Rupert Friend -- do with Iannucci's eloquently brittle text.

Den of Thieves (2018)

If there's one thing you've probably heard about this often ridiculous bank robbery epic, it's that it steals shamelessly from Michael Mann's crime saga Heat. The broad plot elements are similar: There's a team of highly-efficient criminals led by a former Marine (Pablo Schreiber) and they must contend with a obsessive, possibly unhinged cop (Gerard Butler) over the movie's lengthy 140 minute runtime. A screenwriter helming a feature for the first time, director Christian Gudegast is not in the same league as Mann as a filmmaker and Butler, sporting unflattering tattoos and a barrel-like gut, is hardly Al Pacino. But everyone is really going for it here, attempting to squeeze every ounce of Muscle Milk from the bottle.

NETFLIX

Divines (2016)

Thrillers don't come much more propulsive or elegant than Houda Benyamina's Divines, a heartwarming French drama about female friendship that spirals into a pulse-pounding crime saga. Rambunctious teenager Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and her best friend Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) begin the film as low-level shoplifters and thieves, but once they fall into the orbit of a slightly older, seasoned drug dealer named Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda), they're on a Goodfellas-like trajectory. Benyamina offsets the violent, gritty genre elements with lyrical passages where Dounia watches her ballet-dancer crush rehearse his routines from afar, and kinetic scenes of the young girls goofing off on social media. It's a cautionary tale told with joy, empathy, and an eye for beauty.

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Eddie Murphy has been waiting years to get this movie about comedian and blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore made, and you can feel his joy in finally getting to play this role every second he's on screen. The film, directed by Hustle & Flow's Craig Brewer, charts how Moore rose from record store employee, to successful underground comedian, to making his now-cult classic feature Dolemite by sheer force of passion. It's thrilling (and hilarious) to watch Murphy adopt Moore's Dolemite persona, a swaggering pimp, but it's just as satisfying to see the former SNL star capture his character at his lowest points. He's surrounded by an ensemble that matches his infectious energy.

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

As romanticized as adolescence can be, it’s hard being young. Following the high school experience of troubled, overdramatic Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), The Edge of Seventeen portrays the woes of adolescence with a tender, yet appropriately cheeky tone. As if junior year isn’t hellish enough, the universe essentially bursts into flames when Nadine finds out her best friend is dating her brother; their friendship begins to dissolve, and she finds the only return on young love is embarrassment and pain. That may all sound like a miserable premise for a young-adult movie, except it’s all painfully accurate, making it endearingly hilarious -- and there’s so much to love about Steinfeld’s self-aware performance.

FOCUS FEATURES

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Romance and love are nothing without the potential for loss and pain, but most of us would probably still consider cutting away all the worst memories of the latter. Given the option to eradicate memories of their busted relationship, Jim Carrey's Joel and Kate Winslet's Clementine go through with the procedure, only to find themselves unable to totally let go. Science fiction naturally lends itself to clockwork mechanisms, but director Michel Gondry and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman never lose the human touch as they toy with the kaleidoscope of their characters' hearts and minds.

The Evil Dead (1981)

Before Bruce Campbell's Ash was wielding his chainsaw-arm in Army of Darkness and on Starz's Ash Vs. Evil Dead, he was just a good looking guy hoping to spend a nice, quiet vacation in a cabin with some friends. Unfortunately, the book of the dead had other plans for him. With this low-budget horror classic, director Sam Raimi brings a surprising degree of technical ingenuity to bear on the splatter-film, sending his camera zooming around the woods with wonder and glee. While the sequels double-downed on laughs, the original Evil Dead still knows how to scare.

The Firm (1993)

The '90s were a golden era of sleek, movie-star-packed legal thrillers, and they don't get much better than director Sydney Pollack's The Firm. This John Grisham adaptation has a little bit of everything -- tax paperwork, sneering mobsters, and Garey Busey, for starters -- but there's one reason to watch this movie: the weirdness of Tom Cruise. He does a backflip in this movie. What else do you need to know?

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The Florida Project (2017)

Sean Baker's The Florida Project nuzzles into the swirling, sunny, strapped-for-cash populace of a mauve motel just within orbit of Walt Disney World. His eyes are Moonee, a 6-year-old who adventures through abandoned condos, along strip mall-encrusted highway, and across verdant fields of overgrown brush like Max in Where the Wild Things Are. But as gorgeous as the everything appears -- and The Florida Project looks stunning -- the world around here is falling apart, beginning with her mother, an ex-stripper turning to prostitution. The juxtaposition, and down-to-earth style, reconsiders modern America in the most electrifying way imaginable.

Frances Ha (2012)

Before winning hearts and Oscar nominations with her coming-of-age comedy Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig starred in the perfect companion film, about an aimless 27-year-old who hops from New York City to her hometown of Sacramento to Paris to Poughkeepsie and eventually back to New York in hopes of stumbling into the perfect job, the perfect relationship, and the perfect life. Directed by Noah Baumbach (The Meyerowitz Stories), and co-written by both, Frances Ha is a measured look at adult-ish life captured the kind of intoxicating black and white world we dream of living in.

NETFLIX

Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened (2019)

Everyone's favorite disaster of a festival received not one, but two streaming documentaries in the same week. Netflix's version has rightly faced some criticism over its willingness to let marketing company Fuck Jerry off the hook (Jerry Media produced the doc), but that doesn't take away from the overall picture it portrays of the festival's haphazard planning and the addiction to grift from which Fyre's founder, Billy McFarland, apparently suffers. It's schadenfreude at its best.

Gerald's Game (2017)

Like his previous low-budget Netflix-released horror release, Hush, a captivity thriller about a deaf woman fighting off a masked intruder, Mike Flanagan's Stephen King adaptation of Gerald's Game wrings big scares from a small location. Sticking close to the grisly plot details of King's seemingly "unfilmable" novel, the movie chronicles the painstaking struggles of Jessie Burlingame (Carla Gugino) after she finds herself handcuffed to a bed in an isolated vacation home when her husband, the titular Gerald, dies from a heart attack while enacting his kinky sexual fantasies. She's trapped -- and that's it. The premise is clearly challenging to sustain for a whole movie, but Flanagan and Gugino turn the potentially one-note set-up into a forceful, thoughtful meditation on trauma, memory, and resilience in the face of near-certain doom.

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Good Time (2017)

In this greasy, cruel thriller from Uncut Gems directors the Safdie brothers, Robert Pattinson stars as Connie, a bank robber who races through Queens to find enough money to bail out his mentally disabled brother, who's locked up for their last botched job. Each suffocating second of Good Time, blistered by the neon backgrounds of Queens, New York and propelled by warped heartbeat of Oneothrix Point Never's synth score, finds Connie evading authorities by tripping into an even stickier situation.

Green Room (2015)

Green Room is a throaty, thrashing, spit-slinging punk tune belted through an invasion-movie microphone at max volume. It's nasty -- and near-perfect. As a band of 20-something rockstars recklessly defend against a neo-Nazi battalion equipped with machetes, shotguns, and snarling guard dogs, the movie blossoms into a savage coming-of-age tale, an Almost Famous for John Carpenter nuts. Anyone looking for similar mayhem should check out director Jeremy Saulnier's previous movie, the low-budget, darkly comic hillbilly noir, Blue Ruin, also streaming on Netflix.

The Guest (2014)

After writer-director Adam Wingard notched a semi-sleeper horror hit with 2011's You're Next, he'd earned a certain degree of goodwill among genre faithful and, apparently, with studio brass. How else to explain distribution for his atypical thriller The Guest through Time Warner subsidiary Picturehouse? Headlined by soon-to-be megastar Dan Stevens and kindred flick It Follows' lead scream queen Maika Monroe, The Guest introduces itself as a subtextual impostor drama, abruptly spins through a blender of '80s teen tropes, and ultimately reveals its true identity as an expertly self-conscious straight-to-video shoot 'em up, before finally circling back on itself with a well-earned wink. To say anymore about the hell that Stevens' "David" unleashes on a small New Mexico town would not only spoil the fun, but possibly get you killed.

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The Hateful Eight (2015)

Quentin Tarantino has something to say about race, violence, and American life, and it's going to ruffle feathers. Like Django Unchained, the writer-director reflects modern times on the Old West, but with more scalpel-sliced dialogue, profane poetry, and gore. Stewed from bits of Agatha Christie, David Mamet, and Sam Peckinpah, The Hateful Eight traps a cast of blowhards (including Samuel L. Jackson as a Civil War veteran, Kurt Russell as a bounty hunter known as "The Hangman," and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a psychopathic gang member) in a blizzard-enveloped supply station. Tarantino ups the tension by shooting his suffocating space in "glorious 70mm." Treachery and moral compromise never looked so good.

High Flying Bird (2019)

High Flying Bird is a basketball film that has little to do with the sport itself, instead focusing on the behind-the-scenes power dynamics that play out during an NBA lockout. At the center of the Steven Soderbergh movie -- shot on an iPhone, because that's what he does now -- is André Holland's Ray Burke, a sports agent trying to protect his client's interests while also disrupting a corrupt system. It's not an easy tightrope to walk, and, as you might expect, the conditions of the labor stoppage constantly change the playing field. With his iPhone mirroring the NBA's social media-heavy culture, and appearances from actual NBA stars lending the narrative heft, Soderbergh experiments with Netflix's carte blanche and produces a unique film that adds to the streaming service's growing list of original critical hits.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Hugo (2011)

Martin Scorsese hit pause on mob violence and Rolling Stones singles to deliver one of the greatest kid-centric films in eons. Following Hugo (Asa Butterfield) as he traces his own origin story through cryptic automaton clues and early 20th-century movie history, the grand vision wowed in 3-D and still packs a punch at home.

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016)

A meditative horror flick that's more unsettling than outright frightening, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House follows the demise of Lily, a live-in nurse (Ruth Wilson) who's caring for an ailing horror author. As Lily discovers the truth about the writer's fiction and home, the lines between the physical realm and the afterlife blur. The movie's slow pacing and muted escalation might frustrate viewers craving showy jump-scares, but writer-director Oz Perkins is worth keeping tabs on. He brings a beautiful eeriness to every scene, and his story will captivate patient streamers. Fans should be sure to check out his directorial debut, The Blackcoat's Daughter.

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I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017)

In this maniacal mystery, Ruth (Melanie Lynskey), a nurse, and her rattail-sporting, weapon-obsessed neighbor Tony (Elijah Wood) hunt down a local burglar. Part Cormac McCarthy thriller, part wacky, Will Ferrell-esque comedy, I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore is a cathartic neo-noir about everyday troubles. Director Macon Blair's not the first person to find existential enlightenment at the end of an amateur detective tale, but he might be the first to piece one together from cussing octogenarians, ninja stars, Google montages, gallons of Big Red soda, upper-deckers, friendly raccoons, exploding body parts, and the idiocy of humanity.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

With a bullwhip, a leather jacket, and an "only Harrison Ford can pull this off" fedora, director Steven Spielberg invented the modern Hollywood action film by doing what he does best: looking backward. As obsessed as his movie-brat pal and collaborator George Lucas with the action movie serials of their youth, the director mined James Bond, Humphrey Bogart, Westerns, and his hatred of Nazis to create an adventure classic. To watch Raiders of the Lost Ark now is to marvel at the ingenuity of specific sequences (the boulder! The truck scene! The face-melting!) and simply groove to the self-deprecating comic tone (snakes! Karen Allen! That swordsman Indy shoots!). The past has never felt so alive.

Inside Man (2006)

Denzel Washington is at his wily, sharp, and sharply dressed best as he teams up once again with Spike Lee for this wildly entertaining heist thriller. He's an NYPD hostage negotiator who discovers a whole bunch of drama when a crew of robbers (led by Clive Owen) takes a bank hostage during a 24-hour period. Jodie Foster also appears as an interested party with uncertain motivations. You'll have to figure out what's going on several times over before the truth outs.

DRAFTHOUSE FILMS

The Invitation (2015)

This slow-burn horror-thriller preys on your social anxiety. The film's first half-hour, which finds Quarry's Logan Marshall-Green arriving at his ex-wife's house to meet her new husband, plays like a Sundance dramedy about 30-something yuppies and their relationship woes. As the minutes go by, director Karyn Kusama (Jennifer's Body) burrows deeper into the awkward dinner party, finding tension in unwelcome glances, miscommunication, and the possibility that Marshall-Green's character might be misreading a bizarre situation as a dangerous one. We won't spoil what happens, but let's just say this is a party you'll be telling your friends about.

Ip Man (2008)

There aren't many biopics that also pass for decent action movies. Somehow, Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen and director Wilson Yip made Ip Man (and three sequels!) based on the life of Chinese martial arts master Yip Kai-man, who famously trained Bruce Lee. What's their trick to keeping this series fresh? Play fast and loose with the facts, up the melodrama with each film, and, when in doubt, cast Mike Tyson as an evil property developer. The fights are incredible, and Yen's portrayal of the aging master still has the power to draw a few tears from even the most grizzled tough guy.

NETFLIX

The Irishman (2019)

Opening with a tracking shot through the halls of a drab nursing home, where we meet a feeble old man telling tall tales from his wheelchair, The Irishman delights in undercutting its own grandiosity. All the pageantry a $150 million check from Netflix can buy -- the digital de-aging effects, the massive crowd scenes, the shiny rings passed between men -- is on full display. Everything looks tremendous. But, like with 2013's The Wolf of Wall Street, the characters can't escape the fundamental spiritual emptiness of their pursuits. In telling the story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a World War II veteran and truck driver turned mob enforcer and friend to labor leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian construct an underworld-set counter-narrative of late 20th century American life. Even with a 209 minute runtime, every second counts.

It Comes at Night (2017)

In this post-apocalyptic nightmare-and-a-half, the horrors of humanity, the strain of chaotic emotions pent up in the name of survival, bleed out through wary eyes and weathered hands. The setup is blockbuster-sized -- reverts mankind to the days of the American frontier, every sole survivor fights to protect their families and themselves -- but the drama is mano-a-mano. Barricaded in a haunted-house-worthy cabin in the woods, Paul (Edgerton) takes in Will (Abbott) and his family, knowing full well they could threaten his family's existence. All the while, Paul's son, Trevor, battles bloody visions of (or induced by?) the contagion. Shults directs the hell out of every slow-push frame of this psychological thriller, and the less we know, the more confusion feels like a noose around our necks, the scarier his observations become.

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Jupiter Ascending is one of those "bad" movies that might genuinely be quite good. Yes, Channing Tatum is a man-wolf and Mila Kunis is the princess of space and bees don't sting space royalty and Eddie Redmayne hollers his little head off about "harvesting" people -- but what makes this movie great is how all of those things make total, absolute sense in the context of the story. The world the Wachowskis (yes, the Wachowskis!) created is so vibrant and strange and exciting, you almost can't help but get drawn in, even when Redmayne vamps so hard you're afraid he's about to pull a muscle. (And if you're a ballet fan, we have some good news for you.)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Perhaps the only movie that ever truly deserved a conversion to a theme-park ride, Steven Spielberg's thrilling adaptation of the Michael Crichton novel brought long-extinct creatures back to life in more ways than one. Benevolent Netflix gives us more than just the franchise starter, too: The Lost World and JP3 sequels are also available, so you can make a marathon of it.

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Killing Them Softly (2012)

Brad Pitt doesn't make conventional blockbusters anymore -- even World War Z had epidemic-movie ambitions -- so it's not surprising that this crime thriller is a little out there. Set during the financial crisis and presidential election of 2008, the film follows Pitt's hitman character as he makes sense of a poker heist gone wrong, leaving a trail of bodies and one-liners along the way. Mixed in with the carnage, you get lots of musings about the economy and American exceptionalism. It's not subtle -- there's a scene where Scoot McNairy and Ben Mendelsohn do heroin while the Velvet Underground's "Heroin" plays -- but, like a blunt object to the head, it gets the job done.

Lady Bird (2017)

The dizzying, frustrating, exhilarating rite of passage that is senior year of high school is the focus of actress Greta Gerwig's first directorial effort, the story of girl named Lady Bird (her given name, in that "it’s given to me, by me") who rebels against everyday Sacramento, California life to obtain whatever it is "freedom" turns out to be. Laurie Metcalf is an understated powerhouse as Lady Bird's mother, a constant source of contention who doggedly pushes her daughter to be successful in the face of the family's dwindling economic resources. It's a tragic note in total complement to Gerwig's hysterical love letter to home, high school, and the history of ourselves.

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The Lobster (2016)

Greek style master Yorgos Lanthimos' dystopian allegory against romance sees Colin Farrell forced to choose a partner in 45 days or he'll be turned into an animal of his choice, which is a lobster. Stuck in a group home with similarly unlucky singles, Farrell's David decides to bust out and join other renegades in a kind of anti-love terror cell that lives in the woods. It's part comedy of manners, part futuristic thriller, and it looks absolutely beautiful -- Lanthimos handles the bizarre premise with grace and a naturalistic eye that reminds the viewer that humans remain one of the most interesting animals to exist on this planet.

Mad Max (1979)

Before Tom Hardy was grunting his way through the desert and crushing tiny two-headed reptiles as Max Rockatansky, there was Mel Gibson. George Miller's 1979 original introduces the iconic character and paints the maximum force of his dystopian mythology in a somewhat more grounded light -- Australian police factions, communities, and glimmers of hope still in existence. Badass homemade vehicles and chase scenes abound in this taut, 88-minute romp. It's aged just fine.

Magic Mike (2012)

Steven Soderbergh's story of a Tampa exotic dancer with a heart of gold (Channing Tatum) has body-rolled its way to Netflix. Sexy dance routines aside, Mike's story is just gritty enough to be subversive. Did we mention Matthew McConaughey shows up in a pair of ass-less chaps?

The Master (2012)

Loosely inspired by the life of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard -- Dianetics buffs, we strongly recommend Alex Gibney's Going Clear documentary as a companion piece -- The Master boasts one of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s finest performances, as the enigmatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd. Joaquin Phoenix burns just as brightly as his emotionally stunted, loose-cannon protege Freddie Quell, who has a taste for homemade liquor. Paul Thomas Anderson’s cerebral epic lends itself to many different readings; it’s a cult story, it's a love story, it's a story about post-war disillusionment and the American dream, it's a story of individualism and the desire to belong. But the auteur's popping visuals and heady thematic currents will still sweep you away, even if you’re not quite sure where the tide is taking you.

NETFLIX

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)

When Danny (Adam Sandler), Matthew (Ben Stiller) and Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), three half-siblings from three different mothers, gather at their family brownstone in New York to tend to their ailing father (Dustin Hoffman), a lifetime of familial politics explode out of every minute of conversation. Their narcissistic sculptor dad didn't have time for Danny. Matthew was the golden child. Jean was weird… or maybe disturbed by memories no one ever knew. Expertly sketched by writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale) this memoir-like portrait of lives half-lived is the kind of bittersweet, dimensional character comedy we're now used to seeing told in three seasons of prestige television. Baumbach gives us the whole package in two hours.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

The legendary British comedy troupe took the legend of King Arthur and offered a characteristically irreverent take on it in their second feature film. It's rare for comedy to hold up this well, but the timelessness of lines like, "I fart in your general direction!" "It's just a flesh wound," and "Run away!" makes this a movie worth watching again and again.

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Moonlight (2016)

Chronicling the boyhood years, teenage stretch, and muted adult life of Chiron, a black gay man making it in Miami, this triptych altarpiece is at once hyper-specific and cosmically universal. Director Barry Jenkins roots each moment in the last; Chiron's desire for a lost lover can't burn in a diner booth over a bottle of wine without his beachside identity crisis years prior, blurred and violent, or encounters from deeper in his past, when glimpses of his mother's drug addiction, or the mentoring acts of her crack supplier, felt like secrets delivered in code. Panging colors, sounds, and the delicate movements of its perfect cast like the notes of a symphony, Moonlight is the real deal, a movie that will only grow and complicate as you wrestle with it.

Mudbound (2017)

The South's post-slavery existence is, for Hollywood, mostly uncharted territory. Rees rectifies the overlooked stretch of history with this novelistic drama about two Mississippi families working a rain-drenched farm in 1941. The white McAllans settle on a muddy patch of land to realize their dreams. The Jacksons, a family of black sharecroppers working the land, have their own hopes, which their neighbors manage to nurture and curtail. To capture a multitude of perspectives, Mudbound weaves together specific scenes of daily life, vivid and memory-like, with family member reflections, recorded in whispered voice-over. The epic patchwork stretches from the Jackson family dinner table, where the youngest daughter dreams of becoming a stenographer, to the vistas of Mississippi, where incoming storms threaten an essential batch of crops, to the battlefields of World War II Germany, a harrowing scene that will affect both families. Confronting race, class, war, and the possibility of unity, Mudbound spellbinding drama reckons with the past to understand the present.

NETFLIX

My Happy Family (2017)

At 52, Manana (Ia Shughliashvili) packs a bag and walks out on her husband, son, daughter, daughter's live-in boyfriend, and elderly mother and father, all of whom live together in a single apartment. The family is cantankerous and blustery, asking everything of Manana, who spends her days teaching better-behaved teenagers about literature. But as Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß's striking character study unfolds, the motivation behind Manana's departure is a deeper strain of frustration, despite what her brother, aunts, uncles, and anyone else who can cram themselves into the situation would like us to think. Anchored by Ia Shughliashvili's stunningly internal performance, and punctured by a dark sense of humor akin to Darren Aronofsky's mother! (which would have been the perfect alternate title), My Happy Family is both delicate and brutal in its portrayal of independence, and should get under the skin of anyone with their own family drama.

The Naked Gun (1988)

The short-lived Dragnet TV spoof Police Squad! found a second life as The Naked Gun action-comedy movie franchise, and the first installment goes all in on Airplane! co-star Leslie Nielsen's brand of straight-laced dementia. Trying to explain The Naked Gun only makes the stupid sound stupider, but keen viewers will find jokes on top of jokes on top of jokes. It's the kind of movie that can crack "nice beaver," then pass a stuffed beaver through the frame and actually get away with it. Nielsen has everything to do with it; his Frank Drebin continues the grand Inspector Clouseau tradition in oh-so-'80s style.

The Notebook (2004)

"If you’re a bird, I’m a bird." It's a simple statement and a declaration of devotion that captures the staying power of this Nicholas Sparks classic. The film made Ryan Gosling a certified heartthrob, charting his working class character Noah's lovelorn romance with Rachel McAdam's wealthy character Allie. The star-crossed lovers narrative is enough to make even the most cynical among us swoon, but given that their story is told through an elderly man reading (you guessed it!) a notebook to a woman with dementia, it hits all of the tragic romance benchmarks to make you melt. Noah's commitment to following his heart -- and that passionate kiss in the rain -- make this a love story for the ages.

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Okja (2017)

This wild ride, part action heist, part Miyazaki-like travelogue, and part scathing satire, is fueled by fairy tale whimsy -- but the Grimm kind, where there are smiles and spilled blood. Ahn Seo-hyun plays Mija, the young keeper of a "super-pig," bred by a food manufacturer to be the next step in human-consumption evolution. When the corporate overlords come for her roly-poly pal, Mija hightails it from the farm to the big city to break him out, crossing environmental terrorists, a zany Steve Irwin-type (Gyllenhaal), and the icy psychos at the top of the food chain (including Swinton's childlike CEO) along the way. Okja won't pluck your heartstrings like E.T., but there's grandeur in its frenzy, and the film's cross-species friendship will strike up every other emotion with its empathetic, eco-friendly, and eccentric observations.

On Body and Soul (2017)

This Hungarian film earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film, and it's easy to see why. The sparse love story begins when two slaughterhouse employees discover they have the same dream at night, in which they're both deer searching the winter forest for food. Endre, a longtime executive at the slaughterhouse, has a physically damaged arm, whereas Maria is a temporary replacement who seems to be on the autism spectrum. If the setup sounds a bit on-the-nose, the moving performances and the unflinching direction save On Body and Soul from turning into a Thomas Aquinas 101 class, resulting in the kind of bleak beauty you can find in a dead winter forest.

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The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

Don't go into Orson Welles' final film expecting it to be an easy watch. The Other Side of the Wind, which follows fictional veteran Hollywood director Jake Hannaford (tooootally not modeled after Welles himself) and his protegé (also tooootally not a surrogate for Welles' own friend and mentee Peter Bogdanovich, who also plays the character) as they attend a party in celebration of Hannaford's latest film and are beset on all sides by Hannaford's friends, enemies, and everyone in between. The film, which Welles hoped would be his big comeback to Hollywood, was left famously unfinished for decades after his death in 1985. Thanks to Bogdanovich and producer Frank Marshall, it was finally completed in 2018, and the result is a vibrant and bizarre throwback to Welles' own experimental 1970s style, made even more resonant if you know how intertwined the movie is with its own backstory. If you want to dive even deeper, Netflix also released a documentary about the restoration and completion of the film, They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, which delves into Welles' own complicated and tragic relationship with Hollywood and the craft of moviemaking.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Guillermo Del Toro’s dark odyssey Pan’s Labyrinth takes a fantasy setting to mirror the horrible political realities of the human realm. Set in 1940s Falangist Spain, the film documents the hero’s journey of a young girl and stepdaughter of a ruthless Spanish army officer as she seeks an escape from her war-occupied world. When a fairy informs her that her true destiny may be as the princess of the underworld, she seizes her chance. Like Alice in Wonderland if Alice had gone to Hell instead of down the rabbit hole, the Academy Award-winning film is a wondrous, frightening fairy tale where that depicts how perilous the human-created monster of war can be.

Paranormal Activity (2007)

This documentary-style film budgeted at a mere $15,000 made millions at the box office and went on to inspire a number of sequels, all because of how well its scrappiness lent to capturing what feels like a terrifying haunted reality. Centered on a young couple who is convinced an evil spirit is lurking in their home, the two attempt to capture its activity on camera, which, obviously, only makes their supernatural matters worse. It leans on found footage horror tropes made popular by The Blair Witch Project and as it tessellates between showing the viewer what’s captured on their camcorders and the characters’ perspectives, it’s easy to get lost in this disorienting supernatural thriller.

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Poltergeist (1982)

If you saw Poltergeist growing up, chances are you’re probably equally as haunted by Heather O’Rourke as she is in the film, playing a little girl tormented by ghosts in her family home. This Steven Spielberg-penned, Tobe Hooper-directed (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) paranormal flick is a certified cult classic and one of the best horror films of all time, coming from a simple premise about a couple whose home is infested with spirits obsessed with reclaiming the space and kidnapping their daughter. Poltergeist made rearranged furniture freaky, and you may remember a particularly iconic scene with a fuzzed out vintage television set. It’s may be nearly 40 years old, but the creepiness holds up.

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Taking Jane Austen's literary classic and tricking it out with gorgeous long takes, director Joe Wright turns this tale of manners into a visceral, luminescent portrait of passion and desire. While Succession's Matthew MacFadyen might not make you forget Colin Firth from 1995's BBC adaptation, Keira Knightley is a revelation as the tough, nervy Lizzie Bennett. With fun supporting turns from Donald Sutherland, Rosamund Pike, and Judi Dench, it's a sumptuous period romance that transports you from the couch to the ballroom of your dreams -- without changing out of sweatpants.

NETFLIX

Private Life (2018)

Over a decade since the release of her last dark comedy, The Savages, writer and director Tamara Jenkins returned with a sprawling movie in the same vein: more hyper-verbal jerks you can't help but love. Richard (Paul Giamatti) and Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) are a Manhattan-dwelling couple who have spent the last few years attempting to have a baby with little success. When we meet them, they're already in the grips of fertility mania, willing to try almost anything to secure the offspring they think they desire. With all the details about injections, side effects, and pricey medical procedures, the movie functions as a taxonomy of modern pregnancy anxieties, and Hahn brings each part of the process to glorious life.

The Ritual (2018)

The Ritual, a horror film where a group of middle-aged men embark on a hiking trip in honor of a dead friend, understands the tension between natural beauty of the outdoors and the unsettling panic of the unknown. The group's de facto leader Luke (an understated Rafe Spall) attempts to keep the adventure from spiralling out of control, but the forest has other plans. (Maybe brush up on your Scandinavian mythology before viewing.) Like a backpacking variation on Neil Marshall's 2005 cave spelunking classic The Descent, The Ritual deftly explores inter-personal dynamics while delivering jolts of other-worldly terror. It'll have you rethinking that weekend getaway on your calendar.

NETFLIX

Roma (2018)

All those billions Netflix spent paid off in the form of several Oscar nominations for Roma, including one for Best Picture and a win for Best Director. Whether experienced in the hushed reverence of a theater, watched on the glowing screen of a laptop, or, as Netflix executive Ted Sarandos has suggested, binged on the perilous surface of a phone, Alfonso Cuarón's black-and-white passion project seeks to stun. A technical craftsman of the highest order, the Children of Men and Gravity director has an aesthetic that aims to overwhelm -- with the amount of extras, the sense of despair, and the constant whir of exhilaration -- and this autobiographical portrait of kind-hearted maid Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) caring for a family in the early 1970s has been staged on a staggering, mind-boggling scale.

Schindler's List (1993)

A passion project for Steven Spielberg, who shot it back-to-back with another masterpiece, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who reportedly saved over 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Frank, honest, and stark in its depiction of Nazi violence, the three-hour historical drama is a haunting reminder of the world's past, every frame a relic, every lost voice channeled through Itzhak Perlman's mourning violin.

A Serious Man (2009)

This dramedy from the Coen brothers stars Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern physics professor who just can't catch a break, whether it's with his wife, his boss, or his rabbi. (Seriously, if you're having a bad day, this airy flick gives you ample time to brood and then come to the realization that your life isn't as shitty as you think.) Meditating on the spiritual and the temporal, Gopnik's improbable run of bad luck is a smart modern retelling of the Book of Job, with more irony and fewer plagues and pestilences. But not much fewer.

WELL GO USA

Shadow (2019)

In Shadow, the visually stunning action epic from Hero and House of Flying Daggers wuxia master Zhang Yimou, parasols are more than helpful sun-blockers: They can be turned into deadly weapons, shooting boomerang-like blades of steel at oncoming attackers and transforming into protective sleds for traveling through the slick streets. These devices are one of many imaginative leaps made in telling this Shakespearean saga of palace intrigue, vengeance, and secret doppelgangers set in China's Three Kingdoms period. This is a martial arts epic where the dense plotting is as tricky as the often balletic fight scenes. If the battles in Game of Thrones left you frustrated, Shadow provides a thrilling alternative.

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

Before checking out Spike Lee's Netflix original series of the same name, be sure to catch up with where it all began. Nola (Tracy Camilla Johns) juggles three men during her sexual pinnacle, and it's all working out until they discover one another. She's Gotta Have It takes some dark turns, but each revelation speaks volumes about what real romantic independence is all about.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The late director Jonathan Demme's 1991 film is the touchstone for virtually every serial killer film and television show that came after. The iconic closeup shots of an icy, confident Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) as he and FBI newbie Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) engage in their "quid pro quo" interrogation sessions create almost unbearable tension as Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) remains on the loose, killing more victims. Hopkins delivers the more memorable lines, and Buffalo Bill's dance is the stuff of nerve-wracking anxiety nightmares, but it's Foster's nuanced performance as a scared, determined, smart-yet-hesitant agent that sets Silence of the Lambs apart from the rest of the serial killer pack.

THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and David O. Russell’s first collaboration -- and the film that turned J-Law into a bona fide golden girl -- is a romantic comedy/dramedy/dance-flick that bounces across its tonal shifts. A love story between Pat (Cooper), a man struggling with bipolar disease and a history of violent outbursts, and Tiffany (Lawrence), a widow grappling with depression, who come together while rehearsing for an amateur dance competition, Silver Linings balances an emotionally realistic depiction of mental illness with some of the best twirls and dips this side of Step Up. Even if you're allergic to rom-coms, Lawrence and Cooper’s winning chemistry will win you over, as will this sweet little gem of a film: a feel-good, affecting love story that doesn’t feel contrived or treacly.

Sin City (2005)

Frank Miller enlisted Robert Rodriguez as co-director to translate the former's wildly popular series of the same name to the big screen, and with some added directorial work from Quentin Tarantino, the result became a watershed moment in the visual history of film. The signature black-and-white palette with splashes of color provided a grim backdrop to the sensational violence of the miniaturized plotlines -- this is perhaps the movie that feels more like a comic than any other movie you'll ever see.

Sinister (2012)

Horror-movie lesson #32: If you move into a creepy new house, do not read the dusty book, listen to the decaying cassette tapes, or watch the Super 8 reels you find in the attic -- they will inevitably lead to your demise. In Sinister, a true-crime author (played by Ethan Hawke) makes the final mistake, losing his mind to home movies haunted by the "Bughuul."

NETFLIX

Small Crimes (2017)

It's always a little discombobulating to see your favorite Game of Thrones actors in movies that don't call on them to fight dragons, swing swords, or at least wear some armor. But that shouldn't stop you from checking out Small Crimes, a carefully paced thriller starring the Kingslayer Jaime Lannister himself, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. As Joe Denton, a crooked cop turned ex-con, Coster-Waldau plays yet another character with a twisted moral compass, but here he's not part of some mythical narrative. He's just another conniving, scheming dirtbag in director E.L. Katz's Coen brothers-like moral universe. While some of the plot details are confusing -- Katz and co-writer Macon Blair skimp on the exposition so much that some of the dialogue can feel incomprehensible -- the mood of Midwestern dread and Coster-Waldau's patient, lived-in performance make this one worth checking out. Despite the lack of dragons.

Snowpiercer (2013)

Did people go overboard in praising Snowpiercer when it came out? Maybe. But it's important to remember that the movie arrived in the sweaty dog days of summer, hitting critics and sci-fi lovers like a welcome blast of icy water from a hose. The film's simple, almost video game-like plot -- get to the front of the train, or die trying -- allowed visionary South Korean director Bong Joon-ho to fill the screen with excitement, absurdity, and radical politics. Chris Evans never looked more alive, Tilda Swinton never stole more scenes, and mainstream blockbuster filmmaking never felt so tepid in comparison. Come on, ride the train!

The Social Network (2010)

After making films like Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and Zodiac, director David Fincher left behind the world of scumbags and crime for a fantastical, historical epic in 2008's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The Social Network was another swerve, but yielded his greatest film. There's no murder on screen, but Fincher treats Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg like a dorky, socially awkward mob boss operating on an operatic scale. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire, screwball-like dialogue burns with a moral indignation that Fincher's watchful, steady-handed camera chills with an icy distance. It's the rare biopic that's not begging you to smash the "like" button.

SONY PICTURES RELEASING

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

In this shrewd twist on the superhero genre, the audience's familiarity with the origin story of your friendly neighborhood web-slinger -- the character has already starred in three different blockbuster franchises, in addition to countless comics and cartoon TV adaptations -- is used as an asset instead of a liability. The relatively straight-forward coming-of-age tale of Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a Brooklyn teenager who takes on the powers and responsibilities of Spider-Man following the death of Peter Parker, gets a remix built around an increasingly absurd parallel dimension plotline that introduces a cast of other Spider-Heroes like Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glen), and, most ridiculously, Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), a talking pig in a Spider-Suit. The convoluted set-up is mostly an excuse to cram the movie with rapid-fire jokes, comic book allusions, and dream-like imagery that puts the rubbery CGI of most contemporary animated films to shame.

Spotlight (2015)

Tom McCarthy stretches the drama taut as he renders Boston Globe's 2000 Catholic Church sex scandal investigation into a Hollywood vehicle. McCarthy's notable cast members crank like gears as they uncover evidence and reflect on a horrifying discovery of which they shoulder partial blame. Spotlight was the cardigan of 2015's Oscar nominees, but even cardigans look sharp when Mark Ruffalo is involved.

The Squid and the Whale (2005)

No movie captures the prolonged pain of divorce quite like Noah Baumbach's brutal Brooklyn-based comedy The Squid and the Whale. While the performances from Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney as bitter writers going through a separation are top-notch, the film truly belongs to the kids, played by Jesse Eisenberg and Owen Kline, who you watch struggle in the face of their parents' mounting immaturity and pettiness. That Baumbach is able to wring big, cathartic laughs from such emotionally raw material is a testament to his gifts as a writer -- and an observer of human cruelty.

SONY PICTURES RELEASING

Starship Troopers (1997)

Paul Verhoeven is undoubtedly the master of the sly sci-fi satire. With RoboCop, he laid waste to the police state with wicked, trigger-happy glee. He took on evil corporations with Total Recall. And with Starship Troopers, a bouncy, bloody war picture, he skewered the chest-thumping theatrics of pro-military propaganda, offering up a pitch-perfect parody of the post-9/11 Bush presidency years before troops set foot in Iraq or Afghanistan. Come for the exploding alien guts, but stay for the winking comedy -- or stay for both! Bug guts have their charms, too.

Swiss Army Man (2016)

You might think a movie that opens with a suicidal man riding a farting corpse like a Jet Ski wears thin after the fourth or fifth flatulence gag. You would be wrong. Brimming with imagination and expression, the directorial debut of Adult Swim auteurs "The Daniels" wields sophomoric humor to speak to friendship. As Radcliffe's dead body springs back to life -- through karate-chopping, water-vomiting, and wind-breaking -- he becomes the id to Dano's struggling everyman, who is also lost in the woods. If your childhood backyard adventures took the shape of The Revenant, it would look something like Swiss Army Man, and be pure bliss.

NETFLIX

Tallulah (2016)

From Orange Is the New Black writer Sian Heder, Tallulah follows the title character (played by Ellen Page) after she inadvertently "kidnaps" a toddler from an alcoholic rich woman and passes the child off as her own to appeal to her run-out boyfriend's mother (Allison Janney). A messy knot of familial woes and wayward instincts, Heder's directorial debut achieves the same kind of balancing act as her hit Netflix series -- frank social drama with just the right amount of humorous hijinks. As Tallulah grows into a mother figure, her on-the-lam parenting course only makes her more and more of a criminal in the eyes of... just about everyone. You want to root for her, but that would be too easy.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Travis Bickle (a young Bobby De Niro) comes back from the Vietnam War and, having some trouble acclimating to daily life, slowly unravels while fending off brutal insomnia by picking up work as a... taxi driver... in New York City. Eventually he snaps, shaves his hair into a mohawk and goes on a murderous rampage while still managing to squeeze in one of the most New York lines ever captured on film ("You talkin' to me?"). It's not exactly a heartwarmer -- Jodie Foster plays a 12-year-old prostitute -- but Martin Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver is a movie in the cinematic canon that you'd be legitimately missing out on if you didn't watch it.

FOCUS FEATURES

The Theory of Everything (2014)

In his Oscar-winning performance, Eddie Redmayne portrays famed physicist Stephen Hawking -- though The Theory of Everything is less of a biopic than it is a beautiful, sweet film about his lifelong relationship with his wife, Jane (Felicity Jones). Covering his days as a young cosmology student ahead of his diagnosis of ALS at 21, through his struggle with the illness and rise as a theoretical scientist, this film illustrates the trying romance through it all. While it may be written in the cosmos, this James Marsh-directed film that weaves in and out of love will have you experience everything there is to feel.

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Paul Thomas Anderson found modern American greed in the pages of Upton Sinclair's depression-era novel, Oil!. Daniel Day-Lewis found the role of a lifetime behind the bushy mustache of Daniel Plainview, thunderous entrepreneur. Paul Dano found his milkshake drunk up. Their discoveries are our reward -- There Will Be Blood is a stark vision of tycoon terror.

Time to Hunt (2020)

Unrelenting in its pursuit of scenarios where guys point big guns at each other in sparsely lit empty hallways, the South Korean thriller Time to Hunt knows exactly what stylistic register it's playing in. A group of four friends, including Parasite and Train to Busan break-out Choi Woo-shik, knock over a gambling house, stealing a hefty bag of money and a set of even more valuable hard-drives, and then find themselves targeted by a ruthless contract killer (Park Hae-soo) who moves like the T-1000 and shoots like a henchmen in a Michael Mann movie. There are dystopian elements to the world -- protests play out in the streets, the police wage a tech-savvy war on citizens, automatic rifles are readily available to all potential buyers -- but they all serve the simmering tension and elevate the pounding set-pieces instead of feeling like unnecessary allegorical padding. Even with its long runtime, this movie moves.

STUDIOCANAL

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

If a season of 24 took place in the smoky, well-tailored underground of British intelligence crica 1973, it might look a little like this precision-made John le Carré adaptation from Let the Right One In director Tomas Alfredson. Even if you can't follow terse and tightly-woven mystery, the search for Soviet mole led by retired operative George Smiley (Gary Oldman), the ice-cold frames and stellar cast will suck you into the intrigue. It's very possible Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch are reading pages of the British phone book, but egad, it's absorbing. A movie that rewards your full concentration.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)

Of all the entries in the rom-com revival, this one is heavier on the rom than the com. But even though it won't make your sides hurt, it will make your heart flutter. The plot is ripe with high school movie hijinks that arise when the love letters of Lara Jean Covey (the wonderful Lana Condor) accidentally get mailed to her crushes, namely the contractual faux relationship she starts with heartthrob Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). Like its heroine, it's big-hearted but skeptical in all the right places.

Total Recall (1990)

Skip the completely forgettable Colin Farrell remake from 2012. This Arnold Schwarzenegger-powered, action-filled sci-fi movie is the one to go with. Working from a short story by writer Philip K. Dick, director Paul Verhoeven (Robocop) uses a brain-teasing premise -- you can buy "fake" vacation memories from a mysterious company called Rekall -- to stage one of his hyper-violent, winkingly absurd cartoons. The bizarre images of life on Mars and silly one-liners from Arnold fly so fast that you'll begin to think the whole movie was designed to be implanted in your mind.

NETFLIX

Tramps (2017)

There are heists pulled off by slick gentlemen in suits, then there are heists pulled off by two wayward 20-somethings rambling along on a steamy, summer day in New York City. This dog-day crime-romance stages the latter, pairing a lanky Russian kid (Callum Tanner) who ditches his fast-food register job for a one-off thieving gig, with his driver, an aloof strip club waitress (Grace Van Patten) looking for the cash to restart her life. When a briefcase handoff goes awry, the pair head upstate to track down the missing package, where train rides and curbside walks force them to open up. With a laid-back, '70s soul, Tramps is the rare doe-eyed relationship movie where playing third-wheel is a joy.

Uncut Gems (2019)

In Uncut Gems, the immersive crime film from sibling director duo Josh and Benny Safdie, gambling is a matter of faith. Whether he's placing a bet on the Boston Celtics, attempting to rig an auction, or outrunning debt-collecting goons at his daughter's high school play, the movie's jeweler protagonist Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) believes in his ability to beat the odds. Does that mean he always succeeds? No, that would be absurd, undercutting the character's Job-like status, which Sandler imbues with an endearing weariness that holds the story together. But every financial setback, emotional humbling, and spiritual humiliation he suffers gets interpreted by Howard as a sign that his circumstances might be turning around. After all, a big score could be right around the corner.

Velvet Buzzsaw (2018)

Nightcrawler filmmaker Dan Gilroy teams up with Jake Gyllenhaal again to create another piece of cinematic art, this time a satirical horror film about the exclusive, over-the-top LA art scene. The movie centers around a greedy group of art buyers who come into the possession of stolen paintings that, unbeknownst to them, turn out to be haunted, making their luxurious lives of wheeling and dealing overpriced paintings a living hell. Also featuring the likes of John Malkovich, Toni Collette, Billy Magnussen, and others, Velvet Buzzsaw looks like Netflix’s next great original.

COLUMBIA PICTURES

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

Oscar-baiting, musician biopics became so cookie-cutter by the mid-'00s that it was easy for John C. Reilly, Judd Apatow, and writer-director Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) to knot them all together for the ultimate spoof. Dewey Cox is part Johnny Cash, part Bob Dylan, part Ray Charles, part John Lennon, part anyone-you-can-think-of, rising with hit singles, rubbing shoulders with greats of many eras, stumbling with eight-too-many drug addictions, then rising once again. When it comes to relentless wisecracking, Walk Hard is like a Greatest Hits compilation -- every second is gold.

The Witch (2015)

The Witch delivers everything we don't see in horror today. The backdrop, a farm in 17th-century New England, is pure misty, macabre mood. The circumstance, a Puritanical family making it on the fringe of society because they're too religious, bubbles with terror. And the question, whether devil-worshipping is hocus pocus or true black magic, keeps each character on their toes, and begging God for answers. The Witch tests its audience with its (nearly impenetrable) old English dialogue and the (anxiety-inducing) trials of early American life, but the payoff will keep your mind racing, and your face hiding under the covers, for days.

Y Tu Mamá También (2001)

Before taking us to space with Gravity, director Alfonso Cuarón steamed up screens with this provocative, comedic drama about two teenage boys (Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal) road-trippin' it with an older woman. Like a sunbaked Jules and Jim, the movie makes nimble use of its central love triangle, setting up conflicts between the characters as they move through the complicated political and social realities of Mexican life. It's a confident, relaxed film that's got an equal amount of brains and sex appeal. Watch this one with a friend -- or two.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Zodiac (2007)

David Fincher's period drama is for obsessives. In telling the story of the Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer who captured the public imagination by sending letters and puzzles to the Bay Area press, the famously meticulous director zeroes in on the cops, journalists, and amateur code-breakers who made identifying the criminal their life's work. With Jake Gyllenhaal's cartoonist-turned-gumshoe Robert Graysmith at the center, and Robert Downey Jr.'s barfly reporter Paul Avery stumbling around the margins, the film stretches across time and space, becoming a rich study of how people search for meaning in life. Zodiac is a procedural thriller that makes digging through old manilla folders feel like a cosmic quest.

13th (2016)

Selma director Ava DuVernay snuck away from the Hollywood spotlight to direct this sweeping documentary on the state of race in America. DuVernay's focus is the country's growing incarceration rates and an imbalance in the way black men and women are sentenced based on their crimes. Throughout the exploration, 13th dives into post-Emancipation migration, systemic racism that built in the early 20th century, and moments of modern political history that continue to spin a broken gear in our well-oiled national machine. You'll be blown away by what DuVernay uncovers in her interview-heavy research.

20th Century Women (2016)

If there's such thing as an epistolary movie, 20th Century Women is it. Touring 1970s Santa Barbara through a living flipbook, Mike Mills's semi-autobiographical film transcends documentation with a cast of wayward souls and Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), an impressionable young teenager. Annette Bening plays his mother, and the matriarch of a ragtag family, who gather together for safety, dance to music when the moment strikes, and teach Jamie the important lesson of What Women Want, which ranges from feminist theory to love-making techniques. The kid soaks it up like a sponge. Through Mills's caring direction, and characters we feel extending infinitely through past and present, so do we.

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edharrisdaily · 5 years ago

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Ed Harris on Westworld and Staying Non-Hollywood

The Oscar-nominated actor, 65, makes a rare foray into television as the villainous no-named “Man in Black” in the HBO adaptation of the 1973 sci-fi thriller Westworld, airing Sunday nights. The chilling new series, set in a futuristic Wild West–themed amusement park, explores the meaning of life through the interactions of humans and artificial beings.

Can you describe your character?

In the first two episodes, it seems like he’s the baddest guy around, but you learn a lot more about him as the episodes go on in terms of what he does in the real world, his family and what he’s doing in Westworld.

How does the series compare to the Westworld movie?

[The movie was] a lot more campy. This is darker and stranger.

What were some of your favorite Westerns growing up?

I was born in the 1950, so there were tons of Westerns on TV by the time I was 6, 7, 8 years old. In terms of television, Maverick and Have Gun—Will Travel. But filmically, classics like High Noon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance—that’s one of my favorite films.

Do you stay low-key and non-Hollywood by choice?

Big-time, yes. I’ve been in the same house for 31 years, up the coast, and have a little bit of land. There’s always something to do, something to work on when I’m home. I enjoy it. It clears my head. It’s physical. You focus on one thing at a time.

How did giving up football lead you to acting?

I realized after my freshman year that I wasn’t really good enough. I was playing at Columbia University, which is not known for its football team. I probably could have played four years there, but I didn’t. After my freshman year, I was working out for the fall and said, “I just don’t want to do this anymore.” I saw some summer theater that year, and I decided maybe I could do that. So I decided to start studying acting.

Talk a little about the violence on Westworld, because your character “kills” a lot of other characters.

He doesn’t “kill” anybody, because they [the robotic figures] all get re-fixed and sent back out. So in that way, I guess that made me feel like maybe the violence was acceptable on some level. It is a violent world. Everybody knows that. And this is a place where it’s safe and you’re not harming anybody by being violent. You get a chance to go there and get that kind of thing out of your system, hopefully.

I think when he initially came there, he didn’t come there to shoot up robotic people or have sex with robotic prostitutes. I don’t know why. I think he was probably more curious than anything when he first went there. I think he discovered this darker side of himself that he probably wasn’t even aware of on some level, but knew there was a real part of him and a real part of his nature. Every year, he goes back for a month and he purges it, so he doesn’t have to deal with it in the real world.

Is variety in your roles important to you?

If I’ve been an architect of my own career in any fashion, one thing that I’ve attempted to do is not get typecast, in order to be able to play all different kind of characters. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that over the years.

You have two directing credits. Do you want to do more or do you really love acting?

I really love directing. I’ve been looking for something to do since Appaloosa, which we shot in the fall of ’07. I read a book last year, The Ploughmen, by a Montana writer Kim Zupan. It was the first novel that he published. It’s a really well told, suspenseful story but beautifully written and haunting in a way, so I’ve written a screenplay. Stacy Keach is going to play one of the main characters. My wife, Amy [Madigan], is playing another one, and hopefully my daughter, Lily. I’m in the process of trying to cast the story’s main guy, a 29-, 30-year-old deputy sheriff in a small city in Montana. I hope to shoot it next fall. I’m really excited because I just love the whole directing deal.

Is your daughter, Lily, going to follow you into the business?

Maybe, we’ll see. She really loves to act, and she’s a really good actress. She’s done a lot of theater in school and I think she’s up for doing this. If she doesn’t want to do it, it’s fine with me. I’m not going to like force her, but I think it’s a really cool part for her.

What’s next?

I’m doing this picture called Kodachrome with Jason Sudeikis and Elizabeth Olsen. It’s a comedy-drama, semi-road picture. When they stop making Kodachrome film, there’s only one place left to develop it. I play this crankety, very well-known photographer who goes with his estranged son and his secretary out to Kansas to get his film developed.

Then, hopefully, I’m doing Buried Child again. We did a Sam Shepard play in New York early this year, and I think we’re going to be doing that in London in December, January and February. And then at some point next year, I’ll probably end up doing season two of Westworld.

#ed harris #misc.#interview #2016 #parade magazine #westworld #q

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sasskarian · 5 years ago

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The Mostly-Complete Rise of Skywalker semi-liveblog and reaction list that literally no one asked for

I really dig the parallels between Exegol and Korriban. The way both places felt massive and cramped at the same time, all ominous and tomb-like. Both of them are desolate, devoid of all life. They both feel barren, but not just barren. Korriban feels like history crumbling beneath your fingertips. Exegol feels like a place that’s actively trying to wound you with its desolation, like it’s sucking the life out of you to try and renew itself. (Which, given that Palpatine is there and what he does later, yeah, that tracks.)

When Palps tells Kylo to kill Rey, you can see the micro expression in his eyes. The way the muscles in his face tighten up for a second, the brows drawing down in an expression of disdain and repulsion. If we could have seen his mouth, I’d lay money down on there being a sneer flash across his face for a moment. And damn if Adam isn’t a good actor for being able to portray something that subtle.

There were definitely a few moments where Chewie bitches at Poe for the stunts he’s pulling, including a very definitive accusation of “Rey would never do this to me or the Falcon,” or something along those lines. (This is when Poe snarls, “Yeah, well, Rey’s not here right now, is she?”)

Kylo reaching out into the Force. We’re supposed to think he’s trying to reach Anakin/Vader, but I don’t think that’s what happened at all. I think that he reached for Rey specifically, possibly as a self-soothing gesture. The need to feel her alive, reassure himself. And because of Rey’s feelings and connections to his own family, he’s clearly struggling with his more monstrous acts, and with seeing Luke and Han as intrusive thoughts.

Rey failing the training course because of him makes perfect sense. Notice that this is also when she gets angry.

The Kintsugi vibe given off by Ren’s helmet repairs are fascinating.

Given the way Pryde keeps focusing on Hux during the meeting, I feel like he suspects Hux.

I find it interesting that Finn seems to be the peacekeeper in the OT3. Poe is definitely a hothead, even though he’s matured since TFA and TLJ. And Rey snaps back at him, indignant that he’s snapping at her. And Finn is the one doing the “Guys, guYS, we don’t have TIME for this” routine.

I like the quiet horror of Rey recognizing Exegol’s name. Whether it’s Force shenanigans, or from reading Luke’s books, or from the vision, whatever. The recognition followed by horror is Good Fucking Acting.

I wish that there’d been a little more of Luke or Leia reassuring Rey that a name is just a name. That the legacy is what you make it. And that as the children of Anakin Skywalker, they know that better than anyone. I feel like that would have been a good tie-in and highlight for the way the surnames are treated in the movies. Ben shunning both Organa and Solo, Rey having a last name at last but one that carries the same kind of stigma and Dark past.

I… kind of wonder if Ren surrounded himself in atrocities as a means of self-punishment. We know it’s canon that he keeps being pulled to the Light, and that every time he does, he tries something Dark. Maybe it’s his way of reminding himself how far he’s fallen and that he can’t ever go back home again (which we know is bullshit, but hey, abuse fucks your brain up, and Snoke was abusive af). Like, again, I know it’s mostly just in the comics so far, but we see him a lot saying, “I never wanted this,” “I don’t want to do this.”

The Pasaana dance in the festival seems pretty clearly modeled after tribal dances, and that makes me wonder if powerful dances like the Dha Werda and the Ancestor Dance shown in the film send ripples through the Force. And what that might be like.

I… kind of like the idea of Ben and Kylo struggling for control? I need to finish reading TLJ and read TRoS when it comes out, but there are things Kylo does—the almost-gentle banter with Rey, the way he reaches out in TLJ when she’s on Ahch-To, warning her about Palps—that doesn’t make sense from a purely Kylo perspective. I mean, I’m also an angst gremlin who enjoys the idea of Kylo losing more ground to Ben Solo, and having serious identity clashes.

The bond between Rey and Kylo has grown exponentially. Each movie, it gets bigger and more powerful. In TFA, it allowed her to look into his head. And he wasn’t able to really bring himself to hurt her. In TLJ, it bridges impossible distances of space, even so far as transporting physical objects across the distance. And in TRoS, we see that it’s gotten so strong, it literally blocks out the rest of the physical world. You could argue that the darkness in the bond is what’s overshadowing it, but I don’t count it that way. Rey’s surroundings on Pasaana are slowed down and muted, as if only Ren is her focus.

The trio is so drift compatible, it hurts.

The way the trio grabs for each other, though. It was beautiful. Disney may have decided that Poe/Finn wasn’t a thing, which we all know is a damn lie, but this movie ships the OT3 so hard. The way Poe catches Rey as she falls, the way they both turn at almost the same time to look for Finn. The casual touching.

Childish though it was, I did enjoy the “mine’s bigger” joke with Rey’s lightsaber vs Poe’s flashlight.

Rey shows an affinity for Animal Empathy. Ren has used Stasis more than once. I could even argue that there’s been some subtle Battle Meditation going on throughout the series. And I kind of? Like that we’re seeing some of the more obscure and subtle Force powers.

Also? The snakey slow-blink? I love.

Rey seems to have some psychometry abilities. And I love it.

The way Rey says “I’ll be right behind you” isn’t what it sounds like. It has a lot of layers to it. (Just like Han’s “I know” in ESB) It’s declaration of intent (“I’ll handle this”), it’s a request (“Trust me”), and it’s consolation and reassurance (“I’ll be fine.”). The way all that is conveyed with five simple words is. Ugh. My heart.

As Finn gets stronger in the Force, I’m enjoying seeing his instincts kick in. He senses Ren’s approach, which is a nice completion of the parallel to TFA when Ren sensed him as the traitor.

I don’t know who’s read the Rise of Kylo comic, but the way she slices his ship to bring him down is a direct parallel to the shot he made when he escaped the destroyed Temple. (I love all the tie-ins, honestly)

Rey was doing okay with trying to pull the transport down until Kylo stepped in to push her. The most likely scenario is less “force lightning is genetic” (because that’s crap) but more that anger clouded her mind and she already had a direct Force ability going.

When I asked my roommate why she thought Rey couldn’t sense Chewie’s life force, she gave me an interesting theory. Well, a few, but one I think makes a lot of sense. The first was that Chewie was already off-world and thus too far away (later debunked by her sensing him as the Destroyer is in orbit). Or that maybe the transports were shielded against Force Abilities, but given that they’re so rare in this era, I don’t think that’s the case. I agree with my roomie in saying that it’s more likely that Rey burnt out part of her senses and basically put herself in shock due to the feedback of casting a powerful and traditionally dark side ability for the first time.

The first couple of times I watched the movie, the entire Threepio arc bothered me. Why didn’t they just plug him into the navicomputer, the way they’d done before? Why the angst build-up? Then I remembered that they left the Falcon on Pasaana, and it’s possible that L3 is more equipped to talk to Threepio’s forbidden memory banks than a post-TCW era ship that’s almost certainly out of date.

…Zorii and Poe have A Past. I’d put money on them having banged like screen doors in a hurricane at least a few times.

“Who are you hanging out with that spEAKS SITH?!?”

I? love? Babu?

“Does she do that to us?” had me in tears.

Oh my God, the sheer #aesthetic and foreshadowing of her duel with Ren. The red fruit (cherries?) spilling across the floor, the stark color against the too-bright white. The way Vader’s helmet thunks on the ground like a sour note in a song, the way the pedestal shatters with their combined strikes. Vader falling from Ren’s worship (as the truth is revealed that it was Snoke/Palps messing with his mind and he never heard Vader), the dark glass shattering the same way the darkness in Ren dies with him.

Finn is… kind of a gossipy biddy and I love it. The way Jannah hands him the part and he just flat out abandons the work to talk, the body language as he hoists himself up to sit on the ledge. I love it. He’s precious.

I wonder if the Death Star echoes in the Force. So many brutal deaths in those halls. So many restless ghosts.

…okay, I’m not sure how to feel about the dagger lining up with the fallen DS’s architecture. Because like. There’s so many layers to that? That suggests that Palps had the dagger created after Endor/RoTJ. Which suggests that he may have had the Wayfinders created then too (though it seemed pretty comfy in the Vault, so maybe he already had them?) (Also, there was one on Mustafar. Was it planted there? Did Vader know about Exegol? I need more information than this!) And like. The Death Star is sitting in a violent sea. It’s going to degrade eventually. What if the horizon line had changed? What then? It seems flimsy, for all that it was dramatic and cool.

The sheer aesthetic in this movie, though. The symbolism is everywhere. Like Rey taking the skimmer. I love the aesthetic choices of her struggling against these giant, furious waves as a fantastic visual analogy of her struggle against the emotions churning away inside her. And how Despair and Fear and even Anger threaten to overwhelm her and drown her, but she keeps holding tight to that little skimmer the same way she’s clinging to Luke’s teachings and Leia’s love and faith in her. Their belief in her.

“You don’t know what she’s fighting.” “And you do?” I wonder if, as a Force Adept, Finn can sense the bond between Rey and Ren, and that she’s struggling against it. As well as the Palpatine name.

Theory (that may or may not have been explored in the Legends EU): Any place steeped in enough Dark emotion can become a place of visions like the Mirror Cave and Dagobah’s Cave. Rey comes face to face with her worst fear on the Death Star.

Speaking of, I wonder if some small part of Rey enjoyed the vision of her and Kylo as Emperor and Empress. I wonder if that’s where the abject horror comes from.

Speaking of more aesthetic, the on-screen contrast and history of the window where Vader and Luke dueled, and the shot of Palps’ throne over Rey’s shoulder. Sorry not sorry but I’m going to be forever in love with the cinematography in this movie.

Ren seems… almost exasperated that she’s still drawing her saber on him. That has fic potential.

That. Entire. Fucking. Duel. That entire battle. Just… oof. OOF. My heart. It blew everything in me wide open. Looking with the eyes of a writer and SW expert instead of the wide-eyed “my hEaRt!” first reaction, I saw So Much. Like Rey and Ren trading battle stances. IDK if anyone else noticed, and it’s happened before (the throne room battle in TLJ, notably, but also their duel in Ren’s quarters). But here, it’s so clear. They gave and took from each other as they fought, and that broke my heart. It threw me back to KotOR II’s echani battles, and the fight between Sun and Mun in Sense8. Here, unlike TLJ, they weren’t fighting in tandem with each other. This was back and forth. Rey starts out saber up, in what looks like shii-cho. Kylo, like always, starts out in Ataru, with heavy, powerful strikes trying to bludgeon down her defense. Rey switches to an offensive, then to fast, agile strikes holding her lightsaber Ahsoka style. Kylo then switches to shii-cho, and Rey enters Ataru, with the aggressive offensive. The way they switched between each other was fantastic.

Near the end, Rey starts giving up. You can see it. Her movements get sluggish, like she’s just going through the motions. Like she’s so tired of fighting the bond in her head, her reluctant pull to him, like she’s just. So Fucking Tired. She’s resigned.

Kylo Ren dying by his own lightsaber while Ben’s mother called to him. That symbolism. That symbolism, though.

The way he looks around, like he’s in shock. The way the battle just stops, and he’s sitting there, dying. You can see the change in him, as Ben wakes up and Kylo dies. There’s so much shell-shock and disorientation, like someone who’s been asleep for too long, waking up confused. And I’d like to believe that Rey healing him poured not just healing but maybe a little Light into him, and that, along with Leia reaching for him, is what gave Ben the strength to rise over Kylo and overpower him. (See also, my love of internal power struggles)

“I did want to take your hand. Ben’s hand.” Excuse you, I did not sign up for this feels trip.

Rey running away. I have… conflicted feelings on? Did she run away because she was grieving? To escape her own history? Did she run because she gave into the dark and struck down Kylo in anger? Or because she was tempted by Ben?

I know everyone says that Han was just a memory but I prefer to believe that Han’s just too stubborn to be a proper Force Ghost. And Disney and Lucasarts can pry Force Sensitive Han Solo out of my cold dead hands.

Luke, materializing out of the air and catching the saber. My heart screamed. Especially when he chided her (and himself) that a lightsaber deserves more respect.

“Leia didn’t tell me.” I think… I think Leia was trying to, without saying the words, “Rey, you’re a Palpatine.” She said, “Never be afraid of who you are.” And oh, God, that’s something Leia would know. In the EU she struggles with being Anakin’s daughter, with the legacy of Vader hanging over her. She struggles with it so much. And finally comes to terms with it. So if anyone knows what that’s like, it’s going to be her.

"She sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path." So... she had nearly thirty years to plan for it. Yoda says, “Always in motion, the future is.” I don’t believe for a single instant that Leia Organa shrugged her shoulders and said “Welp, guess my kid’s gonna die.”

Luke KNEW Ben would go to Exegol. He knew and no one will ever convince me otherwise. “Take both sabers.” She’d need one for Ben.

I wonder if Lando looks at the Falcon and sees all the little pieces of Han.

So. The arrival order at Exegol threw me for a while. Rey gets there, in Red 5. Using the toasted Wayfinder. Then the Resistance arrives, following her trail. We see Ben arrive in a TIE fighter. But… how? Rey’s trail was given to the Resistance on what I can only imagine is an encrypted wave data burst. We know it was technically given to Lando, so that the people joining the battle could find them. But Ben’s in a TIE fighter. Did he get the message from Lando? Were the coordinates already programmed into the TIE via the Final Order? Did he memorize the path from before (given that he’s a stellar pilot like Han)? Did Rey give it to him?

I hate Palps being a one-trick pony in the movies. We see him in TCW having other abilities, and mad saber skills. But in the movies, his schtick is the same every time: He seduces people to the Dark and makes them feel like they don’t have a choice, usually by dangling, “Look, you can SAVE THEM” in front of everyone. And then once he has them, he keeps them by constantly belittling them and reminding them that there’s nowhere else for them to go, because they burnt all their bridges. (Ex: Vader being reminded of what he did to Padme, and Kylo being reminded via Snoke of his own actions)

WEDGE. WEDGE ANTILLES. WEDGE.

Rey felt Ben’s approach, and you can see the change in her body language.

THAT IS THE MOST HAN SOLO THING I HAVE EVER SEEN AND IT’S NOT EVEN HAN SOLO. Watching the changes in Ben (vs Kylo) is so fucking great. He’s lighter, he’s faster. He skids (Han/Death Star), shoots behind him (Han/TFA), and the Solo Shrug. Ugh. Seeing Leia and Han blended in Ben with the Solo swagger, and Leia’s grace is fantastic.

Also: he looks so Soft. And so much younger.

I wonder if they’re communicating through the bond? He knows she can see him, because he nods at her to give him the saber. And unless I didn’t see correctly, she mouthed/whispered his name. And again, we see the connections between them in the fighting style. They’re still acting and reacting like extensions of each other.

The way they meet, the relief on their faces. Relief that melts into stubbornness and determination. Also, the way they take up their sabers in the same stance, the same expression. It’s delicious.

We were ROBBED of seeing the Jedi around Rey. ROBBED.

I’m STILL SALTY that they weren’t there for Ben (that we can see anyway).

Ben proceeded to completely shatter my heart. When he pulls Rey into his lap, he looks around like he’s waiting for someone to tell him what to do. He’s actively seeking guidance and help. And because we don’t have an in to Ben’s head, we don’t know if someone told him what to do or how to do it, or if anyone comforted him. But we do see his face go from disbelief to despair to acceptance.

The face touch. Stop breaking my damn heart.

When the Core ships arrive, I’m almost positive I saw The Razorcrest and the Ghost. I need to check the disc where I can pause it, but I’d put money on it that I saw them.

The way the trio grabs for each other at the end is more movie-shipping-OT3. Finn holding the two people he loves most in the world, right where he can see them. Poe taking Rey’s hand. They don’t know what happened in the Citadel, but I’m pretty sure Finn can feel how tired Rey is, how wounded she is. And they’re There For Her.

Rey burying the sabers on Tatooine has so many emotions attached to it. Tatooine, where Anakin Skywalker was born of the Force, where Luke spent his formative years. Luke and Leia resting together in the Force, as their student moves on and tries to find her way in the galaxy. And the parallels and tie ins from TFA to now, like Rey building a dual saber from parts of her quarterstaff, the sand sliding, and the OT callback to the protag being silhouetted by the twin suns, were satisfying.

Rey’s saber being yellow is something I find… interesting. If you look at the newer movies, whenever a blue or green saber crosses with a red one, the light sparks and blending of the plasma fields look yellow. And Kyber crystals (in the new canon) aren’t colored. They take on a color when the jedi awakes the force in them. So for her color to resonate yellow as someone balanced in light and dark makes a lot of sense.

I have… Opinions on the surname controversy that I’m still trying to sort through. And I definitely have Opinions on Ben sacrificing himself (mostly that the entire sequel trilogy spent two and a half movies harping on about balance only to kill off half the balance and leave a Force Wound in their protag)

***

Was Rise of Skywalker a good movie? Eh. That depends a lot on your criteria.

Was it a successful Star Wars movie? That also depends on your criteria.

But for me, it felt like Star Wars. It felt like an ending to the Skywalker saga. Did I get everything I wanted? No. Am I salty about parts of it? Absolutely. Are there plot holes I could drive a Death Star through? You betcha. Were we robbed of a better, more cohesive movie based on the leaks from JJ’s crew? YUP.

But I found things to enjoy. I got things I wanted (OT3! Force Sensitive Finn! Bendemption! Lando! Hope for the galaxy!), didn’t know I wanted (Master Leia! D-O the anxiety droid! Generals Finn and Poe!), and things I definitely didn’t want.

#star wars #Star Wars Spoilers #Rise of Skywalker #Rise of Skywalker Spoilers #TRoS Spoilers #Episode IX spoilers #Episode Nine Spoilers #Reylo #Rey/Ben #Rey #Ben Solo #I will Cut a Bitch over a Skywalker #Sher does Star Wars #long post #look I have a lot of feelings okay

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standbyphoenix · 6 years ago

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Movie star River Phoenix left musical mark in Alabama by Matt Wake

Outside record producer Rick Rubin’s Hollywood Hills home, drummer Josh Greenbaum sat in a silver Volvo with his friend and bandmate River Phoenix, the film actor.

The rock-star Lenny Kravitz was with them.

On the car’s stereo, Kravitz played Phoenix and Greenbaum a recording of a new song he’d written called “Are You Gonna Go My Way.” This was 1992, before that explosive tune would become the title track to Kravitz’s third album and era-defining music.

At the moment, Kravitz needed a drummer. He’d recently told mononymous Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea he was frustrated trying to find the right fit. Flea later told Phoenix about Kravitz’s predicament, while Flea was having lunch with Phoenix. Upon hearing about the opportunity, Phoenix promptly hooked-up the drummer of his own band, Aleka’s Attic, with an audition with Kravitz - a much bigger gig.

“And that’s how much River loved me as a brother as a friend,” Greenbaum says. “He was like, ‘I don’t want to hold you back from potential success, and if I can hook you up with this audition then I’m going to do it.’ River was incredibly gracious and generous. He wanted to see the people he cared about thriving.”

The South Florida native wasn’t the only drummer auditioning that day at Rubin’s house. There were 25 or so “L.A. rocker dudes” at the “cattle call” that day “decked-out in leather, nose rings and tattoos.” In sneakers, jeans, sweatshirt and short haircut, Greenbaum looked more college-kid than arena-ready. In the end, the gig didn’t go to a dude at all. Cindy Blackman, a virtuosic jazz musician who happens to be female, deservedly became Kravitz’s next drummer. Still, Greenbaum says he got two callbacks to jam with Kravitz over the course of a week.

River Phoenix was a gifted, charismatic movie star so physically attractive he seemed to defy science.

His nuanced performances lit up such films as "Stand By Me," "My Own Private Idaho" and "Running On Empty."

But Phoenix told Greenbaum more than once, “music was his first love and film was his day-job.”

While some actors’ musical projects can be of dubious quality, Phoenix had legitimate singer/songwriter talent. “Music was a need of his,” Greenbaum says. “That’s why he put so much effort into a band, trying to make it in the music business, which of course would’ve come easier for him than anyone else that wasn’t famous already.”

Phoenix’s other passions included environmentalism, humanitarianism and animal-rights. He was one of the most visibly philanthropic young stars of the early ’90s.

Phoenix was the reason Seventeen subscribers knew what “vegan” meant. “He had a heart of gold and was an extremely hyper-sensitive, emotional person,” Greenbaum says. “And that’s why he wound up helping a lot of people.”

The Gainesville, Fla.-based band’s tours brought them through Alabama, including circa - 1991 shows at Huntsville’s Tip Top Café and Tuscaloosa’s Ivory Tusk. Greenbaum recalls Aleka’s Attic performing in Auburn, possibly at the War Eagle Supper Club there, and maybe Birmingham too.

“We had some successful tours,” says Greenbaum, who’s resided in Maui for more than 20 years. “People showed up because they wanted to hear what River’s band was like, but once they got there they were like, ‘Damn this really is a good band,’ and we had some real authentic fans of the music, for the music, not just because it was River.”

Back before social-media and celeb clickbait, Aleka’s Attic tours also gave fans a rare chance to see a massively famous actor in-person, in the wilds of local rock-bars.

Back then, Sandee Curry was attending Lee High School and delivering pizzas part-time. She was also "obsessed with anything Hollywood-related." When she and friend Michelle Woodson heard about Phoenix's band's upcoming Tip Top Café show, they resolved to attend. "River Phoenix is coming to Huntsville, my hometown? This doesn't happen," Curry says. As many people who lived in Huntsville then are aware, in addition to hosting touring and local bands, Tip Top was known for being extremely easy to get into under-age, so she'd been to shows there before.

Curry brought her snapshot camera to the show. The camera was freshly loaded with black and white film, and she took photos of Aleka’s Attic that night. When she got the film developed later, mixed in with random friend pics were onstage shots of Phoenix, singer Rain Phoenix (River’s sister), bassist Josh McKay, violist Tim Hankins and drummer Greenbaum.

At the Tip Top that night, River Phoenix played a Stratocaster guitar and sported facial scruff, a white T-shirt and camouflage pants. Curry recalls the famous actor being somewhat withdrawn onstage. “If I’m remembering correctly, he was mostly doing backing vocals,” she says. “The bassist and Rain were doing a lot of the singing.” Although Greenbaum says River Phoenix was the songwriter and lead singer on most Aleka’s Attic’s material, fans interviewed for this story recall Rain Phoenix being the focal point onstage during the band’s Alabama shows.

Curry classifies the band’s live sound as “psychedelic ’90s alternative-rock.” She adds, “It was a fun show.”

She remembers enjoying the song “Too Many Colors” and McKay’s tune “Blue Period.”

At the Tip Top, Curry purchased one of the cassette tapes Aleka's Attic was selling at the time. "I listened to that tape a lot and it turned me into a fan" of the band, Curry says. She considered herself "a hippie" and her listening tastes also included The Doors. Curry kept her Aleka's Attic tape until about 10 years ago when she gave it to a friend's young sister who was fascinated with Phoenix: "She was really impressed by this cassette."

Christopher Brown was one of several audio engineers who ran live sound regularly at the Tip Top. On the night of Aleka's Attic he was off-work but there hanging out.

“They were a little more artsy than the typical stuff that we had at the time,” says Brown, who works at a local brewery now. “I remember being pretty impressed by them.” Looking for a more-mainstream, stylistically similar act, I mention Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, known for 1988 patchouli-pop hit “What I Am,” to which Brown, replies, “That’s not a bad comparison.”

The Aleka's Attic show had been the talk of the bar for weeks. Vira Ceci was bartending that night at Tip Top. She recalls Phoenix being "so nice" when she asked him to autograph a cocktail napkin for her cousin, and says the actor was "easily the most accessible member of the band." Ceci, currently employed as a technical writer, recalls the Aleka's Attic show being "pretty busy for a weeknight" and thinks the bar probably charged their typical, $5 cover that night.

Lance Church owned, ran and booked the Tip Top during its prime. He remembers the motor-home Aleka's Attic toured in arriving early in the afternoon and parked in the gravel lot across the street. There was some advance promotion and local press coverage and Church recalls "parents were bringing kids over to sign their movie posters."

Church thinks Aleka’s Attic’s guarantee was “maybe a couple hundred dollars.”

In 1991 and several years into his acting career, Phoenix was just 21 years old. Church still keeps a photo of he and Phoenix shaking hands inside the Tip Top. "He seemed like a really good kid to me," says Church, now a manager at a chain restaurant. "He was polite. He didn't come in there like he was too good for the place or nothing. He was humble, a very likeable guy. He was giggly - he was just a kid."

Church says there'd been many phone calls in to the Tip Top in the week leading up to the Aleka's Attic gig, people asking about start time and such. In the end, he thinks about 100 people attended the show, inside the cinderblock building's mechanics-garage-sized interior. The Billiter sisters were among those attendees: Grace, then 18, Becca, 16, and Jo, 14 - all students at Westminster Christian Academy. (Again, the Tip Top was way easy to get into.) That night, Grace drove them to the Aleka's Attic show in her classic pink Volkswagen Beetle. Back at their family's northside Huntsville home, the sisters displayed River Phoenix photos on their bedroom walls, along with images with other hotties of the day, including Mel Gibson and Billy Idol. Other bands back then the sisters liked included INXS.

Expecting to see Phoenix as he'd appeared as a svelte longhaired Indiana Jones in the latest "Raiders of the Lost Ark" sequel, the Billiters were surprised to see him onstage with a haircut Becca remembers as "choppy and punky." Jo says Phoenix's singing voice "sounded good, a little gravely" and had "nice harmony with his sister." But what's really seared into Jo's hippocampus is she was in the same room with "hands-down my favorite movie star." When the band was on break, the sisters got to meet their idol. Phoenix even briefly, sweetly put his arm around Jo. "I think my heart stopped for a couple beats," she recalls. Looking back, Becca says, "I love that it was the three sisters" that got to share resulting, VW-wide smiles that night.

James Dixon, a University of Alabama student then, attended Aleka's Attic's Ivory Tusk show. On the sidewalk out front of the Tusk, he saw Phoenix leaning up against a nearby light-pole, smoking a cigarette. "That was the days before selfies and things like that," recalls Dixon, who works in financial services in Birmingham. "People would say, 'Hey, River,' and the coeds were swooning over him, but he wasn't being hassled. He seemed laid-back."

Inside, the Ivory Tusk was packed. Earlier that day, Kelli Staggs and friend Lori Watts were playing pinball on a machine inside the bar while the band was doing their soundcheck. One Aleka's Attic musician came over and said hello, then Phoenix, recalls Staggs, who now works in Huntsville as a defense contract specialist. Later that night, Staggs says Aleka's Attic performed, in addition to their material, a version of far-out Jimi Hendrix tune "Third Stone from the Sun." After they played their Hendrix cover, the band asked the crowd if they knew that song. "It was like they were trying to weed out who was there for the music, and who was just there to see him because he was famous," Staggs says. Staggs was an art major at University of Alabama, where she'd seen alternative bands like 10,000 Maniacs perform at local venues.

Aleka's Attic drummer Josh Greenbaum recalls the band enjoying their Alabama shows. "I remember good energy, a good crowd. I remember getting treated pretty well." (Greenbaum has a random memory of one or more of these Alabama venues having troughs instead of urinals in the men's room.) He recalls Tip Top as "a dive, and we loved it for that reason. It was very endearing." In Tuscaloosa, he met a friend named Nancy Romine he's stayed in touch with. "During the same Southeast run, Greenbaum says Aleka's Attic did a show in Knoxville, Tenn. that was multitrack recorded and broadcast. In this era, "Lost in Motion," "What We've Done" and "Dog God" went over particularly well live, he says. Greenbaum recalls Phoenix, "loved the creative process of recording. If he had a preference I would say the studio was, probably, because he was a little bit shy and didn't like being in public places so much. But I know he loved playing live too and he did enjoy the touring. He was happy doing both."

Greenbaum was born 13 days before Phoenix. They were just 16 the first time they met, their families were friends. Greenbaum drove his dad's 1977 Chevy van to Phoenix's aunt's house, Phoenix walked out to meet him, then they went inside where Phoenix played him a demo tape of his song "Heart to Get." "It was a cool song," Greenbaum says. "The last of the commercial music that he wrote, as far as I'm concerned." The two teenagers hung out for about an hour then Greenbaum drove back home. A few months later Phoenix called Greenbaum and said he'd met Island Records founder Chris Blackwell backstage at a U2 concert and Blackwell wanted to sign Phoenix to a development deal. Phoenix asked Greenbaum to move to Gainesville - the famously progressive Phoenix family were living in nearby Micanopy - and start a band. He'd get him money each month to help "develop a band, make records and tour." Greenbaum moved to Gainesville in April 1988. He also spent time with Phoenix in Southern California, getting to know each other."

We were sort of like non-blood cousins," Greenbaum says. "River could trust me, A, because he knew each other through family and he knew I wasn't going to just be some starstruck idiot; and, B, because I'm a great musician. And he valued me as a human being and as a musician, highly. And that proof of his commitment to music, that he was willing to support a brother, to have my talents."

At the time, Greenbaum had been playing “Aerosmith-y, commercial blues-influenced metal” in a local group called Toy Soldier, that eventually became semi-famous ’80s rockers Saigon Kick. At one point, Phoenix traveled to South Florida to visit with Greenbaum on a weekend when Toy Soldier was performing. “River had just gotten into (1984 mockumentary film ‘This is) Spinal Tap’ really heavily, and he did a ‘Spinal Tap’-esque video of that weekend, of that gig and the next morning,” Greenbaum says. “It was pretty funny, actually.”

Greenbaum was influenced by populist bands like Van Halen, Bee Gees and Queen. Phoenix introduced him to more quirkier acts like XTC, Roxy Music and Squeeze. As time went on, Phoenix's music became increasingly experimental. "It was deep, for sure," Greenbaum says of his friend's songwriting. "He had a commitment to crafting a masterpiece every time he wrote a song. And it drove me nuts. He was an eccentric person and his method of communication was such he didn't speak in technical music terms. He would speak artistically and metaphorically. He would say things like, 'I want it to sound like a ship on the ocean with the waves crashing up against the hull and birds flying over' or whatever. I would be like, 'OK, can we break that into sixteenth-notes?'"

Aleka's Attic's label, Island Records, was trying to figure out what to do with this music too. Island asked Phoenix to record two new demos to determine if they'd continue backing the project. He was going to be in the Los Angeles area filming the movie "Sneakers" and brought Greenbaum out to help demo songs. The drummer was able to hang on the "Sneakers" set, where he met his friend's costars, including Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier and Dan Aykroyd. After Phoenix turned in the new demos to Island, the label deemed the music unmarketable. Aleka's Attic was dropped.

At a certain point, McKay, who’d “butted heads musically and personally” with Phoenix for a while, Greenbaum says, parted ways with the band. Phoenix put together another band called Blacksmith Configuration, that featured Greenbaum and some new musicians, including bassist Sasa Raphael.

Phoenix was big on palindromes, Greenbaum says. Their song titles “Dog God” and “ Senile Felines” were palindromes and they were working on an album to be titled “Never Odd or Even,” another example.

On the night before Halloween 1993, Greenbaum went out partying with local musicians, “an intense night, for whatever reason.” Early the next morning, he crashed on the couch at a friend’s downtown Gainesville apartment. A few hours later, Greenbaum woke still buzzed to one of his musician pals from night prior knocking on the front door. When the friend entered, he looked pale and sweaty. He told Greenbaum he’d heard on the radio Phoenix had died. “I was in shock, but it just made sense and I knew it was true,” Greenbaum says. “In some way it didn’t surprise me. I didn’t see it coming - I can’t say that - but what I did see in River was his tendency for being extreme.”

In the wee hours of Oct. 31, Phoenix had collapsed and died on the sidewalk outside West Hollywood, Calif. nightclub The Viper Room, then co-owned by fellow actor/musician Johnny Depp. An autopsy determined cause of death to be “acute multiple drug intoxication.” Cocaine and morphine. Jo Billiter, the young fan who watched Aleka’s Attic’s 1991 show in Huntsville, cried when she heard the news her favorite actor died. “It broke my heart.”

Several fans interviewed for this story said Phoenix seemed a little bleary to clearly buzzed when they’d seen his band perform. Asked if he ever saw Phoenix’s partying on tour reach scary levels, Greenbaum says, “It was a typical rock & roll level. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was a bunch of guys in their young 20s playing gigs and having fun, just like any other band.”

When he was off working on films, Phoenix would check in every few weeks with Greenbaum, the drummer says. Phoenix called him from Utah, where he was filming the thriller “Dark Blood.” His next role was slated to be the interviewer in “Interview with a Vampire.”

When Phoenix called Greenbaum from Utah, “that was the most lucid, sane, grounded, understandable, discernible I had ever experienced him sounding. (In the past) there were times when I just couldn’t follow what he was talking about. He was kind of cryptic. And on that phone call he was like completely calm and sounded really together and we had a great conversation, a great connection and it wound up being our last phone call.”

In 2019, Aleka’s Attic music is back in the news. Two of the band’s songs “Where I’d Gone” and “Scales & Fishnails” were released along with a Rain collaboration with R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe (a friend of River’s) on a three-song collection called “Time Gone.” The record’s cover art features a photo of Rain and River, young and beautiful enjoying a sibling hug amid a verdant scene. A prior posthumous push to officially release Phoenix’s music hit snags getting musicians involved to sign off. “At that time, I was just like, 'Yeah, Rain, just get River’s music out to the world,’” Greenbaum says of that earlier effort. “That’s why he signed a record deal in the first place, to share his music with the world.”

As of the reporting of this story, Greenbaum says he hasn’t been contacted about usage of Aleka’s Attic music on “Time Gone.” The drummer found out about the release via messages from Facebook “friends” who are River Phoenix fans. “Rain didn’t consult us, she didn’t inform us, nothing,” Greenbaum says.

At one point during this interview, Greenbaum says he needs to call me back, so he can count out change to pay for groceries. He says he still plays drums with different local Maui cover bands as well as a blues-rock trio and by-day works construction and maintenance jobs.

Kro Records, the label that released “Time Gone,” didn’t respond to an email inquiry to interview Rain Phoenix and/or a label rep for this story.

Regular financial support and fast-tracking the Lenny Kravitz audition weren’t the only times Phoenix helped Greenbaum. He also bought him an electric-blue DW drumkit, among other instances. Outside of playing music, Phoenix and Greenbaum would throw the frisbee together or jump on the Phoenix family trampoline. They liked going to Falafel King and eating tabbouleh salad and humus. The famous actor would often come over for coffee to the mobile home Greenbaum and Greenbaum’s father lived in, on the Phoenixes’ Micanopy property.

These days, sometime random things will make Greenbaum think of River Phoenix. Sometimes it’s something more direct, like playing a gig will make him think of a certain onstage moment with his late friend.

After counting out coins in the checkout line, Greenbaum calls back. I ask if he thinks pressures of growing up famous led to what happened to Phoenix. “I wouldn’t doubt it,” he replies. “I definitely see how fame messed with his head, his heart. I think fame has that effect on everybody, which is why everybody wants to be famous, but you hear about all these famous people dropping dead and they’re unhappy, depressed and have drug and alcohol problems. Because fame is unnatural.”

— via AL.com, Feb 19, 2019.

#river phoenix #river #phoenix #josh greenbaum #rain phoenix #alekas attic

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rivjudephoenix · 6 years ago

Photo

New Photo and Article: “Movie star River Phoenix left musical mark in Alabama” on al.com

Outside record producer Rick Rubin’s Hollywood Hills home, drummer Josh Greenbaum sat in a silver Volvo with his friend and bandmate River Phoenix, the film actor. The rock-star Lenny Kravitz was with them. On the car’s stereo, Kravitz played Phoenix and Greenbaum a recording of a new song he’d written called “Are You Gonna Go My Way.” This was 1992, before that explosive tune would become the title track to Kravitz’s third album and era-defining music. At the moment, Kravitz needed a drummer. He’d recently told mononymous Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea he was frustrated trying to find the right fit.

Flea later told Phoenix about Kravitz’s predicament, while Flea was having lunch with Phoenix. Upon hearing about the opportunity, Phoenix promptly hooked-up the drummer of his own band, Aleka’s Attic, with an audition with Kravitz - a much bigger gig. “And that’s how much River loved me as a brother as a friend,” Greenbaum says. “He was like, ‘I don’t want to hold you back from potential success, and if I can hook you up with this audition then I’m going to do it.’ River was incredibly gracious and generous. He wanted to see the people he cared about thriving”

River Phoenix was a gifted, charismatic movie star so physically attractive he seemed to defy science. His nuanced performances lit up such films as "Stand By Me," "My Own Private Idaho" and "Running On Empty." But Phoenix told Greenbaum more than once, “music was his first love and film was his day-job.”

Phoenix’s other passions included environmentalism, humanitarianism and animal-rights. He was one of the most visibly philanthropic young stars of the early ’90s. Phoenix was the reason Seventeen subscribers knew what “vegan” meant. “He had a heart of gold and was an extremely hyper-sensitive, emotional person,” Greenbaum says. “And that’s why he wound up helping a lot of people.”

Phoenix formed in Aleka’s Attic in 1987. The Gainesville, Fla.-based band’s tours brought them through Alabama, including circa-1991 shows at Huntsville’s Tip Top Café and Tuscaloosa’s Ivory Tusk. Greenbaum recalls Aleka’s Attic performing in Auburn, possibly at the War Eagle Supper Club there, and maybe Birmingham too.

Back before social-media and celeb clickbait, Aleka’s Attic tours also gave fans a rare chance to see a massively famous actor in-person, in the wilds of local rock-bars.

Curry classifies the band’s live sound as “psychedelic ’90s alternative-rock.” She adds, “It was a fun show.” She remembers enjoying the song “Too Many Colors” and McKay’s tune “Blue Period.”

Christopher Brown was one of several audio engineers who ran live sound regularly at the Tip Top. On the night of Aleka's Attic he was off-work but there hanging out. “They were a little more artsy than the typical stuff that we had at the time,” says Brown, who works at a local brewery now. “I remember being pretty impressed by them.” Looking for a more-mainstream, stylistically similar act, I mention Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, known for 1988 patchouli-pop hit “What I Am,” to which Brown, replies, “That’s not a bad comparison.”

Church thinks Aleka’s Attic’s guarantee was “maybe a couple hundred dollars.”

"We were sort of like non-blood cousins," Greenbaum says. "River could trust me, A, because he knew each other through family and he knew I wasn't going to just be some starstruck idiot; and, B, because I'm a great musician. And he valued me as a human being and as a musician, highly. And that proof of his commitment to music, that he was willing to support a brother, to have my talents."

Phoenix was big on palindromes, Greenbaum says. Their song titles "Dog God" and " Senile Felines" were palindromes and they were working on an album to be titled "Never Odd or Even," another example.

On the night before Halloween 1993, Greenbaum went out partying with local musicians, "an intense night, for whatever reason." Early the next morning, he crashed on the couch at a friend's downtown Gainesville apartment. A few hours later, Greenbaum woke still buzzed to one of his musician pals from night prior knocking on the front door. When the friend entered, he looked pale and sweaty. He told Greenbaum he'd heard on the radio Phoenix had died. "I was in shock, but it just made sense and I knew it was true," Greenbaum says. "In some way it didn't surprise me. I didn't see it coming - I can't say that - but what I did see in River was his tendency for being extreme."

When he was off working on films, Phoenix would check in every few weeks with Greenbaum, the drummer says. Phoenix called him from Utah, where he was filming the thriller "Dark Blood." His next role was slated to be the interviewer in "Interview with a Vampire."

When Phoenix called Greenbaum from Utah, "that was the most lucid, sane, grounded, understandable, discernible I had ever experienced him sounding. (In the past) there were times when I just couldn't follow what he was talking about. He was kind of cryptic. And on that phone call he was like completely calm and sounded really together and we had a great conversation, a great connection and it wound up being our last phone call."

In 2019, Aleka's Attic music is back in the news. Two of the band's songs "Where I'd Gone" and "Scales & Fishnails" were released along with a Rain collaboration with R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe (a friend of River's) on a three-song collection called "Time Gone." The record's cover art features a photo of Rain and River, young and beautiful enjoying a sibling hug amid a verdant scene. A prior posthumous push to officially release Phoenix's music hit snags getting musicians involved to sign off. "At that time, I was just like, 'Yeah, Rain, just get River's music out to the world,'" Greenbaum says of that earlier effort. "That's why he signed a record deal in the first place, to share his music with the world."

Kro Records, the label that released "Time Gone," didn't respond to an email inquiry to interview Rain Phoenix and/or a label rep for this story.

Regular financial support and fast-tracking the Lenny Kravitz audition weren't the only times Phoenix helped Greenbaum. He also bought him an electric-blue DW drumkit, among other instances. Outside of playing music, Phoenix and Greenbaum would throw the frisbee together or jump on the Phoenix family trampoline. They liked going to Falafel King and eating tabbouleh salad and humus. The famous actor would often come over for coffee to the mobile home Greenbaum and Greenbaum's father lived in, on the Phoenixes' Micanopy property.

These days, sometime random things will make Greenbaum think of River Phoenix. Sometimes it's something more direct, like playing a gig will make him think of a certain onstage moment with his late friend.

#river phoenix #music #aleka's attic #josh greenbaum #lenny kravitz #flea #red hot chili peppers #rain phoenix #josh mckay #rick rubin

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gaygwenpool · 6 years ago

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give me literally All Headcanon for that post for Mysterio p l e a s e (also, for the one of my choosing, whether or not you hc he commentates movies while watching them or insists on ABSOLUTE SILENCE)

:D!!! my sweet boy, BLESS you nonnie!

◉ whether or not you hc he commentates movies while watching them or insists on ABSOLUTE SILENCE IS A FANTASTIC QUESTION IVE BEEN LITERALLY LAUGHIN ABOUT IT ALL DAY THANK YOU

Both actually! if you try to comment on the plot or react to an actor, immediately you get rudely shushed with the most scorching glare because how DARE you, focus on the ~ART~ you heathen!!! but also the Moment a slightly more advanced special effect takes place, he is all hoppin on his seat excitedly explaining how it’s done and how genius that is, how would he improve on it and how another movie dealt with it, the dialogue for the big plot reveal goin on the screen be damned :’D Also as the movie advances, he starts gettin more and more into long passionate rants either complaining about the lack/surfeit of respect the creators got, how arrogant this one actor is and how he doesnt respect his cues and so on….. lots of the stuff he says is actually pretty interesting but yeah, if you counted on just enjoying the movie, tough luck

He really likes watchin movies with people but prefers to see the movie first on his own at least once, to really focus on it. Often, he will watch a movie in the livin room while others do their own thing and he will comment on the good scenes, however if you agreed to actually watch somethin with him and got distracted during screening or worse, was on your phone?? you are dead to him. (and you can expect some …unpleasant surprises in the upcoming days)

im gonna put the rest under the readmore cuz this is gettin long ^^;;

[ask meme]

☾ - sleep headcanon

Beck is the UGLIEST sleeper, he is the worst. He snores loudly, drools, moves, KICKS, mumbles and has the most vivid wildest dreams. (it happens rarely but sometimes he’ll dream about somethin, wake up and for a while be convinced it actually happened, you know like when you dream about arguing with your friend and being mad at them the next day etc) On the other hand, sometimes, all his features relax, he loses the scowl and looks surprisingly peaceful and happy… oh and he hogs the blanket.

His sleep schedule is a fuckin mess, he is able to go like the whole week on few hours of sleep total when he is workin on a project but other days he gets grumpy if he doesnt get his 10h of beauty sleep every night..

★ - sad headcanon

uhhh i dont actually have much sad stuff for this boy yet, he brings me so much joy that i dont have the heart for that :’’’D (also i like him and chameleon team ups and Dmitri brings enough angst to the table for the both of them)

He really actually died that one time and went to hell (though in Patchwork, im not gonna keep everythin about that Daredevil plot, i really like Mysti being dangerous and actually a worthy opponent but most of it was too fucked up for my tastes…) and well… it wasnt great :’D it mostly targeted his insecurities about his own talent he buried so deep he almost stopped believing them, the lack of respect and recognition and him willingly throwing away any chance he had at those by becoming Mysterio and of course everything that happened with his ex Brick Johnson…

☆ - happy headcanon

blease consider: autistic Quentin !!!!!!

☠ - angry/violent headcanon

he doesnt have a hair trigger temper like Ock or Electro but Damn does this boy holds grudges over literally everything :’D lots of overcomplicated, carefully crafted revenge plots just for eating the last yogurt in the fridge… He gets frustrated easily, getting snappy and rude, especially if people are not listening to him, but it’s often about the pettiest things, the bigger stuff doesnt affect him as much.

He doesnt enjoy violence for the sake of violence but he is not above it either, everythin is allowed for his big performance…… he can be quite a good n friendly boss if you listen to his orders and work well but can just as much set you up to die in an explosion, all while smiling and patting you on the back…

✿ - Sex headcanon

my Mysterio is gay as hell but also somewhere on the ace spectrum… not sex-repulsed but definitely not a high drive either (he feels oddly smug about that, like look at those fools trying to get into each others’ pants, how pathetic, *I* in the meantime have time for things that Truly matter, like recreating every Xmen battle ever with only straws and gum.)

■ - Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

listen, i basically grew up on those “the entire villain team lives in a single place - shenanigans ensue” fics so im not givin up on the Sinister Six HQ, okay. (Chameleon usually finds them a suitable house with enough rooms, as luxurious as their current fonds allow, and he prides himself in putting in lil personal touches that he knows the sin six members would enjoy, for Quentin it’s often very obscure movies, rare memorabilia from his favorite ones, stuff for his illusions, a stolen Oscar…)

When these are unavailable (aka superheroes got them busted) or when he aint in the middle of a crime job, he usually stays at one of the Cham’s safehouses (with or without him) and in a few of them, he already has his own dedicated room with some of his fav old tricks on display. Speakin of which, he has a BIG warehouse with most of his setups and stages or at least models. He doesnt really plan on reusing them but he likes having them all together

♡ - romantic headcanon

((jakjgkfajga im a loser and ended up shippin him with Chameleon and everythin i’ve thought off so far is EMBARRASSING AND CHEESY AS FUCK :’’’’D so im gonna leave those for another time))

Beck being an Extra Bitch he is, lives for the Big Romantic Gestures like in the movies and he often gets so caught up in the prep he.. kinda disregards the person he was makin it for, the making of the effect means more for him than the actual sentiment behind it…

(ok maybe One mysteleon hc, while it pains him, Quentin knows Chammy Would Not Enjoy being a target of such grand display… he gotta be more subtle, creating a scene where he could play in disguise and dupe some superheroes mayhaps…)

♥ - family headcanon

like 99% of the villains and their grandma, his family wasnt great, mum left when he was very young with another guy, his dad considered his passion for movies a great waste of time and let lil Quentin know how disappointed he was at every occasion both vocally and physically.. After the first few broken models and ripped tapes with stop animations that took weeks to complete, Quentin stopped tryin to impress and convince his father about the greatness of special effects.. He joined a boxing club and learnt some other martial arts but as soon as he could, he left to join a proper film school which led to his father dropping both financing and all contact with him.

☮ - friendship headcanon

Im not even gonna start about Chameleon’s and Mysterio’s friendship because that shit is canon and i cry about it on a daily basis.

Despite his penchant for Dramatics, the constant Need for Validation and Backstabbing and other Throwing Shit in the Fan just cuz it was narratively better, Quentin actually has quite a few friends? He gets along quite well with everyone from the Sin Six and many other villains and even has some ‘normie’ pals from the film industry or just neighborhood…

One of his most surprising is actually Doc Ock with whom he gets along even outside of business partners/partners in crime basis. Though maybe not so surprising, Mysterio is quite vocal with his praises when he feels like they are deserved and Doc as well actually admires and recognizes Beck’s talent while it is still enough specific for him not to feel threatened in his superiority (once he tried to improve them and show them to Quentin with his usual arrogance and flair and that was the biggest fight they ever had and they werent on speaking terms for a loooong while after that… Oct cant stand not having the last word so he still modified some of Mysterio’s tricks even after that but he actually cares about their friendship enough to not tell Mysti about it.. Not like he would ever admit that to Quentin’s fishbowl face)

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

like 99% of everythin Mysti does is Somehow related to special effects/film or the Drama in general but my boy is a nerd in general, theater, books, comics, manga, roleplaying games, you name it. He especially likes flashy stuff obviously.

He really enjoys learning new techniques and figuring out how to make something happen. When he was younger, he was viciously against CGI but later he started to sorta respect it as its own category that needs talent and effort… he still prefers to use the traditional techniques of course :’D (…as traditional as HYPNOTIZING PEOPLE WITH NEURAL GAZ IS)

☯ - likes/dislikes headcanon

He has a very Complicated relationship with the film industry……. on the one hand, he loves the behind the scenes, the rush, the Action…. but on the other hand, he hates it with a fiery passion, everythin from how you get treated like dirt and the pretentious prizes being awarded just for the Big names and hollywood and everythin turning around the money an-…., he has a very long list and it is alphabetized. (While he has a point for many of those complaints, the fact HE himself never got any pretentious award remains probably the main issue…)

he absolutely despises people making fun of D-grade shitty movies in the “this shitty horror is so cheesy and dumb it’s funny and i love it” way, either because the people workin on it were good and trying their best but the money or the producers etc ruined it (his experience) and then it’s an unfair critique or because the creators just didnt try hard enough and that’s even worse in his books and this movie should not get Any Attention much less a positive one..

he likes complaining and being snarky :’D he enjoys the challenge Spidey sets for them and loves playing tag with him (even when he loses..) He loves the prep before his big shows both alone or with help, the adrenalin when actually pulling it off and when he discusses it with Cham in details. He lives for the applause and recognition and ~Fame~

▼ - childhood headcanon

not as much as hc as adopting the Webspinners’ aproach: he spent most of his childhood daydreaming, hiding himself behind the stories and special effects….. not many friends aside from Betsy but he didnt really need them, he wanted audience not pals.. In the film school he started to be more social and communicative, he met Brick there and they started goin out…

∇ -. old age/aging headcanon

hhhhh im conflicted, there are like 3 comics where Q is retired because he has enough of superheroes beating him up and he Really doesnt want to go back to it.. I cant see him actually givin up on it totally tho… idk idk

♒ - cooking/food headcanon

Like with sleep, it oscillates wildly. He can forget to eat when he is hypefocusin on a particular project (one single chip suffices as nourishment) or he just subsides on ramen for a month but on the other hand he is quite a capable cook. Nothing Extraordinary but he can make enough diverse simple meals. When livin with Chammy, they both enjoy eating out so they do that as much as the budget allows (so not that much, illusions arent cheap…)

☼ - appearance headcanon

im still thinkin about that one post that described Quentin as a “toenail of a man” and i couldnt agree more :’D very short, pig nose, hairstyle à la Spock, stocky built and weirdly beefy, like this guy’s thigh is bigger than some heads… (for a nerd he is surprisingly strong what the fuck)

All Mysterios are Good Mysterios but my preferred ones have a bigass ROUND fishbowl, the longest cape and somethin as a belt, preferably sash..

ൠ - random headcanon

he actually isnt….. that great of an actor nor director nor creator………………….. (im sorry baby i love you but it’s tru….) he unconsciously copies a lot of stuff he has seen elsewhere, he follows overused tropes, his work is packed with cliches and cheesy over the top pathos… his special effects mastery n creativity with workin out his illusions is absolutely INCREDIBLE dont get me wrong, it’s just… the plot/ideas…….. at first he lived in denial about this still believing 100% his work is Wonderful and Perfect and he is just a misunderstood author… later he decided to embrace it and he is livin the life now :D

#mysterio #sinister six #quentin beck #chameleon #marvel #spidey #anon #ask meme #patchwork #thank you again!!!!!!! have an infodump!! :D #k

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laird-brochtuarach · 6 years ago

Link

ICONS AUGUST 2018 RAKE-IN-PROGRESS: SAM HEUGHAN

Sam Heughan is an actor, cult figure, philanthropist and marathon runner. The Rake is won over.

fashion director JO GRZESZCZUK by JESSICA BERESFORD photographyNICK KELLY

Charcoal virgin wool three-piece suit, Connolly; grey cotton shirt, Budd Shirtmakers; navy silk knitted tie, Francesco Marino for The Rake.

The collective noun for Sam Heughan’s fans are Heughligans, who number in the tens of thousands and act as a testament to his success: as an actor, philanthropist and, as you’ll probably agree, a rather stand-up guy. This affection is directed at one of Heughan’s characters in particular: Jamie Fraser, a soldier and the central protagonist of the cult T.V. series Outlander. Based on the books of Diana Gabaldon, the time-travelling show is set mainly in Scotland, but enjoyed most of its early success outside the U.K. — from America to Chile, Australia to Japan — despite Heughan himself hailing from Caledonia.

While he’s been enveloped in this world for four seasons, Heughan will this year venture into more varied roles, including as a secret agent in the action-packed Bond spoof The Spy Who Dumped Me. He plays Sebastian, a secret agent who aids co-stars Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon in their far-fetched journey around Europe, and who leads a rather different life to Jamie.

Away from set, Heughan keeps a fairly busy schedule: he runs a charitable initiative called My Peak Challenge, which encourages people to improve themselves physically and mentally while raising funds for Bloodwise and Marie Curie; he participates in marathons around the world to raise money for other charities; and, rather fittingly, he is developing his own brand of whisky, which stems from enjoying “a little dram now and then”.

How did growing up in Scotland inform your career? I was born and brought up in rural Scotland, in the southwest, and I think I was very fortunate living in the countryside: being alone but being in the outdoors, there’s a lot of freedom of expression and creativity — you can use your imagination a lot. I moved to Edinburgh when I was 12, and to me that was a great time to move, because you’re getting older and I started going to the theatre there, and that was certainly how I fell in love with acting. But I think Scotland is definitely a huge part of who I am, and through the show it’s given me a recognisable identity.

When did you realise you could make a living out of acting? I don’t think I have yet. If you’re a jobbing actor, or doing anything in the arts, you’re only as good as your last job. There’s always that fear that something is going to come crashing down. Things are really good, and have been very good for me recently, but I guess you’re always slightly looking over your shoulder. It’s not a bad thing, you’re just ready for everything to change.

What’s it like being part of something that has such a big cult following? We have a unique fan, I think. Diana wrote these books 20 years ago, or longer now, so we’ve got the people who were fans of the books, but then also we’re creating new fans who haven’t heard of the books, who are just watching the show through Amazon or whatever. But they’re very supportive and enthusiastic and vocal, sometimes more so than other fan groups, I think. They have a real ownership over the characters, and that’s probably because they’ve read the books, much like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. People love these characters.

How did you approach playing a character that people were already invested in? When you get either a real-life figure or someone from a book, it’s actually kind of a gift because you can research them, but there’s also that pressure of getting it right, because you don’t want to upset or disappoint people. I think we were slightly naive in that we didn’t realise how big the books were and how invested the fans were when we started. When I first auditioned for it, I just felt like I knew the character, that I knew who this guy is. It’s very fortunate that there are a lot of similarities in who he is and that world. I love Scotland and it’s a big part of who I am, but it’s also a big part of who Jamie is.

How have you transitioned from Outlander to The Spy Who Dumped Me, which are very different? First of all, the comedy world was something I had no idea about. But when I read the script, I laughed out loud, and I thought it was rare that you read a comedy script and it’s actually funny. I think a lot of comedy they supply these days is a lot of slapstick, visual comedy. But I felt this was clever and the dialogue was good. To work with Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon, who are at the top of their game, was a great opportunity. The first day was very intimidating, because I’m so used to working on drama, where, literally, if you get one word slightly wrong, you’re told and you have to make sure that you get the script exactly. And Mila Kunis is just ad-libbing and going off on a tangent, and the same with Kate, every take. And you’re just like, How does this even come together? I don’t know how it works, but they made me feel very comfortable and it was a great experience.

Having now done both drama and comedy, what do you see yourself pursuing? I’m actually off to do two movies this summer, they’re both slightly different. I think I just want to do as much variation as possible. I just want to try different things. As an actor, I certainly never wanted to do the same job, I don’t want to do a 9-5, I don’t want to do the same thing. I want to try different things, and that’s the joy of being an actor — you get to be different people. So, yeah, I want to try and stretch myself.

What jobs have you had outside acting? I’ve done them all. I lived and worked in London for 12 years as a jobbing actor. I delivered sandwiches by bicycle around London during winter, which was horrendous. I worked in all the bars, restaurants. We were doing the BAFTAs the other night at the Southbank Centre, and I actually worked there as a barman a couple of years ago, so it was kind of cool to be on the other side. I won’t name the actor, but I remember I was working for an event at fashion week, and an actor I know, and would almost regard as a friend — my job was to hold people’s drinks as they went and had a cigarette, and he didn’t even notice me and came and gave me his drink and I was just standing there going, ‘Oh my god, I’m just standing here holding his drink, I feel like such an idiot’. But yeah, I’ve been a temp, I worked at Harrods in the perfume hall. I was one of those guys…

What else have you got in the pipeline? I’m off to do a project this summer. I think I can say that it’s an action thing, maybe based on some comics. And it’s going to be a lot of fun.

This interview is from Issue 59 of The Rake. Subscribe here.

#Sam Heughan #the spy who dumped me #my edits #the rake magazine

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jayne-hecate-writer · 7 years ago

Video

youtube

I have now seen Solo and I thought that I should probably give my view on here because as a lover of the Star Wars universe, a keen collector of Star Wars Lego and an adult woman child, it might have some relevance to my few readers.

Firstly did I enjoy it? Yes, I enjoyed the movie on the whole. Am I in a rush to see it again as I did with the Last Jedi or even Rogue One? Not particularly.

Here is why... SPOILER ALERT!

I had my reservations about this movie, Han Solo is a fairly well explored character from the original trilogy, we know that he is a bit of a scoundrel and has a past as a smuggler, so there was not a lot to tell here really. We also know that the film had its problems during production. The first directors were sacked for not following the vision that Lucasfilm had for the movie. The guy who took over was Ron Howard and he has some pedigree with movie making, with some family favourites to his name. The lead actor was rumoured to have needed acting coaching throughout production and to be honest I did find his performance a little naive at times. However, this is the Han Solo origin story, so maybe I was actually picking up on him finding his feet as a character?

Before I went into the movie, I was really looking forwards to the bit of a romp set in the Star Wars universe, I avoided the trailers, I stayed away from most of the hype and I feel that because of this I had a far better experience. To my mind, some bits of the movie were really very good, however some parts of it left me feeling a bit cold and as I sat there in the dark, I did wonder why I was feeling those feelings.

What did I like? Quite a lot of it really...

I liked the explanation for how Han got his name, I also loved the recruitment officer who signed him up for imperial service. This was one of the better scenes at the beginning of the movie.

The meeting of Han and Chewie was brilliant, my heart was breaking for Chewie when we see him for the first time. He is such a noble being, a true gentle warrior, so seeing him and Han create an alliance that goes on to become a great friendship was lovely, then seeing them shower together was hilarious and to be honest, this was essential to the story. It was a throw away joke, but it needed to be seen. I have for years wondered how Chewie kept his fur nice and here we see it, he is a walking advert for posh hydrating shampoo!

I really liked how Chewie and Han made their alliance with Becket’s crew through Han’s determination to escape from the Empire. I liked Becket too and enjoyed the character right up until the end.

Donald Glover as Lando was good casting, he is all charm, wit and deceit. Discovering that his ship was impounded was also a lot of fun, but the reason for it being so was not really hinted at. If he was such a successful gambler, even with his cheating, why was it there? His droid L3 was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed the fact that she demands respect and campaigns for droid civil rights. The later discussion about how she thinks that Lando is in love with her had a sad element for me, when Qi’ra asks how it would work? For those of us in the LGBT world, this is a question that is asked all too often. Frankly, if Lando loved his droid, then good, she was entirely lovable. The subtle hints that Lando and her did have a more physical relationship was rather sweet.

Breaking out of the mine was awesome, Chewie finding his family was captivating and seeing the love between them was powerful. As Chewie explained to one of them that he had to leave with Han, the two Wookies embraced and the love was desperate. It had never occurred to me how much Chewie had sacrificed to spend his days with his best friend. This moment was for me one of the most powerful moments in the whole film and yet it was one of those blink and you miss it moments. There is a lot of heart in this movie.

The reveal at the end of the movie as to who Qi’ra is working with actually gave me tingles. At first I thought that it as Palpatine, but when the face came into view and yes, it was him... I could have jumped from my seat. The familiar face of Ray Park as Maul was truly welcome and ties into his exploits in the Clone Wars saga and later Rebels.

Speaking of evil, the Imperial destroyer appearing in the maelstrom was wonderful as was the filthy mud covered uniforms of the troopers. In fact, the imperial army looked better here than they have in any of the other movies, including my favourite Rogue One! They performed brilliantly as an oppressive regime with some officers being easily bribed, while other actually believed that they were bringing peace and prosperity to the universe. I refer you back to the recruitment officer, a role that was maybe a brief moment of excellence in an otherwise bleak army life.

So with all of that positive stuff, was there anything that I did not enjoy? Yes, unfortunately and all of it was irritating little bits that felt unfinished or down right silly. My first point comes right at the beginning of the movie. The ground effect is what allows Earth based craft to hover at great speed and fly across the planet. This works on land and water, hence why vehicles like Ekranoplans work so well. So why are Star Wars speeders restricted to using road ways when they could happily fly across the water too? This is very silly and needs an explanation.

During the train heist, Val (played by Thandie Newton) effectively killed herself, which was a waste of her otherwise great character. Was there really any need to kill her, particularly in that foolish suicidal way? A better story for her could have been worked out and ensured that she faced her mortality with a degree of dignity rather than giving up her life just to steal some posh jet fuel!

Likewise, the destruction of the under used L3 and then to see her mind transferred into the Falcon, felt like some rather crude gap filling. OK, this leads on to a later aspect of the franchise when C3PO exclaims during episode five that the ship has a rather peculiar dialect. But the execution of it just felt hashed and unnecessary. It also devalued her once again, thus proving her point that electronic sentience is treated as property, just like the organic slaves that we are actually supposed to feel empathy for while they are freed, unlike the mechanical beings. The message here was too messed up to work properly.

The lack of explanation of Qi’ra’s back story was for a purpose, but it was left unanswered even at the end. Have they left it open for more story telling or to encourage fans to check out the Clone Wars? The problem with that is by Dave Felony’s own description, the Clone Wars was itself unfinished. If Qi’ra does appear in the Clone Wars, was seeing her here a massive spoiler? Sadly I have only the first original Clone Wars and a couple of the rebooted first season, so I cannot tell for sure.

There was a lot to like about this movie, but there is also something to criticise. Did I enjoy it? Yes, I did and rather a lot. However, there were parts to this film that felt like they dragged or they lacked the needed power to push the story forwards. Will I buy the Blu-ray when it comes out? Yes of course. Will I watch it again at the cinema? Not sure, but if the chance arises, then probably. After all, this is not a bad movie and it is certainly not terrible, but as with all Star Wars movies, there are some aspects that could have been made better to make it a superb ADULT level film... Bugger, this is a kids movie isn’t it? That explains it. They created this charming, happy little film to be suitable for younger viewers too. To this end, it shows a little and it is vital to remember this when watching these movies. They are family fun, with a little bit of tragedy. Rogue One was special, being a tragedy from the outset, this one has differs by having a lot to make it lighter in its tone even during the bleak or sad parts.

If you have not yet seen the film, then you were a bit silly reading this first, unless you are not really that bothered by the movie. In truth though, you should probably go and see it, it is worth the time and the money and I wish Lucasfilm and Disney the best of luck with the movie and I hope that they continue to produce high quality Star Wars movies. For all of those who wish to direct their hatred towards Kathleen Kennedy for making these movies, I think that you should probably take a long hard look at yourselves and maybe even think about what it is you really want from the franchise. Bare in mind though that I am one of those rare types who will actually admit to enjoying Episode One (although Jar Jar is a bit of a cunt, being a hidden Sith!).

#Solo Movie #Star Wars #Disney #Cinema #Star Wars Lego #milleniumfalcon #the empire strikes back #kathleen kennedy

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yourdailykitsch · 7 years ago

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Taylor Kitsch Gets in Touch With His Inner David Koresh in ‘Waco’

Taylor Kitsch loves being Taylor Kitsch, and one of the charms of the 36-year-old actor is that if you meet him, you’ll love that Taylor Kitsch loves being Taylor Kitsch too. It was a crisp afternoon in late October, and Kitsch was sitting at a picnic table on the patio of the Mean-Eyed Cat, a Johnny Cash–themed bar on West Fifth Street in Austin. Kitsch was enjoying the sunshine. (“The weather’s been insane. It’s why you live in Texas, you know?”) Kitsch was enjoying his barbecued pork ribs. (“Eating a plate of meat is rare for me, but it’s fun right now.”) Kitsch was enjoying his sleek and very expensive-looking BMW GS Rallye motorcycle, which he’d parked in front of the bar’s entrance. (“That bike’s spanking new. It’s like my child. I love it.”)

Over the past few months, Kitsch had gone on a two-thousand-mile motorcycle trip through the mountain west, riding up Glacier National Park’s Going-to-the-Sun Road, winding along Idaho’s Salmon River. He’d visited Africa, “because I didn’t know what the **** was going on with all the poaching, and I wanted to know.” He’d traveled to San Diego to skydive with a bunch of Navy SEALs and his friend and mentor, the macho-man director Peter Berg. He’d gone to the “Harvey Can’t Mess With Texas” benefit show at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin—“a really great concert, like top five for me”—and afterward “tipped, like, 48 beers” with his friend country music star Ryan Bingham. Now Kitsch was preparing to leave the South Austin apartment where he has lived for the past decade and move into his dream house, a 6,500-square-foot bachelor pad on Lake Austin. His whole family—mom, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews—was coming down from British Columbia for Christmas, and Kitsch couldn’t wait to show off his new place. “My mom’s going to lose her mind,” Kitsch said. “We grew up in a single-wide mobile home, then moved to a double-wide—she’ll lose it.” Kitsch was going “full Griswold” on yuletide decorations. He’d already purchased a ten-foot-tall blow-up polar bear to put on his front porch, and he and his oldest brother, Daman, were planning to install an elaborate light display before the rest of the family arrived. “It’ll hurt your eyes,” Kitsch said. “Literally, I hope we get fined by the HOA. That’s our goal, so we’ll do it.” Kitsch became famous for playing the Dillon Panthers’ bad-boy fullback Tim Riggins on the TV show Friday Night Lights, and over the course of five seasons, he made the character irresistible to watch—a teenage jumble of empathy, anger, machismo, and freewheeling fun. When the show ended, Kitsch appeared to be on a rocket path to superstardom, but he still hasn’t quite gotten there. Instead, his career since Friday Night Lights has been defined by soaring expectations, big-budget disappointments, and consistently good acting. When Kitsch and I met in Austin, he had just finished back-to-back press tours for two fall movies in which he plays supporting roles—the espionage thriller American Assassin and the wilderness-firefighter drama Only the Brave. But we were there to talk about Kitsch’s latest part—“the best work of my career, for sure”—which forced the actor to command the screen as never before and might just turn him into a bona fide Hollywood leading man. On January 24, the first episode of this project, Waco, a six-part miniseries about the 1993 standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Central Texas, will premiere on the newly renamed Paramount Network (formerly Spike). The show stars Michael Shannon, John Leguizamo, Rory Culkin, and Melissa Benoist, but Kitsch has the plum role. Kitsch is playing David Koresh. The Waco siege has been the subject of a dozen or so documentaries that range from serious-minded to crackpot, but the new series is improbably the first dramatic re-creation of the entire event: 51 days of stalled negotiations and rising tensions that ended in an inferno that killed Koresh and 75 of his followers. The project’s genesis is unexpected: it was written, directed, and produced by brothers John and Drew Dowdle, whose handful of career credits includes low-budget horror films like Devil and Quarantine and the poorly reviewed Owen Wilson–Pierce Brosnan thriller No Escape. (Harvey Weinstein was an executive producer on the series, but his name has been removed from the credits.) The Dowdles may not have had much experience, but they had a plan: though the Waco siege has been a political and cultural lightning rod for the past 25 years, the brothers decided that their film wouldn’t dwell on the controversies. They wanted to tell the tragic, human, “no-bad-guys version of the story.” To do that, they knew that their single most important decision would be casting someone who could bring tragic humanity to Koresh. “We thought Koresh as a character is a deeply flawed individual, but there’s something a bit everyman about him, there’s something about him that people liked,” Drew Dowdle said. “The Taylor Kitsch version of David Koresh is inherently someone you would enjoy being around.” When Kitsch first heard about the part, he had only a hazy memory of news coverage of the Waco siege. But the more he read, the more fascinated he became. After meeting with the Dowdles, he reached out to his agent and said, “If they want me to do it, I’ll swing. I just need prep time.” Shooting was set to start in Santa Fe in April 2017, and as 2016 was coming to a close, Kitsch steeled himself for the next half year of preparation and production. “I went to Telluride for New Year’s and just blew it out—like, pizza, anything you could drink, ski, just go all out, don’t even worry about anything,” Kitsch said. On January 2, he arrived back in Austin, ready to begin his transformation. When Kitsch first came to Austin, in 2006, to film the pilot for Friday Night Lights, he was 24 years old, “green and raw” and mostly in the dark about acting and the entertainment business. “I genuinely didn’t know what a critic was,” he told me. Kitsch had grown up four hours west of Vancouver in the city of Kelowna, British Columbia, with his mother and two older brothers—his dad was mostly absent—and until he was 20, he dreamed about playing professional ice hockey. When back-to-back knee injuries ended his career, he moved to New York to try to make it as an actor, beginning a scrappy period in which he took classes, modeled, and, for a several-week stretch, spent his nights sleeping on the subway. Kitsch had almost missed his screen test for Friday Night Lights due to visa issues, and when he arrived, Berg, the series’ creator, first made him improvise in character for thirty minutes. Berg was suitably impressed. “What you did in there, make sure you do in this screen test with all the execs, and I think we’ll be just fine,” he told Kitsch. Friday Night Lights never had a big audience, but to the people who watched it week after week, it might as well have been War and Peace, except about high school football, and way more fun. Kitsch was the heartthrob, and even while the show was in the middle of its run, he was getting movie work, playing Gambit in an X-Men movie and the war photographer Kevin Carter in The Bang Bang Club. After Friday Night Lights ended, in 2011, Kitsch was primed to really make it big. Going into 2012, he had starring roles in two massively hyped movies with enormous budgets, John Carter and Battleship, both of which seemed like good bets to turn into franchises. “I had two ten-year contracts,” Kitsch said. “I would have been going Carter, Battleship, Carter, Battleship, and maybe an indie somewhere in there if I could.” But both films fizzled at the box office, and Kitsch’s career was forced to become more interesting. “I still have my journal from when I was in acting class in New York where it’s like, ‘All I want to do is indies and these characters and Sean Penn, Sean Penn, Sean Penn,’ ” Kitsch told me. He got his wish. He’s spent the past four years bringing a coiled-up intensity to men as varied as Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy in Lone Survivor, Gay Men’s Health Crisis president Bruce Niles in HBO’s The Normal Heart, and patrolman Paul Woodrugh in the much-maligned second season of True Detective. Instead of conquering the world as an above-the-title star, Kitsch became our most finely featured character actor. When Kitsch arrived back in Austin after his Telluride bacchanal, he got down to studying. He read the memoirs of Branch Davidian survivor David Thibodeau, watched home videos of Koresh preaching, and made a stab at grasping the Branch Davidians’ end-times theology. “I literally had a beginner’s-Bible-study version of the Book of Revelation,” Kitsch said. Koresh was an enthusiastic rock guitarist and singer (followers wore “David Koresh: God Rocks” T-shirts), so Kitsch took guitar and voice lessons to pull off the on-screen performances. To physically transform into Koresh—who did not have movie-star muscles—Kitsch dropped thirty pounds, limiting himself to eight hundred calories a day and running around Lady Bird Lake while listening to Koresh’s sermons. As Kitsch dug into his research, he saw a clear path to playing the public persona of the Branch Davidian leader. “Before the siege, it’s his birthday every day,” Kitsch said. “It’s all about him. He’s got a go-cart track and a shooting range, and he’s a rock star—obviously the lead singer, obviously the lead guitarist.” In Waco, Koresh, as played by Kitsch, oozes charm and bravado and knows just how to manipulate the people around him. That’s not a stretch. The 33-year-old self-proclaimed “Lamb of God” was in the habit of waking up his followers in the middle of the night so that they could listen to him show off his savant-like recall of the Bible. He had about two dozen “spiritual wives,” including some who were already married to other Branch Davidians. After a claimed revelation from God, he commanded all men in the compound to be celibate, with the singular exception of David Koresh. (“I’ve assumed the burden of sex for us all, but not for my own kicks,” Kitsch as Koresh says in the show’s first episode.) He was good at a drawling, tough-guy act too: he drove a ’68 Camaro, loved his firearms, and famously sent a message to the FBI saying, “You come pointing guns in the direction of my wife and my kids, dammit, I’ll meet you at the door any time.” But Kitsch also had to reckon with Koresh’s darkness. Among Koresh’s wives were women whom he had married when they were as young as twelve years old, and even if you think the federal government acted disastrously at Waco, it’s hard to see Koresh as blameless in the deaths of the 86 people who perished in the initial raid and the final fire. “Taylor and I had long talks: ‘How do you play this guy in a human way?’ ” John Dowdle said. “That was a big part of the preparation, just trying to get through the ugly stuff so he’s not a monster from the get-go.” Kitsch seized on Koresh’s childhood to understand him, trying to find that part of the Branch Davidian leader that was still Vernon Wayne Howell, Koresh’s given name. During his research, Kitsch read about a phone call that Koresh placed to his mother during the ATF raid on the compound. Koresh had been shot twice, was bleeding profusely, and thought that he was minutes from the end. His mother didn’t pick up, but he left a message, telling her he was dying, asking her to “tell Grandma hello for me,” and saying, “I’ll see y’all in the skies.” “I broke reading it,” Kitsch said. “I was crushed. And after that, I was like, ‘I’m dialed in now and I’m ready to go.’ ” The call hadn’t been in the script, but Kitsch emailed the Dowdles and urged them to add it: “I’m like, ‘This will take fifteen, twenty minutes to shoot, guys, we’ve got to have this in there. This is not Koresh—this is Vernon calling his mom.’ ” The Dowdles agreed. When Kitsch arrived on set, cast and crew who were wondering what he’d bring to the role didn’t have to wait long. On the first day, the Dowdles had scheduled a scene in which Kitsch delivered a nine-page sermon on divine joy to his congregants. “It was pretty remarkable to see him get up and do that,” Paul Sparks, who plays Koresh’s deputy, Steve Schneider, told me. “I had heard some of Koresh on the internet, but to be in the room and listen to this person talk about these complex, different ways of looking at Scripture—it was like, ‘Right, that’s what it was like.’ ” Regardless of whether Waco is a hit, Kitsch has his next project lined up. He’s planning to go to a friend’s San Saba ranch in February to shoot a movie currently titled Pieces. It will be his debut as a screenwriter and feature-film director. Pieces tells the story of “three best friends who take an opportunity to change their lives.” In this case, that opportunity is to intercept a drug drop on the Texas-Mexico border, after which, as you might assume, “all hell breaks loose.” Kitsch wrote the script over the course of several motorcycle road trips, and he used the journeys not only to clear his mind for writing but as an opportunity to conduct research. “I remember being in Idaho and there’s this truck-stop hooker, basically, and I had a coffee with her,” Kitsch told me. “Don’t read into that, it was—literally, it was a coffee—and I just bombed questions at her, and she was just super cool. I put a character based on her in the movie.” Kitsch seems to have exactly the kind of fame that he wants. He can build a dream house and get a dream role, but he can drop by a truck stop in Idaho and bomb questions at people who don’t recognize him. He has famous friends and wild adventures, but every interaction he has doesn’t have to be about his celebrity. As we were sitting at Mean-Eyed Cat, Kitsch told me about turning down a role recently. It was a “little rom-com for five days’ work,” he said, and it was “stupid money.” He would have made more on that movie than he did on Waco, Only the Brave, and three Normal Hearts combined—“for five days’ work,” he said again. I asked him why he’d said no. He did the voice-over work for Ram Trucks commercials, after all. First he answered like an actor. “It’s just not where I want to be, it’s not the story I want to tell,” he said. Then he added a caveat that was pure Taylor Kitsch. “I mean, I’m for sale,” he said, a big smile breaking out over his face. “If you want to give me $20 million for something and my mom never has to work again and my family’s good for the rest of their life, yes, I’m going to do it—don’t care who you are. I come from nothing, so to give my mom that call would just be awesome. I mean, I wouldn’t do porn, but, you know?”

#taylor kitsch #waco #austin texas #interview

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aleksandrakv · 7 years ago

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Social media in Adam Lambert’s life&career

It’s been so long since I’ve written anything longer than a tweet about Adam, but this stanning lethargy doesn’t reflect the level of my interest in the man. It may appear so, but can the lack of online presence automatically imply the lack of interest? In today’s state of affairs, when artists have carefully constructed and heavily monitored internet presence, when YouTube views are everything and the most powerful politicians seem to pay more attention to Twitter than their jobs, it would be understandable if it could. The www. has finally become literally that – a worldwide group chat, where presidents tweet, where actors, musicians and sportsmen keep vlogs on YouTube, writers publish their essays on Facebook, and everybody comments.

Adam Lambert has chosen not to do so. In an era when YouTube stars become singers who get Saturday Night Live slots where they whisper the lyrics into a microphone, and when the top trending video which garnered more than 30 million views in a day is one of a reality star announcing her pregnancy, Adam has taken a quiet step back in the past few years - and I together with him. I couldn’t help it. Twitter has lost its appeal to me ever since a constant possibility that Adam could see a particularly flaily or witty tweet was no longer an option – the magic of giddy anticipation was gone. For all intents and purposes, Adam has semi-abandoned Twitter and moved to Instagram; a Facebook affiliated app which I never took a liking to.

I was upset and a little resentful. I didn’t understand why. Not only did I have to suffer the cruel Atlantic Ocean between us, but now we were on different online apps, which is a fate way worse than living on different continents, according to cyber sense of geography. In my bitterness, I even had an occasional mean thought on the subject. Oh yeah, that’s because he can ogle hot guys there. What about MEEE? Or, even worse: it’s because of the filters. The man LOVES a good filter, the vain queen. Or, absolutely the worst: he wanted to escape the twitter crazies. It was the worst because I should have known that the crazies are everywhere. I was bitchy, mean, and so, so wrong. This essay is my redemption. The price I want to pay for my stupidity, because Adam does have a social media presence, albeit not as aggressive as I might like. There is a reason for that, which he has already given. I had read it before, but it flew right over me like a sparrow, equally tender and fragile, leaving my head unruffled and thoughtless as if nothing had happened.

Even on his preferred social network, Adam’s behavior is somewhat atypical, in a sense that he doesn’t hesitate to share less than perfect photos. Unfiltered, sweaty, in-your-face, flaking makeup photos of the realistic kind - a rare occurrence among the Hollywood hotties. But he is a geek like the rest of us. The anticipation of waiting for the first photos to appear when he has a concert is one of the best parts of being his fan. Adam is incredibly photogenic, but sometimes, those photos are low quality ones, taken by fans on their phones, from pretty unflattering angles. Adam somehow manages to look great in most of them, despite the low angles and the fact that great physical exertion makes everyone look awful. Being photographed in the middle of an adrenaline rush while singing from the top of your lungs for two hours is challenging. His facial features almost rearrange with strain, but Adam simply knows how to pose and is rarely caught off guard – a life’s tiny miracle. I love those candid pictures. And Adam posts only the best of them.

It’s the professional photos where he shines the most. Those are usually true works of art, crispy sharp and simply stunning in their quality. I don’t think I’ve ever seen less than perfect professional photo of Adam. They capture the moments that would otherwise be missed and allow you to fully appreciate the visual side the concert. In videos, the focus is primarily on the sound and the movement, but if I had to choose which medium reflects Adam’s emotional state and journey during concerts best, I would choose photography. It’s a strange thing to say about a singer, but Adam has a very expressive face and body. It’s like their muteness and stillness don’t subtract, but add to the experience of Adam’s process of creation.

In addition to music photography, Adam posts everything and anything that’s important to him, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. His Instagram page is a mess, a potpourri of professional photos, fan photos, album covers, photos of his family, friends, his dog, travelling photos, fashion photos, and all that in uneven levels of quality which most posters would never allow themselves. Adam has it all, from professional HD quality to grainy and blurry shots taken by a phone. It’s a far cry from carefully coordinated, handpicked and posted after a thousandth try stylish representation of other serious posters. He doesn’t juice for a week before taking selfies. He doesn’t always filter. He doesn’t always look pretty. He isn’t always all mysterious and artistic. He’s sometimes such a goofball. He is definitely an undisciplined Instagram user.

It’s a revealing fact. He deletes his posts sometimes, and I’m not sure if it’s the morning after self-filtering, or he gets the call. Social media can make or break a career nowadays. But on the other hand, you can be a successful artist without constant media presence – although it is a pretty rare occurrence. The only example coming to my mind is Frank Ocean. There are artists who have a modest number of followers and YouTube views, and yet they can and do fill up arenas, just as there are artists who have millions of followers and cannot have a decent tour.

In Adam’s case, I feel like he is past making or breaking his career online. At this point, he doesn’t need a heavily moderated Instagram page or a vlogging channel to achieve anything - other than making me happier, that is. The fact that I would love if Adam was more present, by engaging with his fans more, or, in best case scenario, vlogging about his life and career (I would sell my firstborn for that), doesn’t mean much in grander scheme of things. Adam has allowed himself the luxury of doing what he wants, and his Instagram page reflects that in the clearest of ways. I am not saying he wouldn’t benefit from having 50 million followers on Twitter or Instagram, but, he just doesn’t have that. If he can’t get it from doing his job and being who he is, he will never get it anyway. He refuses to participate in the social media race. So, unlike many a budding YouTube star trying to make it in other fields by creating an ideal, unrealistic impression of themselves, with their uniform, heavily filtered, grayscale artsy photos, Adam’s multifarious posts do reveal a lot simply by not being what one would expect. He’s a rebel just for kicks there.

Oh, there is some vanity there; he isn’t above it nor does he pretend to be. He smizes and pouts in many filtered photos and videos, enjoying his flawless skin provided by Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom’s filtering system, turning his head like this and like that like a Valley girl – but that’s just Adam playing with his toy. He has this proclivity for ridiculous behavior; that and the fact that he loves the ageless chibi art of Creative Sharka makes me sometimes think that he has entered a serious fear-of-getting-old phase. It would have been true if he posted such photos only, which he most definitely doesn’t.

Adam is a naturally beautiful man, why does he have to goof around like that? Well, because he is so much more than that. Because more than stunning good looks, he has a killer sense of humor. Because more than looking pretty and feeding his vanity, he loves having fun. He mocks himself, too. “I swear I didn't realize I was making full duck face” is his own comment on a truly astounding full duck face he made while trying to credit Valentino for a clothing item. He loves stand-up comedy. He’s watched the Amy Schumer Leather special, and the Ricky Gervais Humanity special, and posted about both shows. That’s how I know.

There’s a selfie which he took while Antinous was being tattooed on his torso – a particularly painful experience, according to him; hence the awkward facial expression. The photo is so ridiculous and unflattering that it immediately reminded me of the comical selfies which Ricky Gervais takes all the time, trying to look as ugly as possible in them, thus expressing his mockery on the worldwide mania of posting unrealistically perfect photos. Adam has a comedic streak a mile wide, and not only does it come out in concerts and movie roles such as his part of Eddie in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but also in his Instagram page as well. Unlike Ricky, Adam just wants to laugh at himself. Yes, he sometimes looks ridiculous and weird - don’t we all? He’s no bullshitter, and never will be.

Now would be a great moment to mention his Grandma June alter ego. So, Adam has decided it would be great to make himself look forty years older, name the character Grandma June and rant throughout several videos on many a current topic. Who? What? Adam, the most eligible gay bachelor of several times? Adam, the Zeus in a thong sex symbol for many? Unbelievable. Waves of discomfort could be felt throughout the shallower waters of the fandom. Was he just having fun with it? Was he mocking himself for overusing de-aging filters? Was he helping himself get over his own fear of aging by laughing at his own expense? Was it some kind of reverse psychology/psychotherapy via Snapchat filters? Was it to shock his fans who come to his page for hotness and beauty galore, only to find Grandma June blinking owlishly at them? The list is endless. It’s like he was saying, ‘yeah, I’m hot, but I’m also ridiculous, funny and a little bit on the crazy side.’ Who knows. It’s certainly less ridiculous than me putting words in his mouth. It is also very non-Hollywood of Adam, where ageism is rampant and the anti-aging industry flourishes, where kids start injecting botox as soon as they’re twenty and where a lot of people take faces they’re born with as a slight suggestion. Interesting topic.

We’re now traipsing deeper and deeper into Adam’s more hidden depths. This makes it sound like scrolling through his Instagram page is a voyage into the heart of darkness, the Apocalypse Now style; but it does feel adventurous after you parse through the regular job-related stuff. Such aside interests tell us a lot about him and his fascinations, like his love and respect for other artists. He is a true fan at heart, expressing himself unabashedly and passionately – so many pictures of Freddie, Bowie and George Michael, but also Goldfrapp, Demi, Lady Gaga, and all his musician friends. Sometimes, he puts the flailers in his own fandom to shame. I like that about him. I feel like it’s a level we can relate on. And I love that he doesn’t have cheap, tit-for-tat, I’ll-do-you-and-you-do-me mentality. When he says that he likes something, you better fucking believe that he does.

He also loves nature. He posts sceneries – the beloved Runyon Canyon, the Ibiza cruise, Mexico, Bali, Mykonos in Greece, Argentina, you name it - but, he will also post a photo of a single olive tree. The fandom speculated for three days about what it could possibly mean. He posted a video of a single butterfly flapping its wings, and a colony of bats, and a lonely gecko crawling up the wall and a mother duck and her ducklings swimming in the lake. Endless photos of Pharaoh don’t even count. Details from around him capture his attention in a way that he expresses his emotive, intuitive side by showing us the impact they have on him. In his private moments, he is a far cry from a wild rocker living his wild rock’n’roll life. He’s so much more than that. He’s a tree watcher. A butterfly watcher. A bird watcher. Life and observing life clearly excites him.

He also loves architecture. He will post pictures of streets and buildings, sculptures and monuments, from everywhere he goes, and he travels a lot. Someone else would probably spend all pre- and post-concert time in hibernation accumulating energy, but not Adam. He loves the bas-reliefs, ancient facades, the Greco-Roman culture, supporting columns and carvings of Venetian houses; but every now and then he will also post some strange things, like tombstones. He’s a traveler with a twist. When he goes somewhere new, he sometimes visits cemeteries. He’s been to Boston Cemetery and Buenos Aires Cemetery. He posted a photo of the entrance to Jesus’ tomb from his visit to Jerusalem. No matter what B Hollywood horror movies are trying to tell us, cemeteries are never about being creepy or frightful -- they are like a library for the imagination. Wandering cemeteries around the globe, reading headstones, thinking about the lives of the people there, the mind wanders into a thousand stories. It can be therapeutic. But, who knows what Adam’s motives were. All I know is that he is more than just a traveler – he is also a spiritual explorer.

In everything he does, he rarely stays within the lines. This diversity tells us that Adam is a complex man before he is an artist, and even less than he is an artist, that he is a promoting artist. His self-promoting campaigns are there, but ever so subtle and discrete - nothing like the aggressive campaigning that has become obligatory nowadays. I’m not talking about the management or the label part in it, or whoever is in charge of his promotion; just Adam’s own role in it. A few tweets, a few Instagram posts, mostly just informative in nature, before a new release. Regarding concerts, a tweet before and after is a rarity. An occasional review. He will sometimes post great photos after concerts, though. I have no idea how to explain such behavior other than to say that he doesn’t want to do it, nor does he feel like he has to. Maybe he is of the ‘an artist should never reveal too much and keep a level of mystery’ persuasion. Maybe he believes the music will find its way to those who want to hear it. Or maybe he just finds it tacky, as I do, the ad nauseam self-promoting of certain artists. Who knows. I certainly wouldn’t find it tacky if Adam did it. We’ll see how Era 4 will roll out and if Adam will be more talkative then. The one explanation I personally find the most believable is that he is a well-mannered man who believes that you should let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips; but that’s because I tend to attribute Adam superhuman qualities. He can’t be that much of a gentleman, can he?

He is not very verbose in his Instagram captions either; most of them, that is. His posts are usually with very little or no comment from him. He tags the people in the photo, or he gives credit to the photographer – he is pretty diligent about it. On few unfortunate occasions when that didn’t happen, we had a mutiny among the photographers which ended with bruised egos on both sides.

So sparse are his comments, that when you do bump onto a few loquacious ones, you just know that it must be something of utter importance or that he feels strongly about. You don’t have to guess anything then, or draw unfortunate conclusions, which is a game his fans like to play and that Adam likes to engage us in by dropping random hints. No game here – his words are loud and crystal clear, concise and to the point, and apart from bringing my attention to the relevance of such particular posts, they serve to remind me what a great thinker and an amazing human being Adam is. Those words are always about love and equality.

One of such glimpses into his more private, passionate side is certainly his love and appreciation for Creative Sharka, a fan who makes digital paintings and chibi art of Adam and the moments in his career. He has posted her art several times and even met with her during his tour - such gratitude and appreciation of a fan really warms my heart. It tells me what I already knew: that he is such a fan himself, a great lover of everything that inspires him and open in his heart for the reciprocal love exchange between artists as the highest form of flattery. He’s had such situation in his career several times, on various levels, but this one with a fan feels truly rewarding.

Creative Sharka gives him her art, but it doesn’t have to be a tangible thing. One of the most revealing and emotional comments he wrote under a photo from one of his performances reveals so much. It is a photo whose focal point are the backs of two people, two guys, who are leaning against one another in a hug, their heads connected, and they are facing Adam singing on the stage in the background. They are in the forefront, their body language speaking of love; Adam is in the background, perhaps inspiring such connection. His comment says, “Really in luv w this photo. So sweet.” I’ve never read Adam saying that about any picture, and it’s one of the amateur, fan ones, too – and all the more precious for that.

But, does he always feel the love? Do we? Most of the times, I am sure that he does. But I have always imagined Adam as a highly emotional guy, which also means a great capacity for sadness, too, especially with so many reasons for it surrounding us. There is one, literally one sad comment that I have encountered during all these years. It’s under a photo of Frank the Robot’s head, taken before the show, with the top half of it waiting patiently to be connected with its bottom half by diligent Queen crew, so that Adam can ride it and spew obscenities into the audience from its shiny, metallic head. “Sad Clown,” is Adam’s caption. I don’t know if he felt bad for Frank at that moment, or the words are about Killer Queen, but there is a possibility that the words are about Frank’s rider later on. Sometimes, he does have to hide his sadness and paint his smile on. Who doesn’t.

He truly belongs to one of the rarest of species – a beautiful man who becomes even more beautiful when he opens his mouth and speaks. Or sings. In the pre-Trump, pre-Brexit, pre-Vučić era, I used to take his words for granted. I believed everybody thought so, or almost everybody. I was spectacularly wrong. The bout of sadness that gripped me then is still not easing up. How can it? This Weltschmerz has affected everyone with a soul - Adam, too. Will our physical reality ever satisfy the demands of our minds and souls ever again? I believe so, as long as there are people like Adam, like Emma Gonzalez, like many others who are fighting for it. That is what hope sounds like. With rising urgency, Adam speaks up.

“Black lives matter. For all of u who totally miss the point of this movement, the GOAL is for all lives to matter equally. But as it stands, racism is preventing us from that ideal. We must fix the reality so we can grow toward hope.”

We must fix the reality… We really do, Adam. Faced with such thoughts, don’t all previous words about promotion and lack of internet presence sound frivolous? I am glad that this is how Adam feels. I am so proud of him for sharing his thoughts.

When he posted a photo of Freddie, pointing out the hypocrisy of the ruling US political party using Freddie Mercury’s music, some people seemed to have an issue with that. This was Adam’s reply:

“I realize that there are many different schools of thought frequented by people following me on social media. EVERYONE is entitled to their opinions and beliefs. Including me. This is MY Instagram page where I share my experiences and feelings. If you don't agree with something, that's perfectly ok with me - but I'm not going to refrain from being me, and no one is forcing you to either.”

And refrained he has not.

He’s spoken against the gun violence.

He’s spoken about Orlando. About Paris. About all mass shootings.

He’s also spoken at the Los Angeles Pride Resist March last year. Here are some of his words:

“I typically avoid publicly speaking about politics because of its divisiveness. People get real sensitive, and I ain’t trying to piss anybody off. But, this year things have gone way too far.

So I’m not speaking today about being a democrat vs. a republican. Today is about right vs. wrong. The current presidential administration has manipulated the country using fear and hate to gain power to divide us. Our differences are being used against us. And the shockwaves of this dangerous rhetoric have rippled throughout our community and beyond. And it fucking hurts. We’ve come way too far to stand by and watch our social progress be yanked backwards. It’s almost as if they’re going, ‘Eh, you’re different. You can’t sit with us.’ What the fuck is that? It’s childish and it needs to end now.

Our pride parade is usually an all out shit show of a party where we all dress up like crazy unicorns and prance around through the streets. Yeah! It’s a celebration of the progress we have made – our liberation, our freedom, our glitter. But this year, we are facing such dark forces that pride has taken on a deeper purpose. Protest. So today, we stand together in order to support anyone whose human rights are at risk. We resist homophobia. We resist transphobia. We resist misogyny. Bi-invisibility. We resist racism. Xenophobia. And we resist extremism, and anything else that helps promote hate. We stand defiant and will not be brainwashed. We refuse to be sucked into that kind of negativity.

But, I ask you not to fight hate with hate. We don’t want to be hypocrites. So how can we resist? I’ll tell you what I think: with unity, with visibility, truth, inclusion, acceptance, and most importantly – love.”

Don’t his words boom loud? Read them and abide by them. Don’t scroll through or ignore them.

Shame on those who think that Adam should only do his job and stop voicing his opinions and views.

Shame on those who, blinded by his beauty, refer to him as a Ken doll.

Shame on those who say that he is back in the closet.

In his Love Letter to the LGBTQ community, which was published in Billboard magazine last year, he talks more about what his community means to him:

“Y'all are my true inspiration. You're life lines that have kept me grounded and thankful. All the LGBTQ musicians, dancers, drag queens, bar stars, club kids, DJ's, designers, actors, stylists, glam squads..... YOU are my circus family. It is because of all those years traipsing round our nocturnal playgrounds that I had any sense of how and why I wanted to stay the course; to rep for my queer family!

And now 8 years later, the LGBTQ community has come SO far. I see fellow artists AND civilians coming out with no apologies and no fucks given. Despite the current obstacles we face, I am blown away by our progress. We have come so far. My true fans share the same principles so we continue to welcome other alien weirdos into our family. Thank you ALL for inspiring and supporting my journey. I promise to keep doing the same for all of you.”

Should he speak more frequently? Adam has voiced his opinions time and again, but he won’t misuse the opportunity given to him. He has a sophisticated sense for not crossing the line between his art and his humanitarian fight. He never pushes anything under anyone’s nose; not his art; not his fight. He never uses just causes as a self-promoting opportunity.

This is all part of the reply to the question from the beginning about what the lack of social presence can mean. His social presence isn’t lacking, it is just of the unobtrusive kind. It’s all out there, only a few clicks away. Are we so used to the constant media shoveling content down our metaphorical throats that we can’t even register when something’s said only once?

Apparently, I am. Because I have already read Adam Lambert’s own explanation about deciding to moderate his social media presence and it hasn’t even made a blip on my radar at the time. I won’t tell you where his words are from, you can try to guess. It’s a direct quote. It says everything.

How pathetic now seems the discussion about flattering vs. less flattering photos? Don’t ask this man about the size of his gauges for a hundredth time and expect him to engage with his fans more. But Adam does, he does engage, for he isn’t a mean man and he answers the same trivial questions again and again. It’s perhaps a much better option than talking, I don’t know, about Weltschmerz. Sometimes, such discussions are better avoided, and not only that - he has already said what he wanted to say. It’s much more bearable to repeat the silly topics than the raw, emotional ones. The repetition hurts, and devalues the latter.

It really is a journey, from Grandma June, to cultivating self-love and True Individuality; only not to the heart of darkness, but to the one of lightness. It’s all him, the philosopher and the comedian, the Frank’s head rider and the march speaker. Read his words. Don’t forget them, like I did. Laugh with him, but also think with him and be sad with him.

“True Individuality seems daunting in our age of social media popularity contests. Sometimes it’s terrifying to face your true, whole self, stripped of any pretense. The good, the bad, the cracks, and the scars. I am no stranger to the feeling of not liking myself. Once I get past my own body image issues, I realize that I sometimes also neglect my own spirit. Living in a world filled with so much hatred sometimes makes cultivating self-love a very difficult task. I have always struggled with this as I’m sure many of you have. My path is a kind of paradox in that I get to share my craft with the world, but also be willing to throw myself to the wolves. To dare to be different, but still wanting to be accepted. There is vast beauty to be found in life’s contradictions. This non-binary reality allows us to lead happy, expressive lives, and yet this very freedom comes with great risks. I’m not alone in this limbo. Through my art, I pledge to bring empathy and courage to anyone who has been made to feel unworthy or ashamed while daring to be themselves.”

***

~The sources for everything mentioned in the essay are Adam Lambert’s social media pages. I’ve decided against posting any links because I feel like this one reference is enough.

~No photos either, since I mention too many of them and this bloody thing is too long already. Just this one.

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britesparc · 5 years ago

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Weekend Top Ten #403

Top Ten Disney Villains

Chalk another one up to “topics I thought I’d already covered”…

So this weekend, or thereabouts, sees the release of Frozen II, which is cool because it uses the “II” instead of the “2”, which makes it seem all moody and epic. At the time of writing, I have not watched it, because I do not believe it is out. However, I will watch it, and not just because I have two little girls who at various points have been utterly nuts for Elsa and Anna. No, I will also watch it because Frozen is rather great and I’m interested to see what happens next. Hopefully Elsa will get a girlfriend. That’d be nice for her.

There are lots of things you could discuss when talking about Disney movies (and by Disney movies I mean specifically the animated “classics”, from Snow White to Wreck-It Ralph, from Cinderella to Moana; I am discounting Pixar movies for the time being, however). There’s the principle characters, the songs, the settings, the dresses… but today I will be discussing The Villains.

What is a Disney movie without a Big Bad? I mean, Winnie the Pooh, I suppose. Arguably Ralph Breaks the Internet. Even more arguably, Moana. Stuff like Dumbo and Pinocchio certainly have bad guys, but not over-arching nemeses. Anyway, where was I?

Yeah, so, Disney Villains. Iconic. Often terrifying. Sometimes hilarious. Kinda sexy? Yeah, sure, why not. They tend to get the best lines; often the best songs; sometimes they’re played with relish and gusto by the best actors. Although some villains sometimes have a bit of nuance, depth, or tragedy to them, most of the time we’re in strict hissing panto territory, and I don’t think that diminishes the films one iota. As our big, broad entertainment enjoys putting wrinkles in its evil linen – be it the fraternal intricacies of Loki or the self-pitying emotional outbursts of Kylo Ren – we do enjoy shades of grey. Therefore it’s all the more entertaining when somebody properly goes for it as a bad guy, and pulls out the Full Palpatine.

I’m not sure, either, quite why Disney excels at female villains. Even when their titular heroines are a bit wet – like Ariel or Aurora – the bad girls are full-throated, evil joys. Ursula and Maleficent are the best bits of those movies, Jamaican crabs notwithstanding. And, yes, they both get to be a bit sexy too. Is it some kind of dark undercurrent of misogyny, of Disney exploring tropes of the fallen woman? Is it something primordial, like a dark inversion of maternity (there are quite a few Wicked Stepmothers in Disney, after all)? Or is it just coz the animators liked drawing sexy bad girls? We’ll never know.

One notable – and unincluded – villain here is Hans, from Frozen (spoiler alert). He just slipped off the list – but then so did quite a few famous others. Hans is interesting because he’s an absolute bastard, conniving and scheming and murdering his way to the top in as sociopathic manner as possible. His heel turn was, for me at least, a surprise, and part of Frozen’s beautiful unpicking of common Disney fairytale tropes. The perfect love-at-first-sight duet partner turns out to be a lying, manipulative toe-rag. Although the film predated the #MeToo movement, Hans is the perfect poster-boy. Whilst his early-days civility and lack of a show-stopping villain theme song means he’s not quite as memorable a character, it’ll be interesting to see if Frozen II pulls off as successful a switcheroo, or has a villain that resonates as strongly with the film’s themes.

But enough of this guff. Let’s get wicked.

Scar (Jeremy Irons, The Lion King, 1994): pretty much the dictionary definition – alongside Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves – of “upper-class English villainy”. It’s just delightful to listen to him enunciate his wickedness. This is Iago-level bastardry. Oscar-worthy.

Ursula (Pat Carroll, The Little Mermaid, 1989): ditto Ursula, who also brings a delightful, raw sexuality to an otherwise rather chaste movie (especially one that’s so concerned with body transmogrification). Great set of pipes, too.

Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy, Tangled, 2010): less of a sneering monster but more realistic in her purely wicked gaslighting. A case study in belittlement and subtle mental torture. Also another case of “belting villain song”.

Maleficent (Eleanor Audley, Sleeping Beauty, 1959): no real nuance, and sadly no real numbers, but Maleficent gets a nod due to her phenomenal visual design, an epic and iconic dragon battle, and just by being the embodiment of unreal, emotionless evil. A literal devil.

Gaston (Richard White, Beauty and the Beast, 1991): not the sneering evil overlord or psychological manipulator, but an early example of toxic masculinity and patriarchal suppression writ large (the size of a barge, in fact). Swagger, ego, and – horror – popularity, rallying the town behind his hate. Also – again – cracking tune.

Prince John (Peter Ustinov, Robin Hood, 1973): Disney doesn’t just do cold evil with its villains; much of the time they’re funny, too, and Prince John is like Captain Hook in being essentially a bumbling idiot used chiefly for comic relief. But he’s funnier than Hook, and with his thumb-sucking schtick, has a better, er, hook, too.

Professor Ratigan (Vincent Price, Basil the Great Mouse Detective, 1986): full disclosure, I’ve not seen this since I was a kid, but I loved Ratigan. Again, cool song; again, tremendous performance. But he managed to be both aloof and sneery yet utterly, primally terrifying; at the end, with his wild face and ripped clothes, he freaked out Young Me so much. Also one of the few Disney villains to actually flat-out murder someone.

Doctor Facilier (Keith David, The Princess and the Frog, 2009): AKA “The Soul Man”, Facilier is an interesting character that explores cultural roots of the film’s New Orleans setting, giving him a vibe (and, frankly, an ethnicity) that makes him unique. Plus he’s really creepy, with his scary “Friends on the Other Side” (great number), and a frankly unsettling death scene.

Lady Tremaine (Eleanor Audley, Cinderella, 1950): ploughing a similar manipulative furrow as Mother Gothel, Tremaine – the quintessential Wicked Stepmother – is a malicious, quiet presence, rarely shouting, never getting physical; she simply strips away everything of Cinderella’s until she’s left with a torn and tattered dress and no means of escape. She is The System which is all-controlling, and only magic is enough to defeat her.

Jafar (Jonathan Freeman, Aladdin, 1992): similar in his own way to the melodramatic villainy of Scar or Maleficent, Jafar also adds some baser human wants and lust for power. He’s a more physical villain, with some of Scar’s eloquence but more of Gaston’s personal need for growth, success, and – well – a bit of a legover. Doesn’t get a good song till The Return of Jafar, though.

So there we are: top Disney gits. Shame I didn’t have room for Mad Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone, who was so nearly there, along with Hook and Hans. I did, however, veto supporting villains, henchmen, and second-tier bad guys, if you’re wondering where Smee, Iago, and Tamatoa are. Maybe that’s the subject for another Top Ten? Shiny!

#top ten #disney #disney movies #disney animation #disney princess #villains #bad guys

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toraonice · 8 years ago

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Yuri on Ice BD audio commentary translation - Volume 3

Translation of the audio commentary of the BD/DVD vol.3, by Mitsurou Kubo and Junichi Suwabe, voice actor of Victor Nikiforov. I really wanted to post this before the weekend because I’m not going to be home a lot, so I decided “well, I might just not sleep tonight and translate this instead”… This time there are some parts that I translated almost integrally. They talk a lot about Victor, especially Suwabe’s struggle to get into the role. It provides insight while at the same time not providing… since apparently it’s very hard to guess what is “right” when talking about Victor. I’m sure you will get what I mean if you read what they say…

The commentary is only for episode 6. Episode 5 has no commentary. It’s not a full translation but I summarized most of what they said, and as I wrote above some parts are almost completely translated. As in the previous ones, the format is different from normal interview translations, and you can find my comments too (mostly in brackets).

Translation under the post because it’s long. Enjoy!

-In the beginning they introduce themselves and, talking about their age, Kubo says that it’s the first audio commentary where both are over 40 (Kubo is 41 and Suwabe is 44, while Toyonaga is 31 and Uchiyama is 26). Suwabe says that actually most of the voice actors playing the skaters in YOI are below 40, except “maybe Yasumoto”. (Though in fact Yasumoto is turning 40 in a few days, and he forgot Nojima, Seung-gil’s seiyuu, who is already 40 and turning 41 in a few days, coincidentally the same day as Yasumoto, lol).

-Suwabe hasn’t listened to the other audio commentaries and says that he’s worried whether he can do it properly, but Kubo tells him that they mostly talked about things unrelated to what was being shown in the anime and he’s like “oh, that’s something I’m good at!”. Kubo says that she has no idea how audio commentaries are usually done and Suwabe replies that it really depends on the series.

-During the scene where Yuuri and Victor are in the airplane flying to China, Kubo comments that the light brown shirt Victor is wearing looks like an “old lady shirt” and he looks cute with that on. (In Japan “old lady shirts” are long-sleeved inner shirts, usually in sober colors like gray or beige, often used by middle-aged or older women under other garments to keep warm) Suwabe asks her whether someone like Victor would usually fly business class or above, and she replies that normally athletes are paying for the trips, including their coach’s part, which means that they need to pay for two tickets and therefore in most cases they don’t get very nice seats (she is referring to Yuuri and Victor’s trip, therefore she actually doesn’t reply to the initial question regarding whether *Victor* would fly business class, but judging from his comment in the series I’d believe he does..). She says that after she went to see the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona she casually ended up on the same return flight as the Russian team and all skaters where sitting in economy class, including Evgenia Medvedeva who was in the last row of economy seats despite winning the gold medal. Suwabe comments that he rarely has a chance to travel abroad, so when he does he would consider spending more to get a good seat, and Kubo says that it’s important to have the right to buy comfort with money, especially for long flights.

-During the scene at the hot pot restaurant, Kubo explains that the restaurant shown in the anime actually exists, and it’s in Beijing close to the classy hotel skaters stay at. She says that she went there with director Yamamoto and the food was delicious. She also says that after YOI aired it got popular and they did some promotions like offering drinks (she doesn’t mention based on what). Beside the hot pot restaurant, the food stands on the streets where also really there. Suwabe comments that the topic of food comes up a lot in YOI, and since it also used to air very late at night it could be considered a “food terrorism” (in English you would more commonly say “food porn”) anime, because it made viewers hungry. Kubo says that the eyecatches were probably Yamamoto’s idea, but she did intend to add in the anime lots of elements that would cause people to physically do something the next day, which includes of course showing food that people would want to eat. She mentions that there was a temporary katsudon boom and that she even heard how katsudon would disappear from convenience stores in the middle of the night because people were going out to buy it. Suwabe says that he also felt like eating katsudon himself and actually did a few times. To explain why she decided to use katsudon, here she tells again the story of the French guy who loved katsudon. She remembers telling someone but I guess she forgot that she already talked about it in the audio commentary of episode 1… (I won’t write it in detail, if you forgot or haven’t read it please check out the audio commentary of vol.1 here) It’s funny how Suwabe is clearly puzzled when she tells him how the guy thought katsudon was “healthy” (Suwabe is like “uhm??”) and how he lost 5 kgs in one month eating katsudon on a daily basis (again Suwabe is like “eh…?”). However he says that he can see how foreigners would like katsudon, because it’s a little salty-sweet like teriyaki which is also popular in America, plus egg and cutlets are both commonly eaten in many places all over the world.

-Regarding “Ousama to Skater” (“The King and the Skater”, the fictional musical from which Phichit’s songs are taken). Kubo says that she saw the musical “The King and I” in New York City and she was moved by it. She really wanted a musical song to be used in one of the programs, so she created “Ousama to Skater” as a background setting, coming up with a very detailed story for it. Real life skaters often use music from movies too and some songs are considered classics. They mention Yuzuru Hanyu and Suwabe says that he likes Yagudin’s program “The Man in the Iron Mask”. Other skaters in YOI are also using music that is said to be from movies (fictitious movies of course, like the song of Guang-Hong’s FS), but Kubo says that she created the setting of “Ousama to Skater” with more details than the others, and that in the world of YOI the songs from this musical are considered figure skating classics. (By the way, they do mention that, due to its contents, “The King and I” is actually banned in Thailand) Suwabe says that his acquantainces who are into figure skating talk to him about YOI, and some commented that “the fact that there’s a skater from Southeast Asia is a nice fantasy”. He asks Kubo whether that was made on purpose, and she says that in YOI they tried to add many elements that might potentially become reality one day, and this is one of those. She says that Kenji Miyamoto is currently choreographing some programs in Thailand, and that a Japanese female coach, Satsuki Muramoto (she retired from competitive skating in 2013), is also teaching students there. According to them, local skaters are improving a lot and there is a high chance that they will be more visible in the international scene in the near future. Kubo also mentions the Filipino skater Michael Christian Martinez who participated in the Olympics in 2013-14. She says that she went to Thailand a few times so she was happy that she could add something from there to the story, and Suwabe comments that it’s nice to see many skaters from various parts of the world competing together.

-Continuing from the previous topic, Suwabe mentions Chris (as “the sexual one”), and they talk about him. Kubo says that she loves Chris, and that within the series he and Victor are both popular but they’re actually very good friends. She also says that it’s great how Hiroki Yasumoto’s voice was a perfect match for Chris. Suwabe jokes that there were too many sexual nuances in his voice, and Kubo says that she heard from Yamamoto that the recording of episode 6 was amazing, and that according to Yasumoto he had added more voice parts but they were cut. Suwabe confirms that Yasumoto did add a lot of “deep” ad-libs during Chris’ program, but that they were cut in the final version “maybe because they could have crossed the line of what can be broadcasted on TV”. According to Kubo, she was told that in the BD/DVDs they have more freedom than on TV, so maybe some parts will be different… (She doesn’t confirm whether they did actually change something about Chris though, but I guess I will try to compare the two versions, lol)

-Here she asks Suwabe how he felt at the time of episode 6, because she knows that he had a hard time grasping Victor’s character. From this point they discuss about Victor, and since I really didn’t know where to cut because it was all interesting I just wrote down basically everything they said, therefore I will report it as normal dialogue (I cut all the “uhm”, “I mean”, “yeah” etc to make the lines flow smoother). Suwabe: I have voiced a lot of characters so far, but Victor is quite unique even among them. The reason is that — even if saying it like this might sound worse than it is — as a character he couldn’t completely ��fit” inside me. To be honest, I have the feeling that my mind couldn’t completely overlap with his until the end. It feels like a three-point shoot that you don’t think will be successful but it is, like you can’t picture it in your mind, your shooting form is not correct but it still works. I read the script, I read the storyboard by Kubo-sensei, I read the dialogues and stage directions, I watched the footage — even though it still wasn’t complete when we recorded the voices — and tried to create an image inside my mind, to shape the person called Victor Nikiforov. I would then go to recording, but it often happened that during the test run I was told “no, not that way”. It happened a lot that I was torn about how to portray him. For the whole time, until the last episode, I wasn’t sure about how I should express his feelings. After all the work was over, looking back on the anime there were scenes where I remembered what I was thinking when I voiced them, but honestly I don’t feel like Victor has stayed inside me. Of course it’s my voice, so I was definitely the one who played him, but somehow I can look at it from a completely neutral point of view. I always had this very curious feeling when I was watching the broadcast. I’ve said it in various interviews too, but during recording it was like a tug of war between the direction — the director and the sound director — and I, fighting over how to portray Victor. It was like my idea of Victor versus their idea of Victor, sometimes I’d win and sometimes I’d act like they said. We created Victor this way, and maybe this continuous wavering is what made him a person hard to understand. I must admit that I don’t think I have completely grasped Victor’s image. But at the same time, it’s not like I don’t understand him. What I feel about playing Victor is a very subtle sensation that I myself find difficult to express with words. Kubo: I think that’s a good thing. In YOI Victor is trying to be a coach for the first time. He’s a person with a long career behind him, that for the first time tries to teach his techniques to someone, not sure that he’s doing it right. It’s like there is an external pressure requesting him to be as good as he has been so far. I guess it’s also what people would seek from someone like you, Suwabe-san. It’s what happens when you have a long and successful career… But if you leave that career and try to do something else, you might feel anxious and not know what to do. You lose your balance, but at the same time you think about what you can do. It’s not like I purposely created the story to have you portray that, but I’m very happy that somehow, as a result, this wavering feeling was conveyed through the way you played Victor. Thank you very much. Suwabe: I felt that it was a real challenge each and every time. Every time I would think, “so, how will it go today? Will it be ok or will they tell me it’s wrong once again?”. It’s interesting because it was always like a match. Victor may be a top athlete but he’s still a human being, so I would try to decipher him like I would interpret the thoughts of a normal person, and I would think “ok, let’s do it this way”, but actually those where the times I would most often be told “no it’s wrong”. And when I had a chance to ask you about him, I remember you saying that, in a way, he’s like a sprite of skating. Kubo: Yeah, I said that maybe he’s an elf, an ice elf. We don’t see anything about his background or his family, and actually I didn’t really create him to behave like a typical Russian person. In my mind he might have been found in the crater left by a meteorite fallen somewhere in Russia. Suwabe: Sounds like someone with superpowers (LOL). Kubo: Like we can’t even tell whether he came from outer space or somewhere else (LOL). He might be the type who hasn’t been a human for a very long time, including his past existences. And while thinking things like that, creating the actual story I would be like, “Victor’s personality might be like this.. no, Victor would definitely say this..”. Even though I was the one drawing him, I myself was looking for his image the whole time, and rewrote the storyboard many times because I’d realize “Victor would not do this, let’s change it”. It’s like I was feeling my way. Suwabe: If we only simply talk about how I created Victor’s state of mind, one of the scenes I had a hard time with — even though it’s a bit weird to talk about it during episode 6 — is the one at the beginning of the last episode, when he’s crying after talking with Yuuri at the hotel. Normally when you cry your nose and your facial muscles are going to move to an extent, but during the test I was told “that’s not needed”. They told me to act the part completely ignoring any kind of physical change related to crying because he is just angry, he isn’t sad nor has any other complex feelings, he’s just mad at Yuuri. So basically what the directors told me is that it’s really what he says, “I’m mad!”, just that. And I was like, oh, I see. We got to this point, and still I come upon things like this. Kubo: I guess what I tried to write in the storyboard was conveyed properly. I’ve actually seen someone cry like that, a man, in front of me. And I was looking at him thinking, ah, this person cries like this, with just teardrops dripping from his eyelashes. He was speaking just the way he normally speaks, the only difference being the teardrops dripping from his lashes, and I made Victor cry that way. Suwabe: It’s like a newborn child, like someone who isn’t conscious of his feelings or his physical movements… that’s so scary. I was surprised to see that even in the last episode his feelings would still show new kinds of nuances. Normally when I play a human character, I mean, what you would consider a normal person, I guess what they are thinking based on their actions and what is happening in the story, but in Victor Nikiforov’s case I had the feeling, while playing him, that his feelings and any guesses would go in totally different ways. That’s why he was a very difficult character. There was a part where he had a monologue, you know, like in a certain TV series (I’m not sure which one he’s referring to), where it’s like the story progresses with his monologue. But even though it was his monologue, I’m not sure I would say that he was 100% baring his true feelings… I’m not sure how to interpret that. Kubo: I think maybe that’s why viewers tend to have very strong ideas about what is correct, about what is the truth. (She was getting to a topic that I personally feel very interesting, but she suddenly cut it to go back to Chris..)

-Here she suddenly says that she forgot to mention about Chris’ ass, and then comments that his line “I’m gonna come” was left. Then Suwabe jokes “the ice is all wet”, and she says that sometimes you get worried because, due to the strong lights and the heat of the hall, the ice really looks wet, but in Chris’ case.. (Suwabe finishes the line) he makes it wet with his aura. She also says that she likes how in this episode Chris and Yuuri are among the oldest, but not necessarily the older ones are getting the best positions in the ranking, and it’s nice how some of the younger ones are surpassing them. She also says she’s sorry that she completely ignored Georgi’s line “I am an evil witch”, and Suwabe says that the highlight of this episode is the absence of Makkachin. She says “maybe he will actually appear more in the BDs” an Suwabe is “I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t go that far (lol). (I think she was joking too when she said it, so don’t expect more Makkachin..)

I translated the last part as dialogue too. Kubo: I’m really happy that you voiced Victor. Creating this work about figure skating we are trying to catch something invisible, but I feel that what we are trying to convey has reached people. What Suwabe-san paid attention to, what the director paid attention to, what I paid attention to.. I had many occasions to feel that they are actually coming across. It was worth putting so many details in the story. Suwabe: I said that Victor is not human, that he’s a sprite, but in a way we could say that, paradoxically, his complexity is what actually does make him human. It actually makes him real, non-stereotyped. I feel that I was able to walk close to a man called Victor Nikiforov, and I’m very happy to have been involved in this work. Now I can say that I’m glad I said all those “amazing!” at the audition (lol). Kubo: You did say that a lot. We had no doubts about choosing you, but it’s funny how actually, while we had no doubts, we made you have doubts, and made you so confused about the role. It’s a new development (lol). Creating stories is fun. Suwabe: Indeed, it really took a lot of efforts and pains to bring to life these characters, and I can’t thank you enough all of you for loving them. I will be really happy if you continue to support Yuri on Ice from now on, for a long time.

And then they say the final greetings.

Final note: Just to be safe because you never know, without hearing the voices it might sound more serious than it is… What they say about Victor being a sprite or an elf or “previous existences” of course is a joke, it’s not like he’s really an alien. Also, what we can gather from all this is that Victor is really a complex character and is hard to completely understand (not even the creators understand him). I personally have always found Yuuri much easier to understand than Victor. By the way, in the line that was cut off I think Kubo is referring to the fact that, since Victor is hard to understand, different people will have different ideas and strongly believe that their interpretation is the truth (this is based on what she said in many other interviews). I’d be really curious to know what scenes were done according to Suwabe’s interpretation and what according to the directors, but I’m pretty sure we will never know that…

P.S.: You don't notice as much reading the translation, but you can hear from the way he speaks that Suwabe really had a hard time explaining how he feels about Victor. He is very good with words usually, so this shows how he seriously means what he says.. (Though to be honest he still manages to speak more clearly than Kubo...) It was a pain to translate too of course, I'm pretty sure the other commentaries didn't take me as long..

#YOI #Yuri on ice #Audio Commentary #BD #kubo mitsurou #suwabe junichi #victor nikiforov #translation

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